I have been reading through many of the threads on the forums and (to me) there seem to be a disturbing number of reports of Interparty violence in many games.

I have been GM'ing and playing for about 15 years now and can only recall two incidences of actual interparty violence where one member has actually attacked another. There have been plenty of "oh crap the fighter's been mind controlled" and "the wizards been possessed" events, though, which i dont really count for purposes of this thread.

Both of my two instances involved single party members attacking single others, one of which (i was the GM) was rapidly stopped by the rest of the group and then resolved with much excellent roleplaying by all parties, the other of which (I was a player and not one of the two parties involved) was a premeditated attack by one character on another whilst the rest of the party were unable to intervene. This resulted in the player being attacked losing a much valued and enjoyed character and the game eventually halted and then was cancelled as the first player wasnt ever able to really justify himself at all (either in or out of character).

Although this isnt strictly a DH-related thread, its definately my favourite RPG out there at the moment so im putting it here for the first appraisal of all you other excellent DH fans.....

Any other players / GM's have any other stories like this? How common is interparty violence, exactly, as its something i have always been curious to find out about?

S.K

In my group, our Psyker and my Assassin havn't come to blows. Yet. I'm GMing, running a noble-born assassin, and our psyker is well.....he has his head shoved so far up his arse it's popped out between his shoulders. We've had many verbal clashes and I believe he called me a pawn of his once, so only time will tell ^^

I have no issues with interparty conflict and/or violence IF it is within bounds of the character's personality and background.

If a pc is playing a hard bitten scum who grew up in the under-hive with his hands stained red... i'm NOT going to stop him from responding as his character should if/when a situation comes up that calls to his 'keep firing til you hear the Click then reload' roots. DH is not a 'don't run with scissors & play nice with others' game. It is as simple as that.

That being said, if a player isn't acting within character and just being a spiteful person then I would stop the event to ask why their character is going about these actions. If they can't give a really good reason then something very, very nastie tends to happen before the event can fully unfold. Such as their =][= showing up at just the wrong moment with her old friend the Death Watch vet. to check in on her acolytes.

I have had GM's that played the 'politically correct' game. One was utterly shocked that my chaotic-evil drow assassin planted a dagger in the prissie wood elf princess' back after she insulted both her family and person. But, that might have had something to do with the fact the player was his girlfriend and was being heavily favoured as well!

I have been role-playing for the better part of two decades in more systems than I can count and I have, on occasion, experienced inter-party violence. My personal rule is to look at every angle from the perspective of the character. If one character wishes to attack another character I try to remind the players that their characters are not merely a collection of numbers and words on a sheet of paper through witch to take their frustrations out against one another. If, however, the characters are truly justified in attacking one another, so be it.

I actually expect instances of party violence to rise within my Dark Heresy campaign. This is because many players interpret their Inquisitorial duty as a license to kill. If an assassin perceives the party Tech Priest as standing in the way of what he believes to be the correct way to handle an instance of heresy/xenos infestation/warp infestation, than it’s very easy to not only accept, but EXPECT that assassin to use the tools at his disposal to circumvent the Tech Priest. Such actions are common within the inquisition and inquisitors struggle against one another all the time… sometimes with lethal consequences as Inquisitors aren’t exactly Imperial “dog catchers’… they work and fight against the most lethal things the galaxy has to offer.

Look at it from this perspective; Imagine there’s a heretical cult that’s kidnapped thousands of innocent people and taken them into the depths of a hive world where they’re sacrificing them to Khorn in hopes of summoning a horrific demon to unleash upon the hive. The party assassin and guardsmen think the best way to deal with the situation is to plant demolition charges on the support columns of the cult hideout and collapse several thousand tons of hive upon them. They’ve written off the captives as casualties already. The party Cleric however, feels it would be better to try and rescue survivors who have not yet been sacrificed but the assassin and guardsmen feel that the cult is too large and, if they are captured or killed they will be unable to set off the charges and the demon will be unleashed. The interparty disagreement comes to a head when the cleric threatens to expose the guardsmen and assassin’s plan to the heretics themselves in the name of rescuing all those innocent lives if they don’t at least attempt to help the captives.

