Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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So, as the title says, it´s not about aggressive players, but their characters.
This is something I have been struggling with my group and I´m not sure how to deal with it.
So here is the situation: The group, and one of the characters in particular (the fighter) always acts very aggressive towards any NPC they encounter. He often tells them that he will torture or kill them if they don´t want to give him what he wants, they will murder enemies that already surrendered, etc. So certainly in some situations, it fits and can sometimes be funny, and so far I was generally OK with it.
Or when they encounter a merchant, they are immediately like "Oh, he has just two guards ? We can kill them and take all his stuff"
And the fighter generally wants to cut off the heads of all of his foes and carry those around for the rest of the campaign.
For example in the last session they came up to a castle and their first impulse was to plan how they could murder all the inhabitants so the castle would be theirs.
Now, I think this is a delicate matter as I certainly don´t want to tell them how to play their characters, but to be honest, it is starting to affect my fun of the game a bit. And it kind of does not work within the frame of the adventure module we are playing (which assumes they players are good guys that want to help the people).
Like I really have trouble handling NPC encounters because it´s basically impossible to have someone react reasonably friendly to those characters.
So after last session I decided to have a talk with the players where I told them about my concerns. On one hand I think it was the right thing to do, because I, as the DM, am a player who should enjoy the game as well. On the other hand, I still feel kind of bad to tell them to do things differently...
Any tips on how to delicately handle this ?
btw. it´s not an online group, it´s a group of real life friends, so finding another group is not an option ;)
It's okay to just ask him to tone it back a little bit. He's acting in a Chaotic Evil manner, but is he Chaotic Evil? Probably not. In my game, one of the players plays a warlock who talks to his dead twin brother and the god he has a pact with that nobody else can see, and is maintaining a conversation with three people at once, which makes it difficult to interact with him, and thus my NPCs just turn to someone else while he works out his issues. It's a hilarious addition to the game, and can sometimes make things difficult, but everyone enjoys it and I've found ways to incorporate it. Have your NPCs turn away, and hopefully he'll get the after you tell him why.
He doesn't have much besides the skin on his bones. Me: I'll take the skin on his bones, then.
"You see a gigantic, monstrous praying mantis burst from out of the ground. It sprays a stream of acid from it's mouth at one soldier, dissolving him instantly, then it turns and chomps another soldier in half with it's- "
"When are we gonna take a snack break?"
This line sounds like a person who is very young.
I think you pull the one person aside, and not be delicate as it appears they are not delicate in the game. Flat out tell him what is giving you the creeps. It sounds like he got laughs and encouragement in the beginning and is taking it even further. Have him dial it back or the "law" may be after him sooner not later.
Have the Law show up if he continues. How far you want the law to go, is your choice but if you bring them into the game their needs to be consequences and that is what the Law would be.
While it is important to keep the distinction between player and character, it’s really working against you in this case. The character isn’t doing those things, the player is choosing to make the character do those things. The player is not a passive observer.
The rule of thumb is, if you find a player saying “but that’s what my character would do” it generally means they are being a jerk, and they are probably aware that they are being a jerk. They can choose to make their character do something else.
The answer is to have an out of character conversation with the player, and tell them to tone it way down. It’s best if you can give specific examples to them of situations where their actions crossed a line into making the game less fun for you (and likely for others at the table).
The other lesson is, even friends who’ve known each other for years can benefit from a session 0. The good news is, it’s never too late to have one. Sit everyone down and talk about the kind of game you all want to have. Get everyone on the same page.
'Your playstyle isn't compatible with my DM style, I'm afraid that you are no longer welcome at my table. I don't have fun DMing for the type of playstyle you have. I am not telling you that you're having fun wrong, rather that you're likely to find more fun at a table with a different style.'
Seriously, I've DMd too much and too often to be messing around with players I get a bad vibe from. So, I remove them from the table and let them find somewhere they'll have more fun. There are way more players than DMs and you'll always be able to find more players. Life's too short to suffer through a player who is causing you not to enjoy yourself too.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
While this might be acceptable advice for pick up games, it is terrible advice for this thread where OP explicitly says that the players are a group of real world friends. Life might be too short to play with bad strangers, but it is never too short to have a grounded conversation with your friends.
The other individuals who have said OP should have a conversation with the problematic player and impose in-game and natural consequences to problematic actions have the right of it.
