#way of the wicked

[htg17]

Way of the wicked campaign sketches: Bazil priest of Asmodeus, Enya paladin of Asmodeus, Henrietta and Heinrich the evil twins. And three hellhounds as blessing from Asmodeus.

[a-flickering-soul]

what people need to understand is that ariana grande is able to pull off every single one of galinda's physical gags because that woman was in the comedy trenches of nickelodeon's victorious and anyone who was forced to show feet in front of dan schneider is walking away with a level of commitment to the bit that human beings were not built to perceive

[dungeonmasterpoisonbite]

Thirakuse' Amazing Wizard Tower: my players found this fun little thing loaded with magical treasures and fun stuff in Farholde, during my Way of the Wicked campaigns. Both times, I introduced it fully intending to steal it from them right away.

The tower has a special ability where a user can attune to the tower, and then pump 30 spell slots worth of magic into it, and instantly teleport the tower and its contents to any place of the attuned's choosing, following all the same rules for Teleport.

In one of the games, this was used for one PC to make a heroic sacrifice and trap the big bad of the book in the Feywild for a while. In another, an NPC the players had been making use of grew disillusioned with the party's evil ways, and ran off with the tower. In both cases, the players were able to yoink most of the stuff they wanted.

The first floor is empty because all the furniture immediately came to life and attacked the players! haha.

I made this map in Dungeon Draft!

[cronchy-baguette]

thank you for loving me

[araneapeixes]

study group is not going so well

[thegayestdiaz]

this modern day fandom culture is killing me because we’re losing the art of shipping

these days you have to publish a dissertation and make a 100 page powerpoint with textual and subtextual evidence to back up the fact that you like seeing two characters together because apparently people can only ship what’s canon now

back in my day we used to be able to ship characters who never interacted,

we used to ship characters that didn’t even exist within the same media

[saltedbirdcat]

No thoughts, just thinking about how Gelphie canNOT keep their hands off each other

[emagios]

'We must stay focused brothers'

The Promise deleted scene except I'm making it funny because I've had enough of Gelphie angst smh

[audraswhore]

I’ll never stop being so annoying abt them

[thebazilly]

Well then.

My longest ever Pathfinder campaign was Way of the Wicked. The evil adventure path. I was a Gnoll Cleric of Lamashtu from level 1 all the way to level 20. So I fundamentally disagree with a lot of these precepts.

First off, if you're doing an evil campaign, use safety tools and get player buy in. Decide what is OK on screen, off screen, or not at all. This is a matter of trust and personal comfort for everyone at the table and will be different for every group.

Second, you absolutely CAN be the big villain. In fact, it's very narratively freeing. The classic fantasy plot is "villains act, heroes react," right? You are giving your players permission to shake things up. Give them an imperfect status quo and let them fight God about it.

Intra-party conflict should be off the table unless cleared beforehand. Backstabbing is a classic villain trait, but villains can also have twisted virtues. RPGs are cooperative, so your party has to work together (at least for now!)

By the end of our campaign, my party had overthrown a kingdom. The dramatic Finale was of course all of us backstabbing each other, but still, we accomplished a lot!

Dm Tip: Playing the Villain/ Guidelines for “Evil” Campaigns

I’ve never liked the idea of running an evil game, despite how often I’ve had people in my inbox asking how I’d go about it. I’m all about that zero-to-hero heroic fantasy not only because I’m a goodie twoshoes IRL but because the narrative-gameplay premise that d&d is built around falls apart if the party is a bunch of killhappy murder hobos. Not only would I get bored narrating such a game and indulging the sort of players who demands the freedom to kill and torture at will (I’ve had those before and they don’t get invited back to my table), but the whole conceit of a party falls through when the obviously villainous player characters face their first real decision point and attempt to kill eachother because cooperation is a thing that goodguys do.

Then I realized I was going about it all wrong.

The problem was I had started out playing d&d with assholes, those “murder and torture” clowns who wanted to play grand-theft-auto in the worlds I’d created and ignore the story in favour of seeing how much unchallenged chaos they could create. They set my expectations for what an evil campaign was, and I spent the rest of my time developing as a dungeonmaster thinking “ I Don’t want any part of that”

But what would an evil campaign look like for my playgroup of emotionally healthy friends who understand character nuance? What would I need to change about the fundamental conceit of d&d adventures to refocus the game on the badguys while still following a similar enough narrative-gameplay premise to a hero game? How do we make that sort of game relatable? What sort of power/play fantasy can we indulge in without going off the deepend?

TLDR: In an evil campaign your players aren’t playing the villains, they’re the MINIONS, they’re mooks, henchmen, goons, lackeys. They’re the disposable underlings of uncaring overseers who have nothing but ill intent towards them and the world at large.

