Ask the GMs: Characters not trusting the other PCs
What do you do when one character doesn’t trust the other characters, and it starts to degrade game play? A game master asks:
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Johnn’s answer:
In my opinion, the best option is to have a chat with the player about making his character fit in better. The player is probably wrapped up in roleplaying the personality of his PC and doesn’t want to “betray his character” by doing something that doesn’t make sense.
First, congrats if this is the case, because this is an awesome player who will take the roleplaying of your group up a level if allowed to do so.
Second, the player has crafted what sounds to be a character with too much group friction to be playable as-is. Meaning, the character has got to change or to go. The player will object. But, it’s no different than if a player brought a robot PC to a fantasy game, an evil PC to a good party, or a 50th level PC to a group of 1st level PCs. The character just doesn’t fit and it’s causing problems.
Fortunately, I think you can turn this situation into something positive for your group. Talk with the player alone and explain the difficulties the character is causing the group. Then offer to craft a storyline that would result in the character being more group-trusting. The storyline gives the roleplayer lots of great game fodder for his PC and it gives you more material to game with. If the player balks at this, bring to his attention that the definition of hero is one who undergoes transformation or change. Ask him to check out Joseph Campbell, movie guides, and literature guides. Characters change – because they must – and that makes them heroic. So, work out with the player a storyline that would result in his character becoming trustful of all the other PCs. If the two of you work this out together then you are sure to get your player’s support.
Depending on your group, you might fill your other players in. I would, but it depends. You don’t want to show favoritism, but you also want to resolve the situation, and if you are getting cooperation and a chance to resolve things quickly, then it’s worth the effort.
The other option is to ask the player to make a new PC – one who fits in with the party. This is not as good an option and might cause personal issues. But, every player at the game table has to understand it’s a cooperative game. It’s not a game of selfish destructive character gaming. :)
Mike’s answer:
There might be more going on here than meets the eye, and I’m not entirely confident that the GM asking the question has put his finger on the real problem. Perhaps the player in question has good reasons not to trust the others. Is this an issue of trust between players, or trust between characters?
If the player in question was a novice, in comparison to the others, he might be feeling overwhelmed by past stories of greed and betrayal spun for his entertainment and enlightenment by the more experienced players.
Perhaps the player’s behaviour is reflecting a real-world distrust of the other players, and not just their characters. These things crop up from time to time, even amongst friends, and it can sometimes be hard to put sufficient distance between out-of-game experiences and those taking place in-game; they will tend to surface, whether we want them to or not. If the problem is that the player doesn’t trust the other players, the DM needs to get to the reasons for that lack of trust before he can find a solution. Real-world problems require real-world answers, they can’t be resolved in-game!
Perhaps Johnn is right, and the character – not the player – is at fault. Again, perhaps he has good reason not to trust the other characters, either because of the character type, the background that he has chosen, or past events that didn’t sit well with the character. Or maybe it’s just that the other characters havn’t given the PC a reason to trust them yet! Bribing him to stay with the group clearly isn’t enough, in his character’s mindset (and would only aggravate the situation if the character is paranoid about the intentions of the other PCs) – they will, through their behaviour and shared experiences, have to find some reason to work together, some common goal. The players may well have agreed on something along those lines, but have the characters?
If the problem is of a purely in-game nature, then metagaming a solution is a viable tactic. Taking the problem outside the mindset of the character and talking to the PCs owner about his character AS A PLAYER may lead to a solution, as Johnn suggests. There are really two classes of solution: revisiting the character concept, or a conspiracy.
Johnn’s advice neatly covers the ‘revisiting the character concept’ solution set. The alternative type of answer is for the character to continue to distrust the other PCs, but to hide the fact from them! If the GM is satisfied that the character has good reasons for his behaviour, or has a character development arc of his own in mind, this can be a viable solution. To set it in motion, what’s needed is for the PC causing the problem to have a side-encounter of some sort that gives him reason to conceal his distrust, and for the GM to then arrange an encounter that justifies the aparrant ‘change of attitude’ on the part of the PC, just as he would if the character was really going to change attitude.
