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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?

Exediron
2013-03-29, 02:48 AM
Well, I don't know anything about World of Darkness, so no comment on anything setting specific. All I can offer is cut-rate psychoanalysis and the voice of experience in terrible party dynamics.

First off: I'm going to assume that this conflict is purely on a character-to-character basis and is not a conflict amongst the players. The two are very different, and there are no easy answers if it's players not getting along.

At the start I was thinking that the Mage probably has issues respecting a werewolf or treating one as an equal (which might possibly have some halfway-reasonable root cause), but his problem extends to a fellow mage - whom you would expect he would at least inherently consider an equal.

It seems that the mage simply considers himself right and everyone else wrong if they disagree with him; assuming that this is not actually the case (it doesn't seem to be), perhaps what you need is some help from the Storyteller (WoD has one, right?) in the form of arranging an episode for the mage in which he comes to appreciate his companions and realize that he is not infallible. Oftentimes characters like that just need to have their world shaken a bit to see that they aren't really quite as central to it as they thought. If he's in a situation where he has to rely on you for his survival and you come through, he might very well change his opinion. The danger is that he might just hate you even more. But you can't please everyone. :smallamused:

It's also possible that he is aware that your character is more intelligent and feels vulnerable as a result (he's a mage, he might think he should be the smart one), and as a reaction to this vulnerability gets very defensive about anything he might perceive as a challenge to his way of doing things. In this case it wouldn't so much be that he thinks you're wrong as that secretly he thinks that he is wrong, but doesn't want you to know and instead tries to regain some control over the situation.

Lastly, wild and probably unlikely explanation: the mage is actually a plant working for the enemy. He goes soft on enemies of the party because they're on his side, and he doesn't want you taking care of them because if he sends them off for 'justice' he can make sure nothing really happens. Likewise, he doesn't actually think his colleague's theory is stupid - he just doesn't want anyone looking too closely into this, because he knows exactly why - and knows how dangerous it would be fore anyone else to know. The princess is likely also an enemy in disguise, and the two are in this together. :smallwink:

PS: I love your signature. I remember that thread and that post specifically, and I literally laughed out loud when I read it :smallbiggrin: If anyone in my campaign ever has the Hand of the Mage, that is going to happen to them in the first village.

Jay R
2013-03-29, 05:34 PM
First of all, consider the possibility that he knows something about it that he can't tell you, due to his backstory. He may actually know what he's doing.

But for the moment, let's assume otherwise. Either the party in general agrees with him, in which case you are out-voted, or they don't, and the whole party's being steam-rollered by the Mage.

You want to find out which it is, and you want the party to know as well.

So ask. "OK, I want to do X; the Mage wants to do Y. Let's each explain our position to the rest of the party and let them decide. Do you want to explain your plan first, or should I?"

There are three possible results:
1. They agree to go with his plan.
2. They agree to go with your plan.
3. He won't let this happen, and you know he's bullying the party.

In each case, you can then decide how to react based on the real situation.

Sith_Happens
2013-03-29, 11:18 PM
I'm inclined to side with the Mage on the second incident, solely on the basis that this is/was the Princess-themed "episode." Forgiving and letting the villain off the hook for the extremely horrible things she's done because she realizes now that it was wrong is the standard magical girl MO. Of course, she's supposed to become to become one of the party's staunchest allies after that rather than offing herself, but I guess that's where the WoD part comes in.

Doxkid
2013-03-30, 12:57 AM
Bring things out into the open. Talk such things out in front of the rest of the party and explain that you do not appreciate every decision being 100% him.

I'm assuming it isn't a single player game that everyone else is just tagging along in.

Lorsa
2013-03-30, 05:38 AM
Things like this happens all too easily in campaigns (in WoD), that different characters have vastly different ideas of how to do things. I was in a Geist group that had similair problems. The best advice I have is 'start over and make characters that can work together or change your current characters' personalities'.

But you should consider a few things. The morality of your characters are vastly different. From a Werewolf point of view, killing someone is okay as long as it's for a reason. A Sin-Eater has no problems with murder either. A Mage on the other hand functions on wisdom and it's ALWAYS a crime against wisdom to kill someone (unless your wisdom is really low). In WoD, there's a very strong meta-game reason why you want to keep your morality score high, and this goes especially for wisdom. Low wisdom sucks major balls. Have you considered that the Mage might simply be against killing as he is afraid of the possible wisdom-loss? Something you do not have to worry about as you follow Harmony. Why a Princess would choose to forgive and forget is easy to understand though, that's just who they are.

Player characters with different ethics is troublesome enough in a normal game, but in a cross-over game you also have different Morality scale making the problem even worse. I think this is something your group should discuss.

Also, while your group, and you in particular does not game about game-balance at all, you should consider that the Mage player knows that he is the most awesome person in your group. He CAN GET AWAY with bullying all of you to follow his command. Maybe this is a player that knew about that when choosing template and maybe, just maybe he isn't on the same page with the campaign as you are. I mean, if you divide the splats into Tiers like they do in D&D then the Sin-Eater and the Changeling is like Tier 1 & 2, you'd be like Tier 6, where the Princess and Mad Scientist is I don't actually know, and the Mage is at Tier God laughing at all the rest for thinking they are somehow cool for having some lame-ass powers.

