Playing evil on RPGs

[Chronicler]

The one I kind of sympathize with is the Wood Nymph in Cloud Falls.

She's like some kind of whimsical tree spirit. Obviously she's not equipped to properly engage in commerce and such. This is more like if we decided to save a dying squirrel than it really is a job posting.

And like, sometimes somebody comes to you with an immediately urgent problem, like "Wolves are trying to eat my son right here and now". Obviously in that kind of situation it's appropriate to just do what needs to be done and talk about compensation later. The same way if you're having a heart attack the paramedics don't ask to see your health card before they attend to you. We can sort out all that stuff after.

 

[Urdnot_Wrex]

This is a very complex topic. Usually the definitions of Good and Evil in games are a bit cartoonish and sometimes random.
People have mentioned weird alignment stuff like "asking for payment before risking your neck isn't Good", or the fact that you can get away with theft and robbery or slaughtering a group of people who provoked you. So I'd rather keep game alignment out of it as a separate entity and focus instead on laws and ethics and all that.
Even there, in games, the evil ones are usually evil just because they're greedy and, well... Evil.
I completely agree with @WarChiefZeke that it would be a lot more interesting to have credible characters, both as a player and as adversaries or NPCs, who have reasons for what they do, for how they got where they are, and often it's even good intentions that lead people to believe that the end justifies the means and little by little they end up on a slippery slope where other people don't count as important anymore.

Or as Terry Pratchett said it through Granny Weatherwax "Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things."

When the individual human being no longer matters. When you think "I need to do this or I won't stand a chance, everyone else will just beat me down."
When either your own personal agenda, your benefit, your greed, pride or whatever matters more to you than anyone.
OR when you have dedicated yourself to a cause, and in the beginning that may very well have been a worthy cause, something that could have made life better for a lot of people, but slowly through wanting to achieve that goal at any cost, the methods change, the compromises you're willing to make, the "collateral damage" you're going to accept, until you're a zealot and that cause becomes more important than the people it was originally meant to help or protect or whatever.
THAT would be a believable way into "evil". An example in the direction of that would be someone like the Illusive Man from Mass Effect.

In general, I would prefer more "grey" areas in games. More complex personalities, people whose motives you can follow even if you don't share them. All this black-and-white morality of alignment was useful when it was part of game mechanics that separated characters into pieces on a chess board, not complex storybuilding and character development as I would hope from a modern game. People usually have reasons for who they are and what they do, and it can be formed by people they meet and choices they make along the way, and that would be an interesting aspect to explore.

Playing an axe-crazy murder hobo, though, no thanks.

 

[Chronicler]

Some of it depends on player interpretation too.

A lot of players come down surprisingly hard on theft. If you kill somebody and loot his corpse, that's noble and heroic. But to take their stuff without killing them first? Perish the though! What kind of hero do you take me for?

In Baldur's Gate theft is often the only way you can really avoid needless killing. A lot of quests that are like "I need you to get this item. Jackass Steve has it." then you go talk to Jackass Steve and he's like "No, obviously I'm not gonna just give it to you. I'm Jackass Steve. Now fight me!" But a halfway decent pickpocket score can avoid the whole thing.

People will say any amount of pickpocketing is contrary to a good alignment despite Imoen being our first companion, a good aligned thief whose biography specifically says she's got sticky fingers.

 

[OrlonKronsteen]

Age has mellowed me, as well. I rarely play evil, and when I do it’s evil ‘light.’ And even then, I usually abandon my run because I just can’t maintain a sour demeanour for a whole game.

As for dialogue options, one thing I found that helps rp immersion for evil characters is to imagine your character uttering the quest dialogue lines (even the seemingly heroic ones) in a tone that’s dripping with sarcasm.

 

[alice_ashpool]

i always go for the evil route the first time i play a cRPG. i think this is because it is difficult to write and a narrative that generally only exists in games. this uniqueness makes it quite interesting from a cultural point of view yadda yadda.

 

[Urdnot_Wrex]

i always go for the evil route the first time i play a cRPG. i think this is because it is difficult to write and a narrative that generally only exists in games. this uniqueness makes it quite interesting from a cultural point of view yadda yadda.

*sneaks in through a back window and pickpockets the golden teeth out of an old lady's mouth to sell them one by one to that fence in the sewers*

Cultural point of view yeah I totally see it