Rough Roleplaying

[HMS Invincible]

Halfway through the semester and my group still doesn't trust each other. Every member of the party is Neutral something/mercenary except for me and our fighter. On several occasions, someone in our party has asked the enemy to pay them to betray the party. In addition, we've abandoned or ignored party members who were in trouble. This epic below is why you set up rock solid group dynamics early.

On the first quest, the party got sent out on quest to stop caravan raids. 2nd party got sent out to kill us by the same quest giver. Both parties meet up and weapons drawn. First party isn't willing to fight other party. 2nd party is willing...DM intervenes and party gets sent back to quest giver for awkward reunion. I ask OOC why the half orc was so confrontational, and we both chalked it up to roleplaying a 8 int 10 wis, 10 cha CN half orc barbarian.
1. Sorcerer. Betrayed party to evil guy on the first quest for 2k gold. It worked out because we found out and both parties blamed him for our troubles. We group up and beat the crap out of backstabbing quest giver and sorcerer PC. Group decides, being beaten up and robbed of his gold is punishment enough. He stays with us.

2. After druid goes down, the rogue runs away leaving me alone against a orc. I get a lucky crit and kill it. We both chalk it up to roleplaying...

3. We kill bounty hunters who are after us. The magical longswords taken by half orc and the sorcerer backstabber keeps the magical leather armor. They inform no one. Both of them sell their loot for magical items they can actually use. The armor was intended for the rogue, dunno about the sword. I talk to him OOC and he says he doesn't consider us part of his friends yet. I tell him to share it anyway, says I'm metagaming. Whatever, I'm the new guy so I won't press it.

4. Mage walks up to our half orc on watch. Mage says he wants to kill us all. Half orc asks if the mage can pay him to help kill us all. The mage refuses 3 increasingly cheaper offers of pay to betray us. Thank god for creative DMs, the mage responds that he'd rather keep all the reward money and kill the orc too. Orc decides to rage and wake everyone up. OOC he says the price for his betrayal will go up as he bonds with us...

5. Mage turns out to be from rival country and he shows up in my room. Threatens to kill me if I don't help him kill the Guard Lieutenant. I refuse and abrupt jaunt when he tries to kill me. I yell for help and the sorcerer looks outside, and goes back to bed. The rest of the party chases him off but not before finding out the mage has spell turning, and only lvl 0-2 spells with superior targeting. He kills people by casting magic missile or ray of frost inside people's skulls. He dealt 32 damage with magic missile and killed our summoned monster II. He vows revenge the next night and leaves.

The DM takes the kid gloves off. Starting party: Lvl 4- 2 Wizards, 1 sorcerer, 1 fighter, 1 half orc barbarian, 1 rogue.
6. We tell the lieutenant in charge that a high mage wanted to kill him. Lieutenant decides to use me as bait since the mage promised to kill me that night. He sets up an ambush with guards to kill the mage. Later that day, a cliched wizard in jaunty hat, beard and blue robes shows up and offers each of us 1k gold to leave town. He gives us an hour to think about it before he leaves town. The mage who tried to kill me will arrive in 2 hours. We tell him we'll think about it and he leaves to his room in the Inn upstairs. We decide on having our 3 casters counterspell the mage into oblivion. Half of us leave to inform the guards of the suspicious blue robe guy, and the other half stay. John the wizard decides to go up to the blue guy's room. He doesn't come back. The DM hands him a note and with orders to flip the note over if he says no. The sorcerer goes up to the room and demands to know what is going on. The sorcerer( Will) sees John there and demands answers. Bam! Dead, brain melted. Blue Wizard, OOC we know it's the same mage who attacked me, drags the body into his room and cleans up the blood. We get back to find half our party gone. So we go up to the wizard room and demand to know what's going on. John is there and acts suspiciously and refused to come join us. Will is nowhere to be found. I cast charm person, but it failed. Asking where Will is, he told us that he teleported Will outside of town. We fail our sense motive and everyone but the half orc and me go back downstairs. I stood in the hallway and the half orc is inside the room. The mage offers to talk to the half orc in private and he arcane locks the door before I can stop him. I go down stairs and demand the rogue pick the lock. The rogue refuses to leave his hiding spot because he wants to sneak attack the mage who will come in 30 minutes. The DM hands a note to the half orc with instructions to flip it over if he says no...

