In my last Star Wars: Edge of Empire session, a PC attacked another PC. To add a bit of context, the group was new; they’d only had one adventure together and one of the PCs insulted the droid PC. The player of the droid PC turned to me and said “I shoot him.”
This isn’t the first time I’d dealt with intra-party physical conflict. In my early gaming days it was almost expected that a new party would have a tavern scuffle before licking wounds and going off on an adventure. At the time, we laughed about it and noted that it was something that just wouldn’t happen in real life, especially if blades had drawn blood.
As time went on, the intra-party fights became less common and usually only happened when frustration set in. These fights often resulted in one or more players creating new characters. The players involved usually ended up coming to blows again in the modified party, usually whenever a previously-offended player could contrive an excuse.
For this particular fight, I shut it down and tossed a destiny point into the PC pool for their trouble. I told them that I didn’t want to see this get out of hand (likely resulting in PC deaths) and, although I gave them a reward for playing along this time, they shouldn’t expect it next time around. My rationalization is that if they trust each other enough to be in a group, they wouldn’t use weapons on each other.
This does create some grey areas, though. I’m not sure I would have stopped the fight if it was simply one PC punching another in frustration. I’d probably be uncomfortable with a PC using a stun-set blaster though, since it’s one PC drawing a weapon on another.
So fair or foul? Was it better to stop the fight or should I have let it play out? Under what circumstances would you allow PCs to physically fight each other? Do you have a “code” or “social contract” that covers this instance in your group?
Hi Walt,
A good call in response to a tough situation.
Many groups can cope with a degree of inter-party conflict, and the game can be improved for it. However, the extent of this conflict is highly variable and depends upon the group. This takes us straight to the Social Contract.
Genre, personal friendships and level of gaming experience can all have a bearing on the degree of conflict accepted by the group. The best way to manage Player expectations, especially in this area, is by making it clear from the start.
This topic is becoming a growing issue in my current game, so I too need to make the boundaries a little clearer. I hope that your tactics work to settle things in your game.
All the best
Phil
, a HeroQuest 2 GM blogs
Robin Laws had a See Page XX awhile ago that brought this up. He was talking about gaming by consensus. One of his examples was intragroup combat. As I remember it, in his example it made sense for two PCs to fight. But no one wanted to deal with the aftermath that might result from the capricious nature of the dice. So everyone agreed to a meaningful outcome that made sense but wasn’t lethal, role played it, and moved on.
Both as a GM and player, I’ve never been a fan of PCs attacking PCs. While I have no opposition to conflict between PCs, when the actions of player have the potential to ruin a campaign or even a single session, then I pause the action.
When players start picking fights among themselves, I take it as a sign that the session has lost it’s focus and it requires the group to find it.
When I’m GMing, and a player or players start having their PC pick irrational fights, I take a look at myself to see the root. Has a role-play encounter gone on for too long and the combat junkies need to see some blood? Is it a real world conflict between players and someone is trying to bring it into the game world? Is someone just having a bad night?
When intra-party violence happens that is completely out of character or unfounded, I stop the game, try to find out what the trigger is, and in most cases overrule the immediate action, and then create a focus.
A player may say, “I attack them.” However, this is not immediate. There are many ways to stop things before that attack takes place. Other PCs could make perception checks to realize that things are escalating, and say or do things to prevent violence. In the case of the game in the article, things happened very quickly, so in this case, I would do a quick rewind and ask the player whose PC made the insult, if based on what it triggered, would he have said something else, or refrained all together. If his answer is, yes, then there is another underlying problem.
If there is a situation where inter-party violence has some basis, I create a more enticing distraction, before the PCs have a chance to strike at one another.
“Just as you are drawing swords, your are ambushed by a pack of ghouls attracted by your raised voices.”
I’ve also used NPCs to stop fights before combat can actually ensue. A bar keep will either break up the fight before it happens, and tell the party to take it outside. Or send a stable boy to fetch the watch because he fears that a fight is about to break out, having the town guards come in and ensure peace.
Maybe it’s a bit heavy handed, but I’ve seen games and gaming groups suffer serious damage when one player’s PC kills another’s. Some players can take it without batting an eye, but for others it can leave a burn that is slow to heal.
Over time, the people I play with have gotten the message that I don’t really tolerate PCs killing PCs in the games I manage and have accepted that.
This topic recently came up on my local gaming forum. This was my answer there….
This is one of those answers that no one likes but one that I have decided from 33 years of experience in this crazy hobby: It really depends on how and why the PVP came about and on how far it is going to go.
If one player is just being a D-Bag just to be a D-Bag then that’s one thing. But if there is a good in game reason for the player conflict well then, it really depends on why the PVP will happen. The maturity of a group is a huge factor too.
With young inexperienced players I actively discourage PVP. It can only go downhill quickly.
With experienced more mature players, it might be a case of: Okay, I see why this is going to happen, there may be consequences, but let’s see how it plays out.
That said, PVP can be something that hurts group cohesion, especially if the players are not able to let things go after things are resolved. I’d certainly not want to see player “A” get back at player “B” down the road just for something that happened between two entirely different characters previously. Petty payback like that is nothing but trouble at the table and I won’t tolerate it.
I’ve had a mixed bag of experiences with PC on PC violence in the last few years that I’ve been GMing (and playing). I’m against any combat between players that starts out of frustration (whether “in character” or not). We had one situation where a player / character’s actions were frustrating the other players. While it did not break out into violence, I did have to put an end to several conversations that were leading that way during game and again before the next session when one of the players started asking to purchase items specifically with the intent of being able to incapacitate the other character.
As I explained to them then, that was not the kind of game I was looking to run and they needed to figure the situation out such that they could play their characters and have fun as a group. I talked to both of the players that were primarily involved individually to try and resolve the situation.
That said, I’ve actively courted PC on PC in a few instances within the same group and in the same game. Talk about setting a double standard!
In one case, the players were playing a one shot where one of the characters went off to explore a personal side story and the other players filled in by playing important characters involved in that story. In that case, one of the characters was a double agent and eventually betrayed them. This worked out really well for the group, for a number of factors, though likely mostly because the player who was the traitor was generally well trusted and liked by the group as a whole, so they took it less personally as a fun twist, and he and the majority of the group were playing one off characters whose fates didn’t really matter that much to them.
As a player, I’ve also invited PC on PC in a session I played in without first clearing it with the GM. In the moment of gaming, it made sense and it was mutually agreed upon by the players. The other player made mention (out of character) that they felt like they should take action, but they were torn. It was a situation where the characters were friendly, but his character disagreed strongly with my character’s religious rituals. Since it was a real point of contention and his character was additionally attacking from hiding, meaning my character wouldn’t know who did it, I encouraged him to take the shot as I thought it would add an interesting character and role-playing dynamic to explore.
What particular game and style of play your group prefers can make a difference, too. My long-time gaming group are all friends in real life; we began playing Vampire: The Masquerade, and later moved up to the World of Darkness. I encouraged players to follow their own plots, with a lot of scheming and intrigue. Almost invariably, the scheming would erupt into violence — PCs sometimes even died due to the machinations of other PCs, often in open combat, sometimes in more sneaky ways. Players enjoyed bragging over their kills, and everyone could go to the bar afterward without tension. (Well, maybe just a little, but all in good fun.) Recently I ran AD&D for the same group, and I was happily surprised that they got the whole, “we have to be a team to survive” thing immediately, pulled together, and directed their focus outward. No tensions, no machinations.
Of course, in my AD&D game I made it a point not to provide hooks that would put the players at odds, which is something I try to do as a rule in a WOD game. When I do do that, sometimes players try to work through them, sometimes they take the conflict and ramp it up, but either way there is inter-party intrigue and drama, which WOD encourages as a play style. D&D, not so much.
In short, I think that if you’re playing with old friends that like the inter-party intrigue, this sort of thing can make for some really memorable games — and, as an added bonus, the GM has far less planning to do: just give the players different carrots to follow, and watch them provide the sticks themselves! (Kind of perverse, but it can be a lot of fun to watch.) For a newer group without ties outside the game, this might cause a lot of problems. And, for a game that depends on the PCs pulling together to face the big bad, it can be a disaster.
I’ve got 2 players that duel each other, at the end of every gaming session for the last 7 years. One game 7 years ago, they were knocking heads at the table and it was turning into an in-party fight. I stopped it, but allowed them to have their duel, out of game after the session was over – they rolled dice and RP’ed it out, but the result doesn’t effect either PC in any way. Ever since that night, these 2 fight it out every game session, so that it becomes a weekly session ender – out of game. I haven’t had this problem with any other players. At least the 2 in question don’t affect the rest of the party in any way.
@ Tsugo:
I totally agree with your plans of running interference for the party. It provides a very nice in-game way to resolve (postpone?) the PvP conflict, so the game doesn’t have to come to a halt to “discuss” the issue at hand. This will usually allow cooler heads to prevail.
My issue with PvP conflict is that it is usually just that player verses player conflict, not character verses character conflict. When the problems of players spill over into the game world (and vice versa), the GM must draw a line. This is often a beef between players that is annoying the hell out of the rest of the players. It almost always signifies that someone is not engaged enough to “play by the rules.” CvC can be appropriate at times, especially in darker campaigns, but out-right assault with a deadly weapon or murder is never justified, unless there is some (agreed upon) plot development. So to answer your question…Fair. Far too usually these conflicts do nothing to further the game and frequently just cause more bad blood between players.
Sorry I sound a bit illiterate in this post, but the edit button failed me 🙂
Virtually every intra-party fight I’ve witnessed resulted from a mistake made during character creation of casting incompatible characters in the same group. For example, a paladin and an unrepentant criminal. Or two clerics of opposing faiths. Or two loyalists of groups or countries with a history of conflict. I lay responsibility for this with the GM.
If you had been talking about Age of Rebellion, I might agree that the group should be predisposed to not shooting at one another. I’m not sure that’s a given in Edge of the Empire, and it might be worth discussiong what attitudes your players assume would be normal for fringers.
That said, while I realize there is a deeper paradigm at work here, this would be the perfect time to use the “one roll combat resolution” alternate rule in EotE, where you assume up front that the PCs will never kill one another, and you just roll to see how banged up their interparty brawl makes them.
We’ve never seen intraparty conflict as something bad. You want to shoot him? Sure, go ahead, just be prepared for the consequences.
The only exception is, naturally, RL conflict filtering over into the game, but that’s a problem with a well-known solution that does not have anything to do with pnp.
In the current game my group is running, I’m a player. A few sessions ago, we had an inter-party dispute that turned to combat. We solved it through non-lethal combat (with the joy of grappling!)
So far, I’ve never had intra-party conflict–especially the kind that goes to dice (instead of a quip of a described but no effect punch)– that has improved the game.
At this point I flatly shut down the system and make the combating parties describe their efforts and the effects of their opponents’ attacks. Following “game system logic” has wounded too many campaigns to embrace it again. (Obvious counter examples include Paranoia, etc., where I’d let the system reign.)
As a an alternative I could get behind KnightErrantJR’s solution from ETOE:
There’s another issue here: was the droid’s player genuinely upset by the insult? Because that’s not cool either.
When I’ve ran into those kinds of issues int he past I’ve always tried my best to determine if it was an in character role-playing option, or one of the players taking their frustrations on the game/how another player has been acting etc.. out in the game on the offending person.(s)
By the sounds of it the insulted droid seemed to overreact to a mere insult to respond with deadly force, even just a melee strike by a mechanical arm of a droid could cause deadly injury depending on the rule system.
In most games where I foresee even the remote possibility of inter party conflict I generally make sure to set some simple guide lines of “no lethal force/unarmed only” since plenty of groups in popular television series and movies have had their share of brawls and brotherly fist fights without it escalating to murder.
For a droid through a stun blaster may actually prove less lethal then impacting the squishy meat bag with their metal hand. Still it seems like a excessive response; most of the games where I’ve seen brawls within the party erupt usually occurred over disagreements on how to handle major plot crossroads or when fighting for the affections or admiration of some significant NPC. (What was the insult out of curiosity?)