One of the players I play with has a habit of saying things like "[Character] is so frustrated right now but Sophie is eating this up," or "[Character] is really worried where this is going but Sophie is delighted by the drama." She's rubbed off on the rest of us, too, and now the whole party will often make those kinds of distinctions during or after dramatic moments. And it has been really useful. It was helpful in the beginning, when Sophie's cleric caused party tension because of the character's pacifist beliefs, which as you might expect is a tricky thing to play in D&D. Sophie would make it clear that when he character was bothered by something, it wasn't because Sophie was upset. Sophie was excited when our characters pushed back against her character's opinions. It made all of us comfortable having a back and forth about it, and it became not just something Sophie was doing, but something we were all doing. Because Sophie wasn't hijacking the party but rather expecting there to be push back, now ALL of us were exploring the boundaries between necessary and unnecessary violence, and whether we can fulfill the role of an adventuring party without killing humanoids. And because of that, our party has changed and grown in really cool ways, and often finds alternate win conditions for encounters. For us, just framing the party conflict in the right light out of character kept it from ever becoming player conflict.
Oh I do something similar! I actually sometimes also make fun of my own character and say "My character is being SUCH a baby right now, I apologize on their behalf". I think there's something really fun about just like...completely disagreeing with your own character's actions and getting to call your own character out on bad behavior😅 It's also why I really enjoy watching Talisen say things like "Percy is an asshole and I love him so much"
The point of having a small thought monologue where you explain what your character is thinking can be underlined by a scene in early Critical Role campaign 2, where there is a night that Caleb is on watch and he is skeptical of the group and Liam explains how Caleb looks at the party sleeping and explains that it would be easy and maybe beneficial to the group if he left, but he stays. One of the coolest Caleb scenes imo
@@SupergeekMike I quite enjoy characters who have personal monologues or conversations with their companions or pets where you can lay out some information or feelings to the table but not directly to the characters.
Had a thought about the emotional monologue solution. If the party isn't in the room with that character, they'd have no idea what he/she was doing or thinking. So the solution is to metagame? Is that a good idea to encourage? I ask because once metagaming is allowed or even encouraged, it's hard to reign in.
"Why did you murder the party and steal their shit?" . "It's what my character would do!" Vs "Why did you sacrifice yourself so we could escape? Your character could've survived!". "It's what my character would do!"
When my group played over zoom, just by the makeup of the group we were pretty cantankerous. There was a lot of arguments between characters. What we realized is that some people could engage in it without hurt feelings, and others couldn’t. One character and mine could argue bitterly, and then we’d just send little emojis over chat afterward, or wink after the fight. Another guy took each one personally, and we had to tell him that maybe his character archetype of ‘rude loner’ wasn’t a good fit for him. Eventually he agreed and changed. As for explaining in character ‘bad actions’, I recently did this in another campaign. I have a character who is obsessed with obtaining magic items. No matter what. Any source of magic (even clearly foreboding ones) she will barrel toward. However, since she’s looking for a specific kind of magic, once she finds out the magic item isn’t helpful to HER she gives it to another party member. We were playing with some new people at the time, so the DM “used” this character obsession to show the others that yes, you should look for items on fallen foes/in villain strongholds. One night the party comes across these clearly evil pillars in the woods. She wants to go near them, her best friend pleads with her not to. The party says they won’t go. They STILL let her take watch alone (which I thought was pretty funny). So I had her get up and start towards it…but then she glances at her best friend’s sleeping face, thought about how she’d be leaving him vulnerable, and she makes the unselfish choice to stay. A moment that would have been “what my character would do” to the max was thwarted by an examination/explanation of why they wouldn’t. Anyway, wanted to share these tidbits. Love the videos!
Speaking in the third person about your character is not just good for communicating with your fellow players but it's good for you, internally, as a player to not conflate your character's feelings with your own. RP is immersive, by design! And it's really easy to get your feelings hurt by getting too connected to your character's feelings.
Let me offer a counter-example to one of the points here, in regards to "my character wouldn't go on this adventure". My story is one where just sighing and going along with the party would have caused the group to have a bad time. We just reached 5th level, and bureaucrat wizard Hoshi, who does not believe the party (a team of mercenaries he was assigned to) likes or values him. He learns Animate Dead so he at least as one person to protect him when the party inevitably abandons him (and Sending, selfishly, so he can call home with any unused spell slots each night), and demonstrates it to the party. Squirrel Bark the rogue immediately leaps onto the zombie and stabs it to death, and makes it clear he doesn't want any undead around. Now I'm sitting here realizing my wizard took *two* dud spells, no one objected to Squirrel Bark's actions, and I want to go home. Before I can process that, we learn of a sidequest to sign on with a pirate crew for a voyage. Hoshi's an aristocrat from an island country, so not only does he not really want to be around the party who didn't stand up for him, he *will not* trust pirates. "No. Hoshi is going back to the barracks. I'll have a different character this week. Hoshi wants nothing to do with any of this, and it is too late to convince him otherwise" The next week, I brought Adventure the artificer/barbarian genius moron, universally beloved short-term party member. I put Hoshi (and my frustration) on the bench for a month so things didn't escalate in the short term. And after that sidequest was done? The DM had arranged a quest that saw the party stick their necks out for Hoshi, and he could progress on his character arc seeing that. It's okay to stick to your guns sometimes. If Hoshi had gotten on that boat, I'd have brought a really bad headspace to the next session, but my DM and I found a workaround, and pushing back led to a better story. You're doing terrific work, Mike. Your videos are thoughtful and, I think, make your viewers better players. That is, people that other people want to play with.
TH-cam, please let me link to comments. I would want anyone I show this video to to read this. In particular, "Bring a different character" is a valid option that should not be ignored.
@@TwilitbeingReboot ...when I click the "2 years ago" link next to the commenter's name, I get a direct link to the video with that particular comment up top. Does it not work for you?
@@TwilitbeingReboot Ah, yeah. I'm on PC. It's frustrating when the GUI is so different between devices. Different not just in how to do things but which operations can even be done. But then, what should I expect from an entertainment monopoly that can't even figure out how to let people sort their own playlists in any efficient manner.
I think speaking in third person, unless it's actual dialogue, is a really invaluable tool. It gets kind of frustrating when the DM insists on first-person descriptions and there's always this confusion between the player and the character. The psychology of the DM talking to me like I am the character also gets under my skin in a weird way. It makes it hard to play characters who aren't simple self-inserts lol But I digress. Being able to let everyone at the table know how you, the player, are feeling with as little confusion as possible can save a lot of hard feelings while still letting your character play out "what they would do“.
I found myself using the "it's what my character would do", but usually when I make them take what I know is a suboptimal or even stupid decision. My favorite example is a low-intelligence, lawful good barbarian who, upon coming across a troll who would not let the party pass, asked him pretty please and he let them. For me it was obvious that he was going to turn on us, but my character tries to see the best in everyone and, again, low-intelligence, so she thanked him happily and started to advance, just to find a second troll in the next corner with the first one blocking the passage behind us. We laughed a lot at how stupid everything was. Obviously we knew the troll would attack us from behind, though I admit I did not expect the second troll to come up which made everything even more absurd and funny. The DM kept laughing for a while thinking about how the trolls themselves were probably very surprised that we had fallen for it
I was playing a session that eventually devolved into some (long built up) PvP between my character and another and it got *pretty* intense. But the other player and I spent half the time playing footsie as a non-verbal signal that we were okay continuing.
Tension between characters is fun. Tension between friends is not. DMs don’t be afraid to undercut dramatic moments with a break if you feel like the tension is crossing over into real life relationships
As a DM, my one session 0 rule is that I'd like to have a party of heroes. That tends to cover most bases, though sometimes further discussions are needed depending on what character concepts get thrown my way. For new players coming in with something potentially problematic, like a necromancer wizard, a thief rogue, or a conqueror paladin, I state loud and clear that if they play in a way that would cause other characters, not players, to want to kick them out of the party, I would let them do so. For experienced players wanting to play something devious, like a minion of the BBEG infiltrating the party, I immediately plan things out with them and make sure they have a backup character for when their first one goes evil and has to leave and potentially even get killed.
Betrayals like this can be hard. I have had success, but what's really important to impart on the player whose character is betraying the party, is that they are going to lose. I'm not going to allow them to turn on the party during a crucial moment and cause a TPK. Just like anything else, one player's fun should never come at the expense of anyone else's. So establish that player's expectations so they can have their fun betrayal moment, get some real emotions going at the table - but that betrayal is going to be bittersweet, because the GM's job is to let EVERYONE have fun. The hero's may be knocked down a peg, but they're going to triumph and the traitor is probably going to suffer an ill fate. The PLAYERS should always be working together, even when their characters are not.
I have banned sex and sexual content completely from my game, i dont wanna deal with the ethics of it and my players can indulge in that aspect of rping somewhere else if theyd like
I think being willing to take an L in and out of character does help. I've had my characters do plenty of suboptimal things, but enough awareness to laugh it off when they fall flat on their face, does alleviate tension.
I have a character whose cursed and he cannot reveal details about the curse. There was a time I'd been hoping for the reveal but he ended up alone with a monk who discovered a lot of details about the curse. As much as my character was humiliated and upset with the curse, and he knew it would cause issues and an argument if revealed....I knew the other players wanted to know. So he had the priest reveal it. It links him to a pretty nasty villain and giving hints and descriptions of his mental state have helped a lot with the fact that he CANNOT reveal things.
I unfortunately developed a reputation of rarely passing key information onto my party, because it was always fairly easy to hit on some reason my character wouldn't mention it. To this day, it's kinda a running gag about me, not even my characters anymore. One time I got a geas to pursue a holy mission and didn't actually mention it to my party until we were trapped by fairies and I was getting magical damage every day for failing to follow the geas. "Oh by the way, guys, I'm supposed to go do this thing--" "You're only mentioning this NOW???"
Ah yes, the important session 0. I remember when we were starting an Eberron campaign where the dm didn't have one, made it sound like we were going to be spending a lot of time in Sharn, then had us leave after two sessions. Needless to say the extremely urban character I had made didn't want to go
I have a dm who requires that each character has ties to at least one other character, and does his best to create those when playing as a PC. They don’t have to be large, but at least something where they will recognize each other and be willing to work together. For example, we played in one campaign where my character’s backstory has him dealing in information, and so we decided that his wizard has previously employed him to acquire a scroll that contained one of his starting spells. It helps the players think about party interactions even before the game starts.
The hits just keep coming. Another video on an important topic to tackle, and one I've experienced from pretty much all sides. I will admit that one of my group's biggest schisms stemmed out of somebody suggesting something my character would do and me agreeing that it really was, and the consequences just went haywire. I still maintain it got disproportionately out of hand and that my character was not wrong, but it essentially led to an apocalypse resolved with some time travel shenanigans and I decided it best that my character (such as they were) should be killed off in the process, so he could get a slight reset to before the crisis point (as I still saw too much conflict with other party members both in-character and out and believed this the best way to smooth out party cooperation so we could continue). I'm probably still a bit bitter about how it all worked out (including several "this is what my character would do" moments from others, which fed into the chaos, some of which I'd argue were out of character, but I wasn't the player of that character), but it certainly was a lesson in the importance of compromise and occasional meta consideration to ensure some level of party cohesion. *Quick edit addition*: We are a group that is usually fine with internal party conflict, it just went to a level where the players & characters couldn't really get past it. We still have internal party conflict, but it's dealt with better and hasn't hit the same level of acrimony. I know Session Zero keeps getting brought up, and I'm curious to see that video, though it feels like an alien concept to me just by virtue of how I game: I'm involved in a pretty solid friend group (with some members in some games but not others, sometimes simply due to scheduling) so we usually know what to expect from each other and what the boundaries are, and aspects of tone and such are usually discussed before people agree to be in (or before people are invited in) to the campaign.
sometimes 3rd person descriptions and explanations can be absolutely essential! it made our games so much smoother when some things may not seem obvious at first. absolutely reccomend it!
Really enjoyed this breakdown. It reminded me of an old Eberron character from the days of 3.5 where I was playing a House Medani elf without a dragonmark. The character resisted going on each adventure because he had a successful busines, home, wife, and daughter. Ultimately he would always give in and join the party when the players would remind him that his father considered him a disapointment (because no dragonmark). This would take up about 15 - 20 minutes of the first session of the next adventure at most, and would motivate his actions in the game. The background and personality were intentionally designed to be resistant in a way that was never game breaking. To this day I use the character as an example of how to build a conflict within the party due to clash of personalities with emphasis that your character always has a reason to be in the party.
The other side of the coin from a single player/character refusing to go along with the group is the single PC who insists they're going to actively do a thing against the will of the rest of the party. Had that one come up this week.
Great video. One thing I would add - when you're in the party with the player that is "doing my character would do", don't feel bad about going OOC to ask some questions about motivation. It's important to differentiate between the player that is trying to RP (albeit poorly in this case) and the player that is just being disruptive. For the former, this is a teaching moment for everyone involved. The latter is probably another video...
Fantastic points here Mike. I honestly have never seen anyone do what you suggested of explaining what sort of thing is going through the character's heads and it really looks like it will work well.
Excellent advice. I had a game where one character playing a kleptomaniac rogue was eventually killed because of his poor behavior. It was a huge shock to the players (and the characters). The player whose character was "just doing what his character did" realized the hard way those actions have consequences. He was out for a couple of weeks, but then he returned, and the party found a wise and smarter hafling cleric whose aim it was to be a benefit to the party. It's a really long and interesting story (to me, anyway), but I didn't think I'd bore anyone with it. I'd love it if you'd talk about any experience you may have had with players you may get at an FLGS or in an online game who *aren't* friends and ways to ensure they are well-intentioned players. Great videos, btw!
When I refer to how my character thinks or what she would do, I tend to contrast it with my own position, to contextualize her motives and understanding. Most of my activity is in character, but when a decision is contentious I choose to explain.
This is fascinating. When I started playing RPGs with my neighborhood friends in the late 80s/early 90s we never had conversations like this one (and there seems to have been an explosion of such discussions in the last 5 years). I really wonder what underlies this difference. What has changed in the social discourse and cultural zeitgeist? There seem to be at least three main possibilities: 1. We were quite insensitive to larger issues when we were kids in the 80s (which may have negatively affected some players). 2. The general culture has become, generally speaking, hyper-sensitive and self-centered (which means that players react much more when they feel a hindrance to expressing themselves through their characters). 3. A complicated combination of 1 + 2. Regardless, it seems a renewal of and commitment to the group process (i.e., improvisational interplay) is an antidote to the issue in whatever form it assumes. Any help in understanding this would be much appreciated!
I would offer a fourth suggestion. Kids generally are still trying to figure out how to handle themselves and their emotions in social situations even as older teens. And rarely do kids get taught the type of language that enables them to express the kind of emotions and discomfort that Mike and many others mention on these kinds of topics. Now I can’t promise anything, but I’m willing to bet that there were times when people at your table were really uncomfortable with what was happening or extremely frustrated or something similar. And through a combination of these are my friends I don’t want to say something and lose that friendship, I don’t have any other options to play this game if I piss these people off, and I don’t have the language to explain these emotions to myself much less someone else who might very well be dismissive of what I’m trying to say if I don’t say it right, they just kept their mouths shut. Now we have a lot of adults at the table, playing, who do have the kind of language, life experience, and options to feel comfortable bringing up and resolving these issues in a more mature way. The advantage of age etc etc. as well as a lot more kids nowadays being given better language to understand and express their emotions and being empowered to talk about them by being able to articulate past I’m upset. Additionally, it could be that role play in later editions is just different. I’ve never played an 80s dnd game, but from what I hear they are very different beasts from what is played nowadays. Maybe your games just didn’t hit the same way they do now.
I joined a "Storm King's Thunder" campaign partway through since they had lost a couple players. It was played via Roll20, and since I did join late, there was no Session Zero to participate in. To his credit, the DM did have a short list of questions for folks to answer, to get a feel for them; then he and I talked via reddit's messaging system, and I joined. After a few sessions, two other players' characters were *constantly* verbally sniping at each other, and it was starting to wear on me. I raised the point (in character) that two beings that fought this much can't possibly work well as a team, because there was clearly no regard nor trust. I was essentially told by one of the players via Dischord PMs to STFU. That's an oversimplification, but he definitely took umbrage with what I said. We did eventually finish the adventure, and the DM decided to run a homebrew campaign. I played for a while, but ultimately left. That inter character conflict had nothing to do with my leaving, but that's a subject for another time.
That burning of the letter example is why I suggest that players portrait their characters in third person, thus they do not keep their thoughts for themselves or just announce actions, but actually tell the story o their character and give others insight into why the character does the things they do and express the mood and such aspects of their characters... great just the moment I had written that you also suggest that. Glad to see that great minds think alike.
I've never played any tabletop game before, but I do occasionally watch Dimension 20 campaigns. Even so, this phrase is something I've seen used as a joke enough in various places to be aware of it, but not aware of its meaning. As an outsider, my reaction to the negative connotation around that phrase is "But aren't they supposed to do what their characters would do?". This video did a great job at explaining how and why that phrase would come into play, as well as offering alternative solutions that give the players their chance at emergent storytelling without causing too much disruption.
Great one! As with in life, good (or better) communication makes just about everything waaaay easier/better, and the converse is typically responsible for a large proportion of interpersonal conflict, again both in game and in life. And you nailed it on the head. Really appreciate the content on your channel - good to hear a voice like yours out here that is also non-threatening etc to better reach people. Because people playing characters on a certain level can only play with what they bring to the table themselves with regard to interpersonal skills, things like not enough communication etc, that the person maybe has some troubles with outside of the game, can easily spill over. And its good to keep that in mind too when playing with friends - it can help you know when something is just in the game or if it the player's personality coming in. And no one is perfect (duh, right?) so keep this in mind when you sit down to play in terms of what could come up. And I don't say "no one is perfect" to just give people a pass when they act inappropriately, but to remember that its your friend (if they are of course) and when you discuss it to resolve the situation remember it might be an issue that they haven't fully resolved inside themselves. This is probably a bit much for the game, because this isn't counseling, but just be mindful that people won't absolutely be doing whatever they are doing "on purpose" so to speak, and as he said above, above and beyond don't take it personally - because you also don't want to screw up a friendship over a misunderstanding as well. But all in all, as he says many times in the video and I mentioned above, better communication goes a long way toward softening the landing of any/all of this, and is your best tool for having a fun game and working through hiccups that arise. (IMO)
As usual, another great video! Not only is it good advice for players, but it also gives DMs a way to suggest alternative approaches at the table. Talking this through during Session Zero may be a great way to socialize your technique with the group from the start. You've actually sparked an idea for a new video on my channel. Thanks for sharing!
As much as i agree about the fact that if you are the only one holding it back in a mission or a situation, on the other hand it's not fun for said person to be forced to do what other people say because "everyone else wants to and you are the only one that doesn't". There must be a balance between the person that for whatever reason doesn't want to do a specific activity and the rest of the party trying to make it feel more comfortable for the person. If not, the person will just get bored and leave the game...and i assume that's the last thing we would want from our friends to feel and eventually do.
Im playing with a group that is doing some heavy rp, and I was wondering why most of the exemple you said were working for us, before you present your solution of exposing the character inner thoughts. That does make a world of difference to not only tell your friends that its not personnal, but also to tell them that you actually respect their agency. Not so long ago, one of the players at my table was justifying his actions with only "its what my character would do", and even if he didnt hoard magic items or refuse to go on adventures it was extremely frustrating. He did have a bit of a character syndrom, he told me in dm that he couldnt die because "the dm has big stuff planned for my character". Well, two sessions later, he died because he kept walking away from the group. His tendancies to slip the party, but mostly the fact that the character was stubborn and was not changing his mind when we argued had for result that the rest of the group had to do all the compromise to carry on as a team because we all wanted to continu to play. But I know that personally I had to make choices and do action that I couldnt justified in character, and I felt disrespected not only as a character but as a real person. Another advice I would give for the heavy roleplay is to not hesitate to have your character leave the party definitevily once it is evident that they cant work with the rest of the group, that their objectives are not alligned anymore and cant find a way to rectify that: just leave. I know its hard, we are all attach to our characters and we love them, but if their presence creat too much conflict and the adventure is not moving forward, theres not really a point to play them in that specific campaign anymore.
The more videos I see, the more I understand that communication is the way to solve any misunderstanding at the table. Man, I love I left behind long way ago that teen way of thinking without sharing.
Good video. I'll definitely keep in mind those tips about having little moments to articulate what a character is thinking and express things in the third person.
I remember using that line, and, at least in the group I've done that, it was accepted by the group and there was no malice behind it. First one was my character being secretive about some things he did or was afraid of, since he had several trust issues and at the same time, didn't want to be a burden because he feared he would be abandoned once again. The other one, is when it comes to making decisions, because I know some of the decisions are terrible, but is like "This obvious deal with the devil is something that would tempt my character, given his circumstances", and it has led to some interesting situations due to the antics of those characters. I think the distinction is how genuine that excuse is, like, if they are actually thinking that, and it's something that isn't overtly hostile towards the other players, it can be good, but when it is used to make other people uncomfortable or pick on them, that's when it becomes a problem
I love the exploration of perspective and all the tools and options you mentioned. I feel like this sort of communication even good and friendly tables can still improve on, mine inluded! You are really hitting many great marks with your vids, just please don’t overwork yourself in the attempt to always deliver such great content
My DM actually commented on this sort of thing to me and two other players last night. Me and one of the others have been building a romance subplot between our characters, and at last week's session a third player pulled some shenanigans to create a misunderstanding between them halting the progress towards them actually getting together. Session that week ended with my character finding out about the prank (I already knew out of character because our DM doesn't do private time for stuff like that), and was royally ticked. So come to last night's session. My character being an assassin, she very openly threatened him over the situation. Knife at his throat, yelling and swearing, while my love interest took a shot at his Hexblade Patron, a shadowy demon that can kind of pop out when he wants and was clearly very terrified of the petite Eladrin woman with a knife against his host's throat. In character, there was massive tension and anger and legitimate conflict. Above table, we're all laughing and ribbing at each other, and my love interest's player and I are assuring the third player "Oh, out of character we totally love Narnair and Azazel. But in character, yeah, you messed with Petril and Elodie's love life and they're going to do something about it." The three of us all being pretty new players, our DM actually gave us some praise for being able to handle having a conflict in-game and address it how we felt appropriate without it affecting how we treated each other out of game, saying that it's something he normally sees newer players struggling to separate.
I love "Script Change" both as a safety tool and a dramatic tool. at any point players can pause, rewind, fast forward, freeze frame or resume play, they can do any of the above for any reason be it safety, taste, retcon, or to highlight something they think is awesome.
What a terrific role -play tool! I have never described my characters' thoughts or feelings in third person. I can think of some times when this would have been really useful.
In somewhat of a similar vein, what are some good ways to handle or approach situations that involve certain characters taking the given campaign in a more evil route involving releasing ancient or greatwyrms that worship Tiamat (standard dragon cult things) to hand the world over to them and getting their piece of the pie of the world that remains once they've conquered it. This character returned to the party after some hiatus and doing some of these quests as an NPC, and as such when they returned, many of the deeds had already been done and there wasn't much the rest of us could do about it. I had the party discuss fully in character what their individual plans were after we defeated the BBEG and eventually decided that the character I was playing wasn't going to have a hand in enabling this result for the world and knew that two of the other party members would kill them if they tried to stop them directly and eventually left the party. I eventually made a less caring character to continue playing the campaign as I was very invested in the character that had to step away. This didn't necessary feel the greatest, and granted, we didn't have a standard session 0 where we discussed what the expectations for the campaign were as we were all less experienced players. I love character development and is the best part of DND and other TTRPGs in my opinion, but if there is any advice or guidelines to when campaigns begin to veer towards an evil direction if some of the characters or players themselves aren't comfortable with the route it's going, particularly when a character is either hiding this information (apocalyptic or world changing in an "evil" direction in this instance) and handling much of it away from the party's attention? I feel that we as a party were able to handle the situation well enough, and there aren't any hard feelings. We're mature enough to know that characters develop in different ways and it happened that mine wasn't able to develop in the ways I was looking for, or ways that were aligning with their newfound moral compass, and had to step away. But all the same, I'd have loved to continue playing that character rather than assigning them to a pseudo-NPC position they were in.
Okay talking about character conflict makes me think of my first big campaign I joined, where I played a tiefling who just wanted to be friends with everyone. I joined this campaign as someone who didn’t know any of the players except one, the person who invited me. I feel a lot closer with those people now that we’ve been playing together for years, but at that point I was still getting to know them. One of the players played a gruff Paladin who didn’t like anyone and who made his opinions about such things very well known to the party. There were times when the character would yell at my character, insulting her and pushing against her positive attitude. Now, the player didn’t mean to be mean about it at all, and didn’t mean to hurt my feelings. But for me it was hard to know where the line between the player and the character was, because I didn’t know the player outside of the game at all. So it was hard for me not to take it personally. I talked to the dm and players about this, and the player apologized and explained that it was just her character. While the character hated my tiefling, the player loved her, and she was so glad to have me in the group. That helped me a lot. The DM also said that he would consider not allowing that sort of gruff character in future campaigns, but the party - even me - said that we liked the character conflict. And I really did. Like I said, it was just difficult for me to know where the line was since I didn’t have a good idea of who the player was outside of the game. Now, we are in a new campaign with all new characters, and I’m playing a girl who has a lot of friction with some of the party members. And now that I know where the line is, it feels a lot more entertaining and a lot less personal. Feels great to be the one throwing out insults this time around!
I once played a Grumpy old Ranger that had a specific goal of what he wanted to do and he viewed the rest of the party more as common mercenaries than his friends at the beginning. The "problem" was, that the GM didn't have anything planned for my Character's Backstory for a while. So there did come the moment where I went to my GM and was like, "Yeah my Character will leave the group soon, the dynamics aren't really clicking" and I readied up another Character which I felt was more appropriate to the group. But my GM felt kind of bad because he knew how much time and effort I had put into the first Character. So he caused an event that forced my Character to flee the City along with the rest of the party. And then he went to me and was like "If after this escape sequence, you still feel like your Character wants to leave, then get out the Secondary Character" and since the escape took up a few sessions since they were being chased even after they left the City, it gave my Character enough time, despite being a grumpy asshole that Doesn't wanna take part in group activities, to become a member of the group enough to stick with the rest of the party. And so yeah "It's what my Character would do" can be a curse for the Player as well, but when communicating with the rest of the table, it can be solved.
I feel like I have unintentionally made many of these mistakes (made a character who was a reluctant adventurer, withheld information from the party etc.). I did feel like they made sense to do at the time, and they were tough decisions to make. Hopefully I explained myself properly so my party didn't think I was being too much of a knob.
Narrating what our characters are thinking and delineating it from what we the players are thinking is something we do a lot at my table. We're definitely an "party drama and conflict is interesting" group of people, but we're friends who want everyone to be having fun, and what you're recommended here is what we ended up landing on as well.
This reminds me of something I might have talked about in another video, I think the Tiberius one (hopefully it was on this channel), where two characters were having a confrontation, and I thought it was really cool until one of the two players started unequivocally attacking the other OOC for not getting what they wanted. The worst kind of "that's what my character would do" people is the one that doesn't accept it when this logic blows up in their face.
I am currently playing a LE human noble storm sorcerer among of party of mostly good characters, including 3 paladins. He alternates between calmly and politely advocating the virtues of pragmatism and 'might makes right' and just flat out laughing gleefully while electrocuting monsters. So far there's been no friction with any of the other PCs. There are three reasons for this. 1) I simply haven't stepped on any other player's toes, nor they on mine. Why would he? He's a squishy caster/social character. He needs tanks/healers who work well with him. 2) it's a weekly pick-up game at the local store, potentially anyone can drop in and join it with a completely new character. There have been a couple of stupid characters taking stupid actions over the past year, but mostly the best way to not piss off a group of strangers who don't feel obligated to tolerate you out of misplaced friendship is not to be a dick. 3) My character is openly and honestly a parody of Emperor Palpatine, who is obviously (from the other player's perspective at least) only along with them to corrupt and use them to his own ends, and I often RP him using that voice or his quotes. By playing a specific well-known character, they can all quickly guess 'what my character would do' so it doesn't come out of left field. At least one of the paladins has already fallen after killing an innocent child, and a target for my character's 'emotional manipu-er, counselling'. "Good, good..."
God the burning documents thing brings back memories of a campaign I played at university. We were in some ancient underground complex trying to figure out some mystery, I can't remember the details, and we came upon a strange room populated by a group of ethereal spirits. They spoke in a language that only 1 of the characters knew so they were able to chat for a while. This was done away from the rest of us since none of our characters could understand the conversation but it was pretty clear the player was getting some really useful plot related info. Then he returns to the table and says nothing. And in character we ask what he found out and he just shrugs and says something like 'nothing important'. This ticked me off a little so I tried to press for the info but he just said 'it's in character to not tell you, his main flaw is that he keeps secrets' which at the start of the campaign seemed a reasonable and interesting flaw since it would make those moments when he finally opened up a bit super impactful but as a party we were floundering a little with figuring out what to do and this info could finally point us in the right direction. So I asked the question, we are trying to play a game together why make a character that actively strives against cooperation. If we had got some kind of inner monologue that gave some actual explanation it might have been fine but as it stood it just came off as the player being more interested in their cool mysterious character than actually playing a game together. What made it worse was the dm then gave that player an inspiration for 'sticking to his character and doing good rp'. The game didn't last many more sessions after that
The sad part is, the character could still act on or share information while convincingly keeping to the flaw, and it could be better roleplaying to do so!
Something I want to add, sometimes the story changes in a way that renders your character narratively unlikely to continue. That’s okay as long as you handle it maturely. I played a dnd game where my character had a very specific reason for working with the group and was purposely working to not form attachments for backstory reasons. Relatively early in the campaign the story arc resolved her reason for being with the group and narrative she had no reason to continue. I spoke with my dm and he gave me two choices, either this character gets retired and you make up a new character or find a way for this character to stay with the group. It ended up pushing me to find a narrative reason for my character to stay that actually advanced the character growth I was planning on working on anyway. Take changes in the story like that as an opportunity to either make something new or dig deeper into your character for a reason to stay
Recently my DM arranged a sort of between-story-beats subplot for our party involving a huge colosseum tournament at the main city that we’re using as a base of operations. The other party members wanted to participate. However my character (a Paladin, if it matters) is vehemently opposed to bloodsport and finds it distasteful at best, a pointless waste of life at worst. I discussed this with the DM in advance and let him know that this would be a conflict of interest with my character. Then, instead of outright refusing to participate, I made my stance on the subject clear to the rest of the party, and then challenged them to try to convince my character to join in. Some of them made some convincing points, among them being that most of the people we’d be fighting would be dangerous criminals or monsters, and that the funds from winning would enable us to to much more good in the long run. But the real clincher was when the DM revealed that my character’s brother (a criminal) was in debt and was being forced to participate as well in order to pay it off. THAT got my character to put his moral reservations aside. “It’s what my character would do” can be a good narrative through line if it’s handled well. It just requires all parties to communicate and put in the effort.
At least as common as session 0 related problems is the 2 common GM errors that lead to players becoming adventure resistant. The first is not paying attention to the adventure hook opportunities for any given character and the second is setting the difficulty level to high. In the first case the g m has usually built the adventure around the assumption of a one alignment or similar motivation and assume that everybody shared it. In the 2nd case you will see a player begin 1st by creating risk reducing side activities and those increasing usually because the GM has compensated for them making it hard again. This is especially true of 3rd and 4th edition which had default challenge ratings that were fun destroying lead to hard.
In our last session, our DM in her home brewed campaign gave us a choice: combat, or deal. We're in a feywild type area. We were interacting with someone under a queen of sorts. Another player wanted to make a deal to kill an enemy of this queen, in trade for our freedom. The thing was: this players character is cursed. And could die at any moment. In the deal, our souls were also included. You had the rest of your life to kill this enemy, or your soul join the rot.. So I stepped in with my character, shoving away the other character. This was a great moment because it was accepted by everyone. While I basically "stole" the deal, I told everyone that this character has an illness which can kill him quit quick. And that I as a half elf monk, could live a very long time.. So, their souls would be the safest with me. Nobody was pissed or anything because we are friends and want to know why things were done. These kind of actions can be a great story point, if you execute it right
My motto is, Instead of excusing your actions saying, "It's what my character would do." You should instead ask yourself, "What would my character do?" Many times the infamous line ignores the PC's instincts, cunning, and desire to stay alive.
Phrasing it like that would definitely flip the script on those trying to get away with being a dick at the table. It would put them on the spot if they cannot use IWMCWD as an excuse.
Did that yesterday lol. Found out the pretty lady in a nice furnished room was actually a Rakshasa. But since my level 1 ranger didn't know that, he stayed in the room because he was being followed by 9 orcs
I had a situation in a game where our DM had the only solution to win a fight was by close combat. Fe fought a gelatinous cube with some specific features, where we would have to roll low to hit it. Since most of us were ranged fighters or support, (Bard, Wizard, Warlock and myself as a Ranger) and we only had a Cleric and Paladin who would fight melee. The paladin got sucked into the cube since a nat 20 would cause that to happen for this specific cube. We couldnt use ranged as the DC to hit was 13 or lower, my bow had a +12 to hit. The paladin got sucked in twice and all of us ranged folk said we wouldnt want to get our melee weapons out just to get a chance to hit this thing, because we and our characters were scared. The DM blamed us for using "thats what my character would do" as an excuse for not wanting to help our Paladin. Most spells didnt work, telekinesis didnt work, AOE spells didnt work, only really rolling low on direct attacks with either weapons or spells for a DC of 13 or lower. In the end we had to give in and go into melee. Our Bard died because of that. We didnt had any possibility to solve this encounter. We didnt had the chance to ignore it in the first place, the DM said we couldnt run as the Cube would be faster than us and we couldnt use most spells because the DM thought that would ruin the "fun" encounter. He blamed us for not going for the easiest solution, get out a weapon with a small bonus to hit and blamed us for roleplaying in a fight and not wanting to get near that cube. Am I wrong to think he wrongfully blamed us because we said "thats what our characters would do, not to get closer"?
That sounds like a very poorly - and probably overly - designed and adjudicated encounter, and when it went poorly the DM displaced his responsibility onto the players. It was inappropriate, and if the goal was to get the characters to engage in melee he could have used the terrain.
@@aaronghunter Worst thing was in the end he blamed us for not liking his "fun" encounter and was surprised that one of us had died. I dont know what the other groups of his are consisting out of, but it seems that those are much more combat focused groups than ours. Dont get me wrong, he is a good GM, just has his flaws here and there.
In my group, we have a player who has the "it's what my character would do" problem where they don't seem to be okay with in game consequences for their actions. It turns into "it's what my character would do", "well, what our characters would do is kick you out."
The moment you talked about when a character does something that the rest of the party does not and could not understand and suggesting you monologue it out and speak in present tense is really highlighted in an episode of Critical Role here recently when Ashton broke a magic item before anybody could stop him. It did not bother me, but I've seen plenty of people genuinely upset about how quickly (and quietly) Taliesin did it that I couldn't help but instantly think of that.
This is something we used to do more when we were kids. Haven't really done it in a long time. The closest thing to it is a couple years ago, playing Edge of the Empire: my character, who was both mechanic and astrogator on our ship, received a message that his family was having some troubles, so he plotted a course to their planet instead of where the rest of the party thought we were going. On the other hand, other players also had their characters doing some impulsive things - like the character who got bored guarding the bridge of an enemy ship and started punching random buttons even though we had specifically told him not to touch anything... ;)
At least at one point, I've been one of those players that didn't quite fully comprehend boundaries. It's still something I have difficulty with, but it's not impossible to comprehend. And I have gotten better since then.
To be fair, intentions matter, and in most cases the "it's what my character would do" person had bad intentions when the did whatever they did that they are now trying to use that line to excuse. It's often used for blatant stuff like stealing from other PCs or keeping important information from them to feel more important, so even if you are someone who has troubles with boundaries, those are pretty easy to spot.
@@andrewshandle for me, it wasn't even me using the "it's what my character would do" excuse. I'm just someone who has trouble comprehending boundaries, period. I have problems recognizing social cues, you see.
It helps to discuss some ahead of the game, so not everything is left to interpretation in the moment. I had a game where several players specifically did not want romance or flirtation due to past negative experiences, so we agreed to table that unless and until we, as a group, decided otherwise.
One campaign started with a "you all meet in a tavern" and I was so utterly bored by the "I know where this is going" feeling that when the meeting got broken up by a raid (guards from the corrupt mayor or whatever), when everyone else fled, I just hid inside a large barrel or something. My stealth was ridiculously insufficient for this at my level, I got immediately caught, and the party's first adventure was finding out how to free me. I was a jerk that session, but it did lead to a far more memorable outcome than what we'd been aiming for initially. But yes, that's one of a handful of times where I fully admit I was a jerk at the table.
Oh man this is so important... I do think there's a point to having a character go off the rails for character reasons, but it's a classic way for a jerk to justify being a jerkface. This is super tricky. No substitute for having a solid understanding of table dynamics and the table norms. I do think your point about building a party that's at least not terribly incohesive is a good one. It also really helps to have a basic idea of when your PC would decide to move on from the party. When is their story done? That can really help if you've been there for a while with that character but the party has moved to other things. One way I've found as a DM is to make sure that there are things that a PC that might want to do things like steal from the party gets some opportunities. For example, a classic thief will get an option for a heist. I probably wouldn't run it as a full session but use something like the "skill challenge" mechanic from 4E or do it as a blue book session online, particularly during downtime or when one or more of the players is late or getting extra chips. Maybe one or two other PCs will be involved, but I can resolve things fairly fast in a session. It's not stealing from the party but the PC gets the itch scratched.
In one of my recent campaigns, my character picked up a sentient weapon that gave me tons of cool abilities. It just came at the cost that I could never put it down, became evil, and couldn't fight undead without hurting myself. Needless to say, our dm threw undead at us not long afterward, and I straight up told my group I couldn't fight them. What sucked is I explained my issues, and they still wanted to fight, so I had to get pretty inventive on how to fight undead without actually hitting them. I had fun, but it did suck being stuck in a situation like that and feeling like I was taking away from the fun of the group.
The only instance that I happened to say "It's what my character would do" was when I was playing Noble - a typical Noble Noble, with a flaw from the OG handbook that he badly takes on offense. After being attacked by goblins, he insisted to raid them and finish them off completely - disregarding safety and extra time it would take. Of course at the end I played it in such a way to let others convince me to give up on this idea. Even if they didn't make any compelling arguments. Yet still at the end of the session I was called off to be the "it's what my character would do" guy. Because, you know, I might be the only one who cares about the background/ideal/bond/flaw combination.
The problem with 'it's what my character would do' is that, _by definition,_ EVERYTHING your character does should be what your character would do, so the question is _why,_ but the answer is _yes._
on the rare time that I'm a player, I always try to couch adversarial behavior in a sentence like, "[my real life name] thinks we should do X, but [my PC's name] does/thinks we should do Y." Much as you've noted in your video, I feel like acknowledging this dichotomy between player and character helps others at the table understand what is going on and helps them overcome negative feeling about these situations. It's sort of the same feeling as being part of an inside joke. Of course, as someone who is usually a DM, I also try to encourage the other players to flip it on me for even more fun. A big part of what makes roleplaying fun for me is when I know something, and another player knows something, but neither of our characters know those things.
I think the only two times I've done such things was when I aimed my axe at our group's sorcerer (she communicated telepathically with my character, who wanted to protect his mind at all cost) and when I got in a 1v1 with a boss (the rest of the group ended up jumping in to help, making my character feel like his honor was tarnished).
I had a nasty example of this when we were in combat and my druid was down and the bard decided to use thunderwave in an area where it would also hit my charecter as well as the enemys inspite of another player telling them they could still hit the enemy and avoid hitting me if they just centered the spell there but he pulled out the "its what my charecter would do" excuse and it let to alot of bad blood that was never resolved
I once sat at a table while a friend of mine had an argument with another player over the ownership of a newly found magic item. My friend was arguing in character while the other player was arguing from an entirely meta perspective for what would benefit their own character the most. It was torture and they were both right.
"One of these days I really am gonna get around to making that Session zero video, but I keep stumbling upon other topics that I realize "Oh, this also needs to go into the session zero video"..." Then come back to it. Session Zero should never be a closed topic. If things come up, or change, or someone has a thought about direction of things, Session Zero should be revisited. Do the video, and just have "Session 0.1" etc. vids that add to it. Revisit as new topics come to light. Just like Session Zero.
It’s true, I might have to resolve that I’ll have multiple Session Zero videos! I already know that’ll be true about my House Rules video, I’ll probably make a new one in a year or two, so I might just have to do that with Session Zero, too. That… actually takes a huge load of pressure off that video, thank you! 😁
I think, even when everyone at the table is okay with inter-party conflict, it's *so* important to acknowledge when an argument in character is going nowhere. A few months ago, in a campaign I play in, our party got into a fight with some bandits on the road. Afterward, one of the other characters came to my character - a Ranger who knew the area they were in - and said "hey, how come you let that happen? You should have never let that happen to us!" and my character replied that there was no way she could have known just by visual that the approaching men on horses were bad guys. Should she assume that everyone they meet on the road is going to be evil? And the tensions were really high between the two of us - because of some other things that had happened during that combat - and the argument was just going around and around in circles. So I had my character walk away, get some air and then after the session we resolved the argument out of character. The next session, our characters calmly apologised to each other. That's the most important part for me. Sometimes we get so into things when playing that it's hard to differentiate when it's just your character getting heated, or when it's *you* getting heated. It's so important to know when to step away.
I am currently playing a Minotaur Warlock who's patron is a literal Chaos God (Tzeentch, since it's a Warhammer campaign), and this is an issue I've had to wrestle with at times. I'm playing him as a straight agent of chaos, regardless of what morality might say (As Chaotic Neutral as I can manage), but it's a delicate game knowing how far to push things at times. While he definitely is a bit on the outs with the party after counterspelling our Artificer's invisibility escape plan after robbing an NPC, I think (and sincerely hope) I've managed to be open enough in my communication with the IRL players to have it be a good time for all involved. Thank you for the advice. Oh, and between being a Pact of the Tome, taking the invocation specific to that subclass, and now multiclassing into Wild Magic Sorcerer (I mean, what other Sorc subclass would I go?), he's up to wielding an absurd 10 different cantrips, LOL.
As a GM who doesn't allow intra-party conflict, I find that you can really keep things cool by offering to run non-canon duels. Any time players want, I'll run combat between them, but at the end of the fight everything is reset -- the fight didn't actually happen, the two characters were just thinking about what WOULD have happened. It lets competitive players work things out without ruining the storyline.
It truly is wild how future tense instead of past tense can make a selfish move into one where the other people at the table have agency. "Character is *going to do* this" allows others in on dialogue! I think it's important that the DM is very cautious in these situations too, since their input is often seen as the deciding factor.
I actually had a great recent experience in one group with both sides of this. My character is a standard die hard lawful Paladin. I try to be as flexable as possible but I've told the group "listen, she's literally a private police force for the king, y'all break laws it's gonna be a problem.". We talked it through ad luckily all other characters weren't criminals or anything. One girl wanted a rivalry with my character so we worked together. Her husband had gotten wrapped up in a criminal organization. My paladin wanted to stop him, even at threat of killing him, her character obviously wants to save her husband. We set boundaries like "I won't kill your character's husband" and "I won't join the criminal organization" so the rivalry can work. It also means they're forced to work together because their seperate goals are in the same spot. It's been great and super fun. All the other characters get mixed up (willingly) in the drama and funny insults are thrown back and forth. It's one of the most fun character interactions I've played. On the other hand there's a guy in the group who I guess wanted to join the fun. So he made this character that is the "embodiment of gluttony", so it's a predator monster thing that kills just to kill. It keeps going on these speeches about killing innocent people and destroying civilization. This doesn't make for very fun RP because it just drags the game to a grinding hault. There's no reasonable explination why any of us would travel with this thing. There's these long awkward pauses after these moments and then we just try to move on. We've had to talk to him cause it's like "listen guy, you threw chaotic evil into lawful nuetral/nuetral good party". We've told him it's up to him to come up with a reason why our characters should work with his because it's a very odd character choice for the game. The DM is going his best but it's almost ended up in PvP a few times, like he's straight up said something like "go ahead and kill my character" and the DM has to step in going "no pvp". Honestly, good character conflict comes with understanding character and player limits then finding a way to skirt around those. As a note: my paladin isn't hard core or anything. "Don't harm innocent people" and "don't steal unless absolutely necessary" and "pay back any property damages" are her main things. She hasn't had an issue with any character but the husband (who tried to kill a woman she was arresting) and the monster thing (who wants to feast on the innocent by it's own admissiom).
Honestly, the monster eating people seems like a fun character in this situation. Take the Hulk in the Avengers, alone he is a menace to society, himself and other heroes. But with the avengers, he can do good things because they are helping him and pointing him to fight villains, you party basically have a Hulk who wants to eat people. Of course Hulk and the avengers fought from time to time, but what team of heroes do not do this kind of thing?
@@isaquepazdasilva8752 yeah the issue isn't so much the character itself, it's how he's going about it. His character prior to this was similar (immortal monster/aboration home brew thing that lives forever and doesn't take mortals seriously). But that one had ties to the party that made sense. There was a common foe with my character so they had to get along. Like once it was about to kill a NPC but my character could step in and go "how about we don't please". So there was some understanding of boundaries. This one has very loose ties to a NPC that it's already tried to kill once. It talks down to the party ("I am immortal and lived forever so I know best and/or what's being discussed doesn't actually matter") and keeps wanting to murder hobo with character who don't want to hurt NPCs. If there was a in game was to stop the senseless killing then it wouldn't be so bad but as it stands pvp that ends in killing it has been the only clear option. But DM said no pvp so we can't. So instead we've just had to ask him nicely out of game to cool it. The game grinds to a hault, gets derailed, and makes everyone just want to drop the RP off even if it's unfinished. I feel kinda bad because at this point we mostly ignore it except for a few sentences but there just isn't a good way to RP with it. "I want to kill everything" "well don't" "how are you gonna stop me" "I'd normally kill you but the DM says I can't" "well you're just a mortal so you don't understand and can't kill me anyways" "yeah, cause the DM said I can't could you cool it so we can actually continue the game?" I feel like the guy just wants a game he can murderhobo in and this game just REALLY isn't it, or he's trying for character conflict and doing really bad at it. I think the later, all of his other characters have been condecending but the "kill everything" part is new.
@@frog7226 hmmmmmmm why don't try pvp but you cant kill each other? You don't lose any health but gets beaten out. That way any discussion can be put to rest without anyone dying. Your party do not kill enemys at all? It seems he likes to make characters who are murder free really, but its a first for me to know about no killing anybody, but about him want to eat people, why not make that he eats some of the enemys until he is full and get disadvantage because he is so fat, starts to be sick, trows up etc you know? That way he cant just go on about eating everything because would not make sense, when he does is because is for the good, what you think?
@@isaquepazdasilva8752 dm actually changed PvP rules because this guy wanted to do to the death. Original session 0 discussion it was allowed but things have gotten so tense and awkward he's afraid it'll just cause more problems. And it wouldn't help anyways since his character has said he'll only stop at death. I think he recently switched up some stuff to change that though but things are so weird I'm not even sure. And we do kill people, just not random NPCs for no reason. My character arrested one NPC because she was sent by the king to arrest her but outside that there has only been standard "kill the bad guy" dnd. So it's not that we don't allow killing, we don't allow random innocent NPCs to be killed. Especially party allies.
I play it two campaigns right now one player plays in both like me. In one of the campaign we have argued for entire sessions and have video of our shouting matches. In the other we almost always are in agreement and our characters are basically always assisting each other. This is one of the best parts of ttrpgs but you have to have a close relationship with eachother and it doesn't work if everyone doesn't understand each other boundaries
i personally find “it’s what my character would do” from players making rash decisions, especially spawning combat, when the rest of the party wanted to role play, and im not sure how to curb that behavior as a dm. i have seen some dms allow that kind of behavior with players when they choose to split from the group but sometimes u just can’t split the party conveniently to allow players to be rash that way. and a lot of players that behave like this seem to only do so when it impacts the whole party. i feel like there may be a better solution than kicking such players out but idk what that would be
I usually support the idea of explaining your characters thoughts and then offering the payers a chance to stop or negotiate your decision. Example: I was playing a knight that hated Kobolds as they killed his daughter 4 months earlier and that's why he left off on this adventure. We got into a kobold fight and he was alone blocking a hallway while the others fought in the main room. The last enemy coming up the hallway offered to surrender. I specifically said to the other players "out of character, these monsters killed my daughter and I don't support torture, but I don't want to accept surrender. We mentioned wanting to capture one for questioning. Does anyone have a way to reasonably stop me from just killing it?" Another player was near the hallway and said "can I see the kobold drop it's weapon and raise it's hands, DM?" The DM said "that's reasonable from your location" The player then says "I will scream to him that this isn't what your daughter would want, you are a knight, not an executioner as you raise your sword" That was enough to make my character accept the surrender. This allowed me to roleplay some character growth as I realize not every kobold killed my daughter, and the ones that did are already dead. This also caused the group to (behind my characters back, but known to me) Al's that player to stick close to me in kobold fights and ensure I don't let my anger and drive for vengeance disgrace my knightly virtues. A really good storyline that we all loved.
rule of thumb: if "what your character would do" is something that would harm the experience for other players, change the character or make a new one. little to no exceptions. i just don't allow evil characters at my table unless you come up with a reason for them to not screw over the other party members (they're a sellsword hired by the party, they respect social conventions, or their evil is more ambiguous and defined by their selfish motivations rather than their desire to hurt others). chaotic evil characters are a no go, because even in evil campaigns they just go around leaving a trail of destruction in their wake and it's hard to develop plot in that scenario.
I am reaching that point on my character. There is only so far you can stay in character while deliberately tying NOT to be a problem. My artificer wants to help people heal from the last war (Ebberon) The Sorcerer of the group, however, is an issue. She has is a murder hobo. She burned down tenements with people in them, wants to loot the houses of the refugees who's town we were brought in to help reclaim, had no remorse over the two characters that died because she brought a deck of many things. yeah, they chose to draw, but no remorse at all over their loss. package all this into a shadow magic wilder who is openly talking about hearing demonic voices. It is difficult to keep coming up with reasons NOT to just treat her like any other villain and kill her.
Okay, now I'm anxious again about my character's actions... I made a more serious character than the others (that may have been the first issue, but I've never wanted to play joke characters). She's a barbarian, but she's deeply traumatized by having to resort to violence and definitely doesn't rush into combat hotheadedly. So when the party insisted they had to see a "sick" child, I said: "okay, he's definitely turned into some kind of a monster, we won't be able to cure him, if we enter, we will just have to kill him, and his father really doesn't want us there". And so I didn't go there. All the others did, and of course the child turned out to be a monster, and of course they had to kill him. I was waiting outside, disapproving, but getting healing potions ready. And when they got out, they all scolded me for being a barbarian but not getting into (really meaningless, in my character's opinion) combat. (Not sure, actually, if it were the characters speaking or the players, probably mostly the characters, but a bit of both.) And I'm really fighting with myself on this one. All these "that's what my character would do" critisisms usually come from a character's jerk behaviour, which is actually the player's jerk behaviour. But does it make me, as a player, a jerk, if my character doesn't want to be, as opposed to others? We didn't agree on making evil characters, by the way, but I'm now the only one with the good alignment.
Last night I counterspelled another PC’s attack on an NPC. His PC was going to kill the NPC then use Speak with Dead to get info only because the NPC was a thief. Only after our quick spar did we learn that her group had murdered a guy we came across earlier, and the player tried to use that as justification. My point was that we did not know that when he attacked, so my Good character chose to protect the NPC from a Chaotic Neutral warlock PC. My next move was to prevent the PC from staying in the Tiny Hut for the long rest but i set up an Alarm area for him instead. The player had the gall to ask why I would do that
I mean, the counterspell and subsequent discussion make sense, but it isn't unreasonable for the player to ask why his character is being left out in the cold, so to speak. Consequences need to be articulated, and action is not a substitute for communication.
To the hoarding money thing, I adopted the Nott the Brave mentality where instead of skimming off the top for extra, I just convince others to buy my stuff so I just have thousands of gold before too long
a lot of people forget that, while you're friends with everyone around you, your character might not be. So like how we as people have to compromise our personal wants and so on in order to fit into a group, so does your character. No group of mercenaries would want a dinglehopper that is clearly hoarding shit, stealing from the group and lying about it as part of their fellowship. So if you wanna roleplay like that, then you also gotta accept if the group roleplays being tired of your characters shit.
A year late but I want to tell a quick story about my first time playing Masks I was the Delinquent, basically the trouble kid in school, and I was sitting at lunch with my two party members. My two powers are psychic weapons and Illusions. One of my party members flung some corn at me so I made a psychic slingshot and fired mashed potatoes at him. He dodged it so it went flying by and smacked a girl the next table over in the back of the head. This girl is a potential romantic partner for the party member, so to be funny I used my Illusion powers to place a slingshot next to my party member at the table, effectively framing him. It was funny and the party member rolled with it of trying to act like he didn't do it but letting himself get set up. That's when the girl's jerk boyfriend stood up and demanded to know who threw that, and got pissed at my party member. My class(playbook) has a feature that I can roll when I've successfully tricked someone, I rolled well, and my GM said it means I have an 'opportunity.' I asked if that means I can dig my party member deeper and really screw him over, or just an opportunity in general. GM said in general though digging deeper was an option. I took about two seconds to realize that throwing my party member under the bus might be what my character would do, it's only ONE thing my character would do. Instead, I used my illusion powers to have someone on the complete opposite side of the cafeteria scream "FOOD FIGHT" and the entire room broke out in a food fight, thus all of my party were able to avoid direct conflict and instead just got wrapped up in the fun of flinging food around. I don't think my party member would've been that upset IRL, but I also didn't want to start a campaign with my character and his at odds, so instead I went a different route that was true to the character I wanted to play AND ended up helping everybody.
Hi Mike I have been enjoying your videos, and find them entertaining and informative. I really appreciate all the hard work and effort you put in, thank you. Good luck with the channel and best wishes for the future to you and yours. Andy
One time the party had been given a quest, and my character hung back, didn't join the party as they started to go elsewhere. When the DM asked if I was uncomfortable with the quest, I said "Oh, it sounds super fun, but Timothy doesn't think he'd be able to help, he needs convincing. Tell him X." so I got to have my character's angsty emo boy moment AND got to enjoy the quest.
Not really central to your point, but the only time I recall doing any sort of PvP is, weirdly, during solo games. Nothing quite like voicing two different characters having an argument that nearly devolves into a fistfight. While navigating a cave. That's trying to eat them.
I have no idea why, but this video got my dnd brain juices running and I am now writing up a word doc on how giff gods work in my friends dnd campaign (well, how the giff in his setting think they work) i think its a combination of this vid, me looking up hippo sounds (for prayer ideas) and reading too much LotR wiki.
I think there's only two good reasons for a character to act against the interests of the party. 1. they're becoming a twist villain, and either sowing the seeds, or doing their turn against the party 2. for some reason, that character needs to leave the party for an extended duration, either because the player is leaving, or the character has served their narrative purpose and needs to be changed out (think Scanlan mid campaign 1)
That’s a valid argument, I think. Obviously it depends on the goals of the campaign but that’s a really good rule of thumb. I also think this is a subject where you can do something and not consider it to be against the party’s best wishes, but ambiguity can lead to conflict - and hopefully this advice helps cut down on that 😁
One of the players I play with has a habit of saying things like "[Character] is so frustrated right now but Sophie is eating this up," or "[Character] is really worried where this is going but Sophie is delighted by the drama." She's rubbed off on the rest of us, too, and now the whole party will often make those kinds of distinctions during or after dramatic moments. And it has been really useful. It was helpful in the beginning, when Sophie's cleric caused party tension because of the character's pacifist beliefs, which as you might expect is a tricky thing to play in D&D. Sophie would make it clear that when he character was bothered by something, it wasn't because Sophie was upset. Sophie was excited when our characters pushed back against her character's opinions. It made all of us comfortable having a back and forth about it, and it became not just something Sophie was doing, but something we were all doing. Because Sophie wasn't hijacking the party but rather expecting there to be push back, now ALL of us were exploring the boundaries between necessary and unnecessary violence, and whether we can fulfill the role of an adventuring party without killing humanoids. And because of that, our party has changed and grown in really cool ways, and often finds alternate win conditions for encounters. For us, just framing the party conflict in the right light out of character kept it from ever becoming player conflict.
Exactly this! I had a Sophie as well who taught me this techniques (her name wasn’t Sophie but she these same practices), it’s a game-changer.
Oh I do something similar! I actually sometimes also make fun of my own character and say "My character is being SUCH a baby right now, I apologize on their behalf". I think there's something really fun about just like...completely disagreeing with your own character's actions and getting to call your own character out on bad behavior😅
It's also why I really enjoy watching Talisen say things like "Percy is an asshole and I love him so much"
The point of having a small thought monologue where you explain what your character is thinking can be underlined by a scene in early Critical Role campaign 2, where there is a night that Caleb is on watch and he is skeptical of the group and Liam explains how Caleb looks at the party sleeping and explains that it would be easy and maybe beneficial to the group if he left, but he stays. One of the coolest Caleb scenes imo
That’s a great one!
@@SupergeekMike I quite enjoy characters who have personal monologues or conversations with their companions or pets where you can lay out some information or feelings to the table but not directly to the characters.
That’s from the night before Molly dies yeah?
Had a thought about the emotional monologue solution. If the party isn't in the room with that character, they'd have no idea what he/she was doing or thinking. So the solution is to metagame? Is that a good idea to encourage? I ask because once metagaming is allowed or even encouraged, it's hard to reign in.
@@Boundwithflame23 Spoiler alert!! 😂
"Why did you murder the party and steal their shit?" . "It's what my character would do!"
Vs "Why did you sacrifice yourself so we could escape? Your character could've survived!". "It's what my character would do!"
When my group played over zoom, just by the makeup of the group we were pretty cantankerous. There was a lot of arguments between characters. What we realized is that some people could engage in it without hurt feelings, and others couldn’t. One character and mine could argue bitterly, and then we’d just send little emojis over chat afterward, or wink after the fight. Another guy took each one personally, and we had to tell him that maybe his character archetype of ‘rude loner’ wasn’t a good fit for him. Eventually he agreed and changed.
As for explaining in character ‘bad actions’, I recently did this in another campaign. I have a character who is obsessed with obtaining magic items. No matter what. Any source of magic (even clearly foreboding ones) she will barrel toward. However, since she’s looking for a specific kind of magic, once she finds out the magic item isn’t helpful to HER she gives it to another party member. We were playing with some new people at the time, so the DM “used” this character obsession to show the others that yes, you should look for items on fallen foes/in villain strongholds.
One night the party comes across these clearly evil pillars in the woods. She wants to go near them, her best friend pleads with her not to. The party says they won’t go. They STILL let her take watch alone (which I thought was pretty funny). So I had her get up and start towards it…but then she glances at her best friend’s sleeping face, thought about how she’d be leaving him vulnerable, and she makes the unselfish choice to stay.
A moment that would have been “what my character would do” to the max was thwarted by an examination/explanation of why they wouldn’t.
Anyway, wanted to share these tidbits. Love the videos!
Speaking in the third person about your character is not just good for communicating with your fellow players but it's good for you, internally, as a player to not conflate your character's feelings with your own. RP is immersive, by design! And it's really easy to get your feelings hurt by getting too connected to your character's feelings.
Let me offer a counter-example to one of the points here, in regards to "my character wouldn't go on this adventure". My story is one where just sighing and going along with the party would have caused the group to have a bad time.
We just reached 5th level, and bureaucrat wizard Hoshi, who does not believe the party (a team of mercenaries he was assigned to) likes or values him. He learns Animate Dead so he at least as one person to protect him when the party inevitably abandons him (and Sending, selfishly, so he can call home with any unused spell slots each night), and demonstrates it to the party. Squirrel Bark the rogue immediately leaps onto the zombie and stabs it to death, and makes it clear he doesn't want any undead around. Now I'm sitting here realizing my wizard took *two* dud spells, no one objected to Squirrel Bark's actions, and I want to go home. Before I can process that, we learn of a sidequest to sign on with a pirate crew for a voyage. Hoshi's an aristocrat from an island country, so not only does he not really want to be around the party who didn't stand up for him, he *will not* trust pirates.
"No. Hoshi is going back to the barracks. I'll have a different character this week. Hoshi wants nothing to do with any of this, and it is too late to convince him otherwise"
The next week, I brought Adventure the artificer/barbarian genius moron, universally beloved short-term party member. I put Hoshi (and my frustration) on the bench for a month so things didn't escalate in the short term. And after that sidequest was done? The DM had arranged a quest that saw the party stick their necks out for Hoshi, and he could progress on his character arc seeing that.
It's okay to stick to your guns sometimes. If Hoshi had gotten on that boat, I'd have brought a really bad headspace to the next session, but my DM and I found a workaround, and pushing back led to a better story.
You're doing terrific work, Mike. Your videos are thoughtful and, I think, make your viewers better players. That is, people that other people want to play with.
TH-cam, please let me link to comments. I would want anyone I show this video to to read this. In particular, "Bring a different character" is a valid option that should not be ignored.
@@TwilitbeingReboot ...when I click the "2 years ago" link next to the commenter's name, I get a direct link to the video with that particular comment up top. Does it not work for you?
@@Arkylie At least on mobile, not for me. Clicking there opens a box for me to reply to the comment.
@@TwilitbeingReboot Ah, yeah. I'm on PC.
It's frustrating when the GUI is so different between devices. Different not just in how to do things but which operations can even be done. But then, what should I expect from an entertainment monopoly that can't even figure out how to let people sort their own playlists in any efficient manner.
I think speaking in third person, unless it's actual dialogue, is a really invaluable tool. It gets kind of frustrating when the DM insists on first-person descriptions and there's always this confusion between the player and the character. The psychology of the DM talking to me like I am the character also gets under my skin in a weird way. It makes it hard to play characters who aren't simple self-inserts lol
But I digress. Being able to let everyone at the table know how you, the player, are feeling with as little confusion as possible can save a lot of hard feelings while still letting your character play out "what they would do“.
I found myself using the "it's what my character would do", but usually when I make them take what I know is a suboptimal or even stupid decision. My favorite example is a low-intelligence, lawful good barbarian who, upon coming across a troll who would not let the party pass, asked him pretty please and he let them. For me it was obvious that he was going to turn on us, but my character tries to see the best in everyone and, again, low-intelligence, so she thanked him happily and started to advance, just to find a second troll in the next corner with the first one blocking the passage behind us.
We laughed a lot at how stupid everything was. Obviously we knew the troll would attack us from behind, though I admit I did not expect the second troll to come up which made everything even more absurd and funny. The DM kept laughing for a while thinking about how the trolls themselves were probably very surprised that we had fallen for it
I was playing a session that eventually devolved into some (long built up) PvP between my character and another and it got *pretty* intense. But the other player and I spent half the time playing footsie as a non-verbal signal that we were okay continuing.
Aw this is cute!! Sounds like a fun table
Huh?
@@Loki- PvP stands for "player vs player," so it sounds like OP's character got into a physical altercation with another player's character.
Tension between characters is fun. Tension between friends is not. DMs don’t be afraid to undercut dramatic moments with a break if you feel like the tension is crossing over into real life relationships
As a DM, my one session 0 rule is that I'd like to have a party of heroes. That tends to cover most bases, though sometimes further discussions are needed depending on what character concepts get thrown my way. For new players coming in with something potentially problematic, like a necromancer wizard, a thief rogue, or a conqueror paladin, I state loud and clear that if they play in a way that would cause other characters, not players, to want to kick them out of the party, I would let them do so. For experienced players wanting to play something devious, like a minion of the BBEG infiltrating the party, I immediately plan things out with them and make sure they have a backup character for when their first one goes evil and has to leave and potentially even get killed.
Betrayals like this can be hard. I have had success, but what's really important to impart on the player whose character is betraying the party, is that they are going to lose. I'm not going to allow them to turn on the party during a crucial moment and cause a TPK. Just like anything else, one player's fun should never come at the expense of anyone else's. So establish that player's expectations so they can have their fun betrayal moment, get some real emotions going at the table - but that betrayal is going to be bittersweet, because the GM's job is to let EVERYONE have fun. The hero's may be knocked down a peg, but they're going to triumph and the traitor is probably going to suffer an ill fate. The PLAYERS should always be working together, even when their characters are not.
I have banned sex and sexual content completely from my game, i dont wanna deal with the ethics of it and my players can indulge in that aspect of rping somewhere else if theyd like
I think being willing to take an L in and out of character does help. I've had my characters do plenty of suboptimal things, but enough awareness to laugh it off when they fall flat on their face, does alleviate tension.
I have a character whose cursed and he cannot reveal details about the curse. There was a time I'd been hoping for the reveal but he ended up alone with a monk who discovered a lot of details about the curse. As much as my character was humiliated and upset with the curse, and he knew it would cause issues and an argument if revealed....I knew the other players wanted to know. So he had the priest reveal it. It links him to a pretty nasty villain and giving hints and descriptions of his mental state have helped a lot with the fact that he CANNOT reveal things.
I unfortunately developed a reputation of rarely passing key information onto my party, because it was always fairly easy to hit on some reason my character wouldn't mention it. To this day, it's kinda a running gag about me, not even my characters anymore. One time I got a geas to pursue a holy mission and didn't actually mention it to my party until we were trapped by fairies and I was getting magical damage every day for failing to follow the geas.
"Oh by the way, guys, I'm supposed to go do this thing--"
"You're only mentioning this NOW???"
Ah yes, the important session 0. I remember when we were starting an Eberron campaign where the dm didn't have one, made it sound like we were going to be spending a lot of time in Sharn, then had us leave after two sessions. Needless to say the extremely urban character I had made didn't want to go
I have a dm who requires that each character has ties to at least one other character, and does his best to create those when playing as a PC. They don’t have to be large, but at least something where they will recognize each other and be willing to work together. For example, we played in one campaign where my character’s backstory has him dealing in information, and so we decided that his wizard has previously employed him to acquire a scroll that contained one of his starting spells. It helps the players think about party interactions even before the game starts.
The hits just keep coming. Another video on an important topic to tackle, and one I've experienced from pretty much all sides.
I will admit that one of my group's biggest schisms stemmed out of somebody suggesting something my character would do and me agreeing that it really was, and the consequences just went haywire. I still maintain it got disproportionately out of hand and that my character was not wrong, but it essentially led to an apocalypse resolved with some time travel shenanigans and I decided it best that my character (such as they were) should be killed off in the process, so he could get a slight reset to before the crisis point (as I still saw too much conflict with other party members both in-character and out and believed this the best way to smooth out party cooperation so we could continue). I'm probably still a bit bitter about how it all worked out (including several "this is what my character would do" moments from others, which fed into the chaos, some of which I'd argue were out of character, but I wasn't the player of that character), but it certainly was a lesson in the importance of compromise and occasional meta consideration to ensure some level of party cohesion.
*Quick edit addition*: We are a group that is usually fine with internal party conflict, it just went to a level where the players & characters couldn't really get past it. We still have internal party conflict, but it's dealt with better and hasn't hit the same level of acrimony.
I know Session Zero keeps getting brought up, and I'm curious to see that video, though it feels like an alien concept to me just by virtue of how I game: I'm involved in a pretty solid friend group (with some members in some games but not others, sometimes simply due to scheduling) so we usually know what to expect from each other and what the boundaries are, and aspects of tone and such are usually discussed before people agree to be in (or before people are invited in) to the campaign.
sometimes 3rd person descriptions and explanations can be absolutely essential! it made our games so much smoother when some things may not seem obvious at first. absolutely reccomend it!
Really enjoyed this breakdown. It reminded me of an old Eberron character from the days of 3.5 where I was playing a House Medani elf without a dragonmark. The character resisted going on each adventure because he had a successful busines, home, wife, and daughter. Ultimately he would always give in and join the party when the players would remind him that his father considered him a disapointment (because no dragonmark). This would take up about 15 - 20 minutes of the first session of the next adventure at most, and would motivate his actions in the game. The background and personality were intentionally designed to be resistant in a way that was never game breaking. To this day I use the character as an example of how to build a conflict within the party due to clash of personalities with emphasis that your character always has a reason to be in the party.
The other side of the coin from a single player/character refusing to go along with the group is the single PC who insists they're going to actively do a thing against the will of the rest of the party.
Had that one come up this week.
Great video. One thing I would add - when you're in the party with the player that is "doing my character would do", don't feel bad about going OOC to ask some questions about motivation. It's important to differentiate between the player that is trying to RP (albeit poorly in this case) and the player that is just being disruptive. For the former, this is a teaching moment for everyone involved. The latter is probably another video...
New Mike vid! Can't wait to see how you tackle this topic with the usual tact and poise!
Fantastic points here Mike. I honestly have never seen anyone do what you suggested of explaining what sort of thing is going through the character's heads and it really looks like it will work well.
Excellent advice. I had a game where one character playing a kleptomaniac rogue was eventually killed because of his poor behavior. It was a huge shock to the players (and the characters). The player whose character was "just doing what his character did" realized the hard way those actions have consequences. He was out for a couple of weeks, but then he returned, and the party found a wise and smarter hafling cleric whose aim it was to be a benefit to the party. It's a really long and interesting story (to me, anyway), but I didn't think I'd bore anyone with it.
I'd love it if you'd talk about any experience you may have had with players you may get at an FLGS or in an online game who *aren't* friends and ways to ensure they are well-intentioned players.
Great videos, btw!
When I refer to how my character thinks or what she would do, I tend to contrast it with my own position, to contextualize her motives and understanding. Most of my activity is in character, but when a decision is contentious I choose to explain.
This is fascinating. When I started playing RPGs with my neighborhood friends in the late 80s/early 90s we never had conversations like this one (and there seems to have been an explosion of such discussions in the last 5 years). I really wonder what underlies this difference. What has changed in the social discourse and cultural zeitgeist? There seem to be at least three main possibilities:
1. We were quite insensitive to larger issues when we were kids in the 80s (which may have negatively affected some players).
2. The general culture has become, generally speaking, hyper-sensitive and self-centered (which means that players react much more when they feel a hindrance to expressing themselves through their characters).
3. A complicated combination of 1 + 2.
Regardless, it seems a renewal of and commitment to the group process (i.e., improvisational interplay) is an antidote to the issue in whatever form it assumes.
Any help in understanding this would be much appreciated!
I would offer a fourth suggestion. Kids generally are still trying to figure out how to handle themselves and their emotions in social situations even as older teens. And rarely do kids get taught the type of language that enables them to express the kind of emotions and discomfort that Mike and many others mention on these kinds of topics. Now I can’t promise anything, but I’m willing to bet that there were times when people at your table were really uncomfortable with what was happening or extremely frustrated or something similar. And through a combination of these are my friends I don’t want to say something and lose that friendship, I don’t have any other options to play this game if I piss these people off, and I don’t have the language to explain these emotions to myself much less someone else who might very well be dismissive of what I’m trying to say if I don’t say it right, they just kept their mouths shut. Now we have a lot of adults at the table, playing, who do have the kind of language, life experience, and options to feel comfortable bringing up and resolving these issues in a more mature way. The advantage of age etc etc. as well as a lot more kids nowadays being given better language to understand and express their emotions and being empowered to talk about them by being able to articulate past I’m upset.
Additionally, it could be that role play in later editions is just different. I’ve never played an 80s dnd game, but from what I hear they are very different beasts from what is played nowadays. Maybe your games just didn’t hit the same way they do now.
I joined a "Storm King's Thunder" campaign partway through since they had lost a couple players. It was played via Roll20, and since I did join late, there was no Session Zero to participate in. To his credit, the DM did have a short list of questions for folks to answer, to get a feel for them; then he and I talked via reddit's messaging system, and I joined.
After a few sessions, two other players' characters were *constantly* verbally sniping at each other, and it was starting to wear on me. I raised the point (in character) that two beings that fought this much can't possibly work well as a team, because there was clearly no regard nor trust. I was essentially told by one of the players via Dischord PMs to STFU. That's an oversimplification, but he definitely took umbrage with what I said.
We did eventually finish the adventure, and the DM decided to run a homebrew campaign. I played for a while, but ultimately left. That inter character conflict had nothing to do with my leaving, but that's a subject for another time.
That burning of the letter example is why I suggest that players portrait their characters in third person, thus they do not keep their thoughts for themselves or just announce actions, but actually tell the story o their character and give others insight into why the character does the things they do and express the mood and such aspects of their characters... great just the moment I had written that you also suggest that. Glad to see that great minds think alike.
I've never played any tabletop game before, but I do occasionally watch Dimension 20 campaigns. Even so, this phrase is something I've seen used as a joke enough in various places to be aware of it, but not aware of its meaning. As an outsider, my reaction to the negative connotation around that phrase is "But aren't they supposed to do what their characters would do?". This video did a great job at explaining how and why that phrase would come into play, as well as offering alternative solutions that give the players their chance at emergent storytelling without causing too much disruption.
This might be your best video yet. Really great. Keep it up!
Thank you so much!
Brilliant brilliant brilliant insights for players and DMs. This is the second of your videos I have watched, but I am now a subscriber.
Great one! As with in life, good (or better) communication makes just about everything waaaay easier/better, and the converse is typically responsible for a large proportion of interpersonal conflict, again both in game and in life. And you nailed it on the head. Really appreciate the content on your channel - good to hear a voice like yours out here that is also non-threatening etc to better reach people. Because people playing characters on a certain level can only play with what they bring to the table themselves with regard to interpersonal skills, things like not enough communication etc, that the person maybe has some troubles with outside of the game, can easily spill over. And its good to keep that in mind too when playing with friends - it can help you know when something is just in the game or if it the player's personality coming in. And no one is perfect (duh, right?) so keep this in mind when you sit down to play in terms of what could come up. And I don't say "no one is perfect" to just give people a pass when they act inappropriately, but to remember that its your friend (if they are of course) and when you discuss it to resolve the situation remember it might be an issue that they haven't fully resolved inside themselves. This is probably a bit much for the game, because this isn't counseling, but just be mindful that people won't absolutely be doing whatever they are doing "on purpose" so to speak, and as he said above, above and beyond don't take it personally - because you also don't want to screw up a friendship over a misunderstanding as well. But all in all, as he says many times in the video and I mentioned above, better communication goes a long way toward softening the landing of any/all of this, and is your best tool for having a fun game and working through hiccups that arise. (IMO)
As usual, another great video! Not only is it good advice for players, but it also gives DMs a way to suggest alternative approaches at the table. Talking this through during Session Zero may be a great way to socialize your technique with the group from the start. You've actually sparked an idea for a new video on my channel. Thanks for sharing!
Glad I could help!
Very well thought out and communicated point of view.
As much as i agree about the fact that if you are the only one holding it back in a mission or a situation, on the other hand it's not fun for said person to be forced to do what other people say because "everyone else wants to and you are the only one that doesn't".
There must be a balance between the person that for whatever reason doesn't want to do a specific activity and the rest of the party trying to make it feel more comfortable for the person.
If not, the person will just get bored and leave the game...and i assume that's the last thing we would want from our friends to feel and eventually do.
Im playing with a group that is doing some heavy rp, and I was wondering why most of the exemple you said were working for us, before you present your solution of exposing the character inner thoughts. That does make a world of difference to not only tell your friends that its not personnal, but also to tell them that you actually respect their agency. Not so long ago, one of the players at my table was justifying his actions with only "its what my character would do", and even if he didnt hoard magic items or refuse to go on adventures it was extremely frustrating. He did have a bit of a character syndrom, he told me in dm that he couldnt die because "the dm has big stuff planned for my character". Well, two sessions later, he died because he kept walking away from the group. His tendancies to slip the party, but mostly the fact that the character was stubborn and was not changing his mind when we argued had for result that the rest of the group had to do all the compromise to carry on as a team because we all wanted to continu to play. But I know that personally I had to make choices and do action that I couldnt justified in character, and I felt disrespected not only as a character but as a real person.
Another advice I would give for the heavy roleplay is to not hesitate to have your character leave the party definitevily once it is evident that they cant work with the rest of the group, that their objectives are not alligned anymore and cant find a way to rectify that: just leave. I know its hard, we are all attach to our characters and we love them, but if their presence creat too much conflict and the adventure is not moving forward, theres not really a point to play them in that specific campaign anymore.
The more videos I see, the more I understand that communication is the way to solve any misunderstanding at the table. Man, I love I left behind long way ago that teen way of thinking without sharing.
Good video. I'll definitely keep in mind those tips about having little moments to articulate what a character is thinking and express things in the third person.
I remember using that line, and, at least in the group I've done that, it was accepted by the group and there was no malice behind it. First one was my character being secretive about some things he did or was afraid of, since he had several trust issues and at the same time, didn't want to be a burden because he feared he would be abandoned once again. The other one, is when it comes to making decisions, because I know some of the decisions are terrible, but is like "This obvious deal with the devil is something that would tempt my character, given his circumstances", and it has led to some interesting situations due to the antics of those characters. I think the distinction is how genuine that excuse is, like, if they are actually thinking that, and it's something that isn't overtly hostile towards the other players, it can be good, but when it is used to make other people uncomfortable or pick on them, that's when it becomes a problem
Thanks for this video. I learned from it and will share with others.
I love the exploration of perspective and all the tools and options you mentioned. I feel like this sort of communication even good and friendly tables can still improve on, mine inluded! You are really hitting many great marks with your vids, just please don’t overwork yourself in the attempt to always deliver such great content
My DM actually commented on this sort of thing to me and two other players last night. Me and one of the others have been building a romance subplot between our characters, and at last week's session a third player pulled some shenanigans to create a misunderstanding between them halting the progress towards them actually getting together. Session that week ended with my character finding out about the prank (I already knew out of character because our DM doesn't do private time for stuff like that), and was royally ticked.
So come to last night's session. My character being an assassin, she very openly threatened him over the situation. Knife at his throat, yelling and swearing, while my love interest took a shot at his Hexblade Patron, a shadowy demon that can kind of pop out when he wants and was clearly very terrified of the petite Eladrin woman with a knife against his host's throat. In character, there was massive tension and anger and legitimate conflict.
Above table, we're all laughing and ribbing at each other, and my love interest's player and I are assuring the third player "Oh, out of character we totally love Narnair and Azazel. But in character, yeah, you messed with Petril and Elodie's love life and they're going to do something about it." The three of us all being pretty new players, our DM actually gave us some praise for being able to handle having a conflict in-game and address it how we felt appropriate without it affecting how we treated each other out of game, saying that it's something he normally sees newer players struggling to separate.
I love "Script Change" both as a safety tool and a dramatic tool. at any point players can pause, rewind, fast forward, freeze frame or resume play, they can do any of the above for any reason be it safety, taste, retcon, or to highlight something they think is awesome.
What a terrific role -play tool! I have never described my characters' thoughts or feelings in third person. I can think of some times when this would have been really useful.
In somewhat of a similar vein, what are some good ways to handle or approach situations that involve certain characters taking the given campaign in a more evil route involving releasing ancient or greatwyrms that worship Tiamat (standard dragon cult things) to hand the world over to them and getting their piece of the pie of the world that remains once they've conquered it. This character returned to the party after some hiatus and doing some of these quests as an NPC, and as such when they returned, many of the deeds had already been done and there wasn't much the rest of us could do about it. I had the party discuss fully in character what their individual plans were after we defeated the BBEG and eventually decided that the character I was playing wasn't going to have a hand in enabling this result for the world and knew that two of the other party members would kill them if they tried to stop them directly and eventually left the party. I eventually made a less caring character to continue playing the campaign as I was very invested in the character that had to step away.
This didn't necessary feel the greatest, and granted, we didn't have a standard session 0 where we discussed what the expectations for the campaign were as we were all less experienced players. I love character development and is the best part of DND and other TTRPGs in my opinion, but if there is any advice or guidelines to when campaigns begin to veer towards an evil direction if some of the characters or players themselves aren't comfortable with the route it's going, particularly when a character is either hiding this information (apocalyptic or world changing in an "evil" direction in this instance) and handling much of it away from the party's attention? I feel that we as a party were able to handle the situation well enough, and there aren't any hard feelings. We're mature enough to know that characters develop in different ways and it happened that mine wasn't able to develop in the ways I was looking for, or ways that were aligning with their newfound moral compass, and had to step away. But all the same, I'd have loved to continue playing that character rather than assigning them to a pseudo-NPC position they were in.
This is so helpful! Especially with my chaotic character :P Thank you!
Okay talking about character conflict makes me think of my first big campaign I joined, where I played a tiefling who just wanted to be friends with everyone. I joined this campaign as someone who didn’t know any of the players except one, the person who invited me. I feel a lot closer with those people now that we’ve been playing together for years, but at that point I was still getting to know them. One of the players played a gruff Paladin who didn’t like anyone and who made his opinions about such things very well known to the party. There were times when the character would yell at my character, insulting her and pushing against her positive attitude. Now, the player didn’t mean to be mean about it at all, and didn’t mean to hurt my feelings. But for me it was hard to know where the line between the player and the character was, because I didn’t know the player outside of the game at all. So it was hard for me not to take it personally. I talked to the dm and players about this, and the player apologized and explained that it was just her character. While the character hated my tiefling, the player loved her, and she was so glad to have me in the group. That helped me a lot. The DM also said that he would consider not allowing that sort of gruff character in future campaigns, but the party - even me - said that we liked the character conflict. And I really did. Like I said, it was just difficult for me to know where the line was since I didn’t have a good idea of who the player was outside of the game. Now, we are in a new campaign with all new characters, and I’m playing a girl who has a lot of friction with some of the party members. And now that I know where the line is, it feels a lot more entertaining and a lot less personal. Feels great to be the one throwing out insults this time around!
I once played a Grumpy old Ranger that had a specific goal of what he wanted to do and he viewed the rest of the party more as common mercenaries than his friends at the beginning. The "problem" was, that the GM didn't have anything planned for my Character's Backstory for a while. So there did come the moment where I went to my GM and was like, "Yeah my Character will leave the group soon, the dynamics aren't really clicking" and I readied up another Character which I felt was more appropriate to the group. But my GM felt kind of bad because he knew how much time and effort I had put into the first Character. So he caused an event that forced my Character to flee the City along with the rest of the party. And then he went to me and was like "If after this escape sequence, you still feel like your Character wants to leave, then get out the Secondary Character" and since the escape took up a few sessions since they were being chased even after they left the City, it gave my Character enough time, despite being a grumpy asshole that Doesn't wanna take part in group activities, to become a member of the group enough to stick with the rest of the party.
And so yeah "It's what my Character would do" can be a curse for the Player as well, but when communicating with the rest of the table, it can be solved.
I feel like I have unintentionally made many of these mistakes (made a character who was a reluctant adventurer, withheld information from the party etc.). I did feel like they made sense to do at the time, and they were tough decisions to make. Hopefully I explained myself properly so my party didn't think I was being too much of a knob.
Narrating what our characters are thinking and delineating it from what we the players are thinking is something we do a lot at my table. We're definitely an "party drama and conflict is interesting" group of people, but we're friends who want everyone to be having fun, and what you're recommended here is what we ended up landing on as well.
This reminds me of something I might have talked about in another video, I think the Tiberius one (hopefully it was on this channel), where two characters were having a confrontation, and I thought it was really cool until one of the two players started unequivocally attacking the other OOC for not getting what they wanted.
The worst kind of "that's what my character would do" people is the one that doesn't accept it when this logic blows up in their face.
I am currently playing a LE human noble storm sorcerer among of party of mostly good characters, including 3 paladins. He alternates between calmly and politely advocating the virtues of pragmatism and 'might makes right' and just flat out laughing gleefully while electrocuting monsters. So far there's been no friction with any of the other PCs. There are three reasons for this. 1) I simply haven't stepped on any other player's toes, nor they on mine. Why would he? He's a squishy caster/social character. He needs tanks/healers who work well with him. 2) it's a weekly pick-up game at the local store, potentially anyone can drop in and join it with a completely new character. There have been a couple of stupid characters taking stupid actions over the past year, but mostly the best way to not piss off a group of strangers who don't feel obligated to tolerate you out of misplaced friendship is not to be a dick. 3) My character is openly and honestly a parody of Emperor Palpatine, who is obviously (from the other player's perspective at least) only along with them to corrupt and use them to his own ends, and I often RP him using that voice or his quotes. By playing a specific well-known character, they can all quickly guess 'what my character would do' so it doesn't come out of left field. At least one of the paladins has already fallen after killing an innocent child, and a target for my character's 'emotional manipu-er, counselling'. "Good, good..."
God the burning documents thing brings back memories of a campaign I played at university. We were in some ancient underground complex trying to figure out some mystery, I can't remember the details, and we came upon a strange room populated by a group of ethereal spirits. They spoke in a language that only 1 of the characters knew so they were able to chat for a while. This was done away from the rest of us since none of our characters could understand the conversation but it was pretty clear the player was getting some really useful plot related info. Then he returns to the table and says nothing. And in character we ask what he found out and he just shrugs and says something like 'nothing important'. This ticked me off a little so I tried to press for the info but he just said 'it's in character to not tell you, his main flaw is that he keeps secrets' which at the start of the campaign seemed a reasonable and interesting flaw since it would make those moments when he finally opened up a bit super impactful but as a party we were floundering a little with figuring out what to do and this info could finally point us in the right direction. So I asked the question, we are trying to play a game together why make a character that actively strives against cooperation. If we had got some kind of inner monologue that gave some actual explanation it might have been fine but as it stood it just came off as the player being more interested in their cool mysterious character than actually playing a game together. What made it worse was the dm then gave that player an inspiration for 'sticking to his character and doing good rp'. The game didn't last many more sessions after that
Yep that sounds about right lol
The sad part is, the character could still act on or share information while convincingly keeping to the flaw, and it could be better roleplaying to do so!
Something I want to add, sometimes the story changes in a way that renders your character narratively unlikely to continue. That’s okay as long as you handle it maturely. I played a dnd game where my character had a very specific reason for working with the group and was purposely working to not form attachments for backstory reasons. Relatively early in the campaign the story arc resolved her reason for being with the group and narrative she had no reason to continue. I spoke with my dm and he gave me two choices, either this character gets retired and you make up a new character or find a way for this character to stay with the group. It ended up pushing me to find a narrative reason for my character to stay that actually advanced the character growth I was planning on working on anyway. Take changes in the story like that as an opportunity to either make something new or dig deeper into your character for a reason to stay
Recently my DM arranged a sort of between-story-beats subplot for our party involving a huge colosseum tournament at the main city that we’re using as a base of operations. The other party members wanted to participate. However my character (a Paladin, if it matters) is vehemently opposed to bloodsport and finds it distasteful at best, a pointless waste of life at worst.
I discussed this with the DM in advance and let him know that this would be a conflict of interest with my character. Then, instead of outright refusing to participate, I made my stance on the subject clear to the rest of the party, and then challenged them to try to convince my character to join in. Some of them made some convincing points, among them being that most of the people we’d be fighting would be dangerous criminals or monsters, and that the funds from winning would enable us to to much more good in the long run. But the real clincher was when the DM revealed that my character’s brother (a criminal) was in debt and was being forced to participate as well in order to pay it off. THAT got my character to put his moral reservations aside.
“It’s what my character would do” can be a good narrative through line if it’s handled well. It just requires all parties to communicate and put in the effort.
At least as common as session 0 related problems is the 2 common GM errors that lead to players becoming adventure resistant. The first is not paying attention to the adventure hook opportunities for any given character and the second is setting the difficulty level to high.
In the first case the g m has usually built the adventure around the assumption of a one alignment or similar motivation and assume that everybody shared it.
In the 2nd case you will see a player begin 1st by creating risk reducing side activities and those increasing usually because the GM has compensated for them making it hard again. This is especially true of 3rd and 4th edition which had default challenge ratings that were fun destroying lead to hard.
In our last session, our DM in her home brewed campaign gave us a choice: combat, or deal. We're in a feywild type area.
We were interacting with someone under a queen of sorts.
Another player wanted to make a deal to kill an enemy of this queen, in trade for our freedom. The thing was: this players character is cursed. And could die at any moment.
In the deal, our souls were also included. You had the rest of your life to kill this enemy, or your soul join the rot..
So I stepped in with my character, shoving away the other character.
This was a great moment because it was accepted by everyone.
While I basically "stole" the deal, I told everyone that this character has an illness which can kill him quit quick. And that I as a half elf monk, could live a very long time.. So, their souls would be the safest with me. Nobody was pissed or anything because we are friends and want to know why things were done.
These kind of actions can be a great story point, if you execute it right
Perfect video!
My motto is,
Instead of excusing your actions saying, "It's what my character would do." You should instead ask yourself, "What would my character do?"
Many times the infamous line ignores the PC's instincts, cunning, and desire to stay alive.
Phrasing it like that would definitely flip the script on those trying to get away with being a dick at the table. It would put them on the spot if they cannot use IWMCWD as an excuse.
Did that yesterday lol. Found out the pretty lady in a nice furnished room was actually a Rakshasa. But since my level 1 ranger didn't know that, he stayed in the room because he was being followed by 9 orcs
I hope you put together your session 0 video, I'm curious to see what exactly you'll cover in it
Me too!
I had a situation in a game where our DM had the only solution to win a fight was by close combat. Fe fought a gelatinous cube with some specific features, where we would have to roll low to hit it. Since most of us were ranged fighters or support, (Bard, Wizard, Warlock and myself as a Ranger) and we only had a Cleric and Paladin who would fight melee. The paladin got sucked into the cube since a nat 20 would cause that to happen for this specific cube. We couldnt use ranged as the DC to hit was 13 or lower, my bow had a +12 to hit. The paladin got sucked in twice and all of us ranged folk said we wouldnt want to get our melee weapons out just to get a chance to hit this thing, because we and our characters were scared.
The DM blamed us for using "thats what my character would do" as an excuse for not wanting to help our Paladin. Most spells didnt work, telekinesis didnt work, AOE spells didnt work, only really rolling low on direct attacks with either weapons or spells for a DC of 13 or lower. In the end we had to give in and go into melee. Our Bard died because of that.
We didnt had any possibility to solve this encounter. We didnt had the chance to ignore it in the first place, the DM said we couldnt run as the Cube would be faster than us and we couldnt use most spells because the DM thought that would ruin the "fun" encounter. He blamed us for not going for the easiest solution, get out a weapon with a small bonus to hit and blamed us for roleplaying in a fight and not wanting to get near that cube.
Am I wrong to think he wrongfully blamed us because we said "thats what our characters would do, not to get closer"?
That sounds like a very poorly - and probably overly - designed and adjudicated encounter, and when it went poorly the DM displaced his responsibility onto the players. It was inappropriate, and if the goal was to get the characters to engage in melee he could have used the terrain.
@@aaronghunter Worst thing was in the end he blamed us for not liking his "fun" encounter and was surprised that one of us had died.
I dont know what the other groups of his are consisting out of, but it seems that those are much more combat focused groups than ours.
Dont get me wrong, he is a good GM, just has his flaws here and there.
In my group, we have a player who has the "it's what my character would do" problem where they don't seem to be okay with in game consequences for their actions. It turns into "it's what my character would do", "well, what our characters would do is kick you out."
The moment you talked about when a character does something that the rest of the party does not and could not understand and suggesting you monologue it out and speak in present tense is really highlighted in an episode of Critical Role here recently when Ashton broke a magic item before anybody could stop him. It did not bother me, but I've seen plenty of people genuinely upset about how quickly (and quietly) Taliesin did it that I couldn't help but instantly think of that.
This is something we used to do more when we were kids. Haven't really done it in a long time.
The closest thing to it is a couple years ago, playing Edge of the Empire: my character, who was both mechanic and astrogator on our ship, received a message that his family was having some troubles, so he plotted a course to their planet instead of where the rest of the party thought we were going. On the other hand, other players also had their characters doing some impulsive things - like the character who got bored guarding the bridge of an enemy ship and started punching random buttons even though we had specifically told him not to touch anything... ;)
At least at one point, I've been one of those players that didn't quite fully comprehend boundaries. It's still something I have difficulty with, but it's not impossible to comprehend. And I have gotten better since then.
To be fair, intentions matter, and in most cases the "it's what my character would do" person had bad intentions when the did whatever they did that they are now trying to use that line to excuse. It's often used for blatant stuff like stealing from other PCs or keeping important information from them to feel more important, so even if you are someone who has troubles with boundaries, those are pretty easy to spot.
@@andrewshandle for me, it wasn't even me using the "it's what my character would do" excuse. I'm just someone who has trouble comprehending boundaries, period. I have problems recognizing social cues, you see.
It helps to discuss some ahead of the game, so not everything is left to interpretation in the moment.
I had a game where several players specifically did not want romance or flirtation due to past negative experiences, so we agreed to table that unless and until we, as a group, decided otherwise.
@@aaronghunter A lesson I hadn’t quite learned back in the day, but I’ve taken to heart ever since.
One campaign started with a "you all meet in a tavern" and I was so utterly bored by the "I know where this is going" feeling that when the meeting got broken up by a raid (guards from the corrupt mayor or whatever), when everyone else fled, I just hid inside a large barrel or something. My stealth was ridiculously insufficient for this at my level, I got immediately caught, and the party's first adventure was finding out how to free me.
I was a jerk that session, but it did lead to a far more memorable outcome than what we'd been aiming for initially. But yes, that's one of a handful of times where I fully admit I was a jerk at the table.
Oh man this is so important... I do think there's a point to having a character go off the rails for character reasons, but it's a classic way for a jerk to justify being a jerkface. This is super tricky. No substitute for having a solid understanding of table dynamics and the table norms.
I do think your point about building a party that's at least not terribly incohesive is a good one. It also really helps to have a basic idea of when your PC would decide to move on from the party. When is their story done? That can really help if you've been there for a while with that character but the party has moved to other things.
One way I've found as a DM is to make sure that there are things that a PC that might want to do things like steal from the party gets some opportunities. For example, a classic thief will get an option for a heist. I probably wouldn't run it as a full session but use something like the "skill challenge" mechanic from 4E or do it as a blue book session online, particularly during downtime or when one or more of the players is late or getting extra chips. Maybe one or two other PCs will be involved, but I can resolve things fairly fast in a session. It's not stealing from the party but the PC gets the itch scratched.
In one of my recent campaigns, my character picked up a sentient weapon that gave me tons of cool abilities. It just came at the cost that I could never put it down, became evil, and couldn't fight undead without hurting myself. Needless to say, our dm threw undead at us not long afterward, and I straight up told my group I couldn't fight them. What sucked is I explained my issues, and they still wanted to fight, so I had to get pretty inventive on how to fight undead without actually hitting them. I had fun, but it did suck being stuck in a situation like that and feeling like I was taking away from the fun of the group.
The only instance that I happened to say "It's what my character would do" was when I was playing Noble - a typical Noble Noble, with a flaw from the OG handbook that he badly takes on offense. After being attacked by goblins, he insisted to raid them and finish them off completely - disregarding safety and extra time it would take. Of course at the end I played it in such a way to let others convince me to give up on this idea. Even if they didn't make any compelling arguments.
Yet still at the end of the session I was called off to be the "it's what my character would do" guy. Because, you know, I might be the only one who cares about the background/ideal/bond/flaw combination.
The problem with 'it's what my character would do' is that, _by definition,_ EVERYTHING your character does should be what your character would do, so the question is _why,_ but the answer is _yes._
Grog's bargaining incident was a fantastic example of this
on the rare time that I'm a player, I always try to couch adversarial behavior in a sentence like, "[my real life name] thinks we should do X, but [my PC's name] does/thinks we should do Y."
Much as you've noted in your video, I feel like acknowledging this dichotomy between player and character helps others at the table understand what is going on and helps them overcome negative feeling about these situations. It's sort of the same feeling as being part of an inside joke.
Of course, as someone who is usually a DM, I also try to encourage the other players to flip it on me for even more fun. A big part of what makes roleplaying fun for me is when I know something, and another player knows something, but neither of our characters know those things.
I think the only two times I've done such things was when I aimed my axe at our group's sorcerer (she communicated telepathically with my character, who wanted to protect his mind at all cost) and when I got in a 1v1 with a boss (the rest of the group ended up jumping in to help, making my character feel like his honor was tarnished).
I had a nasty example of this when we were in combat and my druid was down and the bard decided to use thunderwave in an area where it would also hit my charecter as well as the enemys inspite of another player telling them they could still hit the enemy and avoid hitting me if they just centered the spell there but he pulled out the "its what my charecter would do" excuse and it let to alot of bad blood that was never resolved
I once sat at a table while a friend of mine had an argument with another player over the ownership of a newly found magic item. My friend was arguing in character while the other player was arguing from an entirely meta perspective for what would benefit their own character the most. It was torture and they were both right.
"One of these days I really am gonna get around to making that Session zero video, but I keep stumbling upon other topics that I realize "Oh, this also needs to go into the session zero video"..."
Then come back to it. Session Zero should never be a closed topic. If things come up, or change, or someone has a thought about direction of things, Session Zero should be revisited. Do the video, and just have "Session 0.1" etc. vids that add to it. Revisit as new topics come to light. Just like Session Zero.
It’s true, I might have to resolve that I’ll have multiple Session Zero videos! I already know that’ll be true about my House Rules video, I’ll probably make a new one in a year or two, so I might just have to do that with Session Zero, too.
That… actually takes a huge load of pressure off that video, thank you! 😁
@@SupergeekMike glad I could help.
I think, even when everyone at the table is okay with inter-party conflict, it's *so* important to acknowledge when an argument in character is going nowhere. A few months ago, in a campaign I play in, our party got into a fight with some bandits on the road. Afterward, one of the other characters came to my character - a Ranger who knew the area they were in - and said "hey, how come you let that happen? You should have never let that happen to us!" and my character replied that there was no way she could have known just by visual that the approaching men on horses were bad guys. Should she assume that everyone they meet on the road is going to be evil?
And the tensions were really high between the two of us - because of some other things that had happened during that combat - and the argument was just going around and around in circles. So I had my character walk away, get some air and then after the session we resolved the argument out of character. The next session, our characters calmly apologised to each other. That's the most important part for me. Sometimes we get so into things when playing that it's hard to differentiate when it's just your character getting heated, or when it's *you* getting heated. It's so important to know when to step away.
And another video that me and my former group needed 4-5 years ago.
I am currently playing a Minotaur Warlock who's patron is a literal Chaos God (Tzeentch, since it's a Warhammer campaign), and this is an issue I've had to wrestle with at times. I'm playing him as a straight agent of chaos, regardless of what morality might say (As Chaotic Neutral as I can manage), but it's a delicate game knowing how far to push things at times. While he definitely is a bit on the outs with the party after counterspelling our Artificer's invisibility escape plan after robbing an NPC, I think (and sincerely hope) I've managed to be open enough in my communication with the IRL players to have it be a good time for all involved. Thank you for the advice.
Oh, and between being a Pact of the Tome, taking the invocation specific to that subclass, and now multiclassing into Wild Magic Sorcerer (I mean, what other Sorc subclass would I go?), he's up to wielding an absurd 10 different cantrips, LOL.
As a GM who doesn't allow intra-party conflict, I find that you can really keep things cool by offering to run non-canon duels. Any time players want, I'll run combat between them, but at the end of the fight everything is reset -- the fight didn't actually happen, the two characters were just thinking about what WOULD have happened. It lets competitive players work things out without ruining the storyline.
It truly is wild how future tense instead of past tense can make a selfish move into one where the other people at the table have agency. "Character is *going to do* this" allows others in on dialogue!
I think it's important that the DM is very cautious in these situations too, since their input is often seen as the deciding factor.
The best response, IMO, is just: "But *you* made a character that would do that."
I say... before watching the full video. Whoops!
😁
I actually had a great recent experience in one group with both sides of this.
My character is a standard die hard lawful Paladin. I try to be as flexable as possible but I've told the group "listen, she's literally a private police force for the king, y'all break laws it's gonna be a problem.". We talked it through ad luckily all other characters weren't criminals or anything.
One girl wanted a rivalry with my character so we worked together. Her husband had gotten wrapped up in a criminal organization. My paladin wanted to stop him, even at threat of killing him, her character obviously wants to save her husband. We set boundaries like "I won't kill your character's husband" and "I won't join the criminal organization" so the rivalry can work. It also means they're forced to work together because their seperate goals are in the same spot. It's been great and super fun. All the other characters get mixed up (willingly) in the drama and funny insults are thrown back and forth. It's one of the most fun character interactions I've played.
On the other hand there's a guy in the group who I guess wanted to join the fun. So he made this character that is the "embodiment of gluttony", so it's a predator monster thing that kills just to kill. It keeps going on these speeches about killing innocent people and destroying civilization. This doesn't make for very fun RP because it just drags the game to a grinding hault. There's no reasonable explination why any of us would travel with this thing. There's these long awkward pauses after these moments and then we just try to move on. We've had to talk to him cause it's like "listen guy, you threw chaotic evil into lawful nuetral/nuetral good party". We've told him it's up to him to come up with a reason why our characters should work with his because it's a very odd character choice for the game. The DM is going his best but it's almost ended up in PvP a few times, like he's straight up said something like "go ahead and kill my character" and the DM has to step in going "no pvp".
Honestly, good character conflict comes with understanding character and player limits then finding a way to skirt around those.
As a note: my paladin isn't hard core or anything. "Don't harm innocent people" and "don't steal unless absolutely necessary" and "pay back any property damages" are her main things. She hasn't had an issue with any character but the husband (who tried to kill a woman she was arresting) and the monster thing (who wants to feast on the innocent by it's own admissiom).
Honestly, the monster eating people seems like a fun character in this situation. Take the Hulk in the Avengers, alone he is a menace to society, himself and other heroes. But with the avengers, he can do good things because they are helping him and pointing him to fight villains, you party basically have a Hulk who wants to eat people. Of course Hulk and the avengers fought from time to time, but what team of heroes do not do this kind of thing?
@@isaquepazdasilva8752 yeah the issue isn't so much the character itself, it's how he's going about it.
His character prior to this was similar (immortal monster/aboration home brew thing that lives forever and doesn't take mortals seriously). But that one had ties to the party that made sense. There was a common foe with my character so they had to get along. Like once it was about to kill a NPC but my character could step in and go "how about we don't please". So there was some understanding of boundaries.
This one has very loose ties to a NPC that it's already tried to kill once. It talks down to the party ("I am immortal and lived forever so I know best and/or what's being discussed doesn't actually matter") and keeps wanting to murder hobo with character who don't want to hurt NPCs. If there was a in game was to stop the senseless killing then it wouldn't be so bad but as it stands pvp that ends in killing it has been the only clear option. But DM said no pvp so we can't. So instead we've just had to ask him nicely out of game to cool it. The game grinds to a hault, gets derailed, and makes everyone just want to drop the RP off even if it's unfinished.
I feel kinda bad because at this point we mostly ignore it except for a few sentences but there just isn't a good way to RP with it. "I want to kill everything" "well don't" "how are you gonna stop me" "I'd normally kill you but the DM says I can't" "well you're just a mortal so you don't understand and can't kill me anyways" "yeah, cause the DM said I can't could you cool it so we can actually continue the game?" I feel like the guy just wants a game he can murderhobo in and this game just REALLY isn't it, or he's trying for character conflict and doing really bad at it. I think the later, all of his other characters have been condecending but the "kill everything" part is new.
@@frog7226 hmmmmmmm why don't try pvp but you cant kill each other? You don't lose any health but gets beaten out. That way any discussion can be put to rest without anyone dying. Your party do not kill enemys at all? It seems he likes to make characters who are murder free really, but its a first for me to know about no killing anybody, but about him want to eat people, why not make that he eats some of the enemys until he is full and get disadvantage because he is so fat, starts to be sick, trows up etc you know? That way he cant just go on about eating everything because would not make sense, when he does is because is for the good, what you think?
@@isaquepazdasilva8752 dm actually changed PvP rules because this guy wanted to do to the death. Original session 0 discussion it was allowed but things have gotten so tense and awkward he's afraid it'll just cause more problems. And it wouldn't help anyways since his character has said he'll only stop at death. I think he recently switched up some stuff to change that though but things are so weird I'm not even sure.
And we do kill people, just not random NPCs for no reason. My character arrested one NPC because she was sent by the king to arrest her but outside that there has only been standard "kill the bad guy" dnd. So it's not that we don't allow killing, we don't allow random innocent NPCs to be killed. Especially party allies.
I play it two campaigns right now one player plays in both like me. In one of the campaign we have argued for entire sessions and have video of our shouting matches. In the other we almost always are in agreement and our characters are basically always assisting each other. This is one of the best parts of ttrpgs but you have to have a close relationship with eachother and it doesn't work if everyone doesn't understand each other boundaries
This video is giving me flashbacks of when my character incinerated Strahd's dinner invitation.
i personally find “it’s what my character would do” from players making rash decisions, especially spawning combat, when the rest of the party wanted to role play, and im not sure how to curb that behavior as a dm. i have seen some dms allow that kind of behavior with players when they choose to split from the group but sometimes u just can’t split the party conveniently to allow players to be rash that way. and a lot of players that behave like this seem to only do so when it impacts the whole party. i feel like there may be a better solution than kicking such players out but idk what that would be
I usually support the idea of explaining your characters thoughts and then offering the payers a chance to stop or negotiate your decision.
Example:
I was playing a knight that hated Kobolds as they killed his daughter 4 months earlier and that's why he left off on this adventure. We got into a kobold fight and he was alone blocking a hallway while the others fought in the main room. The last enemy coming up the hallway offered to surrender. I specifically said to the other players "out of character, these monsters killed my daughter and I don't support torture, but I don't want to accept surrender. We mentioned wanting to capture one for questioning. Does anyone have a way to reasonably stop me from just killing it?"
Another player was near the hallway and said "can I see the kobold drop it's weapon and raise it's hands, DM?"
The DM said "that's reasonable from your location"
The player then says "I will scream to him that this isn't what your daughter would want, you are a knight, not an executioner as you raise your sword"
That was enough to make my character accept the surrender.
This allowed me to roleplay some character growth as I realize not every kobold killed my daughter, and the ones that did are already dead. This also caused the group to (behind my characters back, but known to me) Al's that player to stick close to me in kobold fights and ensure I don't let my anger and drive for vengeance disgrace my knightly virtues.
A really good storyline that we all loved.
rule of thumb: if "what your character would do" is something that would harm the experience for other players, change the character or make a new one. little to no exceptions. i just don't allow evil characters at my table unless you come up with a reason for them to not screw over the other party members (they're a sellsword hired by the party, they respect social conventions, or their evil is more ambiguous and defined by their selfish motivations rather than their desire to hurt others). chaotic evil characters are a no go, because even in evil campaigns they just go around leaving a trail of destruction in their wake and it's hard to develop plot in that scenario.
I am reaching that point on my character.
There is only so far you can stay in character while deliberately tying NOT to be a problem.
My artificer wants to help people heal from the last war (Ebberon)
The Sorcerer of the group, however, is an issue.
She has is a murder hobo.
She burned down tenements with people in them, wants to loot the houses of the refugees who's town we were brought in to help reclaim, had no remorse over the two characters that died because she brought a deck of many things. yeah, they chose to draw, but no remorse at all over their loss.
package all this into a shadow magic wilder who is openly talking about hearing demonic voices.
It is difficult to keep coming up with reasons NOT to just treat her like any other villain and kill her.
Okay, now I'm anxious again about my character's actions...
I made a more serious character than the others (that may have been the first issue, but I've never wanted to play joke characters). She's a barbarian, but she's deeply traumatized by having to resort to violence and definitely doesn't rush into combat hotheadedly. So when the party insisted they had to see a "sick" child, I said: "okay, he's definitely turned into some kind of a monster, we won't be able to cure him, if we enter, we will just have to kill him, and his father really doesn't want us there". And so I didn't go there. All the others did, and of course the child turned out to be a monster, and of course they had to kill him. I was waiting outside, disapproving, but getting healing potions ready. And when they got out, they all scolded me for being a barbarian but not getting into (really meaningless, in my character's opinion) combat. (Not sure, actually, if it were the characters speaking or the players, probably mostly the characters, but a bit of both.)
And I'm really fighting with myself on this one. All these "that's what my character would do" critisisms usually come from a character's jerk behaviour, which is actually the player's jerk behaviour. But does it make me, as a player, a jerk, if my character doesn't want to be, as opposed to others?
We didn't agree on making evil characters, by the way, but I'm now the only one with the good alignment.
Last night I counterspelled another PC’s attack on an NPC. His PC was going to kill the NPC then use Speak with Dead to get info only because the NPC was a thief. Only after our quick spar did we learn that her group had murdered a guy we came across earlier, and the player tried to use that as justification. My point was that we did not know that when he attacked, so my Good character chose to protect the NPC from a Chaotic Neutral warlock PC.
My next move was to prevent the PC from staying in the Tiny Hut for the long rest but i set up an Alarm area for him instead. The player had the gall to ask why I would do that
I mean, the counterspell and subsequent discussion make sense, but it isn't unreasonable for the player to ask why his character is being left out in the cold, so to speak. Consequences need to be articulated, and action is not a substitute for communication.
To the hoarding money thing, I adopted the Nott the Brave mentality where instead of skimming off the top for extra, I just convince others to buy my stuff so I just have thousands of gold before too long
a lot of people forget that, while you're friends with everyone around you, your character might not be. So like how we as people have to compromise our personal wants and so on in order to fit into a group, so does your character.
No group of mercenaries would want a dinglehopper that is clearly hoarding shit, stealing from the group and lying about it as part of their fellowship. So if you wanna roleplay like that, then you also gotta accept if the group roleplays being tired of your characters shit.
Further, this kind of roleplaying of disagreement, boundaries and compromise can be rewarding and memorable in itself.
A year late but I want to tell a quick story about my first time playing Masks
I was the Delinquent, basically the trouble kid in school, and I was sitting at lunch with my two party members. My two powers are psychic weapons and Illusions. One of my party members flung some corn at me so I made a psychic slingshot and fired mashed potatoes at him. He dodged it so it went flying by and smacked a girl the next table over in the back of the head. This girl is a potential romantic partner for the party member, so to be funny I used my Illusion powers to place a slingshot next to my party member at the table, effectively framing him. It was funny and the party member rolled with it of trying to act like he didn't do it but letting himself get set up.
That's when the girl's jerk boyfriend stood up and demanded to know who threw that, and got pissed at my party member. My class(playbook) has a feature that I can roll when I've successfully tricked someone, I rolled well, and my GM said it means I have an 'opportunity.' I asked if that means I can dig my party member deeper and really screw him over, or just an opportunity in general. GM said in general though digging deeper was an option. I took about two seconds to realize that throwing my party member under the bus might be what my character would do, it's only ONE thing my character would do.
Instead, I used my illusion powers to have someone on the complete opposite side of the cafeteria scream "FOOD FIGHT" and the entire room broke out in a food fight, thus all of my party were able to avoid direct conflict and instead just got wrapped up in the fun of flinging food around. I don't think my party member would've been that upset IRL, but I also didn't want to start a campaign with my character and his at odds, so instead I went a different route that was true to the character I wanted to play AND ended up helping everybody.
Hi Mike
I have been enjoying your videos, and find them entertaining and informative.
I really appreciate all the hard work and effort you put in, thank you.
Good luck with the channel and best wishes for the future to you and yours.
Andy
Thank you so much!
Best deployment of future tense I’ve seen is in EXU Calamity, when (big spoilers)
Aabriya: “She is going to start to cast Blight.”
One time the party had been given a quest, and my character hung back, didn't join the party as they started to go elsewhere. When the DM asked if I was uncomfortable with the quest, I said "Oh, it sounds super fun, but Timothy doesn't think he'd be able to help, he needs convincing. Tell him X." so I got to have my character's angsty emo boy moment AND got to enjoy the quest.
That’s a good approach, too!
Not really central to your point, but the only time I recall doing any sort of PvP is, weirdly, during solo games. Nothing quite like voicing two different characters having an argument that nearly devolves into a fistfight. While navigating a cave. That's trying to eat them.
I have no idea why, but this video got my dnd brain juices running and I am now writing up a word doc on how giff gods work in my friends dnd campaign (well, how the giff in his setting think they work)
i think its a combination of this vid, me looking up hippo sounds (for prayer ideas) and reading too much LotR wiki.
I think there's only two good reasons for a character to act against the interests of the party.
1. they're becoming a twist villain, and either sowing the seeds, or doing their turn against the party
2. for some reason, that character needs to leave the party for an extended duration, either because the player is leaving, or the character has served their narrative purpose and needs to be changed out (think Scanlan mid campaign 1)
That’s a valid argument, I think. Obviously it depends on the goals of the campaign but that’s a really good rule of thumb. I also think this is a subject where you can do something and not consider it to be against the party’s best wishes, but ambiguity can lead to conflict - and hopefully this advice helps cut down on that 😁