Player Troubles

[Reinboom]

As the title suggests, I'm currently having a bit of an issue with one of my players that I'm having troubles solving and I would like a bit of advice from any willing. The basic issue is that this player wishes to play, yet refuses to learn how to play and constantly clashes with the focus of the game.

For a bit of background information:
My fiancée and I game, as co-GMs, at a couple of friends' house (we'll call them W and L) every Friday night. The system we're using is a custom one with a premise based on D&D and one of the major goals of the campaign has been to test and adjust this system. Otherwise, it's a fairly normal campaign. The setup is for a mostly sandbox world where the players still have an overarching plot to fall back on (or, to be more precise, they have 3 in game years to complete a rather unique contract or face death).

During the early time of this campaign, I quickly discovered that W and L were just, frankly, not that good with role-playing. Both of them were limited to only one other campaign before this where the Storyteller of that campaign, by their claims, was very domineering of their actions and ultimately focused mostly on torturing their character's and combat where combat was always "five vampires attack you". Me and Phoe have been working with both of them to try to get them a more broad gaming experience. We also had another player, "M", who has had plenty of gaming prior to this.

During the first few sessions, many difficulties showed up. W seemed to be stuck in a "look for the railroad tracks" mindset with the extra caveat of being a bit shortsighted and only being able to find such a thing when the tracks are brand new. I have been slowly breaking him from this mold.

L seemed to have similar problems to W at first. Whenever the party would setup a plan and start to execute it, the first time something minor went wrong with the plan she would be the first to emphasize on just outright abandoning the whole thing right there. She also has come off as the first time I have had a player do constant tasteless sex-humor (of the "Alright, I'm the party slut!" nature). To make matters worse, L has had a rather bothersome mindset of "I don't need to know the mechanics. I'll just ask W what my modifiers are."


Two sessions ago (October 8th's session), there was a rather significant battle that took place. During this battle, W's character was killed due to a mistake on W's part. In this battle, there are 4 coils that each build up and then send a charge of energy at a golem in the center of the room and regenerates it (there is only one golem). Each of these 4 coils have a very particular (clockwise!) order to doing this and the party had just discovered that if you stand next to one while its charging, you would probably take a fair bit of damage. Well, W's character was pulled down to 1 HP by the golem and decided he should pull back and instead help by taking down the coils. The first thing he does is jumps up to Coil #3's platform, the one he was closest to, and slashes at it. Coil #2 just finished sending it's bolt of energy that regenerates the golem, meaning that Coil #3 was to begin charging next...
Since this event, W has become really excited and interested in his new character and it seems that it took a character death to finally awaken him.

Now that the happy result from a player is out of the way...


Last session (October 15th) is perhaps one of the worst experiences attempting to game I have had.
The session at first started great. Me and Phoe brought our laptop and a printer in order to print out new character sheets for everyone due to a rather hefty update to our system (we didn't print them at home because we needed to stop at a store on the way to get ink). We decided to also use this opportunity to sit down with each player and help update their character, discuss their character, and to try to ensure that each of them had a firm grasp of the rules and weren't having problems. We used this as a cover in order to get a 1 on 1 with each W and L without it looking like we were singling them out.

With W, it went great. As I mentioned, he is really starting to get in to it now.

With L... not so great. The first problem I tried to address was to make sure she knew how to do even a standard attack. With a bit of work, I have convinced her to just make sure you tell me these two numbers (referring accuracy and damage modifiers) and roll these dice. Yet, she still holds to the position, "Oh, that's easy. But, I'm just going to have someone else just tell me what to roll still." (this is not a paraphrase.)
Basically, she has the boyfriend/girlfriend issue... but doesn't want to break out of it.

Oh well, I gritted and accepted this. Yet.. more problems were to come for this session.


The early part of the game went quite well. Between the introduction of W's new character and the party's deceit to convince that character to sign this contract that will guarantee the party's protection (W knew, OOC, that the contract was actually a terrible thing to get in with. He was just keeping with what the new character knew, and doing it quite well!)

