Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to ask you a question, which has been sparked by a debate I've had with a friend of mine about a couple of campaigns we play at the moment, and which he has dropped out of.

The topic is "Player vs. Player" kills.

What are your experiences with campaigns where this is allowed?

My friend have elected to drop out of two campaigns.

In one campaign, I, as a GM (Forgotten Realms, D&D3.5 game), have stated that I will not bar a player character from killing another character, if there is a weighty in-game reason for the action, and as long as the kill is made in a memorable way. Killing someone while they sleep, or poisoning them is not a cool way to end a character, and thus I wouldn't allow such an end. As all of the players are veteran roleplayers, I have no expectations of the issue ever coming up though, and thus I really wouldn't have expected anyone to be able to have a problem with such a statement.

In the other campaign (SR), the GM will similarly to me, allow us to kill one another, if it should become the only logical in-game response to a given situation. In this game I'm playing a psychotic/sociopatic Twisted Mage, who is a fullbore militant feminist who hate male chauvinists. She's modeled partly on the Belatrix character from Harry Potter, and some of the ideas from the Lilith character from Revelations of a Dark Mother from Revised ed. World of Darkness by White Wolf. She is designed to be able to get along with more or less anything, except male chauvinists who are vocal about their views and direct their oppinions towards her. My friend, on the other hand, elected to make a traditionally raised chinese adept male, with a view that women belong in the kitchen etc. Basically a potential carcrash waiting to happen between our characters. Now, I have nothing against having such potential clashes in a game, and I can easily enough navigate around such topics so that such two characters won't have to end up in a physical fight. My friend, however, elected to play his character in the exact one way that would force my character to ultimately do something drastic to his character. And he decided to persist in playing the character this way, despite several indirect warnings from my character in-game, and direct in-game warnings from one of the other characters. Ultimately I told him outright, out of character, that if he kept playing the character in that way, I would be left with no other character credible action but to have my character try and kill his character. This led to a debate on the issue of PvP in RPG's, and as the GM of the campaign would allow such a thing to happen, he ultimately elected to withdraw from the campaign.

My friend says that he's had bad experiences with campaigns in the past, where PvP have been allowed, and hence he doesn't want to play in such campaigns, where PvP is allowed. I've heard the horrorstories about games where players have made new characters with the goal of killing the character who killed their old character etc., and I conceed that PvP takes mature players. But my background is LARPing, and here PvP kills takes place repeatedly, and nobody bats an eyelash at anything but a lame kill where the victim is sleeping when he's killed, or some such idiocy.

What are your experiences with player characters killing one another in a campaign? I refuse to believe that I'm unique in my view that though such conflicts shouldn't be actively sought out by the players, they need not cause any problems, if they happen as a conclusion to one or more events where a lethal response is the next logical step.

I personally avoid having character concepts that clash, especially in a game like shadowrun where in some cases, a character rightfully deserves death. However, this character was trying to get himself killed or instigating a PvP fight. That sort of behavior suggests an ingrained resentment from 1 player towards the other & I as a GM would not stand for that sort of backhanded attempts to undermine the group cohesiveness.

My table rules stand as such: PvP is allowed so long as it makes sense, but if someone is egging another player on through their actions, I will first talk to them about it privately, & ask them if they have issues. If they indicate in the negative, I will ask them to refrain from continuing their current line of antagonism.

I believe, even in a game like shadowrun where the moral compass of many characters is not True North, that a cohesive team is important, if one character is disrupting that, they need to be spoken to & explained how things work.

If you allow player kills you'll eventually run out of players, plus the police tend to frown on it.

On a more serious note, it should be used sparingly and with everyone's knowledge and consent that they are open season for everyone else. One of my favorite campaigns was when we had too many people to run at once and we broke up into two separate runner teams, who frequently got the same targets or AO.

In this case I do not believe that there was/is any problem between myself and the mentioned other player. Rather I believe that he might not have been briefed well enough on the other characters at the table (he joined a couple of games into the campaign), and subsequently somehow failed to "get" the warnings I tried to give in-game, which ultimately led me to tell him outright of my problem, out of character. Specifically to prevent winding up in a PvP scenario, unless he was really looking for that situation, in which case I'd have been cool with it.

Anyway, thanks for the comment.

the way you described it, he played the one personality trigger that could set your character off, so if its coincidence, its pretty coincidental.

Personally, I dislike PVP. Even in computer games. After all, it is the only way to lose in a game that knows only winners. Heck, I hate dying for whatever reason. I have never re-rolled a character in my over 20 years of role-playing. I have never actually lost a serious character (that does include some amount of Cthulhu and a couple of rounds of Paranoia, unless you count clones) and cannot recall ever directly killing another player or even harming with the intent to kill. I do recall an incident in LARPing where I explained in-time/out-time how much I dislike getting killed and the guy just went away. In Vampire LARP, I switched a vampire character to Sabbat and back to Camarilla to avoid getting killed. Both switches caused quite a lot of misery/unfun to other players, e.g. the Sabbat pack got wiped out, because I betrayed them and before that, I ratted out a couple of my friends from the Camarilla, who had in no way deserved that. As GM, I am all for epic grandness, as a player, I am a rat.

