A Guide To Doing Evil Right(To be Updated In Parts)

[Ralkovia]

(feel free to comment)

One should be wise enough to realize that Evil is a matter of perception. We should observe that rational Evil is mostly predicated in cultural differences, divergent moral codes, practicality, and perhaps most astounding of all, necessity. So let us begin this guide with a simple and solid point, "Rational Evil is merely one means to an end". In this guide, I will cover the basics, so that you(as a player) can better yourself and make a new path towards whatever goal you have, hopefully with a better understanding of what it means to be Evil.


Index

[Ralkovia]

Your Path

I didn't have true path for my nation. Not at all. I eventually came to realize I wanted to play a competent dystopia after a few RPs. When I constantly found my play style drifting towards someone who would gas a city full of communists just to get the job done without a second thought. I sort of evolved from a rabid hatred of communists into an all out Religious Theocracy.

~Doomingsland

Some of you joined knowing that you wanted to wreak havoc and burn innocents, while others slowly evolved into that role. Finding your path is perhaps one of the most important things you will do as a player on here. You don't want to end up as one of the large numbers of Nazi or Stalin Clones, nearly indistinguishable from the other hundred thousand or so. (Even off the top of my head, I can't honestly remember any Nazi Nation by name, and considering that my nation specifically targets Nazi Nations for destruction, you'd think I would. The Nazi might be the easiest choice to follow, but it's also the most cliche.)

You can choose your path from the beginning and play within parameters you set for yourself(i.e. Destroy all communists.) or you can just wander around until you find your own path. Both options work well. There exists advantages and disadvantages in everything, and while I personally went through the latter, many of my closest allies chose the former.

For me, I evolved into the role I hold today. As State of Monavia eloquently wrote, "For the longest time the world of NationStates was not much different from the real world. The anti-Semites ran rampant; they descended upon the innocent Jewry of the world with a terrible fury that was matched by few in its maliciousness and depravity. They plundered, pillaged, pilfered, and purloined whatever they wanted, killed some, enslaved others, and were careful to leave enough Jews alive to be tormented. The future of the Children of Abraham remained bleak during this long, dark period...and then Ralkovia turned the tables."

I never truly envisaged Ralkovia becoming evil, instead, I adopted slavery as a way to deal with the Nazis I captured. I adopted "forced impregnation" as a way to humiliate Nazis. I adopted "Decimation of the Male Population" as way to render Nazis unable to ever fight a war again. I adopted "Revision Of History" as a way to steal their free will from them, rewriting their history to fit what I wanted; tying them at my hip forever.

And slowly, I stopped making distinctions between Nazis and other enemies. As Nietzsche said,"Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one."

Your path might start out as a good guy and the decisions you make will lead you to become a bulwark of Oppression and Evilness.

This is the end of part 1.

[Milograd]

How many parts do you plan on writing? This is a solid start.

[Ralkovia]

How many parts do you plan on writing? This is a solid start.

I don't know. I had way too many ideas to put down on paper. Right now I'm working on:

"Reputation"

Next will be:

"Culture"

I think I might pump out 1 a day.

[United World Order]

Only Ralkovia could make such a guide. o/

Pretty cool introduction. And Start im really looking forward to see more.

[Ralkovia]

Only Ralkovia could make such a guide. o/

Pretty cool introduction. And Start im really looking forward to see more.

Thanks. I actually plan on getting interviews from other players and/or cowriting with others.

[United World Order]

Only Ralkovia could make such a guide. o/

Pretty cool introduction. And Start im really looking forward to see more.

Thanks. I actually plan on getting interviews from other players and/or cowriting with others.

Cool. Who else to learn evil from then Ralkovia

[Ralkovia]

Thanks. I actually plan on getting interviews from other players and/or cowriting with others.

Cool. Who else to learn evil from then Ralkovia

Well I have a few guys planned right now.

[United World Order]

Cool. Who else to learn evil from then Ralkovia

Well I have a few guys planned right now.

Im guessing Doom is one of them.

[Ralkovia]

Well I have a few guys planned right now.

Im guessing Doom is one of them.

Indeed. GWO as well.

[New Edom]

Good job. I'm not going to steal in except to offer this thought: evil tends to believe it is right. Evil rarely sees itself as evil.

[Ralkovia]

Good job. I'm not going to steal in except to offer this thought: evil tends to believe it is right. Evil rarely sees itself as evil.

Of course. That will be put in at a later entry. Right now I'm just going through the basics.

[McNernia]

Hello, hello, hello. It is me...and well let me offer my thought. It would be considered the same thing as New Edom. Or may be consider this. "Tyrants see themselves as the saviours."

[The State of Monavia]

Only Ralkovia could make such a guide.

The Grand World Order and I have also worked on one, though it got stalled because real life nailed both of us.

