Trolls and other malicious players

[LadyLexi]

How do you deal with players who make characters just to try to mock the game? How about players who play characters who are hostile towards the party (every character is, not just a single one for the fun of it)? What about players who spend a lot of out of game time talking about killing other characters?

What about players who try to exploit the rules, just to crash the game? Not even power gaming as just ruining it for other people?

Is it ever easy to ask a player to leave a game? Is that even the best situation? What if that player is the one who's house is used to play at?

[ThiagoMartell]

Unfortunatelly, from the threads I've seen around here, this behavior seems to be not only common, but condoned in our small community.

[Eldan]

Well. I can't say I've ever heard of anyone condoning that here on the forum.

Simple. "Stop it, or you are out of the group."

That's it, really.

[Uhtred]

Defining parameters and limitations, setting alignment restrictions, and giving the "We're here to have fun, this is just a game, when you're at the table, you're your character, so leave real-world drama at the door, and above all be respectful to me and other players" talk first session and when finding players seems to help. Also, picking your players carefully to ensure party harmony and the least amount of hostility is also helpful as a DM. On the occasions that you are a player and find yourself in a party with someone like this, sound out the other players to see if they're as annoyed as you are, and then talk to the DM. It does, however, in my estimation, fall to the DM to expel players from the game or issue warnings as necessary.

DM's who antagonize their players or make outrageous statements like "Break the game. I triple-dog DARE you!" Are just asking for trouble from optimizers and role-players alike and should be taught the meaning of pain.

[SamBurke]

Unfortunatelly, from the threads I've seen around here, this behavior seems to be not only common, but condoned in our small community.

I'm gonna have to disagree.

[Zeful]

Well. I can't say I've ever heard of anyone condoning that here on the forum.

Simple. "Stop it, or you are out of the group."

That's it, really.

Have you seen the various "Break the game for a percieved slight against you" responses to reasonable DM actions?

I have. Quite frankly this forum tends to side with the players over the DM to such a degree that running anything close to a game with intelligent villains is impossible.

[TheGeckoKing]

Unfortunatelly, from the threads I've seen around here, this behavior seems to be not only common, but condoned in our small community.

It's not that common, although you do see the occasional "What? Your DM thinks Psionics/ToB/Incarnum/etc. is broken? You GOTTA play a CoDzilla/God Wizard/StP Erudite and show him what broken is!" or something to that effect, which is just petty revenge.

Anyway, dealing with trolls is easy. Tell them to cut it out, and if they don't stop then give them the boot.

[ima donkey]

I've never really had this problem because I only play with my friends, but if I were you I would just explain to them that if they are ruining the game then they are done. If you are playing at their house then find another house, or if you aren't too self conscious you could go to a library or something(I personally wouldn't do it)but people do do that stuff.

[Zale]

I recommend fire or acid damage, otherwise they'll regen-

Oh, wait. We're talking about players.

So, as I was saying, fire or acid work wonders..

[Kelb_Panthera]

I recommend fire or acid damage, otherwise they'll regen-

Oh, wait. We're talking about players.

So, as I was saying, fire or acid work wonders..

Agreed.


You can't let trolls continue to be trolls and still have an enjoyable game. Give them a stern talking to, and if they don't shape up, give 'em the boot.

[Zeful]

It's not that common, although you do see the occasional "What? Your DM thinks Psionics/ToB/Incarnum/etc. is broken? You GOTTA play a CoDzilla/God Wizard/StP Erudite and show him what broken is!" or something to that effect, which is just petty revenge.

Anyway, dealing with trolls is easy. Tell them to cut it out, and if they don't stop then give them the boot.

Someone on the forum unironically suggested the Killer Gnome build, because a DM did not share another player's interpretation of a rule who came to the forum and whined about it.

[Wyntonian]

I recommend fire or acid damage, otherwise they'll regen-

Oh, wait. We're talking about players.

So, as I was saying, fire or acid work wonders..

Holla.

Step 1. Tell them it's an issue. Hint. HINT.

Step 2. Flat-out tell them to knock it off. Maybe work with them on reallocating/rebuilding things to make this easier.

Step 3. If the previous step does nothing, kick them. Or, duct-tape them to a chair in your basement and tell them they can come out when they learn how to play nice.

Step 4. Fire and Acid. LOTS OF IT.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Holla.

Step 1. Tell them it's an issue. Hint. HINT.

Step 2. Flat-out tell them to knock it off. Maybe work with them on reallocating/rebuilding things to make this easier.

Step 3. If the previous step does nothing, kick them. Or, duct-tape them to a chair in your basement and tell them they can come out when they learn how to play nice.

Step 4. Fire and Acid. LOTS OF IT.

