Courtroom ReviewsBad guys just want to have fun! Edit: See latest post for PC voting details! Polls close on March 31st (8:22:50 PM US Atlantic time)!Way of the Wicked claims the unique title of being the only evil Pathfinder adventure path. From video games to table-top RPGs, you’ve saved the world countless times from the forces of evil; now it’s time to see what it’s like on the other side, where the world needs saving from you!
This book is not called “How to Run a Successful Evil Campaign,” although it discusses this a fair bit for the adventure and other potential gaming sessions. So why the Courtroom Review? Well, a few reasons:
• One, it’s where the PCs are dyed-in-the-wool bad guys. In this campaign the evil PCs are not fighting other evil characters, but paladins, angels, and Talingarde (the “most noble, virtuous, and peaceful nation in the known world”). You’re not fighting to destroy a greater evil, but the holy forces of light.
• Two, evil parties have a well-deserved poor reputation in gaming circles. Many players view an “evil game” as opportunity to indulge in PvP backstabbing, leading to hurt feelings all around. Others use it as an opportunity to indulge in the kind of sick fantasies you see in “Terrible gaming session” threads all over the Internet. And a lot of players play characters as Stupid Evil, recklessly endangering the whole party with their suicidal actions.
• It’s very well-regarded. Not only are people running it and reporting success stories (from Giantitp to Something Awful Traditional Games), almost all the online reviews rate it very highly. This is not the first time publishers made “evil options” books, but a lot of times it devolved into juvenile depravity or focused mostly on game mechanics instead of GMing advice and adventure ideas.
In addition to looking over any advice this book contains and judging its quality, I will also be reviewing the adventure. Lucky you! Examining how the adventure handles the struggles and motivations of an evil party can be an enlightening experience.
Adventure Background: From Whence This Darkness
Here's an abridged version of events. Basically there’s this prosperous nation of Talingarde. In olden times the people worshiped a pantheon of deities, one of which was Asmodeus the Lord of Hell. He wasn’t a beloved god, but people prayed to him to stay his wrath and paid him his due. But then a new noble family, the House of Darius, rose up. They promoted Mitra, god of the sun and arch-enemy of Asmodeus, to the head of the pantheon and outlawed worship of the Lord of Hell. The nobility and clergy undertook a violent purge against the devotees of the devil god, and the survivors either fled the island or lived among the savage monsters of the north (or were the monsters in some cases).
So there was this dude called Samuel of Havelyn, scion of a prominent noble house. He was a cleric of Mitra, and despite his unprecedented scholarship and early promotion to High Priest, was never his father's favorite. His father, Lord Richard, viewed him as lazy and inferior to his brother who was a knight of renown. Samuel met Bronwyn, a fellow noble, and fell in love with her; only to have her stolen away by his brother. His father mocked Samuel's anger and jealousy, saying that his feelings were unbecoming of a man of the cloth, and so began Samuel's descent into villainy.
Mitra wouldn't heed his prayers, so he turned to the only god who would: Asmodeus. Samuel placed a dark curse on his brother's marriage, which resulted in the death of the woman he once loved. His hidden life as a cultist of the devil god was discovered during the purges, and the church sentenced him to death by fire and buried in an unmarked grave. His name was stricken from church documents and the Havelyn family tree, and nobody would speak of him again.
But Asmodeus did not want him to die just yet. He dug his way out of his own grave and retreated to the savage north. After regaining his bearings, he began his plan of vengeance to bring Talingarde to his knees and reclaim his former glory! A dead man lost to history, he took up the new name of Cardinal Thorn, High Priest of Asmodeus!
