But now I’m showing my age…

(1) Your comment “My most memorable evil “character” would have been in a D&D game. He was only ever in it for the money.” Too many evil characters have little depth and a singular driving motivation. It probably states something about my tendencies in rping that Evil characters without depth are going to get manipulated by me the minute I find their leverage point.

(2) Your comment about wanting to play something light and fluffy. There is a heaviness about playing an Evil character that I think a lot of people might not realize/want. It’s pretty sobering.

Aidan: The discrepancies in interpretation regarding someone else’s alignment makes me want to ask the question “How necessary is it to assign an alignment by name during char-gen?” Evil would appear to be utterly subjective from the characters’ standpoint. And if it’s subjective from the characters’ standpoint, then who decides ultimately what is Evil and what is not? The GM? And if the GM decides, what is influencing the GM’s standards? And in the end, does it matter at all?

In a fairly recent D&D game, I played a character who as an escaped slave from a snake-god temple (pick your favourite religious evil-doings, and these guys probably did it) in the middle of a remote desert nation.

In his head, he wasn’t a slave – he felt like he’d committed the most horrific sin in the world by running away from the temple (he had been selected for sacrifice, and had discovered he didn’t want to meet his god just yet). He also had an extremely strict set of moral codes – what was right and what was wrong were emblazoned across his psyche. The thing is, human sacrifice was right. Slaying enemies of the temple was right. Self-scarification was right. Some other races were an abomination.

Enter the rest of the party, who came from regular, well-watered, Tolkien-esque fantasy land. The clash of culture was so great, that they all assumed my character was an assassin, or a thief or something else unsavory. In reality, he was just a warrior. His alignment? Lawful-neutral.

I remember Prodigy from Matt’s $uper$ game. There were other villains-who-really-could-be-misconstrued-as-heroes and vice versa. My second character in that game was very law-abiding, to the point that he actually “betrayed” the rest of the team (who were a little more vigilante) to the proper authorities.

In my (oh-so) humble opinion, the more shades of grey there are in the moral spectrum, the more opportunity there is for roleplay, both in-party and with NPCs, and the more opportunity there is for character growth.

“wicked” means ‘incredibly cool’

I don’t think I’ve ever played any memorable evil characters as a player. As a GM, I have been reminded of some evil-but-sympathetic characters – (Callistratus, the head of the Covenant of Y’Draig Goch – Prodigy, the 15 year old technological genius in $uper$ – a nameless operative of Cloak Division in SLA Industries) – all who caused immeasurable trouble for the players. Some, like Callistratus, would just do evil things and then convince the players about how it was for the greater good, some, like Prodigy, would sell superhero technology to the highest bidder and Cloak – well, they were all just complete fuckers.

My most memorable evil “character” would have been in a D&D game. He was only ever in it for the money.

My current character in KinnyGraham’s DG game is of questionable morality. He used to be an interrogator for the OSI tracking down stolen US munitions in Kuwait and Iraq. When asked to interrogate someone he replied “I don’t think I could do that to an American.” He seriously considered killing the interrogation suspect when they found out that his dreams/emotions were summoning a Byakee. And there’s more. Little comments here and there that make people think he doesn’t really like anyone….
He’s a deeply troubled character and I think the guys in the game made some reference to whether I’d be able to follow it up, should he die. Michael said I’d have to play “the brother”. Personally, if Kruse dies I’ll be opting for a totally different character. Someone light and fluffy. Rather than a bed-wetting loser…