Capturing the PCs

Sometimes GMs post to social media asking for advice on how to capture their PCs.

GMs, we need to have a talk...

1. You don't get to force the PCs to be taken captive.
In most RPGs, the only (or at least primary) way your players have to tell their part of the story is through their characters' actions.  By forcing them to become captives, you take away that ability to tell the story.

Being imprisoned isn't the problem.  There are whole RPGs about being imprisoned (cf Dream Park, 1992).  The transition from free to imprisoned is the problem.  Just like you can't force the players to go into the dungeon, you can't force the players to travel to Paris, and you can't force the players to walk into the spooky haunted castle, you can't force the players to go into captivity.

2. You can get the players' buy-in, though
You can ask the players, out of character, if they agree to a situation where they get taken captive.  If they trust you, and you make it sound fun, they'll agree.  If they agree, be nice about logistical things like letting them getting their stuff back, or else they won't trust you as much in the future.

If they don't agree, find out why.  Maybe they want a fair shot at escape.  Maybe they believe their characters would rather die than be captured by the people you suggest they get captured by.  Ask them under what circumstances their characters would find themselves prisoners.  Allow them to tell a story about how they got captured that's comfortable to them.

Example:  "I would rather die than let myself be captured by vampires.  My character has a terrible fear of being bitten by a vampire.  But if they hit me with a high level Sleep spell of high enough level, they could tie me up and drag me off before I could resist."  

Don't think of it as "that player is trying to tell me what to do."  Think of it as "she just gave me a cool new henchman for the vampire queen -- a sneaky wizard!"

3. Foreseen stakes
Players will accept being captured as the consequences of a die roll they miss, but only with all of the following conditions:

• You presented the stakes before the roll
• The roll appears fair
• The failure stakes sound fun
• You have their trust

For instance, in a D&D game, the party is camping in the wilderness.  The Dragonborn Sorcerer is on watch.  You tell the players, "Some drow are coming to capture you four.  If they capture you, it'll be a cool escape quest.  If not, you'll have a drow warband to investigate from the outside.  Either way, I'm sure it'll be fun.  They're going to use their poison arrows on the Sorcerer, and put their drow poison in your mouths while you sleep.  Each of you gets to make either a DC 13 Constitution save or Perception check -- your choice.  Everyone has Disadvantage because they're sleeping, except the Sorcerer.  If two of you succeed, you fight off the drow, and they retreat.  If less than two of you succeed, you've been captured.  There are too many drow for just one of you to fight off.  OK?"

This example follows the rules:

• Everything was explained before the players rolled, so they know what happens if they fail
• The roll appears fair - more than fair, really.  If the sorcerer got hit with multiple arrows, she'd have to make multiple saving throws.  
• The GM explained how both success and failure on the group check would be fun.  This should always be true:  Never call for a roll where either success or failure is boring!
• We're assuming the players don't have a problem trusting this DM

4. If you don't talk to them about it ahead, it feels like railroading
Let's say you decide to capture the PCs by using a really powerful encounter where the NPCs use nonlethal attacks to capture the party; but you don't present the stakes before the combat, and you don't explain how being captured could be fun in this case.

This is going to seem like railroading, because while any encounter is technically winnable if the players' dice come up 20s every roll, in reality, that's not true.  Using overwhelming opponents and being a jerk about retreat/escape will cost you a lot of trust.  After you burn your players' trust, do you really think they're going to be excited about the "you've been captured" adventure?  Even your best friend will have their enthusiasm dulled a little by the forced capture.

Here's why it feels so bad:  The social contract of most RPG battles is that every battle is technically winnable unless you're attacking something you know is way too powerful for you.  Level 1 D&D characters can't take down a Lich, but the DM will tell them they can't take down a Lich before they try it.  They won't be ambushed by a Lich on the way to the castle.  While it's common to put overwhelmingly powerful monsters in your world, it's lame to put overwhelmingly powerful monsters in your world and then not tell the players they're overwhelmingly powerful.  And it's really crappy GM behavior to ambush the PCs with overwhelming monsters they can't escape from.

5. A truly skilled GM knows how to make them let themselves be captured
Why do all the work?  Why not make the PCs figure out how to get themselves captured?

James Bond always walks right in to his opponent's den, and he's almost always captured as a result.  And he always profits from it!

Why does he do this?  He could assault the enemy's fortification or try to sneak in. He's good at both approaches.  But both involve a lot of risks, including the risk of death. Letting himself get captured often reveals information -- not just "before I kill you, Mr. Bond," monologues, but the layout of the site, the location of things he needs, the relationship between the henchman and the villain, and so forth.  In addition, brazen moves that get him captured usually force the villain to make mistakes, panic, recall henchmen, postpone executions of people Bond wants to save, or abandon additional plans in favor of haste.

If you want your players to start thinking of getting captured as a victory, you just have to make getting captured the most expedient plan.  It helps if you tell the players that...

• ...if the enemy force gets them, they won't kill them, and there will be ample opportunities to escape.
• ...the villain will likely make specific mistakes if they put themselves in the villain's hands ("MI-6 is on to us?  We need to accelerate the timetable!").
• ...other approaches are very dangerous - give them reasons why stealth, assault, and disguise put them at more risk than getting captured.
• ...being captured is the best starting point for a stealth, assault, or disguise plan.  In fact, they can prepare for capture, smuggling in lockpicks and such.

Still, the protagonists letting themselves get captured is different from the protagonists being captured against their will, and you might want both sorts of scenes.

6. Use the system if you can

Only a few RPGs have a mechanic for bribing the PCs to let something bad happen to them.  Fate has compels.  The Cipher System has GM intrusions.  There aren't that many.  If you have access to this tool, use it!  In Fate, for instance, you can use a compel to offer the PCs a Fate Point (meta-game currency they can use for bonuses or doing their own compels) for getting captured.  The can refuse the compel, spending a Fate point instead, and describe how they escape.  It's not perfect, but it's a much smoother way to handle it than a die roll!

Mode of Play

Adam Lee wrote a fun piece for the D&D website called "DM and Player Experience" that describes two modes of play:  Cinematic Mode and DM-as-Nature Mode.  These are very good observations, and I think they can be applied more broadly.  In my experience, what differentiates these modes is how tension is built, and where it comes from.  More, I think there are more modes.  And each mode represents a cluster of GM skills.

Lee's DM-as-Nature Mode has become a common way to play RPGs.  It reflects the "everyone plays by the same rules, and you have to out-think your opponent" ethos of the wargames that D&D originated from.  3rd and 4th edition D&D and Pathfinder are the ultimate examples of it.  John Wick stirred up a lot of controversy by claiming this mode of play is not roleplaying.  Though most of us disagreed with him, it caused us to re-examine what the different tools in our GM toolbox really are for, and how we can use them better.  The essence of DM-as-Nature is that it requires the GM to generate tension by designing "chess" challenges, where the players and GM play by essentially the same rules, the players are set up with advantages that will lead to their success, but the tactics they use to achieve that success are not easy and not immediately apparent.  DM-as-Nature mode relies on the tactical situation (in combat or not) as a sort of puzzle for the players to solve, either as a chess match (active opposition -- fighting an invisible stalker) or a chess puzzle (passive opposition -- circumventing out a complex trap).

I'm going to re-name it Tactical Mode for its reliance on the adversarial tactical relationship between the GM and players in a scene where both play by essentially the same rules.

According to his own description, Lee's Cinematic Mode clearly covers two different styles of play, so let's break it up.

First, Lee describes cinematic mode in terms of actual cinema.  "Sometimes everyone has just rewatched the Lord of the Rings extended editions and all the players are pumped to have an experience where they’re the heroes of the story, fighting supreme evil. They want to do amazing stuff, swinging from chandeliers to land in a silver punchbowl while severing orc heads. They want to live the fantasy dream. In this mode, I put on a movie director hat."  This version of Cinematic Mode uses genre emulation (Lookee!  I wrote an article about genre emulation on Critical Hits!) to activate the players' emotional equity invested in genre tropes, along with a host of other techniques to build tension outside the game system.  Then it uses the game system to resolve them, often with some permissive GMing to let the players better emulate the protagonists of the game's genre.  The chandelier swinging style Lee describes works for D&D's sword-and-sorcery fantasy, but this mode isn't always so over-the-top:  When you're emulating gothic horror, you're not going to be leaping into any punchbowls.  I'm calling it Theatrical Mode.

Then Lee describes a style of play he runs that's pretty goofy:  "Cinematic is also the mode in which to goof around. You can let players make up the craziest characters possible, then do outrageous things to shock and horrify each other."  But I've seen other GMs run this mode of play more seriously, simply setting the player characters up in situations where they'll be like a bull in a china shop, then letting the natural chaos drive the story.  They're likely to screw things up, make bad decisions (in character), and fail checks (generating complications).  I'll call this Improvisational Mode.  It's not always as goofy as Lee describes it.  Back to gothic horror, Trail of Cthulhu was designed to be run as an improvisational, investigative gothic horror RPG.  I'll give it to Lee, though:  The more improvisational you get, the more silly situations arise.

In fact, Theatrical Mode and Improvisational Mode reside on a sliding scale.  At the extreme theatrical end, everything that happens is somehow connected to existing dramatic conflicts in the story.  At the extreme improvisational end, events sort of careen off one another, and the players feel like balls in a pachinko machine, bouncing from one complication to the next until they reach an unpredictable end, which is pretty much what a game of Paranoia feels like.

This particular R&D device is cleared for Blue level troubleshooters only.
Photo by Michael Maggs, Wikimedia Commons

Mode describes what game you're playing - the interaction between the GM (if any), players, play environment, table dynamics, social contract, and rules that determines how the table generates tension.  You might be playing D&D or Fate or Shadowrun, but the actual game you're playing, as humans around a table, is generated socially.

Let me illustrate with an example.  If you've played under multiple GMs, you may have noticed that each GM runs most games they run in a particular way.  Their style is more than just a little flavor on top of a common game.

In every game Anna runs, there is no black and white morality: What really matters is who you care about and the love and loyalty you have for them.  When we feel tension in Anna's games, it's because she jacked up the threats to the people we care about.  She loves the 5th edition D&D Ideals and Bonds, and a lot of encounters with monsters are run by narration or skill checks instead of combat, because they're often about something bigger than just "a monster attacks!"  Anna runs in Theatrical Mode.

In every game Barry runs, we know there's going to be a group of important NPCs who are totally mishandling a crisis, and we're going to have to pick up the pieces.  We'll have to go into some kind of dangerous situation they caused, and figure out how to fix it - and the tension comes from having to figure out Barry's tricky encounters, traps, and puzzles.  He's a die-hard Pathfinder fan, but sometimes he runs Shadowrun or GURPS.  Barry runs in Tactical Mode.

In every game Candace runs, we start off with a lofty goal, but we lose track of it real quick because we wind up screwing things up and spending all our time running away from or fixing the problems we caused.  Candace generates tension by surprising us with awkward situations and unexpected consequences and complications, then making us scramble to pick up the pieces.  She's been running a lot of old World of Darkness, because she loves riffing off our characters' Flaws; and she's very excited about the new edition of Apocalypse World coming out.  She's thinking of demoing FFG's Star Wars games at cons.

In every game Dave runs, he lets us come up with, and sometimes even play the important NPCs in some scenes.  He used to run Adventure! a lot, and now he runs Dresden Files and Atomic Robo because he's really into Fate.  We sit around at "session zero" talking about what the big problems in the world should be.  He takes a lot of suggestions about the events of the game and things in the world.  It's almost like we're his co-GMs.  Because we're really invested in the world, it can be really tense when his nasty bad guys throw everything we created into disarray.  And ironically, he runs the best mysteries.  Dave runs in Author Mode.

A Taxonomy of Modes

Lee's modes resemble the RPG theory concept of Stance (Recap: Actor, Author, Director), which elsewhere I describe in terms of bleed and sphere of influence.   But they're a lot bigger than that.  Still, the ideas of bleed and sphere of influence will be useful in understanding these modes and the clusters of GM skills that go into them.  Another defining factor is how chaotic/random the GM's style is vs. how much everything is generated by the game's plots.

Tactical Mode

Create a puzzle that's hard to solve; that difficulty creates tension.
Tension from:  System Wagers
Bleed:  Lots of bleed-in as players are constantly using their real-life problem-solving skills.  Actor, Author, and Pawn stance are common.
Sphere of Influence:  The players have very limited sphere of influence, but so does the GM.  The GM also has to follow the rules in order to make the world a mechanical place that the players can interface with using the player-facing system, at least "on screen."  Once a dragon shows up, the dragon is limited to what Dragons can do in the rule book, so that the players can figure out how to beat it.  If the dragon differs from the Monster Manual version, the Tactical GM will still use the rules, maybe applying Templates or giving it a spell from the Player's Handbook.
Tension source:  The puzzle has to be hard to solve, but not impossible.  The challenge of solving it generates tension.
System Note:  More complicated systems facilitate tactical mode play, but only to a limited extent.  The GM and players have to be familiar with the system to use it, and that can be troublesome with highly complex systems.  Pathfinder, Shadowrun, Burning Wheel, and D&D are good for Tactical Mode play.
Sub-Modes (Colloquial Terms):  A Tactical Mode game that's high on plot where the GM doesn't improvise much off the main course of events is often called a "linear" or "railroad" game.  A Tactical Mode game that's low on plot can be a "sandbox," and if it's really, really chaotic, it's a "beer and pretzels" game.  I remember the random dungeon generators in 2nd and 3rd edition D&D.  If the DM canceled on you, you could just roll up a random character, enter a random dungeon, and collect random treasure.  It was basically a board game, it got pretty goofy, and it was often really fun.
Skills:  See: illusionism, system mastery, game balance, time pressure, GM-as-toymaker

