I have two huge problems regarding the beginning of a current campaign I'm DMing
First one: The group I have is formed by 4 people. 3 of which are basically solos. They are filled with "**** others, who cares, I don't give a shit about people" attitude.
In order to create a situation that forces them to teamwork and not go their own way, I've put them in an extremely dangerous situation in which if they do not cooperate they will probably die.
This situation is very much disliked. They feel like they're being forced by me to stay together and cooperate with strangers they don't give a **** about forcing them to go out of character.
Second one: Due to story reasons made in agreement with one of the players, I had to kill an NPC they've met along the way. This NPC was very dear to the character of that player. The situation was that a very powerful group of anti paladins immobilized them and forced them to watch the NPC being killed.
This was also very much disliked.
The player wished he could do something to defend his NPC even if that meant losing an arm or dying.
Since they're at the beginning of the campaign at level 2 I believed that using magic to immobilize them and show how powerful the enemies were, was the right move to do. Turns out it wasn't in this case.
So now I have the following:
4 characters who don't give a toss about teamwork and are about to go their own separate ways and a character story moment which was very important that wasn't received well from the protagonist of that moment.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to play a loner character who does not like to work with a team. Yet D&D is still a cooperative game--the DM cannot realistically be expected to DM a bunch of players going off on their own solo adventures and the system just is not designed for that point.
Forcing them into a situation where they have to stick together is not making them break character--they can feel free to grumble and complain all they want in-character or they can choose to go off and die. Either option is acceptable and a valid way for them to play their character. You have orchestrated an event that encourages their characters to act in a certain way, but you are not forcing their characters to be happy about the situation.
I would tell your players that the simple reality is that you are there to play D&D and that you are not forcing their players to do anything out of character. They, the player, can choose whether their character will begrudgingly go along with the other strangers (and possibly learn to like them), or die. Tell them that you are not denying them any character decisions--but you will be imposing consequences if they choose the suboptimal path.
If they continue to grumble and complain, stop DMing for them. If they do not want to play a party-based game such as D&D, you are under no obligation to force D&D into something it is not, and never was, designed to be. I will note, if they are giving you these kinds of problems early in the campaign, that is a portent for things to come, and you will be dealing with these issues throughout the game. You should decide if that is worthwhile to you, and consider terminating the campaign if you do not feel you want to or can handle the countless similar problems that will inevitably arise from this group.
Problem Two:
This one is on you. Removing party agency is the worst thing you can do--D&D is all about player agency and abjectly denying player agency is denying a core element that draws people to the game. This is especially true of moments very near and dear to a specific character--there is nothing worse than the DM taking away your agency and forcing you to adjust your character without any input or opportunity to respond.
Instead, you could have let him struggle--let him do checks to try and break free from the bonds that held him, and then allowed him to fight back. Even if the death of the NPC was fate accompli, they would have felt like they at least took the actions their character would have taken, even if it meant being smacked down and left for dead (I would not maim a PC--too many logistical issues down the line--but you can always drop someone to 0 and then have the bad guys leave, not bothering to finish the job).
Sounds like your players aren't familiar with the social contract of gaming, namely that if players don't agree to play together, then there's no game. A major conceit of dnd is that everything functions around player cooperation. Combat is balanced that way, stories are balanced that way, monsters are balanced that way, everything is balanced that way. It's not even just that it's *hard* to run a game without that cooperation, the game basically does not work without at least some element of it.
The players however, are free to make literally any kind of character they want, so in a case where the character they've chosen to play is impeding the group's ability to actually play it, it's easier simply for the player to just... change their character's personality or just change characters in such a way that they can now see the point of working with others, than it is for the whole group to break up into four different solo campaigns where the DM needs to do 4x the work and has to now schedule 4x the sessions per week.
That isn't even to say you can't play misanthropic, loner characters. Plenty of people do, and still manage to function within a party. Your character is, forgive the language, actually quite stupid if they can't manage the mental arithmetic of "big monster will kill me if I try to solo it, and if I'm dead then I don't get the money for killing it, and money benefits me, therefore party".
Now, not to put it all on the players, but one thing you can examine as a DM is how you are motivating your players to act together. I can see why players would be frustrated with the DM making all the monsters super tough for what they perceive to be "no reason," and I think you're falling into the trap of looking for a mechanical fix for what is actually a story problem. Your players all want to play a specific type of gruff amoral edgy character, and maybe without even realizing it, they're begging you for a reason for why their character would do the DND thing, which I assume they'd like to since they agreed to play. They want a story reason for why their characters would Do The Thing.