Thorn's plan is to create a war between the nation and monstrous hordes of the north, all the while using fifth columnists to weaken Talingarde from within. Terrorism, assassinations, plague spreading, and more would be carried out by nine independent cells, or Knots, of top men and women loyal to him and Asmodeus. They'd be mostly unaware of each other's identity and missions. If all goes according to plan (which it won't), then the war will turn against Talingarde, and Thorn masquerading as a scion of the royal family will sweep in with an army from the mainland. Desperate to turn the tide against the horde, people will give their allegiance to him and Asmodeus for the promise of safety, security, and the restoration of order. Thorn gets what he believes is rightfully his, his minions get cushy positions in the new order, the church of Asmodeus becomes the state religion, and the priesthood of Mitra is wiped out! Everybody wins, except for Mitraites and the bugbears...
Thorn already has eight Knots, but he needs to find just the right candidates for a new cell.
Enter the PCs.
Audience Participation: The Jury Must Call Forth Credible Witnesses
I think that this experience would be a lot more fun with some audience participation.
Here’s your challenge: create a 1st-level Evil PC as though you were playing in this campaign. Since this is a review and not a gaming session, full stats are not necessarily required, although they can add to the experience. List your character name, short bio, and crime (which he is guilty of). If you’re one of the lucky ones to get picked, I’ll craft a story of sorts as our band of villains traipses across the fictional world of this tome.
Basically the set-up is that all the PCs are condemned prisoners in the lawful and virtuous theocratic monarchy of Talingarde. They’ve been forsaken by their country, for theft, treason, black magic, or some other crime of a similar nature. Aided by a strange and mysterious woman, they break out of prison and seek the safe haven promised to them by their benefactor. There they meet Cardinal Thorn, a high priest of Asmodeus who lost everything at the hands of the crown. He offers them power, vengeance, whatever best motivates them, if they work together to bring Talingarde to its knees!
In areas and avenues bound to cause problems or interesting scenarios with an all-evil party, I’ll come up with probable hare-brained schemes our overlords-to-be will perform, hopefully producing entertaining results. It’s heavily encouraged that the PCs would be motivated to take revenge against the regime and help overthrow it for a new diabolical order!
The Player’s Guide for Way of the Wicked.Evil Advice
I’m going to be a little unorthodox here, and start in the Appendix. Specifically regarding the advice for running a successful ‘Villainous Campaign.’ There’s plenty of advice out there online and in products about this very issue, because so much can go so wrong.
Let’s be honest -- campaigns focused on evil characters have pitfalls that never trouble heroic role-playing games. There is a reason why most players prefer to be the good guys. If you are not careful these pitfalls can tear your game apart. Let’s tackle five of the most common perils: 1.) the proactive nature of villainy; 2.) the problem of minions; 3.) inter-party conflict; 4.) the dangers of being too evil and 5.) the inherent banality of being bad for no reason.
Many good points, although in an evil campaign I generally don’t have time to worry about minions when a PC cultist of Demogorgan is running naked through the town square with a meat cleaver in one hand and a bag of dismembered dicks in the other. The most common problems of evil I see in games are Stupid Evil (see previous sentence), Sick Evil (“finally, an opportunity to engage in my disgusting, depraved fantasies in-character!”), and Treacherous Bastard Evil (“I cast Finger of Death on Sir Edward. Roll your character a Fortitude Save, Michael”). Hopefully all this is covered here.
Issue Number 1 is dealt with by providing the PCs a plot hook straight away. In the adventure, it’s expected that they’ll join Cardinal Thorn’s cause and become one of his Nine Knots (one for each layer of Hell). They will be taking orders early on in the Adventure Path, although it promises them flexibility as to how they carry out his wicked plans.
The verdict: I'm not a fan of railroading, but I've seen worse, and it might be necessary to give evil PCs a goal for the beginning sessions. The later adventures promise us more flexibility and freedom, and I've heard people say that the missions in the first book are very open-ended ("You've got to sabatoge the Watchwall fortress, but
how will you sabotage it?").
Issue Number 2 deals with the problem of minion over-reliance by having the quests of the adventure path be things minions cannot do; sending them to do the PCs’ work on major quests instead will result in their failure and alerting the good guys to their plot. Additionally, PCs do not receive experience for tasks and monsters dealt with by minions.
