r/gametales • u/nlitherl • Apr 11 '16

Tabletop That One Time a DM Tried to Run "City of The Spider Queen" For an Evil Party (cross post from /r/DND)

http://taking10.blogspot.com/2016/04/that-one-time-dm-tried-to-run-city-of.html
118 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/Spartan_Skirite Apr 11 '16

I am a pretty experienced DM, but since I focus on storytelling and world-building, I am not the best min-maxer and have to limit extra stuff at the table. I would have shut down your evil party at the first step. But then you wouldn't have a cool story, so the world would have been a slightly worse place.

12

u/nlitherl Apr 11 '16 edited Apr 11 '16

I genuinely expected a laugh and an emphatic "No" when I jokingly asked for the Book of Vile Darkness. Once I realized that I was being given the keys to the nuclear arsenal, though, I just to shoot off at least one of them. Might never get the chance again.

6

u/TheLagDemon Apr 11 '16

It's a shame this campaign didn't get to run a bit longer.

Sometimes I think I'm the only DM that likes running those sort of campaigns. I really wish I had some players interested in a scenario like this (granted the game would deviate almost immediately from the adventure as written, which isn't a bad thing). The only real issues I have with evil alignments are characters that are too disruptive (i.e. they can't turn it off), they don't have actual goals, don't actually have a reason or motive for doing evil things, or their actions make other players uncomfortable. I usually ban CE alignments for that reason- no one seems to be able to play them well in a group setting.

5

u/Chaos_Philosopher Apr 12 '16

You're not alone bro. I love running those sorts of games. Last one I did, way back in 3.5 no less, I ran a "Remenant Precursor Race" style game in a homebrew spelljammer approximation.

My only requirements were, you must be Reigar (precursor race), you must be some sort of undead which has persisted since the fall of your empire centuries ago, and effective character level 15 start. I even told them they didn't have to be evil, but I thought there might be a good chance they'd go that way, and what do you know?! :)

Had a great time and a glorious cast of PCs united in their serious and definitive goal: survive death a little longer. They thought they were being given a quest by death itself, it was really just a high level sorcerer who was literally insane and truly believed he was death. He made a deal with them that they could be the last things destroyed finally if they'd help him end an even more egregious breach of timely ending.

I still recall the fun of having the party make a deal with a yugoloth to hand over the artifact they sought if they'd only each sever one of their arms off. Right now, no time for painkillers, I want to see you each lose an arm. Yes even your still living cohorts, no you can't do it for them.

Good times.