What was the story reason you provided? What's in it for them? If you're story motivation, for example, is that there are innocents suffering and you expect the party to care, that's going to blow up in your face when they don't. As a DM, you want to prepare various possible motivations to hook in various types of characters. Maybe one character is only in it for the money, and needs the other players to have any chance at getting it. Maybe another character is only adventuring because their awesome cool magic sword was stolen years ago and they're trying to track it down across the continent, and rumor has it the thief might be in league with the main bad guy, while maybe another character still just wants to conquer in the name of their bloodthirsty God and sees the party as their vanguard, the forces they'll lead into battle. Just like that, you have reasons for three characters to work together without compromising their edginess, the DM just needs to present their game to the players with the right bow tied on.
I know this isn't fully related, but try and find some discussion threads on here about how to play evil characters. A lot of those discussions provide advice on how to integrate edgy and misanthropic non-team-players into a game and still function.
If, however, your players refuse to work with you on any of those above points, then unfortunately there's just not much you can do. DND is collaborative, not just among the players, but between the players and the DM. The only way to play involves both sides communicating their wants and expectations of the kind of game you all want to play.
Big advice is to have a sesion 0, make sure the players make characters which work as a team - ask them to each make one tie to each other character, even if that's simply that you've been adventuring together for a while, or grew up in the same town, that sort of thing.
Agree that "cutscenes" are not great in dnd, the players need to be able to get involved or it's not collaborative story telling, it's just story telling!
This one is on you. Removing party agency is the worst thing you can do--D&D is all about player agency and abjectly denying player agency is denying a core element that draws people to the game. This is especially true of moments very near and dear to a specific character--there is nothing worse than the DM taking away your agency and forcing you to adjust your character without any input or opportunity to respond.
Instead, you could have let him struggle--let him do checks to try and break free from the bonds that held him, and then allowed him to fight back. Even if the death of the NPC was fate accompli, they would have felt like they at least took the actions their character would have taken, even if it meant being smacked down and left for dead (I would not maim a PC--too many logistical issues down the line--but you can always drop someone to 0 and then have the bad guys leave, not bothering to finish the job).
This.
You as a DM might think paralyzing everyone is a huge show of strength, but as a player, all that feels like is the DM taking control away, not the villain. Far from demonstrating the villain's power and getting the players to take them seriously, it breaks immersion, which results in the players taking *nothing* seriously, cause what's the point if the DM is just gonna take it all away from us and there's nothing they can do.
The players are only going to have that moment of tragedy and horror at the bad guy killing their npc buddy if it happens despite the players best efforts.
If the players feel like they have an impact on events, they will care about them, and if big bad manages to kill npc friends despite the players doing their best to stop him, then the players are going to hate the villain, and that will motivate them to take the villain down like you want it to. HOWEVER, if you take their choice away from them and force them to watch by, powerless, then the players are going to be annoyed at you, because when you put the character sheets away and just say "you're paralyzed automatically no save", then they know that *you* did that, not a villain acting in character.
End of the day, DND is heroic fantasy, and players don't like being made to feel powerless and un-heroic unless it's the consequences of their own choices/actions.
I remember when I was playing in Adventure League (before everything shut down and it became a huge pain), I had initially designed a very simple character who was very mercenary and relatively amoral who was only concerned about money. However, trying to lean into that just slowed everything down... because of the way Adventure League works, you get a set amount of gold at the end of an adventure, so negotiating for a higher paycheck is pointless and just wastes everyone else's time. Having a character that's not interested in helping people without being promised payment runs into trouble because not every adventure in AL has that as an element... sometimes you're just kind of expected to help people because that's what the adventure is about, and you've got 3 hours to get 6 people through this dungeon.
For D&D, if everyone is playing a bunch of characters who refuse to work together and participate in adventures... well, at that point they're just not playing the game. That's just one of those things you might have to explain to them... if their character isn't going to go on the adventure, then they might as well roll up a new sheet and create a character that will work with others, because as a DM you can't be expected to run 4 separate solo-adventures for each player as they go off on their own.
1) You NEED to have a discussion with the players out of character. Explain that you are NOT running 4 separate solo campaigns - the game doesn't work that way. The players may want to play characters that aren't good team players but the players need to know that they are playing a game in which the characters REQUIRE some reason to work together. Sometimes the DM can fill in that gap by giving them a quest or some other activity and then the players all buy into it. However, if the players are complaining that their characters won't do that then the DM and players have to talk. The players need to understand that the group forms a party, they work together, maybe not all the time but most of the time, they aren't there to backstab and betray the others in the party, they aren't there to ignore them ... since otherwise WHY would any of them choose to travel together?
