Self-Destructive Evil
So I just finished playing through Shadow of Mordor, and let me tell ya: Middle-earth would have been just fine without someone’s fan-fic ranger stabbing all those orcs. Gimûb the Infernal hates Skak the Poisoner. Akoth Pain-Lover wants to murder Ûkshak Bone-Ripper. Jôanie loathes Châchi. These Uruks are all the time assassinating one another, fighting for rank, and generally being back-stabbing bastards. It was nice to see the trope in action.
As the resident half-vampire-half-werewolf Miss Gestalt so ably demonstrates, self-destructive evil is useful shorthand for “I’m unbalanced and dangerous.” More aligned with the grimdark style than cartoon villainy, it also serves as a nice contrast to the “friendship and teamwork” shtick of your typical adventuring party. For my money though, I think that the best use of this villainous style lies in the opportunities it affords clever players.
When people say that they want an intrigue game, I don’t think that courtly drama or secret messages are necessarily what they’re after. What they’re really saying is, “I want to turn my enemies against each other.” That’s the most basic mechanic in Shadow of Mordor after all, allowing the player free reign to mind-whammy the local orcs and send them out to cause trouble in the enemy camp. When you set your villains up as ambitious social climbers, you’re setting a clear motivation. These baddies want power, plain and simple. Dangling that power on a stick in front of them is a great way to split up the enemy forces: “Challenge your rival. My friends and I will make sure you win. Just remember the favors you owe.”
If you want to create a campaign arc based on taking advantage of self-destructive evil, the real trick lies in providing the players with the resources to make that play. That includes a cast of evil lieutenants. It means giving those lieutenants easily-discovered (and conflicting) motivations. You’ll want to include rival gangs. Plenty of dark corners for doing dark deeds. A healthy does of “Yes, and” when players do attempt coercion. Even something as video-gamey as a tutorial can work wonders.
“You lads are new to town, eh? Surely you know of the bad blood between the Black Nine and Gimbald’s Rabble. No? Well blimey, they’ve been at one another’s throats ever since His Imperial Darkness sacked this town. Lucky for us, they aren’t the brightest lot. Watch this.”
Your contact saunters over to the table of hard-bitten gentlemen sporting the matching “9” tattoos. He nods once at the bouncer who gave you guys trouble on the way in. Signs flash in thieves‘ cant.
Abruptly, the ugliest of the company jumps to his feet, pointing at the bouncer. “Seems we got us a spy from the Rabble,” he shouts. “Make him bleed, boys!”
The bar erupts into abrupt chaos as your contact, apparently unconcerned, rejoins your table. “Let’s just say it’s an uneasy alliance serving under the new regime. Even a little spark can set off this powder keg. I hope you lot are the spark we’ve been waiting for.”
Showing your players what’s possible in your campaign world is always a good idea. Doubly so if you’ve put in the time and effort to make that web of evil alliances and rivals we discussed. It’s all about transforming the storytelling trope of “self-destructive evil” into a properly useful game mechanic: one that your players can leverage throughout the course of play.
That of course leads us to our question of the day! Have you ever taken advantage of Evil’s self-destructive nature in a game? Did you manipulated a minion to serve your cause? And if so, was it a matter of charm person and dominate, or did you rely on good old-fashioned deception and Bluff checks? Let’s hear all about those bad guys fighting bad guys down in the comments!
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Tales of Wyre ( https://www.enworld.org/threads/tales-of-wyre.58227/ ) has a really cool take on the internal politics of the Abyss. At two points in the story (if I recall correctly) it is explained that treachery among demons isn’t just common – it is expected. Nothing will make the Twice-Fallen (from heaven to hell and from hell to the abyss) more suspicious of their minion than loyalty. Which makes sense if you think about it. What’s more likely: an honest demon, or one that’s so good at intrigue you can’t see through their plots?
I’m not familiar with the format of the linked thread. Was this a game first, or someone’s fic?
The fic is essentially a “novelization” of a game. I’ve seen it posted at two places, and assuming it was ever finished I’ve never found the ending (admittedly it was quite a while since I last looked), but I enjoyed reading it nontheless.
