Unanimous Good

[Talakeal]

During my game this weekend, while my character was contemplating torture and cannibalism, someone asked me why I always played evil characters.

I thought about it for a moment, and came to his conclusion:

I actually much prefer to play good characters. The problem is, in a six person party, someone else will always want to play an evil character, or at the very least a "chaotic neutral" character who is always testing the limits of what they can get away with. And heck, sometimes even the good players are bored / or impulsive and start violence at the most inopportune times, or just have a really different sense of ethics than the rest of the group.

As most groups force the PCs to travel together, and do not allow PvP solutions to problems, I have to go along with whatever evil schemes to other players enact. So my choice is to either be a spineless, wishy-washy sort of good who doesn't oppose and often actively enables evil, or an evil character who is an active participant, and of those two, the latter is a lot more fun.

This certainly seems to be the dynamic in most gamer centered media I am familiar with, but I am wondering just how common is this in practice.

I know I have some particularly problematic players at my table (those of you who are familiar with my threads are going "WELL DUH!" at this point), but is this just a problem for me or does everyone have the issue?

Does anyone have any success playing good campaigns? How do you typically deal with "that guy?"

[Mastikator]

Aaaand this is why I have this rule when I DM: either nobody is good, or nobody is evil, the players decide a side at session zero and stick to it.

I also prefer good characters over evil characters. But if there are evil characters around doing evil stuff I face a dilemma I don't want to face, be fake-good and let evil have its day, or try to control other players. So if I'm making a character as a player I only make good characters if I know the others are not evil.

[NichG]

I tend to just play a character, and their behavior emerges organically from their interactions with other characters and the world. I've had an 'I refuse to pick an alignment' Nietzsche wannabe character end up probably among the most 'good' of their group, but it didn't read as wishy washy or spineless because it didn't start with a moral commitment per se. It was just their aesthetic to try to take any situation or characters encountered and raise them to the status of relevancy - which often meant helping them, and that offer was more often accepted by non-villains - so it ended up reading as good, mildly to the character's consternation.

Well-meaning, but not a Warrior of Light.

[Easy e]

I have no idea why, but this seems to be a D&D problem, as I rarely have run into it in other games.

I have no idea why, but there is something about the way D&D operates that encourages bad behavior instead of discouraging it. Perhaps it is the games history, the way XP use to be handled, the way "Always Evil" races happen, etc. I am not sure of the root cause, but I rarely run across this issue when I play other game systems.

The mechanics or game set-up somehow rewards bad behavior, but it is beyond me on why exactly.

[Pauly]

I haven’t played much D&D for a long time, so I don’t have recent experience with alignment as an in game issue.

My default position when playing with alignment is that alignment is an explicit core rule of D&D, and it cannot be ignored. Too many spells/abilities/magic items trigger off alignment just to hand wave it away.

As a player: I have real life experience of working with people who would land squarely ion the “evil” axis of the D&D alignment system. Accordingly I have no desire to emulate them in the hobby I do for relaxation and enjoyment, so I play ‘good’ characters. If any character of the party overtly acts ‘evil’ my character will at the very least not co-operate with evil plans, and actively oppose them when appropriate. When there is conflict between the characters over good/evil I am careful to frame it as a character conflict not a player conflict.
I have never had game breaking experience over this, although if I were playing with less mature people I can see this easily blowing up.

As a GM: I insist in a ‘no evil’ party. I want the players to have a good time and introducing character conflict whether it plays out plainly or in players going along with plans they oppose is no fun. I play RPGs for fun. I want my players to have fun.

Since I have problems with a lot of core D&D including classes, alignment, speed of level progression my solution is to play games that aren’t tied to these concepts.

[Batcathat]

As most groups force the PCs to travel together, and do not allow PvP solutions to problems, I have to go along with whatever evil schemes to other players enact. So my choice is to either be a spineless, wishy-washy sort of good who doesn't oppose and often actively enables evil, or an evil character who is an active participant, and of those two, the latter is a lot more fun.

Why would it automatically be the Good characters that are forced to go along with the Evil character's plan rather than the other way around?

As for the actual question: no, I can't remember experiencing problems like that. While I usually avoid alignments like the plague (for reasons I'm always happy to discuss at length but probably shouldn't derail yet another thread with. ), most of the characters I play would probably end up in classically Neutral territory (with occasional exceptions at the more extreme parts of the scale) and I feel like I usually end up as the most morally questionable character in a more-or-less heroic party. Which I don't mind as such, as long as the GM doesn't make reality itself bend over backwards to ensure that the Good Choice and the Smart Choice are always identical.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

For my group this dilemma was kind of solved by playing Curse of Strahd. We had express permission to be evil because that could work in this campaign, but I only found out after a character died that he was in fact supposed to be evil. When everything around you eats babies for breakfast you don't really have a choice but to fight it all.

That said, we are a group of mostly newerish players and we do metagame a bit in the sense that we want the adventure to move forward and will try to play our characters in such a way that they can make the story work. I'm sure more creative and/or less restricted players could still have found plenty of ways to be evil torturing cannibals terrorizing the realm, even with exactly the same DM and house rules.

[Lord Torath]

I have no idea why, but this seems to be a D&D problem, as I rarely have run into it in other games.

It does show up in other games, but not necessarily on the good/evil axis. In Shadowrun, for example, you can either be Pink Mohawk or Mirrorshades (or somewhere in-between). In every group of mirrorshades who want to sneak in and out, leaving none the wiser, it seems like there's always a Pink Mohawk who wants to blast their way in, kill as many people as possible, and nuke the site on the way out.

[SimonMoon6]

The thought that someone is always to going to be CN (meaning Eeeeevil) is something I have not encountered. If a group of heroes has an evil character, you kick that character out of the group (possibly killing him for being evil) and wait for the player to either make a new character or leave the gaming group. Then, all is well.

On the other hand, I have had games where the players were in conflict. I have always enabled or encouraged such conflicts because it can make a game much more interesting when the battles are not "the players vs the GM" but are instead "the players versus the other players". Of course, that changes the game into something that's not a cookie-cutter game and I understand that most people don't want to play anything but the standard "kick in the door, kill the orc, take the treasure" sort of game.

Having everyone be without morals in a group, well, that doesn't seem any more likely to prevent group conflict since usually those people without morals, conscience, or any sort of code of conduct eventually will come into conflict with each other anyway, since there is no honor among thieves.

I have played in an "all evil" game and while most of the PCs could work together, one of the rat b*****ds tried to steal from me, so I had him sacrificed to my evil patron. Problem solved. (Except that he got himself reincarnated into a new body that we didn't recognize and rejoined the group.)

[Grod_The_Giant]

I've actually not run into this dynamic very often. Most of the time when one player has edged towards the line of outright evil, the reactions of other people at the table kind of pull them back in line. On the other hand, I generally wind up gaming with friends or at least friends-of-friends, which helps lower the ******* quota, and I've wound up indoctrinating introducing a fair number to the hobby in the first place. If two-thirds of the table learned about D&D from the same person, there's going to be a much narrower idea of what is and isn't appropriate.

The only time I actually had problems was a friends-of-a-friend situation-- the GM was a good friend, but I didn't know any of the other players; I think a bunch of them were co-workers from his new job. I rolled up with my typical good-guy-with-a-ruthless-streak personality archetype, and like an hour into the session another player is gleefully describing how his character is ripping out a prisoner's nails to torture them into talking. After protests didn't accomplish much of anything (my friend the GM was perhaps too invested in player freedom), I wound up packing up my stuff and leaving.

Later that afternoon I got a Facebook message from the torture-happy sadist calling me "no true super sayen Virginia," which still makes me giggle when I think about it.

I have no idea why, but this seems to be a D&D problem, as I rarely have run into it in other games.

I have no idea why, but there is something about the way D&D operates that encourages bad behavior instead of discouraging it. Perhaps it is the games history, the way XP use to be handled, the way "Always Evil" races happen, etc. I am not sure of the root cause, but I rarely run across this issue when I play other game systems.

The mechanics or game set-up somehow rewards bad behavior, but it is beyond me on why exactly.

If I had to put my finger on a single factor, I'd blame the way that D&D directly correlates wealth with character power. In most D&D games, you don't have a choice-- you have to acquire magic items at a certain rate or you'll struggle to keep up. Which is a strong incentive for even the most holier-than-thou Paladin to pick up anything they can, because it appeals to both the power-hungry goblin brain (more shines more power!) and the socially-conscious responsible brain (if I don't do this, I'll be a burden on everyone else).ing

[King of Nowhere]

never had this problem.

while i prefer to play genuine heroes, some other people in my group would like to be more evil. as a result, i play a darker shade of good that will go along with some edgy stuff (nothing too blatant), and those who want to play evil characters play them as pragmatists that don't cross certain lines because, well, it's not convenient. and having good pr tends to pay off in the long run.
this is more or less an average of what the group wants to play; we all compromise a bit to have a party that can adventure toghether.

when i dm, i ask that people are good (again, pragmatic evil like the current state of belkar are fine) because i am not comfortable running a campaign where the bad guys win.

and yes, this entails telling other people what they can or cannot do. it's how society works: we all agree to not do stuff that other people would not want us to do, and the reward is that other people don't do the stuff that we don't want them to do.

i adventured with evil characters all right. sensible players will stay pointed at the goal, and my current experience has structured enough campaign worlds where you cannot get away with theft, torture and murder just by moving to the next town.
people who want to do gratuitously bad are generally distruptive and problematic in a number of other ways. like people who want to roleplay sexual content, really, it's the same principle.
So, how do we deal with that guy? the one time it happened it was a game of strangers found on the internet, and it collapsed quickly; the main cause was the bad railroading dm, but the out-of-control dude was also part of it. when we are in person among friends, we all agree in the beginning.

[icefractal]

I have run into this, yeah. I usually go amoral-neutral or "anything that serves The Plan is acceptable" fanatic rather than sadistic-evil myself, since I just don't enjoy playing that, but it is indeed not usually fun to be "the straight man" impotently scolding the rest of the party.

Why would it automatically be the Good characters that are forced to go along with the Evil character's plan rather than the other way around?

It isn't inherently, but destruction is easier and more final than creation, and usually the evil course of action is the destructive one.

Like if you want to teach the villagers better farming techniques so they can survive the winter, and another PC wants to kill them, reanimate them, and use them to carry his skull-throne around ... even if you teach them first and then they kill them, the result is that the villagers are dead.

Not always. For example, an undead-hunter can burn a bunch of Necromancy tomes before the rest of the party can decide who gets to read them first. But more often than not, the evil action is harder to prevent (short of PVP) and harder to revoke.

Of course, that changes the game into something that's not a cookie-cutter game and I understand that most people don't want to play anything but the standard "kick in the door, kill the orc, take the treasure" sort of game.

There are a number of reasons why a group would want to avoid PVP other than "they want a generic cookie-cutter game".

* PVP makes intra-party balance much more important and antagonistic. In a PvE setup, if one PC is more optimized than another but they have different roles, it may not even be a problem, and can be fairly easily fixed if it is. In a PVP game, imbalance is a matter of life and death, and the GM tossing a boost to a PC who needs it is taking a side in the fight.

* PVP means you can't just share information openly. In one WoD game - which wasn't even "PVP is likely" but merely "PVP is possible" - the result of the PCs' caution (a totally reasonable amount of caution for the situation IC) was that five sessions in, we still didn't have a party, we had a number of separate people who sometimes communicated and occasionally went places together, but mostly didn't. Which would have been fine for an asynchronous game like PbP, but since we were playing in person meant that most players spent most of their time sitting around while other people did things they had no way to be involved in.

* A GM can moderate what their NPCs do based on the RL mood of the players, but in PVP this is both harder and less likely to happen. Yes, theoretically, players should at all times be good sports and not take what happens to their characters personally. But IME that ideal is seldom 100% achieved in reality. I think the OP of this thread knows what I'm talking about.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I've never really had this issue as a player or a DM. As a DM (where I spend 99.9% of my time), my players all tend to be somewhere on the good side of neutral or better. Sometimes greedy, sometimes employing horrific means[1], but always aimed at the bad guys and generally self-sacrificing when push comes to shove.

On the other hand, a strongly lawful character in most of my campaigns would have severe struggles. Because my PCs tend to start at the far-chaotic border and go further out from there. I've had a few that could be argued to be Neutral Good, but they probably sat at the chaotic border a good chunk of the time. For example, in my session on Saturday, the paladin called out just about every extra-planar authority figure the setting has to their faces and told them to GTFO and that they were the problem with the universe. This list included
* Every single god
* Every leader of angelic legions (ok, they're kinda arrogant jerks a lot of the time)
* Every devil family leader (think mafia don)
* All the demon princes
* A good share of the demigods, elemental princes, and other notable extra-planar types

And then the party proceeded to lay the smack down on some of their representatives. Heck, the only ones the party really gets along with are some of the demon princes. Because they're unironically the bad guys and they know it and accept that fact. Probably the fan-favorite across all my campaigns is the demon prince of black magic, the undead, and binding contracts[2]. He's a chill dude (as long as you keep your promises). And aren't his stalker ex-girlfriend.

I've had parties mouth off to kings, princes, ancient dragons, you name it. Snarky and disrespectful is their default condition, and it gets much worse if they don't happen to like you or think you've been lazy as an authority figure. Oddly enough, each of that particular party is a nobleman in his own right, so...yeah.

Similar (although not usually as extreme) things happen in most of my tables as a player. Generally good, generally chaotic.

[1] execution by pouring alchemists fire down someone's throat after they surrendered? Yeah...
[2] NB: the cosmology is very different from stock. Part of that is that alignment as a cosmic factor is not enforced at all, so nobody is compelled to be any particular alignment.

[Batcathat]

It isn't inherently, but destruction is easier and more final than creation, and usually the evil course of action is the destructive one.

Like if you want to teach the villagers better farming techniques so they can survive the winter, and another PC wants to kill them, reanimate them, and use them to carry his skull-throne around ... even if you teach them first and then they kill them, the result is that the villagers are dead.

Not always. For example, an undead-hunter can burn a bunch of Necromancy tomes before the rest of the party can decide who gets to read them first. But more often than not, the evil action is harder to prevent (short of PVP) and harder to revoke.

Sure, if all the party members just go ahead and do whatever they want, the people favoring destructive solutions probably have an easier time. But in my experience, a party (regardless of morality) usually talk through what they should do in non-urgent situations. Which certainly could end with the Evil characters getting their way, but I don't see how it's the only alternative.

If anything, having an Evil character pushed into doing good feels a lot more common in fiction (Belkar being a rather typical example that most people around here should be familiar with) than the opposite. Granted, what's true in non-interactive fiction isn't always true in something like an RPG, but it should at the very least be a possibility.

[False God]

It sounds like your DMs need to, well, do their job.

If a player is constantly pushing the limits of what they can get away with, thats PvP. It's just passive-aggressive PvP.
If a player is constantly concocting evil schemes and dragging the party into it because the DM mandates the party "must stick together", that's PvP.

More specifically, it's not character vs character, it's literally one player(an IRL human) against one or more other players (also IRL humans). Who is taking advantage of the DM restricting others, while not restricting the problem player.

---

Look I enjoy playing LE quite often, but because I enjoy playing a "villain". It's different than playing a "bad guy". I've no more interest when playing an evil character in getting drug into obnoxious CN shenanigans than I do when I play a "good" character. The party is useful and valuable to me, an individual risking these assets of mine on stupid shenanigans is a problem. If the DM isn't going to let me resolve it in game, then it's up to the DM to resolve it out of game.

[jjordan]

I have no idea why, but this seems to be a D&D problem, as I rarely have run into it in other games.

I have no idea why, but there is something about the way D&D operates that encourages bad behavior instead of discouraging it. Perhaps it is the games history, the way XP use to be handled, the way "Always Evil" races happen, etc. I am not sure of the root cause, but I rarely run across this issue when I play other game systems.

The mechanics or game set-up somehow rewards bad behavior, but it is beyond me on why exactly.

D20 mechanic means that any plan, even one that relies on skills the characters have expertise in, is one roll away from complete failure and reverting back to plan B (blow it all up). Add in a focus on combat mechanics, some human nature, and players that understand that in the final analysis D&D is usually about using violence to solve your problems and you might as well cut to the chase and just start cutting throats.

Doesn't have to be that way, but it usually is. The one player in my game who says "Let's investigate a little more" usually gets shouted down by the other players saying some variety of "I'm not sacrificing my sneak attack again just so that we can assuage your conscience". That despite the fact that talking sometimes pays off really big.

[Kish]

I know I have some particularly problematic players at my table (those of you who are familiar with my threads are going "WELL DUH!" at this point), but is this just a problem for me or does everyone have the issue?

Yes, I was going to say.

I'm afraid, Talakeal, that my answer is: I don't play with teenage edgelords so when I say "it's a default heroic campaign" I don't get anyone trying to sell the rest of us on the chaotic neutrality of torture and cannibalism. I don't deal with "that guy" because all the "that guys" are at your table insteaddue to a mystic curse I cast on you years ago.

[kyoryu]

I have no idea why, but this seems to be a D&D problem, as I rarely have run into it in other games.

Because people play alignments like personality disorders.

It sounds like your DMs need to, well, do their job.

If a player is constantly pushing the limits of what they can get away with, thats PvP. It's just passive-aggressive PvP.
If a player is constantly concocting evil schemes and dragging the party into it because the DM mandates the party "must stick together", that's PvP.

More specifically, it's not character vs character, it's literally one player(an IRL human) against one or more other players (also IRL humans). Who is taking advantage of the DM restricting others, while not restricting the problem player.

This. All of this.

It's so common that I call it the "primary social contract abuse". The main social contract of most PvE games is:

1. The party works together
2. Make characters that can work together, and have them make decisions to facilitate that.

Some people decide to use the first rule to guarantee they don't suffer the repercussions of their decisions when they ignore the second. This is a jerk move, period.

[animorte]

I swear reading through the OP, I thought it was going the direction of, "I prefer to play good, but I play evil because I trust myself to be reasonable about it."

Yes, I unwittingly expected your "evil" to instead be an underlying "good" for the table overall.

And on the topic of alignments, I've always felt that your actions determine your alignment, not the other way around.

[Grod_The_Giant]

It sounds like your DMs need to, well, do their job.

If a player is constantly pushing the limits of what they can get away with, thats PvP. It's just passive-aggressive PvP.

Once more for the people in the back!

[The_Snark]

I know I have some particularly problematic players at my table (those of you who are familiar with my threads are going "WELL DUH!" at this point), but is this just a problem for me or does everyone have the issue?

Does anyone have any success playing good campaigns? How do you typically deal with "that guy?"

It's not just you, but it's certainly not universal. A lot of groups just don't have any examples of That Guy. When there is one... well, if there's literally just one player who likes to act this way, there's a lot more social pressure on them not to ruin things for everyone else; usually they either learn to moderate themselves enough that the rest of the group tolerates it, or they'll end up leaving/getting kicked out. It's when you have multiple people like this - or if the problem player is much more forceful than anyone else in the group - that it gets difficult, I think.

[Witty Username]

This hasn't been much of a problem for my playgroups, those of us that have played evil characters (including me) tend to have a joy in the "High-Functioning" evil character. The kind of character that you could go for awhile without knowing they were evil, usually because the situation doesn't allow for it. Plain Simple Garrak from DS9 would be my example, normally he is polite, willing to make small talk over lunch and such, and is a ally to the people on the station most of the time but every so often, as the situation calls for, what he is capable of slips out. Usually, by way of that he never uses stun settings on weapons, going straight for kill/disintegrate.
--
I have played a non-evil cannibal before, if one agrees that it is possible. My first character in 5e was a monk, and as a joke I made them a blend of character traits of DragonBall characters, including Yajirobe. Part of the character was an opinion that meat was meat, and always somewhat hungry, so he would eat the stuff we fought and killed, including humaniod enemies if it happened to come up. I would probably do similar if I was going for a Stranger in a Strange Land vibe, or a carnivore race like lizardfolk.

[Satinavian]

Never had those problems.

Not even in mixed good/evil groups. Those generally work as well as pure good groups.

Pure evil groups sometimes don't work, but that is mostly because of mismatches about (genre) expectations of what "evil group" actually means. Or thinking "all being evil" somehow provides cohesion and thus neglecting any other common ground. Or players realizing halfway they don't actually like playing an evil group and retiring it for lack of fun.


So based on my experiences i always advise against demanding common alignments and don't restrict it when i run.

As most groups force the PCs to travel together, and do not allow PvP solutions to problems

Those are also not true in my games or games i participate in. If the characters really don't want to travel together (anymore), they are always allowed to split and someone changes their character. "Being killed" is not the only way to leave a group.

Furthermore PvP is allowed. It still rarely happens (maybe 1% of sessions). Now, i am not really sure why it is that rare and i am aware that some groups out there restrict PvP because the players would otherwise have their characters fight all the time. But as long as all communities i am in don't do that, PvP is kept unrestricted.

The last instance of PvP was when a GM pulled a Vader "I am your father" moment with the BBEG and the PC in question decided that filial piety was more important than tthe regular quest motivation. Was a nice, memorably session and no bad blood between the players whatsoever.

[King of Nowhere]

Yes, I was going to say.

I'm afraid, Talakeal, that my answer is: I don't play with teenage edgelords so when I say "it's a default heroic campaign" I don't get anyone trying to sell the rest of us on the chaotic neutrality of torture and cannibalism. I don't deal with "that guy" because all the "that guys" are at your table instead

let's all give talekeal a round of applause for playing with all the toxic players so that they won't bother the rest of us. truly, he carries the burden of us all

[KorvinStarmast]

Aaaand this is why I have this rule when I DM: either nobody is good, or nobody is evil, the players decide a side at session zero and stick to it.

This is a small group dynamics thing. We have a wizard who leans mostly to full out murder hobo in my brother's campaign, and I as a player have made it my role to try and reign him in. First with my life cleric (she is retired, pregnant, setting up as the town cleric in a major trading town) and now with my celestial warlock. The rest of the party are who they are, the bard running hard chaotic something all of the time. I still have fun, these are folks who I have been friends with since high school. I don't think I'd put up with some of that behavior in a different group, though.

The mechanics or game set-up somehow rewards bad behavior, but it is beyond me on why exactly.

If you go back to the original campaign in Blackmoor, before the game was published, there was apparently quite a bit of back stabbing going on. Makes sense, all of them had played the board game Diplomacy quite a bit in their war gaming group ...

If I had to put my finger on a single factor, I'd blame the way that D&D directly correlates wealth with character power.

5e doesn't do this, but I am pretty sure our OP is running a hybrid system related to 3.5?

For example, in my session on Saturday, the paladin called out just about every extra-planar authority figure the setting has to their faces and told them to GTFO and that they were the problem with the universe. This list included
* Every single god
* Every leader of angelic legions (ok, they're kinda arrogant jerks a lot of the time)
* Every devil family leader (think mafia don)
* All the demon princes
* A good share of the demigods, elemental princes, and other notable extra-planar types

In Vijil's defense, he is Oath of the Watchers. He is by that oath driven to protect the world, Quartus, from beings that are not from Quartus. That's the whole Watcher schtick. What he did there, by expressing his frustration with the celestials, fiends, deities, etc, was very much in keeping with his oath and experience with their meddling with the people of this world.

Spoiler: possible contributing factor

Show

I think I had just poured my third rye-on-the-rocks at that point.

In-world, he was alive when "the whole world shifted a bit" during the previous campaign when the shenanigans of three gods got a fourth god dethroned. (Our current party has since learned a little bit of what went on there).
His less than sunny attitude towards non-mortals, and mortals who consort with them, is internally consistent and I'll suggest is on the lawful side, given his oath. But behavior wise, if we want to try to track his trends, I've got him at best neutral good, with some wandering off into chaotic thanks to being in the company of some seriously undisciplined allies and fellow alums from that school ... their 'flying over the city while drunk on the drakon' being but a single case in point.

He's a chill dude (as long as you keep your promises). And aren't his stalker ex-girlfriend.

Is that the one who was a patron for our Sorc-Lock? Yeah, quite the smooth operator.

Oddly enough, each of that particular party is a nobleman in his own right, so...yeah.

While I am not sure that 'sounding off' is by default chaotic, for sure our group does some odd stuff. (My paladin is still not pleased with that wizard's alchemist's fire stunt, but our larger mission - protection from that chaotic/demonic/something influence - takes precedence. That's the discipline of the oath and the militia experience kicking in.

I'm afraid, Talakeal, that my answer is: I don't play with teenage edgelords so when I say "it's a default heroic campaign" I don't get anyone trying to sell the rest of us on the chaotic neutrality of torture and cannibalism. I don't deal with "that guy" because all the "that guys" are at your table instead due to a mystic curse I cast on you years ago.

+1, and the last bit got a *chuckle* out of me.

[Talakeal]

I generally don't play D&D actually. IMO its actually worse in other games, because they generally don't lack a visible alignment mechanic to bind people.

I typically play either White Wolf or my own system (link in sig) which is a Gothic Fantasy Western that is similar enough to D&D, but actually plays more like a hybrid of WHFRP and Exalted.

Its funny though, both games use an abstract wealth system, and in both of them "that guy" often complains about how their acts of larceny don't actually have a mechanical reward.

It sounds like your DMs need to, well, do their job.

If a player is constantly pushing the limits of what they can get away with, thats PvP. It's just passive-aggressive PvP.
If a player is constantly concocting evil schemes and dragging the party into it because the DM mandates the party "must stick together", that's PvP.

More specifically, it's not character vs character, it's literally one player(an IRL human) against one or more other players (also IRL humans). Who is taking advantage of the DM restricting others, while not restricting the problem player.

---

Look I enjoy playing LE quite often, but because I enjoy playing a "villain". It's different than playing a "bad guy". I've no more interest when playing an evil character in getting drug into obnoxious CN shenanigans than I do when I play a "good" character. The party is useful and valuable to me, an individual risking these assets of mine on stupid shenanigans is a problem. If the DM isn't going to let me resolve it in game, then it's up to the DM to resolve it out of game.

Fully agree here.

Although the DM often has a lot on his or her plate, and simply doesn't notice all the low key passive aggressive stuff that might be happening around the table until it crosses a line.

My very first horror story was something like this, when the fighter was bullying my rogue throughout the whole campaign and almost got me killed, so I back-stabbed him in his sleep one night, and then the DM, who didn't notice any of the earlier stuff, came down on me hard both in and out of character.

[Easy e]

As I think about it more, perhaps it doesn't come up as much in my Non-D&D games because many of those involve dealing within a civil society, perhaps on its fringes, but still a civil society.

If you murder a bunch of people, the equivalent of the cops show up. It you torture people, other authority figures start asking questions. When a lot of money disappears, then someone is looking for it.

Perhaps, the difference is that D&D focuses a lot of people outside of civilization and on the fringes?

[LibraryOgre]

It does show up in other games, but not necessarily on the good/evil axis. In Shadowrun, for example, you can either be Pink Mohawk or Mirrorshades (or somewhere in-between). In every group of mirrorshades who want to sneak in and out, leaving none the wiser, it seems like there's always a Pink Mohawk who wants to blast their way in, kill as many people as possible, and nuke the site on the way out.

I've referred to this as the "Troll with an Axe". In Shadowrun, a troll with an axe can be a VERY effective character, and there are a couple good ways to build them (cyber or adept). But if your entire schtick is "I have an unreasonable strength and toughness, and a very effective axe", chances are, you're gonna wanna use the axe. And if the plan doesn't include something where you CAN use the axe, you're going to either be bored, or, often, useless. And so many "Troll with an Axe" players wind up creating situations where they get to use their axe.

Which doesn't work too well if the plan is "get in, get out, walk calmly down the street."

[Slipjig]

For example, in my session on Saturday, the paladin called out just about every extra-planar authority figure the setting has to their faces and told them to GTFO and that they were the problem with the universe.

Well, the important question there is, "Is he RIGHT?!?" Or is it at least a reasonable conclusion for him to draw? Because speaking truth to power isn't inherently lawful or chaotic. "Lawful" doesn't mean "subservient to extra-planar entities", even ones that match your alignment.

[False God]

Fully agree here.

Although the DM often has a lot on his or her plate, and simply doesn't notice all the low key passive aggressive stuff that might be happening around the table until it crosses a line.

In those situations you need to bring it to the DMs attention.
"Hey DM, why are you allowing Jerry to keep coming up with evil schemes and forcing us to stick together and thus forcing us to go along with his evil schemes?"
Put the burden back on the DM to state why they're not just allowing, but requiring the game to function this way by tolerating Jerry's behavriour, while restricting everyone else objecting to it.

My very first horror story was something like this, when the fighter was bullying my rogue throughout the whole campaign and almost got me killed, so I back-stabbed him in his sleep one night, and then the DM, who didn't notice any of the earlier stuff, came down on me hard both in and out of character.

I generally don't allow PvP, but I've learned PvP is rarely "in character", and it's the people, not the play that need to be addressed.