good words! Yeah, it's just too risky. I've learned over the years that everyone, for the most part, wants to be the victor in their own tale and once you open the game up to PVP.. things can go downhill fast.
It definitely is easier when the people in the group are all good friends away from the D&D table. One of the funniest examples I can recall was that during one of my brief interludes as a player, I had gotten the DM to sign off on me playing a grugach elf fighter/druid. One of the other players was running a barbarian that didn't speak common, and could only talk to me and one other party member. At one point, he got frustrated with me "stopping to talk to every animal we crossed paths with," and was trying to complain about it to the rest of the party. Since he couldn't actually speak to them, he was trying to convey his frustration in gestures and informal sign language, including trying to pantomime "B.S." by holding his hands to his head like horns, and then motioning out his backside. My character took offense, and engaged with him angrily, which ultimately led to us having a non-lethal fistfight/wrestling match. The rest of the party was a little flummoxed, and trying to decide what they should do...break it up, let it go, leave without us, etc. The DM defused the situation by having small forest creatures keep showing up to watch the fight, and the way he had the animals play out their spectator roles put us all in stitches with laughter, which ended up being how we all played it with our characters, too.
Good DM'ing. It's a question I ask myself frequently during Storytelling; "Can I find some easy humor in the scene when I need it?" I hope the answer is always yes.
@@pranakhan He was a good DM. Interestingly, due to time constraints, he would mainly run published modules, so he was very good at finding ways to put his own spin on things, often on-the-fly.
In a campaign, I wouldn't do pvp unless the story allowed for it. Say if the players are captured and forced to fight in an amphitheatre, or tricked into thinking the other characters are enemies. That way, the players can have a little fun throwing spells and stuff at each other and seeing what happens without there being any desire to kill a character. In a scenario like this, they're still on the same side even, trying to get out of the situation, but doing a little pvp becuase it makes a nice change for a session.
I tend to be a hard no about allowing PVP in games I run. And I've largely had no complaints from my tables about the lack of PVP. Personally I have only engaged in PVP in one game in a highly structed way. That being basically small 'Fight Club' type events that were open entry, never to the death, and the rolls were all overseen by the person running the event so that no one could cheat the rolls. While I'd be willing to participate in the same events again, I wouldn't introduce it into one of my games unless the players could all agree on wanting to have it and be mature about the possibility of losing.
yeah, it's a slick surface and once you go down that road, it opens the rest of that campaign up for it. I'm wont' say that it never happens, but.. as I mention in the video, it's more headache than it's worth
I can think of a time when we had some pvp in a game. Like you said above most of the players in the group had been playing together for a long time. There was a player that was a Paladin, and he kept finding ways to be the person who would get a majority of the magic items. Now my character in the game was a Wizard and we had a great feud in the game on finding ways to one up each other in getting and distributing the magic items to the rest of the party. It went pretty well overall because the entire party continued to work together as a whole on the adventure, but we did have splits on who would get items from who in the game. It was almost like some of the party trusted the paladin and some only trusted me overall but we all still found a way to have fun and work as a team overall.
My bard once convinced the cleric to a sparing because he got too excited with an idea of getting another scar on his face (it made sense in the context), which somehow devolved into the whole group bitting each other. Eventually, the bard got his scar from the barbarian and he and the cleric healed everyone. The bard in question is now level 16 (I played four campaigns/mini-campaigns with three groups over the years as this character) and literally can heal that scar whenever he feels like that, but he doesn't (well, not yet, probably he will at some point). There also was a moment when our sorcerer killed four civilians in a course of storming one drow castle and my artificer threw fists at him after the battle (they literally couldn't do unarmed damage, so we didn't play it as a fight, just agreed that they did it; the only thing I didn't really understand is whether it was the sorcerer who didn't understand why other party members were upset at him, or the player himself). There was one time when I was literally required to start a PvP according to game mechanics, but I couldn't bother at that point (I played as a liberator, and another PC decided to burrow a prisoner alive just for lols; no, he wasn't 14, he was 16), and one time when it was what my character would do, but I decided that I wouldn't (it was a complicated and pretty uncomfortable - both in and out of characters - story, but short version is that everyone in the group but me agreed to commit a war crime, and my paladin would probably switch sides, but I decided that she would just go away to never return and I would make a new character; eventually, that plan just fell apart, to my relief). Not sure if casting Minor Restoration on the bard who was determined to sleep it (a tropical fever) off or rolling insight to analyse each other was PvP, there was no conflict in any of these situations.
