How to Run an EVIL RPG Campaign! (GM Tips w/ Matt Mercer) 

People are usually fine with insanely evil things that are not realistic. For example, if you'd bring up an idea of forced child labor, this will get people uncomfortable. But using burning children as ammunition in a siege? Look at that sucker fly!

One time my GM had too campaigns going on at the same time One was evil campaign, and the other was a generic stop X-evil campaign One day the GM invited both to the same meeting Our campaigns were taking place in the same universe! And it was now A battle royale for Whos campaign would keep going The bad guys win And two of the good guys were corrupted and joined our campaign One of them was reincarnated as a new host for the big bad The other three Died... That was a fun campaign

Another thing people forget - evil characters can care about each other. They can have people they love and will do anything for - even if that 'anything' is unquestionably evil actions. Fully rounded evil characters are the best evil characters.

The party steps on a chicken killing it. "You have committed crimes against Skyrim, I'm taking you into custody!"

One way I curbed Murderhobo behavior, in a Campaign where the party was supposed to group together to kill a high level Lich with Necromancy specialization (What other kind of Lich is there, honestly?), was that 90% of the people they killed came back as Revenants and started hunting them down. It was explained away lore-wise as the Lich's power was becoming so widespread that he didn't even have to be near the dead to bring them back. It was one of the most memorable campaign ends I've ever DMed as well, resulting in a TPK while they held out in an Inn against a zombie horde of their own making. Yes, they knew the revenants were being created via Murderhobo behavior. Yes they kept doing it. There were a TON of revenants there.

One thing that has bugged me when dealing with an evil character (in the few times I've played an RPG with an alignment system) is when a player acts surprised at consequences that come from "just playing my character's alignment." The town guard can't see your character sheet, and if you steal or assault, they won't care that you're playing chaotic neutral correctly.

I once GM'd a campaign where the players belonged to a tribe of nomadic raiders (Mongols, Germanic Tribes, Vikings, etc.). Their homeland was becoming cold and inhospitable, forcing them to go out and pillage their more "civilized" neighbors for their peoples survival. The players were of mixed alignment, where the evil players just liked going out and pillaging. The chaotic good character literally played his character like Genghis Khan, his goal was to unite the other tribes and then the rest of the world under his rule "for the greater good". This tribe building, then empire building and conquest aspect became a major part of the campaign. Originally it was going to be a sort of fish out of water story where the party got mixed up in the trappings of "civilization", but it turned into something different. I had to invent rules for large scale battles and empire management. The Genghis Khan-like player's alignment shifted slowly from good to neutral to evil over the course of the campaign because he had to be increasingly more and more ruthless as time went on. The best part was this happened naturally, I kept giving them scenarios that forced them to make f'ed up decisions "for the greater good", like having to round up and kill all the children in a village to prevent a plague from spreading. Eventually, the adult children of the pc's lead a rebellion against their "evil" parents. The characters were about to kill them and realized how far they had all fallen and allowed the children to win, ending the campaign. I'm sure the players were "playing along" with the narrative by that point, but it still felt pretty natural. Best campaign ever!

I so want to see a evil campaign run by Matt with the CR crew!

In a session I played our DM came up with a unique way to put a curb on Murder Hoboing by introducing emotional consequences to pointless murders. For example our party had to investigate a tavern to find a box. When in the tavern, the party was attacked by a homeless man and he was knocked out. However, our party didn't want him waking up one of us slit his throat to kill him for good. A few rooms later, we were ambushed by a small figure who tripped and broke his own nose. After attempting to capture this unknown person, we found him cowering in the arms of a woman in a broom closet. The small figure was an 8 year old boy and the woman was his mother. The homeless man we killed was the father and husband of this small family. He was just trying to protect them from harm. The party got really sad really quick lmao

When you said at the start of the video that we all have seen our players stab a merchant I thought "Nooo, my players are antisocial idiots... but they never stabbed a merchant!" It was then when I realised that my gf, playing a vampire swordsman at that time, had tried to use glamour to make a monk-merchant giving her a litte discount. She misunderstood what the price for the thing she wanted to buy was (it was 10 Silver, which we called Shilling, but she confused it whith Pound, which were Gold). So she stabbed him, sucked his corpse dry and stole the salt, only to realise that she now had to do something about the body. It led to a hillarious quest where the group seached desperately for a Monster that they could frame for the murder. Still; stabbed a merchant. (Sorry if my english is hard to understand)

“Terrible person, like a cultist to asmodeus” *glances down at my warlock character sheet “Yep! Who would ever do that?! How evil!” Laughs nervously

It doesn't necessarily have to be short, I ran an evil campaign that lasted two years. The characters had goals which aligned with one another, sometimes simply because one PC was paying the others to aid them, but I also gave them a shared ultimate goal - the overthrowing of a kingdom through manipulation and outright brute force. The PCs raised an army, had their own tower of evil and used foul rituals to empower themselves. I did not permit Chaotic Evil characters and the party leader was lawful evil. It was such a successful game that one of my players (a doctor of pharmacology) had his character tattooed on his arm.

Consequences are the most fun part of players actions

My group.... Most of my group got arrested, and the monk and rogue decided to break them out. The mage fighter and pally were all locked up, so the monk broke the chains and let them start running without freeing them from their shackles, and the pally ended up falling down the stairs, and out of his bag out fell his still living zombie head (ask him why, he liked it idfk) and bite someone, and they ended biting someone else, and so forth and so on before the guards for the prison were 90% zombies, and hoarding together. Well the players decided to just bail, not being able to fight that, and when they ran out of the front gates, they were in a medium sized towns trade square, and the monk jumped up on one of the caravans and screamed " HEY THERE ARE TONS OF GOLD PIECES SITTING IN THAT PRISON READY FOR THE TAKING" and in ran 90% of the town, all because he rolled a 20 on bluff... even after i asked him to role 2 d10's to check what was going to happen, he rolled a 90 and an 8 x.x So my group butchered an entire town in a singleton lie, and that monk's alignment dropped from neutral to neutral evil real quick.

I prefer the DMG’s fix: When in doubt, roll dice, say “Oh, no, no...” and announce Tiamat swoops from the sky and attacks.

My favorite trope is a lawful good character (generally paladin), who commits pretty hardcore evil stuff "for the greater good. If they're on point with their philosophy and motivations it can be pretty fun, if your DM isn't to stuck up about the morals and allows such discussions. Like a character, who would find and save a kidnapped child without asking for a reward, but in the process brutaly torture the sh!t out of the kidnapper to get the location. Or when discovering a gang hideout just block the exit and burn the building with them inside. I think, I'm basically talking about a DnD Punisher.

Today I had my first DM session in an Evil campaign. I was going to have the party quickly check out a haunted house, before moving on as friends towards the nearest town (as they all have business to do there). Instead, our vampire convinced a drunk Elven maiden to come outside with him. Our Tiefling Wizard noticed and attacked as soon as the Vampire bit. This resulted in a fight, which ended because of the Innkeeper's interference. Back inside, the Wizard attacked our Gunslinger, so he got thrown out of the inn, left with only two HP. The Vampire then killed the Wizard, turning him into a slave. They then finally made their way to the haunted house, where a Rhino (CR 2) was supposed to be way too OP and chase them inside. Our Dragon Slayer Angel, however, found it a good idea to attack it, even though he made a successful Int Check which told him that it was probably not a good idea to attack it. Our Gunslinger threw a Arcane Grenade at the Rhino, which backfired and turned the Gunslinger into a weasel. They barely got the Angel out alive. So, we had a PC death and resurrection as Vampire Spawn, almost a second PC death, a Vampire that is building an Undead Army and a Gunslinger turned weasel, ALL IN SESSION ONE. I'd say it's off to a great start. What could possibly go wrong?

I had my villains go on a quest to kill some good PCs that were previously run by the same players. It made for a great ending and a Segway into new adventures when the previous good PCs slaughtered the evil PCs and the players decided that the good PCs were too good to abandon forever.

The problem with evil campaigns is not evil actions. It's that by evil every character thinks they need to be a self-centered nihilist who grew up in poverty and seeks to ascend in power using everyone else as tools, ending up doing a ton of "private" stuff that pisses everyone around because they don't know about it, eventually driving everyone into a real life brawl.

"The players get into an argument with a merchant, and end up stabbing him with a sword and killing him. You know what I'm talking about. You've seen it happen, I've seen it happen. We've probably done it...in the game. In the game." Yes. That's exactly how it went down. In the game. Definitely in the game.

