D&D 5E Players Killing Players for stupid reason

[Nitrosaur]

Dude, you are seeking validation from strangers on the internet to play the wizard like derranged psychopath. Like, who the hell is so insecure, petty and twisted that murders as an answer to insolence, freaking Stalin? Is your bar that low or are you just looking for an excuse to do it? Perhaps you expect people here to give you an answer that makes you feel better about it? I don't think you are going to get that.

At the end of the day, what your character would do is what you would make him do, you are the one controlling them.

 

[RickTheFox]

So I came here, a guy relatively new to D&D and I seek advice to a problem I see coming and try to avoid in order to keep the game fun and running, and I get some BS about insecurities thrown in my face and I get compared to Stalin? WTF ?

You guys need to realize one thing, and that is my character was placed in the game at the very beginning, with DM and the rest of the party aware of his traits and accepting him. Would you blame a dragon for burning you if you spit in his eye? Would you blame DM for letting that dragon kill you? After all, it is up to DM, right - "the dragon would that" explanation is all right in this case? Well you have a wizard you know is dark and vengeful and values his reputation greatly, yet the wizard was always helpful and friendly to you. And you betray him and ruin his carefully laid plans, costing him his face and tons of gold later in the game, without provocation and for no reason nor gain at all. That is not a mere insolence. That is deliberate impersonation with malicious intent to cause harm. What do you expect him to do? Especially in a world of D&D where life is relatively "cheap" by law and moral standards of the age.

Part of the game is knowing your actions have consequences. I did not provoke the rogue in any way to deserve this. You are forgetting that I am reacting to what I consider deep and hurtful in-game betrayal and attack at my interests in a way that makes perfect sense roleplay-wise.

If I wanted to player kill, I would. And I would not need to justify that to anyone, and I certainly would not be wasting my time here writing about it. I am literally here because as a player I do care, and I do want to avoid that. I am not seeking validation, I am seeking advice from more experienced players. I am looking for reasonable alternatives. The most reasonable suggestion was to screw it and play in a party that does not do this kind of things, which i probably will do.

 

[Nitrosaur]

So I came here, a guy relatively new to D&D and I seek advice to a problem I see coming and try to avoid in order to keep the game fun and running, and I get some BS about insecurities thrown in my face and I get compared to Stalin? WTF ?

I'm talking about the wizard, not you.

 

[RickTheFox]

I'm talking about the wizard, not you.

At the end of the day, what your character would do is what you would make him do, you are the one controlling them.

Yeah, right.

 

[Nitrosaur]

Yeah, right.

Yes, right. I think we can all understand the separation between the player and the character so i didn't think it was necessary to explicitly state that no dnd player would murder in cold blood, or get into a dirty hole to fight monsters like their character would choose to, but I see you don't have it so clear. You can make your character do whatever, but you have to accept the consecuences, both ingame and irl, and those are very different.

You would make the choice for the wizard to murder the rogue, so you have to accept, irl, that you made a choice that may that might piss off someone you are playing with. That doesn't make you a monster, that makes the wizard the monster, that's the ingame consecuence. You made a controversial choice in a make-believe game, the wizard made the choice to murder a guy. Cool reason to murder i guess but still murder. Ingame.

 

[RickTheFox]

I do have it clear. You, on the other hand, commented on me - a player, a person - rather than on the game.

Dude, you are seeking validation from strangers on the internet to play the wizard like derranged psychopath. Like, who the hell is so insecure, petty and twisted that murders as an answer to insolence, freaking Stalin? Is your bar that low or are you just looking for an excuse to do it? Perhaps you expect people here to give you an answer that makes you feel better about it? I don't think you are going to get that.

At the end of the day, what your character would do is what you would make him do, you are the one controlling them.

You are seeking validation (on this forum) from strangers. You are looking for an excuse to do it (on this forum). You expect people here (on this forum) to justify your playstyle (make you feel better about it).


Insecure and petty would be about the character, perhaps, had you not finished with the "you are the one who would make him do it".

A good 75 % of your comment was about me, the player, not about the PC (and I suspect the remaining 25 % was about both the player and the PC). But never mind that, I honestly do not care much.

I am more interested in hearing reactions to this, and I do not want it to fade among spam ->

my character was placed in the game at the very beginning, with DM and the rest of the party aware of his traits and accepting him. Would you blame a dragon for burning you if you spit in his eye? Would you blame DM for letting that dragon kill you? After all, it is up to DM, right - "the dragon would that" explanation is all right in this case?

