Funny/Frustrating Stories about Loot division

[yougi]

Yesterday, I played a game of Dragons' Gold, a boardgame about splitting the loot after you kill a dragon, which made me think of the Haley method of splitting loot. And I wondered, has anyone ever had a good loot division story?

Here's mine:

We are running A2, a first edition module where we storm a fort in order to liberate some slaves and end the slave trade in there. The group consists of two dwarven fighters (twin brothers if you must know), a half-elf monk, an elven druid and me, a human magic-user (wizard). A thing I must say is that the previous quest ended in a near-TPK, with me as the only survivor. Now my character met the others', and we got together on this particular quest. When we get to the fort, we try to get in from the front, posing as slave buyers, and are shot at by archers. The monk decides to charge in, and because of some incredible rolls, is killed on the spot. I then go invisible, and in 1E, invisibility lasts until you attack, and so I decide to go loot the monk before I meet up with the others, and the DM gives me, on a secret piece of paper, a list of what I get. I then distribute his useful items (Druid got a nice humanbane quarterstaff, a dwarf a crossbow of speed and his twin a couple of potions, and I keep a ring of protection). I, however, keep the non-useful things in my Bag of Holding, without anybody else knowing.

After the quest, when we split the loot, there is some stuff we decide not to keep, and I go to my special contact, the town's wizard, to trade. I also offer him stuff from the monk, and manage to upgrade my own gear by doing so. I also get some stuff for the others. Now the funny thing is, I manage to convince them that I traded my old stuff for this equipment for them, and so I should get a larger part of the treasure for this. In the end, I got 75% of the treasure, with the other 3 sharing the remaining 25%.

Next quest, we raid the Slavers's mages' tower: we get almost exclusively stuff for me. At that point, I managed to convince my partners that instead of counting our fair shares, we should simply take what's best for the team and not worry about the rest.

I'm a jerk. :)

[SowZ]

Star Wars Game, I'm a roguish dude. We kill three guys in Black Sun and then we take their keys to their apartment. They send me in to get the stuff and I find 3 data crystals worth 5k credits a piece, 10k credits, and about 5k in spice. I come out and say, "Guys, I know we thought they were loaded, but all they had was 6k and one data crystal worth about 3k. I'll take the crystal since I can sell it for the most and you two can each have 3k."

IC, they can't do anything about it. OOC, they are kinda pissed.

[Totally Guy]

Back in February I ran a game for Castaras, Hamishspence, Qwaz and Grlump the Elder which started with the group finding the ultimate prize of the dungeon - the Sword!

Castaras played Ssisz, a rat man cultist who had guided the team through the maze and was questing to give the sword to the character's cult leader.
Hamish played Fidhean, an exiled elf. His father had made the sword and it may be the key to forgiveness for his crimes.
Grlump played Brechtanz the dwarf, he was driven by the honour of returning the blade to the dwarven halls where it once was used so proudly.
Robard was played by Qwaz, a human thief with hefty gambling debts. His investigations had revealed where the sword was in the first place.

I think the session lasted about an hour and a half. The situation played itself out and eventually Castaras emerged from the dungeon to present the visionary with the sword. The others, the were stuck, lost and scared in the dungeon for a very long time.

[Slipperychicken]

My DM claimed this game was PvP political intrigue, multiple teams all working against each other. Me and a few other players are on one team, we know IC that everyone else is serving our master's enemies.

A fight happens, in which all the teams briefly happen to be fighting the same guy. My group does almost all the work and kills the bad guy NPC, while the rest just kind of cower in a corner with some nobles. So my initiative would is next after the bad guy falls.

DM: He turns to ash, in which you can see [pile of shiny loot]

Me: I scoop it into my bag. That should just be a full-round at worst. How much does it weigh?

DM: No you don't.

Me: Dude, this is PvP. You originally intended us to be killing eachother this session, and these people are my character's enemies anyway. I'm only splitting loot with my team. Not to mention we did all the work killing this guy while everyone else literally cowered in a corner; they weren't even feared, just goofing off and being *******.