I love playing a lawful evil character even in "good" groups. The rigid structure and desire to maintain order and cohesion make for a situation where conflict within the party is less likely but it introduces some interesting dynamics as the opposing ideals but intersecting goals come to a head and strategies and methods change as a result.

I once had an evil character who didn’t kill super often and often times detested it, they were also very kind to most people and enjoyed talking to anyone and everyone… however they were a serial abuser (not often in the physical sense, more in the emotional and mental sense.) they would manipulate followers with different abuse tactics until they attained their loyalty. They were fun to play, but I always felt so bad afterwards! I’m currently about to dm an evil campaign so we’ll see how that goes! Also unrelated, I loved your work as Kiritsugu Emiya, one of my favorite characters.

The point about flipping point of view in games is key! As DM, you can basically reconstruct adventures you've run for good aligned parties and look at: how would it play out from the villain's side? You could even have side quests where you play as minions on missions for the PCs or you could find a card or board game that replicates sending your troops on mass combat missions of terror. Mwhahaha! -Nerdarchist Ryan

At the end of an Evil campaign session the words "Thanks for making me feel dirty." were heard. Good stuff.

A campaign i was playing in recently, all the characters were Templars and true believers in a very strict religious order. We believed anyone that dealt with undead or were undead or were touched by undead were cursed by it and tainted. This of course led to "cleansings" that caused us to destroy a small manor and everyone in it because they were helping to create flesh golems. Eventhough it was likely that some of the people in the manor didn't know what was going on or thought what they were doing was right. We also killed some revenants that were not evil and mearly wanted to provide us information about some evil. We later recieved an item from the GM that only worked for Good aligned characters and discussions ensued. From our character's points of view we were good. Doing what we believed was best for society to keep everyone safe. Such morally ambiguous campaigns can also be fun.

I'm pretty sure I could listen to Matt talk all day about pretty much nothing. #NextMorganFreeman #NoHomo

My chaotic evil psychotic elf fighter once fought himself after looking into a Mirror Of Opposition... after narrowly defeating his clone he removed the face skin and wore it as a mask during planned attacks... he ended up getting turned to elf jelly by the Tarrasque along with the rest of the party. TPK.

Matt could you do a vid suggesting how to deal with persuasion and deception rolls? And a topic about players with high stats in that skills, like how to give away information to the party without destroying the plot of your campaing? Thanks, realy love this videos of yours, learned a lot with them! Peace.

I ran a drow campaign (Basic D&D rules 1983 ) which ran for two years about 2012-14. The players killed their female drow in charge of their airship while on a raid one night. Then were on the run until they got an army together and went home, captured their city and took over. All the players were wargamers who only dabble in RPGs. The highlight was fighting the battle and storming their home city and killing their mothers. Fun times.

Man, it would be great to DM two different groups on opposite sides of this theme and then have them sit down across from each other to duke it out in a finale after years of solidifying their characters/parties seperately.

Some of my favorite characters have been Lawful evil. Not someone who goes out of their way to be cruel, but is willing to do dark things to meet their goals. More of the “the end justifies the means” type of person

I bet this is going to become Liam's favorite youtube video

that eye twitch at 0:59 tho also, "ITS HIGH NOON" at 2:50

I DM'ed for the first time yesterday. It was a one shot about a mine that was attacked by undead. The players were sent to investigate the mine, kill the monsters and rescue any survivors. They ended up breaking everything, befriending the monsters and eating the survivors.

I would love to see one of these videos discussing large cities, and how to give your players all the interaction they want in a big city, while still keeping them on track. Big city role playing seems to be brushed off in most of the 5e campaign books, but my players seem to really want it, and trying to approach it has been a little overwhelming. Thank you for the great videos!

Who else to teach about evil campaigns than the Machiavellian mastermind himself...

Too many GMs and players are afraid to embrace evil. :(

I've only ever been in one actually evil campaign. We agreed that we would all be on the same side ... kind of like a mafia family ... and it all took place in one city. It was kind of fun but ultimately it didn't feel as challenging or as interesting as a heroic campaign. At least for me, money and power are just less gratifying than heroics.

