How to make players and their characters "behave"?

[DarkEternal]

So, I have a problem of very bad party cohesion between characters, and to be honest, it's becoming more and more exhausting each and every time we play. I've been a DM for some odd two years now with some recesses between, and never was I as taxed as this when it comes to the characters and their respective players.

TL;DR: How to make the game bearable with players? How to enforce discipline and consequences? It's a bit of a long read so be advised.

The party is: Monk/Unarmed Swordsage, Knight, Cleric/Church Inquisitor, bard and Archivist.

They are stuck together for destiny related purpose, and it was a railroady start, I admit. It's for a written module, called the Drow War.

Still, they had no real problem with that, but did with each others actions. For first, the way the knight acted was similarly to what people think when they think of paladin. Only on steroids. He's an egotistical maniac who pretty much inscribed his own name in his armor, wears a permanently enchanted shield with Light on it so everyone would know he was coming. His actions were for the most part stupid. He pretty much, because of his own hubris - broke the laws of diplomacy and charged a high level, chaotic evil mage(who was parlaying at this moment and was not really interested in combat, thinking of the PC's as worms, which they were since he was level 12, and they were level 4-5 at the moment). Still, due to their very lucky rolls, my unlucky ones, and the fact that the module was written in such a way that the wizard didn't have good "get out of grapple" spells like Dimension Door or teleport or anything like that, it was soon over for him. The wizard would actually tpk them with Black Tentacles earlier on, were it not for the bard-archivist-cleric diplomacy checks which made him go from hostile to indifferent. So, when he turned off the tentacles, the charge began.

Anyway, that's not important, but the end result was that the tentacles and poor judgement of the knight(who instigated the agression in the first place by acting holy and using his taunt ability later on) was that two civilians were killed by the tentacles, the husband of one was later intimidated by the knight to act as he wanted and so on.

This left a poor taste in the partys mouth. Still, I have to give credit where credit is due and the knights player started acting more "normal" later on. Still has his moments, but I think that on a subconscious level(he would never admit it out loud, nor would the player in question that he was wrong) he knows he screwed up.

The bards sole existence is to spurn the other characters into doing stupid things. He's there so he can laugh at others, and he plays it like that. He's the "I don't really care" sort of character that screws everything in sight and just lives a chaotic, free life. I have the least amount of problems with him, even though he can't really stand the rest of the party often enough(especially the rigid Knight)

The artificier meta games. A lot. I mean, really, really a lot. He runs away from a combat, and when it's done, without him really knowing it since he's like five rooms away by the end, he magically appears back and instantly starts looting stuff, wanting pretty much everything in sight. He doesn't care if it's taboo, if he's going through tombs, or anything. He just takes, takes and then takes some more. He pretty much threatened a kid with a sword when he suspected her of something which didn't play out later on, went on his own to a sewer where he died even if he knew it was going to be dangerous. For a "smart" sort of character, that seems well...not so smart. The player did say his character is the very curious type, that doesn't really care about anything as long as his curiosity is sated and he learns something new. That's all fine, and well, but it seems to work only when it suits him right. The player is similar and usually speeds everyone on, so that there is minimum of "arguing" between the players(which is a chore all in itself and lasts for hours, really, sometimes which ruins a good time for everyone)

The cleric is probably the most experienced character, and because of that he munchkins a lot. He takes really strong stuff, though not game breaking for which I'm thankful. Still, he deals tremendous damage, has all the right domains for getting out of bad spots and so on. The idea was that he was supposed to be some rigid inquisitor that hates everything that is demonic or abysall or whatever. And yet, he now sort of just goes along with the team because of said arguing which lasts for hours. He was the last to join, and it shows because I know he wouldn't travel with this kind of party if he knew what they were like. He was there at the worst of times with the knight, and then later with the rest of the party. The "highlight" was when he just went to "progress the game" and actually cooperated in bringing a sacrifice(it was a sacrifice of a random magical item, but a sacrifice none the less) to some God who was known to sacrifice elves as well. Mind you, he's supposed to be lawful neutral. Needless to say, this action that he, the swordsage and archivist did brought much scorn to the knight and the player contacted me that he would retire the character probably since he doesn't see how he can continue travelling with this kind of party, and I sort of agree with him.


The swordsage...heh, the swordsage. The player behind it always tries to play different characters, and always plays the same random, chaotic guy. In the last place they were in which was a pyramid of sorts, he took preserving jars filled with organs, went to an underground cavern and used intestines as basically fishing bait for the pirannhas that lived in the lake. Needless to say how the knight reacted. His "We all do what we want anyway" was what got me thinking to make this thread.

