So I've recently started a new campaign with my regular group, and added two new people to it. Unfortunatly the strong personalities in the group, and what maybe some rough feelings about the end of the last campaign, have left the party more at each others throat then focusing on the mission at hand.
Frankly, my NPC isn't one to keep the peace so I'm frustrated on how to unite them. Do you guys have any advice? Anything would be helpful.
Seems like a fair solution, but I'm having trouble deciding where the line is between "acceptable" actions against other pc's and "non-acceptable".
It's hard to tell that where I should draw the line when I enjoy some interplay between the pc's. When is it far enough, you know?
This may be a stupid response, but I'm going to defer back to dknonen's response- ask the rest of the players how far is too far. If nothing else, if/when the group falls apart because of too much inter-party conflict, nobody will say you didn't try to rein it in.
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The whole idea of any role-playing game is to have fun; if you're not having fun, tell 'em to sort it or find another game.
Talking about the issue with the players is the best bet. Maybe they don't see the issue, or see it differently. If there's an issue between two players before they even sit down at the table, that issue is going to remain until they resolve it.
I'm playtesting a game for a friend, it's about extremely violent individuals who kill gods and potentially become power mad tyrants themselves. Since the players still have to somewhat act as a group they explicitly need reasons to work together. This results in the players choosing from several preprinted sentences that they assign other characters to that read something like this:
"I hesitate to kill _______ because he shares my burdens."
"I hesitate to kill _______ because he shows me a new way."
Asking the players to come up with reasons for why their characters are explicitly working together can help.
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Seems like a fair solution, but I'm having trouble deciding where the line is between "acceptable" actions against other pc's and "non-acceptable".
It's hard to tell that where I should draw the line when I enjoy some interplay between the pc's. When is it far enough, you know?
In most games the only acceptable action against other pcs is to argue with them. Once you start trying to hurt them or magically control them you have stepped over the line.
Frankly, my NPC isn't one to keep the peace so I'm frustrated on how to unite them. Do you guys have any advice? Anything would be helpful.
"This game isn't going to work if y'all don't work together as a team. That means no backstabbing each other, no stealing from each other, et cetera. I don't enjoy games where the players act like that, and I won't GM such a game."
Okay, so it sounds like I'll be talking to them about it. We're all pretty good friends but there's just something about pathfinder that makes them seem super competitive with each other.
The last campaign "Apotheosis" was run by one of the other people in our group. Frankly I need to take my share of the blame here for the character I played.a little background: I have been role playing for a little over two decades now, since I was eight, and role playing has ALWAYS been the best part of any campaign for me.
With that in mind I created psion (using psionics unleashed) who had been alive for 2000 years and used mind swap when the current body he was in became to old, as you can imagine, he was not a nice guy.
The back story went that he had recently taken the body of and elvin boy, and I spend the first six months of the campaign pretending to play this whole other innocent little boy. Frankly, I figured the players would catch on sooner...
Suffice to say when the rest of the party found out they were actually traveling with and evil megalomaniac bend on world conquest, they were understandably upset. I figured however, that at this point we were too far into the story to simply go our separate ways as the evil we were facing was far worse then Indrid (my character). This was my reasoning as far as role playing went anyway.
Now this is where the two campaigns differ greatly. With my over two decades of experience, I was very prepared to deal with any backlash from my character being evil, however, everyone else is now only been playing for a little over a year, and having things escalate is not what I really want.
Our GM for apotheosis and I as a player were both okay with the pvp that was going on because it was directed 100% towards me, and I could handle it. But personally, even if my players were all veterans i find a lot of aggression between PC's leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I had hoped that as role players they could all move past the last campaign, but I sometimes forget that they are all still new players and have a hard time separating things.
With that in mind I created psion (using psionics unleashed) who had been alive for 2000 years and used mind swap when the current body he was in became to old, as you can imagine, he was not a nice guy.
The back story went that he had recently taken the body of and elvin boy, and I spend the first six months of the campaign pretending to play this whole other innocent little boy. Frankly, I figured the players would catch on sooner...
I did something similar to this in a 4e campaign with a changeling, it took them over half the campaign to figure it out, although I was evil and working behind their backs the entire time everyone had an awsome laugh about it OOC after the game. Love those unexpected character development/ RP moments.
Seems like a good plan just to talk to everybody. If it's a problem with anyone it'll also give them a chance to clean the air and you can try to remind them to separate in character RP and OOC friendships.
Yeah. I think it was a combination of a bunch of things honestly. The advisary style of the previous campaign, the lack of role playing experience, the inclusion of new people into the group. And everyone just having a rotten day before hand.
I'll go over what I expect from them and I'm sure it'll work out, there just so competitive with each other...
That said I'd really like to thank you all for your advice, it helps a lot!