Group Dynamics and the Chaotic Neutral Bard ...

[Merovigan]

Greetings! I'm new here, just created this account today so that I could ask this one question. It's a description of a problem more than a question, I guess.

I was playing a character who was Chaotic Neutral. We were assigned to retrieve an orb for a General we had just met. There was a war on and this orb would allow the General to control some more troops who would be able to turn the tide of the war. Long story short, we finally get up to the tower holding it, and it's on the roof. There was a group of cultists chanting with a dragon on the other side of the area. He (dragon) hadn't noticed us.

My group began attacking the cultists but, I couldn't really tell why. They hadn't attacked us and … well… there was a freaking dragon there! I knew the DM wouldn't let us really fight it. We were level 1, it was our first adventure together. The group began hacking at the cultists, one went after the orb (it was sitting out in the open) while I approached the dragon.

I asked my group to stop fighting long enough to hear him out and they refused. The dragon said he'd stop the fighting if we stopped but, they wouldn't so … he didn't. Helet the cultists keep fighting (defending themselves as my group hacked them to pieces) and wouldn't order his armies to stop attacking the town.

The dragon summoned a special dagger and a horn. He asked me to kill the General who had sent us and then blow the horn. This seemed a) easier than taking the orb against the will of the dragon and b) safer than letting the dragon beat us allto hell. Several members of the group went after the dragon at this point and during the melee I grabbed the items.

The cleric of the group tackled me on my way to them and we grappled for a while. The dragon eventually picked us both up and began flying back to where the General was. The dragon ordered me to kill the cleric, but I refused. At that point he transferred me from one of his paws to the other and flung the cleric towards the ground (a griffon caught him before he landed on the ground.) I felt bad about this but, meh, he shouldn't have tried to stop my character. The dragon dropped me off a short distance from the General and I blew the horn - I wanted to see what it did. All of the “badguys” stopped fighting and retreated. Then I killed the General ..and ran like hell away from his army.

When the adventure ended, I was sitting in a cave with a dragon (he had used magic to summon me after I killed the general) and the group had the orb.

So that's the adventure … back in reality; it was weird playing a character chaotic neutral like that. I didn't want to blindly do what I was ordered and I didn't want to go along with the group just because they had a desire to kill people. I don't know how the relationships can be mended at this point because they see me as “the traitorous bard” while I feel like I'm the one paying attention to the scenes. I can see us being in a situation again where the fighter and paladin are hacking, the cleric's healing, and I'm wondering “is there a way out of this that ends well for me?” I'm not sure how, or if, we can be a group in this way and I'm wondering if, next time, I should just shut off my mind and mindlessly hack away at every NPC who isn't trying to sell me something. Or do whatever “the good guy” says to do because, clearly, he can be trusted or he wouldn't be “the good guy.” I'm not really interested in playing that way but, it would have made me one of the group instead of an individual.

I'm kind of a newb at pen and paper RPGs, any help with the group dynamic involved here is much appreciated.

 

[Gilladian]

I think it would be nice if you, the DM, and the other players had a friendly chat about the expectations of the group and individuals within it. You might offer to retire your bard and bring in a slightly different character, but with the understanding that you're not interested in a hack-and-slash game of black and white good and evil. Then again, if everyone else in the group wants to play that way, then you may just not fit with this group very well. It does happen.

 

[Razjah]

I think it would be nice if you, the DM, and the other players had a friendly chat about the expectations of the group and individuals within it. You might offer to retire your bard and bring in a slightly different character, but with the understanding that you're not interested in a hack-and-slash game of black and white good and evil. Then again, if everyone else in the group wants to play that way, then you may just not fit with this group very well. It does happen.

I think this is some of the best advice in this situation and it is almost exactly what I would tell you. So, my advice is to follow Gilladian's advice. If that fails and you need to walk away, try Gamers Seeking Gamers here on EN World.

 

[the Jester]

Make a new character and be ready to lose the bard; the other pcs have no reason to ever let him adventure with them again.

 

[Li Shenron]

I'm kind of a newb at pen and paper RPGs, any help with the group dynamic involved here is much appreciated.

I don't think your group's story was bad at all, even tho their decisions didn't seem very appropriate.

The real bad side of it, is that it's really hard to continue playing when the party is split. I think the best thing to do now, is that you create a new PC to join the party, and let your Bard become an NPC. If you really want to play that Bard again, kindly ask the DM not to have him come back as an enemy, and maybe in the future you can still bring him back into the game as a PC.

Generally speaking, my advice is to always give precedence to the party's unity, even if it feels "appropriate" for a PC to go against the others. In a long-running campaign I played in 3e days, the DM summarized it pretty well in 3 rules: don't attack another PC, don't steal from another PC, don't betray another PC. Even if you're playing an "evil" campaign. Yes, you heard it right: even if you're in a game where all PCs are evil, don't do those things unless everybody agrees beforehand that they will accept whatever consequence, because 99% of the times the consequences will be that someone will lose their PC, or will be anyway out of the game.

