How do you guys handle having the one bad egg in the group? I have a party of five players who are all do-gooders except for one person. She likes to be the morally questionable person in the group, always using dark force pips to accomplish her goals. I've kept her character in check so far by putting the group in clear cut moral situations like saving orphans and rescuing villages from monsters to keep her above the dark side threshold on the morality chart.

The problem I see is as the campaign progresses, this character is going to be more and more problematic with the people they meet. I can see her turning into a Palpatine-esque character who solves their problems by shooting it with lightning. While this is all fine and good if the rest of the party wants to go evil, I don't see it working out as they start to meet Rebels and Light Side Paragons. What I'm really worried about is this creating a schism in the party where the Dark Side user becomes hunted by "good guys". This will put the rest of the party in a really bad situation where they have to chose between protecting their "friend" and being "good".

Maybe I should put them in that situation just to see what happens. What do you guys think?

Talk to the player about about acceptable limits of evil. Going full dark side = NPC.

If they are wearing black, using a red lightsaber, frying bad guys, hoarding sith artefacts and misusing force powers for the benefit of the party/campaign then it's no problem.

When they go PVP, torture/kill for fun or impact the enjoyment of the other players/GM then it becomes a problem.

You may want to try hitting them with yodas cave. Make them to through a force vision where they have the opportunity to be as evil as they want to be (maybe kill those orphans he helped rescue). It'll give you and the other players an indication of where the character is heading. If he happily cuts down the other party members in a vision then warning lights should be flashing, if he resists the temptation then maybe the character can last a while. If he goes dark side in the vision give him those crazy sith eyes so the rest of the party will have a reason to be wary of him.

Two big questions up front: Are the players aware that this character is being played in such a manner, and is everyone in the group on board with playing out intra-group conflict? The type of character you're talking about is guaranteed to spark conflict with the other player characters, so in my opinion the other players at the table deserve a heads up unless they've explicitly confirmed that they're okay with circumstances pitting PCs against each other. I am not by any means opposed to PC vs. PC conflict, but there's often an assumption that the PCs are supposed to get along with each other, so tempers can flare if that expectation is violated, so it's important that everyone is on the same page in this matter.

Assuming that that's taken care of, I would say that you don't necessarily need to go out of your way to keep the character "in check." For one, whether or not the character dips below the dark side threshold on the morality chart doesn't matter. This isn't one of those systems where the GM is supposed to turn a PC into an NPC if they accumulate too many bad karma points, so nobody needs to dance around an arbitrary numerical limit. The more pertinent concern is whether the edgelord in the group's goals are compatible with the rest of the group. If everyone is committed to bringing down the Empire, then meeting Rebels isn't necessarily a problem, nor is keeping the group together, provided everyone can stomach what they know of each other's methods.

Which brings in the matter of being discreet. Murdering people in front of the rest of the group is probably going to force a party schism if everyone else is playing do-gooders, and if the individual (or the party) gets a reputation for brutality and extortion, that's going to impact their ability to work with more upstanding types. Ultimately, the consequences of their actions should catch up to them no matter what, but their ability to be subtle and exercise discretion should influence the amount of time and the form those consequences take. If the bad egg isn't covering her tracks or being judicious in her breaches, and especially if the rest of the group knows what she's doing and is tolerating it, then you should put them in tough situations. Send law enforcement after them and see how far they're willing to go to protect their comrade from the consequences of a crime they know she committed.

This also circles back to the issue of being explicit about the possibility of PC vs. PC conflict. If the players of the do-gooders aren't aware that intra-party conflict is on the table, they might protect the bad egg because they think it's a metagame expectation, and not because their characters believe such a person is worth saving from their own bad behavior.

This kind of harkens to some arguments about an Evil PC in a party of Good PCs that I've heard from people playing D&D. Since this is Star Wars, the Good vs Evil conflict is enhanced by the presence of the Force and definitely makes the Evil PC in a party of Good PCs challenging and potentially problematic. As the GM, you should make it clear to the Dark Sider's player that their short term goals should align with the rest of the group, an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" situation. Their long-term goals can be whatever, but players gonna meta-game. If she wants to build her own Dark Side Force Adept group or start her own empire, you may need to do some one on one with her to help keep it behind the scenes and hidden from the rest. A good way to play a morally questionable Force user would be to use the Force to lie, cheat, and steal for their own purposes and enrichment. When it concerns the Force murder crosses a proverbial line, especially when it comes to the choking and electrocuting parts.

