Cosmere RPG bad guys playing?

[Sythrin]

How do I imagine you can create a bad character, if basiclly most radiant orders are inclined to be good (maybe except dustbringers and elsecallers). How would a player play a traditional evil person?
Like killing civilians and doing other evil stuff.

[TheWanderer he/him]

Well I think part of it would revolve around one's personal beliefs. Windrunners could just as easily be villainous depending on where the story focuses. For instance, imagine if someone who killed many singers in a battle later then had to deal with prisoners taken after. You may see the family and friends of those you fought grieving and likely you are the source of their sorrow. May feel fairly villainous, granted they likely would not be able to just kill civilians like in your example.

Lightweavers have fairly flexible oaths, as their honesty to themselves is what is paramount. Their deeds matter significantly less than that. So I can easily see a villainous lightweaver having little trouble with their bond.

Willshapers are to the best of my knowledge are all about seeking freedom, however freedom at what cost? Whose to say a Willshaper wouldn't go full french revolution on those in power.

Those are just a few off the top of my head. Granted I am assuming a more morally ambiguous sort of villain.

[Treamayne]

38 minutes ago, Sythrin said:

How do I imagine you can create a bad character, if basiclly most radiant orders are inclined to be good (maybe except dustbringers and elsecallers). How would a player play a traditional evil person?
Like killing civilians and doing other evil stuff.

I think the bolded part is a bit of a false assumption. In WoK Ch 60, Nohadon laments:

Spoiler

“Our own natures destroy us,” the regal man said, voice soft, though his face was angry. “Alakavish was a Surgebinder. He should have known better. And yet, the Nahel bond gave him no more wisdom than a regular man. Alas, not all spren are as discerning as honorspren.”

“I agree,” Dalinar said.

The other man looked relieved.

In the books, the whole of Roshar is already facing the Everstorm and Final Desolation, which tends to mostly keep them on one side and working together. But, depending on when your RP takes place, that may not be the case. A Radiant must adhere to their oaths, not any set of morals (theirs or others). So, twisted morals with certain Oaths could produce some very Grey (or downright black) morality being expressed. Example, from the Say the Words WoBs:

Spoiler

Dan Wells

Sixth Epoch, Year 31, Palahakah 5.8.5.

Elsecallers

Is it bad to say that I don't like one of the Radiant Orders? Because I don't like Elsecallers. It's not that I don't trust them, per se, it's that I don't know what they're doing or why they're doing it or what their final goals might be. So yes, fine, you're right, I don't trust them. 

Elsecallers are all about potential and progress. What can you become, and how can you work to be a better version of that thing? Which sounds great and all I guess, especially if you want to be a scholar or something. Elsecaller oaths and values can help you become the best scholar you can be. But what if you want to be a king? (That's a bad example; kings can be good.) What if you specifically want to be a tyrant? A thief? A criminal mastermind? A murderer? The Elsecaller oaths and values can help you be that too.

#SayTheWords (Feb. 7, 2024)

There are plenty of examples of serial killers, tyrants, CEOs and other villains that truly believed they were morally justified in their crimes. I think the RP allows interesitng ways to explore non-traditional nemeses without necessarily getting hung up on hero/villian, good/bad, order/chaos, etc. There is plenty of room for shades of grey, or even blue and orange morality. 

Hope that helps

Edited November 12, 2024 by Treamayne
SPAG

[Sythrin]

9 hours ago, Treamayne said:

There are plenty of examples of serial killers, tyrants, CEOs and other villains that truly believed they were morally justified in their crimes. I think the RP allows interesitng ways to explore non-traditional nemeses without necessarily getting hung up on hero/villian, good/bad, order/chaos, etc. There is plenty of room for shades of grey, or even blue and orange morality. 

Yeah. I read that paragraph and thought that Elsecallers are probably the easiest order to incorporate into evil deeds. As they practicly dont have to adhere by some kinda of morale. All that their actions should be to further themselfs.

I just have trouble spinning my head around. Like, in one campaign. I have a player that practiclly did every evil deed of the book. Including some I would rather not write out. There I ask myself. Would „be the evilist person you can be“ be sufficient enough, for that order?

