The Evil Within Review

Barbed wire and color red; get ready to see a lot of it.

So I've been itching to do this review for ages, to review one of the newest and more original Survival Horror works to come out in recent times, it's just taken me ages to finish the game. Shinji Mikami is no stranger to survival horror, having put out most of the original Resident Evil games, including the critically acclaimed and marvelously fun Resident Evil 4, as well as being the creative producer for some Suda 51 works like Shadows of the Damned and a co-writer for Killer 7. Now with credentials like that, to say my expectations were pretty damn high would be the understatement of the year. Having finished the game now, I can say that I enjoyed it thoroughly. It's not the most  original game in the world, and it's not flawless, but it definitely belongs to a long tradition of awesome action horror games like Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space, both of which I utterly adore. So without further ado, let's dig into the Evil Within.

Gameplay

 

Get ready to see scenes comparable to this a lot too.

 Now the gameplay is fun, but to be honest, nothing special. If you've played a Resident Evil game after number 4 or Dead Space, you've gotten a taste of the Evil Within's gameplay, and that's honestly not a bad thing. Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space are super fun, and I think third-person, over the shoulder shooters are probably my favorite of the shooter family, so there's nothing really wrong with that. I will say that it detracts from the survival horror a little bit, in that it disconnects the player from the character, but it still works, and makes the experience fun. I love that the inventory screen doesn't actually pause the game, merely slow it down, which is a nice compromise between Resident Evil 4 offering the ability to reload all your guns between one enemy's swing and another, and Resident Evil 5's game of trade the items while Plagas are preparing to use your brains for finger-painting.

The real thing that I think was painful is that this game is HARD. Really, really hard. Now, don't get me wrong, I've played really hard games before, System Shock 2 and Hotline Miami come to mind off the top of my head, but this kind of goes beyond regular Survival Horror hard of leading a conga line of flesh-hungry mutants around a corner so I can kill them all with a wrench and a prayer, this is 'fuck, let's reload my save for the fourteenth bloody time and try this bullshit boss again.' The bosses are probably the worst offenders here, with all of them being stupidly resilient and all have them having some kind of one-hit kill attack (I think), meaning that you will be fighting them a LOT. I played the game on normal, and the learning curve was pretty steep, however, I would say that by the end of the game, I was more used to it, and the game forced me to fight dirty, kneecapping my enemies and setting them on fire while they're down, and it made the whole thing feel more desperate.

Still, the instant deaths are annoying and there are a LOT of them. There are infuriating sequences and very, very few checkpoints, so if you're not the kind of person who can persevere through that sort of thing, this game will frustrate you very, very quickly.
 

Direction

 

This is where the game really shines, I think, because the art  and direction is utterly stellar. It's got this insane, over the top, visceral feel to it, that would be completely out of place in any other game, but works here. Enemies are twisted zombies wrapped in barbed wire. There are death traps like fans of rotating sawblades and giant brains filled with lobotomy needles and many, many more, like a beautiful love letter to splatter-punk horror and every slasher movie in the past two decades. The feel manages to be cerebral and visceral, dreamlike and also very, very real, and it's really cool when the game manages to juggle and swing drunkenly between these very disparate themes and make it all fit together wonderfully. 

The main props I'd love to give are to the enemy designs, which I really thought were the game's strongest point, and they looked really, really freakish even by the standards of our Silent Hill and Resident Evil desensitized world. My absolute favorite monster was Laura, this lovely lady here, who you fight about three times in the game.  

It's the hair that does it for me.

I'm from Singapore, and like many kids from Asia, I've been almost culturally conditioned to find waifish women in white with long, face covering black hair, utterly terrifying. Everything about Laura, from her insanely creepy, broken marionette-style movement, her incessant ragged breathing that she does as she chases you down, her ability to go from very slow to very fast with little warning, and her boss theme, which sounds like an auditory panic attack, is designed to make your skin crawl. Her one-hit kill move, which she uses more than any other attack is annoying as hell, and to be honest, not that scary, but it makes fights with her a lot more tense. She's pretty much every J-Horror movie from the Ring to the Grudge (she's essentially a ripoff of Kayako Saeki from the Ju-On franchise, down to the death rattle), but fuck, it works. Fortunately, she shares the same weakness every other woman I've ever met has. She really hates being set on fire.

Women, amirite?

Now, I can't talk about the direction of this game without getting to one fairly critical fact. Like Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space, it's not really survival horror. Now, I'm not one of those purists who think that anything that gives you the capacity to fight back disqualifies a game from being survival horror, I'm just saying, at the point the game gives you several grenades and a gun that literally shoots lightning, and tells you to kill a room with respawning waves of enemies, you can pretty much hand in your survival horror card. The Evil Within is many, many things, but one thing it really isn't is restrained. It's scary, don't get me wrong, but there's no sense of really, empty, creeping dread that I got from my favorite survival horror games like Silent Hill 3 or System Shock 2. 

I would say that the main problem I had with The Evil Within is that it can't decide if it's going for serious or tongue-in-cheek goofy. Resident Evil 4 pretty much jumped headfirst into goofy when it decided to introduce its supervillainous Spanish midget in a Napoleon outfit that talked like Speedy Gonzales, and while The Evil Within doesn't go quite that far, there are a lot of little details, like the immense guy wearing a safe over his head who kills with a meat tenderizer and a bag of nails and drops barb-wire mines that break the mood a little bit. Ruvik, our baddy sets up traps that would make Jigsaw cringe, and at times, the sheer amount of ludicrous, over the top insanity takes away from the atmosphere, like the bits near the end where the zombies start using military grade weapons and the final level, that drops all pretense and dumps the player into a Quake 3 arena to fight waves of respawning enemies. 

Speaking of goofy, this is where I need to talk about my favorite part of this game. It is simultaneously the most stupidly awesome and coolest weapon, as well as having absolutely zero in-game justification and being a huge mood breaker. This is the Agony Crossbow. 

Because survival horror and subtlety can suck my dick when I have a motherfucking crossbow that shoots LIGHTNING. This thing is a combination steampunk crossbow/speargun that can conjure magic bolts that do everything from freeze the enemy, set him on fire, explode (if you're boring), staple them to walls, electrocute them or poison them. This ridiculously versatile weapon is acquired pretty early in the game, and from there, every trap you disarm, Sebastian can Macguiver up more magic ammunition, until you're mowing down crowds of enemies like the Green Arrow went off his meds. How Sebastian gets this level of technical aptitude is completely unexplained, and it gets even funnier when he encounters a fairly simple electrical puzzle and complains that he's 'not an electrician,' which can happen right after stepping over the smoldering corpses of enemies char-grilled with home-made lightning. Now, again, don't get me wrong, the Agony Crossbow is fucking cool, and I used it as often as I could. It's just the kind of weapon I would expect to find in Quake, or Mortal Kombat, not a weird cerebral thriller like  The Evil Within. Ultraviolence has its place, no doubt, but when you're trying to put together a horror game, you really don't want to make the player feel overconfident, and every time I was loading up a new grenade spear and yelling 'WITNESS ME!' before I turned another crowd of zombies into paste made me feel that someone perhaps missed that memo.

Storyline

 

Again, I want to say that the game really stands out here. I'm about to spoil the shit out of the story, so if you haven't played the game, seriously, go play it before reading this next bit. Spoiling yourself for this game is a BAD IDEA, and literally cripples the experience, as so much is built on what you aren't seeing. Essentially, the entire game takes place in a machine that links minds, with Ruvik, wonderful mad scientist turned serial killer as the Game Master essentially. Within the machine, he can control reality, and while the rest of the characters are contributing (which is a nice excuse for why you keep finding guns and ammo), Ruvik is in control.

Now, I don't feel sympathy for bad guys often, especially in video games, since my main urge is re-purpose them fertilizer for getting in my way, but I actually did feel for Ruvik (even if my main character, Sebastian, didn't). He's an awesome villain with a tragic past and good, clear motivations for every nasty thing he does, and plays the entire cast like a fiddle, toying with them like a cat and very rarely losing his cool.

