[WFRP] Terrible 1st session of Enemy Within, advice sought.

[Paul Tucker]

Firstly some background for the game.

The game was played using Fantasy Grounds, an online tabletop program, and using Ventrilo for voice-over-internet, so that other than not seeing the other players, it's as close as possible to playing around a table, albeit with players on the other side of the world.

The game being run was Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (2nd Edition), running the start of the epic The Enemy Within campaign. Because two of the players expressed a dislike for using pre-generated characters or having too much 'you start off knowing eachother' we went with standard character creation for the game.

The start of the session begins with the characters wanting to go to Place A (Altdorf), ostensibly for a huge quest being undertaken by a powerful noble. This is, however a red herring just to provide a reason for them all to be travelling the same way. All the characters were also told that while they had prior careers and professions, they were also all desiring 'adventure and excitement'.

Player A, mid 20s very strong roleplayer although actually one of the less experienced of the group, created a rogue/con artist type character (halfling rogue) who nevertheless had a huge curiosity speak and was very outgoing and charismatic IC, she also attempted to investigate/talk to both every player and every NPC she could.

Player B, mid 20s, created a Priest type character (initiate of Shallya for those who know the setting). The god she was particularly devoted to is the goddess of healing and while not a full priest and thus not bound by the full strictures of the cult, had decided her character would be both a pacifist and a zealot for pacifism. I'd pointed out that that was very incongruous within the setting (to the level she wanted to play it) and she insisted that that's what she wanted to play. Of note, she has a habit of playing these types of characters to the frustration of both herself and those around her, but I only found that out after she'd created the character (other people who'd gamed more with her informed me of it). Made no real attempt to interact with any of the NPCs or the plot and barely interacted with the rest of the party, mostly with Player D's character.

Player C, mid 20s, while I've experienced him roleplaying better in the past, decided to create a total lone-wolf type and was also hands down the most effective combatant in the party (A dwarven Pit Fighter). Unknown to me until half way through the session he'd decided that his character 'disliked humans' who made up half the party. Made absolutely no attempt to roleplay with the other players or any of the NPCs and resisted any of their attempts with monosylabic answers.

Player D, most experienced roleplayer in the group, created a mostly independent character whose role (Human Roadwarden) is to ensure the safety of the roads and travelways of the Empire (the setting). Mostly interacted with Player B, some interaction with player C and minimal interaction with the npcs or plot.

A number of key problems occured in the game.

Player A is dyslexic and despite her having asked twice, Players B and C continued to primarily do all of their roleplaying and actions via the chat interface in Fantasy Grounds. This resulted in her missing things and getting frustrated because she, Player D and myself were all using voice and players B and C were primarily typing. Now and then B and C would react using voice (and they certainly have no problem using it as we chat socially via it often) but then slip back into typing. Player A also became more and more frustrated as the game went on as her attempts to interact with the other players were often ignored, or delayed overly-long as player b and c would type, by which time other things had moved on.

Player B pushed her pacifism and, I think, because of OOC relationships with Players C and D this resulted in them attempting to comply with her wishes and do such things as capture murdering cannibalistic mutants that were attempting to kill the players (one in particular that they had witnessed eating a child she insisted should be rehabilitated and not killed). This in spite of the fact that Players C and D were playing warrior-types with absolutely no problem fighting (C was in fact almost soleyly created around fighting). The finale of this came when the group reached a point at which they could separate and she left the others because 'it's obvious no one else shares my beliefs'. Note, this is not leaving the group, she still apparently wants to roleplay this character and have fun but 'it's what my character would do'.

Player C was incredibly taciturn throughout the session. As said above I found out half way through he'd decided his character disliked humans and so said he had no reason to hang around with the others at the point they could separate (for those who know the campaign, when they reached Altdorf during Mistaken Identity). He expressed absolutely no interest at all in the major plot hook (listed below) nor any roleplay about it.