However, even I do believe that if you want to live, you have to play it like your character wants to live, otherwise you are just abusing the meta-rule. As a GM, I find that some characters are played like they have a death wish, because the players assume they are protected by the mystical understanding of "no senseless player kill". I see no reason to kill the characters for that, but either the players diminish the habit to a tolerable level or the players find themselves un-invited. Often, it turns out that a) they are asking to get killed (in which case I usually oblige) or b) they were not aware of this. In any case, the problem cannot be solved in-game and your friend leaving the campaign seems like a viable option to me.

I'm not a fan of PvP. I also think there's an in-game rationale for characters not to kill each other. You get most missions from a fixer, who gathers the group and presents them to the Mr. Johnson. Kill another character when you're "on the job" with them, and your street rep is toast. Now, once the job is done...what you do on your own time is your business. But while you're on the job, you're representing the person who recommended you. Fixers aren't going to call if they consider your character a loose cannon who can't put aside personal grievances long enough to get the job done.

I like PC-PC confrontations, but not physical ones. As a GM, I tell my players right away that they will have to always find in-character ways to tolerate each other. Having to do that actually gives the opportunity for some interesting roleplaying and/or character development. The thin line where annoyance doesn't become all-out life threats but still leads to some snide remarks and the like is very enjoyable in my group. But this is all because I make things very clear that I do not permit PC murders, and this makes everyone more comfortable with small-time confrontations, which we all laugh about

On the subject of killing PCs as the GM, I have absolutely no qualms about it, though I don't like doing it if it's not at least somewhat memorable. I've even seen players asking to die just because they felt like rerolling

I'm not a fan of PVP, primarily because I believe that RPGs are a cooperative, team-building experience.

Saying that, I once played a female character who, while not a militant feminist, had considerable self respect and would not take being talked down to. Then a drop-in player decided that he'd be the biggest chauvinistic pig he could, right out of the gate... so I sprayed pepper punch in his face. Naturally, his first response was to try and kill me... while sitting next to my friends. He calmed down, but no-one cared that he was dead by the end of the session.

Next instance of PVP was due to another problem player. His character was a psychopathic killer, who killed someone our rigger had sworn to protect... and did it just because. He managed to individually piss of every other character, so when he did something stupid we all simply hung him out to dry. To this day I regret not singing the Oompa Loompa song.

In your specific case: Dude, you're deliberately antagonizing a psychotic twisted mage, have been doing so for some time, and have not listened to warnings. What follows is pretty much inevitable... though lethal force might not be necessary.

Seriously. Talk to your GM about the possibility of getting some kind of 'Baleful Polymorph' preparation, maybe make it require exotic components and ritual magic to prevent abuse, then welcome him to the other side of the gender divide. Provides an awesome RP opportunity for him (A chauvinist trapped in a woman's body) without rendering the character unplayable. Take some precautions against the character simply committing suicide (I recommend using control emotions for positive/negative reinforcement) and your character gets their revenge, the other player gets a rare RP challenge and an in-character goal (getting their junk back). After a while they may accomplish it, but the experience changes them and give them character development.

Also, I've heard of horror PVP, like power gamers who kill other PCs for their stuff.

Apparently if you've minmaxed to wield an oversized spiked chain, you don't appreciate sunder as a held action. Complements to Mr Welch for telling the story.

Ultimately this comes down to the group at your table. I have never even addressed the concept at any table I have played. If it happens in game, during the course of RP, and within the characters concept then I have let it go. If the player has been letting personal actions/feelings get in the way I have stopped it. Like any tool it is not the tool itself that is the determining factor of positive or negative, it is the use the tool is put to.

I've had a bit of experience with PvP with different groups and think I've got some of the horror stories, though I normally discourage it as a GM.

PvP prevented most of my games in high school from going anywhere because we had a few jerks that decided to just kill randomly whenever there was a lull in the action. There it definitely ruined the game, but once we got a more mature GM (I played with two brothers that frequently took any opportunity to back stab each other in game) the PvP stopped.

I've had a player that killed another player to steal his stuff. Specifically back-stabbed him in the middle of a fight. The player was quite indignant when the character was put on trial for murder. He quit the game shortly thereafter. No one was sad to see him go. And that didn't even require any rules bending or anything that didn't fit with the game world to deal with the situation.

I've also had experience with players killing each other by accident or while pulling some crazy shenanigans. "The fire ball will kill the thing grappling you and you'll survive, unless I roll unbelievably well on the damage. *dice roll* Well shit." Though that usually doesn't engender hard feelings and then they go to some in game lengths to correct it and it becomes a joke for the rest of the game.

I also have run opposition games, where I did two groups back-to-back and they were working towards opposing goals. One of those ended in PvP. Not actually fun and a lot of people came out of it mad.

