Escalation and how not to botch it.

[ChudoJogurt]

I have encountered a bit of a weirdness in my game, and I wanted to share it and ask for recommendations/opinions.

It's a D&D 3.5 game, but the specific mechanics are not relevant here.
The main thing is that the Party are servants of a Baron -- troubleshooter of sorts, doing miscellaneous 'sensitive' and dangerous tasks.
The Baron has his rival, of equal status, and the Rival has his own team of adventurers for the same purposes, and they often cross paths with the PCs, as they are assigned similar tasks often. I'm fairly fond of the 'competing party' trope, so I used it here.
Previously their encounters were friendly to neutral -- they asked the party to help them question a captured informant (the NPCs didn't speak Orc, while one of the PCs did), in exchange for sharing said informant's knowledge with the party, they invited the PCs to the off-the-books dungeon-delve which they couldn't handle on themselves, that sort of thing.
It was always acknowledged (at least I think) that they serve different masters, and they are at cross-odds, but it was more or less friendly.

Now their paths have crossed again. Both the PC party and the NPC party were sent to procure equipment for their masters. And this was explicitly stated that the PCs have to block the NPC party and their lord from getting that equipment.
En route, their paths literally crossed somewhere in open road. They shared a campfire and the NPCs used potions of Deep Slumber on the PCs, and stole their papers and some petty valuables, left the PCs asleep in a ditch, which seriously sabotaged the PCs chances of completing their mission but inflicted no lasting damage.

Now the PCs want to murder the NPC party. Like near-foaming-at-the-mouth rabid full-on revenge rampage mode.
The only thing that stops them is that they're in a big city, and they haven't had a chance to do it without witnesses.

And I feel that that's an overreaction?
My idea was to slightly escalate the rivalry, get some risque or even dirty play, but I didn't exactly expect players to go into murder mode.
Was my expectation wrong? Did my players overreact? How could I escalate the conflict without making it 'kill-or-be-killed' thing?

[GloatingSwine]

And I feel that that's an overreaction?
My idea was to slightly escalate the rivalry, get some risque or even dirty play, but I didn't exactly expect players to go into murder mode.
Was my expectation wrong? Did my players overreact? How could I escalate the conflict without making it 'kill-or-be-killed' thing?


"He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue!"

They've been burned once, they're going to make sure it can't happen again.

Also consider though: What's your idea of the next level of escalation the players would have gone to? What specifically did you think a proportional response was going to be?

[Batcathat]

I agree the reaction seems a little over the top, but it might make sense from an emotional standpoint if your players (and/or their characters) felt either humiliated or betrayed by what happened. Maybe they figured that their sort-of-friends wouldn't treat them like that, even if they had opposing goals.

[Captain Cap]

What's the alignment of the PCs? Because I could totally see this being an understandable reaction from a bunch of neutral guys. A line has been crossed, and the best enemy is a dead enemy.

[King of Nowhere]

And I feel that that's an overreaction?
My idea was to slightly escalate the rivalry, get some risque or even dirty play, but I didn't exactly expect players to go into murder mode.
Was my expectation wrong? Did my players overreact? How could I escalate the conflict without making it 'kill-or-be-killed' thing?

they are adventurers. most of their character sheet is a list of fancy ways they can kill. they basically have two gears: "friendly" and "kill". and you shifted them out of the first.

but is that an overreaction? they were betrayed, drugged, and stolen from. my players are not murderhobos, but if I did something like this to them, i'd fully expect them to come out in full kill mode.

[ChudoJogurt]

Also consider though: What's your idea of the next level of escalation the players would have gone to? What specifically did you think a proportional response was going to be?

Well, I thought they would engage in some sort of counter-sabotage.
Steal something from them, leak some compromising information, set them up, something more... civilised.
There are, ostensibly, escalation stages between 'friends' and 'war to the last man'

[Mastikator]

IMO you might be able to get the players to spare the NPCs by giving them a choice: succeed the current mission fully or kill the NPCs but fail the mission. Time sensitivity is a powerful tool you can use to construct a scenario for that.

Choosing not to kill the NPCs once, and then a second time you give the players a chance to humiliate and betray (without killing) the NPCs.

Sometimes you need to teach players to not be murderhobos.

[GloatingSwine]

Well, I thought they would engage in some sort of counter-sabotage.
Steal something from them, leak some compromising information, set them up, something more... civilised.
There are, ostensibly, escalation stages between 'friends' and 'war to the last man'

But unless the party leaves their opponents in absolutely no doubt that they would lose any more serious confrontation to the point that they never try again, they lead to the same place. So cut out all the middle steps and your enemy's heart, once he has shown it to be false.

Ultimately as well all those "more civilised" steps might just not feel sufficiently satisfying as restitution for the betrayal.


IMO you might be able to get the players to spare the NPCs by giving them a choice: succeed the current mission fully or kill the NPCs but fail the mission. Time sensitivity is a powerful tool you can use to construct a scenario for that.

Choosing not to kill the NPCs once, and then a second time you give the players a chance to humiliate and betray (without killing) the NPCs.

Sometimes you need to teach players to not be murderhobos.

Unless the NPCs are planning to leave the country, that's not going to work. They'll complete the mission and then hunt them down and murder them in their own time.

Getting revenge on someone who has directly betrayed and stolen from you isn't "being a murderhobo" it's an adventure hook. It's what PCs do.

[ahyangyi]

To be honest, if I were playing a lawful good character I might not entertain the idea of humiliating them and betraying them later.

[Mastikator]

Unless the NPCs are planning to leave the country, that's not going to work. They'll complete the mission and then hunt them down and murder them in their own time.

Getting revenge on someone who has directly betrayed and stolen from you isn't "being a murderhobo" it's an adventure hook. It's what PCs do.

It's a good adventure hook, but the DM can always construct a scenario where the players win by not killing the NPCs.

That is, if the DM desires that the players learn the valuable lesson that murder isn't always the answer.

[ChudoJogurt]

So is there no option for a more indirect conflict?
I'm all for PCs murdering NPCs in general, but in this particular case my goal was to introduce tension/obstacles by setting up an indirect conflict.

[Mastikator]

So is there no option for a more indirect conflict?
I'm all for PCs murdering NPCs in general, but in this particular case my goal was to introduce tension/obstacles by setting up an indirect conflict.

If you want it to be a friendly rivalry situation, where they sabotage each other but not kill, you will have to teach them how to do that. Most players have been *trained to see murder as the one and only solution to any NPC that presents an obstacle.

*trained by video games, trained by TTRPG. It is usually the only answer

[Vahnavoi]

Yes, it's an overreaction, but not by too much.

They were crossed, the right choice is to cross the competing party right back, to punish them for their actions. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. But, the often overlooked thing is that you're not supposed to take more than an eye or more than a tooth.

So the proportionate response is to knock the competing party out and reclaim the stuff that was taken.

Now, GloatingSwine is right that there is an incentive for the players to try to ensure "this will never happen again!", but the moment the characters use that reasoning to escalate to lethal violence, now the competing party and everyone backing them up have a reason to use lethal violence against the characters. You know, so that their deaths will "never happen". "Again" is optional.

Ultimately, though, it is not a given lethal violence can be postponed forever. That would depend on why the parties are competing in the first place. If it's a zero-sum situation where one party's ultimate victory is the other's ultimate loss, then yes, at some point, it makes sense to get rid of the competition for good. If this is not the case, though, do remind your players of this. For example, instead of taking vengeance, it might be better to accept loss and switch over to the other team. That, too, can lead to "this never happening again", because the root reason for the betrayal no longer applies.

[ahyangyi]

Also something I wanted to point out:



En route, their paths literally crossed somewhere in open road. They shared a campfire and the NPCs used potions of Deep Slumber on the PCs, and stole their papers and some petty valuables, left the PCs asleep in a ditch, which seriously sabotaged the PCs chances of completing their mission but inflicted no lasting damage.


The NPC's actions are extremely life-threatening and not subtle at all. The PCs received no lasting damage only because they were lucky, not because the NPC showed any mercy. They might have had encountered bad weather, wild predators, bandit groups or anything else in the helpless state, and died from that.

I won't be surprised if in some cultures "drugging and leaving in the wild" is considered attempted murder.


*trained by video games, trained by TTRPG. It is usually the only answer
I'd argue that it's not the case. Greek mythology certainly wasn't trained by video games or TTRPG, but it contains a healthy dose of lethal revenge stories.

[GloatingSwine]

So is there no option for a more indirect conflict?
I'm all for PCs murdering NPCs in general, but in this particular case my goal was to introduce tension/obstacles by setting up an indirect conflict.

That depends on what you dangle in front of the players that makes them feel like they won hard enough to salve their wounded pride.

Just reclaiming their stuff isn't going to be it (and you wanted escalation, remember?), they need to get something on top that needs to be clear this other NPC party values and doesn't want to have taken away from them. (Ideally this would have been previously established, have you established anything like this?)

[Vahnavoi]

So is there no option for a more indirect conflict?
I'm all for PCs murdering NPCs in general, but in this particular case my goal was to introduce tension/obstacles by setting up an indirect conflict.

There might be a lot of options, but your story lacks details to tell what those would be.

As noted, the obvious alternative to direct murder is to carry out the same plan the competing party did, in reverse. If that is not possible, there might be other ways the party can trick their competition to surrender the stolen items. It's dependent on what kind of resources the party has in their disposal.

One thing they could do is summon bigger fish. Both parties are servient to baronage, you say? Appeal to a higher authority, such as a king of both barons, sue the offending party at the king's court. Or, take the matter to a religious authoroty, such as gods or clergy. Have them pass judgement on the offending party.

Or, as noted, depending on what the conflict between the two barons is, it may be possible to reframe the entire conflict. Accept loss, defect to the winning side.

All kinds of things can happen, just point it out to your players if they can't notice it themselves.

[Amnestic]

Outright killing a player character seems to elicit lighter reactions than stealing from a party in my experience.

They're adventurers whose trade is doing killing on behalf of morally questionable patrons. They need reasons not to kill their rivals.

If their groups are known, and there are few others who could challenge them (which is why they get hired in the first place?) then the list of suspects for the rivals getting whacked is pretty slim. While it might not be sufficient to conclusively prove the party did them in, it might be enough that others start to think they're too loose-cannons to be allowed to move freely.

If the rivals are meant to be roughly of equal strength to the party, then in an even fight a party victory might well still result in a number of party deaths. Is that an acceptable risk they want to take?

Since this is 3.5 and resurrection is a thing, is killing the be-all end-all? Would killing them simply be sending a message? Or could it invite further reprisal?

[GloatingSwine]

I don't think any version of running to mummy is going to be a satisfying solution to the players... (and shouldn't really work anyway, complaining to someone about what their deniable ops squad did to your deniable ops squad is a good way to get laughed out of the room).

[Lord Torath]

Outright killing a player character seems to elicit lighter reactions than stealing from a party in my experience.Heck I remember a story here on the Playground about an party who spent months tracking down and killing a thief who stole one PC's non-magical boots!

[False God]

Well, you kinda went 0-60 on your players. Mild rivalry turned into "We're gonna ask them for help then betray them and steal their stuff."

Maybe jumping to murder is a bit much, but these other NPCs sure dialed up their antics first.

[ahyangyi]

Since this is 3.5 and resurrection is a thing, is killing the be-all end-all? Would killing them simply be sending a message? Or could it invite further reprisal?

Ironically, that means "knocking the NPCs unconscious and handing them to the baron, expecting the baron to throw them into the prison/dungeon" might be both a more merciful and a more permanent solution than outright killing them.

[Segev]

It's practically a meme that the way to make PCs and their players murderously loathe a particular NPC is to have that NPC steal stuff the player considers important to the PCs' ability to be effective. Or, rather, "their stuff," though the fact the stuff has to be important to the PC's build is generally unspoken but there. On the other hand, stealing their gp can also trigger it, so....

I would point out that the rival party didn't kill them, but absolutely could have, and then accept it if the players decide this still means escalating to murder is the right move.

You, as DM, should know why, IC, the rival party didn't kill them. Is it that they have moral compunctions against killing rivals who aren't trying to kill them, but don't mind lesser backstabbing? Is it that they actually like the PCs, but their mission comes first? Are they desperate in this mission, and escalated as much as their consciences would allow due to that desperation, but deeply regret having to betray the trust of their friendly rivals?

This can factor in to how the player party perceives things when they catch up to the rivals, especially based on how the rivals react.

[Amnestic]

Ironically, that means "knocking the NPCs unconscious and handing them to the baron, expecting the baron to throw them into the prison/dungeon" might be both a more merciful and a more permanent solution than outright killing them.

Yep!

Which leads into another reason to take them alive, I suppose: your patron gets a bargaining chip against his rival. You could even turn them into allies instead of rivals.

So there's definitely reasons to choose non-lethal solutions out there, it's just making sure the players are aware of them. In the heat of the moment, I can understand going straight to "murdermode"; it's what I would probably do. Just need to provide them options, either in-character or out of character, so that they can see that there are alternatives.

They might still choose to go killin', but at least then it'll be done with the knowledge they chose it over other things they might not have considered previously.

[Mastikator]

I'd argue that it's not the case. Greek mythology certainly wasn't trained by video games or TTRPG, but it contains a healthy dose of lethal revenge stories.

People are trained by what they have available to them?

[ahyangyi]

You, as DM, should know why, IC, the rival party didn't kill them. Is it that they have moral compunctions against killing rivals who aren't trying to kill them, but don't mind lesser backstabbing? Is it that they actually like the PCs, but their mission comes first? Are they desperate in this mission, and escalated as much as their consciences would allow due to that desperation, but deeply regret having to betray the trust of their friendly rivals?

Yep, as I said, drugging and leaving the PCs in a ditch is extremely careless. However, if, say, the first awaken PC saw a low-level devil saying "well, my job is done" before teleporting away, hinting that the rival party used Planar Ally to ensure their humiliated opponents do not die in the wild, then that's definitely a nice gesture.

[Xervous]

What opportunities did the PCs have to avoid getting drugged? If this hazard presented with no chance of forewarning it’s a rather logical to exterminate it so such things don’t happen again

[MoiMagnus]

And I feel that that's an overreaction?
My idea was to slightly escalate the rivalry, get some risque or even dirty play, but I didn't exactly expect players to go into murder mode.
Was my expectation wrong? Did my players overreact?

Peoples overescalate when they feel betrayed. By suffering negative effects while, being in a safe place, this feels like a significant betrayal.

[Not to say there might also be a feeling of betrayal OOC that get funnelled into the game. It might depends on how safe firecamps are assumed to be at the level of "implicit GM promise to the players".]

By how much is it an over-escalation? IMO it depends on the hypothetical scenario where the other party unconditionally surrenders to them, would they still kill them out of spite? If yes, then I agree it's some serious over-escalation.

On the other hand, the escalation of "we're ready to murder them, but only in honorable ways" is not totally unreasonable if the stakes of their quest are high enough.

Rivals are enemies you can trust. Their predictability means that you can always navigate the water so that things don't end up too bad for you. The trust was broken, as their didn't predict at all the rivals' behaviour, which mean they can't trust them anymore.



How could I escalate the conflict without making it 'kill-or-be-killed' thing?


There is a reason why rivals tend to monologue in films. Predictability is key.

If there is any kind of "betrayal", it should be either a case of all the player immediately thinking "yeah, that was obvious, but that's fair game", or it should be accompanied by whatever information was missing to the PCs for it to be understandable.

(So a monologue, or an apology letter, etc)

Bonus if the monologue/etc also includes some information that is useful to the PCs and willingly given by the NPCs, showing that the NPCs do care about the PCs not stupidly dying to some trap from a common enemy.

[Vahnavoi]

I don't think any version of running to mummy is going to be a satisfying solution to the players... (and shouldn't really work anyway, complaining to someone about what their deniable ops squad did to your deniable ops squad is a good way to get laughed out of the room).

I'm not trying to guess what would feel satisfying to players. Indeed, chasing short-term emotional satisfaction at the expense of long-term strategic objectives is a classic error to make in scenarios such as this. I'm trying to guess what options they might have, and only the OP can supply the details necessary to tell whether they should or should not work.

---


What opportunities did the PCs have to avoid getting drugged? If this hazard presented with no chance of forewarning it’s a rather logical to exterminate it so such things don’t happen again

That's the thing, it isn't logical. At most, you are stopping these specific agents from suddenly betraying you again. But this tells nothing about other agents or other causes of sudden negative consequence. It isn't even given it is these specific agents would betray them again anyway.

Analysis of the reasons behind the betrayal are necessary to see if killing the agents would be effective prevention of future troubles. Without doing that, there's a high chance killing them only satisfies an emotional impulse, without actually preventing anything.

[ahyangyi]

I'm not trying to guess what would feel satisfying to players. Indeed, chasing short-term emotional satisfaction at the expense of long-term strategic objectives is a classic error to make in scenarios such as this. I'm trying to guess what options they might have, and only the OP can supply the details necessary to tell whether they should or should not work.

Not wasting the time to play a TRPG game is usually better for people's long term career success, so it can be argued that by playing a game the players are already willingly making an error.

[Xervous]

That's the thing, it isn't logical. At most, you are stopping these specific agents from suddenly betraying you again. But this tells nothing about other agents or other causes of sudden negative consequence. It isn't even given it is these specific agents would betray them again anyway.

Analysis of the reasons behind the betrayal are necessary to see if killing the agents would be effective prevention of future troubles. Without doing that, there's a high chance killing them only satisfies an emotional impulse, without actually preventing anything.

I’ll elaborate on the stub in my prior post. If it is true that this NPC group’s behavior at the game level is one that circumvents the usual interaction processes for discerning hazards and risks it is in the players’ interests to use the rules they know the enemy will play by to ensure the anomaly doesn’t spring a similar event on them in the future.

In other words, if the players perceived the rival party event as something which they were deprived of normal agency to interact with because of features unique to the rival party, then removing the rival party is a good way to prevent repeats... or figure out how far their special status goes.

As I’ve not seen any clarification on this I am merely speculating that the players may have felt railroaded and identified the rival party as the source of such. It depends heavily on what style of game is being run, and acknowledged as being run at the table.

[GloatingSwine]

It's a good adventure hook, but the DM can always construct a scenario where the players win by not killing the NPCs.

That is, if the DM desires that the players learn the valuable lesson that murder isn't always the answer.

Returning to this.

They can.

But that still burns those NPCs as potential antagonists, because if they return as antagonists it turns out murder was the answer. (because even if an exactly equivalent new antagonist appears well now you can kill them as well and have two sets of loot).

If you want to make players "learn" something, then the first few times they use a tool it has to work.

[Shinizak]

Well, I thought they would engage in some sort of counter-sabotage.
Steal something from them, leak some compromising information, set them up, something more... civilised.
There are, ostensibly, escalation stages between 'friends' and 'war to the last man'

Respectfully, you need to lose that mentality. EVERY character you introduce has to be treated like it's going to be murdered -or- have a giant target painted on their chest. ESPECIALLY if these characters are in opposition to the party.

There are NO sacred cows in this game, and holding on to that concept is only going to breed resentment in you.

Now, if you WANT to deescelate the party's murder drive (a hard thing to do) you NEED to see things from their perspective. They've ONLY had bad interactions with the npc party, so you NEED to give them a friendly, sympathetic character to interact with. You need to introduce this overtly friendly character AT A DISTANCE (because the party WILL kill them if not properly given distance) and you need to have them offer something helpful.

Basically, you need to give the party a reason to keep these characters alive. A GOOD, selfish reason that overtly benefits them more than hurts them.

You NEED to establish that these characters ALSO want the party to live, but will be forced to conflict with them once in a while.

[Easy e]

Well, the first thing you need to do; is create a society of rules that the PCs are part of to begin with. If that is not there, then the escalation goes straight to kill, because that is what D&D teaches its players to do mechanically and culturally. Therefore, unless the adventure is taking place in a civilized land where cultural norms and expectations of Non-murder is in place; the PCs will immediately jump to murder.

That said, the natural next question might be how to make such a world? First, the world has to be one that has a functioning social order, a code of conduct, and authorities or levers to enforce that code of conduct.

So, in your case the PCs are known to work for the Baron. The Baron is part of the noble hierarchy and therefore is expected to act like a member of nobility. If his agents do bad things, it reflects poorly on himself politically, culturally, and potentially legally. The best way to leverage a "brake" on PCs murdering these folks is for their boss to explain that doing so would reflect badly on him, and then he would be very cross with them, revoking their status, fining them, jailing them, or even having to execute them himself in order to save face. Even if those other NPCs die from a completely non-PC related reason, everyone will now assume their boss had a hand in it. Therefore, the PCs must outwardly do everything possible to make sure that these folks stay alive! You can thwart them as you want, non-lethally.

