Wahrheit
2013-03-29, 02:20 AM
Okay, I'm playing in a massive NWoD crossover game and I'd like some advice on how to approach defusing what's shaping up to be a major intra-party conflict. Our party consists of a Changeling, a Mage, a Princess (http://princesswod.wikia.com/wiki/Princess:_The_Hopeful_Wiki), a werewolf (me), a Genius (https://sites.google.com/site/moochava/genius), and a Sin-Eater. The problem lies largely with the Mage and the Princess.
The game itself is structured into "episodes" that each thematically center around one of the supernatural types present in the party. The very first episode was the Princess-themed one. We found out about recurring murders/sacrifices happening every new moon in one of the dorm rooms on campus, and set out to figure out what was behind it. Long story short, it was a creature of Darkness that possessed a guy who'd had his body stolen by a Dreamlands denizen (the Dreamlands being a dream-world-alternate-dimension-thing that a lot of the forces of Light have been imprisoned in). It ripped open a Wound in the spirit world on campus before we beat the everloving bejeezus out of it, leaving us with just the body-snatcher to deal with. Turns out it hadn't really realized what it'd done; it'd just seen a crack in the Dreamlands and escaped through it. Because of this, the Mage and the Princess both argued leniency for it and decided to return it to the Dreamlands where it would stand trial before the Queen.
I, being a werewolf who was rather displeased with a sudden Wound in the heart of my territory, requested that I be allowed to take the Dreamlander to one of my tribe's shamans first so we could figure out what sort of magic it used in hopes of finding a way to more easily close the Wound. I was dismissed out of hand, since the Dreamlander "wasn't my jurisdiction and going to face trial from his own Queen, and besides, it was Darkness magic that opened the Wound and the Dreamlander only has Wisps of the Light." I'm approaching this from an Intelligence 4, Occult 3 (specialty: monsters), Science 2 perspective in that if I can figure out anything about how Wisps work, I can deduce properties of the Darkness similarly to how study of electrons gives a fair bit of insight into the nature of positrons. The Mage and Princess basically inform me that if I want the Dreamlander I'll have to go through them, so I backed off.
Shortly thereafter, my tribal elder lets me know that the Wound is now my responsibility, and it's my head if the thing gets worse. Admittedly, I'm already pretty upset, since the whole time I see two members of the party bending over backwards to ensure "justice" for the creature that, even unintentionally, caused massive harm to my territory and its denizens, and they don't seem to spare a moment's thought to what the consequences of their decision might be for me. Yes, they knew that the university was my territory, and I made it clear to them how bad Wounds are.
In another encounter, we had to deal with a rogue Princess of Tears who'd succumbed to despair, attacked a massive party, and had basically entranced about 60 people and started sucking the willpower out of them to drive them to suicide. We'd found evidence she's done this more than once before. The Mage and Princess both started trying to talk her down, and the Mage in particular threatened me with magic if I tried to attack the person who, y'know, was trying to murder 60 people. Eventually they somehow pushed her over the despair event horizon, she realized what she was doing, and the two of them just let her go, whereupon she killed herself.
When I confronted them about how monumentally dangerous it was to just let a known mass-murderer go free based on a hunch that she was remorseful, and if she hadn't killed herself then we'd have more deaths on our hands, the Mage exploded on me about what did I want him to do, just kill someone? He's refused to discuss it any further.
In all cases, I'm getting a serious "my way or the highway" vibe from the Mage, and he has a tendency to dismiss out-of-hand any plan that doesn't coincide with his view of how things should be done. In particular, he continues to deride my efforts to try to find some way to get access to anything Princess-related for my research into closing the Wound and has shown no curiosity or interest at all when I mentioned that its opening has literally put my life in jeopardy. We also encountered another Mage, who would rather research the nature of Awakening and why so many supernaturals realized their potentials at once at the start of our campaign over going on a fetch-quest for their higher-ups in the Free Council, and the party's Mage immediately decided such efforts were, quote, "stupid," and took every opportunity to belittle him.
My character is getting the serious impression that the Mage doesn't see him as a friend or even as a partner, but as a dumb mutt to be used to further his own goals, and at this point is probably inches away from doing his best to beat the Mage unconscious as a lesson. Obviously, that's an outcome I'd rather avoid, if possible, due to the absolute monkeywrench it would throw into party relations. It's just extremely difficult to find a rationale that fits my character psychology not to do so, especially when the Mage ignores my character's occult advice in favor of charging in to try to talk the monster to death (for reference, in comparison to my base dice pool of 7 for Intelligence + Occult, the Mage has 3 Intelligence and 1 Occult).
