Skills used by players on other players.

Guest 6801328 · Dec 14, 2018

GameOgre said:
Just played a game of 5E tonight. One of my players runs a Tome Warlock of the elder a Elder God, The Eater of Worlds. The Neutral character was told by a wild crazed beggar npc that he had dreamed the pc would destroy the villages gate in a fiery explosion then mentioned the black flaming tentacles the warlock recognized from his own dreams.

He is unknown as a warlock to the party and for sure they have no clue about his Eater of Worlds tie in. The players all know, it's just their characters have no clue. All night the warlock was working to make that explosion happen while working with the group to save the farmers who has hired the party. He lied, he stole,he went behind other pc's back to arrange things and then played it all off like the bad guys were behind it.

All the while the rest of the party was checking left and right to see if they could in character realize anything was going on. One of the player characters got a pretty big clue and they thought they had him at one point but he in character explained it away with a in character great role playing story and persuasion rolls and the rest of the party bought it hook line and sinker.

So in the end the explosion happened just the way the mad beggar said it was supposed to and the bad guys got the blame and the world moved a fraction closer to it's eventual doom.

Everyone had a blast. They told the player though, his character better not slip up because simply misguided or not the stuff he was doing was pretty messed up. I think the player of the warlock is wrestling picking the patron he did mixed with the goals he has for his character. We will see how it all turns out eventually. Should be interesting if nothing else. Good times.

This is illuminating. Your games don't bear any resemblance to mine, so I'm a little bit out of my wheelhouse here. That said, this does help me understand why your players "use social skills" on other players.

It seems to me the other players want to participate. After all, they could easily keep saying that they think something is fishy with the warlock character, and they want to "use Insight" to see if he's lying, or at least hiding something. Eventually the dice are going to land their way. But they don't, which means they think it's all in good fun.

So...if the other players think that it's fun for their characters to be in the dark, and they're not taking obvious and easy steps to spoil the secret...what role do the dice serve? Couldn't you simply let them narrate whatever they think makes for the best story?

Ovinomancer · Dec 14, 2018

GameOgre said:
Just played a game of 5E tonight. One of my players runs a Tome Warlock of the elder a Elder God, The Eater of Worlds. The Neutral character was told by a wild crazed beggar npc that he had dreamed the pc would destroy the villages gate in a fiery explosion then mentioned the black flaming tentacles the warlock recognized from his own dreams.

He is unknown as a warlock to the party and for sure they have no clue about his Eater of Worlds tie in. The players all know, it's just their characters have no clue. All night the warlock was working to make that explosion happen while working with the group to save the farmers who has hired the party. He lied, he stole,he went behind other pc's back to arrange things and then played it all off like the bad guys were behind it.

All the while the rest of the party was checking left and right to see if they could in character realize anything was going on. One of the player characters got a pretty big clue and they thought they had him at one point but he in character explained it away with a in character great role playing story and persuasion rolls and the rest of the party bought it hook line and sinker.

So in the end the explosion happened just the way the mad beggar said it was supposed to and the bad guys got the blame and the world moved a fraction closer to it's eventual doom.

Everyone had a blast. They told the player though, his character better not slip up because simply misguided or not the stuff he was doing was pretty messed up. I think the player of the warlock is wrestling picking the patron he did mixed with the goals he has for his character. We will see how it all turns out eventually. Should be interesting if nothing else. Good times.

Cool! You could totally have this without dice at all.

Story time 2? I was a player in this game. One player has his character go to school in game for a long period of time and brought in a second character to play in the meanwhile. When the time came to bring back the first character, he was abducted and we, along with the backup character, launched a rescue attempt. During our scouting and hostage negotiations with the kidnapper (a powerful NPC we had previously wronged), third parties kept interfering in ways that put the first chatacter's life at risk. These seemed soecifically aimed at beeaking things down with the intent to have the first character killed. We thought we had ended up in a three way attempt on his life and had no clues!

Finally, one of the other PCs tapped a criminal contact to find out what was going on after we IDed an interference attempt as a local criminal gang. That contact told us that the funding and direction for the attacks was coming from the 2nd character of the player of the first! We confronted the second character and they admitted to the scheme because they knew they'd be let go when the first character returned and it was very profitable being in the party. The player had arranged the whole thing against his own PC! Totally awesome. We exiled the second character on pain of death.

During the whole thing, there were no PVP rolls at all.

iserith · Dec 14, 2018

Elfcrusher said:
It seems to me the other players want to participate.