DM: No. You split it evenly with everyone.

Me: What? That's retarded. I take it for my team.

DM: Since you're being greedy, you don't get a share.

Me: [Incoherent Rage]

[The Bandicoot]

And that was entirely out of character? Man I wouldnt have lasted long enough to rage. I would've asked the DM half way through if my character had come under a mind-affecting spell. If he said no it would've been "then stop telling me what MY character is doing like he is"

[NikitaDarkstar]

My DM claimed this game was PvP political intrigue, multiple teams all working against each other. Me and a few other players are on one team, we know IC that everyone else is serving our master's enemies.

A fight happens, in which all the teams briefly happen to be fighting the same guy. My group does almost all the work and kills the bad guy NPC, while the rest just kind of cower in a corner with some nobles. So my initiative would is next after the bad guy falls.

DM: He turns to ash, in which you can see [pile of shiny loot]

Me: I scoop it into my bag. That should just be a full-round at worst. How much does it weigh?

DM: No you don't.

Me: Dude, this is PvP. You originally intended us to be killing eachother this session, and these people are my character's enemies anyway. I'm only splitting loot with my team. Not to mention we did all the work killing this guy while everyone else literally cowered in a corner; they weren't even feared, just goofing off and being *******.

DM: No. You split it evenly with everyone.

Me: What? That's retarded. I take it for my team.

DM: Since you're being greedy, you don't get a share.

Me: [Incoherent Rage]

I would have walked. Not sure if I had done it before or after mauling the DM with a fistful of dice, but I would have walked.

[yougi]

I would have walked. Not sure if I had done it before or after mauling the DM with a fistful of dice, but I would have walked.

Seconded. And I'll third myself. This is illogical, and even in a non-PVP campaign, would still be terrible.

[Jay R]

Me: I scoop it into my bag. That should just be a full-round at worst. How much does it weigh?

DM: No you don't.

Me: Dude, this is PvP. You originally intended us to be killing each other this session, and these people are my character's enemies anyway. I'm only splitting loot with my team. Not to mention we did all the work killing this guy while everyone else literally cowered in a corner; they weren't even feared, just goofing off and being *******.

DM: No. You split it evenly with everyone.

Me: Oh. Here's your NPC's character sheet. (Hands sheet to DM.) I'll be building a player-character. When can I introduce him?

[Talakeal]

While the DM may be a bit heavy handed, I have to resort to this sort of stuff all the time and can see where he is coming from.

Like one time I was playing a White Wolf game where a player came in with a 5 dot artifact and then died during the first session. You would not believe the bitching when I told the other PCs that they could not just take the artifact for themselves off his dead body.

Many people consider the WBL table an ironclad rule. If you freely let players steal from each other, loot fallen comrades, rob friends NPCS, and decide to go rogue and keep the McGuffin rather than returning it to the quest giver, how do you ever keep them close to their recommended WBL?

Now, I usually resolve these issues out of character rather than just dictating player actions, but if someone forced the issue I am not sure what I would do. Probably take away some of their wealth in character by having an NPC rob them or just not giving out treasure in the future, which would, I assume, lead to even more pissed off PCs.

[Calinar]

The very first session of the campaign I was DMing, the party ambushed a small group of soldiers that were on their way to reinforce an army. After a long hard battle, the party is victorious and comes away with a cart carrying a months worth of supplies. While looting the under-captain's body our rogue finds a key, and while taking inventory of the cart she finds the chest that the key unlocks. Turns out that it was the payment chest and had all the soldiers' month worth of pay.

Needless to say she took every single copper piece for herself. When asked about the empty and unlocked chest she bluffs everyone and tells them "Oh, it was empty when I found it. And here's the key I found on the captains body, you'll need it to lock up the chest."
I found it quite funny that they let the "Chaotic Greedy", as shes been described, rogue be the first sort through the loot and managed sneak off with such a large sum of gold (they never will figure out just how much she stole). I do hope that they have learned to never let her near any large pile of loot before a record has been taken of what's in it.