Talk to the players, and get them to come up with reasons WHY their characters are helping and supporting each other even if they are basically loners who prefer to do things by themselves - there could be lots of backstory reasons, they might have worked together before and found that their skills were complementary, they might know someone in common who got them together, they might even have met in a tavern and become unlikely friends. The players need to come up with ANY reason why these four loners would be working together - something they can accept from a role play point of view.
If they won't do that, tell them to roll up new characters that have some reason to work together.
It happens fairly frequently that players come up with some cool character concept that might not play well with others and upfront during a session 0, I will ask them "Why would anyone else choose to travel or adventure with a self-centered, mean spirited, bad/evil, paranoid, sociopath, psychopath ... or whatever their character is ... if you don't have a reason that works for the other characters then there is no reason for this group of characters to ever work together. If you can't come up with a reason for this character, go back to the drawing board and come up with a character concept you like that works."
2) Cut scenes (i.e. any events that happen in front of the characters that they have no ability to influence) are generally a bad idea. Players want to be involved, they may want to stop bad things from happening. Narrating some atrocity happening to an NPC that a character cares about just to make a point is usually just something that will make the player either sad or angry or both.
If an NPC is going to die for plot reasons, you could have it happen off screen with the PCs not present. Alternatively, you can sometimes resolve these things with an encounter giving the player a chance to roll dice for saving throws or attacks or skill checks to possibly free/rescue the NPC but have elements of the encounter make it extremely clear that these opponents are so difficult that the only/best choice is to escape with the NPC. If the only reason the NPC died was to demonstrate how powerful the opponents were then they really didn't need to die at all. The PCs could have been allowed to rescue them. Or possibily, the PCs could have been defeated and knocked unconscious during the fight, finding themselves locked up with the NPC afterward and then have them escape with the NPC showing the characters not only how powerful the opponent is but giving them a feeling of success from rescuing the NPC.
However, it works out, the DM needs to have an idea of which way it can work out and how they want to have it work out but using unbeatable magic (not even hold person with saving throws) to paralyze them and watch an NPC be slaughtered in front of them is definitely a new DM sort of mistake. This kind of scene sometimes works in movies/books to build a revenge theme but it often doesn't work in a D&D game where real players and their characters are involved.
----------------
TL;DR
Have a chat with your players about teamwork and finding a reason why their characters would travel together at all - if they can't come up with one - have them create new characters.
Try not to railroad characters into a plot by completely removing their choices.
Hello folks.
Noob DM here.
I have two huge problems regarding the beginning of a current campaign I'm DMing
First one:
The group I have is formed by 4 people. 3 of which are basically solos. They are filled with "**** others, who cares, I don't give a shit about people" attitude.
In order to create a situation that forces them to teamwork and not go their own way, I've put them in an extremely dangerous situation in which if they do not cooperate they will probably die.
This situation is very much disliked. They feel like they're being forced by me to stay together and cooperate with strangers they don't give a **** about forcing them to go out of character.
Second one:
Due to story reasons made in agreement with one of the players, I had to kill an NPC they've met along the way. This NPC was very dear to the character of that player. The situation was that a very powerful group of anti paladins immobilized them and forced them to watch the NPC being killed.
This was also very much disliked.
The player wished he could do something to defend his NPC even if that meant losing an arm or dying.
Since they're at the beginning of the campaign at level 2 I believed that using magic to immobilize them and show how powerful the enemies were, was the right move to do. Turns out it wasn't in this case.
So now I have the following:
4 characters who don't give a toss about teamwork and are about to go their own separate ways and a character story moment which was very important that wasn't received well from the protagonist of that moment.
What can i do to fix these issues? Any tips?
Problem One:
There is nothing wrong with wanting to play a loner character who does not like to work with a team. Yet D&D is still a cooperative game--the DM cannot realistically be expected to DM a bunch of players going off on their own solo adventures and the system just is not designed for that point.
Forcing them into a situation where they have to stick together is not making them break character--they can feel free to grumble and complain all they want in-character or they can choose to go off and die. Either option is acceptable and a valid way for them to play their character. You have orchestrated an event that encourages their characters to act in a certain way, but you are not forcing their characters to be happy about the situation.
I would tell your players that the simple reality is that you are there to play D&D and that you are not forcing their players to do anything out of character. They, the player, can choose whether their character will begrudgingly go along with the other strangers (and possibly learn to like them), or die. Tell them that you are not denying them any character decisions--but you will be imposing consequences if they choose the suboptimal path.