Thrawn4
2013-03-30, 07:47 AM
The best advice I have is 'start over and make characters that can work together or change your current characters' personalities'.
Much to early for that, imho.

I think the best way to approach this problem is to:
1. talk to the mage player (maybe the mage does not realize your problem)
2. involve the entire party (group vote will make him less of a bully)
3. talk to the storyteller (a good storyteller can provide everyone with a reason to stick together. seeing as every episode is about one character the mage might need some werewolf lore to further his goals)

Agent_0042
2013-03-31, 10:02 AM
Genius player here. The biggest problem in-game is the Mage and the Werewolf both have strong personalities, but the Mage has the Princess as a reinforcer. The Changeling is a GM avatar and largely relegated to the background, and the Geist tends to be passive. When I'm around, I usually back up the Werewolf, but the first incident happened while I wasn't present in-character (I can't have much to do with spirit world shenanigans) and the second was during a side session run because I couldn't game that night.


It seems that the mage simply considers himself right and everyone else wrong if they disagree with him; assuming that this is not actually the case (it doesn't seem to be), perhaps what you need is some help from the Storyteller (WoD has one, right?) in the form of arranging an episode for the mage in which he comes to appreciate his companions and realize that he is not infallible. Oftentimes characters like that just need to have their world shaken a bit to see that they aren't really quite as central to it as they thought. If he's in a situation where he has to rely on you for his survival and you come through, he might very well change his opinion. The danger is that he might just hate you even more. But you can't please everyone. :smallamused: This is most likely the case. Like I said, the Mage has a strong personality (as does the player), and tends to be crusader-ish. The fact that the first incident was the meat of Episode 1: Princess, and the second occurred in the middle of Episode 2: Mage, probably didn't help things; in his mind, he cordoned off what happened as His BusinessTM, when in reality (and to the GM's credit) things are pretty well integrated despite each episode's focus.

Episode 3 is Werewolf-themed, so hopefully that will give the Mage a chance to realize that he neither has all the answers nor is the leader of our rag-tag group.


Lastly, wild and probably unlikely explanation: the mage is actually a plant working for the enemy. He goes soft on enemies of the party because they're on his side, and he doesn't want you taking care of them because if he sends them off for 'justice' he can make sure nothing really happens. Likewise, he doesn't actually think his colleague's theory is stupid - he just doesn't want anyone looking too closely into this, because he knows exactly why - and knows how dangerous it would be fore anyone else to know. The princess is likely also an enemy in disguise, and the two are in this together. :smallwink:I can all-but-guarantee this is not the case. Besides, if anyone's likely to go nuts and eventually betray the party, it'll be me. Disregard that.

In any event, I think the morality conflicts are inevitable, given that Wereworf (and to a lesser extent Genius) have a tremendously different metric than the other supernaturals, and are kinda one of the draws for the game. Aside from that, though, I don't see this continuing to be a major issue, considering his other primary rationale for disregarding the Werewolf's plight was that the Mage's business was more pressing, and that's now done. If it does, I'm soon reaching the point where my shenanigans are on-par with the Mage, so I should be able to lend some oomph to the other side of the argument.

As for the wound, Warheit, the best bet is to disregard the Mage altogether and pull in the Princess to help you figure out how to seal the Wound. In any event, you need to start dragging me around to in-party arguments. I can spare time from my inventings. :smallwink:

Sith_Happens
2013-03-31, 08:39 PM
the second occurred in the middle of Episode 2: Mage,

Oh, in that case disregard my comment on that incident, with the possible exception of if the "talk down, forgive, and let go" approach used was still in fact the Princess's idea.

Water_Bear
2013-03-31, 08:58 PM
Easy Answer: You're a Werewolf, he is a Mage who presumably hasn't prepared to fight Werewolves and is in arms reach. The next time his action (or inaction) threatens the Gauntlet, kill him and be careful not to swallow any bits to keep your Harmony up.

Hard Answer: Talk to the other Players, let them know that if things continue as they have been your character will be forced to fight them. Work out a reason why your characters choose to compromise, then do that. Depending on how good your ST is, this conflict could become an excellent opportunity for the Mage to learn about the danger of Hubris and for the party to gain more respect for one another.

Sith_Happens
2013-03-31, 11:07 PM
Easy Answer: You're a Werewolf, he is a Mage who presumably hasn't prepared to fight Werewolves and is in arms reach. The next time his action (or inaction) threatens the Gauntlet, kill him and be careful not to swallow any bits to keep your Harmony up.

From what I've heard about Mages, they don't have to "prepare" to fight anything. More like you start to attack and they turn you into a lawn chair ten seconds ago.

Water_Bear
2013-04-01, 07:48 AM
From what I've heard about Mages, they don't have to "prepare" to fight anything. More like you start to attack and they turn you into a lawn chair ten seconds ago.

Not really, no.

Mages are very powerful; killing people on other planets is trivially easy for a mage with only a few Arcana dots. But their magic is tough to use on the fly; Paradox, Disbelief (there are almost always Sleepers somewhere nearby), and just the fact that they're so squishy are problems. If a Mage has a few hours to go through their Library and find a Grimoire of the spell they want to cast, then draw some Atlantean Runes out near their Demense and start casting they're great. But if they get jumped in an alley they can go down to the first hit.