D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Vaalingrade]

More seriously, nothing in this thread has changed my mind as expressed in my first post in it: I find it utterly baffling that anyone would treat what @bloodtide is describing as reasonable, let alone serious, RPGing. To me it seems obviously dysfunctional and frankly toxic. Why would any players be interested in putting up with it?

This is the behavior I'm constantly being told absolutely never happens and it's totally okay for the DM to have a totally unhealthy social/parasocialpower dynamic with the other players. Except that's what D&D (almost exclusively D&D and its descendants) culture has bred over the past 50 years and why players deal with it: they think it's the way things have to be; that there's no game without that DM and they're not able to do it on their own.

It's the same reason people maintain relationships with toxic friends and family.

 

[Mort]

This is the behavior I'm constantly being told absolutely never happens and it's totally okay for the DM to have a totally unhealthy social/parasocialpower dynamic with the other players. Except that's what D&D (almost exclusively D&D and its descendants) culture has bred over the past 50 years and why players deal with it: they think it's the way things have to be; that there's no game without that DM and they're not able to do it on their own.

It's the same reason people maintain relationships with toxic friends and family.

You wouldn't think "don't vindictively slaughter the PCs..." NEEDS to be front and center DMing advice, and yet...

 

[Oofta]

You wouldn't think "don't vindictively slaughter the PCs..." NEEDS to be front and center DMing advice, and yet...

Add in: if the players don't understand what's going on and why, don't bother actually explaining anything. Just tell them to create copies of their characters and then blame them for "not understanding the multiverse".

 

[Stalker0]

Man I’m laughing at how far this thread has devolved. It’s gone from reasonable suggestions to outright finger pointing as to whether the DM or the players are the spawn of the devil.

Part of what makes dnd great are the curveballs, it’s what separates it from a video game. In this case, the players threw a curveball.

Whether the players were “wrong” to do so is irrelevant, because it’s their story. However it’s clear that they were “wrong” from the city’s perspective, and so the city would try and deal with them like mass murdering criminals. Now you role play it out appropriately.

However, if the DM doesn’t want to run that kind of scenario I can respect that, in which case there are a few options:

1) fix it in game. Maybe a mysterious stranger recruits them into special forces and clears their names, or xyz.
2) fix it out of game. Talk to the players and maybe retcon something.

The one solution I do not like that has been suggested is handwaving…that just breaks the narrative and role playing. Either the act happened and it’s played out, or the act is retconned and so never happened. Take your pick

 

[Faolyn]

I am curious - do these high level NPCs have nothing better to do than chase after low level murderers? And if they do, why do you need PCs when there are so many big fish who could sort out the problems I assume the party is usually hired to deal with?

Butting in... high-level PCs have nothing better to do then chase after monsters and things like that, many of which are weaker than them. So why wouldn't there be high-level NPCs who chase after low-level murderers? Especially if they get paid to do so. They don't even need to be that much higher in level, either.

 

[pemerton]

You're arguing that murder-hobo players looking to kill NPCs for trivial reasons is 'uncommon'?

Dude, I've met hundreds of them in my lifetime, and I'd be shocked to meet someone who has never met one of these guys on an at least semi regular basis.

This issue came up once for me as a GM, when I was a teenage GM, made an attempt to move from dungeon crawling to more "story"-oriented play, and hadn't learned how to avoid boring railroading. When I fixed my GMing, which (from memory) took a couple of sessions, the problem was solved.

When I started a new group as an adult in a club situation, one of the players for one or two sessions established a "sub-plot" around his PC as a type of reverse Jack the Ripper (ie murdering men who wanted to sleep with sex workers). It became fairly clear fairly quickly that this was a type of "acting out", and the player resolved it himself by bringing in a new character through which he could express his convictions without the more distasteful elements his first PC involved.

If this is a regular issue for a GM, I infer that either they are routinely playing with immature or dysfunctional players, or that they are GMing in such a fashion as to produce immature or dysfunctional play.

 

[TwoSix]

If this is a regular issue for a GM, I infer that either they are routinely playing with immature or dysfunctional players, or that they are GMing in such a fashion as to produce immature or dysfunctional play.

Agreed. Outside of play involving teenagers ("hehe, let's go start a tavern fight"), murder-hoboing seems to be a symptom of trad play priorities being used on players who are unaware/not invested in the trad play agenda and are looking for more agency. The posters in the classic/OSR camp and the more narrative/storygame camp just accept the violence as a possible action and keep on presenting the game.

 

[bloodtide]

Since you mentioned the Rec Center, I wonder at the age of the players. I'm guessing the average age is about 14-15 or so, early High School age?

They are all adults, somewhere 18-25 or so.

Also, I am curious if you think that the previous DM was no longer interesting in running games at the Rec Center, or simply unloaded the party onto you? From your reports I have gotten the impression that these players may not have the experience to understand that they can choose a different path than what is handed to them. They might not have the maturity or understanding that battle is not the only solution to a problem.

I'm not sure as I don't know the guy.

This comes off as straight-up bullying behaviour. You are using the power that you have as DM, and your greater knowledge of the system to TPK the party because they didn’t act the way you liked.

You had several options to de-escalate. You could have talked to the players. You could have talked to the original DM and simply told him you weren’t interested in running another game for this group.

Again, I'm not a talker. I don't mind running the game, if I did I would have said no.

Instead, you decided to “show them whose boss” by killing off their characters. That comes off as a DM on a power trip.

Only if you look at it from the wrong way.

 

[pemerton]

This comes off as straight-up bullying behaviour.

<snip>

That comes off as a DM on a power trip.

Well, to quote from the OP:

This is a problem as old as the game: How does a DM get the players to stop just outright slaying all NPCs, but more specifically the "good guys". Assuming that the PCs are at least sort of good, or at least want open access to good/neutral civilization.

This is not a problem in my Hard Fun Old School Unfair Unbalance style games.

Who would have seen it coming?

 

[bloodtide]

More seriously, nothing in this thread has changed my mind as expressed in my first post in it: I find it utterly baffling that anyone would treat what @bloodtide is describing as reasonable, let alone serious, RPGing. To me it seems obviously dysfunctional and frankly toxic. Why would any players be interested in putting up with it?

Well, you are looking at it out of context. In this case I was just covering a game for another DM. And it's often hard to take over just about anything from another person.

This group of players are the type I would normal not agree to run a game for as we are night and day. For example, y game is unrated and they would insist on a PG-13 game with nothing that would 'trigger' them. They would be fine with a mayor feeding innocent citizens to an owlbear to thin out the population a bit; but they would go crazy and run from the room if I mentioned some drow slavers with some gnomes in chains.

Though I would not say that we could never game together. Just take one of my other groups. So they are all 20 somethings and were all excited to play the new Spelljammer 5E. Their DM did not want to run it though, so they put up and add. After a couple weeks of no takers, they came to me. I run a 2E spelljamming game for older gamers. They asked me to run the game, and I told them we can't game together. I'm an Old School Unfair Unbalanced Hard Fun type.....and they game 180 opposite of that. Then they offer to play the game my way. So of we go into the Black. The first couple of sessions were a bit rocky(and not just from the murderoids!), but they never complained once. And a couple more sessions and everything was going smoothly. Today, they play the Adventure is Survival, Combat is War, Hard Luck Nitty Gritty game with no problems.

They found that many things they thought were "so bad" about my game, were not so bad at all once they played things out in the game.