I have a group I affectionately call the dark side group, because their storylines and actions are taking them there. A player in the group intends to be a Jedi but consistently makes decisions that award multiple conflict per session. This next session, on Saturday, is likely the session this player drops to the Dark Side. It should be interesting to see what develops, as the rest of the group has a big chip on their shoulder about Force Sensitives in general.

I did disallow players from attacking one another at one point, after a player who was with the group only a short time decided to cause a mutiny aboard the ship with Force powers... The rest of the group refrained from attacking him back but basically jailed him for half a session. From then on I had to declare no attacking other players due to some people being upset.

I have told them all if they want to ever take their verbal conflict with each other into the realm of physical conflict, everyone at the table has to be okay with it and agree not to get upset about it. So far, nobody wants to cross that line & sometimes I kind of feel it's because I made that rule that they don't want to.

Anyway, the group is heading towards a lot of at least verbal conflict with one another in the next few sessions. There's a chance things will go really dark and there's a chance the players will surprise me.

I know that falling to the dark side is not as big a thing in this game as perhaps previous versions of the rpg I would say , how do the players really know the difference. Yes they feel that the persons methods are a little harsh but unless they go all ......unlimited power..... on them and laugh with glee how do you tell the difference if someone is a darksider but still fighting the good fight ala Dirty Harry style. Yes their methods are a large bit extreme but really if the players are fine with this then why not run with it.

Other than the fact we know Sith Lightning is a sith technique used by Palpatine and Dooku in the films, how would a player in the OT era know that it was a "bad" thing to do that is any worse than disarming someone, quite literally, with a lightsaber. Sometime ignorance is bliss,

The big problem comes if the player wants to deliberately take the trip down to the dark side to justify using evil methods rather than the other way round.

oh and for the record my own group is the opposite we have one "saint" who is already a parwgon with the rest of us happily taking conflict if it suits us while not being blatantly evil. Other than using fear (a lot) ive yet o gain conflict from the conflcit table, im in my 40s just now, the dice will ultimately decide if I fall.

21 minutes ago, syrath said:

I know that falling to the dark side is not as big a thing in this game as perhaps previous versions of the rpg I would say , how do the players really know the difference. Yes they feel that the persons methods are a little harsh but unless they go all ......unlimited power..... on them and laugh with glee how do you tell the difference if someone is a darksider but still fighting the good fight ala Dirty Harry style. Yes their methods are a large bit extreme but really if the players are fine with this then why not run with it.

Other than the fact we know Sith Lightning is a sith technique used by Palpatine and Dooku in the films, how would a player in the OT era know that it was a "bad" thing to do that is any worse than disarming someone, quite literally, with a lightsaber. Sometime ignorance is bliss,

The big problem comes if the player wants to deliberately take the trip down to the dark side to justify using evil methods rather than the other way round.

oh and for the record my own group is the opposite we have one "saint" who is already a parwgon with the rest of us happily taking conflict if it suits us while not being blatantly evil. Other than using fear (a lot) ive yet o gain conflict from the conflcit table, im in my 40s just now, the dice will ultimately decide if I fall.

Right now the character is fighting the good fight like Dirty Harry. For now. The difference between using lightning to kill someone and disarming someone with a lightsaber is the individual who loses an arm is still alive.

I equate "Force Lightning" to using a disrupter on someone. It's a really really bad way to die.

From a meta-game perspective I know the PC wants to join the Dark Side because every morality roll she's made has caused her to gain morality and she wasn't pleased with that.

1 minute ago, P-Dub663 said:

Right now the character is fighting the good fight like Dirty Harry. For now. The difference between using lightning to kill someone and disarming someone with a lightsaber is the individual who loses an arm is still alive.

I equate "Force Lightning" to using a disrupter on someone. It's a really really bad way to die.

From a meta-game perspective I know the PC wants to join the Dark Side because every morality roll she's made has caused her to gain morality and she wasn't pleased with that.

Well it might be worth asking their intentions to see if its going to cause real life party confict because if you dont get party buy in for it now, it could become a problem. The player may want to play through a redemption arc, thsy may just be the dirty harry type that doesnt think anything of twisting the knife in an opponents wound, if it saves the lives of innocents. It comes down to Daredevil level bad side, Punisher level darkside or Joker comic book level villain darkside or Palapatine level darkside. Daredevil does some nasty things but is still a "good guy" , Batman has been known to have his grey moments , Superman was the wholesome one.

Really is the player going to go far enough that they become the "bad guy" and if so, is the group good with this, if not then the player should either reign it in or find a different campaign to play that suits them better. A bit harsh but better that than in party real life fighting may occur. My own group are quite "grown up" about the way we play and use the whole goodie two shoes / grey cop and even an evil megalomaniac in the group to set up some inner larty banter and I dare say that it may start some pvp infighting if the situation demands it.

