Problem players are a problem

[Greyfeld85]

I'm about ready to eject somebody from a PBP game I'm running, because I'm at the end of my rope in dealing with his bull****.

So, to make me feel better, I'd like to hear all your stories about bad players you've had, and how you dealt with them!

And none of that "we sat down and talked it out like adults" garbage, BRING ME JERRY SPRINGER!!!

[LTwerewolf]

My issue tends to be more with DMs (when I'm a player) than with players (when I DM).

My first DM was one of those that got upset when we didn't go the way he wanted us to, as if we were destroying his story. What he'd do to "keep us on track" was put pointlessly difficult things every place we weren't supposed to go yet. One example was when he had a dracolich in the left wing of a castle because we were supposed to go to the right wing. Then when it was time to go to the left wing, it was miraculously gone. He was also one of those that would take it out on us if he'd had a bad day/week and force us into party-wiping encounters. We didn't stick with him long.

My current DM is a lot better about all that, but tends to go after me a bit more than others. I don't optimize completely, but I do use things to my advantage. I tend to get creative with my spell usage, which skews encounters in our favor. It occasionally trivializes certain encounters (like when I caused a cave-in at the mouth of a cave with our enemies inside, then filled it with water. Now, any time we get into an encounter (even when I'm not playing a spellcaster) he builds them around shutting me down, making it so I can't do anything. With that character (it was an archivist/wizard/MT), we started encountering anti-magic fields everywhere, and enemies that had globes of invulnerability. This leads me to have to find even more creative and awkward uses of spells and magic to give me something to do.

The one problem player I have had to deal with was when he was doing all these awkward things, like insisting his character had narcolepsy. It reminded me of that list of things players are no longer allowed to do. I don't recall the original link, but here's another. (http://theglen.livejournal.com/16735.html)

I don't know the type of BS you're dealing with, but make sure that you aren't exacerbating it by picking on him.

[Greyfeld85]

I don't know the type of BS you're dealing with, but make sure that you aren't exacerbating it by picking on him.

I'm not going to pretend not to be biased, being human and all that. But there's only so many times I can handle a player throwing a bitch-fit and calling me a bad DM every time I nix something he wants to do before I just don't want to hear a word from him anymore.

[only1doug]

I don't often have problems with players as both groups I play with have been playing together for a long time.

Once in a game I was playin (WFRP if it matters) a pair of new players joined up and the contrived intro scene had them rescuing my friends PC from the river as their intro. One of the 2 new PC's taxed him 30gold (most of his money at the time) for rescuing him and then monologued for a while about herself (Male player, female character) before making my friends PC swear allegiance to her husband then ranted about hating thieves and stating flat out that she would kill any thief she met. I agreed with her, saying how we all hated thieves and that night while the entire party were asleep on the deck of a riverboat I cut her throat, recovered my friends gold and rolled her body into the river before returning the money to my friend. (The GM was perfectly happy with this course of events)

I was playing a thief.

When the player next turned up (weeks later actually) he said OOC that he meant that he hated people who steal from the party, I mentioned that maybe he should have been more specific and also that if that was his policy he shouldn't have taken money under duress from an existing party member as a part of his introduction.

[LadyLexi]

We were playing a very large player game, seven is a little too much it would seem. The DM set down one a rule that proved to be really frustrating, "No PC conflict." We couldn't fight each other, or cast harmful spells or steal from each other. Not a big problem for my NG character, I wasn't planning on it.

About twenty sessions in, we finally come to the end of the major story arch and find the woman we have been searching for, she has the knowledge we need to be able to save our kingdom. And she slams the door in our faces and tells us to go away. Now the social character and I are all set to talk to this woman, I have some personal information about her to bring up to guilt her into it and the social character is a good talker. Then the damn half-dragon in the party decides to breath fire into the doorway of her home. And she teleports away.

The game ended because one of the players freaked out and insisted that her character(LE) be allowed to kill the offending half-dragon. I had previously offered to join sides with the evil character despite being good because the rest of the party acted like jerks all the time.

DM refused, game horribly crashed with screaming and yelling. I just got up and left as soon as people started yelling but I heard that it was brutal after that. Friendships ended over the game.

Basically, being considerate of others would have gone a long way.

[only1doug]

We were playing a very large player game, seven is a little too much it would seem. The DM set down one a rule that proved to be really frustrating, "No PC conflict." We couldn't fight each other, or cast harmful spells or steal from each other. Not a big problem for my NG character, I wasn't planning on it.

About twenty sessions in, we finally come to the end of the major story arch and find the woman we have been searching for, she has the knowledge we need to be able to save our kingdom. And she slams the door in our faces and tells us to go away. Now the social character and I are all set to talk to this woman, I have some personal information about her to bring up to guilt her into it and the social character is a good talker. Then the damn half-dragon in the party decides to breath fire into the doorway of her home. And she teleports away.

The game ended because one of the players freaked out and insisted that her character(LE) be allowed to kill the offending half-dragon. I had previously offered to join sides with the evil character despite being good because the rest of the party acted like jerks all the time.

DM refused, game horribly crashed with screaming and yelling. I just got up and left as soon as people started yelling but I heard that it was brutal after that. Friendships ended over the game.

Basically, being considerate of others would have gone a long way.

Sounds terrible but I've played in groups larger without problems, as you say, being considerate of others would be the key.