I tried reacting, I really did. But I believe that some sort of a backlash takes time. Just because you did something completelly out of character and random, or just plain out stupid, the consequences could take days, weeks, maybe even months to come and bite you in the arse. And sometimes they are not really class feature penalties(I made it so that Knights taunt doesn't work anymore, even if he does use it. He doesn't know about this, of course), but something else. But I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle here.

It's like everyone put in a lot of their real life personalities in their characters, which makes it hard to play because our personalities differ and only because that most of us are good friends irl is why we managed to stay as much as we did. So, basically, how to deal with this? I tried talking, but it seems like it's trying to fix something that can't really be fixed. I rather like the adventure path, I like the twists and turns, and I like that they are different. If they were all the same, that would be stupid.

But I also recognise that there is a real problem here with a party that is not meant to be together.

[JusticeZero]

I really hate to come off badly here, but...

Why do you game with these people again? Instead of looking for a different group?

[DarkEternal]

Because like I said, we are all friends. Finding new groups is out of the question. I'm not that new of a DM, and three of the players(bard, knight and swordsage) were here for the ride ever since my begining and we had really good times. The archivist and cleric are the new comers.

[Renen]

Players dont listen to you and make your life difficult?
http://houseofgeekery.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/gmqj.jpg

[Musco]

I went through the exact same thing, we had a humongous group, with 7 players, and it just started getting REALLY taxing for me, because one player tried to bully everyone into doind what he wanted to do, and another player was simply too spoiled, so he hogged the spotlight (it's a 7-player group, battles take a while, so when it's time for your initiative, you BETTER be ready unless something happend, and the guy would just stand there, looking through his cards thinking about what to do, when all that happend during the last round was 2 minions got killed, for instance - and when I said the player would start delaying until he was ready, he lashed out at me at the table). Another simply disappeared, didn't answer any e-mails at all even when directly prompted and always had us on the back foot because he never confirmed his availability (like I said, it's a 7-person group, getting together once a month is already hard without someone disappearing and not even aswering the phone)

When I finally gave up, I sat down with the players I thought were worth salvaging (so they wouldn't disappear as well), talked to them and said I needed a break. I sent an e-mail, disbanded the group, and took my break, taking are of my stuff. Recently, people started talking about getting together to play again. One of the remaining players had to take a break from playing, so we were down to 3 players. We got 2 other players we knew woludn't be a problem, and started talking things over, and long story short, we've been through 2 sessions already, they're all dying to sit down and play session 3 to see what's going to happen, and I've gotten about 4 e-mails congratulating me on plot, planning, props, writing and such, because now, now that it's FUN for me again, I'm putting in a lot of work in getting everything perfect.

So, really, just get out of that mess, you don't have to subjetc yourself to that, you're not a player, so you don't have to "find a group", you can always ASSEMBLE one.

[Diarmuid]

Knight - It sounds like he broke his code by endangering innocents and not respecting a parlay. I'm pretty sure there are rules for Knights who break their code and you should enforce them for this guy so he actually see consequences.

Bard - no real complaints, so no further comments

Artificer - You as the DM have to set rules/penalties/etc for metagaming and enforce them if you want it to stop. WRT to his in-game stuff, some of that sounds like the kind of stuff a Knight certainly shouldnt/wouldnt sit idly by and let happen. Again, code breaking.

Cleric - Nice to see Mr Knight actually reacting properly to this guy's actions. If he's a cleric of a specific God, what would that God think about helping another God who sacrifices elves (I'm assuming not in any kind of good way)? There are no "set in stone" rules about what the ramifications for that kind of action are so it's up to you determine how bad a transgression it actually is in comparison with his God's credo (or whetever he worships) and take action accordingly.

I dont mean to pile on, but you've let this happen by not nipping it in the bud when it first became an issue. I'm glad you've taken at least some action, but if the Knight player doesnt know you've done that he's not going to change his tune.

When PC's do stupid things, bad things should happen to them. When PC's annoy/threaten/aggravate important NPC's, those NPC's should have appropriate reactions. If a module doesnt account for something, that doesnt mean you cant change something on the fly. So what the level 12 wizard didnt have dimension door. *Poof*, now he does...wee!

