When players misbehave - Apocalyptia Play Report

Last night we ran through another round of Apocalyptia. I was terribly unprepared, I had ideas for what I wanted to happen when the players finished their current story arch, but nothing much for what would happen after the last game.  I consider myself fairly decent winging story and thankfully the players that showed up early to the game (my wife, brother, and his girlfriend) seem to really enjoy just exploring ruins which makes my job easy. The group had looted a bunch of buildings returned home to find their home settlement destroyed by slavers.  So they started decking out semi trucks like some sort of mad max fever dream preparing to take the survivors on some grand exodus.

I was fearing I wasn't throwing enough at the players.  My first experience with Apocalyptia was fast paced and brutal, seems there was always raiders or zombies being tossed at us.  That was a game run at Gencon 2014 and the guy running the game just tossed obstacles at us until we got ourselves killed. Fast, brutal, fun. I think I get a little gun shy when it comes to throwing encounters at my players I think I have this fear if I throw to much at the players and wind up with a TPK my campaign goes kaput and I'll never be allowed to run Apocalyptia again.

Ofcourse one player showed up late and let me know the players will due a decent job of killing themselves even if I don't throw hoards of flesh eating undead their way.  You can always tell there's some shady backstabbing silliness afoot when players start handing you folded up hand written notes like you're their middle school crush.

I suppose I could have drawn that myself, not just slap something from a Google image search in paint.  Either way, my player that shows up late starts passing me notes that look alot like what is pictured above.  The tardy player starts rigging traps up to the mad max semi while he was supposed to be watching the group's camp site. Wakes up an NPC and murders him while trying to steal some gear then attempts to run away with the semi.

Now this behavior is not only self destructive but it puts the entire group at risk, and more importantly my campaign. If I wasn't hand holding my party through the first few sessions they would know they have to work together to survive in this game.  So this brings us to our next lessons in Game Mastering. 

How do we handle players behaving badly?  In my groups we've always kind of allowed player in fighting, it takes pressure of the GMs and the players get to mess with each other which seems to make them happy (sometimes).  Parties working against each other and hatching various schemes and conspiracies against each other can pretty much make the GM's job location description. Now granted my group mostly plays World of Darkness games which aren't as hyper lethal and have alot more built in for political back stabbing.  However the post apocalyptic wasteland is no place for such shenanigans.

What do we do with players trying to earn that TPK for you?  Does the GM jump in, hand of God intervenes? I certainly attempted to put some road blocks in the way and let the dice fall where they may but I really didn't feel like letting NPCs kill the rouge player.  In my mind justice for player betrayals need to be meted out by the players themselves. Intervening to keep party cohesion sets a bad precedence and leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.  Sure put some road blocks up, make the player deal with the world's natural reaction to their jackassery but when the hammer really needs to come down, let the players get the blood on their hands.