Hey :) 

I have just started to run my very first D&D campaign with a bunch of friends. None of them have any experience in D&D either. We are 3 sessions in and it is actually going quite well. Feedback is good, everyone seems to have a lot of fun...mostly :D 

Right now we are playing Lost Mines of Phandelver and there is one thing that causes a lot of problems in game and it seems to be spilling over into RL as well. The party can't find common ground when it comes to dealing with "prisoners". They interrogated a goblin in the cragmaw hideout and 2 party members (warlock and ranger) wanted to let him go as "thanks" for the information the gobo gave them. The paladin however was very strongly against it and they ended up killing him. At the moment we are inside the Redbrand Hideout and the same thing happened with the unconcious gobo in area 9. But this time it got a bit more heated between the paladin and the warlock. The sorcerer interrupted the argument and just set the poor gobo on fire (mostly because he just wanted to move on). Furthermore, the party made a deal with the Nothic inside the hideout. The paladin only accepted it VERY begrudingly. We had to end the session inside the dungeon (because of time) and the paladin already told me after the game that he feels like he has to kill the Nothic, because his Character wouldn't let a creature like this live so close the town (he said it would be alright if the Nothic would live furtheraway and wouldn't be a immediate danger to the town). 

So now I know that this will become a huge problem in the next session. Both the paladin and the warlock talked to me after the last session privately. The warlock said that she feels like her opinion doesn't matter and that she doesn't think it's fun to just slaughter everything. The paladin said that he can understand the others, but it wouldn't make sense (from a strategic and character standpoint) to let these creatures live in such a situation. 

Both seem to be pretty annoyed about it (even after a week) and both said that it's impacting their fun.

Any idea on how to handle this? Talking to them didn't really help. Does the paladin have a "better" point, because he has RP arguments while the warlock is more argueing about how it would be more fun to let them live and maybe see them again?  

I maybe should add that overall they are getting along decently and there are no other problems between the players ingame or in RL. It's just this one issue where no one seems to be ale to make concessions. 

I have a character playing through that adventure now.  Right about at that point.  She's a Neutral Good Fighter.  In Craigmaw, she insisted on killing everything but the wolves and a Human they were keeping hostage.  I don't know if he's there in the published adventure.  The wolves she insisted be spared the Druid objected to leaving alive multiple times, which I found puzzling.

In the Redbrand place, we ran into the Nothic.  It was not initially hostile, but greatly upset one of the characters by reading her mind and telling her it knew one of her secrets.  It never said which, but the Rogue threw a dagger and hit.  The Nothic remained passive and we worked out a deal.  My character killed off the goblins and such because they were Evil and she know that, and she will keep right on doing so.  The Nothic is also Evil, but she doesn't know it.  Those are exotic and she'd have no way of knowing that it was Evil.  It lives unless it double-crosses us.

For your own group, the question is why they are doing what they do.  Putting aside Alignment.  Alignment is a purely roleplaying tool and any Alignment can justify any sort of behavior.  Why are they doing what they do?  Is it something from their backgrounds?  Has the Paladin sworn a mighty oath of the non-Paladin kind?  Is it something required by the Warlock's Patron?  One player's justification for their character's actions is as good as any others, so it falls down to what you want to see happening.  

 Thanks to both of you for the quick answers. 

I watched the video and also watched a bunch of other videos concerning "problem players" before. The thing is, I'm not sure who the jerk is in this scenario. The Paladins position is basically that he had bad experiences with Goblins and Orcs (it's in his backstory) and that he is really worried about the town so he does not want to take any risks. While the Warlocks position is mostly that she thinks the Goblins are cute and she would like for them to stay alive and maybe meet them again later. Her Patron doesn't care about any of this, he just wants the Warlock to get into the mine. 

Well, the ranger just arranged a meeting later today to talk about this. Since the Warlock and Paladin apparently complained about this to her as well. Kinda funny that we are friends for about 10 years and it took a fantasy world for us to get into a conflict. :D 

Did you have a session 0? Did you talk about *how* the players wanted to play the game? If not, then you need to have one, at least a short one, before the next session or at the start of it, or maybe in place of it. You don't want things like this to spiral out of control and end up ruining the game.

Have a conversation with the players, out of character, as players. Talk about how they want to approach the game, whether killing everything, or letting things go, or having in-character conflict about it. Make sure that the only way you RP out in-character conflict is if the table wants to. If not, then I don't care how in-character it is, as players, you need to reach a "gentleman's agreement" (not said respecting gender, just the traditional meaning of the term) that whatever the characters might want to do, you are not going to RP out conflicts between them regarding prisoners. 

PC vs PC conflict is difficult to handle, even by experienced RPers, and can lead to hard feelings. With new players this is even more of a risk. Make sure everyone at the table, as players, is on board with however you have chosen to RP this out, and do not let it be the case that the players are walking away feeling frustrated or unhappy.

The Paladin has a good reason from their backstory for their actions.  The Warlock has none.  I'd go with that the Paladin wants.