The story follows adventures of Eadric, Nwn, Mostin and Ortwin (respectively Paladin of Oronthon, Druid, Diviner/Alienist and a multiclassed mess identifying as a Bard, around level 15, 3.5 ruleset) and begins when they encounter a Succubus claiming to seek redemption. This kickstarts a series of events that get increasingly cosmic in scope (SPOILERS let’s just say that not even the planes themselves are safe from getting turned on their heads, the local Satan stand-in gets involved, and one of the major supporting characters becomes an incarnation of nature, while two of the PCs end up as minor deities in their own right).
What’s particularly unusual about the story is the setting, which defies one of the most common D&D conventions – it is more-or-less monotheistic, with the aforementioned Oronthon as the LG deity the dominant church prays to.
All in all, if you’ve got the time it’s definitely worth a read.
Pathfinder has a few examples of this trope.
One of the more notable ones is that between Qlippoths (CE chaotic horrors) and Demons. Qlippoths are chaotic evil incarnate, abberant-shaped fiends that just looking at causes horrible consequences, that supposedly existed even before the gods in the depths of the Abyss.
Demons are creatures that were spawned out of them… And somehow grew in number enough from the sins of mortals to overthrow them. As a consequence, Qlippoths main agenda in the universe right now is to destroy all of demonkind – either directly, or by killing every mortal in the universe (thereby eliminating all sinners/sins and cutting off demons from their power). If you’re (un)lucky enough to be in a battle with a Qlippoth, toss a demon or demoniac at them – they would sooner destroy each other than any other participants.
A similar principle works for the relations between Demons (CE destroyers), Devils (LE sin-tempters) and Daemons (NE nihilists). Devils and Demons hate each other, but both both of them loathe Daemons even more – enough to form an alliance against them between each other, or even with celestials.
The story of the creation of Demons in that setting is awesome in general. Apparently long, long time ago some forgotten Daemonic Horseman decided to see what will happen if he mixed together a Qlippoth and an Abyssal Larva ( so, a soul of a mortal sinner sent to the abyss d punishment). He was eventually successful and created the first Demon. And that’s where the thing start rapidly getting out of control. The Abyss itself (which is conscious and sentient according to PF rules) noticed this new creation and it liked it. Suddenly all over the place the Larva started transforming into Demons. In a matter of minutes Daemonic encampments on the plane where being overrun, the Qlippoths had to retreat to the lowest layers of the Abyss, and even the walls of Hell itself were being besieged.
Suffice to say, a lot of people were very upset with the aforementioned Horseman.
I was thinking about Qlippoths the other day… Is there a good-aligned equivalent? Primordial before-the-universe type beings but on the other end of the alignment chart?
Also of note: What do you reckon about a summoned demon vs. a Qlippoth? Would it get the same hate-it-on-sight reaction, or is it smart enough to recognize a summon as a summon?
Flumphs. I kid you not.
Not quite ‘good’, but there are Proteans (CN). They’re chaotic as heck and frequently as bad as Quippoths (as they like to turn everything into the primal state of chaos, which isn’t good news for the kind of person who had grown used to things like effects following things like causes), but they’re not inherently evil or motivated by it. Difficult to deal with if you have a moral code of any kind, though, or are lawful in general.
There’s also Aeons (N), who have indecipherable motivations and serve as the Pathfinder equivalent of Auditors of the Universe – fixing or breaking things in the universe, especially the ones that cause catastrophic damage like time travel or galaxy-consuming accidents. They just do things – bad or good, seemingly without cause or reason, and they’re terribly complicated to even communicate with, let alone make deals with.
There’s no good-aligned equivalent I’m aware of, and I’ve checked a lot. XD The forces of good are pretty sedate – probably because they actually accept alternate points of view and are more-or-less allied with each other, entirely unlike the infernal planes. They’re usually described as much smaller in number, but their willingness to collaborate and use each other’s strengths is extraordinarily helpful.
Good plan, Gestalt! If you kill all the competition, you’re bound to get that promotion via lack of anyone else to give a promotion to.
I see you’ve met some of my past bosses.
I imagine Gestalt took her tips from a very specific middle-management character.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2f/75/4c/2f754cb326e6377217ee750d57d0d3dc.jpg
She’ll go far, no doubt – she even has the pointy bits on her head and formal wear for it!
That, or she’s being contro-uhh, her fate is being weaved by whoever’s doing it for Fighter as well.
Punish the Innocent,
Reward the Guilty, and
Promote the Uninvolved.
