With that kind of benefits package I’m surprised Sorcerer isn’t in the lineup. And if I’m being perfectly honest with you, I’m a bit tempted myself. That’s because wanton destruction is more or less my MO as a player. It’s yours too.
Lemme explain.
It’s a fun trope to talk about players being agents of chaos. We all like to imagine that we’re chaotic little goblins going left when the GM expects right. We hit the big red button, push over the brazier, mock the king to his face in his own courtroom, and pull on the dragon’s tail. But then again, we are supposed to do these things. And that’s because the GM is supposed to make the environment destructible.
When I say that destruction is fun, I’m not talking about the puppy-kicking variety of evil-for-lols-sake. I’m talking about the raw, unbridled joy of knocking over building blocks. If it’s a GM’s job to construct an environment rife with tenuous alliances, delicate peaces, and dangling quest hooks, it’s our job as players to upset that stasis. It just so happens that the results often look like collateral damage of the Suicide Squad variety.
A phrase that I find myself coming back to in my classes is “make an environment rich in narrative potential.” And what I mean by that is bridges with trolls that need to be fought. Objectionable party guests who need to be confronted. Goblin armies on the march. Creepy castles that need exploring. And orphanages that just so happen to be built next to firework factories.
The point isn’t to destroy a world. The point is to change it. And for players to do that, they need clear signs showing them how the world can be changed. In that sense, saying that “players are pyromaniacal gremlins” is like saying that “quest givers are useful NPCs.” There are things in fictional worlds that ought to be changed. That is the point of their interactivity.
And therefore (at long last) unleashing the primal id of an evil party can be great fun. You get to acknowledge that your job is to get in there and fuck shit up using all the powers at your disposal, self-restraing and common sense be damned.
And so, for today’s discussion question, what do you say we test the limits of this hypothesis? When did you as a player commit acts of wanton destruction? Was it fun, or was it destructive to the campaign? And for the GMs in the room, same question. When did your players blow up the campaign world, and did it have a deleterious effect on your game? Sound off with all those ill-placed / perfectly-placed fireballs down in the comments!
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This team-up makes sense.
It also reminds of OOTS’: “Evil: a growth industry. ‘We’re always hiring!'”
But I do wonder how long it’ll be before those egos start clashing…
Always hiring, sure, but the turnover rate is high, and the severance package is decidedly less than desirable.
Yeah, also see the fine print: ‘Sacrificing minions! Is there any problem it can’t solve?'”
(Apart from a glaring lack of minions…)
Not _entirely_ wanton, given the heat of battle… but does casting Gaia’s Rebuke on Juggernaught in an Exalted game count? Because if you want to make a mess of a battlefield, that’s a hell of a thorough job. If you can judge someone by their enemies, we made some real high quality ones that day…
Lord, I’ve played in good groups that would have HUGE bonuses every quarter. Especially the group in Marvel Superheroes. Half of any funds we had coming in went back out fixing the stuff they broke.
I’m afraid I’m not the “break stuff” kind of DM though. My world is old, old, old and there are actually things watching to make sure certain things don’t happen. All of my groups have been happy to wander, stumbling across neat places to explore or situations that need to rectified. Localized changes happen all the time, but large areas changes are rare and usually triggered by the groups actions but not done by the group.
My evil campaigns are always meant to be short and a lot more railroady than the main campaign. That’s because after a couple months, the group is usually ready to get back to their main characters, so I need to get them were they need to go on a timeline.
One time, I was playing a cleric. I had angered my gods (if they didn’t want me to nuke a load-bearing pillar of reality, it should’ve been properly signposted). I agreed to be their earthly vessel for a short time to make up for it. That time happened to be in front of a massive crowd of faithful to another god, who considered my gods to be heathen scum. They were also the state religion, so they had lots of soldiers backing them up.
So no shit, there I was, having just outed myself (been outed by my gods possessing me to make a big speech) as a dirty heretic in front of pretty much the pope and a massive crowd of zealots. Fortunately, our resistance movement were in place to attack, so my distraction worked out pretty well. Not that that would do me much good. Fortunately, the big church they were all coming out of was made of wood, and I was a Light domain cleric (gets fireball). Good times.
The setup my GM wrote for one campaign can be summarized as : “There are three alliances. All of them are more or less bad. Tell me where you want to go so I can prepare the next session.”
And that’s awesome. Just playing naturally, the players start making allies, getting involved in and precipitating war, and trying to remodel the political landscape over the whole continent… with some moderate success.
The players *always* end up messing things up, anyway. Even moreso when they are trying to do good. Unless they decide to take a break and go to the beach, of course, in which case the country gets to remain un-revolutioned for one more day.
Our group’s name is The Tides of Fate. We generally show up, find some thing that is about to go totally pear shaped and we knock it it right the hell down and sweep most of the remains out to sea. Imagine a tidal wave that only hit burning dumpsters.
It’s not so much we are awesome investigators as the many people who are aware of the crappy situation have vested interests in not changing things too much or are powerless, while we are totally fine with leaving town after cutting off the necrotic bits of the local power structure.
