Play the setting as the setting, no bolds barred.  Wild Bunch groups tend to end up...like the Wild Bunch unless they're really good, smart or both.

It depends on what they players are like, what their mix is, and whether they are going against my or other players' ideas of what we want to be playing.

If there is one or more wild player, and others who aren't, then it sets up a conflict within the group, which I sometimes actually find to be interesting as long as the wild players aren't also ruining continuity somehow. For example, when the players find that their characters have conflicting goals or callings or moral codes or allegiances, and it brings the group into conflict that needs to be resolved somehow. I'd rather see that play out than have "the party sticks together and gets along somehow because they're the party...".

But it can be no good when it doesn't make sense or involves bad roleplaying, especially on the part of the perpetrators. For example, if a character is supposed to be a loyal good-hearted sort with some degree of honor, but the player just decides he wants some object and that the way to get it is to shove another player off a cliff while no one's looking, or something.

I've also had some "drift" in some long-running campaigns, where players start getting into less and less moral behavior, and I've sometimes (particularly when I was a newer GM) worried a bit what to do with that - whether it's bad roleplaying or interesting character devolution. Sometimes players don't realize how bad what they're doing is for their character, as they may get a reputation or lose friends, allies, patrons, and/or become a target as a villain themselves, when they're expecting everyone to still like them and be on their side even though they're descending into worse and worse behavior. Unless the game or character are supposed to be depraved, I tend to now interrupt such moves with GM warnings from the perspective I think their character's intelligence, inhibitions, moral compass, upbringing, self-interest, etc would provide. Failing that, I have NPCs provide perspective too, whether they are friends who would be appalled at what the PC's are proposing or starting to do, and failing that, providing suitably sympathetic / pathetic / appalled / horribly-screaming-or-pleading roleplaying of the victims' reactions, etc. Because, I don't want to be party to glossing over and dehumanizing what's going on if, for example, a player decided they want to backstab their own mercenaries or native guides so they won't have to pay them, then loot them, strip them nude, and harvest their organs for sale in town to alchemical suppliers.

On the other hand, games that are intentionally "wild" can be fun, at least for a while. When I've had players that want to play out some psychopathic destruction, I'd rather they do it in an intentional game about that, as opposed to having their developed characters become psychopaths. Such games also call for different sorts of preparations, both to be ready, and not to waste too much effort detailing the personality and lives of NPCs who are likely to become collateral damage or intentional victims of players going postal. I invented and ran a futuristic game a bit like Grand Theft Auto back about 1984. Players would go to public parks in town and engage in combat and looting. The highlight was when they got an air car (like a land speeder in Star Wars) and drove it through the park and down streets, mowing down pedestrians. Usually it has only taken a few sessions of such games to get it out of their system.

As a GM, it's fairly easy to handle:

1) In The Wild Bunch, the gang might be a bunch of vicious bastards, but they're small potatoes compared to Harrigan's bounty hunters and microscopic potatoes compared to Mapache and his troops. A party of ruthless PCs who won't hesitate to kill those who get in their way might be evil, but compared to monsters who view people as food, or a genocidal regime that wants to make fertilizer, soap or lampshades out of people, or a serial killer who gets off on torture and killing (because well, why the fuck not?) they are not so bad and maybe a blessing in disguise.

2) If the PCs should decide to go Full Joffrey/Cheney and start killing, raping, torturing for the thrill of it all then the movie M would be a useful guide. In that movie, a pedophile/serial killer has killed one victim too many and now not only are the police and outraged citizens after the killer, but the other criminals are out to get him, too. Your run-of-the-mill criminals might be bad people, but even they have limits and standards. In other words, there's a difference between "evil" and as Peter Cushing would say "EE-VILLE"-and NPCs can and should act accordingly.

There can be some limits even among criminals. You just have to present opponents that break those limits in order to turn criminal PCs into the better of two options.

Quote from: RPGPundit;862977There can be some limits even among criminals. You just have to present opponents that break those limits in order to turn criminal PCs into the better of two options.

One of the limits I encounter a lot in these sorts of campaigns is a desire for order and hierarchy. If you have a group of PCs who are essentially criminals and they start a criminal enterprise or organization of some kind, they want to expand, maintain order in the group, avoid unnecessary trouble with the authorities, etc. Throwing in a truly chaotic opponent who doesn't care about that stuff 't having them deal with chaotic elements in their own organization works a lot. Tony Soprano looks pretty reasonable and predictable compared to someone like Heath Ledger's Joker (and the former is still a sociopath).

It sounds like no-one here's ever GM'd or played in a WOD Chronicle...?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863019One of the limits I encounter a lot in these sorts of campaigns is a desire for order and hierarchy. If you have a group of PCs who are essentially criminals and they start a criminal enterprise or organization of some kind, they want to expand, maintain order in the group, avoid unnecessary trouble with the authorities, etc. Throwing in a truly chaotic opponent who doesn't care about that stuff 't having them deal with chaotic elements in their own organization works a lot. Tony Soprano looks pretty reasonable and predictable compared to someone like Heath Ledger's Joker (and the former is still a sociopath).

LE vs. CE.  Good one.