Setting Up Players for Cross-Purposes

[Easy e]

Greetings all,

I enjoy this forum, as there a number of different types of players and GMs with a variety of view points on this board. Therefore, it can be fun to see different opinions, especially ones that maybe diametrically opposed to my own.

I was curious what forumites thoughts were about a GM intentionally setting up scenarios in game that put players goals and objectives against one another? Have you played in a game like that, and how did it turn out?

As I play more and more TTRPGs, I find that some of my favorite games involve the party navigating the central narrative/conflict/adventure/premise of the game; while dealing with or trying to resolve their own personal ambitions or goals. I especially enjoy it, when the GM or DM purposely sets characters onto conflicting story beats about moral issues or conflicting goals. However, I never want it to overflow into straight up PVP combat but I want it to be resolved via RP or in-game scheming. That said, I can and have seen this type of game get completely de-railed and end in bad feels.

So, what have you seen on this subject, what did you feel about it, and how did it go? How did you keep it from spilling over into out-right theft and murder of other players?

[Mastikator]

I had a similar idea for a oneshot. The players would delve into an ancient tomb to recover treasure. Each player would also receive an envelope that contains a secondary mission for that player, which if they succeeded they'd gain extra benefits. But some secondary missions are incompatible with others, meaning not everyone can accomplish their secondary goals.

The more I think about it the more sure I am that this may lead to hard feelings and PVP, the more I lean into just not doing it.

The thing about adventuring is that the players have to trust and rely on each other to survive the quest, and it can be agonizing to know there's a traitor and not know which one it is. A surprise traitor at the end is a different story, since once the traitor is revealed you gotta kill em immediately. Kill em good along with the boss monster.

[oxybe]

Spoilers for the Aliens TTRPG scenario "Chariot of the Gods" will be spoilerblock'd

The basic scenario sets you up as the crew of a shipping vessel for Weyland-Yutani, asked to make a detour due to an emergency call by another WY vessel in the area.

The Players each have pre-made PCs with their own group-facing agendas, but also hidden ones that get revealed to the individual players (and not the group, unless the player themselves mention it) as the 3-part scenario plays out.

Whereas the group's main goal, in addition to simple survival, is to return with a strain of the Xenomorph, one of the players ends up being a Bionational-planted synth who's goals are directly opposed to the rest of the party, first to investigate and then stop the party when everything goes whoopsie-doodle.

I had the good fortune of playing the synth, basically making the module 1v5 scenario with some rogue mutant Xenomorphs running around the vents and bonus mercs.

In the first part I learned through the Agenda cards that I was a plant and have to play my role for now: thus I was the helpful and good-hearted roughneck, gathering information on what happened to the ship, it's crew and it's cargo, but without exposing myself as a synth.

In the second part you have to investigate the alien menace. I nearly got outed as a synth, after barely avoiding having my arm grabbed and torn off by a Xenomorph. But the disguised stayed on.

The third part was a blast and a half as EVERYTHING quickly escalated. And I quote-ish the Act 3 agenda card "You must stop Weyland-Yutani from getting an alien specimen back to Earth at any cost, even if it means murder and suicide. Kill anyone with detailed knowledge about the Strain."

It was then a cat and mouse game of me causing problems while hunting down the other PCs with an axe, who themselves were trying to get the ship online to escape while avoiding being picked off by the Xenomorphs or the late-arrival group of mercs looking to plunder a wreck as well as completing their own agendas.

The scenario ended with me outing myself as a traitor in the engine room by nearly killing another pc trying to repair it (he got away but was mortally wounded and bled out, but not before warning the rest of the pcs), engaging unfeeling Terminator Mode, going on a spacewalk to destroy the external comm array and finally stealing the merc's ship and ramming it headfirst into the bridge of the Chronos stranding everyone and "winning" the scenario... in the sense that I completed my agenda.

