Did You Ever Have a Group Disintegrate and Start Killing Each Other?

[SpiderMonkey]

Seems like that happened quite a bit way back in high school. Since then, it's only happened in one shots where it was intended as the finale (lots of fun), or when the game is going poorly/boring. Then it ends with attack rolls, cackling, and lots of facetious "NOOOOOOOs!!!!" Good times.

 

[(un)reason]

Oh, yes, very much so. (warning, longthread is long) Mind you, this was sorta intentional on my part, as I was actively encouraging interparty tensions. It's fun while it lasts but once the conflict's over, keeping the game going requires considerable ingenuity.

 

[Jack99]

I do not think we have had a full-blown party fight, usually it was always one against the rest, and after the character was dead, the player could make a new character for a more cohesive party.

The funniest episode though, was when the rogue and the wizard convinced a whole community that the paladin in the party was in reality a demon-worshipper, a rapist and sadist in disguise, and we ended up with having a witch-hunt (led by the rogue and the wizard) for the paladin, through the city, which ended with the paladin hiding in the sewers until the others found a way to flood them, and thus flushing him out to the angry citizens.

They burned him at the stake.

Good times. 15 years later, we still laugh about it when we get drunk and tell funny D&D stories.

 

[Jhaelen]

Well, it happened fairly regularly back in the nineties when we were still in school. I thought we'd been over this phase but pretty recently it (almost) happened again in D&D 3E. What caused it was that one of the pcs tried to fullfill the requirement for the second ritual of one of the Items of Legacy, the Mindsplinter.

After failing to kill the high priest of the local Pelor temple the pc turned against the rest of the party and after managing to kill two of them was forced to flee and subsequently turned into an npc.

Unfortunately, it looks as if the players are still bearing a grudge...

 

[S. Baldrick]

Yes. It was the Village of Hommlet.

Reason: About half the party was good (four of us) , the other half evil (Three players and 2 NPCs). The ring leader of the evil PCs was my friend Danny was playing a NE cleric/thief that eventually sided with the cultists in the Moat House and he nearly got the rest of us killed. This lead up the finally battle where the only survivors were my archer/ranger and my friend Brad's ranger who had been blinded by the main bad guy cleric and who had had his throat shot out by a critical hit. It was a blood bath but the good guys (at least those with good alignments) won.

We were playing 1st Edition AD&D but someone (much to the determent of the game in my opinion. As if the game wasn't deadly enough.), had brought in a critical hit list that we used. Kind of fitting that it was Brad's character that got his throat shot out since I'm pretty sure it was Brad's idea to use the list. Anyway, I just remember that my archer/ranger finally took out Danny's cleric (who had been healed a ridiculous amount of times) with a critical hit that pierced his heart and killed him instantly. I just remember getting up from my chair and leaning across the table and saying "Get outta that one @#$%^&!" This was bad because everyone involved were friends but I still REJOICED at finally doing in Danny's thief/cleric, just for the fact that he had stolen all of my archer/ranger's stuff.


Although it was 25 years ago, I still swear up and down that the DM was helping Danny and was totally biased against the rest of us. Not that I am bitter or anything....I mean at least my side one.

 

[Halivar]

Ah, I forgot one. Once a party-mate tried to kill me during the very first fight of a game. We were level one. The evil cleric was being played by the guy who's characters were killed every other session by party members (but never me; I refuse to do that garbage). So, he decided to take out his frustration on... me? Don't know why.

First initiative, he goes first. He casts inflict wounds on my barbarian, out of nowhere. He maxes out the damage. I still have over half my hit-points. I go next. I power-attack with my greatsword. Splat goes the cleric. He packed his stuff and went home.

Now everyone in the party has killed one of his characters at least once.

 

[billd91]

In Call of Cthulhu, the Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign, the party became trapped in an area with a gateway and had a brief encounter with Nyarlathotep himself. Our guide, a young boy, blew his Sanity roll and ran off... into the gate. The big game hunter PC, the one with the elephant gun (very useful those), took off after him. Two other players, in the confusion of the various San losses, misunderstood what he was doing (they thought he pursued to kill the boy) and tried to stop the hunter by opening fire with their pistols. In the flurry of gunfire that ensued, with plenty of people firing back and forth at each other, no fewer than 5 PCs were dead on the floor. The three of us who survived, found a way out of the chamber we were trapped in and recruited new helpers in our efforts to stop the wicked machinations of the Black Pharoah.

So, the party didn't break up, per se. Rather, it spontaneously erupted in a mystifying, panicky purge. There are reasons you just don't allow yourself to become too attached to CoC character...

 

[Oni]

We had the party disintegrate, though the player group was solid as ever.

Basically, in a campaign where we had all avowed that we'd all play characters neutral on the Good-Evil axis, a couple decided to slip in some Evil. A couple others decided to slip in some Good.

There was one gnome on each side of this divide (well one svirfneblin, and one surface gnome). Out of respect for gnomishness, they chose not to go after each other. They each had a "champion" (the champions were not aware of their role in all this), and the gnomes began pranking each other's champion.

As you can guess, things eventually got out of hand. Only the two gnomes survived. And neither one of them ever did anything actually lethal. We then went on to another campaign, having agreed that the evil thing wasn't so grand for us.

While this may not have worked out well for your group, idea of two gnomes trying to outprank each other and the party caught between them is fantastic. I bet you could do a whole adventure based around this idea, the gnomes of course would have to be NPC's.