Role-Playing Ethics
by Rob Ritchie

Chapter 2 - We Aren't With These Guys

After my first year of college, I returned home for summer break and got together with my old high-school AD&D group. Most of the old group had scattered after graduation, but some of the townies still got together with new members and rolled the dice. I sat down to create a new character, and found that most of the group was also making up new characters, apparently because the last session had been particularly brutal with a lot of PC fatalities.

I don’t remember much about the adventure, but I do know that it was a pretty typical dungeon crawl, with a bunch of 1^st level characters and a 4^th level mage (apparently, the only survivor of the last session) fooling around in some hole in the ground. The thing I remember most, though, was after we’d looted some tombs and opened some treasure chests, and while we were on the way out, the 4^th level mage unleashed a fireball that killed most of us, and calmly gunned down the few survivors with some Magic Missiles. Then, he quietly collected all the treasure and went back to town.

Needless to say, I was stunned. The player, Gary, claimed that his character was simply following his Neutral Evil alignment, and it was hard to argue with that. I found out, however, that this was a pattern with him; that the reason why everybody else had been rolling up new characters is that he’d done this the last few times they’d played together. He figured that if there were no survivors, then there would be no witnesses to accuse him, so he’d be free to do it again and again.

After Gary left, I started talking to the other players. I mean, I had just restarted with this group, but I couldn’t help wondering why the players put up with this crap. They agreed that Gary wasn’t that much fun to play with. Why, I asked them, if Gary was such a jerk did they keep playing with him? They looked at each other like I’d just suggested that I knew the secret of the universe, told them something they’d never thought of before. Play without Gary? Is that possible?

They asked how this could be accomplished. The DM asked what in-game justification could be used not to go adventuring with the 4^th level Magic User. I suggested that an adventurer that is the sole survivor of not one but of three disastrous dungeon crawls ought to at least get a reputation for being unlucky to be around. Why should my new thief want to go adventuring with old “Gravedigger Graxis” or whoever? It didn’t make sense for me that anyone would want to join his party.

There was something else at work here, of course. It seemed to me that anybody who acted so, well, mean to his fellow players ought to be punished for it. And having the punishment be the same in-game as out-game seemed elegant and fitting. Gary was mad when he found out we’d changed our gaming night and excluded him from it, but he sure got the message that behavior at the gaming table has real world consequences.

This is different from what I said in Chapter One about character actions; what I’m talking about now are players whose characters are disruptive to the game and annoying to other players. I’m not saying that Gary was responsible for the murders his character committed; but Gary was responsible for spoiling the fun of the other players, wasting their time and snuffing out their own character creations unfairly. In other words, Gary was guilty of being a world-class jerk.

(In retrospect, I have to say that I’m not sure I acted correctly. Sure, Gary was a jerk, but I was a relative newcomer to the gaming group and it was wrong for me to try to remold it to my own liking. Gary had played with them for a while, and if they were willing to put up with him, then I should have stayed quiet and let them handle it in their own way. But I was a younger man then and I made mistakes and had little patience with people who annoyed me. I doubt that Gary even remembers this summer, but for all I know the pain I caused him gnaws at his soul every day. If so, sorry man!)

I know that we aren’t our characters in the sense that we’ll commit suicide if our high-level character misses his last saving throw. But when we sit at the gaming table, we are interacting with our fellow players through our characters, so in a real way, our character’s actions do have real-world implications. When Gary massacred our party of newbies, it wasn’t just his character who was being a traitor.

Now, we run into jerks all the time, and we meet a lot of them at the gaming table. Whether they are blowing smoke in your face, or telling disgusting jokes, or leaving a mess in your bathroom, or never taking a turn buying the munchies, or passing malodorous gas, jerks have a way of spoiling the fun, and it usually doesn’t take too long before they are asked to pack up and leave.

But there is a type of person whose jerkiness expresses itself through the behavior of their characters. Like Gary, their characters can be disruptive in any number of ways, but here they have a shield for their misbehavior, the very ready claim “I'm  only playing my character.” After all, not all characters are good, virtuous, trustworthy, kind, obedient, cheerful and friendly. Some characters are dark, greedy, brooding, violent and unpleasant to be around. This latter type of character can be a lot of fun to play, and when well role-played they can bring a lot to the game and enrich the experience for all players. But some people use a character like this as a weapon to do other players dirty, and that’s not fun for anyone except the jerk himself.

Sometimes, instead of nasty characters, jerks use so-called good characters to act bossy and dictate to the other players what “must” happen in the game, what actions they simply will not put up with, how NPCs should be interacted with, etc. By laying down the law and forcing play along the “correct” path, they inhibit other players from acting in ways they want to. This is a sort of “holy” jerkiness that as surely deflates the enjoyment of the session, as any murderous backstabbing would do.

Jerks usually transfer their own personal likes and dislikes to their characters without any particular logic. If the jerk doesn’t like another player, then his characters will look for reasons to dislike that player’s characters and in the absence of any reasons will hold malice for no reason at all. Now I will grant you that it’s hard to role-play a friendship between characters when the players don’t like each other, but it’s another thing to pick fights in-game over annoyances in the real world. It’s disruptive and childish. For a jerk, everything is personal, and a disagreement about pizza toppings might prompt an in-game duel.

If a person becomes unpleasant to be around, there isn’t any reason to spend time with him around the gaming table. Life is too short to associate with people who annoy you, when the object of getting together is to have a good time. Of course, you should approach the problem maturely, and give people a chance to modify their behavior. Telling someone to occasionally pick up a twelve-pack of soda is reasonable, and if it results in a jerky outburst, well at least it’s out on the table where you can address it. Similarly, informing someone that their character is disruptive and that he ought to think of developing another, while probably a prelude to a hissy-fit, will clear the air and perhaps result in a more jerk-free envorinment.

In my experience, people generally know what they are doing; the guy who never pays for munchies knows that he’s getting something for free, and the guy who tells racist jokes understands that he’s offending people. When these people are shunned, they usually know why. I don’t think that jerks should be excused for their jerkiness simply because their behavior happens in-game. If their character’s actions repeatedly and consistently disrupt play, then there isn’t any reason to play with him. Characters aren’t the only ones who get bad reputations, and sometimes jerks have to be reminded of this.