As you can expect, the storyline is really surreal, as the entire game takes place in this dreamscape, and while there is little sense of continuity, the idea of this huge mental battle happening ala Nightmare on Elm Street is a really powerful one. The main character has a similar tragic backstory and past, and all the characters are well developed and deep. I really didn't want Sebastian to die, and I wanted to protect my friends, even though I usually hate escort missions. I don't want to spoil it too much more, as I've already done that a lot, so play the game for yourself, but let me tell you, the story does not disappoint, and the few times I looked ahead to see what was going on , I deeply regretted the decision. 

Originality

 

Hmmmm...

 If there is one place The Evil Within shoots itself directly in the foot, it's here. If I was going to summarize this game in one sentence, I would either say 'Resident Evil 4, but scary' or less charitably, 'Resident Evil 4 meets Saw'. I don't know if you can plagiarize from yourself, but Mikami really did not do much more than remake one of his most famous games. The sets are almost exactly the same. The enemies are almost exactly the same. Even the level progression goes from a village fighting possessed villagers and a dude with a chainsaw and a mask to a castle, to a paramilitary cityscape. Other than the basic premise, and even that has strains of A Nightmare on Elm Street (with Ruvik being voiced by Jackie Earle Haley, who played Freddy Krueger in the phenomenally shit remake), almost everything in this game is lifted either from another survival horror game or movie.

Now....does that make it bad? No. Does it break the atmosphere? A little. There's a fine line between homage and plagiarism, and The Evil Within walks that line very closely. Resident Evil 4 is just the most obvious comparison to make, but there's loads of things. The safe-headed guy is a faster Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2, down to nicking his final boss fight. Laura, as mentioned earlier is Kayako Saeki from the Grudge/Ju-On, down to the distinctive breathing and constant teleportation. All the environments and traps wouldn't look out of place in Jigsaw's basement. The opening chapter is basically lifted from Outlast. Now, maybe Mikami was trying to reference horror movies and games and make The Evil Within something of a summation of Survival Horror up to that point, with the cityscape maps having small posters advertising 'White Fog' (probably a reference to Silent Hill) and 'Serbian Psycho.' If that's the case, that's cool, but it would have been nice to see something truly memorable and distinctive come out of this game, something that maybe someone else in the future could pay homage to, which the game seems to be building to, and sadly, never comes.

 

Overall

 

The Evil Within is fun. Really, really fucking fun. If you're looking for an action horror romp with an intelligent story, good characters, and fuckawesome weapons and art designs, you could do a lot worse than this. Still, it was bound to be unable to live up to its hype. Shinji Mikami is something of a celebrity in the survival horror community, and with his success, people were expecting something that would give them heart attacks on the spot, so obviously people were going to be disappointed. Still, for what it is, it's definitely a solid game, and scary as fuck. Just don't go in expecting a huge amount of originality or for it to go easy on you.

Rankings

Gameplay - 5/5- Easy to learn, hard to master, exactly as a game should be. Never becomes too frustrating or too easy. 

Story - 5/5- Keeps you guessing until the end, and has great characters and dialogue.

Atmosphere - 5/5- Like a bad dream or a nasty acid trip, combined with all the slasher films since the eighties.

Level Design -3/5- Levels were fun, but after the first, the locations started becoming more mundane

Originality -1/5 - Yep, I agree. Resident Evil 4 was a great game. Learn to let go.

Fun Factor - 3/5 - Undoubtedly fun, but super unforgiving. Get used to the various death animations, because by the end, you'll have them memorized.

Overall Rating - 4/5- Definitely one of the better Horror titles I've played in a long while, and it's really nice to see something come out that's not Silent Hill or Resident Evil, although to call this a departure from their example is hardly accurate.

- Kephn

The Sasha Heresy

So this is an incredibly stupid story, featuring probably one of my favorite characters I've ever played. There's no real moral to this story, however, in this story, I think I derailed the story more than I ever had in any other game. Keep in mind that I don't do this intentionally. I really do hate trolling stories and players that try to make the game all about them. Still, by playing in character, and making a couple of stupid decisions, I caused what I hope will go down in-universe as the Sasha Heresy.

To begin this little anecdote, I'll have to introduce you to my character. His name was Sasha Nex. He was a Heretek in a game of Dark Heresy I played with about six of my friends.

Art by another player in the game, who was playing a sociopathic sniper. Pretty good buds with Sasha

The Adeptus Mechanicus has always been my favorite Imperial faction, so, while I've played them a lot, I've always tried to put a different spin on them. My first character was a naive, young nooby Mechanicus trying to appease his masters in the Tech Priests and the Inquisition. My second character was a fire and brimstone preacher from an Old West themed world, who merged Cult Mechanicus philosophy with being a cowboy gunslinger. Sasha was my last Mechanicus character, and he stood out because he was an actual scientist, not a follower of the Mehcanicus creed. Because innovation is a very bad thing within the Imperium of Man, he was cast out, joining the Dark Mechanicus, before realizing that those guys were totally, utterly, batshit insane, and defected again to join the Inquisition.

Sounds like a derpy backstory, but I really wanted to play Sasha as someone desperately searching for a purpose in life, someone to accept him, and when he fled to the Inquisition, deserting his Dark Mech comrades, he believed, truly and utterly, that he had finally found the last bastion of sanity within the Imperium of Man. Sasha was a Heretek, fused with his mechanical implants into a bio-cyborg of nightmarish proportions (Complete with nifty draco-cyborg wings. Random mutations charts sometimes are nice to me), having studied the Warp, Chaos and Tech Heresy to the nth degree, all with the ultimate motive of creating a new golden age for mankind. He's....misguided.....to be sure, just like every other mad scientist, but what I'm getting at is that this guy wasn't really malicious, or evil for evil's sake. He was a guy with a dream, a dream of a beautiful utopia, and he was willing to commit the vilest and most terrible atrocities to achieve it. A true visionary in every sense of the word.

Sasha and Mordecai the sniper being morally ambiguous BFF's

As you can imagine, Sasha got along with some members of the party more than others. The utterly sociopathic and kill-crazy sniper took a liking to him and had his back, as illustrated in that ADORABLE comic. Even the more puritanical members got along with him, when he proved his loyalty again and again. Still though, Sasha was constantly looking to push the borders of science, science that would inevitably get lost or be left to languish, without any recognition. It was this act of desperation and an unfortunate random encounter when we got lost in the Warp that mark the beginning of the Sasha Heresy.

So we got lost in the Warp thanks to a roll, and we were working on how to get out of it when the ship was contacted by another ship. A very large, terrifying daemonic ship that made our ship look like a canoe at best,, and was readying it's forward firing death ray to kill us. People were panicking, and no matter what we did, there was really no way we could fire our Warp Drive and get away without the ship killing us. Sasha was not prepared to die before his genius could be rightly revealed to the universe, and didn't want to see his friends dying either, so he did the first stupid thing. He contacted the ship over an encrypted channel. He agreed to become the daemon's representative in exchange fir both his friend's lives and the power to make his vision become reality.

Funnily enough, no one suspected him when he got the warp drive working 'just in time.' Just goes to show that sometimes finding the heretic is just a matter of pointing to the guy with demon wings and chaos tattoos.

YOU SEE NOTHING

So, fast forward a couple of months out of game. We finished our mission and our Inquisitor sends us on the most dangerous mission yet. We are to go to Holy Terra and investigate one of the High Lords. Now for those not versed in 40k lore, this is essentially the equivalent of going up to the king or queen of the land and accusing them of treason. The High Lords are almost literally beyond reproach, but the Inquisition's job is basically making sure nobody is beyond reproach. They need to seek Heresy everywhere regardless of how dangerous. So off to Holy Terra we went.

Now, obviously we agonized a little about how to hide my presence, as I was going to be about as welcome on Holy Terra as a guy with severe necrosis at a strip club. Turns out this wouldn't be a problem, as we got ambushed as soon as we landed our ship on Terra. Now, middle of a shipyard, weapon fire going off everywhere and our cowardly little Heretek hiding in the ship trying to figure out what to do.

Now, everything beyond this point is the result of my very stupid decision here. I decided to overload the engine of ship, hoping to cause an INTERNAL explosion that would allow us to get away.

Now, hindsight is 20/20, and I know that a lot of you are probably following the example of this Astartes up here, and I really don't have any excuse. It was a stressful situation and it seemed like a good idea at the time and....well, fuck, it was a mistake.

So I rigged the engine and ran outside, hoping my wings would carry me away from the explosion. Now, several things happened at once.

First the ship's engine exploded. Warhammer 40k ships are pretty huge, like the size of several football fields, so it didn't take out the ship itself completely, but it did make a giant, flaming, melting wreckage.

Now, docking bays are loaded with lots of fuel. In Warhammer 40k, the most common flammable substance is Prometheum, essentially super-fuel. So, all the Prometheum canisters on the dock explode, killing the ambush people, our men, and several party members.

Next, the ground beneath the ship has had about as many massive explosions as it's going to take, and promptly collapses, taking the three thousand plus ton ship (which is on fire) and thousands of gallons of flaming Prometheum with it to the dock directly below it.......which also has a ship.

Now, you can see where this chain reaction is going, because everyone below me did. This giant fiery stream of death burned through dozens of layers in Terra's main dock, destroying most of it, hitting critical infrastructure, before finally hitting the Underhive. Terra was held on military lockdown for the next two decades if I'm not mistaken. In a single instant, Sasha Nex caused the single greatest heresy in human history since Horus walked the earth 10,000 years ago.

Now, for those of you in the know, I was using a Black Crusade character sheet (essentially the same system as Dark Heresy but with some different stats to represent my character's more deviant ways.) Now, one of these stats that it added is one called Infamy, which is essentially how far word has spread of your dark deeds. Hit 100, and you become a daemon prince. Now for upstaging Abaddon the Despoiler himself, I shot straight to 100, but got taken out by an angry former party member who insisted on personally hunting Sasha down and killing him. Still, the Slaanesh daemon who was his patron was quite impressed with his deeds, and installed his soul in a suit of Terminator armor.

So, there's no great moral to take away from this. Just.....I don't know.....think before you do stupid shit in any RPG. But then again, accidentally winning at Black Crusade while playing Dark Heresy isn't the worst fate a character can come to.

You'll get there one day Abby. Don't stop believing.

- Kephn

How To Play Evil Characters Without Ruining the Game

So, today I'm going to be talking about a topic that I feel quite strongly about. With my recent post about alignment and other argument starters, there's something I feel that I didn't address, that's quite important, and something that a lot of DM's and players don't understand. So, I'll leap right into the meat straight off. I love playing Evil aligned characters. Now, most DM's hear that and immediately, their knee-jerk reaction is to tell me to stop trolling, and for the most part, I agree. However, I think with my track record of writing articles, you might guess that I'm not the kind of guy that joins the game just to troll it for the other players. One of my favorite storytelling tropes, as I mentioned from my Alignment post, is that of the reluctant or unlikely hero. The sort of guy who's amoral, or outright evil,  but is forced to do good for the sake of his loved ones, the greater good or just because it's in his best interest. I think playing Evil or Neutral characters can be very interesting, and I have done it many times without wrecking the game or ruining it for everyone else. To explain this, I want to examine the motivations of the characters in question and try to explain how to be an evil aligned character that still has a reason to help the party and contribute, and does not necessarily have to slit their throats over a kit-kat.

First off, I'd like to start with a story. I mentioned an anecdote for this story in the alignment article, but I'd love to expand on it a bit, with a character very close to my heart. Meet my very first Dungeons and Dragons character, and I'm pretty sure my first roleplay character that wasn't in a Play by Post forum. This is Ollie/Olly, the Neutral Evil Changeling Rogue.

He wishes he looked this badass

Now, I've played Ollie in two games, both of which went for about a year, and with some of the same players, so he was the same character, with a level of continuity between the two games, and even today I still think of him as one of my favorite characters I've ever played. Ollie was a shapeshifting, money-obsessed hedonist. He loved everything that glittered and his dream was to live in luxury, preferably with all his (many) enemies dead. Now, this sounds more Neutral, and I would agree, Ollie was very much leaning toward Chaotic Neutral, however, he never lost his evil edge. he was selfish, completely self absorbed, and would have happily stolen from an old man and leave his victim starving and impoverished in the street, if not dead. Now, he might not have sounded like the most fun guy to roleplay with, but here's the thing. Ollie never had a family. Ollie never really had people who cared about him, and one of his character traits, despite the nastiness, was his loyalty. If you treated Ollie well, he'd be your best friend in the world. He'd steal and kill for you. he obviously got along with the second party (which was mostly Neutral aligned) more than the Good aligned first party, but in both settings, he wouldn't have sold them out. (Except maybe the douchebag Chaotic Good paladin of Bahamut. Fuck that guy).  This brings me to my first point.

Being Evil doesn't mean not having friends, or caring about nothing.

Wayyyyyyyyy to many people use Evil aligned characters as an excuse to betray the party, and this is where I usually facepalm and ask 'why?' Even the most self-absorbed assholes alive would probably prefer a group of people who had his back. Look, maybe if the party were abusing him, or were seriously not taking his wishes into account, but overall, most people are not raging psychopaths. Most people like having a group of friends to pal around with, or at least a group that they trust not to kill them in their sleep. Ollie was pretty decent friends with a lot of the second group, and even some of the first group, and in the second group, even began having feelings for a more good-aligned party member. People are social animals and they develop bonds. It's actually pretty unlikely for an evildoer to ditch and betray his friends when they are serving his interests just fine, and even if they aren't, he's probably going to try and sway them instead of just cutting their throats and starting over.

STUPID EVIL

I hate this. I fucking, fucking hate this. Not the show 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia,' because that's a fantastic show. I just hate this mentality. You're EVIL. That doesn't mean you're a fucking idiot. So. Take a moment, with just a little bit of logic. Say you're traveling with a group of people. You might not always get along, but you've established that they have your back against all the other goblins, brigands, heretics and inquisitors out there in the big scary world. Now, say you have some minor disagreement. Is it a better idea to a) try and negotiate b) find some way to steer them toward your goal or c) kill them all and go find another group who are willing to help?

If any one jumped straight to c), then congratulations, you have just qualified for the alignment of STUPID EVIL. This is the kind of character that I'm sure most GM's are used to seeing played. It went under the name Chaotic Stupid for a while, but these are two entirely different things. Stupid Evil characters are characters that act maliciously and evil, regardless of how practical it is. For example, say you're paid to rescue a kitten from a tree. An evil character might take the money and run off. Another evil character might save the cat, then try to hold it ransom for a bigger reward. A stupid evil character will kill the cat and the reward giver and leave. Do you see what I'm getting at here? Stupid Evil characters are usually played by emo teens and fans of the Joker, who have a five-year old's understanding of morality. Evil people, usually, don't get up every morning thinking about what evil acts they're going to commit today. They don't do evil just for the sake of it, because that's the kind of behavior that ends you on a hangman's noose. Evil aligned people, usually just want something. They're willing to crack some skulls to get it, but at the end of the day, everyone has a goal, be it money, power, a dark god's favor, whatever. Burning down orphanages for no reason is something only utter psychopaths do, and here's the next important point.

BEING EVIL DOESN'T MEAN YOU'RE A PSYCHOPATH

Yet another important point to playing evil characters. Psychopaths are pretty goddamn rare. Seriously. More importantly, they're also utterly boring characters, 90% of the time. Psychopaths have no emotional connections to things. They have very little ability to plan for the future. They just do what they want, when they want to and damn the consequences. This plays into being Stupid Evil, but Psychopaths are usually really bad characters. They have no real ability to engage with a story, because for them, it's not about the story, it's about doing what suits them now. So yes, if you are playing a psychopath, I would say it is perfectly in character to kill all your comrades, burn down the local town hall and kick the guards in the balls. It is also completely realistic that you would be then ventilated with so many arrows or bullets that they would not be able to find enough of you to fit in a coffee can. Then I would politely tell you to either make a better character or go away.

Think of it this way. Most people, even in a fairly black and white setting like DnD (My inner Planescape Fanboy wants to butt in here and refute that but I will restrain him), most evil people don't really think they're evil. Let's take a bunch of Orcs, who are listed as 'Usually Chaotic Evil.' Let's think about that. Does an Orc think of itself as Chaotic Evil? Or do they simply see humans as weak, and feel that it's their right to take what they want. Hell, their tribe will probably reward them for it, and they'll be doing good by strengthening their tribe against the humans. Sure, a human Paladin can detect the 'evil' on them, but those pansy tin-cans worship Pelor or Heironeous, gods who have a grudge against orcs anyway, and of course would label them 'evil.' Our Orc worships Grummsh, and Grummsh certainly approves of his behavior. What makes one god more right than another?

I'm getting into moral relativism here, and that's the Vampire player inside me coming up, but what I'm trying to get at is that, even if their actions are objectively evil, most people won't see themselves as evil. They could see it as a cynical, dog-eat-dog world, and they're just doing what they have to. They could see it as a bad means to a good cause or even a bad means to a selfish cause, but very, very few people, other than the aforementioned psychopaths, specifically set out to do as much harm as they can. Evil aligned characters are people too. They have friends, they have family, they probably aren't on the job 24-7. Take Ollie example again. He's evil, sure, but he wants to get to know his companions. If he sees something they might like, he might steal it for them. Ollie believes that the world is cynical, that everyone is out for themselves and that the guy sitting on the highest mountain of gold at the end of the day is the winner, and trust me, he wants to be the winner, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't want his friends on piles of gold almost as high as his. Evil characters have hopes and dreams, they have triumphs and they have character flaws that trouble them as much as any good guy. A lot of the time, it troubles them a lot more because they aren't exactly socially accepted, especially if they're obviously evil.

As I see it, the appeal of playing an evil character is to step outside of one's own morality and try to take in another point of view, and it is fun to be the cold, pragmatic bastard amidst the pretentious goody-goodies. There's a lot of prejudice against evil aligned characters, but the main thing I think you should take away from this is to remember, out of game, you're all friends. Evil characters don't have to be douchebags to people in the party. They don't have to backstab their friends and they don't have to undermine them and weedle them at every opportunity. There's plenty of targets outside the party to mess with, who are not currently supporting you and your adventure. Kill them and steal their stuff, but don't get your friends in trouble. Maybe, maybe, if they see how useful you are, they might start tolerating you, and from there, it's only a few steps toward bringing them around to seeing it your way.

Finally, some neat inspirations for evil characters played well, and as flawed, fallable people, and not caricatures.

Reservoir Dogs - An utterly fantastic movie, with deep, interesting characters, all of whom are grade-A bastards. Even the most sympathetic (without spoiling anything), Mr. White is still a cold-blooded killer who recommends cutting off a person's finger if they don't cooperate. The thing is, they're all loyal to each other. They don't screw each other over for no reason, and even the pragmatic Mr. Pink is utterly disgusted when Mr. Blonde (Stupid Evil extraordinaire) executes the hostages, and Mr. White desperately tries to save Mr. Orange's life, and stands up to his boss on his behalf. It's a fantastic character study of criminals as people, flawed and unpleasant people sure, but people nontheless.

Seven Psychopaths - Probably one of my favorite movies ever. It's definitely a comedy, but it has some real heart, and is a perfect examination of what it's like to have a psychotic motherfucker as your best friend. Billy clearly has his friend Marty's best interests at heart, and does his best to support him and  his dreams and ambitions. To say the way he does this is.....creative is putting it mildly, but without spoiling anything, Billy really exemplifies what it means to be Chaotic Evil, and still have motivations, dreams and a best friend forever.

Atlantis: The Lost Empire - I really liked this movie, even if lots of people didn't. Steampunk just makes my nipples hard. Anyway, while it's a Disney movie, so it can't be too dark, most of the crew are an interestingly amoral bunch, that are still clearly loyal to each other, and turn against their commander when he tries to betray one of them. Vinny (the awesome dude with the mustache and the arsenal of bombs) says it best when justifying his actions. "We've done a lot of things we're not proud of—robbin' graves, plunderin' tombs, double parking...But nobody got hurt! (Beat) Well, maybe somebody got hurt, but nobody we knew..."

The Devil's Rejects - Another one of my favorite movies. The Firefly Clan are murderous, cannibalistic rapists, but above all, they are a family, and they stick together through thick and thin. Even Otis and Spaulding, the characters who butt heads most of the way through, stick together and defend each other, and go out as a unit, shooting and giving Johnny Law a good showdown at the end.

- Kephn

Too Hot to Handle: On Removing Slaanesh (RANT WARNING)

Art by the ever awesome TD-Vice, who draws pretty well for a Nazi.

So, this is going to be less of a reasoned article, and more of me just yelling my frustration into the ether, so rant warning, this is going to be somewhat less concise than most of my other articles. I know I should just stay out of the debates of Warhammer fans, because, well, I know it would usually just irritate me. All my favorite elements of the the Warhammer 40k setting (I have not really gotten into Fantasy, but I've heard it's very good) have been slowly bled away from it. I loved the Necrons being unimaginable alien horrors being controlled by the star gods, but, we can't have that, so now they're just a bunch of robot skeletons who nicked the play book from the Goa'uld from Stargate and have made their gods into Pokemon. I really like the Eldar Harlequins when they were just a mysterious third faction of the Eldar, and not as an entire fucking army, but whatever. Most of all, I love, love, love the Chaos god Slaanesh, and I seem to be the only one who does, given that most of the very vocal fanbase seem to have some massive problem with the character. Games Workshop sure does, as I've now recently heard that Warhammer Fantasy has been turned into Age of Sigmar, something that would take an entire article to properly lambast, but to be sure, has not been met with a lot of love from the fanbase. One big thing that has been changed is that Slaanesh has been effectively removed from the setting (getting kidnapped. How that fucking works is beyond me, given that it's one of the four supremely powerful chaos gods and it just ate a shit ton of elf souls but whatever.) and I've heard rumors (I don't know if they're true, but they seem pretty fucking likely) that they're going to be getting rid of him/her in 40k as well.

Sigh
Let's take a look at Games Workshop and Warhammer 40k as a setting, and you'll truly see exactly why Slaanesh gets the company head's knickers in a twist. 40k, at least initially, started out as an adult setting. It's violent as fuck. It contains more ways to kill someone then I have ever seen in a work of fiction, and creatively too, in ways that make Mortal Kombat drool. Chaos gods embodied very family unfriendly things, like hatred, warfare, decay and disease, mutation and body horror, and of course (gasp) sex and depravity. Now, in its inception, Fantasy and 40k had a lot of flavor, but this wonderful company Games Workshop, this bunch of fucking idiots even their fans hate, who drag their IP through the goddamn mud every time anyone looks at it funny, who tries to copyright the term Space Marine of all fucking things (Starship Troopers and Doom oughta be fucking insulted if they weren't too busy rolling on the floor laughing) has slowly, and surely whittled away every sharp, objectionable edge to the hobby until it's bland and as mass appealing as it can be. Slaanesh has been getting neutered in terms of flavor for decades. First, they refuse to mention sex, then they mention it's the weakest chaos god (because I'm sure the desire to fuck is much less than the desire to make bloody warfare, sink into despair or go schizophrenic) and then they even made it's formerly really hot and creepy daemons into backup dancers for Lordi. So now, Slaanesh in Age of Sigmar has been removed in a SIDEBAR of all fucking things, and replaced with the Horned Rat, because the emotion of being a backstabbing shitstain wasn't already covered by Tzeentch, and I dunno, maybe being eaten by rats and the bubonic plague is a very deep intrinsic emotion for the people of Warhammer Fantasy. I don't know, I'm not a fucking psychologist.

Hand me my flamer, naked, parchment wearing masochist, so I can burn more minorities. You know, for Kids!

 Grimdark and PG-13
40k is often credited with coining the phrase 'grimdark', as 'In the Grim Darkness of the 41st Millennium, there is only War'. Now, I would agree, 40k is an exceedingly dark and visceral setting. The main protagonists are a theocratic dictatorship based on torturing, murdering and killing anyone who looks different or thinks differently from you. One of the main antagonists, the chaos god Khorne (There are three others but Khorne gets the most screentime because his fanboys want to assure you that their dicks are indeed tiny) is all about the brutal murder and slaughter of your enemies in an endless bloodbath to feed his intense hatred. Blah, blah something something honorable combat. Wait, that's too much character? Fine. Remove it. There are guns that flay their victims alive, chainsaw swords, viruses that make their victims explode into gorey puddles, guns that shoot little bugs that eat their victims alive, my personal favorite, a hypersonic whip that's injected into a person and liquifies their organs and blades  that drain moisture out of the victim and turn them into piles of dust.

Now.....just from that brief overview, do you think this is a particularly good setting for 13-year-olds to be immersed in? I know that if it were a movie or a video game, it probably would be rated Mature at least. Case in point, in the country I'm in, Mortal Kombat 9 got banned temporarily because the Fatalities proved too problematic for any ickle impressionable children. I still can't buy a legal copy of Hotline Miami 2 because some people might be offended by a pixellated (and in universe SIMULATED) rape scene.

What I'm trying to get at, is that the setting of Warhammer 40k was never particularly family friendly. It tells the story of humanity's darkest hour, the last glimmer of light before its snuffed out by darkness FOREVER. Horrifying acts of murder, torture, depravity and other unpleasant things have been in the setting since its inception. To decry Slaanesh as too offensive, as too 'family unfriendly' for a setting like Warhammer 40k (or Fantasy for that matter) is so ludicrous that it's almost a weird commentary on society itself. Why are we so OK with horrifying violence, murder and torture but we draw the line if god-forbid someone wants to put a pare of boobs on something. I'm not endorsing rape or sexual violence in any way, but I'm equally not endorsing torture or mass murder. Why are acts of genocide, monstrosity, outright racism and religious persecution ok to portray? We all know they're bad. It's pretty unlikely that any of the millions of fans of the hobby are going to go out and gather some skulls for the skull throne because you let them buy miniature army men with axes. Chaos, and what makes Chaos a great antagonist, is that it exemplifies every part of the human psyche, and Slaanesh was arguably the best and most in-depth because s/he's the only one who lures victims in with what they want. What drives people more than the pleasure principle? What drives people more than feeling pleasure? be it sexual, perfectionistic or prideful? In fact, to shy away from portraying these things ignores such a fundamental part of the human psyche that it almost just takes away the flavor of Chaos as a faction, and makes it as arbitrary and boring as a list of the DnD Demon Princes.

No girls allowed. They are icky and have cooties.

Misogyny
Now, stop. I know what you're thinking, and I'm not saying that Slaanesh is a faction for girls specifically, because it's not. The thing is though, because of its hermaphroditic nature, there is a disproportionate amount of female daemons and symbols within the Slaaneshi faction that contrasts with the ridiculous testosterone poisoning of the rest of the setting. Now, Games Workshop is no stranger to misogyny (our genetically engineered space monks can only be from MANLY MEN, 'cause there's such a difference between men and women genetically, and obviously women can't truly embody the EMPRAH!) and Slaanesh's chosen colors, Pink, and her chosen daemons (usually females) contrast with this. Now, I know I'm getting into a tricky topic here, and I can just feel the hate mail about to pour in.  Normally, I hate it when women are presented as nothing but sex objects. Women are presented as sex objects in almost every other part of 40k (Sisters of Battle who have form-fitting power armor and sometimes whip themselves in battle wearing only parchments and Jesus Christ the Dark Eldar), but I would argue that being presented as a sex object is all about what Slaanesh is about. Even males should be portrayed as sex objects, and that's the point, because Slaanesh is about objectifying people. We as a society should know it's wrong. That's why it works and that's why it's part of an army of DEMONS. Seriously, everyone knows that mass murder, spreading diseases and burning people alive are wrong, and we have no problem selling Khorne, Nurgle and Tzeentch armies. But the instant the players hear about an army of succubi or pink-armored space marines, they head for the hills for fear of catching teh gay.

I'm tired and all ranted out, but in conclusion, I feel that removing Slaanesh is just one more example of Games Workshop caving into mass appeal and (surprise surprise) not having any respect for its IP or quite frankly, the intelligence of its players. Again, I don't know if Slaanesh will be removed from 40k, but the way things are, let's just say it wouldn't fucking surprise me for my favorite faction to go the way of the Squats and the Lost and the Damned. Hardly would be the first time Games Workshop screwed over a less popular demographic of players in chasing the almighty dollar. Once again, I know I should just keep my head out of this shit. Just play Dark Heresy and the other really good RPG's that Fantasy Flight makes, that kind of rise above the turd ocean that Warhammer 40k inevitably becomes, that expect maybe a glimmer of intelligence and (gasp) maturity from it's players. I mean, it's sure as fuck more than anything Games Workshop gives us. Right. Rant over. Hope you enjoyed it. I will return you to your regularly scheduled Mad Scrawlings soon.

- Kephn

Statless Wonders

Derail my game now, bitch.

Hello again internet. Today I want to talk about a topic that's a bit contentious among roleplayers, and for once, I can kind of see where both sides are coming from. So, before we start, I'm going to throw out a few famous characters from RPG's, and see if you can find a common thread among them. Caine from Vampire: The Masquerade. The Lady of Pain from Planescape. The Harlequin from Shadowrun. Now, that's a pretty disparate group, but they're all linked by one thing. In all the editions of their RPG's and in all their appearances, they're unkillable. Not unkillable like the gods of DnD or the Tarrasque, where they're just given absurdly high stats essentially to taunt anyone who would try, but in some, ridiculously small circumstance with utterly, stupidly overwhelming odds, they could be taken down. No. These characters are not really characters so much as plot devices, meant to usher the story along, and they're what I call the Statless (I'm actually not sure if the Harlequin ever did get statted. It's been a long time since I've looked at Shadowrun but last I checked, he has a handwaved reason to survive a briefcase nuke, so I'm going to guess no). What that means is that these characters aren't given statistics. It's just kind of assumed that if you're stupid enough to challenge them, they're going to wreck you, because you don't have a hope in hell. Now, for obvious reasons, because players don't like being told what to do, these characters are one of the oldest points of arguments among roleplayers vs rollplayers.  Some think that it gives the story consistency, because there legitimately should be threats too big for one person to handle, but others argue that it takes agency away from the player. So I'm here to talk about this, maybe provide the for and against arguments and show how I've use characters like this in games.

Why these characters make sense
Now, even when I do use a Statless Wonder, I tend to use them very sparingly, and almost never directly adversarial toward the players, because, obviously there's no game there. An invincible enemy is a boring enemy, and if someone is directly opposing the player, even if they've made that enemy themselves by being idiots, I will always give them some way to get out of it. Now, one of the reasons I do use characters like this, is to preserve the setting. For example, the entire point of the Lady of Pain in Planescape is that she is powerful enough to keep the Gods themselves from setting foot in Sigil, the city between planes. Think about how powerful a being has to be to do that. If a player character can just take her down, they are, by implication, more powerful than any god that has ever lived in ANY DnD setting, and they've basically 'won' the game, as absolutely nothing can challenge them.

