Managing Problems and Players
- Thread starter Archon
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While I agree with this a lot in theory, one of the most fun campaigns I ever played in was when my Ranger got hit with a change alignment spell and no one else in the party noticed. I proceeded to screw them over in many different ways. The DM actually wouldn't let the rest of the party deal with it, because I was careful to not let their characters figure out I was behind it. Eventually, I became the quest, to remove the align spell.
It was quite a bit of fun, and I'm fairly sure the rest of the party enjoyed it, despite them getting screwed over.
It was quite a bit of fun, and I'm fairly sure the rest of the party enjoyed it, despite them getting screwed over.
I'm not sure how the story you've shared represents any difference from what I'm suggesting in practice. It sounds like you and all your fellow players took everything in good stride. I imagine that if your newly-evil Ranger had, i.e., just cut everyone's throats in their sleep, they'd have felt differently, regardless of the fact that you were just roleplaying evil. Or, contrarily, if they'd cast "detect alignment" on you and then cut you down, again, that probably would have changed how you felt.
It sounds like you understood the social dynamic of your group, and roleplayed evil in that context in a way that was fun for everyone! That's a testament to superior playing skill on your part, but it doesn't mean the core theory is wrong
It sounds like you understood the social dynamic of your group, and roleplayed evil in that context in a way that was fun for everyone! That's a testament to superior playing skill on your part, but it doesn't mean the core theory is wrong
Have people actually played in long-term, successful "Individualist" D&D campaigns? I've never been involved in anything other than strongly Collective ones, and friends who have come from Individualist groups to ours always seem, after an initial settling in period, to find the Collective approach more relaxing and enjoyable. It's so far outside my experience I'm just curious what the draw and payoff are to an Individualist style?
It should be pretty easy to avoid this situation and keep with the rules...
I don't know about other versions, but here's a bit from the pathfinder rulebook:
"The three evil alignments are usually for monsters and
villains. With the GM?s permission, a player may assign
an evil alignment to his PC, but such characters are
often a source of disruption and conf lict with good and
neutral party members. GMs are encouraged to carefully
consider how evil PCs might affect the campaign before
allowing them."
So yeah, if you have a player who is going to be evil, the DM should be aware of it and have placed some kind of limits on how evil he can be. I can't imagine someone actually screwing over their teammates as badly as you are describing :\ but if they try to do it as a non-evil character, the DM can simply deny them the ability to do it, since it would be out of character for a neutral-chaotic pc to suddenly slit everyone's throat in the night.
I don't think there's anyone in my current group who would actually do something like this but good to know how to deal with such a case.
I don't know about other versions, but here's a bit from the pathfinder rulebook:
"The three evil alignments are usually for monsters and
villains. With the GM?s permission, a player may assign
an evil alignment to his PC, but such characters are
often a source of disruption and conf lict with good and
neutral party members. GMs are encouraged to carefully
consider how evil PCs might affect the campaign before
allowing them."
So yeah, if you have a player who is going to be evil, the DM should be aware of it and have placed some kind of limits on how evil he can be. I can't imagine someone actually screwing over their teammates as badly as you are describing :\ but if they try to do it as a non-evil character, the DM can simply deny them the ability to do it, since it would be out of character for a neutral-chaotic pc to suddenly slit everyone's throat in the night.
I don't think there's anyone in my current group who would actually do something like this
but good to know how to deal with such a case.Yeah mine have all been very collective. I would think individualist would be pretty rough on the DM, since PCs would often get split up and have to have their own separate story going.Psydney said:
I have run two successful Individualist campaigns using the Cyberpunk 2020 rules. Both of them lasted around 20 sessions or 6 months, which is a very long run for both Cyberpunk and Individualist play!Psydney said:
In the first campaign, the group split into two different factions conspiring against each other over a fortune in illicit wealth. The first faction ended up assassinating the second faction in a series of targeted killings, then fled in a helicopter. Unfortunately the second faction had rigged their chopper to explode. The campaign ended with everyone dead... but after a good long run.
In the second campaign the group split into multiple competing mini-factions that each tried to one-up the other while still working fairly cooperatively. At one point the team's Netrunner actually hacked the team's accounts and started stealing from them under their noses, for instance. The campaign ended with them all jockeying for positions in a third world banana republic, settling into positions of mutual respect but distrust.
Counter-intuitively, I think the key to a successful Individualist campaign is that you need to have a LOT of players. Both Cyberpunk games have had 8 to 10 players. That gives lots of room for factions and conspiracy, while preventing any one player from throwing too much weight around. It's easy to betray 2 people. It's hard to betray 9 people.
When I've run Individualist games with small numbers of players, they end quickly. A Dark Side Star Wars campaign with 4 players lasted 1 session.
It also helps if the game is not level-based. In Cyberpunk, your starting character is fairly tough, and it's easy to introduce a new PC that's capable and competent if you get killed. That minimizes the pain and suffering that's inevitable in Individualist play, and makes it harder to take advantage of the "newbies".
Okay, there's a missing piece. I was picturing a usual "players vs. GM" scenario but with a lot more lying and backstabbing and having a hard time seeing how it wouldn't end in bad feelings on the meta-game level. But if everyone understands up front that they're competing...I can see that. ThanksArchon said:
Fair point. I suppose I wasn't really arguing against it, just looking for some clarification. In support of your theory, I can say that nobody likes playing with the guy who is always chaotic evil (even in games with no alignment) and kills everything he sees. We had a guy like that in High School. Pretty soon we stopped telling him when we were gaming.Archon said:I'm not sure how the story you've shared represents any difference from what I'm suggesting in practice. It sounds like you and all your fellow players took everything in good stride. I imagine that if your newly-evil Ranger had, i.e., just cut everyone's throats in their sleep, they'd have felt differently, regardless of the fact that you were just roleplaying evil. Or, contrarily, if they'd cast "detect alignment" on you and then cut you down, again, that probably would have changed how you felt.
It sounds like you understood the social dynamic of your group, and roleplayed evil in that context in a way that was fun for everyone! That's a testament to superior playing skill on your part, but it doesn't mean the core theory is wrong
In the campaigns I've DM'd, I'd have to say the groups were a mix of your 3 types, depending on the situation. I've always felt very strongly that it is not up to the DM to enforce anything--a good group is self-enforcing (which can be brutal sometimes), and if it's not a good group, then why play with them?
In fact, just as in RL a judge ultimately has to answer to the community, the DM ultimately has to answer to the group community. So if there's a problem player, it's the DM's job to deal with the player--but only because the other players are using the DM as their agent.
Anyway, as to your example, unless we're talking children with limited social experience, I can't imagine a DM not foreseeing problems with the newly made character or the player and heading them off at the pass. If the player is hiding things from the DM, then clearly that is a problem person and beyond the scope of in-game solutions (they are going to "behave badly" no matter what).
Often in my campaigns I've had people turn to the other side, and as gamers I think everyone's enjoyed it (my campaigns have all lasted multiple years). Groups can handle just about anything the DM throws at them provided it's all dealt with honestly in the game.
I think being a sort of wide-open campaign allows for a great many interesting situations that wouldn't otherwise arise. Likewise, I prefer a sandbox world--generally I spend a great deal of time developing a custom world and background, then let the players decide who and what they want to play and what they want to do. From there, I develop the storylines (sometimes with some player input) that I think they will like based on what they've done.
So, though it's convenient and handy to boil RP groups down to some limited number, just as in the wider world, people are not so easily pigeonholed. And woe to the DM who expects to use pat responses (I'm not at all saying yours are) to a group's issues. Every group is distinct and requires a different approach.
In fact, just as in RL a judge ultimately has to answer to the community, the DM ultimately has to answer to the group community. So if there's a problem player, it's the DM's job to deal with the player--but only because the other players are using the DM as their agent.
Anyway, as to your example, unless we're talking children with limited social experience, I can't imagine a DM not foreseeing problems with the newly made character or the player and heading them off at the pass. If the player is hiding things from the DM, then clearly that is a problem person and beyond the scope of in-game solutions (they are going to "behave badly" no matter what).
Often in my campaigns I've had people turn to the other side, and as gamers I think everyone's enjoyed it (my campaigns have all lasted multiple years). Groups can handle just about anything the DM throws at them provided it's all dealt with honestly in the game.
I think being a sort of wide-open campaign allows for a great many interesting situations that wouldn't otherwise arise. Likewise, I prefer a sandbox world--generally I spend a great deal of time developing a custom world and background, then let the players decide who and what they want to play and what they want to do. From there, I develop the storylines (sometimes with some player input) that I think they will like based on what they've done.
So, though it's convenient and handy to boil RP groups down to some limited number, just as in the wider world, people are not so easily pigeonholed. And woe to the DM who expects to use pat responses (I'm not at all saying yours are) to a group's issues. Every group is distinct and requires a different approach.
