(H) What are good without evil?

I have been seeing alot of good, millitary, Clan, religious, and Explorer RP guilds. '
And i cant help but Wonder, why are there no good ol' fashioned evil doers present? All those good guilds what are they worth if there are no evil to fight? I have been wanting evil RP at its best for quite a while now, and i have discovered that it simply does not exist. I can think of one guild who  knows what evil is theei name is Shgla Phgwa an Shel. So i decided to show Defias Brotherhoods roleplayers what evil is, only problem is that i need people for it! People seem to think that good RP is the only kind of RP on Defias Brotherhood.

 I know this might seem like an attack on the type of guilds i mentioned in the start of this topic. But that is not my intention. My intention is to tell people about my idea and hopefully recruit some more people who feels like me. We are rare indeed, but i can't be the only one who wants evil into Defias Brotherhoods RP.

Anyone who is interested please join this channel in-game: EVILTALKOOC. There we can hopefully come up with some ideas for this, and hopefully add some more flavour to Defias Brotherhood roleplay.

You are also welcome to reply here.

I do not know for the Horde, but on Alliance most evil cults of current time are not strong enough to oppose the Good guys, and thus remain in hiding or simply out of the radar. Many also have died, or simply faded away. I myself led an Evil Cult for a time. The Veil of Shadows, was basically intended to be a guild that infiltrates everywhere and takes over everything from the inside, and bring in a new dark, but stronger age!

It did work good for a month, until one of my members decided to get captured, and attempted to leak all information out. She was killed when she attempted, but they still managed to track back to us with the use of the murder weapon (a cursed arrow). As result, they found their way to our headquarters and our members mostly just scattered, and i had lost my few active members to death or capture. Admitted, i could have turned the defeat into victory, but at that time i didn't find interest for it, since my character was getting dull to play, so i let it just to die away.

It is very common on the dark side to get betrayed from the inside if there is any chance for it, and you stand against impressive numbers of good guys, so it is definitely not easy to be an evil guy.

I am aware that it can be hard and that there are various risks, but i still wants to give it a shot and if not directly oppose the good Guys one can still make a name for him/herself by doing various activities ICly. That might be a good place to start at least.

You've already made the first grave error.

Revealing yourself OOC!

The best cultists, villains and 'evil' people are those that rarely reveal themselves OOC and simply roleplay every aspect out with as little as possible OOC interaction.

They are the least expected.

I have never played a good character on the Horde.

Just don't RP your evil guys too powerfull and evil. Remeber that evil guys need good guys to fight but they will be bored/angry with you if you never lose or act too powerful. They need to have fun aswell so throw them a bone. Make them feel rewarded to care about your evil ways

Have Good motivation/reason for your evil guys and evil ways is also a plus.

And, atleast in the beginning, try not to fill a pair of shoes that are too big for you. Establish yourself and build up stuff before you try to make people care about you.

Paia (Priest) is the only "Good" character I've ever played...

Thelos wrote:I have never played a good character on the Horde.

And I only once, and she turned out to be more of a villain then all of my "evil" characters combined!

I'm a bit confused what it is exactly that you're looking for, Gela. What do you expect to find in this "evil" role-play you so crave? Could you be more precise, give some examples of what you consider evil role-play?

Because in my opinion, sitting around in Silvermoon bars with horns on your head and putting "Felblood" in your MRP is not evil role-play. That's just being different for the sake of it. The tricky part is that most evil things happen behind closed doors. Both my characters Alph'el and Jahzeem have done a great deal of terrible things that hardly anyone knows about, at least in-character.

So what exactly is it that you want to role-play?

Important note:
You can only with great difficulty be both Evil and an Antagonist to the good guys. It's in the Good Guys' (TM) nature to oppose evil, and being their adversary in addition quickly excuses necessitate extreme counter measures.

Basicly, to oppose the good guys (and survive), you need "he opposes us, but he's one of the good guys"-armor. To survive as an Evil guy, you need to build your own plotlines in which you (and your mooks) are the evil-doing protagonists, instead of inserting yourself to the plotlines of others. The good guys need to see that you're a different kind of evil, either evil on their side, or an evil that just needs to be dealt with eventually, not right now.

That's on the Alliance side where the Paladins roam freely, though. Horde is less adamant on these things.