In many ways, this can be the ideal solution as it gives the campaign the best of both worlds – the player gets to play the character that he wants to, and party harmony is restored. In other ways, it may be seen as deferring the problem for another day. It is also an excellent solution if the GM decides that the character is unjustified in his distrust of the other characters; at a later point, the “side encounter” that persuades the PC to spy on the others can be revealed as a villain using the PC for his own ignoble ends. This gives the PC a big scene once the deception is revealed in which he has to attempt to atone for the wrong that he has done, (perhaps dying in the process) – definitely heroic!
There is a third class of problem that could also be at play here – besides the purely real-world and purely game-play causes of trouble, there is a transition layer between the two that can be cause this sort of problem. This is where difficulties in preferred playing style lurk in ambush, something that occasionally even catches out the experienced GM. Perhaps the player in question wants to spend more time roleplaying in character, while the others have a greater taste for hack-and-slash. This would explain the players intention to dwell on roleplaying his PCs distrust, and the mounting frustration of the other players. If this is the cause of the problem, then none of the solutions offered so far will ultimately solve it; the player will simply move on to some other ‘deep-immersion’ roleplaying of his character, slowing the game down just as much as ever, and frustrating the other players just as much.
I’m afraid that there’s no easy answer to that particular problem. There are some articles and past e-zines at the roleplaying tips website that might help out. Perhaps encounters in which the offending PC gets to roleplay instead of participating in battle while the other characters hold off the nasties, but these are easy to overuse. Ultimately, this type of problem comes down to one of player expectations, and customising the campaign to try and satisfy both. In other words, the best solution – and it’s not perfect, by any means – lies in changing what you as GM are doing!
Last, it might also be that the problem ISN’T with the player in question, but is actually the frustration being felt by the other players. Perhaps they feel that he is getting more than his fair share of the spotlight, and that is the real issue!
So, before you can begin solving this problem, you first have to identify exactly what it’s cause is. That means talking to the player – in private, and possibly at length – about the campaign, his playing style, his character, and why his character is acting as he is – without telling him about the problems that currently exist unless HE brings them up. DON’T tell the player that the others are getting frustrated, it can generate hard feelings – tell the player that AS GM, you want to understand what he’s doing and why so that you can better tailor scenarios to suit.
Have the same discussions with each of the other players as well – you might well find that there is actually more than one source of the complaint, and that they are merely resulting in a common symptom.
Once you know the real cause, you can tailor a solution (if there is one) to suit.
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February 23rd, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Good answer Mike. Nice coverage of the player to player, or player conspiracy, issue. Now that you mention it, I did GM a game long ago where the players singled out the new guy and forced that player to leave. Reflecting back on it, it was just an issue of the group getting used to the new player’s style. A tight-knit group can’t expect a new player to know all the in-jokes, house rules, and social things that only a comrade would. New players-as-outsiders sometimes have a steep road ahead of them unless the GM reaches out, which I didn’t at the time. Good lesson!
February 23rd, 2009 at 2:43 pm
I always go for an honest approach: Talk to the player, find out the issue from his side. Tell him the other players are getting annoyed and something has to give. Ask him how he thinks things ought to be resolved. If nothing is forthcoming, everyone discusses it openly and suggestions are made.
These guys are good friends. They should be able to discuss things openly and that’s always the best policy.
Rafe’s last blog post..When a New Game Comes A-Callin’
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Good advice Rafe.
February 24th, 2009 at 3:30 am
Caveat : This is all very subjective and subject to errors of interpretation.
I’ve recently has a similar experience. A player who played his character the same way he played all his other charcters in other game worlds : self-involved in his own pleasures to the point of lunacy a in serious/grim campaign world. His “super-hero” would have made a better super-villain! Specifically : His character wanted the group to adapt to him rather than it being a mutual effort; of finding a common ground. After three scenarios, the campaign had slowed down due to time lost due his wierdness.
My méthod was to 1) get him to arrive 5 minutes late. During these five minutes I laid out the problem to the others of the group and said “Guys, I’d like you to make a real effort to reach out to [this guys PC] and include him in the groups plans and activities. I’ll ask him to do the same thing from his direction.” (and I did). This worked for a short while, but no longer. The player slid back into his evil ways and the group got fed up with having to make special efforts to reach out and even more to cleaning up his messes (trying to kill your characters way-more-powerful future self because you disagree with his religion…?!). So that player is no longer part of our group… Harsh, but necessary.