In addition, it would help if the PCs shared their experiences with other NPCs, that it could reflect negatively on them and the other Patron. Therefore, they could "win" by wrecking the other groups rep. However, for such schemes to work there must be a social contract or social order in place that would then ruin their reputation.

Two good examples of games with this in place are Pendragon and Legend of the 5 Rings.

[MonochromeTiger]

You can't really set up a character and just expect the players to react to it in a specific way. You manage your own actions and reactions, only your own, the way others act and react can be predicted if you know them well enough but in a game with rules and interactions entirely different from real life even those predictions shouldn't be relied upon.

The only way to semi-reliably set up a planned rivalry in a game is if you have player buy in and a mutual understanding of the pace and limits for escalation. Just sticking the NPCs out there and having them pull something isn't either of those things even if you've shown they aren't trying to kill or seriously injure. All that does is give them some NPCs they occasionally interact with who have, from their perspective, suddenly done something hostile, in this case drugging and robbing them while impeding their goals. As soon as you had the NPCs do what they did you shifted them from "those people we occasionally meet up with" to "those jerks who wronged us", as much as you seem to have intended a friendly rivalry the players clearly didn't read it that way and have instead jumped to the more common result of the stereotypical "rival party" scenario of enemies fighting each other.

You need to actually discuss expectations for these things with your players if you're going in wanting and expecting a specific result. You need to have a clear understanding of what they, and their characters, are willing to tolerate before an NPC gets marked down as something to kill whenever the opportunity arises. You need to establish that certain characters might have consequences if they're killed because of who they are or who they know. You need to properly establish how far the NPCs are willing and able to go so that what you considered a mild inconvenience to stir up rivalry isn't taken as the opening salvo of a private war.

If you weren't attached to the idea of starting an ongoing rivalry this would all have been fine, lesson learned, oh well. Since you've decided you wanted this to go a certain way however it's now a problem for you because your intentions are being subverted, the only way to fix that is to communicate what you want and what the players are willing or unwilling to go along with instead of assuming they'll pick up on what you want and just roll with it. It's really not that different from a session zero to figure out the game's tone or the basics of understanding that you're playing an RPG and not writing a book. Your players have agency, they will act independently, they will make their own opinions and reach their own conclusions, those won't always be what you expect or want but the only way to manage them is to listen to their stance on things and present your own and compromise or to accept that there are going to be things you didn't plan for.

[Pauly]

I have encountered a bit of a weirdness in my game, and I wanted to share it and ask for recommendations/opinions.

Previously their encounters were friendly to neutral --

It was always acknowledged (at least I think) that they serve different masters, and they are at cross-odds, but it was more or less friendly.
NPCs used potions of Deep Slumber on the PCs, and stole their papers and some petty valuables, left the PCs asleep in a ditch,

Now the PCs want to murder the NPC party. Like near-foaming-at-the-mouth rabid full-on revenge rampage mode.

And I feel that that's an overreaction?

Not really an over-reaction. The NPCs performed an unprovoked hostile attack on the party. The party were expecting a may the race go to the swiftest situation.

How to de-ascalate.
1) Baron absolutely forbids revenge. It will lead to war with the other baron. He replaces the doodads stolen and a bit more as payment.

2) Baron tells them you don’t want revenge against the monkeys, you want revenge against the organ grinder. Baron lays out a plot to discredit rival Baron, part of which involves framing the NPC rivals for a crime they didn’t commit. Not a capital crime, but one that will discredit them and see them banished from the city. Various possible motives for this part of the plan, but removing witnesses for a trial could be a reason. Baron explains dead NPCs can be resurrected or be assumed to be dispositive to rival Baron’s case, so he needs them discredited and gone, not killed.

3) Send PCs on a series of missions that will culminate with NPC rivals being humiliated. The baron wants to keep them busy until their heads have cooled a bit.

4) enjoy sweet cold revenge flavored icecream.

[icefractal]

It's an over-escalation IMO as well, but I'm also not surprised. Players hate being stolen from, with the fury of 10,000 suns, even if what was taken is fairly minor. May be worth bringing up at the start of the next session, after they have a chance to cool down - "Hey, do you really want to escalate to murder over this? There are other ways you could get back at the rival party that aren't so extreme." (and be prepared to provide examples)

There's also the separate factor that this may be the players' OOC anger at being tricked. It's hard to say, because some groups don't mind being tricked and would consider a campaign where they're never outmaneuvered too easy, but other groups really hate it and consider it as the GM being a ****. In that case, the escalation could be primarily in order to rattle you, OOC - "See what happens if you ever make us look foolish, GM? We'll burn your ****ing campaign down if we have to!"

There's also the third possibility that the rival party are more annoying to the players than you'd realized, and this is just the straw that broke the camel's back. This happened in one campaign I was in - the GM had a rival group (nominally allies with just a friendly competition), who he always played as "one step ahead" of the PCs. Not in a way that really harmed us, but it grated on most of the players, and over time we started feeling like the GM cared more about his cool pet NPCs than anything the PCs did. So several PCs started doing everything they could to humiliate/impede/damage those NPCs, including stuff that was IC an unwarranted escalation - because the real OOC point was "GM, we do not care about how cool these NPCs are, please focus more on the PCs!"

So given that it's impossible to say from the info we have which is the case, an OOC discussion with the players is probably a good idea. Also - if the PCs being a group of murderous bastards would kill your enthusiasm for the campaign, tell them that. There's this idea that a GM must roll with anything that happens IC, but it's dumb - the game's not going to be any good once the the GM hates it, so it'd be better to end it and play something else at that point. Or put it on hiatus until the group can come to a meeting of the minds, at least.

[Zuras]

In general, in a D&D style fantasy game, players will want to kill an NPC who tricked them roughly 200% of the time. Especially so in situations where something happens where they felt they had no agency!

I know it’s a common trope in fiction, but players will burn entire villages to the ground in retaliation for being roofied. Unfortunate things players imagine could happen to them in real life risks their ire far more than killing them. I’ve seen players choose sides in civil wars because one side was rude to them.

And honestly, this is not a bad thing. Players are vastly more engaged when they’re following their internal motivations, no matter how odd. However, if you don’t want an ever-widening spiral of violence that ends with the PCs burning down the rival lord’s castle (because that’s where this is heading), you need to have some societal rules that the players actually buy into.

[PhoenixPhyre]

It's an over-escalation IMO as well, but I'm also not surprised. Players hate being stolen from, with the fury of 10,000 suns, even if what was taken is fairly minor.

Yeah. Try to kill them? They'll get irritated. Steal from them? They'll move heaven and earth to come after you. Even if it wasn't actually theirs. The one wrinkle--players, in my experience, treat "allied NPCs" as "their property." They see themselves as kinda fair game--they put themselves into danger. But you come after their party mascot? YOU DEAD.

[Zanos]

I don't think this an overreaction at all. If someone I thought I was friendly with broke bread with me, drugged me, stole from me, and left me to an unknown fate in the wilderness, I don't think I'd be feeling particularly merciful. Especially if I was a mercenary in fantasy medieval times. The average D&D parties approach to people getting in their way is violence, typically against creatures that haven't wronged them personally. If anything, these folks deserve a good killin' more than 99% of the stuff adventurers normally kill.

You aren't going to be alive for very long if your credo is an eye for an eye. If someone hits you, you hit them so hard they can never hit you again. That's just the way it's gotta be when you can't count on the authorities to resolve things for you. Frankly, I don't know why the "rival" adventuring party didn't kill the PCs other than an OOC desire to avoid wiping the party. To adventurers, it's not a game. It's their life. You shouldn't be playing around with people who are willing to betray you, drug you, and leave you for dead.

[Vahnavoi]

Not wasting the time to play a TRPG game is usually better for people's long term career success, so it can be argued that by playing a game the players are already willingly making an error.

Yes, but I was talking in terms of the game scenario and game objectives, so there's no need to go that far. If we were talking about soccer and I told a player to cool their head and keep their eyes on the ball, instead of just revenge-tackling a player who tackled them, do you think the player would suddenly feel the need to question why they're playing soccer in the first place?

---

@Xervous:

Trying to involve railroading or other meta logic in the chain of reasoning, only makes lapses in logic clearer. To wit:

Presume the betrayal was unavoidable due to a referee decision. Why would a referee make that decision? The reason, in this case, is because the referee wanted to escalate the conflict between two parties; this is something the players can deduce or the OP can just tell them. So, if a referee can arbitrarily create an unavoidable situation, why didn't the referee just kill player characters? Because it wouldn't allow the rivalry to continue. Similarly, it's safe for the players to presume the referee wouldn't want to kill their rivals, because that also doesn't allow the rivalry to continue.

In any case, killing these rivals, even if the referee allows it to happen, does not reduce the referee's ability to create new unavoidable situations, introduce new rivals, etc.. The argument from prevention plain does not apply.

A similar chain of logic can be carried out in-character, using the known facts of mission objectives and that the competing party left the player party alive, despite putting them in a situation where they could've killed them. The simplest explanation is that they don't want the player party dead and are only doing this because the context of the mission calls for it. It's unlikely this situation will repeat, so killing them to prevent similar betrayals is not necessary. Not sharing camp when acting on cross purposes would be enough for prevention. The argument from prevention does not extend further than that.

---

To everyone else:

Yes, players sometimes follow perverse incentives. Sometimes, this is because game rules encourage them to. Other times, this is because they are just bad at playing the game. Often, both at the same time.

Stop pandering to their worst instincts. If the game rules are the problem, change them so that, say, character death is genuinely a worse penalty than losing equipment. If the players still keep acting as if the latter is worse, call them out for being the filthy materialists they are, and show them how to play the game better. :smalltongue:

---


IYou aren't going to be alive for very long if your credo is an eye for an eye. If someone hits you, you hit them so hard they can never hit you again.

You are missing something very obvious. Namely, that "eye for an eye" was invented because the strategy you describe wasn't working very well. Indeed, game theoretic exercises with iterated Prisoner's Dilemma has shown that "eye for an eye" is one of the simplest strategies that does well in the long term.

Outside of games, societies have often moved away from "eye from an eye" because, as another saying goes, "eye for an eye leaves everyone half blind". That is, simple "eye for an eye" is often too harsh for what one could call "civilized society". Harsh penalties have not been shown to have the kind of preventive effect people attribute to them, so it makes more sense to focus on other things.

[Segev]

The big question that the PCs should be asking themselves - and may not be because they have an unexamined assumption that the answer is "because we're the PCs" - is: "Why didn't the rival party kill us when we were at their mercy?"

One way to approach this, if you want to try to de-escalate it, would be to set up a situation where the rivals are more or less at the party's mercy...but killing the rivals is going to "feel bad" or otherwise grossly inconvenience them. The more the PCs can humiliate their rivals, the better, especially if they can humiliate them AND also be responsible for saving them from some fate that isn't necessarily death (but might be).

Maybe the rivals got caught on this mission and the PCs can either leave them swinging in the wind while the antagonists throw them in jail, put them in teh stocks, or what-have-you, but murder would be something that brings the antagonists down on the PCs as, well, murderers. The PCs can extort any concessions they want to do the rivals a favor from giving a good word for them to breaking them out to passing a mocking note on to their own Baron so he knows to spend resources springing them. Or they can leave them, and risk that the rivals out the PCs presence.

Or maybe the rivals are unconscious and dying in a monster lair when the PCs catch up, and the PCs could kill them, or save their lives.

Both of these have downsides of the PCs having little to do with putting the rivals in the predicament. Though the first one, at least, could easily be made more of a "take that" to the rivals by having something they stole from the party be what got them in trouble with the law. So the PCs would've had to have dealt with avoiding detection if they'd still had it, but the rivals having it got the rivals in trouble. This at least would feel like the rivals got karmic punishment for having betrayed the PCs.

Even better, though, if the PCs are presented with opportunities to turn the local law/antagonist on the rivals, taking them out of the picture but not able to kill them outright. THEN they can have the chance to leave them swinging in the wind, or extort favors from them to help them out.

But essentially, give the PCs a controlled way to take revenge and gain something from choosing to help the rivals out of the sticky situation the revenge puts or finds them in. And then have the rivals reflect the attitude you hope the PCs will have towards the rivals.

[ChudoJogurt]

Respectfully, you need to lose that mentality. EVERY character you introduce has to be treated like it's going to be murdered -or- have a giant target painted on their chest. ESPECIALLY if these characters are in opposition to the party.

There are NO sacred cows in this game, and holding on to that concept is only going to breed resentment in you.

Now, if you WANT to deescelate the party's murder drive (a hard thing to do) you NEED to see things from their perspective. They've ONLY had bad interactions with the npc party, so you NEED to give them a friendly, sympathetic character to interact with. You need to introduce this overtly friendly character AT A DISTANCE (because the party WILL kill them if not properly given distance) and you need to have them offer something helpful.

Basically, you need to give the party a reason to keep these characters alive. A GOOD, selfish reason that overtly benefits them more than hurts them.

You NEED to establish that these characters ALSO want the party to live, but will be forced to conflict with them once in a while.

I mean, I'm not going to stop my players from trying to kill them. But it's not what I planned for the game.
And, er... I did say they had neutral-to-positive encounters with those guys before. Not like they have a strong emotional attachments, but that was not a random NPC either.

[gbaji]

What opportunities did the PCs have to avoid getting drugged? If this hazard presented with no chance of forewarning it’s a rather logical to exterminate it so such things don’t happen again

I think this is somewhat key. Yes. Players don't like being stolen from (like... a lot!), but I suspect the bigger one is a feeling of loss of control and/or mistaken expectations on the part of the players themselves. And players *never* like having their character lives/properly subject to the whims of NPCs. If they had clues that this might happen, or taken steps to avoid it, and they were "got" anyway, that might be part of the problem.

How did the NPCs drug them? Was this something that was roleplayed out? Or did the GM just claim it happened by fiat? Most adventuring groups do assume they are taking precautions while out in the wilderness (campfire someone assumes this for me, though not stated directly). Do we just assume that PCs accept drinks handed to them by their rivals around said campfire? Without making sure that the other guy drinks from the wineskin before you do? Many players will assume their characters are taking such basic precautions without having to directly state it, while some GMs might assume they are *not* unless they specifically state such. And that can lead to problems.

There are also ways to roleplay this out to minimize the tension and desire to kill said NPCs. Without knowing what sort of interactions occurred prior to this, and how those were played out, it's hard to say though.


Now, if you WANT to deescelate the party's murder drive (a hard thing to do) you NEED to see things from their perspective. They've ONLY had bad interactions with the npc party, so you NEED to give them a friendly, sympathetic character to interact with. You need to introduce this overtly friendly character AT A DISTANCE (because the party WILL kill them if not properly given distance) and you need to have them offer something helpful.

This was exactly the sort of thing I was going to suggest. Have one of the NPC party approach one of the PC party (presumably someone who's not prone to muderhobo activities). Have them be friendly, and tell them "hey. No hard feelings. We just needed those plans, and you had them. Maybe you'll get one over on us next time". This could be jaunty banter style approach, and may work. You could steer the players into non-lethal responses . Maybe.

Could do a variation on that and have one of the NPC party strike up a romantic relationship with one of the party members. That can add some interesting RP opportunities, and force both of them to have to make choices along the way. Basically, any sort of "back channel" interaction to make it clear to the PCs that, no, the NPCs have no intention of causing them serious harm, but sometimes their ends will be at cross purposes, so may engage in sneaky maneuvering to gain the advantage from time to time, but no direct malice is intended. You can de-escalate this a bit. Maybe. Helps also if there's some sort of "no killing my rival baron's guys" rules from their own patron too.

And heck. It may just inspire some of the players to develop their characters into more stealthy/sneaky directions rather than just optimzing for assumed lethal combat against anyone who comes along. Getting them out of a sort of one dimensional play style can help a campaign a lot, and they may just realize that this opens up other avenues and methods for conflict resolution than "kill them all".

Honestly though, this is seriously one of the most difficult things to pull off. Players just don't like having their characters ever be one-upped by anyone. This is one of those types of things that pulls off great in a scripted story on film/tv, but is nearly impossible to pull off in a RPG. So if the OP wants to try it, that's great. Just be prepared for potential failure, and don't make the assumption that this will work out well aand be a requirement for anything going foward.

[Vahnavoi]

@ChudoJogurt: You asked if there are other options. Well, there likely are. You can just allow your players to go full murderhobo, but you can point out that's not the only route they can take.

[Zanos]

You are missing something very obvious. Namely, that "eye for an eye" was invented because the strategy you describe wasn't working very well. Indeed, game theoretic exercises with iterated Prisoner's Dilemma has shown that "eye for an eye" is one of the simplest strategies that does well in the long term.

Outside of games, societies have often moved away from "eye from an eye" because, as another saying goes, "eye for an eye leaves everyone half blind". That is, simple "eye for an eye" is often too harsh for what one could call "civilized society". Harsh penalties have not been shown to have the kind of preventive effect people attribute to them, so it makes more sense to focus on other things.
Fantasy settings generally are not civil. That's why adventurers even exist. And you're referring to punishments for criminal acts, which generally don't serve to dissuade others from performing similar acts, which is true. But that isn't what we're discussing. We're talking about stopping a specific group of individuals from interfering with your plans. Killing them obviously fixes that problem. You can't apply a gentle touch in such a situation in such a setting. I seriously doubt you would suggest that adventurers only kill a few of the orcs raiding local merchant caravans because you wouldn't want to mess them up too much, otherwise they might get angry!

Even if you were to transpose this situation to real life, in which being drugged and robbed and dumped on the side of the road is probably not immediately life threatening, and there is a support network that can be expected in at least some portion to handle this for you, this is obviously a grievous crime. You probably aren't going to murder someone for this because there are institutions set up that we delegate criminal punishment to. That usually isn't the case for adventurers in TTRPGs. If they want justice, they have to get it themselves. The opposing party works for what I assume is semi-legitimate political body, after all.

[Fiery Diamond]

Well, I thought they would engage in some sort of counter-sabotage.
Steal something from them, leak some compromising information, set them up, something more... civilised.
There are, ostensibly, escalation stages between 'friends' and 'war to the last man'

While that last sentence is true, it is worth pointing out that people tend to react worse to "betrayal by friends" than "mild offensive action from sorta-enemies." Not just as characters in games, but in real life: if you had a sorta-friend with whom you were competing for, say, a big promotion, and your efforts toward that promotion were sabotaged by said sorta-friend, would you not be much more upset than if the office jerkface you were also competing with did the same exact thing? In games where things like "actual consequences for violet reactions" don't truly exist, you get to see that hurt and rage blow up into murderous levels of activity.

[Zanos]

While that last sentence is true, it is worth pointing out that people tend to react worse to "betrayal by friends" than "mild offensive action from sorta-enemies." Not just as characters in games, but in real life: if you had a sorta-friend with whom you were competing for, say, a big promotion, and your efforts toward that promotion were sabotaged by said sorta-friend, would you not be much more upset than if the office jerkface you were also competing with did the same exact thing? In games where things like "actual consequences for violet reactions" don't truly exist, you get to see that hurt and rage blow up into murderous levels of activity.
Well, it's more like someone you are competing with a work promotion for invites you to go camping the day before, and while camping he drugs you unconscious, steals a Benjamin from your wallet(incidental, frankly), and then leaves you there so you miss the window to present a big project to your boss. And the expected reaction is "darn, I'll get that rascal next time!" No. You're probably going to the cops and hoping this dude gets 10-20 years for kidnapping, because he is incredibly dangerous. Except if you transport that to a fantasy setting, there is no reliable body of law that's going to capture him because he works for nobility, so you have to do it yourself. And criminal morality is different, such that applying the death penalty for such an action frankly isn't even all that extreme. Especially considering that adventurers risk their lives constantly in the regular course of their activities, so responding lethally to people directly and knowingly interfering with their success isn't even slightly unreasonable.

I have no idea why OP thinks being drugged into unconsciousness by someone you thought was at least neutral to friendly with you is some kind of minor infraction.

[PhoenixPhyre]

While that last sentence is true, it is worth pointing out that people tend to react worse to "betrayal by friends" than "mild offensive action from sorta-enemies." Not just as characters in games, but in real life: if you had a sorta-friend with whom you were competing for, say, a big promotion, and your efforts toward that promotion were sabotaged by said sorta-friend, would you not be much more upset than if the office jerkface you were also competing with did the same exact thing? In games where things like "actual consequences for violet reactions" don't truly exist, you get to see that hurt and rage blow up into murderous levels of activity.

Yeah. If these had been explicitly coded as "enemies we can't kill yet" in all the other interactions, then this betrayal wouldn't be quite so nuclear. But someone you had a history of cooperating with stabbing you in the back? Nah bro, that's terminal.

