Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
What are the biggest RPG crimes?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7557481" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>I haven't had intraparty conflict come up in game I was running in a really long time. What I typically see falls more under 'Loonie' behavior than full out social dysfunction. The player's aesthetics of play lead them to want to start unnecessary trouble, to take wacky actions, and be disruptive without actually having their characters commit crimes against other members of the party. Typically the problem is that the player wants to play extreme Chaotic Evil (regardless of what is on the character sheet) while the party is mostly heroic, or at least pragmatic in outlook, and starts up some side plot on his own which - if the actions were known to the party - would cause conflict. Or the player has some cunning plan that he hasn't explained to the party which he goes off on his own to do. </p><p></p><p>A typical example would be deciding to sign up to compete in an illegal pit fighting tournament, even though in the city before this one they learned that the BBEG had some connection to an illegal pit fighting ring, and in order to maximize his profits from this affair the PC decides to get play bill's printed up, and plaster's them all over the city announcing his participation in an illegal pit fighting tournament at a certain location and at a certain time, even though the party knows that they are being hunted by assassins. Needless to say, there are a score of ways that this 'plan' might not end well, and no really likely ways for it to work out well, especially if the player is keeping this plan secret from the rest of the party until basically the last moment. </p><p></p><p>Or a player of this sort might, in the middle of a mass combat involving hundreds of NPCs, decide to separate themselves from the rest of the party and go over and participate in that fight occurring way over there, even as the combat where the PCs are at continues. Now, there might be occasions where the rest of the party doesn't see the tactical necessity of doing something somewhere else or the fact that what is going on right now is only a distraction, but in this case, going way over there only resulted in getting surrounded with no source of healing or other succor immediately available. Or they might decide, while the party is in opposition to a slaver ring, to secretly sell slaves to the slaving ring on the side - not to win their trust and so get on the inside, but purely because they thought it a good way to make some profit. Or they may decide that the big glowing circle of protection from evil that surrounds the demonic statue is as everyone else in the party believes, there to keep a demonic force trapped, but is in fact there to trick people into not looting the statue of some fabulous treasure. Or they may decide, upon inspecting a box in a magical laboratory that indicates it contains something that if released represents a hazard to all life in an entire continent, to sneak away from the rest of the party and open the box because really, "How bad could it be?". Or, well you get the idea... </p><p></p><p>Generally speaking, the functional response to intraparty conflict is to kill the PC and bury the body. Most intraparty conflict is predicated on the idea that they'll cut the character some slack because he's a PC that they would never cut if it is an NPC. But most of the time they also create characters the party has no reason to be loyal to in the first place, and at the first sign the player is metagaming simply metagame back and kill the character as a group and keep doing that until the player learns there is no way to win at that game.</p><p></p><p>As far as alignment goes, I'm a big fan, but as a DM my only real concern is that a player has the alignment on their sheet that corresponds to the way the player is actually going to play the character. I have no intention of punishing a player for changing alignment, but I don't ever let you play one thing and then have some other label. In fact, I will go so far as to bribe a player whose alignment has been trending in one direction, by offering 100XP in exchange for altering their alignment on the sheet. If I feel that behavior has been trending in one direction for a while, then if they make another act that would in my opinion move the alignment over a line, I'll offer a reward for doing so. I also offer a similar 100XP reward for taking actions that are very much in character for your alignment, such as destroying valuable items of opposing alignments rather than keeping or selling them, or otherwise acting 'in character'. Just don't try to tell me you are 'Chaotic Neutral' when you clearly prefer to play a treacherous, cold blooded killer and we'll get along fine.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7557481, member: 4937"] I haven't had intraparty conflict come up in game I was running in a really long time. What I typically see falls more under 'Loonie' behavior than full out social dysfunction. The player's aesthetics of play lead them to want to start unnecessary trouble, to take wacky actions, and be disruptive without actually having their characters commit crimes against other members of the party. Typically the problem is that the player wants to play extreme Chaotic Evil (regardless of what is on the character sheet) while the party is mostly heroic, or at least pragmatic in outlook, and starts up some side plot on his own which - if the actions were known to the party - would cause conflict. Or the player has some cunning plan that he hasn't explained to the party which he goes off on his own to do. A typical example would be deciding to sign up to compete in an illegal pit fighting tournament, even though in the city before this one they learned that the BBEG had some connection to an illegal pit fighting ring, and in order to maximize his profits from this affair the PC decides to get play bill's printed up, and plaster's them all over the city announcing his participation in an illegal pit fighting tournament at a certain location and at a certain time, even though the party knows that they are being hunted by assassins. Needless to say, there are a score of ways that this 'plan' might not end well, and no really likely ways for it to work out well, especially if the player is keeping this plan secret from the rest of the party until basically the last moment. Or a player of this sort might, in the middle of a mass combat involving hundreds of NPCs, decide to separate themselves from the rest of the party and go over and participate in that fight occurring way over there, even as the combat where the PCs are at continues. Now, there might be occasions where the rest of the party doesn't see the tactical necessity of doing something somewhere else or the fact that what is going on right now is only a distraction, but in this case, going way over there only resulted in getting surrounded with no source of healing or other succor immediately available. Or they might decide, while the party is in opposition to a slaver ring, to secretly sell slaves to the slaving ring on the side - not to win their trust and so get on the inside, but purely because they thought it a good way to make some profit. Or they may decide that the big glowing circle of protection from evil that surrounds the demonic statue is as everyone else in the party believes, there to keep a demonic force trapped, but is in fact there to trick people into not looting the statue of some fabulous treasure. Or they may decide, upon inspecting a box in a magical laboratory that indicates it contains something that if released represents a hazard to all life in an entire continent, to sneak away from the rest of the party and open the box because really, "How bad could it be?". Or, well you get the idea... Generally speaking, the functional response to intraparty conflict is to kill the PC and bury the body. Most intraparty conflict is predicated on the idea that they'll cut the character some slack because he's a PC that they would never cut if it is an NPC. But most of the time they also create characters the party has no reason to be loyal to in the first place, and at the first sign the player is metagaming simply metagame back and kill the character as a group and keep doing that until the player learns there is no way to win at that game. As far as alignment goes, I'm a big fan, but as a DM my only real concern is that a player has the alignment on their sheet that corresponds to the way the player is actually going to play the character. I have no intention of punishing a player for changing alignment, but I don't ever let you play one thing and then have some other label. In fact, I will go so far as to bribe a player whose alignment has been trending in one direction, by offering 100XP in exchange for altering their alignment on the sheet. If I feel that behavior has been trending in one direction for a while, then if they make another act that would in my opinion move the alignment over a line, I'll offer a reward for doing so. I also offer a similar 100XP reward for taking actions that are very much in character for your alignment, such as destroying valuable items of opposing alignments rather than keeping or selling them, or otherwise acting 'in character'. Just don't try to tell me you are 'Chaotic Neutral' when you clearly prefer to play a treacherous, cold blooded killer and we'll get along fine. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
What are the biggest RPG crimes?
Top