The Walking Dead

[Dannyalcatraz]

It seems that those condemning the OP are advocating that this does actually happen but from the side of the other players, not from the OP.

Yep- that's exactly what I'm saying: I condemn the OP's action (in game and out, FWIW), and unless my PC were similarly amoral, I would feel that the proper RP response would be to rid the party of his PC, one way or another.

If the OP's character is in a high stress situation (as did exist) and the NPC is advocating taking action in a manner that would jeopardize the lives of all and if it appears that there are enough other NPCs that this position would win the day (particularly since the GM is having an NPC put it forth and controls all of the other NPCs), then I could see how the OP might feel that the GM was forcing the game in a particular direction and might feel that extreme measures needed to be taken. I don't know that this was the case but I can see how this could have been the case based only on what we know.

1) Again I point at George Romero's movie- you might let the others go get their fool selves killed, but you don't kill the living.

2) Seeing as how a GM can literally kill the party at any point he so chooses, acting as if the NPC he's speaking through is somehow deliberately trying to TPK the party to the point of murdering that NPC says something about how the OP feels about the GM. So I still can't buy the justification.

 

[Mark CMG]

Yep- that's exactly what I'm saying: I condemn the OP's action (in game and out, FWIW), and unless my PC were similarly amoral, I would feel that the proper RP response would be to rid the party of his PC, one way or another.

What you are suggesting is an in-game solution that doesn't take into account that it stems from an out-of-game problem, one for which both the OP and the GM are responsible. You don't seem to want to recognize that the OP was thinking in terms of a different type of game where what he did was not to be unexpected, regardless of your personal views on the matter. You are holding him to a standard to which he was unaware he was to be held. And what you are advocating brings the group no closer to a useful solution, IMO, and in fact would likely do more damage to the group longterm. What you are advocating would, again, IMO, make matters worse.


As to the rest of your post, it is more a matter of freewill for the PCs versus forced plot, and that's really another matter entirely than needs be discussed to bring about a solution though it does bear some insight into the style of GMing in evidence.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

What you are suggesting is an in-game solution that doesn't take into account that it stems from an out-of-game problem,

Actually, I did in a different post- I added the caveat to the PvP solution of something like "if there was in-character contrition, PvP wouldn't be necessary"- but that was one line out of how many? So missing/forgetting it is entirely understandable. I have no intent to go PvP over something that has been resolved.

But if the treating of NPCs like mobile zombie bait continued, the PvP situation WOULD arise.

Now, as to making matters worse, that is entirely possible. If this was just about playing this PC that way, it probably would not cause any long-lasting issues. If this is the way he plays all the time- HIGHLY unlikely- then it could lead to group schism.

And in the latter case, I'm 100% OK with that. I don't need to game with players who routinely play disruptive PCs.

 

[Mark CMG]

But if the treating of NPCs like mobile zombie bait continued, the PvP situation WOULD arise.

I agree. The solution needs to stick for the OP or all bets are off for the OP.

 

[SSquirrel]

blargh. I hit the wrong button and lost a massive response. That sucks. Anyway, my characters are rarely the kind who would have immediately taken action against his character. The occasional one yeah, but the last time a zombie sort of game came up, one of the characters I considered was a file clerk. I discarded him simply b/c in the end I would just be making another one real quickly given his skill set, but it was an amusing idea.

I've played lots of kender and malkavians in games before, so playing someone who can end up being disruptive is nothing new to me, but that isn't all I do. One of my most recent characters is a halfling that no one quite trusts b/c he's not the brightest, does massive amounts of damage (halfling daggermaster rogue) and his family taught him all kinds of disgusting uses for giant meat. He also gets bored when things don't move along and is a catalyst for change. Like pushing the dwarven fighter off a waterfall when people are taking too long trying to figure out how best to get down. He landed in water and griped about his wet armor, even tho we had just floated down an underground river. His player was high 5ing me and trying to stop laughing.

He took action and now everyone has to decide how to act as a result. This is part of how you generate an interesting story. If the characters (key word here) decide they can't trust him and send him off or kill him, then the OP has to make a new character.

I've done things on characters that have gotten the party mad at me before, in and out of game. At least once was from something I did b/c the DM passed me a note telling me to do something. The players at the table thought I was first picking unknown loot and got upset at me. Not their characters since they didn't know. I wasn't willing to take the heat and showed them the note and told them that a) it's a game and b) the DM was deciding to act thru me so they could can it already. I know at least one of the players held a grudge on that and i'm still kind of dumbfounded. That was the result of a very inexperienced DM tho, so things like that will happen.

Again, I'm curious if we will ever hear the fallout of that session.

 

[malcolypse]

So today i had to inform my GM if he wants to have a game that runs like the tv show that i will have to decline.

This is from the first post, why is everyone assuming there will ever be more to this story?

I think the only way we'll hear about the next session is if one of the other players from the OP's group posted it, and surely he wouldn't have ever posted that where they could see it, so I don't think any of them are on Enworld.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

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[SiderisAnon]

IHowever, regarding what the writers put into the show, the group, before Rick joined them, was putting up with a whacked out bigot on drugs who seemingly regularly pointed a loaded weapon and professed that he though some of the group members were less than human. That would seem to pose an imminent life-or-death danger to some members of the group. Yet, in that setting and for those characters, they put up with Merle, perhaps because he was not a walker and they figured having an extra gun against the walkers was worth the risk.