These are getting better Matt & team! Good job :) production-wise and content-wise!

Stumbled across this. Glad to have found it. Great stuff. You've given me a lot of great ideas for my current campaign and for future campaigns. Thumbs up and subscribed. Keep 'em commin'! 😊

"Just TPK them with high level guards." I've never been so eager in my life

*nazeem voice* is Matt's hair as glorious as this very often? Oh what am I saying, of course it is

Just started listening to these. Seems like Matt starts getting more and more comfortable and wily with these explanations as this series goes on. :D

How have i never seen these videos.....how?!?! This is amazing!

I played an evil 3.5e campaign for a year and half which could have gone on longer had I not moved. We did attempt to use Fantasy Grounds but it's not the same. I think you just have to find a group that just clicks and a DM with one hell of an imagination.

I highly recommend a story called "The Way of the Wicked". It runs in pathfinder from level 1 to 20 where you play as an evil character in a setting full of lawful goodbess. I've played for a year now and it has been hella fun, our party even managed to rise a skeleton army at one point and overran a fortress with it.

Hey Matt, I love all your videos, you are such a down to earth guy and you are so creative I just love all your work. I was hoping you could maybe talk about possession or having a pc be controlled by an enemy, especially dealing with possession/influence that the rest of the party isn't supposed to notice and how to handle that. Cant wait to like more of your Dm tips videos!

Tip #8 is so deeply important, and not just for evil campaigns. I've seen and heard of far too many GMs and players letting themes and events get deeply out of hand to the detriment of someone's enjoyment and even mental health. I'm very glad that every time I see Matt talking about this sort of thing, he brings this issue up. It really ought to be the very first thing written in the DM guide of every game in big bold block letters.

Our part is one guy away from being all evil. Though we are evil with standards. My cleric is genocidally racist against giants and all there kin, but helps the weak, while mercilessly punishing the wrong. Our Ranger is an assassin. We have a kind necromancer. And the last guy is one bad memory away from going off the deep end.

Theres some gold in here. I prefer a GTC (Grand Theft Caravan) style of play, where a parallel narrative gives the characters a chance to express character motivation for their actions, which has a tendency to coerce them into defining a code of conduct. Other than that, by "10th lvl" it usually echoes a more sandbox style of game. A balancing act emerges as I the GM spend more time asking the players what the are doing then they spend asking me whats happening. This style of play is preferred for consummate veterans of RPG's, its not a good starting place.

Keep the videos coming! Always love seeing the perspective of other entrepreneurs 🚀

I've recently started a story line with a complex plot that is slowly unraveling for my players. Ultimately, they will be choosing their ending depending on how they play their characters and if they do good or evil. So far, they've mostly chosen good so I think that's the path they'll end on. Even though they are going down the path of good, I like the idea of corrupting and pitting the enemies against each other. I wonder if there's a way to spin that concept around to allow ultimately good characters to instigate situations which will ultimately confuse and pit the darker forces against each other, creating enough chaos so that they good party can divide an conquer the evil doers. What a great concept! Thanks, Matt!

Life would be simpler if I didn't find Matt so attractive.

How bout running a short 3 to 4 episode Evil Campaign for us? :D

I'm preparing an evil campaign for a group of 4 players, the story is that 10,000 years ago they were extremely powerful and tried to take over the world, they were defeated and sealed away in a magical prison that would siphon their power away, a cult eventually found the prison and after every member was killed by traps the one survivor was able to free them. My problem is that I don't know how to introduce "evil" side quests outside of, "take over this village" or "kill this guy".

I'm starting a campaign on ANIMA: Beyond Fantasy. Most of these tips are really helpful, and provide a huge range of idees and concepts that can be adapted and used... Seriously, I already liked Matt for his job in Voice Acting, but to discover that he likes Roleplay games too, see him share his ideas in how to be a good Game Master, it's completely amazing. This guy never ceases to amaze me. I wish I could give him my thanks. This is a huge help for people who want to try being a good GM but lacks experience (such as myself.

How would you suggest a DM and/or a player should deal with flirting, love and maybe even sexual relations? Either between PC’s and NPS’s or between members of the party? And what should DM and players be considering when the PC’s involved in the specific “love interest scenario” may have real world love relations with others in the gaming group? Maybe a suggestion for a “Valentines Day-special”?