Improvisational Mode

(AKA Chaos Mode) Put the players in an interesting situation and let the players' decisions and die roll results generate complications; add chaos if necessary. 
Tension from:  The Unexpected
Bleed:  Rarely is there much bleed-out in Chaos Mode, unless it's played very seriously.  I've seen it played very seriously, with bleed-out starting fights between players, even.  Improvisational Mode is strongest when taken lightly.  It's baked into the dice mechanic for FFG's Star Wars RPGs, because Star Wars is best played as lighthearted space opera.
Sphere of Influence:  The GM doesn't run as mechanical a world as in Tactical Mode, so the GM's sphere of influence tends to be broader.  The players are open to surprise more, so the GM isn't as limited by the system.  The players sometimes suggest chaotic action, and they can signal the directions they want the improvised events to move with their characters and their actions, giving them more influence as well.
Tension source:  The system generates problems partly (or totally) at random, which the players resolve just like in Tactical Mode, but the tension doesn't come from the challenge of solving the problem - it comes from the unexpected appearance of the problem to begin with.  Instead of creating the problems careuflly as puzzles, the GM lets them arise organically either from events (story improvisation) or mechanics (system-facilitated improvisation).  The GM doesn't try to make things hard for the players.  Instead, the GM lets the system and situation spin out challenging externalities that the PCs have to chase down and resolve.
System Note: Systems that have skill niches are great for Improvisational Mode, so Shadowrun, World of Darkness, and those sorts of games are great for it.  Fate Core is also great for it (Fate Accelerated is closer to Theater or Author mode).  The Powered by the Apocalypse series of games and FFG's Star Wars games have Improvisational Mode baked into the core dice mechanics.  The idea of "fail forward" is a powerful improvisational mode tool.  Games with character Flaws, like the World of Darkness games and Fate (your "Trouble" aspect) tend to be great for Improvisational Mode.  5e D&D's Bonds and Flaws also help run this style.
Skills:  See "yes, and", fail forward, mystery design, complicated NPCs, sense of humor

Theater Mode

(AKA Cinematic Mode, Stakes Mode) Manipulate the players into feeling tension, then use the system to resolve it.
Tension from:  Emotional Investment
Bleed:  Bleed-out is the goal here.  The GM is trying to make you care about what's going on in the world.  Players have to be willing and able to cooperate with the GM by choosing to have their characters vulnerable by caring about things that are outside their control.  The players choose what their characters care about, and then feel the fear, pride, sorrow, love, and occasional panic that comes from what the GM does to the stuff they care about.
Sphere of influence:  Like in Improvisational Mode, the players can signal the things they want to see arise in the story - this time by choosing what their characters care about.  Further, the more the story revolves around the PCs' motivations, the more the GM can use them to build tension.  Theater mode isn't just "the GM telling a story" but instead, the GM lets the PCs' motivations and connections drive the story.
Tension source:  Bleed-out provides all the excitement.  The GM uses social skills, the social contract, powerless mechanics, illusionism, and genre emulation to build tension to excite the players.  Then the GM turns on the procedural system to resolve it.
System Note:  Traditional game mechanics (attack rolls, damage, initiative, skill modifiers, etc.) exist to resolve tension.  Mechaincs that cannot resolve tension and only serve to heighten it include resource management (hit points, sanity, rations, blood points), bond mechanics (mechanics that invest your character in things outside your control), powerlessness mechanics (mechanics that take away your freedom to act effectively), and influence mechanics (mechanics that allow/force you to rely on NPCs).  Games that make players connect their characters to the world help by giving the GM levers to pull to motivate the PCs.  Games with mechanics that emulate their genre well also help, because they let you use resonance to generate tension.
Skills:  Tension building, stakes, illusionism, genre emulation, resonance, scene framing, EQ

Author Mode

Create a story together, using system to prevent one player from dominating.  Tension is in getting your way.
Tension from:  Authors' Will
Bleed:  As you're usually in author and director stance, there's significantly less bleed-out, but there can be quite a lot of bleed-in.
Sphere of influence:  Author Mode is defined by giving the players more influence than a traditional RPG does.  At the extreme end, the players have quite a lot of influence.  The breadth of the players' sphere of influence determines how "Author Mode" the game is.
Tension source:  The tension inside the game world is not felt by the players, though they may empathize with the charaters.  There's a meta-game tension between the players as they negotiate the story in directions they like best.  Tension between the players is actually bad.  The fun comes from the players inspiring and "riffing off" one another.
System Note:  Author mode has a gradient/continuum.  In Microscope, there is no GM, and the players tell stories, acting out scenes occasionally.  In Fiasco, there's no GM, and the players control almost everything that happens to their characters.  A game of Fate Core starts with the players and GM talking about what the setting is like and what the big problems of the campaign are going to be.  Throughout the game, they can place Aspects (descriptors) on characters and settings, Compel NPCs to behave in specific ways, and even narrate their own defeats if they concede a fight.  That's significantly more influence than players have in a D&D module, but not as much as a game of Microscope.
Skills:  When there is a GM, the key skills are utilizing player input, improv skills like "yes, and" and passing the ball ("what do you think she's doing here?"), and facilitator skills such as step up / step back

Not on My Watch

While it's always been in my GM Credo to facilitate inclusion, recently good folks have raised awareness of the need for RPG players, especially GMs, to take a stand against rotten behavior at the table that makes players uncomfortable - especially racism, homophobia, and misogyny.  The problem is especially bad in public gaming spaces, where strangers mingle, such as game stores, meetups, and cons; though it could happen anywhere.

As the GM, it is your responsibility to shut down abusive player behavior.  If you run a game with close friends, you already do this, custom-tailored for them.  You don't have to be hyper-alert to the players' reactions to things, because you've known them for a long time, and they're still playing with you.  They've known you for a long time, too, and they know they can talk to you if something at the table makes them uncomfortable.

Gaming with acquaintances and strangers is another story.  If you ever go to a convention or run games at a library, games cafe, or friendly local game store; you need to be more alert.

As responsible GMs, we must acknowledge that everyone is at risk for abusive behavior, and we are all good at noticing and controlling behaviors that make people like ourselves uncomfortable; but it takes heightened awareness and empathy to notice and respond to behavior that could make people different from us uncomfortable.

For instance, if you're thin, you may not notice fat shaming at your table.  If you're a man, you may not notice a scene in a game that makes the women around you uncomfortable.  If you're Jewish, you might have to pay special attention to make sure the table doesn't make a Christian uncomfortable.

The good news is that roleplayers and especially GMs get a lot of practice putting ourselves in others' shoes.  Human empathy is "thinking in character" -- except that the person across the table from you is the character.  You have the skills.  You just have to activate them.

This is not about being politically correct, but about making sure everyone has the best time at your table.  That's how your GMing is evaluated, in the end:  How much fun did everyone have?  If one player out of the four at your table is uncomfortable because half your D&D session was spent in a Faerun cathouse making caricatures of women and sex workers, and you didn't notice because you're not a woman; you only did a good job for 75% of your players.  Even if the other 3 players had a blast, 75% is a C.  Nobody wants to be a C-level GM.  You don't have to be politically correct; you just have to be sensitive to the people at your table.

1. Behavior at or near our table is something we GMs have authority to address.
2. It takes special attention to be alert to behavior that could bother people different from us.
3. Failing to notice and address behavior that makes our players uncomfortable is bad GMing.
4. We must not allow that kind of behavior while we have the authority to stop it.  #NotOnMyWatch (thanks to Heather Stern for the hashtag!)

How do you do it?  Use the tools you already have:  You can say no to a racist character just as easily as you say no to a cheesy rules abusing character.  You can railroad the players away from a misogynistic scene just as easily as you can railroad them away from wasting their time chasing a red herring.  You can use the dice and stats to abstract out uncomfortable scenes or just not run them, just like you do with scenes that might be uncomfortable for you.  If the players are yukking it up about a portly ogre, end that conversation with a goblin ambush.  If you can't control the behavior by diverting the players, you will need to step out of character - the same as with any disruptive behavior, like inappropriate cell phone use, rules lawyering, or quarterbacking.

You don't have to be a social justice warrior.  You don't have to advocate for anything.  You just have to do your job as a GM; and the most important part of your job is making sure everyone is comfortable and having a good time.

Alignment in Dungeons and Dragons

Old and messy as it is, the D&D alignment system can still be an excellent tool for roleplaying.  I love that the 5th edition D&D Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws are subtly connected to character alignment.  Even in 2nd, 3rd, 4th edition and Pathfinder, you can still get a lot of profit out of alignment as a DM and as a player.

First, for alignment to have value, it has to mean something.  Here's the very basic point you should understand about alignment:  The alignment that lets you do the expedient, convenient, logical, tactical, strategic, reasonable thing is True Neutral.  The other four options (Lawful, Chaotic, Good, and Evil) occasionally require you to make sub-optimal or unreasonable choices in character.  In effect, those four alignment choices are "flaws," in the RPG sense of the word.  They're voluntary restrictions on your behavior.

Flaws in RPGs

A "flaw" is a common roleplaying game mechanic that gives you some game system reason to have your character make a decision that is different from and worse than the decision that you, the player, would make.

In a roleplaying game, players take on the role of people different from themselves, but RPGs are usually about problem solving.  Consequently, players spend a lot of time working out the most sensible solutions to problems.  But if you spend all your time having your character, Jordak, making the decision you, Joe, would make, what makes Jordak different from Joe?  Jordak is just Joe with a magic dagger and 45% Find and Remove Traps.  The character of Joe is the same as the character of Jordak.

So I've come up with a way to explain Alignment that Dungeon Masters and players can use to best understand it.

It's a really simple distinction; there are only two kinds of alignment:  There's Neutral, and there's everything else.

Neutral
You act lawful/chaotic or good/evil when it makes the most sense for you.  You don't make a point of honor.  You don't make a point of defying authority.  You don't make a point of altruism.  You don't make a point of selfish greed.  If it's foolish to stick to strict rules, you break them.  When it's comfortable to let someone else continue to suffer while you drink fine wine, you drink fine wine.  When defying authority would cost you, you go along to get along.  When helping others improves your own life, you give freely.  Just because the players of Neutral characters have no limitations on the choices they make doesn't mean they should just play their character as an avatar of themselves.

Chaotic/Lawful/Good/Evil
You choose to act in a particular way, when an average person would not.  Chaotic characters choose to defy authority, even if it costs them.  Because they flout honor, they have flexibility.  Lawful characters choose to obey an honor code, even when it costs them.  Because they uphold a code of honor, they have trustworthiness.  Evil characters choose to satisfy their urges at the expense of others, even if it destroys their community.  Because they never spend a thought for others, they have to rely on their own strength and dominate those around them.    Good characters choose to sacrifice their own needs for the needs of others, which often hurts them to no profit in the mortal world (but that's the point, of course).

Nine vs. Three vs. Five...
If you're playing with the 1e, 2e, 3e, Pathfinder, and 5e "nine alignments" system, you really have eight flawed character types and one with total freedom to act as the player would.  Other editions of D&D had different systems of alignment that made this easier to understand:

• Original and Basic D&D:  Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic
• 4th edition D&D:  Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil, and Chaotic Evil.

When placed on a simple continuum like those editions, it's easier to see Neutral (or Unaligned) as the "normal reasonable person" alignment, and the others as deviations from it.

But the most popular D&D editions are Pathfinder and 5th edition, so let's look at the Lawful/Chaotic and Good/Evil axes independently.  And let's look at them as "flaws" in the classic RPG sense -- opportunities for the player to have their character act in a surprising way.

With RPG flaws, the player is not at fault when the character makes a bad decision in line with their flaw.

Bill:  "Joe, I can't believe you hid from the Reeve.  He just wanted you to pay a tax you could easily afford.  What if he'd caught you?  We'd all be in trouble over a few gold pieces!"
Joe:  "If it were me, I would have paid the tax.  Jordak, on the other hand, gives nothing to the sneering autocrats who think they can take whatever they want by right of birth."  

Flaws are an RPG mechanic that helps players make those decisions that they know are inexpedient without carrying the blame themselves -- it's not Joe's fault.  Joe doesn't have a chip on his shoulder about authority.  Jordak the Thief does.

So here are the kinds of inexpedient decisions you might make when roleplaying your alignment.

Lawful  
You demand your enemies surrender before attacking, removing the element of surprise and maybe giving them a moment to collect their wits and prepare for battle.  You let fleeing enemies escape unless there has been a warrant issued for their capture or their death.  You won't disgrace yourself by pretending to be someone else.  You will find a way to do what you said, even if you were forced or tricked into it.  You refuse to promise anything except to trustworthy people, because you know you will be bound to your word.  You demand apologies or satisfaction by violence from those who insult you.