It was one of the most fun one-shots i've played in ages and how the game uses stress as a mechanic is brilliant. But a few things of note:

1- Some of us have been been gaming together since the mid-2000's. We trust each other and know what lines not to cross.
2- We went into this knowing that we will have our own hidden agenda that may cause our objectives to clash
3- It's the Aliens universe. We expect espionage, sabotage, traitors and violent deaths. And the Xenomorphs on top of all that.

In short: we, as a group, had full buy-in knowing that we may butt heads (and potentially violently so), but that it's nothing personal. It was a nice change of pace.

If you're gonna put the pcs at odds, make sure you get their buy-in that this is a possibility before dropping that scenario. Something like D&D expects you to play as a team and work towards a shared goal of sorts, make sure they understand and want to butt heads without taking it too seriously.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I had a similar idea for a oneshot. The players would delve into an ancient tomb to recover treasure. Each player would also receive an envelope that contains a secondary mission for that player, which if they succeeded they'd gain extra benefits. But some secondary missions are incompatible with others, meaning not everyone can accomplish their secondary goals.

The more I think about it the more sure I am that this may lead to hard feelings and PVP, the more I lean into just not doing it.

The thing about adventuring is that the players have to trust and rely on each other to survive the quest, and it can be agonizing to know there's a traitor and not know which one it is. A surprise traitor at the end is a different story, since once the traitor is revealed you gotta kill em immediately. Kill em good along with the boss monster.

Yeah. This is the sort of thing that needs 100% ahead of time buy-in at the player level. Otherwise Bad Things Happen (which happens to be my catch phrase and shares my initials...) with near 100% certainty.

It's fine if there's conflicts of goals--the team doesn't need to be an inverse hydra (one mind, multiple bodies). But those work best if they're very openly negotiated and navigated. Or if the game itself is designed around that, so you know what you're getting into by sitting down to play.

If one set are playing a cooperative deckbuilder and the others are playing a competitive card game and neither side knows (or only one side knows) that there are two different games going on...yeah. That takes a very special group of people to handle well.

[Pauly]

Where I’ve seen it work is when there is tension between how to achieve the main goal, not what is the goal to achieve.
Also it should be resolved by intra-party diplomacy, not by one player unilaterally taking irrevocable actions.
Further you can’t have too many players in conflict at the same time over the same issue.

For example the main goal is to defeat the mini-boss who has a powerful magic sword. One player may have a hidden objective to kill the mini-boss and another have a hidden goal to capture him and send him to jail. Another player may have a hidden objective to deliver the mini-boss’s sword to their patron and a different player may want to return the sword to the temple it was stolen from. Then you may have one or two additional party members who have no agenda on these matters.
Once the mini-boss is defeated, I will assume the scenario is written such that the mini-boss will offer surrender rather than fight to the death, then the party has to resolve the conflicts of interests.

[Duff]

Has your group tried any of the semi-cooporative board games?
Things like Republic of Rome, where you have to work together enough to stop the game from beating you while also trying to beat each other?

If you enjoyed that, you'll probably be able to have a blast in that sort of RPG game

[GloatingSwine]

It was one of the most fun one-shots i've played in ages and how the game uses stress as a mechanic is brilliant. But a few things of note:


I think that's the important thing.

This sort of thing works well in a one-shot because nobody is expecting the consequences of the conflict to extend over time. That's what makes resentments fester. When the consequences don't stop mattering at the end of that one adventure.

If you try and encourage this sort of behaviour in an extended adventure, it's only a matter of time before nobody dares to sleep in the presence of the others because everyone's got at least one target painted on their back.

[Easy e]

As opposed to a GM setting up secondary objectives, have you encountered games where the GM intentionally left hooks that players could choose to set-up this type of conflict?

In our CoS game, we had one player who wanted to replace Strahd, one who wanted to marry Irena, one that wanted to help the children of Barovia, one who wanted to break the curse and save Strahd, and one who just wanted to get out of Barovia. Those goals were all at cross-purposes and created friction in decision making during the game but were not "hard coded" by the GM.

