The Worst player you've ever had/seen/been/heard of

[Lord Torath]

This is starting to derail the thread, I think the alignment implications of a paladin who is on a 24/7 murder rampage (albeit a selective murder rampage) can be profitably discussed as its own separate topic.Quoted for Truth. Can we take the alignment discussion elsewhere, please?

Thanks!

[Synar]

Oh, yeah, the alignment system in every iteration it has ever existed is entirely arbitrary with little correlation to actual goodness and ethics. But my point is there is zero excuse for being a Lawful Good Paladin who indiscriminately kills every single evil thing like a genocidal maniac. It is wrong by basic logic and morals. It is wrong by the actual published rules.

Well, I must say I agree. I was just saying that a black-and-white game can be a thing too, and we can't be sure that that specific paladin in that specific game should have fallen. So I will continue the discussion no further because I've got nothing else to discuss :smalltongue:.

[Sartharina]

Oh, yeah, the alignment system in every iteration it has ever existed is entirely arbitrary with little correlation to actual goodness and ethics. But my point is there is zero excuse for being a Lawful Good Paladin who indiscriminately kills every single evil thing like a genocidal maniac. It is wrong by basic logic and morals. It is wrong by the actual published rules.
If you're only killing Evil, you're not indiscriminately killing - targetting only Evil is discriminatory by nature.

[Sholos]

Just out of curiosity, what did she use that money for? I mean, when you outfit a character from those three or four pages in the PHB and have 26,000 of 27,000 gold left, that'd kinda send up a few red flags for me.

Did she buy a bed & breakfast or something?

Nothing. She's got all that gold just sitting around in her pack. This is after several people offered to help her pick out better gear. Her justification is that her character is stupid and thus never acquired any real gear and barely knows what's going on half the time.

[Tvtyrant]

My worst experience with another player was when I played a female elf druid in 5E. One of the other players made a hedonist/rapist cleric and began to attempt to do things to my elf. Both in and out of character protests were met with scorn, and I ended up dropping from the group. In a later discussion with one of them at a coffee shop I was told I had "brought it on myself" by playing a female character. Needless to say I am not gaming with that group again...

[Milodiah]

Nothing. She's got all that gold just sitting around in her pack. This is after several people offered to help her pick out better gear. Her justification is that her character is stupid and thus never acquired any real gear and barely knows what's going on half the time.

...and yet she complained about being stupid and barely knowing what's going on half the time?


Also, Jesus Christ, a "no means no" situation in a game? That's just disgusting of them.

[SowZ]

If you're only killing Evil, you're not indiscriminately killing - targetting only Evil is discriminatory by nature.

Sure. That doesn't make it any less psychotic. The universe happens to label people semi-arbitrarily. That does not give anyone the right to wipe out a people group they deem unworthy to live.

[LibraryOgre]

The Mod Wonder: A thread has been created for alignment discussions, folks.

[Tvtyrant]

Also, Jesus Christ, a "no means no" situation in a game? That's just disgusting of them.

Yup, it was not my favorite time ever.

[Stormageddon]

My worst experience with another player was when I played a female elf druid in 5E. One of the other players made a hedonist/rapist cleric and began to attempt to do things to my elf. Both in and out of character protests were met with scorn, and I ended up dropping from the group. In a later discussion with one of them at a coffee shop I was told I had "brought it on myself" by playing a female character. Needless to say I am not gaming with that group again...

Wow! Just wow!

[Khedrac]

My worst experience with another player was when I played a female elf druid in 5E. One of the other players made a hedonist/rapist cleric and began to attempt to do things to my elf. Both in and out of character protests were met with scorn, and I ended up dropping from the group. In a later discussion with one of them at a coffee shop I was told I had "brought it on myself" by playing a female character. Needless to say I am not gaming with that group again...
And it is for these times that RuneQuest (or at least Glorantha) has the deity Maran Gor (effectively goddess of the barren earth) - when things get nasty the women of a region often turn to her and the rapists? - well they start singing soprano.

Anyway I am sorry to say that the worst player I have come across is probably me. It is in specific circumstances though - playing Living Greyhawk at conventions. Having a 4 hour slot to play an adventure most of which seem to overrun puts a fair bit of pressure to get things done. I am not sure of the details but I let the pressure get to me too much and my exasperation with others not getting on with things show. One pair of players said to me after on session that I had made the experience unpleasant for them. I am glad they did as when I thought about it I found I did not really enjoy playing under the convention conditions (time pressure + all the background noise) - so why should I stop others from being able to enjoy themselves when I am not enjoying myself? I stopped playing LG at cons (a decision I do not regret) and I hope they carried on enjoying themselves on other tables.

[Sith_Happens]

No particular reason I'm asking, but are 5e Druids still amazing at wreaking all manner of creative havoc upon those they don't like (e.g.- by setting a local wolf pack upon them at night)?:smallwink:

[Sartharina]

No particular reason I'm asking, but are 5e Druids still amazing at wreaking all manner of creative havoc upon those they don't like (e.g.- by setting a local wolf pack upon them at night)?:smallwink:

Eh... not to the same extent. But they have infinite hitpoints at max level.

[Tvtyrant]

No particular reason I'm asking, but are 5e Druids still amazing at wreaking all manner of creative havoc upon those they don't like (e.g.- by setting a local wolf pack upon them at night)?:smallwink:

I could turn into a bear and maul him (and I did) but our DM was okay with the sexual implications and not with PvP combat, so I couldn't just kill his character when he refused to leave mine alone.

[Inevitability]

I could turn into a bear and maul him (and I did) but our DM was okay with the sexual implications and not with PvP combat, so I couldn't just kill his character when he refused to leave mine alone.

Druids have plenty of ways to defeat people without killing them, don't they? Even Entangle could already hold him off. Though it, depending on the DM's fetishes, could easily make things worse...

Or alternatively, summon a Challenge 6 beast (Conjure Fey), willingly break concentration, then run away with your boosted longstrider speed, leaving your assailant to deal with an angry bear. Technically you're not controlling it, so it doesn't count as PvP. :smalltongue:

[Mr Beer]

I could turn into a bear and maul him (and I did) but our DM was okay with the sexual implications and not with PvP combat, so I couldn't just kill his character when he refused to leave mine alone.

Leaving is the only option then, no point in fighting it if the DM is OK with this kind of BS. Not really the kind of guy I'd want to game with anyway.

[DontEatRawHagis]

Recently a member of my group has been pushing the limits of what I and my players consider decent.

For instant she threw her character at one of the PCs in a very forceful way. More recently her character switch gods when said god offered her boons. The other party cleric didn't. To which she responded when they took a long rest that she was going to cut off a part of his anatomy in his sleep. We half heartedly chuckled, but then she messaged me during wrap up(5 mins after the incident) that she will RP the character how she wants to.

To which I responded that I didn't care if her character was willing to disfigure another PC.

She didn't remember that she had ever said she wanted to attack the other PC. She had sent that message about RPing her character the way she wanted because of another game event that happened earlier in the game.

It was really weird because the entire party heard she wanted to disfigure one of the players, but she didn't remember saying it. It wasn't until her boyfriend who was in the room said she said it did she actually believe she did. Even then she gave one of those half hearted apologizes because she still didn't think she did it.

She is still in my group.

[Anxe]

Recently a member of my group has been pushing the limits of what I and my players consider decent.

For instant she threw her character at one of the PCs in a very forceful way. More recently her character switch gods when said god offered her boons. The other party cleric didn't. To which she responded when they took a long rest that she was going to cut off a part of his anatomy in his sleep. We half heartedly chuckled, but then she messaged me during wrap up(5 mins after the incident) that she will RP the character how she wants to.

To which I responded that I didn't care if her character was willing to disfigure another PC.

She didn't remember that she had ever said she wanted to attack the other PC. She had sent that message about RPing her character the way she wanted because of another game event that happened earlier in the game.

It was really weird because the entire party heard she wanted to disfigure one of the players, but she didn't remember saying it. It wasn't until her boyfriend who was in the room said she said it did she actually believe she did. Even then she gave one of those half hearted apologizes because she still didn't think she did it.

She is still in my group.

My friends and I joke like that with each other all the time. Weird that she didn't remember five minutes later though...

[runeghost]

Well, reading through this thread makes me feel pretty decent about my current group's problem player. She's playing a paladin and seems to be playing her more Lawful Stupid than anything else. Immediately attacking anyone who pings as evil, complete and utter distrust of any of the Chaotic members, etc. That's not even the biggest problem, though (though it is annoying). We started this campaign at level 8. So, 27,000 gp to spend on gear. Guess who has not only non-magical, but not even masterwork equipment? Also, she constantly complains about being useless (she's focused on rapiers of all things...) but doesn't even attempt to get better gear or even use her class abilities. Then she claims a 4th-level warlock and a blasting druid (neither is even half-way optimized) are "OP" because we're halfway useful.

(Not a response about alignment, but about player skill and expectations.)

Does your "problem player" understand that she was intended to buy that sort of equipment? Does she, as a player, know how to optimize a 3.X character, in terms of build and gear?

I cut my roleplaying teeth on B/X D&D and AD&D, and had a terrible time running a useless rogue in my very first 3.0 game because I didn't understand how it was supposed to be played. While I've hand plenty of fun games with 3.0, 3.5, and Pathfinder they tend to have a few core assumptions that are very different from, say, older versions of D&D.

Magic items for sale? Even caring about optimization? Someone in my high school or undergrad games talking about "buying magic items" and what magic they were "supposed" to have, while going on about (for example) average damage per round and action economy would have been looked at like they'd just grown a second head, and considered a munchkin min-maxing rules-lawyer.

[Mr Beer]

She didn't remember that she had ever said she wanted to attack the other PC. She had sent that message about RPing her character the way she wanted because of another game event that happened earlier in the game.

It was really weird because the entire party heard she wanted to disfigure one of the players, but she didn't remember saying it. It wasn't until her boyfriend who was in the room said she said it did she actually believe she did. Even then she gave one of those half hearted apologizes because she still didn't think she did it.

Does she smoke a lot of weed maybe?

[Arbane]

And it is for these times that RuneQuest (or at least Glorantha) has the deity Maran Gor (effectively goddess of the barren earth) - when things get nasty the women of a region often turn to her and the rapists? - well they start singing soprano.


RuneQuest also has broos. Jusy sayin'....

And yeah, walking away from that table was undoubtably the best move.

[Sholos]

(Not a response about alignment, but about player skill and expectations.)

Does your "problem player" understand that she was intended to buy that sort of equipment? Does she, as a player, know how to optimize a 3.X character, in terms of build and gear?

I cut my roleplaying teeth on B/X D&D and AD&D, and had a terrible time running a useless rogue in my very first 3.0 game because I didn't understand how it was supposed to be played. While I've hand plenty of fun games with 3.0, 3.5, and Pathfinder they tend to have a few core assumptions that are very different from, say, older versions of D&D.

Magic items for sale? Even caring about optimization? Someone in my high school or undergrad games talking about "buying magic items" and what magic they were "supposed" to have, while going on about (for example) average damage per round and action economy would have been looked at like they'd just grown a second head, and considered a munchkin min-maxing rules-lawyer.

She should have, and even if she didn't, several people around the table offered to help her pick out equipment that would make her more effective (basically just swapping her current gear for magical versions). She's refused all offers of help. And we don't even require optimization at this table. She's playing a paladin, for starters. The best optimized guy is possibly the TWF ranger with Improved Critical using rapiers (well, okay it's probably the druid, but that's just a feature and not actual effort to optimize).

[runeghost]

She should have, and even if she didn't, several people around the table offered to help her pick out equipment that would make her more effective (basically just swapping her current gear for magical versions). She's refused all offers of help. And we don't even require optimization at this table. She's playing a paladin, for starters. The best optimized guy is possibly the TWF ranger with Improved Critical using rapiers (well, okay it's probably the druid, but that's just a feature and not actual effort to optimize).

If she's actively refusing help, then yeah, that's definitely a problem player. Or at least a player who isn't right for the table, and isn't willing to either acknowledge that or change. Once I finally realized my rogue was frustrating because he was useless I sat down with two other players and rules-geeked for an evening. I ended up retiring the rogue and rolling up a... paladin, who was an absolute blast because it was easy to be straightforwardly kick-ass and something of a tank, while still staying perfectly in character.

The talk about optimization and refusing help reminds me of another awful player story. Low-fantasy campaign in GURPS. One of the players was running an elf archer, which was fine in and of itself. (His refusal to ever personally follow plot hooks was less fine, but still tolerable since he did follow the party, mostly.) He wanted to be Legolas from the LotR movies. Except that he started with a bow skill of 14 (decent, but not even close to super-human) and flatly refused to improve it, while also refusing to do anything tactically to improve his chances of hitting. He'd just drawn and shoot, as fast as possible. (And he cheated on his rolls, too, becoming much less successful when forced to roll out his actions on the table.) He stuck around to the end of the campaign though, always complaining how it was unfair that his character wasn't a better archer, while point-blank refusing any sort of advice, help, or skill improvements.

[azoetia]

My worst experience with another player was when I played a female elf druid in 5E. One of the other players made a hedonist/rapist cleric and began to attempt to do things to my elf. Both in and out of character protests were met with scorn, and I ended up dropping from the group. In a later discussion with one of them at a coffee shop I was told I had "brought it on myself" by playing a female character. Needless to say I am not gaming with that group again...

Oh, how I wish that read "in 1E, 30 years ago," not in 5E in 2014. That just turns my stomach.

[DarkEternal]

Let's see...I wouldn't call it the worst gamers I played with since they can be good, but I would certainly call it the worst experience with this lot. I guess they had stuff going on in their lives that made them act this way.


Anyway.

Playing a published module, and the party comes to a mansion of the local mayor to ask for his help in the oncoming war. The mansion has been taken over by a wizard who needed the mansions location and it's telescope to look at the stars. Of course, being a crotchety, very mad, wizard, he pretty much turned everyone into animals in the mansion and didn't look back. So, I go out of my way to tell them that this guy is pretty damn strong.(He was level 12, and they were level...5 I think at the time or something like that, at best. Maybe even 4)

In any case, they find the mage looking at the stars, and he's very pleasant towards them since they seem to be the "chosen" ones that the stars were talking about. He tells them that he will help them and turn the rude mayor and his family into humans once he's done here and be on his way. All the time he's very jittery, and obviously pretty chaotic with mood swings. The party's knight starts to provoke him every now and then(while the rest of them talk with the mage, he goes around, clanking on the telescope, moving it out of position, or disrupting everything, just because). Mind you, some of the family, the mayor's wife and daughter are in this room as well. They wear enchanted masks that make them unable to do much but act as serving maids to the wizard Eventually, he gets either bored, mad or something, because he says he's gonna intimidate the wizard into leaving this place. He fails, and the wizard turns hostile, as combat starts.

Of course, things go to hell after one casting of Black Tentacles, and the party is pretty much dead. The two women died two rounds into it, literally squeezed to death. I did a little DM fiat(my mistake here, really, should have killed them off) and allowed them rushed diplomacy checks. The party's bard and archivist roll natural 20's with maxed diplomacy. Usually that would not be enough on their level, but I said screw it. The mage agrees to let them go if they behave. The very moment they are released from the tentacles, the knight rushes the wizard and starts grappling him. The rest of the party gang up on him and miraculosly they succeed in beating him(again, published modue, and aside from tentacles, he had some pretty shoddy spells remembered)

Okay. The two women are dead, but mayor is still alive, right? So. What does the knight do? He goes and lies practically to the mayor(who was out of this room at the time), that they were unfortunate deaths that they were not to blame for and that his help is necessary. When the mayor says he just wants some time to grieve, the knight intimidates him yet again, saying he wants his help now. Or else. This time he succeeds. The rest of the party are livid out of character and they want to stay at the mansion for some time to at least bury the dead.

The knight says he'll go with the mayor to the town to gather supplies. The two ride off. The moment that they arrive in the mass of people, the mayor goes away and is now unfriendly towards the knight, saying that this guy threatened him and his family, and that he wants his people to take his head and the rest of his company out of his house. So, what does a KNIGHT do? He bolts. Not only that, he runs away and goes back to the main city, leaving his party behind basically to report. The party that has a very, very angry mob on their trail now, thirsting for their blood. They managed to survive that ordeal by some diplomacy rolls, but they were still roughed up and had stones thrown at them as well as death threats.

The worst part is, to this day, the knight guy says he's done nothing wrong, that he played his LG knight perfectly well and in a way that was necessary. The party hated him. Like every single party member, even the good natured bard hated his guts. This campaign had good potential, but after that, and a few more incidents it was done and over with.

[JetThomasBoat]

I don't think it comes close to some of these stories but I think the worst I've ever played with is an old friend of mine, Br.

In middle and high school, when I was first getting into 3.X (we did a mix of 3.0 and 3.5 based more off what we liked than what we thought was balanced. Most of my old group have no idea how actual optimization works and I've only recently come to have an abstract understanding). Anyway, when I first was getting into it, when I would tell Br about it, his attitude ranged from indifferent to outright insulting about it. He was a sort of popular kid with soooo much wasted potential. And he needed to stay "cool", so he almost never was willing to try playing. And I remember on multiple occasions when I talked about a D&D thing or an anecdote, he would interrupt me to make the joke: "So you're just...giving up on the [insert word that rhymes with wussy]?" I find that word so blech.

Anyway, guy who tells me all the time, then and now, that I'm his best friend evar. Wouldn't even try D&D with me, said something super mean to me about it more than once. You get the jist.

Fast forward to...I dunno, when 4E comes out. Our other friend and my current roommate (T from my Worst DM Ever post on here, also a **** friend) and Br start playing 4E together while away at college. Now they play Pathfinder, but apparently all he played in 4E and all he plays now is big fighter that wastes a medium roll for Charisma and then completely negates it because he's super short tempered and a bully in real life and this carries over into his characters. Whenever he asks a poorly worded or thought out question concerning the plot o an NPC and doesn't roll above average for a Charisma based skill, he starts getting super mad at the NPC for not telling them every little thing they need to know. And it's never that the NPC just doesn't know. Nope, Br's always super sure that they know something because they actually work for the BBEG and so he should try intimidating them.

Case in point, and the first time I saw it get really bad was when we were playing a pre-made module. We're in a town, trying to determine whether or not someone due for an execution was actually guilty or not. We go to a professor who we were supposed to give some random thing from the previous arc and, being a professor, knew a lot of junk we probably didn't since the DM kinda sucks at handling the Knowledge skills. So we're pursuing some line of questioning and I, by far the most experienced player, determined either we weren't asking the right questions or the guy didn't know anything about the thing we were looking for. But with this group, I take a back seat in the NPC talking since my character had a 9 Charisma and I didn't want to step on new player's toes. Also, my heart isn't always in it because I don't like pre-made modules and am not super into Golarian. Or the group for that matter.

Anyway, Br decides to make some skill checks against the guy and botches one. Him and the DM share a knowing glance, I think because this sort of thing had happened before and is a bit of a joke between them. So slightly to mess with him, but also because it was like a 2 roll and not a great question, the professor says something snide in response or something. Some kind of negative response. Then Br tries one more time but is very blunt about it. This makes the NPC like him even less and Br bristles. He decides the professor definitely knows something. Tries Intimidate. And I think he had only points in Diplomacy and none in intimidate, or more likely the other way around.

So the big bad fighter puffs himself up, gets in the professor's face. Professor scoffs again, so Br uses a thinly vieled threat. Probably grabbing his sword hilt meaningfully or something. The professor rather calmly says he'll call the guards. Right when the intimidation started, the rest of the group advised him to cool it. When threats came, we applied to his reasoning, like "We're in the capitol of this country. We can't do this kind of thing." and the thing he takes issue with? That the professor is just so calm. Which might have been the DM bating him. But he makes it clear that's what bothers him. Maybe it's because in real life no one ever finds him to be as intimidating as he thinks he is.

Anyway, I try to step in. I tell him he's not afraid because we're in the most policed area within several hundred miles, in that the city actually has enough guards to be a police force and won't let newcomers just come in murdering people. And that's what he wanted to do, he said. Make the professor think he might actually murder him. I was trying to get the idea across that a LEARNED man, a professor in a huge city that's very well respected, wouldn't think we'd be dumb enough to actually try and murder him.

We barely got through to him. And on went the adventure. But it annoyed the hell out me because it could potentially derail a campaign that's usually too bogged down by the DM describing things poorly and not dropping hints well and a party that don't really think very creatively about solutions. When it was brought up again jokingly in another game, he kept saying how we should have killed the professor and that he was sure he knew something.

I changed characters to a druid and am working on finding spells for next time he does this. I want to wait until he gets going again and then use some spell to immobilize him or effectively make him unable to do anything. I'm gonna sell it as a way to prove a point to him. That he's jeapordizing the quest and that my character won't tolerate that.

But I really just want to see his reaction. :P

[The Random NPC]

I changed characters to a druid and am working on finding spells for next time he does this. I want to wait until he gets going again and then use some spell to immobilize him or effectively make him unable to do anything. I'm gonna sell it as a way to prove a point to him. That he's jeapordizing the quest and that my character won't tolerate that.

But I really just want to see his reaction. :P

Try Calm Emotions (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/calmEmotions.htm), then can't get mad.

[JetThomasBoat]

Try Calm Emotions (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/calmEmotions.htm), then can't get mad.

I don't think it's on my spell list as a druid. Maybe in Pathfinder...

[Sir Chuckles]

I don't think it's on my spell list as a druid. Maybe in Pathfinder...

Scrolls are your friend.
Your not wholly reliable friend.

[AvatarVecna]

My "worst player" experience was fairly early in life, and hindsight shows how obvious the signs were. I was in middle school (there's your sign) and had introduced some of my friends to tabletop RPGs. We'd played some D&D, but the lot of us wanted to play a game of superheroes, so we dropped the dungeon crawling game and picked up a "Super Friends" game in Mutants and Masterminds (2e, I believe). Unfortunately, our light and campy heroes game took a quick turn for the dark and gritty...far more so than most of us were comfortable with.


Players (not their real names); Character Summary; Player Type
Michael; GM;
Joshua; Black-Ops Super-Soldier; Beat-'em-up
Alex; Ghost Psychic; Intrigue
Me; Cop/Gun Mage; Roleplayer
Chris; Samurai Demigod; Roleplayer
Victor; Chaotic "Neutral" Batman; Munchkin

We went through two big plots: the "Nemeses" plot and the "Alien Invasion" plot. While most of us were content to play our characters as superheroes, Victor was playing a dark, edgy antihero Batman who was almost borderline evil half the time. The first plot, where each of us was supposed to face our Nemesis in 1v1 combat, Michael spent a lot of time building villains that would complement and challenge our individual characters...at least, that was the goal. Victor used some of his ridiculously high skills to manipulate the villains into thinking the "final showdown" would be in one particular location.

All the villains arrived at the abandoned construction site right around the same time...and Victor was waiting. Before they knew what was going on, he'd tied them up in power-draining escape-proof rope, before leaving them there. It quickly became apparent why, when several explosions went off and the whole site crashed down on the villains heads, killing them. At this point, Chris and I weren't too happy with what Victor had done, but it was true to his character so we let it slide...after warning him that it would be in-character for us to bring him in if we ever found out in-game. His response: "Can't wait! Bring it on..."

The "Alien Invasion" story Michael had made got subverted halfway: Victor's Batman somehow knew how to operate alien computers and hacked his way into the mothership's control over the fleet. Instead of going the standard "self destruct them all and watch the fireworks", he just had the fleet's internal defenses murder all of the invaders, leaving Victor with an alien fleet at his disposal. Keep in mind that, up to this point, the rest of us had been pretty violent characters, but were still mostly double-capital-G Good Guys defending the Earth. At this point, it had become clear to our characters that Victor's character was a greater threat to the human race than the villains were. Victor, going for a full "Justice Lords" plot twist, gave us the opportunity to join him in making a new world order.

Alex joined pretty quickly, since it seemed more interesting to him to play a bad guy, and Joshua was convinced pretty quickly as well. Chris walked away from the game at this point, and never gamed with us again, unfortunately (even after Victor left; getting to that in a minute); he'd signed up for a superheroes game, and it had turned into an anti-hero/villain game. I was a second away from joining him, but I had an unfortunate stubborn streak and a chip on my shoulder: Chris was my friend, and seeing him so dejected hurt, especially knowing it had happened because we hadn't called Victor on his B.S. before now. At this point, Michael was also getting tired of the anti-hero stuff and was ready to just declare the end of the campaign with "And then you took over the world. The end." Seeing the way the game was going, and want to keep everyone happy (except Victor, who needed to learn a lesson about playing well with others), I agreed to become a villain, just not with my current character. "He's a cop," I argued. "He'd never do something like this...but I think it's interesting, so I want to make a character that better fits it."I'm going to take a moment to go over some M&M rules.

Firstly, all players receive a certain number of power points to spend on creating and/or upgrading their character, which can be spent on anything; at this point in the game, we had 230 points to work with. Secondly, all characters have a Power Level that sets their maximum capability in every aspect of the game (in this case, or Power Level was currently 14, setting our max attributes to 48, max skill ranks to 19, max attack/effect to average of 14, max defense/toughness average to 14, and max saves to +19 after stat mods).

Thirdly, powers are purchased using a simple formula: (Power's Cost/Rank+Extras-Flaws)*(Power Rank)+(Power Feats)-(Drawbacks); the higher your rank, the more powerful the power. Thirdly, the basic rule of extras and flaws was that they could stack with themselves if it made sense that they could (for example, if you took the "Duration" Extra twice, your power's duration would improve by two steps).

Now for some more specific stuff...

Fifthly, one of the most commonly used Power Feats was "Alternate Power"; this acted as an additional effect that a power could have, with the caveat that the powers couldn't be used at the same time (for instance, a lightning bolt power could be a "Blast" power mechanically, doing straight damage; that "Blast" Power could have the "Alternate Power" feat and be used instead to flash so brightly, it messed with people's vision as a "Dazzle" power). Alternate Powers cost the same number of points as the base power (except for any points spend on "Alternate Power" Power Feats), and Alternate Powers can't be used at the same time. The only other rule was that the Alternate Power had to make sense with the base power; thus, it saw a lot of use with the "Magic" power, since magic could have just about any effect. The only way to use multiple Alternate Powers at the same time was if some of them had the "Continuous" duration.

Sixthly, another common Power Feat is "Innate": this Power Feat made your power basically a natural part of you, meaning the power couldn't be drained or suppressed; a good example of this is Godzilla's great size, while another might by divine powers granted by a transcendental deity. Seventhly, there was an extra call "Wide" that increased your power's cost/rank by 1 per Wide rank; although the base power didn't improve, any Alternate Powers gained an additional point/Wide rank of effect. Thus, a power with X ranks of the "Wide" Extra increased the power's cost/rank by X, and any alternate powers gained 2X points to work with (since the Extra increased the cost of the power, and therefore the points available to spend on Alternate Powers).

Got all that straight in your head? Okay! Before I start, let me just say that I walked Michael through this builds tricks, and he didn't have any problems with me playing it, despite the illegalities I later discovered in it.I built a character (who I dubbed Paradox) with only immunity to aging1, immunity to changes in the time stream2, time-related super-senses3, and the ability to travel to any point in time 4. None of these powers can be suppressed or drained by any effect.

1: Immunity 1 (Aging 1); No Extras; No Flaws; Innate; No Drawbacks; Cost 2
2: Feature 1 (Temporal Inertia 1); No Extras; No Flaws; Innate; No Drawbacks; Cost 2
3: Super-Senses 10 (Temporal Awareness 1, Postcognition 4, Precognition 4, Time Sense 1); No Extras; No Flaws; Innate; No Drawbacks; Cost 11
4: Super-Movement 3 (Time Travel 3); Action 2 (Power Use, Reaction), Action 1 (Alternate Power Switch, Reaction), Wide 48; No Flaws; Innate, Alternate Power 55; No Drawbacks; Cost 215

Paradox can travel to any point in time as a reaction. The time travel power has 40 Alternate Powers; each one has 175 power points to work with, and he can switch to any one of these "settings" as a reaction. The only limit on these powers is that they must somehow be a result of his ability to travel through time. Here's a couple examples:

As a result of his constant observation, interpretation, and understanding of the temporal dimensions of the universe, Paradox's mind is strengthened far beyond even the most dedicated psychics and holy men.

-Enhanced Charisma 38; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 40

-Enhanced Feats 3; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 5

---Eidetic Memory; Fearless; Master Plan

-Enhanced Intelligence 38; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 40

-Enhanced Wisdom 38; Impervious; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 78

-Quickness 10 (x1250); Duration 1 (Continuous); Limited -1 (Mental Tasks Only); Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 12Paradox has dedicated the equivalent of 1000 lifetimes to the complete mastery of every field of study in existence.

-Boost Skills 4; Duration 3 (Continuous); Action -1 (Full Round), Limited -1 (Mental Skills Only), Personal; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 14

-Enhanced Feats 16; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 18

---Artificer; Connected; Contacts; Improvised Tools; Inventor; (10) Skill Mastery {Any 40 skills}; Well-Informed

-Enhanced {Mental Skills} 39; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate 52 (per skill), Subtle 52 (per skill); No Drawbacks; Cost 143

---Bluff 3; Computers 3; Concentration 3; Craft (Artistic 3; Chemical 3; Electronic 3; Mechanical 3; Structural 3); Diplomacy 3; Disable Device 3; Disguise 3; Gather Information 3; Handle Animal 3; Intimidate 3; Investigate 3; Knowledge (Arcane Lore 3; Art 3; Behavioral Sciences 3; Business 3; Civics 3; Current Events 3; Earth Sciences 3; History 3; Life Sciences 3; Physical Sciences 3; Popular Culture 3; Streetwise 3; Tactics 3; Technology 3; Theology & Philosophy 3); Language 3 {Any 3 Languages}; Medicine 3; Notice 3; Perform (Acting 3; Comedy 3; Dance 3; Keyboards 3; Oratory 3; Percussion Instruments 3; Singing 3; Stringed Instruments 3; Wind Instruments 3); Profession ({Any 7 professions} 3); Search 3; Sense Motive 3; Survival 3
In his various journeys into the future, Paradox has picked up a lot of interesting technology; most impressive is his body, which now consists almost entirely of artificially created super-organs, greatly increasing Paradox's physical capabilities.

-Boost Skills 4; Duration 3 (Continuous); Action -1 (Full Round), Limited -1 (Physical Skills Only), Personal; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 14

-Enhanced Dexterity 38; Impervious; No Flaws; Innate; No Drawbacks; Cost 77

-Enhanced Fortitude 19; Impervious; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 40

-Enhanced {Physical Skills} 9; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate 9 (per skill), Subtle 9 (per skill); No Drawbacks; Cost 27

---Acrobatics 3; Climb 3; Drive 3; Escape Artist 3; Pilot 3; Ride 3; Sleight of Hand 3; Stealth 3; Swim 3

-Enhanced Strength 16; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate; No Drawbacks; Cost 17In addition to his physical and mental skills, Paradox has also honed his body into a powerful killing machine.

-Enhanced Attack Bonus 40; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 42

-Enhanced Defense Bonus 40; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 42

-Enhanced Feats 39; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 41

[SIZE=1]---Accurate Attack; All-Out Attack; Ambidexterity; Assessment; Blind-Fight; Defensive Attack; Diehard; Elusive Target; (2) Evasion; Grappling Finesse; (2) Improved Defense; (20) Improved Initiative; Instant Up; Power Attack; (2) Quick Draw; (2) Uncanny Dodge {Temporal Awareness}

Immunity1 (Critical Hits 2, Life Support 9); Duration 1 (Continuous); No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 24

-Protection 8; Duration 1 (Continuous), Impervious; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 26Compared to weaving together the tapestry of time, using technological marvels and advanced scientific knowledge to manipulate the economy is child's play.

-Enhanced Feats 174; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle 2; No Drawbacks; Cost 175

---Benefit 18 (Wealth 18); Equipment 156 {Go nuts}

...and so on. There's 35 more APs like this: just loaded with Continuous powers that are always on. Full training in literally every skill, maxed out stats, wonderful combat stats, armies of minions, limitless devices of limitless power...the world at your fingertips, dancing to your tune.Prior to the start of the game, I showed Michael my character, and everything he could do. He allowed it; he was as tired of Victor being a jerk as the rest of us, but none of us were any good at confronting the issue directly, so we either walked away (Chris), attacked him in-game (me, with this), or just ignored the issue (the others). I told him the basic skeleton of my plan for my character's actions, and we started the game: I introduced Shadow, a hyper-competent assassin with dreams of world domination; the perfect right hand man, Assassin was the kind of evil guy who would prefer to work for the BBEG rather than be the BBEG. Well, that's how I presented the character to the rest of the party, anyway; in reality, it was Paradox, beginning his takeover of the game.

Over the next 2 months (we gamed for like a hour after school 2-3 times a week), we gradually confronted and took down the heroes that tried to stop us from taking over the world. Within 3 in-game weeks, we were poised to take over...but the people were beginning to rise up. From the huddled masses, a female rabble rouser had risen to become the leader of the common folk. With a silver tongue and a fiery passion, Sue d'Nym spoke out against the tyranny of our characters and their actions, calling all true heroes to take up arms against our tyrannical league. Within a week, the heroes we'd previously thrashed in combat returned in greater numbers, more powerful and dedicated than ever before, with technology beyond what even the invading aliens had available. Victor became suspicious of this, but since his skill checks didn't turn up anything, he let it go and continued with his "take over the world for its own good" plan.

After finally slogging our way through another wave of increasingly-capable heroes, we finally eradicated every major military force on the planet, leaving on the 4 of us with any real political power. Victor, sensing his imminent victory, began preparing for the end-game...as did I. Unfortunately for him, the game would not be ending so pleasantly...

"As you gaze out across the world from your floating fortress, you feel a deep sense of contentment: after so much violence and conflict, you've finally freed the world from the rule of lesser men; now, only the truly righteous shall rule. And yet...something doesn't seem quite right." *Michael makes some rolls* "Your senses scream at you to move, but it's too late; a beam of energy strikes out at you, rendering you completely immobile, as your body slumps to the ground, you're slowly turned over, revealing the featureless mask of Shadow.

As you gaze into the face of the man you've long since learned to trust, another familiar figure reveals themselves: Sue d'Nym, flanked by a pair of heavily armed super-soldiers. 'It is done,' she says with a sense of finality. Reaching up, Sue removes her glasses, and the visage of an average woman disappears, leaving only a well-groomed old man in her place. As you gaze in confusion at your supposed sword enemy, Shadow removes his mask for the first time in living memory...revealing the very same face Sue changed into."

After the cries of confusion and indignation died down, I explained who my character actually was, what they could do, what they'd been doing, and why. I explained how Paradox had arranged for everyone to see these villains publically defeated at the height of their power, exposed for the frauds they are by Sue d'Nym, who would go on to lead the Empire they had carved out for themselves. Unknown to any but the dead and soon-to-be-dead, Sue d'Nym was a false name used by Paradox. In reality, he was using the PCs to advance his own goals of world domination, although his motives are certainly less clear and morally-inspired. I took great pleasure in pointing out how RAW legal my build was (for the most part, anyway), and how fun it had been to completely take over the game. I rubbed it pretty hard in Victor's face how badly the tables had been turned on him and his little munchkin game.

When Victor, this big, tough middle-schooler I had called friend just a few months prior, began bawling and running from the room, I finally began to consider that I might've gone too far. The others seemed pretty apathetic about the whole thing, but the games sort of grinded to a halt after that, especially with exams approaching. When exams ended, we all moved on to different high schools. It was only after a year or so of self-reflection that I was finally able to take full responsibility for what happened: regardless of how the others had acted, and how they could've reacted differently to certain things, my reaction was the most extreme and the most uncalled for. I haven't spoken with Victor since this incident took place, partly out of a selfish desire to avoid the consequences of my actions and partially to avoid drudging up old memories. And sure, at this point, I'm nowhere near socially adept enough to find him via facebook stalking, I didn't have that excuse a few years ago, and yet I still haven't apologized.

The experience as a whole, and in particular my reflections on that game and the players that played it, has made me appreciate a wider range of play styles and has greatly influenced my feelings about hijacking the game for any reason. And Victor: if you're out there, reading this story for some reason, and you recognize it, please know that I'm sorry for what I did. I know it probably doesn't sound like much of an apology, but it's the best I've got to offer...never really had a way with words...

[JetThomasBoat]

Scrolls are your friend.
Your not wholly reliable friend.

Shows how much I play spellcasters. Didn't even occur to me.

[Sith_Happens]

I'm going to take a moment to go over some M&M rules.

Firstly, all players receive a certain number of power points to spend on creating and/or upgrading their character, which can be spent on anything; at this point in the game, we had 230 points to work with. Secondly, all characters have a Power Level that sets their maximum capability in every aspect of the game (in this case, or Power Level was currently 14, setting our max attributes to 48, max skill ranks to 19, max attack/effect to average of 14, max defense/toughness average to 14, and max saves to +19 after stat mods).

Thirdly, powers are purchased using a simple formula: (Power's Cost/Rank+Extras-Flaws)*(Power Rank)+(Power Feats)-(Drawbacks); the higher your rank, the more powerful the power. Thirdly, the basic rule of extras and flaws was that they could stack with themselves if it made sense that they could (for example, if you took the "Duration" Extra twice, your power's duration would improve by two steps).

Now for some more specific stuff...

Fifthly, one of the most commonly used Power Feats was "Alternate Power"; this acted as an additional effect that a power could have, with the caveat that the powers couldn't be used at the same time (for instance, a lightning bolt power could be a "Blast" power mechanically, doing straight damage; that "Blast" Power could have the "Alternate Power" feat and be used instead to flash so brightly, it messed with people's vision as a "Dazzle" power). Alternate Powers cost the same number of points as the base power (except for any points spend on "Alternate Power" Power Feats), and Alternate Powers can't be used at the same time. The only other rule was that the Alternate Power had to make sense with the base power; thus, it saw a lot of use with the "Magic" power, since magic could have just about any effect. The only way to use multiple Alternate Powers at the same time was if some of them had the "Continuous" duration.

Sixthly, another common Power Feat is "Innate": this Power Feat made your power basically a natural part of you, meaning the power couldn't be drained or suppressed; a good example of this is Godzilla's great size, while another might by divine powers granted by a transcendental deity. Seventhly, there was an extra call "Wide" that increased your power's cost/rank by 1 per Wide rank; although the base power didn't improve, any Alternate Powers gained an additional point/Wide rank of effect. Thus, a power with X ranks of the "Wide" Extra increased the power's cost/rank by X, and any alternate powers gained 2X points to work with (since the Extra increased the cost of the power, and therefore the points available to spend on Alternate Powers).

Got all that straight in your head? Okay! Before I start, let me just say that I walked Michael through this builds tricks, and he didn't have any problems with me playing it, despite the illegalities I later discovered in it.I built a character (who I dubbed Paradox) with only immunity to aging1, immunity to changes in the time stream2, time-related super-senses3, and the ability to travel to any point in time 4. None of these powers can be suppressed or drained by any effect.

1: Immunity 1 (Aging 1); No Extras; No Flaws; Innate; No Drawbacks; Cost 2
2: Feature 1 (Temporal Inertia 1); No Extras; No Flaws; Innate; No Drawbacks; Cost 2
3: Super-Senses 10 (Temporal Awareness 1, Postcognition 4, Precognition 4, Time Sense 1); No Extras; No Flaws; Innate; No Drawbacks; Cost 11
4: Super-Movement 3 (Time Travel 3); Action 2 (Power Use, Reaction), Action 1 (Alternate Power Switch, Reaction), Wide 48; No Flaws; Innate, Alternate Power 55; No Drawbacks; Cost 215

Paradox can travel to any point in time as a reaction. The time travel power has 40 Alternate Powers; each one has 175 power points to work with, and he can switch to any one of these "settings" as a reaction. The only limit on these powers is that they must somehow be a result of his ability to travel through time. Here's a couple examples:

As a result of his constant observation, interpretation, and understanding of the temporal dimensions of the universe, Paradox's mind is strengthened far beyond even the most dedicated psychics and holy men.

-Enhanced Charisma 38; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 40

-Enhanced Feats 3; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 5

---Eidetic Memory; Fearless; Master Plan

-Enhanced Intelligence 38; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 40

-Enhanced Wisdom 38; Impervious; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 78

-Quickness 10 (x1250); Duration 1 (Continuous); Limited -1 (Mental Tasks Only); Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 12Paradox has dedicated the equivalent of 1000 lifetimes to the complete mastery of every field of study in existence.

-Boost Skills 4; Duration 3 (Continuous); Action -1 (Full Round), Limited -1 (Mental Skills Only), Personal; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 14

-Enhanced Feats 16; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 18

---Artificer; Connected; Contacts; Improvised Tools; Inventor; (10) Skill Mastery {Any 40 skills}; Well-Informed

-Enhanced {Mental Skills} 39; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate 52 (per skill), Subtle 52 (per skill); No Drawbacks; Cost 143

---Bluff 3; Computers 3; Concentration 3; Craft (Artistic 3; Chemical 3; Electronic 3; Mechanical 3; Structural 3); Diplomacy 3; Disable Device 3; Disguise 3; Gather Information 3; Handle Animal 3; Intimidate 3; Investigate 3; Knowledge (Arcane Lore 3; Art 3; Behavioral Sciences 3; Business 3; Civics 3; Current Events 3; Earth Sciences 3; History 3; Life Sciences 3; Physical Sciences 3; Popular Culture 3; Streetwise 3; Tactics 3; Technology 3; Theology & Philosophy 3); Language 3 {Any 3 Languages}; Medicine 3; Notice 3; Perform (Acting 3; Comedy 3; Dance 3; Keyboards 3; Oratory 3; Percussion Instruments 3; Singing 3; Stringed Instruments 3; Wind Instruments 3); Profession ({Any 7 professions} 3); Search 3; Sense Motive 3; Survival 3
In his various journeys into the future, Paradox has picked up a lot of interesting technology; most impressive is his body, which now consists almost entirely of artificially created super-organs, greatly increasing Paradox's physical capabilities.

-Boost Skills 4; Duration 3 (Continuous); Action -1 (Full Round), Limited -1 (Physical Skills Only), Personal; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 14

-Enhanced Dexterity 38; Impervious; No Flaws; Innate; No Drawbacks; Cost 77

-Enhanced Fortitude 19; Impervious; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 40

-Enhanced {Physical Skills} 9; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate 9 (per skill), Subtle 9 (per skill); No Drawbacks; Cost 27

---Acrobatics 3; Climb 3; Drive 3; Escape Artist 3; Pilot 3; Ride 3; Sleight of Hand 3; Stealth 3; Swim 3

-Enhanced Strength 16; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate; No Drawbacks; Cost 17In addition to his physical and mental skills, Paradox has also honed his body into a powerful killing machine.

-Enhanced Attack Bonus 40; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 42

-Enhanced Defense Bonus 40; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 42

-Enhanced Feats 39; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 41

[SIZE=1]---Accurate Attack; All-Out Attack; Ambidexterity; Assessment; Blind-Fight; Defensive Attack; Diehard; Elusive Target; (2) Evasion; Grappling Finesse; (2) Improved Defense; (20) Improved Initiative; Instant Up; Power Attack; (2) Quick Draw; (2) Uncanny Dodge {Temporal Awareness}

Immunity1 (Critical Hits 2, Life Support 9); Duration 1 (Continuous); No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 24

-Protection 8; Duration 1 (Continuous), Impervious; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle; No Drawbacks; Cost 26Compared to weaving together the tapestry of time, using technological marvels and advanced scientific knowledge to manipulate the economy is child's play.

-Enhanced Feats 174; No Extras; No Flaws; Innate, Subtle 2; No Drawbacks; Cost 175

---Benefit 18 (Wealth 18); Equipment 156 {Go nuts}

...and so on. There's 35 more APs like this: just loaded with Continuous powers that are always on. Full training in literally every skill, maxed out stats, wonderful combat stats, armies of minions, limitless devices of limitless power...the world at your fingertips, dancing to your tune.

Holy old edition loopholes, Batman! I have no idea what drugs Green Ronin was on when they decided you could switch off of a continuous power without it turning off, I'm just glad they fixed it in 3e.:smalleek:

[Talakeal]

These fall well short of the "worst" player ever, but they are pretty extreme stories:

First, the invisible guy:

So this guy hates the social aspect of RPGs. He refuses to talk in character, refuses to give his character any sort of backstory, and has no goals or personality aside from "become more powerful." Note that in this case he means personally powerful, he could give a rats butt about political power or the like. He is on record as stating that "People are boring. Only powers interest me," and will not play any character where he doesn't have a plethora of supernatural abilities. He never pays attention to flavor text (and he throws temper tantrums if his misunderstanding of a situation causes harm to come to his character), he states this openly and tells the other players that he shouldn't be punished for not caring about our stupid stories.

So, he has found one way to make sure he never has to interact with anything; he is always invisible. He finds some spell, item, or character trait that allow permanent invisibility and never turns it off. He rarely speaks to anyone, even the other characters, whom he often simply follows around without ever letting them know he is there. As a result of his invisibility he, of course, has no social connections such as friends, family, a job, a home, etc. but he sees no problem with this as his invisibility simply allows him to steal whatever he needs to survive.


Second, Phoenix Form!:

So another player gets bored of his characters after a week or two, and usually changes characters every third session. That would be bad enough, but he also has to top his previous character. At one point in time he was actually playing a stable of seven characters, each an insanely specialized power gaming monstrosity in a different area, and switching between them each week. Of course, whenever the going to tough he wanted to call in help, and always tried to talk us into letting him play seven characters at a time.

One time I tried to convince him to play a single character. He started out as a human, but the next session he wanted to be a half elf and remade his character as such. The week after that he wanted to remake his character as a full elf. Then as a half celestial elf. Then as a full on angel. Then as an archangel.

Eventually he wanted to be playing as a phoenix, which I put my foot down and said no, it was simply too unbalanced in a party of humans, but he talked me into letting him play a phoenix in mortal form who could only assume his real shape in the most extreme circumstances. I was stupid enough to fall for it. So the game starts normally, and shortly the players have their first combat encounter, they are attacked by a group of bandits.

First turn, said player shouts "PHOENIX FORM!", turns into a phoenix and proceeds to annihilate the opposition while the rest of the party sits back and watches. After the session I confront him and say "I thought we agreed that was only a last resort?" To which he replies "Are you kidding? We were threatened by armed men! It was a life and death situation! If that isn't a last resort situation, I don't know what is!"

So the other players were getting pretty fed up with this, and one of them came up with a plan. The next time the phoenix's player wanted to make a new character he would do the same, only his new character would be a full on deity. Hopefully, he reasoned, after playing with a deity in the party for a session he would begin to examine his own behavior. I approved it to see what would happen.

So the next session the player tells me "You know, I don't think a phoenix is as cool as I thought it was. I want to remake my character as a titan." At which point the other player pops in "I agree. I also want to remake my character as a god," and whips out his divine character sheet. Player A takes one look at it, and without missing a beat proclaims "I didn't know we could play as gods! Screw titans, I want to be a god to!"

At this point the campaign (and my sanity) collapsed under the weight of sheer madness at the table and the game promptly ended.

[mikeejimbo]

The talk about optimization and refusing help reminds me of another awful player story. Low-fantasy campaign in GURPS. One of the players was running an elf archer, which was fine in and of itself. (His refusal to ever personally follow plot hooks was less fine, but still tolerable since he did follow the party, mostly.) He wanted to be Legolas from the LotR movies. Except that he started with a bow skill of 14 (decent, but not even close to super-human) and flatly refused to improve it, while also refusing to do anything tactically to improve his chances of hitting. He'd just drawn and shoot, as fast as possible. (And he cheated on his rolls, too, becoming much less successful when forced to roll out his actions on the table.) He stuck around to the end of the campaign though, always complaining how it was unfair that his character wasn't a better archer, while point-blank refusing any sort of advice, help, or skill improvements.

