Social experiment on players

[Bulhakov]

I've had a very long running campaign fall apart after recreating the Stanford Prison Experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment) in one of the sessions.


Quick background:
- This wasn't an D&D game, so there were no clear alignments, but all players were basically neutral good (some a bit more lawful or less good). I have a tendency to run good heroic campaigns with quite common moral ambiguities (the villains always have more or less rational or emotional motives)
- Two captured NPCs were being tortured for information/motives (both were neutral, though assumed evil by the party as one was a cocky poison-making alchemist and the other a gifted emotional kid wizard out to kill a paladin NPC that killed his evil mother).
- Two of the players have a tendency to "look the other way" whenever a morally ambiguous situation arises (e.g. interrogating or executing prisoners, lying, stealing). They make it clear they don't like what the remaining three (less "good") players are doing, but stay out of their way if they can't change their minds.

This time to make the game session more interesting, I took the players that avoided the interrogation scene, gave them quick background on the prisoners and key information they had, and put them back in the game as the captured NPCs.

The session turned very ugly and escalated into a big conflict that ended with the tied up prisoners being killed by the interrogating players (mostly due to some very unlucky lucky dice throws - the kid wizard had a natural telepathic attack ability, that caused headaches and very minor damage to anyone he directed his anger at, but he kept rolling critical hits that stacked and the players thought him to be much too dangerous to keep alive). The players came back to the scene as their original characters, and after a long argument (both in and out of character) they resurrected the prisoners. Emotions got so heated that two female players (one in each camp) cried. At that point we stopped the session.

After that we haven't played for over two years (mainly due to lack of time, but also from fear of repeating the emotional roller-coaster).


Was I right to pit the players against each other in such a way?

Any other DMs out there with similar experiences?

[Nepenthe]

That sounds like an amazing session. A lot of GMs (myself included) would love for their players to be that invested in the game. Too bad it caused things to fall apart.

[tensai_oni]

That sounds like an amazing session. A lot of GMs (myself included) would love for their players to be that invested in the game.

No.

If players get so invested in the game that it causes real life conflict, that's not a good thing. That's a really bad thing, that should cause all parties involve to take two steps back and think - where did it go wrong? Are we taking this too seriously? Did the rules we've set up regarding character morality (for example "we play basically decent people that don't torture prisoners", but "everything goes" is fine too as long as everyone knows about it in advance and agrees) were properly obeyed, or did someone break them? Did we have such rules in the first place? If no, perhaps we should have?

The OP's story makes it look like a part of his group was uncomfortable with the game for some time already - not ICly, OOCly. His action only made it explode.

[Rhynn]

I've had a very long running campaign fall apart after recreating the Stanford Prison Experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment) in one of the sessions.

I hope you're not surprised!

... I also hope nobody got hives or some other physiological stress reaction, like the actual participants of the original experiment.


Was I right to pit the players against each other in such a way?

That depends. What did you seriously think was going to happen? (Also are you deontological or consequentialistic?)

I'd say making your players cry and destroying the group is a pretty damn bad outcome. Were you aware of the details of the Stanford Prison Experiment at the time, or is this a connection / reference you made later? It's hard to say whether this was something that could be foreseen.

Generally, though, you probably shouldn't use people you give a crap about to conduct social experiments.

[AttilaTheGeek]

Oh god, that's horrible! Yeah, sure, it's great that your players were invested, but after knowing the results of the real experiment, how could you not have seen that coming?

[TaiLiu]

Dearest comrade, with all due respect, that was an unwise decision.

[Barsoom]

Looks like you just shoved your players off the deep end of an emotional whirlpool and sat back, watching whether they, and the game, will swim or drown.


After that we haven't played for over two years And it drowned.

[Grinner]

Well...As far as the health of your gaming group went, that was a very bad decision, especially considering how the original experiment went. It was also a bit unethical to conduct an experiment on them without their permission.

On the other hand, I've got this little voice at the back of my head marveling at how effectively that worked. You don't often see real science ever leave the ivory towers.

Either way, you shouldn't have done that.

[russdm]

Its D&D, nobody sees anything coming.

It seems to me that the group was pretty much going to break apart, since there seems to be a lot of InGame and OutofGame issues that were building up.

Also, You should have never attempted to redo the Stanford prison experiment. Even the guy who set it up, later viewed it as a big mistake. The only result that ever happens is that it destroys relationships. It was unwise.