[Douglas]

and the fact that the module was written in such a way that the wizard didn't have good "get out of grapple" spells like Dimension Door or teleport or anything like that
I'm running exactly the same module in my own game right now, and I'll say that while the author can write a decent story, he has absolutely no clue how to build effective characters. Unless your party is similarly incompetent/low-op, I strongly recommend ignoring most of the written stat blocks and rebuilding the NPCs. The end boss of the first book is an especially egregious example, and I expect my party could have curb stomped all over her about 6 levels below when they're supposed to meet her if I had used the book stats. Instead, I tossed out everything but the core "drow cleric" concept and ended up with two epic boss fights (she successfully retreated after losing the first one) and a party that well and truly hated her. After killing her, they cremated the body, put the ashes in an urn, and deposited the urn in the ultra-high-security main vault of the Crescent City Bank with explicit instructions to not let anyone withdraw it, ever, not even them.

As for your player behavior problem, almost all I can think of is trying to talk with the players out of game again. It seems the problem is partially embedded in the current characters, so I might even go so far as to tell them you want to scrap the entire current party and replace it. Tell them they need to produce a group of characters that can and will work together as a functioning team, or the campaign just isn't going to work. They can have a lot of freedom within that constraint, but that one very reasonable requirement must be met. Having that as an up front mandate going into character creation might help.

Basically, you need to establish a clear, clean break to help the players disassociate themselves from the past behavior patterns. You also need the players to agree that this behavior is a problem and needs to be fixed. Missing either one of those things will likely doom your efforts at reform. Bring up the problem in a group discussion, and try to get a group consensus that it is a problem. If you can't get that, you might as well give up. If the players do agree on it being a problem, present your plan for solving it and try to get them all on board. If you get far enough, try to follow through by pointing out problem behavior on the spot before it can progress - but be careful to limit that to clearly disruptive behavior so you're not seen as trying to suppress all character freedom.

The only other thing I can think of, and it's not likely to work, is to gradually ramp up the opposition so that they have to work together in order to win. The problem here is that it depends on your players recognizing the trend, figuring out the correct solution (and not going into individualist survival mode instead), and implementing it spontaneously, all quickly enough to not die in game, and all without much out of game guidance and coordination.

[DarkEternal]

Knight - It sounds like he broke his code by endangering innocents and not respecting a parlay. I'm pretty sure there are rules for Knights who break their code and you should enforce them for this guy so he actually see consequences.

Yeah, I agree. The problem is the players world view, because he can't really admit he is wrong even when everyone tells him he is. The kind of person that would adamantly say the sky is yellow even if everyone in the world said the sky is blue. But still, I can't say that he didn't improve tremendously in the last few sessions. Still, I know the entire last "activating an altar and sacrificing intestines and various things to an "evil" God" will be too much for him to bear.




Artificer - You as the DM have to set rules/penalties/etc for metagaming and enforce them if you want it to stop. WRT to his in-game stuff, some of that sounds like the kind of stuff a Knight certainly shouldnt/wouldnt sit idly by and let happen. Again, code breaking.

It's Archivist. And yes, his behaviour maybe starts to piss me off the most in the group because he doesn't show an ounce of remorse for the consequences of his actions. Also, while I can't say this with certainity, I have a feeling he fudges his rolls a lot.


Cleric - Nice to see Mr Knight actually reacting properly to this guy's actions. If he's a cleric of a specific God, what would that God think about helping another God who sacrifices elves (I'm assuming not in any kind of good way)? There are no "set in stone" rules about what the ramifications for that kind of action are so it's up to you determine how bad a transgression it actually is in comparison with his God's credo (or whetever he worships) and take action accordingly.

Yeah. This guy....Well, I know what I'm going to be in with this guy when I make it so he can't cast spells. Looking forward to that.


I dont mean to pile on, but you've let this happen by not nipping it in the bud when it first became an issue. I'm glad you've taken at least some action, but if the Knight player doesnt know you've done that he's not going to change his tune.

When PC's do stupid things, bad things should happen to them. When PC's annoy/threaten/aggravate important NPC's, those NPC's should have appropriate reactions. If a module doesnt account for something, that doesnt mean you cant change something on the fly. So what the level 12 wizard didnt have dimension door. *Poof*, now he does...wee!

How exactly do you "nip" it in the bud without making an entire tpk happening? I mean, ooc I told them that they needed to stop and that the party has one of the worst cohesions I ever saw. But it's like talking to a wall. Honestly, I want to play the module more but I have a feeling that sooner or later, and sooner seems more likely, I'll either have to kill them all off or just walk away.