Is it really that hard to understand how players can go from contemplating the killing of thousands of innocent people in the name of protecting the hive world to killing a fellow character? Some inquisitors exact Exterminatus on entire planets in the name of their work.

cyclocius said:

Ironiclly enough, my parties Psyker and Assassin have been argueing alot. Just this last session the assassin shot at the psyker, but ended up missing the shot, only to have a sucessful spasm cast on him... just at the end of Shades on Twilight... the arguement was that the assassin wanted to read a certian book and the psker had it and said "NO" They clash alot... My party seems very agressive towards one another. If the tech-priest gets hit, by accident or not, he attacks back in a painful Str. 58 mono-saber kinda way...

incarna said:

I agree.

I think interparty violence is easily one of the top five "GM style" issues, where it varies widely between groups depending on what the players and the GM like. Frankly, I tend to be the kind of GM who values everyone having fun over perfect commitment to "what your character would do." I steer people away from interparty killing, away from stealing from one another.

But I still expect it to happen a fair bit in Dark Heresy. It's unavoidable when you have a universe which preaches the virtue of violence, that it is better for a thousand innocents to die than one heretic to go free... where if you spare someone because they are your friend, you are weak.

Like most of these controversial issues, the key is a good balance of in and out of character communication. Granted, PC to PC violence is a tough one, because it is largely out of your hands. It can also sometimes be hard to judge whether they're just going to get into a fist fight when things do errupt, or whether they're going to start firing bolt rounds. But I'm a firm believer in not trying to handle everything through the game, and talking to your players out of game about the story and their characters too.

If I see a conflict escalating that could eventually lead to character death, I gauge whether the players both realize it, and are okay with it (particularly if there is one who I think would be disadvantaged if it came down to combat). If they seem aware and content, I let them go on to whatever the conclusion may be. If they're not, then it's time to flex the power of being the GM. I try to offer some in game alternatives that I could orchestrate to diffuse the situation. Of course, that requires your players to be willing to cooperate with you, but hopefully that's not an issue. Again, to each their own, but I don't want players in my game who put so little value on the enjoyment of others.

I think the background of DH lends itself to these kinds of conflicts more so than many other RPG's. The warp, corruption, etc can cause issues but they can also provide a solution. Corruption points can be given for this type of behavior. Another solution is have the Acolytes Inquisitor become aware of the situation. He can fit the offending players with linked explosive collars. If one dies so does the other. If they seperate by a certain distance, they both go off.

One thing to decide is if the conflict is in character or a real life personality clash. If the later you're probably not going to be able to invite both for the gaming sessions. If it's a relatively new personality clash and they have a history of playing together than you'll probably have to find out what has happened recently to cause the issue and see if it can be resolved.

As far as I'm concerned, this is one of those issues players need to discuss before the game begins. Some people are very attached to their characters, or simply have a tendency to take things personally. Such individuals generally won't handle interparty violence very well. On the other hand, people who really enjoy roleplaying, including conflict, and are able to roll with the punches, shouldn't have any problem with it. It all depends on the players.

Actually, I really like a good interparty conflict. As long it is in character of course, but I think that is obvious. Most of the time it is rather the opposite I have problems with, namely that the players/characters are too trustworthy with each other (because the players (opposite to the characters) know each other rather well). Recently, my groups Guardsman punched the Assassin (SB4 vs TB2) in the face because he was arguing with the Tech-Priest who should sit in the front row of the quad-wheeler they were using on Iocanthos (Illumination). The Guardsman player got 10 XP extra for in character behaviour and the Assassin a bloody nose as well as a seat in the back row...