[Raineh Daze]

You recreated what is pretty much the worst psychological study (even above and beyond Milgram's research) to ever replicate. What the hell were you expecting? Definitely the wrong choice. :|

[Slipperychicken]

I'm shocked that you would consciously choose to inflict such hardship on your players. You should be ashamed.

People like you take the beauty of the roleplaying experience and turn it into a vehicle to gain sadistic thrills at the expense of people who trust you. Of course, if you do seek such thrills, there may be communities who can help you achieve this in a more responsible, less emotionally-devastating manner.


My advice is to abandon GMing altogether. The fact that you need to ask whether this is wrong at all is testament to your lack of moral awareness, your casual disregard (or perhaps antipathy) for the feelings of others, and to your unfitness as a GM.

[headwarpage]

I'm shocked that you would consciously choose to inflict such hardship on your players. You should be ashamed.

People like you take the beauty of the roleplaying experience and turn it into a vehicle to gain sadistic thrills at the expense of people who trust you. Of course, if you do seek such thrills, there may be communities who can help you achieve this in a more responsible, less emotionally-devastating manner.


My advice is to abandon GMing altogether. The fact that you need to ask whether this is wrong at all is testament to your lack of moral awareness, your casual disregard (or perhaps antipathy) for the feelings of others, and to your unfitness as a GM.

Seriously? Granted, it was a bad idea. But there's no need to attack the guy personally over it. Everybody makes mistakes - calling somebody's character into question because they made one bad decision isn't necessary.

[Raineh Daze]

Seriously? Granted, it was a bad idea. But there's no need to attack the guy personally over it. Everybody makes mistakes - calling somebody's character into question because they made one bad decision isn't necessary.

Recreating the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Knowing the results from the original.

In something meant entirely for fun.

Without even asking the players if they wanted to be part of such a study (or any study) first. Seriously, that violates nigh on every ethical principal of any relevance to the original study.

[TaiLiu]

Recreating the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Knowing the results from the original.

In something meant entirely for fun.

Without even asking the players if they wanted to be part of such a study (or any study) first. Seriously, that violates nigh on every ethical principal of any relevance to the original study.
It was a very large mistake. People can make destructive choices by accident.

[headwarpage]

Recreating the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Knowing the results from the original.

In something meant entirely for fun.

Without even asking the players if they wanted to be part of such a study (or any study) first. Seriously, that violates nigh on every ethical principal of any relevance to the original study.

OP never said he did it as a "study," or that he did it intending to recreate the Stanford Prison Experiment, or even that he actually knew about the Stanford Prison Experiment before he did that. And even if he did know about it, there are enough differences (primary one being that the prisoners were at a gaming table, not locked in a basement) that you might not realize it was a bad idea if you didn't think it through all the way.

If OP did something intentionally hurtful to screw with his players, sure, attack away. But that's entirely speculation at this point. Until OP says differently, there's no reason to think this was anything other than "it seemed like a good idea at the time." Which means it's definitely dumb, but I think personal attacks are uncalled for.

Seriously, the guy comes to an RPG board (a notoriously friendly one, at that), and says, "I think I might have screwed up. Did I screw up?" Ok, he screwed up - tell him so. But to suggest that he's a horrible person acting out sadistic fantasies and should never run another game? That seems a little bit uncalled for.

[Mewtarthio]

"You know, I'm really not comfortable with all this torturing..."

"Hm... Okay! I'll just have you get tortured! This cannot possibly end poorly!"

[Acanous]

+5 would social experiment again.

[Slipperychicken]

Seriously? Granted, it was a bad idea. But there's no need to attack the guy personally over it. Everybody makes mistakes - calling somebody's character into question because they made one bad decision isn't necessary.

He knowingly recreated a situation which he knew, having researched the experiment, could cause intense psychological trauma. He did not warn his players of this, and has not made (to our knowledge) any attempt to avert or mitigate the damage.

It was not needed. The OP could have chosen to roleplay the NPCs himself, or simply resolved it without roleplay, but he intentionally chose to do this in the way he knew would harm his players most.


Needlessly traumatizing and victimizing ones unsuspecting friends is wrong, and, assuming he was in his right mind at the time, suggests some highly disturbing things.

Of course, the OP's posting on this board suggests he is now at some level aware of this, perhaps having grown in the years since that session, so I don't mean to condemn him. I do, however, believe that what the OP did was morally wrong.

[headwarpage]

He knowingly recreated a situation which he knew, having researched the experiment, could cause intense psychological trauma. He did not warn his players of this, and has not made (to our knowledge) any attempt to avert or mitigate the damage.

