Why are people so uncomfortable with PvP?

[HeapThaumaturgist]

For me it's really a "why" factor.

I mean, if two players came to me and said they had a great roleplaying thing they wanted to do where one character would get mad at the other and they'd have a grand cinematic combat and at the end one would be struck down ... but left for dead, and would come back as a major villian ...

Something like that. Eh. Cool.

But general PvP is one of those "Fun Reducing Things" which I just see no reason to put up with. Rack it up next to Evil characters, Chaotic Neutral-Psycho/Selfish, characters with backgrounds contrary to the party, and non-Core rules I haven't playtested.

--fje

 

[Shadowslayer]

I found a new group once. It was an old friend of mine and a couple of his friends. With all of them being really nice and easy to be around, I figured, what the hey, lets start a D&D campaign. So everyone rolls up characters and agrees to play next week. SO I go home and design an initial dungeon and a rather unique way of starting off (unique for me anyway)

Well, after all the work I put into it and the neat story around the campaign's starting point and all that, we begin. Half an hour later someone finds a scroll. Party argues over who should get the scroll. Finally leads to a rediculous PC vs PC chase through the dungeon. This is the beginning and the personal issues going on here are becoming apparent to me.

(These are folks in their mid to late 20s by the way, and had gamed before)

To make a long story short, now people are mad at each other. We get outside to find a deserted camp with a caged Worg. Now the party argues over what to do with the worg. One player decides it by kiilling the worg outright, and the girl playing the Druid freaks. It comes to blows between PCs, and gets uglier from there.

ANd its not "ha ha, we really got ON each other didn't we?" These players were mad.

Know what the main combatants said to me? "But...I was just ROLE playing" (insert sound of fingernails scraping down a blackboard)

At that point I closed my books and basically said "look, Im not going through the hassle of designing this stuff just so you can do nothing but fight with each other. Anyone else care to DM?"

And that was it. Never played with them again.

I have NEVER been in a game where this kind of stuff ended well. Feelings get hurt. Yes you can say "well, we're mature and we can handle it", but why should you have to? It still sucks.

Campaigns that are designed in such a way that "sticking it to each other" is encouraged, accepted and expected, are another matter. They CAN be fun. But that's different.

MOST games I've played in have an unspoken social agreement that the group is going to work together. When one or 2 players bugger that up, it ceases to be fun, and the other players (and the DM. Especially the DM, in my case) resent it.

It may not be against the rules to go PvP, but it bites, and I won't waste my time.

Trev

 

[Crothian]

Good things can come of PvP. Just because you havn't seen it doesn't make it nonexistant.

Okay, what good then?

 

[Psion]

Why do so many people seem to have issues with PvP to the point of outrightly forbidding it?

Having been on the wrong end of that philosophy, I don't think I'd be for an outright ban.

But in general, I would say it's strongly discouraged with good reason. At best it's a fun-sapping distraction and a substandard activity (there are games that can do personal scale wargaming better.) At worst it can result in hurt feelings and ruin campaigns.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

I've seen it done once...and it worked perfectly that once, but only because the players didn't do it because they hated each other. Two characters just plain didn't like each other from the very beginning. They worked together, but mainly because they were both working to the same goal and the other two in the group wouldn't have liked the idea of them fighting at all.

Then one of the players decided to leave the game. So...we figured we'd end it how it needed to be ended for the characters. Things went very bad, chaos erupted, and the two of them went at it. Best lightsaber duel(yes, its Star Wars ) I've ever played in. Vicious, long, and back and forth to the very end.

Of course, that's definitely an exception. I don't encourage that kind of thing, as many times it really comes up due to two people just not getting along and putting that into their characters...but if it works and is done right, it can really work.

 

[Glyfair]

Campaigns that are designed in such a way that "sticking it to each other" is encouraged, accepted and expected, are another matter. They CAN be fun. But that's different.

I think this states it well. If it's encouraged, accepted and expected, then it can turn out well. Even then, though, you'll find players who take it personally, regardless of what they claimed before.

Roleplaying encourages a certain identification with your character. Once you reach the point where you have that, it takes a very rare person to completely distance themselves from the character so that don't take it personally at some level.

All in all, I find it's far better to distance a campaign from the option. The only exception would be a campaign where a key part of the campaign is the possiblity of PvP situations (for example, a Birthright campaign where the players are playing competing regents).

 

[freebfrost]

Okay, what good then?

I'll answer this one since I started the original thread on this.

The good for the situation was finding a common ground for an uncommon character that I am playing to be a part of the group.

I have little use for a stereotypical dark stranger in the tavern or heroes being summoned by the king type meeting, and I would venture that my group is of a like mindset. We had a cow over the one time our DM tried to get us to be caravan guards.

Anyways, I had an idea for a very isolated and young female druid, but needed some way to join up with the party. A challenging idea even for the DM in this case, but that's what I like to run - challenging characters.

The DM had worked it so that the main party would meet me in the forest tracking a group of missing children, so I was reluctantly working with the group, but didn't see an IC reason to continue working with them. Vague promises of helping me in my personal quest didn't really ring true as I thought about it, so when the ranger's player did something I saw could be questionable in my PC's eyes, I leapt at the chance to engage him. As it turned out, it fell to blows, which is actually even better.

Now I have a PC who is remorseful for her actions, who has already taken steps to make amends and is continuing to do so in the forest while the rest of the party is in town. I have to think of creative ways to help the group and eventually become trusted by the group while trying to make sense of the things I have seen in my contact with civilization and their "weird" rules about not attacking people.

And that's fun and that's good.

Where's the bad? The other players aren't upset. The DM isn't upset. The only people upset are the people here on ENWorld who seem to think that this kind of action is evil with a capital "E" and only want to tell me how to run my own characters.

In my experience if you have a good group of mature roleplayers, interplay conflict just gives more fuel to feed off of for the game. I find it a shame that more people haven't reached that level and instead just want to sit around and play it at the old "you meet in a tavern and go off to slay the dragon" level.

That's just plain boring to me.

 

[Crothian]

Vague promises of helping me in my personal quest didn't really ring true as I thought about it, so when the ranger's player did something I saw could be questionable in my PC's eyes, I leapt at the chance to engage him. As it turned out, it fell to blows, which is actually even better.

Did you kill the other character? And why would the rest of the party want to deal with your character who attacked their friend?

Sure, there is some roleplaying that can evolve from it, but it just seems that there are better ways to get a character to jion the group.

 

[MavrickWeirdo]

Actually in my PbP game, 2 of the character's fought when they first met. One was a elf guard on patrole, the other was a halfling rogue sneaking around. Guard spotted the rogue, halfling tried to run, they grappled. Guard brought halfling in. Halfling was released on lack of evidence. (Apparently sneaking around at night is not actually illegal.)

however there was no bloodshed.

 

[Threedub]

But I don't forbid it, I found a better way to deal with it is play with people that just don't do it.

I'm with Crothian here, at least 98% of the time. We don't forbid it but I play with a group that understands that it is a group game, and PvP ends up with someone dead and usually splits the party (ie campaign over). However, it has happened, has made in-character sense and was what should have been done at the time. But it happens rarely because we push for characters that can work together at creation.

I spent many of my younger D&D years (late 80's, early 90's) playing with people where everything ended up in PvP. I was one of the principal PvPers. The game was about killing and taking stuff, and if my PC buddy had more stuff--well he was on the list. Cure Light Wounds cost 100gp. The mage saved his spells until he really needed them. The cleric would use Sanctuary rather than turning, just to watch his fellows battle it out and chuckle. Then I grew up and figured out it wasn't really a competitive game, but rather a cooperative one.