A mage has just talked to several of my party members alone, without supervision and now they are acting strangely. I go upstairs to test a theory. I offer our half orc barbarian, who's loves liquor and women, a night of hookers on me. He refuses, and I immediately turn around and leave. The mage tells the orc to go kill me. I see the orc walking down the stairs, and I cast sleep on him. Next round, I coup de grace with a longbow. Dead. The mage spends his turn handing the formerly invisible body of Will to John with instructions to cry loudly when someone opens the door. He then leaves to the adjacent room, readying an action to cast when he hears crying. My remaining party members, and the lieutenant charge up the stairs. Our fighter opens the door, John cries out, the mage casts his spell. Bam! Brain melted, dead. Surprise round is over, Roll Initiative. I cast sleep on the mage, he makes his will save. He kills the Lieutenant, moves out the window. The guards stand in shock, Rogue sees the entire party raped horribly, runs out of the inn. I look out the window, mage is gone. I ask the DM if combat is over; "Yes."

Conclusion: Mission, failure. Ending PC: 2 wizards, 1 rogue. We went to the temple to get raise dead, error 404, souls not found. Treasure: Dead PC items go away.
Btw, if you can't tell, we're all friends in real life except with John.
Edit: I'm trying desperately to shorten this post as much as possible.

[Arbane]

Sounds like the game is a smashing success!

Well, if you were trying for a medieval version of Paranoia, anyway.

If not, I recommend nuking the campaign from orbit and making characters using the Star Wars RPG's system: Every PC has to know and be on decent terms with AT LEAST one other PC.

[Dark_Nohn]

I really hate the half-session to full session length "getting to know your party," and even worse, when we're expected to get to know the other person as you adventure with them. You're supposed to adventure with people that you trust, or at least get along with, otherwise there's always going to be that "beginning" part of the RPG when the players are constantly backstabbing until they realize that it detracts from the plot, and character (sheet) development

[RelentlessImp]

Sounds like the game is a smashing success!

Well, if you were trying for a medieval version of Paranoia, anyway.

If not, I recommend nuking the campaign from orbit and making characters using the Star Wars RPG's system: Every PC has to know and be on decent terms with AT LEAST one other PC.

Citizen, you have been found guilty of treason. Please proceed to the nearest rehabilitation center for reeducation.

[dsmiles]

I've been in campaigns like that. Sometimes, it's just the way it is. A bunch of mercenaries hired to work together don't necessarily have to trust each other to do so, and it sounds like your characters are just that. Sometimes the only thing you trust is gold (because apparently, even though it's so common that they use it for currency in large quaitities, it doesn't depreciate in value at all).
There is nothing stating that you have to know/trust any of the other characters. That's just silly. Why should I trust the people I just met? Unless the DM starts out the campaign with the characters already knowing each other, I see no reason to, really, ever trust the other characters until they prove themselves worthy of it. I don't know if I'd be paranoid enough to betray the group, unless I was EBIL, but trust? Trust is something that is earned, not given.
[/$0.02]

[Lev]

4 Mercs in a party? Sounds like Shadowrun 4.0
Maybe play that.

[dsmiles]

4 Mercs in a party? Sounds like Shadowrun 4.0
Maybe play that.

Sounds like every edition of Shadowrun.

[FelixG]

Well, the solution is simple, if the players are being snarky and their characters are not meshing well and are being counter productive, wait till they are asleep then coup de gras them!

If they complain at you then you just tell them they should have played nice to begin with :P

Then if their new character acts snarky because of what you did to their last one you smack em in the head with the DMG for metagaming :P

[2-HeadedGiraffe]

I had major problems with this sort of thing in a game I ran about a year ago. I had about five players (the number would vary slightly based on who was available that night) who mostly split themselves into two groups. Compounding (or perhaps causing in the first place) the problem was the fact that two of the players were very much into roleplaying, two others were more into the mechanics of the game ("roll playing"), and the fifth had to miss so much of the game due to work schedules that I wasn't sure what to do to draw her in.