It was not needed. The OP could have chosen to roleplay the NPCs himself, or simply resolved it without roleplay, but he intentionally chose to do this in the way he knew would harm his players most.


I don't see this in OP's post. All his reference to the experiment proves is that he now recognizes the similarity. He never said he set out with the goal of recreating the experiment. He doesn't mention his motives, other than "making the game session more interesting." I read that as him thinking "hey, instead of sitting there during the torture scene, why don't you take my notes and play the prisoners so you don't get bored." I admit that my reading isn't supported by OP's post any more than yours is, though.

Bottom line, if OP intended to traumatize his players, that's wrong. If he knew they would be traumatized (in a way that went beyond simply being engaged in the game), that's wrong too. But if he just didn't think things through, I think you're coming down on him too hard.

I'm going to drop this now because it's not likely to end well.

[navar100]

Some DMs don't even need to run their own experiment. It just happens. Just being the "DM" puts them on a power trip, thus we get "Killer DMs", "Dictator DMs", and other such synonyms. The experiment played out in early D&D as players just accepted this DM behavior because they didn't know any better. The rules enforced it with its "Just Say No" paradigm if not explicitly stated.

2E Player's Options series put a dent in it by giving players choices in character building, but it was 3E that finally put a stop to it. Players had more choices from the start. The DM was encouraged to "Say Yes". The internet came along allowing players of gaming groups world over to compare notes. The Il Duce DM was overthrown. 4E 'tore down the statue' by literally having the words "Just Say Yes" in the DMG rules.

Il Duce DMs still exist today, but they are frowned upon. As long as their players do not know any better, i.e. speak to players of other groups such as through the internet, Il Duce remains in power. It is possible for players to rebel on their own anyway, where Il Duce finds he is only the DM for one session. Good riddance.

I know the OP said it wasn't a D&D game. I'm just more familiar with D&D to use as a model.

[AntiTrust]

I'm shocked that you would consciously choose to inflict such hardship on your players. You should be ashamed.

People like you take the beauty of the roleplaying experience and turn it into a vehicle to gain sadistic thrills at the expense of people who trust you. Of course, if you do seek such thrills, there may be communities who can help you achieve this in a more responsible, less emotionally-devastating manner.


My advice is to abandon GMing altogether. The fact that you need to ask whether this is wrong at all is testament to your lack of moral awareness, your casual disregard (or perhaps antipathy) for the feelings of others, and to your unfitness as a GM.

The melodrama levels are critical captain. Its over aggrandizing posts like this that gets these threads locked. Lets try to be more constructive.

If you knew the group would react this way then it was obviously a bad call. Generally speaking some players can't handle something like that. From personal experiences my gamers would be okay with it, in fact I think a few would very much enjoy seeing it from the other side, but that just my group. If the players ever get the time you should probably just promise them a nice kick down the door adventure where the villains are more cut and dry in the morals. As much as I like moral quandaries as a player, I love a villain I can hate with all my guts even more and I relish giving them their just desserts

[Fates]

Wow, just...yeesh, that's rough. I'm going to assume judging by your apparent self-consciousness that you were not trying to replicate the Stanford prison experiment, and that rather you were simply trying to liven up the game and things escalated out of control.

If I'm correct in this regard, I understand your motivations. Nothing frustrates me more as a DM than realizing that my players are not interested in the game I've made for them, and nothing irks me more as a player than an uninteresting game. I like moral ambiguity, I like drama, and I like real, emotional investment in the game. Like you, I've tried to make the game more interesting by shocking my players, and I can see how you might have decided it was a good idea to do what you did. All I can say is, I'm sorry it turned out that way, and I hope that everyone involved learns from your mistake. Don't let it scare you out of making intriguing campaigns- just remember that not everyone feels the same way about game depth, and you should stay conscious of what is going on in your games before things spin out of control again.

[Slipperychicken]

The melodrama levels are critical captain. Its over aggrandizing posts like this that gets these threads locked. Lets try to be more constructive.


Good point. I did go a bit overboard there. A simple "no" to whether it was right would have sufficed.

[Ozfer]

Huh. Honestly, as long as you weren't intentionally trying to distress people, just trying to make the game interesting, I wouldn't feel too bad. I mean, its hard to tell without knowing the group, but I don't think that sounds especially inflammatory or emotionally trying (Your situation, not the actual experiment). I mean, come on, it is just a game. I think it might be more a case of your players taking it too seriously.