Non-Traditional Honor Codes
D&D and Pathfinder assume a world similar to our own, with similar ideas about honesty, integrity, fairness, courage, and temperance.  Even honor codes in vastly different real-world cultures have similar ideas about those things.  But this is fantasy!  It's OK to play a character from a culture with a dramatically different code of honor, but it should be just as restrictive as the default Earth-like code of honor.

Example of a Dramatically Different Honor Code
Traditionally, a Lawful character would demand justice before attacking a humanoid.  "Repent your ways and surrender, or I will slay you where you stand!"  But maybe your character's culture is comfortable with attacking people without warning, if they deserve it.  If you commit a serious offense in that culture, you can expect to be ambushed and killed at any time.  Think about what effects that would have on a culture.  That culture would have strict rules about when it is OK to draw a weapon and what it means to bare steel.  If you take out a weapon in the presence of others, you might be attacking them - there is no cultural penalty to doing so, after all.  People carrying spears or other weapons that could not be sheathed would be immediately suspected of homicidal intent -- more so than just "he's carrying a deadly weapon" but "her choice of weapon signals that she intends to kill without warning."  Wizards would keep their hands visible at all times.   A culture that did not demand justice before administering punishment might also have no concept of repentance.  In a way, it would be more strict than a culture that did.  No repentance.  No forgiveness.  No surrender.  Retreat is only delaying the inevitable.  Such a culture would demand that its warriors fight to the death, even against overwhelming odds.  They might still retreat -- everyone gets scared -- but they would never surrender.  Such a culture would be very careful to never give even the slightest offense.  Politesse and manners would be much more important to them than they are on Earth.  Another thing about this culture -- accidentally hurting an innocent person or administering punishment harsher than was deserved would be strongly censured, or else it would quickly get out of hand.  This supports the culture's obsession with politesse.  If someone hurt you, it is safer to act like the offense is less than it was than it is to over-react.  That's not forgiveness so much as forbearance, dignity and patience.  Truly revered people in this culture would appear to ignore all offenses -- even attacks on their life.

Lawful isn't just Orderly
Discipline and temperance are part of the traditional honor code, but not all of it.  A lawful character is more than just organized and logical.  They have a code, expressed as laws or principles, that they follow.  Typically it reflects the traditional codes of honor we have on Earth, but see above for variations.

Lawful isn't just Obedient
Pro-social deference and humility are part of the traditional honor code, but not all of it, either.  A lawful character isn't just a person who obeys the law and custom.  They internalize the ethical virtues that underpin law itself - the honor code.

Chaotic
You won't give a copper piece to authority figures unless you get something for it.  When you meet The High Queen Jorella Moonflower, Her Highness, Defender of the Realms of Elvenkind, you might lean against a column and call her, "Jorella" like you would with a casual acquaintance, instead of taking a knee and calling her "Your Highness."  You show no respect to toadies or people who slavishly adhere to honor codes.  You don't want a trustworthy reputation - better to be unpredictable and unknown.  You never promise anything because you don't want to be held accountable; and if you are forced to make a promise, you make a point of breaking it somehow.  You sabotage and undermine authority figures, even if they're on your side.  You see no point in chastity or temperence - your character might get blind drunk just for the fun of it.  You're not hurting anyone.  And if you are, is it any worse than the teetotaler refusing to go carousing to gather information because of some abstract ideas about dignity and principle?

Unreliable slob or mysterious rebel?
Chaotic characters might appear to have a chip on their shoulder because they constantly undermine even legitimate, good-intentioned authority.  They see feudalism as an inherently unfair and broken system.  They might appear as lazy, over-indulgent, distasteful slobs because they see no reason to be industrious, abstemious, and dignified; they would rather do what they want without people judging them.  They might appear conceited and unreliable because they don't need to maintain a reputation of humility and trustworthiness; instead preferring to be proud or mysterious.  Charismatic Chaotic characters come across more positively:  A charismatic Chaotic character might be respected for going their own way.  Their confidence and charm make them seem more mysterious than untrustworthy; more revolutionary than undermining; more independent and spontaneous than lazy and unreliable.

(This goes for Lawful characters, too:  An uncharismatic Lawful character might seem like a hide-bound, sanctimonious bore with a death wish; while a charismatic one might come across as trustworthy, honorable, and courageous.)

Chaotic isn't Convenient
Chaotic characters don't obey laws and customs until it's convenient to ignore them.  That's Neutral.  Chaotic characters directly flout or undermine them.  To portray a Chaotic-Good character, it might help if the DM provides examples of how authority, law, and custom have flaws.  They don't have to be huge flaws, but even a few small problems with the social structure will help the C-G character justify their disdain.

Good
You might give your resources away to those in need, even if costs you effectiveness in combat.  You might risk your life for just a 1% chance to save or help an innocent person.  You might use your down time helping others instead of earning money or brewing a potion.  You might let enemies get away because you show them more mercy than they deserve.  When you get no benefit from helping others, only pain and suffering, you don't need excuses.  You know you didn't do it because it made you look good.  You did it because it was good.

Good is Easy to Act and Hard to Choose
It may seem like Good characters have to make more hard decisions than Evil ones.  And that's sort of the point.  Good is all about hard choices.  Evil is easy: Me.  On the other hand, most D&D players are pretty good-hearted folks.  It's hard to play Evil and scoff at an NPC's suffering, abuse your character's henchmen, and manipulate people to do what you want rather than persuade them of the social good of your mission.  So playing Good requires your character to make hard choices.  On the other hand, playing an evil character is going to challenge your acting skills.

Evil
The philosophy of evil is that you only rely on yourself.  Everyone is completely responsible for their own life.  Because everyone is expected to take care of their own life, it doesn't matter if you hurt others - if they couldn't keep themselves safe, they deserved it.  It doesn't matter that you hurt others and gained a reputation as an abuser - you're strong enough to avoid the repercussions.  Evil people can be cowards.  They won't take a risk if they don't think they can avoid the hazards.  They don't trust that others will help them out of kindness or friendship.  They trust that others will help them if they have leverage over them, though.  Evil characters are abusers who get power over others through blackmail, bullying, corruption, lies, and dependence.  Evil characters would never believe they could persuade someone to help them out of a sense of decency.  They would immediately resort to finding leverage to force the person to do as they want.  Evil characters would never expose themselves to a hazard they couldn't survive or force others to endure in their place.  Evil characters would automatically push to gain the greatest reward or greatest share of the reward, only backing down if it would cost them more to persist.  In a party of other adventurers, an evil character would take only their fair share of loot unless they could get leverage over other party members, which is probably not possible if they're all the same level.