I'm running exactly the same module in my own game right now, and I'll say that while the author can write a decent story, he has absolutely no clue how to build effective characters. Unless your party is similarly incompetent/low-op, I strongly recommend ignoring most of the written stat blocks and rebuilding the NPCs. The end boss of the first book is an especially egregious example, and I expect my party could have curb stomped all over her about 6 levels below when they're supposed to meet her if I had used the book stats. Instead, I tossed out everything but the core "drow cleric" concept and ended up with two epic boss fights (she successfully retreated after losing the first one) and a party that well and truly hated her. After killing her, they cremated the body, put the ashes in an urn, and deposited the urn in the ultra-high-security main vault of the Crescent City Bank with explicit instructions to not let anyone withdraw it, ever, not even them.

As for your player behavior problem, almost all I can think of is trying to talk with the players out of game again. It seems the problem is partially embedded in the current characters, so I might even go so far as to tell them you want to scrap the entire current party and replace it. Tell them they need to produce a group of characters that can and will work together as a functioning team, or the campaign just isn't going to work. They can have a lot of freedom within that constraint, but that one very reasonable requirement must be met. Having that as an up front mandate going into character creation might help.

Basically, you need to establish a clear, clean break to help the players disassociate themselves from the past behavior patterns. You also need the players to agree that this behavior is a problem and needs to be fixed. Missing either one of those things will likely doom your efforts at reform. Bring up the problem in a group discussion, and try to get a group consensus that it is a problem. If you can't get that, you might as well give up. If the players do agree on it being a problem, present your plan for solving it and try to get them all on board. If you get far enough, try to follow through by pointing out problem behavior on the spot before it can progress - but be careful to limit that to clearly disruptive behavior so you're not seen as trying to suppress all character freedom.

The only other thing I can think of, and it's not likely to work, is to gradually ramp up the opposition so that they have to work together in order to win. The problem here is that it depends on your players recognizing the trend, figuring out the correct solution (and not going into individualist survival mode instead), and implementing it spontaneously, all quickly enough to not die in game, and all without much out of game guidance and coordination.

It depends really. I'll say that the wizard in question was really poorly optimised with no escape spells what so ever. I didn't really get to the end of the book, but some encounters are pretty challenging like the ones in the pyramid where there are a lot of dead things that can(by this point) shrug most damage done by martial characters due to being either incorporeal or something. Same thing in Saragost where the Shades can butcher most parties since they don't have any magical weapons by that part. But yeah, the "big" fights seem pretty weak.

I think that the prospect of starting over with a new party will be hard to follow, really, though there's a good chance that it will be the only thing possible if this kind of behavious continues.

[Crusader2010]

It seems you need to be reminded what you are.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/57889754/1262727170395.jpg

The answer is simple; Total party kill.

Then the next batch of adventurers will be created with character creation rules like "cannot be insane, megalomaniac, etc etc." and "Has to work well with others without annoying them."

It's good to be king. :smallwink:

[CaladanMoonblad]

Sounds more like problem players than anything; it also sounds like friends.

Here's the thing, friends who rpg together can make those bonds stronger, but some friends have really destructive personalities while being charismatic. There's a reason you like hanging out with the wild one, because that person makes every outing more interesting, comes up with the strangest conversations and sees the world in a unique way. But people with strong personalities (especially competitive ones) means trouble at the RPG table, especially if they have failed to learn empathy.

I've dealt with several "wild ones" in real life and at the RPG table; these are the ones who want to be the center of attention all the time, who crowd out other players and do destructive things in game because "it was funny." These people do not care about the story everyone is cocreating- RPG at its best (IMO) is when everyone cares about the story, when everyone is trying to make it better, when everyone is emotionally invested in their characters such that they make decisions for their PCs as a normal person would (because in real life, we only have one life to live, and we do not charge into the maw of death because "it is fun.")

It's easier to deal with this situation with a group of gamers who are only there for the game, because swapping people out is not as tough because there are fewer emotional bonds. But Darketernal, you're playing with friends, which means that there are real life considerations; you simply can't scrub them out and continue the game.

I play with around 6 people (3 male, 3 female), including my wife. Sometimes my wife gets loopy (someone brought beer) or on a sugar high (someone brought peeps), and she'll act up if she gets bored; that's when I bring out the Dire Mole. You see, in my game world, Dire Moles are the bane of dwarves, and my wife plays a dwarf fighter / knight, and she's had to fight off the same Dire Mole that has been stalking her for years. It's a variation on the lightning from the heavens bit, and my wife sometimes acts up now simply to call the Dire Mole because she wants to tame it and make it into a mount. But that's beside the point; for the most part, all I have to say is "There is a familiar rumbling in the ground" when she is not RPGing her dwarf appropriately or not considering her PC's personality when making decisions that are meta game. The Dire Mole is now a personal joke, and she laughs about it, but it was a way in game to deal with actions I thought were destructive without having to let her lose face in front of our friends (and our gamers are really her friends, since she recruited them all).

