Sooner or later it happens, you’ve brought your paragon of virtue, your paladin so damn holy and righteous angels seem like hissing serpents shielding themselves from your aura of awesome and crawling back into the darkness. You smile as you think of all the great deeds of good you’ll commit in the name of good for the good god which has promised you good rewards in a place where there’s nothing but good.

Suddenly, a new player comes to the game. Perhaps they’re a friend of the GM, perhaps they’re simply bored with the concepts you typically favor or they’re feeling particularly vicious. Whatever the case they’re playing your character's polar opposite. While you are human, his character only appears as such. While you are a paragon of virtue, he is a vile representative of ineffable, unspeakable evil. While you dine on simple fare and occasionally enjoy the company of beautiful women, he enjoys the taste of blood, fear and despair from the beautiful women he hunts. While your magic exemplifies fire, healing, and warding against evil, he calls demons and freezes his foes while wielding darkness unmatched by any other. In other words he should be the villain, not your partner in righteous crusading.

But let's face it, even though by all rights your character should be smiting this bastard to whatever hell he crawled out of there is a player behind that bastard. Likely that player is at least someone you honestly don’t want to get into a fight with over some imaginary characters in an imaginary world with imaginary sets of morals and religion. Plus, if the GM has already approved his character then you have no right to tell him what he should and should not play, simple as that.

So, how do you avoid the inevitability that is one or more characters engaging in the game halting, nerve grinding act of PvP? This article, and its second part coming next month, look to address these issues from an in character standpoint of the good guys forced to work with evil to achieve the goals of the game. It will give you advice on how and why you need to work with him as well as how to direct his evil to the righteousness of your cause.

UNDERSTAND HIM:

In order to work with him you have to understand what he is. He may be just a petty thief with all the downfalls and kleptomania that comes with it. He can also be a terrible vampire that has evolved past the point of merely drinking blood to feasting on a persons fear and despair. You have to know there strengths and weaknesses so you can better help them, or destroy them, should that time come. The simplest way to find out is to outright ask him what he is. If they’re open and honest with you chances are you’re not going to like the answer. If not there are certainly other means. Simple observation and research usually gets the details you need. In particular you want to find habits and personality quirks you can play on if you must in order to direct that ineffable evil towards the ends of good or predict when their particular brand of evil will be unavoidable and at least reduce the damage it causes to yourself or others. This isn’t to say you should manipulate a player, that’s wrong. But, if a character has a strong sense of territorialism, you should play on it, if a character has a strong sense of honor, play on it. Figure out what they desire, what they need and attempt to direct them into path that will get them that and achieve the ends of righteousness. It’s not easy but no one ever said it would be.

DEPEND ON HIM…:

This will certainly be the hardest to swallow for many. You need to find out why your character, why the group, depends on him. Does he provide the group with the resources it needs to press forward? Does he have knowledge of the enemy no one else can duplicate? Does he simply play a class that the group is in need of but no one else has? Then, force yourself to rely on it. That doesn’t mean put yourself completely dependant. Rather, it’s to give your character a reason to help them when they need it and to tolerate some of their evil. Without them you simply cannot accomplish your goal. Without them a far more sinister and far more horrible evil will be allowed to rise. With that on the line does your simple moral stubbornness mean anything? It’s difficult to weigh human life and values and that’s honestly how it should be particularly when dealing with evil in all its forms.

…AND MAKE HIM DEPEND ON YOU:

So you know who he is and how he works. Now, you have to use it. He’s been forced by circumstances to work with you, likely by working with you he’s forced to deny himself some aspect of his being that allows him to maintain his individuality or his survival. Maybe he’s a vampire dependant on blood; maybe he’s a serial killer who has to kill occasionally in order to keep himself level. Whatever the case you need to be able to provide him with that, either with enemies to feed on and kill or some temporary source of torment until a better source can be obtained. Ideally you’ll want to direct his evil upon your foes to spare the innocents. In cases where you can’t you have to remind him of his dependence on you and if he does not curtail his tendencies for a time you’ll be forced to abandon him to his fate.