Characters like this, that preserve the setting, I think have a good reason to be invulnerable because it just wouldn't make sense story-wise if they weren't. If Caine, the first vampire could just be taken down by any random chump who put enough points in say, Thaumaturgy, then why haven't one of the other thousands of terrifying and nasty vampires out there done it already? A lot of these characters are only really challenged by players who want to disrupt the game and the story, and I like to keep those types nipped in the bud before they shank a plot-important NPC and wreck my storyline. It sounds railroadey, but there's a certain level of control that you need to maintain or else why be the storyteller? I'm a fan of player freedom as much as the next person, but someone who wants to personally be the one to take out an Antediluvian itself is trying to mess with you. They're trying to derail your game and make it all about them, probably just for bragging rights.

Now, here's the thing. I'm not inherently against the idea of changing the setting. If some person genuinely has a decades long campaign to use every possible advantage to find Caine and find out his weaknesses and diablerize him, becoming the new lord of all vampires on earth, I'm not inherently against him succeeding. The thing is, there's no story after that. Congratulations, you're Caine. You can splinter skyscrapers into powder with your pinky finger. You can blot the sun out with your godlike obtenebration and embrace all humans and animals at once and eat them. An invincible enemy is boring, but by the same token, so is an invincible player character. If someone legitimately amassed enough power to destroy the Lady of Pain, they have surpassed literally every being in any cosmology of Dungeons and Dragons, and it can be said that genuinely nothing can stand against them that they can't kill just by thinking about it for a moment. How do you challenge a character like that? How can you make a story, which depends on conflict in some way, about a character like that? I'm not against a character taking down a supposedly 'invincible' piece of the setting, but once they've done that, they're retired, because there's no point playing them any more.

Why people who want to kill them are right.
The place where a lot of players have a point about how annoying these characters are, and the place where the GM fails to use them right, I find, is when the GM uses them to 'bully' the players. I've mentioned this before, but there are GM's out there who don't like players getting 'too powerful' for fear of breaking the game, as if games aren't playtested or anything and can be broken that easily. There are GM's who fall in love with their little pet characters and can't bear to see the players take their toys away from them.

I cannot say this enough. I hate this attitude. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

The game is about the players. Period. If you wanted a story focusing on your character, either write a book or be a player character and not the GM. RPG's are a collaborative experience, and there HAS  to be some level of give and take. It's a contract. Players give up control, allow their characters to interact with the story, and accept that their characters may not make it to the end. GM's give up the spotlight. It's the sacrifice that you have to make to be a good GM. If you get to define the story and just make it focus on your pet invincible NPC, you're just playing with yourself.  

I've seen GM's make invincible supervillain Mary Sues, loosely based on themselves. Probably the worst I've seen was run by this raging waste of space (not the author, the idiot who ran the game)
and that was about the saddest thing I've ever read. There's a difference between making a villain badass and making him a Mary Sue (and yes, that term can apply to villains as well). By making Statless Wonders outright oppositional to the PC's, the game becomes unfair, and ceases to be a game.

How I've used the Statless Wonder.
I've used this type of character very, very sparingly. I run Vampire: The Masquerade more than any other game (can you tell?) and even when I make methuselahs or ancients (or in one Sabbat game that sadly never took off, even Antediluvians) statted out so players can defeat them (see my previous post on Learos) if they so choose. The thing is, as I've repeated, the only time I've use an invincible character is when they are ABSOLUTELY critical to the integrity of the setting. I've had players decide they didn't like NPC's as much as I do, and decide to kill them, and even if some of those are my favorites, I've let them die. I've done that for two reasons. Firstly, I like a good story as much as anyone else, and sometimes I find that when a story is completely derailed, it makes for some good drama as both the PC's and NPC's scramble to fix things. Secondly, I am a firm supporter of killing your darlings. As I've mentioned above, I understand my role as a GM, and it's not as the star of the story. Player characters are the stars and they should feel like it.

One little compromise I've used that I actually find as a nice compromise is the idea of the 'Avatar', and not the airbending kind. Essentially, say someone wants to see if they can beat up great Cthulhu or some other stupidly suicidal course of action, and you don't just want to tell them to shut up and eat their salad. How I handle that is by using a statted version of Cthulhu, but then if they beat him, just say it was an avatar, a tiny fraction of Cthulhu's power. Another version of that is the resurrective immortal, the most famous example of that being the Tarrasque in DnD, which has stats, but just flat out, cannot be permanently be killed. Doing something like this gives the player a sense of accomplishment, especially if you establish that the entity notices and even if they aren't killed, may be slightly taken aback by a mere mortal wrecking even a small part of them, while not actually wrecking the setting or the campaign too much. The only other time I've used this type of character is when a player isn't supposed to beat them physically, but outsmart them, almost a puzzle that can hideously kill you. That's neither here nor there, but I'd say that if you used something like that, you make it very clear to the players that a straight up fight is a very, very bad idea.

- Kephn

Alignment, Humanity, and other Argument Starters

So this video inspired me today to come out of my hole and start writing a little bit. Now, I have GM'd and played in a lot of RPG's some good, and some bad, and alignment, humanity and how a character should act is one of the most divisive and beaten topics that ever gets brought up. The basic crux of it is this. Say you have a DnD character who is Lawful Good, or a Vampire on Humanity 2. How does the character act, what does it say about the character, does the GM have a right to say you're acting out of character, and how do deal with conflicting alignments. I'm attempting to write an article that will at least give my perspective and experience, both as a long time GM and player.

Alignment
Now, Alignment gets thrown around a lot, and essentially, it describes a character's moral outlook. There's a scale of Good and Evil and a scale of Law and Chaos, and already we've opened up something of a moral can of worms. Good characters tend to try to be nice and work to the betterment of the world around them, while evildoers tend to try to make the world work for them. Now, that's not to say that a good character cannot commit an evil act or an evil character cannot have a moment of kindness. They aren't robots programmed to act in a certain way. The way I see alignments is that it describes the character's outlook on life. Evil characters see the world as a brutal, cynical one where everyone is preying on someone else and they are no exception. Good characters see it through a more idealistic lens. Neutral (an alignment that always caused me some confusion) either don't see the world through any lens or have some kind of crazy dedication to maintaining a balance between good or evil, law and chaos (I'd argue that automatically puts them on the more Lawful side, but I digress).

Law and Chaos are actually the alignments that people seem to have the most trouble with, because, arguably more than good or evil, Law and Chaos are more subjective. If a person predictably breaks every law they come across, or deliberately acts out, then, well, they're not really chaotic are they? If a character has his own moral code that he thinks supersedes any code of law or justice in an area he's in, well, he's not being exactly Lawful is he? I'd argue that being truly chaotic is impossible, or at least very hard without being totally manic and insane, and a lot of bad players agree, playing characters that would make the most loony fishmalk cringe, and putting a lot of stigma on the alignment of Chaotic Neutral.

The main thing I think to remember is that the characters are people first. Their alignments are two-word representations of their outlook. Even  most paladins aren't totally, one hundred percent squeaky clean, just as most villains aren't totally, out of their gourd child cannibals who worship Hitler-Satan. I have played many evil characters in my time, and I have always tried to make them work with the group. Now, that might seem contrary, but just because a person has a poor moral outlook doesn't mean they don't care about anything. It doesn't mean they don't have friends, or loved ones. Evil characters who take any excuse to betray the party, cause trouble, or sell out anyone who would trust them aren't evil, they're just fucking idiots and the people who play them are just looking for an excuse to make trouble, and would do so with any alignment, not just an evil one. One of my favorite character archetypes is the reluctant hero, a character with a poor, or outright amoral outlook, who is forced by circumstances to become do good, either because their loved ones are in danger or because it's in their own best interest.  My first DnD character was a Neutral Evil changeling rogue, who despite his alignment, actually sacrificed a massive horde of gold to save a group of orphans (admittedly by knocking them unconscious and dragging them away from danger). It's important to remember that good and evil aren't just a switch to flip. They're a scale. Just because the character was ok with stealing a person's wallet, or running scams that bankrupt organizations doesn't mean they're fine to let children die in agony.