And from an OOC standpoint, the players might be saying "ok, now we don't trust you, the DM". Betrayals by supposed friends (or at least friendly rivals) burn a huge amount of trust and teach players to be paranoid toward anyone seemingly doing them a good turn. With the idea that if they let people surrender, they'll just come around and stab them later. That is a shortcut to murderhobo-ville.

[Vahnavoi]

@Zanos: The particular setting under discussion has two barons engaging in covert operations, implying a feudal civilization that in the real world came significantly later than invention of "eye for an eye". I have no reason to give weight to what happens in "fantasy settings in general"; the OP's setting could have both more developed legal theory and more developed institutions than you assume. It's the OP's business which way they want to go with it.

The argument from special prevention, I've already dealt with before. It isn't actually a great argument.

In my own games, it is in fact a mechanical fact that killing every enemy is often unnecessary and, at worst, counter-productive. Morale scores ensure this. To wit: an individual enemy checks morale at first blood and at 50% hitpoints. A group of enemies checks morale at 20% casualties and at 50% casualties. A failed morale check means an enemy flees or surrenders. If no route of escape is left and no attempt at surrender is accepted, the enemy may go to a panicked frenzy and fight like a cornered rat.

So, insisting on killing every enemy often leads to more fighting, and more dangerous fighting, than being "merciful". I don't use orcs, but extrapolated to national level: yes, an enemy nation will react differently to no quarter extermination war than smaller scale border skirmishes. Kill a few "orcs" and show mercy to rest, and the survivors might yield or move elsewhere; try to kill all the "orcs", and now all the "orcs" have a motive to engage in no quarter extermination war against you. The cost of "never again" can be, and often is, prohibitively high.

[GloatingSwine]

But essentially, give the PCs a controlled way to take revenge and gain something from choosing to help the rivals out of the sticky situation the revenge puts or finds them in. And then have the rivals reflect the attitude you hope the PCs will have towards the rivals.

Ultimately the problem remains that any time after that point that these NPCs are an obstacle after showing them mercy the PCs are going to regret doing it.

Setting them up to regret killing the NPCs only works if they don’t subsequently regret not killing them. Which they will if they ever pull any trickery like this again.

They’re burned as rivals unless the players by and for themselves choose a lesser form of escalation than going straight to 100.

[icefractal]

I have no idea why OP thinks being drugged into unconsciousness by someone you thought was at least neutral to friendly with you is some kind of minor infraction.Because it's the kind of thing PCs do all the time, and they don't expect a harsh reaction by society for it. :smallwink:

I mean sure, they're often doing it "for the greater good", and it's more likely that the friendly attitude was just pretense from the beginning, but I've seen plenty of parties use tactics like "get invited to the Baron's party, drug the guards' wine, then steal the Widget of Power while everyone's asleep". And if you told the players "wow, what a fiendish thing to do, shift your alignments toward evil" they'd ask what you were smoking, and whether you wanted them to massacre everyone instead?

Admittedly, one big factor is the "left outside unconscious" thing. From the GM's POV, there was 0% chance of wild animals eating the PCs, the whole point was that the other party didn't kill them. From the PCs POV, it could be considered a very risky situation. I agree with the earlier post that having a planar-bound creature mention having guarded them when they woke up would have been a good idea if the OP wanted to convey that this was only sabotage, but eh, hindsight is 20-20.


Edit: One thing I forgot to mention before - IME, the majority of players do not like losing. They might say they're ok with it, because they don't want to seem immature, but in fact it will create a "cloud of sourness" that attaches to everything involved in the loss. Which in this case is the rival party. The reaction would probably have been less extreme if said party had tried to sabotage them this way, but they still succeeded in the end.

[KineticDiplomat]

In any RPG, this is hard. It generally only works if:

A) The system has substantial non personal combat options.

B) The players truly are wary the consequences.

And even then it's a fine high wire act.

You might notice D&D does not trend towards either of those. The entire arc of D&D revolves around killing things in myriad ways, and anybody who is an antagonist who can't be killed right now is assumed to be on the path to being killed later. You're likely SoL on this one.

However, you can still make the other band a recurring nemesis, or you can take it to another level by having your anti-baron become the agent of escalation.

[Zanos]

@Zanos: The particular setting under discussion has two barons engaging in covert operations, implying a feudal civilization that in the real world came significantly later than invention of "eye for an eye". I have no reason to give weight to what happens in "fantasy settings in general"; the OP's setting could have both more developed legal theory and more developed institutions than you assume. It's the OP's business which way they want to go with it.
Skilled covert operatives are hard to acquire, so from a purely objective standpoint you'd probably want to kill them since replacing them is going to be quite difficult. And if they're truly covert it's not like the rival Baron can publicly accuse the party of murder, since he has to deny that they are his or admit to their activities. As far as law goes, I'm going to assume it's not particularly mature because, again, you probably aren't going to have covert mercenary teams to subvert your rivals in a setting with a mature, robust, and effective legal system. Unless you yourself are trying to subvert a working system, which wasn't the impression I got from OP. But that could be the case.


In my own games, it is in fact a mechanical fact that killing every enemy is often unnecessary and, at worst, counter-productive. Morale scores ensure this. To wit: an individual enemy checks morale at first blood and at 50% hitpoints. A group of enemies checks morale at 20% casualties and at 50% casualties. A failed morale check means an enemy flees or surrenders. If no route of escape is left and no attempt at surrender is accepted, the enemy may go to a panicked frenzy and fight like a cornered rat.

So, insisting on killing every enemy often leads to more fighting, and more dangerous fighting, than being "merciful". I don't use orcs, but extrapolated to national level: yes, an enemy nation will react differently to no quarter extermination war than smaller scale border skirmishes. Kill a few "orcs" and show mercy to rest, and the survivors might yield or move elsewhere; try to kill all the "orcs", and now all the "orcs" have a motive to engage in no quarter extermination war against you. The cost of "never again" can be, and often is, prohibitively high.

If you use a morale system, sure. Most folks don't. And if you wage a war of extermination against them, also sure, but , 1. that's kind of insane and 2. not what I was talking about anyway. Merchant caravans being hit usually isn't going to be an adventure hook for "go to war with an entire nation of orcs." It's "get rid of the orc tribe that's hiding in the mountains." And then you just kill enough of them that they can't do what they're doing anymore. I'm not suggesting you burn down their huts and slaughter the children or anything. But a lot of this is transposing modern understanding of warfare onto settings where it's not uncommon for the largest "nations" to be city states with populations measured in the tens of thousands where a single individual of sufficient personal power can be an existential threat to the powers that be. There are a lot of ways in which the situations aren't really equitable. You can't really mount a fight to the last man resistance against a wizard that keeps casting control weather so all your crops die.

But again, we aren't discussing national warfare efficiency. We're discussing the PCs being interfered with at a personal level by a small group of people in the single digits. The context of the personal problems of adventurers and the problems of national conflict are going to be very different.


Because it's the kind of thing PCs do all the time, and they don't expect a harsh reaction by society for it. :smallwink:
Completely disagree. I would absolutely expect someone I did this to to want me dead and buried.



I mean sure, they're often doing it "for the greater good", and it's more likely that the friendly attitude was just pretense from the beginning, but I've seen plenty of parties use tactics like "get invited to the Baron's party, drug the guards' wine, then steal the Widget of Power while everyone's asleep". And if you told the players "wow, what a fiendish thing to do, shift your alignments toward evil" they'd ask what you were smoking, and whether you wanted them to massacre everyone instead?
It's not necessarily Evil, but I would fully expect the Baron and his men to want the party hanged if they did this. Would you not?


Admittedly, one big factor is the "left outside unconscious" thing. From the GM's POV, there was 0% chance of wild animals eating the PCs, the whole point was that the other party didn't kill them. From the PCs POV, it could be considered a very risky situation. I agree with the earlier post that having a planar-bound creature mention having guarded them when they woke up would have been a good idea if the OP wanted to convey that this was only sabotage, but eh, hindsight is 20-20.
It would soften it a little, but drugging and betrayal while sharing a friendly meal is pretty high up there as far as nasty acts to do against someone go.

[Kane0]

Heck I remember a story here on the Playground about an party who spent months tracking down and killing a thief who stole one PC's non-magical boots!

I remember that making it into someone's signature, and was just going to mention it myself.

[Segev]

I suppose the biggest reason the PCs might not want to retaliate with murder is that, if they do, the next set of rivals knows not to leave the PCs alive if they have the opportunity to end them. Because, remember, the PCs could all be dead now, since the rivals could've slit their throats while they slept.

[King of Nowhere]

Respectfully, you need to lose that mentality. EVERY character you introduce has to be treated like it's going to be murdered -or- have a giant target painted on their chest. ESPECIALLY if these characters are in opposition to the party.

There are NO sacred cows in this game, and holding on to that concept is only going to breed resentment in you.

Now, if you WANT to deescelate the party's murder drive (a hard thing to do) you NEED to see things from their perspective. They've ONLY had bad interactions with the npc party, so you NEED to give them a friendly, sympathetic character to interact with. You need to introduce this overtly friendly character AT A DISTANCE (because the party WILL kill them if not properly given distance) and you need to have them offer something helpful.

Basically, you need to give the party a reason to keep these characters alive. A GOOD, selfish reason that overtly benefits them more than hurts them.

You NEED to establish that these characters ALSO want the party to live, but will be forced to conflict with them once in a while.
you are way too pessimistic.
many players are not murderhobos. they will not try to kill every npc presented to them. In fact, they'll befriend some.
I don't know how common my players are, but in my group it is quite common to end up allying with a minor villain against a major one.

on the other hand, betraying the trust of the party and stealing from them, that paints a big target.


I suppose the biggest reason the PCs might not want to retaliate with murder is that, if they do, the next set of rivals knows not to leave the PCs alive if they have the opportunity to end them. Because, remember, the PCs could all be dead now, since the rivals could've slit their throats while they slept.

on one hand, it makes sense.
on the other hand, it sounds like you're pleading "ok, they betrayed, drugged and robbed the party, but they didn't kill them, so they should get a prize".
finally, I don't know how much "reduced risk" factors in the calculation here. they are, after all, the pcs. danger is their job.

[Segev]

on one hand, it makes sense.
on the other hand, it sounds like you're pleading "ok, they betrayed, drugged and robbed the party, but they didn't kill them, so they should get a prize".
finally, I don't know how much "reduced risk" factors in the calculation here. they are, after all, the pcs. danger is their job.

It's more of a, "Okay, so the PCs are reasoning that, if this was done to them once, they must kill to prevent it from being done again; why didn't the rivals reason that, if they don't kill the PCs now, while they have the chance, the PCs will do something at least this bad to them in the future, so they should kill the PCs now?" thing.

[ahyangyi]

Yes, but I was talking in terms of the game scenario and game objectives, so there's no need to go that far. If we were talking about soccer and I told a player to cool their head and keep their eyes on the ball, instead of just revenge-tackling a player who tackled them, do you think the player would suddenly feel the need to question why they're playing soccer in the first place?

In soccer, if the referee missed an obvious foul, protesting to him is a common move (even if it carries its own risk), especially with VAR technology available.

And that's assuming the existence of a fair, intervening referee: what's the fantasy equivalence of the fair, intervening referee?

Also, being left drugged, unconscious in ditches in the wild isn't just bad sporting. Intentionally knocking your opponent unconscious in soccer is probably a lifetime ban, even if they recovered just fine after 8 hours.


It's more of a, "Okay, so the PCs are reasoning that, if this was done to them once, they must kill to prevent it from being done again; why didn't the rivals reason that, if they don't kill the PCs now, while they have the chance, the PCs will do something at least this bad to them in the future, so they should kill the PCs now?" thing.

Again, leaving the PC unconscious (under magical effects nonetheless) in ditches isn't a good way to convey "I meant no harm". That sounds more like "I want you die but not spill the blood on my clothes".

[Peat]

As a PC I would absolutely escalate hard in this situation.

Reason One is getting betrayed by people you're friendly with sucks.

Reason Two is I don't like losing. Revenge is a nice salve, eliminating ways for it to happen again feels a lot better.

Reason Three is it seems to me that if things keep escalating there's a good chance the other side escalating back will really bite me in the future, so I might as well skip all the steps in between and level them if I can.

Killing? Depends on the game. Most D&D games where I'm acting as an operative doing dodgy things, I think that, yeah, killing would be the considered option. If I play someone who kills fairly regularly in the line of duty, what's a couple more? I don't like to play murderhobos but for me, a seasoned adventurer mightn't kill needlessly but is probably going to always be open to the option



I think to get the whole frenemy rival thing going in future you'd need to

A - Do it to their faces with a smile and do it in a way they can stop. Getting beaten fair and square is a lot easier to put up with than getting blindsided

B - Make sure there's honking big reasons to leave them alive other than "they were friendly a couple of times" and "you won't get away with it". Romantic attraction, family ties, genuinely really useful when not in direct competition... it's got to be big, it's got to be obvious. If it's just "can't get away with it" then the PCs will be thinking of how to circumvent that a lot of the time, not going along with it.

C - Gives the PCs an easy obvious way to get back at the NPCs in a way that keeps alive frenemy status


I like the idea but D&D for most players is about uncomplicated foes, not complicated ones. Unless you know your players aren't those people, you're gonna have to pre-empt tendencies to simplify things.

[GloatingSwine]

I suppose the biggest reason the PCs might not want to retaliate with murder is that, if they do, the next set of rivals knows not to leave the PCs alive if they have the opportunity to end them. Because, remember, the PCs could all be dead now, since the rivals could've slit their throats while they slept.

No, they couldn’t. Because the actions of NPCs outside of initiative are constrained by what will allow the game to continue and if you announce apropos of nothing “you all got killed in your sleep” as a DM you can at least expect an entire room full of players to never play with you again.

[Captain Cap]

As a PC I would absolutely escalate hard in this situation.
Avatar checks out :smallbiggrin:

[Vahnavoi]

Skilled covert operatives are hard to acquire, so from a purely objective standpoint you'd probably want to kill them since replacing them is going to be quite difficult.

Them being hard-to-replace skilled workers is just as much a reason to NOT kill them, if there's a chance they can be made to switch sides, or if there's a chance the barons will stop being in conflict and will co-operate later. Indeed, these reasons are also viable in-character hypotheses for why the competing party didn't simply kill the player party.


And if they're truly covert it's not like the rival Baron can publicly accuse the party of murder, since he has to deny that they are his or admit to their activities. As far as law goes, I'm going to assume it's not particularly mature because, again, you probably aren't going to have covert mercenary teams to subvert your rivals in a setting with a mature, robust, and effective legal system. Unless you yourself are trying to subvert a working system, which wasn't the impression I got from OP. But that could be the case.

There is no point in assuming. The OP is right there, if you want clarifying details, ask them. In any case, it's their business which way they want to go with it.


If you use a morale system, sure. Most folks don't.

Neither me nor the OP have a reason to care. Especially not if the main reason "most folks" don't use a morale system is because WotC neglected to put it in their version of D&D and they just never thought too much about how psychology in warfare actually works.

A different argument that works to the same end would be: remember Sturgeon's law? That 90% of works in any given field are trash? If you try to argue how things work in "general fantasy" based on what "most folks" do, you end up arguing for strategies that only work in their respective works because the authors were lazy hacks. You don't end up with a credible refutation for "eye for an eye", or any other real principle.


And if you wage a war of extermination against them, also sure, but , 1. that's kind of insane and 2. not what I was talking about anyway.

You think you are aren't talking about that, but you are. You are arguing for killing individual enemies to specially prevent them from doing something again. When extrapolated to level of groups, that leads to wars of extermination. If you think the group level extrapolation is insane, the first thing you should do is re-evaluate the individual level application, because that observation implies there is a limit to the individual level application.


Merchant caravans being hit usually isn't going to be an adventure hook for "go to war with an entire nation of orcs." It's "get rid of the orc tribe that's hiding in the mountains." And then you just kill enough of them that they can't do what they're doing anymore. I'm not suggesting you burn down their huts and slaughter the children or anything. But a lot of this is transposing modern understanding of warfare onto settings where it's not uncommon for the largest "nations" to be city states with populations measured in the tens of thousands where a single individual of sufficient personal power can be an existential threat to the powers that be. There are a lot of ways in which the situations aren't really equitable. You can't really mount a fight to the last man resistance against a wizard that keeps casting control weather so all your crops die.

Firstly, merchant caravans being raided, or other border skirmishes, are classic inciting incidents of war. What you say "usually isn't going to be an adventure hook" is in fact one of the classic beginnings for a war story. As for "getting rid of that tribe that's hiding in the mountains", that's an act of war. The "adventurers" going to do that would be acting as warriors or soldiers for their tribe, nation, etc.. This is dirt common in tabletop roleplaying games due to their shared roots with wargaming.

Secondly, engaging in a war of extermination against an orc tribe is not that different from a war of extermination against an orc nation; only the scale of warfare changes, the principles already talked about remain the same.

Thirdly, you say you aren't suggesting killing the offending tribe to last woman and child, but that just shows you didn't think too much about how actions you propose make it so they "can't do what they were doing anymore". The warriors of the tribe were raiding those merchant caravans for a reason. One of those reasons likely was that they want or need goods in the caravan. Simply killing the warriors is unlikely to remove the motive. Women will give birth to more children and the children will grow to become a new generation of warriors. The original situation will recur in a generation or two - unless the blow dealt to the group is sufficiently severe that they are put below their ability to recover. Women will abandon their children, the children will starve, the group will disband. This is what "extermination" in extermination warfare means. It's not possible to do what you suggest, without also to some degree doing the things you say you don't suggest.

The point about wizards veers off to a topic that wasn't even under discussion. It's also false. D&D does give tools for groups to fight wizards and mount the kind of resistance you say they can't. Usually, for that specific scenario, there is just a better tactic available. If the point is that killing the wizard is the best (or only) solution, that's often not the case either.

You are correct that different strategic and tactical landscapes aren't equivalent, but that does not lend support to any of the assumptions you're making nor the conclusions you're drawing from them.


But again, we aren't discussing national warfare efficiency. We're discussing the PCs being interfered with at a personal level by a small group of people in the single digits. The context of the personal problems of adventurers and the problems of national conflict are going to be very different.

Both parties are working under barons with conflicting goals. They already exist in a context larger than their personal problems. In a feudal system, a misstep would be cause for war, or alternatively, one of the barons could declare war to pursue their goals if their respective spec-ops group fails.

So, you say we aren't discussing national warfare, but I pretty much was, and am, because the player characters are agents of war; lot of their personal problems are problems of warfare, and a lot of national problems are just their personal problems extrapolated to level of groups. Game theoretically, an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma can arise between nations just as surely as individuals. The applicable principles aren't as different as you think.

---


In soccer, if the referee missed an obvious foul, protesting to him is a common move (even if it carries its own risk), especially with VAR technology available.

Irrelevant detail. The offended player can still have an emotional impulse to do something that would not serve their game plan, which is why they need to cool their head and keep their eyes on the ball.


And that's assuming the existence of a fair, intervening referee: what's the fantasy equivalence of the fair, intervening referee?

Also, being left drugged, unconscious in ditches in the wild isn't just bad sporting. Intentionally knocking your opponent unconscious in soccer is probably a lifetime ban, even if they recovered just fine after 8 hours.


A fair intervening referee is not required to make killing the competing party a bad play considering the long-term objectives of the player party. But if you'd read the entire argument you're responding to, you would've noticed my suggestion was for the players to appeal to a higher authority, such as the king, the church or the gods. A feudal society could have any number of third parties the players could appeal to, the OP's judgement on feasibility of a such a plan pending.

[KorvinStarmast]

Because I could totally see this being an understandable reaction from a bunch of neutral guys. A line has been crossed, and the best enemy is a dead enemy. I think they could be any alignment and the players' reaction would be the same.

Well, I thought they would engage in some sort of counter-sabotage. Steal something from them, leak some compromising information, set them up, something more... civilised. There are, ostensibly, escalation stages between 'friends' and 'war to the last man' You feel that way, but do your players feel that way? Maybe you need to have that very discussion. And while you are at it, fold in Segev's point...

The big question that the PCs should be asking themselves - and may not be because they have an unexamined assumption that the answer is "because we're the PCs" - is: "Why didn't the rival party kill us when we were at their mercy?"

IMO you might be able to get the players to spare the NPCs by giving them a choice: succeed the current mission fully or kill the NPCs but fail the mission. Time sensitivity is a powerful tool you can use to construct a scenario for that. Not a bad option as a band aid, but once they do complete the mission their thoughts will return to Revenge.