If I’d known the players lack of capacity to adapt, I’d never have invited him to play with the group.
Morals of the story :
1)It takes a group effort.Open communication and teamwork to resolve the problem are heavy-weight problem-solving tools.
2)Evaluate cost (effort involved in keeping him in the group and cleaning up his messes) and benefits (does he enhance or diminish your groups evenings? An investment of effort to improve this : will it be worth it? How likely is it to work?)
3) If the answer is “Not worth it, not now and quite likely not ever.” you need to think about separating the player *character* from your group…. either by creating a new character or by bidding farewell to the player.
February 24th, 2009 at 6:54 am
An alternate viewpoint. There are a set of players out there for whom the point of RPGing is to take on a fictional persona and investigate a fictional world rather than “play the game” and hurry towards achieving whatever arbitrary “adventure goals” have been set out. Perhaps they get their enjoyment from inter-character interplay rather than just getting 50 more XP. The group should ask themselves if this is what they mean by “slowing things down.” “What, you’re not continually doing the metagame-optimized thing in every situation because you think you have a personality with thoughts and feelings and values and morals? What are you, a freak?”
For a person like this, they are honestly trying to play a character. A character doesn’t have to be a hedonistic psychopath to not necessarily trust four trained killers he just met. Besides “bribery,” what have the other *characters* done that would cause a person meeting and engaging with them to trust them? Perhaps this is a RP learning experience for the group and not this guy.
Or maybe he’s a jerk that needs setting straight. But all too often I see that assumption in an established group that does things a certain way and has become comfortable at their current level of RP. New ideas, even frankly “better” ones, get rejected out of complacency.
Consider handling situations like this in character rather than immediately leaping to metagame. Try to get the character to trust your characters for reasons more sound than “we’re all PCs!.” If he actually does things that in the real world would cause you to attack him or “fire” him or whatever, do that. (Playing in character works both ways. If someone steals from their party members because “they’re a thief,” then turn ’em in to the cops and say “I don’t want you around me and my stuff, dude.” Then often it may be new character time so that the player can rejoin the action.
mxyzplk’s last blog post..Fourth “Empire of Ashes” Session Summary Posted
February 24th, 2009 at 8:13 am
@ Loz: You’re right, but ejecting a player should be a last resort. I’ve had to do it once, and I’ve had players walk out (one player made a habit of doing so every second week, it seemed), but its not something to be considered until all other avenues have been exhausted, just as you did.
@ Mxyzplk: You have a valid point, one that I thought I had covered in my answer. However, your comments added a fresh perspective on the whole question: this is exactly the sort of thing that you might expect to see from a clash between an “old school” roleplayer and gamers whose experience derives from MMORPGs and other online gaming. Which is a whole different can of worms. As I suggested, it might come down to the players having different expectations of what the game is going to be all about.
From the minimal information provided in the question, I get the impression that most of not the whole group are relative novices when it comes to gaming, though maybe that’s only the DM. Which is a whole different possibility again: I have seen some cases in which experienced DMs have trouble “letting go” when they are playing in someone else’s campaign. I have even seen one GM-turned-player who, out of frustration with a system mechanic that wasn’t working, deliberately set out to sabotage one of my campaigns because I had all the players that he wanted to be available for one of his games, something he later admitted. It would have been far better all round if he had simply told me of the problems he was having with the game mechanic, then we could have worked out a solution together, just as we did when someone else encountered the same problem.
Ultimately, anything in the whole gamut of human emotions could be the root cause of the problem, and unless that root cause is identified and addressed, anything other solutions will be bandaids at best.
February 25th, 2009 at 7:23 am
Here’s how I handled a similar situation at my gaming table.
1) I met with the player individually to find out what was really going on. I was very pleased to learn that it was just the player getting really into the character and nothing more.
2) We decided that it would be best if this character left the group. Together we planned a spectacular adventure that resulted with betrayal and the problem character slipping away unpunished.
3) We agreed that I could and would use this character as a reoccurring villain, with strong input from the player who developed the character in the first place.
