Fred:
Dave has been whining that Steve has given my characters special consideration in the past, while his characters were some how unfairly treated. I enclose the last part of our ICQ dialog:

Fred:
So to you a bad practical joke is justification for murdering a party member.?

Dave:
A thief who steals from the party and gets caught - yes - we did it before and after that to other thieves in the party and you didnt kill any of us back only me hmmmm

Fred:
Thats because the thieves were actually trying to steal something, not play a joke [on] someone.

Dave:
Before battle is not a joke and you know it too quit being a jerk if i were to [steal] your magic book as a joke you would just laugh no i think not and at that time in steves world my sword was just a hard to get as your book

Fred:
If you stole Shzz't's magic book and then returned it he might thump you one but he wouldn't kill you.

Dave: Yeah right try it with lief and see what he does to you

Fred:
I think I may already have...but I don't think Lief knows it.

Dave:
If he knew he would try to off you

Fred:
No he wouldn't because he hasn't really lost anything. Just like you wouldn't have really lost [your] sword.

Dave:
but at that time i did i couldnt defend myself in the battle and was not useful and got no XP from it as well

Fred:
Oh whaa!

Dave:
by that response i now know i am right

Fred:
Ok Dave you go with that.

Dave:
you know steve took it easier on you ask jeff murray and leen now he is fair to everyone but back then......

Fred:
And the fact that I have always got good marks in the plays well with others catagory and you guys lacked some interpersonal skills is no reason to blame me for an unfair advantage.

Dave:
i dare you to give that same speech to jeff and leen

Fred:
And here we have a challenge accepted.

Jeff:
What incident, precisely, are Dave and Fred discussing here? I don't remember it. The only time I killed Dave was when Zenon pissed off Amulric for not pulling his weight and for stealing from the party. Plus, you know, Amulric had that "C-thing" going on and it just seemed appropriate. Sorry, Dave.

Comments:

Steve, altho' as close to perfect a DM as ever walked the streets of this foolish world, did have his cock-ups and did occasionally seem to play favourites. Of course it's impossible to judge these things with complete accuracy (is Steve letting Fred "get away with something", or is it just that something's going on that the rest of us don't know about?). But if you'll recall, while Steve was usually quite good about interpreting what our intentions were and letting the actions go accordingly, he regularly, for example, shut Russ's characters down for trying the same sorts of things.

You'll recall that Steve liked it when we tried wild or improbable stunts because of the opportunity for role-playing and for good visuals they afforded, eg., "I want to dash forward, do a mid-air flip over the heads of the two orcs, come down behind them and slash one in the back".
In such a case he would routinely assign a probability of success (based on available factors) and off we'd go. But it did seem like Russ would often try stuff like that and Steve would just say "you smash your head on the ceiling because it's too low" and then go on to the next player.
Granted, Russ was tough to play with, could be infuriatingly slow, and tended not to think things through, but I suspect that Steve got impatient with him at times, and/or assumed that - Russ being Russ - he was going to screw it up.

Similarly, Fred, there were times when you would wander off to do your own thing for an hour of real time while the rest of us would twiddle our fingers and wait to do things. That Steve would let you could be said to be favouritism on his part. Partly, however, this derives from our own styles of play. My character(s) tended to be very group-oriented and stayed with the group whereas yours usually had something going "on the side" which would demand their absence from the rest of us.

Which could get rather annoying.

Also, the fact that you, personally, have a very strong persona and tend to dominate the groups you inhabit mean that it would be very easy for Steve to behave toward you in a way that - when compared to the way he acted toward Dave (Dave -you're a good egg too...don't let anyone tell you different. But Fred is, well...Fred), say - would appear overly favouring. Or at least, somewhat slighting to Dave.

Having said that, I'd like to add that Steve was the best damn DM I ever played under. Creative, funny, entertaining, occasionally brutally hungover. Too much fun.

Steve:
Time for Steve to have a bit of a say in this.

You guys can quit with praising the DM - I'm still not handing out anything over +3, and even those are tough to find... :)

On to the gaming comments - I have never consciously "played favorites". If one player character kills another player character, how is that ME playing favorites? When you guys wanted to kill each other off, I always let you do it. Did I ever say, "No, you can't, I like that character?" No, I did not. I let some of my favorite characters die, because you, the players, wanted it so. I was probably more depressed than Jeff when Dilvia/Dilvish died. If it had been Shzzt that Strider had decided to off in his sleep, then Shzzt would be dead. For that matter Shzzt has died on at least three occassions that I can think of off the top of my head, and each time there was the same chance anybody else has of him failing his CON check and not making it back from the beyond.