A fair couple hours passed in normal time and things were going smoothly... and then L gets a phone call. Alright, break time for everyone. Normal. I pull out my A320 and decide to play some games waiting for everyone to get back. The phone call goes on for quite a bit, L just chatting away, even when people come back. Then I hear from W, speaking to L, "Wait, you're not letting them over are you? Let them know we're gaming.". L's response, "Oh, it'll be fine. They'll just stay to the kitchen and it will be later anyways." Hm...

The phone call ends and we get back to gaming. Fifteen minutes pass and then two of L's friends walk in to the door with a "HEY!!". Both of them absolutely drunk. They come in to the main room, offer L a beer. L gets up, heads back in to the kitchen with them.
At this point, the rest of us are just looking at each other stunned. A moment later, we suddenly see M get up and just walk out.

Incidentally, one of those two friends who came in? Used to date M.


During that night, I couldn't get L aside to talk with her again. I felt incredibly disrespected and me and Phoe decided to just leave. W helped us get our stuff out to the car.
This problem expands even further in that, looking at this, I can see L pulling this again.

I'm not entirely sure what to do. :smallfrown:

[Yuki Akuma]

Okay... so have you spoken to L about it, or was your first impulse to post on the Internet about it?

If you talk to her, my advice is to ask her why she plays with you. What she enjoys about it, what she doesn't enjoy, and so on. She could simply want to hang out with her friend(s) and not be too interested in the game.

[Kaww]

Would you be so kind as to state your problem in a more readable manner?

I'll guess that your problem is the fact that the player L is not interested in the game? If so, the answer is simple don't force L to play. If L is not interested then don't play with L. If your rules are too complex (which from what I have understood is not the case) and are the sole reason of L disinterest you should spend some time with L and clarify the rules. You could also make the campaign be more interesting for L, if it doesn't require too much effort on your part.

Again it would help if your question was more concise, since this is just my guess on what your problem really is.

My 2c...

[FelixG]

It seems L knows the rules, she knows whats expected of her but she just doesn't care enough to really participate.

Drop her for all intents and purposes from the group, make her like Vs familiar, if shes there, fine let her help out, if not make her poof and go on with your lives.

If W is fine with playing without L perhaps host at Ms or your house, let L decide to come if they want, L may feel obligated to play because its at her house.

L just seems like a bored problem player who doesn't want to be part of the group, If it were me i would give them the boot.

Hope it helps.

[Reinboom]

I have, as I already described, spoken to L concerning the earlier problems. I have tried to clarify the rules to her. Very specifically, she has made it a point that she does not want to understand the rules.

Also, L does wish to play. To quote her facebook page from the day of the last session: "[L] is excited for the game tonight!"


Okay... so have you spoken to L about it, or was your first impulse to post on the Internet about it?

I have not yet spoken to L since then. However, I'm unsure how you get the idea of "first impulse" out of me quoting the date of 3 days ago. :smallconfused:



Really, what I'm trying to figure out is how to speak to L about the issue of last Friday at all. I can't risk making her upset and have her quit the game... because that causes W and R to leave as well.

I'm also trying to figure out how to handle a player who just outright refuses to learn how to play.



It seems L knows the rules, she knows whats expected of her but she just doesn't care enough to really participate.

Drop her for all intents and purposes from the group, make her like Vs familiar, if shes there, fine let her help out, if not make her poof and go on with your lives.

If W is fine with playing without L perhaps host at Ms or your house, let L decide to come if they want, L may feel obligated to play because its at her house.

L just seems like a bored problem player who doesn't want to be part of the group, If it were me i would give them the boot.

Hope it helps.

I've been debating the merits and cons of moving the game. As we live a decent ways away from everyone else, it's most cost efficient for us to go to them.

It's a consideration, just not something I'm willing to do just yet (and definitely not before speaking and trying harder to work with L first).

[Yuki Akuma]

Have you spoken to W about it? Anyone else who knows her?

It's hard to help when we don't know anything about this person.

Also: just because she's excited about the game doesn't mean she really wants to play. Maybe she just wants to hang out with her friends and this is the only social activity they regularly do.

Not wanting to learn the rules points slightly towards her not being terribly interested in the actual game part - even if she enjoys the socialising and the roleplaying.