In the months to follow, the party has grown even closer, including the new character that joined the group shortly after the betrayal. Now they look forward to any chance to fight this major enemy. It’s become much more personal for the entire party.
What was originally a big problem has turned into a great storyline.
February 25th, 2009 at 8:19 am
@ Ameron: It’s been said that every problem is also an opportunity, and I guess your experience demonstrates the best possible outcome from the situation.
February 25th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Really sounds like a perfect and very rewarding way out Ameron! Thanks for sharing.
TheLemming’s last blog post..Short Updates 2009-02-25
February 26th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
It seems to me that the major problem is that the new player is hogging too much of the DMs time, but I do like the way he is roll-playing, he may not want to get to close to the other pc’s until he trusts them or may even have another agenda. Maybe a bit of jealousy by other pc’s by his roll playing is getting too much.
I would keep asking each of the other pc’s “What are you doing now?” at regular intervals, to keep them involved at an equal level and try to give them all an equal playing time.
If the new player is still trying to hog the DM time then it’s time for a one to one chat.
I know it’s difficult as a DM not to give too much time to a player who has his own interesting agenda. I’ve been in a few games like that and it does get a bit annoying for the other PCs.
June 6th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Another viewpoint to consider is the GM’s world – how dominant is racism in it and how dominating is the GM in regards to how a player chooses to play? I was in a campaign in which the GM instructed his players to each choose a different race, and proceeded to tell his players essentially they were leaders of their respective races, and there is massive racial tension AND literally said “You all do not trust each other and you are to roleplay it that way and we’re gonna start off with a major assassination attempt”. Out of 5 players, we had 1 dead PC, 1 dying PC, 1 PC imprisoned, and 1 other fleeing the city, all in one session. And guess what? No one’s wanting to get the campaign back together, especially after we talked to the GM about trying to make this campaign work and he refused to budge. While its okay to have racial tension in your world, give your players a means to interact civilly.
Sorry if I offend anyone, just trying to cover all points, and nothing was really said about how the GM ran the game.
June 7th, 2009 at 8:53 am
No offence taken, Mama Lin. But in this particular case the situation seems to be the opposite of racism. If the player in question was simply roleplaying a racist position decreed by the GM, the GM would surely have recognised that as being the cause of the mistrust.
As for the example you cite, I would not be all that interested in participating either, unless the position described was intended purely to be the starting position of the various factions, not to change unless such change could be justified by a pattern of trustworthy behaviour.
While roleplaying is not generally a competitive persuit, unlike a board game, giving characters a starting position for the race that they represent, and specific political objectives to be achieved that are in competition, can be perfectly valid. In fact, I have seen and heard of such games in various political science classes modelled on the United Nations where this technique is used to demonstrate the complexity of issues.
I am curious as to exactly what was said when you “talked to the GM about trying to make this campaign work and he refused to budge”. Was this a case of the players attempting to issue ultimatums to the GM, or suggesting that they learn to work together simply because their characters are PCs? Was the GM justified in taking his hard-line position?
While it’s true that a campaign doesn’t exist without players, it’s equally true that the GM is more than a mere facilitator for the players. It’s his world and his campaign, and while the players are participants, they don’t have the authority to overrule the GM just because it makes for better gameplay for them. This authority belongs to the GM exclusively; but it has to be balanced with the responsibility for making the campaign enjoyable, or (as in the example case) it will not last. Personally, I think his biggest mistake was starting things off with the PCs in such a dominant position, the focus of each race’s expectations and prejudices. I would have started them as relative nobodies, with mandated iniital attitudes, and let both the ruler being targetted for assassination, AND the assassins, AND those behind the assassination, all be NPCs. This puts the PCs in a position to find a way to work through their prejudices and find a way to cooperate without putting the entire campaign concept on the chopping block. Even so, success on the part of the PCs in achieving some level of mutual respect and cooperation would not have changed the world – that would have been the central task of the entire campaign. From antagonism and imminant war to a lasting peace due to the PCs actions – that’s a campaign worth playing in!
June 16th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Mike, that was a heck of an answer about making the distrust into a more important part of the character’s concept, rather than less! I would have answered just like Johnn myself, but I’ve never heard an idea like your “conspiracy” and I like it. It seems much more like an example of “yes, and” playing off the what the player wants.