SAVE THE ACCUSATIONS BUT NOTE THE CRIMES:

You are not his judge. By working with him you’ve become his accomplice thus any sort of accusations made against him simply reflect back upon you. Of course this doesn’t mean you should approve of his actions nor does it mean you should be silent. Rather, anything you say in regards to his crimes should reaffirm your hatred for what he is and inform him what sort of hardship it is for you simply to endure his company let alone work with him. Keep in mind you only have to work with him for as long as it takes to defeat this greater evil. Once that is done, let justice prevail at last.

THERE IS A GREATER EVIL:

Anytime you believe your character thinks he is walking with the greatest evil in the land: imagine worse. Imagine if the villain of the campaign won. Imagine that from him spawned hundreds of fiends such as this one you call ally. His evil, multiplied a hundred fold. It should send chills up your characters spine. Facing this ineffable blackness makes the evil character seem more of a dark shade of gray. Hopefully, they’ll kill each other and spare the world of their darkness.

REDEMPTION:

Above all you are the good guy. You are the example of righteousness, justice and good in the group. Prove it, show him the better path. Show him why you are the food guy and why you never took the path of darkness like he has. Cure him of his ailment. Help throw off the shackles of his affliction, his curse, and bring him back toward the light. Just attempting this makes you a better man. You may have sworn to destroy his brand of darkness but while you must work with him that is not an option. So take it as a sign to bring someone from the precipice of oblivion, be the guiding. They’ll resist, as expected, and may even attempt to drag you down with them but persistence and faith conquers all, even the most dreaded inner demons.

SHARE A COMMON LOVE:

A common goal is impossible. True, you both fight the same evil but the goals are always different. You fight because it’s the right thing to do. He fights out of a sense of territorialism or a hunger for further power. For all intents and purposes you oppose one another even as you fight the same enemy, so do it for the sake of something in common. Perhaps someone you both love or care for is endangered by the greater evil. Perhaps something you both built and worked hard to maintain is threatened by it. In any case you both don’t like it but if you don’t work together you both lose something very precious.

LEARN FROM THE PROS:

In Literature and comics the examples and justifications I’ve given above are everywhere. The Coldfire Trilogy I mentioned in an earlier article is the pinnacle of such an interaction between good and evil. Essentially, in D&D terms, it puts a paladin together with a vampire lord. Under normal circumstances they would be trying to destroy one another but the book places them in such circumstances where the natural order that would allow them to undertake such wonderfully self destructive activities are put on hold to protect those things that they cherish and love. From beginning to end it’s a trilogy about the necessities of sacrifice to keep those things from being consumed by greater terrors till the paladin risks hell itself to release his ally from its clutches.

If we speak of comic books we inevitably come to the Fantastic Four where the protagonists almost constantly unite with some former adversary or another in order to face the greater threat. Marvel Comics in general is practically cliché in it’s obsession of uniting enemies with allies. Venom with Spiderman, Doom with Richards, Professor Xavier with Magneto, The Hulk with General Ross, the list goes on and on and on. It’s such a common practice I would not be surprised to find some kind of editor’s guide or note on the guidelines for creating such Faustian partnerships.

Anime too is pretty bad about this. Let’s take the Dragonball series. You don’t defeat villains; you convert them to good guys. This season the villain tries to destroy the earth, the next season that villain and the hero team up to take on a bigger villain, then that villain does the same the next season. The entire cast consists of a small handful of heroes from the beginning of the series and former villains, and the villains outnumber the heroes! Some swear to kill the protagonist throughout the shows entire run! It’s an example of this concept taken to its very extreme. But, then again the show itself is an example of cartoonish extremes.

IN THE END, DON’T:

Despite the fact that this would likely be one of the most memorable character interactions in your gaming career, despite the fact it may be one of the best games you’ve ever player the truth of the matter still stands that your characters should hate each other. This causes problems, arguments, unnecessary infighting and ultimately game destruction. You don’t want this, and neither does the other guy. So, voice your concern, compromise, negotiate. If you truly believe your character cannot work with this bastard and be silent the games destruction is your own fault and no one else’s. If nothing else you can build your characters backgrounds around each other so while you continue to hate one another you do have common enough ground to stand on together and build a working relationship.

So there you have it, the tools are yours to do with as you wish. Just remember to hold off on smiting the motherless cur until the job is done.