I've been in or observed a number of games like this where this seems to be the case. Someone in the group starts lone-wolfing around. Whatever they're doing is more interesting to other players than whatever it is they're doing (or not doing, as is frequently the case in aimless style games). So they start trying to effectively ask the dice for permission to get involved. Sometimes they just want to be a part of it and other times (again, frequently in my experience) it's to try and stop the PC from doing whatever it is he or she is doing. But the dice don't go their way, so they don't get the permission they need to engage in this subplot.

All the while I'm screaming in my head "Get on with the damn adventure already!" There's a whole world of deadly perils just waiting for the PCs to boldly confront them and they're messing about with each other. Not my cup of tea.

FrogReaver · Dec 14, 2018

iserith said:
I've been in or observed a number of games like this where this seems to be the case. Someone in the group starts lone-wolfing around. Whatever they're doing is more interesting to other players than whatever it is they're doing (or not doing, as is frequently the case in aimless style games). So they start trying to effectively ask the dice for permission to get involved. Sometimes they just want to be a part of it and other times (again, frequently in my experience) it's to try and stop the PC from doing whatever it is he or she is doing. But the dice don't go their way, so they don't get the permission they need to engage in this subplot.

All the while I'm screaming in my head "Get on with the damn adventure already!" There's a whole world of deadly perils just waiting for the PCs to boldly confront them and they're messing about with each other. Not my cup of tea.

They usually refer to that aimlessly doing nothing parts of the game as role play as well

Charlaquin · Dec 14, 2018

iserith said:
I've been in or observed a number of games like this where this seems to be the case. Someone in the group starts lone-wolfing around. Whatever they're doing is more interesting to other players than whatever it is they're doing (or not doing, as is frequently the case in aimless style games). So they start trying to effectively ask the dice for permission to get involved. Sometimes they just want to be a part of it and other times (again, frequently in my experience) it's to try and stop the PC from doing whatever it is he or she is doing. But the dice don't go their way, so they don't get the permission they need to engage in this subplot.

All the while I'm screaming in my head "Get on with the damn adventure already!" There's a whole world of deadly perils just waiting for the PCs to boldly confront them and they're messing about with each other. Not my cup of tea.

“Asking the dice for permission” is, I think, a really astute way to put it. I’ve likewise observed this kind of play, as well as participating in it, before I learned to DM. In my experience, it tends to be an attempt to go over the DM’s head. Often, players are afraid to ask the DM for permission, so they ask the dice instead.

Guest 6801328 · Dec 14, 2018

FrogReaver said:
They usually refer to that aimlessly doing nothing parts of the game as role play as well

Just because something is roleplaying doesn't mean it contributes to the game.

In my experience those sort of "lone wolf" roleplayers would be more aptly labeled "prima donna roleplayers".

I DM'd a game recently for a group. 4 of the 5 wanted to accomplish the goals of the adventure. The 5th one decided that his Barbarian was a pacifist and an animal-rights zealot, and proceeded to consume a large portion of our limited game time with his own little escapades, then initiated PvP when the others killed a hostile beast that attacked them.

Was he "roleplaying"? Yeah, I guess so. If that's any consolation.

FrogReaver · Dec 15, 2018

Elfcrusher said:
Just because something is roleplaying doesn't mean it contributes to the game.

In my experience those sort of "lone wolf" roleplayers would be more aptly labeled "prima donna roleplayers".

I DM'd a game recently for a group. 4 of the 5 wanted to accomplish the goals of the adventure. The 5th one decided that his Barbarian was a pacifist and an animal-rights zealot, and proceeded to consume a large portion of our limited game time with his own little escapades, then initiated PvP when the others killed a hostile beast that attacked them.

Was he "roleplaying"? Yeah, I guess so. If that's any consolation.

Maybe. But if I had a PC that was playing an animal rights activist then simply having a big random beast attack the party with no other course of recourse other than killing it, then that's just as much a failure on both the DM's part and the other player's part.

With such a PC the DM needs to
#1 Causes for the attacking animal behavior that the players can figure out to end the encounter without killing the critter. (Examples: You are on it's territory and other paths exist, it's young are nearby, Something bigger and nastier is pushing it from it's territory and it's hostile because it's trying to edge out a new territory if it can't get back on it's own)

The point is the DM needs to offer plenty of valid ways of dealing with the beast other than just combat to the death.

The other players need to play into the scenario a little more than just looking at it as the beast is threatening/attacking us let's kill it.
#1 They can non-lethally defeat the beast out of respect for their companion
#2 They can work to find a non combat solution to the beast

All in all, i'd say everyone refused to play along with the barbarians character concept, both the DM and other players and working around the Barbarians position on animals could have made much more fun and memorable encounters than random beast attacks so kill it.