Was he actually focusing on firing as quickly as possible? If he took Fast-Draw (Arrow) he could potentially fire every other round instead of every third. Or every fourth if he wants to aim though it sounds like he didn't.

Personally I probably wouldn't put much more than 14 in a skill, although I'd definitely do other things to improve my odds of hitting. Namely, I'd shell out for a balanced, fine bow and balanced arrows. Then I'd take Weapon Bond with the bow. That'd give me a base of 19. At max range I only have a 7 to hit, but at 1/2 D I still have a 9. And at under 2 yards I have a 50% chance of pulling off an eye shot, though if I were going for such tactics I'd definitely increase my base skill to at least 17.

Sorry, slightly off topic. Point is that yeah, you're right, he was bad.

[Susano-wo]

New Mexico must be real rough for roleplaying >.<
BTW I would have put my foot down when he said "phoenix form," given what you described to us, IE that he 'could' transform only in the most dire situations. In other words, he would not get to choose. Oh, well, water under the bridge, now :D

[Talakeal]

New Mexico must be real rough for roleplaying >.<
BTW I would have put my foot down when he said "phoenix form," given what you described to us, IE that he 'could' transform only in the most dire situations. In other words, he would not get to choose. Oh, well, water under the bridge, now :D

This was years ago in California.

It was a valuable learning experience though. I have had several players come to me with similar requests in the years since and I have now learned that "being able to use something only in extreme situations" is not really a drawback worth cutting someone slack over.


On a related tangent, in one of the rulebooks for Demon: The Fallen there is a story where a demon offers to help a preacher find the man who burned down his church. The preacher eventually agrees, but only on the condition the demon doesn't use any black magic to do it. The Demon says that would be dangerous for him, and so the preacher allows the demon to use black magic ONLY if his life is in danger. So the demon goes to the suspect and intentionally provokes the suspect into pulling a shotgun on him and threatening him with it, at which point the demon mind controls the man and forces him to go down to the police and confess. It is a nice story because it uses in universe events to teach a valuable lesson about running games.

[Shpadoinkle]

The one that pisses me off most is a guy I played with for a few months about twelve years ago in a couple 3.0 games. At one point when we were maybe level 4 or so, his fighter got a +5 Vorpal longsword. He nevertheless insisted on shooting stuff with his +1 bow and nonmagical arrows. At one point I got pissed off enough about this to outright say to him, "If you're not going to use that damn sword, you can give it to my rogue and I'll start taking fighter levels with him."

[illyahr]

The one that pisses me off most is a guy I played with for a few months about twelve years ago in a couple 3.0 games. At one point when we were maybe level 4 or so, his fighter got a +5 Vorpal longsword. He nevertheless insisted on shooting stuff with his +1 bow and nonmagical arrows. At one point I got pissed off enough about this to outright say to him, "If you're not going to use that damn sword, you can give it to my rogue and I'll start taking fighter levels with him."

I'd refuse to use it too. A +10 weapon is extremely game-breaking at level 4. Was it a random roll or was this the norm for your game?

[Shpadoinkle]

I'd refuse to use it too. A +10 weapon is extremely game-breaking at level 4. Was it a random roll or was this the norm for your game?

I honestly have no idea why the DM gave it to us, maybe he was trying to drop the player a freaking hint, considering he was the only one in the party who was even halfway melee capable but steadfastly and consistently refused to, leaving the rest of use to fend for ourselves in melee while he plinged away with that stupid damn bow of his. It definitely wasn't normal, considering the rest of us were making do with masterwork or +1 weapons.

[Submortimer]

I currently play with a pair that embodies the two things I hate MOST when it comes to gaming: The Child, and the Star of the Show (coupled with Rules Lawyer).

Little bit of setup: This game is the first 5e game I've played in with this group, and ended up meeting through a Meetup group. Most of the people at the table are good at playing the game, not specifically building or "Roll-playing", but Role-playing. The characters are:

- A, the half-elf, fiend-pact warlock
- B, the human Rogue
- C, the Wood Elf Ranger
- D, the human non-healing-battery cleric
- E, The Half-elf archery fighter
- F, the dwarven Barbarian
- G, the Silver Dragonborn vengance paladin
- And myself, Variant Human Polearm fighter.

Not everyone makes it to every game, but myself, the warlock, the barbarian, the other fighter, and the cleric are essentially always there. age ranges from 10-40, with average being somewhere around 26-27.

F, the barbarian, is D's 10 year old son. We game in D's shop that he co-owns with another fella who GM's on the same night. I'm all for teaching the next generation to game, but MAN he can be annoying. It's not overly bad most of the time, mostly just the same kind of annoying that any 10 year old can be, but when it's bad, it's BAD.

What's more of a pain in the ass is E. E, the crossbow fighter, is 17, with lacking social skills and a "I'm gonna win DnD" attitude. He gets in arguments with the 10 year old. He rules lawyers. He gets in arguments with the 10 year old. He tries to do anything that any other member of the party is currently doing, just because he thinks he should be able to. HE GETS IN ARGUMENTS WITH THE 10 YEAR OLD.

*sigh*

on the plus side, he gets shut down when he gets too bad (our DM is pretty good at that), but it feels like his "get a clue" receptors just don't fully function most of the time.

[goto124]

The game I used to play was designed with realism in mind. The good part: insane amounts of detail in everything, from combat and magic to crafts, clothes and food. Trouble was, the bad parts of realism were replicated as well. The medieval european not-as-fantasy-as-others world had a fedualism system, with all the peasants-kiss-the-nobles'-feet. The peasants were players, and the nobles also players. The nobles controlled entire castles, hogged 'forbidden' spells/skills (spells had to be learnt from spellbooks, skills had to be taught by either NPCs or players- fun until the hoggers come in), and killed anyone who obtained those spells/skills without their 'permission'. Just like reality. Erm, a bit too close to reality perhaps, but with more killing? Where killing means starting over with a brand new character.

There were no levels either. Instead, there was a skill system, and you had to practice in that skill to improve it. Want to get better at a spell? Stay in a safe spot and cast the hell out of it. Want to climb buildings? Start with that rough wall over there, and have a friend to heal your injuries. It would've been fun if it didn't involves hours, weeks, months of grinding for a small amount of improvement, and if you could actually go out and do the real thing instead of hiding yourself in a 'safe' place to practice. It is realistic, and fun... for the first hour or so. Wait till you die and start over, forcing you to repeat the grind. And again!

Result: I managed to have fun with the other players for a while, until the politics kick in and I lost a character to that. On another character I played, I had him suicide with no RP reason, just so he would never had to touch politics. It was a pre-emptive move I made as soon as he got out of 'newbie' stage. I honestly wonder how people would think about this.

From what I know, the game used to be even more jerk-ish, with player wars and newcomers getting outright killed for minor transgressions. The game world was already at its nicest when I started. Shudder.

[Mr Beer]

So it was a fantasy recreation of a nasty high school except the mean kids could murder you? Sounds like a barrel of laughs, where do I sign up?

[goto124]

So it was a fantasy recreation of a nasty high school except the mean kids could murder you? Sounds like a barrel of laughs, where do I sign up?

Have fun being on the recieving end.

Also, in high school at least the teachers are in charge. Perhaps a nasty high school whose teacher act like mean kids.

[Marlowe]

A friend and myself, years ago, were part of a Chivalry & Sorcery campaign based on trying to get a trading caravan through a range of hostile mountains. The other players were a pair of brothers (call them Laurel and Hardy) used to the sillier end of D&D and another who had a long-running solo C&S campaign running with the same DM. Call him Anton.

Laurel and Hardy seemed to possess something of a shared hivemind. They each thought each other was tremendously, awesomely funny and clever, and talked incessantly about all the "awesome" stuff they'd done in RPGs and how great they had been. From the anecdotes that emerged they seemed to like turning every game they were in into "Cannibal Stoners III". They seemed especially fond of one MERP game they'd played where they simply wandered through Middle-Earth killing and eating everyone they met.

Well, C&S tends to be a quite gritty "realistic" system set in a quite gritty world. The DM was constantly having to remind them that they were not, in fact, living in a world where they could clown around all they liked without it coming down on their heads, and even had to down books, step out of "narrator mode", and explain to them things like "Putting cannabis in the Knights food WILL get you hanged as poisoners. You live in this world and that's something you should understand without being told. Nobody else at this table has ever had to be told". They didn't take it terribly well that they couldn't carry on acting like sociopathic drug fiends, and also didn't seem to understand why the rest of us seemed less impressed with them.

They didn't turn up to the second session and the DM proceeded to NPC their characters as per the personalities they'd established. Meaning they met sticky ends fairly soon.

Anton, on the other hand, simply didn't seem to like playing with others. He contributed nothing to the game. Like literally, did nothing, said nothing beyond a few personal insults, helped with nothing. Planning sessions between PCs would frequently end with everyone announcing what they were going to do, followed by everybody waiting for Anton's contribution, followed by him saying rather heatedly "What are you looking at me for? I'm not going to do anything".

DM even gave Anton a solo adventure of sorts, where he was drawn aside by the local Gypsy-type people and told "We sense a Great Evil is about to befall your party. You are regarded as a great warrior. Have this magic sword." He said no. Said he didn't want to be in anyone's debt.

Well, the Great Evil ensued (the NPC Knight with the party was a Wereboar. And both homicidally insane and ALMOST unstoppable in Boar form), and we dealt with it, but the expedition was decimated. Anton's character was connected with our employers, he advised we fall back and report to them. Distinctly in low spirits, we did so.

Only to have Anton, with us in the same room, report that the expedition had failed because I was personally incompetent. Nothing about them sending a wereboar with us, nothing about his own refusal to contribute anything at all, nothing even about anything specific I'd done wrong. Just that I was a bad leader and that they should send another expedition with him in charge. And some of his NPC flunkies from his solo campaign as the backup. He basically wanted all the other players written out of the campaign.

We called the DM next day and told him we weren't playing with Anton again.

Apparently, he was "deeply hurt and confused.":smallconfused:

[Inevitability]

My worst player? He isn't that bad, but I still think he deserves to be mentioned here.

Let's call him 'S'.

So far, S has had five characters over the course of three campaigns. All were terrible in some way.

This was the last session of a short introductory campaign I had been running for two other players, but S decided to join in anyway. Character? A Neutral Evil Drow Ranger with Favored Enemy (humans) and Favored Enemy (dwarves), in a party with a human and a dwarf. The only merit of that character was a lack of scimitars and panthers, but I could not see how he would interact peacefully with the party. Turns out he couldn't.

The party had acquired a bar, and S was handwaved as being a friend of the current characters and simply joining their barkeeping business.

Ten minutes into the game, an argument breaks out IC over S pushing the dwarven barbarian's drink over. Dwarf insults him. S' response? Crossbow bolt to the face. The resulting PvP melee caused the barbarian to go down, the cleric to blow all his spells on healing himself, and S to drop to 4 HP.

A guard comes in, asking about the sounds of battle he just heard. Guard is calmed down, and walks out of the bar. What happens the moment he turns his back on S? Right you are, crossbow bolt. S phrased it as: 'Wait, so you mean he wasn't going to call more guards?'

To make a long story short, S is arrested, imprisoned, and sentenced to death for mass murder, resisting arrest, and acts of violence against the dwarf. After the session, I immediately created a strict 'No PvP' rule that has not been lifted since then.

For a new campaign, S decided to play a Lawful Evil half-drow sorcerer. Also known as the point where I discovered how annoying enchantment spells can be.

This character robbed several towns, killed multiple people, looted a church, caused a devil to escape from the magic circle it was trapped in ('I really wanted that powdered silver, guys.') and took over a town by murdering the current ruler and Suggesting influential figures to elect him as new leader. He was then assassinated by a political rival, and the campaign ended.

New campaign, new character. This time, a gnome wizard... with 3/4th of the contents of his spellbook being enchantment. Supposedly CN, but close to NE. All other players were some shade of Good. As S didn't want to play something the party needed, we got stuck with two near-identical gnome wizards. It was a problem that would quickly solve itself.

The campaign starts with kobolds attacking a town. S helps fight off three kobolds (and only because they were stealing his horse) and then runs off to loot the weapon shop. When he discovers some kobolds got the idea before him, he runs off a second time. Except he is not going back to the party, he is running into the fields for whatever reason.

Through all of this, I had to play with the remaining 3 people too. S got upset when I explained that having a group of 3 people meant that group would get thrice the screen time a group of 1 person would get.

S managed to get himself captured by kobolds and is taken prisoner. At that point in time, he is sick of playing the character and starts trying to find crazy ways to make him die.

Heck no, I have the campaign's main source of disruption tied to a pole in the enemy camp, no way I'm letting whatever malign essence controls it abandon its vessel and find another prey. Fortunately, there are surprisingly few ways to kill yourself when you are a gnome wizard tied to hand and feet with no equipment.

When S got interrogated, he angered the kobold's boss so much (using some taunts I must admit were pretty funny) she threw him for the drakes.

Next character! Apparently, this one is a kobold who isn't really evil and decided to get drunk during the attack on the town so that he could sleep through it and not have to kill anybody. Yeah...

On the other hand, S can turn even a plastic pineapple into a murderous monster, so why not have him start with something that is already reviled by 99% of everything alive? It would delay his crazy plans, at least.

This character actually manages to stick with the party for a while. He kills, tanks, and even does a decent job at social interaction. I can even see the kobold being as LN as S claims him to be.

Then a part of the campaign that is not about killing monsters in 10 ft. rooms comes up, and S relapses into his old behavior of murdering, stealing, and intimidating his way past things. The kobold miraculously never got killed, and instead leaves the party when the others disagree with him wanting to knife a nobleman for being rude.

Another sorcerer. Another enchantment user. It caused me to have flashbacks to another campaign, and I was probably right in thinking so. Apparently this one is True Neutral, but I have long since learned of S' habit to put all of his characters a step closer to Lawful Good than they are.

This character was a traveling performer. First session the character kills a NPC whose only crime is asking the PC to sell an item at a low prize. The worst thing? He committed the murder a few inches away from another NPC, who naturally looked around at the sound of hearing a body hit the floor. S apparently thinks he can just Disguise Self into a guard and all problems will be solved. Yeah, no.

One improvised trial later (where I am getting suicidal vibes one of S' characters again) S' character has been placed under the care of all other PC's, with little to no rights. It didn't help.

S has stated he doesn't like this character anymore and is going to create a new. I fear the abomination his mind will give birth to next.



To be fair, I'm being a little hard here. S can be a good player, has a decent grasp of the rules and is a creative person. It's just that these things come with a bunch of ridiculous shenanigans.

TL;DR All player's characters are suicidal egomaniacal psychopaths who do not seem to comprehend their actions have consequences beyond those they intend them to have.

[Arbane]

My worst player? He isn't that bad, but I still think he deserves to be mentioned here.

Let's call him 'S'.

So far, S has had five characters over the course of three campaigns. All were terrible in some way.

(SNIP)
This was the last session of a short introductory campaign I had been running for two other players, but S decided to join in anyway. Character? A Drow Ranger with Favored Enemy (humans) and Favored Enemy (dwarves), in a party with a human and a dwarf.

This guy does indeed sound like the worst sort of hack'n'slasher, but I have to disagree on this. Just because you're really good at fighting something doesn't necessarily mean you hate them. My group's got a Dwarf Ranger with Favored Enemy: Humans, but he gets along fine with (most of) them.

[Talakeal]

This guy does indeed sound like the worst sort of hack'n'slasher, but I have to disagree on this. Just because you're really good at fighting something doesn't necessarily mean you hate them. My group's got a Dwarf Ranger with Favored Enemy: Humans, but he gets along fine with (most of) them.

Seconded. I am currently making a human ranger with Favored enemy: Humans because she works as a bounty hunter.

[Honest Tiefling]

I would still say that putting your favored enemy into the ONLY other races in the party is still a warning sign, but not a certainty of a bad character.

[Inevitability]

This guy does indeed sound like the worst sort of hack'n'slasher, but I have to disagree on this. Just because you're really good at fighting something doesn't necessarily mean you hate them. My group's got a Dwarf Ranger with Favored Enemy: Humans, but he gets along fine with (most of) them.

Indeed, but as HT says, it is a warning sign. Add to that that this player had no backstory including any conflicts with humans/dwarves and his drow's alignment was NE (more like stupid evil) and I feel like there is ground for doubt.

[Darkmonger27]

After reading a bunch of these stories, I'm glad I don't have anything as crazy as those players, but I have had maybe one or two bad players. The worst was R.

We were playing 4e, and me and a friend wanted to start a game, but we couldn't find really anybody to play with us. Let's call the friend J. J suggests that we invite his younger brother, and, seeing no problem with this, I agree. His brother (R) has never played a real game before, and has to use J 's books, because he doesn't have any. R makes a paranoid Drow Rogue.R is a goodish player. He doesn't role play much, and when he does he doesn't quite get how people socialize.

The trouble starts when a friend of mine wanting to get into D&D joins, and creates a paladin. So the paladin (N) and R don't get along well IRL, but I hoped they could put aside their differences for the game at least. Yeah... not a good plan.

N is a really good player, and a dear friend, but R is just hard to stand (recently discovered he's ADD), so every session, there's been an argument. Heck, I've actually ended encounters and even games early to make them stop. It got better over time, but I still look back on that campaign with a mixture of satisfaction (how epic it got, and the jokes) and shame.

[McBars]

My worst player? He isn't that bad, but I still think he deserves to be mentioned here.

Let's call him 'S'.

More 'S' stories please!!! Hilarious stuff dire.

[Inevitability]

More 'S' stories please!!! Hilarious stuff dire.

Well... There's the little conversation that arose when he was building his second character...

S: And for my second spell I'm gonna take... Disguise Self. Yeah, that sounds cool.
Me: You're going to do WHAT? Wait a minute, let me look something up.
S: What are you looking for?
Me: Duration of the... ONE HOUR? And no concentration?
S: I like this spell.
Me: God help us all.

My fear turned out to be justified later, but that's another story.

[nrg89]

You know that bad DM I told you about in another thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?363545-What-was-your-worst-DM-ever-This-thread-is-impervious-roll-to-disbelieve!/page18)? He's not a good player either.


He had rolled up a rogue at 10th level (yes, it's the assassin from the other story) who was chaotic neutral. Now, alignment means different things for all of us. I would argue that there is a general consensus about the broad strokes and it's up to the player to determine what stance the character has on more ambiguous issues. But this guy generally has his idea about how something works and gets mad if he encounters resistance.

We had created a campaign setting together, and my corner of the world was a massive city state who was founded around a portal leading to a sort of "hub plane", where portals to other planes was everywhere with just a couple of feet between them. The players found themselves inside this hub plane. It looks like a sort of town with criss crossing streets leading to the right planes.

The city state had a lot of signs to help guide travelers to the right plane at junctions. First thing he does is pulling out his knife and start scratching out the name on one of those sign. I first think that he's joking but he assures me he's serious.

"Um, ok." I say, confused because that action was so completely random and unprovoked. "Are you stealthily trying to do it? There's guards patrolling the streets."
"Oh no, I do it in plain sight."
"Ok."
I roll a spot check for the closest guard and he fails.
"All right, you've scratched out the name of the sign."
"I want to do it again!"
Since a guard had just made his round past him, I figure no guard would be around to watch him this time either. The players are a little confused as to what he's doing, but there's a big market for magic items and stuff from other planes close by so they go over there and look and I give them a list of items for sale at that market so they can decide what to buy. I keep going with this guy's vandalism.
"Some traveller is stopping and asking what you'r doing and if those portals are closed."
"I point at the direction of the portal to Hell and tell him to take his attitude there."
"Um, ok, he's pissed at you and goes towards a guard."
"I continue. How many signs have I scratched out now? What did it say on them?"
Since he didn't ask I want to keep the damage minimal, so I pick some relatively harmless planes.
"Celestial Plane, Mechanus and the Elemental Plane of Air are now scratched out at this junction, there's two more signs to the City of Brass and Elemental Plane of Water. But you see that the guard is approaching and he has a wand pulled out."
"I continue to scratch out the one to Elemental Plane of Water!"
"Ok, just as you're about to start, the guard shouts at you: 'Hey, stop that! Those signs are the property of the Planar Exploration Company!'"
"I tell him to mind his own business and start to scratch out the name."
"Ok, he says 'Stop, or I am ordered to make you stop!'"
"I continue, haha!"

The guard used Hold Person and called for back up with a whistle. The player was grappling with these two guards for a while and he was eventually subdued.

"Ok" I say. "They ask that you be sent to [the city state] to stand trial when they can find an escort for you to the court."

One of my other players jumps in. He says that he didn't find anything interesting on my list and that he saw the guards taking their friend away. He convinces the guards that they can be the escort of him to the court house.
But, the bad player, as soon as he's went through the portal and is on his way towards the court house, starts to goddamn verbally harass the guards, and I tell him to do an appraise check so he can see that these guys are even better armed with magic items. He keeps harassing them and the guards tell the players to give him to them, because they would love to escort this little turd to the court house themselves. He tries to escape, and gets severely beaten by them.
Finally, the adventure begins and we have a blast while the player is in lockup. He was whining throughout the whole adventure and said that, since we were at his house, he would have to think about letting me DM again because of the way he was treated. That whole sign shenanigans was a quarter of the session and completely revolved around him.

"But, why the hell was your character scratching signs? Does he have a mental disorder or something?"
"He's chaotic neutral, they are unpredictable, not even he knew what he was going to do that day."


Long story short; chaotic neutral apparently means you have obsessive compulsive disorder and empathy issues.

[WeaselGuy]

So, at the end of 2013, my wife and I were playing with a new group, and most of them have now become our main group to game with. There were frictions at first, as I'm sure exist for anybody that meets for the first time, character sheets in hand, to play in an unknown 3.5 campaign. Luckily, most of us were at least semi-competent, and the DM was (and still is) superb.

The table really had 3 bad players (out of 7), B, R, and L.

B wasn't really that bad, just the quintessential "big dumb fighter". About the only thing this guy could do well was power attack with a glaive. He actually put a decent score into Intelligence, but "acted" stupid to throw people off. He wouldn't trip, and wouldn't charge, just move in and attack. He was the most tolerable of the 3.
L was the next most tolerable, but still mostly insufferable. Her 1st character in the campaign was an elf ranger, who apparently was a princess but didn't know about it. Every time we went somewhere, she insisted on spending at least 1 day in the library, scouring elvish tomes for existence of her family name (I'm assuming she at one point expected the DM to include her nobility in the campaign, but it never came up). She was quite literally 1 of the 2 worst rangers I have ever seen in over 10 years of D&D. She couldn't scout, she couldn't sneak, and she couldn't search. The only time she was almost useful was when her character was taking a bath in the river and was attacked by a crocodile, then ran naked through the camp to get her longbow (which she had left by her bedroll). While the rest of us were trying to attack the crocodile and failing miserably (seriously, we couldn't hit the broadside of a flat-footed barn that night), she was pinging away with arrow after arrow. Oh, and she found us a secret door one time with her elf-sense. She also walked face-first into a pair of razor wire traps, leaving some gnarly scars on her face.
Her second character (same campaign) was an elf wizard, who made the mistake of insulting B's big dumb fighter. It was the evening of the first day the group had met her new character, and we had just finished an intense fight with a psion, and while half the group was in favor of restraining the psion and taking her back to town, she was in favor of executing the psion. I, as a Paladin, was in the process of binding the captive's hands, unfortunately Use Rope was not a class skill for me. When L insulted B, B responded by asking her how many spells she had left for the day. When L responded with "Just my cantrips, why?", B proceeded to power attack her with his glaive. When I went to mediate the dispute (before L had to make a 3rd character), the psion got away, and became a general pain in the neck for the next few sessions.
And that brings us to R. R was the other horrible ranger. He wanted to be a dual-wielder. I said "hey, I can help you with that, ranger is a great chassis for dual-wielding. What type of weapons do you want to use?" to which he says "dwarven waraxes. I'm a dwarf!" I was a little taken aback, at first, but eventually said something to the effect of "ok, waraxes... have you looked at the tempest prestige class? it's supposed to use scimitars, but I'm sure the DM can work with you and the waraxe... or, you could use the urgosh, it's cool too." Nope, not cool, he was dead set on waraxes, and, btw, he wants to be a beastmaster, not a tempest. I should've known it wouldn't get any better.
R proceeded, over the next 4 months, to complain, incessantly, every time we entered combat that it wasn't fair that the enemy was always dead by the time he got into melee range (that 20ft move speed man...). I insisted upon numerous solutions, including throwing axes, throwing hammers, javelins, crossbows, longbows, shortbows... the guy just didn't want to do ranged. So, the DM dropped a pair of Boots of Striding and Springing in the loot pile, with the intent the dwarf get them. Nope, he went and sold them to get a belt of strength or something similar. Anyways, after finally getting himself killed, he decided Bard was more his flavor. Dwarf, of course. And not the dragonfire inspiration style bard either. he prestiged into some sort of court loremaster thing from an older 3.0 book, and basically became pretty useless as a whole.