I’m sorry. That saying is based on the three P’s – Protect the guilty, Punish the innocent, and Promote the uninvolved…
#wisdom
Can’t help but feel that Gestalt has opened up positions solely at the “expendable mook” level of management.
If only there was an evil party ready and willing to take on those entry level positions….
If this trend of Starscream-ing antics continue, BBEG will have to be vary of having their desk taken from under them. She’s bound to win the inevitable election/ Patreon poll for the next BBEG election, after all (especially in the other handbook).
Betrayal, you say? Interesting….
If BBEG’s leadership style is ‘Skeletor’, Gestalt would be more ‘Lord Hater’. I think we both know which of the two would be more threatening to the Handbook world at large.
That or she just spends all day lounging and eating, like most of us in quarantine are.
Self-isolation comic…? Might be a bit topical. :/
Gestalt is showing surprising restraint in not having eaten and/or drained that mass of goblins. Not a fan of greens?
She probably already filled at least 5 refrigerated bags of holding.
That’s a bit of a mouthful. I’d market those as an Icebox of Holding.
Goblins can be found in the “frozen greens” section of your local evil grocery store.
I guess Half Orcs and the like would be between the ‘Humanitarian’ and ‘frozen greens’ sections?
Playing a Waterdeep Dragon Heist campaign right now, and this sort of gang warfare intrigue actually helped my party earn a pretty penny. The long story short is that we knew the Zhentarium were trying to bait Xanathar goons into attacking them in a public space, and bribed the guards not to be there so they can attack. So we basically reverse Blackmail the guards that we know they’re being paid off to put them back on their routes, than we spread rumors that the harpers are setting up a sting to weaken the Zhentarium and bolster their standing by keeping the streets clean (incidentally actually alerting harpers that we’re spreading rumors about them).
One thing led to another and what would’ve been a 10v10 gang fight ended up being more like a 4v4 as most of the zhent and Xana got cold feet, and we had a few guardsmen present to help distract the zhents as my party took out some Xana goons easily. And after the zhents trounced the guards, we killed the weakened zhents, loot their corpses, and leave the scene a couple hundred gold coins richer once I flogged the loot. And when the Harpers came to question us about using their names, the party bard was able to convince them that it was for a good reason as to prevent larger bloodshed, scarring off the bulk of the goons to a more manageable level.
When you got all of these gangs, factions, and corrupt authorizes running a city, it pays to be part of the intrigue. Sometimes literally! Having a smooth talker who can convince legitimate authorizes that you’re on the up-and-up is handy too.
Nicely done! I just finished “the lies of locke lamora,” and I’m all about this style of play at the moment.
Any chance of the Harpers thing coming back to bite you?
Only in so far that we are now working with the harpers. Which is a bit awkward for me since my character is part of the Zhentarium, but part of he legit Zhents who don’t want their members to be fighting in the streets. Still there’s a mutual understanding that the issue isn’t so much about pushing the Zhents out of the city, but stopping the violence, so we got a sort of “enemy of my enemy” deal going on. Also I don’t tell people outside of my party that I’m part of the Zhentarium.
I remember we did this once in the elemental evil campaign, to a degree that one of our players, alex jones the water genasi, ended up becoming the leader of the water cult after getting 2 leugenants to turn on their boss and later each other. Unfortunately as he became slowly controlled by the evil water elemental lord, as well as just being a bit evil and very crazy and stupid to begin with, having rolled only 6 for int and 8 for wis, he ended up turn on the rest of the group, in the process effectively ending that portion of the campaign, leading to a evil campaign in which every member was technically under him, but after some mind control from multiple different sources, that group ended up splitting, quite literally explosively, 3 sessions later.
lol. You’re doing it wrong! You’re supposed to play other factions against one another, not yourselves!
I’ve told the story of my Paladin and the Yuan-Ti many times. Short version is that Yuan-Ti are inherently selfish, and therefore inclined to betray if it means preserving their own scaly hides.
His backstory also included an escape from Drow imprisonment because when your society is built around backstabbing, it just takes one good Charisma (Persuasion) to get 90% of the enemy forces to walk away.
Did he play an Out of the Abyss campaign in his backstory?
I kid, but actually that could be a cool way to develop a backstory: using the intro situation from other APs.
His older sister who he has a sibling-inferiority-complex to was the hero of Rise of Tiamat.