I’m always skeptical of the “but that’s what my character would do” defense. Usually it means the person is being a jerk, since they made the character, and they can just as easily change it so they can play better with others, though this time it’s not quite as clear.

I’ll second Biowizard’s advice. Next session have an out of character chat and try to hash things out. Maybe remind them that character v. character conflict can actually be very fun, so long as it doesn’t spill over and become player v. player conflict. That can lead to the group dissolving.

And remind them that they all made their characters and now need to be able to work together. They need to find some way of accommodating each other. 

Hi. Coming in from the wing here. The problem you are describing sounds like something me and my group knows really well, and I think you are right that this isn't necessary anybodys "fault". I don't know if I have a good solution for you, but I'll at least share some of my experiences with the same issue.

I don't think this has anything to do about session 0. This is what sometimes happens when you start playing the characters. Nothing you can plan around. On the good side, it sounds like you have players that are really invested, even morally into their characters. That is gold! That is cool. Actually, that is probably what I love the most about roleplaying. The downside with that is that since RPG is not a story about one person, but about a group, you sometimes end up creating characters that quite simply doesn't fit together.  Not because any character (or player) is doing something wrong, but just because they doesn't fit together. To plan your way out of this isn't possible because it usually only shows when you play the character(s) in a moral dilemma.

Our group has talked a lot about this issue up through the years. It was probably at its worst in some Vampire the Masquerade campaigns like 20 years ago where we basically ended up not caring at all about the plot, but just spent entire sessions trying to destroy each others plots and plans and quarrelling in character. It was fun, but in the end we decided we had to find a way to create characters for RPG that could act more as a group.

I think D&D has a lot of conventions that usually keeps groups away from this issue, and therefore there are very few tools in the system itself to cope with it. When people sit down to play D&D, they expect to be adventurers, they will take that offer for an adventure by the barkeeper, and everyone knows that evil is evil and is OK to kill. It sounds like you are playing a game where not everyone buy into all those "conventions", and that isn't necessarily because they are being "difficult". Perhaps it just is that you and your group want to play a slightly more "moral" D&D game, than what the standard is.

Games like for instance "Blades in the Dark" is a good example of a game that has a good system for creating "the gang". In that game it is very clear that if you leave the gang, you leave the game. That makes it easier to have conflict in the group, since they all also have a common gold. In my group, we had almost a decade were we usually ended up playing as siblings because you then had the bond of family that bonded us together.

But what to do? I guess my best advice is to talk with the group. Not necessary to have people change their characters, but try together to find a solution. That might be that someone do some changes to their character, someone might create new ones, or you might end up creating a complete new set of adventurers who has already sworn an oath to be "brothers for life".

Hope you get something out of my long rambling, but I can assure you that after 30 years with this problem, my group is still playing together, so although it might not go away, you can still have a lot of fun!

The Paladin has a good reason from their backstory for their actions.  The Warlock has none.  I'd go with that the Paladin wants.

Respectfully, I would argue that it is not productive to just "go with what" any particular character wants. The characters are run by human players, and each player is going to want something for his or her character. Players and GM have to work together to generate the shared fiction. If one player gets what he/she wants and the others do not, someone walks away unhappy, and eventually the group will be harmed. Already, the GM has pointed out, some of this is starting to mildly bleed over into real life.

This situation should not be solved in-character but out of character. Talk with the players, and everyone agree on what they want out of the game. For example, a while back my characters met an Astral Dragon. They were on a quest to kill it and take its mind-pearl to power a villain's magic item (and earn them a trip back home from the Astral plane). But they decided to talk to the dragon instead, in character, and it offered to tell them how to get home in exchange for a magic item. As they debated in character, my best friend, one of the players, stopped and said, OK, let's have an OOC conversation. Do you guys want to fight the dragon? If so, then let's RP our way to that goal. They talked about it and agreed that although, as players, they wanted to see if they could beat an adult Astral Dragon at level 6 (!), their characters would mostly not want to kill it. They then proceeded with the RP having decided, as a group, that they would RP *not* fighting the dragon. They also asked me, by the way, was I disappointed they weren't going to fight the dragon? They didn't want to ruin the DM's night. I said do whatever you want (yeah, I was curious like they were to see if they could beat it, but I had fully prepared for either circumstance).

This is how one is supposed to play an RPG. No, it was not metagaming. It was a player checking in with the other players and the GM, to make sure that everyone at the table (or in this case in the Zoom) was happy with where the RP was going. Because D&D is a cooperative story-telling venture, not something any ONE person, even the GM, can control. Everyone needs to be happy, to the extent possible. (Leaving aside, of course, people who are never happy....)

