Dealing with Betrayal [4e]

[HMS Invincible]

We just found out there is a double agent in my party and it's to the BBEG to boot. He's been warned repeatedly about making double agent/evil characters in and out of character.

For a reasons as to why we're kicking him out:

Here are his previous characters:
1. Ranger who sells out his party to the BBEG for money. Party catches wind to the betrayal, gets killed.

2. Rogue who steals a caster item for the sword-mage, then sells it to another party member. Behavior soon spreads to other party members. The unobservant ones are deprived of loot they didn't even know they had. Later dies due to excessive cheating of die rolls and suicide attempts to get more treasure and a better character. He was "donating" his loot to the other rogue, and became very reckless in combat. He would forget to heal or charge into swarms of enemies.

3. Barbarian who keeps trying to take charge of negotiations with proposals that sound strangely close to working for evil cults.


I wasn't sure if this was an evil or good campaign yet. I suppose we could have spared him, but he didn't seem to show any remorse or loyalty to us. We filed it under good roleplaying, and awaited his replacement. The party under his influence has taken a decidedly evil shift. Other party members start fudging dice and stealing. The betrayal character was interesting the first time and he made out quite well. He got extra loot and was in high standing with the BBEG, but he made a few mistakes and got caught. The typical punishment for treason was death.

Next, the rogue with sticky hands who would even steal from fellow party members. I asked the party if we should let PCs steal from the party. All of us voted no, with the 2 people abstaining since they had no opinion. Later on, GM catches wind of his plan to cheat the parcel system for wealth and the rogue literally disappeared along with all the items that he has donated to the other rogue.

It's a classic rogue move to steal from party members but I dislike it due to the distrust and anger he is sowing in the party. The cheating also puts into question his high stats for his last 2 characters. GM declared that it a good aligned campaign.

Overall, he's had a very corrosive effect on our party, dragging down the alignments of the party, and making trust very fleeting. When I asked him what his goals are, he laughs and says he did it for the money. I got the impression he was like the joker from batman, except he gets upset when we kill him.


As for the GM, he's stated that it's suppose to be a good-aligned campaign, but he's willing to play out whatever we do as long as he gets to throw his monsters at us.
This is the last straw and I'm devoting my full might and magic to kill him. My budget is essentially unlimited and anything below lvl 16 in items will be paid for and made. The GM has given tacit approval, by not interfering with our plan. He is a lvl 12 military/secret agent barbarian.

I know, we really should have a heartfelt chat and let him leave without ruining our relationship with him, but we never felt we had the authority to kick him out of our club. Instead, we had the face to face chat, actively stopped his evil plans, and vigilantly watched for cheating. All we got for our trouble is more GM fiats and needless PC deaths. We thought he got the point when all his characters kept dying, and his last character didn't do anything too bad. He didn't become better, he was just hiding his evil intentions better.
The GM has a habit of taking ex-characters and turning them into villains who we have to fight. Thanks to 1 player, the enemy ranks of noteworthy members have swollen. To be frank, we have gotten tired of accommodating him just so we have a full group.

After this, we're just going to tell him he isn't welcome in our campaign anymore, or in our group in general.


Here's the plan:
There is a room with a throne of dominion and a dimensional anchor. I will sit on my throne, cast dominate(telling him to throw down his weapon), and demand his loyalty. If he disobeys, he's stunned and then I sleep-lock him til he dies. To back me up is the rest of the party: artful dodger rogue, swordmage, druid/hybrid wizard, and a shaman.

How's our plan? The GM may interfere to get a free npc on his side with uber stats or the barbarian may not cooperate since he may know that we have found out his true identity.

[Gralamin]

...You are taking the game WAY to seriously :smalleek:. I'm not sure you meant your post to sound like that, but as far as I can tell, you care more about how your character feels in the game then about the players within it. Granted, I don't know your group, but you've already stated multiple times that
1) You don't trust your GM
2) You want him out of the group for creating what might be an interesting situation. Is party unity really that important to you?
3) You don't care about the possible OOC or IC consequences of your actions.

Strictly speaking, Unless you can explain yourself better, I don't think you are justified at all.

[DabblerWizard]

Let me paraphrase what you're saying, HMS Invincible.

You have a player that repeatedly makes characters that backstab and steal from other party members. While this was funny at first, it has lead to frustration all around. Despite talking to him, he hasn't changed his behavior and continues to make characters that break your party's trust, and otherwise disturb the campaign theme and player enjoyment overall.

It is now your intention to beat him down, in character, in the hope that he'll learn, out of character, that the rest of you can't stand his play style.

I don't understand your DM's place in all of this. I see that he's used "DM Fiat" but that doesn't tell me enough about his behavior. A good DM should be able to curtail counterproductive player shenanigans.

It also seems unwise to beat him up in character. That sounds like a passive aggressive move on the part of the rest of the group, including the DM. A more mature move, would involve assertive modeling. You've already told him that you don't like his behavior, but maybe you haven't told him what's going to happen if he continues it.

(1) Explicitly state the bothersome behavior; (2) Say how it affects you; (3) Say how you'll react if the behavior continues

For example: The rest of the group is supremely annoyed with your continuous creation of misanthropic backstabbers. If you continue making characters like this, we are going to stop gaming with you.

It's that simple.


In general I disagree with Gralamin.

You do seem very aware of the consequences of your actions and your rights as a player. After a while, there's no reason why you should have to put up with negative players who only serve to hurt other people's fun.

Party unity is very important, and hoping that maybe his foolish behavior leads to some laughs, would be a silly move, especially when it's clear that everyone else can't stand his behavior, already.

It seems that you do trust your DM since you've told him your plans behind taking down this annoying player.

[Kurald Galain]

It also seems unwise to beat him up in character. That sounds like a passive aggressive move on the part of the rest of the group, including the DM. A more mature move, would involve assertive modeling. You've already told him that you don't like his behavior, but maybe you haven't told him what's going to happen if he continues it.

(1) Explicitly state the bothersome behavior; (2) Say how it affects you; (3) Say how you'll react if the behavior continues

This says it all, really.

[KillianHawkeye]

I think what you really need to do is get your DM on your side here. From your post, it sounds like he doesn't care what happens within the party so long as he can send wave after wave of monsters to try and kill you. This just isn't going to work. As long as the DM allows this behavior to continue, you're going to have a hard time stopping it or kicking him out of your group.

[DabblerWizard]

I agree with DabblerWizard on all but one point.

The in-game beat-down is necessary. Without it, the DM will simply take the evil character and use it against them later. Killing the character deprives the DM of another customized monster for his arsenal.

The DM has been encouraging the player's behavior by "promoting" disruptive characters to big bads. It is poor DMing, and flies in the face of his stated desire to have a good-aligned group.

You might suggest inviting the player back when the GM brings his (former) characters into play, so y'all can go PvP, but I wouldn't want him in my gaming group either. If he doesn't care that other people aren't enjoying the game, and doesn't care that the players are becoming mistrustful of each other, then he's not just being a bad player -- he's being a bad friend.

Jackattack makes good points above. ^^

Allowing a disruptive character to play an active role in the story world, especially after the player no longer runs him, seems to send some mixed messages.

If the players described in the OP were intentionally playing an evil campaign, having one or more of those characters turned into an NPC that future good aligned PCs have to battle, could be pretty fun.

That isn't the case in this scenario, however.

When a player uses a character that disrupts the game for the rest of the group, it's probably a good idea to cut off interaction with that character.

When that PC-turned-NPC reappears, players will think back to those bad times, and will be displeased that this bad reminder is being thrust into their faces. Some players will enjoy beating down this NPC, but others will just want it to go away.

Also, the DM seems to be implicitly defending the bad player by demonstrating to him that his negative characters are useful and a good idea. Maybe the DM is just trying to be nice, by including the PC-NPC in a way he sees fit, without completely destroying the player's creation. Maybe he's just really focused on the fact that this negative character makes a good BBEG. Either way, it's a bad idea in my opinion.

[Volkov]

Kill the player and burn the body to leave no evidence........>.>

[HMS Invincible]

This says it all, really.

We already did step 1, 2, and 3. He should know what's coming, if not he's living in a dream world. Now we're finally following through and getting rid of the guy. I'm gonna kill his character, followed by a boot from the game club. Yes, you guys are right, we were being too passive aggressive with him. Until now, my group has always caved into the demands of the few to keep the group together. At last, I've convinced the majority of them that a direct banning is the answer. I'm hoping the 1-2 punch of a united show of force to kill him followed by the revoking of his membership will make him think about his behavior when he plays with other groups.

[Gralamin]

In general I disagree with Gralamin.

You do seem very aware of the consequences of your actions and your rights as a player. After a while, there's no reason why you should have to put up with negative players who only serve to hurt other people's fun.

Party unity is very important, and hoping that maybe his foolish behavior leads to some laughs, would be a silly move, especially when it's clear that everyone else can't stand his behavior, already.

It seems that you do trust your DM since you've told him your plans behind taking down this annoying player.

Too be fair, the original post looked a lot different. It has since been edited, and looks a lot more sane now. I'm glad that HMS didn't mean what his original post entailed.

[Juk]

You seem to be confusing reality with a game. There should be no overlap here. If a player is disrupting your gaming group and the majority of people don't want to play with him, simply tell him that and send him on his way. If the DM uses his pc as an NPC, who cares? It's just another monster. If you had a disruptive player in a basketball game you wouldn't invite him over to play one more time before telling him he's not welcome, you just tell him no one wants to play with him because he's sucking the fun out of it for the rest of the players. His character is not the problem, he is. Your DM is certainly not helping things any, you might want to ask him directly what he wants from the campaign and does he care what his gaming groups wants from the campaign.

If the campaign isn't fun, fix it or quit but complaining in here to try and get support for some sort of passive aggression atta-boy is way outside the realm of normal behavior. This is a game, if you're not enjoying yourself in any given campaign/group why would you continue?

[DabblerWizard]

We already did step 1, 2, and 3. He should know what's coming, if not he's living in a dream world. Now we're finally following through and getting rid of the guy. I'm gonna kill his character, followed by a boot from the game club. Yes, you guys are right, we were being too passive aggressive with him. Until now, my group has always caved into the demands of the few to keep the group together. At last, I've convinced the majority of them that a direct banning is the answer. I'm hoping the 1-2 punch of a united show of force to kill him followed by the revoking of his membership will make him think about his behavior when he plays with other groups.

Step 4 of the assertive model involves holding up to your end of the bargain. If you stated that you would no longer invite him to the gaming group if his behavior continued, then you would need to actually no longer invite him, otherwise the model is worthless as a tool that leads to change in behavior. It sounds like you're on your way to doing that.

I agree with Juk. It's not your job to teach him a lesson. It feels like you're trying to put salt on a wound, as though you wanted to make him feel really bad about his behavior. - I would think that being kicked out of a social group is lesson enough. Besides, who are you to punish him that way?


---



Too be fair, the original post looked a lot different. It has since been edited, and looks a lot more sane now. I'm glad that HMS didn't mean what his original post entailed.

Let me rephrase. In general I disagree with Gralamin's original assessment of the OP's pre-edited post, based on my exposure to the OP's post, post-edit. :smallsmile: - In other words, forget what I said.

[Tequila Sunrise]

Don't kill his PC and then boot him; the PvP just makes it more likely that he'll blame the whole situation on you guys rather than thinking 'Gee, maybe it's something I did.' Boot him and then kill his PC.

Or don't bother killing his PC -- it really doesn't matter in the long run. It's not like killing him will grant you any villain-free days; if your DM doesn't have the old PC villain to bring back as a foe, he'll just send another villain at you.