I like the addition of " *very* powerful investigator" that is *very* good advice.

I've revisited this series every time I start to DM a new campaign. Mercer is so damn good

I'm not even a DM and I'm enjoying these tips! It helps me understand the role the DM plays

I play a Neutral Evil rogue. So he's not evil, so much as just doesn't care. Oh, and he's a thief.

Not a fan of alignments like good and evil myself, but would encourage creative interpretations of such. If I'd have to use them, I'd probably describe the "good-evil axis" more like "moral flexibility". A good character is really restricted in what they can do, while an evil character isn't exactly obligated to commit atrocities (except maybe by a god they worship, or something), but they absolutely CAN when they feel the need. Think Tyrion Lannister. Really hard to point him to any point on a grid of good-vs-evil and lawful-vs-chaotic. He has his high points and low, and he's principled, but pragmatic. He will be acting in good and... well, let's call it less good, and he'll be predictable even when he's unpredictable. Whether something is good or evil depends largely on whether you're facing the tip of a sword, or wielding it. I also personally have a pretty big problem with the idea that killing is ever good. It might be desirable from the point of a god seen as good, but that's probably not a universally shared view in an RPG setting, and that means the truth of good is subjective, not absolute.

I really like this show, you provide lots of good information and opinions. I would love to see an episode about "using traps as a DM"

Thanks matt, I've been planning an evil campaign for awhile. All of this will be extremely helpful. ^^

one time i was playing with my friends (i was not the gm) , one of them suddenly decided to spend 100% of their gold to buy about 500 pigs, and proceed to lead them through the whole f'ing city to his backyard, and burn them all alive.

*It's high noon*

I ended up doing the jail/owe a favor thing with my own group. One of the party members cast fireball in the middle of a crowded tavern full of innocent bystanders (they had confronted a villain duo there and combat broke out). There were off-duty guards present who tried to stop them and ended up getting attacked as well. The party was eventually subdued and had to stand trial. As an offer to lessen their sentence (was no death penalty as long as they could pay an unaffordable fine, as the city itself was run by pretty evil people to begin with) they agreed to do a favor for a noble who could pull strings. I used it to effectively railroad them into the overarching story line of the campaign. TL;DR always find ways to curb murder hobo-ing, and Matt Mercer gives awesome advice.

TPK them all with high level guards. Loved that haha. I was thinking actually for a campaign I want to run where the governing state or what have you cracks down on dissenters or the players with an airship and basically a Rapid Reaction Team that is deployed via Featherfall swarms the party if they don't try to flee. So many cool options!

I play more of a Loot Hobo. If it died by us and we have like a spare minute that corpse has lost a fair bit of it's stuff. Friend or foe, everything is the same when it's dead.

I'd love to play a game where characters do some effed up shiz, but still have codes and morals and human feelings. Like Godfather or the Sopranos. That, or hell, just make it a bunch of Roose and Ramsay Boltons, Walder Freys, Circe Lannisters, Littlefingers, and Viserys Targaryens.

Chaotic evil is what most Murder Hobos are. As such they will be the target of other good forces, and also other chaotic evil beings, for them everyone is the enemy, so trust is not going to be a thing, its rule by force, someone in the group might be the leader and the others just follow out of fear and seeking to betray the leader at any moment when its possible. Lawful evil campaigns can be more diplomatic and dealing in details of contracts and how to work edge cases around them. Opens up for basically anything that a good campaign does, characters just do it for their own self interest and might push the mission with all means necessary to get to the goal, without constraints.

As always great tips, I deeply appriciate the Time and effort you put forth to help aspiring GMs like myself.

As a DM who has been running an evil campaign: DON'T. Legit advice though, if your players will start acting chaotic evil, you can just use the game world to realistically penalize such behaviour, without it seeming unfair to the players. Then their characters will act more subtly with their evil. Also evil characters usually have personalities and goals too, and by setting up interesting goals for them, they can still have adventures that feel satisfying. Watching them set up schemes is pretty interesting. For example, my group met this cult of mercy and love, whose leader was a messiah-like figure who hid from the authorities and only sent his apostles to foment rebellion against the authoritarian government. They didn't even intend to get rewarded, they just heard someone trying to do good and wanted to stop it. Lo and behold, one of them thought to capture the man after the battle (he was protected by a pretty powerful angel), and they brought the guy to the authorities and got rewarded. I try to set things up so that my players will want something to gain, so they will strive towards that goal, instead of just trying to kill everything. Now there is a dispute of inheritance, but they might try to usurp the noble title for themselves. Evil characters usually want power instead of power trips. Also if you have an NPC that you don't want them to kill, set up a defence: he lives in a place where weapons aren't allowed, he has uncanny dodge or a magic armor, or he's a minor image or hologram. Heck, you can just tell your player to roll and they are likely to fail that as well.