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Looking more at the consequences side of things, I want to build a little on Character77006’s suggestion of sending the law after the party. This is a perfectly valid solution at lower levels, but starts to fall off when you get to higher levels. Why? To feel like they matter to the story, the players do not need to feel they are the most powerful people in the land, but they do need to feel they are heroes who can solve problems the regular guards cannot. If the regular guards are able to easily put them in their place, a high level party will start to wonder subconsciously “what are we even doing here if the regular militia could have solved this?”
This is one of the many reasons I like to pepper my world with characters at or above the party’s power level, albeit characters who have other things going on so can’t just swoop in to save the day in place of the party. This not only gives you NPCs to feel like the party’s friends and equals and makes the party feel like a more organic part of the world, it also allows you to send high level bounty hunters after them, or a hero come out of retirement, or for the person they tried to rob secretly being an ancient dragon. If you set the stage early for a powerful world, you can help avoid some of the arrogance that comes from party members who think their relative power compared to a CR 1 guard makes them untouchable.
It's really not. One of my closest friends got this response two years ago. Of course I followed it up with a more precise discussion over where the incompatibility lay, but we're still friends. You see a real friend will get it and respect boundaries. My best mate loves football, doesn't mean I'm expecting that I should be able to be part of his 5-a-side team just because we're friends. I'd be dreadful. Same principle applies here. You can be friends and not engage in the same hobbies and interests.
I've held this titbit back for a good long while on these forums, but stuff it. Sometimes friends make the worst players at a table because you feel obligated to cross boundaries that you otherwise wouldn't so as *gasp* not to offend. If a good amount of therapy has taught me anything it's that real friends will respect your boundaries. If the person in question flakes on you then they were never friends to begin with.
Maybe it's my weird brain, but so much of our social intercourse is built around compromising ourselves for the sake of people we call friends. That way leads to burnout and underlying health issues. Frankly, calling people out for crossing boundaries is healthy behaviour. True friends will understand that.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
Traumatize him. And I mean that in the kindest way. Make a friendly NPC, can be any kind you choose, then turn him into a dragon or something. Dragons, Fey, Demons, and even Celestials can all transform into humanoid form, make it a green dragon who just wants money and decided to make it legitimately, a fey who is doing business on the material plane, something where technically the character is still in the wrong for fighting it in the first place, but will still get his butt whooped by a high level creature. That, or have the character get arrested for it since this is illegal in most countries. Also, in the DMG there is a section about players exhibiting antisocial behaviors, so check that out. Don’t feel bad for asking your players for you to have fun too, this is a game for both the players and the DM to enjoy.
(That castle could be owned by a vampire in disguise)
Session 0. It's never too late for one.
Explain in that session that you're looking for a game of good or neutral people, and all this cutting off heads and murdering the locals is definitely evil. Explain that, whilst Evil play can be fun and entertaining, it needs everyone to be doing it and the DM to plan out the campaign accordingly, and you haven't planned for an evil campaign. Explain that the world you're building is meant to be interacted with in certain ways, and that you will have to withhold all the best bits because you don't want the awesome king or the cool wizard to be decapitated by a psychotic character.
Ask the group what they want. If they want an evil campaign, consider making one - but advise them that even evil characters have to show some restraint. Try this sort of thing in the presence of the evil king and you'll be executed, without trial. Know your limits, and you'll be fine.
If they want the evil campaign, then send it in a different direction and swap out "orcs" for "Guards" and "evil king" for "good king" and set them on a similar quest. Chances are, they'll try murder-hoboing in an evil city and discover that "Evil" doesn't mean "Okay with you killing their friends", and they'll get murdered right back.
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Its ok if the player likes to act that way.
But there is nothing stopping him from gaining a "patron" who demands very bad things from him. Very soon the "patron"could demand he not associate with those do gooders in his party. Either he kills them, turns them bad, or leaves.
It should go without saying that this is incredibly bad advice. Allowing a player to continue to disrupt the game, ruining the experience for others, with the long term “solution” being an extended period of misery for everyone until things finally come to a head and PvP might occur?
That is a D&D horror story in the making.
I agree with Caerwyn, letting the frustration and bad vibes sit longer is not OK, only causes more friction.
Also, never try to solve issues that can be talked about or at least removed from with in game solutions. Doesn't end up fun for anyone (unless the group agrees with it, but that's a given).
"You're not chaotic evil! You're just chaotic SHIT!"
