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View Full Version : PC's who can't stand the look of each other...



Capt'n Ironbrow
2007-07-02, 10:40 AM
Okay, it ain't D&D, it's WFRP, but I guess groups will be groups and people be people (or elves or dwarves or halflings)...

Has anyone experienced player characters beginning to strongly dislike, hate or even fear other player characters? In my group there are a few of such situations in which PC's just can't stand each other:

The earlier mentioned Nymphomaniacal Heroically Idiot Cleric of Morr has, with heroically idiotic action (soloing a group of about a dozen low-level necromancers to which the good natured spy came to his aid), caused the Spy/cartwright to receive a critical-hit which added the final required insanity point to get a disorder... this disorder was then (off course) that Spy now fears all clerics of Morr and is genuinly uneasy when near the NHICOM (as everyone should actually be 'cause that guy is seriously booped up)...

The Dwarf Captain had a similar fall-out with the Spy (who was then just an outrider) over the question of attacking a rival party of giant hunters who came from the rival village. the discussion 'caused the rivals to laugh and depart to ambush the PC's later on (but being dispatched with ease)... still they have not been reconciled and whenever the Dwarf Captain's name is mentioned, the spy will ridicule him.

Then there's the Charlatan of evil alignment. In one adventure, he decided to destroy a bunch of potions found in a dungeon so that the others would have to use and pay for his quack potions. This he did in plain sight of the other partymembers and was battered into a 10 week coma by the dwarf engineer....
Needless to say, there will be revenge..

Off course, this happens in a system where you get XP for playing the part you should play based on alignment and disorders, which occasionally causes some very unpopular actions to be made by certain characters, estranging them from other partymembers to the point of enmity.

banjo1985
2007-07-02, 10:46 AM
Yeah this happens quite a lot in our group, and makes for some good roleplaying opportunities.

I had an evil tiefling rogue in one campaign, in the same party as a LG paladin with a demon graft arm (he went through a graft machine to escape the lower hells apparently). He couldn't detect my alignment due to some nice magical mojo I had on me, but he new I was up to know good, and would chastise me and attempt to turn the party against me at every opportunity. He even accused my characetr of several things that he didn't actually do. For my part, my character would rib him about his demon arm, accusing him of being no better than him, and saying he had no right to maintain his holier than thou attitude. It really developed into a big sub-plot that made for some great roleppleying and some genuine moments of tension between the two characters, it was a pity when the GM moved away and the campaign went on hiatus.

I think it's a great thing, as long as it doesn't overflow into OOC arguements.

nerulean
2007-07-02, 11:38 AM
Conflict is the source of all good roleplay, provided the players are mature enough to keep in character and out of character separate.

Groups where everyone helps each other out and gets along cheerfully and without friction often make for flat, boring campaigns. The memorable ones, in terms of character interaction, are the ones where there is some level of conflict, whether it's something as small as the rogue's godawful sense of humour frequently making the paladin consider attempting a smite against him, or more serious divides like those mentioned above.

Diggorian
2007-07-02, 11:59 AM
This happens in games I'm in all the time. In the two sessions of my new campaign, an intra-party copnflict has occured once per game. First game, Dwarf with a short fuse grappled the uppity half-elf. Last game, a Binder joined the party and his weired abilities are making the priest suspicious.

Makes for entertaining tension that fills out the plot nicely.

TempusCCK
2007-07-02, 12:14 PM
I'm in a game like that right now actually, well, not so many problems, but there's a large rift in our party between me and my two best friends, and my girlfriend.

The problem is, when I step up and take the leadership role for the party, the boys come along, but the cleric (played by my girlfriend) always has something else she'd rather be doing. So when I say "I want to explore the west side of the gnoll lair first, and then we can come back and check out the bottom of the well." She gets all huffy and decides to just sit while the rest of us run off to do something. And then when we get back, she's mad that we don't listen to her.

She absolutely refuses to make compromises and be reasonable about it, and it's driving me insane. And it's not just her character either, after the sessions over and everyone else is headed home, she'll crawl into her room and mope, and I have to try and figure out why she's being like this. It's really, bothersome.

Miles Invictus
2007-07-02, 12:24 PM
That...suggests that the cause of the problem lies outside the game.

Dairun Cates
2007-07-02, 01:51 PM
Let's see. Our Slayers campaign was built on mutual hate between friends.