[AuraTwilight]

Protip: Don't knowingly recreate psychological studies that the scientific consensus regards as being mentally and emotionally abusive. What in God's name made you think this was a good idea on any level?

Also, you didn't get your players' consent to do this. If this caused any actual damage, you'd be legally liable.

[Remmirath]

It sounds to me as though it was merely unwise, unless you knew that the players were sensitive enough to have such a problem with it, and then it would move more into the territory of being wrong.

Recreating the actual experiment on the players would surely be wrong, but there's a very large difference between actually creating a prison scenario and roleplaying it. For most people, I'd reckon the level of removal of roleplaying a character and not simply being themselves would be enough that it wouldn't be that much of a problem (though it might make a large number of people uncomfortable, and if those particular players were already being made uncomfortable, that should've been a warning that the group might not take well to it), particularly when just handed new characters and so not even being attached to long-played characters or anything of the sort.

This all assuming that you weren't specifically trying a social experiment on your players without asking them, which I would say would be rather dubious.

Basically, I think that in some groups what you did would have worked fine, but you should have taken a bit more care beforehand in making sure that it would've worked out in your group. Possibly you should also have attempted to defuse the situation before it got so out of control that people started crying, but that's a trickier proposition.

[Arbane]

You all DO know what "social experiment" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29) is interenetese for, right?

[Bulhakov]

I think I need to clarify a few things:

- it was not my original intention to recreate the experiment, that is I've read about it before, but realized where things were heading a bit too late into the session

- the original intent of the PC->NPC swap was to actually make the NPCs "more human" and serve as a wake up call to the three characters that were getting too much into the "ends justify the means" morality ("we're heroes out to save the world, everyone else doesn't matter")

- the above was also the main reason the "good" players agreed to the play the NPCs, I didn't force it on them and gave them the option to back out

- the conflict mainly stayed in character, but there was some drama due to different and evolving play styles and expectations - all players started out playing characters with more or less the same outlook on morality as themselves, but throughout a two-three year long campaign the moralities of at least 2 characters (of 2 most experienced players) tended to drift more and more towards "efficient ruthlessness", while the rest stuck to their original perception of playing their own morality (this was a very gradual change, that peaked during this final session)

- the conflict didn't cause any bad blood in real life, we're all good friends and still party together, we just don't play RPGs together (mostly to lack of time, but I get a vibe that they learned that they prefer to see each other as friends, not as characters)

[Gildedragon]

First of all: I am glad that your friendships were not damaged by this incident. Moral fractures in a game can be rough, for the all the players, DM included.

Ideally you ought to have stopped it when it began to spiral out of control. When tempers begin to rise its time for a cookie break, or muffin baking, or something. But it is hard, both to have the presence of mind to stop and negotiate conflict, and to stop oneself from watching it descend into madness. If you trawl through the archives you'll see stories of DMs facing problematic situations. That's life: not all of us are good at being diplomats for conflicts we didn't expect.

I had a similar experience, and I fixed it. Not nearly as... problematic as your case, but a moral rift that split the party in two nonetheless. Long story short: half the group had read Frankenstein the other hadn't. Awakened flesh-golem with standard berserkiness and ranks in craft (painting), vague allusions to a beast in the swamp (where the old chateau was). Half the party wanted to kill the golem, half the party didn't... golem got killed.
It would have gotten fightier but I said: you can rebuild the golem. Craft leatherworking and alchemy, and you can bring it back to life as a cohort. It will have a master, will be under control, but it'll still be alive and well. The group was okay with this and we still play... all twelve of us.
My players' disposition helped a lot too: they remembered a big social lubricant "if its making someone upset and doesn't net me anything, I'm going to stop and I'll figure out a reason for stopping"

[Bulhakov]

Some answers to specific questions:



That depends. What did you seriously think was going to happen? (Also are you deontological or consequentialistic?)


Oh god, that's horrible! Yeah, sure, it's great that your players were invested, but after knowing the results of the real experiment, how could you not have seen that coming?

What the hell were you expecting?


I honestly expected the torturers to have a bit of an eye-opener moment when they realized the NPCs had motives, personalities and feelings of their own (actually role-played extremely well played by the two players), instead they gave in more and more to their ruthless or even sadistic sides, as the session turned into a psychological PvP fight.

Also, I'm definitely a consequentialist (though I prioritize motive and minimizing negative consequences, over utilitarianism and positive consequences).