We had a player make an immediate drop to 0 because they flipped a switch that automatically killed a group of 3000 potentially homicidal genetically modified creatures under cryo , thing was they flipped a destiny point to retcon the buttons existence. While this was a heinous act , the justification was that we had just been attacked by 10 of them and felt like it was safer to make sure they didnt reach civilization, I wanted to drop them off at the nearest habitable , but uninhabited planet and while figuring this out my friend flipped the switch. He had justification, so we could only argue his methods.

Personally in a F&D game I'm the one playing the more morally dubious character - gleefully using those dark side pips when I roll for Bind, reaching for morally ambiguous knowledge from questionable sources, etc. However, no matter what - my character is 100% loyal to the party, and thus, it isn't really a problem (especially since IC, at least one of the two other PCs actually wants to make sure I don't fall to the dark side fully).

The takeaway is simple, make sure that the dark sider still fights FOR the party at all times, and that they have reasons to stick together even if their methods diverge greatly for their goals. Someone using the dark side to do the right thing is STILL doing an evil act (you can argue about the dark side not being evil till you're blue in the face but the original trilogy refers to it as the literal force of evil) - but there is appeal in playing someone trying to justify their evil acts as being for the greater good.

There is a difference between stupid darkside and Darkside. A darkside player will work well in the party, but they will take advantage of the situation to give the good players a push towards the DARK SIDE. They work best if they are best friends with them, supportive, capable sometimes making morally dubious choices that they can argue are for the greater good, but no outright stupid evil murdering innocents (unless they can't get caught). burning down orphanages and generally being stupid. The first rule is always have an NPC fall guy to frame.

9 hours ago, P-Dub663 said:

How do you guys handle having the one bad egg in the group? I have a party of five players who are all do-gooders except for one person. She likes to be the morally questionable person in the group, always using dark force pips to accomplish her goals. I've kept her character in check so far by putting the group in clear cut moral situations like saving orphans and rescuing villages from monsters to keep her above the dark side threshold on the morality chart.

The problem I see is as the campaign progresses, this character is going to be more and more problematic with the people they meet. I can see her turning into a Palpatine-esque character who solves their problems by shooting it with lightning. While this is all fine and good if the rest of the party wants to go evil, I don't see it working out as they start to meet Rebels and Light Side Paragons. What I'm really worried about is this creating a schism in the party where the Dark Side user becomes hunted by "good guys". This will put the rest of the party in a really bad situation where they have to chose between protecting their "friend" and being "good".

Maybe I should put them in that situation just to see what happens. What do you guys think?

OK, so what you need to consider is this basic scenario:

In what situation would PCs legitimately associate with and adventure with someone who is basically a murder-hobo. In the vast majority of cases, the murder hobo is far more of a liability than an asset. A rational response to said murder hobo by the other PCs (especially if the 'liability factor' has become too serious to ignore) is to eliminate the character in question, whether through legal channels (e.g. calling the cops on them) or not so legal channels. Furthermore the murder hobo PC needs to remember that for every 'in character reason' they have to be a murder hobo, there are at least ten more why they shouldn't be, or at least should be to the detriment of the party.

The challenge with allowing such a campaign to continue, using in game consequences to police it, is that most gaming groups just don't have the desire to play in them. And unfortunately in most cases, the players who are most offended by such behavior are also the same players who voice their concerns about it the least due to simple discomfort with RL personal conflict. You generally won't find out they were mad or uncomfortable until they've quit your table.

So unless you've had a very open and honest session zero discussion with ALL players outside of game time and gotten full agreement with this type of party dynamic, I would strongly encourage speaking to the loose cannon and help her find ways to play her character in such a way that is satisfying to her, but also satisfying to all players at the table (including the GM).

Using DS pips to do good isn't evil. It'll get you Conflict, but it's not evil. Even if the Conflict drops your Morality towards 0, you can still keep on doing good, it's just that you're probably very cynical and self-serving when you do so. (Likewise, a character with Morality towards 100 can still do evil, but he won't view it that way because he's a self-righteous sort that will justify everything he does).

I would certainly say the Player should avoid openly evil actions in front of the rest of the party. Lying, cheating, stealing can all be done when the group is together. But if the character occasionally disappears for a couple of hours to murder an NPC then it's hard for the other characters to be Conflicted

Keep in mind, Dark doesn't necessarily mean evil. This is a misconception often resulting from the book's poor use of the words "fallen," "redemption," and "morality." As long as the character is still being a generally good person and doing good things, there shouldn't be a problem.

10 hours ago, Nivrap said:

Keep in mind, Dark doesn't necessarily mean evil. This is a misconception often resulting from the book's poor use of the words "fallen," "redemption," and "morality." As long as the character is still being a generally good person and doing good things, there shouldn't be a problem.

That most definitely is a way to play the game... That goes against the spirit of Star Wars. Remember the original trilogy, its pretty darn clear: The dark side is the literal power of evil. I wouldn't let a player just keep on being the nice guy next door if his Morality hits rock bottom simply because that's not the setting we're in here.

11 hours ago, Nivrap said:

Keep in mind, Dark doesn't necessarily mean evil. This is a misconception often resulting from the book's poor use of the words "fallen," "redemption," and "morality." As long as the character is still being a generally good person and doing good things, there shouldn't be a problem.

In the Star Wars universe Dark = Evil. There is no equivocation. If you are a Dark Side user you are Evil. Doing 'good' while a Dark Sider does not make you less Evil.

Like I said, a dark sider can be Cunning. They use their friends, lying to them, stealing from them, making deals behind their backs to get a better cut of the pay.

But using their friends also means keeping secrets, not telling them all the things you do. You don't have to betray them, well perhaps not until the very end of the campaign!

The trouble with "dark side = evil" is that you can easily end up dark side without doing anything evil or even particularly questionable. Someone who spends enough black pips when using force powers can go dark side on that alone without ever having done the lie/cheat/steal/murder/etc stuff. Besides that, the notion that lying enough automatically turns you into a psychopathic killer as well stretches credibility well past the breaking point.

Yes, Star Wars as a setting wants 'the dark side' to be evil, but there's a disconnect between that and the way that the game handles it. In the game's case, someone may well be dark side and not evil - which, considering that PCs are supposed to be exceptional types, is perfectly okay. (That, and the descriptions of light/dark come from ever-so-slightly biased sources in the setting - maybe they were wrong about this point too.)

3 hours ago, Magnus Arcanus said:

In the Star Wars universe Dark = Evil. There is no equivocation. If you are a Dark Side user you are Evil. Doing 'good' while a Dark Sider does not make you less Evil.

From what we've seen in The Clone Wars and Rebels, Dark doesn't always mean evil. Ventress after Dooku betrayed her, the Bendu, even Maul when he was trying to find a weapon to destroy the Empire.

13 minutes ago, Nivrap said:

From what we've seen in The Clone Wars and Rebels, Dark doesn't always mean evil. Ventress after Dooku betrayed her, the Bendu, even Maul when he was trying to find a weapon to destroy the Empire.

or Quinlan Vos after meeting Ventress, or most of the Jedi at the end of the clone wars.

1 hour ago, syrath said:

or Quinlan Vos after meeting Ventress, or most of the Jedi at the end of the clone wars.

Ah, yes! I forgot about Vos! Not to mention this exchange:

"Revenge is not the way of the Jedi..." -Darth Vader.

"I'm no Jedi!" -Ahsoka Tano

Seems like everyone is going down the road of the Bardottans now.

"It is a quiet thing, to fall. But far more terrible is to admit it." - Kreia

In other words, it doesn't always work that you do a bunch of evil things and then fall to the dark side as a result. Sometimes you fall to the dark side in your mind, and the evil actions are merely the first outward sign of the corruption that has already taken root.

Many good people worked alongside Sheev Palpatine without realising how depraved he was. In this game it doesnt automatically follow that a player with less than 30 morality is

1/ An evil person - they may be a good person trying to do the right thing with the wrong methods. They may torture their enemies so they can get information to save more people rather than stand idle and let it happen. Their methods may be abhorrent to the rest of the group and it could cause in party fights as these methods could and should lead to others, either getting conflict for letting it happen or arguing with the player if these methods are necessary.

2/ Obviously dark side , as I said Sheev hid it for decades without even many close to him realising , including the majority of the Jedi council , although dark side power use , or power use with dark pips should at least feel off to the other players.

Given the above it should be possible to play someone darkside in the game. Peraonally Im , as a player, not averse to being one to dip my toes in the dark waters, howeved Im roleplaying the game dependant on my Morality as it goes up I behave more and as it goes down I use fear as my weapon of choice thwt bit more, or use dark side pips that littkw bit more.My character is anti-slavery in a big way and will think nothing of uwing anything in his abilities to help thst motivation, light or dark.

duplicate.