The shaman was angry at the bear warrior for making lewd jokes about his accidental romantic involvement with a woman that turned out to be a unicorn, and hated his sister for being his parents favorite child, making Reginald supposedly the dumb one (he technically was. 14 int vs. 16 int to start), and getting sent to finishing school instead of military school.

The bear warrior hated the shaman because of the constant revenge for the jokes about the unicorn incident, was frustrated at the Loremaster's insanely low wisdom, and disliked the thief for hating bar fights.

The Sorceror hated her brother for getting sent to military school instead of finishing school, hated Bob's food emporium for existing, and hated the Loremaster because he caused a lot of trouble for her through her stupidity.

The thief hated everyone because we could not enter a tavern without pissing someone in or outside of it off and got him kicked out of his local thieves guild.

The loremaster hated no one.

... and that's only half as complex as the hate circle in the last campaign where I would actually need a chart to show the love-hate relationships, especially if we include the player's pets.

As long as it doesn't make the players themselves angry, it's perfectly normal. Also, in the above example, all the characters were still friends. They were just the kinds of friends that get on each other's nerves. When Reginald's body was supposedly thrown in a meat grinder and turned into a paste, Mr. Bear still went beserk in rage. When it came down to it, Reginald still kept his vow to protect everyone with his life and repay his debts. Micheal still stayed with the party despite their occassionally unstealthy approach. Regina, despite her party's stupidity still took every danger for her fellow comrades as a danger for herself. Kaitos... well, Kaitos is Kaitos. Nets and all.

Joltz
2007-07-02, 01:57 PM
Hmm. sounds like fun. I wish our group could have tension between party members while keeping it ingame and staying loyal to partymates. Every time we have major party tension a party member ends up dead after a long disruption to the campaign flow. I hate chaotic stupid :smallfrown:

Dairun Cates
2007-07-02, 02:09 PM
Hmm. sounds like fun. I wish our group could have tension between party members while keeping it ingame and staying loyal to partymates. Every time we have major party tension a party member ends up dead after a long disruption to the campaign flow. I hate chaotic stupid :smallfrown:

The secret is to have a GM and players that can keep disputes somewhat farcical, and to realize that while your character may have an excuse to kill the PC, you as a player have a responsibility to keep the game fun, and find an excuse not to kill them. Burlew did an article on this with an example of a stealing rogue, and showed that the monk should try to reform him rather than leave the party.

In all of the above cases, we made the harassment and hatred a running gag that broke up the serious parts. Despite all the comedic appeal, every character had a moment by the end where they had either been through something horrible or overcome adversity. It's a fine balance that the GM AND the players have to work for.

TheAlmightyOne
2007-07-02, 04:07 PM
Yes. My chaotic evil elf dude doesnt get on well with our ranger. The ranger is of course the DM's character so he enjoys making life hard for me. We also had the misfortune of traveling with a druid for a while. UNfortunatly I and therefore my character has a strong dislike of druids and so my repeated attempts to kill her have caused the rest of my team to hate me. Couple of good bluff checks (the druid was trying to steal your stuff on a retaded half-orc barbarian and I wanted her money on the team leader (chaotic neutral bard)) ment that it was just the cleric and ranger who wanted me dead. i cast charm person on the cleric so I spend most of my time antagonising the ranger because my ranks in bluff mean that i can make the team stop him from killing me. also that druid left our party because 'that creepy elf kept trying to stab me'. I had fun.

Flawless
2007-07-02, 09:01 PM
The campaign I have the best memories of is the one in which I played an arrogant female elven evoker and a friend of mine played a grumpy dwarven warrior. There were endless debates and even some IC shouting and fighting, but at the end of a tough adventure they'd always be sitting together in the tavern, drinking and talking about how irritating those new-comer races (like humans - the rest of the party was human) are. It was fun.

Ravyn
2007-07-02, 09:46 PM
There was a freeform game I'd gotten into in which.... well, if it wasn't the xenophobic character having to deal with the elf-girl, or the snob and the thief, it was the fact that I was playing a researcher of all things magical in a group where EVERYONE had some sort of beef with magic users except the elf-girl, and she was just allergic. Nearly destroyed the group--particularly since I was the only really competent one (none of the others had quite gotten the concept of stealth and conspiracy games, though that was what our poor newbie GM was trying to run), and quickly got just as sick of them as they did of me.

