[RPG] How to keep PCs from killing each other when 1 or more is evil

alignmentcampaign-development

I'd like to run a more mature themed campaign, along the lines of game of thrones. In that story, several of the main characters have an evil alignment.

I'd like to do something similar to this in my campaign, but I'd like to know how to keep the good and evil PCs from constantly trying to kill each other? What techniques can I use to have them work together? What techniques can I use to have them work against each other without fatal consequences?

Best Answer

Dungeons & Dragons-style Alignment is not cut out for this

The characters in Game of Thrones are almost as complex as real people. Real people cannot be put in one of nine little boxes and call it done. Alignment in general is extremely problematic for a lot of games, but this one especially so. It’s just far too simplistic to handle a “mature” game with any depth. Remember, the system was designed for straight dungeon-delving with little thought for more complicated campaigns. As such, you should not be labeling characters with cute little two-word descriptions like “Lawful Good” or “Chaotic Evil.” You’ll pretty much automatically fail to achieve a complex world full of realistic people with deep motivations and reasons for their actions if you do that.

If you are running this in a system that, like Dungeons & Dragons, has mechanical alignment, you’ll need to handle that. I’ve discussed doing that a few times; this answer sums up the options I see available pretty nicely (and also goes into some more discussion of why alignment is limited).

That said, some thoughts on how those who care about morals can get along with those who don’t, or even those who actively flaunt them for the sake of flaunting them.

Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend

The classic reason: both Good and Evil face some serious external threat that they must face together. Plenty of Evil has no interest in seeing everything destroyed, or, for that matter, in seeing everything dominated by some other Evil force. Dungeons & Dragons has several examples of these, such as the Blood War (archons, creatures of pure lawful-good-ness, have at times fought alongside the lawful-evil devils against the chaotic-evil demons), and then when the illithids suddenly appeared (which caused the Blood War to stop and potentially had celestials, demons, and devils all fighting together, though that did devolve into bloodshed among the allies).

No One Is Beyond Redemption

The Good guys tolerate the Evil ones on the basis that they can redeem the Evil ones. The Evil ones hang around because the Good guys’ quests (and their rewards) are valuable to the Evil characters. Order of the Stick uses this heavily for Belkar, who is not at all picky about who he cuts up, and the Order provides him with plenty of relatively consequence-free victims. The rest of the group is aware of this but they have some hope (not unfounded, either) of reforming him, or at least preventing him from getting worse.

Evil Can Be Loyal

An Evil character isn’t necessarily a sociopath with no regard for anyone but himself. He may have values and friendships and relationships. He may be Evil because of his methods and his intentions, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’re a bad guy. This is especially true in the case of simplistic D&D alignment, where you can ding “Evil” without doing anything that strikes a lot of people as horribly evil.

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