I have posted the last draft (from December) in the spoiler below.

Roleplaying Villany


by
The Grand World Order

Edited by the State of Monavia

Introduction

So you want to be the villain. Rather, you want your country to play the villain. Whether being good is just too boring, too hard, or you didn't get enough hugs as a child, you decided that you want to be the bad guy.

That's cool, cause without evil there can be no good, so it's good to be evil. Someone's got to be the robbers, the aliens, the Nazis, and the Indians, otherwise you've got a bunch of cops, astronauts, Americans, and cowboys sitting around talking about the weather.
However, as being here for half of the ten year history of NationStates has shown me, being evil isn't simple in the least. So many players fail to grasp the complexity of real evil that they utterly fail at roleplaying it effectively.

It's actually harder, in my opinion, to roleplay evil on NS than it is to roleplay good, because there's such a thing as acting too evil to be considered evil. Once your country’s villainy becomes so over-the-top that it’s considered "too evil," it's hard to take it seriously any longer. Evil that is too unrealistic and unbelievable is viewed as unoriginal, clichéd, or simply an example of bad form. It may eventually become comical and end up being relegated to the bin of comedic fodder used to put together cheap jokes. For example, one need only look at the Borderlands games which use the "incredibly too evil" device as a form of comedy.

Some of these rules may also be helpful to you if you want to RP a good country but that is not the purpose of this guide. Let's get started with the basic rules of being The Bad Guy^TM.

1. What you consider evil cannot be considered evil by everyone.

The difficulty of understanding evil is its subjectivity. One example of this subjectivity is the way in which my nation is viewed. Many players number it among the most evil countries of NationStates; yet I personally disagree. One man's terrorist is another's liberator—and even within a household, morals can vary significantly. If you travel overseas, you'll notice that different people not only profess different beliefs, but you may also notice that some cultures allow things that are completely and utterly unacceptable within other cultures. A Hmong man living in Fresno, California once kidnapped a woman from the local college campus and raped her at his cousin's house. The Hmong call this practice zij poj niam, or "marriage by capture." Although the Hmong accept (and possibly even endorse) this practice, the laws of the United States define it as kidnapping and rape, both of which are serious felonies. Conversely, homosexuality is gaining increasing acceptance in the United States, while in Iran, a homosexual person will receive a public street hanging conducted by droves of furious citizens.

It is thus possible to have a society that values mass rape, slavery, and pillaging—and the Romans (or the Greeks) would be totally cool with you, as long as you didn't wear pants and spoke Latin or Greek. At the same time, you could have a morally uptight, devout nation that wouldn't harm a fly—and some cultures would find your country disgusting. Your entire culture could be run by nothing but self-serving quasi-sociopaths, and they'd still be righteous in the eyes of Objectivists, who are also fundamentally against any moral system (though technically speaking they have invented one of their own).

Additionally, even if you were able to find some system that utterly offends everyone else, the people ordering it still have to believe it's the right thing to do, because...

2. Nobody does things solely to be evil.

(the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.)

While this rule is listed as #2, this one is the most important rule of all. Consider the example of Adolph Hitler. He did not have eleven million people (including some 2,000,000 Roma, 5,750,000 Jews, and several million others) killed in the Holocaust out of pure spite, nor did he demand this carnage because he had a wish to establish himself as the world’s villain-in-chief. Hitler became an accomplished purveyor of diabolical arts because he had reasons for perpetrating his crimes. He spent many hours writing a detailed book that explained what he wanted during his imprisonment for rioting in 1925. His hatred for the Jews was a psychological fixation shared by many of his fellow citizens, who blamed them for the loss of World War I on the basis of rumor and prejudice. He seriously thought that removing the Jews from society (preferably for good) was the right thing to do, partly out of a misguided quest for revenge and partly out of many other reasons he detailed in his book, which continues to incite anti-Semitic acts to this day.

So, as a bad guy, you're still going to have to have a moral system you can use to determine the actions of your characters. This system must be very different from one used by the most people while still being realistic enough to be taken seriously. When you cross the moral boundary that marks out the "too evil" zone, people will actually think you're less evil. The horror genre follows this same principle; most people won't be frightened by something unless it is believable. In horror, this is accomplished by employing realistic visual effects (or crappy ones that get flashed suddenly and without warning so that they can startle someone more than actually scare them). Alternatively, the skilled horror producer will concoct chilling scenarios that barely, if at all, detract from commonly known principles of realism. It's better to draw motivation from real people who practiced real evil than from artificial, fictional characters—unless those characters are heavily based on real people in the first place.

Do you think that a grown man who cried when his mother died in front of him would annihilate an entire planet with billions of people on it so he could amuse himself or stoke an overinflated ego? I would think not. That is but one reason that Darth Vader is not really considered a good example of evil, even though he plays the role of a villain.