@@gamemasters I completely forgot The frog game! Rogue needs to successfully roll animal handling in the appropriate biom to acquire a frog. From there, the rogue can roll slide of hands against anyone's (NPC or party member) passive perception to slip the frog into their pocket. If the victim is a PC, the DM adds the word "frog" or frog emoji to the random field in their character sheet (we played in vtt), and the player has to find it before the character can get rid of the frog (or not). The frog... Doesn't really do anything, and is considered immortal for the purpose of the game (so you won't find a rotten carcass in your pocket if you forgot about it for a year and got fully submerged into acid in a course of that time). I never considered it a PvP (just a running joke), but I guess it technically counts 🤔
The only PVP I have allowed at my table has been friendly contests or harmless pranks that everyone at the table agrees to. I've had players do an archery contest, or join a tournament against each other. The only real consequences were bragging rights and sometimes a trophy to display in their character's room at their home base.
aye, that's all legit and fine, it's when it devolves to sword swinging and spell slinging that I've seen player feelings get hurt. I think it mostly boils down to ego, they _thought_ their character was a badass only to discover that someone else is more powerful (or crafty)..
One time our rogue stole an attuned item from me during a session I couldn’t make it to because of work and then during the next session when I said I went to pull it out, the GM just said “What ____?” After I finally understood the joke, I was pretty pissed that he’d allow it while I wasn’t there to defend or even argue that there’s no way I wouldn’t notice that specific item going missing.
Once had a player join in a game for two sessions in the course of a campaign as a favor to me he didn't really have time to join the game but he was nothing if not the king of the jackasses. He was playing a paladin, who was, without question the biggest piece of shit imaginable. He would actively work to sabotage the party and damned near got them killed a few times before they finally snapped and killed him... mission accomplished. He stole their money and threw it into a well filled with acid saying how he expected it to give him a wish. Threw the fighters magic sword off a cliff when they were disarmed. Fed them 'human meat', sold one of the party's followers to bandits that snuck to the camp while he was up keeping watch... you know... just generally an awful person. He was a paladin who was openly breaking his oaths, meaning that, post mortem, he would become a death knight. He made one more appearance at the end of the adventure... as the BBEG. Players thought the player was a newbie who was just being a jackass... but... that was what I wanted them think. 10/10, Highly recommend PVP villains!
We have Arena days, usually not on our regular day, We set the rules, equipment, levels and whatnot. Then whoever is running the game sets the map and whatever rules and we fight. Its usually intense and fun. Not all our group participates, some choose not to.
I typically don't like pvp in my games and try to do what I can to make sure it doesn't happen, but every now and again there is just no way to get around it.
It should be its own separate One Shot, designed specifically for characters who want to play through a "Game of Death" style session. They could play as criminals, gladiators, experimental soldiers forced into separate sides of a faction war, the list goes on. Try to keep it as fair as you can (considering class imbalances), decide at the beginning whether its lethal or non-lethal combats. Play with people who can get into the vibe. Sometimes throw a powerful NPC monster into the middle of it just to f&ck with them! It can be an awesome & different way to play the game.
yeah, I think this kindav explains it too. There is a (or at least for me there is) a clear line between ME as a person and my character. We've seen the term "bleed in" and "bleed out". Bleeding in is when you, as the person, get into character, bleeding out is when you leave your character and become you again. One of the big things with table top roleplay vs live action role play is that in table top that bleed in and out happens almost instantly. With larping, most folks try to ease out of it mainly because there was never a clear "signal" that said "hey, I'm done, I'm back to being Brian now" while the other 12 or so folks are still in character. I think making this clear on the front end could go a long way...