You all DO know what "social experiment" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29) is interenetese for, right?
Yeah, I've been accused of being a troll-GM before, but usually in a good way. I'm a very "Just Say Yes" type of a GM, allowing the players a lot of freedom and improvising side-quests on the go. However, since the group has always been extremely genre-savvy I tended to throw in frequent shockers/twists to keep the players emotionally involved.

[Waar]

The Title and first sentence implies something much worse than the rest of your posts :smalltongue:
I can't say i am surprised at the result, nor would i recommend doing it again, however given the circumstances you handeld is ok (as far i see from your posts at least), maybe should have called it of a litle sooner when you realised how they were reacting.

[prufock]

To be fair, the Stanford experiment impacted real people's lives, and required physically acting out the roles. Your D&D game impacted I assume only a single session of conversation. I'm not sure why people think you should have expected it to blow up. The DM takes a position of authority and antagonism often, and that doesn't usually end up with hurt feelings. Even usual player-vs-player stuff doesn't go off the deep end.

[Mewtarthio]

I think I need to clarify a few things:

- it was not my original intention to recreate the experiment, that is I've read about it before, but realized where things were heading a bit too late into the session

- the original intent of the PC->NPC swap was to actually make the NPCs "more human" and serve as a wake up call to the three characters that were getting too much into the "ends justify the means" morality ("we're heroes out to save the world, everyone else doesn't matter")

- the above was also the main reason the "good" players agreed to the play the NPCs, I didn't force it on them and gave them the option to back out

- the conflict mainly stayed in character, but there was some drama due to different and evolving play styles and expectations - all players started out playing characters with more or less the same outlook on morality as themselves, but throughout a two-three year long campaign the moralities of at least 2 characters (of 2 most experienced players) tended to drift more and more towards "efficient ruthlessness", while the rest stuck to their original perception of playing their own morality (this was a very gradual change, that peaked during this final session)

- the conflict didn't cause any bad blood in real life, we're all good friends and still party together, we just don't play RPGs together (mostly to lack of time, but I get a vibe that they learned that they prefer to see each other as friends, not as characters)

Ah. Well, that's a whole lot more reasonable, then.

[Joe the Rat]

This definitely turned into a parallel of the Stanford Prison Experiment. That's not considered a good thing.

It was a clever idea to try this with the players, and unless you were using the Stanford Experiment as an inspiration, you probably didn't know how important it is to have someone "outside" of the game with this sort of scenario. Part of why the SPE went so wrong is that Zimbardo was playing a role himself. He was the Warden. He set the study up, specifically to look at the situational effects of role and power, and he got sucked in as well. It took a grad student outside of the study to point out how horribly wrong things had gone. Since you were still playing a role in the scenario ("Game Master"), it was easier for you to "roll the dice and see how this plays out" rather than stepping in when things were getting a little too intense, causing your game to shut down. For two years.

I'm glad to hear that there are no apparent long-term consequences in everyone's relationships. But it will take a lot of work to get everyone back to the table. Stepping away from the above discussion, there are games that people won't play together because bad things happened. My in-laws cannot play Parcheesi together. They were so competitive and ruthlessly vindictive in play, it almost cost them their marriage. My wife won't play Monopoly with me because one time we played, I had a horrible run with the dice, and less-than-stellar composure while losing. I've mellowed (and still suck at Monopoly), but she still avoids it. We play a variety of other cutthroat, subterfuge and sabotage style games - even with my in-laws - but these present no issues. It may be a matter of mellowing with age, and the past problems might not occur again, but they don't want to risk it.

The emotional aspect is going to be big influence on their memories of gameplay, and at some level they'll associate gaming (at least with your group) with the anger and torment in the last session. They may not admit this is a factor, and they might not even realize it. That will be hard to overcome. You might have more luck starting with something a bit more light-hearted. You might also need to step away from the GM's seat to make it happen - not because of anything you've done specifically, but because you as GM is part of the association.

[Water_Bear]

I think the big mistake here was probably the idea that the Players who were having fun playing more antiheroic characters needed an "eye opener" in the first place.

If people are having fun in an RPG (or really any kind of roleplay) morality doesn't really come into it except as a plot element; their characters' "actions" have no real world consequences and are so separated from the real world that you can't even say it reflects on their motives. Trying to make them feel bad about treating imaginary people poorly is, in a word, silly; it is sacrificing the enjoyment of your players to the altar of an abstract ideological ideal which doesn't even apply there. The only time you need to step in is if they are causing the DM or other Players distress, otherwise it's good clean fun.