I won't be surprised if in some cultures "drugging and leaving in the wild" is considered attempted murder. If that cultural assumption is a part of the OPs world, that needs to be articulated to the players, and it if isn't that also needs to be articulated to the players.
Or, as noted, depending on what the conflict between the two barons is, it may be possible to reframe the entire conflict. Accept loss, defect to the winning side. And then a few sessions or levels later, back stab them. :smallcool: Payback's a {censored}

Ironically, that means "knocking the NPCs unconscious and handing them to the baron, expecting the baron to throw them into the prison/dungeon" might be both a more merciful and a more permanent solution than outright killing them. Not a bad idea, and it raises the stakes between the two barons.

So there's definitely reasons to choose non-lethal solutions out there, it's just making sure the players are aware of them. Which is the OOC conversation the OP needs to have with the players.

People are trained by what they have available to them? I don't think "trained" is the correct term here.

Well, the first thing you need to do; is create a society of rules that the PCs are part of to begin with. If that is not there, then the escalation goes straight to kill, because that is what D&D teaches its players to do mechanically and culturally. Therefore, unless the adventure is taking place in a civilized land where cultural norms and expectations of Non-murder is in place; the PCs will immediately jump to murder. That overbroad generalization is false, in my experience. Each group of players has a different take on that.

But you come after their party mascot? YOU DEAD. I have seen what you refer to in the post happen on a variety of occasions.

And from an OOC standpoint, the players might be saying "ok, now we don't trust you, the DM". Betrayals by supposed friends (or at least friendly rivals) burn a huge amount of trust and teach players to be paranoid toward anyone seemingly doing them a good turn. With the idea that if they let people surrender, they'll just come around and stab them later. That is a shortcut to murderhobo-ville. Seen that often enough, and in one case a particular wizard pulled that and I wasn't close enough to stop him. :smallconfused:

In my own games, it is in fact a mechanical fact that killing every enemy is often unnecessary and, at worst, counter-productive. Morale scores ensure this. To wit: an individual enemy checks morale at first blood and at 50% hitpoints. A group of enemies checks morale at 20% casualties and at 50% casualties. A failed morale check means an enemy flees or surrenders. If no route of escape is left and no attempt at surrender is accepted, the enemy may go to a panicked frenzy and fight like a cornered rat. My brother and I both use a morale system: I use 2d6, he uses a wisdom check, but the general approach is the same.

Because, remember, the PCs could all be dead now, since the rivals could've slit their throats while they slept. I think the OP is applying a not-too-uncommon movie trope where a protagonist is left tied up, or otherwise hindered, by a rival and they have get out of that situation. The players might not be on board with that trope. (An example includes how Blondi treated Tuco in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly).

Neither me nor the OP have a reason to care. Especially not if the main reason "most folks" don't use a morale system is because WotC neglected to put it in their version of D&D and they just never thought too much about how psychology in warfare actually works. Yeah, WotC kinda tubed it on that one. With that said, some of the published adventures for 5e offer the DM "if this happens, this NPC will flee/surrender/ask for mercy" if certain things go badly for them.

Firstly, merchant caravans being raided, or other border skirmishes, are classic inciting incidents of war. What you say "usually isn't going to be an adventure hook" is in fact one of the classic beginnings for a war story. As for "getting rid of that tribe that's hiding in the mountains", that's an act of war. The "adventurers" going to do that would be acting as warriors or soldiers for their tribe, nation, etc.. This is dirt common in tabletop roleplaying games due to their shared roots with wargaming. Heck, it is a hook in the D&D 5e Starter Kit ...

Both parties are working under barons with conflicting goals. They already exist in a context larger than their personal problems. In a feudal system, a misstep would be cause for war, or alternatively, one of the barons could declare war to pursue their goals if their respective spec-ops group fails. That could be settled by a duel, though, or a trial by combat.

[Xervous]

@Xervous:

Trying to involve railroading or other meta logic in the chain of reasoning, only makes lapses in logic clearer. To wit:

Presume the betrayal was unavoidable due to a referee decision. Why would a referee make that decision? The reason, in this case, is because the referee wanted to escalate the conflict between two parties; this is something the players can deduce or the OP can just tell them. So, if a referee can arbitrarily create an unavoidable situation, why didn't the referee just kill player characters? Because it wouldn't allow the rivalry to continue. Similarly, it's safe for the players to presume the referee wouldn't want to kill their rivals, because that also doesn't allow the rivalry to continue.

In any case, killing these rivals, even if the referee allows it to happen, does not reduce the referee's ability to create new unavoidable situations, introduce new rivals, etc.. The argument from prevention plain does not apply.

A similar chain of logic can be carried out in-character, using the known facts of mission objectives and that the competing party left the player party alive, despite putting them in a situation where they could've killed them. The simplest explanation is that they don't want the player party dead and are only doing this because the context of the mission calls for it. It's unlikely this situation will repeat, so killing them to prevent similar betrayals is not necessary. Not sharing camp when acting on cross purposes would be enough for prevention. The argument from prevention does not extend further than that.


The degrees to which the GM will go to preserve the conditions for rivalry are as of yet untested. If the mechanical resolution of combat has proved a consistent solution for anything hazardous lingering in the area, and the GM has not made any special clarifications about expectations for the game, then eliminating the rivals has some parallels to eliminating a patrolling monster in a dungeon. They as players know it’s extremely hazardous when it does act. If we get clarification from OP we’d know if the players even had agency or forewarning in the event. Lack of agency and forewarning leaves the rival party itself as the only warning sign for future events.

From what we’ve seen the players expect the flow of the game to lead them to encounter the rivals again. As they do not want their characters to leave the region the solution involves removing the source of the risk. They would not contemplate removing the risk if they knew it wasn’t feasible.

The GM has provided a hazard with no clarification on how it represents a shift of expectations. Why shouldn’t the players use a proven tool to address the new hazard?

[Segev]

Again, leaving the PC unconscious (under magical effects nonetheless) in ditches isn't a good way to convey "I meant no harm". That sounds more like "I want you die but not spill the blood on my clothes".I'm not trying to convince anybody that it was "okay" for the rivals to leave the PCs unconscious. I doubt the covert ops team is squeamish about spilling blood, though, to the point they'd leave someone for dead on purpose without making sure of it.

The point I'm trying to get across here is that the fact the rivals didn't just kill the PCs should ideally mean there's a reason to leave rivals alive. What is it?


I think the OP is applying a not to uncommon movie trope where a protagonist is left tied, or otherwise hindered, up by a rival and they have get out of that situation. The players might not be on board with that trope.

Right. Again, this needs to become an examined assumption/expectation.

If PCs engage in "kill 'em; they will only be problems later on, so make them not-problems now," why don't NPCs?

This probably needs to be an OOC discussion between players and DM, if the DM doesn't have operative reasons why the rivals would do what they did, but not go further and do what the PCs are saying they would do, and the DM doesn't mind that his rival NPCs will not be 'rivals' so much as KOS targets now. KOS targets who foolishly left their would-be killers alive when they could have ensured their own increased success rate at missions in the future and prevented themselves from having expert killers wanting them dead.

Which, again, may need to be an OOC discussion of expectations. Even if it's just, "Okay, guys, I can't think of a reason why you'd be left unconscious rather than be killed, so don't expect anybody else who has you at their mercy like that to ever grant it again." I'm not even trying to say you should threaten the players, even though that's what this amounts to. I'm saying that, if that's what verisimilitude is to the players, the fact they're alive at all should already break their verisimilitude.

[Vahnavoi]

The degrees to which the GM will go to preserve the conditions for rivalry are as of yet untested.

Yes, which is why it's not logical to jump to killing the rivals. There are missing steps that need to be addressed before it can be even said attempting to kill them would be a good way to test these conditions.


If the mechanical resolution of combat has proved a consistent solution for anything hazardous lingering in the area, and the GM has not made any special clarifications about expectations for the game, then eliminating the rivals has some parallels to eliminating a patrolling monster in a dungeon. They as players know it’s extremely hazardous when it does act. If we get clarification from OP we’d know if the players even had agency or forewarning in the event. Lack of agency and forewarning leaves the rival party itself as the only warning sign for future events.

You begin with a conditional and continue with a thing that runs straight against problems of induction.

Basic rules of 3.5 edition D&D allow for encounters that are insurmountable for player characters. If players actually paid attention to rules, they don't need a special referee confirmation to know that past combat performance is not binding predictor of future combat performance. What they need is confirmation that they can kill the opponent.

The lack of agency argument continues to be a red herring. Actually following the meta logic through, again, means that the referee took your agency away to facilitate a scenario, and to determine what agency you will have in the future requires figuring out what said scenario and the motive behind it is.


From what we’ve seen the players expect the flow of the game to lead them to encounter the rivals again. As they do not want their characters to leave the region the solution involves removing the source of the risk. They would not contemplate removing the risk if they knew it wasn’t feasible.

The GM has provided a hazard with no clarification on how it represents a shift of expectations. Why shouldn’t the players use a proven tool to address the new hazard?

The bolded part assumes too much. It's not given the players even know what their future risks are, nevermind if killing the competing party would be feasible way to reduce them.

As for the last question? What's been the discussion between me and the OP? Oh, right: whether the players have other options. If they have, that alone calls for review of their plan. The specific question of why not kill them, I've already answered.

[GloatingSwine]

Right. Again, this needs to become an examined assumption/expectation.

If PCs engage in "kill 'em; they will only be problems later on, so make them not-problems now," why don't NPCs?

This probably needs to be an OOC discussion between players and DM, if the DM doesn't have operative reasons why the rivals would do what they did, but not go further and do what the PCs are saying they would do, and the DM doesn't mind that his rival NPCs will not be 'rivals' so much as KOS targets now. KOS targets who foolishly left their would-be killers alive when they could have ensured their own increased success rate at missions in the future and prevented themselves from having expert killers wanting them dead.

Which, again, may need to be an OOC discussion of expectations. Even if it's just, "Okay, guys, I can't think of a reason why you'd be left unconscious rather than be killed, so don't expect anybody else who has you at their mercy like that to ever grant it again." I'm not even trying to say you should threaten the players, even though that's what this amounts to. I'm saying that, if that's what verisimilitude is to the players, the fact they're alive at all should already break their verisimilitude.

They do.

Most of the time the PCs are fighting they will be doing so on the assumption that they are fighting for their lives and will not recieve any mercy if they are defeated (because they'll have fought to the death anyway).

But this wasn't one of those situations, this was a situation where the players were simply told after the fact that something hostile had happened to them with no expectation that they could have prevented it. They were declared after the fact to have been at someone's mercy.

Try it. In your next game you GM just declare at random that the party has died and risen as zombies because the dread necromancer Gort the Unclean on the next continent over finished his masterwork spell of doom. No they weren't ever intended to interact with that plot, another party was dealing with it and they botched it. It's just part of the verisimilitude of a world where fantasy adventures happen.

Anyway game over roll new characters for next week.

Commit as well. Don't back out no matter what your players argue. This is it. This is how the game went down.

[Easy e]

Oh, one other way to handle this is to simply let the PCs try to kill these other guys, and find out that..... "Hey, it really isn't that easy." Remember, anything the PCs can do, these folks can do too. Then, a big focus of the campaign becomes getting the drop on these guys or out-maneuvering them becuase "Just killing them" did not work.

This was a big part of a Shadowrun campaign I played, and after several interactions with the other runners; when the PCs finally out-did them; they actually respected them as characters and no longer wanted them dead. They enjoyed being heralded as the "better runners" instead and these old rivals became Contacts and support characters later.

[Zuras]

Sometimes people play D&D specifically for the power fantasy aspect of not having to put up with all the BS we do in real life, too. If that is a big part of your players’ enjoyment, their reactions to betrayal may seem extreme.

For your players, though, being able to Force choke someone who tries to charge them extra for breadsticks, or reducing the insurance company who denied their claim to a smoking crater is part of the joy and escapism of the system.

It’s purely a matter of taste, but it’s unavoidable. For example on a related but different note, I’ve never read Spider-Man comics, not because I don’t like the character, but because I don’t want to read about anyone’s struggles with money. I’ve had enough of those myself, and it ruins my escapism. Many people actually *like* that aspect of the character, as it makes them more relatable.

Other people would prefer Peter throw Flash Thompson through a wall the first time he tries to give him a wedgie.

[Segev]

They do.

Most of the time the PCs are fighting they will be doing so on the assumption that they are fighting for their lives and will not recieve any mercy if they are defeated (because they'll have fought to the death anyway).

But this wasn't one of those situations, this was a situation where the players were simply told after the fact that something hostile had happened to them with no expectation that they could have prevented it. They were declared after the fact to have been at someone's mercy.

Try it. In your next game you GM just declare at random that the party has died and risen as zombies because the dread necromancer Gort the Unclean on the next continent over finished his masterwork spell of doom. No they weren't ever intended to interact with that plot, another party was dealing with it and they botched it. It's just part of the verisimilitude of a world where fantasy adventures happen.

Anyway game over roll new characters for next week.

Commit as well. Don't back out no matter what your players argue. This is it. This is how the game went down.That's just it: you're outlining why plot armor exists, OOC. If it only exists OOC, though, it starts begging questions.

The PCs could have been killed exactly as you described. If they weren't plot-armored PCs, would they have been? If not, why not?

The DM, at the very least, should know why the rivals spared the PCs. It could be as simple as they didn't want to kill them, but then he has to ask himself why this would bother them. Do they consider the PCs friends as well as rivals? Was there motive that actually made sense in their mission parameters that needs them alive?


Oh, one other way to handle this is to simply let the PCs try to kill these other guys, and find out that..... "Hey, it really isn't that easy." Remember, anything the PCs can do, these folks can do too. Then, a big focus of the campaign becomes getting the drop on these guys or out-maneuvering them becuase "Just killing them" did not work.

This was a big part of a Shadowrun campaign I played, and after several interactions with the other runners; when the PCs finally out-did them; they actually respected them as characters and no longer wanted them dead. They enjoyed being heralded as the "better runners" instead and these old rivals became Contacts and support characters later.The trouble with this is that the PCs have already been bested to the point that they "should" be dead, and only the apparent mercy of the NPC rivals spared them. If the PCs can do "anything" the rivals can, the PCs can also drug the rivals and have them at their mercy. And then choose to kill them instead of what the rivals did.

But yes, having the PCs learn more about their rivals between now and when they get a chance at killing them is probably good.

Maybe even hearing the rivals laughing about how they owe the PCs a drink or something in apology for that trick, followed by banter about whether they'd accept a drink in teh future, and maybe some signs of, if not guilt, at least expectation that this is all in good fun and friendly rivalry, and that maybe they, as the first to escalate, owe at least some token of "no hard feelings, right?"

I dunno. It depends what the DM wants the rivals to be to the party.

[Quertus]

Congratulations! You have simultaneously demonstrated and negated a rather rare skill. Let me explain.

Disclaimer: I am not an authority on human psychology, nor do I play one in an RPG. The following is a mix of “facts” (to the extent one can have facts in a soft science) from this century and last, sprinkled with logical extension and pet theories. Viewer digression is advised.

Hardware has physical limits. There’s only so much data one can store on any given hard drive. Software imposes further limits: despite having room free on the drive, you still can’t get your video game character to put more items in their inventory.

It’s the same with the human mind. There’s only so much space for storage, and humans are wired with limits on certain types of storage.

Perhaps one of the strangest limits is on… friendship. Community. The people we really care about. Humans are hard-wired to only have 30-some-odd slots for such; after that, they literally have no more cares to give.

Think about this in parallel with the concept of focus. Children are much more unfocused than adults, able to notice a broader range of stimulus. Whereas adults are generally more focused, able to get more depth of information about the things they care about at the cost of breadth of analysis of input.

For adults, the default state is one of “not caring”. However, that doesn’t sit at one end of the spectrum; rather, it sits in the middle, with the ends having labels more like “love” and “hate”. However, for added fun, the best way to visualize this is actually to fold the paper the line is drawn on in half, and put a pin in love/hate, so that not caring actually does sit at one end - at the bottom, if we hang it by that pin.

Part of the point of the visual is, it helps drive home that it takes effort for things to advance in how much they are cared about. The second point of the visual is that it shows how little distance there is between the “love” and “hate” sides of the same level of caring about something. See also people intentionally evoking negative reactions, and responding happily with “you do care”-style responses.

Anyway, all this is to explain that you have the rare skill to make your players care positively about something; in this case, the rival NPC group. Unfortunately, you’ve shifted that level of caring from the positive to the negative end of the spectrum. And you’ve also demonstrated the answer to the question “where do murderhobos come from?” - the answer is, they come from there exact scenario you created: players being betrayed by caring about the setting elements.

Now, let’s look at this in a little more detail, to see exactly Why they feel so betrayed, and why their reaction is justified / predictably human.


The Baron has his rival, of equal status, and the Rival has his own team of adventurers for the same purposes, and they often cross paths with the PCs, as they are assigned similar tasks often. I'm fairly fond of the 'competing party' trope, so I used it here.
Previously their encounters were friendly to neutral -- they asked the party to help them question a captured informant (the NPCs didn't speak Orc, while one of the PCs did), in exchange for sharing said informant's knowledge with the party, they invited the PCs to the off-the-books dungeon-delve which they couldn't handle on themselves, that sort of thing.
It was always acknowledged (at least I think) that they serve different masters, and they are at cross-odds, but it was more or less friendly.

Yup, they’re friends. Despite the scenario, despite expectations of “subordinates of my boss’s enemy are my enemy”, they’ve chosen to be friends. That’s a recipe for how strong bonds are formed.


They shared a campfire

They’re friends, they treated them like friends, symbolically showing trust and inviting them into their homes.


and the NPCs used potions of Deep Slumber on the PCs, and stole their papers and some petty valuables, left the PCs asleep in a ditch, which seriously sabotaged the PCs chances of completing their mission but inflicted no lasting damage.

And that trust was betrayed.


Now the PCs want to murder the NPC party. Like near-foaming-at-the-mouth rabid full-on revenge rampage mode.

Obviously.


And I feel that that's an overreaction?

Not even remotely.

But to explain that, let me give you an example of it done right:
Bob seems really upset about something, but he won’t tell me what. So we share a drink, and he still won’t open up. One drink turns into lots of drinks, and I black out at some point. I wake up at the crack of noon with a killer hangover, to discover that Bob and my car keys are both gone.

Note the differences. In this example, it’s been telegraphed (albeit only obvious in retrospect) that Bob isn’t happy about what he needs to do. Also, Bob’s actions make sense given his objective: he got me drunk (maybe drugged, maybe not) and stole my keys, both with the clear intent to make me “late to the party”.

That could have been a nice, friendly way to say, “yeah, we’re friends, but we’re still rivals”, to potentially begin an escalation of the sort you were after.

If Bob had instead slit my tires, and left a note saying “don’t follow me”, that also has some potential, although it tells a different story.

In your case, you had your “Bob” come in smiling for drinks, drug them, then smash the car windows and steal their pants.

You’ve told your players that Bob is a psycho who shows no remorse for harming your friendship. That Bob is a two-faced false friend, who never had any intentions of friendship to begin with, that everything you felt was a lie. That Bob is petty and crazy. That Bob is not a real person, just a toy in a game.

There really isn’t such a thing as an overreaction to a psycho false friend game token with no humanity.

Your best bet is to give them the catharsis of murdering these inhuman monsters that have hurt them so.


Well, I thought they would engage in some sort of counter-sabotage.
Steal something from them, leak some compromising information, set them up, something more... civilised.
There are, ostensibly, escalation stages between 'friends' and 'war to the last man'

Why in the world would they do that? If they wanted to respond to like with like, they would have tried to make the NPC group feel what they felt. They would have gone back, killed the NPCs’ employer, burned down their places of business, killed the NPCs’ families, people who owed them money. Then the NPCs would have felt the same sense of betrayal the PCs felt.

Why in the world would they do that? They’re most likely spec’d for murder, not espionage and one-up-man-ship (sp?). And you’ve almost certainly demonstrated you’re not on their side in such encounters, failing to Telegraph the NPC party’s betrayal. So of course they’ll avoid this area where they know they’ll lose, and move to utilizing their strengths.

Why in the world would they do that? You’ve clearly treated these NPCs as a vehicle for the Plot, rather than as real people, having them take actions that make no sense in character in order to push your agenda. So why would the players have any impetus to do differently, to simply treat the NPCs (and likely all NPCs in the future) as simply a source of XP and loot?

So, that’s the scenario you now find yourself in. By treating the NPC group as a vehicle for the Plot instead of as people, by not respecting the PCs bonds or agency, you’ve ruined the PCs friendship, fanned a murderous Rage, and likely spawned a new batch of murderhobos. Good luck!

[Segev]

Largely an excellent post, but I still feel the need to harp on the question that, ignoring plot armor...


Your best bet is to give them the catharsis of murdering these inhuman monsters that have hurt them so.