In other words, when you have a PC that has particularly strong feelings about some specific something, then even if the other PC's don't share that view (as long as they don't have equal and opposite feelings about that same something) then it makes for a more fun game for them to support their companions taste in play even if they have their PC's in game don't share the same views. It can be out of respect, to keep their friend happy because they may need him etc.

Guest 6801328 · Dec 15, 2018

FrogReaver said:
Maybe. But if I had a PC that was playing an animal rights activist then simply having a big random beast attack the party with no other course of recourse other than killing it, then that's just as much a failure on both the DM's part and the other player's part.

With such a PC the DM needs to
#1 Causes for the attacking animal behavior that the players can figure out to end the encounter without killing the critter. (Examples: You are on it's territory and other paths exist, it's young are nearby, Something bigger and nastier is pushing it from it's territory and it's hostile because it's trying to edge out a new territory if it can't get back on it's own)

The point is the DM needs to offer plenty of valid ways of dealing with the beast other than just combat to the death.

The other players need to play into the scenario a little more than just looking at it as the beast is threatening/attacking us let's kill it.
#1 They can non-lethally defeat the beast out of respect for their companion
#2 They can work to find a non combat solution to the beast

All in all, i'd say everyone refused to play along with the barbarians character concept, both the DM and other players and working around the Barbarians position on animals could have made much more fun and memorable encounters than random beast attacks so kill it.

In other words, when you have a PC that has particularly strong feelings about some specific something, then even if the other PC's don't share that view (as long as they don't have equal and opposite feelings about that same something) then it makes for a more fun game for them to support their companions taste in play even if they have their PC's in game don't share the same views. It can be out of respect, to keep their friend happy because they may need him etc.

Wow. Way to jump to conclusions, based on almost zero information, about the nature of that encounter. Thanks for giving my DMing the benefit of the doubt.

The irony is that you seem to assume complete sincerity on the player's part, instead of just trying to be a prima donna and gum up the works. Which I believe was the case.

FrogReaver · Dec 15, 2018

Elfcrusher said:
Wow. Way to jump to conclusions, based on almost zero information, about the nature of that encounter. Thanks for giving my DMing the benefit of the doubt.

The irony is that you seem to assume complete sincerity on the player's part, instead of just trying to be a prima donna and gum up the works. Which I believe was the case.

I said IF. I don't know all the details in your case. I was just was offering my opinion that placing the blame solely on the player in a situation like the one you described is not really fair to the player being described (especially without having access to a lot more info than we do). I'm not saying it's impossible for such a situation to be solely the players fault. It's definitely possible. I'm saying that the fault could very easily reside not on the player being described but on the DM and other players at the game.

All parties involved should try to maximize fun.

Ovinomancer · Dec 15, 2018

FrogReaver said:
Maybe. But if I had a PC that was playing an animal rights activist then simply having a big random beast attack the party with no other course of recourse other than killing it, then that's just as much a failure on both the DM's part and the other player's part.

With such a PC the DM needs to
#1 Causes for the attacking animal behavior that the players can figure out to end the encounter without killing the critter. (Examples: You are on it's territory and other paths exist, it's young are nearby, Something bigger and nastier is pushing it from it's territory and it's hostile because it's trying to edge out a new territory if it can't get back on it's own)

The point is the DM needs to offer plenty of valid ways of dealing with the beast other than just combat to the death.

The other players need to play into the scenario a little more than just looking at it as the beast is threatening/attacking us let's kill it.
#1 They can non-lethally defeat the beast out of respect for their companion
#2 They can work to find a non combat solution to the beast

All in all, i'd say everyone refused to play along with the barbarians character concept, both the DM and other players and working around the Barbarians position on animals could have made much more fun and memorable encounters than random beast attacks so kill it.

In other words, when you have a PC that has particularly strong feelings about some specific something, then even if the other PC's don't share that view (as long as they don't have equal and opposite feelings about that same something) then it makes for a more fun game for them to support their companions taste in play even if they have their PC's in game don't share the same views. It can be out of respect, to keep their friend happy because they may need him etc.

If you had a pacificistic animal-rights activist barbarian character in my game, I'd point you toward the door, but that would have been covered in session zero when game expectations were set. You might want to explore those things, but I really don't, at least not in my D&D game. My 7th Sea Hack for Firefly, sure, sounds fun, let's do it.