[Slipperychicken]

Like one time I was playing a White Wolf game where a player came in with a 5 dot artifact and then died during the first session. You would not believe the bitching when I told the other PCs that they could not just take the artifact for themselves off his dead body.

Reminds me of one 3.5 game, where the policy for absent players was for the DM to control them. I seriously wished everyone would show up to every game, because their characters would turn into massive, horrible DMPCs whenever they didn't. Also to note is that WBL is completely ignored, because of "realism" (we must have had ~30k gold between us at level 21, excepting some stupidly-valuable homebrew items like a Breastplate of Magic Immunity).

So one party member is killed, and he was carrying a whole crapload of shiny stuff, including a sword that was literally valuable enough to buy nations (which was also a Lich's Phylactery, and technically impossible by the rules, which led to its stupidly high price tag), and some healing-amulet which a dying healer had willed to him literally the day before (on his deathbed) because he "did not want its powers to go to waste" when he died.


So what does the the "Were-DMPC" (Turns into a DMPC whenever his player doesn't show up) suggest force us to do? Bury him, with all his stuff, and use the Epic Lich's phylactery as a grave-marker. In short, he was dumping hundreds of thousands of gold into the ****ing dirt, for no reason other than the DM not wanting us to have it. My character explained all this to him, and he wasn't having it; DMPC bodily forced my PC away (I didn't want to force a fight, for so many different reasons), claiming he "should show some respect for the dead" (resurrection is impossible, and most people in the world are Atheists anyway). I pointed out, tongue-in-cheek, that he hasn't "respected the dead" in months. So he stood guard over this hole for two continuous in-game days, and every attempt to retrieve it with magic failed horribly.


So the DM wasted a kingdom's worth of wealth, and the dead PC's player re-rolled a new character one level lower and completely broke, without a say in the matter.

[SowZ]

While the DM may be a bit heavy handed, I have to resort to this sort of stuff all the time and can see where he is coming from.

Like one time I was playing a White Wolf game where a player came in with a 5 dot artifact and then died during the first session. You would not believe the bitching when I told the other PCs that they could not just take the artifact for themselves off his dead body.

Many people consider the WBL table an ironclad rule. If you freely let players steal from each other, loot fallen comrades, rob friends NPCS, and decide to go rogue and keep the McGuffin rather than returning it to the quest giver, how do you ever keep them close to their recommended WBL?

Now, I usually resolve these issues out of character rather than just dictating player actions, but if someone forced the issue I am not sure what I would do. Probably take away some of their wealth in character by having an NPC rob them or just not giving out treasure in the future, which would, I assume, lead to even more pissed off PCs.

Well, how did you explain it? Some sort of magic so they couldn't wield it or would you just say no? If the latter, I don't know how I could have been able to get into the story.

[Talakeal]

Well, how did you explain it? Some sort of magic so they couldn't wield it or would you just say no? If the latter, I don't know how I could have been able to get into the story.

I said out of character "No. You are not going to rob him. You are going to do the decent thing, bury the body, and give his posessions to his next of kin."

I am not really what it has to do with getting into the "story" one way or another. Thinking you have free reign to steal someone's heirlooms just because they travelled with you for a few days is not realistic in any way. Petty criminals and con men might try it, but that wasn't the type of campaign we were running, and I didn't want to derail the campaign with a long plot about the deceased's family hiring bounty hunters to beat up the PCs and take it back because that would only be wasting a lot of time and effort with a plotline that could have no good consequences.

[SowZ]

I said out of character "No. You are not going to rob him. You are going to do the decent thing, bury the body, and give his posessions to his next of kin."

I am not really what it has to do with getting into the "story" one way or another. Thinking you have free reign to steal someone's heirlooms just because they travelled with you for a few days is not realistic in any way. Petty criminals and con men might try it, but that wasn't the type of campaign we were running, and I didn't want to derail the campaign with a long plot about the deceased's family hiring bounty hunters to beat up the PCs and take it back because that would only be wasting a lot of time and effort with a plotline that could have no good consequences.

I mean, I get taken out of a story if my character can't do what they would actually do or the GM tells me how they act. I mean, if a character knows that the artifact is completely priceless, I can see a lot of people deciding to keep the artifact especially if they are involved in life threatening stuff they could use the artifact to aid in.

I am just saying I understand why your players were upset, I probably would have, too. Not from not getting the artifact. I mean, if it had blown up when the character was killed I wouldn't have minded. Just having control wrested from me.

[Talakeal]

I mean, I get taken out of a story if my character can't do what they would actually do or the GM tells me how they act. I mean, if a character knows that the artifact is completely priceless, I can see a lot of people deciding to keep the artifact especially if they are involved in life threatening stuff they could use the artifact to aid in.

I am just saying I understand why your players were upset, I probably would have, too. Not from not getting the artifact. I mean, if it had blown up when the character was killed I wouldn't have minded. Just having control wrested from me.

If you can figure out a better alternative my hat is off to you. I can't let them keep it as it greatly throws off game balance, and any in character justification for taking it away is going to make them even more mad and waste time.

To use an example, say, a player wanted to play a serial rapist or child murderer. It is "his character" and he has the right to do it, but it makes the rest of the group very uncomfortable. In my mind the best response is to ask him not to OOC before he gets started.

[SowZ]

If you can figure out a better alternative my hat is off to you. I can't let them keep it as it greatly throws off game balance, and any in character justification for taking it away is going to make them even more mad and waste time.

To use an example, say, a player wanted to play a serial rapist or child murderer. It is "his character" and he has the right to do it, but it makes the rest of the group very uncomfortable. In my mind the best response is to ask him not to OOC before he gets started.

Oh, sure, no I totally understand it especially from the position of a GM. Sometimes the best solution is to just ask the players to not do something. I am just saying I probably would have been frustrated as your players were, as well.

[Deepbluediver]

For the longest campaign I ever played in, I was a lawful-good monk in a party with a TN Wizard, and one character from every level of the chaotic alignment spectrum. Ok, the rogue wasn't down and out horrible, but he was more lilke chaotic-how-do-you-define-evil, essentially trying to get away with as much as he could.

Since we where low level in a relatively low-op setting, I could pretty much get by with the clothes on my back and any kind of solid stick. I didn't know about VoP at the time, but since I didn't need much money, my character was constantly trying to give away large portions of any loot we acquired to various hospitals, temples, or orphanages, which drove the other players absolutely nuts. And on at least one occasion, I "forgot" to mention that there had been a reward promised for certain services rendered. It got so bad that at one point we where in a relatively major city, and the DM described the entire place as a nest of thieves and cut-throats, specifically so I wouldn't be able to find any worthy causes to give away our treasure.

Rather than try to force any view on the other players though, I would act like it genuinely hadn't occured to me that we should keep anything more than the basic minimum for ourselves, and I would adopt a "I'm very dispointed in you" tone.
Since we there supposed to be the heroes of the story, once I pointed out the "right" thing to do, most of them found it very hard to argue for any other action. I like to think that I was a pioneer in the field of finding new and novel ways to use the LG alignment to annoy the rest of the party.


When we eventually moved on to the next game, and I announced I was playing a grizzled old fighter, who was constantly angry at the world for not giving him his due, and I was only in it for the gold, I actually got cheers.

[NikitaDarkstar]

The very first session of the campaign I was DMing, the party ambushed a small group of soldiers that were on their way to reinforce an army. After a long hard battle, the party is victorious and comes away with a cart carrying a months worth of supplies. While looting the under-captain's body our rogue finds a key, and while taking inventory of the cart she finds the chest that the key unlocks. Turns out that it was the payment chest and had all the soldiers' month worth of pay.

Needless to say she took every single copper piece for herself. When asked about the empty and unlocked chest she bluffs everyone and tells them "Oh, it was empty when I found it. And here's the key I found on the captains body, you'll need it to lock up the chest."
I found it quite funny that they let the "Chaotic Greedy", as shes been described, rogue be the first sort through the loot and managed sneak off with such a large sum of gold (they never will figure out just how much she stole). I do hope that they have learned to never let her near any large pile of loot before a record has been taken of what's in it.

Unless that character had a bag of holding I would have loved to see the explanation on how she hid away an entire chest full of coins in an unseen and unheard manner. And yes I know it's details that's normally ignored, but it's also things I'd totally allow players to roll for when things like this happens.


And DM's in general: Please, if you can't tolerate the players having <shiny> for <reason> either find an IC explanation for why (it broke, it's magically keyed to only work for one person, it has to be given, thieves can't use it etc.), and if you can't do that don't put it in your game. It's the same basic concept of don't introduce the BBEG if you're not ready to have him killed yet.

[Seatbelt]

In two different games with my home group I started off as "party treasurer" keeping track of how much gold we had earned and what loot we had received from killin dudes. When it came time to shop I'd divide it amongst the party.

Then at some point they would decide "Jim is bad at math" (admittedly I don't do mental math well, which is why I did all of it with a notepad and pencil...) and give it to Herbert. Who would then systematically rob the party. Then the other players would get mad at him and lament that there was nothing we could do about it IC.

Frustrating.

[Jay R]

My experience has been that grabbing more than my share is much easier than grabbing all of it. Once, my thief (Original D&D) had just opened the chest.

DM: You find 5,000 gold pieces and 50 pieces of jewelry.

Other player: What did he say?

Me: Hey, guys, we found 5,000 gold pieces and 40 pieces of jewelry.

DM: (says nothing. Rolls die. Makes notes.)

After the game, he told me the value of the 10 pieces of jewelry I had hidden away.

[Friv]

If you can figure out a better alternative my hat is off to you. I can't let them keep it as it greatly throws off game balance, and any in character justification for taking it away is going to make them even more mad and waste time.

If it's a White Wolf game, I say, "Okay, you now have that artifact. Spend the experience on the background. If you don't want to, that's fine, but remember that artifacts you don't spend experience on are artifacts that aren't important to your character concept and thus do not have story protection'.

As a rule for Backgrounds in general, it's worked out staggeringly well for me.

If it's a game with WBL, I just make sure that the next adventure doesn't have much wealth in it so that things balance out again. It's a good chance to throw the characters against crazy magical weather or insane animals or other challenges that don't carry much stuff on them.

[Calinar]

They did get rolls, both for the spot and bluff, they just failed (the highest spot in the party besides the rogue has a 2, sense motives aren't much better). I generally don't worry too much about how or where they store the money, they have other things to keep track of, like food and provisions.

[Tyndmyr]

I said out of character "No. You are not going to rob him. You are going to do the decent thing, bury the body, and give his posessions to his next of kin."

I am not really what it has to do with getting into the "story" one way or another. Thinking you have free reign to steal someone's heirlooms just because they travelled with you for a few days is not realistic in any way. Petty criminals and con men might try it, but that wasn't the type of campaign we were running, and I didn't want to derail the campaign with a long plot about the deceased's family hiring bounty hunters to beat up the PCs and take it back because that would only be wasting a lot of time and effort with a plotline that could have no good consequences.

Dude, it's roleplaying. People gleefully loot people's heirlooms just because they can. Or because they just stabbed them to death. Leaving priceless artifacts in the wild just because they "don't belong to you" is ridiculous. Bringing them back to next of kin would be roughly as noble as you can hope for. Leaving them in the wild...not normally a thing.

Long story short, if something absolutely cannot ever be in the possession of players...don't put it into the game. "this would entirely throw off game balance"? Well, perhaps you should consider that before you make it part of the world PCs interact with. Balance is a two way street.

I'd have been upset at that outcome too.

[BRC]

I said out of character "No. You are not going to rob him. You are going to do the decent thing, bury the body, and give his posessions to his next of kin."

I am not really what it has to do with getting into the "story" one way or another. Thinking you have free reign to steal someone's heirlooms just because they travelled with you for a few days is not realistic in any way. Petty criminals and con men might try it, but that wasn't the type of campaign we were running, and I didn't want to derail the campaign with a long plot about the deceased's family hiring bounty hunters to beat up the PCs and take it back because that would only be wasting a lot of time and effort with a plotline that could have no good consequences.

If you feel that strongly that looting in this way wasn't a good action, you can change their alignments (Alignment reflects Action, not the other way around) to reflect that, have them haunted by ghosts, have the characters gain a reputation for being dishonorable and greedy, or have them lose all that loot through some contrivance.

However, you should NEVER tell the players what their characters would do. You could say "Are you sure your character would do that?", but putting your foot down like that out-of-character is a different matter. It's not about if the PC's had any right to the heirlooms, remember, your average adventuring party makes it's living by killing things, often sentient beings, and taking whatever they can find on the corpses. It just so happens that many of these thing are "Evil".

Now, with the example you gave of the artifact. I'm not super-familiar with White Wolf, but it sounds like he bought that artifact as part of his character creation, and therefore it's effectiveness should have died with the character. Had you denied the party it's use until they spend the points for it, that would be one thing. However, by outright saying "You return it to the family", you've taken control of their characters, which is crossing a serious line. If it's an heirloom, say "Only a trueborn heir of this family can use it", or say it vanishes mysteriously, or that anybody else who picks it up starts signing showtunes at the top of their lungs. You can make it a terrible idea to do anything but give it back, but the players should be the ones who make the actual decision.


You can lead a party to a dragon, but you can't make them kill it.

[Kaww]

Many people consider the WBL table an ironclad rule. If you freely let players steal from each other, loot fallen comrades, rob friends NPCS, and decide to go rogue and keep the McGuffin rather than returning it to the quest giver, how do you ever keep them close to their recommended WBL?

Dear Sir, WBL is ironclad if you are not flexible. In D&D equipment may be stolen, sundered, disintegrated, disenchanted...

I have played in games in which we had millions of platinum pieces and no way to spend them. Nobody needs money in a city wracked by famine, dungeon, zombie apocalypse, desert... You know, the kind of situations PCs usually are.

As for people robbing the body of a fallen comrade this is a fundamental thing in just about any FRP. Also in reality in wars, plain crashes and other situations when staying alive is difficult.

Robbing a friendly NPC=unfriendly NPC that's out for revenge. And if you are not prepared for the PCs to go rogue and steal the McGuffin or start working for their "invincible enemy" you have no place GMing a game.

@Slipperychicken: You should walk when something like that happens.

I apologize to the rest of the playground for the rant.

[Talakeal]

Dude, it's roleplaying. People gleefully loot people's heirlooms just because they can. Or because they just stabbed them to death. Leaving priceless artifacts in the wild just because they "don't belong to you" is ridiculous. Bringing them back to next of kin would be roughly as noble as you can hope for. Leaving them in the wild...not normally a thing.

Long story short, if something absolutely cannot ever be in the possession of players...don't put it into the game. "this would entirely throw off game balance"? Well, perhaps you should consider that before you make it part of the world PCs interact with. Balance is a two way street.

I'd have been upset at that outcome too.

Again I did not put it in the game. Another player talked me into letting him have it because he paid for it with his character creation resources. Then when the character who paid a major price for it died the other players wanted to be able to loot it and have it absolutely free. They could have paid the points to take the artifact on their own, but they didn't want to because it wasn't tailored for their characters, they literally wanted it for FREE because of the OOC actions of another player.

The rules say that I have to find an IC excuse to give the PC an item if the player makes the OOC decision to spend the points. Why should I let players who did

So, let's say the other player hadn't died. Would you say it is reasonable for the players to murder him and take the gun? How about if instead of murdering him they sold him into slavery or raped him? What if they did this to every new player who joined the group? Don't you think that would cause kind of an OOC problem? I really don't think telling them to knock it off OOC would be unreasonable.

If your players are actually going to be CE murder hobos there are very few stories you can tell. If they attack everyone who has nice things they are going to die and die hard quickly, because people with powerful magic items are stronger than starting PCs, and even if the PCs manage to win then they will face powerful friends.

Imagine if you were trying to run a game based on LoTR and Frodo's player decided right off the bat to keep the ring and become the new dark lord of Middle Earth. Not only can you not use any of your existing ideas for the campaign, but he and his little hobbit friends are going to die horrible deaths as every force in the world, good and evil alike, come to smite their level 1 asses unless you put up some sort of contrived plot shield (and I am not sure how different putting in a contrived plot shield to protect stupid PCs is any different than coming up with contrived reasons to stop stupid PCs).

[BRC]

Again I did not put it in the game. Another player talked me into letting him have it because he paid for it with his character creation resources. Then when the character who paid a major price for it died the other players wanted to be able to loot it and have it absolutely free. They could have paid the points to take the artifact on their own, but they didn't want to because it wasn't tailored for their characters, they literally wanted it for FREE because of the OOC actions of another player.

The rules say that I have to find an IC excuse to give the PC an item if the player makes the OOC decision to spend the points. Why should I let players who did

So, let's say the other player hadn't died. Would you say it is reasonable for the players to murder him and take the gun? How about if instead of murdering him they sold him into slavery or raped him? What if they did this to every new player who joined the group? Don't you think that would cause kind of an OOC problem? I really don't think telling them to knock it off OOC would be unreasonable.

If your players are actually going to be CE murder hobos there are very few stories you can tell. If they attack everyone who has nice things they are going to die and die hard quickly, because people with powerful magic items are stronger than starting PCs, and even if the PCs manage to win then they will face powerful friends.

Imagine if you were trying to run a game based on LoTR and Frodo's player decided right off the bat to keep the ring and become the new dark lord of Middle Earth. Not only can you not use any of your existing ideas for the campaign, but he and his little hobbit friends are going to die horrible deaths as every force in the world, good and evil alike, come to smite their level 1 asses unless you put up some sort of contrived plot shield (and I am not sure how different putting in a contrived plot shield to protect stupid PCs is any different than coming up with contrived reasons to stop stupid PCs).

The issue isn't that you deprived them the use of the item. I would argue that you could be seen as required to do just that.

The issue is HOW you deprived them of the item, specifically by taking control of their characters.

[Talakeal]

The issue isn't that you deprived them the use of the item. I would argue that you could be seen as required to do just that.

The issue is HOW you deprived them of the item, specifically by taking control of their characters.

Well, obviously it depends on the specific situation. I personally find it much easier for everyone involved if you just talk about what is acceptable behavior with the players up front rather than wasting everyone's time and energy coming up with increasingly contrived methods to control the players in character, which they will fight every step of the way but can't actually win.

For example, if you have an adventure about slaying a red dragon I think it is easier to just tell the players "Tonight’s game is about slaying a dragon" than to put them in a situation where there is a dragon to the north, impassable mountains to the south, impassible forest to the west, and an ocean to the east, and then spending three hours coming up with reasons to shoot down the players plans to cross ocean, forest, or mountains.

To share a story, one time I was playing the party Rogue. The party fighter would constantly verbally abuse me for being a coward every time I hid or went for a backstab rather than a straight attack. This had been going on for several weeks and was pissing me off both in and out of character. My character also had a phobia of water as part of my background.

One night we came to a river and the fighter wanted to swim. I refused and wanted to look for a boat. The fighter simply picked me up with his 18/00 strength and threw me in the river, where I was attacked by water monsters and almost killed. That night after we made camp I volunteered for watch and then, using my rogue powers, killed the fighter in his sleep.

The DM responded by having a level 20 wizard / cleric teleport in, teleport me to jail, and true res the fighter. End result, my actions didn't matter and everyone was pissed off at everyone both in and out of character.

This was a situation that was handled totally IC by every party, and yet it ended with the party breaking up and everyone mad at everyone else both in and out of character. Don't you think this situation would have worked out better for everyone involved if someone had just broken the fourth wall and had an OOC conversation about acceptable player behavior?

I also had another game where the party rogue regularly stole from his part members. If someone doesn't act OOC, barring very careful, subtle, and unrealistic intervention on the DM's part, you are going to have a party where the rogue is grossly over WBL, the rest of the part grossly under WBL, and when the party eventually finds out they are going to kill (or at the very least kick out) the rogue from the party and make everyone mad.

[Shadow Viper]

Reminds me of one 3.5 game, where the policy for absent players was for the DM to control them. I seriously wished everyone would show up to every game, because their characters would turn into massive, horrible DMPCs whenever they didn't. Also to note is that WBL is completely ignored, because of "realism" (we must have had ~30k gold between us at level 21, excepting some stupidly-valuable homebrew items like a Breastplate of Magic Immunity).

So one party member is killed, and he was carrying a whole crapload of shiny stuff, including a sword that was literally valuable enough to buy nations (which was also a Lich's Phylactery, and technically impossible by the rules, which led to its stupidly high price tag), and some healing-amulet which a dying healer had willed to him literally the day before (on his deathbed) because he "did not want its powers to go to waste" when he died.


So what does the the "Were-DMPC" (Turns into a DMPC whenever his player doesn't show up) suggest force us to do? Bury him, with all his stuff, and use the Epic Lich's phylactery as a grave-marker. In short, he was dumping hundreds of thousands of gold into the ****ing dirt, for no reason other than the DM not wanting us to have it. My character explained all this to him, and he wasn't having it; DMPC bodily forced my PC away (I didn't want to force a fight, for so many different reasons), claiming he "should show some respect for the dead" (resurrection is impossible, and most people in the world are Atheists anyway). I pointed out, tongue-in-cheek, that he hasn't "respected the dead" in months. So he stood guard over this hole for two continuous in-game days, and every attempt to retrieve it with magic failed horribly.


So the DM wasted a kingdom's worth of wealth, and the dead PC's player re-rolled a new character one level lower and completely broke, without a say in the matter.

After both examples, Really hope you're no longer playing with that DM or allowing that person to DM

[Kaww]

The DM responded by having a level 20 wizard / cleric teleport in, teleport me to jail, and true res the fighter. End result, my actions didn't matter and everyone was pissed off at everyone both in and out of character.

This was a situation that was handled totally IC by every party, and yet it ended with the party breaking up and everyone mad at everyone else both in and out of character. Don't you think this situation would have worked out better for everyone involved if someone had just broken the fourth wall and had an OOC conversation about acceptable player behavior?

I also had another game where the party rogue regularly stole from his part members. If someone doesn't act OOC, barring very careful, subtle, and unrealistic intervention on the DM's part, you are going to have a party where the rogue is grossly over WBL, the rest of the part grossly under WBL, and when the party eventually finds out they are going to kill (or at the very least kick out) the rogue from the party and make everyone mad.

Red: Well at that point: No. At the beginning of the game: Yes. You did the right thing and the GM is acting like a ten year old who doesn't want Bambi to die. Actions have consequences. If the fighter's player knew OOC about your phobia - he had it coming. If it's a non PvP game GM has to stop any form of abuse. Otherwise it's justice the way PCs see it and GM doesn't get involved. GM is a referee and that is all there is to it. If you are basketball referee and you beat up a player because he made a foul you have problems and no job after the incident. Same should apply here.

Green: If no PvP why the hell is he stealing!? If PvP is allowed then once they find out it's a routine procedure - kill, loot, divide loot.