The verdict: The PCs don't really gain minions until the second book of the Adventure Path, so this isn't really an issue right now.
Issue Number 3 deals with PvP by encouraging the PCs at character creation to be united in a common cause. In a nation where the forces of evil are the underdog, the PCs must work together or face death. Cardinal Thorn provides indirect assistance at most, but he’s not going to baby the PCs; and his other evil minions (the Thorns) are more like rivals than true allies. Even if they don’t like each other, they can’t really trust anyone else as much as their fellow PCs.
The verdict: This is a great way of providing incentive for PCs to not backstab each other. Players who absolutely insist on being dicks and trolling the game won't care, but for players who are interested in a serious game, this works very well.
Issue Number 4 pretty much addresses the “Sick Evil” problem. It specifically discusses torture, and may bring up discussion of what’s acceptable and what’s not during the campaign.
The solution is to allow the action but to keep the descriptions and details in the realm of a PG-13 movie. A great example of PG-13 villainy comes from the most famous space opera of all time. The black clad villain about to interrogate the princess strides into her cell.
“And now, your highness,” he announces, “we will discuss the location of your hidden rebel base…” The movie then cuts away with a close up of a fearsome floating torture implement sporting a cruel hypodermic needle. The cut is the important lesson. Who knows what the villain did to the princess? Was she threatened, beaten, drugged or worse? Doubtless. But the movie doesn’t dwell on the specifics and neither should your game. Instead, roll an intimidation skill check and perhaps a will save. Then cut back to the villain emerging from the cell.
The verdict: Ehh, not exactly what I was hoping for. Of more concern are players who might try to use an evil campaign to “get their rocks off” and creep everyone the fuck out. Fading to black is a good thing for torture (or sex), although there are some things I’m uncomfortable with PCs doing even in the context of a game. Although a PG-13 movie pretty much precludes stuff like rape, necrophilia, and pedophilia, so I suppose it can work.
Issue Number 5 discusses that the clichéd, banal form of “I’m so evil mwahahaha!” In other words, evil for the sake of evil. The book stresses that it’s very important that the players want to root for the bad guys, and thus should find compelling reasons to flesh out villains. Maybe even make them sympathetic!
So let us avoid that trap. Let us give our villains motivation beyond the senseless pursuit of evil. In the author’s personal experience, the best villains are the ones you sympathize with and maybe even quietly cheer. That is exactly what this campaign is all about. “Way of the Wicked” is about openly rooting for the bad guys.
Let’s give another example. Samuel Havelyn (aka Adrastus Thorn) is an example of a villain with a motivation. He could have been a faithful priest of Mitra if it had not been for the unrequited love of Bronwyn. After she rejected him, he could have still turned aside from this dark road if only his father had sympathized with his son’s loss and consoled him. Instead, the old man just laughed. Thus a villain was born.
Try to encourage every PC to find a similar sort of motivation as they are being created. Every PC starts as a criminal, true enough. But why did they turn to crime? When could they have last turned back? And now that they cannot, whom do they blame for their scars? What must be done to Talingarde should not be banal wickedness for its own sake. Your characters are on a mission from Asmodeus. Vengeance will be theirs.
Just be sure to know why.
The verdict: I agree. It’s important to make sure that evil PCs are interesting characters if you want to avoid the “for the evulz” style shenanigans. Vengeance is hella evil, but it’s far more believable and interesting than “I hate goodliness and flowers and light!” Although they forgot to include some other popular suggestions, like making villain PCs fighting against an even greater evil; or highlighting the brutality, prejudices, and hypocrisy of the forces of Good (read the Dragonlance novels sometime, or The Complete Book of Elves).
So the advice isn't the most comprehensive or stellar, but it does touch upon some common pitfalls and issues. Since it uses examples from the adventure itself, we're going to delve into the book of villainy and find out if this product lives up to the hype!