Oh man, this happened to me just last session. The party were investigating a bunch of orc raiders to find out where their base was and what their goal was. In typical PC manner, as soon as they found a patrol they lost the plot and decided to kill them all instead of capturing a prisoner. Combat opens up, and the bard decides to lead with an illusion spell on some of the orcs. He makes one of them think his buddies started attacking him, and the orc fails his save. A couple turns later, and the orcs get their actions. Naturally, the one who thinks he’s being attacked is unhappy, so he takes a swing at one of his buddies… and fumbles, misses, and hits a different one instead. So now BOTH of those guys are now actually attacking this poor orc, and murder the crap out of him. So the orcs waste half their turn attacking themselves before they settle down. Unrelated, in the same round another poor orc has taken some damage from the party, tries to chuck his javelin at them… and fumbles, hits himself for 1 point of damage, and dies from it. It was the most embarrassing combat ive ever run. I rules that his weapon became cursed from the sheer incompetence and bad luck on display.
Hey, sometimes the dice just go the players’ way. They should get to feel competent every once in a while!
I especially dig the charming play among naturally fractious critters like orcs. That’s practically a two-for-one when it hits.
A friend of mine once ran a campaign based on classic fairy tales. At one point, our party was infiltrating Captain Hook’s ship and we came up against a barrier that we were informed that only the captain could pass through. I decided that the best way to get through the barrier was to start a mutiny and make our Bard the ship’s new captain. A few Diplomacy rolls later and the whole crew had turned against Captain Hook and declared our Bard the new captain. Unfortunately, the magical barrier didn’t recognize her as the captain, but it was enough to draw Hook himself out of his quarters on the other side and onto the deck for a boss fight. After we won, our DM informed us that he had originally planned for the entire crew to be a combat encounter, but because of our mutiny, they just stood aside and cheered us on.
Nicely done! Gotta love the gullibility of drunken ruffians.
I’ve got to know though: Who got Hook’s hook? What kind of magic weapon was it?
A +1 Hook Hand with Bane (Fey/Humans)?
That or this one:
https://aonprd.com/MagicWeaponsDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Wizard%20Hook
Jôanie loathes Châchi? Heeyyyyy!! two thumbs aloft Who’d’a known? Wicked!
I submit that the Fonz would be a bard.
I am doing something like this in an RPG I am running, but I don’t know if any of my players read this blog. It’s fun though to drop hints and give them a chance to maybe figure out they are being played as pawns in the infighting!
So they’re not the only ones pulling the strings? Nice! Sounds like you’ve got a chess master-type BBEG.
Self-destructive evil isn’t grimdark, is a cartoonish take on evil. Think of Tarquin vs Xykon. One is legal-evil the other chaotic-evil, one is the shadow ruler of a continent the other is trying to dominate the world. One is a brilliant mastermind, the other is stupid and evil. Except they are not. Tarquin is not a shadow ruler, he and his friends are, they work together or die together. And he isn’t that much brilliant as he think he is. Smarter than both his sons together, yes he is, but he got this TV-Tropes-TOC that don’t let him see how much he is wasting his efforts. He is the worst best kind of evil, the smart kind. He could rule the world yet he loose time with his little game. Xykon may look like a total moron, the poster child of stupid-evil, but read Start of Darkness and in the very end anyone will know how much stupid Xykon is. The “Oh Redcloak, don’t confuse not caring with not knowing” is a huge proof of that. And what this has to do with self-destructive evil? Both of them are successful in their evilness because they don’t go around destroying their own power bases. Tarquin don’t kill his men and friends, Miss Gestalt is only making things difficult for herself. And the whole evil-is-a-nest-of-backstabbing-snakes is silly at best, infantile at worst 🙁
The best intrigue is not the one were evil factions fight among themselves, but the one were good factions fight among themselves. Back to OotS, remember when the comic says that Evil isn’t one big, happy family? Goodness can be worse. In many games we have got, by mi influence on the plot, lots of good factions fighting among themselves, many fighting for being the ones who save the world and not the others. Other fighting because they got conflicting view of what is good and right. Goodness can be as nasty as evilness in their infighting, and far more interesting 😀
After a quick google:
https://www.freakinawesomenetwork.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/oots00951.gif
For me, sending your men to their pointless deaths is part of the self-destructive evil trope. I don’t think it matters that “one goblin isn’t really harming his power base.” We’re still talking about frittering away your forces callously. That’s the trope.