Speaking of duct-taping peole to chairs, does anyone have a link to that one website "how to deal with steve?" That thing always makes me laugh.

[Andorax]

First and foremost, make sure that it IS the player that's the problem. Look long and hard in the mirror and be sure that it's not something you're doing to draw this sort of behavior out.

Ok...so it's not you. Do you have a lot of players like this? Then maybe it's the group, and the thing to do is to gracefully withdraw (and keep the contact info of the 1-2 sane people still in the group).


Failing that...it's all about communication. In a non-confrontational manner, talk to the problem player(s) and let them know:

1) Exactly what it is they are doing that is bothering/distruptive.

2) Suggestions for how they could improve.

3) A clear set of parameters (including deadlines if applicable) by which changes need to be made, and

4) Binding, non-flexible consequences if they disappoint.


Always keep in mind what is and is not within your power (and within their power). You can't ask someone to change something that's not within their means to. You can't kick someone out of the group unless it is the will of the group.

You CAN withhold your DMing services and leave it to the will of the group which they value more...troublemaker's playing or your DMing.

Other houses can be found to game at. It's tricky, but you CAN even keep a friendship with someone you've asked to leave a game. It's not easy, and it takes time, but it deserves to be handled properly.


And PLEASE do not try to impose in-game consequences for what is inherently an out-of-game conflict. Worst mistake you can make.

[ThiagoMartell]

I'm gonna have to disagree.

Zeful already explained this, but read through a few threads and you'll see how wrong you are.

[The Glyphstone]

Zeful already explained this, but read through a few threads and you'll see how wrong you are.

If you specifically go hunting for them, sure, you'll find what you're looking for. But there's just as many threads where DMs are advised to mess with players, and an even greater majority where reasonable advice is prevalent and it's only a few (and generally recurring) voices advocating bad behavior.

[ThiagoMartell]

If you specifically go hunting for them, sure, you'll find what you're looking for. But there's just as many threads where DMs are advised to mess with players, and an even greater majority where reasonable advice is prevalent and it's only a few (and generally recurring) voices advocating bad behavior.

Hm, granted, it does seem to be the same guys saying that stuff.
Then again, 339 was known as "bashing newbies" while only PhoenixInferno did that, so there is that. :smalltongue:

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'll admit to advising someone to take petty revenge against a DM. I only do so after giving the advice to try and talk it out, but when the described behavior makes the DM a butt-head, (e.g. ignoring or changing the rules unexpectedly and without reason) I don't have much sympathy for his position behind the screen.

[Oscredwin]

I think this board (like most places) usually sides with the person posting here against their group.

[ThiagoMartell]

I think this board (like most places) usually sides with the person posting here against their group.
This is hard to avoid, but I'm sincerely very tired of threads calling DMs jerks for doing reasonable stuff. That thread when people told a guy to drop a game because the DM was using RAW lycanthropy was specially weird.

[Urpriest]

I've never really had this problem because I only play with my friends, but if I were you I would just explain to them that if they are ruining the game then they are done. If you are playing at their house then find another house, or if you aren't too self conscious you could go to a library or something(I personally wouldn't do it)but people do do that stuff.

See, this sort of trolling is the kind of thing that only happens when you play with friends. Nobody is going to ruin a stranger's game. It's the sort of power play that happens because nerd friendships tend to be massively dysfunctional. If you've got a way to deal with that sort of dysfunctionality in real life, then you can probably deal with it when it shows up in player form. If you're helpless when friends are jerks to you though, you generally won't have many options when they intentionally screw up a D&D game.

[Psyren]

I side with whichever party isn't trying to exploit or outright circumvent the rules.

(Unless the rule itself is the problem, of course.)

As far as getting people to leave your house, is a message board the best place to get that kind of advice?

[Tengu_temp]

Dealing with a troll isn't hard: tell him to stop doing whatever he's doing, because it makes the game not fun for other players. If he refuses, kick him. If he agrees but continues, warn him again. If he keeps going after that point, kick him.

If you're playing at the troll's house? You can always move the game to a different location. And if you can't, then you have to consider: is the game worth keeping up with the troll's frustrating antics? No game is better than a game that's not fun.


Unfortunatelly, from the threads I've seen around here, this behavior seems to be not only common, but condoned in our small community.

Perhaps. Doesn't mean the community is right about it.

[Eldariel]

Perhaps. Doesn't mean the community is right about it.

Vast majority of the people in this community seem to never say nothing of the sort anyways. I think it's vastly unfair to say this community condones trolling games or making game unpleasant for others.

Whether it's ok to give reality checks to DMs when it comes to things like game balance is another discussion entirely but even in those cases, most of the time people seem to suggest civil enough approaches.

