While I don't mind party conflicts, and think they can be interesting as long as it doesn't destroy the group completely, some people take less lightly to it than others.

yeah if you know it annoys someone you probably shouldn't do it, like most things, but I tend to think it's better to operate under the assumption that things are ok until you know people have a problem with them.

I tend to think people that assume this are a major issue just about anywhere you go... be it online, in game, or real life. There's nothing hard at all about talking to the others at the game table first to be like "Hey, my character totally hates elves and is going to go ballistic and try to kill any we see without question" and getting feedback from the party.

Likewise its not that hard to ask someone in public "Hey man, my earbuds are broke do you mind if I listen to music on my phone through the speaker?". If you ask your more likely to get a yes answer from most people. But if you're just sitting there at the airport with your music blasting on your crappy iphone apparently unaware of the world around you I'm going to be tempted to report you as a suspicious person to TSA.

[quote="Bounty HunterLikewise its not that hard to ask someone in public "Hey man, my earbuds are broke do you mind if I listen to music on my phone through the speaker?".[/quote]
And yet, no one does this, they all just blare their music however loud they want.

~SE++

yeah that's a pretty different scenario. I'm talking specifically about a setting where we all came together, in a group we agreed upon, to play a game together. settings in which we didn't actively agree to participate with each other aren't comparable. if I'm, say, at an airport, and you're at an airport, you didn't agree to be there with me, and so it's totally reasonable to expect me to not interact with you, including forcing you to listen to my music. and even in certain explicitly interactive settings, we have a clear goal in mind when we begin that interaction, and generally it's reasonable to expect that our interaction will be limited to furthering that goal. for instance, if you're ordering a sandwich, it's reasonable for you to assume that the person making it will not stop and spend half an hour talking to you about how martians are secretly living in hidden caves on mount Everest, because both of you entered this interaction on the implicit assumption that the goal of it was for you to pay for and receive a sandwich.

but roleplaying isn't a goal-oriented interaction. it's an explorational, collaborative storytelling engagement. and in that context, I think the best format is as few boundaries as possible. part of the experience is surprise at what other players do and the unpredictable nature of the characters and the world, and if everyone's stopping every five seconds to check that no one's going to be upset by what they're about to do, that kills that surprise. I don't want surprise at the airport, and I certainly don't want it while getting a sandwich, but it's the point of roleplaying so, in the context of roleplaying, blatant forewarning is antithetical to the goals of the activity.

again, I don't think you should do things that you know or suspect will seriously upset other players out of game. so in any given context, you may decide not to attack another character because you think that that character's player would get really angry, or because they'd previously expressed dislike for pvp. and that's reasonable. and maybe you don't do it because you don't want to, even if you think your character would. and that's ok too. it's about having fun, and if that's not fun don't do it. but don't claim that it's about being a better roleplayer, because it's not.

Yeeeeah. You payed a ton of money to be able to use those Beats by Dre as a fashion accessory, yet I still have to hear your terrible tastes in music.

Pretty much why I travel with headphones. Not to blast my music, but to drown out other people's.

~SE++

Roleplay is very much goal-oriented, and just like real life a party of six may have six different goals, but there very much are goals. The rogue wants to get rich by whatever means available, the paladin is trying to spread the word of Pelor, the wizard wants to become immortal and DM wants to see everyone at wits end with some awesome fight. There are smaller goals along the way to those in the form of quests and skill challenges and roleplay, but the group very much should have a loose common goal in addition to their own agendas.

Also, your comment about stopping every five minutes is an absolute hyperbole and is blowing it way out of proportion. No one is staying stop constantly, I'm saying you should field issues that you know will effect the whole group because the game is a group game. If your actions only effect you, do what you want, but when your fun could be hampering the fun of others have some common courtesy to at least ask before acting on some of the large stuff.

all of those are character goals, not player goals.

my point is that asking can diminish the fun for everyone. to go back to my first example, what made it so cool and so memorable was that I had no idea that that was even an option. if he'd stopped and said "hey razor I think realistically my barbarian would kill you right now, do you mind if I do that?" I of course would've been like "yeah sure", but it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun because I knew it was coming. the shock of realizing that oh no my character's about to die for the stuff he's been saying and there's nothing I can do about it was the experience, and forewarning and permission would've ruined that.

I guess, though, at this point, we should probably just agree to disagree. I was mainly objecting not to the practice, but to the advocacy of that practice as objectively superior, which is on the article's author, not you. I don't disagree that it's reasonable to discuss things, I just feel like there are downsides as well and I personally prefer doing it the other way.

There are very much player goals as well as character goals when it comes to playing an RPG.

Even if you personally dont have em.

*shrug*

But agree to disagree I reckon. Though I do agree that its not "objectively better" which isnt really the best way to look at something as fluid as RPGs.

Different goats for different folks ya know?

Almost completely irrelevant to the discussion, but despite being a pushover in social situations, I might actually have objected to such a request.

Anyway, razorborne, I actually think there are enough people that would get assblastered if you chucked an axe into their perfectly sculpted special snowflake face. A lot of players can get really invested in their characters, and dying to a teammate can be pretty upsetting.
However, the problem isn't actually when you take that fireball and chuck it down his throat, because most rational people don't solve their problems through straight out murder. I get that we're discussing Manchildren & Murderhobos here, but a lot of the time, you will get two+ people who are upset with each others actions, but not to the point of bringing out sheer violence. At that point you get two brooding parties who each look at each other thinking "Why would I want to party with that guy?", but neither of them feel like parting with their character. The rest of the party couldn't care less about whose god could beat up the other in a fight, so you have to find some other form of resolution to the problem, before it slowly corrodes.

I'd probably just ask "Do you think party conflict is interesting?" during character creating, and get down with it there and then.

Read the whole post. It had everything to do with my mini rant on people who dont realize or care how much they impose on others.