Hi, I'm Jacinto's GM and I'd like to tell you what he is not telling you. First off, the atmosphere is more then toxic... we have several different players with different viewpoints and they tend not to agree on anything.
In honest truth, none of our players talk about their problems outside of the game unless it's to complain to me, or about me.
In book 1, I made the mistake of trying to make sure the party got all the treasure... but I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm going to try not to include spoilers for the module I'm running.
The party numbered 5. A Gunslinger, a Rogue, a Host, a warpriest and a Barbarian techslinger archetype I can't remember the name of off the top of my head.
In book one, Jacinto played a rogue. What he did was sit at the back of the party and watch the combats happen. None of the players were pleased with having an inactive player.
In addition, he was doing a majority of the looting. Out of character and between sessions, he was telling me about how his market stall in the town was ripping people off, because they do not know the value of the 'tech' items he was selling.
However, there was a traveling NPC Merchant that was the counter to this scheme. For reasons that venture into spoiler territory, Jacinto killed the man and proceeded to burn down a portion of the town. He got dinged on alignment there.
Into book two, Jacinto's looting strategy was putting the party into PVP mode, with our barbarian wanting his character dead. The gunslinger decides to test an EMP Gun on him without forewarning and Jacinto's Rogue decides to steal his bag in the middle of the night and run off into the city never to return.
The party takes on the boss of the module and loses, prompting the first of several changes to the module. The boss (at 5 hp) decides to cut his losses and escape to fight again another day.
At this point, several players are character dissatisfied/dead and the party gets a wizard to replace the gunslinger (dead/still alive/spoilers), an oracle to replace the warpriest a fighter to replace the Barbarian, a druid to replace the rogue and a we get a sixth player joining as a Ranger.
With the change in Characters, most of the good module loot so far is gone.
Entering book three, the party starts to perceive a timeline that really isn't there... following the footsteps of the boss which got away. Jacinto finds a shortcut which bypasses 2/3of the module. They do gain xp later for some of the encounters they missed.
The party decides to NOT go back in because now they want to pursue a lead that takes them into book four. As a side note, the party is able to get the gunslinger back and I wound up coaxing the oracle to take back his warpriest so there are players there to answer Jacinto's question: "Why are we even doing this" which gets asked three to four time's a session.
However, there is another problem... none of the characters know why their character is there save for the Host, who misses sessions regularly due to work, and an NPC or two the party picked up in book 1 to help them out (as a rule of thumb, I don't count the NPC's as party members when I hand out xp).
During this time, Jacinto's character is trolling the game, making liberal use of create water squawking in bird form while the NPC's are trying to talk.
Book four, no one liked book four... The combats were long and tedious and most of them ended after an hour of real time with the words: You are able to defeat the monsters. Due to a desire to finish the module, quickly, the party decides to skip 5 minor - medium dungeons, and I let them auto loot the areas they complete bypassing major obstacles.
The party has to invest their loot to deal with Jacinto's spells. During downtime, the parties Ranger is crafting Fogcutter Goggles for himself, the gunslinger, and then the melee characters so they can see through the obscuring mist which gets dropped every combat.
Into book five the party now has two problems. 1: they are short on levels, being two levels behind where they are supposed to be. 2: They have convinced themselves that they do not have enough magical items.
In addition, I'm not a big fan of the handholding that takes place in book five so I make a few revisions to the Encounters to make it seem the end boss is close to his endgame.
Unfortunately, the party walks directly into a well placed ambush when two NPCs betray the party. Fearing the other PCs were going to betray him and at low health, Jacinto flees to a roof where he waits out the rest of the combat.
Down two characters (One dead / one fled), the party decides to cut it's losses and flee. Jacinto, admitting the whole city has to be against him, drops a tornado which kills most of the encounter and a portion of the city and takes an alignment hit.
His actions also attracts the attention of a group of priests of *spoiler* and they start attempting to scry on him because they are now his #1 fans...
Now wanted in the city, the party decides they can't hit any of the markets there and chooses to spend their gains in another city in another country (boots of teleport). I tell the players they could sell their tech items for higher in this city because they are curios but I'm told that is stupid and they are not going to.
For the most part, the group is well built and makes short work of any encounter they come across. Most battles don't go longer then three rounds and the party has only really suffered four major losses, in Book 2, Book 4, Book 5 and now in Book 6 during last nights session.
The atmosphere is toxic because none of my players are honest with each other, and the reason I get defensive is because I don't want to be the middle man, that has to say: 'So & So does not like to game with you' or the person is insulting another player without them their to defend themselves or their actions.
I consider myself blessed to have a versatile group of players, but cursed that they never play off each other’s strengths and instead focus on each other’s weaknesses.