The real stink of it is, R and L had been playing D&D for the better part of 30 years. They started with AD&D and played 2e as well. They were not inexperienced. They just didn't know 3.5. Every time we leveled (at the end of the night btw, "be level 9 when you come back next week!") I could count on spending the first hour the following week helping each of them level up.

By comparison, we have Z and J, who had never played D&D before in their lives, much less 3.5. Z showed up with a cleric, which he used to great effect as a buffer and downtime-healer. J brought a druid, who's main course involved summoning bears, wildshaping into a bear, and having his bear companion all attack the same enemy, then moving as a bear herd to attack the next enemy, and so on and so forth. Or, if the enemy could fly, he summoned hippogryffs or griffons. For campaign 2, Z had an improved trip/knock-down monk, and J had a swordsage. My how they grow up so fast :'-)

[Cazero]

Long story short; chaotic neutral apparently means you have obsessive compulsive disorder and empathy issues.
Another story of someone who just doesn't understand alignement and picked chaotic neutral as an excuse to do stupid things. Is there a thread exploring the reason of this far too common misunderstanding?

[hymer]

I don't know if he was the worst player I've ever dealt with, but he ranks.

We were playing a sandbox campaign, and if the players didn't do something, nothing much happened. The players were all aware of this feature, at least I hope so. But this guy would usually argue against ideas or plans brought up. And when I say 'argue against', I mean he would say something to the effect of 'I think that's stupid, I don't want to do that'. No reasons why it was stupid, just stonewalling. When asked what he wanted to do instead, he would reply that he didn't know, just that he didn't want to do as had been suggested.
He threw himself out of the group by picking a fight with the tremendously nice and patient guy who usually gave him a lift, going well out of his way to perform this favour more often than not. He was asked to meet the pickup somewhere other than at his home and threw a fit. When next the nice guy couldn't practically offer a lift, this player decided that the nice guy was just being mean, and that was the end of that.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Another story of someone who just doesn't understand alignement and picked chaotic neutral as an excuse to do stupid things. Is there a thread exploring the reason of this far too common misunderstanding?
I doubt this has anything to do with it for that case (as that particular story is clearly about a chaotic stupid-evil character) but it might partly have to do with campaign restraints on alignment.

Evil, most notably chaotic evil, is usually barred from groups. Probably because lots of people feel that alignment encourages intraparty conflict more than it does good roleplaying. This isn't entirely unjustified, as a lot of people seem to do that when they make evil characters.

Mostly, it seems some people just want their character to do silly stuff in general. And people think that chaotic and evil are both good excuses to have no justification for ridiculous behavior that derails the campaign and makes them the central figure of events.

Whenever I feel like playing a chaotic evil character and I understand chaotic stupid-evil is the only reason for the ban, I just label them chaotic neutral and nobody really seems to notice. If someone does notice that I'm clearly not neutral, it's already obvious by that point that I'm not being the kill everyone and light fires for no reason type. So it doesn't matter by then.

I probably have made someone wonder every now and then why I don't understand that alignment, though. Though it does help if you can give justifications for your actions in-character that don't sound evil. (Something every decent evil character has to be able to do anyway.)

[Honest Tiefling]

The real stink of it is, R and L had been playing D&D for the better part of 30 years. They started with AD&D and played 2e as well. They were not inexperienced. They just didn't know 3.5. Every time we leveled (at the end of the night btw, "be level 9 when you come back next week!") I could count on spending the first hour the following week helping each of them level up.

By comparison, we have Z and J, who had never played D&D before in their lives, much less 3.5. Z showed up with a cleric, which he used to great effect as a buffer and downtime-healer. J brought a druid, who's main course involved summoning bears, wildshaping into a bear, and having his bear companion all attack the same enemy, then moving as a bear herd to attack the next enemy, and so on and so forth. Or, if the enemy could fly, he summoned hippogryffs or griffons. For campaign 2, Z had an improved trip/knock-down monk, and J had a swordsage. My how they grow up so fast :'-)

This is exactly why the phrase "Of course I'm good at RPing, I've been doing it for decades!" gives me pause.

[Cealocanth]

In my last campaign we had a player who was quite a character. In the tradition of this thread, I will refer to her as C.

We were playing a pirate-themed game of 4e D&D basically set during the Forgotten Realms version of the Golden Age of Piracy. Every character in the party was a swashbuckler, a pistolieer, a shipmate, and a buccaneer. Even the most extreme of the characters in the party, the healer, was playing something that at least semi-fit the Treasure Island-esque campaign world we had made, playing a dryad spirit who inhabited the figurehead of the ship. After the first campaign session, it seemed like that this would work out beautifully, as we were all having fun sailing the Frozen Seas, pillaging and taking enemy ships a-prize, and competing in great races to glory with other pirates. Then C showed up.

C was absolutely obsessed with the time period in question. This would normally be a good thing, if not for her insisting in correcting absolutely every little detail about how a ship worked and operated in the world. I don't mind if a player lets me know that my ship sailing is immersion breaking and unrealistic, and politely offering a way to rectify that, but C did this loudly and rudely about absolutely everything. Sometimes it was reasonable things about how ship tactics worked, but most of the time, it was about how a captain would have treated his crew during this time period. Specifically, she believed that a pirate ship in a fantasy universe would operate exactly like the ship in Master and Commander, meaning that all crew members were expected to obey every single order by the captain and the bosun to the letter or be killed, and no one was allowed to offer advice or even speak to those in power without being punished for insubordination. So what if Crewman A isn't keeping his hammock in his personal quarters up to military standards? It's a pirate ship, and he certainly doesn't deserve to be thrown overboard for it.

Players do crazy things all the time, but C insisted on playing a LG Paladin, but rarely acted good and acted so unbelievably lawful it's amazing that she ever joined a pirate crew anyway. Furthermore, she wasn't just a Paladin, because Paladins have to follow rules set by their gods. She was a Paladin of a clan of dragonborn who worshiped a dragon, and she wore a gemstone on her forehead in which this god lived, and she was the selected 'princess' of this clan so they would let her do whatever she wanted because she was their leader. Furthermore, she was a samurai, ignoring the fact that there really isn't anything that remotely resembles Japan in the campaign, and she lived by a code of honor which changed whenever she felt like it. Basically, she played a Paladin without all the extra baggage about doing good and obeying the gods rules. We had to stretch next to everything to even allow her character to exist in the campaign world, let alone let the rest of the crew tolerate her for long.

Up to that point I was a relatively playful DM. I rarely refused to compromise on things, and I wanted to make sure everyone was having a good time, but C taught me that some people only have fun when everyone else is suffering. My personality was just not strong enough to overcome hers, so she ran rampant in what was a perfectly nice game, and I was not willing to bring down the hammer and preserve the campaign world for the rest of the group. It's one thing if all the players want to go nuts with the world, drawing anything they please in to the game. That's fine, as long as everyone at the table is having fun. It's another thing if one player wants to go against the grain, and no one has the charisma to prevent her from grabbing the reins and driving the campaign as she sees fit, at the expense of everyone else's fun. I just wish I had summoned the courage to kick C out of the group, but instead I chose to run out the clock, and stepped down that summer in favor of a new DM and a new system. We just never told C we were making a new group.

[AmewTheFox]

Every time we leveled (at the end of the night btw, "be level 9 when you come back next week!") I could count on spending the first hour the following week helping each of them level up.


Guh, I hate it when players do that. I mean, I understand that you have a life, and everything, but you really can't take and hour or two to cycle through your options. Especially if it's easily available and totally free on the internet! Legally!

[Anxe]

Guh, I hate it when players do that. I mean, I understand that you have a life, and everything, but you really can't take and hour or two to cycle through your options. Especially if it's easily available and totally free on the internet! Legally!

It's also one of the most fun parts of roleplaying. That's what always confuses me about people not doing that.

[Honest Tiefling]

And if they want help, they should clear it before the game outside of the game. I still don't understand optimization of certain systems to be honest, but if I ask for help I try to be polite about it. If you cannot be in communication regularly, you...Probably should figure things out on your own, sorry, rather then springing it onto people.

[WarKitty]

Well, there was the high level fighter/barb gish who took toughness for all his feats and didn't ever want to use magic anything...and always charged the nearest enemy in fights.

[nedz]

Well, there was the high level fighter/barb gish who took toughness for all his feats and didn't ever want to use magic anything...and always charged the nearest enemy in fights.

And, ..., what was his next character ?

[WarKitty]

And, ..., what was his next character ?

Oddly enough, that one survived, though mainly because due to his inability to hit anything I decided most enemies ignored him in favor of more competent party members.

Really that was a bad case of "I want to hang out with my girlfriend but I don't really actually care about the game."

[Tvtyrant]

I don't know if he was the worst player I've ever dealt with, but he ranks.
When next the nice guy couldn't practically offer a lift, this player decided that the nice guy was just being mean, and that was the end of that.

:smalleek: Wow, talk about entitlement issues. I'm amazed he lasted until he quit instead of being thrown out.

[hymer]

:smalleek: Wow, talk about entitlement issues. I'm amazed he lasted until he quit instead of being thrown out.

The nice guy went as far as first phoning the player after the last fit, then turning up at his place to iron out the issues. But he failed to do so, and he felt horrible about that.
The nice guy was the player's social shield from the kicking out he so richly deserved. The player sometimes contacts me, asking if he can play, and I tell him the nice guy is in my campaign. If he can't get things working with him of all people, I/we don't want him.

[Sliver]

The nice guy went as far as first phoning the player after the last fit, then turning up at his place to iron out the issues. But he failed to do so, and he felt horrible about that.
The nice guy was the player's social shield from the kicking out he so richly deserved. The player sometimes contacts me, asking if he can play, and I tell him the nice guy is in my campaign. If he can't get things working with him of all people, I/we don't want him.

At this point, 'nice guy' sounds like an understatement...

[Solaris]

At this point, 'nice guy' sounds like an understatement...

'Door mat' seems more appropriate.
It pains me to see decent people let themselves get walked all over, not the least for which because they then turn bitter and cynical, blaming the world for walking all over them when they're the ones who stretched out over the doorstep.

[nedz]

'Door mat' seems more appropriate.
It pains me to see decent people let themselves get walked all over, not the least for which because they then turn bitter and cynical, blaming the world for walking all over them when they're the ones who stretched out over the doorstep.

I was thinking the same — but I didn't like to say. :smallamused:

A lack of respect is what results from such behaviour — from most folk at least.

[Solaris]

I was thinking the same — but I didn't like to say. :smallamused:

A lack of respect is what results from such behaviour — from most folk at least.

I'm a recovering nice guy and a terminal cynic. I don't feel bad about knocking it upside the nice kid's head that it's not a bad thing to stand up for yourself and that people don't have a right to treat you like crap just because their parents felt the need to ensure their substandard genetics continued another generation.

[Stuebi]

So, I actually DM'ed for the first time the past two weekends. First session went fine, but in the second one we were joined by another player. And...well:

In what my experienced buddy calls “typical newbie behavior”, I had done a LOT of preparation. Creating multiple locations, stories and just general stuff for the players to discover. I wanted to make sure that even if we had a split up, people would have stuff to do, and I wanted to keep railroading to a minimum.

The first session went dandy. People made some money, apprehended a criminal and were gearing up for their first “big” Quest, involving the search for a local nobleman's son, who had run off a few nights before the game started. The group got along better than I expected, despite the wide range of motivations and alignments inside. We ended the session in a tavern, which was almost perfect for me, since it made introducing the new player easier, once we played again next week. I got really nice feedback. Pretty much the only negative point made was that I had been nervous, and some of the NPC's would occasionally stutter, when a player surprised me with a question or the like. One of the players who regularly DM's assured me that this would seize once I had some more experience (And I do hope that is true.).

Now, before we get to the juicy part, I want to mention that I probably could've done better myself. And I dont see myself as innocent in this little tale. I do think, however, that the player in question was somewhat inconsiderate of me being a Newbie, and also kind of an a**.

Next session, we gather in Skype. New Player, an ex-girlfriend to one of the other players, is introduced. I will refer to her as C from now on. Their breakup went fine, and even tough she and me never really liked each other, I was confident that we could handle this maturely and have a good time.

I have been wrong before.

Like one of the other players, C was very experienced with the setting, rule set and Lore. And she had a nic for optimizing characters, as I was later told. The other experienced player went with a balanced build and kept a decent balance between keeping the character useful, and still having a nice role playing concept. This made things easier for me. Apparently, C wasn't really riding the same horse in this regard. She handed me her sheet and I approved her character, missing quite a few red flags in form of Maneuvers, feats and other stuff. I simply lacked the experience to tell that there were a few powerful combinations, and other stuff that is usually frowned upon in a role playing focused group.

The game continues, C joins the group. She provides a much needed “thievish” character, able to disarm traps, good with a bow and able to talk herself out of a lot of bad situations. At this point, everything seems perfect, and the group embarks on their adventure. I had planned a few stepping stones and distractions on the way. Opportunities for combat, some loot and a good deed or two. Ideally, everyone in the group would've gotten his moment to shine. But this was the point when C took over.

The first combat encounter was basically soloed by her. It was a bandit ambush, and to make sure that the two ranged combatant in the group couldn't just fire arrow after arrow undisturbed, I added some Flankers. One failed spot check later, the group would theoretically been in a pretty tense situation, if not for C. She used her maneuvers to basically kite enemies to death. Even if they got in range, she was pretty agile and some of her character traits made sure she could comfortably outmaneuver pretty much the entire encounter. I hadn't expected that something like that could so easily be achieved by tweaking the character a little, and I was later told stuff like this came pretty close to power gaming and could only be countered by also buffing the enemies with a lot of extra tricks. I was unprepared for it however, and so there wasn't a single bandit able to stand up to C and she tore trough the encounter in mere minutes, bolting Bandits with shots from behind and the side.

It continued on like this. Obstacles like guards or other NPC's were sweet-talked by her, using a combination of “persuade” and good looks. The latter giving some decent bonuses on persuasion rolls in certain situations. Other things like strong monsters with a specific weakness where either completely crippled by her (Aiming for specific spots. I'm reasonably sure she could've turned Cthulu into a crying cripple, given enough time), or she had knowledge on the thing on hand.

Basically everything I had set up, coming even close to being a hindrance, was completely negated by C. After two hours of play, I was basically defeated. Some of the stuff I prepared would've called for some strategic thinking, tactics, discussion. But C had a direct and effective solution on hand every time. To the groups credit, the continued to Role play, and even made some jokes on C's cost (“Why don't you go on ahead? We are obviously not needed...”), trying to get her to take it back a bit. But for some reason, she seemed dead set on showing me how easily she could tear my campaign apart.

In the pause, the “DM” player took me to the side. He explained a few things to me, her feats, the combinations, and also how one could deal with them. After 15 minutes, I was a lot wiser. However, this is also were I probably failed. I took C aside and had a short conversation with her. I asked her to maybe step it back a notch. It's fine to have a prominent character and to show me, where my Encounter design might have been flawed, but the others were basically just tagging along at this point. She shrugged, told me that she was just playing her character, and that it was my job to react to her power level accordingly.

And I admit, this is were I acted childishly.

I buffed the leader of the main enemies party up. He was basically the David to C's Goliath, equipped with just the things he needed to challenge her. So after a bit of RP and puzzle solving, he entered the Ring. While the party was dealing with the “regulars”, who were appropriate for them, C had her hands on a bandit chief. And this one was ready for her. After 4 rounds, C was grappled and smacked across the room, her enemy snapped her bow and was moving in to add another wound or two. However, the rest of his raiding party had died after some intense fighting, and so he fled the scene.

C hadn't exactly made any friends in the group either. The hunter and the knight in particular didn't care for C's character IC and made some insulting remarks. She had provoked them before, and this was an obvious opportunity to repay her. The priest fixed her up tough, and the adventure continued. I repeated the plan “Nemesis” another time, were there was at least one enemy in the opposing group that was able to effectively take C head on. Since she didn't have a lot of support in the group, only the priest would actively help her in combat, while the rest rather dealt with their own problems. After she went flying the second time, unable to take the dude down, C stood up, called me a moron, and announced that she would not play with such an incompetent DM again. She tried to convince the rest to leave as well, which is the main thing that rustled me about the reaction. The others didn't want to, however, and so she stormed off. Hasn't talked to me since.

I want to mention, I did not make her enemies undefeatable. They were pretty much right on her level. But the fact that I had made them specifically to take her down, annoyed her a lot, it seems. Again, probably not my msot adult moment.

[goto124]

So even after you explained to her how she's ripping the campaign apart, she says 'it's part of my RP'? Ouch.

[Anxe]

Sounds like it wasn't just the IC part that wasn't working for her. Still strange that when you pulled her aside she seemed to be saying, "I'm staying at this power level, why don't you give me something that can challenge me?" Then when you did she flipped? Not a logically consistent viewpoint, but who says emotions are logical?

[McBars]

So even after you explained to her how she's ripping the campaign apart, she says 'it's part of my RP'? Ouch.

always such a cop-out answer "but I'm just playing my character!" = I'm an a-hole

[VincentTakeda]

I think the big challenge here is seeing this behavior as logically inconsistant... It's actually totally consistant. Here's the trouble...

Some folks do not play the game because they want 'challenge'. If they DO want challenge, they optimize in such a way as to tell you explicitly the way in which they do NOT want the game to challenge them.

Instead of falling into the constant trap of 'escalation fu', the player is saying 'yes i'm good at combat. It is desirable for my character to own in any outright combat situation.'

What they'd be expecting is for the other elements of the campaign to come to the fore instead... social interactions, or, if the game truly is combat centric, then to include other details/nuance in the combat scenario that add to the challenge... Protect an innocent... Not rescue after combat.. Rescue DURING combat... Something that makes the fight more than just runny choppy runny choppy.

What they DONT want is escalation. To be challenged specifically where their focus is. They don't want to be 'met head on' in the area of their expertise... They want to have that expertise put to more complicated tasks. Not to be steamrolled with stats.

A lot of players don't even realize they do this, and thus have a reeeeely hard time articulating the nature of it... But when you optimize, you're CHOOSING what you want to be great at... and you want to be great at it all the dang time. What they're asking you to do is twist and nuance.. Make the challenge something OTHER than countering their build. Anyone with even a sliver of system mastery can counter a build.

[Solaris]

I think the big challenge here is seeing this behavior as logically inconsistent... It's actually totally consistent. Here's the trouble...

Snip

A lot of players don't even realize they do this, and thus have a reeeeely hard time articulating the nature of it... But when you optimize, you're CHOOSING what you want to be great at... and you want to be great at it all the dang time. What they're asking you to do is twist and nuance.. Make the challenge something OTHER than countering their build. Anyone with even a sliver of system mastery can counter a build.

I think it's completely and utterly unreasonable to expect the GM to not make, say, a boss-type encounter that counters your character's capabilities and forces you to do something other than just steamroll through powers and numbers.
If the player didn't want that, she shouldn't have gone with the jerkass response of "You just have to keep up." I don't think she wanted the GM to come up with other sorts of challenges - I'm pretty sure she just wanted to win the game and curbstomp the GM's plot and encounters to make them look incompetent. After all, she declared the GM was incompetent and tried to get the other players to mutiny when she stopped auto-winning everything.

[Alberic Strein]

good stuff

Pretty much. Once upon a time in a ars magica game, I rolled a tank. And I mean a freaking tank. His stamina and endurance were not on the level of the best an average human could hope to achieve, but the best an human could achieve. Ever. That coupled with my DM's weird understanding of the rules meant that even his eyesockets were practically dagger proof. And then he donned armor. So how was that character challenged when fighting was needed and specifically when in a plot-relevant duel? Simply put my DM took my sheet, noted the relevant ability scores, and said "ok, that's your foe's stats now, oh, and he has proficiency in the ritual weapon of the duel and you do not."

Needless to say I didn't take it well. Suddenly all my efforts to create a kickass character where duplicated and turned against me.

I enjoyed much more later when he whipped out intrigues and situations which didn't revolve around pulling a sword and killing everyone. The team cooked a plan, everyone did his bit, and mine was the slaughter of the opposition. A number of times the fights were even off-screen, my GM basically looking me in the eye and going "ok, there is noone among the enemies able to match [your character], next scene."

And I was ok with that. I didn't need a three hour long gratification battle where I cleave the opposition in half. Just to have my area of expertise recognized.

So now, while they are pretty low key, let me introduce you to S and M.

S was really the better of the two. He just had a HUGE tendancy to be extremely overbearing and playing chaotic selfish arse holes with almost no redeeming qualities. Meaning his characters would b*tch about everything, quit everytime anything became a tiny little bit complicated, running and abandoning the crew when a kickass imposing foe appeared (okay, an army of 300 with FROST GIANTS is a scary sight, but damnit man, you were the ass kicker of the group...) and easily becoming bored. Seriously he spent waaaaaaaaaay too long on his damn computer skyping with his crush.

On the plus side, he was VERY good at being the Gladfly, playing Call of C'thullu and playing Paranoïa, was a real mood maker, and gave us a few good laughs.

M, on the other hand...

Oh well, maybe she was just like that with me, but oh GOD that woman.

1. Short, very very short temper. 2. Can't take a joke to save her life. 3. Can't take a damn negative outcome happening to her character without b*tching for one hour 4. Can't, for the life of her, refrain from killing, threaten to, or trying to kill my characters 5. Plays characters without any redeeming quality. 6. Manages to be inconsequential to entire sessions (she played an earth mage, we were imprisoned underground, what was so hard to understand?!) 7. Got waaay too immersed in her own backstories and tragic bits. 8. Talked the talk but couldn't walk the walk (if rape makes you uncomfortable -which is PERFECTLY understandable- why include it in your freaking backstory?! We're not your phychiatrist!) 9. Talked about her suicide attempt litterally the first day I met her. 10. Tended to get lost in her own world in the middle of the game.

You know what? I'm stopping there. Long story short, there wasn't one single game which wouldn't have been enhanced by switching her with a flower pot. An empty flower pot.

Ps: Oh and there was that one player (can't remember anything about her) who would keep irremediably silent, do absolutely nothing in and out of game save from some random high-pitched screamings and b*tching we're not playing Toon.

[Traab]

I think the big challenge here is seeing this behavior as logically inconsistant... It's actually totally consistant. Here's the trouble...

Some folks do not play the game because they want 'challenge'. If they DO want challenge, they optimize in such a way as to tell you explicitly the way in which they do NOT want the game to challenge them.

Instead of falling into the constant trap of 'escalation fu', the player is saying 'yes i'm good at combat. It is desirable for my character to own in any outright combat situation.'

What they'd be expecting is for the other elements of the campaign to come to the fore instead... social interactions, or, if the game truly is combat centric, then to include other details/nuance in the combat scenario that add to the challenge... Protect an innocent... Not rescue after combat.. Rescue DURING combat... Something that makes the fight more than just runny choppy runny choppy.

What they DONT want is escalation. To be challenged specifically where their focus is. They don't want to be 'met head on' in the area of their expertise... They want to have that expertise put to more complicated tasks. Not to be steamrolled with stats.