This story doesn't have a happy ending, at least not within the scope of that particular campaign. Usually, I prefer to start with something like, "You all know each other already, okay?" to which most players will say "okay," and we'll avoid the getting-to-know-you session, or worse, the session where the PCs (still strangers to one another) end up fighting.

[The Big Dice]

If everything is being kept in character and in game, then it's not a problem and having antagonistic characters can be good fun. BUt if it starts coming away from the gaming table and people start acting towards each other like their characters act, then maybe it's time to put the campaign to bed and play something that's got slightly less hostile overtones.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Damn, HMS - is every campaign you join so wacky? First the oWoD "Vampire" campaign with giant robots and railguns, now this?

I think you need to find some new DMs

[Thrawn4]

First the oWoD "Vampire" campaign with giant robots and railguns, now this?

I still wonder how that campaign is going. Any news?

[Psyx]

Sometimes it's for the best for GMs to just insist on a predominantly good-aligned party, just to save the squabbling. It seems that often 'neutral' translates as 'utterly selfish' in people's eyes. Although in this case it seems that the GM is trying to run a PvP game and actively encouraging you to murder each other.

Some people get a blast out of that kind of thing, but I find that it gets dull very, very quickly and only causes OOC friction. RPGs generally work best as a team game.



"He kills people by casting magic missile or ray of frost inside people's skulls. "
"He dealt 32 damage with magic missile"

I don't think those spells work the way your GM thinks they do...

Erm... that's a maximised, empowered magic missile...

[jiriku]

Yeah, I really have trouble imagining myself having fun in such a game. D&D is so much more enjoyable when I say "You guys have been adventuring together for years, you know and trust each other, you're godparents to each other's children and attended each other's Bar Mitzvah, and anyone who even THINKS about PvP is getting a DMG to the back of the head." Then we can get down to the business of being heroes.

[Kylarra]

Yeah, the trust issue is why we've decided that for all future "heroic"-type games, the party just knows each other or at least already has the mutual-respect thing going.

[WarKitty]

Alternately, I like to throw the PC's in situations where it is abundantly clear that the skills of every single PC will be vital to getting out of there alive.

Yes, this is one of the things that ideally should be gotten out beforehand. Make it clear whether you're expecting heroic fantasy or gritty PvP. It sounds like you're in a PvP group.

[Psyx]

If it's a PvP group then the GM is still at least partly to blame for having every darned encounter attempting to subvert PCs.

[HMS Invincible]

I still wonder how that campaign is going. Any news?

The campaign pretty much ended while we were debating between time travel, nuclear war, or fighting Kane. We decided the best thing to do is to not talk about it ever again. We're starting L5R now. So from superheroes who come out at night, to medieval japan. =.= On the plus side, the orc is GMing that game and right off the bat, he says: You all work for the emperor. He commands you to follow this chick's orders or die. See? Loyalty isn't so hard to set up.

Our DM allows pvp, but I can tell when he discourages it because there were several instances where the orc tried to betray us, and the mage didn't take advantage of it. He could have paid the orc to attack us, but he didn't. He also specified that all of us had to be Nonevil.

Here's what the DM told us out of character, and from when each person was missing information.
The mages are all from an evilish country to the south. They gave up access to all spells 3rd level and up in exchange for super powered 1st and 2nd level spells. He said that superior targeting means hitting internal organs, which deals double damage, and there's either an empowered or maximized thrown in somewhere. The mage's plan involved me either cooperating with him or trying to ambush him. Either way, it was to draw the lieutenant out.
Metagaming, either the DM is either frustrated at our behavior or he just likes to play rough campaigns. I'm not sure which. The point buy is pretty low (25? I got a 16 and a 14 in stats, 8, 10 11 for everything else) and we all died when we were level 1.

The orc, john the wizard, the rogue, and the centaur are all heavy roleplayers. The same rogue, and sorcerer are both very quirky, and will do anything for a laugh. The orc and the rogue know how to optimize, sorta and are built for combat. The centaur only roleplays, so it doesn't work well against high powered mages. The rogue plays the annoying "I try to kill anything and flees whenever things don't go his way" type. He's very cautious, and runs if the melee tank goes down.
John the wizard is a wild card. We have to help him level up his character sheet, but he got the gist of it really quick. However, he has a strange thing about how he reads alignments. He's chaotic neutral and didn't consider us part of the party til I forcefully asked him. "You can either join us, or you're free to leave"
Both John and Will, the sorcerer are following us, so we all assumed they fell into the trusted ally category.

