Even Evil Has Standards/Tabletop Games

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Vampire: The Masquerade has several levels of standards, especially considering the players are playing corpses repeatedly engaging in what is essentially rape (not to mention cannibalism.) Most clans despise the Sabbat (for being Ax Crazy nutcases with no regard for the Masquerade), the Giovanni (for being incestuous necromancers) and the Setites (for being dealers in generic sin). These in turn despise the Ba'ali (for being worshippers and servants of powers wanting to end existence). And certain sub-factions of the Ba'ali despise the other subfactions.
    • Vampire's Humanity mechanic basically allows players to invoke, invert or subvert the trope any way they choose. But they can never really avert it because of the long-term gameplay impact, which reinforces the trope as an essential theme to the game. "Monsters we are, lest monsters we become."
    • Many of the more inhuman moralities have this trope in full effect. Two examples would be the path of Lilith and the path of the night. Those on the path of Lilith believe that pain is a good thing, they will happily kidnap and torture people for no better reason than a passing kindness of making them more jaded and realistic. Murder to a lilin is seen in exactly the same light as to a follower of Humanity. The path of the Night views vampires as agents of hell. They choose a victim, investigate them until they find a sin, however minor, then torment and traumatise their victim with the aim of making their life a living hell. Emphasis on living once again, killing is still wrong.
    • The Guide to the Sabbat sourcebook encourages players to play Sabbat characters who go about murdering, raping, torturing, and generally raising Hell, metaphorically at least. But if you literally try to raise Hell...the book mentions in several places that demon summoning is a Bad Thing, the GM is under no obligation to allow the players to do it, and if they do, the GM should be willing to drag their characters off to Hell on a whim.
      • And in-universe, the Sabbat, who make a point of being pure and utter monsters, with no regard for human life and no care for anyone's safety, will haul you out of your haven and throw you into acid if they find out you're messing around with demon-invoking.
  • In Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000, you can be an Axe Crazy berzerker, a sadistic torturer, or a demon worshipper, but you never fire at a melee, because that would hit your own troops. The Skaven are the sole exception in both Grimdark game lines.
    • Now (2011) the Grey Knights have an Inquisitor who will happily call in orbital strikes on his own men. It makes the shot perfectly accurate. Then again, given that the supposedly holy Grey Knights butcher nuns and use their blood as a holy ointment in this same codex, the "good" and "pure" seem far worse than the evil.
    • Khorne, the Chaos God of rage, murder, and general Ax-Crazyness will fuck you up if you try to present him skulls of defenceless people. Although this is less because he has standards and more because he wants skulls of worthy foes (trying to present him a bunch of baby skulls would be cheating). He doesn't seem to have any problems with the actual killing, though.
      • He does, however, loathe the use of trickery and deception. As a result, he's the only Chaos God in Fantasy whose followers cannot use magic.
      • The same goes for 40k, none of his followers can use psychic powers (even his daemons) and need to resort to more conventional (in comparison. A plasma cannon is anything but conventional otherwise) methods of dealing ranged damage.
      • Sadly Khorne has been flanderized, he doesn't really care who gets slaughtered anymore, though he still doen't like Sorcery, Trickery, or anything else that is considered "Using methods that do not rely upon one's own skill set".
    • The Redemptionists, a splinter sect from the Imperium dedicated to burning things even remotely heretical, are so deranged that the Imperium is frightened by them.
  • In the eponymous city of Mortasheen, while the inhabitants will willingly do horrible, terrible, things to each other, but even they find the Dolfury horrifying and evil.
  • In the D20 Modern campaign setting Otherverse America, a Divided America shattered by an abortion issue centered civil war, the Pro-Life faction is portrayed as the villains. Despite this, one of the sidebars makes it clear that any links that they might have had with neo-nazi factions (a modern accusation with varying levels of truth), the 22nd century version has effectively purged them out.
  • In the Eberron D&D setting, evil is not dependant on one's personality or goals, but rather, on how much one is willing to compromise. The queen who wages a bloody war to conquer the kingdom is good while the king who tries to maintain peace and security is evil. Why? Because she has standards; she wouldn't stoop to underhanded assassination plots, for instance. The king? He'd throw puppies into a woodchipper to achieve his goals. Evil does not have standards in Eberron.