Now, as to whether or not in the early days of the game I was manipulated into acting a certain way, that is another story. Fred knew that when a Player Character is acting politely and rationally (and, yes, even sucking up) to an NPC I was playing, I had a difficult time keeping a hard line on the NPCs reactions. He played this up as a way to get out of some tight situations. On the other hand, certain other players tended to look at agressive NPCs as personal attacks, and acted by getting beligerent. These characters were often eventually attacked by the NPC(s) or some other petty misfortune might have happened to the PC(s) in question because they had stepped over the line between fantasy and reality and stepped on my personal toes. The power afforded a DM is far too easy to abuse, and in some cases these people got a little punishment perhaps.
As far as sneaking off and doing his own thing - anyone had the opportunity to do that if they wished. It just didn't fit with other characters to do so. I have always consciously made the game what each person expects it to be. I sprinkle elements that each of my players find enjoyable into the game so everyone has a good time. It is not my personal showpiece that you are all invited to come look at, but don't screw around with it too much, as some games are. At no point did I ever tell Fred, "OK, we've got a long game tonight, so I want you to sneak off for a half an hour to frustrate Jeff and the others."

Jeff:
Arf! ROTFLMAO!

Steve:
But on the other hand, I am not going to say, "Your character can't do that because everybody else will be bored." Note that although Fred and Murray sat through several games of Phaedrus and Kay's engagement and preparation for the subsequent wedding, neither one of them has ever complained of having to twiddle their fingers and wait to do things while those games were happening.

I had no idea people all this time had been figuring my game to be the "Shzzt Show". Just because he has lasted longer than anyone else in the game does not mean I am playing favorites to him. That is just luck, and the fact that he stayed in Kananaskis for so long. (and maybe some smart playing, but if I say that, I'm playing favorites again)

I have nothing much to say about Russ. I have already told you Jeff that I admit being hard on Russ and don't understand why I did it. I'm very, very, very, very sorry that it happened. However, if he plays in my game again, I'll likely do the same, since I was also hard on Tony for the few games he played, and now I'm being hard on Adam. Trying to knock some common sense into them, I suppose, but that does not make it right. I still don't quite lump "I want to dash forward, do a mid-air flip over the heads of the two orcs, come down behind them and slash one in the back" in the same category with "I look for humshrooms while I light my molotov and have my wizard melee with the Ogres".

Jeff:
Phaedrus had +4 armour once. Later Steve - in the guise of a rust monster - took it away. Sigh.

[As far as] when a Player Character is acting politely and rationally (and, yes, even sucking up) to an NPC [Steve] was playing, [he says he] had a difficult time keeping a hard line on the NPCs reactions.

This sounds more like natural behaviour on the part of the NPC than a DM reacting personally to a player's attempts at manipulation. As my mother says "you get more flies with honey" (to which I always answer "What the hell do I need flies for?"

I don't think any of us thought that [this was the "Shzzt Show"] ...hmmm....he did seem to demand an inordinate amount of your time (granting the truth of the Phaedrus and Kay wedding plan thing) but then he was always pretty proactive about the game so perhaps you were just responding to input. But "The Shzzt Show"? No.

[Also,] I wasn't dissing you Steve, just making an observation in support of an argument. I have wondered since if it wasn't an unconscious attempt to get him to leave the game. And as we have both noted he wasn't the easiest player to deal with.

Hey - as an aside...who DM'd the game where Steve and I played thieves?

Steve:

We played thieves? Together? Are you sure you aren't thinking of Pipsqueak and Amulrik, the Chaos Twins? I know jumping from Amulrik to thief is a long stretch (not!) but perhaps this is what you are thinking of? 'Twas Fred if that's the one.

Jeff:
Nope...that wasn't it...I mean - yeah, I remember Pip and Amulric working together, but I'm sure we played thieves who were cousins of some sort...one of us had a half elf?

Steve:
Maybe you are thinking of Murray's game where I was playing a bard (Coronae) and you a thief of the half-elven kind? I don't think WE were cousins, but we stayed at your cousins place and I got a crush for your girl cousin. Then we went to the dungeon, freed a wraith or something, and Murray figured out the the wraith took over the dungeon and killed the Naga we would have eventually fought if we hadn't had to leave town or something like that. This was before Coronae was killed by a centipede's poisonous bite the day before Murray bought the monster manual update that said centipede poison only made you very sick, not killed you. Then I was ressurected by a priest of Odin and became one as well.

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