Why do some people prefer to play the bad guy if given the option?
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I always do my first playthrough of a game by following what I would really choose if I was in that position, which generally ends up as an attempt to be good. But after that might come the "goof around for fun and experimentation" playthrough. And what kind of well-adjusted individual would be a saint for fun?
I often prefer to play the good guy, because a bad guy would simply turn down most of the quest givers unless they want to rob a bank, or something. Playing as the good guy makes me treat most NPC nicely, which is often better rewarded. Being a dick to NPC simply locks most side quests.
In games where that doesn't matter (for example, infamous), I like the bad side because it is less hindered. Why try to kill your enemies with precision and subtlety to avoid collateral casualties, when filling the screen with grenades works so much better?
In games where that doesn't matter (for example, infamous), I like the bad side because it is less hindered. Why try to kill your enemies with precision and subtlety to avoid collateral casualties, when filling the screen with grenades works so much better?
I don't get it either.
Half the time, being "generic evil guy" in a game that allows for "good or evil" just boils down to "Hey! You can steal, murder and disregard collateral damage! EASY MODE AWAY (as long as you're cool with fighting off guards of some kind, who are tough at first, but eventually become a total joke)!"
It's boring and not all that interesting most of the time.
I prefer to play the good side. And the main reason is this:
TEMPTATION.
I play a hero in Mass Effect. And yet, I take a fair amount of renegade options. Why? Because they tempt me. There are plenty of times where the payoff for doing the "bad" thing will help me out quite well somehow, if only I can ignore my conscience.
Being good always leaves you open to taking the quick and easy way to success, and it's always there. It makes things WAY more interesting to me. On the other hand, if you're evil? It's VERY hard to "tempt" you to do good. Why would you? Aside from making yourself look good to people, there's next to no reason to do the right thing over the wrong thing if you're cool with doing evil most of the time.
The EPITOME of this is with Vampire the Masquerade (the tabletop game, not the video game).
Whenever I look for stuff online about it, I see SO many goddamn topics about "Oh hey, we just started a Sabbat Campaign and it's SO much fun! We lit fire to a mall and killed like...20 mortals and one guy drained another one dry and beat a hunter to death with the body!
" (ok maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but there are WAY more "I started an awesome sabbat campaign" topics than other faction campaigns).
To those who don't play, the Sabbat are the generic "Evil" faction. They embrace their monstrous nature and gleefully hurt humans and act like generic bad guys about 90% of the time. Which TOTALLY negates the entire POINT of Vampire the Masquerade, which is the slow, steady decline of your morality in the face of your monstrous nature, and whether you choose to fight it, or eventually succumb to your nature. STARTING in the Sabbat is basically saying "oh hey, I don't care about the central conflict. I just wanna light stuff on fire because why not!".
And this is coming from a player who is playing IN a Sabbat campaign now (Although I'm an Independent/No-Faction who was DRAGGED into the conflict because the Sabbat rule the city I'm hiding out in and they're basically planning on killing me if I don't help them resolve a major conflict, which has the potential to destroy the entire city). I'm a highly Moral character who is trying to keep the insanity of my two teammates in check and juggle my distaste of the Sabbat with the fact that if I don't help them, things could get even worse for the city (and they'll kill me).
And then there are my two partner players. One is a Mad Scientist who is only interesting because she finds all sorts of creative evil experiments to do, role plays them SUPER amusingly, and also has to contend with the fact that if her morality slips too much she will turn into a rabid animal, so she HAS to try to limit her madness. The other? A typical "Imma gonna kill ALL THE THINGS and have NO restraint!" street soldier lady.
The only reason that last character is interesting in the SLIGHTEST is because our Storyteller is REALLY good. He's made her desire for unrestrained violence a WEAKNESS and she's learning to try to control herself (she ROYALLY fucked up something in our last session. The ST said "Your character is prone to unrestrained violence, right? Roll for willpower. ...Oh, you failed? In a fit of revenge, you kill the person you were ordered to take alive." Cue the city falling into civil war). Plus, he's actually made the Sabbat more than just unrestrained monsters. They plot, they scheme, and they keep both tempting me AND making it clear that the only reason I'm not dead is the fact I'm being useful to them. (I shudder to think of what will happen if/when they uncover my character's Dark Past, which includes killing a VERY high ranking Sabbat member one time...).
I get the feeling most storytellers wouldn't be able to pull that off, or even want to. I keep seeing topics about how much fun they're having just going on creative massacres instead of the desperate (but fun) struggles against forces beyond our control, as well as our morality and personality flaws.
