Rant about my Party

[Jhaelen]

I could reply by ranting about D&D's 'Alignment' issues, but I won't...

 

[Nagol]

To potentially turn this into more than just me venting and ranting, how quickly should that be the answer?


This is something I'm struggling with as I think towards the future and games that may involve other online groups. If I end up in a similar situation and after 4 months 4 of the 5 players say "Hey lets burn down an orphanage" or something equally dumb and stupid, should I immediately say "Okay, Garret leaves the party, I'll see you guys next week with my new character Drago Bloodfist the 4th." Or do I try and struggle to keep the character even when it causes friction in the group? Do you ever press for alternative answers to the situation?

I mean, like you said the answer almost always is "Bring a character who does what the party wants" but that is a lot harder once you've got an established party and story as compared to session zero.

In my opinion, you press for alternative answers once to discover the group dynamic at play. If the group (or at least a decent plurality of it) responds favourably to the poke then you know it's an OK part of the game. If the group generally responds unfavourably you know it's not part of the game the group wants to explore and you back off, discuss it out-of-game, or quietly withdraw from the game.

What the actual dynamic you want doesn't matter either: perhaps you want to not-murderhobo everything in sight; perhaps you want to murderhobo everything in sight; perhaps you want to engage in PC-PC rivalry; perhaps you want to engage in PC-PC romance. Once you discover the unspoken group expectation, adhere to it, openly discuss it and hope the group will accept a change, or leave.

 

[S'mon]

Find a more sensible group

Yes, they sound terrible and you are clearly not a good fit.

 

[S'mon]

I know it is a difference in playstyle between me and them, but is this sort of “Screw the world we only care about the Party” type of mentality more the norm? Is the idea of just chasing whatever random suggestion the DM off-handedly mentions instead of following logic of our situation normal to most groups?

I know people do this sort of thing in one off games, but this is two separate long running campaigns where I’m being indicated that caring about NPCs is weird and makes no sense.

No, IME these days most D&D players play heroic good-guy types who help the NPCs, in fact I got some pushback when I suggested running the Skull & Shackles pirates campaign. Last time I saw evil PCs was about 16 years ago, some young Australian bros liked to wreak havoc with their Monk PCs in my 3e game. I enjoyed it, but only because they were in agreement.

 

[Eltab]

We're only getting one side here, but it sounds like the group is broken.
Time to depart.

And I'm saying this as a DM who had to figure out how to handle an inter-group conflict that was exacerbated by some of the quarrelling members being family to each other, with the additional IRL dynamic complications.

 

[ccs]

Is this a real life group or an online game?

 

[billd91]

I could reply by ranting about D&D's 'Alignment' issues, but I won't...

Good, because that's probably not really at issue here. You don't need D&D's alignments to have fundamental disagreements about behavior in RPGs. As long as you've got one PC trying to be a hero with a pack of murder-hobos (or vice versa) you've got these problems.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Is this a real life group or an online game?

Online group, and to respond to [MENTION=6803337]Eltab[/MENTION] no one in the group is actually related.

The PC who left started out treating the Paladin as an older sister, but over the course of the game the Paladin became more and more of an psychopath, at the same time, the rest of the group slowly took over as a series of big brother figures with her as the little sister we took care of.


And, yeah, I didn't know or care about these people when I joined the group. Except for the DM who was a friend of mine, but after gaming together for over a year I'd say they've grown into being friends and if I left the group, I'd never end up talking to them again. That's more of a me thing though, I have a hard time keeping in contact with people.

 

[The_Gneech]

The whole group sounds kind of bonkers to me. I am a big advocate of "create a character who will work in the game," but I also can't imagine having a good time in the game you are describing (where a paladin can be an ass and not face consequences, and the "reasonable" approach to a helpless woman not letting strangers into her house is to kill her) and would probably leave.

-The Gneech

 

[GMforPowergamers]

To potentially turn this into more than just me venting and ranting, how quickly should that be the answer?


This is something I'm struggling with as I think towards the future and games that may involve other online groups. If I end up in a similar situation and after 4 months 4 of the 5 players say "Hey lets burn down an orphanage" or something equally dumb and stupid, should I immediately say "Okay, Garret leaves the party, I'll see you guys next week with my new character Drago Bloodfist the 4th." Or do I try and struggle to keep the character even when it causes friction in the group? Do you ever press for alternative answers to the situation?


I mean, like you said the answer almost always is "Bring a character who does what the party wants" but that is a lot harder once you've got an established party and story as compared to session zero.

well in my case my idea would depend on the character I'm playing and how quick I can make a change.

Example 1) my level 3 Neutral Good Druid would most likely walk away from that the 1st time the argument came up...
Example 2) my level 3 Chaotic Good Wizard I might just decide thinks that fire is cool and try to roll with it and slightly go more chaotic less good.

All of the examples I gave up thread came to a head within 2-3 sessions.