If you want to flip the script and say that “there’s no difference between good and evil: the good are only hypocrites and just as selfish as anyone else,” then I don’t think you’ve moved the needle too much on self-destructive evil. You’ve just broadened the definition of evil.
What i say is that there is a difference between stupid evil and evil itself. Neither Miss Gestalt nor Fane are sending their minions to a pointless death, she is killing them just for fun, if at all. Is the whole “evil mistreat his minions” the cliche thing. Too common, too cartoonish. It’s more a posturing of “since evil is evil it should be evil”. Presenting evil as something nasty, uncaring, merciless and with every flaw and sin imaginable, and then some more, is the typical evil should be something people don’t should do a therefor be presented in the worst light. Boring, cartoonish, too idealist and too simplistic as an approach 🙁
If she did that to an army of goblins for ‘looking at her funny’, I dread to imagine what she’d be capable of in the other handbook.
Miss Gestalt is a selfish lover.
We’ve got a half-orc druid in our party who is making friends with animals in every biome we get sent to. It’s amazing to watch. And someday, when he’s in danger, there’s going to be a wonderful moment where the baddies are trampled by an army of assorted animals.
endOfAvatar.exe
Turn Evil on Evil? Only with Mind Control magic or psionics (I’ve done both actually).
But I was once in a Lawful Evil campaign (every PC had to be within one step of LE, except the Bard who was allowed Chaotic Evil) where we turned two Good knighthoods on each other… they were a LG and CG knighthoods… we conspired to slowly build antagonism between them, then open hostility, then finally when they armed up to remove each other we moved on our objective safe in the knowledge they’d be too wrapped up killing each other to stop us murdering the entire royal family…
I mean, there were other defenders of the castle and royal family, but we’d infiltrated them and were really only worried that if it accidentally became a protracted ‘siege’ thing (our ragtag troops getting bogged down rooting out defenders in locked down areas of the castle) that word would get it out (it always does) and the two knighthoods would spring into action and, if not stop us, at least stymie our escape.
but no, I’ve never been in a Shadow of Mordor situation where we needed to turn an enemy army on itself. When dealing with enemy armies we usually just perform ye olde ‘hey diddle diddle’ and go head on.
Weird that, when you do this to goodly creatures like the knights, it’s a matter of corruption. Evil comes from without and turns friend against friend. When you do this to evil creatures, it’s just encouraging their natural inclinations. Evil comes from within and ultimately destroys itself.
An incompetent, empire-building middle manager? Congratulations, Colin and Laurel! You’ve managed to make the most evil character I’ve ever seen in a game world.
lol. We’ll have to see if there’s any empire building. That might require something resembling a coherent plot-arc, and those are hard.
I mentioned in a previous post how my Empathic Duelist Eliciter, Sam turned a Goblin Shaman against his chief with a sleight of hand-enhanced Mind sphere spell. Good times.
More recently we encountered a very bad, good guy from one of the party’s back story. A captain who seems to think anyone that steps out of line is a pirate, and has taken a rather unsavory disliking to our party.
He had a couple of hired goons with him and when Sam couldn’t mind-whammy him, he turned to a henchman and “asked” rather forcibly “Why are you still following this madman?”.
Save failed, he turned his halberd on his now former employer with a “yeah, he’s right! You are crazy!” And boom! Temporary ally. Captain got away by jumping into a river and Sam yelled “AFTER HIM!” Off our new ally ran with about a hour left on his spelled compliance…
We are pretty sure that even almost dead, the captain probably killed the poor bastard, but I mean… he wasn’t our friend so… you know…
Back during the Baldur’s Gate 2/NWN era, I always found the underdark sections to be rather amusing in their own right. There was a constant theme of “yes, we are drow, brooking so many alliances with beholders, and illythid, and suahagin, and once they serve their purpose, we shall betray them with the very power they helped us get!”
and of course the PCs would ruin all of that.
I wanted to insert a fan character; a crazy drow priestess on the fringes of society that was so rampantly faithful to Lolth that she was an unintentional liability to all their machinations; “she just attacked the beholder nest and now they’re declaring war on us!” “weren’t we going to betray them next week?” “yes, NEXT week! Not now, when they can actually ruin our plans!”