I think this is an apples to oranges comparison because you're forgetting that Rick and the PCs are different that the rest of the people involved.

Trying not to go too far out into improper forum discussion, but simply put many human beings are basically sheep. We as a species regularly follow strong leaders for all the wrong reasons. (We do it for the right reasons too, but that's not what we're talking about here.)

However, some people are definitely not sheep. The Rick character in the show is one such. He is not going to put up with Merle and has the backbone to actually back that up. The PCs are not supposed to be sheep. What fun is it to play a sheep? They are the strong ones and they are the ones who would be not putting up with Merle/OP type actions and dealing with the situation.

Take a look at some of the "big group" zombie films. There are often several strong characters and a bunch of weak characters that are mostly there to be part of the drama and probably get eaten by zombies (since there's rarely many survivors in those movies). The strong characters lead most of the things going on. In gaming terms, those strong characters are the PCs. The rest are NPCs.

What we have in the original post is a situation where one person stomped down someone who dared to show initiative and fed them to the zombies. The apples in the group will follow along because they are either unwilling or unable to rise up and stop this. The oranges in the group will either decide this is the way to go or will remove the problem. (Either by bullet or banishment.)



I wonder if the OP had any idea that the question on the board would generate 12 pages of heated discussion?

 

[Mark CMG]

What we have in the original post is a situation where one person stomped down someone who dared to show initiative and fed them to the zombies.

I don't know that that is quite what happened. One person's show of initiative is another person's NPC putting forth a plan that could get everyone killed. Reviewing what was shared with us in this thread shows that every time they followed what the GM, through the NPCs, put forth as the way the PCs were destined to go got them deeper and deeper into trouble and danger and what culminated was them all trapped in a "cool room" of a diner with death all around and yet another NPC trying to call for a vote to yet another plan from the GM, through the NPCs. Now, I don't know how many other NPCs were also in the cool room but if there were enough that even without PC votes that plan would have been adopted, then I certainly would have felt that there was another portion of track being laid on a railroad that had already brought the PCs further and further into mortal danger.

As to the rest of what you posted, I do agree that distinguishing who on the show (and in the graphic novel) might be considered a PC, who an NPC, and who a villain (an NPC that is not a sheep but rather a conflict source for the GM's narrative) can be difficult. We might suggest that Merle is an NPC/villain but what of Shane? It's hard to make those sort of distinctions because obviously there is a marked difference between fiction and a game, and every character in fiction does as the writers determine. It might be more apt to sugest that all fictional characters are NPCs and villains of the writer-as-GM. However, the apples to oranges comparison isn't in trying to equate certain fictional characters to PCs, NPCs, or villains, it stems from the apples to oranges comparisons we all are making between fiction and game.

 

[Arrowhawk]

I'm somewhat loathe to be get back into this discussion given its polarizing nature, but you wrote something that seems so obvious, but perhaps has, in fact, been totally ignored by many.

Reviewing what was shared with us in this thread shows that every time they followed what the GM, through the NPCs, put forth as the way the PCs were destined to go got them deeper and deeper into trouble and danger and what culminated was them all trapped in a "cool room" of a diner with death all around and yet another NPC trying to call for a vote to yet another plan from the GM, through the NPCs.

It seemed to me that RR had been pushed to the tipping point by the GM. At every important instance, the party has been led into a deeper and deeper pit. A key moment in RR's story is when he says the NPC's at the diner inexplicably dropped their guns and got munched on. From RR's perspective, he is baffled by this NPC behavior. Finally, in the cooler, one can imagine that RR realizes that the NPC's are simply the pawns of the GM (and not acting like real people) and they maybe part of the problem, not the solution.

When RR watches the show, he's frustrated by the stupidity of the people on the show. Put two and two together and you see the GM trying to cultivate this experience which is an assault on RR's intellect and survival instinct as a player. RR admitted that he could have done it differently, but it's not hard to imagine that in the moment RR perceived the NPC's as the biggest threat both as decisions makers in-game and as tools of the GM to manipulate and frustrate the players.

As others have suggested, had RR been familiar with the genre, maybe he would have just tacitly accepted what he viewed as detrimental actions by the NPC's. But RR is expecting to be able to act with freewill, not according to characters in a script.

Let me repeat something you wrote, essentially speaks to something that is crucial to the way I perceive this and seems to be irrelevant to many:

...it stems from the apples to oranges comparisons we all are making between fiction and game.

I've always considered An RPG as a game, not a fiction. Everything about what the GM was doing feels like a fiction being dressed up as a game. As I said before, I think many GM's in this thread latch on to the part of this that resembles a disruptive player they've had to deal with and they are focused on RR as that guy.

The flip side is that I can see more of why the GM was annoyed. I suspect the GM wants an RPG where the players are, in fact, pushed around and not allowed to necessarily solve the problem. Several people have said that TWD is not about the zombies. In essence, TWD characters are never allowed to extricate themselves from the zombie problem and they are discouraged from confronting it. I can see how someone not familiar with this type of RPG would be frustrated very quickly once he felt the GM was using the NPCs to further stress the party.

just thinking out loud with those last paragraphs...