Well, I think you are wrong there. Hiding things from the DM is completely acceptable in some groups, particularly games that encourage adversial play like D&D 3.5. It's not how I run but I know DMs who run like that.0over0 said:
Anyway, the point of my article is that one person's "behave badly" is another person's "enjoyable in-game treachery" and that you can't even assess what's bad behavior until you've determined what your group's standard of good behavior is. More often than not, the problem is a player who isn't in line with the rest of the group's expectations. If the group dynamic is competition and treachery, the cooperative player is going to be perceived as a whiny carebear. if the group dynamic is cooperation and collectivism, the competitive player is going to be perceived as a jerk.
It's not convenient or handy to understand your group dynamic. It's essential.
This seems right to me and adds another dimension to the models offered here - that is, in addition to intra-party decisions about collectivity, competitiveness, or individualism there are analogous decisions to be made about the party-DM dynamic. The different combinations of the two matrices could be fairly interesting (e.g., collective players team up to thwart a competitive DM; individualistic players cooperate with a competitive DM against other players).Archon said:
It also seems that, based on these criteria, I'm a raging socialist - collective party and non-competitive DM.
I like the competitive-collective it was fun to have the players in competition. This is why I hated running evil campaigns it is hard to have an evil party. My group begged for one at one time but I broke them of it quickly. Imagine a player in the campaign who has an evil sword that begs him every night to kill everyone in their sleep, hope you have good will!
While this is something I've noticed in running my own RPGs, I find that incorporating the social dynamic into the plot of the game is very effective.
For collective games, I've placed NPC's in the campaign that distinctly favor some characters over others. Usually, the NPC dislikes the most collectivist character, leaving them to wonder what offense they committed to deserve the scorn. The new dynamic and new character often manifests itself in troubling scenarios... the story would require the hated player character to work with the aggressive NPC to solve a problem and it's a great way to push the player to creativity.
For individualist characters, I've set up situations where they attract the attention of a powerful patron who offers them perks, for a price. While the price rarely destroys the main plotline, it often makes the team work harder for a goal and the attempts of the individualist to hide their true intentions from the group is quite fun.
Even in non-alignment based games (like Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green) the same social dynamics play out when there's no strict rules about the level of goodness or neutrality.
For collective games, I've placed NPC's in the campaign that distinctly favor some characters over others. Usually, the NPC dislikes the most collectivist character, leaving them to wonder what offense they committed to deserve the scorn. The new dynamic and new character often manifests itself in troubling scenarios... the story would require the hated player character to work with the aggressive NPC to solve a problem and it's a great way to push the player to creativity.
For individualist characters, I've set up situations where they attract the attention of a powerful patron who offers them perks, for a price. While the price rarely destroys the main plotline, it often makes the team work harder for a goal and the attempts of the individualist to hide their true intentions from the group is quite fun.
Even in non-alignment based games (like Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green) the same social dynamics play out when there's no strict rules about the level of goodness or neutrality.
We were always a part of Competitive-Collective sessions. There was actually a time when the old GM that we were sick of joined in as an antagonist and ended up attempting to kill half the party and the nearby town. I think it was enjoyable for everyone to turn him into the king and get rid of him from the games.
However, I don't think evil is such a bad choice for a character to play depending how you play it. If anyone has seen the show Dexter, he is (in D&D terms) LE yet he is living a life in hiding so he is super secretive about all of his extracurriculars.
However, I don't think evil is such a bad choice for a character to play depending how you play it. If anyone has seen the show Dexter, he is (in D&D terms) LE yet he is living a life in hiding so he is super secretive about all of his extracurriculars.
You would be surprised; an Evil camp is allot of fun if you set down the mentioned play style before hand. For instance if you can get all of your players to only screw with each other in a minor fashion and show them that collective evil can be fun, you end up with a surprisingly rewarding camp.Fortuan said:
It is important to have a common goal they can work to.
Well I guess I didn't mention that really it wasn't the fact that it was an evil campaign that was a problem but how the players wanted to play it. For instance I honestly gave them a goal. They banded together in order to fend off a vigilante who would surely destroy them 1 by 1. Unfortunately for them they decided it was better to back stab each other until only 2 remained. They were promptly slaughtered.Croaker42 said:
That is called stupid, not evil. If they were any kind of successful evil doer they would call truce, kill the vigilante, and then back stab the party member. All the while attempting to build people's allegiance to prevent something happening to your guy before you get to the vigilante.Fortuan said:
I think a little bit of that kind of stupid should be expected from time to time. The first thing I think of when the idea of an evil camp comes up is this kind of behavior.KEM10 said:
Honestly I think the best ways to deal with the behavior is to drop a good number of hints at plot pregame. If that fails, make a few constraints on class/alignment True/Lawfull evil are almost always patient and planing.