Half the time, being "generic evil guy" in a game that allows for "good or evil" just boils down to "Hey! You can steal, murder and disregard collateral damage! EASY MODE AWAY (as long as you're cool with fighting off guards of some kind, who are tough at first, but eventually become a total joke)!"
It's boring and not all that interesting most of the time.
I prefer to play the good side. And the main reason is this:
TEMPTATION.
I play a hero in Mass Effect. And yet, I take a fair amount of renegade options. Why? Because they tempt me. There are plenty of times where the payoff for doing the "bad" thing will help me out quite well somehow, if only I can ignore my conscience.
Being good always leaves you open to taking the quick and easy way to success, and it's always there. It makes things WAY more interesting to me. On the other hand, if you're evil? It's VERY hard to "tempt" you to do good. Why would you? Aside from making yourself look good to people, there's next to no reason to do the right thing over the wrong thing if you're cool with doing evil most of the time.
The EPITOME of this is with Vampire the Masquerade (the tabletop game, not the video game).
Whenever I look for stuff online about it, I see SO many goddamn topics about "Oh hey, we just started a Sabbat Campaign and it's SO much fun! We lit fire to a mall and killed like...20 mortals and one guy drained another one dry and beat a hunter to death with the body!
" (ok maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but there are WAY more "I started an awesome sabbat campaign" topics than other faction campaigns).To those who don't play, the Sabbat are the generic "Evil" faction. They embrace their monstrous nature and gleefully hurt humans and act like generic bad guys about 90% of the time. Which TOTALLY negates the entire POINT of Vampire the Masquerade, which is the slow, steady decline of your morality in the face of your monstrous nature, and whether you choose to fight it, or eventually succumb to your nature. STARTING in the Sabbat is basically saying "oh hey, I don't care about the central conflict. I just wanna light stuff on fire because why not!".
And this is coming from a player who is playing IN a Sabbat campaign now (Although I'm an Independent/No-Faction who was DRAGGED into the conflict because the Sabbat rule the city I'm hiding out in and they're basically planning on killing me if I don't help them resolve a major conflict, which has the potential to destroy the entire city). I'm a highly Moral character who is trying to keep the insanity of my two teammates in check and juggle my distaste of the Sabbat with the fact that if I don't help them, things could get even worse for the city (and they'll kill me).
And then there are my two partner players. One is a Mad Scientist who is only interesting because she finds all sorts of creative evil experiments to do, role plays them SUPER amusingly, and also has to contend with the fact that if her morality slips too much she will turn into a rabid animal, so she HAS to try to limit her madness. The other? A typical "Imma gonna kill ALL THE THINGS and have NO restraint!" street soldier lady.
The only reason that last character is interesting in the SLIGHTEST is because our Storyteller is REALLY good. He's made her desire for unrestrained violence a WEAKNESS and she's learning to try to control herself (she ROYALLY fucked up something in our last session. The ST said "Your character is prone to unrestrained violence, right? Roll for willpower. ...Oh, you failed? In a fit of revenge, you kill the person you were ordered to take alive." Cue the city falling into civil war). Plus, he's actually made the Sabbat more than just unrestrained monsters. They plot, they scheme, and they keep both tempting me AND making it clear that the only reason I'm not dead is the fact I'm being useful to them. (I shudder to think of what will happen if/when they uncover my character's Dark Past, which includes killing a VERY high ranking Sabbat member one time...).
I get the feeling most storytellers wouldn't be able to pull that off, or even want to. I keep seeing topics about how much fun they're having just going on creative massacres instead of the desperate (but fun) struggles against forces beyond our control, as well as our morality and personality flaws.
Oh, BTW,
Even though I'm a highly moral person IRL, I'm sure that if I got superpowers I would eventually turn into a "Knights-Templar Trope" kind of bad guy.
I am under no illusions that my desire to "Fix the world" could eventually corrupt me into taking the quick and easy route of just killing off the people who are causing the world's problems if I had so much power that I could take them out with ease.
Even though I'm a highly moral person IRL, I'm sure that if I got superpowers I would eventually turn into a "Knights-Templar Trope" kind of bad guy.
I am under no illusions that my desire to "Fix the world" could eventually corrupt me into taking the quick and easy route of just killing off the people who are causing the world's problems if I had so much power that I could take them out with ease.
Note that my commentary relates solely to Pen & Paper RPG's as that's where I actually have experience with it...
Different people do it for different reasons.
