Forked Thread: Dealing with sociopathic PCs (Was: Stop being so paranoid)

[Jürgen Hubert]

Let me sum up...

You start by introducing a situation where players are roleplaying murderous slayers. You then propose to teach them a lesson by a long campaign of greater and greater negative consequences mostly based on the idea that a game of murderous slayers isn't what you want the players to be.

I prefer to think of it as showing them that playing murderous slayers is limiting themselves as role-players. If they are only rewarded for looting and killing, then what's what they will continue to do.

But this way will teach them that other, less tangible rewards matter as well.

Rather than any out of game discussion, you instead propose session after session of degrading circumstances where the PC's ultimately perish in darkness--perhaps even shedding a tear as they bitterly crumple their character sheets.

Not they perish in darkness - the world. The player characters become darkness unless they choose to pursue another path.

But walking the path of darkness was their choice, too...

But the players are ultimately grateful for the life lesson you have taught them.

Not life lesson - gaming lesson. They've learned that the actions of their PCs matter for more than their character sheets.

While this may work out well in a church fable... I don't think this has anything to do with teaching good roleplay. Roleplay is just taking on a persona to act out in a game... there is no implied "goodness" to the role. Some murderous slayers are facinating characters.

But even that takes good role-playing. Players such as I have described haven't advanced this far.

But hey... fight the good fight... teach all the life lessons you think need to be taught. I'm sure someone goes for the "slow decent in to darkness" campaign. I'll be taking the faster route to the happy game, thanks.

Telling them how to role-play is not as effective as showing them. Which is what this plan is intended to accomplish.

 

[catsclaw227]

I think its just much easier to start out saying to the group what kind of game you want to DM, establish the social contract, and let them know that if they want to play evil, their characters may end up dying to Good NPCs early on in the campaign.

Out of game conversations are much better, in my opinion. I don't want to waste 12-18 months of my precious and infrequent gaming time, as a DM, to teach players lessons about gaming. I want to game.

 

[roguerouge]

Not all entertainments are created equal. Heroin's quite entertaining, for a while. Mocking other people and pulling malicious practical jokes meant to embarrass is quite entertaining. Frying ants with a magnifying glass is also entertaining. Simply laughing AT people can be fun. Fantasies of revenge can be quite sweet.

Some entertainments are good for you, some are not. Doing these things once may not cause much harm at all and may even be good for you. But repeated many times over a long period, such things can erode your social skills and can erode your empathy.

Once that happens and people start to avoid you, well, all you have are your malicious sense of humor and fantasies of power and revenge. So you get even more into them. It's a vicious circle, a feedback loop.

Oh, and one other thing... whether or not the DM has the genre conversation with the players, surely the DM knows whether or not there should be a big honkin' E on the player's character sheet. If he didn't explicitly sign on for an evils campaign, and all of a sudden he is in one... he certainly is in his rights to cry "foul."

The DM should talk with the offending player, once. Listen. State your case. Be firm and clear. After that, if there is a second violation of the implicit social contract, then the DM or the player should leave. Because a sociopath is not going to change.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

a) DMs should be out to kill PCs (from another thread)
b) PvP is to be encouraged?
<Snip>
...but it looks like your sig says something like "true vengence knows no boundaries" or something like that.

If doing those things amuses you, then do them and don't worry about protests or whiny players. And I don't speak latin either but that's what I'm going for.

 

[catsclaw227]

If doing those things amuses you, then do them and don't worry about protests or whiny players. And I don't speak latin either but that's what I'm going for.

I didn't say that I want to do them, nor that it amuses me. I am asking if this is generally YOUR gaming philosophy.

I asked if you were serious about your contentions that:

a) DMs should be out to kill PCs (from another thread)
b) PvP is to be encouraged?

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I think its just much easier to start out saying to the group what kind of game you want to DM, establish the social contract,

You first have to get them to understand why a social contract is needed in the first place. Like I said, I'm assuming that these are either newbies or other people who simply haven't had any real experience with good role-playing.