 

[Nitrosaur]

I am more interested in hearing reactions to this, and I do not want it to fade among spam ->

my character was placed in the game at the very beginning, with DM and the rest of the party aware of his traits and accepting him. Would you blame a dragon for burning you if you spit in his eye? Would you blame DM for letting that dragon kill you? After all, it is up to DM, right - "the dragon would that" explanation is all right in this case?

Very well, I do not wish to hamper you with that.

Yes, I would blame the dragon for escalating violence in such a cartoonish fashion. I would not blame the DM because dragons are monsters, big, cruel, spiteful, arrogant and violent reptiles, and that's why many adventurers go on quests to kill dragons, because those lizards deserve it. I would blame the dragon, not the DM, for killing someone in such undeserved manner. I would not blame the gang of adventurers that proceed to hunt down that dragon and kill it like an animal. Key difference, the dragon is to the very core of its being, by virtue of being a dragon, a barbarous beast, while the wizard is (presumably) a humanoid that has the choice to be better than a vile monster bound by it's nature. Being violent by nature isn't a valid excuse in court, or most social groups, for murder, and I seriously doubt the party would be the exception.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Again, that's today speaking. Trying to apply today's morality to a different-era society isn't going to work, in that the result will probably just be today's society dressed in funny clothes which rather defeats some of the point of emulating a different society.

Trying to apply pop culture medieval morality to D&D is just as incorrect, given that D&D only has the barest fig leaf of medieval trappings.

Which begs the question, given the choice, why choose the option that allows you to claim that the dickish anti-social behaviour a character engages in is justified?

 

[RickTheFox]

Very well, I do not wish to hamper you with that.

Yes, I would blame the dragon for escalating violence in such a cartoonish fashion. I would not blame the DM because dragons are monsters, big, cruel, spiteful, arrogant and violent reptiles, and that's why many adventurers go on quests to kill dragons, because those lizards deserve it. I would blame the dragon, not the DM, for killing someone in such undeserved manner. I would not blame the gang of adventurers that proceed to hunt down that dragon and kill it like an animal. Key difference, the dragon is to the very core of its being, by virtue of being a dragon, a barbarous beast, while the wizard is (presumably) a humanoid that has the choice to be better than a vile monster bound by it's nature. Being violent by nature isn't a valid excuse in court, or most social groups, for murder, and I seriously doubt the party would be the exception.

Thank you. So you say it is reasonable that the dragon kills after being "insulted" by spit in his eye. Because it is his nature, and DM is not an a--hole for making him do so. So if I have a character, whose core nature is vengeful... (morally bad or good aside, vengeful).

FrozenNorth the D&D has technology and culture of approximate era between 1000 BC and 1200 AD. That goes for technology, morality of society and law, written or unwritten, and customs. It is an age where bandits plague roads, aristocrats poison each other over titles and lands, thieves lose their hands for smallest of thefts, nations invade their neigbours for spices or for insults between monarchs. It was not unheard of that if you fall down before kings procession, they would just trample you to death (a life of a commoner was not even worth stopping for, or stop and beat you if they felt generous and crowds would cheer).That is the age, that is the world, that is the setting. DM can, of course, make the settings a little lighter or darker, but the general setting is that time and that era + magic and cool beasts. Anti-social behavior today is very different than anti-social behavior at that age.

Lanefan got it exactly right.

 

[Nitrosaur]

Thank you. So you say it is reasonable that the dragon kills after being "insulted" by spit in his eye. Because it is his nature. So if I have a character, whose core nature is vengeful... (morally bad or good aside, vengeful).

Well first of all I apologize if you felt insulted, I assure you all my derogatory words were directed to the wizard character, not you.

I think you are missing that the dragon is a monster and the wizard is not. The dragon is there to be killed and looted, not to be an ally, and by the very nature of the game, an NPC murdering a PC stings way less than a PC murdering another one. I believe that you think that what the wizard is planing to do is not as evil as we think, and you have to be aware of the posibility that your group may take it in a manner similar to ours.

I am mostly a DM and, at least with my groups, both players and PCs that would murder another PC were not popular at all with the rest of the group. Trust me, unless you are absolutely, 100% sure that the rogue's player, the DM and the group is cool with that, don't do it. Don´t try to pull a fast one on the player or the DM, talk to them about it beforehand if you insist on doing that, or it's going to get very ugly very fast.