Aboleth-controlled council member, people blackmailed into cutting deals with slaad, demonic influence in a fey court and human-collaborators in a city invaded by shadow fey are typical fare.
We generally make a point of trying to use diplomacy (that’s the tide going out) and when we are rebuffed have little qualms about leveling the neighborhood adjacent to the dumpster fire when the wave hits.
We do have a habit of throwing a block party for thr survivors after the fact filed by our well-earmed loot. We have a surprisingly high charisma party with a bard, paladin (Ancients/party-hearty), warlock/bard and a cleric/paladin (life domain-hangover cure) so we throw a really good party.
The upper class are wigged out but the locals are usually happy that the demonic-meth house is gone.
Addendum- we usually leave a fund for repairs, widows and orphans with the one or two trustworthy people we found. Plus the Bard knows Wall of Stone to do major reconstruction in a day or two.
“The point isn’t to destroy a world. The point is to change it.”
NBot always, some times the point is to maintain the status quo. Sure, sure, you can say “But putting down that rebel cell is changing the world, you’ve removed a rebel cell!” but that’s in service of keeping the current heirarchy in place.
And that usually requires not burning down the orphanarium that’s right above the revel’s hideout… so sometimes the PCs are “working for The Man” and not as Agents of Chaos™.
Your in-setting hierarchy is fictional. The players’ ability to change the course of events in a setting is meta-fictional. Apples and oranges, my contrarian friend.
Back in 1e AD&D, in a World of Lankhmar campaign, my half-elven battle-druid had been jerked around and frequently overcharged by a rude, racist alchemist who routinely said nasty things about half-elves and druids. (Why did I go back to shop there? He was the only apothecary in a district I was welcome in.)
Finally, after one particularly irritating visit, I lobbed a *produce flame* onto the counter as I walked out the door without ever looking back. I’d read the Fritz Leiber stories the milieu was based on, and –yes– I’d heard of the Great Fire of London and the Chicago Fire, but at the time I didn’t own a copy of the campaign book and had no idea that the City of Sevenscore Thousand Smokes had an “inferno” mechanic that encouraged DMs to regularly destroy whole swaths of city blocks in order to keep the city map organic, cramped and ever-evolving.
Sure, the irritating alchemist was gone when we got back to town, but so was the inn we lived at, the favorite tavern where we gathered at the beginning and end of every mission, the homes and shops of the local NPCs we knew,…
Look, if I want to build my wizard to be a walking artillery piece then that’s my prerogative.
I am reminded of the time my party’s blood hunter burnt down a baron’s manor because he was an evil cultist. The druid’s wildfire spirit also helped iirc, but the blood hunter set the first spark, and the battle master was the one to actually kill the baron. The whole party got arrested for it, of course, but previous plot relevant NPCs (aka the king’s lover and illegitimate kid) burst into the courtroom to save our asses. Good times.
I think Artificer is going to have some trouble hauling her ship and crew into Team Evil’s humble and hole-ridden quarters.
Unless they yoink her ship as their new mobile HQ. At which point they’re gonna wish they invested in profession (sailor) checks to avoid seasickness.
Khorne damnit, my norse berserker would have bankrupted the party financier. If lighting up the town gunpowder stores doesn’t qualify I’ll find another party.
Played 7th Sea years ago. Probably the best swashbuckling game I’ve ever seen. We did all the classic stuff, swung from chandeliers, flipped tables, raced through the city streets atop the roof of a carriage while duelling our nemesis… breaking the scenery is part and parcel of the game, do it at every opportunity…
We are agents of lawful chaos in our current campaign right now!
What ho you say? You can’t be chaotic and lawful at the same time?!
Yes so I say!
We have been actively working on the side of various factions, MOST of them of a generally lawful and/or good general concept of alignments and morality ideas (a couple are… less so, but we only do jobs for them that still mostly work in favor of more overall “good” in the world… mostly).
In the investigations we have taken part in and the tasks we have been involved (many of them “officially sanctioned, asked of us, and in a couple cases a part of our “job” for the city itself as legal lawkeepers… at least tangentially in some cases), we have been at the center of at least 6 individual bloodbath type scenarios. A couple with massive spell interactions (Fireballs and the like), and while only a couple of these bloodbaths have been our direct actions (and a couple weren’t even defense actions, but active stealth and murder situations… ), ALL of them so far have been in active “legal” “order” for the city’s various law enforcement organizations and despite our own chaos and blood in the literal streets (three of our bloodbaths took place in a span of three weeks! We’re getting good at this stuff XD ), every action is actually preventing even MORE chaos and blood and destruction from additional factions that we are fighting against!
well… over time the ends will justify the means and the numbers will all be in the positives… in theory!
For the greater good! (Now where have i heard that before… )
Well, we did blow up an entire town (and the dungeon underneath it) by dropping a colossal golem onto a dragon that had unknowingly ate a bunch of bombs. Does that count?
I’m gonna say you get *extra* points for that setup.