Would you believe that a man who was abused as a child, suffered chronic depression after his mother died, failed painting school, wound up homeless after fighting in a horrific war, and got thrown in prison for rioting in a bar could find cause to blame his miserable life, the defeat of his country, and the ensuring depression on a bunch of law-abiding Jews so that he could seek vengeance and transform most of Europe into a bombed-out charnel house? I don't know, you tell me.

The fact is that nobody (except perhaps a depraved moral degenerate with a mental illness on the side) is going to carve up infants like turkeys in front of their parents for the mere "fun" of it. If your troops consider this fun then they don't need much to be entertained. In all frankness, there's legitimate way to justify such egregious behavior. You must think of what types of things would drive your nation's people to commit atrocities rather than focus a lot on the details of the evil deeds themselves. The deeds are just the manifestations of an evil mindset, for the deeds and the mindset are not the same thing. If an evil mindset isn't there, you're just doing things for the sake of being evil.

3. Evil doesn't look like any particular thing.

Many people automatically picture a series of stock imagery when they imagine an evil army. They often envision stereotypical hordes of black-clad soldiers with glowing gas masks, oversized machine guns, and more flamethrowers than they can possibly lug around. The bad guys are usually dirty, brutal, and silent as they make mincemeat out of unsuspecting victims and play catch with the remains of conquered peoples. They march over rubble-strewn streets and make piles out of bones. Their home cities are dank, dreary places where thousands of laborers spend their days building implements of destruction. This sordid picture, while so easy to imagine, is just another giant cliché.

To tell the truth, I would be far more disturbed to witness a colorful knockoff of the U.S. Army committing atrocities in the name of their conception of justice and the like after coming from a happy, suburban neighborhood in a clean, stable country. The element that makes this scene so disturbing is not the evil deeds that are committed, but who is committing them. This example represents a corruption of something I find good, so it scores extra Bad Guy Points on my personal compass.

The more true-to-life your society looks, the more believable it is. If design and function are sacrificed just to be "intimidating," it's not believable anymore. Cops in dressy shirts and ties at the forefront of an oppressive system can be far more terrifying than masked enforcers in coarse trench coats, especially if you throw in very real issues such as the Blue Code of Silence (also called the Thin Blue Line).

It is also a good idea to avoid using the ski mask and balaclava as a “standard issue uniform” for evil characters. This problem is prevalent in nearly every first person shooter game that has come out recently. Most (if not all) of your opponents will have some sort of mask covering their face. Filmmakers often make their villains faceless to dehumanize them and make it acceptable for the heroes to slaughter them by the dozen but if your story is not being driven by a few heroic characters, do not do this. Do not make your soldiers and police into "robots." Make them human beings capable of independent thought who genuinely believe they're doing the right thing.

One of my friends on this forum, Allanea, once told me a story about a "villain" he RPed with. They wanted to be evil, so their troops went into battle wearing black and red trench coats—in the snow. That alone makes them comical, not evil. If your troops are usually fighting in a dark environment such as a city, there’s nothing wrong with making their uniforms dark gray and black, because that's probably what they'd actually be wearing. If they are fighting in a snowy tundra, you can forget that whole scheme altogether. Wearing black in a snowy environment is the equivalent of wearing a bull’s-eye, and nobody except for cheesy stock villains will be stupid enough to dress their minions that way.

4. Insanity is not evil.

Many "villains" like to claim that their soldiers are all psychopaths. As someone seeking to become a certified psychologist, this immediately makes them comical to me, partly because such a system is unworkable and partly because the roleplayers usually have no clue what insanity really is.

Insanity is a series of illnesses, not a stock "justification" for making goreporn. Once again, you should be creating a mindset that would justify actions, and then making the actions afterwards, not making an atrocious act and then trying to justify it.

A psychopath or sociopath (they're both really the same thing) is someone who fundamentally does not understand or respect the rights of others. No, not rights like freedom of speech, but things like basic free will, bodily integrity, and life itself. Psychopaths are extremely manipulative and try to find loopholes in their culture's moral system to make them look decent. It's part of their need for control, a part of the Hierarchy of Needs that every human has.

Psychopaths are capable of horrendous things. But if you want to get us to believe that your entire army is made up of them, thus a "Badass Army," get out of here. There'd be no way they'd be a competent force—psychopathy, when you get down to it, is extreme individualism, an absence of superego and overabundance of id; they wouldn't feel any bond to the man next to them. Psychopaths are difficult to control, have issues with authority, and generally do not like being ordered around—in other words, they make awful soldiers. Their loyalty is questionable and they are not somebody who a sane leader would trust with weapons and training.

[The State of Monavia]

I have no desire for my double-posting to cause a mess, but I am concerned about whether this diamond-in-the-rough guide will continue developing. The community stands to benefit greatly from reading a finished version of it.