Group Dynamics and the Chaotic Neutral Bard ...

[Umbran]

Janx raises an excellent point regarding the overcomplication of this scene. If the dragon just wanted the general dead, and was willing to fly to within a short distance of him, why didn't the dragon just kill him itself? Even if it couldn't have wielded the special dagger in its oversized claws, it could've just plucked him off the battlements and air-dropped him.

Because, clearly, we know what defenses the General has in place? We know what agreements or compulsions the dragon may be stuck with? Could not a halfway decent GM not come up with a half-dozen reasons for the dragon to not want to directly attack, that the PCs wouldn't know about, in as many minutes? Sheesh!

I have a different take on this altogether. What I see here seems to have little to do with character alignment. It has to do with player expectations. Some players felt this was a game where problems would be generally solved by fighting. The OP thought it was a game where finding non-combat solutions was expected.

Expectation-mismatch. Fix? Talk like reasonable adults about what's expected in the game - "Hey, GM, did you really expect us to fight our way through that?"

 

[Janx]

Because, clearly, we know what defenses the General has in place? We know what agreements or compulsions the dragon may be stuck with? Could not a halfway decent GM not come up with a half-dozen reasons for the dragon to not want to directly attack, that the PCs wouldn't know about, in as many minutes? Sheesh!

I have a different take on this altogether. What I see here seems to have little to do with character alignment. It has to do with player expectations. Some players felt this was a game where problems would be generally solved by fighting. The OP thought it was a game where finding non-combat solutions was expected.

Expectation-mismatch. Fix? Talk like reasonable adults about what's expected in the game - "Hey, GM, did you really expect us to fight our way through that?"

Absolutely.

But my initial assessment is that placing the dragon at the scene, the GM was overcomplicating it and setting up a railroad. When a first level party meets a dragon capable of carrying them, if he doesn't wipe them out, it's because the GM is going to make them do what the dragon wants. Because the party cannot beat the dragon, and at best, can run away.

Since the dragon carried the OP to the general, I kind of get the feeling the whole thing was a setup for that. Any reason the dragon couldn't do it himself was arbitrary. It's entirerly probable the GM didn't want/expect the players to kill the cultists, as his whole goal was likely to reverse the players course and get them to kill the cultist.

Obviously, we'll never know. But if the players talk, they can better understand why it got goofy because of how each player looked at the situation. Each player needed to recognize that the GM was doing something screwy and they may be hosing themselves. The General may have been a bad guy actually.

The OP needed to assess whether his new information was actually information. Was the General a truly a good guy, or did the party even know? If yes, then was the Dragon a bad guy? Usually, yes. If so, then anything the dragon says is a lie. A big monster on the scene of a low level party is meant to force the party down a path. The OP was already intimidated enough to know he couldn't fight it. I'm surprised the party was dumb enough to keep fighting in its presence.

My point, to the OP, is that with his own viewpoint laden version of events, I can find logical cause to side with the other players plan to stick with the general. Whether I'm right or not, there's a reasonable logical chain to support their viewpoint. Which means, they weren't on crack, nor were you. The situation was complicated and it put party unity at risk.

As a GM, I find more fault with the GM. Some GMs like to mix it up or be contrary, but I find it serves little good to add ambiguity to the first adventure. Make it straight-forward so you can get the players to bond as a team. Don't bring in high level NPCs to bully the party and make them choose the right path because they can't oppose the high level PCs.

the GM may have revealed a point that "you shouldn't blindly follow the first plot hook you're handed", but he did so at the expense of the first adventure. There may be some bad blood between players now. Maybe that can be fixed.

 

[Umbran]

Absolutely.

But my initial assessment is that placing the dragon at the scene, the GM was overcomplicating it and setting up a railroad.

I feel your assessment is premature (see below). And, by the way, if the dragon is there to create a railroad, then that's a restriction of choices, and thus a simplification, not a complication. If your choices are "run, die, or talk", that's pretty darned simple.

When a first level party meets a dragon capable of carrying them, if he doesn't wipe them out, it's because the GM is going to make them do what the dragon wants.

Oh. So, you've never introduced the BBEG early on, then? It is a fairly standard technique. So is a little bit of railroading early in a campaign - however much campaign information the GM has put out, players sometimes (even often) need a little while of being led by the nose until they personally run across enough of the world to start making their own choices about where they'll go and what they'll do. I mean, my on campaign began with "You're all strangers on a train heading for Kansas, when bandits attack and a monster breaks loose from one of the cargo cars!" A *literal* railroad adventure.

Because the party cannot beat the dragon, and at best, can run away.

"Talk, die, or run," is a pretty normal set of choices. Seems to me I recall most editions of the game recommending putting some number of such things in your campaign, lest things get too predictable and your PCs get cocky or the players bored.