For example, if they derive their knowledge of RPGs from computer RPGs, they might stick to such behavior because it works and has few consequences in them.

and let them know that if they want to play evil, their characters may end up dying to Good NPCs early on in the campaign.

The same way they may end up dying at the hands of Evil NPCs early on in the campaign if they want to play Good?

Out of game conversations are much better, in my opinion. I don't want to waste 12-18 months of my precious and infrequent gaming time, as a DM, to teach players lessons about gaming. I want to game.

Why should the two be mutually exclusive?

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Well,. player's character in my Dark Sun campaign was a gladiator...
Total bloody psychopath!

He was told to kill 1 npc in an inn in Tyr in oen adventure (it's Dark Sun, assassination is a way of life )...so he poisoned EVERYONE in the inn, when that didn't work fast enough, he set fire ot the place, chopped up and killed everyone as they tried to escape.
Why? 'Cause he couldn't work out who was the target!

After that, the PCs were driven off Athas, anyway, long story but he asa a complete mass murdering monster, folk were **** scared of him!

And in Sigil, when they got attacked by mind flayers, hunting his companion's brain (an uber intelligent Athasian wizard/cleric, best food, EVAH, for illithids!)
What did they do when the capture squad threw up harmless walls of fog in the street to hide the abduction?
The wizard/cleric cast Fireball and Blade Barrier into the fog, just in case someone was there!...slaughtering 63 innocent (well, innocent of abduction anyway) denizens of Sigil!
They barely avoided getting "caged" for that by breasking out of the Mercykillers gaol (in another blood bath), and had to avoid Sigil ever after.

But...in the end he met up with the titan, son of Haephestus, whom they'd met in the Abyss and PO'd off big time...he'd finally caught up with them.
In my campaigns, titans are *Greek Titans* 50' tall, god-like SOBs.

Knowing he was gonna be scragged, even as good as he was, the evil god of slaughter in my campaigns, whom the psycho gladiator had had some odd encounters with...hint hint...offered to help him...by letting him be his avatar!

So, player agress ot this...and powered by the god, he beats the titan (still nasty fight though).

And the god takes him over! "Your character is now an NPC under the control of an evil god of slaughter, sorry!"

Player was mad, saying "The god had said he wouldn't take him over completely!"

I pointed out the god was:
a) Neutral/chaoticEvil, Treacherous, WTH did he expect! He should have picked the clues I kept dropping about where his conduct was gonna lead to.

b) Sure, he'd get a break once in a while. Once in a while...his character was now a murderous, immortal killing machine, which is exaclty what he said he wanted ot be! So he'd be very happy.

he got his wish, tough luck! lol.

 

[el-remmen]

Since I am a firm believer in following through with the consequences of PC actions, both intended and unintended, I let the players know ahead of time that this is way the game will be run - so good or evil, no act goes unpunished in some way or another in my games - just because every possibility is not always apparent to those involved.

This doesn't mean that the PCs don't get to "win" sometimes - it is just that "winning" is in a larger context. Thus, for example, the PCs can "succeed" at an adventure by stopping the evil wizard's plot and putting out the fire he started that threatened to engulf the whole town, but there is still the issue of all the refugees from the area that did burn, the subsequent food shortages, need for shelter and conflicts between the town guard and looters to deal with. . .

 

[LostSoul]

To me, the blog post suggested what I would, if I were a player in that game, consider railroading.

How else are they to learn the fundamentals of good role-playing? If nobody teaches them how to do it, then how will they know what role-playing is all about?

Good role-playing isn't hard to teach. "Play your character - what would he do? And don't be a dick about it." That's about all you need.

Teaching them that bad things will happen if they don't deal with NPCs in the way the DM wants them to is going to produce players who don't play their characters - they'll wait to see what the DM wants them to do, and then do it.

I would deal with sociopathic PCs just like I'd deal with heroic PCs: find out what they want and make them work for it. No moral judgements, no teaching lessons to make people better roleplayers, just playing the world as a source of adversity.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

To me, the blog post suggested what I would, if I were a player in that game, consider railroading.

How is this railroading? The PCs are completely free to act as they want, and their actions can have a dramatical impact on the world.