Player D was probably the next most engaged after Player B, however, on getting the major plot hook (during a fight with mutants they discovered a body of a man who was the spitting image of Player D's character and who also had a letter on his body stating that he was the inheritor of a noble estate and fortune if he wanted to claim to be someone he wasn't) then pretty much dropped the ball on it as far as involving the others. Firstly he took the letter off the others, showed no interest, surprise or any curiosity at all in how this person was his exact copy and, when they asked further and eventually found out about the inheritance letter (he had to get someone else to read it out for him), he claimed that the dead body was his brother (A lie) and that it was none of their business.

Taking the all  above into account, I'd not have been surprised if, after they all went their separate ways they'd all said that for whatever reason they hadn't clicked as a group (apart from player A there was very little in-party roleplay, and player A eventually all but gave up on trying to roleplay with the others as they barely responded or engaged). However, they insist that they had a great time and want to continue.

One of the problems I kow is that player A and player B are very much in the school of 'the wizard comes into the tavern and hires us to go do a quest' so they bought into the initial red herring to get them to the city and believe that that must absolutely be what the plot is and therefore i'll crowbar them all into an adventuring party. I had, however, said that WFRP is the anti-D&D of fantasy games, and that there isn't going to be an NPC forcing them together so the onus was on them to make their group work and come up with reasons to want to adventure with the others, something that blatantly didn't happen. When I asked at the end of the session (I ended it about two hours earlier than I was planning to because of feeling drained and frustrated) if they actually wanted to play as this group of characters, they all said yes but B, C and D followed up with variations along 'but my character wouldn't hang out with X or want to be interested in Y etc.)

After having spent a lot of hours setting up a wiki for the game, scanning the handouts for them to work digitally, doing images and maps etc. etc. I'm left utterly drained from a session in which it feels as if I had to drag three of the players through, watch them ignore huge plot hooks and then at the end have the entire party separate with no way to get them back short of forcing them into the same room IC through GM fiat (something I dislike doing) and, on current evidence, having this happen again and again.

Had it not been that I want to run this particular campaign (I've run it twice before, it's excellent and i've never had a problem getting people to buy into the initial plot hooks) then it would be less of an issue, but four pcs going totally separate ways with no ic intention of meeting up again of their own volition isn't good in any game.

Thoughts, comments, criticisms, help wanted as right now I feel i've wasted my time and ended up hitting my head on a wall of 'my character wouldn't do that' style comments, something that got said a couple of times during and after, Player A is frustrated and disappointed, and player B, C and D apparently enjoyed it, but I can't run another session of trying to drag roleplaying blood from a stone.

[Paul Tucker]

Edit Player D mostly interacted with B, some interaction with A.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Ouch. I've never played WFRP, though I've heard good things about the game in general -- it's apparently great for hardcore, gritty setting evoked in rich detail -- and about The Enemy Within in particular. Nor have I played voice-over-internet, so I can't advise you from a standpoint of vast experience, but some thoughts come to mind:

1) You say you've playing not only this game but this specific campaign before, but have you ever playing them over the internet before? My own experience of running two campaigns play-by-post, and everything I've heard about both chat and voice-over-internet, is that it is damned hard to play a tabletop roleplaying game -- which is, duh, designed for people playing together physically around a tabletop -- with a group of people who aren't physically together and can't read each other's body language and facial expressions. There's a huge amount of feedback that we primates get non-verbally and it's a bitch to strip all that out of a social interaction. One dyslexic player and two who keep using typed chat is just agonizing icing on the cake of pain.

2) What's "standard character creation for the game"? In particular, I wonder if it gave room for the players to interact with each other, brainstorm together, bounce character ideas off each other, and then come up with a group of protagonists that really mesh -- not because the party coheres for "in-character" reasons (screw "in-character": the characters don't exist!) but because the real people playing together are all interested in each others' characters and want to interact. All my experience of roleplaying has taught me that when people come up with characters independently, neither the fictional characters nor the real people playing have an easy time coming together, but when everyone brainstorms as a group before setting pen to paper on an actual character sheet, the results are often awesome. And it sounds like you really, really need the "party" to cohere in this campaign, because there're aren't a lot of easy hooks like "you're all adventurers in a tavern, an old guy comes up to you with a map, you know the drill."