Where as in a hero game the party is given the freedom to challenge and overthrow corrupt systems, in an evil game the party is suck as part of that corrupt system, forced to bend and compromise and sacrifice in order to survive. The fantasy is one of escaping that corrupt system, of biding your time just long enough to find an opening, find the right leverage, then tossing a molitov behind you on the way out.

Fundamentally it’s the fantasy of escaping a shitty job by bringing the whole company down and punching your asshole boss in the face for good measure.

Below the cut I’m going to get into more nuance about how to build these kinds of narratives, also feel free to check out my evil party tag for campaigns and adventures that fit with the theme.

Keep reading

[lateforcakes]

the magic yuri got me 💚💕

[dungeonmasterpoisonbite]

Another map from Way of the Wicked, this time from Book 02! this colossal structure... is one that the players must explore and then secure against intrusion for a very long period of time. Its quiiiite fun. Lot of character development and fun stuff happened here.

You can find Book 02 of Way of the Wicked HERE

My version under the cut!

You can really see what I meant in an earlier post about Details. That uppermost floor is meant to be empty, but there's so much going on here, I felt it necessary to fill up the space! I also in my notes dramatically increased the number of monsters and stuff in here haha.

Two Words.

Ghost Kong.

Do with that what you will.

I've also got a version that was fully repaired and furnished, too!

[no-onemournsthelesbians]

One of my absolute favorite things about Wicked the book is that the first thing Glinda notices about Elphaba, excluding her being green, is her hair. A whole paragraph is dedicated to Glinda talking about Elphaba’s hair, calling it “black silk,” “coffee spun into threads,” and “night rain.” And then the paragraph ends, in short, with Glinda pretty much saying to herself “well it doesn’t matter how pretty her hair is because she’s ugly everywhere else and therefore I don’t care.”

There’s a definite push and pull between Glinda’s desire for status and her curiosity concerning Elphaba, but I think it’s truly sweet that the first thing she instinctively thinks when she sees her is “wow she has really pretty hair.” There’s something so pure about that moment that makes me smile and it makes everything that happens later all the more heartbreaking.

Also Glinda isn’t succeeding well in denying the claims that she was the first of them to develop a crush.

[cyberkevvideo]

Think I am now "verified" on Tumblr...Anyhow I am a retail board game store on Vancouver Island outside Vancouver, BC Canada and have recently acquired a Way of the Wicked Book One in trade at my store. My question for you (who seems to love this publication) is that obviously this was published during PF 1e and we are now venturing into 2e- "Re-mastered" or whatever....How many adjustments do you think might be required to play this module and others in the series under 2e rules?

First off, thanks for the question. I appreciate that even after all this time, people find my Way of the Wicked posts and can find them helpful. Also, hello, fellow Canadian. Hope the weather out west is nicer than our prairie winter.

Regarding the viability of WotC being converted to PF2e, it can be done. It's going to take some work though. There are, unfortunately, a fair number of mistakes in this AP, the vast majority of which are evidenced by the Error Codex that was posted online.

To start with, you'll want to use the Wololo Adventure Conversion Guide that was posted on the Paizo forum, if you don't already have a copy. There is also this PF2e Bestiary Stats spreadsheet. Another person started to convert the feats that would be shown as player options in Book 5 (but are offered in Book 1). Some of the maps have been made available (including homebrew ones), and someone posted a link to their conversion, but it's for FoundryVTT (it's a download). Someone also did a side-by-side rough swap out for some the NPCs and monsters. Obviously not all of them were converted, but it's definitely a start. The person who was doing this mysteriously disappeared two years ago and never finished.

One of the bigger problems is likely going to be the magic items, especially Book 3 and onwards. Thankfully the guide addresses some of that, especially weapons, but customizing everything to work, especially the circlets that are given, could be a challenge.

I think with all of this, you have a really good shot of converting the AP. It's going to feel rough, and you might have to adjust as you go, but it's doable. About the only real adjustments I can see not working so hot might be the traits that dictate why the PCs were imprisoned in the first place, but you could make that their occupations instead. "What's your 'occupation' that got you jailed?" "Serial arsonist."

Hope that all helps. Wish I could do more, but my knowledge on PF2e is extremely limited (absolutely no one here is willing to run/play it, let alone teach me, even at conventions). If you go through with it, I wish you the best with the game and hope everyone enjoys themselves.

May evil reign.

[s-aint-elmo]

if y'all were wondering how the @gelphiebigbang2025 server has been coping with the trailer drop, we've been spiraling over an au where madame morrible and larena are bitter exes and glinda is their accidental magic baby. aka momsible au

(ID in alt text)

[fadeintoyou1993]

WICKED (2024) dir. John M. Chu Deleted Scene — "Elphaba's Promise"