A lot of players don't even realize they do this, and thus have a reeeeely hard time articulating the nature of it... But when you optimize, you're CHOOSING what you want to be great at... and you want to be great at it all the dang time. What they're asking you to do is twist and nuance.. Make the challenge something OTHER than countering their build. Anyone with even a sliver of system mastery can counter a build.

I can sort of see this as being almost reasonable, except her character was pure death in combat, and easily able to handle all noncombat roles. She was an unstoppable diplomatic face, a perfect trap finder, a juggernaut in combat, etc etc etc. Where exactly DO you challenge her without targeting her "focus" which seems to be "the entire game and everything in it"

[Solaris]

I can sort of see this as being almost reasonable, except her character was pure death in combat, and easily able to handle all noncombat roles. She was an unstoppable diplomatic face, a perfect trap finder, a juggernaut in combat, etc etc etc. Where exactly DO you challenge her without targeting her "focus" which seems to be "the entire game and everything in it"

Agreed. That's why I was pretty sure that this situation is an exception to the general rule - she wasn't looking for a challenge, she was looking to win and probably to make the GM look bad while she was at it.

[Alberic Strein]

Agreed. That's why I was pretty sure that this situation is an exception to the general rule - she wasn't looking for a challenge, she was looking to win and probably to make the GM look bad while she was at it.

"Never blame on evil what you can blame on stupidity"

And on social awkwardness, knowing our hobby.

[Solaris]

An occasionally useful cliche which falls apart if applied despite the evidence of malevolent behavior.

Building a character that can destroy the game, refusing to tone it down, and then throwing a temper tantrum when the GM wheels out something that can counter your overpowered character is malevolent behavior. It's not social awkwardness, it's not being unable to properly express your desire for an alternative challenge in words, it's malevolent behavior.

Being socially awkward is no excuse for being a jerk.

[Ceiling_Squid]

"Never blame on evil what you can blame on stupidity"

And on social awkwardness, knowing our hobby.

Yes, and Hanlon's Razor (and it's variants) are good practice for maintaining healthy player relations.

And C's attempted mutiny...wow. That's definitely malicIous against any DM, especially a newbie who clearly put a lot of effort into the game, and even attempted to discuss matters with her. I think we know now what side of the razor she fell on.

Edit: And, yes, Solaris, it falls apart if someone's stupid enough to take it as an absolute and ignoring all evidence to the contrary. It's merely a useful admonition about not being prejudicial of other people's motives, and it's a type of patience that is in very short supply.

If you want a more nuanced version, then take Einstein's Razor - Do not attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don't rule out malice.

[icefractal]

I'm not saying she wasn't a jerk - because she does sound like a jerk. But there's a large middle ground between "pushover opponent" and "specific hard-counter to the PC" that was jumped straight past.

Like for example, in some campaigns I've played, a Hellfire Glaivelock would be an expected and appropriate amount of ass-kicking. In others, it would be way too much and make the GM miserable.

So let's say I thought a campaign was in the first category, brought said Warlock, and was steamrolling through encounters. And then the GM suddenly switched to acid-proof golems for everything. I might be miffed, I might think "Why didn't you just make the enemies tougher enough to be a decent fight, instead of totally shutting me down?"

The difference from the story above is that if the GM said OOC that it was too much, I wouldn't just blow that off. So the "jerk" statement probably still stands. But it is possible to dislike hard-counters without being against any challenge.

[Reverent-One]

I'm not saying she wasn't a jerk - because she does sound like a jerk. But there's a large middle ground between "pushover opponent" and "specific hard-counter to the PC" that was jumped straight past.

Like for example, in some campaigns I've played, a Hellfire Glaivelock would be an expected and appropriate amount of ass-kicking. In others, it would be way too much and make the GM miserable.

So let's say I thought a campaign was in the first category, brought said Warlock, and was steamrolling through encounters. And then the GM suddenly switched to acid-proof golems for everything. I might be miffed, I might think "Why didn't you just make the enemies tougher enough to be a decent fight, instead of totally shutting me down?"

The difference from the story above is that if the GM said OOC that it was too much, I wouldn't just blow that off. So the "jerk" statement probably still stands. But it is possible to dislike hard-counters without being against any challenge.

Stuebi says he didn't made her nemesis's undefeatable, just on her level, so it sounds like they were in that middle ground.

[Ceiling_Squid]

Stuebi says he didn't made her nemesis's undefeatable, just on her level, so it sounds like they were in that middle ground.

Yes indeed. Maybe a bit too tailor-made, but it doesn't seem that unreasonable on the surface.

[Alberic Strein]

Nothing is an excuse for nothing. There are reasons though.

Here, I'll go on a limb and claim that at some point of time any of us has been a jerk.

I, for once, did my damned best to get the best out of an horrible gaming experience, even at the cost of being a total jerk to the DM. Was my behavior to annoy/hurt the DM? Nope. My dysfunctional behavior was my response to a dysfunctional unfun game. Did I annoy the DM in the process? Sure! Did I care? Nope. Was that the intended result of my actions? Nope. Was it definitely the result of my immature actions? Yup.

I won't say that there are no malevolent people in our hobby, but the most game-ruining people I've seen were certain that they were right. That they were justified. That they were on the good end of the good/evil axis.

Here, once in a shadowrun game, I rolled a character with one of the best reflexes possible and equipped with a pistol sized semi-automatic grenade launcher. It's as awesome as it sounds. And exactly as broken as it sounds. I cared for the awesome part. My DM for the latter.

Anyway I proceeded to wreck the encounters with my god-awesome initiative, dodge score, and damage thanks to grenades and edge (luck factor I used to boost my rolls) to the point that in a "defeat four bosses" mission, I destroyed 2 without getting hit a single time while my dwarf mage ally had to retreat after getting so close to death one time too many.

My reflexes score came from an official errata of the rules and usually such score was impossible to get at character creation, meaning countering me demanded some rather specific things much stronger than the average power level of the opposition (more or less, shadowrun blurs the line there)

It came down to the DM purposefully adding bits and rules to screw my character over and me b*tching about it.

So we have
1. Specific "optimized" character
2. Who screws the balance the DM had in mind for the game.
3. The player of said character b*tching when put back in line.

There are of course obvious differences with the situations, such as the DM not asking me to tone it down and taking a more aggressive (oppressive) stance on the question but there are still some goddamned similarities.

Now, has any of us NOT thought about answering with "this is what my character would do?" of course (bar specific examples) claiming so as a reason for our actions is wrong, but it's not malevolent in itself, it's just a mistake.

And has any of us, ever, EVER, reacted well to dice (seemingly) stacked against our favor? I dealt this way with a powergamer once. He left. I shouldn't have dealt with him that way. It killed the fun, and his efforts, for him.

So now I know I'm being the devil's advocate here, but:

Coming to a game all proud and sh*t about your character you designed with help of GITP forums, rocking the game, being obnoxious as sh*t with over half of the other players because you're full of yourself, taking it badly when you're told to stop being awesome only to discover the DM had (apparently) decided to screw you over either way. Suddenly your little jewel of a character is trash getting dropped every fight. Suddenly you notice over half of the group is not being nice at you (because you pissed them off earlier) suddenly you don't feel wanted in this game, the good evening turns into a bad evening. And what did you do? You didn't cheat. Okay you were a bit overbearing, but it's not your fault, you were playing your character and your character is awesome. So what? Whose fault is it? The DM of course! It's always the DM's fault and everyone (not really) had fun until he decided to screw you over. So you throw a tantrum and leave.

That's not being malevolent as sh*t. That's being an entitled insecure brat. There is no intent to hurt, simply a dysfonctional person in social situations.

[Solaris]

Here, I'll go on a limb and claim that at some point of time any of us has been a jerk.
Tangentially, just because I've been a jerk doesn't mean I'm wrong in saying someone else is a jerk. It might make me a hypocrite, but it doesn't invalidate the point.


I won't say that there are no malevolent people in our hobby, but the most game-ruining people I've seen were certain that they were right. That they were justified. That they were on the good end of the good/evil axis.

Just because someone thinks they're right doesn't make them right.
You don't have to be Evil or intend to cause harm, merely thoughtless, misguided, and not care about the consequences of your actions have for other people. If this had been a solo game we were talking about, she would've been perfectly justified in getting upset over an encounter she couldn't solo. Being as it wasn't... thoughtless malevolence is still malevolence. The only difference is that one could be cured by having the consequences pointed out to her (which they were), while the other can really only be cured by the person wanting to change.


Here, once in a shadowrun game, I rolled a character with one of the best reflexes possible and equipped with a pistol sized semi-automatic grenade launcher. It's as awesome as it sounds. And exactly as broken as it sounds. I cared for the awesome part. My DM for the latter.

Anyway I proceeded to wreck the encounters with my god-awesome initiative, dodge score, and damage thanks to grenades and edge (luck factor I used to boost my rolls) to the point that in a "defeat four bosses" mission, I destroyed 2 without getting hit a single time while my dwarf mage ally had to retreat after getting so close to death one time too many.

My reflexes score came from an official errata of the rules and usually such score was impossible to get at character creation, meaning countering me demanded some rather specific things much stronger than the average power level of the opposition (more or less, shadowrun blurs the line there)

It came down to the DM purposefully adding bits and rules to screw my character over and me b*tching about it.

So we have
1. Specific "optimized" character
2. Who screws the balance the DM had in mind for the game.
3. The player of said character b*tching when put back in line.

There are of course obvious differences with the situations, such as the DM not asking me to tone it down and taking a more aggressive (oppressive) stance on the question but there are still some goddamned similarities.

I think the most important parts here are the differences, not the similarities. While I won't go so far as to say you were right to complain about the DM inserting things to counteract your character, the DM really tried to deal with a metagame problem in-game. You murderizing everything into a fine pink mist isn't an in-game problem, it's a problem that makes it difficult for the DM to balance encounters so that everyone gets to have fun killing things rather than just your turning everything into gooey smears.
If the DM had asked you to tone it down and you'd refused, then it'd be essentially the same situation. He didn't, and instead went for the passive-aggressive non-solution of escalation. I say this is passive-aggressive and a non-solution because you, the player, weren't interested in escalation (and I think he was doing it badly, if I'm reading you correctly - ham-handed and nasty insertions rather than something played well).


Now, has any of us NOT thought about answering with "this is what my character would do?" of course (bar specific examples) claiming so as a reason for our actions is wrong, but it's not malevolent in itself, it's just a mistake.

A big, huge, enormous mistake - and one that begs the question of if that's what your character would do, why did you make a character who would do that?


And has any of us, ever, EVER, reacted well to dice (seemingly) stacked against our favor? I dealt this way with a powergamer once. He left. I shouldn't have dealt with him that way. It killed the fun, and his efforts, for him.

I actually prefer situations stacked against me. I perform best under pressure and when presented with a challenge. Others have different preferences, of course; your powergamer wasn't interested in a challenge, he wanted to win D&D. The difference of situations comes up with whether or not the GM is actually cheating or is doing his job. I'd argue that a GM who was doing it in line with the rules (for both NPC/monster creation and encounter design) and creating encounters that required the entire party rather than just one character was doing his job, whereas a character who was beaten by GM fiat (whether obviously or not) was cheating.

I'm... honestly a challenge to beat as a player. Not because of damage numbers or my ability to employ spellcasters (my characters tend to be less than spectacular on that, actually), but because of how I organize my party. Small unit tactics were my livelihood for most of my adult life, which means that I'm deadly on the offensive and hell to pin down on the defensive. I do things like jump out second-story windows (in-character and out; ironically, my unarmored elven rogue took more damage than I did myself when I dropped out a window wearing full battle-rattle; he lost a quarter of his health, while I didn't even roll an ankle - turns out 6 ranks in Tumble and a 20 Dexterity aren't all they're cracked up to be), climb up onto rooftops (nobody looks up), know the importance of maneuvering into a flanking position, control my opponent's movement, and generally make myself a pain in the ass to keep bottled in one place. If I have a team, it gets exponentially worse for the opposition. I rarely play full spellcasters, but instead prefer to play skillmonkeys and mounted warriors who can maneuver into and out of pretty much any terrain they encounter.

I've had DMs react in different ways to this. One, which I disliked immensely, ruled that I could only speak on my turn (never mind that our characters would be knowledgeable about this sort of thing, more so than the players); it was oppressive, heavy-handed, frustrating (some of the other players were amazingly stupid when it came to tactical combat), and applied only to me. He wasn't interested in maintaining the challenge for the players (my brain is not an I Win button), just in protecting his monsters from my ability to maximize our tactical advantages over them and use terrain against them. Another reacted by scaling up numbers of combatants, which slowed things to a slog but managed to slow me down even if it couldn't quite pin me down. My favorite, though, was how the opposition forces reacted during the IRL training where I learned this stuff: By playing it just as smart as I did. I've only had one DM who managed that.


So now I know I'm being the devil's advocate here, but:

Coming to a game all proud and sh*t about your character you designed with help of GITP forums, rocking the game, being obnoxious as sh*t with over half of the other players because you're full of yourself, taking it badly when you're told to stop being awesome only to discover the DM had (apparently) decided to screw you over either way. Suddenly your little jewel of a character is trash getting dropped every fight. Suddenly you notice over half of the group is not being nice at you (because you pissed them off earlier) suddenly you don't feel wanted in this game, the good evening turns into a bad evening. And what did you do? You didn't cheat. Okay you were a bit overbearing, but it's not your fault, you were playing your character and your character is awesome. So what? Whose fault is it? The DM of course! It's always the DM's fault and everyone (not really) had fun until he decided to screw you over. So you throw a tantrum and leave.

That's not being malevolent as sh*t. That's being an entitled insecure brat. There is no intent to hurt, simply a dysfonctional person in social situations.

No, at that point you've crossed the line from 'dysfunctional in social situations' into 'actively trying to wreck everyone else's fun for slights real and imagined', which is malevolent. Just because you think you're justified doesn't make you right.

[Vertharrad]

Weighing in on the part of players that don't like their fun being taken away by single characters...you brought in a single man Rambo army and made everyone feel like luggage? Then you want to blame the DM when they react to your escalation and get the other players miffed at you? You may not be evil(of which I'd have to see a particular event to judge) but you definitely deserve what you got. I have been that 5th wheel piece of luggage because a certain character stepped all over my characetrs toes. Would I have smiled maliciously as you got stomped? Yes. NoOne likes being degraded to henchmen status...NoOne. The GM didn't create the game in hours for you to crap all over it in mere minutes...have some consideration of others. And if you must know...I have been on both sides of the screen. This doesn't make me biased to either players or GM's.

[Alberic Strein]

Tangentially, just because I've been a jerk doesn't mean I'm wrong in saying someone else is a jerk. It might make me a hypocrite, but it doesn't invalidate the point.
Perish the thought. (yes, I know it's an antiquated saying which sounds satyrical now, but I like it, and I'm being sincere)
I don't even think it makes you a hypocrite. If you thought that this behaviour made that person a jerk but when you were doing it it didn't, then it would be hypocritical. This was mainly an opening for my "not so different" stance on this.



Just because someone thinks they're right doesn't make them right.
You don't have to be Evil or intend to cause harm, merely thoughtless, misguided, and not care about the consequences of your actions have for other people. If this had been a solo game we were talking about, she would've been perfectly justified in getting upset over an encounter she couldn't solo. Being as it wasn't... thoughtless malevolence is still malevolence. The only difference is that one could be cured by having the consequences pointed out to her (which they were), while the other can really only be cured by the person wanting to change.
I feel this is our main point of contention. I may be wrong and I am not smarter than the other guy, but to me at least, hurting others without meaning to through your flaws is both unavoidable and not malevolent, if a proof of your stupidity and/or lack of empathy.

I won't argue that thinking you're right doesn't make you right, though.


I think the most important parts here are the differences, not the similarities. While I won't go so far as to say you were right to complain about the DM inserting things to counteract your character, the DM really tried to deal with a metagame problem in-game. You murderizing everything into a fine pink mist isn't an in-game problem, it's a problem that makes it difficult for the DM to balance encounters so that everyone gets to have fun killing things rather than just your turning everything into gooey smears.
If the DM had asked you to tone it down and you'd refused, then it'd be essentially the same situation. He didn't, and instead went for the passive-aggressive non-solution of escalation. I say this is passive-aggressive and a non-solution because you, the player, weren't interested in escalation (and I think he was doing it badly, if I'm reading you correctly - ham-handed and nasty insertions rather than something played well).
I want to think so. I want to think that I am as far away as possible from that sorry excuse for a player in the story we were told. Still, I don't think that my DM was particularly wrong. Instead of pulling me aside and telling me "stop playing what you want to play, I'm new at that shadowrun thing and I CAN'T DEAL WITH IT" he decided to take matters into his hands and nerf me to preserve both player equality (I remembered wrong, it was a 3 boss mission, and we only killed 2, the 2 my characters turned into paste without suffering the smallest wound and we ended the mission there) his story telling power and my character the way I had designed it. He did his best, but we were new to the game and I felt like a constant batch of nerfs was headed my way as soon as I did anything.

Also, I don't think I'm playing too much on words when I say that my DM implicitely passive-aggressively told me to switch weapons of choice with the constant batch of nerfs.

As for looking at similarities and dissimilarities, I kinda think they're both school of thoughts. I privilegized the similarities approach because it's the one I feel uncomfortable with, in this situation.


A big, huge, enormous mistake - and one that begs the question of if that's what your character would do, why did you make a character who would do that?
Definitely. And hiding behind your character's supposed psyche is ridiculous enough, but as an inexperienced DM before getting in these forums, I never once thought about calling bullsh*t on that like I should have. It can be surprisingly hard to deal with. Or surprisingly convincing to a player, even more one dysfunctional. Remember M? She would use that. A lot.


I actually prefer situations stacked against me. I perform best under pressure and when presented with a challenge. Others have different preferences, of course; your powergamer wasn't interested in a challenge, he wanted to win D&D. The difference of situations comes up with whether or not the GM is actually cheating or is doing his job. I'd argue that a GM who was doing it in line with the rules (for both NPC/monster creation and encounter design) and creating encounters that required the entire party rather than just one character was doing his job, whereas a character who was beaten by GM fiat (whether obviously or not) was cheating.
He wanted to win MRQII. Irrelevant to our discussion, but eh, for comprehensivity's sake.
Likewise I like difficult situations, but when I fail at solving them... I feel I failed as a player. I can understand the desire to create a kickass character in order not to fail at the game. Or at least feel like one failed at the game.


I'm... honestly a challenge to beat as a player. Not because of damage numbers or my ability to employ spellcasters (my characters tend to be less than spectacular on that, actually), but because of how I organize my party. Small unit tactics were my livelihood for most of my adult life, which means that I'm deadly on the offensive and hell to pin down on the defensive. I do things like jump out second-story windows (in-character and out; ironically, my unarmored elven rogue took more damage than I did myself when I dropped out a window wearing full battle-rattle; he lost a quarter of his health, while I didn't even roll an ankle - turns out 6 ranks in Tumble and a 20 Dexterity aren't all they're cracked up to be), climb up onto rooftops (nobody looks up), know the importance of maneuvering into a flanking position, control my opponent's movement, and generally make myself a pain in the ass to keep bottled in one place. If I have a team, it gets exponentially worse for the opposition. I rarely play full spellcasters, but instead prefer to play skillmonkeys and mounted warriors who can maneuver into and out of pretty much any terrain they encounter.
Don't, ever, try to jump out of a window at shadowrun. Ground hits harder than an anti-tank round. Besides that, playing with you sounds freaking awesome.


I've had DMs react in different ways to this. One, which I disliked immensely, ruled that I could only speak on my turn (never mind that our characters would be knowledgeable about this sort of thing, more so than the players); it was oppressive, heavy-handed, frustrating (some of the other players were amazingly stupid when it came to tactical combat), and applied only to me. He wasn't interested in maintaining the challenge for the players (my brain is not an I Win button), just in protecting his monsters from my ability to maximize our tactical advantages over them and use terrain against them. Another reacted by scaling up numbers of combatants, which slowed things to a slog but managed to slow me down even if it couldn't quite pin me down. My favorite, though, was how the opposition forces reacted during the IRL training where I learned this stuff: By playing it just as smart as I did. I've only had one DM who managed that.
Never thought I would regret my lack of understanding on guerilla tactics and how they're gimping my ability to offer kickass combat situations to players.


No, at that point you've crossed the line from 'dysfunctional in social situations' into 'actively trying to wreck everyone else's fun for slights real and imagined', which is malevolent. Just because you think you're justified doesn't make you right.
Aaaaaand, main contention point again. Again, thinking you're justified doesn't make you right, that's a given. My whole point was to put ourselves in her shoes, of course I described her in a much more positive light than she probably is, but that's to draw a parallel between her behaviour, which we find abusive, and ours, which in some cases is not going to be that different. Or not as different as we would want it to be.

While a colossal jerk, what she did was:
Come to a game with an overpowered character
Thought kicking ass with that character was justified and thus asking her to kick it down a peg was wrong
Flipped her sh*t at the DM when he pulled the Nemesis system on her, and tried to convince the rest of the team to leave the game with her.

Is she justified in any of that? No, definitely not.

But it doesn't strike me as inevitably malevolent in itself. Or something THAT far from my own behaviour at times. (maybe I should watch myself more)

My point is that in her behaviour there is not a clear, 100% certified desire to ruin anybody's fun. There may be no desire for malevolence. There is a possibility that her behaviour was motivated merely by the desire to be awesome, and she was either blind, or uncaring at the consequence of ruining other people's fun, but that it wasn't the intent. Even in her last action, trying to set a mutiny, there is not definitely a desire to ruin fun. There are droves of stories about bad DMs, many of which have players see the games as being 100% unfun and a chore to keep attending. Wanting to end one of those games is not considered wrecking fun, since there is no fun to be had. I don't even think that someone thinking an unfun game for them is just an unfun game and thus should end is pushing stupidity that far.

Long story short, I am of the mind to think that if there is no will to hurt, no desire to ruin other people's fun as a goal, then while you can be a jerk, an idiot, and many more unflattering adjectives and nouns, but you're not an evil malevolent basterd, you're just stupid and can't even realise your own stupidity through the glass of your own self-entitlement.

So yeah, maybe she is just a malevolent person, there are definitely clues pointing towards that. But maybe, just maybe, she is just someone like you and me who happened to behave stupidly, so, so, so very stupidly.

And let's face it, we all act stupid sometimes.

I don't know, I guess that putting the "malevolent" label on her distances her from us too far for comfort. For me at least.

[Susano-wo]

She told you to keep up. You did. She flipped. My conclusion: She lied to you. She did not want you to keep up, but to 'lose.' When you did not, it ruined her plans, and apparent superiority complex. (disclaimer: all conclusions are based on referenced poster accurately depicting events)

And I think your response was beautiful. You kept up and made the rest of the party useful. The fact that they still made it through the encounters is evidence that it wasn't just you curb stomping the players. Maybe if she had made more friends someone would have been willing to trade opponents :smallamused: (what system was this, BTW?)

[LooseCannoneer]

The worst player I ever encountered was a G, all the way to, "real men Fight." So only real men play Fighters. All of his characters had penalties to INT, and often WIS, because real men don't need their head to fight.

So, in one campaign that reached level 20, the DM decided he would give one piece of epic-level loot to everyone. G got a +5 Vorpal Greatsword that could cast True Strike on him 5/day. When the DM gave my Bard a Cloak of Charisma +10, G flipped out, demanding that he get it. The combat went something like this:

G: Give that to me, or I will attack!
Me: Passed a note to the GM saying that I prepared to use Bardic Music Fascinate if G attacked.
G: I've given you long enough to give me what I deserve. I attack!
GM: You're fascinated. He (the bard) prepared to use fascinate on you if you attacked him. Since you have +5 to Will saves, and he has over a +30 bonus to perform, you are incapable of making the save.
G: How the hell did he get such an OP ability? He's cheating! I don't have anything like that!
Me: I have one level of Bard.
G proceeds to look through the rules, then determine that it is, in fact, legal.
G: Why didn't I get anything like that?
Everyone: You're playing a Fighter, and they don't get stuff like that.
G: Okay, I see how this works. I wait until the fascination effect ends, then I attack. 20! I'm sorry, but you died.
Me: Hang on, you can't time skip past that if I still want to take actions. I use Bardic Music suggestion to suggest that you take an oath not to harm me or anyone I say you can't harm.
G: I ignore your suggestion.
GM: You can't. Its another Bardic Music thing you can't make the saving throw for since you didn't take the Iron Will feat I suggested for you!
G: Okay, fine. I wait until the suggestion ends, then attack, using one of my True Strikes. Its a total of 57! I know you can't block that!
Wizard: You activated my contingency.
G: What's a contingency?
Wizard: Its a spell that activates another spell when conditions are met. I cast one to go off if you attacked the Bard.
G: Fine, I'll deal with another player incapacitating me. What do you do?
Wizard: Actually, we didn't want you to attack him again, so we agreed that it would be lethal this time. I Plane Shift you to the Negative Energy Plane. Make a Will save.
G, after failing the Will save: How do you all keep doing this? I'm not making any Will saves! How is that happening!
GM: You only have a +5 to Will. You have a negative WIS modifier, so that dropped you from +6 to +5.
G: So, what happens on the Negative Energy Plane?
GM: Unless someone wants to plane shift themselves to you then plane shift you out, you die. Anyone?
G: That's BS! How do I just die!
GM: The negative energy seeps into you, causing you to rapidly shrivel and die. You are raised as a wight.

G then proceeded to physically attack both the Wizard's player and me. He was thrown out quite forcefully and never invited back.

[Argentum]

The worst player I ever encountered was a G, all the way to, "real men Fight." So only real men play Fighters. All of his characters had penalties to INT, and often WIS, because real men don't need their head to fight.

So, in one campaign that reached level 20, the DM decided he would give one piece of epic-level loot to everyone. G got a +5 Vorpal Greatsword that could cast True Strike on him 5/day. When the DM gave my Bard a Cloak of Charisma +10, G flipped out, demanding that he get it. The combat went something like this:

G: Give that to me, or I will attack!
Me: Passed a note to the GM saying that I prepared to use Bardic Music Fascinate if G attacked.
G: I've given you long enough to give me what I deserve. I attack!
GM: You're fascinated. He (the bard) prepared to use fascinate on you if you attacked him. Since you have +5 to Will saves, and he has over a +30 bonus to perform, you are incapable of making the save.
G: How the hell did he get such an OP ability? He's cheating! I don't have anything like that!
Me: I have one level of Bard.
G proceeds to look through the rules, then determine that it is, in fact, legal.
G: Why didn't I get anything like that?
Everyone: You're playing a Fighter, and they don't get stuff like that.
G: Okay, I see how this works. I wait until the fascination effect ends, then I attack. 20! I'm sorry, but you died.
Me: Hang on, you can't time skip past that if I still want to take actions. I use Bardic Music suggestion to suggest that you take an oath not to harm me or anyone I say you can't harm.
G: I ignore your suggestion.
GM: You can't. Its another Bardic Music thing you can't make the saving throw for since you didn't take the Iron Will feat I suggested for you!
G: Okay, fine. I wait until the suggestion ends, then attack, using one of my True Strikes. Its a total of 57! I know you can't block that!
Wizard: You activated my contingency.
G: What's a contingency?
Wizard: Its a spell that activates another spell when conditions are met. I cast one to go off if you attacked the Bard.
G: Fine, I'll deal with another player incapacitating me. What do you do?
Wizard: Actually, we didn't want you to attack him again, so we agreed that it would be lethal this time. I Plane Shift you to the Negative Energy Plane. Make a Will save.
G, after failing the Will save: How do you all keep doing this? I'm not making any Will saves! How is that happening!
GM: You only have a +5 to Will. You have a negative WIS modifier, so that dropped you from +6 to +5.
G: So, what happens on the Negative Energy Plane?
GM: Unless someone wants to plane shift themselves to you then plane shift you out, you die. Anyone?
G: That's BS! How do I just die!
GM: The negative energy seeps into you, causing you to rapidly shrivel and die. You are raised as a wight.

G then proceeded to physically attack both the Wizard's player and me. He was thrown out quite forcefully and never invited back.

If nothing else, you can at least say that he roleplayed the brainless brute very well.

[Kesnit]

The worst player I ever encountered was a G, all the way to, "real men Fight." So only real men play Fighters. All of his characters had penalties to INT, and often WIS, because real men don't need their head to fight.

So, in one campaign that reached level 20, the DM decided he would give one piece of epic-level loot to everyone. G got a +5 Vorpal Greatsword that could cast True Strike on him 5/day. When the DM gave my Bard a Cloak of Charisma +10, G flipped out, demanding that he get it. The combat went something like this:

(snip)

G then proceeded to physically attack both the Wizard's player and me. He was thrown out quite forcefully and never invited back.

How did G get to LVL 20 without realizing what the other party members could do?

[Cazero]

What I don't get is why he would bother getting a cloak of charisma. Dumping both INT and WIS should have saved more than enough point to have a good base charisma, and it's an useless dump stat for a dumb fighter.

[LooseCannoneer]

G was a miracle of ignoring why all the enemies disappeared. He listened as the GM described the enemies, failed the appropriate knowledge check to identify them, then just repeated I full-attack whenever someone said his name. I don't really know how he ignored our out-of-combat abilities, though. I think he was just surprised that we actually would try to, "Fight the Fighting Man."

[LooseCannoneer]

What I don't get is why he would bother getting a cloak of charisma. Dumping both INT and WIS should have saved more than enough point to have a good base charisma, and it's an useless dump stat for a dumb fighter.

G would want random stuff. The wizard lost a Metamagic rod to G once or twice. Every so often, he would say, "That's mine" to stuf that sounded cool to him.

[turbo164]

What I don't get is why he would bother getting a cloak of charisma. Dumping both INT and WIS should have saved more than enough point to have a good base charisma, and it's an useless dump stat for a dumb fighter.

Capes look awesome, and Charisma helps pick up chicks! Totally worth teamkilling for! #bigdumbfighterlogic

[(Un)Inspired]

G sound pretty hilarious.

Losing a fight in game? Time to take it to RL! I kinda like to imagine you guys easy dispatched him in reality as well.

[goto124]

I just realised he took it OoCly.

I shouldn't laught at something like that really.

[oshi]

I'm... honestly a challenge to beat as a player. Not because of damage numbers or my ability to employ spellcasters (my characters tend to be less than spectacular on that, actually), but because of how I organize my party. Small unit tactics were my livelihood for most of my adult life, which means that I'm deadly on the offensive and hell to pin down on the defensive. I do things like jump out second-story windows (in-character and out; ironically, my unarmored elven rogue took more damage than I did myself when I dropped out a window wearing full battle-rattle; he lost a quarter of his health, while I didn't even roll an ankle - turns out 6 ranks in Tumble and a 20 Dexterity aren't all they're cracked up to be), climb up onto rooftops (nobody looks up), know the importance of maneuvering into a flanking position, control my opponent's movement, and generally make myself a pain in the ass to keep bottled in one place. If I have a team, it gets exponentially worse for the opposition. I rarely play full spellcasters, but instead prefer to play skillmonkeys and mounted warriors who can maneuver into and out of pretty much any terrain they encounter.


That sounds really interesting and I'd love some more examples of how you manage this with the constraints of turn-based systems and fairly limited sets of "Actions" that can be performed in most roleplaying games if you don't mind.

[Traab]

What I don't get is why he would bother getting a cloak of charisma. Dumping both INT and WIS should have saved more than enough point to have a good base charisma, and it's an useless dump stat for a dumb fighter.

See, if I hadnt read further down the replies I would have said, "It has a higher number on it than his sword, therefore he wants it!" That sounds right about up his alley. I do like how the group handled it. Honestly, some people are too stupid to be allowed to interact with others.

[Talakeal]

The worst player I ever encountered was a G, all the way to, "real men Fight." So only real men play Fighters. All of his characters had penalties to INT, and often WIS, because real men don't need their head to fight.

So, in one campaign that reached level 20, the DM decided he would give one piece of epic-level loot to everyone. G got a +5 Vorpal Greatsword that could cast True Strike on him 5/day. When the DM gave my Bard a Cloak of Charisma +10, G flipped out, demanding that he get it. The combat went something like this:

G: Give that to me, or I will attack!
Me: Passed a note to the GM saying that I prepared to use Bardic Music Fascinate if G attacked.
G: I've given you long enough to give me what I deserve. I attack!
GM: You're fascinated. He (the bard) prepared to use fascinate on you if you attacked him. Since you have +5 to Will saves, and he has over a +30 bonus to perform, you are incapable of making the save.
G: How the hell did he get such an OP ability? He's cheating! I don't have anything like that!
Me: I have one level of Bard.
G proceeds to look through the rules, then determine that it is, in fact, legal.
G: Why didn't I get anything like that?
Everyone: You're playing a Fighter, and they don't get stuff like that.
G: Okay, I see how this works. I wait until the fascination effect ends, then I attack. 20! I'm sorry, but you died.
Me: Hang on, you can't time skip past that if I still want to take actions. I use Bardic Music suggestion to suggest that you take an oath not to harm me or anyone I say you can't harm.
G: I ignore your suggestion.
GM: You can't. Its another Bardic Music thing you can't make the saving throw for since you didn't take the Iron Will feat I suggested for you!
G: Okay, fine. I wait until the suggestion ends, then attack, using one of my True Strikes. Its a total of 57! I know you can't block that!
Wizard: You activated my contingency.
G: What's a contingency?
Wizard: Its a spell that activates another spell when conditions are met. I cast one to go off if you attacked the Bard.
G: Fine, I'll deal with another player incapacitating me. What do you do?
Wizard: Actually, we didn't want you to attack him again, so we agreed that it would be lethal this time. I Plane Shift you to the Negative Energy Plane. Make a Will save.
G, after failing the Will save: How do you all keep doing this? I'm not making any Will saves! How is that happening!
GM: You only have a +5 to Will. You have a negative WIS modifier, so that dropped you from +6 to +5.
G: So, what happens on the Negative Energy Plane?
GM: Unless someone wants to plane shift themselves to you then plane shift you out, you die. Anyone?
G: That's BS! How do I just die!
GM: The negative energy seeps into you, causing you to rapidly shrivel and die. You are raised as a wight.

G then proceeded to physically attack both the Wizard's player and me. He was thrown out quite forcefully and never invited back.

How old was everyone involved? Because this really sounds like the sort of immature nonsense my group engaged in when we were 12-15.

Now, let me start out by saying I would never attack another player over loot or call dibs on something that was clearly meant for another character. I have however , far too many times, seen other players get into lethal fights over loot.

I actually can see why G was upset. Playing up 3.Xs hatred of fighters and ganging up on him to kill of his character is a pretty **** move when any one of you should have been able to render him impotent. Also, knowing the the wizard had previously set up a contingency for just such an occasion implies there is a lot more malice going on. Honestly I probably would have lost my temper and hit someone if this had happened to me when I was a teenager.

Also, would anyone actually hold someone to an oath they make while under mind controlling magic?


On a related story, I remember one time when two other PCs got into a fight over loot and where going to kill one another. I cast a suggestion spell on someone suggesting he stop fighting and discuss the issue reasonably. His response was to stop fighting for one second, tell the other player "I refuse to back down," and then claiming that broke the spell because the conditions were met. The DM agreed, and he ended up killing the other player and refusing to party with me anymore for trying to take away his free will.

[Milo v3]

Also, knowing the the wizard had previously set up a contingency for just such an occasion implies there is a lot more malice going on.

Actually, I think he sent up the contingency while G was fascinated.

[Sith_Happens]

Actually, I think he sent up the contingency while G was fascinated.

That's what readied actions are for, as demonstrating in that very post. The contingency was definitely set up well in advance of that incident, presumably due to there having been previous ones like it.

[Arbane]

I'm... honestly a challenge to beat as a player. Not because of damage numbers or my ability to employ spellcasters (my characters tend to be less than spectacular on that, actually), but because of how I organize my party. Small unit tactics were my livelihood for most of my adult life, which means that I'm deadly on the offensive and hell to pin down on the defensive.

Could you make a thread for 'small unit tactics for adventurers'? I'm sure a lot of people here could use the advice. (Including me.)

[Talakeal]

Actually, I think he sent up the contingency while G was fascinated.

The whole situation seems weird to me. By RAW contingency has a ten minute casting time and can only duplicate self only spells. Also, Fascinate automatically breaks if you take a hostile action towards someone (such as casting a spell), and I can't see how a suggestion spell could force a creature to make and obey a binding oath.

Not calling anyone out here, it just seems like everyone (including the DM) was teaming up to get G and playing fast and easy with the rules. Of course, he may well have deserved it, and there are a thousand perfectly legal ways a bard and a wizard could defeat fighter at level 20 (especially with DM collusion), I am just saying that I can see why he would be feeling picked on and lost his temper.


Could you make a thread for 'small unit tactics for adventurers'? I'm sure a lot of people here could use the advice. (Including me.)

I would love to see such a thing. I was almost considering asking you to sit in on a few sessions of my game to help my players break out of their self induced aversion to tactical play.

[Argentum]

The whole situation seems weird to me. By RAW contingency has a ten minute casting time and can only duplicate self only spells. Also, Fascinate automatically breaks if you take a hostile action towards someone (such as casting a spell), and I can't see how a suggestion spell could force a creature to make and obey a binding oath.

Not calling anyone out here, it just seems like everyone (including the DM) was teaming up to get G and playing fast and easy with the rules. Of course, he may well have deserved it, and there are a thousand perfectly legal ways a bard and a wizard could defeat fighter at level 20 (especially with DM collusion), I am just saying that I can see why he would be feeling picked on and lost his temper.


Not that the Fighter didn't have it coming when he's apparently already done this several times in the past.

[LooseCannoneer]

Not that the Fighter didn't have it coming when he's apparently already done this several times in the past.

G did this sort of stuff repeatedly, this was just the time I said, "No, you don't get this, this is mine." So G attacked, and I believe we were far more merciful than we would have been if this was an NPC. G got a huge warning with the bardic music suggestion.

I believe the contingency was worded as, " When G attacks someone I don't want him to attack," and the contingent spell was Celerity.

The suggestion was to make and follow through on an oath for a year (just for 20 hours of breathing and planning). The wizard had plenty of time to cast contingency.


How old was everyone involved? Because this really sounds like the sort of immature nonsense my group engaged in when we were 12-15.

We were all 22-24.


Also, would anyone actually hold someone to an oath they make while under mind controlling magic?


Again, that was just a Suggestion made to get him to stop attacking me for 20 hours. This was the party deciding, IC, that we would not adventure with someone perfectly willing to kill us. I do believe that is permitted, plus Plane Shift was one of the Wizard's last spells when the Suggestion ran out, so it was the best choice.


Of course, he may well have deserved it, and there are a thousand perfectly legal ways a bard and a wizard could defeat fighter at level 20 (especially with DM collusion

Please explain to me how forcing a series of absurdly high Will saves on a Fighter with a penalty to WIS is illegal and would require GM collusion, because everything here seems to be perfectly legal.

[Susano-wo]

Talakeal, I think what you are missing is that these area series of spells, and after each one was cast G tried to timeskip to the end of the spell (as though everyone just sat there for the duration :smallsigh:) so that he could murder the character. Then the players would respond with another spell. until it finally came to "he is going to kill us after the spells are done no matter what."

The only thing sketchy is that Loose seems to imply that he didn't get to roll his saves for some of the spells as his saves were too low (which, incidentally, Loose, taking iron will and boosting his WIS by a few points would have done nothing for :smallamused:), whereas according to the rules, a 20 is always a success. Still probably would have gone down the same way. Or he possibly would have killed one character and the others would have destroyed him, perhaps skipping right to planeshift, given his murderous action.

[LooseCannoneer]

Talakeal, I think what you are missing is that these area series of spells, and after each one was cast G tried to timeskip to the end of the spell (as though everyone just sat there for the duration :smallsigh:) so that he could murder the character. Then the players would respond with another spell. until it finally came to "he is going to kill us after the spells are done no matter what."

The only thing sketchy is that Loose seems to imply that he didn't get to roll his saves for some of the spells as his saves were too low (which, incidentally, Loose, taking iron will and boosting his WIS by a few points would have done nothing for :smallamused:), whereas according to the rules, a 20 is always a success. Still probably would have gone down the same way. Or he possibly would have killed one character and the others would have destroyed him, perhaps skipping right to planeshift, given his murderous action.

The GM houseruled that saves follow the lack of automatic success and failure for skills if the difference of the bonuses to the save and the thing forcing a save differed by 20 or more, because a Psion Telepath 20 should have more than a 95% chance of dominating a 1st level Commoner, and the same Psion Telepath shouldn't fall to a 12th level sorcerer 5% of the time.

Come to think of it, the only thing in his campaigns that had a different affect on a 20 is the Vorpal sword G had.

[AmewTheFox]

Had an idea for that, namely:

>Roll d20
>If 20, roll again
>If 20, roll again
>If 20, super-critical success.

It's a 1/100 shot, from a probability mathematics standpoint. Unless I'm wrong.

I don't like the no-win scenario.

[Solaris]

That sounds really interesting and I'd love some more examples of how you manage this with the constraints of turn-based systems and fairly limited sets of "Actions" that can be performed in most roleplaying games if you don't mind.


Could you make a thread for 'small unit tactics for adventurers'? I'm sure a lot of people here could use the advice. (Including me.)


I would love to see such a thing. I was almost considering asking you to sit in on a few sessions of my game to help my players break out of their self induced aversion to tactical play.

I'll give it a think and see what I can come up with for pointers. I'll post it in another thread when I've come up with it.
The basic gist of it is having skill ranks (or a good STR/DEX and a willingness to eat a bad result every now and again) in athletic/acrobatic skills and considering position on the battlefield in more than just two dimensions.

I will say this, though: It falls completely apart at higher levels when spellcasters start to really own the game. It doesn't matter if you're ambushing them from the ceiling when they're rewriting reality. (Did you know it's possible for a grown man in body armor to stand on a doorframe? That group of privates never forgot to look up after that. The next group, on the other hand... Well, I learned a lesson about not showing off and trying to do a Batman-drop onto the last man.)

[LibraryOgre]

Had an idea for that, namely:

>Roll d20
>If 20, roll again
>If 20, roll again
>If 20, super-critical success.

It's a 1/100 shot, from a probability mathematics standpoint. Unless I'm wrong.

I don't like the no-win scenario.

You're really, really, really wrong.

A 20 following a 20 is a 1 in 400. A 20 after that is 1 in 8000.

[McBars]

Probability of rolling n number of 20's =1/(20^n) where n = # of 20's rolled

[Vertharrad]

You're really, really, really wrong.

A 20 following a 20 is a 1 in 400. A 20 after that is 1 in 8000.

And I've seen it happen...personally when our old group witnessed a friend roll 3 20's back to back.
He also rolled 2 20's and a confirm with the same die...he syas the die disappeared right after that...I wonder why.

[Talakeal]

Please explain to me how forcing a series of absurdly high Will saves on a Fighter with a penalty to WIS is illegal and would require GM collusion, because everything here seems to be perfectly legal.

Again, I wasn't there, and I don't know what rules you play by, so I am just going off my impression from your post.

But by RAW fascinate breaks as soon as you (or anyone else) attempt to cast a spell on the subject, and contingency cannot contain spells that target another person.

Also, that seems to me to be way outside of what a Suggestion spell can do, but then again that is a pretty subjectively written spell.


Also, it seems really strange that a player would have gotten to epic levels without ever realizing that only having a +5 bonus to will saves is a really bad thing, or any sort of save boosting item or immunity to mind control, teleportation, or energy drain. Nothing illegal there, just weird.

[Milo v3]

Again, I wasn't there, and I don't know what rules you play by, so I am just going off my impression from your post.

But by RAW fascinate breaks as soon as you (or anyone else) attempt to cast a spell on the subject, and contingency cannot contain spells that target another person.

Also, that seems to me to be way outside of what a Suggestion spell can do, but then again that is a pretty subjectively written spell.

One of the bardic abilities lets you use suggestion on people you have fascinated, and he clarified that the contigent spell was Celerity.

[Talakeal]

One of the bardic abilities lets you use suggestion on people you have fascinated, and he clarified that the contigent spell was Celerity.

Ah, so he did, I missed that. Thanks.

I am not used to bards being able to use suggestion at first level, so I assumed it was through the spell; I assume this was in 3.0 when you could get better bardic music simply by raising your skills then?

[LooseCannoneer]

Ah, so he did, I missed that. Thanks.

I am not used to bards being able to use suggestion at first level, so I assumed it was through the spell; I assume this was in 3.0 when you could get better bardic music simply by raising your skills then?

No, it was 3.5. We were all level 20, and we spent levels 1-19 trying to get G to take Iron Will, or we were getting rid of mind-control on G.

[AmewTheFox]

You're really, really, really wrong.

A 20 following a 20 is a 1 in 400. A 20 after that is 1 in 8000.

See, this is why I'm not a statistician.

Less than 1% was almost what I was talking about. (Namely level 20 Psion has five percent chance of level one Commoner perfectly resisting mind wierdness) If anything, my incorrect statistic was probably closer to what I was talking about.

[Sliver]

What I find weird isn't G's character getting to level 20 without him realizing how the game works, but the fact that this was the first time you didn't let G get away with bullying and apparently kept inviting him to games up to that point. According to your descriptions, an empty chair would have been better than him.

[wicketman8]

Oh let me tell you a story of one person in our group. Let's call him S.

Our group can rarely get together so we play through Roll 20. As our GM was trying to get everything ready on the page S decided to slow everyone down. They rolled thousands of dice at once, lagging every computer in our group, and then decided to draw on everything whenever we were about to do anything. Finally we got started, our characters had left off in the middle of an intense fight but when it got to S's turn they seemed not to respond. Then they started raging over the mic about how he was trying to farm for a gun and some noob killed him, at which point we realized he was playing an FPS rather than paying attention to the story.

Later (we had still done barely anything this session) S decided to stop the whole game to play Clash of Clans. And the worst part is that the GM encouraged it by playing with him. When we finally got on track we actually managed to get some stuff done, at which point they began to tell us exactly what we were doing. All of us were somewhat confused, especially when the GM told them that they couldn't tell us what to do. In their favor S took this in stride but it's not as though this were his first time roleplaying.

Other things that S did:
His Mutants and Masterminds character was literally Groot. Not a copy of Groot, but literally Groot, despite the clear OC only rule.
Got mad when others didn't know his stats.
Forced everyone else to create his character.
Got mad when character did not resemble Groot well enough, despite our explanations that it was a low superhuman game.

All in all I'm surprised he even came, and I haven't played with him again since.

[LooseCannoneer]

What I find weird isn't G's character getting to level 20 without him realizing how the game works, but the fact that this was the first time you didn't let G get away with bullying and apparently kept inviting him to games up to that point. According to your descriptions, an empty chair would have been better than him.

An empty chair would have known to take the advice about raising Will.

[Stuebi]

I'm not gonna blow this psot full of quotes, I'm sure people will pick up if they ahve anything to say.

First of all, no the buffed enemies werent "undefeatable". The main thing she used to blow the encounters by taking advantage of her optimum range. The dark eye has optimum ranges for different weapons. Spears, for example, have an optimum range that is slightly away from the enemy (which makes sense). As long as she stood in that range, enemies had penalties on blocking her. She took a range of feats and stats that pretty much allowed her to effectively stay at that range, as long as she didnt roll terribly bad. My encounters were designed for a Beginners Party, and acting on advice I got from experienced DM's, I kept the amount of skills and feats on enemy groups low. Regular Bandits and Outlaws. For the entire group, except the lady in question, this meant they were stronger than the individual grunt, which was balanced with usually having them outnumber the group by one or two, or giving them a different advantage. (Altough it's alo possible for the group to outmaneuver or ambush the foe. We had one or two "curbstomps", where the rogue-character set up a very decent trap and the group positioned itself smartly. But I do think this is fair and should be encouraged, smart play should feel good, imho.)

