D&D 5E Goals for a party - why should they even go anywhere together?

[iserith]

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one. If someone is playing an evil character, in all likelihood they will at some point commit evil acts.

There's nothing stopping a player from having a character without an evil alignment from committing evil acts.

What will temper their choices is knowing that they have to work with these other PCs and engage with the content. You don't do stuff that would potentially cause you to violate these basic premises if you're playing in good faith. Even so, if an evil act is committed, then the players of the other characters have the same obligation - how can we move past this in a way reasonably consistent with my character and continue working together and engaging with the content?

These things have a way of working themselves out if the players are bought in on the basic premises I laid out. Not writing "evil" on your sheet is not in my view an inoculation against evil acts being committed.

 

[Imaculata]

Not writing "evil" on your sheet is not in my view an inoculation against evil acts being committed.

Which is why I think the group should do both:

-Don't play an evil character.
-Agree not to act like murder hobos. You're heroes. When it comes down to it, you're the good guys.

These are things I always cover in my session 0, just so we're all on the same page.

 

[Croesus]

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one. If someone is playing an evil character, in all likelihood they will at some point commit evil acts.

Which is why I let people vote, in secret if necessary. If even one person doesn't want an evil character I don't allow it.

Here, here. I don't allow evil alignments in my games, and won't play in games that allow them. I play games to escape reality and have fun, not focus on the bad stuff human beings do, certainly not be a party to such actions. If others want to play RPGs exploring such characters, that's fine. But not for me.

Kind of reminds me of a recent thread discussing alignments. I've found that most players tend to play the same alignment, regardless of what the character sheet says. We're playing ourselves, even if our characters step outside our own normal behavior w/in the game. (For instance, I don't tend to attack people on sight in real life, but in a game...orcs beware! ) Group dynamics can be very fragile, and allowing evil characters can quickly splinter a group. As Oofta says, if even one person isn't comfortable with it, best to leave that option out.

 

[Croesus]

These things have a way of working themselves out if the players are bought in on the basic premises I laid out. Not writing "evil" on your sheet is not in my view an inoculation against evil acts being committed.

Agree 100%. However, writing "evil" on the character sheet does pretty much guarantee that evil acts will be committed. I've yet to see a player want to play an evil character who then never did anything evil. So at a bare minimum, groups that don't want characters committing evil acts should not allow evil characters.

 

[iserith]

Which is why I think the group should do both:

-Don't play an evil character.
-Agree not to act like murder hobos. You're heroes. When it comes down to it, you're the good guys.

These are things I always cover in my session 0, just so we're all on the same page.

While the Basic Rules do in some cases refer to adventurers as "heroes," I don't think of that as the default or as the best way to curb certain issues. Same with "no evil." I think we have to get at the underlying issues to be the most effective at getting what we want.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[iserith]

On the topic of what impact there can be when characters (or players) don't work well together, I have some recent experience with this. I know and play with a pretty wide network of players and DMs via Roll20, some of whom I know better than others.

As circumstances would have it, I was put on the spot to run a one-shot (three-session) adventure for a group. Some of those players were also players or DM in a game that I joined as a player. It became apparent right away in the game in which I was playing that one of the players just wasn't going with the flow. His standard position seemed to be "Whatever the rest of the party wants, I will set myself in opposition." This made everything, including engaging with the module's content, a debate where we had to convince the guy to, you know, be an adventurer. A couple sessions in, I started just saying the opposite of what I really wanted and, sure enough, this guy would do the opposite of that, which was what I wanted to begin with. SIGH. I quit that game. Convincing fellow adventurers to adventure just isn't my jam, even if the reverse psychology was hilariously effective.

Meanwhile, this guy is a player in the one-shot I'm running. The same behavior continues, but with a different character. What the party wants, he does not want, and so the debates convincing him to do this or that continues. I serve up all manner of opportunities for him to do things and he resists or avoid them. It is an incredibly perplexing behavior. I'm glad there's only one session left. If this were an ongoing campaign that he found his way into, I'd most certainly address his behavior with him and give him an opportunity to amend it. Failing that, he'd have to go. What's more, I'm sure he thinks he's a brilliant roleplayer and just "doing what my character would do." And while that's fair enough, doing what you think your character would do must be, as I see it, tempered by the metagame assumptions that make the game function well.

Looping it back to the OP, it's very important to get this stuff out in the open at the beginning of the campaign in my view. If you don't, you risk situations like the above.

 

[iserith]

Agree 100%. However, writing "evil" on the character sheet does pretty much guarantee that evil acts will be committed. I've yet to see a player want to play an evil character who then never did anything evil. So at a bare minimum, groups that don't want characters committing evil acts should not allow evil characters.

I would just say "No evil acts to include X, Y, Z or substantially similar things." I wouldn't otherwise limit someone's alignment choices.

 

[Croesus]

I would just say "No evil acts to include X, Y, Z or substantially similar things." I wouldn't otherwise limit someone's alignment choices.

And if such acts do occur - everyone has an off night - then make sure there are consequences.

When running PotA, we had a character cut down a number of innocents. The entire group was shocked, as the player has never shown any desire to play his character in such a way. Yet, for whatever reason, he did so during one encounter. He continued as a member of the party, but the NPC cleric refused to heal him until he made amends to the families of the victims. The player had the character search out each family, ask forgiveness, and pay "weregild" (man payment). It gave the game a few serious moments and didn't derail the campaign, as it was a one time aberration.

 

[woonga]

As a new DM, I can't emphasize enough how important the two recommendations above are. I didn't have this explicit at the start of my run through LMoP. After some individual work to refine backgrounds, the party was dropped in media res with the understanding that they'd been contracted for an escort job, but after the short intro dungeon some players were definitely questioning their motivation to stick with the broader thrust of the campaign, despite my best efforts and future plans to provide plot hooks based on those backgrounds. We were able to recover well, but I think getting understanding and agreement that Iserith outlines up front just sets things up to go more smoothly.