[Reinboom]

Have you spoken to W about it? Anyone else who knows her?

It's hard to help when we don't know anything about this person.

Also: just because she's excited about the game doesn't mean she really wants to play. Maybe she just wants to hang out with her friends and this is the only social activity they regularly do.

Not wanting to learn the rules points slightly towards her not being terribly interested in the actual game part - even if she enjoys the socialising and the roleplaying.

I have not spoken to W. They are a pair and I don't want to come off as rude by speaking behind L's back to W like so. Especially since the only reliable methods I have of speaking with them is messaging on facebook and by driving there. I will be speaking to L come next Friday (or by facebook if I can figure out how to not sound mean. I'm extremely paranoid that everything I write online will always be misread...)

I was suspect that her game interest (of the game aspect) wasn't there. As I tried to note in the first post, the rules issue isn't such a large problem as myself not knowing how to respond to the last event, the ditching us mid game for other friends.

She's a rather difficult person to read, since the giddiness even highlights mechanics at times, "____ yeah! A 20!".

[FelixG]

I've been debating the merits and cons of moving the game. As we live a decent ways away from everyone else, it's most cost efficient for us to go to them.

It's a consideration, just not something I'm willing to do just yet (and definitely not before speaking and trying harder to work with L first).

Well, if not moving it to your home how would M feel about being the hose? does he live closer?

If so then you could play it off as a change of pace without pointing any fingers.

Also dont consider talking to W going behind her back, its more testing the waters to get all the facts straight before you confront a problem...well not problem, lets call it a challenge :P

When you confront her you want to have clearly defined issues and possible solutions in mind with a way to approach each one.

[Urpriest]

My guess is that dropping L from the group will not be an option without dropping W, since it sounds like L is in the group merely because W is. Since W wants to play, you're going to get L. A potential solution, already mentioned, is to rig things up so that L doesn't have to do very much to contribute. Sometimes L will do things, sometimes she won't. While depressing to watch for the more dedicated gamers, so long as she doesn't have her self-esteem riding on being a "real gamer" (which it sounds like she doesn't), she should be fine with playing a character who only demands her attention when she bothers to give it. The rest of the time, poof, into the bag of character holding she goes.

Does L know that one of the people she invited was M's ex, by the way?

[Shpadoinkle]

L doesn't seem the least bit interested in the game and to me, she only seems to be playing because M is. I think one or both of them think they should be doing things as a couple, so they tried this, but L clearly couldn't care less.

Make it clear that she doesn't have to play if she's not interested. If she insists she wants to play, despite doing everything short of actually saying "I don't want to play" to indicate otherwise, tell her that half-assing it like this and being disrespectful to you and your fiancee isn't going to fly, so she needs to make up her mind one way or the other.

I'd also suggest explaining to her that running a game takes a lot of time and work, but I don't think she'd listen or care.

[Cespenar]

L doesn't seem the least bit interested in the game and to me, she only seems to be playing because M is. I think one or both of them think they should be doing things as a couple, so they tried this, but L clearly couldn't care less.

I got the same vibe as well. The best way this thing can go seems to be the peaceful termination of the game.

Then again, I'm pretty pessimistic at times, with the side order of not knowing exactly what's going on over there, so I'm probably wrong.

[bloodtide]

Some people, like L, just never want to learn the rules of a game...any game, or any activity, for that matter. You just need to accept that some people are wired that way. You can explain something five times, they they will still stop and say 'do I do this?' or whatever.

So if L just wants to ask every time and be rules clueless....let her. Does it slow the game down much? Somehow her asking 'I need to roll a 10?' or such, should not slow the game down. You might also want to make her some cheat sheets.

The friends stopping by....well this happens. If it happens once, it should not be a big deal. You can say something, but I'm sure she will just have a sad story('Mindy just broke up with Mark and needs me and I have not seen her in...blah, blah, blah').


A role playing trick, to keep L into the game more, is just give her something special. It can be anything that fits the story. The classic is a powerful magic item only she can use, or a special power. And if she wants to be the 'slut', let her...add in a rich noble how likes her character or a half-orc fan or whatever.