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View Full Version : Hitting Three Angles; how to deal with party conflicts?



Togath
2013-11-17, 02:50 AM
Ian, Silver, Terra, Euk, Luna.. Feel free to take a look if you happen upon this thread.
With that out of the way;

Does anyone have tips for both resolving, and preventing intra-party conflicts?
At the moment it amounts to having an Optimizer/Teacher, a Heavy RPer, and a guy here for The Game in the same group..
The past two sessions there's been major conflicts, with the guy here for The Game nearly leaving in the session before tonight's, and the Heavy RPer considering dropping out after tonight's.
Both conflicts are related to the Optimizer/Teacher, the first because he was taking up a lot of time with crafting and bringing the game to a halt(he's playing an artificer.. in a party of tier 3-4s played by newbies.. He's fine with rerolling to make things more balanced though..), while the second was due to his character nearly dying, and the RPer's bard having had no way for her to know in character that he had a cure scroll(which the others argued was an OK thing to break character over.. and eventually started getting a bit.. "miffed" at her).
Adding to this mire is the fact that the artificer asked me to kill his character off so he could reroll as a more balanced class.. But I'm having trouble getting enough nerve to just have a monster focus fire him instead of one of the more combat oriented characters..

So.. Any suggestions? Anyone else encounter situations like this before?

The Oni
2013-11-17, 04:06 AM
If you're looking for a way to get rid of the Artificer, and he's cool with it, you can do one of two things.

1. Put him in a situation where he'd be more useful to the mission somewhere other than actually in the party.

2. Kill him in a way that it makes sense for an Artificer to be killed. Perhaps have the party stumble upon a strange device. The Artificer is trying to get it to work, when suddenly it springs to life, is some manner of semisentient death machine, and kills the Artificer brutally before rounding on the party who flee before its onslaught.

Kalmageddon
2013-11-17, 09:02 AM
He shouldn't need to have his character killed off in order to change it and make things more fun and balanced for everyone. He could just ask for an excuse to have his character wander off in pursue of his objectives, with an artificer this shouldn't even be difficult, as a character he should be perfectly fine with staying in his lab the whole day.
This is just the optimizier trying to make things difficult.

Slylizard
2013-11-17, 05:06 PM
Why not use it as a device to further the plot? Don't just have him killed by random thing X. Have a plot related encounter/assassination/etc kill him off.

nospacebar14
2013-11-17, 10:11 PM
Also, it sounds like there's enough party conflict to role-play a split in the party. Simple enough to let them go their separate ways and meet Joe Newguy in the next tavern.

Maybe the artificer is going to come back as an NPC villain in the end.

Airk
2013-11-18, 10:36 AM
Have you considered sitting everyone down and trying to figure out WTF kind of game you are actually playing?

Because right now, you have the equivalent of people getting together to "play cards" and one person is playing Hearts, one is playing Go Fish, and one is playing Poker. This is obviously not a good way to have a successful game night.

Togath
2013-11-20, 12:24 AM
Have you considered sitting everyone down and trying to figure out WTF kind of game you are actually playing?

Because right now, you have the equivalent of people getting together to "play cards" and one person is playing Hearts, one is playing Go Fish, and one is playing Poker. This is obviously not a good way to have a successful game night.

That's very useful advice.. they're in more than one timezone, so doing it all at once might be hard.. but I could at least talk to them individually.

Sir Chuckles
2013-11-20, 03:36 AM
That's very useful advice.. they're in more than one timezone, so doing it all at once might be hard.. but I could at least talk to them individually.

There's a reason Diplomacy is considered OP...

That said, you should really identify the main issues each player has. It seems the biggest one is the Optimization and Crafting problem.

What I do when my players want to go on a crafting spree is ask them "What will it cost in time, cash, and exp? What is it called?" If they can answer that, they can craft the item and we all move on in a matter of seconds. If they want to craft 17 scrolls, 5 wands, an enough potions to bathe in, I break out a calculator, and tell them to answer the same question, but in bulk and with a written list.

As for the "He didn't know they had a scroll" part, for now let it slide. My players had that problem a few times, and from then on, unless otherwise stated, it became assumed that when someone bought a wand of CLW, he told the party "Hey guys, I'm buying this wand, so if I go down it's in my left pocket!".

Airk
2013-11-20, 11:09 AM
That's very useful advice.. they're in more than one timezone, so doing it all at once might be hard.. but I could at least talk to them individually.

Well, presuming you are the GM (I'm not -entirely- clear from your post, but it sounds like you are?) then you can probably get away with a little bit of "here's how it's going to be, guys." - trying to reach some sort of compromise in this kind of thing often just results in people trying to get away with playing what they REALLY want to be playing, so sometimes it helps to lay down the law a little bit. Unfortunately, that tends to work better BEFORE the game starts.

Still, getting some answers to the questions on the Same Page Tool (http://bankuei.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/the-same-page-tool/) agreed upon before proceeding can only be beneficial.

Jay R
2013-11-20, 12:26 PM
Does anyone have tips for both resolving, and preventing intra-party conflicts?

That's two questions. Let's answer the easy one first.

No, nobody has a way to prevent intra-party conflicts.

Meanwhile, back on earth, you need a way to resolve this particular intra-party conflict.

And the dull, boring answer is to talk to them.

DO NOT start the next game until you and the players have talked out what they want, and have agreed to make it happen.

One of three things will happen:
1. People will find out how they are preventing other people's fun, and invent an approach they will all enjoy, or
2. They will agree that the conflict is fun, and keep going, and you will know you have no problem to solve, or
3. Somebody will leave.

Those were the only possible solutions anyway. And if it grows out of a discussion, then it will be the right one, done the right way.

Finally, you don't need to kill the artificer; just put him on a bus out of town. Have a messenger show up with news that he has just inherited a large holding, and has to retire from adventuring. Or have him needed for another quest that requires his artificer skills. It's easier and less disruptive for him to leave than to die.