Evil Doesn't Mean Asshole

Just act in your own best interest more often than not. Maybe make the evil more subtle rather than all out.You can be nice to select people and still be evil. You can also just be evil in one very prominent aspect (like an ideology.)

He ordered hitmen to take out Phil Leotardo and instead they got a completely innocent person who happened to look a bit like their target. He also had Adriana murdered.

Just be entirely selfish. You don't need to be a sadist or take pleasure in your path of destruction to be evil.

stack up crazy amounts of Charisma - you can be asshole and people will still like you (except for those you're directly harming)

In one group I ran there was a fantastic evil dwarf barbarian. He was an idiot and the player played him like an idiot. He was also opportunistic and greedy and petty and despite being a combat monster he would avoid dangerous situations if he had to. But he was an idiot and he knew it.

What made the character great was that since he had this meaningful weakness he had a reason to lean on the party. He had evil schemes and would abuse even the slightest bit of power in a heart beat. But the player always knew it was just for fun so he played along when the party shut him down.
But he was always there to stir the pot, make things interesting by providing some good natured party conflict without having it devolve into drama. From time to time his nastiness could pay off.

It's more fun to have Jayne in the party than Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal is charming and a fun power fantasy but he has no need for a party and every interaction with him is such a dramatic power struggle that it leads the game to revolve around his personality. If the personality is neat then it's fun for a while but it drags fast. Jayne is a violent, mean asshole but you know where he stands and he knows where he stands and you all know that it's a solid place.

>TL:DR
>What I'm say is that it's about weakness and need. Once you have your power figured out you need a practical flaw and personality flaw that gives you a place in a party.
>You have to be okay with not always getting what you want, it's about striving and conflict.
>But most of all it's about not holding a grudge for in character things and having fun with the play itself.
It takes a good dude to play an evil character.

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>It's more fun to have Jayne in the party
Only if you get Mal to keep him in line. And the only reason you can't call Mal out on being a Mary Sue is because of that one bitch in a box.

Not a very good picture for the point you're trying to make.

I'll try to describe the situation of a campaign we started a few months ago and has been stuck on hold.

>Be player in a GM's setting.
>Setting's big thing is that mankind is dying out because of a mistake they made three centuries ago.
>Humans of the last couple of centuries have finally conceded that they're dying out because of this mistake, some are trying to correct the problem any way they can figure out, some have just went full on nihilist since at this rate, man won't exist in another century.
>Society has been on a decline after the mistake, which took place around a WW2 tech level, by the time the players arrive on scene, most places have regressed back to a middle age sort of time period due to drastically reduced population, but occasional modern technology still shows up in use (For example, occasional city watchmen still have bolt action rifles, HAM radios can be found in major settlements wealthy enough to generate power to use them, etc.)

>GM's intention was to set the players on a quest to find out how to fix the problem somehow.
>Player character decides since mankind made the mistake they did, they deserve the punishment they're receiving, and are only on the quest with others to intervene if a poor solution is found to avoid facing the music of their crime.
>Is actually incredibly compassionate and has no intention to watch people suffer, but still working to ensure humanity's doom, somewhat unknown to the party.

For the exact issue that brought about these events:
>Earthmother type deity sustains the lifeforce of humanity from their initial creation perpetually onwards for thousands of years.
>Human cultures usually have a religion that reveres this deity in some form or another, despite not having contact with it since their creation.
>History advances somewhat similarly to our own, eventually culminating in the rise of mass communication, population booms, higher institutions of learning, and finally a general sentiment of science over belief for most of the population.
>Humans accidentally find alarming ancient writings about the Earthmother, which links together a lot of systems of belief, and eventually proves that such a being actually exists and if believed, has enormous power over life and death.

>As most no longer really believe in divinity and see such a thing as just an external being to be used as best fit, a collective race for various nations to find this deity and exploit her powers.
>Culminates in a massive war as gates to the realm of the Earthmother are found, turns out the earth is actually hollow.
>Said Earthmother is unable to communicate with the humans waging war around her.
>After a long, drawn out bloody battle, one side decides if they're losing, they can't let the other guys win and outright kill the Earthmother.
>Said Earthmother can no longer repair the souls of mortals after their death, making them unable to be recycled into new humans.
>Increasing number of children born sickly, mentally broken, or simply stillborn.

>Fast forward three centuries later, the human population has shrunk to a fraction of what it was as functional souls number fewer and fewer.

I guess my point was, said player was technically evil as fuck attempting to bring about the end of life as we know it, but wasn't actually a -bad guy- in the way most evil folks are.

better?

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Crap if I know. I haven't read Discworld, but I have played Advance Wars.

>OP wants someone who's not an asshole.
>Posts the biggest asshole he could possibly find.

Yeah, probably not the best choice.

Would Ends Justifying Means be evil?
Like, is Mr Freeze evil? Considering he does all his villain shit to save his wife

I played a lawful evil knight who only cared about the laws of Cormyr. In side the borders, I upheld the law unerringly. It was almost as if I was playing a good character in Cormyr (a traditional Medieval England-like country) and an evil one outside of it. As an example, we encountered some demon worshipers engaging in vile acts in whatever nation was next to Cormyr. Rather than bust them like everyone else thought I would I actually suggested we ally with them. I didn't care what they got up to in their own country. In Cormyr I would have rounded them all up and took them in. Funny thing was that the evil government guy NPC had offered me my family name back (my reason for becoming a knight) if I killed my own mother. I asked if she had committed any crimes. She had not. So I said know and was forced to fight his evil demon while he escaped. Good times.

if the end is personal it's Neutral to Evil-ish
if the end is visionary it's Neutral to Good-ish

Not really evil. Neutral, maybe, and very unscrupulous but his goals are explicitly to ensure stability and prosperity on Ankh-Morpork. He doesn't even gain much from it personally, not like some previous patricians who clad themselves in bling and did the usual outrageous noble stuff - Vetinari lives humbly, eats just bread and water and isn't murderous like his predecessors.