[Treamayne]

2 hours ago, Sythrin said:

Yeah. I read that paragraph and thought that Elsecallers are probably the easiest order to incorporate into evil deeds. As they practicly dont have to adhere by some kinda of morale. All that their actions should be to further themselfs.

I just have trouble spinning my head around. Like, in one campaign. I have a player that practiclly did every evil deed of the book. Including some I would rather not write out. There I ask myself. Would „be the evilist person you can be“ be sufficient enough, for that order?

But that is still putting things on the good-evil scale, and it is very rare that any person actually considers themselves evil (we are all the hero of our own stories).

Was Rashek Evil? Intersting debate. Was Rashek the antagonist of book 1? No debate at all - Yes. WoB:

Spoiler

PhantomMonstrosity (paraphrased)

If the Lord Ruler joined the Knights Radiant, what order would he fit in best?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Lord Ruler might make an okay Skybreaker, but not a great one.

Steel Ministry report (Aug. 20, 2014)

So if TLR could have been a Skybreaker - even with the way he treated his people - then you have another example. For that matter, was Darkness evil in the first two books? Hunting and executing proto Radiants, simply becase they were becoming Radiant, and using any excuse to do so? He's a fifth Oath Skybreaker, and it seems his Spren and Bond had no problem with that either.

So, my advice would be to not have the player or NPC focus on "being evil" but rather focus on a morality that upholds thier Oaths, even when their actions, from another person's view, would be considered evil or villainous.

Hope that helps.

[alder24]

13 hours ago, Sythrin said:

How do I imagine you can create a bad character, if basiclly most radiant orders are inclined to be good (maybe except dustbringers and elsecallers). How would a player play a traditional evil person?
Like killing civilians and doing other evil stuff.

You can do that with any Radiant Order, the trick is that whether a knight is upholding his Oaths depends on their and their spren interpretation. There are some limits to this, but you can have an evil Honorspren, who would consider killing all humans as a way to protect all spren from another Recreance for example. Spren are capable of being evil because they have free will. RoW spoilers:

Spoiler

Sekier wasn't like this, but he clearly did immoral and dishonorable deeds to win the trial. Honorspren even seriously contemplated joining Odium's side, whom some characters like Adolin consider to be evil.

You can also have an insane spren that also allows them to twist the interpretation of Oaths to do evil things. But in those situations Oaths are still the limiting factor - your character needs to have some goal in mind, some justification which makes them believe what they are doing is right or maybe even moral, their Oaths needs to represent it. 

WoBs:

Spoiler

[...]

Questioner

Are you saying that the spren’s view of themself influences how they work?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh yeah, and humans’ view of them because spren are pieces of Investiture who have gained sapience, or sentience for the smaller spren, through human perception of those forces. For instance, whether or not Kaladin is keeping an oath is up to what Syl and Kaladin think is keeping that oath. It is not related to capital-T Truth, what is actually keeping the oath. Two windrunners can disagree on whether an oath has been kept or not.

Boskone 54 (Feb. 18, 2017)

 

Spoiler

Blightsong

Can honorspren, or any other type of Knight Radiant spren, be evil despite their relationship to Tanavast or Cultivation?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, because I don't call the Shards good and evil. There are no good and evil Shards in my opinion, like and so, what's evil and what's not evil- you can totally have spren that are of Honor that you would consider evil. They have free will; they are much more strictly limited in that free will than we are, because of their nature as spren. It's very hard for most spren to ever break an oath or to lie. That's just like- as manifestations of laws of nature makes it very hard for that to happen, but they can be cruel.

OdysseyCon 2016 (April 8, 2016)

 

Spoiler

Krios (paraphrased)

At the end of Oathbringer, Kaladin says that the Oaths are about perception. So, what would happen when a crazy person bonds a crazy spren? Is there a hard limit to what the Oaths allow or could they just go on a John Wick style rampage?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Perception will get you a very long way, like Nightblood proves. So you can go beyond the Oaths, but there will be a hard limit. Although it will be hard to find a such fitting pair of human and spren.