...why didn't these inhuman monsters just kill the PCs in their sleep, rather than doing everything they could to set up a reason for these dangerous spec ops guys to want to kill them?

[MonochromeTiger]

Yes, which is why it's not logical to jump to killing the rivals. There are missing steps that need to be addressed before it can be even said attempting to kill them would be a good way to test these conditions.

That depends pretty heavily on the group. We've got very little context of the group or the game they play beyond that they're working for a Count, the other group is working for a rival Count, and things are starting to ramp up to actual opposition instead of mutual usefulness. For all we know political manipulation in their game could have a history of going very badly very quickly or the group may have had something in the past that makes them wary of or unwilling to brush off the kind of betrayal the other group pulled.

From a purely political and espionage based view, yes there's things you should probably consider before jumping to killing. From the perspective of people whose entire job comes down to "go here, kill the bad things, make the problems go away" however the opposing party just made themselves one of those bad things and the quickest easiest way to make the problem go away is to get rid of them as permanently as can be managed.



You begin with a conditional and continue with a thing that runs straight against problems of induction.

Basic rules of 3.5 edition D&D allow for encounters that are insurmountable for player characters. If players actually paid attention to rules, they don't need a special referee confirmation to know that past combat performance is not binding predictor of future combat performance. What they need is confirmation that they can kill the opponent.

Except the entire thread is about their reaction in the game. Not "they aren't playing by the rules", not "they're complaining and whining and I don't like it", just "they're doing a thing I didn't expect what should I do?" Nothing about saying the game doesn't need to be fair makes them wrong to have that reaction. If anything throwing an unfair situation at them to take away their agency would make their reaction more valid because it takes them out of the role of the players and just makes them observers to a bad situation they have no way of interacting with or resolving. Even those insurmountable encounters you mention generally have options even if those options boil down to run or die.


The lack of agency argument continues to be a red herring. Actually following the meta logic through, again, means that the referee took your agency away to facilitate a scenario, and to determine what agency you will have in the future requires figuring out what said scenario and the motive behind it is.

TTRPG includes the RPG part, you know, "Role Playing Game." Taking away agency takes them out of the Role Playing part of that because it deprives them of any say in what they do. Keeping agency, even if it's only in the form of letting them try to resist or avoid something nigh impossible for them to get out of, is a vital part of not bringing people out of the game. An action can be futile but the choice to attempt that futile action shouldn't be denied outright even if the result ends up working against the player.


The bolded part assumes too much. It's not given the players even know what their future risks are, nevermind if killing the competing party would be feasible way to reduce them.

You're working off a very strange approach here from what I can tell. They're supposed to play nice and be sneaky here because you think it's the best choice while they're completely unreasonable to take the route they think is the best choice. You can't assume consequences and at the same time deny them that option, even less so when you're doing so based off your own personal experiences and views of how the game should be played as applied to a game you aren't a part of and don't know the full context for.

As for whether or not killing the opposing party is a feasible way to reduce risk? It gets rid of the active vector of that risk. It denies the opposing side their standard problem solvers and agents who have, up to this point, been their equivalent to the party fulfilling the same role thus as far as the party is concerned they're likely to hold the same importance. Everything points to the simple answer that removing them in any way will hurt their boss' rival and that as long as they do so in a way that doesn't get them into direct legal trouble they aren't getting any more enemies than they already have while leaving the other party active means ongoing interference.

Trying to turn them is an option but it relies entirely on them having no serious loyalty to their employer. Considering the other party has already gone from "friendly" to "drug them, steal their stuff, and leave them in a vulnerable state somewhere they could potentially have worse done to them" it's fairly clear their loyalty to their employer is at least enough to cause some harm to the party and overtly betray their trust. That opens the door to them doing worse later if they believe the job they're on warrants it. Past experiences will have shown they're somewhat capable, recent events will have proven they can be hostile, combine those and you have an active ongoing threat with the potential to get worse. Removing that threat might seem extreme but from another perspective it's simple self preservation, better to ensure that particular blade never ends up in your back than to let it wind up its strike.


As for the last question? What's been the discussion between me and the OP? Oh, right: whether the players have other options. If they have, that alone calls for review of their plan. The specific question of why not kill them, I've already answered.

Whether the players have other options or not isn't particularly relevant here though. They've already chosen an option. They aren't likely to sway their option because somebody they don't know on the internet disagrees with it, you aren't convincing them here, you aren't even directly addressing them here. You're giving your opinion to their GM that the party is in the wrong to do an option you disapprove of. That isn't changing what happened or altering the mindset the players operate on it's just giving the GM reason to feel slighted that their players are "being unreasonable" not going along with a rivalry story they might not have been aware of ahead of time and only had reason to understand was happening when something was done to them that absolutely qualifies as a threatening, possibly even violating, action.

I said it earlier but I'll say it again differently. The problem here isn't "are they right to do this" or "did they jump to an extreme option", it's "did we not adequately communicate our differing stances on how this game will go and what's considered a reasonable response". The players were informed something had happened and, with that context, decided on a course of action. That's playing the game, whether that's a right or wrong way to play the game is entirely down to them and their GM to determine. Whether their actions in game are right or wrong is similarly down to them and their GM to decide. Nobody here, except ChudoJogurt, can do more than give opinions and advice. We aren't arbiters of morality or deciders of objective best and worst options, we aren't even directly involved.

[Easy e]

As a player, I find games way more fun when key enemy NPCs are kept alive for later encounters. However, many of the people I play with are 100% against this. When trying to understand why, it came down to D&Disms.

Their TT RPG history was mostly D&D where letting enemies lived always ended up badly. Mine was mostly other games, where letting key enemies live led to further fun down the road as they were more cinematic themed.

[GloatingSwine]

That's just it: you're outlining why plot armor exists, OOC. If it only exists OOC, though, it starts begging questions.

The PCs could have been killed exactly as you described. If they weren't plot-armored PCs, would they have been? If not, why not?

The DM, at the very least, should know why the rivals spared the PCs. It could be as simple as they didn't want to kill them, but then he has to ask himself why this would bother them. Do they consider the PCs friends as well as rivals? Was there motive that actually made sense in their mission parameters that needs them alive?

Yes, but also no. It’s not accurate to say that the PCs have plot armour, it is accurate to say that the actions of NPCs are more constrained than the actions of PCs in order to allow the game to exist.

It’s an axiom of play that the DM will not do certain things, because if they do the game breaks down.

One of those things is arbitrarily kill the PCs outside of gameplay in a narrated scene. The world can kill the PCs the power of the DM cannot, otherwise the game breaks down.


The trouble with this is that the PCs have already been bested to the point that they "should" be dead, and only the apparent mercy of the NPC rivals spared them. If the PCs can do "anything" the rivals can, the PCs can also drug the rivals and have them at their mercy. And then choose to kill them instead of what the rivals did.


But they haven’t been bested by these NPCs, they’ve been bested by the omnipotent authority of the DM. Which is why in order for there to be a game they could not possibly be dead.

It’s just axiomatically incorrect to start your reasoning from the position that NPCs can do anything the players could in an equivalent situation, they can’t unless they got into that situation strictly following the same rules the players would have.

[Quertus]

Largely an excellent post, but I still feel the need to harp on the question that, ignoring plot armor...


...why didn't these inhuman monsters just kill the PCs in their sleep, rather than doing everything they could to set up a reason for these dangerous spec ops guys to want to kill them?

I was actually trying to avoid this bit, but…

The NPC's actions are extremely life-threatening and not subtle at all. The PCs received no lasting damage only because they were lucky, not because the NPC showed any mercy. They might have had encountered bad weather, wild predators, bandit groups or anything else in the helpless state, and died from that.

I won't be surprised if in some cultures "drugging and leaving in the wild" is considered attempted murder.

The NPCs potentially left them to die (depending on how safe the roads / the world is). If it was like being left drugged and unconscious in the wilds of ancient fantasy Europe in Wolf tornado country, vs being left drugged and unconscious just outside modern New York … actually, I’m not sure there’s really anywhere I’d feel comfortable being left outside drugged and unconscious at night, tbh.

Ignoring that, I mean, yeah, it was clearly meant to come across as “they went out of their way to…”, but the execution failed, completely, making the NPC party look (as I said) petty / psycho / false-friends / tools of the GM and the Plot.

But the important part is, it didn’t feel like them being nice and going out of their way not to hurt them. It felt like betrayal, humiliation, and “part of their plan all along”. It wasn’t people taking reasonable actions to delay their friends, it was a whole group intentionally feigning friendship for the express purpose of a later betrayal.

Lastly, as a minor quibble, when I say “inhuman”, I literally mean “normal humans don’t act that way”. Or “your writing is incoherent to serve the plot”. Like handing characters the Idiot Ball. That they are also monsters is a separate issue with their actions… which, yes, is more obvious when you don’t ignore the potential “left them to die” scenario, depending on how verisimilitude interacts with that reality, but still exists with the “friendly smile up until they stabbed you in the back like they had always planned to do” that it otherwise reads as, as the “closest to human behavior” that this maps to.

[Vahnavoi]

That depends pretty heavily on the group. We've got very little context of the group or the game they play beyond that they're working for a Count, the other group is working for a rival Count, and things are starting to ramp up to actual opposition instead of mutual usefulness. For all we know political manipulation in their game could have a history of going very badly very quickly or the group may have had something in the past that makes them wary of or unwilling to brush off the kind of betrayal the other group pulled.

Logic is about showing how a conclusion follows from premises. Where there is unknown information, this follow-through cannot be done. What I was criticizing Xervous for was making tacit assumptions that haven't been shown to follow from anywhere. As for playing "for all we know", that's moving the goal posts in wholly unnecessary way. As I said to Zanos, the OP is right there. Rather than assuming, it's possible to directly ask for clarification.


From a purely political and espionage based view, yes there's things you should probably consider before jumping to killing. From the perspective of people whose entire job comes down to "go here, kill the bad things, make the problems go away" however the opposing party just made themselves one of those bad things and the quickest easiest way to make the problem go away is to get rid of them as permanently as can be managed.

It doesn't follow from anywhere that killing the opposing party is the quickest or easiest way to make the problem go away. Your argument boils down to "if all you have used is a hammer, the quickest easiest way to work is to treat everything like a nail". But "quickest" and "easiest" are comparative statements. If you don't ever try using something else, the comparative value of other tools is unknown, not slower or harder.

This kind of reasoning is hence fallacious. It is illogical in a group-independent way.


Except the entire thread is about their reaction in the game. Not "they aren't playing by the rules", not "they're complaining and whining and I don't like it", just "they're doing a thing I didn't expect what should I do?" Nothing about saying the game doesn't need to be fair makes them wrong to have that reaction. If anything throwing an unfair situation at them to take away their agency would make their reaction more valid because it takes them out of the role of the players and just makes them observers to a bad situation they have no way of interacting with or resolving. Even those insurmountable encounters you mention generally have options even if those options boil down to run or die.

Did you read all what I've written in this thread? Because I don't think you did.

My argument concerns whether it's logical to jump to killing the competing party, especially as form of special prevention.

I'm not concerned with feelings of fairness, because emotional reasons behind a decision don't give any validity to a faulty chain of logic. The part, above, that I underlined for emphasis? Pure humbug. It doesn't happen. The reason it doesn't happen, as I already explained to Xervous, is because killing a bunch of NPCs does not in any meaningful way prevent a referee from being unfair again.

Don't confuse lack of logic with other types of wrongness, and don't confuse logical validity with other types of validity.


TTRPG includes the RPG part, you know, "Role Playing Game." Taking away agency takes them out of the Role Playing part of that because it deprives them of any say in what they do. Keeping agency, even if it's only in the form of letting them try to resist or avoid something nigh impossible for them to get out of, is a vital part of not bringing people out of the game. An action can be futile but the choice to attempt that futile action shouldn't be denied outright even if the result ends up working against the player.

It is completely normal for a game designer or game referee to give players no agency in setting up as a scenario. This is not contrary to the idea of roleplaying in any shape or form, because it does not follow players will have no agency during the scenario. Players choose to engage or not based on whether they like the scenario and the options they are presented.

This is completely independent from whether killing the competition is a good or a logical choice within the scenario. Lack of agency in a set-up doesn't dictate they have no agency going forward, nevermind what would be good use of that agency.

That's why you are arguing past me. I have not said the OP should stop their players from killing the competing party. My concern is with people calling the players' choice logical when it is not. This agency tangent, is a red herring.


You're working off a very strange approach here from what I can tell. They're supposed to play nice and be sneaky here because you think it's the best choice while they're completely unreasonable to take the route they think is the best choice. You can't assume consequences and at the same time deny them that option, even less so when you're doing so based off your own personal experiences and views of how the game should be played as applied to a game you aren't a part of and don't know the full context for.

My argument with Xervous does not concern what the players are "supposed to do", it concerns whether a particular course of action by them can be called logical. If you pay attention to what I said to the actual OP, I aren't advocating for a singular best course of action anywhere. I'm pointing out where there's insufficient detail to tell what the best option would be, and where to look for other options. The actual value of those other options is the OP's business.


As for whether or not killing the opposing party is a feasible way to reduce risk? It gets rid of the active vector of that risk. It denies the opposing side their standard problem solvers and agents who have, up to this point, been their equivalent to the party fulfilling the same role thus as far as the party is concerned they're likely to hold the same importance. Everything points to the simple answer that removing them in any way will hurt their boss' rival and that as long as they do so in a way that doesn't get them into direct legal trouble they aren't getting any more enemies than they already have while leaving the other party active means ongoing interference.

You completely missed the point. Even if all you say is true, don't assume the players actually thought that far before their reaction.

What you are doing, is rationalization. You are trying to find reason in the reaction after-the-fact. This does not prove what you think it does.

Also, to re-iterate the point I made to Xervous: D&D rules don't promise you can kill every adversary. All those good things that would result from killing the competition? They are purely speculative in a way that doesn't matter before checking if killing them is feasible. If it is, then the next step involves comparing risks of attempting to kill them with risks of letting them live. People, including you, are repeatedly skipping these steps in their hurry to proclaim the players' reaction logical. That's what makes the endeavors not logical.


Whether the players have other options or not isn't particularly relevant here though. They've already chosen an option. They aren't likely to sway their option because somebody they don't know on the internet disagrees with it, you aren't convincing them here, you aren't even directly addressing them here. You're giving your opinion to their GM that the party is in the wrong to do an option you disapprove of. That isn't changing what happened or altering the mindset the players operate on it's just giving the GM reason to feel slighted that their players are "being unreasonable" not going along with a rivalry story they might not have been aware of ahead of time and only had reason to understand was happening when something was done to them that absolutely qualifies as a threatening, possibly even violating, action.

The OP asked if there are other options. You can literally scroll back to see where they asked that. Untill the OP's players actually off the competing party, the OP has time to point those out, and the players have time to weigh their options. They aren't locked to the first idea they came up with. What they ultimately choose, is their business. It's not my goal to sway the OP or their players.

I'm trying to sway Xervous and other people to stop calling a reaction "logical" when it is not.

Keep track of who I'm responding to and why. The points I wanted to make to the OP, I've by and large made directly to the OP. My points to other people serve a different purpose.

[KorvinStarmast]

The point I'm trying to get across here is that the fact the rivals didn't just kill the PCs should ideally mean there's a reason to leave rivals alive. What is it? I have supported your point on that since I came across it. If our OP, the DM, had not already thought through that, I think they ought to start now.
Right. Again, this needs to become an examined assumption/expectation. Fun with Multiquote: I think you were quoting me rather than Gloating Swine on the "tied up and left" trope I mentioned.

As a player, I find games way more fun when key enemy NPCs are kept alive for later encounters. However, many of the people I play with are 100% against this. When trying to understand why, it came down to D&Disms. Videogamisms, given what many players are very familiar with and have as experiential baselines before taking up a TTRPG. "The Full Clear" thing.

[icefractal]

While I do think that OOC frustration about losing in what they consider an unfair way is very plausibly one of the motivations for the players' intended plan, I still feel like people are conflating two things in this thread:
The IC morality of an action doesn't change based on how fair it was OOC.

That is, imagine in one campaign an urchin steals a PC's coin purse entirely 'fairly' - there's signs given that in retrospect point to what happened, all the appropriate rolls were made, the PCs were able to track them down using their own abilities, etc. In another campaign, the GM blatantly railroaded them into the theft, made it impossible to solve except via a specific route he wanted for the plot, and was obnoxious about it as well. So those are very likely to result in different reactions by the players. However, the IC action was the same. It wasn't "an understandable mistake" in the first one and "a monstrous inhuman action" in the second one.

So if people's position is "betraying my PC means death, no second chances" then fine, that's a consistent position though I don't hold it myself. But if their position is "betraying my PC and not giving me, the player, sufficient agency in resisting that means death" then you're trying to solve OOC problems IC - better to bring it up to the GM directly that you're not going to play if this happens again (or whatever your individual line is).

[Xervous]

@ChudoJogurt

How did you present the campaign premise to the players in terms of action, agency, and buy in? Is them being servants of the Baron the campaign premise, or just something they chose to get involved with and could abandon? What have they typically done about other creatures and NPCs that threaten or harm them? What do you think they see as the consequences for going through with murdering the rival party? Was there forewarning on the sleep drug?

[KorvinStarmast]

So if people's position is "betraying my PC means death, no second chances" then fine, that's a consistent position though I don't hold it myself. But if their position is "betraying my PC and not giving me, the player, sufficient agency in resisting that means death" then you're trying to solve OOC problems IC - better to bring it up to the GM directly that you're not going to play if this happens again (or whatever your individual line is). Overall a good post, however, the problem to solve is that of the OP. Their problem is the disconnect between the expected reaction versus the received reaction from his players. How the players 'solve' this situation, eventually, is opaque to us, since none of them are in this conversation. Giving a DM 'your players ought to' advice, and giving players 'your DM ought to' advice only works if both parties are involved in our conversation. (We have had a few cases of that on this forum).

The players already have what looks like a solution, IC.
Since the DM, our OP, finds that unpalatable a variety of advice has already been offered which gives him a menu of options for how to engage with the players (OOC) which opens up other options.

@Xevous: that's a nice, useful post (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25710484&postcount=80). :smallsmile: +1.

[Ionathus]

I'll always bet on the overreaction of TTRPG players to NPC shenanigans.

The PCs at my current table are all varying shades of morally upstanding, compassionate, thoughtful people (the players even more so). But I've seen how they act when lowly NPCs manage to bamboozle them, and "disproportionate retribution" is the order of the day.

No matter how committed they are to the reality of the world you've created, most players are still gonna act with a certain level of entitlement. They think the world revolves around them, and guess what -- that's because it does!

I see it in mostly tiny ways -- the way that PCs will mess with tavern NPCs in weird, antisocial ways just to get a laugh. NPCs, especially if they're friendly, are seen as reactive instead of proactive. They're there to serve the players' experience, after all, so why would the players expect them to exercise agency or do something unpredictable?

If this sounds like a rant, I don't mean for it to be. I actually believe this is the natural and expected dynamic at a table! I do the same thing when I'm a player - it's impossible to avoid when you're playing "the hero" and your friend the DM is very obviously inventing numerous throwaway characters to grease the wheels of your roleplay and/or combat train. It's a conceit we all buy in to to make the hobby function, but an unintended side effect is that players are sometimes shocked or even angered when the NPCs don't - for lack of a better term - "know their place."

[Zanos]

Them being hard-to-replace skilled workers is just as much a reason to NOT kill them, if there's a chance they can be made to switch sides, or if there's a chance the barons will stop being in conflict and will co-operate later. Indeed, these reasons are also viable in-character hypotheses for why the competing party didn't simply kill the player party.
That's substantially more difficult, likely not a task well-suited to the parties skills, and fraught with risk as these individuals have already displayed that they are willing and capable of pretending to be allies to backstab the PCs.


There is no point in assuming. The OP is right there, if you want clarifying details, ask them. In any case, it's their business which way they want to go with it.
It would take an entire 50 page thread to dispel every assumption one has to make to function in any conversation. But if OP wants to contradict my assumptions, or yours, or anyone else's, I will obviously believe him. But I am going to assume he is playing in a TTRPG game that plausibly allows for the existence of adventurers and doesn't feature governments the size or scale of modern nation states, and that the parties opposition is relatively small and not a nation of hundreds of millions of people. Because to assume otherwise is incongruent with almost every commonly played published setting and my own experience.

Likewise, I would prefer if when I tell you that I am not advocating for the wholesale genocide of nations or other groups when I say that the PCs should take necessary steps to end threats to their own success, that you believe me when I say that. The baseline assumptions that you come into a TTRPG with are clearly very different from my own.


