Cernor
2016-09-10, 01:22 PM
Alright, we all know how these threads go. Internet guy posts about a player in his group who did something which they think was out of line, then the inevitable lines "We only know only one side of the story!" and "No gaming is better than bad gaming!" pop up for 100-odd posts before the thread finally dies out. That being said, I'm looking for advice regarding a potential problem player - albeit one who isn't disruptive. On the whole he'd rather sit back and observe and only occasionally get involved, which is why I hadn't really noticed the problems until recently. To protect his identity (although it will be obvious to anyone in my group), let's call him Will. And be warned! This will be a long post. I'm trying to give as much detail as is necessary up front, so chances are you'll know twice as much about my game and style as necessary.
I first recruited Will for an online game about two years ago, and he's been the only stable player in this group, other than my brother, since then. He's put up with my learning how to DM and my experimental (and rarely good) adventures. We started on the D&D 5e boxed set, went to a gritty survival game for a month, went back to FR for a while, and are now in a low-level sandbox-style game. For some reason or another Will has stayed all the way through to the current campaign, occasionally shoddy DMing and all, which is where I've begun taking issue with our differences in playstyle... But in retrospect, these problems had been there since the beginning.
The game is D&D 5E, with a heavily modified setting: races are restricted, magic is rare and feared by the masses, dragons have been almost entirely unseen for the last couple thousand years, the gods are silent, so clerics channel power through the strength of their belief, the world is flat (and small, with some peculiar metaphysics), and so on and so forth. In terms of relevant character restrictions, Evil or CN characters aren't allowed, Paladins fit the "knights in shining armour" archetype, and new characters have to be connected to members of the party in a meaningful way, to explain why they would take up a profession as dangerous as adventuring. The PCs can screw with the world and NPCs as much as they want (or are willing to accept consequences for), and by no means do they have to be Good or heroic, but they MUST work together. And this last rule is the one which there have been problems with.
You see, Will is playing an alchemist: he tagged along with the party because they were investigating the same cult which wiped out his home city. This alchemist is relentlessly self-interested at best, and cowardly at worst. If a fight break out he stays well back, generally only getting close when his allies start dropping or he is personally threatened. Last night, the party was delving an ancient tomb guarded by monsters and magical traps; they had found their way to the final chamber, guarded by a magical fog which dealt a decent, but not lethal, chunk of cold damage. The rest of the party had gone through and begun fighting the boss monster, but Will stayed behind. Being a player down, the party was getting absolutely hammered by this creature. One PC was down, one was one solid hit away from going down, and the third wasn't equipped to deal with such a powerful enemy on her own. It was obvious that the fight was going badly, but... The Alchemist stayed out of the room, using what spells he could to help without navigating through the fog itself. The whole party agreed that he should go through, but he still refused, saying "You guys are crazy and I don't want to get killed along with you".
I knew that if he didn't get into the fight the party would likely die. And if the party died, he'd be stuck navigating an extremely hostile wasteland by himself, avoiding the forces of an empress who wants the party dead, and have to explain to an angry dragon why her son (she was born a draconic humanoid, and became a dragon recently) was killed and the body left in the tomb to rot. Since this isn't the first time he'd refused to risk himself in a dangerous situation, I made a cardinal sin of DMing: I gave him an ultimatum. Either he'd go in there and help, or he'd leave the party - because if by some chance their helper NPC survived, he'd kill Will himself for leaving them to die. Go ahead, point and scream "DMPC!". I don't mind. The fact is, they invited this character into their group - and they need the firepower, since one of my players left to join the army. So Will gritted his teeth, ran through the fog, helped the party, and they managed to defeat the boss and loot the room, earning a pretty big pile of loot to spend as they will.
So the party won. Hooray! However, it feels like the victory is cheapened, since I had to intervene OOC to force a decision IC. I feel I overstepped my bounds as a DM. Even though I was trying to avoid hard feelings of "I lost my character which had somehow survived for a year because Will didn't help", I still feel I made the wrong call by interfering. The thing is that I'm perfectly fine with bad rolls killing a character, or someone's own mistakes coming back to bite them. The thing that rubs me (and at least one of my players) the wrong way is when people die because another character could have helped them but didn't.
And this whole episode got me thinking about the last time a similar situation had happened... And even further back, to his previous characters.