Tallis
2007-07-02, 09:58 PM
In party tension can make for a great game if handled properly. PCs that hate each other could be a bit of a problem unless you like pvp.
Best campaign I was ever in involved an ongoing rivalry between me and the group's other mage. We would each take any opportunity to show each other up or embarrass each other. We still worked as a team against any enemies though. We caused problems for each other, but noone else was allowed to. Of course he killed me in the last session of the campaign, but there's a good chance it was an accident. Turns out I became a celestial servant of my goddess anyway, so it worked out.

LongbowHeadshot
2007-07-02, 11:21 PM
In my first game my character was an elf-type in a homebrewed world with culturally inherited racism towards pretty much every other race (long backstory), so he disliked pretty much the entire party except for the half-elf Fighter/Cleric at the beginning. Made for some intersting situations with the other PCs, but he he was loyal enough that there were no concerns about backstabbing (metaphorical or otherwise) from either side. He even developed a bit of respect for the human rogue and the halfling illusionist. The fighter/cleric, on the other hand, hated taking any damage for other characters or getting to close to the battles (leaving my elven ranger taking extra damage to keep the others alive), hated being told what to do, and often had to be begged for healing. This lead, of course, to many an argument among the characters following battles and in the middle of dungeons. ...There were ooc factors at work though, and the player left the game halfway through.

Damionte
2007-07-02, 11:29 PM
No our group can't handle this dynamic. we have a coupel of players who despite being the "big kids" now (over 40) still can't fully seperate thier in character and out of character motivations. Or seperate the player from the character. So no.. no more never again.

Callix
2007-07-02, 11:37 PM
I'm currently playing an LG Crusader in a party that is more than half Chaotic Stupid. In the middle of the High Temple of the dominant, jealous, enormously pro-it religion that dominates the campaign world, one of the characters tried to negotiate some form of payment from the high priest, after the priest explicitly refused, and two party members had been smote for heresy (the pillar of fire rolled a 1 on damage). And after he had been told he was of no intrinsic value to the church's plans and could be easily replaced. And this was the character with 17 Wis and max ranks in Sense Motive.

Needless to say, my character is not impressed for a number of reasons.

Deme
2007-07-03, 07:33 PM
My group's had that dynamic many times. A lot of time it was fun, but it was very hard. we had to work very, very hard to keep the part from splitting up, and with smaller conflicts, it was a lot more fun, because there was less maintenence. It's only recently, after losing some members, that we've toned it down from...

first major campaign:

fighter hates all elves, thus hating the wizard and the rogue, who was a half-elf and got reincarnated as a grey elf. fighter is passionately lusting after paladin, which means she also hated the cleric the paladin had a crush on.

the cleric and the wizard hated the fighter for hating them.

the paladin, well, the paladin was a person practically incapable of hate, but strongly disliked the rogue for being a drunkard.

the rogue and the ranger(who, being human and not romantically involved, managed to stay out of things) thought everyone was crazy.

second major campaign (and these guys were all the same race and general age group, 'sept for the cohort):

barbarian hates everything, for the most part. particularly hates the rogue for being a coward.

wizard has love/hate relationship with barbarian, gets everyone drunk all the time.

bard has love/hate relationship with favored soul.

favored soul, in addition to said love/hate relationship, strongly disliked barbarian for breaking her wrist that one time.

the rogue was scared of the bard, the wizard, and the favored soul, but had a crush on the ranger.

the ranger hated the barbarian for always calling him "shrimp".

the druidic cohort of the ranger had a crush on him, was a mix of terrified and hateful to the barbarian, picked a lot of fights.

and now it's down to the current campaign:

knight thinks wizard is control freak, dislikes the bard's sudden fits of pyromania. likes cleric, but isn't sure, and knows that the cleric is in denial.

wizard(my guy) thinks that the knight is a niave fool who doesn't see how good he has it, thinks the cleric has no spine for not admitting that her husband is bad for her. is very close friends with the bard, but is uncomfortable because she reminds him of the fact that he didn't kill his brother(the villain) when he had a chance.

cleric thinks that the bard is crazy, and is, at least at first, uncomfortable with the party as a whole. is in denial over her husband cheating on her.

bard has been transformed into a fiend by wizard's brother, and thus has fits of evil from time to time. agrees that the cleric should leave her husband, has no particular grudges.

these guys are actually getting increasingly friendly, if partly because those most prone to arguement can gang up on the cleric from time to time, and she doesn't hold grudges.

