History Main / NoCampaignFortheWicked

* An example from TabletopGames. In ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'', in early editions, it was explicitly made clear that PC shadowrunners were not allowed to be genuinely evil, and the rules enforced this by making [[KarmaMeter Karma]] synonymous with ''ExperiencePoints''. You couldn't get XP through doing evil deeds, period, and you could sometimes buy XP by donating money to soup kitchens. This was removed in 4e and returned in a less-emphatic form in 5e (where evil deeds earn less karma than good ones). In addition, learning BloodMagic instantly turns you into an NPC, no exceptions, because good shadowrunners don't do that sort of thing.

!!Aversions:

* The ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty'' games set in WWII allow you to play as a soldier on the U.S., British and Soviet sides - playing on the German or (in ''World at War'') Japanese sides is only allowed in multiplayer. Probably because of the controversy that would ensue if players were able to be Nazis.

* Notably averted in ''{{Warcraft}},'' where not only do the the Orcs get a campaign, their victory is the [[CuttingOffTheBranches outcome the sequel follows on from]]. Said sequel also gives the bad guys a campaign, but it's the Alliance who canonically win. From that point on in both the {{Warcraft}} and {{Starcraft}} series, every faction gets a campaign and they ''all'' canonically win their campaigns; each campaign is treated as a single time period in a longer storyline.
** The whole thing gets taken to the next level in ''Warcraft III'', where no matter which race's campaign you get to play in you get to kill at least once race that you were so happily guiding to victory before, with the Night Elves campaign allowing the player to dabble in killing some of all three other major races present in WC III, and then some.

* In ''Rome: VideoGame/TotalWar'', you can play as any faction in the skirmish mode, but only the Romans are available for the campaign at the start of the game. After playing with the Romans for a bit you can start to unlock other factions for the main campaign, but still only about half of them. This is mainly practical: the other factions either stand no chance of winning (small, insignificant nations), exist only for the sake of storytelling (the Senate has no territory and apparently infinite population) or don't make any sense (''all'' nonaligned towns and armies are considered by the game to belong to the "slave" faction - it will honestly try to make this work for you if you unlock it with cheats, but running an ''absence of a government'' misses the point a bit, and you don't count as having any territory or population because nobody in your faction is aligned with you... wait, what?).

* In ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiI'', you eventually have to choose between Law, Chaos or Neutrality, picking your own view of "what is right" and imposing it upon the world; all three sides are somewhere between [[BlackAndGrayMorality black and gray]]. However, prior to finally picking your ending, there are many examples of [[{{Jerkass}} jerkasses]] who you cannot deal with diplomatically or ally with, regardless of your side. Also, notably, [[ButThouMust you cannot choose Yuriko as your romantic partner]], partly because her plotline has her acting as a {{Yandere}} toward you and that wouldn't work if you could accept, and partly because [[spoiler: she's Lilith, you're Adam, and your actual destined partner is Eve]].

* Averted in ''{{Warcraft}}'' and its sequel. Semi-averted in later [=RTS=] games by BlizzardEntertainment. You get to play as Terran and Zerg and Protoss in ''StarCraft''... but it's a single storyline, as opposed to the earlier games where playing on one side was the entire story, the other side's game being an "alternate universe" of sorts.

Even if the bad guys get a campaign, [[NoCanonForTheWicked it's not likely to be canon.]]

** This, of course, has no effect on the players and [=DMs=], who create all-evil campaigns frequently and with panache.

* ''VideoGame/{{X-Wing}}'' was naturally about the exploits of the heroic [[LaResistance Rebel Alliance]], and as such featured no campaign for the bad guys. The sequel ''VideoGame/{{TIE Fighter}}'', reversed the situation, with a campaign for TheEmpire and none for the good guys. Most of the time, however, you were actually fighting Imperial traitors, not the actual Rebel Alliance.

* ''DungeonKeeper'' is an inversion. The good guys don't get a campaign.

* WarForCybertron actually encourages you to play both Decepticons and Autobots - the first half of the campaign allows you to play as Decepticons getting the upper hand, and in the second, you play Autobots trying to foil their plans.

** While both ''Red Alert 2'' and its expansion, ''Yuri's Revenge'', allow you to play as the usually-evil Soviets, the expansion doesn't have a campaign for Yuri's own faction, which was created for it and serves as the main villain in both the Allied and Soviet campaigns. This is probably because the faction is horribly broken and was never meant to be played as.

** Darkspawn Chronicles is interesting in that playing [[spoiler:the battle of Denerim]] as a darkspawn is vastly harder than playing is as the heroes, and the last battle where you [[spoiler: protect the FinalBoss from the main game's party, led by Alistair]] is the hardest battle in the game by far.

Compare NoSwastikas, VideogameHistoricalRevisionism.

* ''Franchise/{{Gundam}} Crossfire'' has a Zeon campaign. Notably, it still follows the [[DoomedByCanon canon storyline]], where Zeon is defeated and eventually driven off Earth, the main difference being that the final mission is a pyrrhic victory rather than an all-out defeat.

* The first two ''CallOfDuty'' games, set in WWII, allow you to play as a soldier on the U.S., British and Soviet sides. Probably because of the controversy that would ensue if players were able to be Nazis.

* In ''Rome: TotalWar'', you can play as any faction in the skirmish mode, but only the Romans are available for the campaign at the start of the game. After playing with the Romans for a bit you can start to unlock other factions for the main campaign, but still only about half of them. This is mainly practical: the other factions either stand no chance of winning (small, insignificant nations), exist only for the sake of storytelling (the Senate has no territory and apparently infinite population) or don't make any sense (''all'' nonaligned towns and armies are considered by the game to belong to the "slave" faction - it will honestly try to make this work for you if you unlock it with cheats, but running an ''absence of a government'' misses the point a bit, and you don't count as having any territory or population because everyone in your faction is not aligned with you... wait, what?).

* ''{{X-Wing}}'' was naturally about the exploits of the heroic [[LaResistance Rebel Alliance]], and as such featured no campaign for the bad guys. The sequel ''{{TIE Fighter}}'', reversed the situation, with a campaign for TheEmpire and none for the good guys. Most of the time, however, you were actually fighting Imperial traitors, not the Rebel Alliance.
** [[FridgeLogic But wouldn't the Rebel Alliance be Imperial traitors by default?]]
* Taken to an extreme in ''AmericasArmy'': although the multiplayer element features Americans versus an enemy force, '''every''' player is portrayed as American in first-person, with the role of the enemy taken up superficially by whichever side is "not yours". This creates some interesting fractures where, for instance, the "American" player armed with his M-16 appears to opposing players as an "[=OpFor=]" with an AK-47.

** In ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved: Anniversary'', [=ODSTs=] were announced to be allies while playing as a SPARTAN in Firefight. "Does that mean we can kill them as Elites?" is a signature fan statement to any article or video announcing this. No, [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential No, but why should that stop you]]?

* Very noticeable in the ''[[CommandAndConquer Red Alert 2]]'' expansion Yuri's Revenge, despite the title there is no Yuri campaign. You can choose whether he's defeated by the Allies or the Soviets (and once again which ends up dominant over the other) depending on who manages to hold the time machine at the start of the story. You'd think after doing all that work to build a third faction they'd give it a campaign but nope.
** Rooting around in the game files shows audio files containing briefings for Yuri missions, including one where you play Yuri during one of the missions undertaken in the Allied campaign. There's not enough to warrant a full campaign though, suggesting they ran out of time.