Rant: The Best Laid Plans... (Long)

[Piratecat]

Next time I would just simply tell the player that you won't permit him to take that sort of action, precisely because it will break up the party.

I would never tell a player this; I detest someone telling me that my character can't or wouldn't do something. I would, however, make sure that he understood the consequences of his actions.

To me it sounds like he had a couple of frustrating months IRL followed by a couple of "slow" game sessions, and the player wanted some action. Then the action was over before his PC got there! I understand why it happened, but it's still unfortunate.

 

[Rackhir]

I would never tell a player this; I detest someone telling me that my character can't or wouldn't do something. I would, however, make sure that he understood the consequences of his actions.

To me it sounds like he had a couple of frustrating months IRL followed by a couple of "slow" game sessions, and the player wanted some action. Then the action was over before his PC got there! I understand why it happened, but it's still unfortunate.

Oh, I don't like it any better than you do, but to me it falls into the same sort of category as "I'm not going to permit the Frenzied Berzerker class" or "No you can't have a staff of the archmagi". The DM sets the ground rules for the campaign and not permitting intraparty conflict of this sort seems to me to be a not unreasonable ground rule.

I'm not advocating the DM taking control of the characters away from the Players, more like "You can justify any number of sorts of actions given the character, think of a way to justify not doing this one."

It's like having a paladin in the party and not permitting outright evil characters in the group.

Are you restricting player choice and actions? Yes.

However, you are also heading off a situation which is inevitably going to lead to a conflict that can ruin the campaign. There's no reason why a DM has to permit things that are going to lead to ruining things for the entire group.

 

[GQuail]

Next session of my game begins in a couple of hours, so thanks for all your advice: It's almost time to try and use it. ;-)

Chatting to the player and the rest of the group, the recent random activity of the wizard might get him arrested less for violence and more for insanity: there have been some Cthuloid moments in our game, so that this might just be a slow manifestion of madness coming through to the surface would fit the theme. The players are pondering getting a scroll of Flesh To Stone so they can "freeze him in carbonite" until they think he's salvageable.

The only issue now is patching up the rest of the group, as there was a certain amount of raised voices. ONe player has said he'd like the group to have a "safe word" and anyone who gets insulted OOC should use it to indicate that whatever discussion they're having is going beyond the Halfling and the Gnome arguing: and I think that might be a nice way to prevent the tensions of last time causing anyone to leave in a huff.

The next pc of Ogri's character is going to be an LN Ranger, who'll be the bodyguard of another new PC we're getting. Hopefully he'll bring in some order. ;-)

 

[silentspace]

Sounds like the PCs have some issues with Ogri's PC.

Ogri didn't do anything that really negatively impacted the party. Rash, yes. Acted against the party's wishes, yes. But what's the real downside? You have to cast a speak with dead spell?

On the other hand, the party took the dwarf down. They attacked him, then handed him over to the authorities. What's up with that? There's some deeper stuff going on here then PCs acting independently (which they all do...)

 

[DonTadow]

Oh, I don't like it any better than you do, but to me it falls into the same sort of category as "I'm not going to permit the Frenzied Berzerker class" or "No you can't have a staff of the archmagi". The DM sets the ground rules for the campaign and not permitting intraparty conflict of this sort seems to me to be a not unreasonable ground rule.

I'm not advocating the DM taking control of the characters away from the Players, more like "You can justify any number of sorts of actions given the character, think of a way to justify not doing this one."

It's like having a paladin in the party and not permitting outright evil characters in the group.

Are you restricting player choice and actions? Yes.

However, you are also heading off a situation which is inevitably going to lead to a conflict that can ruin the campaign. There's no reason why a DM has to permit things that are going to lead to ruining things for the entire group.

I wouldn't associate the DM's rules for the campaign with telling a player how to play the character, no matter what the circumstances. The DM controls the world, however, he can't arbitrarily make up rules. That will lead to vast inconsistencies and eventual player anger. THe DM has far too many tools (he controls just about everything in that house) that he needs to control the PC in that situation. Once the DM starts telling aplayer what he must do, he is dangerously over exceeding a DM's power. Even in a situation like this (especially in situations like) , where it effects the party negatively, I agree with the DM that if there are no previous rules against this, he should let the characters play the game the way they want to.