3) A pacifist in a Warhammer setting? That's not just incongrous, that's utterly disfunctional, along the lines of

"I wanna play a space pirate!"
"But this is a film-noir game. I think..."
"Don't care! Space pirate!"
"But, you see, a private eye..."
"Ninja catgirl space pirate!"
"Oh, fine."

Does. Not. Work. This is probably where you needed to be polite-but-firm and say, "hey, sounds like this game isn't for you, we'll have you in the next one, okay?"

[Callan S.]

I think B and C are almost screaming kickers "I'm a pacifist!!!!", "I hate humans!!!!". It's almost saying explicitely "I'm not interested in the module, this is the issue I want to cover"

Hypothetically, lets say you change stuff and B finds a situation where some innocents are likely to die if she, say, doesn't knock someone out - not kill, but you know, isn't bopping someone violent? And for the dwarf, if he sticks with the group something dwarfy will be much more likely to be saved - but hell, he could perhaps do it alone and isn't that whats more important?

Mind you, perhaps she just wants to play a pacifist and - just play it, and play it. I'm cloudy on that subject, I'll leave it to someone else. Same for the dwarf - perhaps its just how it is, he doesn't want it tested, he just wants that.

You know those flags at the beach, the ones its safe to swim between - what responces do you want from players? What's between the flags? Or, if there aren't flags - perhaps the players are just 'swimming' at very different parts of the beach...they need a set of flags if they are to play/swim together. Damn, hope that analogy made sense!

[contracycle]

My advice: tell them their characters DID go their separate ways just as the players said they should, and now they have to create a new party, brainstormed together this time as Sydney describes.  And if they won't, say goodbye, because it doesn't sound to me like its going to get any better.  Also, see if you can bar or disable the text chat function, no ifs buts or maybes.

What I would fear most is that the pacifism, and the human hatred, are essentially blocking strategies.  At any time the player can resist a plot point by pulling their blocking strategy out of the bag.  This is their "reason I don't have to care".  And the reason I think this is because of the collusion with the silly pacifism; they were not really doing "what their character would do" at all.

I think, everybody wants to be Han Solo.  The unsentimental semi-mercenary who loudly protests he is only doing it for the credits, but who has a heart of gold, really.  They want to be persuaded to work for the plot, the greater cause, against their nominal will.  Unfortunately this doesn't work; linear authors can force odd groups together, but when two players are effectively exerting a mutual repulsion, each demanding to be persuaded in-game by the other, all you get is a spiral of antagonism and recrimination.  And the GM cannot intervene effectively because they have no effective control over the characters.  It's really a demand that the game should be "all about me, please".  And when its not about me, I can block.

It is not and cannot be your job to psychoanalyse the characters and give them just the right pushes and pulls that they resolve their internal conflicts and pull together; indeed, in linear media that would be a whole story in its own right.  And it's not going to happen by accident unless the players themselves admit and agree that they WANT it to happen.  At the very least, the only conceivable way this game could be resumed IMO is if you pass the burden to the players explicitly.  OK, so you dislike humans; YOU tell ME why you keep hanging around with them.  OK so they don't share your beliefs; YOU tell ME why you stay with them then.  It would have been far better to have sorted this out before play began but if you have a natural breakpoint here, you might be able to perform some emergency surgery.

Player A seems the least problematic, being self motivated.  Player D looks complicated.  Clearly willing to play along both with the weird pacifism and using voice, but apparently unengaged plot-wise/world-wise.  I suspect player D may have a Plan, and you'd be better off knowing what it is sooner rather than later.  Player D also looks like a good candidate for taking an active leadership role; you might want to discuss this directly with Player D, and ask honestly for help in keeping the pack together.  If player D is experienced and has seen this all before, the plot he is apparently not responding to may be an insurance policy of sorts; knowing the characters are rather more likely to hang singly than together, he will have an opt out when things go sour, a private angle.  He might be banking momentum, as it were.