Neither me nor the OP have a reason to care. Especially not if the main reason "most folks" don't use a morale system is because WotC neglected to put it in their version of D&D and they just never thought too much about how psychology in warfare actually works.
Again, that's a difference in baseline assumptions. OP hasn't said he uses a morale system. Most commonly played systems don't have one at all, and the ones that do usually present it as an optional rule. I believe you when you say that you use one, but you need to accept that your experience is going to be different from others.



A different argument that works to the same end would be: remember Sturgeon's law? That 90% of works in any given field are trash? If you try to argue how things work in "general fantasy" based on what "most folks" do, you end up arguing for strategies that only work in their respective works because the authors were lazy hacks. You don't end up with a credible refutation for "eye for an eye", or any other real principle.
I generally assume that a setting functions as presented rather than constantly arguing with a DM about modern moral sensibilities, military strategy, and psychological operations, yes. I don't think a setting being somewhat unrealistic in these dimensions makes the authors hacks. They just care about other things, like creating a setting where adventurers can go on adventures.


You think you are aren't talking about that, but you are. You are arguing for killing individual enemies to specially prevent them from doing something again. When extrapolated to level of groups, that leads to wars of extermination. If you think the group level extrapolation is insane, the first thing you should do is re-evaluate the individual level application, because that observation implies there is a limit to the individual level application.
This is inaccurate both in real life and in RPGs. It is entirely possibly to cripple any organizations ability to take military action without literally slaughtering everyone involved to the last man. That has basically never been successfully done and yet plenty of empires have fallen. However RPGs differ in several ways that separate them from the real world. Typically organizations are much smaller, and the number of people who are actually relevant to the power of any organization is much smaller than that. If the Church of Shar has 3 15th level clerics and 900 2nd level adepts, they are going to be incapable of taking revenge on a party of 15th level PCs if the 3 clerics are killed.


Firstly, merchant caravans being raided, or other border skirmishes, are classic inciting incidents of war. What you say "usually isn't going to be an adventure hook" is in fact one of the classic beginnings for a war story.
If your campaign is about the party contributing to international warfare, sure. Most are not, at least at low levels. Again, your assumptions.


As for "getting rid of that tribe that's hiding in the mountains", that's an act of war. The "adventurers" going to do that would be acting as warriors or soldiers for their tribe, nation, etc.. This is dirt common in tabletop roleplaying games due to their shared roots with wargaming.
They're acting as warriors, sure. But the reason I use orcs is that the classic depiction of orcs in D&D is that of loosely connected tribes who are only temporarily bludgeoned into larger organizations by exceptionally powerful leaders. You can't really start a "war" in the typical sense with a tribe that has maybe twenty warriors of fighting age. I assumed that someone posting here would be familiar with the most iconic RPG of all times classical usage of orcs, but I suppose I was incorrect in making that assumption.


Secondly, engaging in a war of extermination against an orc tribe is not that different from a war of extermination against an orc nation; only the scale of warfare changes, the principles already talked about remain the same.
No, it's actually very different. A four man party enters an orc encampment that has ten fighting orcs in it, which is the entirety of tribes fighting force. They kill them all in the ensuing fight. The noncombatants, if there even are any, flee to another tribe or whatever, because most DMs and players aren't really interested in role-playing what your average itinerant mercenary is going to do with the wives and children of the defeated. Unless your DM has the last name Gygax in which case he will probably be confused as to why you aren't clubbing them all to death, since they're Evil. "Extermination" over. I don't think I need to really highlight how massively different it would be to apply this to a nation, although to start I think you would have to be dangerously insane and inexcusably evil.


Thirdly, you say you aren't suggesting killing the offending tribe to last woman and child, but that just shows you didn't think too much about how actions you propose make it so they "can't do what they were doing anymore". The warriors of the tribe were raiding those merchant caravans for a reason. One of those reasons likely was that they want or need goods in the caravan. Simply killing the warriors is unlikely to remove the motive. Women will give birth to more children and the children will grow to become a new generation of warriors. The original situation will recur in a generation or two - unless the blow dealt to the group is sufficiently severe that they are put below their ability to recover. Women will abandon their children, the children will starve, the group will disband. This is what "extermination" in extermination warfare means. It's not possible to do what you suggest, without also to some degree doing the things you say you don't suggest.
Most D&D parties are largely unconcerned that an issue might recur in two generations. Especially considering the environment is usually hostile enough that, as you say, a weakened organization is likely to disband. But yeah, TTRPGs are usually going to kid glove the part of killing raiders where their children starve or whatever, because it's a game and not a warcrime simulator. I really don't understand where this obsession with the idea that to remove someone's ability to harm you, you have to kill them, their wife, their children, their brother, their uncle, their grandmother, and everyone that ever sold them a cake. Especially with regard to this thread, where there are no indications that killing the opposing adventuring party wouldn't substantially weaken the rival Baron's ability to interfere with your activities.


The point about wizards veers off to a topic that wasn't even under discussion. It's also false. D&D does give tools for groups to fight wizards and mount the kind of resistance you say they can't. Usually, for that specific scenario, there is just a better tactic available. If the point is that killing the wizard is the best (or only) solution, that's often not the case either.
The point I was trying to illustrate is the majority of people in any organization are going to be incapable of providing any resistance against a sufficiently powerful threat once all their own high level individuals are rendered incapable of acting. The actual powerbase of most factions is relatively focused into a few people. Which, as you might imagine, is so adventurers can fight a small team or even a single bad guy to defeat The Evil Kingdom, and don't spend their time flying over battlefields and fireballing hundreds and hundreds of 1st and 2nd level infantry. I assume in this case the the two Barons are both employee adventurers because the people that serve them directly aren't as capable in this role, and therefore neither party can be trivially replaced.


Both parties are working under barons with conflicting goals. They already exist in a context larger than their personal problems. In a feudal system, a misstep would be cause for war, or alternatively, one of the barons could declare war to pursue their goals if their respective spec-ops group fails.
I actually don't know what "Baron" means in this context, because it's never used consistently, even historically. A Baron could be anything from the most minor of landed nobles that has to go all the way up the chain if he has a problem with another Baron, and only has a small amount of land and a dozen knights he can call to arms. Or it could be a completely independent nation-state ruled by a "Baron" who is effectively a hereditary dictator that answers to nobody, because noble terms are even less consistent in fantasy land. I admit I defaulted to the assumption these were minor nobles who are using espionage because they can't actually commit resources to open warfare, since their superiors would then got involved and resolve it for them, and likely not to their benefit. So you have internal skullduggery that can't really escalate to open warfare. Unless warfare is just defined by you as any violent conflict, which is not how I would use the term.


So, you say we aren't discussing national warfare, but I pretty much was, and am, because the player characters are agents of war; lot of their personal problems are problems of warfare, and a lot of national problems are just their personal problems extrapolated to level of groups. Game theoretically, an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma can arise between nations just as surely as individuals. The applicable principles aren't as different as you think.
The applicable difference between killing four people you have a problem with and killing a thousand people you have a problem with and killing a million people you have a problem with should be fairly obvious. And no, most nation-states actually have substantially different interests from the people that compose them because the nation-state itself becomes invested in maintaining its own existence and power apart from the people that compose it. I doubt the people under either of these Barons rules frankly cares much who they are or what they are do as long as the taxes are fair and they aren't bothered.


So if people's position is "betraying my PC means death, no second chances" then fine, that's a consistent position though I don't hold it myself.
I don't think that's what people are suggesting. Morality can rarely be boiled down to singular, unqualified principles and still remain an accurate descriptor of peoples values. There's a lot to take into account when someone betrays you that's going to affect how you react to it.

[KorvinStarmast]

They think the world revolves around them, and guess what -- that's because it does! Nicely made point.
It's a conceit we all buy in to to make the hobby function, but an unintended side effect is that players are sometimes shocked or even angered when the NPCs don't - for lack of a better term - "know their place." There are some styles of play that lead to a little more "it's a big world and we are just hanging in there" but those appear to be less common these days. Or, they are consigned to lower levels.

[ChudoJogurt]

Right, there are a lot of requests/questions about the details, so some additional points:


The event happened in a somewhat 'safe' zone. Both parties made their way through the actual wild wilderness full of monsters and indigenous hostiles, and at that point, they were travelling through a mostly tamed part of the land. They were not a day away from the nearest villages, around them were pastures and the road was not too far away.
It wasn't articulated explicitly, and it wasn't really impossible in-game that they would be found and robbed or killed, but it wasn't like being thrown in a ravine in the forest untrod by a foot of man.
They had some, though not much forewarning and/or defence. During the description of the campfire, I mentioned once or twice that the NPCs weren't eating the same food as the PCs, but I did so in passing, so as not to attract much attention to it and spoil the ambush. Also, they had a normal Will Save against Deep Slumber for the character who remained to stand watch, and he rolled poorly.
There is a somewhat mature legal system in the city, and it's been strongly established that naked violence and killing each other is frowned upon in the society, and, unless happened in specifically listed situations such as duel, self-defence or honourable rebellion or something similar, is investigated and punished. Ours is an Evil society, but it's a Lawful Evil society, strongly built around the idea of limiting violence and murdering each other despite everyone being an evil backstabber.
That's why they can't kill NPCs right now, though they still really really want to.
They can't go to the local constabulary or their lord because simply put, they have no proof. There were no witnesses, and by nowenough time has passed by now that any investigation is likely to be inconclusive. It is an avenue they can still pursue, especially using magic and expert investigators but that would be really hard, and it would take significant time that they don't really have now.
They aren't like secret spies or anything. Think Three Musketeers -- they publicly serve their liege, mostly doing sensitive and complex tasks, and on occasion, they also do off-the-books stuff. In this case, it's not even an off-the-books mission. They were literally sent to procure some perfectly legal alchemical equipment, as their lords try to corner the market on newly-discovered magical substance source.
Either party can't go crying to their lord right now, as they are week's travel away from their home bases, and their task is very time sensitive.

[MonochromeTiger]

Logic is about showing how a conclusion follows from premises. Where there is unknown information, this follow-through cannot be done. What I was criticizing Xervous for was making tacit assumptions that haven't been shown to follow from anywhere. As for playing "for all we know", that's moving the goal posts in wholly unnecessary way. As I said to Zanos, the OP is right there. Rather than assuming, it's possible to directly ask for clarification.

But your own statements in regards to the party's actions still rely on making similar assumptions. To point out that other assumptions can reach a conclusion other than yours isn't moving the goalposts, it's simply pointing out possible conclusions from the information we've actually been provided.



It doesn't follow from anywhere that killing the opposing party is the quickest or easiest way to make the problem go away.

The other party is the source of the problem, namely the threat posed by the presence of another active party that has shown a casual willingness to betray past friendship or break from a non-adversarial state. As long as that party is active the problem is present, as such the way to resolve the problem is to make that other party no longer active. Simply finishing the task means they'll still be active working for their employer against the players' party. Simply undermining their employer without directly dealing with them means they're still around and now have the motive of revenge for taking down somebody who paid them and who they were seemingly loyal to as opposed to the players' party. "Turning" them can't be trusted because they've already shown a willingness to lie to and betray the players' party and any seeming agreement or alliance can very easily be an act. Getting them imprisoned somewhere means they're still around and can be freed through the efforts of their employer or through their own actions becoming an active threat again. All of the above also rely on engineering the circumstances for them to become an option, none of which can be done quickly or easily without both more information and the correct opportunities being present.

Killing them meanwhile is as fast as fighting them somewhere without guards and has the lasting result of the other party being dead and staying that way as long as their employer doesn't have ready access to their bodies and high grade resurrecting magic.


Your argument boils down to "if all you have used is a hammer, the quickest easiest way to work is to treat everything like a nail". But "quickest" and "easiest" are comparative statements. If you don't ever try using something else, the comparative value of other tools is unknown, not slower or harder.

My argument boils down to "this is what they do, they've been presented with an opportunity in which it is a valid answer, not necessarily the best or worst answer but still one that can potentially resolve the issue and be used as a springboard to resolving the underlying issues." But sure, lets go with "all you have is a hammer." All I have is a hammer, the problem is present now and has the potential to get exponentially worse the longer I leave it. I know a hammer will get a result and to the best of my knowledge making sure that result is good is entirely down to how effectively I wield the hammer. Do I use the hammer now with my own confidence I can use it correctly or do I go looking for other tools, tools I'm not even certain I have or that I can find before the problem gets bad enough to be beyond solving, or do I use this nice convenient hammer while the problem is small?


This kind of reasoning is hence fallacious. It is illogical in a group-independent way.

It's illogical that a game largely built around combat encounters encourages the idea of combat as a solution to situations in which you've been harmed? Interesting.



Did you read all what I've written in this thread? Because I don't think you did.

My argument concerns whether it's logical to jump to killing the competing party, especially as form of special prevention.

And your reasoning on why it isn't has been down to other options being present, not how viable those other options are, nor how they may have their own consequences, just that this one option is illogical because of the presence of others.


I'm not concerned with feelings of fairness, because emotional reasons behind a decision don't give any validity to a faulty chain of logic. The part, above, that I underlined for emphasis? Pure humbug. It doesn't happen. The reason it doesn't happen, as I already explained to Xervous, is because killing a bunch of NPCs does not in any meaningful way prevent a referee from being unfair again.

Don't confuse lack of logic with other types of wrongness, and don't confuse logical validity with other types of validity.

You seem to enjoy using the word logic to shut things down here but I'm not sure it follows the way you want it to. In a real life situation, yes, it is highly illogical and flawed to immediately jump from "they did something bad to us" to "and we should kill them for it." This isn't a real life situation. This is a situation in a game where the right and wrong way to play are entirely subjective, the amount of violence and focus on violence or diplomacy is highly variable, and the level of lawfulness and intrigue differs from game to game. For this group, yes, jumping to planning violence made sense. For them, in their exact situation, with their mindsets, this was a solution they settled on as logically leading from their previous experiences in conflict resolution and their results. Was there likely an emotional element? Almost certainly. Does that remove the other components of the decision making process or otherwise invalidate them? No.

As for the part you underlined and your comment on it. I agree. It makes no sense to get railroaded then act and expect no future railroading and loss of agency. Personally I'd consider it grounds for a discussion with the GM on how they're running the game and my issues with that as well as a serious consideration of if I'm interested in continuing to play under those conditions. Which is why earlier I specifically brought up that I think the entire situation is a communications issue, not one of in character behavior.


It is completely normal for a game designer or game referee to give players no agency in setting up as a scenario. This is not contrary to the idea of roleplaying in any shape or form, because it does not follow players will have no agency during the scenario. Players choose to engage or not based on whether they like the scenario and the options they are presented.

Removing agency renders the players' ability to actually take part moot. That it can be returned at certain points doesn't remedy that, it just means that there are now designated bits where they get to actually play there characters and other points where a GM dictates "no, this just happens." Player agency and involvement are connected, they're the difference between playing the game and reading a choose your own adventure book that occasionally throws in math to disguise the fact that everything has a foregone conclusion that you can't actually change. Railroading happens sometimes, it's not completely avoidable, but arranging a scenario in which it happens such as this is going to cause a response and that response can easily contribute to the conclusion the players reached.


This is completely independent from whether killing the competition is a good or a logical choice within the scenario. Lack of agency in a set-up doesn't dictate they have no agency going forward, nevermind what would be good use of that agency.

Much like the issue with the other party being an ongoing threat, the loss of agency was for the sake of a story involving this other party. Removing the other party won't ensure there isn't further loss of agency but it does make the odds of a loss of agency for the same reason of "I want you guys to interact with them" less likely. In the event it still happens the players can confirm that it is tied to their GM wanting to push story involving this other party on them and state their objections on those grounds.


That's why you are arguing past me. I have not said the OP should stop their players from killing the competing party. My concern is with people calling the players' choice logical when it is not. This agency tangent, is a red herring.

The "agency tangent" is a potential contributing factor because player choice doesn't happen in a vacuum nor where the only factor involved is in character knowledge. As much as everyone comments on metagaming being bad and separating in and out of character actions the in character actions are informed by our out of character perspective and knowledge. Even the issue of if the players' decision was logical or not comes down to their out of character understanding of the game and the options present for them as much as it does their in character knowledge.


You completely missed the point. Even if all you say is true, don't assume the players actually thought that far before their reaction.

Yet your argument on logic is under the assumption that they haven't.


What you are doing, is rationalization. You are trying to find reason in the reaction after-the-fact. This does not prove what you think it does.

The application of a rationale after the fact isn't indicative of its absence in the decision making process, nor is the application of an attempted logical argument before a conclusion an indication that it is truly a logical conclusion. Most decision making done by the human mind is done subconsciously with emotional bias with our conscious thought then piecing together why we reach that decision.


Also, to re-iterate the point I made to Xervous: D&D rules don't promise you can kill every adversary.

But they do give you the opportunity to try.


All those good things that would result from killing the competition? They are purely speculative in a way that doesn't matter before checking if killing them is feasible.

The players' party has seen the other party on multiple occasions, according to previous posts in the thread they've even fought alongside them to clear a dungeon. They've had the opportunity to appraise their combat abilities, victory wouldn't be a certainty but it is something they should have sufficient evidence to claim is a possibility or not; and clearly they think it is or their reaction wouldn't be "we're going to kill them" it would be "oh no these much stronger opponents are starting to turn on us we need to avoid them at all costs."


If it is, then the next step involves comparing risks of attempting to kill them with risks of letting them live. People, including you, are repeatedly skipping these steps in their hurry to proclaim the players' reaction logical. That's what makes the endeavors not logical.

Funny thing, I made the earlier comments in this post before even reading this part. Still, to summarize, the other party being at opposing ends constitutes a threat. The duplicity they've casually partaken in presents the complication that they can't be trusted and their willingness to engage in that duplicity in service to their boss means that there's greater loyalty to that boss than to any ties of friendship or respect for peers between them and the party. With those in mind and the power of that other party being comparable to the players' party there are few options, if any, that actually grant any lasting solution to the threat of their presence beyond what would also stop the players' party, in this case a complete inability to start or continue hostilities.



The OP asked if there are other options. You can literally scroll back to see where they asked that. Untill the OP's players actually off the competing party, the OP has time to point those out, and the players have time to weigh their options. They aren't locked to the first idea they came up with. What they ultimately choose, is their business. It's not my goal to sway the OP or their players.

I'm aware. As I mentioned the solution that comes closest to salvaging their original intention is actually discussing it with the group. That way they can raise their concerns about the sudden turn to violence and the players can voice their concerns or complaints about the storyline and both can actually understand where the other is coming from.


I'm trying to sway Xervous and other people to stop calling a reaction "logical" when it is not.

Keep track of who I'm responding to and why. The points I wanted to make to the OP, I've by and large made directly to the OP. My points to other people serve a different purpose.

Except the logic, or lack thereof, is again dependent on all of the circumstances. For some games violence actually is the answer.

[Zanos]

Right, there's a lot of requests/questions about the details, so some additional points:
Thanks.



The event happened in a somewhat 'safe' zone. Both parties made their way through the actual wild wilderness full of monsters and indigenous hostiles, and at that point, they were travelling through a mostly tamed part of the land. They were not a day away from the nearest villages, around them were pastures and the road was not too far away.
It wasn't articulated explicitly, and it wasn't really impossible in-game that they would be found and robbed or killed, but it wasn't like being thrown in a ravine in the forest untrod by a foot of man.
Yeah, so this is kind of what I expected. They weren't going out of their way to ensure the parties death, but they did nothing to aid their safety, either. Being put in a potentially deadly situation after someone removes your ability to defend yourself is going to be treated as a pretty severe hostility.


They had some, though not much forewarning and/or defence. During the description of the campfire, I mentioned once or twice that the NPCs weren't eating the same food as the PCs, but I did so in passing, so as not to attract much attention to it and spoil the ambush. Also, they had a normal Will Save against Deep Slumber for the character who remained to stand watch, and he rolled poorly.
Would sense motive or a similar skill check not have been appropriate? Assuming 3.5 of PF with the mention of deep slumber. I assumed that you didn't completely railroad them so I didn't have any issue with this, but I'd give the PCs a chance to notice that they were acting a little off.


There is a somewhat mature legal system in the city, and it's been strongly established that naked violence and killing each other is frowned upon in the society, and, unless happened in specifically listed situations such as duel, self-defence or honourable rebellion or something similar, is investigated and punished. Ours is an Evil society, but it's a Lawful Evil society, strongly built around the idea of limiting violence and murdering each other despite everyone being an evil backstabber.
That's why they can't kill NPCs right now, though they still really really want to.

