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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Faolyn" data-source="post: 9257331" data-attributes="member: 6915329">I am trying to play a game with my friends and we all want to have fun. So we work together to make sure we all have fun, and we can't have fun if we can't trust each other or if we go all Lord of the Flies on each other. When you're in the field, you need societal rules even more, because you have no one else to rely on other than the other PCs. The only reason your games don't fall apart is for completely meta reasons, because you know it's a group game and not a solo game--in reality, you're not going to go fight the lich-queen with someone you can't trust not to steal from you or stab you in the back.And yet slavery and charming other PCs is perfectly OK!?And as I said, that is a bad thing to do because it takes agency away from those other players.Rime, my chaotic neutral rogue, often does stupid things. Put a button in her path and she'll push it. The DM loves her because they can guarantee I'll find the plot that way. The other players try to reason with her as to why not to do certain things, and it often works. But the idea of charming her into obediance is anathema to the rest of the party because mind-control is pretty evil. And no, we don't charm NPCs either for exactly that same reason.And you are continuing to assume that's the primary or only option with the last mage! If she's a PC, then it's up to the players to decide if they want that party dynamic.And here you are reducing a PC to a mere tool, rather than as a person. Rime isn't in the party because of her skills as a thief, since she has none besides stealth (Int was her dump stat and many rogue skills in 5e are Int-based; she's a swashbuckler, who rely on Dex and Cha); she's part of the party because she is friend and ally to the other characters. We have nobody who can search for traps with any reliability. We have NPCs with the party because we have befriended them or because they're part of our backstories, not because we hired them for a role.We've had games where a PC has not been able to become friend and ally to the characters for whatever reason--typically goals or personality too different--and each time, the player had chosen to have PC leave and then made a character who could work with the group. But this is very rare, since we all find a reason to work together.No, I mean players. As in, two players had a discussion about their character ideas and came to the conclusion that it would be a cool party dynamic if one player was the boss and the other was their secretary.Yes, they're truly employees. But no, because while the boss can order the secretary around, the secretary's player can choose whether or not they are going to obey, and the secretary's player can have a discussion with the boss's player if the boss is getting out of hand with their demands. Because we understand that things like one PC being abusive to another is as much a player issue as it is a character issue, because it involves a player making the choice to act that way. There's no such thing as "it's what my character would do." Your characters are not separate entities over whom you have no control. If they're jerks, it's because you made them that way.Plus (in my MotW game), the boss is really dependent on the secretary to do things such as pick up the dry cleaning and correct their abysmal spelling and work the phones and make sure there's enough raw meat in the fridge to satisfy the boss after he wolfs out. The power balance is actually equal. It's not just one player ordering another one around.But switch from that sort of game. Let's pretend we're talking about game where you're in a chain of command. A military game, or something like Star Trek. The players are still choosing to play in that dynamic. Because it's a group game where the goal is for everyone to have fun, having the captain or commander PC abuse their relationship with the other PCs because they're in charge means that there's a good chance that the other PCs aren't having fun.Because they're PCs, and I'm not going to force other players not play their characters. This is what you need to understand, and you seem to refuse to do that.</blockquote>

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