The main thing is, you have to make it abundantly clear that you are not their nursemaid or a dating agency, and that if their characters are going to get along it is up to them to make it so.

[JC]

some random ideas...

why not ask, no, tell everyone that roleplaying (all interactions really) are to be done through voice, and that text is just for dice-rolling?

why not go back to char-gen, with all the players online, and ask everyone to give a reason why the character is part of the group?

the Enemy Within campaign has a terrible reputation for being very \\\"railroady\\\"... it\\\'s probably a good idea to work some character motivations in there somewhere, and also be prepared to have the characters wander off in some direction you hadn\\\'t foreseen

finally, it might be a good idea to talk to each of the players seperately to make sure they\\\'re really having a good time (and not, say, just saying so, while secretely hoping things will get better)

[Sydney Freedberg]

the Enemy Within campaign has a terrible reputation for being very \\\"railroady\\\"...

Yeah, I've heard that too, but Paul said explicitly he made it work in the past. The term "railroad" gets used as a pejorative, but, you know what, I like trains. There's nothing wrong with a railroad as long as everyone knows that it's a railroad and is happy to be along for the ride -- which is where I think this group is not working.

[Filip Luszczyk]

Sydney,

Well, it's really hard to compare play-by-post play, text chat play and voice chat play, as these are effectively three completely different mediums. Of the three, voice chat is as close to face to face play as you can get online - games designed for tabletop work generally as they would face to face, and communication doesn't suffer all that much (it requires everyone to recognize the limitations and be careful that everything comes through to everyone else, though).

However, I usually find it easier to play via voice chat with people I've met face to face before, or played with for a longer period online. And so...

Paul,

Give us more background, from before you actually started the session. Without broader context, people are shooting their advice blindly.

How did you arrange the game? Have you known the players before and have you met them face to face? Maybe you played with some of them before? What about the players - have they all known themselves well? You mention socializing online with some of them, but was it the case with everyone? How long and how well do you know yourself? Also, have you discussed your gaming preferences and expectations before the game, and made sure there's a clear consensus as to what everyone wants?

Anyway, you mention that you feel the time you invested into the game was wasted. I completely agree with you in this regard.

You say that you had an awful time, being frustrated, drained and all. If there's no fun for you in the game, there's no point forcing yourself to continue it, even if your players had a great time.

Never mind that from their point of view it could have been like: "I had my 15 minutes of fun, and it wasn't worse than my average game, so let's not talk about problems and let's tell the GM everything was cool, out of courtesy. He must have invested a lot of work into the game after all, and the others seemed to have a good time, too." I think such "dishonesty out of courtesy" is a somewhat common mentality in GM-centered groups playing games that offer uneven input, and I've even seen people glorifying such approach on various forums. Although I can't be certain, I think there is some possibility that it's a case here. And I don't think it would help the fun, as such approach invites the group to pretend problems don't exist rather than point them out and try to discuss and solve them together.

The thing is, the game you describe is a pile of problems the size of Mount Everest. You have four players, and each of them is trying to play his own game. This includes at least one player with obvious symptoms of "my guy" syndrome (namely, B). As you describe it, I don't even see a group playing a game - I see you running four separate games simultaneously. No surprise it's draining and frustrating.

Now, there is no such thing as a problem that can't be solved. People will suggest you a lot of solutions here, I'm sure of that. However, you need to ask yourself if this game is actually worth saving.

I say, screw the game.

Acknowledge that it really was a waste of time and move along. Such things do happen, and there's no point to prolong something that doesn't lead anywhere. Select those players you felt most comfortable playing with, and propose them to start something new, from scratch. This time make sure everyone is on the same page from the very beginning, and that everyone is willing to actively contribute to everyone else's fun all the time. And if something frustrates you, tell them, even if it stops the session - it's player's responsibility to make the game fun for you as much as it's your job to make it fun for them.

[Paul Tucker]

the Enemy Within campaign has a terrible reputation for being very \\\"railroady\\\"...

