Astonishing Swordsmen And Sorcerers of Hyperborea | Party Conflict

[Ulkek]

In the game I'm in I'm playing as a Viking Berzerker. To play such a character has been my dream for the entirety of my time playing Tabletop games, and now it's finally happened. I'm greatly enjoying it, seamlessly being able to get into my character's head and roleplay a pretty historically accurate Viking raider. However, conflict has risen in the party, and quickly developed into conflict at the table.

Another person in the party who is really into the roleplaying aspect is a player playing an Amazonian Witch. As a male Amazonian, he was a slave and despises the institution of slavery. My character, being a Viking raider, doesn't attach any negative moral consequence to slavery. He would only discourage treating slaves poorly. As such, after our last dungeon crawl where we ended up with tons of money I had my character purchase an expensive scholar as a slave, as well as a very well equipped soldier to protect her. The player of the Witch questioned me on this decision, and I requested he let my character act as he really would and buy the slave, then let our characters' relationship develop in response to how my character treats his slave.(Which is quite benevolently)

Later we did a randomized story involving our characters retracing their steps following a night of extreme partying. I found that my slave was gone, and the soldier I hired incapacitated. I then began trying to track her, assuming she had wandered off drunk the night before. It wasn't until the next game that the other players at the table revealed that they had freed my slave.

Now, this makes me annoyed because many times throughout the game I toned down the brash mentality of my character because I knew it would compromise everyone else's fun. However, as soon as my character does something they don't like they stripped my ability to roleplay my character as I see fit in a secret session. When I said that's simply my character's nature to not see slavery as evil they questioned if my character belongs in the party, which stunned me because there's a thief in our party who has made a habit of stealing from downtrodden, desperate questgivers. My stance was that if their characters didn't like my character's ethics, they could've approached him in game to address it and allow all of our characters to develop from it, maybe changing someone's views on slavery and avoiding stripping me of my autonomy in the process. I didn't say much after expressing my discontent out of character, not wanting to cause some kind of argument at the table.

We played the rest of the game, but I spent the whole time feeling like my character was hollow. I was going to have him beat the guard down for his incompetence, but the party threatened to kill my character if he did so. Outside of this, I can't see my character continuing to travel with a party he feels betrayed him. And now it seems my only choice is to make the character, who's a brash and easily angered berzerker, shrug it off and pretend there's been no transgression. It's so character breaking to me that what was once easily my favorite character I've ever played is a distracting bore. And worst of all, there's no way for me to roll a new character without making the DM think I'm doing it out of spite.

It's a shame. I love playing with my current group, as they're all super intelligent and roleplay well. However, this whole experience has been offputting, as I've effectively been told that I can't play characters I enjoy if other characters disagree with their lifestyle choices. This strips me down to having to play uninspired good guy archetypes and makes the game generally unenjoyable. However, I'm not sure how to take this to my table constructively.

What do you guys think? Am I not fairly considering their side of this? Do you think that their act of freeing the slave through a secret session was going too far? How should I discuss this with the party?

[Premier]

Tough situation. My advice is this:

- (This is the big one, you either do it or you don't.) Decide to either solve this issue in a way that's mutually acceptable to everyone, or leave the game.
- Show them this post you've written right here. It's pretty good at explaining your viewpoint, the nature of your grievance and why you feel you've been mistreated. Maybe amend it a bit along those line. Be fair and upfront and make it clear - without being accusatory or pointing fingers - that this state of affairs is not acceptable to you, and you will leave the game if it isn't addressed seriously.
- Give them a chance to engage and discuss the issue. Genuinely engage: actually explain why they had a problem with your PC's actions, why they thought it was acceptable for them to force this thing on you without your consent and why they're having double standards regarding the thief. If they refuse to really sit down and talk, leave the game. It's not worth the grief.

[Zavoniki]

I can see where your party members are coming from with this. Slavery is an uncomfortable issue for a lot of people so they just label it as evil and move on. I suspect that is what happened here. Its unfortunate that a lot of times people assume that the people the are friends with and roleplay with have exactly the same moral values that they do. Generally they are roughly the same, but the specifics might be different. And sometimes those specifics matter.

I has a GM recently who got the party together and just flat out asked if we had any areas we'd rather not explore in a New World of Darkness game. The party agreed that most things were ok, but certain areas involving children and teenagers were pretty off limits. I'm not sure if it changed the game at all, but discussion like that are important.