Anyway, sorry for the wall of text. Any advice from you lot?
The game itself is structured into "episodes" that each thematically center around one of the supernatural types present in the party. The very first episode was the Princess-themed one. We found out about recurring murders/sacrifices happening every new moon in one of the dorm rooms on campus, and set out to figure out what was behind it. Long story short, it was a creature of Darkness that possessed a guy who'd had his body stolen by a Dreamlands denizen (the Dreamlands being a dream-world-alternate-dimension-thing that a lot of the forces of Light have been imprisoned in). It ripped open a Wound in the spirit world on campus before we beat the everloving bejeezus out of it, leaving us with just the body-snatcher to deal with. Turns out it hadn't really realized what it'd done; it'd just seen a crack in the Dreamlands and escaped through it. Because of this, the Mage and the Princess both argued leniency for it and decided to return it to the Dreamlands where it would stand trial before the Queen.
I, being a werewolf who was rather displeased with a sudden Wound in the heart of my territory, requested that I be allowed to take the Dreamlander to one of my tribe's shamans first so we could figure out what sort of magic it used in hopes of finding a way to more easily close the Wound. I was dismissed out of hand, since the Dreamlander "wasn't my jurisdiction and going to face trial from his own Queen, and besides, it was Darkness magic that opened the Wound and the Dreamlander only has Wisps of the Light." I'm approaching this from an Intelligence 4, Occult 3 (specialty: monsters), Science 2 perspective in that if I can figure out anything about how Wisps work, I can deduce properties of the Darkness similarly to how study of electrons gives a fair bit of insight into the nature of positrons. The Mage and Princess basically inform me that if I want the Dreamlander I'll have to go through them, so I backed off.
Shortly thereafter, my tribal elder lets me know that the Wound is now my responsibility, and it's my head if the thing gets worse. Admittedly, I'm already pretty upset, since the whole time I see two members of the party bending over backwards to ensure "justice" for the creature that, even unintentionally, caused massive harm to my territory and its denizens, and they don't seem to spare a moment's thought to what the consequences of their decision might be for me. Yes, they knew that the university was my territory, and I made it clear to them how bad Wounds are.
In another encounter, we had to deal with a rogue Princess of Tears who'd succumbed to despair, attacked a massive party, and had basically entranced about 60 people and started sucking the willpower out of them to drive them to suicide. We'd found evidence she's done this more than once before. The Mage and Princess both started trying to talk her down, and the Mage in particular threatened me with magic if I tried to attack the person who, y'know, was trying to murder 60 people. Eventually they somehow pushed her over the despair event horizon, she realized what she was doing, and the two of them just let her go, whereupon she killed herself.
When I confronted them about how monumentally dangerous it was to just let a known mass-murderer go free based on a hunch that she was remorseful, and if she hadn't killed herself then we'd have more deaths on our hands, the Mage exploded on me about what did I want him to do, just kill someone? He's refused to discuss it any further.
In all cases, I'm getting a serious "my way or the highway" vibe from the Mage, and he has a tendency to dismiss out-of-hand any plan that doesn't coincide with his view of how things should be done. In particular, he continues to deride my efforts to try to find some way to get access to anything Princess-related for my research into closing the Wound and has shown no curiosity or interest at all when I mentioned that its opening has literally put my life in jeopardy. We also encountered another Mage, who would rather research the nature of Awakening and why so many supernaturals realized their potentials at once at the start of our campaign over going on a fetch-quest for their higher-ups in the Free Council, and the party's Mage immediately decided such efforts were, quote, "stupid," and took every opportunity to belittle him.
My character is getting the serious impression that the Mage doesn't see him as a friend or even as a partner, but as a dumb mutt to be used to further his own goals, and at this point is probably inches away from doing his best to beat the Mage unconscious as a lesson. Obviously, that's an outcome I'd rather avoid, if possible, due to the absolute monkeywrench it would throw into party relations. It's just extremely difficult to find a rationale that fits my character psychology not to do so, especially when the Mage ignores my character's occult advice in favor of charging in to try to talk the monster to death (for reference, in comparison to my base dice pool of 7 for Intelligence + Occult, the Mage has 3 Intelligence and 1 Occult).
Anyway, sorry for the wall of text. Any advice from you lot?