Generally speaking, I prefer to game with females, because group cohesion is a bigger part of female gender roles in the west, and I have fewer problems from women than I do men. I also prefer to game with Beta personality types, because Alpha types give everyone more trouble. RPGing is a group activity, and one that allows everyone to contribute; it seems anathema to an Alpha personality.

But yes... character creation rules are essential... "No evil alignments" is perfectly acceptable if group cohesion is problematic. I've found it useful when introducing new PCs to have the group "stumble and rescue" the character simply to build up in game duty and story debt to foster group cohesion.

[Douglas]

It depends really. I'll say that the wizard in question was really poorly optimised with no escape spells what so ever. I didn't really get to the end of the book, but some encounters are pretty challenging like the ones in the pyramid where there are a lot of dead things that can(by this point) shrug most damage done by martial characters due to being either incorporeal or something. Same thing in Saragost where the Shades can butcher most parties since they don't have any magical weapons by that part. But yeah, the "big" fights seem pretty weak.
Ah, but those challenging encounters were straight up monsters with prepackaged threatening stats. He's fine with those. It's adding class levels that he sucks at. Oh, and filling in the details of dragons (spell and feat selection), but that doesn't matter until book 2.

Anyway, turn to page 224 and the stat block of Mezelline "The Terror" Vel'Arakh, final boss of the level 1 to 10 arc, and behold her impotence.


I think that the prospect of starting over with a new party will be hard to follow, really, though there's a good chance that it will be the only thing possible if this kind of behavious continues.
I was thinking more like staying at the same place in the campaign, just retconning that the replacement party is who did all the accomplishments of the current party. Starting over from the beginning would be a bad idea, as the entire group would face the temptation of metagaming with the knowledge gained from having played through that part once already.

[nedz]

I think you can solve these problems individually, well some of them anyway. I don't know the module, so you might have to re-write is a little.

The guy with the light on his shield so that they can see him coming gets targeted at long range. This is what he is asking for, so full verisimilitude here. Any long range spell will do: Fireball has long range so have a Sorcerer empty his 3rd level slots on him from 800' away, like every day. The Sorcerer then bugs out. Archers will all target him first also. Pretty soon no one will want to stand next to him — do not underestimate the power of peer pressure.

Metagaming — just say no. You can't do X because you don't know anything about that. Get the other players to agree with you, again peer pressure.

PCs who go off by themselves get to have either: a) nothing to do or b) a level appropriate encounter for the whole party to themselves. In the case of b): if they run away the encounter will pursue them, this will make him unpopular as he causes the party to have to fight two encounters at once.

You seem to have a handle on the Cleric. If he takes actions just because that's what the group is doing: make his character pay. You have to make it in his interest to stop the others from breaking his IC rules. He should then do some of your work for you. Again peer pressure.

I'm not sure I can help you with the swordsage; other than: stupid actions get you killed. He'll get tired of creating new characters after a while.

[Sheogoroth]

Nothing you mentioned seems like a particularly bad thing.
In fact, your Knight's charge- take out an Evil Wizard that has 8 levels on you with a grapple, seems pretty awesome!
The Swordsage is playing the kind of character that he apparently enjoys.
Your artificer seems like the only one who's actually an issue, and the way to fix that is to just make him follow up on his actions.
Everyone sounds like they're playing the kind of character they want to, and they're having fun with it.
I don't mean to sound rude, but you seem to be the one who has the biggest issue with your party, and if its that big of a deal to you, maybe you should let someone else in your group DM?

[DarkEternal]

How is a Knight, who threatens a high power wizard in the middle of ar oom filled with civilians, AFTER they went through actual diplomacy checks and rules, playing it well? You are pretty much the only person(aside the person playing said knight) who ever agreed that this was good. Ever.

The fact is not that they are playing characters that are bad, but because they are bad with each other. Nobody agrees with anything, they squabble all the time, every single room lasts hours upon hours if something has to be done since everyone has a different take and pretty much ostracises the next one, every single "roleplay" session is filled with the knight and the archivist arguing over who has a stick up his arse, and who is pretty much evil and does whatever the hell he wants while thinking he is right, bard spurning the discussion on then whining irl that they are going on his nerves and that he will go home if this persists, the swordsage having some of the stupidest ideas I have heard in my life, etc.

