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Thread: Spite in gaming

  1. - Top - End - #31
    Titan in the Playground
     
    AssassinGuy

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    Default Re: Spite in gaming

    Quote Originally Posted by False God View Post
    THIS. For any line the DM is unwilling to cross.
    Agreed. There are things my group is fine with touching on with a fade to black. There are things that my group is not fine with even making implicit like that. Understanding where you draw the line is important info to have as a DM.
    “Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”

  2. - Top - End - #32
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    ElfRangerGuy

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    Jul 2014

    Default Re: Spite in gaming

    Quote Originally Posted by Bulhakov View Post
    - having players who refused to participate in torturing/interrogating two prisoners, to roleplay as those prisoners instead (which basically turned the session into the Stanford prison experiment)
    Oh wow. I am so totally stealing this.

    By which I mean... say a morally dubious situation comes up in game. A situation where the players might be acting out because it's an NPC they met 5 minutes ago and it's all fantasy and make-believe anyway, you can force them to re-evaluate the interaction by recruiting another player or a friend outside your group. That is not to say, you should be deploying this trick often - it is a game, and much of the point is to be able to act in ways we couldn't irl and not invite extra emotional consternation in everyone's life. But in case you need to add extra gravitas to a scene or the players have misinterpreted the mood you're trying to convey, this could be a rather effective tool in your DM box.

  3. - Top - End - #33
    Titan in the Playground
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    Default Re: Spite in gaming

    Quote Originally Posted by Jay R View Post
    The quick way to train your players not to do it is to stop the game and be completely open, honest, and committed to your position..

    "I'm prepared to create and run a world for you to pretend to be heroes in. I am not willing to create and run a world for you to pretend to be villains in. It really bothers me and I can't keep going right now. We're stopping for today. If you want to come back and pick up from here as the heroes, I'll keep running the game. But if torturing prisoners is an important part of playing D&D for you, then I'm not the right DM for you; I can't give you the game you want. I sincerely hope you find a DM who will run the game you want to play, but I'm just not up to it."
    Note: this does not include sneering at the players for being different from me. I'm not saying their way to play is bad -- just that I can't be the DM for it.

    This avoids any irrelevant discussion of their playstyle. In response to any defense of what they want to do, I would say, "That's your business, not mine. And I hope you find a DM who can run the game the way you want. I just can't."

  4. - Top - End - #34
    Pixie in the Playground
     
    Chimera

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    Oct 2022

    eek Re: Spite in gaming

    Quote Originally Posted by HumanFighter View Post
    Friends and fellow gamers, have u ever had a session or campaign that just went plain bad? As an isolated incident, one that does not bleed (or explode) over to other things in the group, it is still bad but it stays in its proper place, usually.
    Still, sometimes, things go so personally bad for everyone that sides are taken, lines are drawn, wars are declared, and this can echo into other campaigns within that group forevermore

    The bitter GM, feeling spiteful from what had happened in previous sessions in other campaigns, he decides to pick on and be unfair to one or two players in particular to get back at them for whatever imaginary slight he concocted, and so the campaign becomes lop-sided and skewed, making one half of the players positively blessed while the other half suffers at all turns.
    This is not what I want to happen in my games or at my table, but nevertheless it does happen, unfortunately, because life is stupid and unfair at times, but that doesn't mean we cant talk it out and correct it.
    People get the wrong idea about other ppl at the table, they make assumptions. Sometimes people troll, sometimes for fun, sometimes out of spite. I've seen it. Ive seen an entire table of 8 ppl or more ripped apart and divided because of some immature crap.
    U guys ever have such an experience? Cuz if so, it can significantly impact one's enthusiasm for the hobby
    Were u ever able to correct things, or did it degenerate more and more until all or part of the group broke off? Curious to know. Im HumanFighter. This post was a sweaty one for me.
    Lately, games have been annoying me a lot. So I was playing Call of Duty once and my monitor got really buggy a few times. I was so nervous that I smashed it against the radiator and threw it out the window. Then I had a mental breakdown and had to find a therapist, now I'm on pills.

  5. - Top - End - #35
    Ogre in the Playground
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    Feb 2015

    Default Re: Spite in gaming

    Quote Originally Posted by HumanFighter View Post
    U guys ever have such an experience? Cuz if so, it can significantly impact one's enthusiasm for the hobby
    Were u ever able to correct things, or did it degenerate more and more until all or part of the group broke off? Curious to know. Im HumanFighter. This post was a sweaty one for me.
    I have seen conflicts where people took sides be resolved peacefully and via compromise, but only when it could be done in less than a week Everything else led to a split of the group.

    The worst case was when a couple had a divorce and tried to drag the group into it.

  6. - Top - End - #36
    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Jun 2021

    Default Re: Spite in gaming

    Here's the deal. Players -should- have the option of capturing, rather than killing, all the enemies. And they should be rewarded by being able to get information out of the captured enemies. However, the key here is to let the captured enemies give up the information WITHOUT having to be tortured to get it.

    Too many DMs default to all captured prisoners being tough-guys who will never give up what they know! And all that trains the players to do is resort to torture or some other coercive technique. That, or it teaches the players to never take prisoners in the first place. There's no point, if all it leads to is headaches and no useful benefit.

    So if you have players who are torturing people, then stop having captured enemies hold out until they end up getting tortured. If they are nice enough to capture a bad guy instead of killing them, then the bad guy can simply tell them what they know in exchange for being let go.

  7. - Top - End - #37
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Aug 2022

    Default Re: Spite in gaming

    Quote Originally Posted by Wintermoot View Post
    So if you have players who are torturing people, then stop having captured enemies hold out until they end up getting tortured. If they are nice enough to capture a bad guy instead of killing them, then the bad guy can simply tell them what they know in exchange for being let go.
    Yeah. That's a somewhat simple way of dealing with this. Introduce the concept of "ransom" as a means to recover catpured people (both PCs and NPCs). This encourages both sides to not kill/torture prisoners, and encourages folks to surrender rather than fight to the death. And yeah, the payment can come in the form of information instead of cash.

  8. - Top - End - #38
    Archmage in the Playground Moderator
     
    truemane's Avatar

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    Default Re: Spite in gaming

    Metamagic Mod: Thread Necromancy
    (Avatar by Cuthalion, who is great.)

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