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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 9257421" data-attributes="member: 29398">That reliance isn't born of societal rules, it's born of sheer self-preservation in the face of common peril and the realization that there's strength in numbers.In theory, yes.  In practice, when Joe the Fighter is known to be a cheating thieving bastard who'd rip your heart out if it made him a few g.p. and yet he's the best sword in the region, you're gonna suck it up and recruit him to help against the lich queen...keeping a close eye on hm all the while...because your party is simply more effective with him than without him, and you know it.We neither see nor flag mind control as evil, and nor does the game as written (in any edition).  It's just another tool in the box, and often considerably less harmful to the target than the alternatives, as in:--- we need to get info from this prisoner now; we can torture him and later kill him, or just kill him now and cast lots of Speak With Deads, or charm him and later let him go.--- we need to rein in this otherwise-useful guy's gonzo stupidities; we can charm him and keep him around, or we can stand back and watch him kill himself while hoping he doesn't drag the rest of us down with him.--- we've got this Orc who surrendered to us; we can kill her now, or haul her around as a captive, or charm her and let her help us.If I'm in a party and we're considering what new recruits to bring in then yes, I'm approaching it like a sports team manager: who best fits what we need, and-or who best fills the gaps in our current lineup.Were I in that game I'd have us go out and recruit an NPC Rogue or Thief to fill that gap, along with that of dealing with locks.Cool that she's a swashbuckler though; I've long thought there's room for a dedicated swashvuckler class in the game but have yet to design it.Some party NPCs come in due to friendship, others for story reasons, and others because they're hired.  The party I'm running has at the moment three NPC Orcs working for them - all were enemies who surrendered to the party and got taken in as henches - plus a recruited full-character Thief brought in because they didn't otherwise have any stealth at all, plus an unclassed sex-trade worker (a camp follower of an enemy army) they took prisoner as they didn't know what else to do with her and who has since shown some nascent potential as a future adventurer.Odds are high to extreme that none of these NPCs will be with the party after this adventure ends, though.  The Orcs will be repatriated to their clans, the Thief is long since fed up with this crew and can't wait to leave (and may or may not rip them off on her way out, that's still TBD), and she'll probably end up taking the prisoner with her and try to get her into the Thieving trade.We've had characters leave parties for similar reasons.  We've also had more stubborn characters stay in and keep arguing.And usually the overriding reason to work together comes down to realizing two things: the whole of a well-rounded party is greater than the sum of its parts, and the "ka-ching" payoff is better.I greatly prefer that in-character problems and disagreements be solved in-character.  The moment it spills over to the table, that's when the real problems begin.So here, if the boss is being too pushy it's on the secretary to push back in-character, or to go on strike, or to quit the job.  No table discussion needed, just play the characters true to themselves and let the chips fall where they may.A military game is a different animal; and would indeed require some players to be willing to allow other players to, in effect, order their characters around.  Most players IME would be fine with this dynamic for the very short term (as in, a one-off game or a very short closed-ended campaign) but none would go for it in anything intended ot be long-term: we're all just too chaotic. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Which means you're allowing metagame concerns to trump your being true to your character; and while I do understand the motivations and rationale behind this, it's still - along with pretty much any other metagaming - not something I want to see in a game.</blockquote>

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