Did the Alignment Champions Win?

[Crazy Jerome]

I remember action scenes, but I don't remember any details of in-party personality squabbles other than an overwhelming sense of anxiety, and people walking out of the room to do something else. Truly fascinating to learn that someone else can find that the *best* part of the game.

It has to be framed (clearly limited) well, and you have to know what you are doing. When that happens, it is certainly one of the best parts of the game, for me and my group. Of course, the problem is getting there. It takes some practice to be really good at it, and it isn't for everyone in any case. So if you think you might enjoy it, you probably have to risk some mistakes and drama to get it.

I do find that it works far better in large groups than otherwise. 4-5 party members, especially if one or two are "wall flowers", can lead to a "Joe always versus Jane" situation, and that can lead to bad feelings. With 7-12 players, you tend to get multiple, changing factions--and it is rare for a single individual to be isolated. Plus, it leads to more actual play for the people involved (important with a large group), and the consequences are not as bad if the party becomes slightly less effective. (If 1 of 7 has a in-character snit fit and grudgingly helps on the mission, less trouble than if 1 of 4 does so.) Of course, I could take any 4-5 people out of 9 player group and do the intra-party feud now, because they are all experienced. I wouldn't do it with the 5 kids I'm planning on introducing to roleplaying with 4E.

 

[SSquirrel]

We had fun using magic w/o our dimwitted Paladin, who upheld the laws of the land and magic was banned. His player thought the ways we were tricking his guy was great an I was using things like Grease to make people fall down and Blind/Deaf to make them easy for him to mow down. He never caught on that I was using magic, he just kept yelling at our opponents for being clumsy an falling down or whatever. That was a fun game.

 

[Valdrax]

Alignment wars, IME, almost always go from IC to OOC very quickly.

(Intraparty conflict in general often does the same thing, but less regularly and not as fast.)

There are entire *games* based largely on intra-PC conflict that are lots of fun and actually frequently encourage OOC fun. Amber, Paranoia, etc. are largely centered around adversarial PCs, and games like the Storyteller series frequently encourage the formation of groups with different (often opposed) goals.

Team-based/Party-based games like D&D, however, that rely on an assumption of a common cause frequently have issues with IC to OOC conflict creep. That said, even a D&D group made up of mature players can have IC conflicts that are inherently amusing to the players, as long as everyone remembers that the game is a game meant for the amusement of everyone at the table.


One example would be the first 3.0 module I played in -- the Sunless Citadel. The backstory involves a goblin tribe that is selling magical apples to the highest bidder in a small town nearby. The single apple available each year care cure any illness, but the saplings planted form the seeds are stolen every time the villagers try to plant them. The PCs are sent to investigate.

The party's Barbarian thinks that the apples promote weakness and subvert the natural order by making the village grovel to the goblins and preventing the sick and weak from dying, thus holding them back. The party's Druid (played by me) thinks that the tree that produces the magical apples must be a natural wonder and wants to preserve it. We had many exchanges back and forth in which the player of the Barbarian and I quibble over whether or not he was going to burn the tree with threats, cajoling, and reasoning back and forth over a wide variety of philosophical issues. All IC and all enjoyed by the table OOC.

Eventually, the truth comes out that the tree is in fact evil -- its seeds produce monsters that roam the land (solving the "theft" of the saplings), it's being used to corrupt a party of captured adventurers into half-plant monsters, and for every healing apple it also produces a killing apple. Its origins are in a green stake used to stake a vampire which sprouted into a tree filled with dark magics.

Druid: "The tree is an abomination. We must burn it to the ground."
Barbarian: "I don't know. I think it's kind of growing on me."

And so the bickering continued, now reversed, for another half hour IC with most of the players around the table laughing at the two characters now using each others' former arguments against the other.

I miss that game.

(Also, I've later had serious in-game alignment arguments over whether or not LG alignment requires one to spare the children of a monstrous race as innocents or to kill them as inevitably evil beings. None of it spilled over in the real life. It just depends on the maturity of the players.)