I don't think there is a delicate approach to this situation. Straightforward is the way to go here. Have a frank conversation with the player to express how their behavior is disruptive to the game and (I assume) doesn't fit with the way everyone else wants to play. Explain that "kill everyone" isn't compatible with the kind of setting and storytelling in this game. But also, make it clear that within the game world the behavior won't go unnoticed or tolerated. As Caerwyn mentioned, the guards probably aren't going to cut it as a solution. But your problem player should understand that merchants aren't going to deal with them, quest givers aren't going to talk to them, governing figures are going to consider them untrustworthy, and everything up to and including dragons, archfey, and the gods themselves will have terribly little patience for senseless slaughter of civilians. And as Thoruk suggested, bridge that into a session zero discussion on what everyone as a group wants.
The main thing is to be clear. It sounds like you've gone along with the behaviour for a while so he probably thinks it is totally fine to do what he is doing. You need to lay down the law so to say that this is going to destroy the game because the game assumes the players are good guys who generally follow the law, and generally get along with NPCs. Then mention that you personally find it disruptive to the immersion of the game, and to maintain the immersion there will have to be in-game consequences...
Thanks for all the responses.
So it might have come across worse than it actually is. So no ones fun has been ruined (yet). I was hoping to be able to steer away from that before it happens.
And yes, it´s been going on for a while. I tried to give some ingame hints, like for example when he was carrying around the cut-off head of a dragon wyrmling all the time, I had people comment on the smell and a tavern keeper denied him entry to the tavern and stuff like that.
Thankfully, they don´t always act on those ideas they have.
But the last session was the first time I noticed that it is starting to annoy me and I felt like I had to speak up.
So for example I made it clear to them that there is no way they would just be able to take over this castle, even if they killed the current lord in it. Like the townsfolk wouldn´t just accept that.
I also told them that killing the guys how had surrendered would be considered murder and would have consequences. Thankfully, the groups paladin also heavily argued against that.
But it´s really starting to annoy me how quickly they jump to the idea of killing or torturing everyone.
My main concern is that it doesn´t fit into the campaign we are playing (Rime of the Frostmaiden, which was actually chosen by the players)
Spoiler:
Later in the campaign, Ten-Towns will be attacked and possibly destroyed, and I every time they come to a new town, I try to make the players like the townsfolk, so the attack will have a bigger impact later on. But so far I´ve failed to do that, because the players always act aggressivle towards everyone and don´t seem to care about them at all.
But of course I can´t tell them that...
The person playing that fighter is completely out of line and it needs to stop immediately, or that behavior will completely derail your entire game, end your campaign, and all your good players will just quit.
Before starting the next session, before anyone even takes out their character sheet, you need to announce a few things. Inform all players that willful violations of laws and customs will trigger a proportionate response from the Town Guard, or the Local Militia, or the retired 20th level assassin rogue who actually owns that shop the party is robbing. Ask yourself, honestly, what would happen if you walked into a Starbucks and started beheading baristas? A large crowd of armed people would show up and stop you, possibly even end you. That's what! Well, that's what needs to happen to that fighter in-game. If you were to walk around in your day-to-day life with a decapitated human head tied to your belt, what would happen? Same thing! The cops would show up and the rest of your life would be very painful and very short. And remember, our cops don't have access to Hold Person, or Forcecage, or Time Stop. Every town has guards. Every city has soldiers. Every retired 20th level character lives somewhere. Also, cities and towns all talk to one another. Commit a crime in City A, and by the time you reach City B, their entire Militia is waiting to arrest you.
This is a game. A fantasy game of imagination and adventure. Torture is not that. Violations of basic human decency are not that. If you're not having fun, why continue? There is no delicate way to fix this. You have to be vocal and you have to be firm.
"Guys, this isn't my idea of fun. Okay? No more torture, no more senseless murder. We're gonna run a fun lighthearted adventure, and that's that. If that's not what you want, that's fine. There's the door. Plenty of other tables out there. But if you're still sitting at this table 60 seconds from now, then you're going to follow some rules. Understand?"
That's it.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
As a starter, in your first post it looked like this was a one-player problem; your most recent post makes this look like a mostly party-wide problem. Frankly, it sounds a bit like you are playing with a group of younger players who have not quite learned that, just because D&D is a sandbox, does not mean there are not consequences. The primary solution is the same - you hold a mid-game session zero where you redirect the party, you tell them their murder hobo tendencies make it hard to run the campaign as written and make it difficult for you as the DM... and then you straight up tell them that you will be giving organic consequences naturally arising from their actions. Make it clear your goal is not to punish them, but rather the simple fact that D&D is a cooperative story, and when they drive the story to a darker place, the world will naturally respond.