The first time was because I wanted to provide a different sort of challenge for our group of players... unfortunately our GM had no subtlety and so didn't want to wait for me to betray the group at an appropriate/climactic moment, he just wanted me to have a shoot out with everyone else and kept dropping hints to the other players that I was actually evil, even having a 'mysterious note' that flat out told one of the other PC's that I was evil appear to one of the characters. The really funny part is that even after that no-one would believe that I was evil, they just couldn't see me doing that. Until I met an NPC who was so obtuse that I actually lost it ... at which point one of the other PC's gleefully threw in with me and the campaign took some crazy fun twists.
I also once played an evil character just as a stress valve, just having the chance to kill & torture to my hearts content made some very frustrating real life days a little more bearable.
I know one person who does it to explore every aspect of character role play... when he plays good characters they are very good, when he plays evil characters they are very evil, when he plays indifferent characters they are very indifferent.
I have also (unfortunately) had the experience of a member of our group using campaigns set in the present day as a way to 'rehearse' things that he wanted to do, and see what problems that he hadn't thought of might arise. (It *wasn't* a massacre or shooting or anything near that caliber of bad.) Then when he went and actually did the thing he wanted to do he was able to plan ahead for more of the problems.
Different people do it for different reasons.
The first time was because I wanted to provide a different sort of challenge for our group of players... unfortunately our GM had no subtlety and so didn't want to wait for me to betray the group at an appropriate/climactic moment, he just wanted me to have a shoot out with everyone else and kept dropping hints to the other players that I was actually evil, even having a 'mysterious note' that flat out told one of the other PC's that I was evil appear to one of the characters. The really funny part is that even after that no-one would believe that I was evil, they just couldn't see me doing that. Until I met an NPC who was so obtuse that I actually lost it ... at which point one of the other PC's gleefully threw in with me and the campaign took some crazy fun twists.
I also once played an evil character just as a stress valve, just having the chance to kill & torture to my hearts content made some very frustrating real life days a little more bearable.
I know one person who does it to explore every aspect of character role play... when he plays good characters they are very good, when he plays evil characters they are very evil, when he plays indifferent characters they are very indifferent.
I have also (unfortunately) had the experience of a member of our group using campaigns set in the present day as a way to 'rehearse' things that he wanted to do, and see what problems that he hadn't thought of might arise. (It *wasn't* a massacre or shooting or anything near that caliber of bad.) Then when he went and actually did the thing he wanted to do he was able to plan ahead for more of the problems.
All my life I tolerate people I really shouldn't have, I'm not even allowed to punch a awful parent or neuter those who in the running for the darwin award, so if I find myself in a position of authority and power, I'm gonna be an ass to the first person who breathes in a way I find unappealing. Something like Infamous 2 comes to mind, playing evil seen as I just played a JPRG and have had enough happy fun times, some woman says "you wouldn't hit a girl...right?" so I turn around and BLOW THE STREET APART WITH A THUNDEROUS HURRICANE OF DOOM.......why do bitches think I'll pull a punch cos you got tits, I'll wreck you ALL equally and fairly.
Sorry for the snip, it's because the quote would become quite big. And...I agree with you on all accounts, we ssem to have the same problem with classical RPGs, that the only kind of evil path they have is the petty/stupid evil. It's like...You can be a mass murderer psycho, but not the vilain. In that, i quite like the Jedi Knight series of FPS, it's a quadrilogy of games where you have the option to go Light Side or Dark Side.Blaine Houle said:
While being Light Side you end up winning the final battle and going in another adventure, in the Dark Side endings you actualy take control of the Empire Remnants and become the new Emperor, and let's face it, that's a better ending. So yeah, there were games that rewarded being evil better, and the good thing about those games is that you don't need to be petty, just ruthless and ambitious.
Now i'm played modded skyrim, and it's been a blast for what i can do, there is a mod that make it possible for your character to become High King of Skyrim, and i'm trying just that, and the freedom the game already give you, with the ability the mods present to just make characters un-essential make for some awesome role play as a legitimate evil manipulator just biding his time to take the Throne of Skyrim, then the Empire (after assassinating that wimpy of an emperor), and hopefully purge Tamriel from the Altmer...Ok, the last part is good, but i can be a litthe Machiavellian here
Interesting idea, i do have one Jedi Knight character at the start of the game, so yeah, gonna try to go Dark Side with him, thanks for the tip!ecoho said:may I suggest playing a dark sided Jedi? honestly I think bioware made a good choice with how they made tor, if you want to be cliché then you'll be cliché and do darkside choices as a sith and lightside choices as a jedi but if you rock the boat and go the opposite direction you are actually rewarded. Also light and dark choices are a little more grey on the other classes as mostly the right thing to do can sometimes be really dark.
OT: I like to be chaotic neutral that way you can do as you please when you please