The thing is, this isn't the first time this has happened. And this section is going to be a little odd, since I'm going to go backwards through this campaign and explain his characters in reverse order. A couple of months ago we were at the finale of the previous campaign arc: a cult had taken over a city and were performing a ritual to tear open a portal to the Shadowfell, where their leader thought he could unlock the secrets of immortality. The party had gathered an army and were taking out a tower to provide their squad of rangers a vantage point. They'd cleared out the tower when they were confronted by Will's old Paladin, who joined the cult after being (sort of) abandoned by the party because he'd Fallen. Due to a high-damage critical hit he dropped the party Ranger in a single hit, and Will decided to call the retreat. The party retreated for one round, decided that they had to go back to help the DMPC who'd stayed back to fight the Paladin (due to his deep respect for Will's Paladin before his Fall, he took this betrayal very personally). However, this extra round without help was what it took for the Ranger to die. After winning the fight by the skin of their teeth, the party agreed that Will's decision to run away was a bad idea, and had a minor confrontation. He agreed to not be so cowardly and I figured that was the end of that. But to illustrate why I'm not simply demanding Will rerolls, here's the rough story of his Paladin.
The Paladin was introduced at the beginning of the aforementioned arc, when the city fell to the cult. This was Will's very first attempt at a Good character... And so we got Sir Gregory Benedictus, a Paladin devoted to maintaining order, law, and society. In the first session, the city had fallen to the cult and the rest of the party was planning on using ballistae mounted on the walls to fire inwards, burning as many buildings as possible to deny the cult resources. Will's response? "Arson is illegal. If you are an arsonist you are Evil, and Evil deserves no leniency or mercy."
... Yeah. He was willing to execute the other PCs for performing Chaotic acts. Even when they were entirely sensible. Will was knocked out and the ballistae used to burn what buildings they could, then the party left. Despite this difference in opinion, Sir Gregory stayed with the party for some time longer, but his methods were... Not always compatible with those of the party. They tried to talk to "evil" people? Unless given a very convincing reason to go with the plan, he'd charge into battle, blowing his warhorn. They tried to sneak past enemies? He'd charge into battle, blowing his warhorn. They spent a few minutes planning tactics with monsters or "evil" people close by? I'm sure you can guess. You're right. He'd charge in, blowing his warhorn.
In fairness, at least Will could occasionally be talked into the right course of action. He didn't always interrupt the party's plans, but it happened frequently enough that his character couldn't be said to work with the party... More that the party worked around him. And in a game where everyone agreed to work as a party, it soon became an irritation for at least two players to have to come up with a good excuse every time they wanted to do something Sir Gregory would disagree with.
So, that's my conundrum. I may be overreacting; it may be that he's protesting any of a variety of DMing mistakes I may have made (and I'm willing to admit to many). Now that I've noticed the pattern in his behaviour, I feel I have to make a decision of some kind. As I see it, my choices are talking to Will and hope he changes, having him reroll and see if that helps, or accepting he might not be a good fit for this group and ask him to leave. While I don't want to have to continually remind him to play nicely with others, I also don't want to remove him without being sure that there's no chance of his changing since he's put up with me despite my occasionally egregious mistakes.
So what do the good folks of GitP suggest? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! :smile:
I first recruited Will for an online game about two years ago, and he's been the only stable player in this group, other than my brother, since then. He's put up with my learning how to DM and my experimental (and rarely good) adventures. We started on the D&D 5e boxed set, went to a gritty survival game for a month, went back to FR for a while, and are now in a low-level sandbox-style game. For some reason or another Will has stayed all the way through to the current campaign, occasionally shoddy DMing and all, which is where I've begun taking issue with our differences in playstyle... But in retrospect, these problems had been there since the beginning.
The game is D&D 5E, with a heavily modified setting: races are restricted, magic is rare and feared by the masses, dragons have been almost entirely unseen for the last couple thousand years, the gods are silent, so clerics channel power through the strength of their belief, the world is flat (and small, with some peculiar metaphysics), and so on and so forth. In terms of relevant character restrictions, Evil or CN characters aren't allowed, Paladins fit the "knights in shining armour" archetype, and new characters have to be connected to members of the party in a meaningful way, to explain why they would take up a profession as dangerous as adventuring. The PCs can screw with the world and NPCs as much as they want (or are willing to accept consequences for), and by no means do they have to be Good or heroic, but they MUST work together. And this last rule is the one which there have been problems with.
You see, Will is playing an alchemist: he tagged along with the party because they were investigating the same cult which wiped out his home city. This alchemist is relentlessly self-interested at best, and cowardly at worst. If a fight break out he stays well back, generally only getting close when his allies start dropping or he is personally threatened. Last night, the party was delving an ancient tomb guarded by monsters and magical traps; they had found their way to the final chamber, guarded by a magical fog which dealt a decent, but not lethal, chunk of cold damage. The rest of the party had gone through and begun fighting the boss monster, but Will stayed behind. Being a player down, the party was getting absolutely hammered by this creature. One PC was down, one was one solid hit away from going down, and the third wasn't equipped to deal with such a powerful enemy on her own. It was obvious that the fight was going badly, but... The Alchemist stayed out of the room, using what spells he could to help without navigating through the fog itself. The whole party agreed that he should go through, but he still refused, saying "You guys are crazy and I don't want to get killed along with you".
