Note passing

One of the players plays a necromancer, and he's always passing me notes telling me what he's doing. He's not evil, per-se, but VERY neutral (he'll do something TERRIBLE, and then make up for it by saving an entire village or something.) But he tries to get to the good magic items before the others.

No problem. They're ticked when they find out ICly, but hey...

Now another player is replacing her old character with an assassin. She's EEEEEVIL, but sweet and innocent on the outside. She gets along with the others, but the other two players (out of four) are getting annoyed with the constant secrets and note-passing. The party isn't as concrete as it used to be, and there's really only one "good" character left, and she's just fed up.

How can I possibly make everyone happy?

BTW, I personally have no problem running a campaign with an evil character or two, but its just the conflicts that are getting the players riled up at each other.


Thanks
Chris

Well the solution is easy, but too late for you. When you start a campaign, insist on a certain tone or feel, so the party is somewhat compatible. Quite bluntly, why would an Assassin, a Necromancer, A good character of ANY kind, and whatever is left ever work together?

I agree wholeheartedly with the previous post, but here's an idea that you might try, now:

Set aside specific points during the course of the session that people may pass notes and only accept them at those points. This will help to keep the game from slowing down as you constantly try to answer notes, will help keep the frivolous note-passing down, and will lower the level of inner-party paranoia. I personally like a relatively high rate of note-passing, but I also run games in which I stress that there will be no inner-party conflict. And I don't define what I mean by "inner-party conflict."

At any rate, good luck. If worse comes to worse, just tell the players that you're not running the game that they want to play, and tell them that theyr're going to have to be less abrassive characters.

I like note passing in a game. I don't like it when all the PCs know everything about each other and what evryone is up to.

However, when you have conflicting PCs(and boy is your group set up for it now) it can become unenjoyable real quick.

Unless everybody knows you are in an evil campaign the backstabbing and betrayal which evil charcters inevitably do can cause serious problems.

The party USED to be all good/neutral.

But as characters are slowly replaced, people want to play different types of characters, and well, bad things happen.

The chaotic good cleric just died last week, and now the neutral good rogue is the only GOOD person left, and she's ready to drink herself into oblivion because all of the friends she started this group out with are now gone.

It's really fun, in character, because they all get along pretty well in combat..

In any case, my suggestion to her was to let her character get totally fed up and leave the group, and I'll have it arranged for the dead characters to be revived by an NPC, and have a storyline where the others are forced out of retirement and they go on another big mission together...

And play it by ear...

Snow!! In one campaign the note passing got so bad, I just referred to it as snow.

I think you just need to get characters that are more together. Not all good or anything, but don't just allow a random new character. There should be a pretty good reason why they are letting in this new guy.

Well, the PC's were pretty easy on the new person helping them out, and the players knew this was gona be their new teammate, etc etc etc...

Inner-party conflict can be a lot of fun if the players are mature enough. In this case it appears that they may not be. Even with people who can handle inner-party conflict. It's best if you can keep it to a minimum and have some reason for the party to be together that they can fall back on when things get out of hand.

Inner party conflict can be quite enjoyable. However, it requires exactly the right mix. If all the factors aren't right, it just ends up a mess. Someone takes something personally, players stop having fun, one or two players hog all the action/resources/treasure or someone leaves upset.

All of my games have had the rule that all the players must either be good or neutral with good leanings. This eliminates the major cause of inner-party conflict, the evil player.

This, of course, doesn't get rid of all conflict. However, usually that's just between two or three and is easier to handle. You can sit down with the appropriate players and set the ground rules about what lines can and can't be crossed. Find a set everyone (including you) can enjoy and you'll be home free.

I think this can be applied to a larger group, but it's much harder. You should still get everyone together, explain the potential problem and frictions, and agree to some ground rules. For example, a good rule is that the players will never physically attack each other (at least lethally) either directly or indirectly.

Glyfair of Glamis

thundershot said:

One of the players plays a necromancer, and he's always passing me notes telling me what he's doing. He's not evil, per-se, but VERY neutral (he'll do something TERRIBLE, and then make up for it by saving an entire village or something.) But he tries to get to the good magic items before the others.

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Neutral does not mean doing evil and good in equal measure. A character who consistently performs evil acts is evil, no matter how many good acts he or she performs to "make up for it." Generally speaking, you need to look at the character's principle motivations and in this case they are clearly greed and power - the good acts are simply window dressing to make the character appear all sweetness and light.

Now another player is replacing her old character with an assassin. She's EEEEEVIL, but sweet and innocent on the outside. She gets along with the others, but the other two players (out of four) are getting annoyed with the constant secrets and note-passing. The party isn't as concrete as it used to be, and there's really only one "good" character left, and she's just fed up.

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That's generally what happens.

How can I possibly make everyone happy?

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You can't

BTW, I personally have no problem running a campaign with an evil character or two, but its just the conflicts that are getting the players riled up at each other.

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It might be best to let this run its course. Evil campaigns can work where there is some overarching reason for the characters to cooperate, but this sounds like the players are taking on evil characters simply so that they can take pot shots at each other. Chances are good that they'll get bored with it sooner or later. A party with no unity can't achieve much.

Take the remaining "good" player aside and explain to her what you're doing and ask her to ride it out. If it doesn't look like they are getting bored with the whole evil thing over the course of a few sessions, then review your options. Maybe it will evolve into a functional campaign and everyone will be happy ... maybe.

If continual note passing is pissing off some players, then put your foot down. Maybe don't stamp it out all together, but impose a 100XP penalty for each note passed. I'm sure that this will drastically reduce the interruptions to play