...Eh?
2007-07-03, 07:46 PM
In a somewhat dead campaign (my first one, actually) I played a completely neurotic gnome rogue who went berserk when someone made fun of his height and had a bit of an infatuation with the warlock. He got into a discusion with the warlock as to the size of a gnomish package, and the fighter said something about the gnome's hieght, so because nothing was happening at all and I was bored, said gnome charged the fighter head-on. Skill-monkey vs. Tank fight= Thank god the tank used nonleathal damage.

The next day, we were working very well together flanking a pack of wolves. Sudden mood swings make life ocmplicated, and somewhat funny.

Hectonkhyres
2007-07-03, 09:19 PM
Meh. In a long-ago game we had a gith-zerai psionic asskicker & spy for his people with a greatsword he was constantly reforging (me), a human fighter who was dumber and less inhibited than I had previously though possible, a dwarven cleric of some god of travel and wealth who ritually whipped himself to get the voices in his head to shut up, a half-elf rogue who was out to kill a particular fiend who ate her family, and a city druid who wanted to create a back-up city for Sigil and magically bind himself to it... making himself something like the lady of pain.

Ooooh... that was an interesting one. I got some really interesting looks when I started taking trophies. Including the beards of over thirty dwarven petitioner pallies and fighters. As a gith, I was big on ancestor worship and so I had to present and leave my trophies in limbo periodically.

The best games are the ones where every player scares the living crap out of every other player.

Lord Tataraus
2007-07-03, 09:49 PM
My group shies away from inner party conflict but still have a lively party. Mostly because of the "incident".

It was a rare game in which I did not DM so I made a very fleshed out character with all sorts of quirks, one being the hate of bards (one had cursed him) which I as a player share (though I'm not cursed). Unfortunately, one player was a bard. No first off, I dislike gestalt, a lot. I told the DM that gestalt was a bad idea and that I didn't like, but i would play neverless and not let it bother me as long as he kept to the rules he set down being you can gestalt to classes of the same "type" such as wizard//sorcerer, fighter//barbarian, or bard//rogue. So, of course the bard convinced the DM to let him be a bard//rogue. strike 2. One main reason I hate bards (which all my group knows) is that they are frequently played as annoying characters (i.e. constantly playing music and being all too happy). This bard decided to be annoy even after a number of warnings. strike 3. My character was a shifter druid//rogue specializing in ranged attacks mixed with self healing, the bard was pure support and took rogue purely for skills and trapfinding and had every little combat ability. My character's friend was a Warforged fighter that would do almost anything my character said and acted as a bodyguard (including stopping a few fights from breaking out between me and the bard). After I cut the bard's lute strings the second time for playing too much he challenged me to a dual, which the DM convinced him he would lose (we were level 2). After that we both calmed down our characters and would have had a decent game if not for bad DMing, but that's another story.

Call Me Siggy
2007-07-03, 09:54 PM
In a somewhat dead campaign (my first one, actually) I played a completely neurotic gnome rogue who went berserk when someone made fun of his height and had a bit of an infatuation with the warlock. He got into a discusion with the warlock as to the size of a gnomish package, and the fighter said something about the gnome's hieght, so because nothing was happening at all and I was bored, said gnome charged the fighter head-on. Skill-monkey vs. Tank fight= Thank god the tank used nonleathal damage.

The next day, we were working very well together flanking a pack of wolves. Sudden mood swings make life ocmplicated, and somewhat funny.

...I was the fighter.

Rogue:But how can you tell how big it is until you see?
Warlock:I'd rather not find out.
Me (Whispering to the warlock):Don't worry, if all goes well, you can punt him.
And Joe made his listen check.

One single hit, he dropped.

Later that day, when he was in negative hit points, a squirrel played cards with his corpse.

Seffbasilisk
2007-07-03, 10:00 PM
Current game on the boards now.

Elvish Warmage hates any who challange his authority and those who think to mock him (He's insane. Player and PC)

Halfling rogue hates the Elvish Warmage for blasting him to near death when they first met, as he looted the elf's kill.

Human Binder hates them both for making life difficult.

Half-Orc Monk somehow hates no one, but is confused by the elf and the halfling.

Human Beguiler is hated by the elf, liked by the binder, hated by the halfling

Hobgoblin Cleric is just confused.

...Eh?
2007-07-06, 10:04 AM
One single hit, he dropped.

I still think Shrimp fixed that, he had made it pretty clear he didn't want it heppening, and the crit was exactly enough to take me out without preventing me from fighting the next day.