[Menteith]

Unfortunatelly, from the threads I've seen around here, this behavior seems to be not only common, but condoned in our small community.

[CITATION NEEDED]

I don't condone such behavior, and like to think of myself as a member of the community here.

[The Glyphstone]

This is hard to avoid, but I'm sincerely very tired of threads calling DMs jerks for doing reasonable stuff. That thread when people told a guy to drop a game because the DM was using RAW lycanthropy was specially weird.

Odds-on it's just the phenomenon where the bad stuff is more noticeable, despite being a minority of the total. I'm sure there's some fancy psychology term for it, but it's the same thing as only remembering the one time you get stuck in traffic for three hours instead of the 99 times you made it home on time...it's both unpleasant and unusual, so it just sticks in your memory better.

[Psyren]

I'm sure there's some fancy psychology term for it, but it's the same thing as only remembering the one time you get stuck in traffic for three hours instead of the 99 times you made it home on time...it's both unpleasant and unusual, so it just sticks in your memory better.

This. Not to mention - how many people make a thread to say "The other day, we asked this one guy in our group to tone it down a little, and he complied. Campaign went great after that and we're still best friends" ?

I'd be willing to bet - not many.

[TheWombatOfDoom]

Unfortunatelly, from the threads I've seen around here, this behavior seems to be not only common, but condoned in our small community.

Seeems....Legit....?

(:small disagree:)

[ThiagoMartell]

Odds-on it's just the phenomenon where the bad stuff is more noticeable, despite being a minority of the total. I'm sure there's some fancy psychology term for it, but it's the same thing as only remembering the one time you get stuck in traffic for three hours instead of the 99 times you made it home on time...it's both unpleasant and unusual, so it just sticks in your memory better.
Agreed on the phenomenon, but it still feels like those kinds of thread are more common. I'd make a spreadsheet, but I think specifically quoting from other threads this way would be breaking forum rules (i.e., "each thread exists in a vacuum").

[Madara]

Usually "The Community" responds by recommending to talk to your DM/ other player out of game, and if that fails to look for another group because it isn't worth it if you aren't having fun.

Then, the OP responds that they tried that/ whatever else they say. The OP still wants a super build, so "The Community" complies reluctently. They tried to convince the person, but now they will help them build such a character.

Helping them is not the same as condoning the behavior, but rather it is the nature of "The Community" to try their best to help the OP with what they want.

[Menteith]

Just looking at the front page, I don't see a single thread or post that encourages players to actively try and screw up a game. And I don't think I've ever actually seen someone flat out say "go ruin a game" - sometimes people will give advice that's not appropriate to a power level, but that's very rarely malicious, usually just misguided (at least in my experience). What the OP is asking for help on is an actively malicious person, who's seeking to disrupt the game - that's a much harder problem to deal with than skewed power levels.

[ThiagoMartell]

Just looking at the front page, I don't see a single thread or post that encourages players to actively try and screw up a game.

You do notice there are no threads in the first page mentioning conflicts with DMs, right?

[Spuddles]

Odds-on it's just the phenomenon where the bad stuff is more noticeable, despite being a minority of the total. I'm sure there's some fancy psychology term for it, but it's the same thing as only remembering the one time you get stuck in traffic for three hours instead of the 99 times you made it home on time...it's both unpleasant and unusual, so it just sticks in your memory better.

I think it's a little different than that, perhaps in the abstract, where voices in a community advocate bad behavior without any contrary opinion. If there aren't contrary voices to notice, then you won't notice them.

These boards are extremely gamist and tend to heavily favor player privelege over DMs, and I've certainly noticed a lot of advocation for breaking games and trolling DMs. However, I've seen at least as many posts saying don't do that and admonishing the ones who wish to troll. So I think it would be unfair to characterize these forums as thiago did, but I would certainly support previous posters' assertions of a strong sense of player entitlement in the playground.

[GenghisDon]

How do you deal with players who make characters just to try to mock the game? How about players who play characters who are hostile towards the party (every character is, not just a single one for the fun of it)? What about players who spend a lot of out of game time talking about killing other characters?

What about players who try to exploit the rules, just to crash the game? Not even power gaming as just ruining it for other people?

Is it ever easy to ask a player to leave a game? Is that even the best situation? What if that player is the one who's house is used to play at?

Don't play games with them.

Don't let them play.

Yes & No, it depends on what your relationship outside the game is. Best is always relative. Play somewhere else, every time, even if you erroneously do continue to allow them to play.

[Menteith]

Don't play games with them.

Don't let them play.