I would definitely bring this up with the party Out of Character and try and explain where you are coming from. Then I would sit back and listen to their response. It could be that they don't want a slaver(of any kind) in their party and that's just something that you'll have to deal with. Or something else could be going on.

The party's actions seem totally reasonable to me however. Not talking to you Out Of Character beforehand to get your OK on all this is the only kinda shady thing I see, but my group tends to make sure everyone's on the same page OOC before we do anything IC so that may just be me.

[Ulkek]

I can see where your party members are coming from with this. Slavery is an uncomfortable issue for a lot of people so they just label it as evil and move on. I suspect that is what happened here. Its unfortunate that a lot of times people assume that the people the are friends with and roleplay with have exactly the same moral values that they do. Generally they are roughly the same, but the specifics might be different. And sometimes those specifics matter.

I has a GM recently who got the party together and just flat out asked if we had any areas we'd rather not explore in a New World of Darkness game. The party agreed that most things were ok, but certain areas involving children and teenagers were pretty off limits. I'm not sure if it changed the game at all, but discussion like that are important.

I would definitely bring this up with the party Out of Character and try and explain where you are coming from. Then I would sit back and listen to their response. It could be that they don't want a slaver(of any kind) in their party and that's just something that you'll have to deal with. Or something else could be going on.

The party's actions seem totally reasonable to me however. Not talking to you Out Of Character beforehand to get your OK on all this is the only kinda shady thing I see, but my group tends to make sure everyone's on the same page OOC before we do anything IC so that may just be me.

Yeah, I'm going to talk to them tonight. I hope they listen, because one of my biggest pet peeves is playing a progressive minded character in a setting that has little room for it. When I think of Hyperborea I think of extreme sexism, racism, violence, it's just a land of barbarians plunged into chaos. Then our party is the Kleptomaniacal Egalitarian Morality Squad. It's very anachronist, and makes it difficult for me to enjoy the game. However, even if they don't come to a middle ground I'll probably hang on and play a character I'm a bit less enthusiastic about. My group is normally really solid, and these kind of disagreements are super atypical. It really sucks that I can't play a character that I absolutely love using, but I'd rather play a game that I'm not completely invested in and still have such a good group that's going to likely have many more awesome games to make up for it.

[shadow_archmagi]

Yeah, I'm going to talk to them tonight. I hope they listen, because one of my biggest pet peeves is playing a progressive minded character in a setting that has little room for it. When I think of Hyperborea I think of extreme sexism, racism, violence, it's just a land of barbarians plunged into chaos. Then our party is the Kleptomaniacal Egalitarian Morality Squad. It's very anachronist, and makes it difficult for me to enjoy the game. However, even if they don't come to a middle ground I'll probably hang on and play a character I'm a bit less enthusiastic about. My group is normally really solid, and these kind of disagreements are super atypical. It really sucks that I can't play a character that I absolutely love using, but I'd rather play a game that I'm not completely invested in and still have such a good group that's going to likely have many more awesome games to make up for it.

I know how you feel, although luckily in my group it's reversed and there's one guy who gets really confused when people say things like "All orcs are bad!" and asks them to consider a more open-minded viewpoint.

[Chambers]

I think your best move in this is to retire the character and play something that you'll enjoy playing but also fits in with the parties expectations. 'No Slavery' seems to be one of those expectations.

I agree that it's a bummer that they went behind your back (both IC and OOC) to deal with something IC that they had an OOC problem with. At the next session you might want to talk about that. From my experience, IC problems should always be addressed OOC first before taking actions in the game.

[Stomper]

We once had a similar disagreement in our group although over a more extreme issue.
Sad to say it didn't get resolved.

We had a player who refused to be cured of lycantropy (the wererat kind) because of the perceived perks.
That she would kill innocents 3 nights a month was of no consequence to her.
She was very angry when the rest of us didn't want to party with her anymore.

As a party we drew a line there as we had no intention of becoming diner in the middle of the dessert.
We staged an intervention in a friendly temple against her will to solve it in game, but she made her ST twice after which the DM gave up. (Divine sign?)

She rage quited the character after the next DM played it by the rules (attack people with which you have a strong emotion love/hate)
and let her kill her mother on the next full moon. ;-)