Social Contract: Don't Be a Dick
If you're playing an evil character, it is important to talk about your character's penchant for abusing others out of character with the GM and other players.  They might decide to collaborate with you to decide how your character got leverage over their character, so that they could later roleplay how their character turned on your character and punished your character for their manipulation.  Never abuse and manipulate your friends in real life -- make sure they know out of character that your character is doing it. If they want to play along, good.

If the other player is not OK with it, you have to back off and come up with an in-character reason.  Maybe your evil wizard is too afraid of the barbarian to try manipulating him.  Sure, his low Int makes it easy to trick him; but if he ever snapped and turned on you, a single blow from that +2 Keen Falchion would be the end of you.

Over the Top Evil
Some aspects of Evil in D&D are just plain awful.  Cannibalism, soul-stealing, consorting with demons, wanton slaughter, destroying the world, genocide, despoiling things out of hatred for purity, torture for the fun of it -- these activities are horrible and disgusting.  They're "over the top" evil.  An evil PC in an otherwise non-evil party may not get away with these acts.  And they don't have to try -- you can be really evil without doing these things.

Keep it PG-13 (or Whatever)
Alignments are ultimately moral choices, and moral choices can lead to mature themes.  Make sure you understand the "MPAA Rating" of your table and keep from taking things too far.  If your table is playing a PG-13 campaign, then choosing to run an adventure about sexual abuse might be pushing it too far, even if you treat the subject in a mature and educated manner.

Final Thoughts

Mixed Alignments
Lawful and Good seem to go hand-in-hand in a lot of ways.  Honor and honesty seem altruistic and good; and charity and kindness seem honorable and lawful.  The same goes for Chaotic and Evil.  So mixed alignments, like Chaotic Good and Lawful Evil create contradictions.  Some editions didn't have these mixed alignments (Original, BECMI, and 4th edition).  This might be hard to roleplay spontaneously, but the GM can make use of your conflicting alignments to create dramatic choices for you.

A lawful-evil character might find a situation that makes them choose between putting themselves at risk with no expectation of gain, and breaking their word.  One or the other has to give.  You might expect them to break their word and then cover it up; or keep their word and then take revenge for being forced into the situation.

A chaotic-good character might find a situation that makes them choose between helping people and supporting an authority they especially dislike.  The Duke rewards them by bestowing a hospital on them and giving them title Lord Hospitalier.  As long as they don't piss off the Duke, they can do a lot of good for the people of the duchy.  The character would have to grit their teeth and serve a Duke, or else undermine the Duke more subtly.

Neutral as Balance
In some D&D settings, Neutral is more than just "not law/chaos/good/evil" but instead a concept of balance between them.  In Dragonlance, for instance, the world is at risk when it is not balanced.  Neutral alignment in those settings can also mean "my character is aware that the world needs to remain balanced, and I intend to restore that balance."  Ultimately, that character has a strange (alien to us!) philosophical idea that some amount of cruelty and abuse is necessary to the cosmological underpinnings of reality itself, but too much is just as bad.  Same with order and chaos.

True Neutral Still isn't Just "You"
If you play True Neutral, try to invent some important ways in which your character makes decisions differently from you.  In a way, Neutral can be more challenging than the other alignments, as a result.  It helps to pick a driving goal for your True Neutral character, and seek to achieve it no matter the cost.

How to Start a Game

When you start a game, you need to gather players, find a place to play, read the system, buy some new dice (OK, not everyone does that...), and schedule the first session (or session zero, as it's called).  People run their games in different ways, sure; but this is the ideal way to start a typical adventure or campaign.  You might try variations on this basic structure just to play around with different ideas; but you should follow this structure as close as you can.

Here's how game pitches should start:

1. GM Dreams it up
The GM comes up with the concept for the game. The GM then distills this into a very descriptive, evocative game pitch. A game pitch that has no wizards in it, for instance, maybe about pirates (see the link above).

2. GM Pitches the Game
Next, the GM emails the pitch out or tells the players about it.

3. Players Give Feedback
The players read/hear the pitch and give feedback. The GM listens carefully - not only noting what the players ask for and what they seem to like most; but also what they don't really respond to.  Also, when players give feedback, the GM should assess whether it's feedback one player has, or whether the entire table agrees.  "We don't want to play a game without wizards" says one player.  The other players shrug.  Maybe they were OK with a game without wizards.  Maybe that one player wants to play a wizard.  What's a good compromise?

4. GM Incorporates Feedback
The GM incorporates some of the feedback, to please the majority of the players. If the feedback is really negative, the GM goes "back to the drawing board." But once the GM has made changes - that's the game you're playing. You had your chance to give input.  Note, the GM has to like the game they're running!  No GM should change their campaign concept to one they don't enjoy.  But the players also have to like it.  If the players and GM can't agree, it's time to go back to the drawing board.

5. Players Make Characters
Now the players make characters appropriate for the game described in the (revised) pitch. Their character represents how they want to interact with the pitch. The players also create character hooks (aka backstory, ideals/bonds/flaws, background, known NPCs, and other sorts of things GMs ask for or players write unsolicited).  Those hooks describe what stories they are interested in being involved in.

6. GM Creates Content for the Player Characters
Next, the GM builds some antagonists and settings (or revises and fleshes out the sketched ones he or she already made) based around the players' characters. E.g. if a PC is a Paladin, a holy order needs to be added. If a PC is looking for her lost husband, the NPC husband needs to be written into the setting, and the disappearance needs to be attributed to one of the antagonists.

7. The GM Starts the Adventure or Campaign

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The GM hooks the PCs into the first session using their personal agendas.

You're a Paladin. Your holy order sends you on a mission to a ruined city to find out what mysterious force destroyed it. This woman (other PC) wants to tag along - says she's looking for clues to the whereabouts of her missing husband there.  She's concerned he became mixed up in unlawful magicks.  This mysterious man arranged it so he was assigned to help the Paladin investigate.  The orders are clear:  He will help investigate, and if he finds anything that looks like a book or scroll with strange glyphs, only he is allowed to touch it.  He looks like a wizard.  But no... that can't be.  The wizarding traditions were purged by the holy order a thousand years ago...

Character Death

Today, I present another guest post from Reinhart at Chaos Engineering. This is a two-parter, so stay tuned next week for more on the topic!

Character death: It happens. I think we can all agree that death has a place in stories in roleplaying games, but there are few topics more contentious in gaming. There are plenty of traditionalists who enjoy how characters in D&D and The Call of Cthulhu can die suddenly and without warning. There’s also strong and vocal support across the roleplaying hobby for treating characters as protagonists who are less likely to die a senseless death. Both sides get vilified too much for what is really just a preference in playstyle.

Given the rancor on the subject, you might suspect that these playstyles are incompatible. The thing is, so long as everyone at the table is playing respectfully and talks about it ahead of time, there’s no reason this disagreement has to be a deal breaker. There’s plenty of room for compromise, and if you’re smart, that compromise doesn’t even have to be a zero-sum game.

