[True/False] There is a point in every campaign when the PCs come to blows.

[The_Warlock]

In my prior post, none of the intra-party conflict was due to personal player issues with each other, and the lethal character attacks were all based on in character reaction but the player chosing an innapropriate method due to relying on the metagame of the player knowing damage outputs of weapons versus the known hit point total of the character that had irked his character.

But when it's been "conflict" between characters due to role-playing, barring the one player's poor choice methodology, no other time did intra-party conflict go beyond in character arguments.

Though the best one ever, near the end of the 13 year old campaign, had a massive, multi-character heated discussion going on, and one player character dropped a Calm Emotions on the entire rest of the party. Before I could ever really comprehend it, everybody was playing the ongoing conversation like they'd been tagged with magical Lithium. It was amazing.

 

[Boarstorm]

If you play with characters like I often create, it's all but inevitable.

If my power hungry wizard runs across the artifact the BBEG has been hunting... well, it's his now, unless the party meddles and ruins my plans.

If my Jedi stumbles across an ancient Sith temple brimming with Dark Side energy, he's going to go in unless the party restrains him -- and even then, he'll often find a way to escape at the first opportunity and return to the temple.

Sometimes this results in the character getting removed from the campaign (turned into a villain, forces his party to slaughter him, etc), and sometimes not. The thing is to just take it in stride. I loved some of those characters, but whatever happens is the natural result of who the character was, so it's all good. I may not be able to play Mavros the fallen Jedi any longer, but damned if it wasn't a fitting end to the character anyway.

Heroic characters deserve heroic deaths. Villainous (or corrupted) characters deserve villainous deaths. Why nurture hard feelings for reaping what you've sown?

 

[Nine Hands]

I answered TRUE but my opinion of "comes to blows" is a much broader than just physical violence. I see every group go through the pain of establishing a pecking order, especially in character.

In one campaign, we went through several "leaders" until we settled on the right person, each time the "leader" changed, there was lots of character interaction and in character bickering. It was pretty hilarious.

In the current campaign I play in, my character (who is a scientist and is too smart for his own good) squares off against the former Soviet tank commander (who is also too smart for his own good). The in character conversations are pretty hilarious and are really good overall for the game.

The most important thing is to not allow any of this "fighting" to cause damage to anyones real world relationships. Its just a game, sometimes the characters argue but most of the time they get along wonderfully.

I also see the chances for arguements decrease as the campaign progresses and the characters get to know each other.

Good poll question BTW

 

[The Eternal GM]

I call false, a campaign CAN be all about players competing/conflicting but that's not something I've seen much outside of oWoD chronicles and the odd 'evil' campaign in more traditional ones.

I always wanted to run A Game of Thrones precisely to see how much infighting it would breed. Never got around to it.

Game/Players/GM/Intent all factor too much for it to be a truism for me.

 

[Scarbonac]

It's been my experience that expectations, motivations and goals differ from PC to PC and player to player; these sometimes come into conflict, resulting in humorous and/or near-deadly confrontations.

 

[JediSoth]

The only time PCs have come to blows in any of my campaigns was when a botched Disable Device roll set off an Insanity trap, afflicting 3/4 of the party.

It was an unfortunate circumstance because it led to an intra-party TPK, but it wasn't because of any moral stance any of the PCs had, so I voted "False."

JediSoth

 

[Ahnehnois]

I answered "false" because I've been in games where that didn't happen. However, in *most* of the games I've played/DMed, there was some type of in-party fighting. My most recent campaign had an Elder Evil being reborn within a PC, so the goal was for the other(s) to get that PC killed. I once replaced a PC with a doppelganger, so the player attacked his party for a session. However, I've also had alignment conflicts, personality conflicts, and other reasons for *players* to fight each other.

It happens.

 

[Ruslanchik]

A big TRUE here.

Recently a one-shot game even involved a little PC-on-PC violence.

I have never seen PCs kill each other or even use their weapons on each other. As a player you see how powerful the characters are and know that the fighter or wizard could easily kill your character if they didn't hold back. Therefore, there is a kind of mutually assured destruction truce between players. Also, after killing tribes of goblins, blasting dragons, and wading through pools of monster blood, there is something dramatic about a fistfight. It is much closer to a real-world conflict and almost always has cool RP results.

In my experience, these conflicts are the result of two things: alignment conflicts and player personalities.

There will inevitably be a conflict between the lawful good and chaotic neutral members of a group. This is unavoidable and is desirable, I think. It is cool to give your character some principles and make him/her stand up for them.

However, some people will always behave a certain way regardless of their alignment. Some people will defend the innocent with their chaotic neutral rogue because they are morally opposed to acting any other way. Some people, however, will rape and kill wantonly with their chaotic good character.

For me, there are certain lines that I don't like to see crossed. I am personally opposed to sex and sexual violence in a game. Maybe this is because I'm married and don't need to roleplay my sexual fantasies, maybe it's because these things cross a kind of decency line or take me into a space in other players' minds that I am not interested in. Regardless, no character of mine, no matter their alignment, will sit by and watch an NPC be raped or sexually assaulted. I'll happily address these issues with the players, but if they insist on going there, I will insist on kicking their asses in-game.

 

[hornedturtle]

I have fought with other characters a few times. The first time was the first session of a campaign. The characters were traveling on a flying airship and it crashed. After the survivors got away from the ship we got in fight with a invisible fungus. I was playing a Weretiger (with sand in his fur from the crash). It had a nauseating smell (sort of like a sewer) and after biting it (it tasted disgusting) another character had the bright idea of trying to toss a vile of ink at it. He missed and hit my character in the face and he lashed out instinctively (throwing his greathammer at him). Unfortunately for him it did enough damage to take him from full hit points to past -10.

Another time a diferent character of mine put on a helm of alignment change.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The Midwood campaign had an unwieldy cast of 11 player characters, about half lined up behind the forces of the baron and dedicated to defending the barony against the monstrous threats of Green Mountain, and about half who chafed under the yoke of the Tarsisian Empire. Quite without any of us expecting it to happen when it did, suddenly one half of the group was in trouble with the law, and the other half was trying to bring them to justice.

The campaign forked quite nicely, and each are pursuing their own agendas, hundreds of miles apart. (The Good Guy Gang has gone back to defending the barony, while the Fugitives are settling in at Freeport, presumably beyond the reach of imperial bounty hunters, just in time to find themselves in a Ptolus-flavored version of the Freeport Trilogy.)

Although the actual moment of the fork was a little trying, it came about very organically and has made the campaign a lot better. You can read about it in, I think, the third chapter of my Story Hour.