I tend to be a GM who tries to avoid inter-party conflict in the interests of 'keeping it fun', though I'm willing to go with it if characters have good IC reasons for the conflict. I have had a good deal of interparty conflict in my game, including two attempted killings, which took me aback a little. I've been GMing for around 20 years now, and I've never had inter-party conflict on this scale before (outside of games of Paranoia). However, on reflection, I think DH does have significant potential for inter-party conflict built in, and as a GM you have to be aware of that. The high-stakes nature of adventures and the Inquisition's culture of ruthlessness has already been mentioned. As has the fact that the fluff encourages your combat oriented characters to be created as stone-cold killers, whether they are hive scum, members of death cults, or fanatically loyal guardsmen. Another factor, though, is that if played correctly a number of character types will naturally conflict. I had a Tech-Priest, played correctly as someone who didn't even pay lip-service to the worship of the God-Emperor and was openly disdainful of the reasoning capabilities of his fleshly colleagues. A psyker who was fanatically devoted to the God-Emperor. A Sister of Battle who was similarly fanatically devoted, and insisted on calling the psyker 'witch' and making it clear she was itching to put a bullet through his brain at the first sign of a warp manifestation, as well as seeing the Inquisitor as an agent of God whose decisions and judgements it was heresy to question. I also had an Arbitrator and a Scum, but they had fortunately fallen into a cop/criminal buddy movie groove. My point is basically that the character creation rules encourage the creation of a party of hugely disparate characters with extreme views, many of whom are trained killers. The game concept is then to throw them into very extreme situations, encourage them to feel that drastic (and violent) solutions to problems are often called for, and remove any effective oversight from their boss.

The party has settled down a bit now, but I think next time I'll be a lot more careful about what character concepts I allow into the same party, and consider starting them as an established cell who have worked together before.

RevMark said:

Well said.

RevMark said:

In my experience that doesn't go as far as you'd think. The characters are still new to the player, and it's usually very hard for them to really play it like their character has mutual trust for another character when they've never roleplayed them together before. I would suggest augmenting this approach by laying it out to your players that you are doing this because you don't want them killing eachother, and ask them to collaborate on idea why their characters get along (against the odds) before they play them.

Shadowkat said:

I agree. I run a group consisting of an arbitrator and a psyker. Both the players are friends outside of this DH game and their characters have become fast friends, earning each other's trust through the trials of the Inquisiton. That said, the arbitrator has made if very clear that if the psyker causes any demons to spill over from the Warp he's going to be a dead psyker. The funny part is that the psyker agrees, preferring the mercy of oblivion to that of life as a heretic.

In general party conflict can be fun - if done in the way of roleplaying. Having characters get along because they are in a party stifles play.

In DH, I would think conflict would be fairly common - with all the different flavors of inquisitors to choose from not to mention a healthy dose of paranoia. Just this weekend we had some issues with a cleric going a bit nuts. A soldier was driven insane fighting apparent demons. The cleric immediately decided to purify him with his flamer. The rest of the party saved the poor soul and the Commisar had some serious words with him. Basically he had no right to do that from an ethical as well as legal standpoint. Later the cleric interviewed a rebel who gave a sob story of living in the Gorgonid mines and rebelled only to get a better life. They had no connection to the warp or ruinious powers and had nothing to do with the mutants and/or demons that came out when they retreated. The cleric felt sorry for him and game him a combat knife to defend himself with and go down fighting when the guards came to execute him. This last bit was unknown to the rest of the party but the other characters, mainly the Commissar, would see this a treasonous. Needless to say, the cleric might not be long for the party and the player will be fine with it.

In the end conflict can be a good tool for character development and general role play. However it does take a level of maturity to pull it off before it gets person amongst the players.

I have been a GM for as long as the new Warhammer RPG has been out, and personally I am fine with inter-group violence, as long as it's the characters that are fighting (and have a valid reason for it).

As an example I had 4 players; one was a very boozed up scum that drank literally everything he could get his hands on (he became more of an alcoholic as his insanity went up), the other was a heavily augmented tech-priest with a mutation so his one remaining eye was like a lizards, the 3rd was the party psyker who was the normal(!) in the group, and finally we had our young noble guardswoman who felt as she needed to be seen as the leader simply due to her ancestry.

