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

[Jürgen Hubert]

Forked from: Stop being so paranoid

Over in the other thread, it was discussed how to deal with sociopathic player characters - the kind of characters who see the world around them as nothing more than a source of XPs and loot, regardless of whether their activities would be considered ethical.

I've expanded my thoughts on the issue and posted them to my blog here. But I am wondering how other people would deal with such issues.

 

[frankthedm]

Give them what they [think they] want. If the group revels in Murder and Mayhem, let them and slowly direct their rampages at things the players would never want to. Take the violence and gruesomeness over the top to the point where the players start to sicken of it. Or if you run out of orphanages in your campaign setting, round up a copy of oWoD Werewolf: the Apocalypse & Freak Legion and have a jolly time of playing a depraved monster on the way to a potentially literal meltdown.

 

[WayneLigon]

If you have people that determined to play sociopaths, then I think you can skip pretty much everything in the blog entry and go straight to the last line.

Pretty much by definition, your loves-to-play-sociopaths players won't care one whit - in fact, once it's revealed to them that they are the ultimate destoyers of the world, they'll look on that as the ultimate vindication they've been looking for. They'll look on that status as a prize to be talked about for years afterwards: 'Yeah, we totally trashed this one guy's world. We walked all over it and at the end we found out we'd ushered in a new dark age. Very cool'. They got to be bad-ass all the way up until the end.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Its a table issue, not a game issue.

If the group playing the game is ok with the situation, and the DM does not mind running such a game, than it is a non issue.

When it does become an issue, there are a few possible reasons.

1) Adventure derailment: The sociopathic tendencies of the player or group end up causing the player to disregard the adventure hook or act contrary to it. This problem is huge if the adventure is a published module. If the villagers need help but the players seem hellbent on on robbing them, it is pretty damn hard to get things back into line in game.

2) Party conflict: If you have John the murderous madman who likes stabbing everything in sight in the same party as Samuel the Pious Paladin, your going to have issues. They may end up trying to kill one another at the start of the game, which is bad. Or possibly worse for the sanity of the DM, they may get along perfectly with one another.

The solution in either case is to talk to the offending players and see if you can get them to lay off of it. If that fails, you may want to have someone else run the game, play something else entirely, or remove the player from the group.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

I tend to kill them.

 

[Umbran]

Well, I think you start out with a slightly flawed premise - that there's a way the PCs are "supposed" to deal with NPCs, and the world around them. The implication is that they are doing it wrong, and your intended way was right.

I saw no mention of a prior agreement with the players on the game themes. Regardless of what the rulebooks might say - if you had not all explicitly agreed beforehand that they were supposed to be heroes, then they are under no obligation to play such, and doing what you prescribe here is being a bit of a jerk.

I'm guessing that's not what you meant, though. So, I will assume that the missing part here is that you specifically billed the game as heroic adventure, and that they are violating the genre they originally agreed to.

At which point, I have to rather strongly disagree with you - "slowly screw with the players to teach them a lesson" is not a good plan. When there's a problem, talk to the players.

If and only if they continue to claim they know they are supposed to be heroes, but have the characters continue to behaving in unheroic fashion, is there any teaching to be done.

Then, I still have to disagree with you. Behavior is altered by rewarding desired behavior, and providing disincentive to undesired behavior. If they know they're supposed to be heroes, but aren't playing that way, making them the powerful villains of the piece is not a disincentive.

Honestly, if they jerk me around like that and lie to me about their intentions, I'm apt to just pack up my books and go home. I don't have time for players who lie to me, and having the game fold up is a disincentive.

If I were feeling a bit more poetic, I'd use somethign similar to your method, but without any of the implied glory of doom, and being the big villain of the piece. If the players continue to violate the genre they agree to, they lose.

That means they don't get the power and glory and fun. That means the Good Guys are on their tails, and the BBEG that I originally intended for the campaign wins. They end up dead, or poor, powerless, and friendless in a world that's been handed to someone else.

Then, I explain to them that if they want to play villains, or just kill things and take their stuff, I'm open to that kind of gaming - but not if they lie to me.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

Over in the other thread, it was discussed how to deal with sociopathic player characters...

Hell, Jürgen, isn’t that the point of the game? Take everything you can, kill everything you can and in so doing, grow more powerful. Anything else is missing the fundamental essence, even the point, of the game. Zero-Sum-Gain standards for success, with you in one corner and the rest of creation in the other.

 

[Masada]

This set up does beg the question... Who is the game for? The DM or the players? The answer is of course, both. The DM has special veto power though. No one could ask a friend to DM a game they hated. The DM would just quit and then there's no game at all.

So... rather than engage in a looong moral lesson as described in your blog. Just make the Timout handsign with the group and say, "Hey, I don't want to ref a game of murdering cut throats." Draw straws and have someone else ref and you can roll a murderous cut throat of your own.

I see tons of DM's trying to convince their players how to "play right" through subtle (or unsubtle) game events. Don't waste the time, get it out in the open quickly and then refocus on the game you want to play. I don't know about y'all but a lot of the gamers I know would not notice subtle unless it was tied to a brick, hurled thru the window smacking them in the face and then had it read to them aloud. Save the clever DM'ing for stuff you want to play.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Well, I think you start out with a slightly flawed premise - that there's a way the PCs are "supposed" to deal with NPCs, and the world around them. The implication is that they are doing it wrong, and your intended way was right.

No, the implication is that their way is no fun for the DM.

If they want the DM to be an encounter generator only, they might as well play an MMORPG. If the DM actually enjoys that kind of style, then more luck to him, but my essay was explicitly written for those DMs who would get frustrated by that kind of style.

Hell, Jürgen, isn’t that the point of the game? Take everything you can, kill everything you can and in so doing, grow more powerful.

Not for me. Not for any other DM I know. Sure, combats are a vital part of a D&D campaign - but they aren't the only part. Without role-playing, the whole thing becomes a rather tedious slug-fest.

Anything else is missing the fundamental essence, even the point, of the game. Zero-Sum-Gain standards for success, with you in one corner and the rest of creation in the other.

I must have missed the description of this "fundamental essence" in the DMG somehow. But feel free to give me the page reference.

 

[WayneLigon]

Hell, Jürgen, isn’t that the point of the game? Take everything you can, kill everything you can and in so doing, grow more powerful. Anything else is missing the fundamental essence, even the point, of the game. Zero-Sum-Gain standards for success, with you in one corner and the rest of creation in the other.

That same attitude got you banned from another thread. I'm not exactly sure what you're on about all of a sudden, but it's obviously not the point of the game except perhaps in the hands of 10-year-olds. You have a gaming group implode over this very issue, or something?