Humanity and Paths of Enlightenment
Vampire: the Masquerade is unique among the Old World of Darkness games in that it had a morality system, namely how in touch a character was with their Humanity, represented by a rating of 1 to 10, where 10 was a living saint who could barely think selfish thoughts and 1 represented a barely-sentient monster who would slit their best friend's throat to jump ahead in line. Obviously, most characters fall somewhere in between those two extremes, and those who do actually try to hit either of those are probably not long for this world. Now, Humanity is quite strict, as a system, and vampires have to struggle to maintain it, and lower Humanity has penalties like an increased risk of Frenzy when hungry or scared and waking up later in the night. This all changed when the Sabbat book came out, and introduced probably one of my favorite, but also controversial aspects of the game: Paths of Enlightenment.

You see, when the Sabbat were in it's inception, they were just the generic baddies for the players to hunt down and kill. Their exceeding popularity allowed them to become a fully fleshed out faction in their own right, ala the Camarilla, and the developers had the conundrum that if Vampires indulged in most of the gorier pastimes in the Sabbat, they would be dropping their Humanity like a hot potato.

To counter this, White Wolf came up with Paths of Enlightenment, which is yet another great idea that gets ruined by asshole powergaming shits. The basic idea was that when a Vampire dropped to a low enough Huamnity (3 or lower), they could switch onto a Path, literally rewriting their morality into a new and alien philosophy, that quite literally turned them into inhuman, alien beings. Now, some of these paths were good ideas (Path of Honorable Accord, which emphasized honor and truthfullness and dignitas over being a particularly nice person, Path of Cathari, which emphasizes pleasure and indulgence and Path of Metamorphosis, which emphasizes transhumanism and study being my personal favorites) and some of them were not so good ideas (Path of Evil Revelations, which emphasizes selling your soul and being a douchebag and Path of Paradox, the path of being a stupid prick were my least) but I loved the concept. It made perfect sense for the Sabbat, an entire sect based around the rejection of base Humanity and the exploration of Vampirism in all its facets would realize that as they were no longer human, human morality was irrelevant.

Naturally, once again, many, many players have dragged this otherwise good idea through the shitter. Players started taking on Paths and trying to use them to justify consequence-free atrocity. The thing is, as far as I can remember, all the Paths were just as restrictive in their own way, as Humanity itself. A few may have had no compunctions against killing and torture, but if you were on Metamorphosis, you'd best be studying yourself and your condition. If you were on the Path of Honorable Accord, breaking your word is the equivalent sin of participating in a gang rape on Humanity. These are not just 'get out of jail free' cards, these are genuine alternate moralities, but because of a lack of understanding on the parts of the GM's and abusive players, Paths are soiled in the eyes of many GM's. I can only say that if you're using these systems, try to understand them and and actually enforce them, because ignoring them robs the game of so many of its themes.

Party Dynamics
Now, where all this is heading is how it makes the party dynamic. It's a complete myth that Good and Evil characters cannot work together for mutual benefit, or that people cannot find some kind of common ground. To use the example of my Changeling Rogue, he traveled with a Chaotic Good paladin and a party of other, mostly good guys, because, well, firstly, they mostly liked or tolerated each other, and secondly, they had bigger problems to take care of then a few snatched purses or backstabs here and there. As my character pointed out to a Lawful Good paladin who wanted to arrest him one day after detecting evil on him, merely being evil is not actually a crime. Characters, and good players, will find a reason to compromise, and some of the best roleplaying I got was playing a morally conflicted character who still managed to have friends and colleagues who were righteous, with genuine mutual respect and friendship.

Evil characters and characters with opposing alignments get a bad name because of the arguments they start, like the aforementioned Prisoner's Dilemma (eg. we come across a group of baby orcs. Kill the little bastards or don't and let them grow into evil orc raiders?), but I've always been of the opinion that if the players are mature enough to separate their characters from themselves, there's no problem with an in-character argument or moral dilemma. I've played in Black Crusade games (Alpha Legionnaire, for the record. Praise the Hydra) where my character has detested  every one of his teammates, but recognized that they were the only ones who would help him get the job done. Out of character, the other players were good friends of mine, but in character, the teeth-clenched teamwork was a fun dynamic, as every member of the party had their own reasons to dislike everyone else but had to stick together as something of an odd little family.

The point I'm trying to get across here is that it all comes down to the players. If someone new, who you don't trust arrives at your table, by all means, you have the right to veto any stupid idea he might have about playing a Chaotic Evil necromancer or a Path of Blood 10 Assamite (Don't EVER bring me the last one, because I'll be wondering why you're working with these scrubs instead of Diablerising literally everyone around you for the glory of Haqim, infidel), but don't let the idea get soiled in your head. Remember that even strangest sounding ideas can be played well, and can enhance the game instead of wrecking it. Much like alignment, humanity and other argument starters, it all comes down to your perspective. Any bad player can use any alignment, even Lawful Good, or Humanity 7 to troll your game, and any good player can make even a Chaotic Evil motherfucker work for the benefit of the same.

- Kephn

My Characters: Learos (Vampire: The Masquerade)

It's always a bit of a faux pas, I've found, putting true ancients in a game of Vampire: The Masquerade. The purpose of methuselahs usually gets relegated to the role of boogeymen and cautionary tales, with none of the characters ever actually meeting one. The following character is one that I've played a lot as an NPC, in almost every Vampire game I've ever run. As much of my games follow a solid timeline (something I've been trying to do more and more), Learos is probably my most re-occurring NPC, largely because his life spans the majority of the timeline. Learos is an ancient, a true methuselah, who was embraced by Tzimisce itself, and exists to provide a timeless and truly alien perspective. He'll serve different roles in my game, occasionally corrupting the PC's, more often then not, if they're polite, helping them. Learos is an alien predator, like every other ancient, however, unlike the others, he has one very uncommon trait that sets him apart. Other methuselahs have eons-spanning plots and roles in the eternal Jyhad, but Learos has long been abandoned by his sire and siblings, and now seeks nothing more than to wait out eternity. In other words, he's bored, and when the PC's come by, he'll nearly always find something interesting in them.

Now, despite all the Tremere love I've been throwing out there, let it be known now and forever, that the Tzimisce are far and away my favorite clan. Ancient, anachronistic monsters, with body-horror powers, crawling from stinking tombs and crumbling castles in Carpathia, Tzimisce tickle every one of my vampire G-spots. Learos is created as an archetypical Tzimisce, polite to a fault, honorable in his own way, but evil beyond all earthly measure. He was also one of my very first re-occurring NPC's, so he holds a special place in my heart, even if he is a bit overpowered. Learos never overshadows the players, however, as he exists to give an answer to that eternal question of whether or not humanity is worth clinging to. Take a guess what his answer is.

History
Learos' long and terrible life began as a healer, for a tribe of humans in a land that would later on become called Carpathia. Beyond almost all his tribesmen, Learos was the most virtuous, giving up honor and glory and even women in order to dedicate his life to helping his fellow men. In those ancient days, he mastered what healing arts he could, and while he was never held in the esteem of the warriors, there was always a certain respect that existed between him and his peers.

Learos would never know the true reason that the Tzimisce Antediluvian  attacked his tribe, though he would spend many centuries making educated guesses. Not the most communicative forefather in the best of circumstances, the Eldest Tzimisce seemed to go out of its way to avoid contact with Learos, effectively making him the very first Caitiff. It is said that Learos was the last of Tzimisce's childer, and unlike the rest, was nothing more than a passing whim, an experiment, to the ancient, who had heard of the mystery of vampiric enlightenment, or Golconda, and sought a truly pure soul to see if any of its blood could ever achieve such a blessed state. Regardless of its reasons, that fateful night, the antediluvian attacked the tribe, consuming men, women and children alike in a deluge of flesh, fangs and other appendages, digesting them down to their bones and marrow, leaving only the traumatized Learos, lying on the ground as the monster left it forever.

