tired
camstone and pholph took the premise of the extremely addictive wine that they'd been guzzling, and went to town with it. Frightening, because camstone's and jamesbarrett's characters got into a clash of wills that escalated to the point of physical violence (in the form of camstone's ranger hoisting jamesbarrett's wizard over his shoulder and carrying her off) and magical violence (in the form of the wizard casting a light spell in his eyes as retaliation for same).Fortunately, it didn't come to the point of actual knock-down drag-out fighting ... while I've been fortunate enough to have avoided campaigns that ended in inter-party brawls, I've heard about enough of them to know it's a real danger. But as the GM, I have to be "Mr. Impartial Universe," and if the PCs want to go abusing each other over the topic of whether they spend another day in town or not, well, that's their perogative.
What it boils down to, in this particular case, is that the wizard has an arrogant streak and tends to make unilateral decisions, thinking of the other members of the party as her helpers ... while the other members of the party have (of late) taken to dismissing her abilities and being almost contrary about any plans she may want to make.
Some of this is probably precipitated by the fact that the beginning of my "post-3.5-reboot" campaign began with the wizard having led them into a situation that didn't go well for them (i.e., the crypt of Dorl Tavyani), and they've sorta been riding on her back ever since. Well, she's imperious, so riding on her back makes for good laughs. But at the same time, she is a powerful wizard and a valued member of the party, so she does deserve a certain amount of respect. You can't just abuse her and expect not to get burned -- but at the same time, casting spells on other party members is just asking for escalation. The worst part of it is that discussing the matter beforehand would probably have avoided the whole problem -- and it's not like a day in town, or leaving a day earlier, would have made any difference anyway. The bees-at-the-winery issue is not going to change in that 24-hour period.
Hopefully, after a cooling-off period, things will calm down. Certainly Verdhaven, the lawful-good monk/cleric NPC who is the closest thing the game has to "my" character, is going to be trying to play peacemaker. I'm also hoping that the conflict stays in-game ... the last thing I need is hard feelings between players. I just want to have fun, y'know?
The good news is, the main topic of post-session discussion seemed to be the fun everybody had with the addictive wine problem, which pleases me. I always try to put an interesting spin on the story!
-The Gneech