If they continue to grumble and complain, stop DMing for them. If they do not want to play a party-based game such as D&D, you are under no obligation to force D&D into something it is not, and never was, designed to be. I will note, if they are giving you these kinds of problems early in the campaign, that is a portent for things to come, and you will be dealing with these issues throughout the game. You should decide if that is worthwhile to you, and consider terminating the campaign if you do not feel you want to or can handle the countless similar problems that will inevitably arise from this group.
Problem Two:
This one is on you. Removing party agency is the worst thing you can do--D&D is all about player agency and abjectly denying player agency is denying a core element that draws people to the game. This is especially true of moments very near and dear to a specific character--there is nothing worse than the DM taking away your agency and forcing you to adjust your character without any input or opportunity to respond.
Instead, you could have let him struggle--let him do checks to try and break free from the bonds that held him, and then allowed him to fight back. Even if the death of the NPC was fate accompli, they would have felt like they at least took the actions their character would have taken, even if it meant being smacked down and left for dead (I would not maim a PC--too many logistical issues down the line--but you can always drop someone to 0 and then have the bad guys leave, not bothering to finish the job).
I will take all this into account. Thank you deeply Sir! <3
Sounds like your players aren't familiar with the social contract of gaming, namely that if players don't agree to play together, then there's no game. A major conceit of dnd is that everything functions around player cooperation. Combat is balanced that way, stories are balanced that way, monsters are balanced that way, everything is balanced that way. It's not even just that it's *hard* to run a game without that cooperation, the game basically does not work without at least some element of it.
The players however, are free to make literally any kind of character they want, so in a case where the character they've chosen to play is impeding the group's ability to actually play it, it's easier simply for the player to just... change their character's personality or just change characters in such a way that they can now see the point of working with others, than it is for the whole group to break up into four different solo campaigns where the DM needs to do 4x the work and has to now schedule 4x the sessions per week.
That isn't even to say you can't play misanthropic, loner characters. Plenty of people do, and still manage to function within a party. Your character is, forgive the language, actually quite stupid if they can't manage the mental arithmetic of "big monster will kill me if I try to solo it, and if I'm dead then I don't get the money for killing it, and money benefits me, therefore party".
Now, not to put it all on the players, but one thing you can examine as a DM is how you are motivating your players to act together. I can see why players would be frustrated with the DM making all the monsters super tough for what they perceive to be "no reason," and I think you're falling into the trap of looking for a mechanical fix for what is actually a story problem. Your players all want to play a specific type of gruff amoral edgy character, and maybe without even realizing it, they're begging you for a reason for why their character would do the DND thing, which I assume they'd like to since they agreed to play. They want a story reason for why their characters would Do The Thing.
What was the story reason you provided? What's in it for them? If you're story motivation, for example, is that there are innocents suffering and you expect the party to care, that's going to blow up in your face when they don't. As a DM, you want to prepare various possible motivations to hook in various types of characters. Maybe one character is only in it for the money, and needs the other players to have any chance at getting it. Maybe another character is only adventuring because their awesome cool magic sword was stolen years ago and they're trying to track it down across the continent, and rumor has it the thief might be in league with the main bad guy, while maybe another character still just wants to conquer in the name of their bloodthirsty God and sees the party as their vanguard, the forces they'll lead into battle. Just like that, you have reasons for three characters to work together without compromising their edginess, the DM just needs to present their game to the players with the right bow tied on.
I know this isn't fully related, but try and find some discussion threads on here about how to play evil characters. A lot of those discussions provide advice on how to integrate edgy and misanthropic non-team-players into a game and still function.
If, however, your players refuse to work with you on any of those above points, then unfortunately there's just not much you can do. DND is collaborative, not just among the players, but between the players and the DM. The only way to play involves both sides communicating their wants and expectations of the kind of game you all want to play.
Big advice is to have a sesion 0, make sure the players make characters which work as a team - ask them to each make one tie to each other character, even if that's simply that you've been adventuring together for a while, or grew up in the same town, that sort of thing.
Agree that "cutscenes" are not great in dnd, the players need to be able to get involved or it's not collaborative story telling, it's just story telling!
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This.
You as a DM might think paralyzing everyone is a huge show of strength, but as a player, all that feels like is the DM taking control away, not the villain. Far from demonstrating the villain's power and getting the players to take them seriously, it breaks immersion, which results in the players taking *nothing* seriously, cause what's the point if the DM is just gonna take it all away from us and there's nothing they can do.
The players are only going to have that moment of tragedy and horror at the bad guy killing their npc buddy if it happens despite the players best efforts.