The compromise can be as simple as RPing a character in a certain way. For example, back in my Rolemaster days, one of my characters was (secretly) a Nightblade -- a magical assassin. The players eventually knew it, but the PCs did not. She was Lawful Evil. There was a Paladin on the group, who is Lawful Good. How did the player square the circle of having a LG paladin teamed up with a frequently-murderous magical assassin? By RPing that the Paladin had a crush on the assassin (she was very pretty, high Appearance value), and simply refused to believe ill of her. "My Lady would never have done such a thing... surely you are mistaken." Or he would RP that Sir Thomas happened to be looking the other way, maybe he got a pebble in his armored boot and was trying to clear it, when the assassin got up to no good. This allowed him to RP his character as LG, while not stopping me from being able to RP the evil side of my assassin on occasion. And in return, I made sure to find ways to do Nightbladey things when Sir Thomas was not looking, or in ways it would make his player easily able to brush aside. We worked together so that both of us got to enjoy our characters, and nobody had to RP something that would not be IC for their character.

I wanna say, BTW, Sir Thomas was played by a high school student (I was in college at the time) and additionally, that we never actually talked about any of this out of character. We just naturally made sure to RP in ways that would not step on each other's toes. 

Again, this is not metagaming -- it is finding a way to responsibly RP so that everyone can have a good time and realize their vision for their character.

If everyone in OP's group followed "that's what my character would do," then the party would probably end up dissolving or turning against each other. I don't think that's the answer.

D&D has a social contract. You're roleplaying your characters but you're also a person playing a game with other people and if your fun is severely impacting the fun of others, everyone needs to take a step back and figure out a new way to move forward together. That is what the warlock is talking about, and it's every bit as valid as "but my backstory."

Thanks again to everyone, it is super helpful. 

A little update: 

We just had a zoom call with me, the paladin, the warlock, and the ranger. Turns out that there are/were more underlying issues. Which sounds way more dramatic than it is. 

We had a session zero in which we talked about the warlock/paladin dynamic and they are RPing around it quite well. The issues don’t even have to do anything with the other player/character. The Warlocks issues aren't necessarily with killing gobo prisoners, but much more with her not being able to make decisions. The party decided to go against her plan twice in the previous session. So, when they decided against her idea again, she felt like not being taken seriously. The paladin and the ranger promised to be more considerate in the future.

Question: Is there anything I can do during a game as DM, if I see one PC getting overruled constantly? Should I even interfere? If it's 3v1? 

The paladin is just taking the game a bit too seriously. Even though, I made it clear during session 0 (well, maybe not clear enough) that this campaign is a chill, learning by doing campaign, he thought that letting a prisoner go could result in an unwinnable ambush attack or a huge goblin attack on the town or something like that. I ensured him that I will not just wipe them if they make a "strategic mistake". Apparently, he doesn't quite trust me, because we used to play board games a lot before d&d and I had a reputation of backstabbing my allies. I have not been hard on them at all, and I am aware that I'm not their enemy. 

First off, good job doing the zoom call to work it out. 

Secondly, more as a lesson to others reading this thread, this is why I say that one cannot solve OOC problems with IC solutions. The Warlock player was having an issue, not so much with the RP, but with the way the other players were (to her mind, true or not) treating her, by not taking her opinions into account. Thus, OOC conversation is really important here.

Regarding what you should do as a DM, this is a very difficult problem to deal with. On the one hand, as a DM, it is normally not a good idea to interfere directly in the decision-making process of the party. And unfortunately, it sometimes works out that 1 player wants to do 1 thing a lot, and the rest of the 3 or 4 players all want to do something else. I think being aware of it, as a DM, you should (a) start the next session by letting any other player(s) who were not part of the zoom call, know what the underlying problem is. If the whole table is aware that one player was made to feel not-listened-to, maybe you can all pay attention to being a little more considerate. Then as a DM if you see it happening again, maybe gently remind them, "Guys, remember, the Warlock has asked not to be overruled all the time by the party."

As for the Paladin not trusting you... hopefully that will get better over time. Have you tried rolling dice in front of the group, if possible? Often that really ups the trust level because players know you are not cheating the die rolls.

Talk about it is often the solution, and as Bio has said several times: do it out of character :-) After all, it is a game, and we must asume that all players and DM's want to have fun :-)

Quote from KaptnHammer >>

Question: Is there anything I can do during a game as DM, if I see one PC getting overruled constantly? Should I even interfere? If it's 3v1? 

 I assume you play with friends, if so, I would say no. It would be slightly different if you're DM'ing kids at the local after school. Then as an adult I would have felt an obligation to make sure everyone felt included (like I would have felt if I took them playing football or anything else really). If you are playing with your friends, I would say that this is mostly outside what you should put on yourself as a DM. This is something you as a group should talk about, not something you as a DM should "handle". That said, as part of that group, feel free to raise the question. And to refer to Bio: this is solved ooc, not ic!

Quote from KaptnHammer >>

Question: Is there anything I can do during a game as DM, if I see one PC getting overruled constantly? Should I even interfere? If it's 3v1? 

 This is tough to answer without more details. Certainly, if people are ganging up on someone, you want to put a stop to it, though there’s also a point where she needs to speak up for herself. It’s difficult to judge without being there.

That said, there’s a big difference between, they don’t hear her; they ignore her; they actively berate her;  they steal her ideas as their own; and they give thoughtful consideration to her idea, but decide it’s not a good idea and do something else. Which kind of a situation are we looking at? Or is it not even one of those?