Who's at fault?

[PapersAndPaychecks]

The players.

It's not the DM's job to tell the thief how to play his character, and if the paladin didn't have anything at all he wanted do with three hours' gaming time except wait for the thief to decide to include him, then he needs to develop the character more.

 

[an_idol_mind]

The DM should have made sure that everyone got involved.

The players should have worked to include the paladin in some way. While it's the DM's primary responsibility, D&D is still a game to be played and enjoyed by everyone at the table, and everyone at the table needs to try to make it as inclusive an environment as possible.

 

[Lhorgrim]

I'm going to echo that the DM is the one who has the ultimate responsibility to make sure everyone at the table has an opportunity to have good time.

I'm curious to understand why some of the previous posters have declared the paladin player at fault to some degree or another.

It doesn't sound like he was whining about being "bound by a code", rather that he was just not involved in the majority of an adventure session. I had the same type of thing happen to rigger and decker characters in some old Shadowrun games, but it never occured to me that I might be to blame for selecting that class instead of street sam, merc, or combat mage.

 

[Gold Roger]

The whole group for not ensuring a group that has a functioning dynamic.

The DM has special game, because:
1.He's the moderator of character creation and should have lead the effort for a good dynamic

2.After failing that also failed to consider the fact of a disfunctional party dynamic into his adventure design.


But that doesn't overshadow that I think the group as a whole has failed here.

 

[buzz]

The group.

If the thief's player knew that keeping the passage secret would mean the paladin's player would be excluded from the prepared adventure, no amount of pleading "it's what my character would do" will change the fact that he's being a jerk, and is at fault.

If the DM, seeing how things went down, did nothing to help get the paladin involved or give him something to do FOR THREE HOURS, he's at fault.

The paladin's player should probably have communicated that he wanted to be involved instead of just sitting by grumpily reading books FOR THREE HOURS. Of course, I can only blame him so much given that D&D places most of the power to effect his involvement in the hands of the DM.

The wizard's player could have tried to help find a solution to get the paladin involved, instead of ignoring that player FOR THREE HOURS while he enjoyed his escapade with the thief.

That the party consists of PCs with such incompatible goals is an overall group failure, and should never have been allowed to happen. Granted, in D&D, it's primarily the DM that should have taken some steps to fix this initially, so he's more culpable than the others.

So, IMO, everyone at the table screwed up.

EDIT: Yeah, what Gold Roger said.

 

[werk]

I have a situation for you.

A party consists of a thief-type rogue, a paladin ...

The DM. It is completely rude to ignore a player in favor of other players because they roleplayed him out. He should have given equal time to the paladin, at least!

If I were the paladin's player, I would have insisted on playing. Sitting around wasting time waiting for the DM to give you fair play is total BS.

(good job on getting 11 replies in 12 views!)

 

[Barak]

I blame the wizard. He had nothing to lose and everything to gain by letting the pally know without letting the rogue know that he snitched!

Seriously, while the DM isn't to blame for the actual situation, he is definitively to blame for letting a player stew in his own juices for 3 hours for no fault of his own.

 

[Pbartender]

Look... No matter how much a DM tries to involve players in what's going on, there are certain situations in which is simply doesn't work. It's unavoidable. It's ultimately a product of having a party full of characters who each specialize in a certain set of skills.

...

And while I was typing this, Buzz pretty much already said what I was going to say.

Sometimes these things happen... When it does, the goal shouldn't necessarily be to include the oddball character, but to minimize his uninvolvement. There HAD to be something else the paladin could have been doing while the rogue and the wizard made the rescue... and everyone -- all three players and the DM -- should have a part of figuring out what it was.

 

[Lockridge]

Thanks for your replies folks,
In the end the campaign was scrapped and the group re-rolled characters. Everyone agreed (after a few nights of cooling off) that it was indeed the group's fault as a whole for 1st not creating a group that is a team and 2nd for not finding a way to correct the situation once it started. As Buzz said, even the wizard could have done something.
Everyone decided that this was an "off day" for all and decided to move on.
Everyone is still friends to this day 15 years later.

 

[joshuakanton]

Next time have the Paladin be the one to learn about the secret passage and let him tell the rest of the group.