I would have ended the post there, but more thoughts came to me:
1.
Define what kind of evil you want to be. Is evil good guys, that use extreme means to reach their arguably good goals? A military unit that's seen too much slaughter and too many fallen on their side, turning mercenary, still aligned with their faction, but picking their own battles, selling slaves and looting? Capatalists who bit by bit turn the flow of money towards their pockets? Warlocks who want a place in their society where they're not just grudgedly accepted, but looked up to? Westfall/redrigde citizens who want an end to taxation without getting better protection back from their many daily trials (separatist)? Corrupt guards and politicians?

Basicly, all kinds of people can be described as evil by their enemies. Don't try to become evil. Try to set different goals than your lawful peers etc. Proper motivation means everything.

2.
Do not publicly announce yourself.

3.
There must always be a way out. Have escape plans ready, set up hostage situations to end sieges, etc. Remember though, you'll both win and lose every now and then. Your characters may bite the dust, but have a plan onwards for the guild/group. Have your guildies understand that attitude, and use it themselves.

4.
Having the guild tag "BABYKILLERS INC" will make people meta against you. Remember that going undercover, working from within other guilds or as guildless can be valid options (keep alts in your guild for communication with guildies, I suppose).

5.
Don't force yourself on people. Enter their consciousness by work over time. Don't crash real events, use insiders (IC or OOC) in other guilds to arrange events that were meant to be crashed all along. People get more pissed when group X is killing people left and right during Ray and Roy's wedding than when they're out on a routine mission and a guildie goes "Don't rage, it's pretty much the plan". Note, this doesn't mean you need to script all events, but planning a few key details might help you a lot.

Might post more if I think of it. Hope this was a little helpful.

erwtenpeller. Gel is working on ways to corrupt the Shatterskull Marauders and their Allies from a distance i am going to fill you in in-game. My definition of evil roleplay is destroying those who have stepped on your  characters toes:twisted:  (For Gel that is the Marauders) Only problem is that i need more ''Main characters'' to join him, it seems all who roleplays evil do it on an alt. And those who does it on their main tend to not roleplay as much as me and the Marauders. And as you said i desperatly want something pure evil started up but its harder than i thought. I wont stop though you must agree that if i succeed in getting something started it would be fun for both the Marauders AND me and Gels Allies. I would appreciate that anyone who might be interested or know someone who might be contact me in-game either by whisper or the channel i mentioned up top.

That reminds me of my Warlock on a smaller scale. She's working on a slow process of mentally destroying another characters mind, fishing up all their secrets and poison their dreams with Nightmares. There are bad guys out there. Small in numbers, but there is. It's just not your comic-book obvious evil that screams "I am Evil" with everything they does, and is there only to be defeated by the Superhero.

Shame that Gelarieu is on the Horde. Flicky would totally get in touch to hate you.

Inran/Skarain wrote:It's just not your comic-book obvious evil that screams "I am Evil" with everything they does, and is there only to be defeated by the Superhero.

You mean like this?

Spoiler:

Gelarieu wrote:erwtenpeller. Gel is working on ways to corrupt the Shatterskull Marauders and their Allies from a distance i am going to fill you in in-game. My definition of evil roleplay is destroying those who have stepped on your  characters toes:twisted:  (For Gel that is the Marauders) Only problem is that i need more ''Main characters'' to join him, it seems all who roleplays evil do it on an alt. And those who does it on their main tend to not roleplay as much as me and the Marauders. And as you said i desperatly want something pure evil started up but its harder than i thought. I wont stop though you must agree that if i succeed in getting something started it would be fun for both the Marauders AND me and Gels Allies. I would appreciate that anyone who might be interested or know someone who might be contact me in-game either by whisper or the channel i mentioned up top.

I think you'll find that you will have greater luck trying this from the inside.

And if you have a plan before purposely going out to meet Marauders in public places you know they will visit. Going there saying you're only there because you're bored, you want to be regognised but you're not willing to face the consequences as a fight and/or emprisonment is not exactly making it any more interesting to RP with you. Your character has escaped a few too many times to remain credible. And yes, I know we've rolled for it last time, but I must say that all of it was a bit of a drag for me to play out. Sorry, mate. It just seems you don't really know how to play a credible evil char yet.