First session, this worked completely fine. We had some wounds, a close call or two saved by teamwork, and the group feeling good about their victory. But as I wrote, once C was in the picture, she blew practically every challenge. And I do feel she inserted herself very agressively into every situation. I mean, I dont know if I can blame her for that. If your character knows a solution, it's logical to step forward and take action. But if interactions and speech are about 50% one player, and the other 50 divided amongst the other 4, I think something's wrong. And what miffed me most was her reaction after I talked to her. It was basically a scoff. "Not my problem.". It's an attitude that tends to make me angry. I put work into this. We had a nice round before you came. I culd just boot you right now. But this is a hobby, we're here to have fun, so I'll try to fix it.

And then I get the equivalent of spitting into my cereal and inviting the others to do it too. Really?

Her buffed counterparts basically had a few things that allowed them to actually muster up to her. I had hoped to swap two flies with one strike. Her having to rely on the rest of the group, and thereby getting the others some much needed "screentime". But she didnt take it well. I'm fairly sure it was a misunderstanding. That she wanted something else, or thought I buffed the guys too much. But she doesnt even talk to me right now, so I really dont see myself responsible to clear that up.


Also, to stay on topic, I asked my buddy for his worst player, and he came up with two!


First one was the in his words classic "only bad guy in the group". Early on it worked fine, for the most part. A bit of underhanded gold here and there, secret agenda and he didnt try to be "Pen and Paper Sauron.". It went bad after the very first time he was found out tough. The party knight found out that he had stolen some gold from the party-treasury. He refused to let him handle any affairs concerning gold. This went on for two sessions, before Bad guy asked, in front of the whole table no less, that the knight's player leave, since he was being too antagonistic. DM tried to be diplomatic, and was confronted with "Either he goes, or you people leave my house.". Yelp.

Second one was a couple starting a relationsship-argument on the table. Including matters in the bedroom. Color me happy, because I'd take C any day over something like that. Most awkward session ever.

[Mutazoia]

I've played with a few bad players over the years, but most recently I've had the dubious pleasure of gaming with X. (actually I've played with X twice in two different groups.) Rather than type out a novel detailing the joy that is gaming with X...I'll just list a few highlights


X claimed to have been in the military but could not stand to be told to do anything, and would throw a tantrum every time. Even if it was something as innocent as "you've got to try this" he would puff up and yell "I don't have to do anything! Stop telling me what to do."
X would go ape @!#& if anything bad happened to his characters, even if they were direct results of his own actions. (He had a character commit suicide because he got one measly point of taint in an L5R game....after 5 minutes of whining about it OOC.)
X would derail a campaign at the drop of a hat. Once during a SWD6 game, on a mission to recover critical information about rebel sleeper agents from the empire, X decided his smuggler would, instead of attempting to track the imperial agent's ship, much rather go shopping on the other side of the Galaxy, and immediately jumped to hyperspace, dooming thousands of rebel agents to death, and forcing the game to come to a grinding halt as the GM had to take a break to come up with new material on the fly.
In every campaign, X decides to get romantically involved with a random female NPC...and then proceeds to force our male GM to role play dates and intimate encounters, despite the GM's obvious discomfort. (Derailing the game for the rest of the players.)
X will lecture at the drop of a hat about the evils of meta-gamers, even though he is a meta-gaming god himself. He has repeatedly questioned players about the actions of their characters (actions declared openly at the table) that his character would have no knowledge of (such as said actions taking place in a different room or while X's character is engaged in combat with 3 opponents 100 feet away with his back turned).
X has rage quit more games (RPG and Board games) than I can count...merely because he is losing. At one point, during a game of Talisman being played in a public venue, X began shouting profanities at the top of his lungs because his "talisman" card was stolen by another player. He literally threw is drink across the room at the general direction of a trash can (still cussing like a sailor) and stormed out of the venue.
X will throw a fit if his carefully crafted (and flawed) plans in a game don't turn out exactly as planned, and insist on halting the game while he argues (record time is an hour and a half) that his (imperfect) real world knowledge proves that his plan should have worked flawlessly (such as when he was enraged because the fake identity that he created in a Shadowrun game was found out because it simply appeared one day in only one corps's server and existed nowhere else...and insisted that it would have worked perfectly in the real world.)
X could not take criticism at all, and would become enraged if anyone even tried to offer so much as a simple comment. (Such as when we, calmly and quite nicely I might add, mentioned how it inconveniences everyone else when he quits a game in the middle because he is losing...and he began yelling about he he doesn't like to lose and why the hell should he play a game if he's losing.)


I could go on, but you get the idea.

Eventually we told him we were taking a break while our usual GM had some work related things to take care of and that our GM would send out and email when we were going to start up again...and just kept meeting with out him. I think he got in with another group that met at one of the local game stores but I haven't seen that group meeting there in a while, so I assume he destroyed yet another group.

[Anonymouswizard]

X claimed to have been in the military but could not stand to be told to do anything, and would throw a tantrum every time. Even if it was something as innocent as "you've got to try this" he would puff up and yell "I don't have to do anything! Stop telling me what to do."

He could have still been in the military, most would have kicked this kind of person out ASAP though, according to my friends with links to the army.


X would go ape @!#& if anything bad happened to his characters, even if they were direct results of his own actions. (He had a character commit suicide because he got one measly point of taint in an L5R game....after 5 minutes of whining about it OOC.)

Danger sign right there, this is basically someone saying "I want to be super awesome and don't care about anything else", which annoys me because my characters are normally in danger of suffering from "taint" systems by being too pragmatic. How did he react to failing or botching rolls?


X would derail a campaign at the drop of a hat. Once during a SWD6 game, on a mission to recover critical information about rebel sleeper agents from the empire, X decided his smuggler would, instead of attempting to track the imperial agent's ship, much rather go shopping on the other side of the Galaxy, and immediately jumped to hyperspace, dooming thousands of rebel agents to death, and forcing the game to come to a grinding halt as the GM had to take a break to come up with new material on the fly.

This isn't always a bad thing, as long as it's cleared with the GM beforehand, but like number 2, this sounds like it was done in the worst possible way.


In every campaign, X decides to get romantically involved with a random female NPC...and then proceeds to force our male GM to role play dates and intimate encounters, despite the GM's obvious discomfort. (Derailing the game for the rest of the players.)

Chr!st on a b!ke, what kind of control freak does that? I'm glad most people I know have aromantic characters now.


X will lecture at the drop of a hat about the evils of meta-gamers, even though he is a meta-gaming god himself. He has repeatedly questioned players about the actions of their characters (actions declared openly at the table) that his character would have no knowledge of (such as said actions taking place in a different room or while X's character is engaged in combat with 3 opponents 100 feet away with his back turned).

Just imagine how he'd react to note passing. He'd get shouted at quite quickly at my table, simply for the hipocracy.


X has rage quit more games (RPG and Board games) than I can count...merely because he is losing. At one point, during a game of Talisman being played in a public venue, X began shouting profanities at the top of his lungs because his "talisman" card was stolen by another player. He literally threw is drink across the room at the general direction of a trash can (still cussing like a sailor) and stormed out of the venue.

The sad thing is that this immediately reminded me of how I was at about 6, throwing tantrums simply because I was losing. I'll be putting my main comment on this after the next bit.


X will throw a fit if his carefully crafted (and flawed) plans in a game don't turn out exactly as planned, and insist on halting the game while he argues (record time is an hour and a half) that his (imperfect) real world knowledge proves that his plan should have worked flawlessly (such as when he was enraged because the fake identity that he created in a Shadowrun game was found out because it simply appeared one day in only one corps's server and existed nowhere else...and insisted that it would have worked perfectly in the real world.)
X could not take criticism at all, and would become enraged if anyone even tried to offer so much as a simple comment. (Such as when we, calmly and quite nicely I might add, mentioned how it inconveniences everyone else when he quits a game in the middle because he is losing...and he began yelling about he he doesn't like to lose and why the hell should he play a game if he's losing.)

Why play a game if you hate losing? This is why I prefer totalling scores at the end of a game, people who think like this can sulk while the rest of us retreat into the kitchen and start playing Seven Wonders.


Eventually we told him we were taking a break while our usual GM had some work related things to take care of and that our GM would send out and email when we were going to start up again...and just kept meeting with out him. I think he got in with another group that met at one of the local game stores but I haven't seen that group meeting there in a while, so I assume he destroyed yet another group.

I don't blame you, from the sounds of it he'd have been kicked out of every British group I've had contact with.

[Solaris]

He could have still been in the military, most would have kicked this kind of person out ASAP though, according to my friends with links to the army.

In the "Barely made it into basic training/boot camp, did not make it out" sort of way, yeah, maybe. I've seen some lousy privates in my day, but nobody who lost their bearing just because they were told to do something.
More likely, he's outright lying. The guy who says he'd have gone into the military, but was afraid he'd punch the drill sergeant in the face for yelling is closely related to that sort of personality. Just knowing that about him, and that alone, I feel pretty confident in denouncing him as a faker.

[Anonymouswizard]

In the "Barely made it into basic training/boot camp, did not make it out" sort of way, yeah, maybe. I've seen some lousy privates in my day, but nobody who lost their bearing just because they were told to do something.
More likely, he's outright lying. The guy who says he'd have gone into the military, but was afraid he'd punch the drill sergeant in the face for yelling is closely related to that sort of personality. Just knowing that about him, and that alone, I feel pretty confident in denouncing him as a faker.

That's what I meant :smallsmile: to be honest, did he even have a confirmed job? I could see him faking one of them because honestly, I can't see anyone hiring him.

[Peebles]

Whilst not as bad as some of these, which are truly astonishing, the worst player I've ever gamed with sticks in my head even six years later.

I was responsible for introducing him to the group, and also for getting rid of him before the next session. He was my boyfriend at the time, a relationship which ended entirely due to his behaviour in the game. Let's call him DH, an acronym I feel is particularly apt. :smallannoyed:

I used to be, and still am to an extent, pretty insecure about my geekier hobbies, and tended not to tell new friends or acquaintances about them until I was sure I'd know how they'd react to it. DH was an exception however, due to various strategy board-games and 40k models taking pride of place on his bookshelf. So I mentioned I played 3.5 D&D with a group made up of other final year uni students, and DH asked whether he could give it a go.

Our DM at the time, a lovely laid-back guy who I have sadly since lost contact with, eagerly agreed with a more the merrier attitude. Big mistake.

Said DM was a gay man, but had only come out to a few select people, and only I among the gaming group knew this. This will be important later.

I forget the characters anyone except DH came up with, they're not really important anyway. DH asks what's easiest for a beginner to play, rolls up a greatsword wielding fighter with big stats in Str and Cha and we begin the adventure in earnest.

Things start out okay. We're halfway through a dungeon, and liberate DH's character from the clutches of a group of kobolds who were apparently keeping him for supper. DH puts on a rather camp voice when he speaks in character, but nothing too untoward as yet. We complete the dungeon run and go back to town, and the problems start.

Turns out that DH thought it would be hilarious to play a gay character, or what he apparently thought a gay person was like. As soon as we got back to the town, his character proceeded to try and engage anything male he could get hold of in intercourse (including animals and street urchins), whilst making constant derogatory slurs and using every related insult you can think of, with the explanation that 'a (fill this in how you want, I'm not repeating it)'s got to cool off somehow.' Seriously, I couldn't even paraphrase anything he said on here. Like, the worst, most backwards stream of vitriolic stereotypical bigotry you can imagine.

DH clearly thinks this is hilarious, and that we should all be off our chairs giggling uncontrollably, rather than staring at him in ashen-faced silence. I wince as soon as I realise what's going on, and take the DM to one side as soon as I can get away with it, who has to his extreme credit not reacted at all. I'll talk to DH, I say, and will make sure he's less of a prat for the next session.

Cue awful conversation on the bus home from the session. Turns out DH isn't playing the gay fighter that way for laughs, in some kind of misguided attempt at humour - that would have been unpleasant, but possible to overcome. No, turns out that all this bile and stereotypical simpering are DH's genuine worldview, and not only that, he then continues into a full blown oratory on the sins of anything but a completely straight lifestyle, and about what he'd do to all the (fill in again if you wish)'s if he had the power. Safe to say, what he wanted to do was not pleasant.

Now, this side of DH was one I had not seen before in the week or so we'd been together, or the month or so we'd been talking before that, and it came as an extreme shock to me. Not only was our excellent DM gay, but I'm bisexual, and within about five minutes I became genuinely frightened of DH sitting next to me and spouting this crap. I went from hoping to tone down my boyfriends childish humour before the next session to needing to get away from him immediately.

Long story short, I got off at the next stop even though it was miles from my place (I definitely did not want DH to find out where I lived), and blocked the guy every damn way I could think of. I stopped hanging around all the places I'd seen him, and avoided his whole neighbourhood until I finished uni and moved areas. We changed the location of the game for the next month or so, just in case DH showed up on his own, but I thankfully never saw him again.

The game continued for a couple of months, but it just kind of stopped in the end and we never played as a group together as end. I've never confirmed it, but I'm certain that group disbanding was my fault. I'm still in touch with two of the others players, and one of them still roleplays, but the other one's never gone back after the end of that group. :smallfrown:

So yeah, I guess I inadvertently became the worst player that group ever had to deal with, if only for penchant for poor life choices. :smallsigh:

[Traab]

In the "Barely made it into basic training/boot camp, did not make it out" sort of way, yeah, maybe. I've seen some lousy privates in my day, but nobody who lost their bearing just because they were told to do something.
More likely, he's outright lying. The guy who says he'd have gone into the military, but was afraid he'd punch the drill sergeant in the face for yelling is closely related to that sort of personality. Just knowing that about him, and that alone, I feel pretty confident in denouncing him as a faker.

Too be fair, there is one guy I know for a fact served a term in the marines. He HATES being told what to do. I mean its almost pathological how much he hates the idea of not being in total control. It can make him a real pain in the butt on anything involving a group effort where he cant take over.

[Dire Moose]

And I've seen it happen...personally when our old group witnessed a friend roll 3 20's back to back.
He also rolled 2 20's and a confirm with the same die...he syas the die disappeared right after that...I wonder why.

I have a couple of matching blue d20s that are really weird about rolling natural 1s and 20s. I got two natural 20s when I rolled them together on two occasions, and they've also yielded two natural 1s once.

[(Un)Inspired]

Whilst not as bad as some of these, which are truly astonishing, the worst player I've ever gamed with sticks in my head even six years later.

I was responsible for introducing him to the group, and also for getting rid of him before the next session. He was my boyfriend at the time, a relationship which ended entirely due to his behaviour in the game. Let's call him DH, an acronym I feel is particularly apt. :smallannoyed:

I used to be, and still am to an extent, pretty insecure about my geekier hobbies, and tended not to tell new friends or acquaintances about them until I was sure I'd know how they'd react to it. DH was an exception however, due to various strategy board-games and 40k models taking pride of place on his bookshelf. So I mentioned I played 3.5 D&D with a group made up of other final year uni students, and DH asked whether he could give it a go.

Our DM at the time, a lovely laid-back guy who I have sadly since lost contact with, eagerly agreed with a more the merrier attitude. Big mistake.

Said DM was a gay man, but had only come out to a few select people, and only I among the gaming group knew this. This will be important later.

I forget the characters anyone except DH came up with, they're not really important anyway. DH asks what's easiest for a beginner to play, rolls up a greatsword wielding fighter with big stats in Str and Cha and we begin the adventure in earnest.

Things start out okay. We're halfway through a dungeon, and liberate DH's character from the clutches of a group of kobolds who were apparently keeping him for supper. DH puts on a rather camp voice when he speaks in character, but nothing too untoward as yet. We complete the dungeon run and go back to town, and the problems start.

Turns out that DH thought it would be hilarious to play a gay character, or what he apparently thought a gay person was like. As soon as we got back to the town, his character proceeded to try and engage anything male he could get hold of in intercourse (including animals and street urchins), whilst making constant derogatory slurs and using every related insult you can think of, with the explanation that 'a (fill this in how you want, I'm not repeating it)'s got to cool off somehow.' Seriously, I couldn't even paraphrase anything he said on here. Like, the worst, most backwards stream of vitriolic stereotypical bigotry you can imagine.

DH clearly thinks this is hilarious, and that we should all be off our chairs giggling uncontrollably, rather than staring at him in ashen-faced silence. I wince as soon as I realise what's going on, and take the DM to one side as soon as I can get away with it, who has to his extreme credit not reacted at all. I'll talk to DH, I say, and will make sure he's less of a prat for the next session.

Cue awful conversation on the bus home from the session. Turns out DH isn't playing the gay fighter that way for laughs, in some kind of misguided attempt at humour - that would have been unpleasant, but possible to overcome. No, turns out that all this bile and stereotypical simpering are DH's genuine worldview, and not only that, he then continues into a full blown oratory on the sins of anything but a completely straight lifestyle, and about what he'd do to all the (fill in again if you wish)'s if he had the power. Safe to say, what he wanted to do was not pleasant.

Now, this side of DH was one I had not seen before in the week or so we'd been together, or the month or so we'd been talking before that, and it came as an extreme shock to me. Not only was our excellent DM gay, but I'm bisexual, and within about five minutes I became genuinely frightened of DH sitting next to me and spouting this crap. I went from hoping to tone down my boyfriends childish humour before the next session to needing to get away from him immediately.

Long story short, I got off at the next stop even though it was miles from my place (I definitely did not want DH to find out where I lived), and blocked the guy every damn way I could think of. I stopped hanging around all the places I'd seen him, and avoided his whole neighbourhood until I finished uni and moved areas. We changed the location of the game for the next month or so, just in case DH showed up on his own, but I thankfully never saw him again.

The game continued for a couple of months, but it just kind of stopped in the end and we never played as a group together as end. I've never confirmed it, but I'm certain that group disbanding was my fault. I'm still in touch with two of the others players, and one of them still roleplays, but the other one's never gone back after the end of that group. :smallfrown:

So yeah, I guess I inadvertently became the worst player that group ever had to deal with, if only for penchant for poor life choices. :smallsigh:

Oh my god.

That's... That's unreal. Putting aside this hombre's ghastly world-view; why in hell would a person come to the conclusion that a DnD game with strangers was a good time hop on his soap box?

I just don't understand why someone would lay their cards on the table so hard that they might collapse the poor table in front of a group of strangers.

[LeSwordfish]

So yeah, I guess I inadvertently became the worst player that group ever had to deal with, if only for penchant for poor life choices. :smallsigh:

I feel like there's an important correction here- you weren't the worst player, he was. Don't feel responsible for someone else's bigotry! :smallsmile:

[Peebles]

Oh my god.

That's... That's unreal. Putting aside this hombre's ghastly world-view; why in hell would a person come to the conclusion that a DnD game with strangers was a good time hop on his soap box?

I just don't understand why someone would lay their cards on the table so hard that they might collapse the poor table in front of a group of strangers.

To this day I have no clue. I'd seen absolutely nothing untoward up until that point, even in hindsight I can't identify anything that would have tipped me off. I have awful taste in men, but I'm sure I'd have picked up something if it had been there beforehand. Some people are just crazy, even if they don't show it.

I almost didn't go back to that game group at all; I was mortified. Everyone was very nice about the whole sorry mess I'd caused, but still. I just wanted to curl up and die for introducing my friends to someone like that.:smalleek:


I feel like there's an important correction here- you weren't the worst player, he was. Don't feel responsible for someone else's bigotry! :smallsmile:

I appreciate that, and really I know it. I don't take any responsibility whatsoever for the bigotry of others, but I introduced DH to the group; it's kind of on me.

Oh, I forgot I mentioned the greatsword at the start of that sorry story. You can imagine the kind of joknes and things he was wanting to do with that. :smallsigh:

[(Un)Inspired]

To this day I have no clue. I'd seen absolutely nothing untoward up until that point, even in hindsight I can't identify anything that would have tipped me off. I have awful taste in men, but I'm sure I'd have picked up something if it had been there beforehand. Some people are just crazy, even if they don't show it.

I almost didn't go back to that game group at all; I was mortified. Everyone was very nice about the whole sorry mess I'd caused, but still. I just wanted to curl up and die for introducing my friends to someone like that.:smalleek:


Yeah it does sound like you have terrible taste in guys. Although this fella sounds like a back-door homophobe. There was no detecting his churlishness beforehand.

How did the people at the table react to he character while the game was going on? Did everyone just kind of ignore him?

[Peebles]

How did the people at the table react to he character while the game was going on? Did everyone just kind of ignore him?

Pretty much. Everyone adopted the traditional British reaction to someone doing something weird - ignore it and hope it will go away. I asked him a few times what the hell he thought he was doing - he said he was just having a laugh. We ended up calling the town guard and the DM had the character thrown in prison, assumed drunk, but that didn't really help.

I initially thought that maybe he was just bored of his first role playing experience and was keeping himself entertained in a particularly unpleasant and childish way, but that bus strip put me straight on that. back-door homophobe just about covers it I think.

[LibraryOgre]

Too be fair, there is one guy I know for a fact served a term in the marines. He HATES being told what to do. I mean its almost pathological how much he hates the idea of not being in total control. It can make him a real pain in the butt on anything involving a group effort where he cant take over.

I know some guys who got that way once they got out. That and a pathological hatred of officers is not uncommon among guys who've been in and gotten out.

[Solaris]

Too be fair, there is one guy I know for a fact served a term in the marines. He HATES being told what to do. I mean its almost pathological how much he hates the idea of not being in total control. It can make him a real pain in the butt on anything involving a group effort where he cant take over.

Interesting.
How far did he make it in, rank-wise? I'm totally not collecting data for riling up some muh-reenz I know, honest.

[Mr Beer]

Eventually we told him we were taking a break while our usual GM had some work related things to take care of and that our GM would send out and email when we were going to start up again...and just kept meeting with out him. I think he got in with another group that met at one of the local game stores but I haven't seen that group meeting there in a while, so I assume he destroyed yet another group.

LOL, I wouldn't have made any kind of excuse, assuming this was a game I was running he'd get one free rage-quit (or other such tantrum) and then after that be told to not come back.

[(Un)Inspired]

Pretty much. Everyone adopted the traditional British reaction to someone doing something weird - ignore it and hope it will go away.

Does this method work?

[Sith_Happens]

Does this method work?

It's technically not what you're asking, but I've found that in many cases if you get good enough at ignoring something it's almost exactly like it's actually gone.:smallwink:

[Anonymouswizard]

Does this method work?

Like most of our habits, no, but when has that stopped the British from being passive aggressive?

EDIT:

It's technically not what you're asking, but I've found that in many cases if you get good enough at ignoring something it's almost exactly like it's actually gone.:smallwink:

This guy knows the theory :smalltongue:

[Susano-wo]

I just want to jump on the "not your fault" bandwagon. You had no indication of his true nature, so you cant be responsible. You are only responsible for things you have, or could reasonably be expected to have, knowledge of.:smallbiggrin:

[Peebles]

Yep, doesn't work, but doesn't stop us from trying. :smalltongue:

[Earthwalker]

Yep, doesn't work, but doesn't stop us from trying. :smalltongue:

Of course it doesnt work. We are British tho and its traditional. What else can we do but keep going on ignoring things. Its the British way. <Stands proudly as the opening chords for God Save the Queen begin in the background>

I would like to cast my vote in the not your fault column. Is someone keeping track ?

On to my bad player story. I want to talk about P. P had a serious mine is bigger problem. No matter what was said he always had to top it. This became increasingly annoying in a cooperative group playing dynamic.

P only lasted in the group for two session before he was uninvited.

I could try to remember the specific examples but I think just describing the characters we made gets the point across. We were playing Cyberpunk 2020. We were all new to the system save for P. So the GM had one session of making characters.
In this session we had
Me – A company man, working for Miltech (an arms manufacture). Some gun skills but mainly a face type character.
Next Player – A Nomad, a member of a biker game and part time smugglers. Some biking skills and a nice load of infiltration skills with a bonus of having his “family” to call on.
Next Player – A street rat turned news hound. Loads of investigation skills (this was based on the rocker archtype) so could also use a kind of “Do you know who I am ?” kind of deal.
Then we had P – He made a simple Solo, loads of gun skills and cyberware. His main thing was going first in combat. He had a stat that added onto combat things.