They can't go to the local constabulary or their lord because simply put, they have no proof. There were no witnesses, and by nowenough time has passed by now that any investigation is likely to be inconclusive. It is an avenue they can still pursue, especially using magic and expert investigators but that would be really hard, and it would take significant time that they don't really have now.
Yeah, so as I suspected, the PCs cannot rely on the legal system to deliver justice. So if they want to do something about these folks, they have to do it themselves, and even if they were to non-lethally capture them and turn them in, there's a good chance no charges would stick because it can't be proven and they work for someone who is in power, which LE systems are generally going to protect at the expense of actual justice. I think that should clarify why the PCs are going straight to the ol' murder.


They aren't like... spies or anything. Think Three Musketeers -- they publicly serve their liege, mostly doing sensitive and complex tasks, and on occasion they also do off-the-books stuff. In this case it's not even an off-the-books mission. They were literally sent to procure some perfectly legal alchemcial equipment, as their lords try to corner market on newly-discovered magical substance source.

Sounds like adventurers to me.

[Xervous]

Right, there are a lot of requests/questions about the details, so some additional points:

...

There is a somewhat mature legal system in the city, and it's been strongly established that naked violence and killing each other is frowned upon in the society, and, unless happened in specifically listed situations such as duel, self-defence or honourable rebellion or something similar, is investigated and punished. Ours is an Evil society, but it's a Lawful Evil society, strongly built around the idea of limiting violence and murdering each other despite everyone being an evil backstabber.
That's why they can't kill NPCs right now, though they still really really want to.

To be clear, have the players stated their understanding that it would be hard to get away with murder as part of the discussion? If they are keenly aware of that fact it casts the “we want to murder these dudes” in another light; that of frustration contained by respect for the setting.

You might find success in offering some immediate or short term opportunities for less extreme reprisal. Casual mention that it would take precious or copious amounts of time to set up deniable deaths would come across like putting a price tag on killing the rivals. Swoop in with a smaller package of revenge that costs less time per strictly metaphorical pound of flesh to see if they bite the more immediate gratification.

I advise talking this over with the players OOC to be sure everyone is on the same page. The clarity your description of the town and its laws brings a new perspective. “Jimmy you’re dead!” doesn’t usually mean Dad wants to kill Jimmy, though you hold the details still.

[Zuras]

Overall a good post, however, the problem to solve is that of the OP. Their problem is the disconnect between the expected reaction versus the received reaction from his players. How the players 'solve' this situation, eventually, is opaque to us, since none of them are in this conversation. Giving a DM 'your players ought to' advice, and giving players 'your DM ought to' advice only works if both parties are involved in our conversation. (We have had a few cases of that on this forum).

The players already have what looks like a solution, IC.
Since the DM, our OP, finds that unpalatable a variety of advice has already been offered which gives him a menu of options for how to engage with the players (OOC) which opens up other options.

@Xevous: that's a nice, useful post (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25710484&postcount=80). :smallsmile: +1.

Yeah, if the players feel like the NPCs are the ones who insulted them, going on a roaring rampage of revenge is an emotionally satisfying solution.

It’s like slavery in a setting—either it’s a hard no/X card from me or the campaign is all about freeing slaves. Just don’t ever ask me to rile play a character who would be indifferent, regardless of how “normal” or “realistic” it may have been in the past.

[GloatingSwine]

To be clear, have the players stated their understanding that it would be hard to get away with murder as part of the discussion? If they are keenly aware of that fact it casts the “we want to murder these dudes” in another light; that of frustration contained by respect for the setting.


Doesn't matter.

The PCs and their NPC antagonists sound like they're both expected to go beyond the reach of the law on a semiregular basis. That means a lot of scope for "accidents".

Unless the players decide otherwise, there's only one way this ends.

[gbaji]

The point I'm trying to get across here is that the fact the rivals didn't just kill the PCs should ideally mean there's a reason to leave rivals alive. What is it?

...

This probably needs to be an OOC discussion between players and DM, if the DM doesn't have operative reasons why the rivals would do what they did, but not go further and do what the PCs are saying they would do, and the DM doesn't mind that his rival NPCs will not be 'rivals' so much as KOS targets now. KOS targets who foolishly left their would-be killers alive when they could have ensured their own increased success rate at missions in the future and prevented themselves from having expert killers wanting them dead.

Which, again, may need to be an OOC discussion of expectations. Even if it's just, "Okay, guys, I can't think of a reason why you'd be left unconscious rather than be killed, so don't expect anybody else who has you at their mercy like that to ever grant it again." I'm not even trying to say you should threaten the players, even though that's what this amounts to. I'm saying that, if that's what verisimilitude is to the players, the fact they're alive at all should already break their verisimilitude.

You raised this question several times, and I agree with the whole "GM needs to have a talk with the players" bit. I can't speak for the OP, but there's a pretty obvious reason (both for why the NPCs didn't kill the PCs, and perhaps why the PCs should not seek to kill the NPCs:

They may need eachother at some later point.

This seems to be an environment where the two barons/patrons are "rivals", but not necessarily "enemies" (those are two different things). There is no open hostilities between them. The implication is that these two barons are themselves merely two figures in a larger set of potential powers/players in the game environment. And on a lot of things, they may find their needs aligning. It's why you don't automatically escalate every little thing into full warfare. There may be much more powerful enemies that both barons would want to be able to defend against, and their operatives may need to be able to get over their minor differences and squabbles when that happens.


Yeah, so this is kind of what I expected. They weren't going out of their way to ensure the parties death, but they did nothing to aid their safety, either. Being put in a potentially deadly situation after someone removes your ability to defend yourself is going to be treated as a pretty severe hostility.

They were in a relatively safe location. I'm not sure what is expected here. I mean, in our games, we sometimes assume that any time you don't leave a guard awake while traveling, some random monsters are going to come by and eat the party or something, but the reality is that this is not really something that happens much in most locations. Many of us go camping and magically fail to be eaten, despite not having someone "on watch" all night, right? We have, in our modern age, teens who earn wilderness survival merit badges, which require doing things far far more risky than merely sleeping through the night around a fire (that's just normal "camping" in the scouts). Depending on the game setting, and the specific location within that setting, drugging a group of travelers and letting them sleep it off around their campfire while you sneak off into the night is just not a terribly dangerous thing to do to them. Mean? Yes. Dangerous? No.

I also doubt very much that the source of the players "they must die!" position is some sort of "OMG! We could have died to wandering monsters!" response. It's much more about "they cost us something and must pay!". Which I totally get. And yeah, I think that can be redirected a bit by the GM based on the described setting and situation without too much difficulty. Or not. Hard to say how the players will respond. But it could be a very healthy RP opportunity for them, if they choose to accept it.

[Zanos]

They were in a relatively safe location. I'm not sure what is expected here. I mean, in our games, we sometimes assume that any time you don't leave a guard awake while traveling, some random monsters are going to come by and eat the party or something, but the reality is that this is not really something that happens much in most locations. Many of us go camping and magically fail to be eaten, despite not having someone "on watch" all night, right? We have, in our modern age, teens who earn wilderness survival merit badges, which require doing things far far more risky than merely sleeping through the night around a fire (that's just normal "camping" in the scouts). Depending on the game setting, and the specific location within that setting, drugging a group of travelers and letting them sleep it off around their campfire while you sneak off into the night is just not a terribly dangerous thing to do to them. Mean? Yes. Dangerous? No.
The typical campground is less dangerous than a D&Dverse campground, and I still wouldn't want to be placed in a magically induced stupor outdoors in a real life forest on the side of the road. I don't roofie my friends when we're out camping because I'm feeling a little mean and want to play a prank on them.


I also doubt very much that the source of the players "they must die!" position is some sort of "OMG! We could have died to wandering monsters!" response. It's much more about "they cost us something and must pay!". Which I totally get. And yeah, I think that can be redirected a bit by the GM based on the described setting and situation without too much difficulty. Or not. Hard to say how the players will respond. But it could be a very healthy RP opportunity for them, if they choose to accept it.
Fairly unlikely. While players are generally defensive of their loot it's uncommon for them to make killing a a petty thief their sole objective. I think you're correct that dying to wandering monsters is not their primary concern; their greatest offense at the incident is that they were taken advantage of by a group they considered to be friends, who have revealed themselves as a direct impediment of their goals that is willing to lie and betray to take advantage of their good nature.

[GloatingSwine]

You raised this question several times, and I agree with the whole "GM needs to have a talk with the players" bit. I can't speak for the OP, but there's a pretty obvious reason (both for why the NPCs didn't kill the PCs, and perhaps why the PCs should not seek to kill the NPCs:

They may need eachother at some later point.

This seems to be an environment where the two barons/patrons are "rivals", but not necessarily "enemies" (those are two different things). There is no open hostilities between them. The implication is that these two barons are themselves merely two figures in a larger set of potential powers/players in the game environment. And on a lot of things, they may find their needs aligning. It's why you don't automatically escalate every little thing into full warfare. There may be much more powerful enemies that both barons would want to be able to defend against, and their operatives may need to be able to get over their minor differences and squabbles when that happens.

That logic worked when they were rivals with mutual respect. Respect is off the table. Betrayal is now expected. It's the default position now.

[MonochromeTiger]

They were in a relatively safe location. I'm not sure what is expected here. I mean, in our games, we sometimes assume that any time you don't leave a guard awake while traveling, some random monsters are going to come by and eat the party or something, but the reality is that this is not really something that happens much in most locations. Many of us go camping and magically fail to be eaten, despite not having someone "on watch" all night, right? We have, in our modern age, teens who earn wilderness survival merit badges, which require doing things far far more risky than merely sleeping through the night around a fire (that's just normal "camping" in the scouts).

Modern campgrounds are also much more carefully regulated and tended. We've gradually moved away from "the woods are dark and scary and you'll get lost and eaten by Wolves" over time but the fact that we have Scouts who are earning survival badges for various tasks still acknowledges that those tasks are survival tactics even if the Scouts doing them are trained in how to do them and practice them in relatively safe and well known environments usually with numbers and supervision to mitigate any remaining risks.

Even in a camp ground that's watched for these kinds of things you still have the occasional case of animals wandering in and ransacking any loose camping supplies for food or resting where somebody wandering into them can scare them into lashing out. I've had a few camping trips where poisonous Snakes passed just a short distance from where people rested and a few incidents happened from people wandering a bit too close before they noticed what was there.

Meanwhile going back to older times the woods are dark and scary and while Wolves aren't the cold calculating killers they were believed to be they could still be dangerous, bears even more so. There's reasons to keep your guard up. RPGs make that even worse, violent criminals and unrealistically malicious animals are all over the place and you've got everything from monsters to whatever magic people don't want to be seen practicing in town to worry about. The worlds these games happen in, even the relatively safe ones, usually have a standard of somebody keeping watch for a reason, and even in a "safer" place being vulnerable is still being vulnerable and being put in that state by somebody you trusted is a massive violation of that trust that shows they're willing to put you in danger by leaving you there unprotected.


Depending on the game setting, and the specific location within that setting, drugging a group of travelers and letting them sleep it off around their campfire while you sneak off into the night is just not a terribly dangerous thing to do to them. Mean? Yes. Dangerous? No.

Depends on the setting, sure. Even in a realistic and modern setting you can't account for everything though. Really in more realistic and modern settings the response to leaving somebody drugged by the road side has even worse implications simply because of how many horror stories there are about situations involving those circumstances. If something involves drugging people who trust you and leaving them in a ditch it's, at best, a really messed up thing to do. At worst it's setting them up for the possibility of some random person or wild animal killing them while they're unconscious and take their remaining stuff.


I also doubt very much that the source of the players "they must die!" position is some sort of "OMG! We could have died to wandering monsters!" response. It's much more about "they cost us something and must pay!". Which I totally get. And yeah, I think that can be redirected a bit by the GM based on the described setting and situation without too much difficulty. Or not. Hard to say how the players will respond. But it could be a very healthy RP opportunity for them, if they choose to accept it.

I've seen both and really both kind of come from the same place. I can only speak for myself but after being robbed there's a definite feeling of lost security that you can't quite get back, even if nothing of particular value was taken the fact is that they still managed to take something from you and you couldn't prevent it and the thought is there that they could've done much more than that. Then the scenario at play here, they were left in a potentially dangerous position and there was little they could do to prevent it, that's going to really mess with their sense of security and lashing out at the source is sort of understandable.

Both can cause serious harm to your mental health, adding a betrayed trust on top of that is just a follow up gut punch to the emotions, and all of this in a game where most things are resolved with violence on some level I can absolutely see where the players are coming from. That said as you and others acknowledge the real thing to do here is to have some discussion between the players and GM and actually get everybody on the same page of what happened, why, and how people feel about it so it doesn't spiral into something nobody intended.

[ChudoJogurt]

So, I had a conversation with a players -- well, it was async chat between games, that has been ongoing for a while.
It is fairly clear to them that murdering the NPCs is not really an option due to legal and/or reputational constraints. I also underscored that going into full blood-vendetta mode is an escalation compared to what was done to them, and outlined that they can go less-than-lethal route, with comparable counter-play.
They agreed, I think, between themselves that escalating conflict is what they want, and that's what they intend to do.
We have a game on Sunday, so wonder what they're gonna do now.

if people are interested, I'm happy to post some detailed reports from the game (gonna have to ask my players for permission, tho)

[Pauly]

Trying to focus on the second question from the OP - How to de-escalate the situation?
(The consensus to the first question is that it was the player’s response is within the norm of expected PC behavior)

The current situation is that the PCs are obsessed with getting revenge and will derail any attempt to play the main regular campaign until their revenge lust is slaked.

Option 1. OOC talk.
I’m against this for 2 reasons. The first is that it smacks of the GM telling the players they are having wrongfun. The other is that the players have stumbled into a plot hook they are totally invested in, and my philosophy as a GM is to lean into player generated plot hooks as much as I can.

Option 2. Mafia Sitdown.
The barons negotiate an appropriate allowable level of revenge. The PCs may have a say in the negotiations but the end decision is made by more senior people. It might be an outcome such as they are allowed to kill 1 member of the NPC party, no more. I don’t think the genre really supports this kind of resolution.

Option 3. Elaborate revenge.
The players plot and scheme to enact an elaborate poetic revenge on the NPCs. They will probably need an NPC quest giver such as the baron to set them on this path.

Option 4 Cheap revenge.
The PCs come across the NPCs completely at their advantage. Drunk, drugged, asleep, resources depleted after a hard fight. If the PCs want to kill them it’s a quick one sided affair. The players will feel cheated out of having proper revenge.

Option 5. Apology from the NPCs.
This is a bit bigger than “whoops we’re sorry”. One possibility is the leader of the NPCs comes to the PCs and returns the stolen items. He explains “I’m sorry but it was all [Belkar’s] fault. He drugged you without telling the rest of us and then suggested we get ahead while you were asleep. He then doubled back and stole your papers and gear.”. He then says [Belkar] has been kicked out of their group. They won’t help the NPCs help hunt down and kill [Belkar], but they won’t lift a finger to to help [Belkar].

[Mastikator]

That logic worked when they were rivals with mutual respect. Respect is off the table. Betrayal is now expected. It's the default position now.

There's a wide chasm between "rivals you don't respect and you want humiliate" and "frothing at the mouth, hunt them to the ends of the earth and kill them".

A proportional response might be to frame them for a crime and have them rot in a cell for a year, or have them estranged from their own lord. Or steal all of their most valued possessions and destroy the rest. There are tons of ways the players can get back at their rivals, but they don't see those options. They only see red. Because they are murderhobos.

[KorvinStarmast]

I don't roofie my friends when we're out camping because I'm feeling a little mean and want to play a prank on them. Well played. *golf clap*

That logic worked when they were rivals with mutual respect. Respect is off the table. Betrayal is now expected. It's the default position now. Unless a further IC interaction between the groups points in another direction. (TBH, that PoV isn't a bad one as an entering position). That 'roofie them' move was not a friendly move, it was a hostile one. The question is of degree not kind.


They agreed, I think, between themselves that escalating conflict is what they want, and that's what they intend to do.
We have a game on Sunday, so wonder what they're gonna do now.

if people are interested, I'm happy to post some detailed reports from the game (gonna have to ask my players for permission, tho) Please do! I'd love to see how this works out. :smallsmile: Also, thanks for coming back to follow up, I think we had gotten into a bit of a hamsterwheel ... :smallcool:

Trying to focus on the second question from the OP - How to de-escalate the situation?
(The consensus to the first question is that it was the player’s response is within the norm of expected PC behavior)

Option 5. Apology from the NPCs.
This is a bit bigger than “whoops we’re sorry”. One possibility is the leader of the NPCs comes to the PCs and returns the stolen items. He explains “I’m sorry but it was all [Belkar’s] fault. He drugged you without telling the rest of us and then suggested we get ahead while you were asleep. He then doubled back and stole your papers and gear.”. He then says [Belkar] has been kicked out of their group. They won’t help the NPCs help hunt down and kill [Belkar], but they won’t lift a finger to to help [Belkar]. Over all a very good post, but Option 5 sings to me. It is right there in the DM's wheelhouse to open the door for something other than the "kill them all" line ... but the players may respond by doing something harsher: up to them.

[MonochromeTiger]

There's a wide chasm between "rivals you don't respect and you want humiliate" and "frothing at the mouth, hunt them to the ends of the earth and kill them".

There is. Problem is the former is much less viable when everybody involved is a highly dangerous mercenary and the rivalry is likely to consist of interfering in each others' vital missions on a regular basis. Moot point anyway in this situation as of the latest update however.


A proportional response might be to frame them for a crime and have them rot in a cell for a year,

They have connections on the same level as the players' party who would likely intervene to get them out. Even without that they're adventurers with their own resources and abilities who would likely find some way out fairly quickly. After that you've now got an opposed party who is ticked off at being set up and jailed and more motivated to go after you.


or have them estranged from their own lord.

Which then results in them being ticked off at losing their source of income and the patronage of somebody they're loyal to meaning, again, they're ticked off and more motivated to go after you.


Or steal all of their most valued possessions and destroy the rest.

Same problem though this does actually weaken them as a threat for however long it takes them to replace their stuff. Really the issue with escalation of any kind is that it gives more of a push toward the eventual endpoint of "we are enemies" and even the nonviolent methods can easily cut you off from any benefits of the other party being around. Without those benefits there's also not much point to intentionally pulling punches to ensure a somewhat hostile party of rivals is around to repeatedly mess up whatever you're doing and potentially make your life much more dangerous.


There are tons of ways the players can get back at their rivals, but they don't see those options. They only see red. Because they are murderhobos.

As of the latest update they've actively decided against actually killing the other party. So no, they're not murderhobos.

Even without that however there's a very big gap between acknowledging the danger posed by this kind of hostile relationship between powerful individuals and "murderhobo." More so when a conceit of their positions in society is that they've got some pretty decent chances of getting around any legal repercussions their patrons can buy or talk them out of and their power as individuals and problem solvers makes finding other patrons pretty likely if their existing one drops their services.

[Peat]

So, I had a conversation with a players -- well, it was async chat between games, that has been ongoing for a while.
It is fairly clear to them that murdering the NPCs is not really an option due to legal and/or reputational constraints. I also underscored that going into full blood-vendetta mode is an escalation compared to what was done to them, and outlined that they can go less-than-lethal route, with comparable counter-play.
They agreed, I think, between themselves that escalating conflict is what they want, and that's what they intend to do.
We have a game on Sunday, so wonder what they're gonna do now.

if people are interested, I'm happy to post some detailed reports from the game (gonna have to ask my players for permission, tho)

Yeah, I'm interested. Glad to hear everyone is on the same page, sounds like you'll have a blast.

[Pauly]

Over all a very good post, but Option 5 sings to me. It is right there in the DM's wheelhouse to open the door for something other than the "kill them all" line ... but the players may respond by doing something harsher: up to them.

It also sets up the party member the NPCs kicked out of their group as a potential recurring villain, especially if it is a sneaky rogue who pops up now and again to pee in their porridge. One that when the PCs eventually track down and kill they will feel immense satisfaction.

[Thunder999]

It's not a particularly unreasonable response, there's few things people hate more than a traitor.

[ChudoJogurt]

So, nothing much happened today. The characters came up with an interesting plan, cornered one of the NPCs, but ultimately, did nothing, and threatened him, saying that he better return the papers and items stolen, or sleep with his eyes open.
No other interactions happened so far.





Dramatis Personae:
The Party are 5th level, and there are four:
Aristocrat/Warblade -- he doesn't have Aristocrat class, but he's a minor noble-born in his backstory, and we use it in roleplay.
Rogue -- Swordsage, really, but he sneaks and backstabs. Not great with traps or locks, though.
Warlock -- a warlock. A really silent guy IRL, so he barely speaks, but he's our main Alchemy specialist which is mildly important in the story.
Shapeshifter -- a Wildshape Variant Ranger, who keeps his Wildshaping (which by local law and custom ought to be reported and marked on his clothing) a secret for sneaking purposes. A real OSR type.