Yeah, I've heard that too, but Paul said explicitly he made it work in the past. The term "railroad" gets used as a pejorative, but, you know what, I like trains. There's nothing wrong with a railroad as long as everyone knows that it's a railroad and is happy to be along for the ride -- which is where I think this group is not working.

The start absolutely has railroad tracks around it, but they're pretty good tracks that people should want to follow 'a dead guy is your exact duplicate and according to this piece of paper he's the inheritor of a fortune'. Or 'these two guys are making weird gestures at you and getting upset when you don't respond'. So, yes there are train tracks, but they're not that bad and after the initial part of the story, the campaign after that (up until the end of Power behind the Throne) is a lot less railroady than most published adventures.

Note, my usual 'style' of GMing is 'work out the world - depending on the game - get the players to collectively create characters and then use their characters and some overall flow ideas and let the players go where they want'. Because of time and effort I decided to go with something pre-published. I've run The Enemy Within before and found it an awesome gaming experience that I think is up there as one of the best published campaigns around.

With this group I encouraged them to talk in advance, 3 of them made characters around the same time, one did it on a different day. Only one person threw me emails before the session to check on ideas etc. And, while I put up a sizeable wiki on the empire, the game, the setting, maps etc I'm pretty sure at least two of them barely looked at it.

[Sydney Freedberg]

while I put up a sizeable wiki on the empire, the game, the setting, maps etc I'm pretty sure at least two of them barely looked at it.

I'm not surprised. In the average group you'll have maybe one player with both the interest and the energy to look over all the setting material, one who'll say "cool! I'll look at that.. uh... sometime," and two who'll say "why are you assigning me reading homework? This is a game, dammit."

With this group I encouraged them to talk in advance, 3 of them made characters around the same time, one did it on a different day. Only one person threw me emails before the session to check on ideas etc

When you say they made characters "around the same time," do you mean they did it together as a group? Or just on the same day but still separately without consulting each other?

And in any case, even if the whole group gets together and makes characters collaboratively with wonderful harmony but without you involved, they're kinda missing a key element!

[Paul Tucker]

Give us more background, from before you actually started the session. Without broader context, people are shooting their advice blindly.

How did you arrange the game? Have you known the players before and have you met them face to face? Maybe you played with some of them before? What about the players - have they all known themselves well? You mention socializing online with some of them, but was it the case with everyone? How long and how well do you know yourself? Also, have you discussed your gaming preferences and expectations before the game, and made sure there's a clear consensus as to what everyone wants?

Apologies, I meant to do that in my first post and deleted it as I didn't want the post to be over long.

I've known Players B and D for about 18-19 months and have played in a couple of short-run games using Vent & Fantasy Grounds in the past. The two longer ones of those were problematic in having too many players involved and too many scheduling problems getting enough people together. Collectively the five of us, with others, have played a number of MMOs and suchlike and are definitely in the 'friends' category, albeit never having met in person (we're all actually meeting up this year with a few other similar online friends for GaelCon in Ireland).

A and C I've known for about 6 months. B, C and D are all close friends and live near to eachother.

The game started because both as a group and individually the four have been pushing me to run a game for a while, one prospective one got cancelled when D started to run a game that failed when another player in the group, who D had made the central plot point dropped out due to RL work and since then the four have been wanting me to run for them. I'd previously run a Midnight game using D&D for a group including B&D that was a deliberately short-arc but which worked well.

The consensus they said when we had a long discussion about the types of games (I have an extremely large gaming library and have run games for most of the books I own) was that they wanted a dark fantasy game unlike normal D&D with horror and mysteries, dangerous combat and heavy roleplay - something that WFRP is great for even if the rules themselves aren't as good as games with better social systems.

I chose WFRP as a relatively simple system to learn, a great contrast to D&D (All four are probably most experienced with D&D, A has played and run a number of other games but nothing Indie, D is a big fan of WoD, Exalted etc - I'd rather chew something off than run D&D again as the system just doesn't interest me at all anymore). I debated Burning Wheel or Riddle of Streel but decided on WFRP for the ease of material and I had a big wealth of adventures to draw on with me having to do less work than I would have invested for BW or RoS.

