Pissed at my Pathfinder group

[paintballworker]

My wife has told me, if the choice is saving me cause I'm your wife or letting me die because of my own actions(or lack thereof), feel free to kill me......I demanded that in writing.

Yes, it sounds like a talk is needed..

[hinakiba777]

I have had people in parties I'm in complain about my character's actions before. Especially if I am trying to keep to character/alignment/class withing my actions. I think the worst example of this was when a GM straight up refused to explain the pantheon of a campaign to me, but then punished my character for not following the rules of the gods of her race. I didn't even know that those rules were.

Another time, a rogue in our party trusted my character to buy him something and gave her his personal gold. She retrieved the item for much less than the estimated cost, but chose to keep the gold. It was established that my character did not like the rogue, and he had stolen from her before. Plus she was Neutral so it woudln't have caused an alignment change. However, everyone else in the campaign complained(out of character because no one was with her when she made the purchase, and she didn't tell anyone what she had done) about keeping the gold until my character was forced to give it back.

However, I've never had it so bad that I felt I needed to leave a campaign. Though there are certain players I won't play with again. Like the person who forced my character into prostitution.

[wolfie]

My Battletech group learned very very quickly, there are consequences to every action.

One of the players, decided is was a good idea, to massacre a bunch of protesting civilians, who had no weapons of any kind.

Just curious, but was he a Kurita "regular army" type, and did this happen on Kentares?

[Crescent Cat]

So I talked to my husband and let him know how I was feeling, that I was upset that they kept blaming me for the fallout of their evil act because I did what I felt was the right thing and what not. Apparently he didn't know how bad the problem was because we sat on opposite sides of the table and he couldn't hear all of the comments that were being made. Obviously, when I made a scene last time, he knew about it but he didn't up until that point. Until then I had been trying to get them off my back by calmly explaining my actions in character, but obviously that didn't help.

So he decided he is going to postpone or possibly end that campaign. He sent an email to all players letting them know I will no longer be playing with them and why. He explained that what they did was, indeed, an evil act and that they feel no remorse in or out of character for it. Most importantly he explained that I'm feeling singled out when the situation is brought up and that they are acting as though the fallout was my fault alone when it actually was theirs.

You know, it really sucks when people ruin things that are suppose to be fun.

[paintballworker]

Ouch...if my pathfinder books hadn't been destroyed in 'The Great Flood of '13', I would soo run a pathfinder campaign and invite you.

Also, no.
He was Lyran by birth, merc by trade and the world was a dustball in the middle of the Federated Suns outback. His exact words were 'who gives a damn about a bunch of civvie farmers'.

[EricKei]

hina -- Wait...people complained about a rogue -- the archetype most likely to cheat his own party members -- getting cheated out of some gold? O_O I'm curious about how the characters (not the players) found out about it, anyway...

Had the rogue done something like that to another character, most players would have chalked it up to just "playing in character," unless the player had already established the toon as more of a Robin Hood-type of rogue. Heck, he might even get a small EXP bonus for doing it!

[Kheldarson]

hina -- Wait...people complained about a rogue -- the archetype most likely to cheat his own party members -- getting cheated out of some gold? O_O I'm curious about how the characters (not the players) found out about it, anyway...

Had the rogue done something like that to another character, most players would have chalked it up to just "playing in character," unless the player had already established the toon as more of a Robin Hood-type of rogue. Heck, he might even get a small EXP bonus for doing it!

Some people are like this. The group I played with in college had a guy who was so OCD and efficiency minded that when we finished the Pirate's Cove module we were able to buy pretty much...everything. We bought equipment to essentially double our effective level and still had extra.

But. The rogue couldn't steal any extra without telling him. If I even tried, he'd pitch a small fit. It got...boring after a while having everything divided exactly equally and to the greatest efficiency.

[KhirasHY]

I DID remember a fun character that I ran in a campaign (not Pathfinder...can't remember what system we used for it actually). He was the perfect Mercenary character: one of the other PCs would pay a certain amount of cash each game day in order to keep me under contract. While under contract, I was obligated to follow the orders of my employer, to the letter if needs be. This caused several problems, which actually became a large motivator in the story for our party.

See, my employer also had a good intelligence score, but jack shit on his wisdom score. That meant that while he was fairly efficient in shouting out "Kill them all", he was not exactly good at realizing that he needed to countermand that order when someone mentioned we might need a prisoner. Oops.

I also had fun basically becoming a supplemental antagonist at times, since I wasn't under contract to the other party members, which led to my character famously mentioning that "any stupidity you involve yourself in without (employer) is more or less your fuck up to enjoy!" When they finally convinced my contractor to order me to also follow their orders, it led to an even more fun conversation:
"So, if we're outnumbered ten to one and we order you to open fire, you would do it?"
"No, I would either shoot you, or use your body as a shield and run away."
"What!? Why!?!?"
"Because my contract specifically states I only have to follow intelligent orders. Section 3, Paragraph 7 has specific guidelines on what constitutes 'dumbfuckery' and the punishments therein. I heard you two joking about making me get you pies earlier, by the way, and under my current contract I am well within my rights to deliver you pies made out of deadly chemicals and filled with pressure-activated explosives."
"Why would you put that in your contract?"
"You have no idea how many stupid people there are in this galaxy, do you? Necessity."

I really miss that character. Sure, he threatened to casually murder the other PCs on a regular basis, but once they figured out how to sidestep his rough edges, they generally managed to point his aggression in the right direction. I only ever betrayed them twice, but they never found out about that, and it was all in fairness while I negotiated a higher paying contract with them. (And one of those times, my employer forgot to pay my contract for a few days, thus voiding it. Once he re-hired me, well, I was obligated to murder my way through the people I'd hired to convince him to pay me again, now wasn't I? Then I didn't have to pay them!)

[Mytical]

Personally I don't meta game, and usually am confused when people do. Any knowledge gained in character should remain in character, any knowledge gained out of character should remain out of character.

If somebody in your group is giving you a hard time for something they should have no way of knowing (like say a thief keeping some gold), then that is meta gaming and it should be put a stop to by the game/dungeon master.

[Gerrinson]

Oof. That was an unpleasant situation. I have a pretty regular Pathfinder game I run (2 - 3 times a month), and my players do some crazy s***. But they don't argue the consequences of their actions too much, either. In the current campaign, one of my players has openly stated that his Chaotic Neutral character is leaning towards Evil.

The only real complaining from my current group wasn't even done to my face. There was was an instance where a PC decided to cheat at the first casino they found. The Lawful Neutral PC, I might add. He got caught. So, they dragged him out back, beat him unconscious, tattooed the word 'CHEATER' onto his chest, stripped him of valuables and clothing, and left him in a ditch.

The player was saying that this was 'too harsh' a punishment for getting caught cheating, though after game and to the other players, not to me. The other players pointed out that in old-school Las Vegas, which was the model for this city, he would have just wound up in a shallow grave for blatant cheating and he should consider his continued existence as a sign of leniency.

Of course, in order to get his revenge, the Lawful Netrual PC decided to Tarzan-swing off the top of a 2 story builiding in order to throw bombs into the office of the NPC who ran the local casino.

Did I mention that on the first pass by the window he noticed the party's employer was in the room and tossed the bombs anyway?

Did I also mention that his 'great escape' was to drop the remaining 1 story to the ground right next to the 4 half-orc guards standing outside the back entrance while the rest of the PCs got the hell out of dodge for fear of backlash.

Needless to say, he didn't quite survive his crazy antics, though not for lack of trying.

[Ghel]

I'm playing a necromancer in a Pathfinder evil campaign right now. Being an evil campaign, there's a lot of cheating and conniving going on. So far, it has mostly worked out. We have the one lawful neutral character be the voice of the party, and we go along with his decisions, for the most part. (I don't think that player's strategies have been very good, but that's been more to his own detriment than anyone else's.)

I, too, try not to meta-game. It's hard sometimes. I know what something is, but my character failed her knowledge check. Or I'll forget and have to ask the DM, "did I hear that?" or "would I know...?" I remember one time in a Shadowrun campaign telling one of the other players, "If my character finds out you've been withholding information, she'll kill you."

[hinakiba777]

O_O I'm curious about how the characters (not the players) found out about it, anyway...

I really would love to know how it happened. I think people were just bitter about how much gold my Oracle had. She really didn't need any gear, so she never spent her gold. 50% of our income went into building a city, but the rest was ours. However, everyone except he gnome king spent their gold very quickly, and the gnome king put 100% of his gold into the city. So they were pissed that I had like 6000 gold. It should also be noted, my Oracle was the only person in our party with a job. So she got paid a lot. In addition to the forced prostitution. I REALLY hated that dwarf.


The campaign was supposed to end with the revelation that the god who chose my oracle was actually the demi-god of betrayal who served the god of destruction who was destroying the continent. I was supposed to just turn evil and obliterate my party members. We never did have the last session. But part of me believes that the GM let all the others pick on me so I would hate them, and then not fight it when my God got revealed to be EVIL!

GODS I wanted to play that last session so badly! No one ever lets me be an oracle anymore because all the GMs complain it's "extra work for them."

[violiavampyr]

Personally it irritates me when GMs make one person the lynchpin to everything. I've seen it get so bad that if that person doesn't show for a game then there can't be a game. Fortunately my BF is pretty good at balancing things. He's tries to keep things focused on the overall team.

There has been a time or two when he does it as part of the plot, and it works really well. But it never became the TJ show (Dark Heresy: The Haarlock's Legacy Trilogy), and it was a total surprise to everyone (even TJ). That was a fun one. He were undercover at somesort of evil auction (in our group only 2 people knew anything about Warhammer 40k, the GM and TJ) and our tech priest tried to jack into somesort of evil computer AND THEN he later was wandering around and put on a chaos marine shoulder cover. Things did not end well.
ETA2: Actually, the other time I've seen it work well was in another Dark Heresy game)

I've been in other games were it became the GMs wife/girlfriend/girl he has a crush on show. Even on the very rare occasions (just one time for a Rouge Trader campaign, and then only because it my showing up was a sure thing) were I take the role of "leader" or "Captain" it's not the violiav show. No favoritism at all.

Actually in that Rouge Trader campaign it was close to becoming the douchebag guy BF and I worked for show (he's got one of those "needs to be the center of attention" personalities). I would have capped him in game when he started inciting rebellion, but he was such a douche he would have gotten douchier at work.

ETA: The pathfinder game he's running now I took the flaw "Gods Wrath" (something like that), but I asked first.