They serve a newly-made Barron, as part of his household, and they are following her (it's a she) into her new domain on a wild, henceforth untrod frontier. Their job (as a whole) is to trod it, tame it, and establish a proper feud.
Along them and their entire group, a second Baron follows. He is to assume his holding in about the same territory (they will decide on the exact demarcation later, but for now, the wilderness is wild, monsters and indigenous tribes roam, they join their forces in an uneasy alliance.

The 2Baron also has his own group of three NPC halflings who work for him, and are adventurers' counterparts. I made them weaker (4th level vs 5th), but also built them so as to avoid-and-evade if PCs choose to attack them, the NPCs would have many options to run away, through various disengagement strategies.

In previous episodes
(it's mildly relevant, I promise! Also, hopefully interesting.)

So as they go together, they discover a good place for a more permanent encampment - a lone mountainous plateau overseeing plain steppe and the river. The PCs are sent to investigate, and they find out that it's guarded by a hive of giant prescient Watts-style pseudosapient insects, and within that mountain, there are some remains of ancient ruins, that seem to be much more advanced than is typical for the local indigenous population.
They know these ruins sometimes contain valuable magic items, gold and jewels, or at least some collector's items and items of ancient art, but before they have a chance to investigate deeper, they are chased away by the soldier-insects of the hive.

Their Barrons make a deal to unite their forces, clean the insects out, and establish a joint castle as the base of their operations, while they do reconnaissance and prepare to split their ways. While the barons make their deals, of which the characters aren't really aware, the NPCs invite the PCs for a joint venture. They have found a hidden entrance to the insect hive, and they suggest both parties will sneak into the insect hive, and try to get to the riches hidden in the ancient ruins before the Barrons take it all for themselves. It's a bit cheeky, but the players agree, and together they sneak in, and as the PCs fight the inside the hive, the NPCs leave them and go dungeon-delving on their own.

The players get some cool magic items (and so do NPCs, off-screen), and some interesting alchemical substances, seemingly produced by a natural structure of the corridors of the hive.
The next day the Barrons move in with their main armies, and clean out the hive, destroying all the insects and killing the queen.

The players are summoned in and they are told that the deal was made by their liege with the other Baron -- the other guy gets all the magic items that may or may not be found in the ruins, whereas their baron gets all the mundane stuff - the iron ore, with which the mountain is positively lousy, and the territory itself.
Unfortunately the 'magic stuff' includes a completely unprecedented find -- there is a substance deep in the hive that is, once alchemically purified, is essentially pure magic -- good enough to create magic items in lieu of XP. That is, by all accounts impossible, and hugely, hugely valuable. Their Baron cannot go back on her word, but wants to outflank her ally/rival -- she sends the characters to the main city on the continent, to purchase exclusive contracts for reagents and machinery needed to purify said substance, so that the other Baron would have no choice but to share the profits.
She gives the players a writ of credit and a letter of recommendation to one of her allies in the higher aristocracy of the city who can lend her support both financially and politically. They will leave, under the guise of supporting an incoming shipment of lumber. They will ride (about two weeks' worth of riding) towards the more civilised part of the continent, go to the lumber-producting village to check on the shipment, and then ride another two days to the city, where they will procure the equipment and secure the contracts for the materials, and ride back the same route, arriving with the lumber-shipment.

They ride, and hijinks ensue, both on the way through the wilderness and in the lumber-producing village. They solve a problem with a potential uprising for the local lord, who gives them a recommendation to his cousin - a minor aristocrat who, among other things, runs a salon in the city, and a potentially magical golden statue for their help.

They leave the village early in the morning, ride through the day, and as they are ready to stop on the pastures halfway to the city, they see the familiar NPCs, waving at them, having already stopped at the best camping location around.
The NPCS invite them to their campfire, they pool their money to buy a couple of goats from a nearby goat-herder, and share stew (the PCs have the stew) and some shashlik (which the NPCs eat exclusively).
As they set up the first watch -- one of each party, the PC watchman (watchgnome, sorry), feels his eyelids growing heavy, and, failing a will-save, falls into a deep, magical slumber.

Everyone wakes up, really (like, surprisingly) well-rested, and realise that it's the middle of the morning, their NPC rivals are long gone, and both their writ of recommendation, their letter of credit and a shiny golden statue they got from the lumber-village-lord for helping him with his problems, are gone with them.
They now have no money (well, outside of their personal funds, which are clearly insufficient for the task), and no proof that they are even acting on behalf of their lord. While their rivals know why they are here and are way ahead of them if they have the same mission. But at least the Warlock, and his alchemical knowledge, allows them to reproduce a good approximation of the list of stuff they would need to procure.

First, the players try to give chase. The Ranger turns into a Giant Hawk, and scouts around, but their tracks are lost once they cross a fairly busy road. He then tries to head them off at the city gate, but he has no luck -- most likely because they are long since in the city.

Second, the players try to find the NPCs in the city. They pay off a bunch of potential informants, they roll Gather Information, and after a couple of hours, they track the distinct group of three very well-equipped and armed halflings to a tavern in a seedier part of the town, where they seem to be gambling and drinking, potentially after a long day of doing the things PCs should have been doing instead of chasing said halflings. Now PCs seriously contemplate just barging in and murdering everyone, but there's too many witnesses, and the tavern in a seedy part of town is bound to have protection, so cooler heads prevail.
The Rogue sneaks instead, into the NPCs rooms. He's not great at opening locks though, so he uses his martial prowess to cut through the door, and, not having checked for traps (he failed his Search roll), barges in, which raises the magical Alarm, and mentally alerts the NPC. He ransacks the room but fails to find either the documents (long since burned to ash) or the statue (NPCs buried it somewhere outside of the city).
The NPCs and the tavern security try to grab him, but he swiftly escapes, jumping out the window.

We ended our game there and took a two-week pause until the next one.

--> That's sort of situation at the moment of the OP.

They discuss their options in the chat. The players are pretty angry about the whole deal, but they understand that they don't exactly have the best chances to get away with murder here, until one of them has an idea. If NPCs are evil no-good backstabbers, there is no way that the PCs are the first people they backstabbed, right? There's got to be someone else who could if not murder the NPCs for them, at least slow them down enough so that PCs have a chance to fulfil their mission.

I have not planned that, to be honest, but, I thought that was a pretty cool idea, so I rolled with it. Aristocrat used his Knowledge Local, to remember a rumour he heard before he left the town for the frontier, of a certain high-ranking martial adept looking to open a martial school of his own, when one of the NPCs who was to be his student, has stolen something from him. Aristocrat didn't know what was the thing that was stolen, but it was very valuable -- it might have been an item, a secret technique or even a woman (ok, I did not phrase that well, but you understand my meaning), only that said Adept was rather unhappy about it, and no new school got opened.

So next game they track down said Adept. He seems to be surrounded by some sort of rogue types (sneaky, all-black-wearing, martially not completely useless), and meets them in a hidey-hole in a basement in the Industrial Quarters. They tell him they know where the NPC who stole from him is, and he seems to be suitably disposed to track him down and do grievous bodily harm of some sort, so they are somewhat emboldened.
They split their party, and run around town, trying to actually do their mission. They learn some useful things, they manage to arrange for the less valuable things on their list, and as the Aristocrat and the Shapeshifter are returning back to their own seedy tavern, they hear cries for help and sounds of battle.

They rush over there, and see NPCs being attacked by ninjas. They have clearly been ambushed -- one of the NPCs has a crossbow bolt in his guts, the other is in a melee with two ninjas, and has several deep cuts already, and the third is activating an unknown artefact of protection as he tries to heal himself from some invisible wound.

The players return back to HULK SMASH mode, and run to aid the ninjas, as the NPCs try to disengage and run away.
The payers aren't terribly successful, and the NPCs are built to run away, so two of the NPCs run away clean, but the third is chased, and while he loses the ninjas, he is cornered by the Aristocrat. The Aristocrat raises his spiked chain...

And freezes. There isn't that much he can do. Sure he (and the Shapeshifter, who is not far behind) can beat the snot out of the NPC easily enough, but that would be aggravated assault and battery, where there are enough witnesses. And if ninjas may not care, the Aristocrat is not really into living off the grid and avoiding the fuzz, so he can't just start throwing punches.

He can't really take the NPC prisoner either. Robbing him is even worse than murder, for sure. So.... he lowers his spiked chain down. And says that if they don't return the papers and the statue they stole, then this means WAR. So think hard, if you want to have us as a friend or as an enemy.
The NPC sighs, says that, well, real sorry mate, but the papers (if we took them, which nuh-uh, I can't confirm or deny) are long since turned to ash, and it's really nothing personal, you see. Just business. Hope y'understand, but nuthin I can do. So if m'lord don't mind, I'll just...
And that's about it. The NPC leaves, the Aristocrat is a bit miffed. But there's at least a chance of getting the statue back... though I personally wouldn't count on it.



Ok, so nijas they hired, actually work for the local Magic University.
The University is the main source of raw magic here, through their Spellpool, and they are not looking for competition, which, coincidentally, and entirely independently of the characters has been appearing in the town. While the characters (or rather their Baron and her rival) have stumbled on a source of pure magic, another group of Evil mages and worshippers of the Evil Gods have figured out how to make raw magic through ritualistic torture and sacrifice, and intend to sell that stuff on the black market.
The University, having gotten a sniff of it, hired said ninjas, to figure out who is cornering in on their market, and the characters (and the NPCs) running around and asking about all sorts of magical devices and reagents have triggered all the right triggers to make the ninjas believe that PCs and NPCs alike are their target, and will be looking to betray the PCs the next time they have a chance to lure them into ambush.
I'm hoping that this will make NPCs and PCs to make an unlikely alliance, to try to fight back against the ninjas.

[icefractal]

I'm not your players, but I feel like this isn't really doing anything to change their opinion on murdering the rival group, and the twist may in fact turn them full-on murderhobo.

Like, they did spare the NPC, with an ultimatum to return their stuff or else it's war ... and the NPCs answer was basically to choose war: a non-apology, reveal that they couldn't return the most important stuff, and probably wouldn't return the statue either (and while the papers may have been their duty to take, the statue is just normal theft). Not that it doesn't make sense - said NPC had just been nearly killed by the PCs' apparent allies and reasonably wasn't inclined to be nice. But it can make sense and still lead to "these are annoying enemies, not friendly rivals".

And the twist - so after being betrayed by one group they thought they were on good terms with, they ally with another group and ... get betrayed by them too? NGL, even though I said the initial reaction was excessive, I think as a player I'd very plausibly take the second betrayal as "ok, I'm just not trusting any NPCs anymore, allies are for chumps apparently". Even the uniting aspect I have doubts about. You know the ninjas would be suspicious of them anyway, but as far as the PCs know the problem would be entirely a by-product of the rival group's actions. So even if said rival group helps them out in this, all they'd be doing is helping clean up their own mess.

[Pauly]

[

Ok, so nijas they hired, actually work for the local Magic University.
The University is the main source of raw magic here, through their Spellpool, and they are not looking for competition, which, coincidentally, and entirely independently of the characters has been appearing in the town. While the characters (or rather their Baron and her rival) have stumbled on a source of pure magic, another group of Evil mages and worshippers of the Evil Gods have figured out how to make raw magic through ritualistic torture and sacrifice, and intend to sell that stuff on the black market.
The University, having gotten a sniff of it, hired said ninjas, to figure out who is cornering in on their market, and the characters (and the NPCs) running around and asking about all sorts of magical devices and reagents have triggered all the right triggers to make the ninjas believe that PCs and NPCs alike are their target, and will be looking to betray the PCs the next time they have a chance to lure them into ambush.
I'm hoping that this will make NPCs and PCs to make an unlikely alliance, to try to fight back against the ninjas.


So your twist is to have the PCs betrayed by a different group of NPCs who they thought they could trust?

I know from a story perspective it makes sense, but your players don’t know this part of the story. The players are going to feel you’ve backstabbed them again.

Think about how that will affect how they interact with any NPC in the future.

If you want to play a campaign where NPCs are untrustworthy and will shaft the PCs at the drop of a hat Shadowrun is the game you should be playing.

[Catullus64]

This seems like a thing that may cool with time, so keep some distance between your PCs and these NPCs for a while. Your players are super angry now and want blood revenge; give it a few weeks of play time and a few months of in-game time and they might be a little more circumspect. If it helps, have them encounter the rivals at a diplomatic or court function where they're not allowed to start a fracas. (Note that last one is prone to backfiring if your players decide that they want to start a fight anyway.) The NPCs have a chance to smooth things over to the point that your PCs don't immediately want their heads.

[gbaji]

Modern campgrounds are also much more carefully regulated and tended.

Campgrounds and campsites are very different things. There are lots of people who camp out in the middle of nowhere, with no set camp grounds set up, no facilities, and rare (or not at all) park ranger presence. My scouting experience as a teen back in the 70s may have been a bit atypical even for that time period, but we regularly camped in the middle of a vast redwood forest, miles away from the nearest road, well off the beaten path, and not on any sort of park land at all (wealthy patron owned vast tracks of land up on the mountain we lived on, and allowed us to camp there). And that was just our monthly weekend camp trips. We also did longer backpacking trips up in the Sierras, and other out of the way locations in Northern California (though we usually had a ranger/guide on the longer trips).

Let's separate this into two different things:

1. The actual danger of being left in a deep sleep around a campfire in the great outdoors: Very very low. The odds of someone or something dangerous coming along randomly in any given couple hour period of time is incredibly low. That's what I'm talking about when I say things like "young teens do this and manage to not get killed (very often anyway)". I'm not talking about the drugging bit here, but merely the odds of something dangerous happening during that very narrow window of time.

2. The act of being drugged by the NPCs so they can steal the papers/whatnot from the party: This is a different thing. In a fantasy world where these same characters are regularly getting into dangerous fights, and dealing with a host of deadly things? We certainly would consider this a dangerous thing to do to a group of teens in our modern world, but if we loop that back to a group of adventurers in an RPG? Pretty tame really. We should not judge this by the same standard I was looking at in 1, above.


With 1, I was merely responding to several claims that the NPCs effectively put the PCs at risk of loss of life, thus rationlizing/justifying a lethal response. That's it. Again, the drugging is a separate issue. Were the PCs really in any danger? The answer is: No. At the end of the day, the PCs were disabled and stolen from. That's it. They can (and should) respond in kind to the NPC group, but to leap all the way to "let's kill them all!" seems extreme.

Again though, having said that, I also know how player groups think, so I'm not at all surprised by the response (it's very much a "modern RPG players response", and not so much "realistic response for people who were actually in that situation", but yeah). And it sounds like the OP did pull them down off the ledge somewhat. Although the "twist" seems to have undone that work IMO. Unless the objective is to just make the PCs completely paranoid of working with anyone at all, that seemed like a bit of poor timing for that.

[Xervous]

As I’ve had players comment openly when the world seems entirely set against them, sneaking another betrayal onto the players is just going to reinforce player vs world mentality. The players need to be able to see and feel that the steps they take are leading to logical conclusions or they will default to known functional interactions (violence). Proper emphasis that trusting the ninjas is risky would add immediate tension and establish their betrayal as a more isolated case rather than a world constant.

[Segev]

I'm going to use a situation in video game design to illustrate the point I think several people are trying to make here.

I'm going to say this was Call of Duty, but I could be misremembering which FPS it was. But for sake of this, I'll be using "CoD" as the identifier for the game.

When they were programming the AI in CoD, they programmed it initially with tactical acumen that relied on sight lines and overwatch info so that the individual NPC soldiers would respond to player tactics based on what they individually could see, or what their allied NPCs could see and relay to them via line of sight. They programmed them with good squad tactics, and if you watched the game from an overwatch perspective, you could clearly see how the computer AI played quite fair.

However, the player doesn't have that overwatch perspective. The player only sees what he, himself, can see. Players in playtesting complained about a computer AI that cheated by having not only global information, but spawning enemy soldiers in the worst possible places with no warning. From the player's perspective, he'd cleared that niche or alcove earlier, but because he didn't know about the path from around that corner to where the enemies were, even if he saw 5 enemies in the pillbox earlier, he didn't realize that they'd split up to surround him and the one that "magically spawned" in the alcove actually sneaked around out of his sight. It was, technically, totally fair play by the computer. If it were a PVP battle where all the soldiers were controlled by individual players, the player criticizing it would've been shouting something like, "WHERE DID HE COME FROM?!" but, knowing it's another player, he either would shriek about no-clip cheating or would accept that there must have been some way that was accomplished. But when it's a computer that controls the game world as well as the NPC AI, the players assumed that, since they didn't know how those guys got there, the computer cheated.

The solution the CoD game devs found was to add voiced calls from the NPCs. "I'm going left!" "He's over here!" "Split up and surround him!" and other such cues that signal to the player that NPC soldiers are doing certain things. It does technically make the game easier for the player, because now he has tactical information sacrificed on the altar by the NPCs' shouts of their plans. But it also, importantly, gave the player just enough of that "overwatch perspective" from where he is in the trenches to appreciate that the computer was "playing fair."


Where this analogy plays in to the OP's situation and what others are saying about the PCs feeling like the world is just backstabbing them every time they trust anybody is that, despite the fact that this background plot the PCs never hear anything about (at least, not before the betrayal happens) explains in full why this is happening and even gives them possible hooks once they learn about it to take their revenge, the fact that the PCs don't - and can't - know about it before it goes off means that the player perspective is not, "Well, there must be more going on here." The player perspective is, "Every time we work with any NPCs, they abuse every inch of trust we give them to cause us harm by betraying that trust. We can't trust any NPCs at all; they're all out to get us." i.e., they see the "cheating AI" because they don't see the overwatch perspective of how the AI used the terrain to do what it did.

@ChudoJogurt, what you need to do is find ways for the PCs to discover at least hints about the way factions are aligned and the possible betrayal - and, importantly, who can be actually trusted (especially if it's the rival team) - from evidence they can believe because it's not just words told to them by more potentially-untrustworthy NPCs. The players can then either feel clever when they thwart the betrayal, and even feel good about having trusted the right people, or they at least can look back and say, "Well, I should've seen that coming." And, importantly, if they do get betrayed and say, "I should've seen that coming," they should also get information that shows them that there were NPCs who wouldn't have betrayed them, and are even (if possible) working to try to save them / make it right.

Remember: if the reader/audience/players don't see something in a game, it may as well not have happened. If you've got sufficient trust built up, you can get away with not showing them something that's key to what's going on until later, building mystery. But that requires trust be built up. The initial belief is realistically going to be that things are just out to get them. Not, "Wow, I wonder why this NPC group just attacked us; they MUST have a good and compelling reason why we shouldn't defend ourselves lethally and/or take revenge to get our stuff back!"

[KorvinStarmast]

@ChudoJogurt, what you need to do is find ways for the PCs to discover at least hints about the way factions are aligned and the possible betrayal - and, importantly, who can be actually trusted (especially if it's the rival team) - from evidence they can believe because it's not just words told to them by more potentially-untrustworthy NPCs. The players can then either feel clever when they thwart the betrayal, and even feel good about having trusted the right people, or they at least can look back and say, "Well, I should've seen that coming." And, importantly, if they do get betrayed and say, "I should've seen that coming," they should also get information that shows them that there were NPCs who wouldn't have betrayed them, and are even (if possible) working to try to save them / make it right.

Remember: if the reader/audience/players don't see something in a game, it may as well not have happened. If you've got sufficient trust built up, you can get away with not showing them something that's key to what's going on until later, building mystery. But that requires trust be built up. The initial belief is realistically going to be that things are just out to get them. Not, "Wow, I wonder why this NPC group just attacked us; they MUST have a good and compelling reason why we shouldn't defend ourselves lethally and/or take revenge to get our stuff back!" Overall a good post, and I think that part of what you are getting at is foreshadowing, so that the I should have seen that coming comes from the players themselves as a natural reaction.
I suspect that about this time a "three clue rule" point will be made since not all hints or signals come across with equal fidelity. (Which is something marriage counselors wrestle with in their profession)

[Segev]

Overall a good post, and I think that part of what you are getting at is foreshadowing, so that the I should have seen that coming comes from the players themselves as a natural reaction.
I suspect that about this time a "three clue rule" point will be made since not all hints or signals come across with equal fidelity. (Which is something marriage counselors wrestle with in their profession)

Right, and I just feel it important to emphasize, because I'm not sure I got it across firmly enough, that, "I should have seen that coming," must not be based on, "...because NPCs always betray us." It must be based on, "I knew he was up to something. I knew about the clandestine meeting with the bad guy. I knew he cheated at the mustache twirling contest! Why didn't I put together that Snidely Whiplash was going to betray me?"