[ima donkey]

PC conflict seems so weird to me. In my groups we just do votes or just go with, if it doesn't cause you harm just let them do it but I mostly only play with friends. I have had some DM problems though, like deciding what class you are going to be, getting angry when things get to easy or when you kill his monster he really liked, and just generally being insulting and yelling at us when we don't agree with him.

[manyslayer]

Not a game I DMed but a game I played in in high school had one problem player join our existing group. For some reason he had a beef with one of the other players (maybe because they each had the same name?) and after a few sessions with any new character, he would try to kill the old player's character. And he failed every time. The new guy had to go through a half dozen characters, easy. One time he simply had his new character (centaur cavalier, 1st edition) charge the other guy's character on first seeing him. Cue dead centaur. Same guy also periodically called a die result before a die stopped moving and snatched up the die.

The absolute worst thing about the whole situation is that all of a sudden the guy went through a metamorphosis and became a character driven player looking to enhance everyone's role-playing experience and making a character that fit both the setting and campaign model. Then he moved the next week.:smallfrown:

[Medic!]

I had a player in a RL group throw a hissy-fit once in an epic level campaign (party was 21st lvl, fresh from the starting lvl of 20)

1st init, the party duskblade casts Earth Reaver on the attacking Pseudonatural Troll (straight out of the Epic Level Handbook), troll fails his save, falls prone.

2nd init, the party paladin fires his longbow at the troll and misses the prone AC by 1. Enter the hissy-fit. "What the hell, this is an unbeatable encounter, I rolled GREAT and missed we can't hit this thing!!!" (He did roll like a 15 or 16...can't remember, but I do remember the troll's AC was 51 or 52, +4 vs ranged for being prone)

Bear in mind, this is after me not saying anything when said paladin was doing crazy illegal stuff like using Rapid Shot and Manyshot at the same time etc etc etc

I lost my cool, and threw my own hissy-fit, read the entire monster entry to the group, and declared the encounter over with no xp gain. As a concession (it's a family group, after all), I granted the entire group like 1.2m gp out of thin air for weapon upgrades etc, and then spent the next hour and a half making them sit and listen to me as I went through several books listing off all of the lvl 2 or below spells that could have instantly ended the encounter pre-hissy-fit. That part was my favorite. The campaign was never touched again!

[vrigar]

We had a player who was terrible at navigating, even though her character was proficient at navigation (2nd edition). She would insist on leading the group to their destination (actually in circles) and when people told her what she's doing she yelled at them "But I have navigation!!!".
She was so terrible we actually started meeting intentionally on her work days but then she started moving her workdays around which aggravated her boss. We have inadvertently got her fired. We (at least I) felt pretty bad...

[Azoth]

I usually have more issues with DMs than players as well, but I have had quite a few players that waranted a dwarven urgosh up the portable holes then sized to collosal.

One such was pretty recent. He swore up and down as the day is long that d&dwiki was all legit and official material :smallfrown: . Then took to telling me about how his old DM used all kinds of house rules, some of which made me disoriented and baffled. Finally, since I have a standard house rule that if I say I am certain of something rule specific and you can show me in the book that I am incorrect I will give your character a gimme, he took to stopping me after nearly everything I stated from a rule about falling damage to the components of a spell to double check it in his books in hopes of a gimme. (Normally these gimmes were something small, flavorful, and something I thought would be useful to your character at the given level. I.E. An elven cloak for a level 1-3 rogue, a weapon upgrade for a fighter, things like this. Nothing gamebreaking or really powerful but something) He got me once, because I was certain that a particular spell had an xp component...and was wrong. Then came the houndings on what kind of gimme was it, when was he going to get it, what would it be if he changed characters, would he keep it if he rolled a new character, would it be powerful, could he have this, that, other object...ect. Drove me bat guanno crazy.

Then came a new campaign. Two man party. One of which was a brand new player in their first campaign. Every time this player did something smart and inventive to trivialize or shift an encounter I got to hear calls of favoritism or the like. Again drove me nuts.

In a complete lack of adult finess or graciousness, I grabbed me 3.0 PHB during one of his ranting fits and crammed in his mouth while telling him to shut up. Followed shortly thereafter by a grab your **** and get out of my place. Granted after I calmed down (I have a nasty temper) I did call him and talk to him and try to explain why I did what I did. Took us a while, but we got back to normal and being friends again...though I refuse to DM for him. I will play in a campaign with him, but not DM...EVER.

[LanternOG]

The one problem player I have had to deal with was when he was doing all these awkward things, like insisting his character had narcolepsy. It reminded me of that list of things players are no longer allowed to do. I don't recall the original link, but here's another. (http://theglen.livejournal.com/16735.html)


I was just about to go off on a rant about several of the guys I have played with, but since I clicked that link I can't stop chuckling.

My biggest problem playing has actually been interparty conflict. I just dropped out of a campaign because the party consisted of 8ish people (I know big party) including:


The Rules Lawyer who often got the rule wrong and always insisted on bringing up rules that made the party's life harder
The Cleric who at 9th level had used DMM cheese (persisted 10 spells) to create a character who had an AC of 42, a +27 to hit, and did 2d8+40 damage.


The kicker was that the rules lawyer would show up to the sessions for the other party (The DM was running two large parties in the same world during different sessions) and just generally be a pain there too.

[Hyena]

I've seen a lot of players I don't like, but the most hated kind of them I call "Placeholders". You know this guy - it takes weeks for him to make the character, even more to create a char sheet and when he finally starts playing, it turns out he never considered reading the rules of the game, despite being told to do so repeatedly.