Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 GelatinousOctahedron Feb 04, 2009 10:44:53	I read people complaining about players, usually playing evil characters and/or rogues, stealing from other party members because it is “what the character would do”. I may be relatively unique in that when that has happened in the group I play in it is usually pretty fun and enhances the experience. The first time my character was the victim of the theft in an all evil party back in a 3.5 campaign. My character was a LE cleric of the dark six in Eberron, who along with his brother who was a NE werewolf (a homebrew barbarian variant) was in a party that contained a CE kobold thief (technically he was an elf who had been reincarnated as a kobold before the campaign had started. He did not know how to speak kobold and refused to learn how since he felt it was beneath him.) Throughout the campaign whenever he had first chance at grabbing loot he would, would pickpocket NPC’s, and would not tell us about it if he got away with it. This got to be pretty fun since it eventually led to him pick pocketing a lich’s phylactery and out of character I could see him coming up with some ingenious ways to steal stuff and cheat the other party members. We used the flaws system from unearthed arcana and my cleric had the absent minded flaw, which meant he had really bad perception and it was in character for him not to notice, while most of the time the barbarian/werewolf was too distracted by his rage to notice. Eventually the rogue changed his alignment to NE because stealing so much was getting him into too much trouble and he thought he was doing too much to screw the party. My character was not motivated by money, but was motivated by advancing the church and gaining his gods’ favor so he did not care much about wealth. The werewolf just wanted to kill stuff and spread lycanthropy amongst the peasantry. A good time was had by all. The second time was the only time I have played a rogue (true neutral) and it was in the iron kingdom setting with some of the same players. This was the classic meet in a tavern to begin the adventure so our characters did not know each other yet. One player was a trollkin fell caller, which is kind of like a bard. So he was singing in the tavern and afterwards passed along a hat to collect some tips for his night’s work. My character decided to throw in some copper and take out some gold, since he did not know the trollkin and thought hey, free gold! I rolled really low for my slight of hand check and the main NPC for the campaign happened to be next to my rogue and saw that there was less gold in there than before. He then proceeded to publicly accuse my rogue of theft and a fist fight started that ended with my rogue lying unconscious in the corner of the tavern without even the little money he had started with. This gave the cleric in the party a chance to heal my rogue and helped us all get to know each other. A good time was had by all and that was probably the most memorable start to a campaign we have ever had. Sadly, this was also our only campaign that ended in a TPK.
#2 rikiji Feb 04, 2009 11:52:31	With the right group of people in the right campaign setting it can work. Of course, the right group of people and the right setting can make just about anything work. As a rule it's a bad idea - there needs to be a fair amount of comfort and trust among the players first and it generally works best if the DM presents a setting which favors intrigue and interplayer competition. Even then, it tends to backfire in an extended campaign so it works best for short adventures or one-shots.
#3 mccowen Feb 04, 2009 13:32:28	Sometimes, people survive getting struck by lightning. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to climb a flagpole in a storm.
#4 kouk Feb 04, 2009 14:22:57	Sometimes, people survive getting struck by lightning. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to climb a flagpole in a storm. Well put.
#5 GelatinousOctahedron Feb 04, 2009 14:38:54	Sometimes, people survive getting struck by lightning. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to climb a flagpole in a storm. I am not sure what that has to do with it. Sometimes adventurers survive getting attacked by a dragon and other times they do not. So should they never even attempt to fight a dragon? Characters still go out and take risks far greater than sitting on a flagpole during a storm. It is supposed to be a role playing game where people play characters that they are not like in real life and do things that they would otherwise not do.
#6 Arbitrary_Aardvark Feb 04, 2009 14:56:34	I am not sure what that has to do with it. Sometimes adventurers survive getting attacked by a dragon and other times they do not. So should they never even attempt to fight a dragon? Characters still go out and take risks far greater than sitting on a flagpole during a storm. It is supposed to be a role playing game where people play characters that they are not like in real life and do things that they would otherwise not do. And in real life if your "friends" stole from you they wouldn't be your friends anymore. Most players who's characters steal from the party are relying on the fact that the DM (and probably at least some of the other players) will cut them some slack, and won't bounce them from the game, or even their character from the party. It's pushing the implied gaming contract which states that, without good reason, a party will accept a PC even when they might not had it been an NPC, but likewise a player won't set up a PC which the party would be unable to accept. (Where here replace "accept" with "continue to adventure with".)
#7 mccowen Feb 04, 2009 15:54:59	And in real life if your "friends" stole from you they wouldn't be your friends anymore. Most players who's characters steal from the party are relying on the fact that the DM (and probably at least some of the other players) will cut them some slack, and won't bounce them from the game, or even their character from the party. It's pushing the implied gaming contract which states that, without good reason, a party will accept a PC even when they might not had it been an NPC, but likewise a player won't set up a PC which the party would be unable to accept. (Where here replace "accept" with "continue to adventure with".) This, essentially. The scenario that starts with stealing from other PCs most often develops in a race to see who can betray whom fastest and most permanently. Some groups can avoid it, by design or by dumb luck, but the most likely outcome is one or more dead PCs and a deeply divided party.
#8 Keiichi_m Feb 04, 2009 20:39:15	Honestly right now I'm running a campaign that I thought would be a good aligned campaign with a bunch of players that started unaligned and 4 of 6 went in the evil direction, it's a bit of a challange but it is fun for all, one of the good characters is having fun with roleplay because she keeps getting so shocked by what they're doing. It's a lot harder, it takes a lot of work to pull off and you need the right group. I have a really good group, so it's working out, my previous group could not manage it at all.
#9 1red13 Feb 04, 2009 21:51:01	I think Keiichi is fortunate that his group works to make things playable. I've found even when it is explicity agreed upon before hand by all parties a good number of people don't handle pvp. At some point the level of party conflict rises past a persons level which they are willing to put up with and like an earlier poster mentioned there is a race to screw over the offending character. This is usually infects all the other pcs and soon all of the game is about screwing each other over rather than adventuring. In general a sucky way of spending a game session.l
#10 spasheridan Feb 04, 2009 22:40:53	If my "friends" and I went around slaughtering Giant war parties, hordes of undead, demons and dragons I really don't think I would consider stealing from them a healthy long term plan... IMO in DnD things I encounter fall in 3 categories... Allies, neutral, and Foe. Foes die ASAP. If you steal from me, you are a Foe... I guess you can call that fun, but the logical conclusion of inter-party theft is dead PCs.
#11 daidojitaidoru Feb 05, 2009 1:04:41	The rules of proper inter PC douchebaggery suitable for any game. 1 - No permanent damage. At 10th level 10 gp is a joke, like extra spicy fish sauce in the soup. 1000 gp is a blood feud. Your target should be able to laugh about it later. 2 - No risk to the mission. Misplacing someones watch is funny. MIsplacing their healing potion is something that might get him (and you) killed. Keep your jokes away from anything that could ruin your shots at the big money. It's for the greater you. 3 - Take your lumps. IC lie misinterpret and otherwise claim to be totally innocent. OoC take it in good humor. Don't demand a dozen rolls or claim your Diplomacy should magically make the other PCs utter retards. *4 - Optional but recommended - Make sure it's funny OoC. People will forgive a lot if they can laugh about it. I had a vicious rivalry with another character that included outright attempts at murder. I worked because we both thought it was funny, and because we worked out most of the conflict out of game instead of actually just going at it in game.