  • Many of the big-name villains of the Ravenloft setting have standards, even if their other crimes overwhelmingly outweigh them. Strahd von Zarovich, though he preys upon them himself, vigorously protects his Barovian subjects from outside threats; Dr. Mordenheim has treated the injured even if it didn't advance his research to do so; Azalin takes his obligations as a king very seriously, despite the fact that he despises his kingdom. And every Darklord who knows of Falkovnia and its ruler Vlad Drakov know him as a cruel despot, misogynist, and bigot, who is beneath contempt.
  • In the Pathfinder setting, devils are bent on dominating all that is, bringing order to the universe through tyranny and treating mortal souls as tools, slaves, and currency. Demons enjoy desecrating the flesh and warping the souls of mortals, seeing them as playthings. Both devils and demons will put their differences aside and even work alongside angels to stop daemons, who only want to eat and destroy mortal souls.
    • Rovagug, God of Omnicidal Mania tends to invoke this among the other gods. Asmodeus (God of Tyranny), Zon-Kuthon (God of Envy, Darkness, and Loss), and even Lamashtu (God of Madness, Monsters, and Nightmares) are opposed to his being released, largely because hey, not even they benefit from the end of the world.
  • Dungeons & Dragons
    • This is how some people view the Lawful Evil alignment. He may kill babies, assassinate kings, and plot to take over the world, but many Lawful Evil villain will never engage in wanton slaughter to no purpose and will never break his word. That being said, there is nothing to prevent a Lawful Evil Complete Monster from engaging in Pragmatic Villainy and finding minimal pretense to do the above ("I won't slaughter these villagers For the Evulz, I need living space for my more important countrymen"). Furthermore there is nothing to prevent the Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil characters from having standards themselves. And the biggest flaw of the Lawful Evil Even Evil Has Standards view is that Devils, the literal embodiments of Lawful Evil pre-4th Edition, pretty much do all these things without the need for standards.
    • The Drow, the infamous Evil Counterpart Race of the Elves and Eladrin, are brutal, fascist conquerors whose society is based around lies, deceit and betrayal, is prone to brutal infighting, and lives by the unpredictable whims of their batshit insane goddess. And yet, even they are disgusted by the horrifyingly insane Derro, so much that they're willing to put aside whatever evil plot they're currently concocting to put a stop to the Derros' own plots.
    • Most races - including drow and derro, but many other evil creatures - refuse to trade with, ally with, or associate with illithids, who are notorious for mental enslavement of other races and eating brains. Only the neogi (even worse slavers), aboleths (rumored to be related to illithid in some way) and grimlocks (primitive predatory humanoids who consume the bodies after illithids are done with the brains) do so.
    • For that matter, neogi are also ostracized by other evil races due to their slave-making agenda. Even the mercane, a Proud Merchant Race who normally trade with anyone won't deal with neogi. Only the illithid are their allies, mostly because neogi are afraid of them.
  • In Nomine features a band of demons called the Shedim, Body Surfing Puppeteer Parasites who survive by degrading their hosts to the lowest possible moral denominator. While other demonic bands will sometimes hold a grudging respect for one another, not a single one of them wants anything to do with the Shedim if they can absolutely avoid it.
  • Scion has this in regards to Loki. He initially backed Hitler's rise to power in Germany in the hopes that a united Europe would allow him the power needed to stave off Ragnarok (it makes sense in context). Still, when Loki learned about the Holocaust, he was disgusted and had Hel ensure the Nazi top brass received the worst afterlife possible.
  • In Rifts, the Obviously Evil Coalition States is lead by Emperor Prosek, who will cheerfully plunge his nation into pointless, horrific wars for the sake of power. He is absolutely ruthless when it comes to destroying non-humans and magic users. He even has a facility used to create mutant animals to be used as canon fodder. However, genetic experimentation on humans is strictly forbidden.
    • Except when its being used to make secret life-extension therapies that are withheld from the rank-and-file and saved only for the highly privileged... such as Emperor Prosek. Among his vast legion of other personality flaws, he's also a hypocrite.
  • In The Dark Eye, those who forge a pact with the demon lord of tyranny and vengeance are despite their evil will direct enemies of the servants of the nameless god. The demon lords demon subjects may even demand this attitude of their human "masters" no matter how well they are controlled.
  • Cyberpunk: In a setting full of callous, predatory Mega Corps and brutal, vicious gangs, everyone despises the Scavengers, who - contrary to the Non-Indicative Name - kidnap people while still alive to rip out their cybernetics for sale and don't care if the victim survives the extraction process.
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