Stuttgart signing (May 17, 2019)

 

Spoiler

[...]

FirebreatherRay

We've seen that the interpretation of the oaths is largely up to each individual spren (to the point that we've seen an entire Order of Radiants change their allegiance). Would it be possible for there to be a "sociopathic spren" that has interpreted the oaths so radically differently from the rest of their kind that it appears, to an outsider, that they are unbound in the same way the wielder of an honorblade is unbound? Or is there something essential about the nature of spren that prevents this?

Brandon Sanderson

I think that spren could go further than we've seen so far, and indeed, many of the older Skybreakers might be horrified by how far their order has gone. However, there are SOME fundamentals that even a spren with a very different interpretation wouldn't be able to abandon.

Dawnshard Annotations Reddit Q&A (Nov. 6, 2020)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

Can Skybreakers vow to follow a code of rules some might consider outlaw-ish, like the Pirate Code. Are they obliged to adhere to changes in the law after their vow?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes and yes.

What you're running into with what's happening right now, the Skybreakers are under the thumb of someone who has a much more rigid interpretation of what they should do than is necessary for the Order. And so you could totally be a Skybreaker who is not of this group, and this group would not look kindly on something like the Pirate Code necessarily. (Though the Pirate Code kind of works for them, because it's in international waters, so even with the current crop of Skybreakers you could probably argue the Pirate Code, and they'd probably be okay with it.)

But you could have even less, codes that's like, "I'm going to follow the code of the criminal underground. I'm going to follow the Mafia code." Current crop of Skybreakers, that would not fly with them. But in the Order in general, and the way that highspren work, and things like that, you would totally be okay.

Which is kind of dangerous, yes. But you would have to follow the code as the code changes. So that could get you into trouble, also. Skybreakers, they've got an interesting way of going about all this. Hopefully, all the Orders do; that's one of my goals with them.

YouTube Livestream 9 (May 28, 2020)

 

Spoiler

Jerich

After what Adolin does at the end [of Words of Radiance] are there still Radiant orders that would take him?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there would be. In fact, yes. Definitely that's possible. I'm not going to say that he becomes one, but yeah.

Jerich

So like the Skybreakers or Dustbringers or...?

Brandon Sanderson

The Skybreakers might have trouble because it wasn't legal. But there are others who would be like "oh that was totally the right thing to do."

Words of Radiance Seattle signing (March 8, 2014)

 

[Returned he/him]

There isn't anything inherently good (in a moral sense) about Radiants, generally. For example, Nale murders via pretext, Lift steals constantly, Shallan deceives others all the time, Malata transported an invading enemy army to Urithiru, etc.

The biggest in-universe issue will be thinking of a way the Radiant spren would be on board with the character's actions. I don't think that that would be such a big challenge, depending on the spren. The next issue is: what is evil (or whatever mode of behavior you want the character to have), and why does the character engage in it? Why would they not do "good" things, nor pursue "good" objectives?

The biggest overall issue is a meta concern: does the game you're playing have a place for an evil player character? Many do not, or require elaborate approaches to accommodate one. Evil-as-indiscriminate-mass-murder is just not going to fit into most games, and a character whose only approach to a situation is to do "evil", anti-social things is often not one that is fun for other people to play with. But sometimes thinking about the setting and general plot helps me to flesh out details for a character that I might have trouble figuring out if I started from a character-specific place.

Edited November 13, 2024 by Returned

[Sythrin]

14 hours ago, Returned said:

The biggest in-universe issue will be thinking of a way the Radiant spren would be on board with the character's actions. I don't think that that would be such a big challenge, depending on the spren. The next issue is: what is evil (or whatever mode of behavior you want the character to have), and why does the character engage in it? Why would they not do "good" things, nor pursue "good" objectives?

