Yeah, I can’t really go full evil comfortably. I favor crpgs and adjacent genres and while I can go tough and blunt, even a bit jerkish, I’ve never been able to really enjoy going the full villain route. As noted many times above, all too often evil choices in crpgs are inherently dumb. But even when they aren’t, I don’t really enjoy, say, sacrificing party members for a mild power boost.
I’m just not going to go demon or lich in Pathfinder:WotR no matter how mechanically strong and thematically interesting the paths are .
Exceptions are games designed around being the bad guy in a humorous way (like say the old game Overlord) or playing a strategy game like Europa Universalis where I am coolly distant from the results of my blandly disinterested evil. Yes, I will be brutally colonizing the New World when playing Spain - there are resources to be had!
I played EVE Online for a while and I just could not get into it’s cutthroat play style against other players. It is a feature of that game and is a main draw. Indeed, it is famous for some massive moments of screwing others over. Ruining the game for hundreds or even thousands of people in one go (happened more than once)
I cannot do it and quit. I would not be able to sleep if I did some of the things people happily pulled in that game. But, that is what makes the game truly unique and interesting.
Especially if the actual line ends up being a very different tone than the choices we were given. Starfield has several like this - I picked the line that I thought would be a bit snarky and sarcastic, but then they made my character say something outright jerkish, that ended up pissing the NPCs off, which wasn’t my intent.
This thread reminds me of the old-school 8-bit (although there were ports for the Amiga and the Atari ST) game Alternate Reality. There were various ways you could attack others; some were fairly instant (“charming” and “tricking” them), but your (hidden) alignment moved more toward evil with each attempt, so I stayed away from it. Years later, I found out that that this was pretty much the only way to advance in the game.
With the release of 5th edition in 2014, WotC has really reduced the signifcance of alignment in Dungeons & Dragons. This was a trend started with 3rd edition.
Same. I played it, had a gorgeous ship, had a lot of fun with PvE. Flying around, doing missions, killing pirates. But talking with other players they said you can’t play the game that way for long. PvP is inevitable and if you don’t like it, don’t play.
I stopped playing.
Now, there’s a game I’ve supported since Kickstarter coming out (eventually, lots of progress) that has PvP as a core mechanic. But it’s based on things like resource competition, running and raiding caravans, wars between cities, and so on. Random ganking can happen but not without severe consequences. That kind of PvP is not so bad to me. Star Wars Galaxies was like that, where you had a reason for fighting (generally to defend or blow up the other faction’s bases) and I actually enjoyed it.
They’ve reduced it so much that Paladins can be objectively evil. Paladins are still effectively lawful because to be a Paladin requires that you follow an oath, but that oath can permit certain actions that would be classified as “evil” in previous editions. Oath of Vengeance allows for a lot of leeway in who you can kill. There are also options under oaths to serve the greater good, which means you can do some pretty evil things if the repercussions are overall more “good” than evil.
Previously, evil acts even if they were for a good reason were a quick way to lose your Paladin powers, generally even faster than “unlawful” acts. And there are stories of DMs who would use that to intentionally torture the players of Paladins by putting them in unwinnable scenarios. Because some DMs are jerks. With the deemphasis of alignment, any act justifiable under your sworn oath is fine.
The thing I’m most excited about is the node system. The game world changes based on the actions of players, and different areas (nodes) can be developed into settlements, villages, towns, cities, and so on. Shaped by players. Dungeons and monsters spawn and change nearby too. And part of the game is when citizens of one node attack another, because nodes of a certain size can’t be adjacent, and there is a limit in the game world for the number of most advanced nodes. Also, you can have bigger nodes ruling smaller nodes, so a village might answer to a nearby city unless the people rebel. Wars and sieges are part of it.
That kind of PvP actually interests me, rather than random killing and griefing, or mindless repetitive arena combat.
I forgot, there’s also a bounty system. If you do decide to attack other players against their consent (they turn off their PvP mode), not only do you get a stacking debuff but you eventually get a bounty put on you, and players who go after you can attack you as if you were a monster in the world, and get rewards. You can be evil but it’s a real pain and meant to be one, because they don’t want it to be prevalent.
Meh, while it’s inarguable that some DMs (or GMs in a more general sense) are jerks, most of the time I find it’s the players pushing back against the player paladin, and the DM just enforcing the rules. If you have a party that wants to do things the easy way (and that’s not absolutely a bad thing) - like burn down a barn for a distraction, beat up a mook for information, or rob that Lawful Evil Lord for the cash and lolz, a paladin in the party can be a huge pain. So they’ll keep pushing at the “party pooper” until they leave the group, switch characters, or otherwise cave.
In most games, atonement for a paladin is the matter of correcting your behaviors, striving to do better, and a cast of an Atonement spell.
But I’m glad to see alignment being less of a factor in both CC and TT RPGS. It’s always been more of a hook for the DM to control the party rather than to enhance storytelling. And if I have to pick an alignment system, it’ll be Palladiums - Good (various flavors), Selfish (ditto) and Evil (re-ditto). And it’s phrased in terms like “will generally” “prefers” etc rather than absolutes in most cases.
My college roommate called me a narrative junkie, and that’s pretty true. I read a lot of fantasy/science fiction, and full-bore antihero stories don’t do it for me. So when it comes to games, I like games with stories, and I identify with the protagonist, and protagonists who do shitty things make me feel shitty as if I’d done them myself. It’s not fun for me.
Other folks get into the evil cosplay, and that’s seriously cool; I kinda wish I could, too. But I can’t, so I don’t play the evil side.
I think these situations are part of the origins of the Lawful Stupid Paladin. I know when I played as a teen, any Paladin in our group was willfully oblivious to the shennanigans we’d pull. These days, most of the older folks I play with won’t even attack a goblin or an orc unless there’s direct evidence it’s justified.
Paladin is probably my favorite RPG archetype. I love being the tank and the face at the same time, I usually try to subvert the “lawful stupid” stereotype, but I did once make my party apologize to a necromancer and give back all his loot after we sort of accidentally broke into his home and assaulted him.
He took it well, all things considered, after we untied him from that chair.
I was in an old AD&D campaign (2nd Edition) and I was playing a Paladin, and one party member was an “Outlaw” (some Fighter/Thief kit).
A bounty hunter had tracked down the Outlaw and was going to take him to face justice. Of course he insisted that he was innocent. My Paladin said he believed him, and to prove it he offered to use his Detect Evil Intent power to prove his innocence and clear his name.
The Outlaw immediately attacked my Paladin in response, to his utter shock.
I usually hated inter-party conflict but it was hilarious.
Invading in sniper elite 5 was super fun though! On either side. It gave the game a ton more replayability. And it was way better than the team v team multiplayer only maps/modes. And, as you said, a simple switch shuts it off if you don’t want it. My first playthrough I totally had it off.
Eta, but I agree it should be opt in by default, not opt out.
This is me. I put some thought into designing stalls for the villagers that let them exercise all their normal functions, like sleeping and gossiping, as well as working. And i built a tower for the useless villagers, because i didn’t want them to wander off and get killed. I try to avoid upsetting endermen, too. I get my ender pearls from trading with villagers. I don’t think I’ve killed a piglin or a villager or a wandering trader yet.
I don’t have a problem killing the pillagers, though. I was just minding my own business and they came and attacked me. But many of my bases are designed such that when pillagers spawn there’s some barrier to keep them far enough away that i don’t have to fight them.
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