Well, to begin with, thanks Abh for answering, as just when I read the topic, I was going to toss it
There are some points on Abh's post I don't fully understand, but I first will state my oppinion:
Beeing evil. In my experience, becoming evil was indeed not a standar process. Jezz was a giggling shaolin, friend of everyone, until someday he found an iron amulet on the ground. After wearing it, he felt an evil deity looking for him. And, trust me or not, since I was the player who knew less about the MUD at that time
I thought it was some kind of mega-customized-thing someone had done for me
Then Jezz started to kill Elvandar guards and liked it and blah blah blah. Ok, now let's focus on current times in Geas, because back then, we had only sathos as evil doers, oh, and thieves. By that times, thieves used to backstab and loot corpses, and we were lucky enough to have some satho thieves. By that times too, among the satho clerics, there were mainly Kurt and Dalamar, two excellent roleplayers, as most of you can testity, but also two of the best powergamers I've ever seen.
Because yes, like it or not, if you want to be openly evil, you NEED to powergame. You can roleplay as much as you like to, but to be realistic, if a gremlin can kill you, I doubt anyone will allow you to roleplay a half-undead... . If you are weak, soon you will have crusaders over you (it's their job), surely backuped by taniel clerics, and 80% of the rest players will act as spies for the two mentioned guilds.
So ok, you are the leader of sathos, and you want to get new guys into the guild. But then a human approaches you, telling you he wants to join your Church, and showing good rp for it. So you take him to fight orcs and.. uhmm... he scores 0 hits, plus the orc wielding a club nearly butchers him alive. So ok, you tell the human he has to become stronger because else, if someone sees him wearing a satho robe, probably his head will be put on a pole really fast. And as Abh said, the evil guys have to be more powerful and smart than the average player, mainly because, we are alone, and neutrals will always try to help the good side (at least in Geas).
So ok, the guy leaves and you hope he will start training hard and stuff. There are two options then:
A) The player is found to be a follower and harass starts. He barely can go training anywhere without someone kicking his ass, and the big evil guy can't be 24 hours logged on
B) The player hides his trusts and becomes stronger, but while he does so, he finds it's so much more easy to join another guild, he will be able to team with much more different people, much more different people chats with him and tells him secrets, and overally he can do more things (that's called, not beeing evil in heart)
Both options lead to the same ending: the guy either leaves his char idea, or joins another guild.
That has been my experience with evil doers and wannabe evil doers in the past. To resume it, nowadays in Geas is much better to be neutral or good, because the ammount of resources of the MUD you are given access to, is MUCH BIGGER (custom items, alchemists, fredom to walk around, 3 times more friends...)
So the only chance I see for a succesful evil doer is someone who grew in another guild, and after the char is big enough, changed his ways to evilness. It has happened before too, but I think the players then realize their past life was much more funny and... bye again. Not to mention, that situation of "guild hoping" is not what I'd desire for any evil guild.
As Abh said, it's maybe a problem of motivation for the chars, but as everyone can surely understand, I can't give sathos (for example) a high and difficult goal... if I'm alone
Because raiding the Taniel guild, taking the rod of Luthien, and killing Gwenlanea with it so she becomes a banshee and then we lure Vlad in order to kill him and study how he became undead... Well, it sure looks funny to do, but sathos would need first numbers, and then after the base is set, high goals can be discussed too.
Abh also suggested that more evil chars means less power and more vulnerabilities for the average evil char... I don't understand that sentence
So Abh you have to write another post.
Point (3) sounds interesting, but I think right now it's not an important point, because anyway, everyone knows already about every satho "secret", by ooc or ic means. Maybe in a future this option could be interesting.
Point (4) rocks, but for it, we would also need more evils (or Jezz becoming Sathonys Avatar and raiding whole Forostar
)
Point (5) makes me drool
I have always been up for such kind of wars, if not for the fact that Jezz has never done a war because... wars need numbers
To finish, "things you can do beeing evil that you can't do beeing good" would be one of the main points Geas lacks. Beeing goodie you can do EVERYTHING. Beeing evil you will son find yourself with many features closed.
My 2cc, long, and boring 2cc
PD: Having this question posted for 3 days with only Abh answering, is another show of how much people cares about evilness in Geas. While I play mainly to have fun myself, Jezz has come to become quite a "party man" for Geas so I like to make others have fun. This partly showed me, that fun is not really needed in Geas. My 2cc again.