First of all, if you’re going to find a workable compromise then you need to understand both sides in this tension. A lot of the disrespect I see around this debate is because neither side truly understands the other.

The Case for Random Death

Why would anyone prefer a random death? Well, it comes from a very basic principle of role-playing with dice: play to see what happens. A lot of players enjoy the tension that comes from being uncertain about what is about to happen to their character. Many GM’s enjoy not being in complete control of every situation, and sometimes they need to feel a little less culpable in the decision to remove player characters from the story.

Additionally, random death isn’t so random.  Some people play RPGs to play a game of make-believe instead of to tell a story.  Part of that difference is “what’s there is there.”  In the make-believe game, if there is a death trap there, it’s there; and if the PCs touch the wrong part of it, they will die.  Make-believe style play favors verisimilitude over narrative.

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but there’s nothing wrong with wanting and enjoying this style of gaming either.

The Case for a Dramatic Death

Where’s the excitement in a game where you can’t die until the story demands it? If you’re seriously asking that question then you need to go read up on stakes. Just because character death isn’t a lurking threat, doesn’t mean that anything or everything else isn’t up for grabs. The problem with random death is that outside of some expensive D&D spells, it’s pretty damn final. Of all the things that could happen to a character in story, death is probably one of the least interesting because it generally closes off more possibilities than it creates.  

Just as most GM’s run with some basic scenes, challenges, and plot already prepared in mind, many players create characters with potential themes and plot points they want to explore. As a result when the dice end a character prematurely, there can be disappointment with both the player and the GM.

Don’t be a Slave to the Rules

Obviously the players and the GM can always decide to ignore the rules whenever they become inconvenient, but players can find it jarring to just “take back” a roll or consequence like that. It’s generally better to solve the problem before it even starts. Like most RPG issues, the best time to address this is at session zero.

If you and your players all hate random character death, you should probably learn and use a set of rules that don’t emphasize that element. D&D or Call of Cthulhu are great games, but they both have game mechanics that can kill characters without warning. If you don’t want to play that way then maybe pick a game like Fate to tell your story. If you don’t want to learn an entirely new set of rules then perhaps have the players collaborate on crafting their own house-rules for death and dying.

Negotiate the Stakes

Even once you and your players have decided on the rules that best fit your playstyle, there’s still a lot of leeway given to the GM as to when and how character death happens. When a player character heroically runs into a burning building, and the building collapses on them, you don’t have to roll for damage. Their life or death at that moment is should be determined by what makes sense and what is the most interesting result for everyone at the table.

Good GMs are open about the stakes that the players are risking. Let them know when you feel the scene is warranting life or death decisions. “Do you really want to run back into that building? It looks like it could collapse at any moment. It would probably kill you if you got trapped inside now.”

Likewise, during session zero, each player should be very honest about how survivable they expect their characters to be. They don’t all have to agree to this equally, either. One GM that I’ve played Delta Green with suggests that players volunteer for random death by writing “DNR” at the top of their character sheets. When the tension ramps up, those players can usually look forward to a sudden and interesting demise.

I like the DNR house-rule, but as I discussed before just because a player is against a random death doesn’t mean they’re opposed to a dramatic death. For that reason I like negotiating the terms of character death openly when discussing a player’s goals for a character:

• How do you see your character ending up in this campaign?
• What would be a suitable heroic arc?
• How could it turn tragic?

These questions aren’t just there for me to help direct the story, but also to help the player anticipate and recognize what fates are appropriate for their character. Many players accept an eventual demise better when they’ve already accomplished some of their goals and their doom conforms with how they expected their character to die.

Pacing Your Doom

Even if everyone is alright with the rules and dramatic circumstances that govern their demise, there’s still a certain combination of logistics and art to determining when to kill of a character. If your player characters really can drop out of the story at any moment, make sure that players have a developed replacement character. If you and your player characters like to have developed backstories and lead-ins for your player characters then that means perhaps there should be occasional insertions of the back-up characters into the narrative before they’re eventually needed.

Regardless of whether death in your game is random or dramatically orchestrated, it tends to leave one player with less to do and a lot less to get engaged with. For that reason it’s best to plan for death near the conclusion of a session or adventure. For those of you letting the dice determine this, that means planning and designing your adventure so that more lethal threats are introduced later and near important milestones. Players are generally more accepting of their characters being murdered by the villain of the plot than they are by a random owlbear they tripped over in the woods.

Do it Right

A player’s character is often the only way that the player can interact with the shared imagined world of your RPG.  Few systems allow players to manipulate events or storylines without a character.  So death is a big deal.  Death is “game over - at least for now” for a player.  Using session zero, thinking about what mode of character death you want to include in your game, preparing for the type of game you want to run (and doing it right), and taking care not to waste your players’ time all contribute to solid GM skills -- regardless of how you want to run character death.

This is part 1 of a two-part series. Stay tuned for Part 2: Death Omens - a house rule for nearly any RPG that might satisfy all types of players!

Party Conflict in RPGs

Five Flavors of Intra-Party Conflict

Intra-party conflict in RPGs commonly comes in five different “flavors.”

1. Organic Disagreement
2. Explicit Competition
3. Traitor as PC-NPC
4. Clashing Ideals
5. Director Stance

For each, I’m going to describe the conflict, how it’s used, and what dangers are inherent in it.  I will then offer a tip for GMs who find themselves refereeing that conflict.  It’s tricky, handling party treason.

Benedict Arnold: Iconic American traitor

My philosophical stance that underlies these tips is that we play RPGs to have fun, and that the GM’s job is to facilitate a fun, exciting game.  You don’t facilitate a player vs. player conflict; you referee it or prevent it so that you can facilitate a fun dramatic moment between characters - not an un-fun conflict between players.  I recognize that other GMs have different ideas about this, but I respectfully disagree with them.

Organic Disagreement

Key concepts review:  

• Immersion
• Frame and Stance
• Magic Circle and Bleed

The most common conflict occurs when the players, immersed in actor stance, have an in-character disagreement.  The disagreement rises to a serious conflict that could be overcome by stepping back from the game world frame into the social or game frame and discussing OOC reasons why the inciting player chose the actions they did for their character.  But for any number of reasons, the players don’t do that.  A common reason is that it’s fun to have a row in character -- though different players tolerate this to different degrees, so be careful!  Other possible reasons include authorial independence:  Where a player prioritizes control over their character’s actions over party harmony, e.g. “This is how my character would act, and I don’t want your OOC concerns affecting my decisions about my character’s actions.”  

