For me it's more of a read the room situation. Evil characters aren't appropriate for every campaign, and neither are wholly good characters. This is one reason session 0 is so important. Setting expectations and the type of play to expect before characters are created. Believe it or not it's a lot more fun to play a character that fits the campaign and meshes well with the group than the random iconoclast you dreamt up six weeks before the campaign was even mentioned.
Evil characters are fine. Good characters are fine. In the right context.
I agree. Although, a lot of people are bad at conflict and confrontation, so a lot of concepts get past session zero even though internally not everyone is on board.
Session zero is step one in making sure everyone is aligned. But I honestly consider it on me to walk from any table I'm not compatible with, and often do.
Some of my best friends love rpgs, but I don't play with them because we can't both enjoy ourselves at the same time
Yeah if your playstyle isn't syncing up that's a whole different thing. Some groups prefer rp heavy, some dungeon crawls, some laid back romps and some crunchy death defying combat. I am 100% with you there. If it's as simple as a character not meshing with a group though that could be as easy as switching to a new character or working with the DM to come through a redemption arc.
Edit: idk why you got downvoted, that wasn't me and I think you have a good point. Not every group of people should play at the same table. We have different ideas of fun. My brother in law is a great dude, fun to hang around and play halo with. However he likes his dnd to be very very jokey, akin to dungeons and daddies or adventure zone, where as our normal group likes a little more serious game. He lasted two sessions with us and walked away with no feelings hurt. It happens.
I agree context is important. In my last game I played an evil character in my mostly neutral or good party, but he didn’t start that way. He was more of a neutral teifling who just hated humans in particular. I gradually made him evil because I liked one teifling thing I read that said most of them try to at least be neutral, but tensions with humans can put them down a dark path. So since our campaign kind of allowed for that situation to happen, I just rolled with it. The course of the game drove him that Way, but we could still tell there was rift growing in the party, so for a few sessions we ramped up my characters shity ness and then my dm and I revealed a secret boss fight in which my character finally snapped and gave everyone else the catharsis of killing him. It was one of the best sessions I think, and I think the death at the party’s hands made him one of my best characters ever. But it any other game he would be awful, he was barely ok in ours, that’s why he had to die.
My next character was a home brew ent who didn’t like to get involved but was loyal to the party so that meta game wise we wouldn’t have any tension for a while.
Tbf, I was more so poking fun at the fact that, IMO, OP should have written 'problematic behaviour' as you can justify some behaviour with alignment if you want, just so long as it's not obnoxious and/or disruptive to the rest of the players at the table.
I agree with you on that, behaving in accordance with alignment is core to the game, that's what alignment is there for.
In my opinion, nobody is rude for bringing their DM approved character to a game. If it's disruptive or obnoxious, that's more of a DM mistake than a player mistake, they're all just sticking to what was agreed to. Whether it be a lawful paladin that makes people feel mothered or vilified when they wanted to be an anti-hero, or a rogue who robs innocents and ruins the parties reputation, those things aren't wrong to play. They might just be wrong for you.
It's bizarre to me to consider an incompatibility in playstyle anybody's fault, instead of just being something to acknowledge and move on from
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u/Fuzzleton Mar 25 '21
Conform to the unspoken hivemind or you're being rude :(