 

[Elf Witch]

The best advice is to talk to the DM and the other players. You should not have to just give up your PC just because you went against the group there should be some way to role play this out. See if you can get them to understand why you did what you did. It might not work but at least you should try.

This kind of thing has happened plenty of times in games I have played in. Usually it happens between kill everything players versus is there another way players. Since I am usually in the lets not just kill everything I have often been in your shoes. Just from reading what you described I would have wanted to stop fighting and talk as well. It would have made me curious why a dragon was not attacking us or the army. It would scream to me hey something weird is going on here.

I have gone against the party plenty of times when I thought they were wrong. Usually it has not destroyed the party because it turns out that in these kind of situations that something was going on that we didn't understand. Though I have made new PCs because it just worked better but I didn't regret what I had done because to have done anything different would have not felt right for my PC.

I am of the school that you try and make a PC that has a reason to work with the party, that you try and find the best way to role play working with the party and not use the excuse I am just playing my player to always get your way. But I also believe that we are not a bunch of drones and that sometimes the party makes it impossible to toe the party line and then you do what your PC would do and face the consequences.

I can think of two examples that happened one where I got to stay and one where my PC became an NPC. In the first we were fighting Dopplegangers and several of them looked like us. I suddenly released the trap we had all been separated and so it was very possible one of them was us. I did my best to stop the party from just killing and they wouldn't when we got to the last one who looked like our party cleric something clicked. I realized that he was our party cleric and the one fighting with us was a doopleganger. It was just a lot of little things. The party would not stop so I cast grease then web on them to make them stop or slow them down. When that didn't slow the rogue down I attacked him with offensive spells and took him down to -6. He was really angry until I then turned to the cleric caught in the web and threatened to set it on fire unless he revealed himself and since he seen me use offensive magic on my own party he complied. Though there were grumbles that I should not have been willing to use lethal magic on a party member. My character was romantically involved with the cleric so it made role playing sense that she would do what she had to to save his life.

The other time our group came across a religious item very important to my god. I was not playing a cleric but I had played my PC has very faithful. The party decided to auction off the item because they knew that other churches wanted it too and that was the way to extort a huge amount of gold from my church. My character ended up stealing the item and running away and just giving it back to the church. I knew that I could not bring back my PC after that so she became an NPC and I brought in a new PC. Ironically that NPC helped TPK the party several levels later.

Not knowing what the DM plan was I can't agree with people saying he did this wrong. There could have been valid reasons why the dragon did not kill the general himself and they could have been plot hooks and clues the party missed about what was going on here. I have hoodwinked the players before by letting think they are working for the good guys but they are not though there are clues if they looked for them that tells them no they are not. I have used dragons at low levels. In my current game because of the compact dragons are not supposed to interfere with humans but they do sneaky tings to get around that compact all the time.

One final thing as someone else said your group may not play this way they just want a black and white game hack and slashing everything and no party disagreements if that is the case then you should find out and if that is not something you want then find another group if you don't mind it then simply make another character.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Most groups like to play cooperatively rather than against each other. Unless your group has agreed otherwise it's safe to assume that this is the case. Given this, it's important to create a character that will cooperate with the rest of the party. It's common to excuse a disruptive character with "It's what my character would do; I'm just roleplaying" This is a cop out. Since the player created the disruptive character in the first place he's still responsible for the problem.

In most groups of people IRL, and in particular in groups where individuals count on each other in lethal circumstance, cooperation is vital. Debating a course of action is great. Acting against the group once the group has made a decision, especially with lives at stake, makes you an enemy. If you do this, don't expect to be accepted back into the group ever. I think your PC is done.

So, as others have said, talk to your group and find out their expectations. If they prefer cooperation then make a character that has reasons to cooperate.

 

[Jhaelen]

Most groups like to play cooperatively rather than against each other. Unless your group has agreed otherwise it's safe to assume that this is the case.

It's not that simple. As a new player, I'd ask the DM what alignments are allowed. If the DM doesn't think to restrict alignments to something that's compatible with the rest of the group _and_ support actually being cooperative.
E.g. no one can really expect a chaotic evil group to cooperate for longer than a single adventure if that.

In my last 3e campaign I only allowed LG, NG, LN, and NN alignments to make sure the pcs had some grounds to cooperate (that, and all of them shared a common background of working as guards of the realm).
If as a DM I allowed a player to choose a CN alignment, I'd expect her to not always cooperate.

I'm not saying you cannot have a party of mixed alignments cooperating, but it requires some careful preparation on the side of the players. E.g. in our current 4e Dark Sun campaign I'm playing an evil templar in an otherwise mostly unaligned party with the occasional good aligned member. This only works because my long-term goals align with the rest of the party and the pc is a kind of undercover agent for his Sorcerer King. Still, it means that my character won't hold back should one of the other characters' actions interfere with my goals or find out the truth about him. Of course he'd prefer to make it look like an accident...

