Do you allow murder within the party?

[green slime]

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.

Or the story places them in direct conflict with one another... or their characters cannot agree on a series of major issues and finally things come to a head and they decide to sort things out by duelling to the death (with of course a garantee to ressurect the loser, and/or other commiserations)... or one of the player's characters commits some horrible deed to a valued NPC (for whatever reason, consider real world murders: slights against family honour, wives commiting adultry, insurance fraud, arguments over inheritance issues, ...),

Boredom may or may not be an issue. If it is, then the campaign definitely has other problems.

 

[DragonLancer]

One of the few house rules at my game is that you never attack or kill another PC without specific cause (dominated into doing it for an example).

 

[Kahuna Burger]

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.

This is why, while I don't allow PVP, I also don't impose this rule in a vaccum. The best response from my perspective, would be when the kender player declared this intention, to have the princess player say "if my PC finds out about this, her natural inclination is going to be to kill the kender or at the least have him expelled from the group." At which point, I as the DM (who agrees with the assessment) say to the kender player, "Dial it down."

I have been in too many games where one player's idea of roleplaying and "playing my character" forced the other players to metagame and not play their characters or have the adventuring party self destruct. My first two rules are "I expect you to play your character" and "I expect you to come up with a character which you can play without ruining the fun of other players or stopping them from playing their characters." PVP is outlawed in my games, but by the same token so is behaviour which provokes it. New PCs will be integrated into the party, but a new PC should be designed for easy integration. Its a fine balance of everyone metagaming a little so that no one feels put upon by the necessity to metagame completely or be the bad guy.

 

[Holy Bovine]

No. Never.

 

[billd91]

I am part of this game in question, I, the player, witnessed the heinous murder unfold. My response; I hung my head in exasperation. My main objection to the pc death would be in my estimation that punishment for the theft of $10 did not warrant multiple stabbings. A savage beating, perhaps, but since the character got a –4 to strike with fists and he couldn’t administer the beat down…he chose to go with the knife he was proficient in, and thus we have a dead lil’ person.

San Francisco in the 1920s. Two characters on the fringe of society. One gets knifed for being a thief. No surprises here. I wouldn't even expect much of an investigation by the cops either unless it was done on the nice side of town.

What surprises me in the carny trying to steal the money in the first place. When I mentioned the unspoken social contract at my tables, stealing from the party in any significant way and running (and pickpocketing $10 in the 1920s counts as significant) breaks that contract and opens the door to retaliation.

Trying the pickpocket the money, failing, and then talking your way out of it would have been a better option ("Oh, you got me. Relax, I'm just joshin' ya. Gotta keep the skills good when I really do need 'em, y'know."). Running implies he really DID want to take the money.

 

[ValhallaGH]

Players are never allowed to kill players, at my gaming table.

Player Character are allowed to kill player characters, themselves or others.

 

[Wombat]

There are no specific rules against it in most of my campaigns, but it has only happened twice in 30+ years of gaming.

 

[MonsterMash]

Rare in anything except Paranoia, though in WFRP or CoC it might happen, but very very rare in D&D or similar types of game.

 

[DonTadow]

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

This is where I rule that player interaction is ok in the spirit of role playing. but incidents like this are rare. Most people abuse it to seek out whatever vendetta they have (you took the last slice of pizza).

 

[danzig138]

Always

The closest I come to telling someone "No, you can't kill Bob's character" is "Are you sure you want to do that right now? Maybe you should wait until after you get away from the cops?"

Otherwise, I tend to allow the characters all the freedom people have - if they want to go kill random strangers, molest doggies, or kill each other, it's all good with me. They know that if they aren't incredibly careful, there will be consequences. The final choice is theirs.

And many a time have they taken the option to kill each other. Sometimes over money, sometimes over pride, a couple of times because they looked at each other wrong.