On one of their recon mission in the lower middle hive our scum get hold of a HUGE amount of brown booze-like liquid, anyways he drown as much as he can and get very, very drunk, anyways at the same time the tech priest, in a bid to make the guardswoman forget that he has a mutation (he had just discovered it and was horrified) he gives her a large dose of some local drug. Anyways the scum, who has previously been an ass on the guardswoman come back into the main room of their house and starts fumbling with the guardswomen, she meanwhile is so high she doesn't get what is going on, now the players decide to let the dice rule; so a 1-3 she get drug-raped 4-10 he vomits and pass out. All 5 of us hold our breath, and the dice hits a 1...

Now the guardswoman don't take kindly to this when she realize what has happened, while the scum on the morrow is having a major hangover he can't help but gloat. Later the day while the psyker, scum and tech-priest is out, she opens up her flamer's promethium tank and drapes all the scum's stuff in it. When the team comes back from recon the scum booze himself up as usual and at some point go to his room to sleep it off. At this point the psyker, having been convinced to drink to by the scum is already fast asleep in the scum's room, and the tech-priest is in the kitchen looking over the info they got that day. The guardswomen calmly walks into the scum's room with a lit cigar, and flick it towards our scum.

What happens is first and foremost that the entire room is lit up by the promethium-soaked stuff on top of which lies the scum, the scum's player rules that his character is in no position to use his fate point and simply lets him go up in horribly flame, the psyker meanwhile comes running out of the room screaming and suffering from 2nd degree burns on most of his body. Our tech-priest get the psyker injected with some of his drugs (he was using himself) so the psyker calms down, the tech is trying to patch up our poor psyker he himself decide to use his psychic abilities to heal himself, but manage to roll psychic phenomenon (warp whispers) and gives everyone inside the house a whooping 1d10 corruption points, which results in the tech-priest getting an additional mutation, this time leather-flesh. Everyone at this point is laughing at the insanity of it all at this point so no hard feelings from any of the players.

So I would say that inter-party violence can be just as funny as what I as a GM can come up with and its stuff like this that now 1½ later still gets referred to by all players involved.

Had to re-read that post as I was taking 'she opens up her flamer's promethium tank and drapes all the scum's stuff in it' to mean something completely different...

I agree if it is in character then the interparty violence has a place. In the first game I ran using the pre-gen scenario with characters such wackiness ensued. After playing through and successfully completing their objective they settled in for the night back at camp. Unfortunatley one of the party had picked up a slight mutation from exposure to warp energy that would manifest in the morning. So the Arbites wakes up first, followed by the Assassin (both played by women in the group). As they are talking about what to do next. The Guardsman wakes up(the guy in the group) and it turns out his hair has turned bright pink. Seeing this the VERY INTOLERANT females, yell mutant and pull down on him. Shreiking in a manly way he makes a break for the door/tent flap, just as he is clearing the entrance the assassin tags him in the leg. So as he starts limping across camp the Arbites runs out fires a round that hits him in the head blowin it clean off and setting him on fire. After which he spins around runs at the Arbites collapsing in flames two meters from her feet. Lots of laughter from two thirds of the party and a little from the last member. However is played well and to their respective beliefs so worked out correctly if not a little extreme.

I imagine fear or respect for the inquisition would keep the cell mostly in line. i've no problem with friction, scheming and mistrust between PC's (I actively encourage it) but for someone to actually attack another player, that's a whole different ball game. Can you imagine one of Eisenhorn's or Ravenor's acolytes executing an acolyte without at least asking?