In terms of gaming preferences I'd highlighted:

Playing within the dark & gritty world of the Empire in WFRP - my game is very much old WFRP in terms of flavour. 2nd edition has a lot more awareness of the things that go bump in the night and I wanted to keep the feel of superstitions and mystery more than 2nd ed presents.

The group to be unified. That doesn't mean all playing good guys, but I didn't want to deal with player-backstabbing and too much 'only out for myself'. It can make for a great game sitting around a table with friends (I've had some great successes with Burning Wheel one-shots that are all about every man for himself for example) but one of the limitations in FantasyGrounds and voice is that things do take a little longer at times and I also wanted to absolutely minimise the chance of 4 players following totally different agendas. In hindsight I should have absolutely made that a lot clearer.



Things I know I did wrong:

I should have nixed Player B's character or at least far more strongly reinforced the setting to her. I gave her a long write-up of information on the religion of the setting and she chose that particular god and said she'd read the background info on it. If so I think she pretty much seized on a couple of points and missed the rest.

I should have run a starter adventure that could have been a one-off to put them into the melting pot, the adventure should have strongly pushed them having to work together so they had a stronger bond going into the campaign itself. That was definitely a big fault of mine. I'd thought of doing it but figured because they all knew eachother they'd buy into the gaming awareness of 'create characters that will work with the others and accept the metagaming notion that you have to play together'. It seems they expect me to force them into it and because the start of the adventure doesn't do that they fell into 'well my character wouldn't.

I should have stopped the game at the point it had become obvious they were all pulling in totally different directions and had a long discussion with it. I assumed that possibly other than D who I found it very hard to engage in any way, that they would pull it back together themselves and I tried to give ample opportunity for in-party roleplay. By the end when it was obvious that wasn't going to happen I'd hit my frustration point and just wanted to step back and think about what had happened, hence posting to here.

I say, screw the game.

Acknowledge that it really was a waste of time and move along. Such things do happen, and there's no point to prolong something that doesn't lead anywhere. Select those players you felt most comfortable playing with, and propose them to start something new, from scratch. This time make sure everyone is on the same page from the very beginning, and that everyone is willing to actively contribute to everyone else's fun all the time. And if something frustrates you, tell them, even if it stops the session - it's player's responsibility to make the game fun for you as much as it's your job to make it fun for them.

That's what I was feeling at the end. I didn't want to give up on the work invested and, to some extent, deal with the inevitable hurt feelings when I have that discussion hence coming here to see if there was something I was obviously missing as a way to get it all back on track. While there were definitely things I should have done differently or more strongly, however, at this point I'm really not sure of a way to make this group work. And I'm starting to think that B in particular will always lean towards this sort of character - at odds with the rest of the party - which while it can be fun for her, is often frustrating for others.

[Paul Tucker]

When you say they made characters "around the same time," do you mean they did it together as a group? Or just on the same day but still separately without consulting each other?

And in any case, even if the whole group gets together and makes characters collaboratively with wonderful harmony but without you involved, they're kinda missing a key element!

I was involved as I talked them through the process. WFRP does very random character creation in terms of the career of the character but wheras one of the issues in D&D for example is with niche protection (too many people doing the same thing leads to one of them feeling frustrated that they don't get their time to do 'their thing') in this case the party was very balanced in terms of 'what their thing is' it was how they created their personalities and backgrounds that has led to all of the trouble. That's the part they did on their own without any talking to the other players. Or, rather, I encouraged them to chuck some emails around on it to ensure they fitted together but it turned out no one had come the start of the session. My failing for not pushing that more strongly.

[Frank Tarcikowski]

I think, everybody wants to be Han Solo.  The unsentimental semi-mercenary who loudly protests he is only doing it for the credits, but who has a heart of gold, really.  They want to be persuaded to work for the plot, the greater cause, against their nominal will.  Unfortunately this doesn't work; linear authors can force odd groups together, but when two players are effectively exerting a mutual repulsion, each demanding to be persuaded in-game by the other, all you get is a spiral of antagonism and recrimination.  And the GM cannot intervene effectively because they have no effective control over the characters.  It's really a demand that the game should be "all about me, please".  And when its not about me, I can block.

