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Is forbidding PvP considered a foul in OSR style games?

That_Scumbag

Literate
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Nov 4, 2024
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17
I've been wondering, how do you handle PvP tendencies in games where you don't want them in as a GM? And how far is it considered "acceptable" to go? Do you outright forbid any clear attempt by assholes to sabotage and derail the party? Do you allow it but then let the rest of the party slit the asshole's throat/firebomb his tent while sleeping?
 

Sacibengala

Prophet
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Aug 16, 2014
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I DM OSR for 7 years and I never had any situation of the players wanting to PvP. I just say at the beginning that it is a game of teamwork and cooperation. It's all about wilderness/dungeon exploration with treasure for xp mentality. It always worked just fine.
 

catfood

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I had a game where one of my players wanted to betray the others. I don't remember exactly how it got to that point. I think a villain blackmailed him into doing it or something. I wish I could remember the details now that I think about it. I might have been the one instigating the whole thing. Anyway it even got to a point where he allied himself with some villains to do the rest in, but he lost in the end. It was a very unique experience and a very tense fight. We all had a lot of fun. I think it's doable as long as everyone is aboard with it and can make for some very memorable moments. If players want to do this you could give it a try as long as it makes sense in the context of the story. The only thing to be careful is with how you split up the scenes. For example I had to switch scenes when the traitor was out planning his attack so I had to be careful not to drag those out for too long because the other players could get bored just watching only me and the other player interact.
 

darkpatriot

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Like most questions tabletop RPG related, it depends on if the players and DM find it fun or not. Especially those on the losing side. And there is a wide player spectrum for player conflict. All the way from undermining each other in minor ways such as one of the characters pocketing some treasure and not informing the other characters all the way to player outright murdering each other.

It can be difficult to accurately judge if all the players are into it. Most people would enjoy it if they are the ones who come out on top or get one over on someone else, but that same person might have a fit if another player screws them over in some way. I have gamed with the same group for decades now though, so we have a pretty good understanding of what everyone enjoys and what boundaries they have. So I don't have any particularly useful advice for how to establish what everyone is okay with and would enjoy when you don't know them very well. Ask them, I guess?

Personally, as a DM I generally draw the line at players killing each other or creating conflicts with each other that would cause them to not be able to be in the same party together. Because DMing split parties is a lot more work and not very rewarding, imo.

Edit: I see I might have misread the question a bit, as it is more how to prevent/stop it if the DM doesn't want it. The way I would handle that is I just wouldn't let them do it. Just say, "No, you can't do that" and then explain the reason you aren't allowing it. If the player is being difficult about it, then there are probably mismatched expectations for the game/campaign and you will need to reset expectations for how the game/campaign is going to work. Setting proper expectations ahead of time can help prevent that.
 
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udm

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After some prior experiences of allowing pvp and having the entire campaign derail, I just tell them no from the start. If you want to pvp, go play a wargame. RPGs are a cooperative game.

Occasionally I do get idiots who still try to stir shit, in which case I'd gladly exclude them from the next session.
 

Darth Roxor

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I once GM'd an entire campaign where more or less everyone in the party was scheming against each other, which eventually led to 4 of the 6 players killing the other 2.

It was great fun and everyone remembers it fondly to this day! However, it was also pretty difficult to run and a bit exhausting, so I think after it was done everyone came to the unspoken conclusion that while fun, it's best kept to a minimum from now on.

Then again, this wasn't exactly OSR but Dark Heresy, which can lend itself naturally to such behaviours depending on how things go, but I still see nothing wrong with it, though I think all the players have to give it the green light for it to work right. Obviously unless it's just one player who ends up a traitor due to circumstances, then it shouldn't be communicated, and again I see only opportunities from that rather than problems.
 

Jaedar

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Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
It was great fun and everyone remembers it fondly to this day! However, it was also pretty difficult to run and a bit exhausting, so I think after it was done everyone came to the unspoken conclusion that while fun, it's best kept to a minimum from now on.
I do in fact fondly remember it!

But yeah, it's a dangerous can of worms to open. It can easily take over from everything else. But I think the only time I was actually upset by it was when we played shadowrun, and one of the PCs backstabbed everyone else in the last 5 minutes (it was a oneshot scenario).
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
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The answer to 99.9% of generalized tabletop questions is "it depends."

If we're playing a one-shot dungeon crawl scenario and someone makes a cool plan to kill everyone at the end to run away with the loot, hey man you go right on ahead.