He's definitely not good, but he's definitely not evil either. He seeks generally good and neutral goals through often neutral or at times evil means.

I'd say he's ultimately CN. He keeps order and appearance of law, but he doesn't really care about law - he wants results, and he's more than willing to break rules to get it.

>hey tg can you rubber stamp my edgy shit
Look dude if you want to have a villain then just accept that they're a villain. Don't spend so much time hem-hawing about the definition of evil as if it's written in stone somewhere. Instead figure out whether your villain-character is conducive to the kind of story you want and go with that.

Not op, was just curious as to what Veeky Forums's labelling system for evil entailed. And I like Mr Freeze.

>seeks the stability and prosperity of Ankh-Morpork
>chaotic
A chaotic leader would be way more hands-off, Vetinari is almost as lawful as it gets.

Vetinari is a rock-solid LN. How is he chaotic in the slightest? Everything he does is calculated to maintain order and stability, not to mention the fact that he defines what is lawful for Ankh-Morpork.

>Would Ends Justifying Means be evil?
This is quite literally the hallmark of evil characters. It's the big reason they are perfectly willing to shit all over anybody in their pursuit of their goal, whatever it is. If you don't care about how you achieve your goal, your not going to care about who you hurt along the way, which means you will engage in actions which are patently evil. In addition, it is often that evils goal is simply incredibly selfish too, so that they are willing to harm others to make their end come about which only benefits themselves.

Good cares about how they achieve a goal, making sure that they don't harm others while trying to achieve a goal which helps many.

Neutral tends to minimize suffering but also selfish goals.

Fuck that mayor.

Watch the Venture Bros.
It's just a job.

That’s a pretty badass setting but there’s no way to fix that so it makes sense that no one would try.

This. Evil characters need some weaknesses and flaws to be good in a party.

You can have them be an undercover agent infiltrating the party. This way they're evil and their end goal is ultimately evil but they need to act and appear good to survive and fit in.

Might need to have a good story and climax for such a trope to not be completely meaningless though.

>>Said Earthmother can no longer repair the souls of mortals after their death, making them unable to be recycled into new humans.
>>Increasing number of children born sickly, mentally broken, or simply stillborn.
You wanna know what even 40k inmates would think is ultra-grimdark and depressing as hell? Your setting. Congrats.

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>How does Veeky Forums play an evil character without coming off as a dick to others or indulging in evil acts and enjoying them?
The character doesn't believe they are evil.

Best part is that it's ultimately man's fault for the fucked up state of things too.

>evil end goal but didn't explicitly be a horrible monster to reach it?

That doesn't seem to make any sense. People often justify an evil act with a desire for a good end, but working towards and evil end with nothing but good acts? I'm not sure what that would even look like. "Bake Sale to Burn Down the Church!"

That's actually a better example than you'd think, if you were someone who thought of churches as institutions that inherently were designed to destroy free will of people and oppress them. I say this in a hushed tone not to draw too much discussion at the risk of derailing, but that was essentially the Marxist belief on the matter, and would make sense for those who followed it.

But when viewed in that light, it's hard to put a good-evil spectrum on the matter and instead view the situation as the clash of two wills.

Sure, but if you just up and burned down a church you'd be creating victims of the congregation. Even if its a church you don't agree with, a radical Mosque or a Lavey Satan Baphomet temple or Fred Phelps, you can't just BURN DOWN somebody else's property for having a free religion.

So, you'd have to have the bake sale, you'd have to BUY the Church, and THEN you can burn it down and laugh maniacally with the moral certainty that you achieved your goal without fucking anybody over.

I've been working on the idea of a Lawful Evil character for a long while now, trying to think of ways to design him where he won't get in the way of the rest of the party. The basic idea I have for him is he is evil, but it;s because he's a criminal, a thug, a bandit, not some mass murdering psychopath. He'll hurt people, happily, if they have it coming, cross him, or get in the way, but he won't just hurt or kill innocent citizens, and even when he hurts folks he won't kill everyone he faces (like a guard may get away with a broken nose, or a broken arm, but he'll still be alive). He's just a dick who has a code of twisted ethics that he sticks to.

He is an absolute dictator who fudges things all the time. He recruits fugitives sentenced to death and allows them to work for him under assumed identities (Moist Lipwig), he basically allows organized crime and guilds to run the city by making sure they're all fighting with each other and balance is kept.

We're talking about a man whose solution to organized crime is making it legal.

I know that feeling of despair.
I'm playing in a setting where 800 or so years ago, hell destroyed an army of the entire material plane and heaven combined because it was actually something like 10 planes: it was bigger than they thought. Then hell conquered heaven and the material plane. All the good in the world failed already. Hell's the only afterlife like it's requiem: vampire knight or something, and what we thought was the material plane is just a big demiplane sustained by the dying dreams of the gods who failed, surrounded on all sides by the level of hell that used to be the material plane. Demons are pouring in at this point.

I had a wizard that was a medical professor. He wanted to bring his murdered wife back, and was willing to do anything to gain that ability. Unfortunately for him (and his wife), he went the arcane route, as he was rather short on faith after the incident.

Adventuring is a great way to gain money and power.

what if she was asking for it, tho?

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but this is textbook neutral, tho

Imbibing of the alcohol is still a sin and thus evil.