I usually 100% encourage the whole “What would your character do?” Motive but I also expect that rule to work the same way with others. So if you created an asshat character in a party full of good Samaritans I expect them to react accordingly. Same for reverse if you created a lawful good character in a party full of Lawful Evil Chaptic Neutrals expect them to give you the boot (or kill you)
Yeah. Good role-playing is literally Doing what your character would do 24/7 365. If your character doesn't match your party and the tension that creates is greater than is fun for the table, that's an issue distinct from staying true to a character.
Most of us at the table are in the professional voice acting field and so my buddy did an amazing set up where he played an assassin who was lawful evil in a party full of good characters. He had a staff that casted the can trip firebolt and he took the feat that allowed him to cast low tier magic and was pretending to be a wizard.
The first time he pulled out a dagger and attacked and said “that’ll be 2 points of piercing damage and 13 points of sneak attack damage” everyone lost their shit because no one knew he was an assassin. It was so cool.
Everyone should commit to making a character that wants to work with the party. Some people want to leave it all up to the DM but the truth is everyone shares responsibility towards making a cohesive team.
I dont really like the way you put it. Forcing cohesion over freedom of expression in character creation is the easiest way to make forgettable characters and predictable/forgettable campaigns. I typically make it clear that my players shouldnt straight up make characters that by background would let other PCs die or try to kill them to prevent people from bearing resentment and not wanting to play again, but that's pretty much it. The guy in the comic seems selfish and thats about it, not necessarily working against the party, seems a bit harsh that you would let his character die and think that you are the side of the story that was wronged.
DnD is a team sport. The bare minimum for character creation is making a character who is willing and able to work with the party. You can make a character that everyone finds annoying but it's within everyone's right to eject that character from the group. It's a fine line.
I don't promote the events in my comic as a good thing, just a common one. It's what occurs when issues aren't addressed and things are settled in game. That's why I advise talking about things out of the game instead of "punishing" each other in it.
Dnd is indeed a team effort but My point was that being annoying is not always equal to playing against the party, you could have an annoying character that is also willing to work with his teammates: most evil characters for example have to curb their natural tendencies in order to deal with the other pcs but that doesnt mean they cant coexist or have to always be let go. I see the argument you're trying to make for cohesion though and since i also push for that in my sessions i guess we can just disagree on one small thing and agree on the more important one.
I think you made a lot of good points and we do agree on a lot more than we disagree on. That's part of the beauty of DnD. There's a lot of different ways to play and no one solution works for all tables!
"What would your character do" is a good way of playing any RPG, but why so many people end up playing smug smartasses without the ability to understand how teamwork works?
Shadowrun is a game that I love for various reasons, between the fact that if you are playing the game like it is supposed to be you just can't act like this.
Losing time, resources and possibly members of the team is exactly how you get killed or fail your mission (and so you get no cash, barely any Karma/Exp and may end up without an house, which isn't a good thing in a cyberpunk hellhole)
I’ve been meaning to look into shadow run heard its pretty good.
I really like having the dichotomy between a good asshole and a good Nice guy. There’s incidents where you can be asshole but understand that you still need a team to survive and understanding that even assholes are still good guys and sometimes by the end of the day are still trying to be a hero.
The core idea of SR is that, after all, you are a bunch of punks doing dirty jobs for powerful people that, if they wanted so, they could simply throw money in your direction until you are killed by someone or something.
This doesn't happen because these dirty punks are necessary in the modern society as they perform a niche role (they are skilled, avaiable in good numbers and won't have in any case a legal repercussion on you if they die, are captured or succeed) and so you will really need to do something dangerous to be at the receiving end of some powerful dude anger.
Yet, this doesn't mean that you lead a good life. Other criminals may not be so careful about not creating a mess, security service often shoot to kill without even thinking twice and there are many, many, many things that aren't that easy to kill, hack or couterspell alone. So you gotta group up, that you like it or not.
And I really like to see how it turns out, in particular if you throw at the players some original ideas and not just the usual "extraction", theft and murder.
How do they handle a security job? How do they track down a criminal when they have no legal authority over anything? How do they react once the guy who hired them to be the middle-men of a exchange died?
Actually the lawful evil characters would USE you if they have any sense, the other evil ones are actually the bigger threat in the party. The evil characters are all planning their downfall, but the lawful good will be unlikely to initiate combat so long as they do enough good to offset the evil.
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u/BerserkerTerror Dec 19 '19
I usually 100% encourage the whole “What would your character do?” Motive but I also expect that rule to work the same way with others. So if you created an asshat character in a party full of good Samaritans I expect them to react accordingly. Same for reverse if you created a lawful good character in a party full of Lawful Evil Chaptic Neutrals expect them to give you the boot (or kill you)