What if it IS what my character would do?

[Talakeal]

You know, I have been thinking more about what Icefractal said about PvP being a spectrum, and I think that needs to be more common knowledge. And I think being able to DETECT pvp is an incredibly valuable skill for GMs, as I think most of it just flies right over their head.

To use my example, the DM did absolutely nothing until I crossed a line that existed only in his head, and then decided to ruin both the dynamic of the gaming group and the verisimilitude of the setting with an extremely heavy-handed over reaction.

On the other hand, the best GM I have ever played under, we had this situation: We came across someone was injured, I was playing a surgeon and went to heal them. Another player, a diviner, cast a spell to find the optimal way to treat them. The GM saw that this was a "pvp microaggression" as he was attempting to steal the spotlight, and so the divination's answer came back "The best way to heal them is to let Talakeal do what she is doing."

Nope. Why is it always "kill anyone who does x or die trying"? Who in real life does that, for anything? Opposing x wherever you encounter it is a good and flavourful character trait, and there are multiple ways to oppose something that is both non-disruptive, and in fact could even create content for everyone at the table, but just ratcheting it up to "must engage in violence immediately, to the death" is just massively inflexible and unrealistic. Apply some nuance to the trait and everyone benefits, play it flat and uncompromising, and that's when you have a problem.

You know, I just had a long thread about the very same topic. In my case, it is that every group I have ever had (and apparently a majority of GitP posters) really do feel that "kill anyone or die trying" is the correct response to ANY situation where you are going to be captured.

There was potential for a very interesting party dynamic here, but the Fighter blew it to defaulting to violence. A party are supposed to be, at best, a group of friends, at worst, a group of co-workers who tolerate each other. Interpersonal friction is certainly within the bounds of play, but violence is not; what friend group would survive one member outright attacking another? None, it is just utterly unreasonable. There were plenty of ways to play out the situation that didn't involve violence, but the fighters player stepped over the line.



Sure, the fighter has already broken the fellowship, but again, premeditated murder is not the solution to a disagreement. You could argue that the rogue saw the water incident as an attempt on his life, and a sign of escalation, and knew a more serious attempt on his life was only a matter of time, but still, why murder, and not just abandon the party in the night and make a new character? Either way, your characters membership is over (no-one is keeping someone in the party who will just outright murder a companion in the night, regardless of provocation), so taking the Fighter out first served no useful purpose.

My thinking at the time was, one of us will be making a new character, but we both like and want to keep playing our current character, so I am going to force the issue by striking first. The rest of the party would have been fine either way. What I didn't expect was the DM to then intervene (both in and ooc) against me as he had previously been totally hands off in the conflict, and had actually ramped it up by having me attacked by monsters after being thrown in the lake.

Obviously, it was stupid and immature, but we were teenage gamers.

We were also a band of murder hobos. We regularly committed murder, we just did it on the battlefield with swords drawn. Saying that killing someone in their sleep is somehow worse is basically doing the same thing the fighter was doing, assuming that anyone who uses stealth is morally inferior and worthy of disdain.