Well like previously mentioned. I had a player, that practicly just did evil things because he could. From violence to other atrocoties, including sexuel.
But he always did it smart and not careless. To not get caught (I am generally a GM that is hands of the actions of the players. So little railroading as possible.)
Probably the only redeeming quality was, that he kinda cared for the other characters of the party. He helped them and things like that but on the other hand, he did torment them a little (as long as the other players were ok with that. He never did something like intervene in the plot of another character if that would diminish the fun for that player. He was quite the respectfull player if you did not force him to do things that his character would not do)

[Returned he/him]

5 hours ago, Sythrin said:

Well like previously mentioned. I had a player, that practicly just did evil things because he could. From violence to other atrocoties, including sexuel.
But he always did it smart and not careless. To not get caught (I am generally a GM that is hands of the actions of the players. So little railroading as possible.)
Probably the only redeeming quality was, that he kinda cared for the other characters of the party. He helped them and things like that but on the other hand, he did torment them a little (as long as the other players were ok with that. He never did something like intervene in the plot of another character if that would diminish the fun for that player. He was quite the respectfull player if you did not force him to do things that his character would not do)

That's not quite what I was trying to get at. Doing evil things "just because you can" isn't really a motivation with any depth, and that's an issue that is likely to run into problems when the evilness absolutely requires in-world justifications and connections due to the spren aspect. A psychotic, purposeless mass murderer is going to have trouble right from the first oath ("life before death", after all), and that sort of thing will need to be addressed or explicitly ignored. Explicitly ignoring it unwinds a lot of the details of the Stormlight setting (as we understand it so far, at least).

It's great for a GM not to railroad players, and a spren won't railroad a player character, but straying from the oaths weakens the Nahel bond and certainly can leave a character without any surgebinding powers. If you want to homebrew setting details to avoid that it's obviously an option, but at that point you're likely just changing details about what Radiants are, in which case you don't need to worry about the question in the OP: the player plays an evil character without any restrictions because the GM declares that that works in-setting, and any in-setting justification (or lack of one) doesn't matter.

It's always reasonable to expect player characters to have some sort of code or system of morality that they follow and which guides their actions in-game, as opposed to random or arbitrary behaviors. That can be ignored, usually at a cost of depth to the character, setting, and/or game. But the spren piece kind of demands that it not be ignored, either with ethics-based oaths or with deep self-awareness (in the case of Lightweavers). If you really want to ignore that I think it would be much easier to have a character be a surgebinder but not a Radiant. That angle would allow for some really interesting interactions with the setting and with Radiants without needing to undermine fundamental details about what Radiants are and how their powers work.

[Treamayne]

@Returned Had some great thoughts. I'll just chime in that, as far as I know, the SA RPG does not require player character to be Radiants. It has other classes and paths to be explored as well (such as Artefabrian). That player may find an experience closer to their preferences following one of the other availble paths. 

[Sythrin]

5 hours ago, Treamayne said:

d some great thoughts. I'll just chime in that, as far as I know, the SA RPG does not require player character to be Radiants. It has other classes and paths to be explored as well (such as Artefabrian). That player may find an experience closer to their preferences following one of the other availble paths. 

If I remember correctly. You have a class and an order for your character. Like you can be an artifabrian and a knight radiant. But perhaps you can focous yourself to one espect entirely.

[Sophrosyne he/him]

5 hours ago, Sythrin said:

If I remember correctly. You have a class and an order for your character. Like you can be an artifabrian and a knight radiant. But perhaps you can focous yourself to one espect entirely.

You remember correctly. You do not have to be a Knight Radiant, in fact you don't even get ACESS to them until you've already picked up levels elsewhere.

[RefusesToElaborate]

Aaaaaah its fine.

 

Let's look at Jasnah.

Quote

Murders dudes to prove a point.

Hires contract killers.

Kills a dude and has him revived just so he can live with the humiliation of losing everything in a duel.

Openly says she based her morals on vibes.

Her oaths are intact. 

[Ink and Embers Any pronouns]

I think it would also be easy to twist some of the Ideals - for example, a Truthwatcher who's so obsessed with truth they take it end up with a binary right / wrong, truth / lie worldview and never stop to consider why people lie. A Windrunner so obsessed with protection, they don't give other people the room to make mistakes and learn. An Edgedancer so obsessed with remembering, they become scared of forgetting and withdraw so there's less they feel they have to remember. It's frighteningly easy to take some of the oaths to extremes.