Player vs. Player

[Stalker0]

I'm really surprised at the answers here, my games have involved tons of pvp conflict, argument, backstealing, and deaths, and those are the most memorable games to me. We don't run evil games, but sometimes things happen.

Was teh character's fighting in character? If it was, then you can't take it personally, that's how the game goes.

 

[dpdx]

My experience with wanting to kill somebody else's PC is limited to one instance in my tabletop party. I choked it back, though. The player later stopped coming to sessions, and was then 'written out' of the adventure.

My take is that by the time those feelings surface, much less get acted on, the game is already (at the minimum) considerably less fun for at least one player, and it's time to stop the session and work some stuff out. Sometimes it's hard to tell: you've got to really be watching and listening to your players. But if you can tell, it's best not to go any further until you lay some rules down or show somebody the door.

I sympathize with the thread starter, and hope his next party is a little more conducive to his GMing style.

 

[Wormwood]

Was teh character's fighting in character? If it was, then you can't take it personally, that's how the game goes.

I've seen people use "I'm just roleplaying" as a fig leaf for a lot of anti-social or just plain scummy behavior.

It doesn't fly at my table.

As I said, the few instances of PvP that I consider legitimate were when both parties involved felt them appropriate and entertaining (such as the example I noted above).

All other playerkilling I've experienced has been the result of someone acting like a jerk---and calling "roleplaying" in those situations never assuaged the bad feelings that resulted.

Some people are just jerks.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

In our latest session (yesterday), we came close to having this happen. The PCs had just been ambushed and survived a TPK due to a special one-use magic item they had, which would return their souls to their bodies. Downside to the return was that the souls ended up in the wrong bodies.

So the party was standing around arguing with each other and trying to get their original equipment back, while simultaneously being asked questions by the ruler of the province they were in (who was the intended target for the ambush they stumbled into). Suddenly, the player of the dwarven mage (who had ended up in the middle-aged human cleric's body) said that he was casting a fly spell. So everybody asked him what the heck he was doing and that he should get down, and went back to the discussion. At which point he backed up till he was out of range, and dumped a fireball on the party!

Justification? "I can't take being stuck in a human's body, so I'm just going to kill myself." And when he was asked why that entailed attacking everyone else, he claimed that killing himself would be too difficult, so he'd just get them to do so.

He was promptly taken down to -9 hit points and tied up. I don't fudge, so I was quite willing to see the PC bite the dust, especially after that boneheaded move. Anyhow, he survived, and everybody managed to get back into their own bodies eventually.

As a number of people have pointed out, PvP is fine in some contexts. But this kind of idiotic stuff I definitely draw the line at, and I doubt the players would be happy with PCs killing each other for any reason. So I'm going to have to lay down the law next session

Sounds more like you have a player who doesnt give two craps about their character really. He designed his character with one thing in mind and the characters personality and background was not it. So when you threw the characters for a loop he decided that the easiest solution was to kill himself and the rest of the party so that he could draw up a new character and not have to deal with what you as the DM had done.

I have had players like this before. My solution is simple. I tell them in front of everyone that my campaign is not a revolving door for his character concept of the week approach to gaming. If I feel he kills his character off on a regular basis just out of boredom his replacement characters will either: start out a level lower than the last character, or start out with 3/4th the money of their level, or be 2 points lower than the last character in point but, or any combination of the three.

If a player continues to refuse to care about their character I will ask them to stop playing. If the don't care then it limits things greatly. You cannot threaten the characters family cause players like this always have characters who hate their family or are orphans. You cannot get them to surrender or retreat in battle since their characters always fight to the death. Basically you cannot do anything but line up bigger and bigger monsters in front of them and pass out loot. If I wanted to do that I would save myself the effort and tell everyone we are just going to play networked Diablo.

 

[MerakSpielman]

I've seen people use "I'm just roleplaying" as a fig leaf for a lot of anti-social or just plain scummy behavior.

It doesn't fly at my table.

As I said, the few instances of PvP that I consider legitimate were when both parties involved felt them appropriate and entertaining (such as the example I noted above).

All other playerkilling I've experienced has been the result of someone acting like a jerk---and calling "roleplaying" in those situations never assuaged the bad feelings that resulted.

Some people are just jerks.

Interesting. My group works exactly the opposite. We're all terribly nice people, but our characters are jerks.

 

[Bagpuss]

Interesting. My group works exactly the opposite. We're all terribly nice people, but our characters are jerks.

Snap, that's our groups make up as well. In party conflict is one of the most enjoyable aspects of most of our games.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Interesting. My group works exactly the opposite. We're all terribly nice people, but our characters are jerks.

I hate playing or DMing with people like you. Do you know how annoying it is to try and DM this?

Example:

Big Bad Guy takes a poor peasant woman as a hostage and uses her body as a shield while threatening the party. Jerk party responce? Fireball him and her and laugh about it the whole time.

That is not playing a RPG to me. That is using pen and paper to play Diablo instead of using your computer and quite boring quite quickly.

 

[Emiricol]

Well, DocM, to be fair not all PvP means evil PCs. It works for some parties, not for others. I wouldn't game in that environment, but I know people who do, whom I otherwise respect as players/DMs.

 

[MerakSpielman]

Doc: You have no idea what you're talking about. Do you have any idea how rare combat is in our games? Do you have any idea what it's like to play with bloody 150+ IQ programmer/physicist/mathmaticians at the table? I play with people who can out-think me any day of the week. One of our DM's favorite quote, "Did I mention I have no freaking clue what you guys are going to do next?"

The kind of D&D where the characters march neatly from one adventure to the next, trying to catch up with curly-moustache cookie-cutter villians taking hostages and always getting away, is not for us. We're sick of "you're the heroes who must save the world" plots. It's the ultimate cliche of the fantasy genre, and I'm starting to really despise it.

Play what you like, but don't around making assumptions about what other people's games are like with so little information.

Incidentally, what good is taking a hostage? Only really stupid heroes would let a villian get away with it. For a RL example, do you know the SOP if there's a hostage situation on Kirtland Air Force Base/Sandia National Labs? Step 1: Call in the marines. Step 2: Tell them to go into the building and shoot everybody. Step 3: Sort out the bodies.

 

[Bagpuss]

For a RL example, do you know the SOP if there's a hostage situation on Kirtland Air Force Base/Sandia National Labs? Step 1: Call in the marines. Step 2: Tell them to go into the building and shoot everybody. Step 3: Sort out the bodies.

Some how I doubt that, the special forces of most countries are trained to tell the difference between a hostage and a terrorist before they pull the trigger. And what idiot would call the marines to do specialist counter-terrorism work?

But your right about DocM making assumptions. I've worked with some real jerks in my time but none of them have just shot a customer because they don't like them, why would someone just fireball the villan and the hostage?

Besides that I've heard of LG parties fireballing a hostage just to do raise dead on them later.