All the problems here followed from that principle. By attempting to make the Players feel guilty about imaginary crimes it created a situation where real emotional damage was done, and predictably took the fun out of roleplaying for the whole group.

[tensai_oni]

I think the big mistake here was probably the idea that the Players who were having fun playing more antiheroic characters needed an "eye opener" in the first place.

Did you miss the part where the rest of the party was obviously not okay with their behaviour? You wrote about sacrificing enjoyment. I'm pretty sure the enjoyment in the party was compromised for a long time already.

[Water_Bear]

Did you miss the part where the rest of the party was obviously not okay with their behaviour? You wrote about sacrificing enjoyment. I'm pretty sure the enjoyment in the party was compromised for a long time already.

Then that's an issue to deal with out of game. If it's causing OOC problems, shut it the hell down ASAP by talking to the players about it. If it isn't, which my reading of the OP indicates, there's no reason to even take OOC action much less interfering with the game to deliver some sort of moral lesson.

As I said, "The only time you need to step in is if they are causing the DM or other Players distress [...]" otherwise it's pointless.

[Barsoom]

"Don't introduce IC solutions for OOC problems" is a good advice given time and again.

[Rhynn]

If people are having fun in an RPG (or really any kind of roleplay) morality doesn't really come into it except as a plot element; their characters' "actions" have no real world consequences and are so separated from the real world that you can't even say it reflects on their motives. Trying to make them feel bad about treating imaginary people poorly is, in a word, silly; it is sacrificing the enjoyment of your players to the altar of an abstract ideological ideal which doesn't even apply there. The only time you need to step in is if they are causing the DM or other Players distress, otherwise it's good clean fun.

Exploration of an issue can be perfectly valid, but yeah, setting out with a goal in mind to teach a lesson is, IMO, as misguided as setting out to tell a specific story, only in a slightly different way. In both cases, the heart of the problem is that you can, as DM, neither predict nor control what will happen.

[Bulhakov]

"Don't introduce IC solutions for OOC problems" is a good advice given time and again.

I think this hits the nail on the head. I do have a tendency to attempt to use IC tricks to solve problems I would have a more difficult time solving OOC.

The thing is that from my experience, the players that can easily separate their IC and OOC emotions, will often get very offended when someone tries to tell them OOC how they should alter their behavior IC, while given a proper IC incentive they will alter that behavior easily and with no personal offense.

One example from my 10+ years as a GM: I had two players who had a tendency to derail sessions due to the animosity between their characters, often leading to PvP. The first fix was to develop quests in such a way so they hinged on their cooperation, but this was a bit forced so I tried a more subtle approach. The second solution was to give each of them "secret" faction missions that actually lead to them helping each other out (this worked pretty well, until one decided to betray his faction). Finally, the best fix I came up with was when starting a new game, I made their characters brothers. It turned out their animosity found a perfect outlet in sibling rivalry - instead of derailing into PvP, they became competitive to prove which brother was more powerful or creative and they played a lot of small immature pranks on each other, which actually made the game more fun for the whole party.

[Rhynn]

I think this hits the nail on the head. I do have a tendency to attempt to use IC tricks to solve problems I would have a more difficult time solving OOC.

The thing is that from my experience, the players that can easily separate their IC and OOC emotions, will often get very offended when someone tries to tell them OOC how they should alter their behavior IC, while given a proper IC incentive they will alter that behavior easily and with no personal offense.

Yeah, there's a place for both. Talking OOC is the best approach to problems between players. Problems between the players and the setting can be resolved IC. You absolutely can use the setting and the world (as well as the rules!) to reinforce or discourage certain behaviors.)

For instance, I think the best solution to PCs killing and robbing everything, mooning the king then wiping their rear on his purple cape, etc., is IC consequences.

The best solution to two players picking fights and PVPing, detracting from everyone else's fun, is OOC talk.

The best solution to just one PC stealing from the others may be IC (tell them they should go ahead and kick him out and the player will have to create a new PC) or OOC (an agreement not to steal from the party).

[TinyHippo]

Generally speaking, folks don't enjoy PvP in cooperative games, and very few people enjoy roleplaying a character getting tortured. It's hard to see how setting up a PvP environment where one side tortures the other could end well.

[Asmodai]

Actually, you should have kept a better feel for the group. You put them into a potentially highly volatile situation and didn't listen how far their tensions were getting. This should have been stopped way before it exploded.