 

[The Shadow]

I remember action scenes, but I don't remember any details of in-party personality squabbles other than an overwhelming sense of anxiety, and people walking out of the room to do something else. Truly fascinating to learn that someone else can find that the *best* part of the game.

Really? Where's the fun in a group marching in lockstep against the BBEG? Ethical dilemmas and friendly intraparty squabbling can make for GREAT games. I can't even imagine letting it spill over into OOC relationships; why on earth would anyone do that?

Good grief, one of the most fun adventures I've ever played is where I colluded with the GM to have my gnomish thief/illusionist play a colossal, elaborate practical joke on the party, involving several high-level councilors to the king, who was visiting our baronetcy. The whole adventure was the joke; the BBEG was an illusion.

Another hugely fun adventure involved one of the players deciding to have his character actually *give in* to the whisperings of the evil tome in his backpack and betray the group in the clutch. As characters, to be sure, we wanted his head on a pike! But as players, we had a blast! Memorable quote: "Kill him, save the world... kill him, save the world... I'm THINKING, dammit!" Why would anyone have hard feelings over such a thing? It made the game at least twice as interesting, and we still talk about it fondly 15 years later.

My best friend and I often establish something our characters *argue* about IC. And our DM very often creates NPC's to adventure with the party who are bound to get under a certain character's skin. It's fun!

The actual action, while important at the time, is one of the things I remember least from sessions past. There are campaigns from years ago where I couldn't tell you anything about how the fights went (clever plans to avoid fights, more), but I can tell you all about the cool exchange of words between my character and the villain amidst the fray, or the heartbreak of having to kill an innocent child warped into a monster, or the fun dispute between two characters (in a modern superhero game) about whether magic exists or not - when the guy who denies it is a telepath and the guy who affirms it is a wizard.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Some of my best gaming has been with Inter-Party conflicts, we also set things up between the DM and the player to help run it smoothly.

Two examples are:

A Beguiler character had stolen a sentient-skull from a powerful mage in Sigil (try and guess who ) and is now on the run through the planes when she winded up with the party. The party doesn't know it but she is simply using them so when he does come after her, she can use them to slow him down.

Another example was between my Tiefling Swashbuckler who had a extreme distaste for Paladins of Tyr because of some corrupt ones, and there was a Paladin of Tyr in the party. Essentially the conflict between the two of them was a background noise that persisted throughout the campaign, ranging from serious and almost to taking blood to amusing and funny (I would love to dump all my gear on his mount, and make him walk with the rest of us).

 

[Agamon]

(Also, I've later had serious in-game alignment arguments over whether or not LG alignment requires one to spare the children of a monstrous race as innocents or to kill them as inevitably evil beings. None of it spilled over in the real life. It just depends on the maturity of the players.)

You had me until the alignment argument. Even IC, the thought makes my left eye twitch...

 

[SSquirrel]

Heck look at classic D&D novels. How many of them have parties who get along like the Brady Bunch? None of em, b/c that is boring as can be.

Dragonlance you have Raistlin who no one trusts but is smarter than everyone, Riverwind who has trouble trusting anyone not a Plainsman, Flint and Sturm..pretty much no one gets along well, yet they worked together and got things done.

Forgotten Realms, I'll use the Avatar Trilogy. Kelemvor is a pure mercenary and b/c of his curse has to be paid for everything he does, no one really likes Adon, but Midnight ends up defending him, and Cyric obviously follows his instincts and becomes a very bad man.

I had a bloodthirsty halfling rogue as part of our group once. He was out for himself first and his group somewhere down the line. He loved cutting off trophies from his kills and I believe when he killed an ogre by himself (it was dark and he never saw one of our party members shoot it w/a crossbow first, and he could be a bit delusional) I believe the phrase "bathe in the blood" got used and he was painting it all over himself. The party didn't really like him, but he had useful skills and got the job done.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Depends on the campaign tone. I'd like the game to support "Knee deep in dead orcs? Is that all? Send more orcs!" and "Oh, woe betide the sorry fate that causes us to kill, lest we be killed! Curse you, cruel gods of dire necessity!"

What does alignment have to do with this? I got the same thing in a homebrew sci-fi game I played in a couple of years back. It's just characterization.