Other than in junior high and high school, I rarely have encountered players that do this type of stuff. Of the two that I have encountered in recent years, one was kicked out by one of the other DMs shortly after I rejoined the group while the other player reluctantly allows his characters to be kept in check by the other pcs.
Does Your Group Abuse NPCs?
- Thread starter Numion
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frankthedm
First Post
I am lucky in this regard. The person who hosts my gaming group has a Merciful death to the wicked pesuasion and has PCs who would would swiftly kill those who started doing things like this, saving me a lot of time if others in the group tried for this type of play.
kigmatzomat
Legend
I'm going to use my new catch phrase:
Immature players are the entire party's responsibility to either eject or induce maturity.
I'm all for kinetically maturing people. I've seen people that need to be matured right upside the head.
Immature players are the entire party's responsibility to either eject or induce maturity.
I'm all for kinetically maturing people. I've seen people that need to be matured right upside the head.
ruleslawyer
Registered User
In D&D? Never, not even in games that I played in when I was eight years old.
Treating people with respect and decency was always considered part of being a good-aligned adventurer in the games I encountered. Even the one evil-aligned game that I DM-ed didn't feature real NPC abuse, since a) the principal NPCs involved were on par with the PCs in power and b) the PCs were too busy fighting each other.
In other genres? Oh yeah; Paranoia being, of course, the worst.
Treating people with respect and decency was always considered part of being a good-aligned adventurer in the games I encountered. Even the one evil-aligned game that I DM-ed didn't feature real NPC abuse, since a) the principal NPCs involved were on par with the PCs in power and b) the PCs were too busy fighting each other.
In other genres? Oh yeah; Paranoia being, of course, the worst.
frankthedm
First Post
Sometimes it is immaturity, other times it is stress relief and sometimes folks are just plain sickos who want to avoid jail-time.kigmatzomat said:
Myself, I like playing characters whose seem heroically eccentric, but if my goals are pursued to the utmost, they involve summoning and bargaining with Alien horrors from other dimensions that would and could consume the multiverse if given a chance to do so. Murdering helpless townsfolk is not my bag, but my end goals risk bringing about doomsday situations.
Our host would likely kill such a fellow PC character at soonest opportunity once he realized the caster was willing to have anything to do with the far realm. He’d probably CDG the party’s Frenzied Berserker once the threat to the rest of the party was shown.
Hypersmurf
Moderatarrrrh...
Nomad4life said:
I was trained out of attacking shopkeepers by Nethack.
You miss Asidonhopo. Asidonhopo gets angry! -- more --
Asidonhopo hits! Asidonhopo hits! Asidonhopo hits! -- more --
Asidonhopo hits! You die...
-Hyp.
SpiderMonkey
Explorer
My group is generally great with NPCs, whether I'm DMing or playing. However, one player with a mischievous streak and a short attention span sometimes just does stuff for the heck of it. The party usually sorts this out themselves. Example:
In a recent Ravenloft game, our group was trying to spring a prisoner from a tower in the middle of a town. The region was known for having a reaving Red Dragon, so we waited until night, tossed a bunch of alchemist fire jugs on stone buildings and had a summoned griffon let its silhouette be seen against the night sky. The guards distracted we retreived the prisoner and headed out of town, lobbing alchemist fire at more stone buildings. As we were a generally (except for the one player) good-aligned group, we made sure no one would throw any on anything actually flammable or hurt any people.
Our deviant, naturally tried lobbing some at some fleeing innocents, which my cleric of Odin healed. My cleric is pretty...hardcore...let's say, when it comes to morality. He had already set himself on fire to buy the party time to flee from some swarms and so felt he had earned the right to do the following:
That night at camp my cleric woke Deviantboy up by dashing a jug of alchemist fire on him. As DB woke, my cleric basically said, "As you have put others to the flame, so does this flame judge you. Survive, and you may continue to live." Luckily, I won the initiative and readied an action; if he acted hostile, he was gonna catch a Hold Person. Probably needless to say, one Hold Person and a coup de grace later, we had one less impulsive tard in the group. Harsh? Maybe. But, strangely enough, the other players didn't have a problem with it at all.
In a recent Ravenloft game, our group was trying to spring a prisoner from a tower in the middle of a town. The region was known for having a reaving Red Dragon, so we waited until night, tossed a bunch of alchemist fire jugs on stone buildings and had a summoned griffon let its silhouette be seen against the night sky. The guards distracted we retreived the prisoner and headed out of town, lobbing alchemist fire at more stone buildings. As we were a generally (except for the one player) good-aligned group, we made sure no one would throw any on anything actually flammable or hurt any people.
Our deviant, naturally tried lobbing some at some fleeing innocents, which my cleric of Odin healed. My cleric is pretty...hardcore...let's say, when it comes to morality. He had already set himself on fire to buy the party time to flee from some swarms and so felt he had earned the right to do the following:
That night at camp my cleric woke Deviantboy up by dashing a jug of alchemist fire on him. As DB woke, my cleric basically said, "As you have put others to the flame, so does this flame judge you. Survive, and you may continue to live." Luckily, I won the initiative and readied an action; if he acted hostile, he was gonna catch a Hold Person. Probably needless to say, one Hold Person and a coup de grace later, we had one less impulsive tard in the group. Harsh? Maybe. But, strangely enough, the other players didn't have a problem with it at all.
arscott
First Post
My players aren't always the nicest to NPCs. In fact one of them (a reptilian mutant) threatened to eat an enemy agent and then exposed him to an incurable disease when that didn't work.
Still, it's to be expected. Hoffmann Institute agents aren't the good guys because they won't kidnap your insane psychic birth-mother from the wreckage of a smoking vehicle, putting you in the driver's seat to take the blame. They're the goodguys because they didn't 'disappear' your dad, your stepmom, and your baby sister in the process.
Still, it's to be expected. Hoffmann Institute agents aren't the good guys because they won't kidnap your insane psychic birth-mother from the wreckage of a smoking vehicle, putting you in the driver's seat to take the blame. They're the goodguys because they didn't 'disappear' your dad, your stepmom, and your baby sister in the process.
Ridley's Cohort
First Post
We are too nice to the NPCs.
Abraxas
Explorer
It has been my experience that players who abuse NPCs have been trained to do that by former DMs. When every NPC is a jackass, when every NPC backstabs the PCs, when every NPC triple charges for goods/services even after the PCs save the town because its the heroic thing to do, the players tend to get a bit adversarial with them.
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