So true. What's peculiar is that there are really quite some role-players who enjoy themselves ruining the other players' fun. You get that behavior in sports, too. Of course they don't play with the intention of ruining others' fun, and probably they don't realize they do, which is why they even think it was a good game. But they enjoy having their way, and pushing others aside. I think they suck.

Paul, you are at no fault. Shoot player A and email and get the two of you a group that works so you can still use your wiki. (Btw, would you mind linking the wiki?)

- Frank

[Valamir]

Because two of the players expressed a dislike for using pre-generated characters or having too much 'you start off knowing eachother' we went with standard character creation for the game.

Lots of good comments so far.

But this part...this is the root of all your problems.  Don't do this.  And don't let players bully you into doing it.

PCs created mostly in a vacuum with no ties to each other or to the scenario, leads to players who have little interest in any of the characters other than their own, and that is a recipe for suck.

All players need to be equally jazzed about all the other characters in play...not just their own, and you the GM also need to be jazzed.  If you're a player, and the other players are NOT jazzed about your character...you have an OBLIGATION to fix it.

You had a whole party full of "This is my character and I'm going to make it exactly as I want without any regard whatsoever to any of the other players at the table"...that kind of social behavior would not be tolerated in any other group setting its not acceptable in RPing either.

Similarly if you're a player, and you're not jazzed about someone elses character...you have an OBLIGATION to help make that character better.

A dwarf who hates humans in a human party...a pacifist in the Warhammer universe...these are concepts that CAN work.  If everybody is totally excited about seeing what's going to come of it.  But in a vacuum?  No. 

IMO:  as GM your responsibility (especially given that you'd run this campaign before) was to recognize the danger signs that these characters were not going to be able to functionally engage with your scenario and work with the players to come up with better concepts and a comittment to making those concepts something engaging for everyone.

[Adam Dray]

I want to echo what Ralph is saying, with a twist. As I read your horror story, Paul, I kept thinking, "Why wasn't Paul kicking their asses?"

I'm not saying it's your responsibility to make the game fun for everyone. I'm saying that the game seems to provide little or no support for certain things and it's someone's role to step and call the bullshit where they see it. The traditional model says that's the GM's job. I suspect WFRP probably expects that of the GM, too.

You seemed to be "hands off" for a lot of it, trying to let the players do what they will. That's fine if it's totally clear to the players up front. But if they don't take on their share of the responsibility, the game is gonna fall on its face -- and that happened.

From what I can tell, these players weren't trying to share responsibility for traditional GM tasks (getting everyone together, building situation, etc.). They expected you to do it. And I don't think you did.

In my traditional GM-is-God days, I'd have said "no" a lot to that group. "No, you're not allowed to be a pacifist: you'll get killed." "No, you're not allowed to hate humans unless everyone in the group signs on for inter-party fighting." "No, you cannot continue to type your RP instead of role-playing over the voice interface; you're being extremely rude to the dyslexic player!" "No, you cannot start out as complete strangers and expect me to force you all into a group; the campaign we're playing expects a cohesive party."

I think some of them expected that GM-is-God rule. The new player needed more guidance (maybe she just had no idea what was acceptable). The chat interface fucked everything up -- I'll bet a couple of those players are MUSHers, right? If so, they felt more comfortable typing up long blocks of role-play than speaking aloud.

In short, I think you had a vicarious situation to begin with (Internet role-play, new players, new interface, game they'd never played before) and they needed a guide through it all. Maybe your indie sensibilities were too strong. Maybe you let them get away with a lot of shit because you expected them to act like adults and take responsibility for their own fun. Maybe I'm reading way too much into this limited bit of explanation, but I doubt it.

(I know Paul IRL and so I can be a bit of an asshole, but that doesn't mean you can. He knows where I live and will kick my ass if I get out of line.)