Kill-happy players?

[Myth]

OK guys why is the predominant pain for DMs around here that their players will stab everyone and anyone in the eye on a completely bat**** crazy whim? How often do you get this?

I play PbP exclusively, by virtue of having no access to people who would be willing to play (yay Eastern Europe :smallmad:) and the people i play with roleplay quite well and have not behaved Chaotic Stupid or Stupid Evil in any way. In fact in the games i DM they are quite timid and sort of expect me to guide them by the hand. In the games where I'm a player I'm the one who usually uses things in an unconventional way (like using Dancing Lights to form a humanoid shape and lure a Hydra away from our level 2 party).

I have never once seen anyone do something really mind-boggingly-stupid to ruin the DM's day, like everyone here seems to suggest, like killing the main Quest Giver tm., destroying the McGuffin artifact, setting the Inn on fire, raping and pillaging on a whim etc.

Is this behavior more common for tabletop? Does the age of the players matter?

[dsmiles]

I don't PBP, so I can't say whether it's more or less predominant for TTRPGing.

And it's not so much age as maturity, IMO. I'm sure that there are people of all ages that play this way.

[panaikhan]

To quote KotDT: "Enough flavour text, how much XP for the man on the motorcycle?"

in a RL gaming session, you are pretty much stuck with people in your immediate area that like the system you want to play.
PbP or online groups can be much more diverse, and players can pick and choose which group fits their interests. All the Killowar's will find themselves a race to genocide, all the Thinkers will devise wonderful puzzles for each other etc. etc.

[PopcornMage]

OK guys why is the predominant pain for DMs around here that their players will stab everyone and anyone in the eye on a completely bat**** crazy whim? How often do you get this?


Because people talk about problems, not things going well? Or at least things that are funny. It's exception bias.

But yeah, PbP will tend to get you a different crowd than table-top ones, and that may include less of the kill-happy types.

Age doesn't necessarily matter, and some people have just been doing it for years, it's harder to change them than the young ones without those notions.

[soulchicken]

Also, its the 10% of the idiots out there that stain the reputation of the rest.

Most of the groups out there that don't have idiot players don't feel the need to raise hell about bad players, so the small percentage of DM's that have bad players need to vent here. You take 5 different dm's venting about stupid people making 5 different posts, and it looks like half the planet has bad players.

my 2 cp

[Myth]

But it's even included in the DM guide presented in another thread currently here. If it's in the guide it's implied that this happens regularly enough.

[dsmiles]

But it's even included in the DM guide presented in another thread currently here. If it's in the guide it's implied that this happens regularly enough.

Personally, my current group doesn't suffer from this. However, I beleive the DM Guide thread may be trying to head this problem off at the pass, as it were, before it gets out of control.

[PopcornMage]

Well, it is a problem when it happens, and I have seen response contingencies for situations with far lower odds than 10%.

At least I hope they are lower.

But really, it's not as big a worry as might be indicated. In other words, no it ain't quite like that.

[Psyx]

Is this behavior more common for tabletop? Does the age of the players matter?

Perhaps not so much the age of the players, but their level of maturity, and level of interest in RPGs as roleplaying and problem-solving games, rather than as a social interlude.

I used to see such behaviour when I started gaming at school, but haven't seen anyone act in such a manner for a very, very long while. Thankfully.

[Saintheart]

I suspect it's less likely in PbP than tabletop, mostly because in PbP people have a chance to think over their actions in detail -- there's less opportunity to just blurt out that you're doing something, er, "silly". Tabletop consequences for the character are usually gone in half an hour or so; in PbP the reminder of the silly decision can hang around on the board for months.

(Not trying to attack spontaneity or players who do "silly" stuff -- that's just how some people roll.)