If that means I am the one in the "wrong", then okay with me. Honestly, if that is the case, I don't want to be right. Ever.

[Musco]

Like I said before, assemble a new group. Sure, it sucks, but truth is, we like different people for different things, and not everyone has to be a joyous company for every kind of activity. If they simply aren't pleasant to RPG with, then don't.

Talk to them, TELL them you're getting tired, it's taxing you and it's starting to not be fun anymore.

Volunteer the DM screen to anyone who's willing to take it.

If no one does, then that means you DO have power over how things go, because, simply put, it's either you DM'ing or no RPG at all, so if you STILL can't get them to work together, do what I said. Talk to the ones you CAN aget to work together (which, after an ultimatum like this, might be a larger number than you have now), and simply start over. Take a break, and form a new group later, WITHOUT inviting the troublesome players.

It might suck, they might get pissed at you, but at the end of the day, if they decide to stop being friends with you over a game you don't like playing with them anymore, maybe you shouldn't be friends with them in the first place.

[yougi]

I think the main question is: is it getting to the point where during a game, you'd rather be doing something else? If so, do something else. You're entitled to have fun: even if the D&D terminology doesn't refer to you as a player, you still play a game, and when a game's no fun, well...

My advice would be



Talk to them, TELL them you're getting tired, it's taxing you and it's starting to not be fun anymore.

They're human beings, they're (semi-) intelligent beings: there's a reason behind everything they do. I have three approaches, depending on the problem:

- Short term issue, one player: The player is tired, he just had a fight with his wife, his kid's sick, he failed an exam, his favorite sock just caught on fire, whatever it is, it's affecting everyone's experience. Or sometimes, it's not even RL issues, sometimes it's just that on this day, their brain went into "being a jerk" mode. I usually go "man, are you okay? You're acting weird." If it doesn't change, I tell them they're getting in the way of us all having fun, and ask them if they'd rather leave. If they keep on ruining it, I yell a bit. I've learned as a teacher that faking you're angry can actually work: if you really get angry though, you're in trouble. Just a sentence or two, something like "BOB, ARE YOU DONE CRITICIZING EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE WE SAY? It's getting REAAAAALLY old! We're in here to have fun for crap's sake! *deep breath* Sorry. Alice, what did you say you rolled?"

- Long term issue, one player: If someone just keeps on doing something that annoys me, or that I'm told annoys the rest of the group, I first talk to them away from the table, trying to make them understand that when they do X, it takes away from our fun. I make sure they don't feel excluded, but just that that's annoying. I give them solutions, but also let them know it's a real problem. Something like "Hey Bob, it's been a few times that while the party plan for something, you don't listen, and then you don't follow the plan. It's getting annoying for the group, and I don't want it to ruin the game. Think you can pay more attention to the game in these times? Or at least, when they're done planning, if you don't like that part, ask what you have to do."

- Short term issue, whole table: The whole table is not feeling it? I take out a board game, or call for a break to go get some take out, telling them that they don't seem to be into it. If after the break, it's still not working, we just call it a night.

- LT issue, whole table: I once had problems like you're describing. I came in to one session, started with "we have a problem", described why it didn't work for me, and we had a discussion about it. Now that they knew what bothered me, I told them that I wanted the game to continue, but not like that, and told them my terms: no phone/tablet/iPod at the table, not even for books, I don't trust you with that; no more evil characters, or evil-leaning neutral characters; no more plotting behind the others' back; now you figure out why to work together, not why not to work together; no more meta-gaming; if you're not there for a period of time, whenever it makes sense, your character will go back to the inn and stay there, it will not become an NPC. And I ended with "that's the kind of game I want to DM, is that the kind of game you want to play in?" One of the guys said no and left, and we're still friends. The other four stayed, and that's that.


TL;dr: If they're truly your friend, and they're ruining it for you, it must be because they don't know they are. Tell them.

[Gnome Alone]

@Nedz:
I'd so play that sorcerer.

"Karnelivus! How've you been, man?"

"Pretty good, sacrificin' villagers, summonin' demons, the usual. Oh! and I've been trailing this idiot with a lighted shield and fireballing him every day, it's pretty awesome."

[nedz]

LOL, OK perhaps I went a bit far with that idea but I would hate to be a Ranger or Rogue in that party.