 

[MarkB]

It's also worth mentioning that the Chaotic Neutral alignment has a certain notoriety as being chosen by players who want to be able to disrupt the party and basically do as they please. From your description, I don't for one moment think you were doing any such thing, but the fact is that simply playing a character of that alignment may prejudice some players against you. That may have contributed to their reluctance to go along with your suggestions.

It is better to stick with the party in most circumstances, but it can be frustrating if you're playing a character who wants to give others the benefit of the doubt and try to talk things out whilst others in the group tend to want to charge in headlong at the first opportunity. It's definitely a good idea to try and talk this out with the group, and see if you can persuade them to at least give the more diplomatic approach a chance every once in awhile.

 

[Janx]

Gilladian and others' advice is pretty much spot on for how to move on with the players and group.

As a post-analysis of the adventure, there's a whole lot of assumptions going on, as well as risky GMing.

As a player, you should never assume the GM who put that dragon in the scene isn't going to kill you with it just because you are first level. That's meta-gaming. It's also tactically risky, as you really don't know how ruthless this GM is.

On the GM's part, he should never had put a high level NPC in a direct conflict position with the players, UNLESS he expects to wipe you out with them. Note, I differentiate between you players going off to stupidly hunt and kill a dragon, from the GM putting a dragon in the next scene where you will directly discover he is opposed to the player's plans. That's just risky and nearly any outcome of him NOT killing you outright with it is blatant railroading to spare your lives because you're first level. He also may have power-level appropriateness issues if your first level PC then kills off the General, with little difficulty. That's just nuts. What kind of pansy was he. And why didn't the dragon do it himself.

This hits yet another aspect of crappy adventure design, convoluted plots to manipulate or confuse the players where they were doing just fine and taking action and getting stuff done. If the players are pursuing a goal (particularly one based on the content the GM supplied), then don't screw with that. it's hard enough getting players to follow a plot. Once you teach them that your plots are screwjobs, they will buck your plots every time.

Your fellow players got themselves into a hasty assumption rut, where they assumed the cultists were enemies, and just attacked them. They also didn't listen to you when you raised up concerns. They probably could have handled that better.

However, assuming the General was indeed a good guy and he needed the Orb, the party probably rightly deduced that people holding the Orb were bad guys. Why wait for the bad guys to attack first, you know they are bad guys, and look, there's a dragon, further proof they are bad guys. Your conversation with the Dragon where he asks you to kill the General is even further proof that the dragon and cultists are bad. So from the other player's perspective, you were confusing what was really a simple situation.

It didn't help that the dragon was present. As a high level bad guy, he should have eliminated you all. Though it also worked that he manipulated your bard to achieve his end goal. As a GM, anytime you put something that is over-kill, you force certain outcomes on your players. Had the encounter just been the cultists, as an even match, your group could try to fight them, parley, or sneak in. with the dragon present, the GM was going to win, or make it very railroady in order spare your lives so you all didn't die.

As a player, you stand in a tricky position. You clearly see situations differently than the other players, and the GM. If you read more into a situation than exists, or if the GM has logical inconsistencies, you may deduce something that conflicts with the group consensus and with GM expectation. Basically, this kind of thing will happen again.

I think part of it is on the GM, as he created the situation (probably deliberately), but in a way that caused logical inconsistencies (a dragon is not going to waste time with 1st level PCs if they become a hassle). I've seen this kind of thing before, where the GM sets up something convoluted to 'trick" the players, and on review, what I see is a convoluted, contradictory setup, that hinges on things the NPC needn't have bothered with to gain the same outcome.

 

[MarkB]

Janx raises an excellent point regarding the overcomplication of this scene. If the dragon just wanted the general dead, and was willing to fly to within a short distance of him, why didn't the dragon just kill him itself? Even if it couldn't have wielded the special dagger in its oversized claws, it could've just plucked him off the battlements and air-dropped him.

 

[Grogg of the North]

Talk to the group and DM about what the expectations are for the campaign. Make sure everyone gets a chance to talk and be sure to explain what your thoughts were last session with your bard.

While its good to roleplay what your character would do, "It's what my character would do" can be used to justify some of the craziest/cruelest things imaginable.

 

[stevelabny]

Your conversation with the Dragon where he asks you to kill the General is even further proof that the dragon and cultists are bad.

I disagree with this. The dragon said he would stop fighting the PCs if they stopped fighting. They refused. The horn made the dragon's army stop attacking. So he clearly isn't out to destroy the city or all the people in it. The dragon wants the general dead and that its. We know the general wants some magical orb to help him "control more troops" (mind control?)

This story needs a LOT more information. And if the players didn't have more information, than the bard played this correctly and the other players messed up.

Why are we assuming the general is "good"? Why are the players assisting the general? Was it just the first plot hook that offered money? Do we know more details about the crystal?

And in normal war...there isn't always one good side and one evil side. The dragon and general could be at odds over this orb of control, neither trusting the other to use it responsibly and not exploit it. They both could feel they are doing the right thing, and both going to extreme measures.

Definitely needs more info.