@@gamemasters I’m a larper, so I know all about the bleed. LARP usually use a physical signal (typically hand on top of the head) to say “hey, I’m ooc right,” which lets the people around them know. I think the big difference is that in LARP people are more attached to their characters because you have to physically be them. You have to dress up, speak, and LIVE as that character for 2-3 (7 for big larps) straight. Dnd you have 1-2 min of dialogue usually and then everything else involves explaining what you’re doing, looking up abilities or spells, crackin a joke here or there, taking breaks to stretch. And each session is only a few hours once every one to two weeks. People don’t think they can get emotionally absorbed into like in LARP
my players tend to build characters with at least some secrets. E.g. one of them is a changeling, but they haven't told the rest of the party because they've barely even met. For things like this that don't have any huge implications I just let them roll Insight or something if a suspicious thing happens. We have big mouths so out-of-character everyone knows it anyway
heh yeah.. meta-gaming for some is easy, for others.. not so much. I used to pass notes to my players when I needed just one of them to know something or I'd pull them into another room and tell them and let it be up to them to share with everyone else.. Today we tend to text a bit, but that has started to become an issue because.. I have that ONE player that texts constantly...
I don't normally like it, but sometimes the players want to be stupid. Someone always ends up getting their feelings hurt, especially with highly competitive players.
Totally agree 👌 Don't allow unless all players involved actively ask for it... and even then, only if they (players) have a good relation.
good words! Yeah, it's just too risky. I've learned over the years that everyone, for the most part, wants to be the victor in their own tale and once you open the game up to PVP.. things can go downhill fast.
It definitely is easier when the people in the group are all good friends away from the D&D table. One of the funniest examples I can recall was that during one of my brief interludes as a player, I had gotten the DM to sign off on me playing a grugach elf fighter/druid. One of the other players was running a barbarian that didn't speak common, and could only talk to me and one other party member.
At one point, he got frustrated with me "stopping to talk to every animal we crossed paths with," and was trying to complain about it to the rest of the party. Since he couldn't actually speak to them, he was trying to convey his frustration in gestures and informal sign language, including trying to pantomime "B.S." by holding his hands to his head like horns, and then motioning out his backside. My character took offense, and engaged with him angrily, which ultimately led to us having a non-lethal fistfight/wrestling match.
The rest of the party was a little flummoxed, and trying to decide what they should do...break it up, let it go, leave without us, etc. The DM defused the situation by having small forest creatures keep showing up to watch the fight, and the way he had the animals play out their spectator roles put us all in stitches with laughter, which ended up being how we all played it with our characters, too.
that.. is an excellent diffusion..
Good DM'ing. It's a question I ask myself frequently during Storytelling; "Can I find some easy humor in the scene when I need it?" I hope the answer is always yes.
@@pranakhan He was a good DM. Interestingly, due to time constraints, he would mainly run published modules, so he was very good at finding ways to put his own spin on things, often on-the-fly.
In a campaign, I wouldn't do pvp unless the story allowed for it. Say if the players are captured and forced to fight in an amphitheatre, or tricked into thinking the other characters are enemies. That way, the players can have a little fun throwing spells and stuff at each other and seeing what happens without there being any desire to kill a character. In a scenario like this, they're still on the same side even, trying to get out of the situation, but doing a little pvp becuase it makes a nice change for a session.
that's a valid point, we _have_ on occasion done pvp in one-shots.. In those.. anything can happen and usually not everyone survives.
I tend to be a hard no about allowing PVP in games I run. And I've largely had no complaints from my tables about the lack of PVP. Personally I have only engaged in PVP in one game in a highly structed way. That being basically small 'Fight Club' type events that were open entry, never to the death, and the rolls were all overseen by the person running the event so that no one could cheat the rolls. While I'd be willing to participate in the same events again, I wouldn't introduce it into one of my games unless the players could all agree on wanting to have it and be mature about the possibility of losing.
yeah, it's a slick surface and once you go down that road, it opens the rest of that campaign up for it. I'm wont' say that it never happens, but.. as I mention in the video, it's more headache than it's worth
I can think of a time when we had some pvp in a game. Like you said above most of the players in the group had been playing together for a long time. There was a player that was a Paladin, and he kept finding ways to be the person who would get a majority of the magic items. Now my character in the game was a Wizard and we had a great feud in the game on finding ways to one up each other in getting and distributing the magic items to the rest of the party. It went pretty well overall because the entire party continued to work together as a whole on the adventure, but we did have splits on who would get items from who in the game. It was almost like some of the party trusted the paladin and some only trusted me overall but we all still found a way to have fun and work as a team overall.
working together is perfect, it's when things devolve that it can become problematic.
My bard once convinced the cleric to a sparing because he got too excited with an idea of getting another scar on his face (it made sense in the context), which somehow devolved into the whole group bitting each other. Eventually, the bard got his scar from the barbarian and he and the cleric healed everyone. The bard in question is now level 16 (I played four campaigns/mini-campaigns with three groups over the years as this character) and literally can heal that scar whenever he feels like that, but he doesn't (well, not yet, probably he will at some point).
There also was a moment when our sorcerer killed four civilians in a course of storming one drow castle and my artificer threw fists at him after the battle (they literally couldn't do unarmed damage, so we didn't play it as a fight, just agreed that they did it; the only thing I didn't really understand is whether it was the sorcerer who didn't understand why other party members were upset at him, or the player himself).
There was one time when I was literally required to start a PvP according to game mechanics, but I couldn't bother at that point (I played as a liberator, and another PC decided to burrow a prisoner alive just for lols; no, he wasn't 14, he was 16), and one time when it was what my character would do, but I decided that I wouldn't (it was a complicated and pretty uncomfortable - both in and out of characters - story, but short version is that everyone in the group but me agreed to commit a war crime, and my paladin would probably switch sides, but I decided that she would just go away to never return and I would make a new character; eventually, that plan just fell apart, to my relief).
Not sure if casting Minor Restoration on the bard who was determined to sleep it (a tropical fever) off or rolling insight to analyse each other was PvP, there was no conflict in any of these situations.
heh aye, PVP can take on many forms and it looks like you and your party have hit several of those forms hahaha
@@gamemasters I completely forgot The frog game!
Rogue needs to successfully roll animal handling in the appropriate biom to acquire a frog. From there, the rogue can roll slide of hands against anyone's (NPC or party member) passive perception to slip the frog into their pocket. If the victim is a PC, the DM adds the word "frog" or frog emoji to the random field in their character sheet (we played in vtt), and the player has to find it before the character can get rid of the frog (or not). The frog... Doesn't really do anything, and is considered immortal for the purpose of the game (so you won't find a rotten carcass in your pocket if you forgot about it for a year and got fully submerged into acid in a course of that time). I never considered it a PvP (just a running joke), but I guess it technically counts 🤔
It's what my character would do...
@@GordonDS ROFL YUP!!
The only PVP I have allowed at my table has been friendly contests or harmless pranks that everyone at the table agrees to.
I've had players do an archery contest, or join a tournament against each other. The only real consequences were bragging rights and sometimes a trophy to display in their character's room at their home base.
aye, that's all legit and fine, it's when it devolves to sword swinging and spell slinging that I've seen player feelings get hurt. I think it mostly boils down to ego, they _thought_ their character was a badass only to discover that someone else is more powerful (or crafty)..
One time our rogue stole an attuned item from me during a session I couldn’t make it to because of work and then during the next session when I said I went to pull it out, the GM just said “What ____?” After I finally understood the joke, I was pretty pissed that he’d allow it while I wasn’t there to defend or even argue that there’s no way I wouldn’t notice that specific item going missing.
yeah, that's lower than low. I'd leave the group at that point.
Once had a player join in a game for two sessions in the course of a campaign as a favor to me he didn't really have time to join the game but he was nothing if not the king of the jackasses.
He was playing a paladin, who was, without question the biggest piece of shit imaginable. He would actively work to sabotage the party and damned near got them killed a few times before they finally snapped and killed him... mission accomplished. He stole their money and threw it into a well filled with acid saying how he expected it to give him a wish. Threw the fighters magic sword off a cliff when they were disarmed. Fed them 'human meat', sold one of the party's followers to bandits that snuck to the camp while he was up keeping watch... you know... just generally an awful person.
He was a paladin who was openly breaking his oaths, meaning that, post mortem, he would become a death knight.
He made one more appearance at the end of the adventure... as the BBEG. Players thought the player was a newbie who was just being a jackass... but... that was what I wanted them think. 10/10, Highly recommend PVP villains!
that is a fun twist!
We have Arena days, usually not on our regular day, We set the rules, equipment, levels and whatnot. Then whoever is running the game sets the map and whatever rules and we fight. Its usually intense and fun. Not all our group participates, some choose not to.
aye, when that's the purpose of the scenario, that can work.
I typically don't like pvp in my games and try to do what I can to make sure it doesn't happen, but every now and again there is just no way to get around it.
yeah, sometimes it is unavoidable.
It should be its own separate One Shot, designed specifically for characters who want to play through a "Game of Death" style session. They could play as criminals, gladiators, experimental soldiers forced into separate sides of a faction war, the list goes on. Try to keep it as fair as you can (considering class imbalances), decide at the beginning whether its lethal or non-lethal combats. Play with people who can get into the vibe. Sometimes throw a powerful NPC monster into the middle of it just to f&ck with them! It can be an awesome & different way to play the game.
aye, if it can be set up as a one shot and that's what is expected, that can work, we've done that on occasion.
I really feel like DND needs to take a page from LARP’s book and have a discussion about bleed and how to deal with it
yeah, I think this kindav explains it too. There is a (or at least for me there is) a clear line between ME as a person and my character. We've seen the term "bleed in" and "bleed out". Bleeding in is when you, as the person, get into character, bleeding out is when you leave your character and become you again. One of the big things with table top roleplay vs live action role play is that in table top that bleed in and out happens almost instantly. With larping, most folks try to ease out of it mainly because there was never a clear "signal" that said "hey, I'm done, I'm back to being Brian now" while the other 12 or so folks are still in character.
I think making this clear on the front end could go a long way...
@@gamemasters I’m a larper, so I know all about the bleed. LARP usually use a physical signal (typically hand on top of the head) to say “hey, I’m ooc right,” which lets the people around them know. I think the big difference is that in LARP people are more attached to their characters because you have to physically be them. You have to dress up, speak, and LIVE as that character for 2-3 (7 for big larps) straight. Dnd you have 1-2 min of dialogue usually and then everything else involves explaining what you’re doing, looking up abilities or spells, crackin a joke here or there, taking breaks to stretch. And each session is only a few hours once every one to two weeks. People don’t think they can get emotionally absorbed into like in LARP
@@gamemasters totally agree making it clear on the front end could help a lot.
my players tend to build characters with at least some secrets. E.g. one of them is a changeling, but they haven't told the rest of the party because they've barely even met.
For things like this that don't have any huge implications I just let them roll Insight or something if a suspicious thing happens. We have big mouths so out-of-character everyone knows it anyway
heh yeah.. meta-gaming for some is easy, for others.. not so much. I used to pass notes to my players when I needed just one of them to know something or I'd pull them into another room and tell them and let it be up to them to share with everyone else.. Today we tend to text a bit, but that has started to become an issue because.. I have that ONE player that texts constantly...
well if they are into it i have sparring gear so they can slug it out.... :)
lol
-get more Monk levels. Got it!
I don't normally like it, but sometimes the players want to be stupid. Someone always ends up getting their feelings hurt, especially with highly competitive players.
yep. that's the main reason I do not encourage it.
I try to put that to a quick stop. I don’t like it and players won’t either if the thief robs from them. So just NO
yup
I allow PvP if both sides agree to it. This includes friendly fire fireball.
Question, do you allow single player PCvPC? One person controlling two or more pc, where their own pcs start fighting with each other.
I mean.. I suppose so.. I've never had that situation come up.. but.. I mean.. sure?
First and well said.
second! and thank you! :)
Don't do PvP unless you play Alien or Paranoia.
loved Paranoia! I still play the WEG version of Aliens :)
@@gamemasters Try Alien from Free League, sooo much fun and easy to handle.