My biggest problem with Evil campaign, is that age of the players tends to give you different kind of people. like kids just want to murder every NPC you create without any consequences and if you do give them consequences. they end up dieing to guards and then creating evil guy #2 who just do the same shit all over again. then there is the anime guy who just want to do like animes villains and be all godlike who can't be dealt with. then there are those who actually have a plan and knows how to be lex luthor and not the joker, but they always ends up killing their partners really fast int the game because there is always this lone murder hobo who just want to ruin the lives of his companions. but of all that, my major beef is that evil campaign never finishes in epic stuff. reguardless of how epic you want it to be, they always will be destroying your narative and in the end just murder each others. i've been DMing a lot and everytime i get asked... can i be neutral instead of good... the real question they are asking is, can i be murder hobo in disguise ? and when they ask for an evil campaign thee is always this guy playing the joker who just kills int he middle of the street in front of guards and doesn'T care cause to him thats a video game and he can just create another ugy and do the same again.

I think i could listen to Matt talk about anything and enjoy it.

I'm currently playing in a friend's campaign around level 10 as a party of a Hired Gun, a smuggler monk, and a black market alchemist in a Black market themed campaign, the leader of our group being a Beguiler Player Character who's face is always hidden, who is often referred to as The Angler. We run our operation in ancient underground catacombs beneath a Paladin capital city.

I love being evil! Gir! activate the murder-hobo 9000! MUHAHAHAHAHAHA! ALL SHALL BEND KNEE TO ZIM!

Joke's on you. Every PC is evil. Every. Single. One of them. Hide your loot. Hide your NPCs, because they killin EVERYBODY.

Fantastic video, I'll be using these tips in the future

I'm planning my first adventure and Matt Mercer is already my new favourite person.

Always love the GM tips.

I had this kind of thing come up a lot, as mixed alignment groups were the norm for games I've run/been part of. In fact one of my favorite characters (who's name I often use online, and I ran while DMing and when others DMed for that party/parties he was part of ) was an assassin in his early career. Conflicts with the law were few, as he was a licensed member of the assassin and adventurer guilds, but conflicts with groups and individuals connected to targets was common. Facing the law would have been preferable to angering deities and world spanning organizations because you took out a high ranking priest and/or member.

im just learning of this game anf hkw it flows, and Matther here has definitely helped out and makes pretty fun to watch and learn.

Thank you for the insight Mccree.

This gives me so many good ideas!!! Thank you!

My group did an evil campaign in the same universe and time line as our long going good campaign. A few of us were moving from the home town so it became a great way to end both campaigns by having the good and evil parties meet. And then fight it out. It was a boat load of fun.

evil characters work together, albeit differently from how good ones do. good characters are usually easy to gather in the name of honor or whatever, but evil characters only work together when it is convenient or when they have to and they will probably fight a lot. theyre not too different from good groups, they just skip the honor and glory speeches and move right onto the immediate gratifications. "whats in it for me" discussions, etc. its up to the gm to keep things moving along and to proide a bigger stronger common threat to focus on

Thanks for this. I'm looking at running a short arc where everyone plays Goblinoids. Knowing my party it helps to have ideas on curbing the fratricidal nature that is likely to pop up.

I love this series so much.

