The social contract

[Greenfield]

There's a sort of social contract among the PCs in most games I've played in.

In the simplest terms: Somebody's in trouble, you help them out.

What do you do when a PC does something far off the deep end, and expects your character to help cover for him?

What if it keeps on happening?

 

[Halivar]

I've had fellow players who insist on creating... "troublesome" characters.

Typically a sheet of paper is discretely handed to the DM, who has the player roll a listen or notice check before being informed they were coup-de-grace'd in their sleep.

 

[xigbar]

It depends on what kind of character I'm running, and how it's interacted with the distressed one in question. If I've had favorable interactions and play an at least moderately generous character, then yes. If neither, then no. If one or the other, it really depends. The first time, probably, but on repet occasions, my character isn't going to save anyone's day.

 

[Greenfield]

We don't execute PCs, either in PVP style or by DM fiat. Lot's of problems stem from that sort of thing.

One player who recently fouled things up has volunteered to have his character retire.

His PC decided to pick the pocket of a man we met on the road who was bad-mouthing a dead PC. He got caught and the ensuing ruckus ended with four guardsmen (road patrol for a local lord, no less) dead, and their leader critically injured.

Yeah, we ended up killing some cops as things rapidly escalated out of control.

But he's prepared to take his lumps over that. He knows he screwed up.

What I'm talking about is the PC who goes looking for trouble, picking fights in town or baiting NPCs into trying to rob them. The Cleric who burns down a local church for being of a "heretic" faith, that sort of thing.

(And no, we didn't have a Cleric do such a thing, it was just an example.)

This kind of trouble reflects badly on anyone who's known to keep company with the trouble maker.

Oddly, in our current game, (the one I complained about in "Grumble Grumble"), the trouble that was caused had no backlash or consequence at all, because that would have diverted the "railroad" plot line. Cops dead on the road and a surviving witness who can clearly identify the PCs, and not a ripple.

But, aside from the rare case of the one-track DM, what sort of consequences should happen when one PC makes it a habit of leading trouble back to the party?

 

[kitcik]

We have the same social contract, EVEN if they do it repeatedly.

The exceptions would be:
- they keep doing the exact same thing (charging into the same dragon's den ahead of the party more than once, after being told not to)
- they are doing it for personal gain at the expense of the party

We currently have a CG Ranger in our party who can't help being impulsive to a fault. We cover him no matter what trouble he gets into.

 

[Sekhmet]

Once I finished making my own campaign setting, trouble making PC's aren't too hard to deal with. The world is as fluid as I can make it, actions are relevant to every concurrent character you will ever play.
If your Cleric burned down a Church in the year 82, you'll be able to run into that burned down Church in the year 83.

If your character was Evil, and thrown in prison in the year 85, your next character will be able to watch him rotting in his cell/hear about his deeds in the year 90.

I've even had players forced to kill their own characters.

This style of fluidity has forced my players to take a second look at how they interact with things. This isn't a gigantic world (population around 500,000), and what they do really does matter, so when they mess up they can potentially mess everything up for future characters as well as themselves.

 

[Oryan77]

We don't really have a social contract. We just keep it in game and roll with the punches.

I've only had 1 fellow player be the reckless type. My PC at the time was a survivalist and would only risk his life for another when it meant something. This other PC wanted to sneak into a warehouse by himself even after we said it wasn't a good idea. The player was also the type to throw realism and logic out the window and do things like carry 10 sets of armor in his backpack and argue about it when the DM would say that he can't do that.

So of course his PC gets caught by guards inside the warehouse. We see him being escorted down the street and being led to a factory where they burn criminals without even going to trial first. I was sort of the party leader, so everyone asked me what we should do and I just said, "Sorry, it's too risky, I'm not attacking the guards, & he got himself in this situation and disregarded our warnings. I'm not doing anything." Everyone agreed and the player got all pissed off at us. The DM said they immediately executed him in the fire pits.

So he rolled up a Bard that had the swimming proficiency because his old PC believed there was treasure at the bottom of an oasis that he ran across one time. This was a Darksun campaign; there are no bodies of water around for people to learn how to swim. And he was using metagame knowledge to benefit his new PC in case there was treasure there.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

We've had creative mixes of alignments and personalities over the years.

When one player is extreme, usually one of the following happens:

-If that PC is very powerful, we usually do whatever that PC does.
-If that PC is roleplayed charismatic (not about the CHA score, but you just love um, even if they make you crazy), then we usually go along with whatever that PC does.
-If that PC is neither powerful or charming, we'll roleplay grumbling for a while & try to talk some sense. If there isn't a change.... well it's happened where one PC will charge in and the rest of us just sorta stand back and watch. That PC will either die or retreat with a little bit more wisdom.

As games have varied, Players have gotten different levels of attached to characters. Some have been some kind of insane and expected to die, some have been more comic and expected to die, some are stupidly heroic and expect to die. We roll up new characters and keep going pretty smoothly when death happens, so it's not usually a problem.

 

[Grogg of the North]

For the most part my players, and when I play in games myself, will come to the aid of a fellow PC if they've gotten surrounded by orcs and are desperately trying to stay alive.

However, if someone did something stupid, like ask the queen if she wants to see his longstaff of charming, then the rest of the group leaves them to their own devices and cuts their losses. In a recent game we even tried to abandon a trouble maker in the woods because he managed to aggravate a nearby army encampment.

The bigger problem I've had is when one player is a trouble maker; annoys everyone at the table and the rest of the party bends over backwards to justify why they are still adventuring together.

 

[kitcik]

However, if someone did something stupid, like ask the queen if she wants to see his longstaff of charming...

The Ranger in our party, referenced in my post above, has an animal companion python named Shaft and dual wields a sword and a Rod of Wonder. You can imagine the innuendos that ensue. Strangely, that's not usually what gets him in trouble.