Do you allow murder within the party?

[phindar]

So, the moral of the the story is "Don't be evil or heroes will murder you in your sleep"?

Good to know.

 

[Griffith Dragonlake]

Hence some DMs not allowing it. Yes, a player character can do anything. If the player character's action seem likely to end the campaign and perhaps screw up the dynamics of the group, saying "woo hoo, everything's possible!" seems like a good idea once.

My exact experience. When I was in High School I allowed my players to murder each other. Since then I've realized that it hurts the game more than it helps. Players have to resolve their conflicts out of game and not use their characters as surrogates. Having said that, I have no problem with 1-shot Evil games where everyone might and probably will turn on each other. But with regular games there is an implicit understanding that everyone is here to kill monsters, take their stuff, and go up levels. Which is also why I do not allow Evil PCs.

Game time is short and precious. Suffer not fools.

 

[was]

every once in a while

 

[Treacherous_B]

To be honest if a DM ever tried to prevent me from PKing a fellow party member it would probably be the last time I played under them.

It all boils down to the play group, and how well each individual understands the concept of character motivation. If I'm playing a Paladin and a party member decides for a lark to throw a fireball into an orphanage, I'm not going to have my character politely ask they leave the party just because they've got the "PC glow" - I'm going to mete out justice the way I would with any other evil character, with the end of my sword. Sometimes personal character motivation outweighs the need/desire to "not be a jerk" by killing somebody else's character off.

Of course with anything it's a matter of circumstance. If I catch the party thief trying to lift some coinage off my belt I'm probably not going to go for the throat. That's what subdual damage is for

 

[Li Shenron]

In fact, the two players seem to be pretty good friends, and had no hard feelings afterwards.

I never allow in-party conflict, including betrayal, murder and theft.

But your line above shows that it was perfectly fine for your group.

 

[S'mon]

"Allow"? As a dm, it is NOT my job to tell the players how to play their characters.

Pretty much my approach - I 'allow' it, but I also don't force players to accept another player's PC into the group. Basically, the PC-homicidal player needs to ensure the other players are ok with it, or the player could be tagged as disruptive and end up being kicked out of the game group. What happens in practice is that would-be disruptive players move on pretty quick & we haven't had a problem.

I would say that in Cthulu or Paranoia this is much more likely to be acceptable than in D&D.

 

[William drake]

Why would you allow it?

Unless the game is bent on the players killing one another, as in an all evil party where everyone is trying to become the most powerful and take over the area: like a mob kind of game.

I did that, I ran an evil game where all the players had to work together, and, at the same time, look for a way to take each other out. Everyone knew it, and it was fun that way...I was the medium, I knew all the behind the scenes actions (there was alot of secret notes) and the players had to put outside knowledge away, (but they were good players so it wasn't hard) and at the end of the game, while it was fun, most didn't want to play it again. It was more or less..." lets play an all evil party" kind of thing, once over, it was done.

But, in a game, player's shouldn't be allowed to kill one another, that just opens to many doors to bad blood, and out of game drama. As the DM I think you should step in. Its a game, you can stop the game, or end it completly if you have to so that the players GROW UP and decided that it shouldn't be done. Also, if killing that player is the only option, then your a bad DM...if that player is a bad gamer, messes with peoplel, or other such things, then he should be made to leave. ANd once gone, the story moves on without him.


Also, yes, a player may get it in mind that he could slip a knife into another player, but then I'd think most players would be like "what the hell are you doing? why would u want to do that?" I think the other players would step up and convince him that what he was doing was stupid and childish.

The DM is there to keep these "out of place reactions" out of the game.
Just cause a player could do it, doesn't mean he would, and just cause he could come up with a valid reason, doesn't mean it would really happen. I think you have to look at the real reason why there PK's, most arn't for story reasons, or because "thats what my charcter would do" reasons.

Game ON

 

[prosfilaes]

In one of our local games, the kender decided to have some fun by projecting illusions of the Princess/wizard naked dancing on the tables at the local pub. When the Princess--self-centered and arrogant before her alignment got magically changed to CN--heard of this she charged into the inn. The player says that she knew then exactly what her character would have done--she would have killed the kender. For party unity, she didn't, and instead had a big fight that managed to keep the party together. In retrospect, the player regrets that; the rest of the campaign never quite worked right, because that moment had rung so false.

 

[EyeontheMountain]

Nope. I don't run that kind of game. If the palyer wants to playthat kind of gmae, i wish them luck and then kick them off my list.

 

[Herobizkit]

Last night we started a new d20 Call of Cthulu campaign(...)

As a general rule, don't the words "Call of Cthulu" all put together like that pretty much means all bets are off? I mean, everyone's going to end up insane anyway, so why would it shock the DM that intra-party murder is going to happen?

IME, players only turn on each other when they're too bored with the story.