I played in a game with an lawful stupid character that decided that someone needed to die for their evil actions, despite the character and the player having done said action with good intentions and offering to undergo a process to make amends and try to correct himself. It eventually ended up causing the group to split and take sides and fight one another.

The only time I've actively encouraged PvP was when I had a game with a female player where some of the male players were being dicks. One of them robbed her character and another decided to have his character grope her character. My response was, "You can fight back if you want. You're armed. In fact, he's flat footed." After the second time, when it became clear that I would let her kill their characters if they were dicks, they stopped being dicks, at least overtly. Since I only killed one character that campaign, she had more kills than I did.

Long story short, I think there may be sometimes where PvP is appropriate, but I've seen it ruin more games than it's improved and think it's better done with forethought and discussion or if someone has seriously crossed a line.

I've only ever had one PvP death in a game. It was in ICE's Rolemaster system. We had overlaid Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time world as our setting. The party was exploring a tomb, looking for ter'angreal. Trollocs had been using the tomb as a resting spot though and heard the party. One of the members enraged himself (per his abilities) and began dealing much death with his paired swords. He became a whirling dervish of blood and steel. He was mad though.

As he killed the last Trolloc, his friend thought it would be a good idea to try to assist him with snapping back to his right mind. I jumped in as GM and asked him to make an Observation Test, to which he succeeded. I told him that he looked battle-crazed and his words would have no effect on him. Told him the best course of action was to stay away from him and allow him to cool off.

Instead, he drew his sword (for protection) and stepped towards him, telling him to calm down. Needless to say, they roleplayed out their words towards one another, but the rules were very clear about how rage worked and the enraged swordsman kept failing his checks to chill out. The two ended up dealing death blows to one another, one cleaving his friend's clavicle and chest cavity with a great sword, and the other impaling his friend with both swords through the chest.

I storied that they were found 150 years later, skeletons still gripping their swords, kneeling and propped up against one another in a warrior's final embrace.

Needless to say, all were not happy though. The guy who was enraged liked making new characters, so he thought it was a cool ending. The other guy left the game, saying something about how this was a horrible way to die. I didn't feel all that bad for him though as he was warned.

PVP needs to be handled with care. It can often be cheesy - if you want to kill another PC, it is fairly easy to wait until the character is asleep, badly wounded, or completely unaware, then taking a cheap shot. I think it is also often a dick move, done by a dick player. Most of us have probably experienced the player who tried to kill the other PCs so he could take their stuff, or the one who makes a psychopathic character, so he can claim randomly killing other PCs is just "playing in character."

I could see PVP happening in Shadowrun, and I could see it working with mature players who can keep it all IC instead of spilling over into OOC resentment. PCs in Shadowrun have incentive to work together, but they are a volatile mix of outcasts and burnouts, justifiably paranoid, and usually quick to put down a teammate who puts all of them in danger or screws up spectacularly. Add in Shadowrun's vying criminal and corporate factions and the noir elements of greed and betrayal, and yes, you can definitely run a game that has some PVP.

I think the GM needs to be upfront about whether the game will have possible PVP or not - and enforce appropriate characters if it is disallowed, especially in Shadowrun. If someone plays a character that makes trouble for the team, then putting a bullet in that character's head should be an option. Otherwise, like xsansara said, you are abusing the meta-rule.

I don't condone players being dicks to other players. The killer douchebags are ALWAYS the one that can easily state a plausible 'memorable' reason/approach to killing another character. A GM that readily embraces that? That's a guy that WANTS that to happen. You think you might be saying "All I'm saying is permissible" what people (such as your friend) hears is: Don't bother putting any work into your char, or even enjoy playing it, cause I'm going to let someone in this group kill it.

Here's the thing. This is the type of scenario that rarely works unless EVERYONE at the table wants it, gm and players. If say 1 player wants it and the gm and others don't, that usually translates into "I'm not able to kill you, but I'm going to be Chaotic Neutral douchebag, or LG/LE pain in the ass to make you all miserable", if the GM wants it but the players don't, it'll come up in 'killer GM syndrome' "You don't want to kill each other, but I'll kill you with NPCs instead." If the Gm wants it, and all but 1 player wants it too, guess what, that 1 player that doesn't want to play, WON'T play.

I have given this specific case as described by you some more thought, and have come to the conclusion that violence will solve nothing.

Here is my reasoning:

1) The other player has ignored both in and out of character warnings, meaning that he is either intentionally stirring you up or he believes his character would ignore those warnings as well.

2) A: in the former case, merely killing his character will only encourage him. he now knows how to push your buttons and might even make a revenge character. You end up in a worse position than when you started.
B: You can work with this. As discussed above, organize a karmic transformation for his character, possibly with the help of the player in question. Pose it as an roleplaying challenge that means he gets to keep his character and your psychotic tainted mage has her beloved vengeance (makes 'revenge, a most worthless of causes' joke here).

If you have A then the problem is with the player and the best solution is simply to treat him as an internet troll and ignore him. If you have B, work with them to create a better story.