DMing RPG Party Conflict: 5 Tips for When Your Players Get Along But Their Characters Don’t

Greetings gamers from all systems, places and timelines.

Gaming keeps friendships together like nothing else. Just think about it for a second: It’s something that gets our friends together in one place or online more times than pretty much any other activity. (Especially if you have friends like mine, who struggle to meet in person to watch all of four football games a year. And one of those games is usually the Super Bowl.) For this reason, I’m grateful for the opportunity to game because, without it, I would end up seeing some of my friends, well, to put it bluntly, “a hell of a lot less.” 

But what do you do when one or more of your friend’s characters either don’t get along or outright dislike each other? Unfortunately, when this happens, it can kill a game like nothing else. And on this topic, I’m speaking from experience. So, I would like to give some tips to help navigate this situation if you happen to be that unlucky DM whose party members have more hate for each other than the final boss. 

1. You Did What? 

This is something that can seemingly happen out of nowhere. You could finish your session thinking everything went well, and then next thing you know, you’ve got a player bending your ear about how unhappy they are about something someone else did. I was running a game, and the character who was leading the way came across a ring in a pool of water. Then another one of the characters, who was further away, stated that they put the ring on. No one reacted to this negatively in the moment, but later there was the kind of butt-hurt you would only hear about in legends. 

So what do you do when a player tries to nab a magical item that someone else has their eyes on? Looking back on the situation, what I should have done differently was have everyone take their turns based on the initiative order. Not that I would have made them all roll for initiative again, but I could have used the initiative table from the previous combat, then asked the mage who won initiative what they were doing, the barbarian, and so on. 

2. Finding and Not Finding Treasure Can Both Cause Problems 

Putting everyone in the turn order stops any discussion about who had the ability to do what. However, what if that player was able to put the ring on anyway? And while that complaint can sound petty, I get it. I’ve ground loot in dungeons where the treasure has been about as rare as reading an uplifting news story. But when your party comes across a magical treasure, and the rogue who’s checking for traps says “I’m interested in this item,” and they take it …

Let me just throw this out there: Being the thief doesn’t mean you get first dibs on treasure because you opened the box it was in. At least not if you ask the barbarian and the paladin who just hacked down the 34 monsters that were between you and the lock you just picked.  

My solution to this in terms of treasure is getting it spread through the party so no one is left empty-handed. Because nothing is more obnoxious than when a party comes across an enchanted ring and the one player who already has a magical sword, shield and boots says, “Hey I could use that.”

Also, a real recipe for disaster is to put one piece of treasure in every 3rd dungeon. Because, no matter who gets it, the other players are going to be side-eyeing that character as some of them are still fighting using the weapons they came into the campaign with. 

3. Sometimes the Characters Are on Different Pages – or More Like Different Books

Now, what if not all of the character’s goals line up? You wouldn’t think this would be such an issue.

Well, I didn’t either until I was in a mercenary campaign and our group was trying to make a name for ourselves … Except that one player bailed on us to become a criminal entrepreneur. While the rest of the party was trying to stick to the core plot, he was off mining for gold and making nice nice with the underworld. Now, if these actions were helping the party in some way, that would have been fine. But they weren’t, and all of this was clearly about his own personal  rise to power.

It’s amazing how you can both love and hate chaotic neutral characters at the same time. 

Now the DM did not manage the situation, even if he knew several players weren’t happy with it, so we handled it in-game by explaining to him that he was needed on the team and not off playing 6 hours of Minecraft every session. To which he said, “It’s my character and I will play him any way that I want.” Which, on paper, we all respected.

We showed him just how much we appreciated that by killing him so excessively he could have buried in a coffee cup. 

4. Beware the Road to Nowhere 

That last incident was pretty shocking because, in our group, it was the first time one player killed another’s character. But we were mercenaries, and everyone wants to be mercs until you piss off the wrong people – including your friends. Not shockingly, that player did not handle his death particularly well and vowed revenge. Which he got, but that plot was so similar to Spawn’s that all he needed was a red cape with an extremely high collar. 

Anyway, while this made for a “great drama”, six sessions later, we hadn’t advanced our character goals or the actual story an inch. For those of us who were still alive to care, that is. 

The problem here was the DM allowed the player a little too much freedom, if there is such a thing. You can’t have one player just go off and do something completely different from the other players indefinitely. It was more like the DM was running a solo campaign for one player and a campaign for everyone else at the same time, which would have been fine, if they were in different sessions. Instead, the party was left waiting for its last member to show up when the player was actually in the room but ducking the adventure because he was too busy eating spaghetti with Tony Soprano.

5. Are You the Jealous Type? 

One final issue with characters that drives me up the wall is intra-party jealousy. But, to be fair, sometimes the players have a reasonable gripe – especially if everyone’s stats were rolled and one came up with the short end of the stick. This is why I’m a huge fan of character balancing. 

For example, In my Storm King’s Thunder game, I allowed the players to roll their ability scores. However, the barbarian rolled some super hot dice while the bard’s were as cold as the ring of Winter. So, in this situation, I had no problem giving the lower-stat characters a bump in their scores. With the help of a little point curve, this prevents anyone from coming back to you four games later and saying, “Wow, my character sucks.” 

Because what are you supposed to do with that point? Find an in-game reason for how that character suddenly gained three points of Constitution and four points dex? Good luck with that solution, but I suspect it will come with extra cheese. Unfortunately, if a player isn’t happy with their character, while there can be solutions depending on their reasoning, it’s never a good thing. (Unless everyone in the party hates that character and wants them to retire. Because, if that’s the case, then that does feel like a bit of an awkward win. And that’s also been something I have experienced but that is another story.) 

In Conclusion 

If a key situation is taking place, stick to an initiative order so no one can jump out of turn in a way that seems unrealistic. If something absolutely crazy goes down on someone’s turn, then that’s on them. As DM Dave once said, “It’s like we’re playing D&D.” 

In terms of treasure, spread it out. You can give out as little or as much as you want, but make sure either everybody has nothing or everybody has something, even if it’s just a participation trophy. 

Lastly, if a player wants to be in a campaign, then it should be understood that they’re going to join a party. As my dad once said, “Half of life is just showing up.” So, if the DM wants to run something for a character where they go off and start their own gold mining Mafia family, then knock yourself out. Just don’t leave the other players expecting him to show up and have their backs when he’s out there on his own personal episode of Gold Rush: Faerun.