I have a similiar situation in my game. I have a player whom plays the biggest, beefiest fighter I've ever seen built. Has great hit points, great abilities and great defense. In combat, she does nothing for rounds on end. Now keep in mind this is not the characteristic of the PC as far as what the player has told me. The player has told me that this fighter is a master of all arts, and takes on all challenges. He's trained at the toughest warcollege in the world.

But you couldnt tell this from watching the pc. Every initiative, the player will hold her action or delay. Obviously in a party that only consists of a ranger, a cleric, a sorceror and a thief, this ca nbe bad. One time, her inaction nearly got the mages and hte thief killed (the ranger couldnt make it that game). This is how I handled that situation.

The party reaches the layer of a dracolich, and must complete a puzzle in four different rooms to activate the warding that will trap it again. The fighter however, instead of confronting the dracolich decides to run 100 ft. outside, for a reason that has never ever been explained. (again her playing her character, didnt ask). The mages were in front of the party ??? and were essentially trapped in the lair with the dracolich. If I played it out logically it would have been a tpk. The fighter was still headed outside while the dracolich was dropping the mages. Obviously this was going to end bad, not for the party, but for the group as I could see them all blaming them for their pc deaths. I could have easily said ,no your player would fight the dracolich, not go outside. But I knew that would cross the DM boundaries. So I used some DM power to even out the situation. I brought down one of the NPCs whom had traveled with the pcs but stayed behind. I fudged some spot rolls by the dracolich and had him believe the mages was dead and used the NPC as a buffer. The mages managed to complete the puzzle while the npc was getting toasted. 7 rounds later, after the fighter had tourhoughly searched outside (still don't know what for) she came back (2 rounds after the dracolich was taken care of). This made the encounter fair without taking away the challenge for those whom wanted it.

After session I addressed the bigger issue without having it come out in session. IF that battle would have continued the way it did, I don't think the group would have survived if she was in it.

Moral of my long drawn out story and how it relates to the above.
IT's always better to maximize your DM power, keep the player's in control of their character, and prevent and incident that is best handled with discussion out of game.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Overt player uselessness or party harming behavor is always handled by the party in my games, I never have to step in.

And by useless I'm not referring to lack of optimization or stuff like that, but the behavoir of the above fighter, running from a dragon to search outside for no reason, while the mages were left behind. Every round the other players would just ask the fighters player just WTF are they doing, and begin to hurl insults until they did something other than leave the other party members out to dry. If the player kept on doing that they would probably end up killed by the other party members of booted from the group making the player create a new PC that would contribute to the success of the group.

 

[Rackhir]

Moral of my long drawn out story and how it relates to the above.
IT's always better to maximize your DM power, keep the player's in control of their character, and prevent and incident that is best handled with discussion out of game.

I think I see where the disconnect is between what we are talking about. Your story was about a player chosing to do something stupid for no reason that made sense to anyone else. While that could have lead to a TPK, that behavior doesn't fall into the realm of things I was talking about.

My comments were devoted more to the player doing things that would lead to outright warfare between characters. Its sort of the RPG equivalent of "Never give a order you know won't be obeyed." You don't permit actions that you know are going to cause characters to come to blows. Thus my paladin/evil characters example.

A Paladin is forbidden from associating with openly evil character and from participating in or condoning openly evil actions. So if there is a paladin in the party and you let someone run an openly evil character, they will inevitably come to blows and a conflict that is going to split the party and quite possibly cause players to quit. Likewise you don't let a paladin into an evil party, for pretty much the exact same reason.

If you wish to permit situations that will cause the breakup of the group and the loss of at least some players, well you certainly have that right.

At no point was I advocating that the DM start running the PC, dictating tactics or actions. I am simply saying that I have found a certain wisdom in the DM forbiding things from coming to open warfare between characters.

This might never be an issue depending on your player and their characters. I'm fairly certain from what I've read of PC's story hours that characters trying to kill each other simply isn't an issue with his players.

OTOH, I get the impression that everyone was going to want to kill pretty much any character that the Peck's player ran in Wulf Ratbane's story hour.