For centuries, Learos existed as a vampire, barely knowing anything about vampiric culture or lore. He met other Tzimisce, especially his 'siblings,' however, most of them like the Dracon, were such monsters that he cut contact with them. Learos traveled ancient Europe, using the power of Vicissitude to become something of an angel of mercy, passing through human civilizations, healing the wounded and the sick, and taking blood as a price. This lasted until he met the one person who would become his soulmate and most hated enemy, Alia.

Alia was a Ravnos, a childe of Zapathasura and a member of the fourth generation, like himself. Alia saw potential in the young Tzimisce, as she herself had cut ties with her main clan, and like many others, wandered the lands seeking Golconda. It is believed that the Tzimisce ancient engineered this meeting, if Learos was in fact the experiment he was claimed to be. Together, Alia and Learos blood bonded to each other, and supported the quest for enlightenment mutually. When the time came, they experienced the Suspire together, where Alia succeeded, but for reasons unknown, Learos failed.

Failure broke the Tzimisce, as the chance for Golconda can be experienced only once, Learos sank into depression, which soon turned into jealousy, then hatred for his lover Alia, who could now walk in the sunlight and subsist off the energy of the universe. He convinced himself that Alia had somehow sabotaged him, and while he could not bring himself to hurt her, as their blood bond was too strong, Learos resolved that since enlightenment and humanity had been denied to him, he would instead go the other direction, becoming the greatest monster the undead world would ever know.

Learos and Alia would always travel separately, however, would always meet every fifty years or so. In the times when they were apart, Learos made friendships with some of the ancient, primordial Baali that existed, who taught him the Road of the Devil, a path of sin that Learos took to heart as a true symbol of vampiric damnation. Learos aided the Baali in setting up nests in many parts of Europe, and re-established contact with some of his long forgotten siblings, having seen the error of his humane ways. At some point in history, he became the lord of the Greek city of Thebes, during which times he spent fleshcrafting beasts into bacchanalian abominations that mirrored Greek monsters, and outdid some of his most depraved and horrendous peers in both the Baali and the Tzimisce in atrocities committed as he tried to cut away the very last of his humanity.

At around the time of the fall of Greece to the expansionist empire of Rome, Learos had become bored with the world of mortals, convinced that he had committed every sin and evil that existed, and he became wary with his unlife. More to render him dormant and out of the way than anything else, Alia suggested he sleep, and he agreed, setting his retainers to earn money for him before crafting himself into a stone block and burying himself in the ruins of his old citadel in Greece. In the modern day, he has been unearthed.

Learos fits into any Camarilla or Sabbat city as a reclusive elder. He has been awake long enough to learn the intricacies of language and basic technology, but like a small child, the new world of the 21st Century has re-awoken the Tzimisce elder's sense of wonder. Learos refuses to take part in the Jyhad of the Camarilla or the Sabbat, literally becoming bored of committing evil, and now simply wants to enjoy the pleasures of this world, and perhaps pass down his teachings to the next generation.

Personality and Roleplaying Hints
Learos is the archetypical Tzimisce, having long accepted his clan and his heritage, and often takes the role of the likable old man. He is absolutely fascinated with almost every facet of the modern world, and has developed a strange love for computer games and the internet. The old Dragon is still very hospitable, and takes the laws of hospitality very seriously. He is kind and gentile, soft spoken and pleasant, and never raises his voice. To all outward appearances, he is the perfect host.

All of this hides a monster of truly inhuman proportions. Learos is the near perfect example of a Retired Monster, as TvTropes would put it. He may not be wreaking havoc, sending Szchlacta to feast on the townsfolk, or making people into furniture (often) now, but that's only because it's old-hat for him. The Tzimisce elder has committed every possible crime or sin that there is a name for, and plenty more that there aren't.  To the elder, Sabbat Tzimisce who festoon their havens in the remains of their enemies and adorn their castles with grisly trophies aren't shocking or appalling, just boring. The other people in the city would love for the eccentric old Fiend to leave, but no one wants to be the one to make the trek to his mansion and tell him. Learos may be polite and honorable, but those who do not return their hosts hospitality end up in fates much, much worse than mere death.

Learos maintains a healthy practice of both Vicissitude and Koldunic magic, and is not afraid to use both to defend his sanctity, as any impolite guests find out, to their dismay. He creates scultpures of very alien beauty out of flesh, like living statues that weep vitae and other such oddities. He sees the Tremere as a vastly amusing phenomenon, and holds no great enmity toward them, seeing them as a bloodline of his own clan.

Beneath all the evil, however, Learos is depressed, truly, deeply and utterly unhappy. He knows well that, despite his enlightenment on the Road of the Devil and his vast personal power, he almost achieved his Golconda, but was found unworthy at the last second. This manifests as both cruel spite to those he sees who are high on the Path of Humanity, and he is eager to tempt them down the road to sin and depravity. On occasion, however, a small glimmer of decency will appear in his heart, and he will point someone in the right direction. It is a trait Learos himself would never admit, but it's there, the very last shred of decency in Learos' long, long dead heart.

Story Hooks

• Learos has just awoken in your city, and your Archbishop or Prince wants the allegiance of the methuselah. The elders of the city send the characters up to the Tzimisce's mansion to talk to him, to try to convince him to become a proper part of their faction, but the old Fiend is having none of it. Instead, he takes an interest in the characters, offering them sanctuary in his manor, and playing them against each other, hoping to make some, or better yet, all fall to corruption. Some of the player characters may impress him, however, and depending on their outlook, Learos may be more than happy to teach them some of the tricks he has learned during the years....firsthand.
• Learos tells the player characters that he will soon be receiving a guest, one he has not seen in a while. He asks them to pick her up from the airport, where her coffin is being shipped in, and implies that the reward for bringing her back will be power or wealth beyond the character's wildest dreams. When they get the coffin, however, it opens, and they meet Alia, Learos' old lover. The Ravnos in Golconda begs not to be taken to the Tzimisce, as he will try to diablerise her in a mad quest to 'steal' her blessing. The characters will have to decide who to side with in this conflict, and who is more dangerous to antagonize.
• Learos has decided that, as the Tremere are a Tzimisce bloodline, Thaumaturgy is the birthright of the clan, and one he is eager to reclaim. The regent of the Tremere in the city is understandably quite nervous about the methuselah, and decides to send an envoy of the player characters to attempt to negotiate. Both the regent and Learos want everything they can from each other, and if the players handle this badly, the results for the city, or the Masquerade in general, could be quite bad.

Stats (Using V20)
Learos is naturally very powerful, being an ancient vampire, and despite these stats, would probably benefit more from simply being an unstatted plot device. Still, if you must fight him, these are the last stats I used for him in one of my games.

Name: Learos
Sire: Tzimisce the Eldest
Clan: Tzimisce
Nature: Caregiver
Demeanor: Monster
Generation: 4th
Embrace: Primordial ancient times
Apparent Age: Varies, but usually 13-14
Physical: Strength 6, Dexterity 8, Stamina 7
Social: Charisma 8, Manipulation 8, Appearance 7
Mental: Perception 9, Intelligence 8, Wits 9
Talents: Alertness 7, Brawl 5, Dodge 7, Empathy 6, Intimidation 7, Leadership 8, Subterfuge 9
Skills: Animal Ken 4, Crafts 9, Etiquette 5, Melee 7
Knowledges: Medicine 8, Linguistics 8, Occult 8
Disciplines: Animalism 7, Auspex 8, Dominate 5, Fortitude 5, Koldunic Sorcery 6 (Path of Air), Potence 6, Presence 3, Vicissitude 9
Backgrounds: Allies 5 (Inconnu), Generation 9, Herd 5, Influence 2 (Old Money Families), Resources 5, Retainers 5 (War Ghouls)
Virtues: Conviction 4, Instinct 5, Courage 5
Morality: Road of the Devil 10
Willpower: 10
Derangements: Depression, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (Tidiness)
Notes: Failed Golconda, may never attempt it again. Also, Blood bound to Alia, hence immune to Blood Bonding.

- Kephn