You dont have to be evil or a cult to RP a heel char. The shroud made loads of heat just by showing up and they were more or less neutral (well it was full of evil cultists, but that aside, the group were not evil as such).

My point is there are other ways of playing a heel char or group. The Antlions did it v well for a long time.

I don't think there's any strictly "evil" guilds on Alliance currently either. At all. Cartel is probably the closest you'll get to actual villains. You've got advice from others here that's good though. That said I see nothing wrong with announcing yourself, particularly if it's IC to be grandiose and obnoxious. It provides RP and in the end that is what it's all about.

The main bit of advice I can give that I've learned is, if you do events with the "good guys," whether you're DMing or just fighting, give them a win at the end, no matter what it is, or it's just frustrating and not fun for them. If you make fun RP for everyone, they'll want to RP with you more, it gives them stuff to talk about etc. People forget: they want to "win" OOCly and it leads to hostility rather than OOC cooperation on both sides. Sure there's some out there that prefer to keep -everything- IC and that's fine! It's great. But if you are out to generate RP keep the OOC needs of both groups in mind!

The trouble is the good guys can not take loses. If you do want to play a bad guy or bad group this is going to take its toll on you and you will have to find a way around this.

Lexgrad wrote:The trouble is the good guys can not take loses.  If you do want to play a bad guy or bad group this is going to take its toll on you and you will have to find a way around this.

Well yes. We play in a world where the good guys win and its hard for players to all agree and play out something like... The total destruction of Stormwind or everyone dying of Plague.

Dude the amount of times I got /w which were basicly "will you attack x and let us drive you off". Sure there are bad baddies and there are bad goodies. But the point is there are no bad guilds for the reason that they are more or less seen as adds for good RP.

As they should be.

...I've noticed two things that make for a good evil RP'er or evil guild.

Firstly, that said evil must be mysterious, unseen, rumored and feared. in short, open direct contact should be rare but instills dread and terror. The evil guys get to be evil, don't get caught, don't annoy the good guys too often and everyone is happy.

Second, that if you can't be mysterious. Be evil parading as good... the chapter for example... untouchable due to faith, they hunt the 'evil guys' yet their own sinister interpretations and actions under the light means they themselves could be seen as the bad guys.

To summarize, be clever about it.

In this guy's humble opinion, if you are going to brand yourself as being evil, you ought to be prepared to take on the responsibility that goes with the brand; mainly, you have to be prepared to be defeated by the good guys, because that's what the bad guys are for: to be defeated by the good guys. That's the purpose of evil; that's what it's purpose has always been and will be for as long as we'll be telling stories, which I estimate will be forever.

If that doesn't sound very fun to you, then I advice you stay away from the E-word and try to navigate yourself trough the stormy waters of moral ambiguity. Between good and evil, there's a whole world of gray, of the misunderstood, the overly zealous, the well-intentioned extremists, the desperate and disposessed, the misunderstood... you get the idea.

Either way, try not to get caught in a situation where the entire playerbase wants your character dead and you have no way out; always have a out and always have allies. You won't last long on your own.

Peace out (or for you baddies out there, war on!)

I more or less agree with Thelos really on this, but yeah remember mostly evil should not be the point. The evil is not the deed but the purpose.

For example, you might drown a basket of puppies to venerate an old god, or to summon a demon, or due to the fact that the puppies were heretic labradoodles. That is what evil acts should be, an ends to a means if you follow me. I have seen "Evil RPers" do the variations of drowning puppies for no real reason and that seems somehow unnatural for RP.

Just cos is bad story telling.

Lexgrad wrote:a basket of puppies to venerate an old god, or to summon a demon, or due to the fact that the puppies were heretic labradoodles.

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You mean like those?

I think if you want to RP evil and keep it all IC that's fine, as in, you want to roleplay out the development of a "sinister" character. You should not be shoehorned into a "you are fodder for the good guys" role if that's not your purpose. But then be very careful about what you do and as with all RP prepare for consequences should you fuck it up.

If the guild you want to make IS meant to be "to give the good guys something to beat," then do whatever you like with it. I'm in disgreement with the others here that it has to be subtle or mysterious; I've seen a lot of flamboyant and hilariously genre-saavy villains who were a great deal of fun to RP with. But then they cross over into half-humorous realm. That said if that's IC for the character, it's pretty great.