Award or penalize

[kk14]

In my 4e game, the players got into a fight. At the end, one of the werewolves surrendered. The cleric/avenger, having just rolled his dice (being soon on the initiative) decided that he was going to fire his crit anyway, obliterating the werewolf in a beam of holy light.

The other characters, being of a moral, righteous, and generally good-aligned persuasion decided that this was the last straw, and requested that the character (not the player) leave the party. At first they asked her to hand over her weapons and implement, and come to a locked room on the ship where they could keep her until they arrived at a nearby port. The cleric/avenger refused. On two separate occasions it looked like there was going to be some PvP, to the point where one player said 'roll initiative', and changed his mind a few seconds later.

The cleric/avenger eventually agreed to come along peacefully so long as she got to keep all her equipment, and was held in the locked cabin with the fighter standing outside until a trial was arranged. One of the characters who has delusions of grandeur and styles himself a duke arranged for an autocratic trial (himself presiding) with a jury of NPC crewmembers and the rest of the party (the fighter, the bard/cleric) with the wizard defending the cleric/avenger.

The charge was murder. The cleric used his Kalash-tar telepathy to threaten the NPC jurors and their families, extorting a positive verdict. So, despite winning arguments on both sides, the verdict was 3-2, not guilty ( saying the werewolf was still a threat).

The other players accepted the verdict, but then their characters demanded that the cleric explain why they should allow him to continue with them, given that she had deliberately contravened the party's intentions, killing someone they had placed under their protection. This especially made the bard, who was the party's diplomat, angry, so much so that if 'such actions were going to continue' she was going to leave. On two separate occasions it seemed that a character was going to leave. Again, careful negotiation and roleplaying led to a whole party.

My question is: given that the characters put themselves into this situation, do I reward them with Roleplaying XP? It is a character-made difficulty, and on many occasions there was almost a party split or a PvP combat, which I do not want to encourage. On the other hand, it was excellent roleplaying, and despite the many near misses, no one got attacked or asked to leave. I have decided not to award individuals roleplaying XP, but rather give it in lump sums to the whole party.

 

[Crothian]

Yes, give them XP. This is good character development and character driven drama.

 

[RyvenCedrylle]

Completely agree with Crothian. Furthermore, your players were able to hold it together as a party despite their differences and complete the arc as a group - you want to give XP to encourage that even if it seemed that it would fall apart along the way. If you want to verbally emphasize that they're getting the XP because they as players maintained cohesion, that might not be a bad idea either.

 

[Kinneus]

It depends on whether you want to encourage this behavior a bit.

Are the players angry at each other? Or just the characters? If it's just the characters, then heck yeah, load on the Roleplaying XP. As long as the party has the option of booting out the evilish cleric/avenger and getting the player to roll up a new character, then go ahead an encourage this with XP. Sounds like fun.

However, if the players are seriously annoyed at the cleric/avenger's player, then it might be time to pull out-of-character and have a discussion. Is the cleric/avenger player just bored, and trying to be disruptive? Did he honestly think executing a prisoner was a Good or Lawful Good thing to do? Are you, as a DM, okay with evilish behavior like this, and think the other players need to lighten up?

In the end, it all depends on if they're having fun or not. If they're having fun (even if it means eventually splitting the party), then ladle out the carrots. If they're ruining their own fun with inter-party strife, then smack them with a stick.

 

[Asmor]

I think a rephrasing of your post might prove illuminating.

"So my players did this totally awesome thing that could have gone really bad but they held it together and it was totally awesome. Should I reward or punish them?"

I think the answer's clear.

 

[Umbran]

Here's a question I'll throw into the mix...

Was this a case of good roleplaying, or of an obnoxious player and the rest of the players getting into a head-to-head by way of their characters?

If it was the former, reward them, most certainly. If it was the latter, I'd note that out-of-game issues should not be hashed out with in-game drama. I'd not penalize them, but I'd have to have a talk with them about expectations.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Sounds like some pretty darn good roleplaying to me. So long as there aren't any hard feelings on the part of the players, XP for all! Of course, the whole 'problem' came about because of metagaming. In game time there was probably only a fraction of a second between when the surrender was accepted and the c/a fired. Simple adrenalin could have caused that. It happens pretty often to police officers, or so I hear.

 

[kk14]

By and large I was leaning towards what the majority of the posters here say: give them XP. I am inclined to give a fair bit, too, because the RP and character drama were great. But let me further explain the dilemma

I was trying to decide how much XP to give them when it occured to me that this was an entirely player-created challenge. Normally I as a DM don't want to reward players for making their lives harder. If they went out of their way to create a pit trap somewhere only to (genuinely by accident) fall into it the next week, I wouldn't award them XP for the pit trap. If they run into the gorge as they flee from enemy archers, giving those archers high ground aand cliff advantages for the encounter, I won't give them extra XP. In the same way, this wrinkled my sense of 'challenge' because it was entirely player-made.

That said, it WAS awesome, it WAS great, and no player's feelings were hurt (once it became clear that everyone was in character). Once players start running portions of the game themselves you know it is going well...

 

[Nightson]

Here's the important thing. What were the players doing not the characters. If these actions were leaking out in real life, then thats a problem, a big one in fact, something that needs to be settled out of game.

On the other hand if everyone is still friends and no one takes the game personally, then there's no problem with the situation continuing.

 

[FireLance]

To take a slightly different perspective from most of the other posters in this thread: why do you feel the need to reward or penalize anything? If the players enjoyed the session, it should be its own reward. If the players did not enjoy the session, it should be penalty enough. Throwing extra XP rewards or penalties into the picture simply messes up what to me is a simple and straightforward feedback loop, IMO.