Yes & No, it depends on what your relationship outside the game is. Best is always relative. Play somewhere else, every time, even if you erroneously do continue to allow them to play.

GenghisDon's right on the money here. If a player is working to break the game, then they have no place in it. The behaviors you're describing cross the line for me - I DM way more than I play, and I count myself lucky that I've never had to deal with a person like that.

[GenghisDon]

Thanks, Menteith:smallsmile:

[Marlowe]

I...don't know if I could tell this behaviour from some people's genuine attempts at building characters. I've been a few PbP games that died owing to the massive social dysfunctionality of one or more characters, and I've never got the impression that trolling was involved.

Some people seem to be sincere, geniune roleplayers that simply don't know how to create a personality that might realistically live long enough to outlast puberty.:smallfrown:

[Water_Bear]

Maybe this isn't a common thing, but I've had at least three players who started out as trolls or munchkins and actually became excellent players after getting invested in the game.

Sometimes you need to kick people out, but if you're friends with someone they should be a reasonable person you can deal with.

[Yorae]

Just looking at the front page, I don't see a single thread or post that encourages players to actively try and screw up a game. And I don't think I've ever actually seen someone flat out say "go ruin a game" - sometimes people will give advice that's not appropriate to a power level, but that's very rarely malicious, usually just misguided (at least in my experience). What the OP is asking for help on is an actively malicious person, who's seeking to disrupt the game - that's a much harder problem to deal with than skewed power levels.

I concur. It is pretty clear that community consensus isn't malicious. These types of threads pop up with some regularity, and the answers I have seen have always been positive. In cases of DM-player conflict, the advice you'll see is most often to work it out peacefully between the DM and player or part ways. Mismatched power levels != troll or actively malicious. Don't hang around a jerk in D&D anymore than you would in any other situation. Find a different location, drop them out. If they are clearly being purely malicious and everyone else agrees, you could even just come to a consensus with everyone else to simply start meeting somewhere else and not include the jerk. Before doing that, however, I'd try to let said player know the problems they are causing and see if he or she improves.

[Downysole]

After we watched "The Gamers", we had a guy who was constantly rolling dice to "steal your pants!" and that got old really fast. He was joking around most of the time, but it really slowed down the game and pulled people out of character.

As such, we didn't show any of our new players this movie until at least a year of solid gaming was under their belts. Many better things to quote at that point during a game.

[Alienist]

Puts hand up for "yes, there are way too many hostile to the DM threads"

Or at least, there were for a while. I stopped reading anything that sounded like: "player X is butthurt because DM won't let him do //insert completely unreasonable thing// let's all sit around and tell him that his DM is bad and should feel bad."

There are some people who very much want to play the meta-game of 'system-mastery'. Typically they get very good at it. There does, however, seem to be an unfortunate tendency for them to get matched up with DMs with a lower level of system mastery.

Then the player tries to use his system mastery to 'win' D&D. Usually in some subtly flawed way (such as requiring an extremely dodgy interpretation of RAW when the perfectly reasonable alternative interpretation wouldn't let them go super-saiyan at level 3).

The DM's response should be to laugh and point at them and go "ha ha!", and then gently point out the horrible flaw in their logic, and perhaps some remedial reading courses from the local community college. BUT because the DM has low system mastery they can't spot the huge flaw in their player's lovingly crafted scheme, and so they pick up the multi-tool sitting right there... Rule 0, DM's fiat.

Then, it's on like Donkey Kong. The player escalates (sometimes they do this on their own for a couple of iterations, sometimes they have to come here for other people to egg them on to it). The DM responds to the escalation with the tool that worked really well last time, rule 0.

Eventually the player starts playing a game of whack-a-mole with the DM, wherein he is the mole, and the mallet is the ban-hammer. This is not a zero sum game. This is a negative sum game. Nobody wins, and nobody has fun.

Eventually the players will stagger away from smoking crater that used to be the campaign and wander across the ruined wasteland, wondering where they went wrong.

Everyone loses.

[Menteith]

Which is why the near unanimous advice offered is to deal with it out of game. As for the hostile to DM thing, I don't really see it. I remember the "Things that you hate in a DM" thread (or whatever it was named), but even that wasn't over the top, and I agreed with most of the problems people had with their DMs in that thread. For the record, I DM for my group far more frequently than I play, and generally can only PbP on these forums, outside of one shots.

[ThiagoMartell]

Puts hand up for "yes, there are way too many hostile to the DM threads"

Or at least, there were for a while. I stopped reading anything that sounded like: "player X is butthurt because DM won't let him do //insert completely unreasonable thing// let's all sit around and tell him that his DM is bad and should feel bad."

That's what I see as well. It does seem to be more common this week or something like that, though.