I have not ran a Dark Heresy Campaign yet. I am about to. However I have ran and been a part of numerous D&D 3 and 3.5 campaigns. Most of these Campaigns ended in inter party violence. For those not aware of the D&D 3.5 alignment system this will make less sense. Most characters were some sort of neutral or if allowed evil. We'd get an occasional good character. There was always an inter party conflict in each campaign. It all depended on who pissed who off in game. Some times it would only be one memeber of the party that was butchered for his incompetence. Thus was at times understandable. Othertimes it was almost an even split, and sometimes it was or became a free for all. Characters that didn't pick sides might be left out, if they were support characters and didn't pick sides then they were kept out of the disputes. I as a player was left out of party conflict largely because most of the players liked me in person, and even if I played a darker character they tended to respect me in character. When I did get involved was when I agreed with the reasons ic and otc and when my character was better made than the rest of the group. This would at times completely prevent conflict, cause I was good at both powergaming and rping at the same time.

In my experience most conflicts are caused by a combination of bordom (either of their character, or of a underpowered campaign), or of pride (whos the best), and in character conflict (which may be simptomatic of bordom and pride). Bordom is a strong word to use in this case, desire for more conflict is a better one. I don't think that most of the story lines that were created were grimdark enough for my players. These character conflicts tend to make very interesting rp opportunities, allow players to have a good reason for replacing their chracter (cause they are dead), and the conflicts can get even more interesting if the pcs that died are resurrected (a rare occurance in D&D, unless the party has a high level cleric). Next such a situation happens (in D&D), if I am DMing (Gming), I will have the charcters that die rise (alive or undead or demon) and become nemisis npcs.

Ironically enough I think that I will encounter no interparty killings mainly because of the Grim Dark theme of Dark Heresy (I've tried to run D&D horror campaigns, but most of my pcs wanted to be anit-heros (which tends to make things seem less horrific in character (Especially when they start doing worse things than the villans (In which case I make the next villans good) ) I have also exluded from the group the biggest incompetents and trouble makers.

If any of you want me to post more detail ask. My post is rather lengthy already, but I'm trying to be consise.

I strongly discourage PC's beating on each other by keeping them quite occupied with their present problems and making sure that each of them can contribute to the problem solving in some way or another. Which can be fairly hard when a few of the careers don't touch much on the intellectual side and the ones that do tend to be fairly meek and uninteresting to the bulk of people we play with, so I cant keep all of them occupied 100% all of the time, best I can do is give people a place to shine where they're good at so they're useful and kick em in the junk where they're weakest.

That works for the majority of the time.

It doesn't necessarily work for 'extreme' circumstances where they're faced with the possibility of one of their own ending up a threat to them, mutation, corruption, insanity, possession, personal choices, stupid actions that threaten them and hopefully some moral quandaries once in awhile. But I would like to keep the dice from making that decision as much as possible. Except Psykers, they get the RAW because otherwise they're overbearing and its that threat of keeping it exactly as written which keeps them from spamming away at will with very powerful psychic powers, though if needed they can always burn the odd fate point to keep the character in play.

Ultimately though, its made clear enough that they're accountable for themselves and completely to the Inquisitor.

They better have a bloody good reason for it, because they sure as hell he will find out if the reason wasn't sufficient and there's no hole deep enough to hide in...

I had enough of inter-party sniping and backstabbing when I ran games in my teens. I actually see it as a sign of immaturity in a roleplayer and simply don't tolerate it. I recognize the fact that some good storytelling and roleplay could come from inter-party conflict but I have yet to actually meet a roleplayer who can pull it off without simply being a ****. Most often it devolves into a bunch of posturing and petty sniping that does nothing but detract from the story and the characters.

When I run a game I make it abundantly clear that the characters have been together for a long time and that they trust and rely on each other. Players are expected to work their backstories together and come up with a character that functions well socially with the other characters. Players who isist on creating 'anti-social' characters either change or stop coming to games. Pretty simple.

An interesting take on things Plastic Rat. However, I think you are misunderstanding the nature of conflict/violence in a RP sense.

