Zerter
2012-11-11, 03:15 PM
I'm in a group with mostly players I've known pretty much my entire life. Not that we've been close friends, but we've always traveled in the same circles. The group as it is is in its third year now, and the last year one of those players has been a problem player. I am here to vent :smallwink:. He shall hereafter be reffered to as Bart.
Conflict has been in this group from the beginning. We kicked our first two problem players a few months in, giving me the honorary distinction of getting a post in every 'bad DM' thread on this website by one of them since. Bart was a reasonable player in the beginning however. The kind of player that mostly keeps to himself during play, optimizes using a googled guide, does not excell in any one area of D&D but does not fall short either, and is generally on time and contributes royally in terms of gaming materials and snacks.
About a year in he started to change. He started to get bored and / or annoyed. Why? Several possible reasons:
- Bart played optimized builds from day one, maybe he wanted to be powerful for once. But following the guides never really got him anywhere. Three of the other players were better at this aspect of D&D, making builds that make use of all available options specific to the party and the DM as opposed to the constraints of a guide which is limited to a sort of general 'This should be allowed in most settings, good in average parties facing average encounters.'
- Bart felt he was more pure than the others. In his eyes he followed alignments the way they were meant, were others constantly argued why their lawful good characters were allowed to break the law to serve the greater good (or really their own interest), he simply followed it. Bart used official material only and never went 3rd party or homebrew. The others did when allowed, because they obviously wanted to break the game!
- Bart's characters never really went anywhere. He tried a few times, but none of them developed into much in the setting. Their personalities never evolved, they never left a mark of any kind. They died more than he liked. At some point all of this started to be the fault of other people. Everyone was allowed to get away with stuff while he followed the rules as a sucker.
A little more than a year in a new player was added, a intelligent, socially pleasant person. Also the kind of person that is vulnerable to being influenced by others. Bart decided to seize his chance and use the new player as a proxxy for his own frustrations.
When the new player was DMing and did exciting things for players other than Bart, Bart put him down and told him the specific encounter was way too easy, the diplomat convinced without any really effort or the Paladin PC was really breaking his code from day one. When the new player was playing Bart tried to create conflict between him and other players 'He's stealing your loot, he always does that!'', put him down "Don't make a big deal about it, it made perfect IC sense for my character to threaten your character's life if you did not follow my way!" and generally made the atmosphere bad.
Eventually the new player grew, developed bigger balls, made many lasting contributions to the setting and departed to another city leaving a gap.
Bart grew more unhinged as time went on. Examples!
As DM a player found a way to defeat a demilich pet NPC in PF by putting him in a AMF. First came the rules debate ("I am 99% sure he can still fly"). That was followed by screwing the player over: the AMF was activated and created a hole in the floor that was suddenly kept solid by magic and ended in a pool of lava, killing him. ("Haha, I googled that!").
As a PC Bart knowingly sabotaged an entire campaign that was about building a camp. A campaign with as requirement Good-aligned characters. He burned a farm build by another PC, freed a saboteur, randomly killed various NPCs. Finally another PC stepped in and ensured he was brought to trial, that same PC offered him the chance to redeem himself. Bart felt screwed over for even being captured and instead suicided in a way that he hoped would bring the other PCs with him.
Enter the next campaign: the players meet beforehand and agree that this time they are really going to work together, and will really be playing good-aligned characters. The campaign ends with Bart playing a death knight intent on killing every living creature and spreading a plague turning everyone into undead.
Also in general a lot of blatant meta-gaming.
Last week we recruited a new guy. I send out a email asking everyone to play nice so we have a positive atmosphere for the new guy (but I really meant, 'Bart play nice'). I am DMing. Among the things Bart did in the session was telling the new guy that the only way to play was evil, demonstrating this belief by attacking and coming awfully close to killing him on their first meeting. Annoyed by Bart, another PC finishes off the dying animal companion of Bart. Bart does not know this IC, proceeds to attack the PC anyway only to be corrected OOC.
The remainder of Bart's actions consist off him going into the woods, randomly searching for a new animal companion, engaging every encounter and pushing for the death of his PC since he is now bored with it. Just short off cheering the monsters on to deliver the killing blow. His character is eventually taken captured by a bunch of goblins, leading to someone to suggest to 'End on this cliffhanger."
Anyway, enough is enough. Other players and me at several points tried to reason this out in a civilized way to no avail. I just send him a more definitive email saying it's really time to cut the crap and stop getting his enjoyment from frustrating the rest, before the new player gets corrupted. I am venting here because I tried not to do it in the email and keep that contained, but really it's been building up.
