molten_dragon
2012-05-16, 06:12 PM
Warning! Wall of text incoming!
I'm currently playing in an exalted campaign with 5 other players. It had been going very well up until last night. Last night though, there was a serious intra-party conflict that I fear is going to affect the campaign negatively from here on out. It was mainly between me and one other player, who I'll call Bob. The conflict took place mainly in-game.
The story so far in the campaign is that we are all dragonbloods serving in the military of a powerful solar. We all have various reasons for joining her army. My character's hometown was invaded by a different solar, so he made a deal with this one that he would serve in her army and within a year and a day she would give him aid in freeing his hometown. Bob's character is driven by her destiny, which led her to join the Solar's military. In the past Bob's character has shown minor signs that she will disobey orders if she believes they are contrary to her destiny. As it is a military campaign, we all have ranks in the Solar's army and our team has a commanding officer. We are expected to follow a set of rules set down by the Solar we serve under. They are:
Follow the orders of your commanding officer
Weigh your soldiers’ lives equal to your own
Do not kill that which is not your foe or your dinner
Do not lightly take the life of an honorable opponent
Do not steal from your allies or those who may become your allies
Conduct yourself in a manner befitting your station
Until recently one of the other players was the only person in the party with the rank of Captain (the rest of us were lieutenants) and was our commanding officer. At the end of the last story arc, I was promoted to Captain and put in command of the group for our next mission, since we were being sent to free my hometown and hopefully bring them into the Solar's budding empire. When the Solar sent us on the mission, she told us that for the purposes of plausible deniability we were not officially on a mission from her, and the rules were a bit looser, but she still expected us to follow our commanding officer and abide by her rules. She also told us (I'm paraphrasing somewhat here) that her empire needed time to rebuild after a nasty war, and under no circumstances were we to start another war.
To get to my character's hometown, we had to travel through territory controlled by two other empires. One was neutral, and we made it through there just fine. The other was controlled by an empire that was much larger than our leader's and was semi-hostile towards us, though things hadn't devolved to the point of armed conflict yet. The part of their territory that we had to pass through was very close to Bob's character's hometown, and he wanted to visit his parents, and the monastery where he trained when we passed by.
A few sessions before this, we had learned that Bob's character was a wanted criminal in his hometown, accused of murdering "scores of people" and fleeing justice. He insisted that he did no such thing and the whole town was brainwashed. Regardless of his guilt or innocence, the whole town believed him guilty, so he couldn't just waltz into town. My character agreed to have the stealthiest member of our party sneak in, contact his parents, and bring them a few miles outside town to meet with us so his character could see them.
He got to talk to them for a couple minutes, and was in the midst of trying to find out more information about the crime he had supposedly committed when we heard hoofbeats. Realizing we had somehow been found out, we jumped on our horses to leave before we caused a major scene. Shortly after we started running, we heard a magical voice command Bob's character to stop and face justice. I ordered him to ignore it, but he said it was one of the monks from his monastery and it was his destiny to face her, and turned his horse around and started heading towards the people chasing us.
Realizing at this point that there was nothing I could do to stop the conflict, I figured the best thing I could do was to keep him from getting killed and try to do damage control once the dust settled, so I ordered the rest of the party to follow him.
The enemy turned out to be one of the monks from his monastery with 4 soldiers. When Bob's character saw the monk, they charged each other. They hit hard enough that both were badly wounded and knocked from their mounts. The enemy monk was still conscious, holding her weapons, and weakly struggling with Bob's character. Seeing that one of the soldiers under my command was still in danger, and worried that if the monk reported back that Bob's character was working for our leader's empire it would start a war, I decided the best course of action was simply to kill the monk, hide the body, and leave before anyone else found us. So I went up and beheaded the monk while she was still on the ground.
Bob's character kind of went ape **** at that point, screaming at mine and wanting to know why I had killed her. I was still trying to talk the guards into surrendering and basically ignored him. The guards surrendered, though it turned out to be a bluff and we ended up having to kill them. While this was going on, Bob's character grabbed the body of the monk and jumped on his familiar/mount, which was a winged unicorn, and took off in the direction of the town.
Having no idea what he was going to do with the body, and worried that he might start a conflict with the unfriendly empire, I ordered him to come back. He ignored me. At that point, I did the only thing I could think of to stop him without killing him, and ordered the other party members with ranged attacks to shoot down his mount. It quickly became clear that he couldn't get away before we killed his mount (the DM told bob this) and I gave him one more chance in-character to come back. He ignored me again, and we killed his mount causing him to crash to the ground.
Bob's character then picked up the body of the dead monk and started running towards the unfriendly town on foot, with me not far behind him. He beat me there by a hair and waiting for us when we left the forest were some of the leaders of the unfriendly empire. He gave them the body of the monk, blamed the whole thing on me, turned and ran back into the woods. I stayed just long enough to tell them that he had disobeyed orders to start a conflict that we were trying to avoid then I left too.
When Bob's character and mine caught back up to the rest of the group, I told him in-character that if he ever disobeyed orders and put our mission in jeopardy like that again, I'd kill him. Later that day, Bob made it clear out-of-character that he wanted to kill my character's familiar in revenge for me ordering his killed.
A couple in-game days later, we ran across a caravan of people from my hometown with a badly wounded member. Since Bob's character was the only one with any medical skill, I asked him to help heal the injured guy's wounds in the hopes that they would be grateful and give us some information on my hometown. He refused. I ordered him, and he refused again. Finally the other guy with the rank of Captain asked him to do it and he did. Then as we were talking to them, he started blurting out who we were and what we were doing there, despite my character having asked everyone to keep quiet about our goals until we learned more information. I ordered his character to be quiet, and he ignored me again.
After the caravan left, I said we needed to talk. I apologized in-character for the necessity of having to kill the monk and Bob's character's mount, but pointed out that none of it would have happened had he followed orders like he was supposed to. I also told him that if he was unwilling to follow orders and wasn't going to use his abilities to help further our goals, then he was dead weight and he could leave. He made it clear that he would not be following any orders I gave. At this point, the DM suggested we could use a message spell to contact our leader and explain the situation, and ask for her advice. We did, and she ordered Bob's character to follow the orders of the other Captain in the group, and the other Captain to continue to follow my orders. Despite the ridiculousness of that solution, Bob's character seemed to agree with it, though he continued to ignore my character and any orders I gave until the other Captain passed them on. Out of character, the DM told us to please come up with a way to resolve this and not cause problems for him. I agreed to try, and Bob's response was that his character would not forgive what I did and would continue to play his character that way.
That's essentially where the session ended. After the session I told Bob that I was sorry that things fell out that way and hoped there were no hard feelings. His response was "**** you, you killed my horse". I think he was joking, but I don't know him well enough to be sure.
I'm looking for advice on two things here.
First is, despite the fact that things happened quickly, and I didn't have a lot of time to think of solutions to problems, I feel like I could have probably handled the situation better. I'm not sure exactly how though. So how would you have handled it given the situation and the restrictions I was working under. What would you have done to try to resolve the situation without it turning into a problem?
And secondly, I'm looking for advice on how to try to keep the conflict from escalating going forward. I don't want an in-game conflict to become an out-of-game conflict, and I don't want it to end up becoming a big problem for the DM. I'm willing to do things that are somewhat out of character for my character if it will help settle things down, but roleplaying is a relatively important part of the game, so I don't want to go too far outside what my character would do. So what is your advice on trying to smooth things over for the future?
I'm currently playing in an exalted campaign with 5 other players. It had been going very well up until last night. Last night though, there was a serious intra-party conflict that I fear is going to affect the campaign negatively from here on out. It was mainly between me and one other player, who I'll call Bob. The conflict took place mainly in-game.
The story so far in the campaign is that we are all dragonbloods serving in the military of a powerful solar. We all have various reasons for joining her army. My character's hometown was invaded by a different solar, so he made a deal with this one that he would serve in her army and within a year and a day she would give him aid in freeing his hometown. Bob's character is driven by her destiny, which led her to join the Solar's military. In the past Bob's character has shown minor signs that she will disobey orders if she believes they are contrary to her destiny. As it is a military campaign, we all have ranks in the Solar's army and our team has a commanding officer. We are expected to follow a set of rules set down by the Solar we serve under. They are:
Follow the orders of your commanding officer
Weigh your soldiers’ lives equal to your own
Do not kill that which is not your foe or your dinner
Do not lightly take the life of an honorable opponent
Do not steal from your allies or those who may become your allies
Conduct yourself in a manner befitting your station
Until recently one of the other players was the only person in the party with the rank of Captain (the rest of us were lieutenants) and was our commanding officer. At the end of the last story arc, I was promoted to Captain and put in command of the group for our next mission, since we were being sent to free my hometown and hopefully bring them into the Solar's budding empire. When the Solar sent us on the mission, she told us that for the purposes of plausible deniability we were not officially on a mission from her, and the rules were a bit looser, but she still expected us to follow our commanding officer and abide by her rules. She also told us (I'm paraphrasing somewhat here) that her empire needed time to rebuild after a nasty war, and under no circumstances were we to start another war.
To get to my character's hometown, we had to travel through territory controlled by two other empires. One was neutral, and we made it through there just fine. The other was controlled by an empire that was much larger than our leader's and was semi-hostile towards us, though things hadn't devolved to the point of armed conflict yet. The part of their territory that we had to pass through was very close to Bob's character's hometown, and he wanted to visit his parents, and the monastery where he trained when we passed by.
A few sessions before this, we had learned that Bob's character was a wanted criminal in his hometown, accused of murdering "scores of people" and fleeing justice. He insisted that he did no such thing and the whole town was brainwashed. Regardless of his guilt or innocence, the whole town believed him guilty, so he couldn't just waltz into town. My character agreed to have the stealthiest member of our party sneak in, contact his parents, and bring them a few miles outside town to meet with us so his character could see them.
He got to talk to them for a couple minutes, and was in the midst of trying to find out more information about the crime he had supposedly committed when we heard hoofbeats. Realizing we had somehow been found out, we jumped on our horses to leave before we caused a major scene. Shortly after we started running, we heard a magical voice command Bob's character to stop and face justice. I ordered him to ignore it, but he said it was one of the monks from his monastery and it was his destiny to face her, and turned his horse around and started heading towards the people chasing us.
Realizing at this point that there was nothing I could do to stop the conflict, I figured the best thing I could do was to keep him from getting killed and try to do damage control once the dust settled, so I ordered the rest of the party to follow him.
The enemy turned out to be one of the monks from his monastery with 4 soldiers. When Bob's character saw the monk, they charged each other. They hit hard enough that both were badly wounded and knocked from their mounts. The enemy monk was still conscious, holding her weapons, and weakly struggling with Bob's character. Seeing that one of the soldiers under my command was still in danger, and worried that if the monk reported back that Bob's character was working for our leader's empire it would start a war, I decided the best course of action was simply to kill the monk, hide the body, and leave before anyone else found us. So I went up and beheaded the monk while she was still on the ground.
Bob's character kind of went ape **** at that point, screaming at mine and wanting to know why I had killed her. I was still trying to talk the guards into surrendering and basically ignored him. The guards surrendered, though it turned out to be a bluff and we ended up having to kill them. While this was going on, Bob's character grabbed the body of the monk and jumped on his familiar/mount, which was a winged unicorn, and took off in the direction of the town.
Having no idea what he was going to do with the body, and worried that he might start a conflict with the unfriendly empire, I ordered him to come back. He ignored me. At that point, I did the only thing I could think of to stop him without killing him, and ordered the other party members with ranged attacks to shoot down his mount. It quickly became clear that he couldn't get away before we killed his mount (the DM told bob this) and I gave him one more chance in-character to come back. He ignored me again, and we killed his mount causing him to crash to the ground.
Bob's character then picked up the body of the dead monk and started running towards the unfriendly town on foot, with me not far behind him. He beat me there by a hair and waiting for us when we left the forest were some of the leaders of the unfriendly empire. He gave them the body of the monk, blamed the whole thing on me, turned and ran back into the woods. I stayed just long enough to tell them that he had disobeyed orders to start a conflict that we were trying to avoid then I left too.
When Bob's character and mine caught back up to the rest of the group, I told him in-character that if he ever disobeyed orders and put our mission in jeopardy like that again, I'd kill him. Later that day, Bob made it clear out-of-character that he wanted to kill my character's familiar in revenge for me ordering his killed.
A couple in-game days later, we ran across a caravan of people from my hometown with a badly wounded member. Since Bob's character was the only one with any medical skill, I asked him to help heal the injured guy's wounds in the hopes that they would be grateful and give us some information on my hometown. He refused. I ordered him, and he refused again. Finally the other guy with the rank of Captain asked him to do it and he did. Then as we were talking to them, he started blurting out who we were and what we were doing there, despite my character having asked everyone to keep quiet about our goals until we learned more information. I ordered his character to be quiet, and he ignored me again.
After the caravan left, I said we needed to talk. I apologized in-character for the necessity of having to kill the monk and Bob's character's mount, but pointed out that none of it would have happened had he followed orders like he was supposed to. I also told him that if he was unwilling to follow orders and wasn't going to use his abilities to help further our goals, then he was dead weight and he could leave. He made it clear that he would not be following any orders I gave. At this point, the DM suggested we could use a message spell to contact our leader and explain the situation, and ask for her advice. We did, and she ordered Bob's character to follow the orders of the other Captain in the group, and the other Captain to continue to follow my orders. Despite the ridiculousness of that solution, Bob's character seemed to agree with it, though he continued to ignore my character and any orders I gave until the other Captain passed them on. Out of character, the DM told us to please come up with a way to resolve this and not cause problems for him. I agreed to try, and Bob's response was that his character would not forgive what I did and would continue to play his character that way.
That's essentially where the session ended. After the session I told Bob that I was sorry that things fell out that way and hoped there were no hard feelings. His response was "**** you, you killed my horse". I think he was joking, but I don't know him well enough to be sure.
I'm looking for advice on two things here.
First is, despite the fact that things happened quickly, and I didn't have a lot of time to think of solutions to problems, I feel like I could have probably handled the situation better. I'm not sure exactly how though. So how would you have handled it given the situation and the restrictions I was working under. What would you have done to try to resolve the situation without it turning into a problem?
And secondly, I'm looking for advice on how to try to keep the conflict from escalating going forward. I don't want an in-game conflict to become an out-of-game conflict, and I don't want it to end up becoming a big problem for the DM. I'm willing to do things that are somewhat out of character for my character if it will help settle things down, but roleplaying is a relatively important part of the game, so I don't want to go too far outside what my character would do. So what is your advice on trying to smooth things over for the future?