D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Lanefan]

What do you do when you have a disagreement with someone about what should be done in the real world? For example, your friend wants to go to a certain taco restaurant for lunch, but you're feeling teriyaki today, and you can't go to both places. Perhaps, if the disagreement is simply too great, you just don't go to lunch at all, which I hope you'd agree is rather a shame. More likely, one or the other of you shrugs, saying, "Sure, we can do that this time, but next time you're taking me to X." Likewise any other aspect of doing things together with others: what games to play, what movies or shows to watch, what team name to use, what music to listen to...you find some way to build consensus.

I mean, would you say you struggle to resolve situations like disagreeing with your spouse/SO/best friend/roommate/etc. about which of two mutually-exclusive things you want to do?

Most of the time, if-when this sort of thing comes up I'd prefer we each go and do our own thing (you go for tacos, I'm going for a burger), and meet up again later. That way, everyone ends up happy - and fed.

With a typical RPG group, however, there's two other issues. First is that there's almost always more than two people involved, meaning you can end up with multi-way or multi-option disagreements rather than just a yes-no. Second is that the specific intent is that it be a group activity (as opposed to eating lunch, which most people can do quite well on their own), which somewhat forces more surface-level agreement.

 

[Lanefan]

It's not unilateral. When I invite people to my game I let them know what type of campaign I run which includes no evil characters. So people know my choice before even a session 0 starts.

You contradict yourself here.

You state clearly "It's not unilateral", then go on to say that during the invitation process you'll be imposing a unilateral choice you've made.

 

[Lanefan]

After the mysterious guy left, a guard with the key showed up and let them out and took them over to the room with all their equipment and stuff. This is where they did there typical endless talk of what to do....and the warlock character killed the 'key guard' to "cover their tracks".

OK, this is a hugely important piece of information here: the players - or one of them, anyway - shot first.

The game notes had that traitor guard lead them out.

This is another key piece of info: there was a scripted escape already in place.

I'm starting to think the players - intentionally or otherwise - kinda messed up on this, and made a bed for themselves they'd later have to lay in. Fair enough. Run with it. But run with it at least somewhat logically, an umbrella under which teleporting in jumped-up alt-clones of the PCs to smack them down very much does not fall.

 

[Lanefan]

The game's rules do that as well. Because we don't let players play their PCs however they like. There are rules about what actions they can and can't take--including, in earlier editions, what actions they could and couldn't take to maintain their alignment.

Indeed, but there was also nothing in the rules (in 1e anyway) banning me from choosing to play any one of the nine alignments; nor was there anything banning me from playing a character of any given personality. Which meant, I could play a happy-go-lucky chaotic-evil airhead and the game couldn't stop me...unless I tried to play a class that wouldn't accept my alignment (e.g. Ranger, Paladin).

 

[Lanefan]

The fact that the GM thinks a character is too evil to go on (under a "no evil" rules) doesn't mean that other participants would agree, or are even likely to agree, given the notoriously wide variation in moral opinions found among the people who play RPGs.

Never mind that some players sometimes find it useful to have an evil PC in the group to do the dirty work while their hands are kept clean under the aegis of plausible deniability. I've DMed parties like this on various occasions.

 

[Lanefan]

Oh, I think that 'unsophisticated' is probably too loaded a term, but I do mean that the techniques which evolved in the early days of D&D, and are exemplified by a lot of material like the 1e DMG, tend to produce these characters that are not highly connected to anything. In terms of giving characters tactically and operationally challenging scenarios, which I assume you mean by 'techniques' isn't particularly easier than for any other character, but I think constructing a milieu and providing ways for players to establish that connectivity and depth of character that makes 'murder hobo' just not a thing is a whole other dimension beyond challenging the player's skill.

You seem to be treating depth of character and morderhobo as opposites here; I'm trying to say this isn't necessarily the case.

Well, my point is, the sorts of things that you present to your PCs, how the environment is depicted, the generation of connectedness with the other inhabitants of their world, etc. is what makes the characters seem 'real' and give the players reasons and 'hooks' upon which to hang realistic behavior. When you are playing a game where the PCs arrive from nowhere at the gates to The Keep on The Borderlands, and their only cognizable goals are getting loot and XP, and they don't even have any defined bond with each other, let alone anyone in the Keep, you will probably get behavior that is at least somewhat 'murder hobo'. It will vary, and often it will be focused entirely on the denizens of the Caves of Chaos.

The first adventure - the really gonzo one - in my current campaign was KotB. Two players rolled up characters who were already - well, not exactly friends, but travelling companions: one a Bard, the other a Cavalier, known together as the Bardalier. These two had heard there was adventuring to be done in them thar mountains (but with no real idea what it entailed!) and rolled up the country singing their own completely fabricated praises at every village and inviting people to join their merry band. And one by one people joined, and thus by the time they got to Holtus (my re-named Keep village) they had a party of nine: two PCs each plus an adventuring NPC.

So at least that initial crew had a bit of connection to something (mainly each other, except the NPC who they unwisely took in without learning anything about him even including his name!), even if the group very quickly got to the point of recruiting anyone they could press-gang once the casualties started mounting.