PS: He also bragged last session about how awesome it was that his death knight spread the plague as mentioned earlier as if it was some major accomplishment that we decided to spare ourselves the drama and not go out of the way to kill his character, instead ending the campaign. I mention this because for me personally that was probably the straw that broke the camel's back.
Conflict has been in this group from the beginning. We kicked our first two problem players a few months in, giving me the honorary distinction of getting a post in every 'bad DM' thread on this website by one of them since. Bart was a reasonable player in the beginning however. The kind of player that mostly keeps to himself during play, optimizes using a googled guide, does not excell in any one area of D&D but does not fall short either, and is generally on time and contributes royally in terms of gaming materials and snacks.
About a year in he started to change. He started to get bored and / or annoyed. Why? Several possible reasons:
- Bart played optimized builds from day one, maybe he wanted to be powerful for once. But following the guides never really got him anywhere. Three of the other players were better at this aspect of D&D, making builds that make use of all available options specific to the party and the DM as opposed to the constraints of a guide which is limited to a sort of general 'This should be allowed in most settings, good in average parties facing average encounters.'
- Bart felt he was more pure than the others. In his eyes he followed alignments the way they were meant, were others constantly argued why their lawful good characters were allowed to break the law to serve the greater good (or really their own interest), he simply followed it. Bart used official material only and never went 3rd party or homebrew. The others did when allowed, because they obviously wanted to break the game!
- Bart's characters never really went anywhere. He tried a few times, but none of them developed into much in the setting. Their personalities never evolved, they never left a mark of any kind. They died more than he liked. At some point all of this started to be the fault of other people. Everyone was allowed to get away with stuff while he followed the rules as a sucker.
A little more than a year in a new player was added, a intelligent, socially pleasant person. Also the kind of person that is vulnerable to being influenced by others. Bart decided to seize his chance and use the new player as a proxxy for his own frustrations.
When the new player was DMing and did exciting things for players other than Bart, Bart put him down and told him the specific encounter was way too easy, the diplomat convinced without any really effort or the Paladin PC was really breaking his code from day one. When the new player was playing Bart tried to create conflict between him and other players 'He's stealing your loot, he always does that!'', put him down "Don't make a big deal about it, it made perfect IC sense for my character to threaten your character's life if you did not follow my way!" and generally made the atmosphere bad.
Eventually the new player grew, developed bigger balls, made many lasting contributions to the setting and departed to another city leaving a gap.
Bart grew more unhinged as time went on. Examples!
As DM a player found a way to defeat a demilich pet NPC in PF by putting him in a AMF. First came the rules debate ("I am 99% sure he can still fly"). That was followed by screwing the player over: the AMF was activated and created a hole in the floor that was suddenly kept solid by magic and ended in a pool of lava, killing him. ("Haha, I googled that!").
As a PC Bart knowingly sabotaged an entire campaign that was about building a camp. A campaign with as requirement Good-aligned characters. He burned a farm build by another PC, freed a saboteur, randomly killed various NPCs. Finally another PC stepped in and ensured he was brought to trial, that same PC offered him the chance to redeem himself. Bart felt screwed over for even being captured and instead suicided in a way that he hoped would bring the other PCs with him.
Enter the next campaign: the players meet beforehand and agree that this time they are really going to work together, and will really be playing good-aligned characters. The campaign ends with Bart playing a death knight intent on killing every living creature and spreading a plague turning everyone into undead.
Also in general a lot of blatant meta-gaming.
Last week we recruited a new guy. I send out a email asking everyone to play nice so we have a positive atmosphere for the new guy (but I really meant, 'Bart play nice'). I am DMing. Among the things Bart did in the session was telling the new guy that the only way to play was evil, demonstrating this belief by attacking and coming awfully close to killing him on their first meeting. Annoyed by Bart, another PC finishes off the dying animal companion of Bart. Bart does not know this IC, proceeds to attack the PC anyway only to be corrected OOC.
The remainder of Bart's actions consist off him going into the woods, randomly searching for a new animal companion, engaging every encounter and pushing for the death of his PC since he is now bored with it. Just short off cheering the monsters on to deliver the killing blow. His character is eventually taken captured by a bunch of goblins, leading to someone to suggest to 'End on this cliffhanger."
Anyway, enough is enough. Other players and me at several points tried to reason this out in a civilized way to no avail. I just send him a more definitive email saying it's really time to cut the crap and stop getting his enjoyment from frustrating the rest, before the new player gets corrupted. I am venting here because I tried not to do it in the email and keep that contained, but really it's been building up.
PS: He also bragged last session about how awesome it was that his death knight spread the plague as mentioned earlier as if it was some major accomplishment that we decided to spare ourselves the drama and not go out of the way to kill his character, instead ending the campaign. I mention this because for me personally that was probably the straw that broke the camel's back.