TL;DR: IF a group decides to allow the full range of alignments, then they must be prepared to deal with it. Otherwise, just play without alignments (which is actually my personal preference).

 

[Umbran]

TL;DR: IF a group decides to allow the full range of alignments, then they must be prepared to deal with it. Otherwise, just play without alignments (which is actually my personal preference).

No, I don't think that's true. As a player, you've got an obligation to come to the table looking to make the game cool for everyone, not just yourself. "Let me see how much trouble I can make," is only conducive to cool in very limited circumstances, and it is part of a player's obligation to ask specifically about it if he intends to engage in it. Yes, the player's obligation to ask, not just the GM's to tell (it *is* also the GM's duty to tell, but that doesn't absolve the player's responsibility). The player should not be passive in determining the limits of the social contract - you don't get to blame the GM or other players for not telling you, as you entered into it.

And, despite assertions to the contrary, "chaotic evil" does not mean, "crazy sonofagun who cannot cooperate with anyone for more than 5 minutes without stabbing them in the back". Therein lies the route of using alignment to excuse player-jerkitude, which is a quick way to get yourself asked to not play again.

This is largely why I said upthread that the OP isn't about alignment - it is about player expectations.

 

[Jhaelen]

This is largely why I said upthread that the OP isn't about alignment - it is about player expectations.

Yep, and when I ask the GM about which alignments are allowed an answer of "anything goes" will lead to me expecting that "anything goes", i.e. it's accepted and expected that I'll play my alignment to the hilt. I've played for years in such groups and it is kind of fun but can also get old rather quickly. Campaign arcs and adventures take a back-seat of course, the conflicts and backstabbing among the party members (with a highly fluctuating cast) take the lead role. These days I vastly prefer cooperative play.

At least in earlier editions of D&D and among oldtimers like me, 'PvP' is the default mode of play. So, if the GM fails to mention that unconditional cooperation is expected despite blatantly different alignments, I'd assume otherwise. Of course more recent advice, most notably in 4e, tells players to effectively ignore their alignments, but imho that's BS. If you want to ignore alignments, do the sensible thing and actually ignore them. It's not as if the game depended on them.
I'd also like to note that, interestingly, according to what I've been reading 4e's Game Designers seem to prefer to have a healthy amount of PvP action in their own games despite the advice they give in the books. Go figure!

And, despite assertions to the contrary, "chaotic evil" does not mean, "crazy sonofagun who cannot cooperate with anyone for more than 5 minutes without stabbing them in the back". Therein lies the route of using alignment to excuse player-jerkitude, which is a quick way to get yourself asked to not play again.

Well, IIRC, the central motto of a CE character is "might makes right". So, as long as my CE character is the acknowledged party leader, there's no reason to backstab anyone and the characters will get along just fine and dandy. Of course my pc will have to watch his back since he expects everyone else to want to backstab him

 

[DnD_Dad]

Basically if you have a character that doesn't work well with others, and there isn't any story hook surrounding them, then the party doesn't need you or would logically want you around. Make a character that plays nice.

 

[Umbran]

Yep, and when I ask the GM about which alignments are allowed an answer of "anything goes" will lead to me expecting that "anything goes", i.e. it's accepted and expected that I'll play my alignment to the hilt.

And, if being on EN world has taught you nothing else, it should have revealed that there's no single definition of what alignments really mean to various players and groups. So, "to the hilt," doesn't really tell us much.

At least in earlier editions of D&D and among oldtimers like me, 'PvP' is the default mode of play.

Over-generalization and appeal to authority of experience will not get you very far. I'm not exactly a young'un, you know. And it seemed pretty darned obvious to the folks I played with way back when that the game had monsters specifically so that we didn't have to fight one another to have fun.

So, if the GM fails to mention that unconditional cooperation is expected despite blatantly different alignments, I'd assume otherwise.

My point here is that actually examining whether your assumptions and preconceptions match the rest of the group's play-style and intent is part of your responsibility as a player. "The GM didn't explicitly tell me," is not an excuse. Drilling down further so that you're not relying on much assumption is part of your job when joining a group. Otherwise, you're basically signing a social contract without actually reading it first.

Well, IIRC, the central motto of a CE character is "might makes right".

That seems a limited version. Perhaps, if you have a very broad definition of "might". It isn't like alignment dictates particular personalities and ways of doing business. Sneaky people have power, too, and part of being sneaky would be making it difficult to figure out that, in fact, you're the one with the power. Thus, acknowledgement is not a general requirement - sure, if you're a big badass burly CE fighter it may make sense, but there are many other approaches that still fit in with the CE mindset.