Put 3-5 unrelated people with vastly different backgrounds on a team then set them loose on a mission and you are going to get conflict. It is human nature. Even if they have known and worked with each other for years, expecting that everyone is going to play nice in the sandbox at all times is (imo) rather heavy handed from a GM's sense. Conflict/violence doesn't always mean putting a bolter round in the back of someone's head.... it could also be locking the door to safehouse and making someone spend a long, cold night outside in the hive for being an idiot. OR the low-born scum finally snapping from one too many comments about his origins and confronting the noble in a tense scene.

Do you always agree with your best friends? You have known them for years right? Nothing they do ever urks you? Do 'teams' in books/tv shows never disagree? They may make up later... it makes for great drama/rp on the screen and also at the table.

The Dark Heresy setting is Dark. The acolytes aren't tracking down the heritic to give him a slap on the wrist, or to ask the Chaos cultists nicely to stop sacrificing children to the dark powers. Conflict and violence are things of everyday life in the 41st millennium. Expecting players to work together isn't wrong... but expecting that they should never have conflict with another charactor is a bit far don't you think?

Another thing to keep in mind is that the Inquisition is a fractured organization in a very paranoid setting. Inquisitor factions routinely come to blows and treat other factions within the Inquisition with the highest suspicion. This is played out in the Eisenhorn books as well as potential conflict within the various groups. As for asking permission for killing another party member, desparate times call for desparate means. Possession, insanity and mutation/corruption within the RAW offer plenty of scenarios where a party culling could happen if not be required.

aethel said:

Strange, I've almost always had the opposite problem. By that I mean PC's tolerating behavior from other PC's that they'd instantly execute an NPC for, but letting it slide from a PC just because they are a PC. Mysterious figure shows up and tried to join in on things: if he's a NPC distrust and probably kill just to be on the safe sid: if he's a PC, oh hi sure you can join our group. That kind of behavior from player has always driven me nuts. Especially when character just trust or tolerate one another, not b/c they're both acolytes of the =][= but because they're both PC's. NPC's aren't seen as people but as targets b/c each doesn't have one of the players behind it. I've spent years trying to beat into my players to treat all of them at people (or at least entities) based on the interactions and perceptions in game between individuals without reference to out of game considerations (such as whether the individual is a GM controlled or player controlled character).

Further, its not my job as a GM to stop inter-party conflict. If they decide to kill one another I'm not going to tell them they can't. However, there will be whatever consequences make sense within the universe/narative of the game. That means they better have a good reason for anything that irritates their Inquisitor (especially since the Inquisitor for my current game's cell is a master telepath that it's very hard to hide anything from).

Plastic Rat said:

Here you really have to make a distinction between player conflict (stuff caused because a player is just being a ****, or wants to prove his character is most bad ass or some out of game issue being take up by fighting in the game) and character conflict (conflict caused by characters having differing views, goals, perceptions, or even situational information).

I agree that most forms of player conflict (as defined above) are immature. However I also find it almost equally immature to operate on a we're the player party so we automatically get along basis.

Character conflict (again as defined above) can make for some great role-playing and fun as long as the players are mature enough to keep it in game and not make out of game fights over it. (and as long as the conflict comes from in character/in game sources and not some player going I'm going to make a character who causes problems just b/c I feel like being a pain in the ass.)

I would just say that even though i have had plenty of interparty-violence, it has NEVER been becourse of ooc problems. Ofcourse i try to limit it to a certain degree, by making sure that if the players character dies, the new character only has 400 xp to spend, so the more they die, the lower 'level' they are. I have done this in both Dark Heresy, and in Warhammer RPG, and my players are all fine with it. This also has the bonus benefit of making sure my players dont end up with super-strong charecters as they have a fairly high mortality rate (yes i kill of players left and right, it IS after all a grim world). Should i however see a interparty-violence happen just becourse they players have a problem, i would NOT allow it, and would simply take a time out so they could work out their problems away from the game. After all thats what friends are for.

And as for their inqusitor? They make the report to him so if they say one of the group was killed by the bad guys, how is he to know better? After all hes not THAT omnipresent.