Players: it's your responsibility to carry a story.

[Lanefan]

I'm not Lanefan

Yes you are! Today's my day to be pemerton...

but where there has been PvP in my games it has normally been with consent by both players - ie an understanding that they are happy to play out the conflict between their PCs - or at least with a fairly light-hearted attitude.

And it case that doesn't make it clear - PvP in my game has always been out in the open as far as the players are concerned, even if the PCs don't always know what's going on. So the backstabbing, if any, is only a part of the fiction - at the table itself there is only frontstabbing!

We pass notes and occasionally set up elaborate schemes; but much of the time it is, as you say, frontstabbing.

And talk about players carrying the story! When they're at each other's throats I don't have to do a thing except adjudicate the occasional rule or spell effect (or rewrite and pass on notes, if required)...I can sit back, crack a beer, and enjoy the entertainment!

In character, I once had an entire adventure designed for me by another player so I could get back the +2 Sword of Healing (which I'd stolen in the first place; and its previous owner had stolen it also) she had stolen from me. That one sword was in fact stolen somewhere over a dozen different times by about 7 different people; I wound up with it in the end, and only when I had loaned it to someone - i.e. it changed hands without being stolen - did it finally meet its demise. (it was last seen in the throne room of Hel's palace, if anyone ever wants to go get it)

Lanefan

 

[Doug McCrae]

I used to game with people who were, like Lanefan, heavily simulationist - do what your character would do. They were accepting of PvP so long as it was appropriate to one's character. I was never very comfortable with it. I sensed that there really was a gamist undercurrent there, a competitive element when it came to player v player contests, that these guys never acknowledged.

It was the late 90s and we used to play a fair bit of Amber or World of Darkness, games that are more encouraging of PvP than D&D. Though the classic 'Head of Vecna' story is pure PvP - it was all a scheme set up by one player party to fool another party in the same DM's world.

 

[S'mon]

Reading more closely, I just noticed your event occurred in an online campaign; which would take away the face-to-face part of it. That would present a much different dynamic than I'm used to.

Yes, but my tabletop groups are super-cooperative and haven't done PvP since I was 15.

 

[S'mon]

In a linear campaign where there's only one party it just doesn't work as well unless the player is prepared to role-play the character (and maybe themselves) right out of the game; I've done this in the past. But when there's multiple parties in the same campaign, leaving one just means a chance to join another; and once there's been enough turnover things tend to get forgotten about anyway.

And the player is always free to bang out another character and dive right back in, leaving the backstabber out there for future reference.

It's a sandbox campaign, in theory I could run 2 parties, but my time is limited and 2 separate parties would mean halving the play time of both. I normally run it the traditional way where whoever irl turns up in the chatroom, turns up in the game (usually in the Pirate's Cove Inn, Sea Brigand's Street, City State of the Invincible Overlord), and adventures together for that session. Occasionally I do solo stuff but I try to do most of it early in the session before most of the players turn up.

 

[pemerton]

I used to game with people who were, like Lanefan, heavily simulationist - do what your character would do. They were accepting of PvP so long as it was appropriate to one's character. I was never very comfortable with it. I sensed that there really was a gamist undercurrent there, a competitive element when it came to player v player contests, that these guys never acknowledged.

In the PvP that I've GMed, it's very rarely come down to combat - and when it has, that has mostly been the bulk of the party reining in or chasing down the rogue PC.

The dynamics have therefore tended not to be gamist. What has tended to drive PvP in my games has been disagreement between the PCs over questions of morals/politics/allegiances - generally reflecting differences over player preferences as to which direction the story should head, but occasionally just because a player deems such disagreement to be "in character", or even because someone thinks that initiating such a disagreement might be fun.

 

[The Shaman]

It's goes without saying that others - like The Shaman - might legitimately prefer a different approach to play. But I will rise to the bait and say that, while I think I'll concede the "organic" point, I don't think I'll concede the "real" point. Because a players playing out of a relationship or some history that was developed at start, when done well, can make it as real as if it emerged purely organically out of nothing but the course of play.

Out of curiosity, do the games you enjoy provide rules as boundaries for, or mechanics which engage, the develop-at-start process? Or is this wholly player-driven?

Frex, a Flashing Blades character may begin the game as the captain of a company of soldiers in the royal army, or a fencing master, or the member of a knightly order, or a member of a gentlemen's club. They may possess advantages like influential contacts, favors owed by powerful persons, or noble titles. They may also possess secrets such as a double or twin, a secret loyalty, or religious fanaticism.

So most adventurers begin the game thoroughly engaged with social institutions, influential individuals, or societal mores, which, if I'm understanding you correctly, is the sort of thing you consider important as the foundation for the games you enjoy; I'm guessing you also like to take it a step or two further, creating conflicts and relationships resulting from that engagement with the setting.

But sticking for the moment with just that initial engagement, I think it's significant that in emulating the swashbuckling genre Flashing Blades provides specific rules for how that engagement tales place; there are mechanical limits in the rules, as well as a significant measure of randomization, guiding the extent to which an adventurer begins the game engaged in the setting.

Would you say this characterizes the games you choose to play as well? If so, to what extent?

 

[Lanefan]

In the save-or-die thread, you wrote:

In the sort of game I called encounter/scene based, ingame causality of the sort just described is less important. As I said earlier, it is important to maintain a consistent gameworld - but if a satisfyingly dramatic encounter requires that encounter B have at least 10 foes, then if the players kill 2 guards earlier on before they can retreat it is legitimate as GM to replace them, provided there is a coherent story to be told about where the extra bodies came from. (What counts as coherent here will, of course, depend in part on what the players already know.)

This seems to be the basis of 4e adventure design, from the now-numerous examples I've seen: one encounter affects the next minimally at most and most preferably not at all....which is fine if you're looking to run a series of great set-piece battles but not so great if there's to be any natural fluidity in the adventure, in how the denizens of the dungeon interact with each other and respond to a threat.

It's the biggest headache I've found with converting 4e modules: figuring out how the different occupants of the place would logically interact with each other. The modules themselves generally don't seem to care much.

But it's not legitimate to make those sorts of changes to the encounter in such a way as to undo the signficance of what the PCs achieved.

Agreed completely in any case.

Lanefan

 

[S'mon]

Heh, IMCs if the PCs killed 2/10 guards then retreat, chances are next time there'll be 18 guards... and if the PCs didn't retreat far enough they're likely to get bushwhacked while resting. I follow EGG's advice in the 1e DMG - unless you're dealing with static foes like zombies in a crypt, alert-the-enemy-then-retreat is typically a disastrous tactic.

 

[pemerton]

t's the biggest headache I've found with converting 4e modules: figuring out how the different occupants of the place would logically interact with each other. The modules themselves generally don't seem to care much.

The way I try to handle it is to run those areas as single encounters (with the players being slightly higher level than suggested in the module - this also means I've never had a problem with grind!).

 

[pemerton]

Double post deleted.