In organic disagreements, conflict is player vs. player and character vs. character at the same time, because the players are fully immersed in the game world frame / actor stance.  When players’ autonomy over their own characters is so strong that they act in character without OOC consideration for one another as players, there is (by definition) no social contract that says that the players will choose character actions that will not hurt the feelings of other players.  

GM Tip:  Priorities, people!  When organic conflict arises, remind the players that they are all friends, and it should be OK to sacrifice a little autonomy over their characters’ actions in order to avoid annoying their friends around the table.  This establishes a norm of respecting each other as players first, and respecting each other’s autonomy over their character second.  

Explicit Competition

Key concepts review:

• The Pitch or Session Zero
• Elysium Style LARP (1, 2)
• The Horror-Hunter Ladder (Mood)

Some RPGs are pitched as explicitly competitive adventures or campaigns, where the PCs are forced to work together, but have their own, competing agendas.  This is a common style for games like Vampire and Ars Magica, and for Elysium Style LARP (which arose from Vampire).  At the start of the game, the GM ensures that all the players accept the competitive premise and design characters who will be fun to play in that sort of scenario.  Players can choose to play characters out to win, out to fail horribly, out to be sympathetic underdogs caught in the fray, or doomed heroes who put themselves above the fray, and are torn apart as a result.  These games are rarely at the Hero rung or higher for mood.

In explicit competition, the conflict is player vs. player, where the competitive skill of the players determines the final outcome.  Will Andy’s character become Prince?  Or will Betty’s?  Because of the explicit nature of the game, the conflict is an accepted part of the game frame understanding of events, and does not affect the social frame relationship between the players.  

GM Tip:  Just because the players accept a competitive premise doesn’t mean they’ll take losing well.  Anyone can be a sore loser, and sometimes they’re justified (such as when a player exploits a rules loophole to win the conflict).  GMs should make sure to be a fair referees in explicitly competitive games; and when players win unfairly, GMs should shift the blame to themselves and act to restore fairness somehow.  (It’s a hard balancing act!  Just look at all the drama in Vampire LARP communities!)

Traitor PC-NPC

Sub-types of this flavor of betrayal are the key concepts to review:

• Face-Heel Turn, where the traitor is initially loyal, then changes sides
• Subtrope: Forced Into Evil, which happens when a character is taken over by the GM due to madness, mind control, possession, etc. (see Director Stance, below)
• Subtrope: Face-Monster Turn, which is where the character is turned permanently into a monster, such as by a vampire bite, werewolf curse, etc.
• The Mole, where the traitor was a traitor all along

Perhaps the most common (and easiest) way to handle party betrayal in a Hero-rung game or higher is to allow a party traitor, but treat it like that player is playing an NPC.  The PC-NPC acts like a typical PC while adventuring with the party, until their treason is revealed.  At that point, there is a final confrontation, and the traitor is killed or escapes to become an NPC.  Regardless, once the traitor’s actions are no longer secret, the traitor’s player has to make a new character.  This is a good way to handle party traitors in D&D and similar heroic-mood RPG scenarios.

Because the traitor player is acting with the permission of the GM in the role of a party antagonist, the treason is acceptable.  The conflict is character vs. character.  The GM uses their power to maintain the traitor’s secrecy until the climactic betrayal, at which point the GM uses their power to turn the traitor PC into an NPC.  The traitor’s player is seen as helping the GM make the game more fun, rather than betraying the other players.  This makes it acceptable within the game frame, in the same way that the GM using an NPC to betray the other player characters is acceptable.

GM Tip:  This is probably the most tame kind of intra-party conflict.  But some players are sensitive to any disharmony in the group, or just don’t like surprises.  In the pitch, make sure the players know that there might be a party traitor.  Then they’ll be eagerly anticipating the climactic betrayal, instead of surprised and unhappy about it.  Also, make sure to let the betrayed characters can get their revenge against the traitor.  Otherwise, there could be some bleed-out resentment.

Clashing Ideals

Key concept review:

• Plot Hooks

In just about any kind of game up to (but not including) the superhero rung, the GM can engineer a situation where any solution the PCs seek inevitably harms another PC’s agenda.  In that case, the players must choose how they’ll handle it.  Their choices vary between extreme harmony and extreme disharmony:

• With extreme harmony, the PCs negotiate and come to a consensus on their solution.  “OK, we’ll go with Andy’s tactic, but that will hurt Betty’s agenda.  So next chance we get, we’ll go make it right, fix the damage we did, and try to advance her agenda.”  In this case, they accept a difficult negotiation, followed by a fairly harmonious reconciliation.
• With extreme disharmony, one or a group of PCs seize the initiative and act on their own, choosing an option that hurts another character’s agenda.  Then they have a long, hard road to reconciliation afterwards.  “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission,” is not always true!

This sort of conflict is designed to create dramatic character vs. character conflict within the party temporarily.  The players, acting in character, have to negotiate both the resolution of the challenge (who gets the shaft?) and the reconciliation of the conflict (how can the shafted PC forgive the others?).  The players usually have OOC motives here (that’s what hooks are, after all - expressions of OOC motives), and might suffer some bleed-out into player vs. player conflict if they cannot come to a solution that satisfies all the players.  Ironically, there might be bleed-in later as a player might be offended by being shafted, and become more unforgiving than their character would be.

GM Tip:  If the players cannot come to an agreement in character, ask them to talk about it out of character.  If they cannot come to an agreement out of character, you have to modify the situation so that they can.  It’s always better to retcon something than to have the players hate each other (and you) for putting them in a spot they’re uncomfortable with OOC, as humans with friendships and feelings.

Director Stance

Key concept review:

• Flaws as author stance empowerment

Many RPGs encourage director stance character vs. character (instead of player vs. player) conflict.  Fiasco is entirely based on it.  Fate has a Compel mechanic that allows players and GMs to make each other act irresponsibly and possibly against party interests.  Indie RPG Unsung has this mechanic as well. Many RPGs have forced-behavior mechanics such as Flaws (Champions, World of Darkness) or stress mechanics (Call of Cthulhu, Werewolf: the Apocalypse) that cause characters to act irrationally.  When the system forces a character to act against the party interest, the player is not at fault, making it an author or director stance decision.  

The conflict here is explicitly character vs. character.  The players are fully aware that the player whose character commits treason against the party is acting based on author or director stance, game frame, impulses.  Events proceed from the understanding that the character acted irresponsibly or selfishly, not the player, and the conflict never bleeds out of the game world frame.

GM Tip:  Most games with mechanics that compel other players’ behavior usually have a pressure-release valve in the form of a veto of some kind.  Even where there is no veto, if a player is uncomfortable being forced into a decision for their character that they are unhappy with, use your GM fiat to undo the mechanical compulsion, fudge a roll, or ignore the rule.  It’s better to cheat a little than to ruin someone’s fun.