Will the sorcerer: Doesn't like me, but otherwise is semi-team player. I think he betrays us mainly to watch me squirm, so it's not a big deal. Surprisingly, we never found out if Will would betray us to the mage, he died before the conversation reached that point.
The notes that the GM was passing to the players inside the mage's room? Defect to the enemy country. If you refuse, flip the note over. Other side states: "You're Dead."
John the wizard was under intense metagame pressure.

My dilemma is that they are taking advantage of my metagaming and good alignment. I think I gave them enough chances, but if they are dead, how do I treat their new characters? I'll have to role play the racist elven wizard if everybody I meet is untrustworthy. No wait, I'm thinking about this in the wrong way. I need to set up a organization which agrees to work together and not screw each other in order to further the goals of everyone. You know, like a party of ... Adventurers?
The DM has now allowed everyone the option of raise dead, and everyone is taking it. Interesting side note: Lvl 4, the non-full casters in our party are already complaining about how useless they are to the party. I don't know what if anything has changed in party dynamics, but we need to do something drastic if we want to get anything done. I'm not sure who shares my views though.

[Dark_Nohn]

Lvl 4, the non-full casters in our party are already complaining about how useless they are to the party. I don't know what if anything has changed in party dynamics, but we need to do something drastic if we want to get anything done. I'm not sure who shares my views though.

I think this is rather a reaction of the players to the enemy mage more than the magic-based PCs. Level 1 spells doing empowered maximized damage to vital organs (you said the effect of that was double damage?) at the expense of 3rd level spell slots? This should definitely NOT be player available, and the DM shouldn't run any ally (DMPC or NPC alike) with such features (though antagonists are questionably alright,) the ability seems to be the effect of high-arcana (via archmage,) or some ability that should come after 6-8 levels of a PrC, either way, it's definitely not something that should be available to the PCs (at least until level 12+.)

But if the PC casters are overshadowing the non-caster PCs at level 4, then something's wrong with either the way that the campaign is playing out, or there's not enough campaign balance.

[jiriku]

L5R is a pretty sweet game. Are you guys using the new L5R4e books, or the older version?

[Arbane]

Does _anything_ else in D&D allow called shots to internal organs?

[dsmiles]

Does _anything_ else in D&D allow called shots to internal organs?

Well, if your stick is pointy enough, you could poke somebody in the spleen with it. Be careful, though. You'll put an eye out with that thing.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Does _anything_ else in D&D allow called shots to internal organs?

Often with particular DMs, rocks will fall from the sky and target all internal organs at once. External too.

[HMS Invincible]

L5R is a pretty sweet game. Are you guys using the new L5R4e books, or the older version?

I dunno, there's only like the original and revised, and they said they were basically the same thing except for defense calculations.

The DM explained that you sacrifice anything past 2nd level spells. So no dispel magic, no wish, no gate, no polymorph, no summon or save or suck spells. You just get to buff the hell out of your first 2 spells levels. It was a little unfair, but then again, so was facing an ogre at lvl 1 with only 4 people. Like I said, either the DM expected all of us to be really well coordinated, aka plays tough, or he got mad at us. I'm not sure which.

After the game, he also told us that when he had me by the throat, he didn't expect me to not choose cooperate.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

The DM explained that you sacrifice anything past 2nd level spells. So no dispel magic, no wish, no gate, no polymorph, no summon or save or suck spells. You just get to buff the hell out of your first 2 spells levels. It was a little unfair, but then again, so was facing an ogre at lvl 1 with only 4 people.

The magic missile you describe (double damage + empowered), with rules-legal metamagic augmenting it, is worth a level *seven* spell slot. He literally handed out pieces of paper that fiat-killed characters. At least ogres have to roll to hit.

[Dark_Nohn]

The magic missile you describe (double damage + empowered), with rules-legal metamagic augmenting it, is worth a level *seven* spell slot. He literally handed out pieces of paper that fiat-killed characters. At least ogres have to roll to hit.