For example, I imagine if I played a Supers game, the big thematic question would be, "What doe sit mean to be a hero?" and during play I imagine that various players would have different answers to that. Those answers could lead to conflict in the group, and that is where the game is interesting, not if they defeat the villain, but how the reconcile the choices the game provides?

Do you as the GM encourage or play into these player goals knowing they will create friction, or let the players do all the heavy lifting?

Do you find that some TTRPGS lean into these types of situations more than others?

[kyoryu]

This has a rich and storied history - some of the first proto-RPGs, the Braunstein games, were basically this set up.

I think it's fantastic - IF AND ONLY IF the players are all aware of what they're signing up for.

[Quertus]

I’d say step 1 is to play with people mature enough to have conversations about conflicting goals*. A good second step is to wait until they’re good enough at roleplaying to develop characters with actual personalities - ones which lend themselves naturally to a difference of opinion, practice with dealing with such, and evidence of their adequate levels of both maturity and ability to separate character conflict and player conflict.

* before I continue, “goals” may be the wrong word, or give the wrong idea. Bandits attack; clearly, most if not all of the PCs can be counted on to have goals like “survive the bandits” and “defeat the bandits”. They may just differ on the specifics, like whether or not to take the bandits alive, to investigate whether it was a coincidence they were attacked, or to castrate the survivors and force them to watch while you feed their bits to your pets as a warning to anyone else who would attack their interests.

A good third step is to allow this to continue long enough that the players can see how the various characters a given player themselves play could come into conflict over such issues. How can a mature player get bent out of shape by someone doing what they know that they themselves would do?

At this point, you may not really *need* to do so, but you are finally in a fairly good place in terms of getting player buy-in to intentionally include more challenging conflicts of interest.

Now, a good trick is, *don’t* make them inherently mutually exclusive. Make the challenge be to figure out how to balance the various interests of the PCs. Between the PCs, they have goals that include “found a guild”, “collect arcane information”, “avenge their dead father”, “become famous”, “slay the gods”, “raise a dragon”, “weasel out of a demonic contract”, “(train a successor and) retire”. Ok, when word reaches the party that the evil princess has kidnapped an innocent dragon, how - or even whether - the party gets involved is part of the game.

And, if you *aren’t* running a 1-shot, then the mature response of accepting/adopting everyone’s goals as your own, and accepting that a particular quest may not advance *your* goals, but *does* advance those of your allies and friends becomes much more palatable.

Then, once your players have played through a few campaigns like this, demonstrating their maturity and roleplaying chops, then you might be in a good place to try out a 1-shot of actual opposed, mutually-exclusive goals. Or not. Personally, I’d aim for not, as I prefer more cooperative games. Shrug.

[gbaji]

I think the concept can work well in a one-shot environment. It's less likely to build resentment, and the players aren't building up the characters for future stuff, so win/lose stuff doesn't matter as much (other than bragging rights, I guess). I'll point out that this is pretty much the entire basis of playing any scenario in Paranoia, so I do know that it works. Though you get 6 clones of your character there, so death is more accepted, and it's really less about building characters and gaining stuff over time as just having fun and doing whacky things. I think I still hold the record for "shortest scenario resolution" in my group, for causing a TPW before we'd even finished getting our weapons checked out for the mission (though my friend who accidentally fired a tactical nuke at point blank range gets an honorable mention, cause... well... nuke).

I can say that for longer running campaigns, you need to be extremely careful about this as a GM. I would absolutely avoid creating scenario bits that pit players against each other in any way. It's unnecessary IMO. In a longer running campaign, the players themselves will tend to have their characters doing different things off on the side, and there are plenty of ways those can interact (sometimes in conflict) with each other anyway. Let the players drive this though. If the GM creates these conflicts as a component of a game scenario being run, the players will feel they have been forced into those conflicts (and they would be right). If the player's various activities "bump" into eachother in various ways, that's just fine.

Just also be careful about manipulating things in the background to force those "bumps" though. That can also come off in a very negative way to the players. It can be tricky as the GM to run the background stuff and rule on how different player choices may interact without injecting your own desired outcomes into the situation. But if you can manage it properly, it will work extremely well, and the players will really enjoy it. Done poorly? Not so much.

[False God]

It depends on the party/player cohesiveness, and the cross-purposes themselves.

IMO: characters should always have their own drives beyond "do the adventure with the group". Sometimes those drives will end up being perpendicular to the party.

If the players are cohesive, they can work this out on a meta level. If the party is cohesive, they can work that out too and make fair decisions based on the needs of the group, the individual and the campaign. And I'm always OK with one member of the party saying "Hey I really need to deal with this thing." and leaving. Maybe they'll come back later, maybe they won't. If the players can work this all out amicably, great!

But it does have the potential for going south really quick, especially if the players themselves are not cohesive. At least with a party that isn't cohesive, the party can break up without the group breaking up. If the group breaks up, especially on bad terms, well, thats just no good for anyone.

I generally prefer to include them if the players have given me the go-ahead and some hooks for their character to do so. If the player hasn't, then I don't invent some for their character. I want these setups to be things the player/character will really care about. So me just throwing random stuff around till they get interested in something.

[Amidus Drexel]

Greetings all,

I enjoy this forum, as there a number of different types of players and GMs with a variety of view points on this board. Therefore, it can be fun to see different opinions, especially ones that maybe diametrically opposed to my own.

I was curious what forumites thoughts were about a GM intentionally setting up scenarios in game that put players goals and objectives against one another? Have you played in a game like that, and how did it turn out?

As I play more and more TTRPGs, I find that some of my favorite games involve the party navigating the central narrative/conflict/adventure/premise of the game; while dealing with or trying to resolve their own personal ambitions or goals. I especially enjoy it, when the GM or DM purposely sets characters onto conflicting story beats about moral issues or conflicting goals. However, I never want it to overflow into straight up PVP combat but I want it to be resolved via RP or in-game scheming. That said, I can and have seen this type of game get completely de-railed and end in bad feels.

So, what have you seen on this subject, what did you feel about it, and how did it go? How did you keep it from spilling over into out-right theft and murder of other players?

Conflicting goals between PCs is one of the central themes of Paranoia. The game can certainly be played without it, but you lose some of the essence of the setting if the players aren't being pitted against each other at some level. (Of course, Paranoia does somewhat encourage PvP - overtly if you're playing in the silly, slapstick style; or covertly otherwise).

I ran a one-shot last year for my regular group (with the 2016(?) RCE ruleset), and they loved it (one player has already asked me to run it again), so I'd consider it a great success. The party went to investigate a broken-down power plant, got into a fight with the workers there, and spent the last half of the session sabotaging each other (mostly with telekinesis and explosives) until one of the players ran out of clones. They remaining party members got a thorough dressing-down in debriefing, and had the opportunity to shift blame a little bit, which was good fun for all.

[Pex]

Players determine their character's goals, not the DM. It's the players' character, not the DM's.

PCs are allowed to disagree with each other. They should not be adversarial. It's bad enough when a player is a donkey cavity to play his character at the expense of the fun of another player. It's worse when the DM instigates it.

[Slipjig]

I think setting up players to have *different* goals and competing priorities is fine. e.g. if Character A has a goal of rescuing a prisoner that requires a side trip into an otherwise skippable part of the dungeon while Character B has a quest racing a ticking clock to get the medicine back to town before someone dies, that makes for great role-playing and genuinely tough decisions. Though if you do this, I'd suggest that you make it DIFFICULT but not IMPOSSIBLE to do both (though if they try to do both and fail, let them fail).

OTOH, the possibility of players having mutually exclusive goals (e.g. one player is tasked to rescue the hostage while the other one is tasked to make sure the hostage doesn't make it out alive) is definitely something to discuss in Session Zero.
Games with a "traitor" mechanic can be a lot of fun, but if some of the players don't realize that's the game you are playing until the betrayal, it can be a recipe for seriously hurt feelings.