But you are likely to hear things like "How can we take over this keep?" or "why don't we just rob the shrine, the priest already got all our gold!" I mean, why not? Sure, PCs have an alignment, but I think that's been largely dealt with, its basically just something written on the sheet.

Where I'm fine with this if that's what they want to do. I neither ask nor expect them to be heroes, and their alignments are set by their actions once any patterns become clear.

Now, if the PCs COME FROM the keep, if one of the character's fathers in a watch leader, if one used to be the banker until the merchant he invested all his money in went broke because the goblins at the caves robbed him, if one of them has a crush on the priest, now its a bit of a different game! Especially if the fourth character has a crush on the 3rd character and is jealous of the priest!

I thought about just starting them at Holtus on this sort of basis, but then the "Bardalier" idea came up and that was just too good to pass up. Also, with Holtus being such a small place I didn't think it'd make in-game sense there'd be so many neophyte adventurers all right there.

Maybe he takes a big risk in the kobold cave to impress her, and gets killed. Maybe his brother is a thief who now demands weregild!

There was a bit of that within the party now and then, along with lots of bickering.

 

[Lanefan]

This makes no sense to me. The GM should address the fictional characters? This seems to be as effective as talking to a wall.

When I'm DMing it's very rare I use a player's name unless I'm asking that player to get me a beer or something. Rather, I speak as if talking to the character even if I'm asking the player to do a game-related thing:

Me: "Divwaya*, roll me a d20, will ya?"
Divwaya's player: "OK. <<roll>> 6."
Me: "Well before it reaches you, you notice a gray mist slowly seeping down the passage..."

* - Divwaya was one of the nine founding characters referenced in my previous post.

Again, be a fan of a fictional character? This makes no sense.

I agree it makes no sense but not, I suspect, in the same way you think it doesn't make sense.

Personally, I don't think the DM should be a fan* of the characters and at the same time don't think the DM should be a fan of their opponents either. The DM instead should be neutral, as should any referee.

* - where "fan" means active cheering supporter of, as would be a fan of a sports team or an entertainer.

Well, check.

 

[Lanefan]

Like I said, it's no different than having a line or veil in a game. If a player says "don't do X," and another player deliberately does X repeatedly, then they've broken the game's social contract and it's completely understandable if they get booted.

Is it?

One could argue - and I will, just for kicks - that there's sometimes a case to be made that the one to boot is the one who is trying to impose the limitation rather than the one who is violating said limitation.

I had this come up many a time in much younger years when two (or more) people would be friends of mine but weren't getting along with each other. Eventually one of them would say to me something like "You've gotta choose which one of us you're gonna hang around with", and almost invariably my response would be to choose against the one who had tried to limit my friendships by forcing that choice.

Same principle applies here, unless the 'X' people are being asked not to do runs well beyond the bounds of common decency. If a player says "Don't do X" where X is something fairly harmless (e.g. speaking with a funny accent for a character, playing a character sub-optimally, etc.) I'm going to be looking far harder at the player making that request than at the player to whom the request is made; and even more so if it comes down to a "him or me in the game" choice. You force that choice, you're very very likely going to lose.

 

[Lanefan]

I hate digging into single points this deep into a thread, but, this one stuck out at me bad enough I gotta comment on it and hammer on it like a nail.


how

how in the world does "Being a fan of a fictional character" not make sense?

Do you... Not like fictional characters? Didn't read LotR and want Frodo and Sam to succeed?

I want Frodo and Sam to succeed.

I'm also not DMing them, which makes my point of view entirely different. As a reader, I'm an engaged spectator cheering them on. As a DM I'm supposed to be a neutral referee not cheering anybody on.

That's being a fan. You're not making things easy for them, you're the maker of the Original Character about the poor the Bad Times Juice on them (as everyone who has ever made an original character does) and wanting to see them struggle against it. But just the same, you want to see what they do. Eager to see their next adventure, the next way they mess up and crash into the house of cards around them.

That's being interested, but being interested alone doesn't make you a fan. A fan actively wants them to succeed, where an interested viewer just wants to see what comes next without concern for whether they succeed or fail or somethingin between.

That's the flaw with the phrase "Be a fan of the characters" as DM advice, because being a fan means actively wanting them to succeed and thus implies the imposition of a bias toward making sure they do succeed.

"Be interested in the characters" would be a far better phrasing.

 

[Oofta]

I don't think lines and veils normally work under the description "evil".

Nor did I say anything about "fairness".

I simply said that a rule that says If the GM judges a player's character as acting in an evil fashion, the player forfetis the chance to play that character in that game is not a rule that gives the players full control over their PCs.

So? If I'm in a group and someone starts bullying and intimidating other players in the group to the point where it becomes uncomfortable for other players what happens? What if they start spewing racist garbage, misogyny and insults? Suppose they literally start yelling and screaming at others because "that's who their character is"?

In functional groups that abusive player is at best going to be asked to tone it down and more likely will be kicked out of the group. I assume we all have limits on what type of behavior we allow when playing a game with others. I don't see an issue with that. I don't see an issue with telling people I don't allow evil PCs because that's not the kind of game I want to be involved in.

Why should one person's preference override the preferences of the rest of the group?