I once threw an ogre at a pair of level 2 characters... a rogue and a bard, and they beat it without a scratch... somehow. A CR3 creature against four level 1's can spell death in a hit, but wise adventurers start with enough ranged weapons, even if it's just crossbows on the low-str side of the table.

[Susano-wo]

OK, where to start: 1, RP is RP, and you should do just that. If these characters are really this misanthropic, and your character is not, well, he/she shouldn't put up with it. This might mean violence or simply leaving, or any other IC action.

You should not be forced to not play your character to keep the party together wehn A: no one is even trying to mitigate their actions to do so, and B: the whole party/campaign is set up to not be a party based campaign, but one where you may or may not actually like each other, get along, work together, etc.

And let me jump off of that onto the GM's expectations. He wants you guys to be coordinated, yet he constantly had powerful mages with AUTOKILL SPELLS kill you if you won't betray the party? No amount of coordination is going to help you against cheating magic missles that you have no opportunity to ready actions to counterspell. HE wants everyone to be good aligned (or at least non evil), but he does the above? And also puts up with everyone betraying people at the drop of a hat? Yeah...that's non-evil....

GM needs to be clear about what he wants, and work to facilitate that.

Also, this is a good example of GM cheating. Yes, you can feel free to make your villains as nasty as you want, but to give them options that the PCs pretty much can't deal with that are completely outside the rules, I'd have a serious talk with my GM. (obviously, YMMV, but I htink that's going too far)

RE: party pre-knowing each other. If you want to have the party together from the beginning, then please, please please make them togetehre, so you can all craft their backstory and make them actually fit. Nothing like "you guys all know each other and like each other. So, whatcha all playing?" "Bob the Palladin, Jim the Necromancer, and Joe the chaotic neutral thief. Also a Drow Priestess."

Otherwise, as GM, give them hooks! And as players, do your damndest to find ways to accept them! (Or play a game where its not necessarily a party of adventurers. Either way works)

[HMS Invincible]

Who intentionally starts a game of d&d where you aren't a party of adventurers? I know many people end up there, but how many people start at that point where nobody is working together?

There's a problem with reciprocating stealing with violence. I can't fight toe to toe with other characters. I either kill them outright with sleep coup de grace or send them on suicide missions. I've been doing the latter, but it puts me in danger since the party goes together, else they'd be suspicious. Anyway, this doesn't solve my problem. I have to create a explicit collective security arrangement where nobody betrays each other, and we punish cheaters. I'm used to groups where it's already assumed we do this so it's gonna take a while before things get better.

We had a plan, that only required 3 people. The sorcerer was suppose to counterspell magic missile, while I counter sleep. Then our orc barbarian rages and grapples the mage to death with his spiked armored gauntlets. Or the rogue sneak attacks, or the fighter swings his sword. But it fell apart because people kept going up to his room ALONE and ONE BY ONE. The guy playing the orc read the situation correctly from the start and he still walked into the room. That's dedication to role play right there. He's like those awful Lawful crazy paladins that would always smite everyone who wasn't perfectly good in their sight, and then call it good roleplaying. I disagree with his mentally imposed limitations on roleplaying, but I can't say he was inconsistent.

[Fuzzie Fuzz]

Yeah, the DM needs to say that y'all need to get along. For the campaign I'm starting soon, I've made it very clear that the characters were best friends before they became adventurers, and would sacrafice their own lives to save each others'. In addition, I've required a player to modify his backstory because it sets him up as a loner character, when I specifically stated to come up with a reason of how the PCs met and why they're such darn good friends. (Actually, I really like the way the character turned out. He's still a brooding, depressed, slightly secretive type, but has some good social dynamics going. He'll contrast well with the normally quite flamboyantly roleplayed characters of the rest of the party.)

[The Big Dice]

I dunno, there's only like the original and revised, and they said they were basically the same thing except for defense calculations.

That sounds like 3rd edition. If it's a red coloured book, it's 3rd. If it's 3rd revised, there's some extensive eratta for that particular book. It was rushed to the printers and it shows it, but it is very much an improvement on the original printing of 3rd edition.