#12 syrsuro Feb 05, 2009 7:49:55	On the surface, those seem like good rules, but I can even see exceptions to them. But they have an underlying assumption I disagree with: That theft from the party is to be played for comedy. Regardless, the most important rule (imho) is very simple: The player's must agree that actions of this type are appropriate. Theft from the party (or even combat among party members) may occasionally be appropriate from the character's perspective. But for it to work, the players' must agree that it will be allowed. This includes the thief character accepting that there may be consequences for the theft. That is my problem with the above rules. They all seem to make the theft a joke, done for comedy and apparently immune from consequences. I would rather see the theft treated as it would be by the characters. So, to reexamine the above rules: No Permanent Damage: At 10th level, 10 gp may be a joke but 1000 gp might get you killed or removed from the group. No Risk to the Mission: Make sure that what you gain is worth what it might cost you. Don't treat party theft as an amusing way to occupy your time when you are bored. Treat it as your character would. Is stealing that healing potion really worth risking the life of a companion? And when your companion finds out that his life is worth less than 50gp to you, how do you expect him to react? Take your Lumps: Yep. And this includes accepting the consequenes when you get caught. (Aside: I have played in large, multiple DM and multiple player campaigns with open season on characters. And I have been accused (unfairly in my character's view) of theft and been executed for it (the party put me in charge of dividing up the treasure and then some were unhappy about how I did the job - and were able to sway the others to their side). That is the way the game goes - just make sure that all the players are willing to take the consequences of their action. Make sure it's funny Ooc: This I disagree with. If you are doing it because it is funny, you are doing it for a reason that most likely is not an in character motivation (unless your character is a prankster) and I don't think that amusing bored players is the best reason for interparty conflict. Essentially - I would only recommend theft or other interparty conflicts in a group where the 'social contract' is such that behavior like that is allowed and one in which the organization of the campaign is such that the characters are not immune from repercussions. This rarely occurs in a typical static group and thus it is generally a bad idea for most groups. But that isn't to say it can't happen. Carl
#13 daidojitaidoru Feb 05, 2009 9:56:05	I thinks there's a disconnect here. Perhaps a better way for me to put it is: Make sure the animosity stays IC and everyone is having fun. If you and your friends are laughing about the conflict out of game all is well. If your arguing over the incident and it's repurcussions it's bad. I've seen some stunning betrayals at the table, but no one cared out of game because the person doing the betraying made sure that while everyones characters would be shocked and angry, the players would think it was really cool.
#14 syrsuro Feb 05, 2009 20:32:00	I thinks there's a disconnect here. Perhaps a better way for me to put it is: Make sure the animosity stays IC and everyone is having fun. If you and your friends are laughing about the conflict out of game all is well. If your arguing over the incident and it's repurcussions it's bad. I've seen some stunning betrayals at the table, but no one cared out of game because the person doing the betraying made sure that while everyones characters would be shocked and angry, the players would think it was really cool. That I agree with wholeheartedly. The first step is that the players must agree that the potential for such behavior exists. But in the case you describe above, given that the character's are 'shocked and angry' - what form of revenge/ retribution would you allow? Many groups place limits on what the victim can do to the betrayer while still assuming that the party will pick up the next day with few repercussions (aside from some nasty glares) and that, imho, creates an imbalance. Carl
#15 daidojitaidoru Feb 05, 2009 20:48:11	That I agree with wholeheartedly. The first step is that the players must agree that the potential for such behavior exists. But in the case you describe above, given that the character's are 'shocked and angry' - what form of revenge/ retribution would you allow? Many groups place limits on what the victim can do to the betrayer while still assuming that the party will pick up the next day with few repercussions (aside from some nasty glares) and that, imho, creates an imbalance. Carl Well usually when the character does the uber betrayal the next incident is a lethal fight between the former friends (with the betrayer knowing to expect the loss). But of course the punishment must fit the crime as well. As you might have guessed the groups that I play with that allow that stuff usually like humor mixed in, so a minor IC humiliation and return of property for theft and stuff is standard. In a non D&D game we had a friend use his dark connections to embarrass a fellow party member across all creation in exchange for cable service. In return we used a voodoo doll to paralize him just out of reach of the remote. Since damage is usually easy to fix in game physical violence is another favorite.
#16 1red13 Feb 05, 2009 20:56:02	Its been my experience that the pvp competitive gameplay that runs well is the exception not the rule. Most often a good many players come to the table with the assumption that everyone is going to cooperatively work together. Then there is the few who from the outset know they are going to steal from or take advantage of their party. They hide behind the pretense that this is what their character would do and lean on the fact that they are a pc rather than just some other shmoe to protect them from being booted from the adventuring group. Therein is where most of the animosity comes from and the skepticism that pvp does anything other than devolve the game into a bitter feud amoungst players.
#17 GelatinousOctahedron Feb 06, 2009 10:00:26	I thinks there's a disconnect here. Perhaps a better way for me to put it is: Make sure the animosity stays IC and everyone is having fun. If you and your friends are laughing about the conflict out of game all is well. If your arguing over the incident and it's repurcussions it's bad. I've seen some stunning betrayals at the table, but no one cared out of game because the person doing the betraying made sure that while everyones characters would be shocked and angry, the players would think it was really cool. I think people come to the table with very different gaming assumptions. If the players on the same page in fighting and betrayal can work. In the two examples I listed everyone at the table was ok with the theft in the sense that they all thought it was what the character probably would do and no one person was secretly evil or anything like that. In a slightly related example, last night the fighter in our party attacked my warlock (tried to punch him) after the party was almost devoured by a pack of wolves. And he was semi justified in doing so since my warlock failed his perception and endurance checks pretty badly and fell asleep while on watch. And his fighter character took the worst beating in the group, while my character went almost completly unscathed and every one else was bloodied. To top it off, when he tried to hit my character, he succeeded, but then I used my halfling reroll ability and he missed the reroll, which just made his character, who already has anger issues, even madder. Everyone at the table thought this aftermath of a battle was pretty funny, though none of us were happy that we came fairly close to TPK last night. Normally I would be pretty mad about another player attacking my character and I cannot think of another time when a character has attacked another party member at all, but it was in character and not personal at all. His character is an experienced soldier who would never fall asleep on watch and who distrusts warlocks to begin with, and my characters laziness almost got everyone killed. No damage done except to my characters pride.
#18 mccowen Feb 06, 2009 10:18:49	Normally I would be pretty mad about another player attacking my character and I cannot think of another time when a character has attacked another party member at all, but it was in character and not personal at all. His character is an experienced soldier who would never fall asleep on watch and who distrusts warlocks to begin with, and my characters laziness almost got everyone killed. No damage done except to my characters pride. The fighter's PC is being a jerk. Playing out your trust/anger issues in-character is all very well and good, but if you're the kind of person who assaults even close allies at the drop of a hat, no one is going to spend any time around you, ever. Let me put it another way: you have a good friend who plays poker with you twice a month. However, he's a bad loser, and one day you clean him out with a well-played bluff. He overturns the table and tries to hit you with a chair. Would you invite him over for the next game? If not, what on earth makes you think that your warlock would trust the fighter to have his back in tomorrow's life-or-death situation? Daidoji's three(ish) rules for successful intra-party douchebaggery conflict are good if you want to betray, lie to, steal from, assault, or otherwise mess with the other PCs. If you follow those rules, the other PCs' players will likely still be your friends after the game is over. But it's worth pointing out that even if you obey all the rules, you're still acting like a jerk.
#19 GelatinousOctahedron Feb 06, 2009 10:43:21	The fighter's PC is being a jerk. Playing out your trust/anger issues in-character is all very well and good, but if you're the kind of person who assaults even close allies at the drop of a hat, no one is going to spend any time around you, ever. The fighter's PC is a jerk. His character is a long time veteran fighter who saw his son die in combat while under his command and then drank himself back to level 1, selling almost all his equipment to pay for booze and who for the past months has been wasting his life. But he is the most experienced soldier left in the town after the town's ruler lead a group of men into the nearby mountains to explore dwarven ruins and what came back was a group of undead warriors to return most of the explorers' heads. But this was not the drop of a hat. My character falling asleep almost got men under the fighter's command killed, including the other warlock who is only a teenager. It is in no way comparable to a fight over a poker game. Before we left town the fighter got multiple lectures about how he needed to bring the other warlock home safely and how he was just a kid and he should not even be leaving town to go on this wild adventure. Him losing it over my character falling asleep makes my character trust him more, rather than less.
#20 johnthedm7000 Feb 06, 2009 12:27:29	I completely agree with Daodiji- the viability of a game that involves intra-party conflict is directly related to the consensus that the group has reached. If the players and the DM agree "Alright-if characters have a valid IG reason to fight, then it's alright if they do; however all conflicts should be kept IG-we're here to tell a story, not **** our friends off" then this approach works well. Some of my most memorable (in a good way) experiences in both D&D and other roleplaying systems came from intra-party conflict of some sort that was understood by the entire group to only be IG, and to be acceptable. And that's the kicker-some people think that adventurers should always be completely cohesive and never do more than bicker, while others prefer more intrigue and conflict. It's all just a matter of what a particular gaming group decides upon as being the best approach-so long as everyone's on the same page then it should be fine.
#21 Baree Feb 07, 2009 20:32:42	Hmm. Well, I am still a somewhat inexperienced player, but in one campaign I play an evil lawful warforged monk and when it comes to loot I basically share with whomever is with me. If we kill something, the loot is distributed amongst whomever is present. If I sell some loot in a shop, no matter how I got it, I share it with who came with me. If that person told me to share it with the others as well, I would do so. But so far none of them have yet. OOC they all know it of course, but in-game they are probably aware of it as well by now. I have shared loot this way with all of them a couple of times already. Seems to work out fine. Of course, I make sure I am always present when loot is being distributed. In another campaign stealing, sort of, actually provided for a pretty hilarious series of events. At least in my eyes. Basically, we had an inexperienced DM, a couple of inexperienced players (myself included) and a couple of experienced ones. Half the party was good, the other evil. Technically I suppose this would have been impossible, especially since one of the good players was a paladin with detect evil. But we worked around it, basically myself and the other evil player made sure we were never around when he cast it. Of course there was some suspicion after a while... Anyway, at one point we found some gems. Now, my evil minion (as I saw him, I suppose he considered me... maybe not a friend, but at least an ally) could appraise. I took him aside at one point and tried to convince him to tell to the others that the gems were only worth half as much as they really were. The difference we would split between us. He agreed. However, when we did this, the paladin sensed something was not quite right. I was planning to take the gems myself to a store in the first city we'd encounter, but it was pretty obvious the paladin wouldn't let either of us sell the gems alone. So, instead, I discussed a new plan with my minion. He would take the group to our contact in the city first, in the meantime I would go to a shop and try to get the shopkeeper into our plan. In the end, it all worked out. We split half the worth of the gem between out party, the other half we split evenly between the shopkeeper, me and my minion. Actually, I think the shopkeeper got less, I'm not sure. Even OOC the others weren't aware of what we had done until we told them when the short campaign was finished, but we all had a good laugh about it. That whole campaign was pretty hilarious actually, since because I wasn't at the briefing of our contact I returned to him later, and he told me the true assignment. I was the only one in the party who knew it. It eventually ended in the paladin getting killed by a level drain from some undead (he had a weird extraterrestrial character with lots of damage reduction but only lvl 2, while the rest was lvl 4 I think), me tricking the other good player in getting himself killed (only at the very end of the campaign, right before we stopped), one last rival fleeing before the green dragon we encountered at the end and me and my evil minion being the only creatures in the realm who knew where the enormously powerful magic artefact was that we were after. Which turned out to be in a kobold den, and we actually almost managed to find it right at the beginning of the campaign because the DM had us start in the forest where the den was. He didn't expect me to interrogate the kobold leader of the raiding party we battled in order to find out if they had a den nearby with loot in it. Like I said, he was inexperienced :D . He managed to distract us though, with only a very little amount of railroading. I still respect him for that. I am sure we broke quite a few D&D rules in that campaign, but we all had a blast and laughed our asses off.