If the players feel like they have an impact on events, they will care about them, and if big bad manages to kill npc friends despite the players doing their best to stop him, then the players are going to hate the villain, and that will motivate them to take the villain down like you want it to. HOWEVER, if you take their choice away from them and force them to watch by, powerless, then the players are going to be annoyed at you, because when you put the character sheets away and just say "you're paralyzed automatically no save", then they know that *you* did that, not a villain acting in character.
End of the day, DND is heroic fantasy, and players don't like being made to feel powerless and un-heroic unless it's the consequences of their own choices/actions.
I remember when I was playing in Adventure League (before everything shut down and it became a huge pain), I had initially designed a very simple character who was very mercenary and relatively amoral who was only concerned about money. However, trying to lean into that just slowed everything down... because of the way Adventure League works, you get a set amount of gold at the end of an adventure, so negotiating for a higher paycheck is pointless and just wastes everyone else's time. Having a character that's not interested in helping people without being promised payment runs into trouble because not every adventure in AL has that as an element... sometimes you're just kind of expected to help people because that's what the adventure is about, and you've got 3 hours to get 6 people through this dungeon.
For D&D, if everyone is playing a bunch of characters who refuse to work together and participate in adventures... well, at that point they're just not playing the game. That's just one of those things you might have to explain to them... if their character isn't going to go on the adventure, then they might as well roll up a new sheet and create a character that will work with others, because as a DM you can't be expected to run 4 separate solo-adventures for each player as they go off on their own.
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There are a couple of issues here.
1) You NEED to have a discussion with the players out of character. Explain that you are NOT running 4 separate solo campaigns - the game doesn't work that way. The players may want to play characters that aren't good team players but the players need to know that they are playing a game in which the characters REQUIRE some reason to work together. Sometimes the DM can fill in that gap by giving them a quest or some other activity and then the players all buy into it. However, if the players are complaining that their characters won't do that then the DM and players have to talk. The players need to understand that the group forms a party, they work together, maybe not all the time but most of the time, they aren't there to backstab and betray the others in the party, they aren't there to ignore them ... since otherwise WHY would any of them choose to travel together?
Talk to the players, and get them to come up with reasons WHY their characters are helping and supporting each other even if they are basically loners who prefer to do things by themselves - there could be lots of backstory reasons, they might have worked together before and found that their skills were complementary, they might know someone in common who got them together, they might even have met in a tavern and become unlikely friends. The players need to come up with ANY reason why these four loners would be working together - something they can accept from a role play point of view.
If they won't do that, tell them to roll up new characters that have some reason to work together.
It happens fairly frequently that players come up with some cool character concept that might not play well with others and upfront during a session 0, I will ask them "Why would anyone else choose to travel or adventure with a self-centered, mean spirited, bad/evil, paranoid, sociopath, psychopath ... or whatever their character is ... if you don't have a reason that works for the other characters then there is no reason for this group of characters to ever work together. If you can't come up with a reason for this character, go back to the drawing board and come up with a character concept you like that works."
2) Cut scenes (i.e. any events that happen in front of the characters that they have no ability to influence) are generally a bad idea. Players want to be involved, they may want to stop bad things from happening. Narrating some atrocity happening to an NPC that a character cares about just to make a point is usually just something that will make the player either sad or angry or both.
If an NPC is going to die for plot reasons, you could have it happen off screen with the PCs not present. Alternatively, you can sometimes resolve these things with an encounter giving the player a chance to roll dice for saving throws or attacks or skill checks to possibly free/rescue the NPC but have elements of the encounter make it extremely clear that these opponents are so difficult that the only/best choice is to escape with the NPC. If the only reason the NPC died was to demonstrate how powerful the opponents were then they really didn't need to die at all. The PCs could have been allowed to rescue them. Or possibily, the PCs could have been defeated and knocked unconscious during the fight, finding themselves locked up with the NPC afterward and then have them escape with the NPC showing the characters not only how powerful the opponent is but giving them a feeling of success from rescuing the NPC.
However, it works out, the DM needs to have an idea of which way it can work out and how they want to have it work out but using unbeatable magic (not even hold person with saving throws) to paralyze them and watch an NPC be slaughtered in front of them is definitely a new DM sort of mistake. This kind of scene sometimes works in movies/books to build a revenge theme but it often doesn't work in a D&D game where real players and their characters are involved.
----------------
TL;DR
Have a chat with your players about teamwork and finding a reason why their characters would travel together at all - if they can't come up with one - have them create new characters.
Try not to railroad characters into a plot by completely removing their choices.
Thank you, good Sir! I will ponder about all this.
I just wish to take the opportunity to thank all of you folks for the time you've spent on this! Thank you kindly! :)