Evil PCs in TTRPGs

...Or how the medium affects the message. 

General wisdom states that it is easier to present well-crafted dark, sensitive, or even controversial themes in a TTRPG than a board game, because the medium of a source book and more open, extended play allows for more cultural context, safety tools, and thematic nuance. On the whole, this rings true. But I am writing this post to explore some thoughts I have about when board games might be better at exploring some of these topics. 

I have no interest in playing an evil character in an RPG. When I role play, my favorite part is the creative problem solving. I create characters with different ethical bents to help me explore how different personal strictures lead to different solutions to problems. I'm not ruling out ever playing an evil character, but I'm not very interested in how to creatively solve a problem evilly. 

I'm more open to playing evil characters in board games. I've written before about how and when this can work as a design. In this post, I'm going to focus on the unique issues that RPGs face. (I'm folding LARP into RPG for this discussion.)

RPGs are storytelling experiences where the storytellers are also specific characters in the story. As a result, RPGs are uniquely immersive/transportive (in a way that board games are not). The emotions and choices are more personal than in other forms of entertainment. 

Which would be fine if the act of play were truly separate from the real world. But inasmuch as the magic circle exists, it is permeable. We bring our morals and ethics and histories with us into play. When a game offers a moral choice our first instinct is to act according to our own morals. This can be overridden if we go into the game with a clear plan to act other than how we normally would. How the particular game is pitched or framed will also have an affect on our actions. If I sign up for a D&D game set in Dis, I will go in with different expectations than I would my usual game. 

Even if expectations are set, there are certain issues to take into account. Many of these apply to both RPGs and board games. 

Firstly, there are levels to how bad an evil action will feel depending on a number of variables. Asking a player to literally lie to another player (Sheriff of Nottingham) is a hard 'no' for some of my friends. Player characters are always going to be more 'real' than NPCs in the minds of players, so player to player conflict in RPGs is more fraught. GM-voiced NPCs will in turn be more real than unnamed, background NPCs (or board game NPCs). How real and present a character feels affects how bad you will feel mistreating them. 

This leads into the point that the more in depth the simulation/scenario, the more resistant players will be to making the evil choice. As I have written previously, abstraction allows designers to explore the psychology of evil while still having an enjoyable game. 

Lastly, I want to explore the idea that some stories are better suited to certain forms of entertainment over others. 

The Sondheim musical Assassins is a serious exploration of evil wrapped in catchy music. The music broadens the appeal of the show, but also makes the topic feel less serious than it is. Board games, with their art and abstraction, can do the same thing but not necessarily with the same subjects. Because the main event in Assassins takes place in living memory, it would be a terrible board game. Board games and RPGs are about player interactivity. When considering evil characters of history, a certain amount of historical distance is necessary for players. (This is not the only consideration, and war games operate by their own rules that I'm not qualified to speak on.) Deadly Dowagers goes a step further by not having historical figures/real people depicted at all, while still using historical distance. 

Returning to Assassins, sometimes levity is useful, sometimes not. Board games can control the nature of satire in a game. I'm not sure RPGs can produce reliable satire. There is something very earnest about inhabiting a character. Both RPGs and board games can employ absurdism which also creates emotional distance from actions. 

I believe games can be powerful forms of storytelling, but they have unique issues because of their participatory nature. Good movies often don't make for good plays. They each have different strong suits. The same is true for board games and RPGs. I don't have a particular interest at this time in developing a Deadly Dowagers RPG. The card game explores the choices to a level of abstraction that I am comfortable with. 

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays.