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Milo v3
2011-06-19, 02:24 AM
One of my players characters severely disliked the other players characters. So the player tries to leave the group often. Twice in todays session.
The first time was fine as in a way it was Heroic Sacrifice.

The second time not so much. They returned to the town and the after meeting with the quest giver. The player's character left the group, hating the other characters.

To tell the truth they were kind of psychopaths and she was Neutral.

So I decided to speed up the plot by about three months by making Mindflayers attack the village they were in and force them to be slaves.

Did I do the wrong thing? I'm annoyed by the player who tried to split the team so I found a way to keep the team together.

WeeFreeMen
2011-06-19, 03:43 AM
If she is neutral, I dont see why them being Psycho is a problem, as long as it doesnt threaten her well being. Can we have more detail as to why said PC hates of PCs?

As for the Plot Fast-Foward, It wouldnt have been the move I woulda made, but then again, I dont know your players. If she wants to hate them, thats fine, you need to give them a reason to be together and need eachother. Easiest way is for Survival in Extreme situations. Which I beleive is the way you took, unless im mistaken.

Milo v3
2011-06-19, 04:34 AM
Well I didn't really fast forward time or anything. I sped up the plotline. Basically instead of mindflayers begining there attack in three months. They start now.

Also one of these guys is a Paladin (But he isn't getting his power from a good god like he thinks) and killed & skinned kobolds just because they asked why he was in there lair (A lair different from the one they thought they were going to). And every thinks he is a Hero.

And the other is simply insane and launched a magic missle at a kobold during diplomacy. And is planning on killing the party healer because he is ignorant.
And he isn't against killing innocents at all.

While the other character is a (Very) Lawful Neutral (On the border of good) who is a survivalist and has a soft spot for furry or young creatures. She also likes getting the job done without killing.

In hindsight not the best group........

king.com
2011-06-19, 05:04 AM
Honestly I would have done the same as the splitter after stuff like that. Though personally i love splitters. Great opportunity to get one of the groups captured. Have the other side rescue them and point out how splitting probably wasnt the best idea.

Milo v3
2011-06-19, 05:17 AM
To tell the truth I'm fine with team splitters in some games. But not in this own. Its in the realworld, their is only three players so I don't want the group any more.

Ashram
2011-06-19, 06:58 AM
I have one of these in my games; in my new DM stupidity I let one of the "more experienced" people in my group play an orc barbarian with negative mental stats. Now every time there's a new room in the dungeon, it basically plays out as "Hey DM, is this room cool or interested? If not, I'm gonna wander off by myself because this is boring."

Milo v3
2011-06-19, 07:07 AM
None of my players has ever gotten bored yet. (It was our third session so it bound to happen soon though).
The splitter's character appearently doesn't like slaughtering innocents for no reason, unlike her companions thats why her character decided to leave.

Morquard
2011-06-19, 08:43 AM
None of my players has ever gotten bored yet. (It was our third session so it bound to happen soon though).
The splitter's character appearently doesn't like slaughtering innocents for no reason, unlike her companions thats why her character decided to leave.

Quite frankly it seems that person was expecting a good/neutral campaign and ended up with only evil companions.
Even if they have LG on their character sheet maybe, slaughtering innocents for no reason is neither lawful nor good.

As for "she's neutral, why does she have a problem": Only a complete idiot would asociate with psycopaths that kill for fun. Maybe when they're bored tomorrow, they decide to find out how I look from the inside? No thanks, I'm out.

hydroplatypus
2011-06-19, 10:42 AM
I had a similar problem as a player. If this is the case I would tell the player to make a character sheet with the evil or neutral (leaning evil), and have their original character leave, to be replaced with the less moral character. Problem solved. In my version of this problem my character didn't leave due to a TPK, but I was planning on doing this whenever we got back to town.

Steward
2011-06-19, 12:33 PM
Are you sure that this is something that you should even try to resolve IC? I've noticed that in-game solutions to problems get proposed a lot here ("Dealing with a Chaotic Evil Stupid PC? Send a solar after him!") but it doesn't seem like that sort of thing works 9 times out of 10. I would bring the other players together out of character and try to work something out (perhaps have the "psychos" moderate their characters, the "neutral" agree to be more patient and tolerant, or one side or another just making new characters that fit better together, or something else).

It doesn't seem really fair to make the DM have to quickly improvise an entirely new campaign just to appease someone who wants to split the party and go somewhere else. I mean, unless it was a sandbox type thing, how many of us could really run two campaigns literally simultaneously? Certainly that's not something you should just demand out of nowhere.

Milo v3
2011-06-19, 04:48 PM
Quite frankly it seems that person was expecting a good/neutral campaign and ended up with only evil companions.

I was also expecting a good/neutral (More Neutral though) campaign.


As for "she's neutral, why does she have a problem": Only a complete idiot would asociate with psycopaths that kill for fun. Maybe when they're bored tomorrow, they decide to find out how I look from the inside? No thanks, I'm out.
I was being sarcastic when I asked that.

Omeganaut
2011-06-19, 09:25 PM
Did you expect their characters to act that way when the players created them? If given the chance, a party that will not work together at all won't work at all.

Secondly, the paladin seems to be playing more CN than LG. If I could find a reason to I would have him/her fall and need atonement or a new character. As for the wizard just give him/her a situation where magic missile won't work, and he/she will have to try not killing everything in sight.

However, the problem may be your expectations. The splitter sounds like a RP player while the others sound like dungeon crawlers. Maybe the group isn't ready to do both. If the RP player can stand doing a straight hack-n-slash, maybe focus that way and reduce the RP in the game.

I wish you good luck, and may your players not try to be another McGuyver.

Pisha
2011-06-19, 11:03 PM
It seems like team-splitting is the symptom, not the problem. The problem is that your players have created incompatible characters. I don't blame the player who split the group; if my party-mates turned out to be psychopaths, my character wouldn't stick around them either.

I'll admit, I'm biased in favor of the Neutral character, because a) I dislike psychopath characters (especially the ones who are stupidly psychopathic, like the one who's lobbing magic missiles during diplomacy), and b) I really, really dislike bait-and-switch characters. If you want to play an evil character, or a chaotic neutral character, that's cool, but be upfront about it. You need to let your GM and the other players know what kind of character you want to play, so a game can be crafted where everyone has fun. But it sounds here like your Neutral player took the paladin's player at his word when he said he wanted to play LG, and created a character that would work well with a LG paladin - and then got Surprise!Crazy instead. (I'm assuming that there was at least some discussion of character concepts pre-game; if not, well, there's your problem right there.)

As for how to fix it - are your players mature enough to sit down and talk about what they want out of the game and why they want to play a particular character type? If not, are any of the players mature enough for you to talk to them on your own about what they want and if they're willing to compromise?

And, y'know, sometimes parties just aren't compatible, and sometimes letting that play out can be part of the fun. I certainly don't think that arranging matters so that they have to work together and can't split off is a bad thing. (In fact, if the characters hate each other but the players aren't willing to either make new characters or leave the game, then you kind of HAVE to give them IC reasons to work together if you still want to have a game.)