Reinboom
2010-10-17, 08:33 AM
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:
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: