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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6864098" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, in the quote I posted you did refer to a social rule being broken - whether or not that is a "technical" or other form of wronggoing I don't have a firm view on!I don't see these as the only options. For instance, you might ask them to change their tastes in how they play the game.And even if you decide not to ask them to change their tastes, you might address the issue of sharing approaches as a social matter, rather than try to regulate it via encounter design.I've bundled these three posts together because the first two seem to me somewhat illustrative of Manbearcat's point, though maybe not in the way he had in mind.The idea that the GM is in charge of deciding whether the proper approach to an encounter is combat ("ultra-violence") or is social interaction ("talking") posits a very high degree of GM control over the game. This is the sort of removal or player agency ("GM, not players, moving the planchette") that I mentioned upthread (post 642). At post 658 [MENTION=6802951]Cap'n Kobold[/MENTION] said that this encounter-design suggestion has no bearing on "player agency during encounters", but I can't see that at all. It seems to be very much about dictating how encounters should be resolved.As I said, this is a social issue. I don't have a universal flowchart that I pull out to resolve social issues in my life - it depends on who the parties are, what my relationship is to them, what their relationships are among one another, not to mention very contextual things like who is in what sort of mood at the time the issue becomes apparent.In the past, when the players at my table have had different views about how to approach an encounter, generally they have worked it out among themselves. My interventions - which are almost always by way of over-the-shoulder style comments reminding one player or another of what might be at stake in resolving the encounter one way rather than another - are not in service of the sort of social issue you raise, but trying to amp up the tension and evident stakes of the encounter.In a 4e session in the latter part of last year, the PCs encountered Kas (Vecna's vampire ex-lieutenant, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?313724-Actual-play-the-PCs-successfully-negotiated-with-Kas" target="_blank">with whom the PCs had made a deal back at paragon tier</a>) and Osterneth (a servant of Vecna, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?299440-Exploration-scenarios-my-experiment-last-Sunday" target="_blank">who when she was a young apprentice 100 years in the past had been rescued by the time-travelling PCs</a>) fighting over access to the mausoleum of the Raven Queen. A fuller write-up is <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?470791-Session-report-the-party-comes-close-to-a-split-but-not-quite" target="_blank">here</a>, but in short: the players (and hence PCs) couldn't decide who to talk with, who to fight, etc, and so in the end - to force some sort of resolution - I made them write down blind declarations of general intent. The result was that one player had his PC attack Kas, while the rest went for Jenna.Over the course of that session and the <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?480707-Session-report-PCs-defeat-Kas-but-cede-the-battlefield-to-Osterneth" target="_blank">next</a>, the other PCs joined with the Kas-fighting one and left Jenna alone; then turned on her (but with the Kas-fighting one wishing her "good luck" in her attempt to get to the mausoleum first, but then being the one to shut its door against her when the PCs ultimately made it there before she did).All four of the sessions I've just linked to involved the players having different views about how to approach the ingame situation. These have included whether to talk to NPCs or fight them, and (in the time-travel scenario) one of the players making a decision for his PC alone (who had sneaked off) which had consequences, and which he knew had the potential to have consequences, for the other PCs and hence players (namely, releasing undead spiders by taking the gems from the eye sockets of a skull). In these sort of situation I don't see it as my job, as GM, to tell them or to send them "telegraphs" as to what to do. At best, if the discussion is becoming interminable, I might force a decision to be made (eg as per the example of blind declaration; <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?340383-PCs-kill-Ometh-leading-to-open-season-on-the-Raven-Queen-s-name" target="_blank">on another occasion</a>, I ended up making them roll CHA-modified dice to reach a party resolution between two travel destinations which had been debated back-and-forth without conclusion over a couple of sessions).I have vague memories, from a 2nd ed AD&D campaign 20-odd years ago when I was a player, of a fellow player who had a tendency to trigger traps, initiate combats etc (I think he was what the modern terminology would call an "instigator"). When his choices frustrated the rest of us as players, we talked to him about it.</blockquote>

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