Let us talk a moment about natural consequences, since you have provided some more detail on what campaign you are running. I will start by saying that Rime of the Frostmaiden is a notoriously bad adventure - it has issues being directionless, has some serious pacing problems, and has a main villain who inexplicably dies with two chapters left in the campaign and who is so utterly uninteresting as written D&D Beyond once did an entire article pretty much apologizing for how bad Auril was handled in the text.
I say that not to dissuade you from running the adventure - you have already committed - but to bring up another point: Because the campaign is such a mess of concepts thrown at the wall, you actually have a lot of ways to organically provide consequences within the context of the campaign.
You have two factions - the Zhent and Xardorok Sunblight - to work with. This gives you two factions that might not take kindly to the party causing chaos that might draw too much attention and ruin their own plans. Or maybe their plans are able to advance quicker because factions like the Harpers and town guards are preoccupied with your party. If your party wants to keep the guards from doing their real job, as long as you telegraph in advance they are making the situation worse and worse (at least 3 telegraphs I would say), you could always do something like drop the dragon on them early or a much, much more powerful, better designed dragon when the time would have naturally come.
You have Auril, and whatever relationship the townsfolk have with her in your setting. She is the goddess of winter's cruelty, but canonically is very protective of arctic creatures that can survive her harsh winters. She could take a bit of a protective air and, if the party are exiled from the towns into where she rules supreme, punish them for trying to hurt those she has taken claim of.
You have the Harpers, who might lecture the party or actively try to stop them so they can go back to focusing on their old enemies the Zhent.
The campaign gives you a lot of different groups already existing that might impose consequences on your party - think through what you do or do not want to actually get done in your campaign and what you wish to highlight, and then base consequences on those elements.
They've already told you the main solutions for this kind of players.
First off, session 0 is where you should bring boundaries up.
You can always talk to him in private. I'd give him a "yellow card", that is, I'd tell him I'm not comfortable with his roleplaying style, explaining to him why, respecfully. If he continues with that kind of behaviour, he'd be out of the table.
THAT SAID, I prefer to tell that person his behaviour is a problem within the game. That is, if he tries to attack/kill an NPC, that NPC will be (1) a lvl 20 retired adventurer and will crush him; (2) or a disguised strong monster that smashes him straight away.
Another option is to make consequences matter: if they start killing NPCs, the logic consequence is guards will end up searching for them to put them in jail. If they can't find/capture them, the mayor/king/whoever is in charge of the territory will put a bounty on their heads, which means they will be constantly harassed until they are captured or killed.
They will eventually realise that kind of playstyle is not fun and they will stop behaving like that. It worked for me with one of my best friends, and he appreciated that I didn't kick him out of the table. hahaha
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I personally wouldn't throw in-game consequences at them until you've had an out-of-game discussion about it. Let them know that this is not an evil campaign, that there will be consequences for continuing this behavior, and give examples of what you think/wish they could have done differently to make sure they realize there are options for NPC interactions other than violence. This seems like it might be younger players, and in my experience sometimes younger players don't realize that friendly NPCs are a thing - they view everything you put in front of them as a potential combat encounter. But I could be wrong. Either way, it's never too late for a session 0-style check-in about how things are going. Maybe there's a reason why they aren't getting emotionally attached to the world and seem to have no problem inciting violence, and that's something you should try to figure out. But they need to know that it's starting to affect your fun before you get resentful. And if you're actually friends, they shouldn't have any problem with this kind of discussion.
If they continue to make these same violent choices after you talk, break out the in-game consequences. Throw some people in jail, put a bounty on their heads, make a deceptively powerful NPC that crushes them, etc...whatever you like to show them that just because it's a fantasy world doesn't mean there aren't laws/social contracts.
I totally agree. It's never too late for a session 0 and I think that's the first step to take. If things go south, release the kraken. 😈
Anyway, all these options that you can use within the game against the disrupting player(s) I'd only use them if the rest of the table is having fun too. If there's only one person who's disrupting the game, and his or her behaviour is ruining other people's experience, I'd seriously talk to that player in private straight away, explaining him or her the situation.
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