When freedom is a crime, only criminals are free.

The theme of this campaign is freedom and its antithesis, law and order. The setting is an unspeakable police state in the throes of a religious Inquisition. The players are first victims of this regime, and then its antagonists, seeking to create some small space for vice, for personal freedom, for addiction, for frailty, for privacy, and for hope.

I've never run a game with evil player characters. It sets off all of my bells. Even chaotic characters run the risk of the "I'm chaotic neutral so I can do whatever I want but all I ever do is create party havoc" player. You know the one. And, then there are the stereotypical "anti-party" campaigns, where the players strive to do all the evil that they usually strive to prevent. All of that rings false: people aren't evil just to be evil. They have reasons. They have stories of their own.

It seems to me there is a kind of hero that remains a hero, but is not a "good" person, at all. Brutus. Magneto. The Invisibles. V. Thomas Covenant. Jackie Estacado. Even the Judas Iscariot of the recently-uncovered gnostic gospel.

I want to run a campaign about antiheroes. Not BBEGs (Big Bad Evil Guys) -- the traditional heavies of a fantasy game. Antiheroes. They're heroes, but broken and flawed. Deeply human. And the last hope of freedom against the Blight and the Tetrarch's Inquisition.

Playing an Anti-Hero

An antihero campaign places special trust in, and responsibility on, the players. Every player has a responsibility to the story. It is easy for players to disrupt the story. Everyone has played with the thief that couldn't keep his fingers out of other party members' pockets. Seriously -- when is the last time you shoplifted, then hung around and went to slay a dragon with the guy you stole from? It just doesn't make sense.

Playing an antihero means the potential for in-party conflict is back. And it can, if managed very very deftly, be a source of great material for the story. But it can equally damage the story.

So, some basic rules: First, don't disrupt the story. Use the first rule of Improv -- don't contradict what another player does, build on it. If your character doesn't like the adventure you're going on, bitch and complain about it. Take your displeasure out on adversaries. But don't block the story from going forward -- find a way to make the story your own.

Second, don't shit where you eat. Find a way to make your character loyal to the other party members. This shouldn't be hard -- in the Thirty Pieces of Silver campaign, you play the poverty stricken, the downtrodden. Maybe the other players are friends you've run the streets with since you were abandoned by your mother. Whatever it takes. But even though you're sick and twisted, you'd never betray your friends.

(Unless, of course, you do betray them. But see your responsibility to the story, Rule 1. You're going to have to give me, the GM, a way to keep you in the story, and not make you the NPC who betrayed the rest of the group.)

In sum, it is your responsibility as a player to make intra-party conflict into a bonus for the story, not a minus.

Third, part of playing an antihero is being the bad guy. You should find something about your character that is really, truly despicable, and roleplay it to the hilt. Again, this is within the bounds of Rule 1. If your foible makes you a true "bad guy," and not an antihero, you've violated Rule 1.

Fourth, part of playing an antihero is making something so bad look so good. We all laughed when Travolta and Jackson shot some kids in Pulp Fiction. They made it stylish. A big part of being an antihero is making with the funny in the middle of truly horrible moments.

Fifth, you should decide what about your character would make anyone think they were redeemable. Antiheroes are scruffy, they're downright evil, they're twisted, they've been hurt. But they always have that "tragic virtue" -- the attribute that makes you think if things had been different they'd be the best of the best.

Finally, if you should choose a chaotic alignment, a note about what "chaos" means. Chaos does not mean randomness and stupidity. Chaos is a commitment to personal freedom at the expense of "law and order." Chaos comes close to some people's idea of "evil" -- after all, many people use freedom to exercise their vices.

In short -- you should feel free to make a chaotic evil character. But instead of the idiotic random murderer that the book's take on alignment would suggest, a chaotic evil character in an anti-hero game must be the hero: fighting for freedom, and willing to use whatever means necessary to bring down the stifling power structure of Selene.