I knew that if he didn't get into the fight the party would likely die. And if the party died, he'd be stuck navigating an extremely hostile wasteland by himself, avoiding the forces of an empress who wants the party dead, and have to explain to an angry dragon why her son (she was born a draconic humanoid, and became a dragon recently) was killed and the body left in the tomb to rot. Since this isn't the first time he'd refused to risk himself in a dangerous situation, I made a cardinal sin of DMing: I gave him an ultimatum. Either he'd go in there and help, or he'd leave the party - because if by some chance their helper NPC survived, he'd kill Will himself for leaving them to die. Go ahead, point and scream "DMPC!". I don't mind. The fact is, they invited this character into their group - and they need the firepower, since one of my players left to join the army. So Will gritted his teeth, ran through the fog, helped the party, and they managed to defeat the boss and loot the room, earning a pretty big pile of loot to spend as they will.
So the party won. Hooray! However, it feels like the victory is cheapened, since I had to intervene OOC to force a decision IC. I feel I overstepped my bounds as a DM. Even though I was trying to avoid hard feelings of "I lost my character which had somehow survived for a year because Will didn't help", I still feel I made the wrong call by interfering. The thing is that I'm perfectly fine with bad rolls killing a character, or someone's own mistakes coming back to bite them. The thing that rubs me (and at least one of my players) the wrong way is when people die because another character could have helped them but didn't.
And this whole episode got me thinking about the last time a similar situation had happened... And even further back, to his previous characters.
The thing is, this isn't the first time this has happened. And this section is going to be a little odd, since I'm going to go backwards through this campaign and explain his characters in reverse order. A couple of months ago we were at the finale of the previous campaign arc: a cult had taken over a city and were performing a ritual to tear open a portal to the Shadowfell, where their leader thought he could unlock the secrets of immortality. The party had gathered an army and were taking out a tower to provide their squad of rangers a vantage point. They'd cleared out the tower when they were confronted by Will's old Paladin, who joined the cult after being (sort of) abandoned by the party because he'd Fallen. Due to a high-damage critical hit he dropped the party Ranger in a single hit, and Will decided to call the retreat. The party retreated for one round, decided that they had to go back to help the DMPC who'd stayed back to fight the Paladin (due to his deep respect for Will's Paladin before his Fall, he took this betrayal very personally). However, this extra round without help was what it took for the Ranger to die. After winning the fight by the skin of their teeth, the party agreed that Will's decision to run away was a bad idea, and had a minor confrontation. He agreed to not be so cowardly and I figured that was the end of that. But to illustrate why I'm not simply demanding Will rerolls, here's the rough story of his Paladin.
The Paladin was introduced at the beginning of the aforementioned arc, when the city fell to the cult. This was Will's very first attempt at a Good character... And so we got Sir Gregory Benedictus, a Paladin devoted to maintaining order, law, and society. In the first session, the city had fallen to the cult and the rest of the party was planning on using ballistae mounted on the walls to fire inwards, burning as many buildings as possible to deny the cult resources. Will's response? "Arson is illegal. If you are an arsonist you are Evil, and Evil deserves no leniency or mercy."
... Yeah. He was willing to execute the other PCs for performing Chaotic acts. Even when they were entirely sensible. Will was knocked out and the ballistae used to burn what buildings they could, then the party left. Despite this difference in opinion, Sir Gregory stayed with the party for some time longer, but his methods were... Not always compatible with those of the party. They tried to talk to "evil" people? Unless given a very convincing reason to go with the plan, he'd charge into battle, blowing his warhorn. They tried to sneak past enemies? He'd charge into battle, blowing his warhorn. They spent a few minutes planning tactics with monsters or "evil" people close by? I'm sure you can guess. You're right. He'd charge in, blowing his warhorn.
In fairness, at least Will could occasionally be talked into the right course of action. He didn't always interrupt the party's plans, but it happened frequently enough that his character couldn't be said to work with the party... More that the party worked around him. And in a game where everyone agreed to work as a party, it soon became an irritation for at least two players to have to come up with a good excuse every time they wanted to do something Sir Gregory would disagree with.
So, that's my conundrum. I may be overreacting; it may be that he's protesting any of a variety of DMing mistakes I may have made (and I'm willing to admit to many). Now that I've noticed the pattern in his behaviour, I feel I have to make a decision of some kind. As I see it, my choices are talking to Will and hope he changes, having him reroll and see if that helps, or accepting he might not be a good fit for this group and ask him to leave. While I don't want to have to continually remind him to play nicely with others, I also don't want to remove him without being sure that there's no chance of his changing since he's put up with me despite my occasionally egregious mistakes.
So what do the good folks of GitP suggest? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! :smile: