In our Vampire the Masquerade LARP, which is full CvC, we have a rule that if you take an action that leads to the death of another character you owe the player dinner.
I am currently running a VtM on VTT and CvC is only a matter of time. But every session we have a organic discussion about how much we like playing with eachother and how cool all the characters are.
For her very first one-shot, my wife handed each of the players a note. For most of the players, it was some nonsense to make sure that everyone was reading for the same amount of time. But for one (randomly assigned) player, it informed them that they were secretly working for the villain and would reveal themselves (and turn into a giant bug) during the final battle. It was a blast.
I did something similar in one of my one-shots, the game was about looking for a magic sword so I gave everyone some info about the sword that could help them find it, but I also gave to one the fact that the sword was the cause of great evil. This lead to excelente CvC conflict during the game due to the different agendas of the characters in this persuit.
On the time and place issue, one common rule on pirate ships in the Age of Sail was that all disputes between the crew had to be resolved on shore (usually by blade). This ensured that conflicts between the crew didn't get in the way of anything important or dangerous. A rule like this makes a lot of in-world sense for adventurers, shadowrunners or similar freelance violence-producers.
Sometimes you get the opposite problem. My Paranoia games are never as fun because the characters all work together too well. Instead of backstabbing and betraying each other like proper Alpha Complex citizens.
Prior to a game of Paranoia I prepare a secret envelope for each player. Inside the envelope is a secret society card, a mutant power card, and a piece of paper with their secret society mission. The secret society mission should bring the character into conflict with the mission objective, another character's secret society mission, and/or Alpha Complex protocol. You should provide big incentives to loyal citizens to rat out traitors, such as extra Cold Fun, promotion to a higher clearance, or a big red foam hand with a number one on it that they must wear at all times (yes, I literally have such a prop that is awarded to the #1 troubleshooter). If all else fails, hand out prizes at the end of the mission for the troubleshooter who terminates the most traitors.
Ahh, but do they successfully thwart Friend Computer and/or pull off their Commie Mutant Treason? 'Cause I know *I'd* like to see that happen occasionally.
There are a few ways to fix this. The aforementioned secret society missions work wonders to inspire CvC, especially if you write them well. In Paranoia XP, there are the bonus mandatory duties that intentionally overlap (and can overlap even more if everyone is set to team lead. Remember, if you are team lead and others offer ideas that you use, you are a traitor!). If all else fails, just have an NPC point at one of the characters and shout "It's him! I'd stake my Cold Fun on it! He's the Commie Mutant Traitor who !" It's even better if you just read that word for word.
One of the best rivalries I had was when I played a photojournalist and another player played a live tv journalist, and we both set to disparage the others work, when both of us actually were jealous of the other because ‘they were the real journalist’ It was a great session.
My most spectacular campaign ended with two characters fighting. My players had all failed a (really low) save to avoid turning evil, and two of my players began biding their time until they cleared the throne of Hell from the final boss, then turned to each other and fought one another to the death. Loved every second.
Almost all the best games I have ever played involved some PVP... and almost all the worst games I have ever played involved some PVP. It is one of those horseshoe things. Either a sign a group really gets along well or that they are so dysfunctional it is time for a new one.
I've recently been in a game where I worked with the game master to make a PC that was secretly working for the bad guys and honestly I had a ton of fun with it. One thing I stole from Matt Collville that I really think helped a lot is that when my character's villainy was revealed, I symbolically handed my character sheet over to the game master, basically saying "This isn't my character anymore"... because if you're going to make a character that is likely to turn against the party, you kind of have to accept that there's only one way for their story to end. It's not like the game master is going to suddenly start playing a separate, solo campaign with just your character, after all.
I mean if the player and GM want to continue to develop that villain together and they’ve got the time… why not? Have them just make a new character like they were planning to anyway if they also intend to continuing playing with the larger group… Flexibility is the main appeal of games like this to me. That can include copying ideas outright, but also bending them to suit your individual players wants and needs.
Seth you if you make the video you should call it "The Mini-Sub Incident" you could use the Resavore Dogs opening or something and have the Gang help you on it...
You didn't consider the holodeck solution. Cross between duel and lethal combat. An opportunity for characters to duke it out in some illusionary setting, but using all their powers. Maybe they find a magic altar that allows two (or more) characters' minds to be transported to a dream arena, in which they must fight to the "death."
it sounds doable but a bit hard to pull off in every setting i had an idea involving the clone spell but the big thing seems to be a lot of the time its so resource extensive to justify it that more often then not its not worth it, barring certain exceptions and even then in system it gets hard to do in some game systems more then others.
Yeah back in D&D 2E my group had a problem player that the DM just refused to deal with to the point where I just started DMing my own group and the entire group minus those two jumped over. He played a Wizard/Transmuted Specialist and once he got to Lv 9 learned the Stoneskin Spell which back then lasted forever until dispelled of chipped away (the spell absorbed and negated up to 10 physical blows that struck you weather a arrow, sword, or pebble didn't matter) He would cast it when awaking in the morning and keep 2 more mimoriesed and would pretty much us it to bully the party into doing whatever he wanted to do. We'd need to hit him 10 times before dealing damage all the while he's blasting us with lightning, magic missiles, and other combat spells we just couldn't beat him. Then 1 player joined and Wizard pulled his crap or her but unfortunately for him, she used to play a Wizard so she knew that spells weakness so when the duel started on her turn she kneels down grabs a hand full of pebbles and throws the whole handful at him......the look on that asshole's face was priceless
Take a handful of rubble, throw it at the player, instant stoneskin removal. Old trick but effective. There's a counter to pretty much any "overpowered" spell. All it takes is a bit of creativity.
Actually there was a "Pages from the Mages" question in the Dragon regarding that very item back in the 2e days. "Will a handful of sand negate Stoneskins" the answer was - No, the "hit" has to have the chance to cause damage. So.....the 'ole "I throw a bunch of pebbles at the 20th level mage" is a no-go. The REAL power of this spell is that it can be cast on OTHER people. Take few days prior to leaving on your adventure and cast it on the WHOLE PARTY. Now you have a group that can really withstand a beating. Or put in on scrolls, and keep everyone topped of. We have house ruled it can only be cast on Self.
I think an in-character betrayal built up over multiple sessions can be brilliant. Some great moments can come from being stabbed in the back by someone who *literally* took an arrow for you. But for me as a GM the stipulation is the player has to privately discuss it with me beforehand, so it can't be forced, it can't usually be done easily, and the motivation for doing it must be greater than the general good of the party from that character's perspective.
This is such an important thing to cover and I'm glad someone is doing it. In my current group we have about 3 different CvC things going at once (with my character being the reason for 2 of those..), but we all understand that no player is upset with another. We've been playing for years since college, and we've always done our best to make sure the other player knows its not US that is having conflict it's the characters. For examples. One CvC conflicts is my character (Lucland) with my best friends (Kaseon); the parties goal was to stay in a city for a couple days to quick rest up from a recent major event and then travel to Kaseon's parents for some actual downtime and rest. My character took a job with his former guild (he's a former hired killer for a rouge guild) that requires the whole party that extended our city stay for a couple days for a huge payout but without asking literally anyone else in the party. Obviously that's caused some conflicts with everyone, but Kaseon was the most severely hurt, feels very betrayed and it's going to be a serious thing to cover at a later date post job. My best friend and I are still best friends and we game together almost every day without issue, because we communicate clealry its not him and I. It's Lucland and Kaseon. Second example: another friend who's character (Samira) is in a romantic situationship-thing with Lucland, is constantly getting into spats and arguments with Lucland because to be frank they're both toxic, broken people that are just trying to survive and used to being hurt by literally everyone. We, the 2 players fucking love it, we have fawned over these 2 dip shits and their complications for weeks because they're such a clusterfuck. The characters fight quite a bit, but we still fawn over them as players. The last example: our wizard bladesinger (Vannan) decided to fireball something completely irrelevant and uncessary as we (the entire party) were desperately trying to leave a bad and getting worse situation. The party is very pissed about it, the players thought it was hilarious. I ramble alot, but I like videos like this that address persistent issues in TTRPGs and potential ways to go about handling it. Too many stories end up on CritCrab (love that guy so much) because players couldn't separate game issues from real life.
My yearly Halloween game revolves around CvC. I took your advice about hidden agendas from a Q&A about 2 years ago so every Halloween is a hidden agenda oneshot made to have strange or combative characters work together and against each other. It's been my players' favorite game I run each year so far and I love making them. This year everyone thought the Serpent Person was the serial killer and went after him even though he was just trying to have a good weekend. The real killer iced everyone after they all got in the getaway car.
The brilliant thing with this is it gives the group a regular outlet for their mischief and mayhem. No one wants to spoil a good betrayal on the regular campaign, they're saving their CvC A-game for Halloween. So if it does happen in the main campaign it's because it was story appropriate, as it should be.
As an interesting note, the DIE RPG by Kieron Gillen has a conflict between the players who want to stay in the fantasy world versus the ones who want to escape. In the RPG, it's sort of implied it's supposed to end with the PCs hugging it out, but usually they end up killing each other.
Always great to get new content from you, Seth. I always recommend your RPG philosophy videos to friends and acquaintances whenever we talk about tabletop stuff. (and RPG reviews too, i had fun running a session of Missed Dues to new players recently) Keep up the great work !
There are a lot of great PbtA games that are perfect for exploring dramatic CvC situations. For example, I just can’t imagine playing Pasion de las Pasiones or Cartel, without ever escalating CvC tension. In games like Urban Shadows or The Veil, there is a lot of potential for a conflict between characters, but if you don’t like this style of game, you can easily play these games as a more traditional ensemble or just simply explore different character arcs in one city. A game addressing tense group dynamics really well is Bite Marks. It’s about playing a pack of werewolves and most of the game procedures and mechanics examine power and belonging dynamics in their relationships - challenging the alpha, dominating others, provoking emotional spills in other characters). You have to build close connections to have access to amazing pack actions, but the systems of the game are always putting those bonds on the line… Outside of the PbtA family of games - Trophy Dark (more modern Gauntlet game) and Mountain Witch (more old school Forge game) are both great games about trust and betrayal between PC’s. And I know, I know - this channel is dedicated specifically to trad games and trad gaming, but I thought “hey, maybe somebody wants to check a different flavor of play and check those more indie solutions to “character conflict” at the table” :) Good content! Keep it up :)
Great video as always. I've tried a separate, but related, circumstance you might find interesting. We were starting a new campaign. There were 3 players that would be able to attend every session, unless there was some emergency, but there was a 4th player who would only be able to attend intermittently, perhaps less than half the time, and usually without being able to provide any advanced notice. I was going to have a recurring villain in the campaign, so I asked the fourth player if he would be interested in playing the villain. He agreed, and I informed the other players what was up. Then, whenever the 4th player was able to show up, so would the recurring villain. The campaign went well, though we never finished it (I forget why). The villain player would tell me his villainous plans, and I would have his underlings carry out his plans as best they could when he was not present. Then when he did show up his minions would fill him in on what had happened in his absence, and apologize to him for their failures, or brag to him about their successes (only happened once). He would then be in charge of the minions for that session. Since all the player's knew which PCs were friends and which were enemies, everything went smoothly. I've never had a chance to do that again, and I wonder if it would be workable if there was a full time villain PC.
@@NateArnoldVideos The villain player was an experienced GM himself, so he understood that the villain will probably loose, didn't take anything personally, and he played the dastardly villain perfectly. You need to have someone that can separate their own ego from the character's ego.
It's perfectly viable to just have a player play the villain, just as long as they aren't part of the hero group. You could ask a friend on a weekly basis what should the villain do?
I find little out of character discussions about the game make roleplaying easier for me since it creates some distance between myself and my character which means i am more likely to have them act like them not like me
Re: Mini-sub grenade time Everyone knew what the ending of Titanic was going to be, but still went to watch it in droves. As long as the story is fun I wouldn't mind knowing how it was going to turn out.
Oh wow, a new video well before I thought I would get one - what a nice surprise! Thanks Seth. Now to watch while enjoying dinner. Our group handles character vs. character by not allowing it...full stop. This works great for us.
I ended up getting Covid last week. Took 3 years, but it finally caught me. You can hear it a little in my last video where my voice was a bit phlegmy. So being quarantined from my wife on our anniversary weekend I passed the time writing this video. I'm feeling much better, BTW. Finished my antivirals yesterday. Need to test to see if it's all gone, but my last couple were still coming up positive.
@@SSkorkowsky Take it slow and easy regardless. Lost too many people in the last few years already, four dead within my circle and one other with long COVID symptoms that have ruined her life.
@@SSkorkowsky hope you get better Seth and we always let it happen if it was explained first and there was a Valed reason for it.... Example: our casual and arsonist during a game of 3.5 decided to not help my PC Tatsuie (Hobgoblin Samurai) he died along with the amnesiaic Drow he was helping now our GM decided to roll and see if I could be brought back the other two decided to just keep on going now this all came to a head when the other two had become gods by taking all the power of the other pantheons in that world that ment that they controlled all magic, they forgot one thing in the Oriental Adventures Book (which we were using and they agreed to it) all of there "Magic" came from the Base Elements not anything else. They tried to say that they then take away all of the elements I pointed out that then they couldn't be alive either cause they were made completely out of them(at there own request to) and I got to kill both of them in three turns and restore order back to the Universe. I found out later that it had all been the arsonist's idea because he wanted to destroy the game so that he'd get to do whatever he wanted next game the GM made....
CvC seems like it was more common in OD&D/Chainmail. I can imagine with a larger stable of characters per player it would take some of that personal sting out of a potential loss (lethal or otherwise). I stumbled across pretty detailed rules for writing a character’s last will and testament, that included what to do if “the reports of my demise were greatly exaggerated” and an old character formerly declared dead, returns to reclaim what’s rightfully theirs. So two characters controlled by the same person (ostensibly, I mean who ever knows with OD&D) either fight over the inheritance or work it out. And every time the inheritance shifts ownership theirs some NPC lawyer taking a percentage. It’s all delightfully convoluted.
It did happen but not more so than nowadays. At least, not from my experience playing since the mid 80s. Of that, what I'd see the most of is players trying to gack other players then get butthurt if THEIR PC got killed. Saw that alot
What I did, when one of my players said their character would fight the party and then run, I said "Great! If someone is fighting the party, I'll control them. If you really want your character to backstab, then I, as the DM, will manage them from now on, and consult you about their behavior". This character went on to be a reocurring nemesis for the players. I like this rule because it allows for characters to live out their realistic goals, discourages CvC if people want to keep controlling their characters, and doesn't put players into conflict as the DM I'm expected to have characters who fight the party. This approach also facilitates evil characters, as if the character is just there for convienece, once the adventure is over, I can offer to have them turn fully murderous and have the player roll up a new character
Even though the title spoils the ending I'd love to hear the betrayal filled war story, especially the reaction of the 2 players that weren't given tempting offers to go turncoat.
I recently took part in a new series channel (Die Inspired) that started out with 80 players and forced them to compete to be a surviving 20% in the first session (four groups of twenty) via a lifeboat situation. It culminated in a split cash prize amongst the campaign survivors. So yeah, there was character fighting and even murder in that setting. I ended up being taken out by the GM for seeking alternative solutions and cooperating with other players to keep more of us alive.
I remember a Paranoia convention tournament where the first thing the GM did was pass out the proper color squirt guns... Lots of CvC and PvP it was a total blast.
The last part really hit home. We had a long pathfinder campaign which came to CvC blows at the end. Mine and a friends chatacter had loyalty to different nations and to solve who got an artifact at the end came to my character assassinating the local queen, which resulted in my friends character charging me and decapitating my character. It was an exhilariting end to the campaign as we both knew that something would happen.
I had a player rage quit a campaign on the spot after he lost a fight against another player. This was in a tournament setting that everyone agreed to ahead of time and there were no real stakes. Like, he didn't stand to suffer any consequences. Just the feeling of losing a fight to another player was enough to make him go off. Since then I haven't allowed any player vs player in any of my campaigns. I realized even if people believe they are mature enough to handle it they might not actually be able to handle losing to another player when the time comes. I guess it's possible to say that it was a single problem player, and the rest of us could all move past it, but it's tough to open back up the idea of PVP after something like that happened.
Honestly, it sounds like that tournament eliminated a potential problem player. If they can't handle the idea of losing within a friendly setting, where zero stakes are involved then it's unlikely they will be much better at handling a moment of real consequence at the table. Though I can certainly agree that pvp isn't for everyone, I nearly lost my temper at someone once because they kept siding with a cult yet tried to play their character as a good guy trying to talk me down, handing over a relic she needed e.t.c, to the extent I had to clear the air and said "look, you are literally siding with someone who is about to sacrifice me and start a unholy crusade against the galaxy, whether or not she's your character's grandmother really doesn't matter to me. If you continue to oppose me, I'm going to have no choice but to fight you." He continued to do so, so I defeated him and ultimately ended up having to retreat from the BBEG and leaving him behind. That lead to two people being salty, me for even trusting him when all he planned to do was serve the bad guy and talk me down at every turn, and me for grievously wounding their character and removed them as a PC. I've had a couple of other occasions which turned out more fun (one was a character *actually* trying to assassinate and ended up being a Jackie chan styled fist fight in the back of a futuristic ambulance, which actually was hilarious and memorable. The other I was literally playing a evil doppelganger of my character who I quickly made apparent wasn't going to be redeemable at all, basically cutting loose in a hectic and memorable battle which I was ultimately defeated, because I understood what my role was and leant into it whole hog) but it requires a certain maturity and ability to read the room and play a role that I'm not certain many groups can do. As a side note, I wasn't playing D&D. And sorry for the wall, I just kinda got caught up in the memories. XD
@@lordbiscuitthetossable5352 Agreed. If you have a good supply of players, using a PvP tourney to filter out the bad players might actually be a good idea to intentionally do.
@@lordbiscuitthetossable5352 How are you not a "problem player?" I honestly hate that term, and your stories, in my opinion, make you sound like a total dick, not the "mature" person you are trying to describe yourself as.
In a few campaigns I’ve run, the final boss was played by a former player and it’s been awesome every time. The reaction at the table has always been excitement.
Seth. I have watched many videos and read articles about player-driven conflicts in TTRPG, but you are the only content creator who got this topic right. I can't agree more on the contents of this video. Good job.
A couple of times I have had CVC between myself and another player, after the conflict I made sure to check in with the other player to make sure everything is ok between us
Had a CoC game where I had sacrificed myself to trap the monster, but the other characters took so much sanity damage killing it they started attacking each other. It ended with a TPK, as our mad Scottish laird was reluctantly shot by his own manservant. It was perfect!
Call of Cthulhu is cool because sanity mechanics add fun modifiers to how you roleplay your characters, but it's not really even character vs character because they're literally insane.
I was once playing in a game of D&D that had so many players the DM had to split the people up into Group A and Group B on a biweekly basis for each group. Our characters were enlisted into the army to face off against an incoming undead force as it desolated the countryside. Not too long after the DM split us up into Group A & B, the characters were asked "who wants to take charge of their group". One character, a Chaotic Nautral Sorcerer (we'll call him CN) immediately jumped up. As a player I volunteered to be his 2nd in command, with my Lawful Neutral old man ranger character grumbling about "I didn't want this responsibility, but, I guess I'll take it, for the good of the group". Not too long after this, CN player's work schedule got jumbled up and he couldn't make it to Group B nights, but the DM allowed him to playing during Group A nights when that was the case. Throughout the course of the game, he was only around for about 1/4 of Group B games. Finally, he and the DM agreed to formally switch him over to Group A since CN's player could make *those* nights with consistency. So during our next Group B game, CN begins announcing how he'll "be leaving to go help the other group". My old man gets up and says "NO. You don't get to keep running away. This is *a war* against undead horrors. These people we're leading; none of them are trained soldiers. Heck, some of them are terrified out of their minds right now. Now you *chose* to lead this group, and that means *responsibility* . I don't want their blood on my hands. I'm not going to abandon them, because you wanted me to be your 2nd in command, and I am making DAMN sure to look out for the people YOU put me in charge." I had stood up from the table as I poured my heart out. CN's player asked me "Dood...you good?" I replied "yeah, I'm good, why?" "Oh, I thought you were pissed off or something." "No, no, this is like a natural progression, the whole Lawful/Chaotic moral thing, of duty VS freedom. You good?" "Yeah yeah, I was just worried about you." I continued the scene. "Look...I'm not going to stop you. Just...whoever you decide to help, protect them *the best way you can* . Being a leader is a serious responsibility, and I know it's a lot for someone your age to pick up [CN was a kind of a snark, rebellious teenager]. But these people *need our help* and we have to do what's right by them, *for* them. Just promise me that. promise me you'll out for people." Cn nods, understanding the weight of my old man's inspirational speech. "Okay. I will. I promise." After the game, other players were asking me if I was OK, and honestly? It was the BEST moment I had ever had; it was serious conflict without bloodshed, it made sense for both of our characters...and it gave me a chance to act out what it feels like when a reserved character finally shows some emotion. I told the other players that I was cool, and I thanked CN's player many times for the opportunity.
I enjoy the rivalry between characters that involves one character on the verge of defeat, when suddenly, their rival intervenes saying something like, "Nobody kills them but me!" or "Their death will come by my hand alone!" It can set up a future showdown or gradually lead to a greater bond.
Great video, all though I have an anecdote that in my experience in Call of Cthulhu specifically, I find CvC happens a lot more frequently because losing sanity and bouts of madness can have people do some bad things. Definitely everything you said is true, but in CoC I play it not fast and loose, holding to the golden rules of making sure the two parties are in agreement that it’s ok
As always a great video. I remember in my first year of playing with a High School Group (whoa 1986) - where me and another character got into conflict and we ended up killing each other. We still had some resentment towards each other. The GM (wasn't D&D), who was an old had, had us re-role another set of characters - he gave use the concept - we were not only to play the same race - but we would be brothers. So our previous conflict with each other, and any residual resentment from our fight was washed out and turned into typical sibling ribbing. Our conflict turned into playful brothers doing fun arguments and we even became friendly after the game. A good GM is worth their weight in platinum - remember players.
That Cyberpunk campaign ending sounds brilliant. I would love to hear the rest of that tale. Rpg warstories are always some of my personal favorites on this channel. Seth does such a great job of telling them.
thoughts before watching the video: in my games, CvC is not only allowed, but honestly kinda encouraged to a slight extent, we've never really had anyone actually kill each other in a basic fight, but we've had long games where two characters are putting up with each other for the simple reason of they have to to survive, not to mention, whenever someone does something plain stupid, having other characters slap them around tends to knock the sense back into them a lot of my games, as I am the permanent dm of my group, tend to be more rp focused around the players, while there are npc's, at best there's usually only two that matter, and the main brunt of the story is from the way the characters themselves interact with each other and the world around them, so having it be that sometimes two people just plain hate each other enough to kill one another, or at the very least hurt, puts a fun spin on it, especially when it leads the other players into doing things they normally wouldn't to try and intervene lastly, I think it mainly stems from when we used to play years ago, and we were just dumb teenagers so it was hard to really get some people to do what they were supposed to do without being a burden or downright rp terrorist at times, but when the threat of another person in their came up, it really snapped them back to reality and is what really sparked all our interest in the game, as it allowed us to start having actually interesting games with no murder hoboing or the like end of video thoughts: yeah, I expected as much lol, we run vastly, yet still pretty interesting, different games I think because we've all sorta grown up doing this together for years now, we've sorta developed our own sort of methods to handle the problem of keeping it in *character* and not in *person*, only every had that sort of problem happen once, which resulted in them leaving the campaign, but even still that person didn't have any grudge against anyone else for in character altercations, just more so having a bad day and finding hard to separate character and irl feelings overall though, funky video
This video came at the perfect time... I was wondering how I could tell my players to ease down a bit on the "negative" interaction among their characters (though sometimes it was more than justified in my opinion). I think this video is gonna help out perfectly, thanks Seth!
What I would really enjoy seeing is some kind of campaign diary from the gamemaster point of view. Does not have to be extremely detailed, just the most important bits! From what I've seen you are often using modules for your campaigns and I would be really interested to see how you string them together to one coherent and interesting overarching plot or how you move from one to another so it feels seemless. Would you be up for something like that? I've been really interested in seeing something like that from you for ages! Thanks for all the great content you put out!
I try to get the captionings up before a video goes live. Sometimes I'm a little slow and it takes a day or 2, but the last couple years Captioning my vids has been a regular thing I do. I'll even go back on older videos and add it in (finished captioning my old Pax Cthuliana review vid last night). It can be tiring and monotonous because even when I'm following a teleprompter script I regularly go so off script that it still requires manually going through it all. So it's actually better for me to let UA-cam auto-caption it, then manually go in and correct the mistakes and add punctuation/capitalizations. It can take a long time. Sometimes I wonder if anyone even notices the Closed Captions, so thank you for letting me know.
One of my favorite moments from GMing was not only CvC but also a fight to the death. The party was split up about halfway through the campaign and the players ended up on different sides of the conflict. Resentment kept building until in the final session of the campaign they went one on one in the middle of a very chaotic scenario and one of them killed the other brutally. Now this only worked because it was the last session, and the resolution to the conflict. Both players knew this was likely to happen and it was great fun.
Great and informative video as always! PvP is a real interesting topic, you could do a whole series of videos on it. It is something that always inevitably comes up in RPG's. I agree you are almost always going to have someone who holds a grudge. I have seen it work really well as a closer to a campaign, one of the characters slowly turning to the other side as adventures continued. But that was something that was communicated. I find bad blood happens when it's sprung out of nowhere, the sudden attack out of the blue.
Another great video with great advice. I recommended your channel to my brother who just started getting into RPGs and DMing and he's been having a blast. Can't wait for the next video on meta-rules. It's something I don't hear about often enough, and afaik I'm the only DM among my 2 groups of ~12 players who openly talks about meta rules and why PCvPC is banned etc. I had a similar rule banning PCvPC combat after my very first session as a DM ended with one of the two conscious party members drinking a potion of dragon's breath, killing the 2nd PC who was conscious, then murdering the rest of the downed party before taking all the loot for himself. Said player then quit when he realized the players might hold a grudge. I also have exceptions, as years later a different player was drunk and had his PC murder random survivors after the climatic final battle as he "lost trust in [the good guys] since they summoned the big bad[into a mortal form so he could be actually defeated instead of his true form coming into the world]". The rest of the party defended the survivors and it wasn't a fair fight.
I've been pretty lucky in that this has never been an issue in any of my campaigns. There's only ever been one time that the players have tried to kill each other, and it ended up being a climactic mage duel on the back of a flying dragon. Neither of the characters even died either, the fight ended with the evil druid repeatedly shouting "I can fix this" while desperately clinging to the side of the dragon.
Hi Seth. Thank you very much for this one. Your RPG-philosophy series means so much to me and has improoved me as a player. Be well and take care, Alicia from Sweden.
Good vid Seth! One thing I'd like to add is that waiting for an appropriate moment to raise a grievance doesn't even have to be meta. I feel in a lot of scenarios it makes sense in character. You just found out something that makes your character really mad at another, however, while fighting the horde of enemies is not the time to start fighting. You can both see that your shared survival could depend on leaving this for now. I think it's perfectly reasonable to have your character grit their teeth and be like "Fine, now's not the time" and even save said character in a "We still need your sorry butt" sort of way but as soon as the dungeon is cleared and the danger subsided, the party's having a well deserved drink in the tavern when you stride over to the offender and be like "Now, what the heck was that about you worm!"
I made a oneshot once. It was called "Evilshot" amongst my players, when they played as an evil character. And the last encounter was a free for all fight for the possession of the magical spear. That was really fun for the players to smack each other for a change.
One neat way to work with this I've seen is in Changeling: The Lost, where in the game characters can make pledges that as long as they uphold their end of the bargain they gain supernatural boons, and if they break it a curse is placed upon them. Every single group I played with in this game took The Motley's Pledge, where the characters pledge to watch each other's back and not to willingly bring harm to any of the others in the group. Everyone gains some relatively minor boons from this, but if anyone broke it, everyone in the group gains perks to attack the pledge breaker.
I played in a superhero game a few years at my local store. I convinced a friend to join us, and the game master introduced his character in such a way that my character thought that my friend's character was attacking him (that whole superhero "they meet, they fight, they team up to beat the bad guy" trope). Rather than actually fight, he and I just described a running battle across warehouse rooftops, crashing through skylights and scattering pigeons. There was a lot of movement and back-and-forth, but neither of us landed a blow until at last his Android punched a brick chimney, and the debris from that knocked my costumed Vigilante off of the roof. My friend's character reached out with an extending arm and grabbed my character's leg, saving him from the fall. We turned back to the game master who, after a pause, said "okay, so fight." "Aaah, we just did." I've never seen a GM look disappointed to see players NOT engage in PVP before. 😄
great video Seth! I only had one CvC episode, but it did end my campaign (truth be told DMing was too much stress at the time, so it was kind of welcome news)!
Never had to face this problem at my table, but Alien RPG is kind of scary with that baked in theme. Usualy my players characters are more or less all on the same page, but with the Alien agendas (great concept btw), it can go south pretty fast. And since my players never fought each over, sometimes i fear they're not equiped to handle that kind of thing. So far so good, but i always keep my eyes wide open on this. Thanks for the video and your channel, Seth :)
Many years ago, I joined a group whoch fell apart due to character vs. character infighting in the first session. This was like thirty years ago, long before Session Zero was a concept. We were playing AD&D 2E, and part of the problem was opposing alignments. Half the group was Good and half the group was Evil. While the NPC Quest Giver was giving us the mission, a fight broke out. In the end, the group split in two, and after the session ended, no one seemed to have time for another. A good Session Zero and house rules could have prevented this chaos, but it was 1992, and we didn't have the tools to make it happen.
Good job on mentioning how one shots can be different. I created a Call of Cthluhu one shot where the entire premise is that the ghosts on the ship are messing with the characters heads to the point they start fighting each. Its pretty obvious what is going to happen as the players set down though. Half the table is the British MI6 and the other half is the Chinese MSS.
Only time I've considered CvC action was when we were playing Shadowrun and our first big contact meet-up was setup, two players rolled really high on their relevant knowledge and stuff, so we sent them forwards to meet the contact, who was going to be some really powerful member of a crime family. My character along with our fourth party member hung back as cover (within earshot, though). The GM had told us that we had to be ultra-respectful and polite to the crime family on contact. Our two ambassadors proceeded to lie and dissemble and antagonise the contact. My character was about to step in and try to smooth things over when the contact just drew down on the forward two. At this point, I checked in with the GM on their policy on CvC because my character was absolutely ready to take down her supposed team mates (in-story we'd just been thrown together by the person giving us the contact) to prevent going to war with the extremely powerful crime gang. As it happened, the other players were higher in the initiative order and rolled really well on their attacks, killed the contact, thus plunging us into war with the crime family and derailed the entire campaign - but set up a scenario where we were now desperately trying to space our skins from vengeance. So I never did shoot at the other player-characters. Instead there was a blazing row back at the team HQ over what went down.
Awesome video, I ran something with CvC lethal game in the form of the d100 warhammer fantasy game where the players where murderous rat man known as the skaven. The concentual rule of combat was always there and kept players happy even if they got killed over figuring out who's pack leader or for some warp stone.
TTRPG is kayfabe, players are the performers who share a locker room after the show. Sure, yes, in most games the players are the faces and the DM plays all of the heels. But that simplistic understanding of the game ignores the advancements of the Monday Night Wars, where in WCW the nWo could be "the bad guys" but still be cool, and where in WWE, then WWF, the biggest face was Stone Cold Chaotic Neutral. That means the Chaotic Good Ranger and the Lawful Fundamentalist Conquest Paladin might be on the same team at Survivor Series, because the former is chasing a belt (as much as I may offend Vince McMahon by using that word) currently held by a Conquest/Bronze Draconic Earth Genasi Sorcadin and the latter is trying to stop a Pit Fiend's rampage against the rest of the card while Kelemvor Calaway is out with an injury, and this time Mr. McMahon (or some in-universe stand-in from the Nine Hells, played by the DM) might have insisted that "The Most Electrifying Paladinoid NPC in Sports Entertainment" The Rock put the Pit Fiend Kane on his Survivor Series team while Stone Cold Chaotic Neutral recruited the two people best equipped to get wins over those enemies. Doesn't mean the two are going to be best friends at the Royal Rumble, doesn't mean they wouldn't face each other next August at Summerslam. But the players need to be comfortable in the same Burger King after the session ends. Because if a DM doesn't pull that off, if they've got a Hart family vs. Kliq situation on their hands in which you have factionalism among the human beings at the table, well, that's a party that won't stick together, whether or not there's an official TPK to break them up. Mr. McMahon survived that kind of backstage chaos because for one Bret was leaving anyway whether the Montreal Screwjob happened or not, and more importantly there was an actual business there with exposure and contracts and broadcasting deals independent of backstage politics, and because of that Vince had a national audience on the Raw after Survivor Series 1997, and he had the creativity, all those years ago, to figure out an explanation that could guide his show forward. Unless your name is Matt Mercer, you probably don't have most of that aside from MAYBE the creativity, and Matt Mercer has players who are professional voice actors who are used to playing characters to a level far beyond most TTRPGs anyway, separating his situation from most of us behind the screen. As a DM, I know it: we're lucky if the people we're booking in our own little promotions are psychologically mature enough to claim the title of "adults". And I've had at least a few players either leave or go into business for themselves, making a mess of the show as a whole, to say nothing of others being 90s Shawn Michaels levels of prima donna narcissists within the rules. TTRPG is WWE, but where the players should be marks not for individual characters, but for the party as a whole. The DM has to be the booker, or co-booker alongside the dice, but always ought to remain smart to the best possible story, and not pushing or burying players for the wrong reasons or letting some marks for themselves among the players bury people they have backstage heat with. Because where WWE tells a story for the millions (AND MILLIONS) of the WWE Universe, we're all telling a story to the four-to-eight people, including the DM, with whom we're interacting. And if one person is feeling left out, well, one out of a table of five is 20% of the audience.
Darn. I was here for actual player-vs-player fights. Maybe tactics or something. Should I shiv Wayne when he's reaching for the pizza or wait until he's got his hands full? Can I make a shank out of a big honking d4, a pencil, and some gum? Is shank the verb?
I like how your first example of searching someone's bag was non combat-related, but I think that it would have been good to emphasize that point a bit more. Character vs character conflict can happen even when no attack rolls are being made. A classic example is the social character who rolls against other PCs to try to manipulate their actions (which may be disallowed in some systems, though a lot of tables still allow it anyway with house rules). Or where you've got a thief who rolls against his party members. A great house rule that Matt Colville introduced me to is where the instigating player can make a roll, and the one being rolled against can decide what happens.
I remember a time in our super-villain game, one of our characters undercalculated the yield of cemtex he was using for a distraction, and it lead to the largest terror attack on US soil in the timeline. It led to the point that, even though we were playing villains, everyone else felt like they would not want to work with that character again after this (especially since the character showed no remorse about the miscalculation) and leaving him alive would be a loose end, so we were all talking about bumping the guy off. We were talking for maybe half an hour before we realised we should probably get the character's player into the chat. He was very understanding, and we prepped his next character pretty soon after. A good time was had by all, in the end.
The only time I played in a game with a CvC conflict was one where I kinda instigated the fight. The party’s thief had stolen a jewel that a little boy was planning to use to pay us, but my character caught him and demanded he give the jewel back. The fight was brief, and the thief ended up surrendering the jewel before we began the quest. I was still a newbie trying to play a chaotic good elf Ranger at that time, and as far as I’m aware, none of the other players or the DM ever thought I had real beef with the guy playing the thief. This was probably one of those rare CvC moments where the game was hardly affected, but it still might’ve helped to have had these tips at the time
Towards the end of my last campaign, I had one player character that would constantly rib another, and it got to the point where it felt targeted and mean-spirited. My solution was to let it happen, but asked the one player to tone it down since it was making the other player slightly uncomfortable. As a side note, I love how whenever something comes up in my game, you release a video shortly after that covers said topic. Really fun coincidence imo. (To further clarify, I am also going to set a hard rule against this going forward in new campaigns by having the players make characters so that they knew each other for a long time and thus have no reason for unnecessary conflict.)
I am GMing a table where we have two good, two chaotic and one evil character. We have PvP on at all times, and so far there was only one moment when things got to the point they had to hit each other, and it was pretty smooth from our end because we always have a meta discussion at the end of each session.
I love the idea of "group vs group" conflict. for context theres this incredibly ambitious style of pseudo MMO play talked about in old dnd editions, basically different groups run in the same campaign world, the DM keeps a record of the sessions timeline and each group can directly or indirectly affect each other. stuff like "Group B enters a dungeon to find group A took all the loot. they hire assasins to kill group A. Group A kills the assasins, finds out who sent them and their next session is spent raiding group B's Fortress they constructed with previous wealth." its so interesting and organic to me as a GM.
In about 40 years, I have GM'ed over many a CvC event, most of them back when we were in our teens and early 20's. There was only one player v player fight, and we fortunately had padded LARP swords on hand to prevent a hospital trip.
I've had great experiences with limited CvC on more social type rolls/interations, such as having my character fully believe the bards lies after a contested deception roll up to casting suggestion to force another character to co-operate/be helpful. That said, it 100% has to be agreed upon in advance, and its best to check in and explain intent immediately prior to resolving the actions.
From the title I thought this was an update to the PvP vid, but it was a new lighter topic. I had some CvC conflicts in D&D when I got to play a succubus opposite a cleric of Sune, but thanks to divine intervention (literally) we played nice & I wasn't banished.😄 Neat to hear the Paranoia reference at the end, I found that vid just a month ago.
Love all the old movie images. Reminds me why I like Conan the Destroyer - that is pretty much a movie about an adventuring party. Pity nobody seems to be streaming in it Oz.
I think the situation and your group are extremely important here. If people are being bullies or blowing up the game for chuckles that's no fun and PCs shouldn't be killing each other over nonsense. However sometimes when characters have their own goals and motivations and everyone is roleplaying to the nines there comes a point where (generally without anyone intending to take it in that direction) those characters objectives are utterly irreconcilable with each other to the point where there simply isn't a peaceful solution anymore and someone has to go. In my experience these moments can end up being some of the most memorable and exciting in roleplaying, not just for the drama but because these are moments when characters are forced to draw a line in the sand that they can't back down from even when confronted by an ally. I've had a couple moments like this at my table and they're some of my group's favorite stories from our campaign. Of course that doesn't mean I'm saying to go out looking to get in CvC conflicts on purpose or that CvC works for everyone, just that it can work in the right context.
Discussion in metagame which come to a consensus can always override table rules. One of the best campaigns I have ever been in was a Morrowind (Elder Scrolls) conversion campaign, and it ended with CvC where my character (the Nerevarine) turned on the others. This made a beautiful ending because it actually kinda fits the lore of Morrowind and ended the campaign in a bittersweet "you can't go home again," moment. CvC is hard to do well, but it can be done well.
Often my group starts off CvC scenes in session but then shifts to online RP once the stakes have been established. So we can get into the nitty gritty when we have more time.
So one thing I noticed is when stakes are low and the players have some fuel left after an adventuring day is that if I say something like "We've got only 2 rooms left, but you should be able to squeeze your party of 4 in. The Innkeeper has the two keys in his outstretched arm." it can turn into a mini-brawl of players trying to get the keys and enter the room while trying to keep the other players outside. The players remembered the wizard who took one of the keys and then cast a wall of force as he started up the stairs.
Regrettably, I think I agree. Even tried to do an arena type one shot where fighting to the death was the point and it always feels like someone leaves upset.
This video came out exactly when I needed it! I am GMing Shadowrun and one of my PCs (the decker) has always been a murderhobo, but last session he crossed the line by throwing a grenade during a bar brawl, and said bar being a smuggler meet-up spot. The other players were very pissed off at him because not only did they probably end up making a lot of enemies but also killed a lot of "innocent" (as innocent as people having out at such a place could be) and it would definitively make them look bad to their employer they were trying really hard to impress. Now I am talking to everyone to make sure the game can continue peacefully between the players. There will definitively be consequences, but I'll have to find a way to make them focused on the murderhobo player and not so much on the rest of the PCs in order to keep my table peaceful.
as an ex-SR GM, the obvious consequence is the pineapple damaging some goods in transit from another smuggler group and they decide to come collect from the guy stupid enough to be throwing pineapples in a bar. Either he has to work with the party to escape or his chrome ends up on the secondhand market while his flesh feeds some ghouls.
Hey Seth... I have a question that I think needs a long answer to, and this video made me think about it. Assassins and PC ambushes. I mean being sent to kill the PCs. It's something that's not a great move as a GM; it's hard to avoid bad feelings, and it can very easily lead to a TPK if the PCs are unprepared, regardless of how strong the assassins are stat-wise. But it's something that should be a LOT more common, because how many games take place in settings where assassins or hitmen are commonplace? In D&D, any given noble could hire people to go kill some annoying adventurers for them. If the Big Bad (or even a more minor villain) has magic powers, they might even be able to summon creatures to go ambush the PCs while they are camping or sleeping at an inn. Meanwhile in Cyberpunk settings, the PCs are often already basically hitmen and almost always some form of "professional criminal"; the same channels used to hire the PCs could be used to find assassins no problem, and the corps that play the antagonistic role have more than enough funds to throw hitmen at anyone who annoys them enough. If the PCs in a cyberpunk game cross a crime syndicate, expecting their home base to get shot up by made men should be something they're actually concerned about. Any suggestions on how to include scenes of assassins coming for the PCs in ways that can be fun and challenging with upsetting the players or accidentally killing them would be really appreciated! I feel like if used properly, they could do a great job of adding tension and making it so the players feel pressure to continue towards the objective, because taking their time and being too casual about it could bite them.
PCs frequently make a lot of enemies, so assassins or attempts on their life wouldn't be uncommon. They're also a good tool to show consequences. Not just consequences for behaviour like murderhobos but story consequences that show a living world. If the PCs go to a town, do an adventure, then move on to the next town it can give the sense to the players how the world isn't connected because each adventure is in a different place and never revisited. So having as assassin come as revenge from that badguy 3 towns ago reminds the players that just because their characters left that town, it is still there and the echoes of their adventure are still being heard. As far as assassination attempts. With the sheer number of possibilities and different RPGs there's no real easy answer. But my approach has been that no matter what setting or type of assassins they are, the PCs always get a warning or way of escaping certain death. This can be tricky, as you don't want the warning to give the impression that the assassin is incompetent, only that the PCs were lucky and might not be lucky on the next attempt. For example, if the assassin is using a huge sniper rifle, they're not going to simply blow away a PC in one shot without the player even getting a chance. But if the sniper misses their first shot, you might accidentally give the impression that the sniper isn't good. You want the sniper to feel like a real threat. So I've had it where the sniper's first bullet takes out some NPC standing with the PCs. So the players see their buddy's head explode, realize there's a sniper, and can hit the dirt or jump behind cover or something before the 2nd shot is fired. So whether the assassin is poisoning their drinks, setting a bomb under their car, or whatever, the PCs need a way of seeing it coming just before or avoiding it. This might be a skill roll, but I usually don't have it be that. The assassin is a pro. A casual Perception check isn't going to spot them. So it might be a random lucky thing, like the PCs order drinks, but the waiter spills their drinks and they sizzle on the floor like acid. Or, like in The Godfather, an NPC friend offers to pull the PC's car around for them, but are killed when the bomb in the PC's car explodes. Had the PC been behind the wheel they've have surely died. This give the impression that the assassin exists and is capable. So now the PCs can figure out what they're going to do about it. Or maybe they get wind of some intercepted message or rumor that the badguy from 3 adventures aqo has hired some assassins. Maybe these are known assassins, or maybe no one knows who they are. But the PCs are given the tip how their lives are now in peril. After that, it's up to them. This is far better than the PCs step out of their house one random Tuesday and is instantly killed by a sniper bullet with no warning at all. Sure a capable assassin taking them out with a .50 cal with zero warning is realistic in the real world, players understandably don't like it when their character is taken out like that. A little foreshadowing of the threat goes a long way.
In our Vampire the Masquerade LARP, which is full CvC, we have a rule that if you take an action that leads to the death of another character you owe the player dinner.
"I died but scored some free pizza. 5/5"
That sounds like an awesome rule. GIB ME PIZZA.
If you kill my Malk with 20 personalities, does that mean I eat for free for the rest of the LARPing season?
Cue "those guys" targeting female players.
I am currently running a VtM on VTT and CvC is only a matter of time. But every session we have a organic discussion about how much we like playing with eachother and how cool all the characters are.
For her very first one-shot, my wife handed each of the players a note. For most of the players, it was some nonsense to make sure that everyone was reading for the same amount of time. But for one (randomly assigned) player, it informed them that they were secretly working for the villain and would reveal themselves (and turn into a giant bug) during the final battle. It was a blast.
She did good!
I did something similar in one of my one-shots, the game was about looking for a magic sword so I gave everyone some info about the sword that could help them find it, but I also gave to one the fact that the sword was the cause of great evil. This lead to excelente CvC conflict during the game due to the different agendas of the characters in this persuit.
Faith in D&D players restored.
On the time and place issue, one common rule on pirate ships in the Age of Sail was that all disputes between the crew had to be resolved on shore (usually by blade). This ensured that conflicts between the crew didn't get in the way of anything important or dangerous. A rule like this makes a lot of in-world sense for adventurers, shadowrunners or similar freelance violence-producers.
makes sense I can imagine lost guilds or the like in a setting might have a designated area or similar way of handling things
Sometimes you get the opposite problem. My Paranoia games are never as fun because the characters all work together too well. Instead of backstabbing and betraying each other like proper Alpha Complex citizens.
Its treasonous to state that Paranoia games are never as fun as other games.
Prior to a game of Paranoia I prepare a secret envelope for each player. Inside the envelope is a secret society card, a mutant power card, and a piece of paper with their secret society mission. The secret society mission should bring the character into conflict with the mission objective, another character's secret society mission, and/or Alpha Complex protocol. You should provide big incentives to loyal citizens to rat out traitors, such as extra Cold Fun, promotion to a higher clearance, or a big red foam hand with a number one on it that they must wear at all times (yes, I literally have such a prop that is awarded to the #1 troubleshooter).
If all else fails, hand out prizes at the end of the mission for the troubleshooter who terminates the most traitors.
Ahh, but do they successfully thwart Friend Computer and/or pull off their Commie Mutant Treason?
'Cause I know *I'd* like to see that happen occasionally.
Maybe they should try out call of ctuhullu or werewolf the apocalypse...
There are a few ways to fix this. The aforementioned secret society missions work wonders to inspire CvC, especially if you write them well. In Paranoia XP, there are the bonus mandatory duties that intentionally overlap (and can overlap even more if everyone is set to team lead. Remember, if you are team lead and others offer ideas that you use, you are a traitor!). If all else fails, just have an NPC point at one of the characters and shout "It's him! I'd stake my Cold Fun on it! He's the Commie Mutant Traitor who !" It's even better if you just read that word for word.
One of the best rivalries I had was when I played a photojournalist and another player played a live tv journalist, and we both set to disparage the others work, when both of us actually were jealous of the other because ‘they were the real journalist’
It was a great session.
My most spectacular campaign ended with two characters fighting. My players had all failed a (really low) save to avoid turning evil, and two of my players began biding their time until they cleared the throne of Hell from the final boss, then turned to each other and fought one another to the death. Loved every second.
If everyone is smiling and shaking hands after, sounds awesome. RPG is sport, not life. ❤
Almost all the best games I have ever played involved some PVP... and almost all the worst games I have ever played involved some PVP. It is one of those horseshoe things. Either a sign a group really gets along well or that they are so dysfunctional it is time for a new one.
I've recently been in a game where I worked with the game master to make a PC that was secretly working for the bad guys and honestly I had a ton of fun with it. One thing I stole from Matt Collville that I really think helped a lot is that when my character's villainy was revealed, I symbolically handed my character sheet over to the game master, basically saying "This isn't my character anymore"... because if you're going to make a character that is likely to turn against the party, you kind of have to accept that there's only one way for their story to end. It's not like the game master is going to suddenly start playing a separate, solo campaign with just your character, after all.
That was probably the wisest move
I mean if the player and GM want to continue to develop that villain together and they’ve got the time… why not?
Have them just make a new character like they were planning to anyway if they also intend to continuing playing with the larger group… Flexibility is the main appeal of games like this to me. That can include copying ideas outright, but also bending them to suit your individual players wants and needs.
A Kult video and a RPG Philosophy video in less than a week? We don't deserve you Seth. =D
I agree 107%. Thank you for this comment.
The "sudden but inevitable betrayal" comment just won you a new subscriber. Keep up the good work!
Seth you if you make the video you should call it "The Mini-Sub Incident" you could use the Resavore Dogs opening or something and have the Gang help you on it...
I want to see this now
@@blazetheplaneswalker you and me both.
This story was talked about in one of his call of Cthulhu reviews I think.
YES! This exactly!
Definitely want to see it
Title for the War Story, "Scuffle in a Submersible" doesn't give it away too much and alliteration even if you're cheating a bit is always nice
I enjoy all of Seth Skorkowsky videos
You didn't consider the holodeck solution. Cross between duel and lethal combat. An opportunity for characters to duke it out in some illusionary setting, but using all their powers. Maybe they find a magic altar that allows two (or more) characters' minds to be transported to a dream arena, in which they must fight to the "death."
it sounds doable but a bit hard to pull off in every setting i had an idea involving the clone spell but the big thing seems to be a lot of the time its so resource extensive to justify it that more often then not its not worth it, barring certain exceptions and even then in system it gets hard to do in some game systems more then others.
Yeah back in D&D 2E my group had a problem player that the DM just refused to deal with to the point where I just started DMing my own group and the entire group minus those two jumped over. He played a Wizard/Transmuted Specialist and once he got to Lv 9 learned the Stoneskin Spell which back then lasted forever until dispelled of chipped away (the spell absorbed and negated up to 10 physical blows that struck you weather a arrow, sword, or pebble didn't matter) He would cast it when awaking in the morning and keep 2 more mimoriesed and would pretty much us it to bully the party into doing whatever he wanted to do. We'd need to hit him 10 times before dealing damage all the while he's blasting us with lightning, magic missiles, and other combat spells we just couldn't beat him. Then 1 player joined and Wizard pulled his crap or her but unfortunately for him, she used to play a Wizard so she knew that spells weakness so when the duel started on her turn she kneels down grabs a hand full of pebbles and throws the whole handful at him......the look on that asshole's face was priceless
That guy's think they are always smart abusing a special ability or spell only to get curb stomped by somebody who actually knows the rules.
Take a handful of rubble, throw it at the player, instant stoneskin removal. Old trick but effective.
There's a counter to pretty much any "overpowered" spell. All it takes is a bit of creativity.
Should have laid him out like the Private Pyle beating scene from Full Metal Jacket
Actually there was a "Pages from the Mages" question in the Dragon regarding that very item back in the 2e days. "Will a handful of sand negate Stoneskins" the answer was - No, the "hit" has to have the chance to cause damage. So.....the 'ole "I throw a bunch of pebbles at the 20th level mage" is a no-go.
The REAL power of this spell is that it can be cast on OTHER people. Take few days prior to leaving on your adventure and cast it on the WHOLE PARTY. Now you have a group that can really withstand a beating. Or put in on scrolls, and keep everyone topped of. We have house ruled it can only be cast on Self.
@@vernonator63 Sand will not, pebbles can actually cause damage if thrown with enough strength.
I think an in-character betrayal built up over multiple sessions can be brilliant. Some great moments can come from being stabbed in the back by someone who *literally* took an arrow for you. But for me as a GM the stipulation is the player has to privately discuss it with me beforehand, so it can't be forced, it can't usually be done easily, and the motivation for doing it must be greater than the general good of the party from that character's perspective.
This is such an important thing to cover and I'm glad someone is doing it. In my current group we have about 3 different CvC things going at once (with my character being the reason for 2 of those..), but we all understand that no player is upset with another. We've been playing for years since college, and we've always done our best to make sure the other player knows its not US that is having conflict it's the characters.
For examples. One CvC conflicts is my character (Lucland) with my best friends (Kaseon); the parties goal was to stay in a city for a couple days to quick rest up from a recent major event and then travel to Kaseon's parents for some actual downtime and rest. My character took a job with his former guild (he's a former hired killer for a rouge guild) that requires the whole party that extended our city stay for a couple days for a huge payout but without asking literally anyone else in the party. Obviously that's caused some conflicts with everyone, but Kaseon was the most severely hurt, feels very betrayed and it's going to be a serious thing to cover at a later date post job. My best friend and I are still best friends and we game together almost every day without issue, because we communicate clealry its not him and I. It's Lucland and Kaseon.
Second example: another friend who's character (Samira) is in a romantic situationship-thing with Lucland, is constantly getting into spats and arguments with Lucland because to be frank they're both toxic, broken people that are just trying to survive and used to being hurt by literally everyone. We, the 2 players fucking love it, we have fawned over these 2 dip shits and their complications for weeks because they're such a clusterfuck. The characters fight quite a bit, but we still fawn over them as players.
The last example: our wizard bladesinger (Vannan) decided to fireball something completely irrelevant and uncessary as we (the entire party) were desperately trying to leave a bad and getting worse situation. The party is very pissed about it, the players thought it was hilarious.
I ramble alot, but I like videos like this that address persistent issues in TTRPGs and potential ways to go about handling it. Too many stories end up on CritCrab (love that guy so much) because players couldn't separate game issues from real life.
My yearly Halloween game revolves around CvC. I took your advice about hidden agendas from a Q&A about 2 years ago so every Halloween is a hidden agenda oneshot made to have strange or combative characters work together and against each other. It's been my players' favorite game I run each year so far and I love making them. This year everyone thought the Serpent Person was the serial killer and went after him even though he was just trying to have a good weekend. The real killer iced everyone after they all got in the getaway car.
The brilliant thing with this is it gives the group a regular outlet for their mischief and mayhem. No one wants to spoil a good betrayal on the regular campaign, they're saving their CvC A-game for Halloween. So if it does happen in the main campaign it's because it was story appropriate, as it should be.
As an interesting note, the DIE RPG by Kieron Gillen has a conflict between the players who want to stay in the fantasy world versus the ones who want to escape.
In the RPG, it's sort of implied it's supposed to end with the PCs hugging it out, but usually they end up killing each other.
Always great to get new content from you, Seth. I always recommend your RPG philosophy videos to friends and acquaintances whenever we talk about tabletop stuff. (and RPG reviews too, i had fun running a session of Missed Dues to new players recently) Keep up the great work !
Wow! Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
And always happy to hear my reviews helped GMs running them.
There are a lot of great PbtA games that are perfect for exploring dramatic CvC situations. For example, I just can’t imagine playing Pasion de las Pasiones or Cartel, without ever escalating CvC tension.
In games like Urban Shadows or The Veil, there is a lot of potential for a conflict between characters, but if you don’t like this style of game, you can easily play these games as a more traditional ensemble or just simply explore different character arcs in one city.
A game addressing tense group dynamics really well is Bite Marks. It’s about playing a pack of werewolves and most of the game procedures and mechanics examine power and belonging dynamics in their relationships - challenging the alpha, dominating others, provoking emotional spills in other characters). You have to build close connections to have access to amazing pack actions, but the systems of the game are always putting those bonds on the line…
Outside of the PbtA family of games - Trophy Dark (more modern Gauntlet game) and Mountain Witch (more old school Forge game) are both great games about trust and betrayal between PC’s.
And I know, I know - this channel is dedicated specifically to trad games and trad gaming, but I thought “hey, maybe somebody wants to check a different flavor of play and check those more indie solutions to “character conflict” at the table” :)
Good content! Keep it up :)
Great video as always.
I've tried a separate, but related, circumstance you might find interesting.
We were starting a new campaign. There were 3 players that would be able to attend every session, unless there was some emergency, but there was a 4th player who would only be able to attend intermittently, perhaps less than half the time, and usually without being able to provide any advanced notice.
I was going to have a recurring villain in the campaign, so I asked the fourth player if he would be interested in playing the villain. He agreed, and I informed the other players what was up. Then, whenever the 4th player was able to show up, so would the recurring villain.
The campaign went well, though we never finished it (I forget why). The villain player would tell me his villainous plans, and I would have his underlings carry out his plans as best they could when he was not present. Then when he did show up his minions would fill him in on what had happened in his absence, and apologize to him for their failures, or brag to him about their successes (only happened once). He would then be in charge of the minions for that session.
Since all the player's knew which PCs were friends and which were enemies, everything went smoothly.
I've never had a chance to do that again, and I wonder if it would be workable if there was a full time villain PC.
That sounds fun. I'll have to give that a shot!
@@NateArnoldVideos The villain player was an experienced GM himself, so he understood that the villain will probably loose, didn't take anything personally, and he played the dastardly villain perfectly. You need to have someone that can separate their own ego from the character's ego.
It's perfectly viable to just have a player play the villain, just as long as they aren't part of the hero group.
You could ask a friend on a weekly basis what should the villain do?
I find little out of character discussions about the game make roleplaying easier for me since it creates some distance between myself and my character which means i am more likely to have them act like them not like me
Re: Mini-sub grenade time
Everyone knew what the ending of Titanic was going to be, but still went to watch it in droves. As long as the story is fun I wouldn't mind knowing how it was going to turn out.
Oh wow, a new video well before I thought I would get one - what a nice surprise! Thanks Seth. Now to watch while enjoying dinner.
Our group handles character vs. character by not allowing it...full stop. This works great for us.
I ended up getting Covid last week. Took 3 years, but it finally caught me. You can hear it a little in my last video where my voice was a bit phlegmy. So being quarantined from my wife on our anniversary weekend I passed the time writing this video.
I'm feeling much better, BTW. Finished my antivirals yesterday. Need to test to see if it's all gone, but my last couple were still coming up positive.
@@SSkorkowsky Take it slow and easy regardless. Lost too many people in the last few years already, four dead within my circle and one other with long COVID symptoms that have ruined her life.
@@SSkorkowsky hope you get better Seth and we always let it happen if it was explained first and there was a Valed reason for it....
Example: our casual and arsonist during a game of 3.5 decided to not help my PC Tatsuie (Hobgoblin Samurai) he died along with the amnesiaic Drow he was helping now our GM decided to roll and see if I could be brought back the other two decided to just keep on going now this all came to a head when the other two had become gods by taking all the power of the other pantheons in that world that ment that they controlled all magic, they forgot one thing in the Oriental Adventures Book (which we were using and they agreed to it) all of there "Magic" came from the Base Elements not anything else. They tried to say that they then take away all of the elements I pointed out that then they couldn't be alive either cause they were made completely out of them(at there own request to) and I got to kill both of them in three turns and restore order back to the Universe.
I found out later that it had all been the arsonist's idea because he wanted to destroy the game so that he'd get to do whatever he wanted next game the GM made....
@@SSkorkowsky Glad you are feeling better man.
@@SSkorkowsky Please take the time to recover.
CvC seems like it was more common in OD&D/Chainmail. I can imagine with a larger stable of characters per player it would take some of that personal sting out of a potential loss (lethal or otherwise).
I stumbled across pretty detailed rules for writing a character’s last will and testament, that included what to do if “the reports of my demise were greatly exaggerated” and an old character formerly declared dead, returns to reclaim what’s rightfully theirs. So two characters controlled by the same person (ostensibly, I mean who ever knows with OD&D) either fight over the inheritance or work it out. And every time the inheritance shifts ownership theirs some NPC lawyer taking a percentage. It’s all delightfully convoluted.
It did happen but not more so than nowadays. At least, not from my experience playing since the mid 80s. Of that, what I'd see the most of is players trying to gack other players then get butthurt if THEIR PC got killed. Saw that alot
What I did, when one of my players said their character would fight the party and then run, I said "Great! If someone is fighting the party, I'll control them. If you really want your character to backstab, then I, as the DM, will manage them from now on, and consult you about their behavior". This character went on to be a reocurring nemesis for the players.
I like this rule because it allows for characters to live out their realistic goals, discourages CvC if people want to keep controlling their characters, and doesn't put players into conflict as the DM I'm expected to have characters who fight the party.
This approach also facilitates evil characters, as if the character is just there for convienece, once the adventure is over, I can offer to have them turn fully murderous and have the player roll up a new character
Even though the title spoils the ending I'd love to hear the betrayal filled war story, especially the reaction of the 2 players that weren't given tempting offers to go turncoat.
Always great to see more of these types of videos! Great job and thank you, Seth. :D
I recently took part in a new series channel (Die Inspired) that started out with 80 players and forced them to compete to be a surviving 20% in the first session (four groups of twenty) via a lifeboat situation. It culminated in a split cash prize amongst the campaign survivors. So yeah, there was character fighting and even murder in that setting. I ended up being taken out by the GM for seeking alternative solutions and cooperating with other players to keep more of us alive.
I remember a Paranoia convention tournament where the first thing the GM did was pass out the proper color squirt guns... Lots of CvC and PvP it was a total blast.
The last part really hit home. We had a long pathfinder campaign which came to CvC blows at the end. Mine and a friends chatacter had loyalty to different nations and to solve who got an artifact at the end came to my character assassinating the local queen, which resulted in my friends character charging me and decapitating my character. It was an exhilariting end to the campaign as we both knew that something would happen.
I had a player rage quit a campaign on the spot after he lost a fight against another player. This was in a tournament setting that everyone agreed to ahead of time and there were no real stakes. Like, he didn't stand to suffer any consequences. Just the feeling of losing a fight to another player was enough to make him go off. Since then I haven't allowed any player vs player in any of my campaigns. I realized even if people believe they are mature enough to handle it they might not actually be able to handle losing to another player when the time comes. I guess it's possible to say that it was a single problem player, and the rest of us could all move past it, but it's tough to open back up the idea of PVP after something like that happened.
Honestly, it sounds like that tournament eliminated a potential problem player. If they can't handle the idea of losing within a friendly setting, where zero stakes are involved then it's unlikely they will be much better at handling a moment of real consequence at the table.
Though I can certainly agree that pvp isn't for everyone, I nearly lost my temper at someone once because they kept siding with a cult yet tried to play their character as a good guy trying to talk me down, handing over a relic she needed e.t.c, to the extent I had to clear the air and said "look, you are literally siding with someone who is about to sacrifice me and start a unholy crusade against the galaxy, whether or not she's your character's grandmother really doesn't matter to me. If you continue to oppose me, I'm going to have no choice but to fight you." He continued to do so, so I defeated him and ultimately ended up having to retreat from the BBEG and leaving him behind. That lead to two people being salty, me for even trusting him when all he planned to do was serve the bad guy and talk me down at every turn, and me for grievously wounding their character and removed them as a PC.
I've had a couple of other occasions which turned out more fun (one was a character *actually* trying to assassinate and ended up being a Jackie chan styled fist fight in the back of a futuristic ambulance, which actually was hilarious and memorable. The other I was literally playing a evil doppelganger of my character who I quickly made apparent wasn't going to be redeemable at all, basically cutting loose in a hectic and memorable battle which I was ultimately defeated, because I understood what my role was and leant into it whole hog) but it requires a certain maturity and ability to read the room and play a role that I'm not certain many groups can do.
As a side note, I wasn't playing D&D. And sorry for the wall, I just kinda got caught up in the memories. XD
@@lordbiscuitthetossable5352 Agreed. If you have a good supply of players, using a PvP tourney to filter out the bad players might actually be a good idea to intentionally do.
And nothing of value was lost that day.
@@lordbiscuitthetossable5352 How are you not a "problem player?" I honestly hate that term, and your stories, in my opinion, make you sound like a total dick, not the "mature" person you are trying to describe yourself as.
In a few campaigns I’ve run, the final boss was played by a former player and it’s been awesome every time. The reaction at the table has always been excitement.
And in the role of... special guest star...
I love these type of RPG philosophy videos! Keep up the good work Seth!
"why you don't use a grenade inside of a mini sub" has the same energy as "i didn't ask how big the room was, i said i cast fireball"
Seth. I have watched many videos and read articles about player-driven conflicts in TTRPG, but you are the only content creator who got this topic right. I can't agree more on the contents of this video. Good job.
A couple of times I have had CVC between myself and another player, after the conflict I made sure to check in with the other player to make sure everything is ok between us
Had a CoC game where I had sacrificed myself to trap the monster, but the other characters took so much sanity damage killing it they started attacking each other. It ended with a TPK, as our mad Scottish laird was reluctantly shot by his own manservant. It was perfect!
Call of Cthulhu is cool because sanity mechanics add fun modifiers to how you roleplay your characters, but it's not really even character vs character because they're literally insane.
Some of my most memorable and enjoyable adventures involved CvC!
I was once playing in a game of D&D that had so many players the DM had to split the people up into Group A and Group B on a biweekly basis for each group. Our characters were enlisted into the army to face off against an incoming undead force as it desolated the countryside. Not too long after the DM split us up into Group A & B, the characters were asked "who wants to take charge of their group". One character, a Chaotic Nautral Sorcerer (we'll call him CN) immediately jumped up. As a player I volunteered to be his 2nd in command, with my Lawful Neutral old man ranger character grumbling about "I didn't want this responsibility, but, I guess I'll take it, for the good of the group".
Not too long after this, CN player's work schedule got jumbled up and he couldn't make it to Group B nights, but the DM allowed him to playing during Group A nights when that was the case. Throughout the course of the game, he was only around for about 1/4 of Group B games. Finally, he and the DM agreed to formally switch him over to Group A since CN's player could make *those* nights with consistency.
So during our next Group B game, CN begins announcing how he'll "be leaving to go help the other group". My old man gets up and says "NO. You don't get to keep running away. This is *a war* against undead horrors. These people we're leading; none of them are trained soldiers. Heck, some of them are terrified out of their minds right now. Now you *chose* to lead this group, and that means *responsibility* . I don't want their blood on my hands. I'm not going to abandon them, because you wanted me to be your 2nd in command, and I am making DAMN sure to look out for the people YOU put me in charge."
I had stood up from the table as I poured my heart out.
CN's player asked me "Dood...you good?" I replied "yeah, I'm good, why?"
"Oh, I thought you were pissed off or something."
"No, no, this is like a natural progression, the whole Lawful/Chaotic moral thing, of duty VS freedom. You good?"
"Yeah yeah, I was just worried about you."
I continued the scene. "Look...I'm not going to stop you. Just...whoever you decide to help, protect them *the best way you can* . Being a leader is a serious responsibility, and I know it's a lot for someone your age to pick up [CN was a kind of a snark, rebellious teenager]. But these people *need our help* and we have to do what's right by them, *for* them. Just promise me that. promise me you'll out for people."
Cn nods, understanding the weight of my old man's inspirational speech. "Okay. I will. I promise."
After the game, other players were asking me if I was OK, and honestly? It was the BEST moment I had ever had; it was serious conflict without bloodshed, it made sense for both of our characters...and it gave me a chance to act out what it feels like when a reserved character finally shows some emotion. I told the other players that I was cool, and I thanked CN's player many times for the opportunity.
I enjoy the rivalry between characters that involves one character on the verge of defeat, when suddenly, their rival intervenes saying something like, "Nobody kills them but me!" or "Their death will come by my hand alone!" It can set up a future showdown or gradually lead to a greater bond.
Thank you very much for differentiating between "player" and "player character".
Great video, all though I have an anecdote that in my experience in Call of Cthulhu specifically, I find CvC happens a lot more frequently because losing sanity and bouts of madness can have people do some bad things. Definitely everything you said is true, but in CoC I play it not fast and loose, holding to the golden rules of making sure the two parties are in agreement that it’s ok
Yeah, 'bout time for another War Story video! My friends that are now regular viewers were hooked when I sent them the Bug and the Scott Brown videos.
Love you Seth, can't wait to see the full list!
As always a great video.
I remember in my first year of playing with a High School Group (whoa 1986) - where me and another character got into conflict and we ended up killing each other. We still had some resentment towards each other.
The GM (wasn't D&D), who was an old had, had us re-role another set of characters - he gave use the concept - we were not only to play the same race - but we would be brothers. So our previous conflict with each other, and any residual resentment from our fight was washed out and turned into typical sibling ribbing. Our conflict turned into playful brothers doing fun arguments and we even became friendly after the game.
A good GM is worth their weight in platinum - remember players.
That Cyberpunk campaign ending sounds brilliant. I would love to hear the rest of that tale.
Rpg warstories are always some of my personal favorites on this channel. Seth does such a great job of telling them.
thoughts before watching the video:
in my games, CvC is not only allowed, but honestly kinda encouraged to a slight extent, we've never really had anyone actually kill each other in a basic fight, but we've had long games where two characters are putting up with each other for the simple reason of they have to to survive, not to mention, whenever someone does something plain stupid, having other characters slap them around tends to knock the sense back into them
a lot of my games, as I am the permanent dm of my group, tend to be more rp focused around the players, while there are npc's, at best there's usually only two that matter, and the main brunt of the story is from the way the characters themselves interact with each other and the world around them, so having it be that sometimes two people just plain hate each other enough to kill one another, or at the very least hurt, puts a fun spin on it, especially when it leads the other players into doing things they normally wouldn't to try and intervene
lastly, I think it mainly stems from when we used to play years ago, and we were just dumb teenagers so it was hard to really get some people to do what they were supposed to do without being a burden or downright rp terrorist at times, but when the threat of another person in their came up, it really snapped them back to reality and is what really sparked all our interest in the game, as it allowed us to start having actually interesting games with no murder hoboing or the like
end of video thoughts:
yeah, I expected as much lol, we run vastly, yet still pretty interesting, different games
I think because we've all sorta grown up doing this together for years now, we've sorta developed our own sort of methods to handle the problem of keeping it in *character* and not in *person*, only every had that sort of problem happen once, which resulted in them leaving the campaign, but even still that person didn't have any grudge against anyone else for in character altercations, just more so having a bad day and finding hard to separate character and irl feelings
overall though, funky video
This video came at the perfect time... I was wondering how I could tell my players to ease down a bit on the "negative" interaction among their characters (though sometimes it was more than justified in my opinion). I think this video is gonna help out perfectly, thanks Seth!
What I would really enjoy seeing is some kind of campaign diary from the gamemaster point of view. Does not have to be extremely detailed, just the most important bits! From what I've seen you are often using modules for your campaigns and I would be really interested to see how you string them together to one coherent and interesting overarching plot or how you move from one to another so it feels seemless. Would you be up for something like that? I've been really interested in seeing something like that from you for ages!
Thanks for all the great content you put out!
Same. Getting more recaps along with that connective campaign tissue would be prime too.
I very much appreciate the added captions, helps ingest the info and sometimes the autogenerated subtitles are wayy off
I try to get the captionings up before a video goes live. Sometimes I'm a little slow and it takes a day or 2, but the last couple years Captioning my vids has been a regular thing I do. I'll even go back on older videos and add it in (finished captioning my old Pax Cthuliana review vid last night). It can be tiring and monotonous because even when I'm following a teleprompter script I regularly go so off script that it still requires manually going through it all. So it's actually better for me to let UA-cam auto-caption it, then manually go in and correct the mistakes and add punctuation/capitalizations. It can take a long time. Sometimes I wonder if anyone even notices the Closed Captions, so thank you for letting me know.
One of my favorite moments from GMing was not only CvC but also a fight to the death. The party was split up about halfway through the campaign and the players ended up on different sides of the conflict. Resentment kept building until in the final session of the campaign they went one on one in the middle of a very chaotic scenario and one of them killed the other brutally.
Now this only worked because it was the last session, and the resolution to the conflict. Both players knew this was likely to happen and it was great fun.
Great and informative video as always! PvP is a real interesting topic, you could do a whole series of videos on it. It is something that always inevitably comes up in RPG's. I agree you are almost always going to have someone who holds a grudge. I have seen it work really well as a closer to a campaign, one of the characters slowly turning to the other side as adventures continued. But that was something that was communicated. I find bad blood happens when it's sprung out of nowhere, the sudden attack out of the blue.
You are a kind of person I would love to have in my life to hangout with and play games. Have a great day Seth!
Another great video with great advice. I recommended your channel to my brother who just started getting into RPGs and DMing and he's been having a blast. Can't wait for the next video on meta-rules. It's something I don't hear about often enough, and afaik I'm the only DM among my 2 groups of ~12 players who openly talks about meta rules and why PCvPC is banned etc.
I had a similar rule banning PCvPC combat after my very first session as a DM ended with one of the two conscious party members drinking a potion of dragon's breath, killing the 2nd PC who was conscious, then murdering the rest of the downed party before taking all the loot for himself. Said player then quit when he realized the players might hold a grudge.
I also have exceptions, as years later a different player was drunk and had his PC murder random survivors after the climatic final battle as he "lost trust in [the good guys] since they summoned the big bad[into a mortal form so he could be actually defeated instead of his true form coming into the world]". The rest of the party defended the survivors and it wasn't a fair fight.
I've been pretty lucky in that this has never been an issue in any of my campaigns. There's only ever been one time that the players have tried to kill each other, and it ended up being a climactic mage duel on the back of a flying dragon. Neither of the characters even died either, the fight ended with the evil druid repeatedly shouting "I can fix this" while desperately clinging to the side of the dragon.
Hi Seth. Thank you very much for this one. Your RPG-philosophy series means so much to me and has improoved me as a player.
Be well and take care,
Alicia from Sweden.
Good vid Seth! One thing I'd like to add is that waiting for an appropriate moment to raise a grievance doesn't even have to be meta. I feel in a lot of scenarios it makes sense in character. You just found out something that makes your character really mad at another, however, while fighting the horde of enemies is not the time to start fighting. You can both see that your shared survival could depend on leaving this for now. I think it's perfectly reasonable to have your character grit their teeth and be like "Fine, now's not the time" and even save said character in a "We still need your sorry butt" sort of way but as soon as the dungeon is cleared and the danger subsided, the party's having a well deserved drink in the tavern when you stride over to the offender and be like "Now, what the heck was that about you worm!"
I made a oneshot once. It was called "Evilshot" amongst my players, when they played as an evil character. And the last encounter was a free for all fight for the possession of the magical spear. That was really fun for the players to smack each other for a change.
Haven't you already made a video about the mexican stand off in the submarine? Could have sworn I saw that in one of your videos.
One neat way to work with this I've seen is in Changeling: The Lost, where in the game characters can make pledges that as long as they uphold their end of the bargain they gain supernatural boons, and if they break it a curse is placed upon them. Every single group I played with in this game took The Motley's Pledge, where the characters pledge to watch each other's back and not to willingly bring harm to any of the others in the group. Everyone gains some relatively minor boons from this, but if anyone broke it, everyone in the group gains perks to attack the pledge breaker.
I played in a superhero game a few years at my local store. I convinced a friend to join us, and the game master introduced his character in such a way that my character thought that my friend's character was attacking him (that whole superhero "they meet, they fight, they team up to beat the bad guy" trope). Rather than actually fight, he and I just described a running battle across warehouse rooftops, crashing through skylights and scattering pigeons. There was a lot of movement and back-and-forth, but neither of us landed a blow until at last his Android punched a brick chimney, and the debris from that knocked my costumed Vigilante off of the roof. My friend's character reached out with an extending arm and grabbed my character's leg, saving him from the fall. We turned back to the game master who, after a pause, said "okay, so fight."
"Aaah, we just did."
I've never seen a GM look disappointed to see players NOT engage in PVP before. 😄
great video Seth! I only had one CvC episode, but it did end my campaign (truth be told DMing was too much stress at the time, so it was kind of welcome news)!
Never had to face this problem at my table, but Alien RPG is kind of scary with that baked in theme.
Usualy my players characters are more or less all on the same page, but with the Alien agendas (great concept btw), it can go south pretty fast.
And since my players never fought each over, sometimes i fear they're not equiped to handle that kind of thing. So far so good, but i always keep my eyes wide open on this.
Thanks for the video and your channel, Seth :)
Many years ago, I joined a group whoch fell apart due to character vs. character infighting in the first session. This was like thirty years ago, long before Session Zero was a concept. We were playing AD&D 2E, and part of the problem was opposing alignments. Half the group was Good and half the group was Evil. While the NPC Quest Giver was giving us the mission, a fight broke out. In the end, the group split in two, and after the session ended, no one seemed to have time for another.
A good Session Zero and house rules could have prevented this chaos, but it was 1992, and we didn't have the tools to make it happen.
Good job on mentioning how one shots can be different. I created a Call of Cthluhu one shot where the entire premise is that the ghosts on the ship are messing with the characters heads to the point they start fighting each. Its pretty obvious what is going to happen as the players set down though. Half the table is the British MI6 and the other half is the Chinese MSS.
Only time I've considered CvC action was when we were playing Shadowrun and our first big contact meet-up was setup, two players rolled really high on their relevant knowledge and stuff, so we sent them forwards to meet the contact, who was going to be some really powerful member of a crime family. My character along with our fourth party member hung back as cover (within earshot, though). The GM had told us that we had to be ultra-respectful and polite to the crime family on contact. Our two ambassadors proceeded to lie and dissemble and antagonise the contact. My character was about to step in and try to smooth things over when the contact just drew down on the forward two. At this point, I checked in with the GM on their policy on CvC because my character was absolutely ready to take down her supposed team mates (in-story we'd just been thrown together by the person giving us the contact) to prevent going to war with the extremely powerful crime gang. As it happened, the other players were higher in the initiative order and rolled really well on their attacks, killed the contact, thus plunging us into war with the crime family and derailed the entire campaign - but set up a scenario where we were now desperately trying to space our skins from vengeance. So I never did shoot at the other player-characters. Instead there was a blazing row back at the team HQ over what went down.
Awesome video, I ran something with CvC lethal game in the form of the d100 warhammer fantasy game where the players where murderous rat man known as the skaven.
The concentual rule of combat was always there and kept players happy even if they got killed over figuring out who's pack leader or for some warp stone.
TTRPG is kayfabe, players are the performers who share a locker room after the show. Sure, yes, in most games the players are the faces and the DM plays all of the heels. But that simplistic understanding of the game ignores the advancements of the Monday Night Wars, where in WCW the nWo could be "the bad guys" but still be cool, and where in WWE, then WWF, the biggest face was Stone Cold Chaotic Neutral.
That means the Chaotic Good Ranger and the Lawful Fundamentalist Conquest Paladin might be on the same team at Survivor Series, because the former is chasing a belt (as much as I may offend Vince McMahon by using that word) currently held by a Conquest/Bronze Draconic Earth Genasi Sorcadin and the latter is trying to stop a Pit Fiend's rampage against the rest of the card while Kelemvor Calaway is out with an injury, and this time Mr. McMahon (or some in-universe stand-in from the Nine Hells, played by the DM) might have insisted that "The Most Electrifying Paladinoid NPC in Sports Entertainment" The Rock put the Pit Fiend Kane on his Survivor Series team while Stone Cold Chaotic Neutral recruited the two people best equipped to get wins over those enemies. Doesn't mean the two are going to be best friends at the Royal Rumble, doesn't mean they wouldn't face each other next August at Summerslam.
But the players need to be comfortable in the same Burger King after the session ends. Because if a DM doesn't pull that off, if they've got a Hart family vs. Kliq situation on their hands in which you have factionalism among the human beings at the table, well, that's a party that won't stick together, whether or not there's an official TPK to break them up. Mr. McMahon survived that kind of backstage chaos because for one Bret was leaving anyway whether the Montreal Screwjob happened or not, and more importantly there was an actual business there with exposure and contracts and broadcasting deals independent of backstage politics, and because of that Vince had a national audience on the Raw after Survivor Series 1997, and he had the creativity, all those years ago, to figure out an explanation that could guide his show forward. Unless your name is Matt Mercer, you probably don't have most of that aside from MAYBE the creativity, and Matt Mercer has players who are professional voice actors who are used to playing characters to a level far beyond most TTRPGs anyway, separating his situation from most of us behind the screen. As a DM, I know it: we're lucky if the people we're booking in our own little promotions are psychologically mature enough to claim the title of "adults". And I've had at least a few players either leave or go into business for themselves, making a mess of the show as a whole, to say nothing of others being 90s Shawn Michaels levels of prima donna narcissists within the rules.
TTRPG is WWE, but where the players should be marks not for individual characters, but for the party as a whole. The DM has to be the booker, or co-booker alongside the dice, but always ought to remain smart to the best possible story, and not pushing or burying players for the wrong reasons or letting some marks for themselves among the players bury people they have backstage heat with. Because where WWE tells a story for the millions (AND MILLIONS) of the WWE Universe, we're all telling a story to the four-to-eight people, including the DM, with whom we're interacting. And if one person is feeling left out, well, one out of a table of five is 20% of the audience.
Darn. I was here for actual player-vs-player fights. Maybe tactics or something. Should I shiv Wayne when he's reaching for the pizza or wait until he's got his hands full? Can I make a shank out of a big honking d4, a pencil, and some gum? Is shank the verb?
This is just great advice as always, thanks.
That’s funny, my last session had this happen. Great timing Man!
I like how your first example of searching someone's bag was non combat-related, but I think that it would have been good to emphasize that point a bit more.
Character vs character conflict can happen even when no attack rolls are being made. A classic example is the social character who rolls against other PCs to try to manipulate their actions (which may be disallowed in some systems, though a lot of tables still allow it anyway with house rules). Or where you've got a thief who rolls against his party members.
A great house rule that Matt Colville introduced me to is where the instigating player can make a roll, and the one being rolled against can decide what happens.
I remember a time in our super-villain game, one of our characters undercalculated the yield of cemtex he was using for a distraction, and it lead to the largest terror attack on US soil in the timeline. It led to the point that, even though we were playing villains, everyone else felt like they would not want to work with that character again after this (especially since the character showed no remorse about the miscalculation) and leaving him alive would be a loose end, so we were all talking about bumping the guy off. We were talking for maybe half an hour before we realised we should probably get the character's player into the chat. He was very understanding, and we prepped his next character pretty soon after. A good time was had by all, in the end.
This would have been so useful back in my old playgroup.
Thanks Seth!
Thanks for the great content.
The only time I played in a game with a CvC conflict was one where I kinda instigated the fight. The party’s thief had stolen a jewel that a little boy was planning to use to pay us, but my character caught him and demanded he give the jewel back. The fight was brief, and the thief ended up surrendering the jewel before we began the quest.
I was still a newbie trying to play a chaotic good elf Ranger at that time, and as far as I’m aware, none of the other players or the DM ever thought I had real beef with the guy playing the thief. This was probably one of those rare CvC moments where the game was hardly affected, but it still might’ve helped to have had these tips at the time
Towards the end of my last campaign, I had one player character that would constantly rib another, and it got to the point where it felt targeted and mean-spirited.
My solution was to let it happen, but asked the one player to tone it down since it was making the other player slightly uncomfortable.
As a side note, I love how whenever something comes up in my game, you release a video shortly after that covers said topic. Really fun coincidence imo.
(To further clarify, I am also going to set a hard rule against this going forward in new campaigns by having the players make characters so that they knew each other for a long time and thus have no reason for unnecessary conflict.)
I am GMing a table where we have two good, two chaotic and one evil character. We have PvP on at all times, and so far there was only one moment when things got to the point they had to hit each other, and it was pretty smooth from our end because we always have a meta discussion at the end of each session.
I would love to see that War story. Good job as always sir.
After 40 years of gaming I completely agree, great summary. Thank you.
I love the idea of "group vs group" conflict. for context theres this incredibly ambitious style of pseudo MMO play talked about in old dnd editions, basically different groups run in the same campaign world, the DM keeps a record of the sessions timeline and each group can directly or indirectly affect each other. stuff like "Group B enters a dungeon to find group A took all the loot. they hire assasins to kill group A. Group A kills the assasins, finds out who sent them and their next session is spent raiding group B's Fortress they constructed with previous wealth."
its so interesting and organic to me as a GM.
In about 40 years, I have GM'ed over many a CvC event, most of them back when we were in our teens and early 20's.
There was only one player v player fight, and we fortunately had padded LARP swords on hand to prevent a hospital trip.
I've had great experiences with limited CvC on more social type rolls/interations, such as having my character fully believe the bards lies after a contested deception roll up to casting suggestion to force another character to co-operate/be helpful. That said, it 100% has to be agreed upon in advance, and its best to check in and explain intent immediately prior to resolving the actions.
Great video Seth. There are only two times I allow PVP play; 1. When it is unambiguously agreed upon by the entire group and two, one shots.
Great video! Your policy mirrors the rules at my own group’s table in a lot of ways.
From the title I thought this was an update to the PvP vid, but it was a new lighter topic. I had some CvC conflicts in D&D when I got to play a succubus opposite a cleric of Sune, but thanks to divine intervention (literally) we played nice & I wasn't banished.😄
Neat to hear the Paranoia reference at the end, I found that vid just a month ago.
Love all the old movie images. Reminds me why I like Conan the Destroyer - that is pretty much a movie about an adventuring party. Pity nobody seems to be streaming in it Oz.
I think the situation and your group are extremely important here. If people are being bullies or blowing up the game for chuckles that's no fun and PCs shouldn't be killing each other over nonsense. However sometimes when characters have their own goals and motivations and everyone is roleplaying to the nines there comes a point where (generally without anyone intending to take it in that direction) those characters objectives are utterly irreconcilable with each other to the point where there simply isn't a peaceful solution anymore and someone has to go. In my experience these moments can end up being some of the most memorable and exciting in roleplaying, not just for the drama but because these are moments when characters are forced to draw a line in the sand that they can't back down from even when confronted by an ally. I've had a couple moments like this at my table and they're some of my group's favorite stories from our campaign. Of course that doesn't mean I'm saying to go out looking to get in CvC conflicts on purpose or that CvC works for everyone, just that it can work in the right context.
Thanks for the video!
I would love to see a similar video regarding character v character but with intrigue, politics, backstabby type of games (World of Darkness, etc.).
Discussion in metagame which come to a consensus can always override table rules. One of the best campaigns I have ever been in was a Morrowind (Elder Scrolls) conversion campaign, and it ended with CvC where my character (the Nerevarine) turned on the others. This made a beautiful ending because it actually kinda fits the lore of Morrowind and ended the campaign in a bittersweet "you can't go home again," moment.
CvC is hard to do well, but it can be done well.
I kept wondering if Seth would bring up Paranoia, I'm glad Mike did.
Often my group starts off CvC scenes in session but then shifts to online RP once the stakes have been established. So we can get into the nitty gritty when we have more time.
So one thing I noticed is when stakes are low and the players have some fuel left after an adventuring day is that if I say something like "We've got only 2 rooms left, but you should be able to squeeze your party of 4 in. The Innkeeper has the two keys in his outstretched arm." it can turn into a mini-brawl of players trying to get the keys and enter the room while trying to keep the other players outside. The players remembered the wizard who took one of the keys and then cast a wall of force as he started up the stairs.
Regrettably, I think I agree. Even tried to do an arena type one shot where fighting to the death was the point and it always feels like someone leaves upset.
Great video, I appreciate the considered, level approach. I am subscribing, for the fourth time. Let's hope UA-cam lets me stay this time...
I found you!!! Somehow I lost track of your channel and couldn't remember your name, but I frick'n found you and I'm delighted!
This video came out exactly when I needed it! I am GMing Shadowrun and one of my PCs (the decker) has always been a murderhobo, but last session he crossed the line by throwing a grenade during a bar brawl, and said bar being a smuggler meet-up spot. The other players were very pissed off at him because not only did they probably end up making a lot of enemies but also killed a lot of "innocent" (as innocent as people having out at such a place could be) and it would definitively make them look bad to their employer they were trying really hard to impress. Now I am talking to everyone to make sure the game can continue peacefully between the players. There will definitively be consequences, but I'll have to find a way to make them focused on the murderhobo player and not so much on the rest of the PCs in order to keep my table peaceful.
as an ex-SR GM, the obvious consequence is the pineapple damaging some goods in transit from another smuggler group and they decide to come collect from the guy stupid enough to be throwing pineapples in a bar. Either he has to work with the party to escape or his chrome ends up on the secondhand market while his flesh feeds some ghouls.
Hey Seth... I have a question that I think needs a long answer to, and this video made me think about it. Assassins and PC ambushes. I mean being sent to kill the PCs. It's something that's not a great move as a GM; it's hard to avoid bad feelings, and it can very easily lead to a TPK if the PCs are unprepared, regardless of how strong the assassins are stat-wise. But it's something that should be a LOT more common, because how many games take place in settings where assassins or hitmen are commonplace? In D&D, any given noble could hire people to go kill some annoying adventurers for them. If the Big Bad (or even a more minor villain) has magic powers, they might even be able to summon creatures to go ambush the PCs while they are camping or sleeping at an inn. Meanwhile in Cyberpunk settings, the PCs are often already basically hitmen and almost always some form of "professional criminal"; the same channels used to hire the PCs could be used to find assassins no problem, and the corps that play the antagonistic role have more than enough funds to throw hitmen at anyone who annoys them enough. If the PCs in a cyberpunk game cross a crime syndicate, expecting their home base to get shot up by made men should be something they're actually concerned about.
Any suggestions on how to include scenes of assassins coming for the PCs in ways that can be fun and challenging with upsetting the players or accidentally killing them would be really appreciated! I feel like if used properly, they could do a great job of adding tension and making it so the players feel pressure to continue towards the objective, because taking their time and being too casual about it could bite them.
PCs frequently make a lot of enemies, so assassins or attempts on their life wouldn't be uncommon. They're also a good tool to show consequences. Not just consequences for behaviour like murderhobos but story consequences that show a living world. If the PCs go to a town, do an adventure, then move on to the next town it can give the sense to the players how the world isn't connected because each adventure is in a different place and never revisited. So having as assassin come as revenge from that badguy 3 towns ago reminds the players that just because their characters left that town, it is still there and the echoes of their adventure are still being heard.
As far as assassination attempts. With the sheer number of possibilities and different RPGs there's no real easy answer. But my approach has been that no matter what setting or type of assassins they are, the PCs always get a warning or way of escaping certain death. This can be tricky, as you don't want the warning to give the impression that the assassin is incompetent, only that the PCs were lucky and might not be lucky on the next attempt.
For example, if the assassin is using a huge sniper rifle, they're not going to simply blow away a PC in one shot without the player even getting a chance. But if the sniper misses their first shot, you might accidentally give the impression that the sniper isn't good. You want the sniper to feel like a real threat. So I've had it where the sniper's first bullet takes out some NPC standing with the PCs. So the players see their buddy's head explode, realize there's a sniper, and can hit the dirt or jump behind cover or something before the 2nd shot is fired. So whether the assassin is poisoning their drinks, setting a bomb under their car, or whatever, the PCs need a way of seeing it coming just before or avoiding it. This might be a skill roll, but I usually don't have it be that. The assassin is a pro. A casual Perception check isn't going to spot them. So it might be a random lucky thing, like the PCs order drinks, but the waiter spills their drinks and they sizzle on the floor like acid. Or, like in The Godfather, an NPC friend offers to pull the PC's car around for them, but are killed when the bomb in the PC's car explodes. Had the PC been behind the wheel they've have surely died.
This give the impression that the assassin exists and is capable. So now the PCs can figure out what they're going to do about it.
Or maybe they get wind of some intercepted message or rumor that the badguy from 3 adventures aqo has hired some assassins. Maybe these are known assassins, or maybe no one knows who they are. But the PCs are given the tip how their lives are now in peril. After that, it's up to them.
This is far better than the PCs step out of their house one random Tuesday and is instantly killed by a sniper bullet with no warning at all. Sure a capable assassin taking them out with a .50 cal with zero warning is realistic in the real world, players understandably don't like it when their character is taken out like that. A little foreshadowing of the threat goes a long way.