I had one friend start playing with us in dnd, I'm the DM, and he played a barbarian character and he found enjoyment out of killing just about anyone he came across and being really specific as to how he tortured and or killed them. There weren't many legal ramifications at the moment. Guards did eventually fin out which they began searching for him and he ended up escaping to a different town. However now his legacy was known as "The Gray Ghost" because he was an aasimar. Anyway, not long after that the party does a few more things and then we have a couple new friends join and we decide yeah lets start over wouldn't want everyone starting at level 9. So we did and the way I started their story was that they were all new bounty hunters this was just thought up off the top of my head because I had this previous antagonist I had wanted to bring back so yeah. anyway their first quest was killing a minor god at half power so that was cool. Their next and current bounty as told by the leader of the bounty hunter guild is "We've heard reports of some Gray Ghost down south killing and torturing people." the party that had played before started freaking out it was great lmao. Now the next session they'll be fighting this players old character and taking some of his items as punishment. So it worked out in the end

The campaign I'm currently playing in is an evil campaign, where we're pirates in Eberron. My character is chaotic evil, but she's very attached to the other two pcs, and they can usually keep her worse impulses in check. We're having a lot of fun, though it's going to come to a close soon.

My last game as a player was about a military unit of Drow Elves, I played a multiclassed Fighter/Thief and a Assassin/Mage. I didn't find it hard to play Evil characters but I leaned more towards amoral the thief Elron was NE, did whatever made him happy, fighting was his job he didn't take much joy in it. The assassin was highly charismatic and LE, went to great lengths to make everyone think he was more than he was, every horrific thing he did was to intimidate or scare people away from getting in his way, he was a hopeless fighter

I was having some soup while watching this and I did not expect the *pew pew* sound effect when Matt pointed forward. damn near chocked haha well played

i love the mentioning of Pathfinder deities and having d&d 5e books on the table :D

For a one-off adventure, try running a reverse dungeon with the players as goblins defending a warren from low level adventurers, or orcs in a warband, or some other communal monster style. I had a lot of fun running some players in a goblin campaign, buffing them a little to the heroic side of the goblin race. They joined forces to seize control of the goblin clan from a degenerate and corrupt ruler, and successfully raided nearby towns while preventing retaliatory adventurers from stopping the goblin menace. If the players like it, you can spin it into a larger campaign. I highly recommend it, and if your players shy away from eating villagers, well, you're the DM, roll with it!

Oh my gosh, just watched this for the first time after my first time being the GM on Tuesday. I was, although shouldn't have been, surprised when one of the players killed the tavern owner after he asked a simple request. I was coming up with stats for the tavern owner when I found "cultist". Immediately this exact idea that Matt presented formed, and after guards couldn't find the player, the investigators found the tavern owner was a member of a dangerous cult, so it was actually a good thing. It even made a way to tie them in to the narrative much earlier than I ever thought. I then decided that if they continued down this road, they'd eventually get caught and have to make a deal, which would pull them in to the narrative even further. Perfect! (Also, *evil grin* for making this actually a good thing for the community. Lol) TBH, the whole session was hilarious. We have 3 bards and a rogue. 2 of the bards are College of Whispers. Pretty sure they are mostly neutral aligned. Nothing went according to plan. I loved it and so did they. Fantastically hilarious role-playing the whole evening. 😂 I can't wait until we can get together in person again so I can see their reactions. I am going to remind them that, although I won't intentionally try to kill them off, I won't artificially protect them from the consequences of their actions, either. Let the chaos commence!! 😁

This was very helpful! I’m planning on doing a campaign where all the players are insanely high CR monsters (Adult Red Dragon, Demi-Lich, Death Knight, Mummy Lord, Pit Fiend) where they get high CR pets (Aboleth, Undead Displacer Beast, Mummies, Succubi, Death Salaads, and Hell Hounds) as well as high CR servants (Helmed Horrors, Mind Flayers, Chain Devils, Bone Devils, Undead Beholders, and Mummified Cloakers) and try to kill the gods (Empyeans) and help their master (Super Powerful Homebrew Lich with CR of 99) take over the multiverse! It’s gonna be fun!

One of my favorite early characters was a chaotic evil fighter that got kicked out of a tavern in Procampur (forgotten realms) at first level. He never forgot it and throughout the campaign he eventually raised an army of orcs, ogres, giants, and one dragon (I want to say it was a black dragon) and destroyed the entire city.

3:15 oath breaker paladin is perfect for this role

Used to listen to an RPG podcast, called Fear the Boot. A GREAT resource. Don't know whether they're still active but even then they had well over a hundred episodes with great audio quality and moderating. Just in case any budding DMs are looking for guidance.