You planning to go on a randomized murder spree the first session of a long campaign we spent ages preparing for, then first of all: how are you even at my table, I got rid of everyone with that insufferable personality before I turned 18. Second of all, get the fuck out of my living room
 

That_Scumbag

Literate
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Nov 4, 2024
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Jeffro-Gygaxian timekeeping solves this. Player competition up to and including PVP becomes desirable. Multiple characters, multiple parties, one dynamic world reacting to all of them. Watch this entire series of 20-40 minute videos (well over 13 hours) for a basic primer on the concepts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cte_fhco12I&list=PL_z29m150g5pF-58Np0vhDyqxMapISXay

Yes, but what if you run a single consistent table of 4-5 players without patron play? 1:1 time would not help much there. Perhaps the opposite.
 
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Oberon

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Jeffro-Gygaxian timekeeping solves this. Player competition up to and including PVP becomes desirable. Multiple characters, multiple parties, one dynamic world reacting to all of them. Watch this entire series of 20-40 minute videos (well over 13 hours) for a basic primer on the concepts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cte_fhco12I&list=PL_z29m150g5pF-58Np0vhDyqxMapISXay

Yes, but what if you run a single consistent table of 4-5 players without patron play? 1:1 time would not help much there. Perhaps the opposite.
Refer to video 38 2:31 :obviously:
 

That_Scumbag

Literate
Joined
Nov 4, 2024
Messages
17
Jeffro-Gygaxian timekeeping solves this. Player competition up to and including PVP becomes desirable. Multiple characters, multiple parties, one dynamic world reacting to all of them. Watch this entire series of 20-40 minute videos (well over 13 hours) for a basic primer on the concepts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cte_fhco12I&list=PL_z29m150g5pF-58Np0vhDyqxMapISXay

Yes, but what if you run a single consistent table of 4-5 players without patron play? 1:1 time would not help much there. Perhaps the opposite.
Refer to video 38 2:31 :obviously:

I will, thank you.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2017
Messages
1,472
I think forbidding PvP is kind of gay and breaks immersion. If you think the group for which you're running a game is made up of the sort of people that will be at each others' throats for petty grievances, always avoid any systems where rolling a new character will take up a lot of time (e.g.: Shadowrun), or make sure they have rolled 4-5 characters each before starting the campaign. I knew a group that always did the latter, because they had been playing together for so many years that they knew they'd start fights over minor disagreements and that usually ended with more than 2 dead PCs. For example, one such fight was during a D&D campaign over which inn the group would stay at. They started fighting in the street, and as the crowd gathered around the mage cast Confusion, which led to a massive brawl in the streets of the village. After the spell wore out, most of the group was lynched by the villagers.

Another one from the same group was when they had to implement a scorched earth strategy against an advancing orc army. One of the players had qualms about kicking an elderly couple of farmers off their farm and burning it all down, and another player started ranting about "let's make the beds for the orcs and tuck them in, and cook a nice stew - we can't let them go to bed hungry!". Anyway, fighting and hilarity ensued, and those two players communicated by proxy for months on end.

Back when I was a teen, we had a game of basic 1st edition D&D going on every Saturday, and the GM eventually got tired of PvP happening every other session, so he implemented a bare fist only rule for PvP, to prevent PC deaths, but it ended out being counterproductive because with the system he had put together, certain attacks were far more efficient than others regardless of armour class, and we exploited the shit out of that, PvP frequency increased, and some PCs spent half the campaign knocked out. That was fixed when we switched to Call of Cthulhu, where there's no fighting over loot.

Edit: another funny thing about the aforementioned D&D game is that we played it in a church's basement, which was used as a social centre for a bunch of cultural activities. My God, the amount of swearing and blasphemy that went on in those sessions: "I shit on God!", "I shit on the Virgin Mary!", "I shit on the Holy Wafer!", "I shit on your fucking mother!", and many such expressions common in Northern Spain. Thankfully, the parish priest seldom visited that part of the church and never got to hear any of it, because he would probably have expelled the roleplaying club from the premises.
 

That_Scumbag

Literate
Joined
Nov 4, 2024
Messages
17
Jeffro-Gygaxian timekeeping solves this. Player competition up to and including PVP becomes desirable. Multiple characters, multiple parties, one dynamic world reacting to all of them. Watch this entire series of 20-40 minute videos (well over 13 hours) for a basic primer on the concepts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cte_fhco12I&list=PL_z29m150g5pF-58Np0vhDyqxMapISXay

Honestly, I am not sure what the 1:1 time keeping would help with, unless I had multiple parties of players, patrons, etc. I just have a small and consistent player group. Also, his backhanded way of saying ''it's your fault'' if a real life circumstance, not an in game bad decision, prevents someone from finishing a game outside of the dungeon is simply pretentious. People have lives outside of the game.
That said, I thank you again for the suggestion.
 
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