Dealing with arrogant characters (players)?

[Mallus]

I know he also uses Pride and Prejudice as source material. Of course, I play a Bard.

In all seriousness, that sounds great. When I'm DM'ing, I have a hard time not giving pseudo-Oscar Wilde-esque witticisms to NPC barbarians... in fact, I often fail.

It is not always easy to maneuver through all the interactions, but it is infiinitely more interesting to me than going in sword-a-swinging. I mean, combat is relatively easy to handle. Trying to avoid getting into combat is harder.

Agreed. That's the kind of game I run and enjoy playing in. I got my current group to go two whole sessions just roleplaying (I made some fairly amusing NPC's), without having to deploy the requisite 'kick-in-doors-and-start-shooting' combat fodder I have on hand...

But I think ignoring the way fantasy (RPG's and lit.) are rooted in adolescent (and typically masculine) power-fantasies demonstrates either dishonesty or a lack of basic critical inquiry. Or both...

 

[Numion]

I think it's totally pointless to punish PCs for insulting a bunch of thugs. In D&D it's ok to get power - it's even one of the main drives in the game. In the same way, I think it's ok to flaunt it once in a while. In our games we even have sorts of cinematic breaks for useless banter and threats when we encounter big bad evil guys! (They also serve the purpose of the bad guy revealing his plans, because PCs are often clueless.)

And we never show respect to the vile scum we are bout to rid from this world. Well, ok, we might just point out the flaws in his plan, or how he could've achieved his goals legally

 

[iksander]

Hnnn... I dont really see the problem.

I've run characters that were horribly arrogant to nearly everyone, but it just gave my DM more ammunition to use against me. I enjoyed it, your players will proably enjoy the havoc, or learn to not smart off. Use the PCs arrogance against them. If anything PC arrogance gives you a tool to make the PCs squirm, by trying to explain away why they just disrespected the kings champion, or etc...

Ya also gotta ease up on your players. I mean they were thugs; I really dont expect the players to have meaningful dialogue with thugs. If your players say the dreaded "you guys should just give up now before were forced to kill you" line, do as Sejs suggests and roll with it.

Heck let some of the thugs repent their bad ways, so your party doesnt straight up assassinate the thugs after pulling a couple of the suggestions that Sejs mentioned. Players do like a little positive reinforcement that their deeds are doing good. Have townsfolk throw the PCs a party after a doing noble deeds. Or if the PCs are motivated by pure mercenary means have the townsfolk make sarky comments and jack up prices.

 

[fusangite]

In my view, just play this realistically. Most recurring intelligent NPCs will figure out that the party is not just the one jerk. Those individuals can snub the arrogant character, suggest to the other PCs that they stop working with him and otherwise exert pressure on the rest of the party to drop this unsavoury individual if he does not mend his ways.

For one-time NPCs, just roleplay it out. The way I run games, massive circumstance bonuses and penalties are applied to Cha-based skills depending on how the player plays out the scene. It sounds to me that this problematic individual will experience such severe penalties as to guarantee negative interactions with NPCs; hopefully envy will motivate him to mend his ways as he watches his fellow players enjoying far more success in their interactions.

If his problematic behaviour gets to the point of causing real offense to people who have the power to summarily jail or otherwise punish people, have him publicly horse-whipped or the like for lipping-off to the local duke.