So we got something worked out for who we were, then we tried to fit our characters together and how they knew each other. The simplest option was we all grew up in the same area, knew each other as kids and grew apart but then as problems come up we often turn to each other for help. This seemed to work but P wanted to go over a few more details. He will fine tune his character between sessions and speak to the GM.
So the next session comes around. P changed his character and used some more books we didn’t have. He was still a solo but had done a lot of work for Miltech so knew a few people there, he also now owned a bike and best of all was also a consultant for a network show about guns. This show was on the same network as the news hounds show.
The first game session then turned into P walk, no stamping all over the rest of our areas while at the same time playing it off as helping us along. We need to talk to a corp big wig, I go but P will come along, then I don’t get a word in. Becudes somehow his skills are all higher than mine. The same happened with the other two characters. P basically made a character that did all we did only better with more cyberware.

[Sith_Happens]

Of course it doesnt work. We are British tho and its traditional. What else can we do but keep going on ignoring things. Its the British way. <Stands proudly as the opening chords for God Save the Queen begin in the background>

See also: Somebody Else's Problem fields (http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Somebody_Else's_Problem_field).

[Synar]

Of course it doesn't work! It comes from the very perfide Albion! It's obvious!


Going back to my hole to hide now.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

Of course it doesn't work! It comes from the very perfide Albion! It's obvious!


Going back to my hole to hide now.

- French diplomat to British diplomat, just before the fighting started.

[TheThan]

Let me tell you some stories about D. D likes anime, in fact he probably likes anime a bit too much. He also plays D&D. He met another friend of mine we’ll call X, in school studying Japanese (like I said he really likes anime).
Anyway these aren’t in the order they occurred to me, not in the order they happened.


Apparently some time ago, D had decided to craft a massive homebrewed world, cool, however he stuffed his homebrewed world with every single anime troupe you could imagine. He had medieval samurai butted up against space elves that flew trees and wielded light sabers, that sort of ridiculousness. He was really proud of this creation and was trying to talk up his campaign world. The person he latched onto was fortunately not me but my best friend W, he spend probably an hour talking up this setting. It didn’t take long for W to get annoyed but he held his tongue because he’s the new guy in the group, we’ll cut him some slack.

Anyway, after D gives W this big long spiel W, ever the joker that he is, simply asked if there was a Mega Man setting. Without even slowing down, he response is “well I can craft it for you, there’s room on the map!”. I was almost floored by this, this guy seems to have no concept of a premise or themes. We thankfully never played in that setting, if we had we would have tried to break it.



This story involves me, D, X, W and another friend we’ll call N and two more who arn’t too important to the story. X decided to run a campaign; he gave us rules D&D 3.5, no homebrew, core only. So I roll up a sorcerer, W rolls up a druid with the wild shape variant in PHBII (which was cleared by the dm, since PHBII is sort of core anyway), N rolls up… something… I honestly can’t recall what his character was, the other two are rogue and cleric. So anyway D shows up with this custom class he had made.

This class was designed to absorb magic and then use it to buff himself, heal and do a variety of other utilitarian things. This is a blatant rip off of Toma from A Certain Magical Index. He can absorb magic and use it be awesome. (I never actually saw the show, but I’ve heard enough about it to put two and two together really fast). Now when the rest of us learned about this character we were rather put off, the Dm explicitly stated no Hombrew yet he signed off on a homebrewed class anyway. Me and W went to X privately and told him that this wasn’t fair and that he should have D play a class from the PHB or PHBII like the rest of us.

X’s response is that he just wanted everyone to have fun and that D wouldn’t have fun playing anything else. After stewing for a bit we relented.
So the game started, and honestly D wasn’t that bad, however we weren’t fighting that much in the way of magical enemies, so he was mostly useless. He kept pestering me about casting spells at him so he could get powered up and be useful (steal the show he means). I promptly refused because I didn’t want to sacrifice my ability to power another up. If he was benefiting from the effect of my spell (like say a bull’s strength for instance) that would be different. But he would completely negate my spell to use his own abilities.

So anyway. We adventure around for a bit and catch wind of this invasion force of goblinoids. The rumors are that they’re going to assault this town. So we promptly arrive in town to stop the invasion. We were expecting a fair amount of goblinoids but not what we found. What we found was a literal tidal wave of gbolinoids. These guys were literally rolling like waves in the sea. We were expecting a lot but this is nuts. So we take refuge on top of the tallest building, I think the tavern or somesuch. We start preparing defenses, the casters are throwing down defensive magic, the non-casters are taking out the stairs so they can’t come up them and setting up fortifications. We’re preparing for a siege as best we could.

They hit us. And we’re in it deep, I’m up high (I might have been airborne at the time) and start dropping fireballs, with little effect. Oh I was killing goblins, I was killing a lot of goblins, but there were so many that the net effect of my fireballs wasn’t that fruitful. The others are faring well enough, keeping them off the balcony; like freaking Helms deep.

This is where things go pear shaped. D spots a dragon. (We had been warned that dragons were not color coded for our convenience so we can’t expect anything specific behaviors.) Immediately he bails on us and takes off after this dragon (which was a gold dragon if memory servers). This dragon was swimming through the sea of goblins; like a great whale it would leap out of the ocean of goblins and dive back in. He’s off to convince the dragon to join our side in this epic battle. (we later figured out the dragon was actually killing goblins this whole time)

Here’s the deal, apparently X had let it slip during japanese class or somesuch that he was going to introduce a dragon NPC and gave him a bunch of OOC knowledge. Which he promptly used in game to try to get an advantage. Now I know sometimes it can be hard to separate OOC knowledge from IC knowledge but still this shouldn’t had been that hard. Anyway he’s conducting negotiations and failing because charisma is a dump stat unless you’re a bard or sorcerer. Ignoreing the fact we don't know anything about this dragon, D is deadset on getting this dragon on our side. but his charisma sucks. So I fly over there (yeah I was flying) and conducted negotiations.

Now the funny part was N, N had decided that if D was going to use OOC knowledge in game he was too. Just to make a point. So D is trying to negotiate with this dragon, and N starts calling him out on lies. He’s yelling things like “he’s lying!” and what not (I’m actually glad he stopped once I got there).

So we have this scenario where this human is conducting negotiations with this gigantic dragon, then from a football field’s distance away they hear this tiny voice going “liar!”. We were rolling.

Anyway we did get the dragon to sort of join us. Basically we had a onetime summons of an ancient gold dragon, pretty awesome. We actually finished that campaign by assassinating the leader of the goblinoids, a badass lizardman general, but that’s a story for another day; which doesn’t include D.




Ok this on involves me, D, and his then girlfriend (now wife). D’s girlfriend is a huge starwars fan and she was jonesin for a starwars RPG. Well D knew I DMed Star wars saga, so he contacts me and convinces me to do it for his girlfriend (trying to win points). I’m like ok we can do this over skype +map tool since they’re both in another town (4 hour drive away). So I round up a third player and we begin.

The first session went great, everyone was there on time and we had a good time.

The second game was not so great, the third player (who has a 3 hour time difference) is late and D + his girlfriend are also late. But we just went on a bit later than the first session.

The third session never happened. I was there, the third player was their but D and his girlfriend were nowhere to be found. We sat around chitchatting on skype for like 2 hours before I finally get a call from D. he and his girlfriend aren’t going to make it because they’re at an amusement park on a date. I was rather pissed.

The entire point of this game was so he could score points with his girl, and he and her still ditched me to go to an amusement park. At the very least he could called ahead of time and said “we’re going on a date instead sorry to cancel on you.” I would have been annoyed but not mad. But no I was mad, not only did he not call ahead of time, he made me sit there and wait for them for two hours before finally giving me a call.

So I told him that if he and his girlfriend weren’t going to take the game seriously enough to at least make an effort to try to care about it, then I wasn’t going to Dm for them and waste my time.

Now I’ve had people bow out before to be with their girl, that’s not the issue. The issue is that he didn’t even bother to tell me and made me waste two hours of my time waiting on them. At least the other people that canceled on me because of a girl had the decency to tell me before hand.

“ sorry, the girl wants to go out to dinner, I don’t think I’m going to make it”, that’s all it takes one sentence. GRRRR .

Plus i get a little anal about promptness. i can't stand being late for an appointment, and it frustrates me when others are late to an appointment for me.





So D’s previous D&D group had power gamer tendencies. They even admit it as I’ve gotten to meet most of them. This has caused D’s perspective of D&D to be somewhat skewed. I learned this the hard way when he invited me to join his campaign. I wasn’t going to but then he explained his setting and I’m relieved it’s not the big kitchen sink setting above. This one explores the concept of good and law and the church. Ok I’ll join.
So I roll up this paladin and we begin. This time we had W playing I think a monk, X playing a rogue I believe and a couple of other characters. He must have decided that I was the scary one. (I didn’t even power game really).

We’re in this town and we come across this inquisitor. Now my character is technically the same thing, (paladins being the equivalent of an inquisitor) in this setting, but I was looking to root out corruption in the church, instead of just terrorizing the population.
Well I found the corruption I was looking for, this inquisitor was torturing an innocent man. I ordered him to stop torturing this guy, he refused, so we start rumbling. I scanned them both for evil both came up dry. So I couldn’t smite his ass down like a paladin should. This kinda irked me because he was doing a blatantly evil act.

We also fight some dark cloaked bad guys, these guys were heretics and clearly quite evil. But again they didn’t ping as evil on my paladar so I was again denied my class feature. By now the others are clearly more useful in a fight since I wasn’t getting my damage ability off. That fight actually end with us accidentally burning down a building (we helped put it out). Anyway we left town. By now I’m perplexed and somewhat annoyed I’m being totally denied by class feature, and the concept of good and evil alignments have been heavily skewed.

Anyway after burning down the tavern on accident we decided to follow another lead on this cult and skipped town. that’s when we fought the will o’ wisps. These things are near impossible to hit and are fairly dangerous for us to deal with. There were like four of them I believe. but they finally counted as evil so I got ONE smite off the entire game. After nearly getting our buts kicked by glowing lights, the campaign sorta ended.

Anyway I got further confirmation of D countering players in an Anima: Beyond Fantasy game I was not participating in, he roped X and a couple of others into this game. I saw them fight one guy, this guy was built to counter one specific player (which happened to be from his old gaming group, his old gaming group seem to be decent fellows btw). That one single one on one fight lasted several hours. This NPC he was fighting was geared out not counter the player’s character so much that he had virtually no attack ability. So at best he could get a draw, but it still just wore on. he deliberately stalled the game out just to nullify one character. I didn’t like that, it’s not a challenging fight, it’s a chore. I don’t play D&D to do work.


In all honesty D isn’t the worst player ever, but I’ve still decided I didn’t want to play with him. He’s got a fairly obnoxious personality (he’s a know-it-all that doesn't know it all), is willing to ditch people, obviously uses OOC knowledge, and generally is annoying.

[oshi]

The second worst player I ever played with was me. This occured in an Iron Kingdoms PBP I was involved in in the first quarter of last year (Which is probably enough information for anyone who really cares to track it down, but anyway...), and the only excuse I have is that I'm still pretty new to roleplaying. My character was an intensely self-interested individual who had basically joined a mercenary company for the comfort of having someone to watch her back as she left her fighting prime. We were hired to transport a sealed crate that NATURALLY we opened within the first few hours of in-game time, and it turns out there's a drugged naked lady inside.
Even my character is a little put off by this, because even if you're murderer who has grown up struggling to survive on the streets, there are some pretty terrible things that can happen to a person in the IKRPG beyond the rape, torture and slavery you might be imagining... There's actual factual soul-stealing to wory about as well, although that seemed to be unlikely in the situation. Anyway, we eventually revive her and discover that she has a price on her head equivelant to probably $200,000 modern monies, and that her fate would "only" be torture and execution. Not an enormous amount, but certainly enough for an amoral person with a ton of deaths on their hands already worrying about their future to jump on...
So my character naturally heads off to betray everyone. In a PBP game with a bunch of cool people I like that I've played with before and since. This means the GM now has to put in extra effort for me, and I steal a bit of focus. I sign off for the night with a sense of intense righteousness because I'm doing what my character would do! Yeah. Not even kidding. It takes me a day or two to realise what I've done, and I start PM'ing one of the other players with my regrets and concerns, and they give me the obvious amazing glorious advice that... You design your character. You can always find an out while keeping with their personality. Too late, of course.
Thankfully, this story ends fairly tamely. My character gets tossed in a sewer as a side-effect of being out on her own betraying her friends, and has a bit of an epiphany. We use the double-cross to set up as a triple-cross as the new end-game hook (My character doesn't come clean, she makes out like she was only pretending to betray everyone to set up this). I learn a valuable lesson. Sadly, I also retire my favourite character ever because I don't want to downplay her personality and I don't want to risk a similiar confict of interest ever coming up again.

This story is also about me being a bad GM. We're playing 40k Black Crusade campaign (For those unfamiliar: We're the bad guys.) where the theoretical premise (Which I did not execute well) is "What does it take to turn a normal Imperial citizen to Chaos." The group is loosely affiliated mostly brought together by circumstance and there's already been a bit of PvP, mostly focused around 1's character, who was introduced late to the game and I guess didn't much care about the premise, because it turned out his character was basically Hannibal Lector when we meet him. We introduce him to the game as a doctor, since the mother of one of the other characters has been used as a hostage and is quite unwell. The first thing he does is to drug two members of the group (The response of the other two: Strip them of their arms and armour) and take them to his sound-proofed kill room, where he starts to perform medical experiments on them, waking them up with the pain of the surgery.
He almost ends up dead right here, and would have if EITHER of the characters he managed to drug had been competent at combat. There's a back and forth for a while until they all cool down a bit (And a recurring antagonist conveniently shows up to distract everyone), except for the mother, who is screaming in horror having woken up in this room with three people fighting and (IIRC) several fingers missing. He sedates her, she fails a Toughness test massively, I tell him she's had an adverse reaction, he says he doesn't care and watches her die. We're all friends IRL, so we do our best to get the game back together and not let the fact that he's killed another character's parent and drugged several of them get in the way... And he claims IC that he did everything he could. Neither of the other characters present are really able to disprove that.
Anyway, we slaughter the antagonist, because that's what you do to people with massive blackmail evidence on you, then flee the resulting enforcer response, burning down 1's house in the process to cover their escape and hide evidence of his crimes. We get back to 2's restaurant with them all now presumably exposed as heretics. Given the loose affiliation of characters, this is the point at which 2 decides to explode his restaurant, with 1 and another character still inside. Everyone survives, but 1 is now nursing a serious grudge.
Following the attempted murder of 1, at the end of the session, I frown around the table and open a frank discussion about PvP in the campaign, something along the lines of "I know we're the bad guys and this is part of the fun of the game and I'll run the game you guys want to play, but what I want to know is, are we okay with straight out hating each other and trying to kill each other, or do we want to dial it down to dislike and maybe some plotting in the background?" to which the general response was that we should dial it back and get onto the plot.
The group gets split into two groups for a while, and eventually meets back up (After various further crimes) at the train station out of the city. 1 spots 2 through the crowds of people and... Exposes his mutations, sprouting wings in the middle of a crowded commuter hub and flying at him with a two handed weapon screaming. I look at him confusededly, reiterate that there are crowds of people here and ask him if he's basically just killing off his character. He says yes, I ask if that means we can just assume the enforcers splatter him and 2 escapes so we can get on with the game, he says no, he wants a chance to kill 2. I say okay hesitantly, we roll initiative (Well... Four of the six do. One of the characters isn't a combat character and doesn't care one way or the other. The other abstainee is a Psyker, and not stupid enough to engage in combat in such a situation. 3 is 2's bodyguard. 4 just likes to fight. The other two are 1 and 2.)
So 2 wins initiative and wisely sprints off into the crowd, losing 1 almost immediately. Shall we give up and get back to the game? No. 1 insists on attacking 3 for... Reasons. He got in the way and let 2 escape I guess. The two of them duke it out in the middle of the train station for something in the order of 1 and a half hours realtime in some of the least epic combat I've ever run while I run down the amount of rounds I've allocated for the inevitable enforcer response to this. 4 duels 1's minion for fun in the meantime, while getting heckled by 1 for taking attention away from his fight. 2 sneaks back after a few rounds to try and help out 3. The other two watch. For an hour and a half. Eventually, the enforcers show up and thou shalt no suffer the mutant to live... Unfortunately, this is the point at which 3 bleeds out, losing a pretty great character to 1's random attack.
Worried about whether or not burning Infamy to stay in the game will just get him killed by the enforcers, he asks if the spectators would have seen his Regeneration(1) mutation in effect (Basically healing himself for a small amount (<10% of his total health) SOME rounds), I rule no because of how small the heal is. 1 speaks up in an incredibly offended voice saying something along the lines of "What are you railroading it so he gets to live?" 3 decides to stay dead despite my objections.
1 quits the campaign due to a new job, I get told that he has a history of showing up for a few weeks and derailing things then disappearing. A few weeks later he drunkenly corners (LITERALLY corners, standing within personal space) me at a party for 20-30 minutes alternating between telling me he did the right thing it was what his character would have done and apologising fairly unconvincingly for wrecking the session and forcing me to get a new hook to introduce 3's new character. This took so long because he was drunk and kept saying things he'd already said and ignoring my shrugs and insistence that he let it go after the first five minutes or so.


Phew.

[Miscast_Mage]

So we have this scenario where this human is conducting negotiations with this gigantic dragon, then from a football field’s distance away they hear this tiny voice going “liar!”. We were rolling.


The mental image of this has me giggling like a madman.

[TheThan]

The mental image of this has me giggling like a madman.

yeah, the rest of us were laughing pretty good. I'm glad you approve.

[Sir Chuckles]

Than, I'd approve of it far more if you didn't, almost verbatim, describe a player I had to DM for for a good five years. I generally have my players run their characters through the Mary Sue Litmus Test (http://www.springhole.net/writing/marysue.htm), and the lowest one of his characters has ever came back with was a 57. That particular character's name was Ragnarok, a Lizardfolk (because I rejected Half-Lizardfolk), and he used a hammer that he named "Oppai".
We were 17 at the time, but, I'll be honest, that wasn't too terribly long ago.

Using anime as your base if fine, I've done it myself, but if someone who is not a fierce fan of whatever you're using can see through the idea, you've gone too far. I'd describe my player in more detail, but, again, I'd almost be repeating Than's post. Even the stood up part.

[VincentTakeda]

I think the tricky part about the mary sue test is that its so subjective. It starts of by saying that the answer is yes or technically yes only if such a thing isnt considered commonplace within the context of its world... If evey player builds a character whose 'name is exotic' then at least within the context of player characters, having an exotic name doesnt really make them unique... So what at first starts of seeming like a pretty low bar, when put into context, isn't as mary sue as one might think. You have given your character hobbies that you think would be cool to have... uh... ok... But does doing so make them stand out?

If we ignore the qualifier 'unless such a thing wouldnt make your character stand out.. unless such a thing is so commonplace in the setting that it would be overlooked'... Well, I can't imagine many characters at all that aren't mary sues.

[Segev]

The Mary Sue test sufferes from being conflated with a Self Insert test. These are actually two different things.

Now, being a Self Insert is a warning sign of being a potential Mary Sue, but you can be the former without being the latter, and you can be the latter without being the former.

(It is much less of a warning sign that one is a Self Insert if one is a Mary Sue; Sues are often escapist enough that there's little of the author directly in them. But if it's an author insert...it likely will be a Sue unless great care is taken.)

[kaoskonfety]

I've had a few impressive players and characters over the years... Worst... hmmm

Quite a competition.

Its a toss up between a fairly classic set of ideas,

We will call him A, "I play insane and damaged people so I can act like a nut" - 'recovering' drug addicts, unstable street people, fish waving Malkavians, "Chaotics" in D&D terms - whatever the game "allowed" that "permitted" him to derail the game the SECOND he wasn't on scene and was therefore bored.
And I mean the second he was bored. Breaking the masquerade? Well as long as its the WHOLE parties problem we will have to cover for him, hey look its all about me now, sweet. Been clean of drugs for 6 months but the play is in a tence RP moment? Time to shoot up and get naked in the halls screaming, hey look, me again! Aren't I a nut? ha ha ha! It of course helps that he was the poster child for "thats what my character would do" - typically while attacking the party who had the audacity to (in character) try and reign him in. Whoops there goes another campaign! Whats next guys?



We will call him Null - sell his soul for power? WHERES THE LINE! In any system with a corruption mechanic that lead to power he would red line... and then see how much further the DM would let him go. I'd have felt better about it if he had been in *any* way good (or just not awful) at optimizing, role-playing or round by round tactics. But his characters were ALWAYS awful at whatever he we trying to get them to do - AWFUL. And he was BAD it making choices - even with only 2 options, one clearly bad, the other clearly good, he would invariably take the worse choice
i.e - I can trip the nearly dead enemy and provoke and attack of opportunity likely suffer damage and fail entirely, or try to hit him with my great sword and probably end him right now... tripping things is cool... "are you sure?" was a phrase all his DM's used quite a bit...
He could spend hours arguing rules, for his character, rules he had clearly not read. Take up hours of campaign time asking for and getting subsequently ignored advise.
I'm MILES from a min/maxer and generate sub optimal characters all the time - but you find a trick, even if its an excellent run speed - some sort of useful trick to use and you lever it to, if not success than at least, survival. This guy was so bad the DM gave him /allowed him to have at char gen. a "Wish 3/day" item physical embedded into his body (drastically misread the custom magic item creation rules)... on his level 17 lich wizard in a level 20 3.5 D&D game. That character lasted 4 sessions before his phylactery (which he kept ON HIS PERSON despite repeated warning from every last player and the DM) was destroyed along side his body. It was mind boggling to watch.

[TheThan]

Than, I'd approve of it far more if you didn't, almost verbatim, describe a player I had to DM for for a good five years. I generally have my players run their characters through the Mary Sue Litmus Test (http://www.springhole.net/writing/marysue.htm), and the lowest one of his characters has ever came back with was a 57. That particular character's name was Ragnarok, a Lizardfolk (because I rejected Half-Lizardfolk), and he used a hammer that he named "Oppai".
We were 17 at the time, but, I'll be honest, that wasn't too terribly long ago.

Using anime as your base if fine, I've done it myself, but if someone who is not a fierce fan of whatever you're using can see through the idea, you've gone too far. I'd describe my player in more detail, but, again, I'd almost be repeating Than's post. Even the stood up part.

Wow, that’s… just wow. I guess everyone really does have a twin

Yeah the problem isn’t that he was copying or borrowing heavily from anime, it’s that he was borrowing from ALL anime. Seriously, he ripped off from just about every major anime going on at that time and stuffed it into his campaign setting. If he had just picked one or two and stuck with them that would be fine; or if he had come up with some way to incorporate them all together in such a way that it made sense. But he literally had Tenchi Muyo, sharing a political border with Rurouni Kenshin, and that’s just the only example that comes to mind, the rest were just as awful sounding.

His standing me up for his girl was more selfish than anything. That’s what made me so angry; he didn’t bother to let me know that they weren’t going to make it ahead of time. The game I was running for them became a second thought (if even then I was that far up the line).

I actually made the wedding cake toppers for their wedding

The OOC/IC part was not entirely his fault, since the DM capitulated to him (never do that btw, you give them an inch, and they’ll take a mile), and his OOC knowledge didn’t get him as far as he had hoped since he didn’t have the ranks or charisma to win the dragon over and I had to intervene to do it.

Same with his Dming style, he sorta developed that from having to deal with a whole group of power gamer players. So his perspective was heavily scewed. So I don’t entirely blame him for that.

he was more annoying than anything else.



You should post up your stories, so we can compare notes

[Flashy]

Than, I'd approve of it far more if you didn't, almost verbatim, describe a player I had to DM for for a good five years. I generally have my players run their characters through the Mary Sue Litmus Test (http://www.springhole.net/writing/marysue.htm), and the lowest one of his characters has ever came back with was a 57. That particular character's name was Ragnarok, a Lizardfolk (because I rejected Half-Lizardfolk), and he used a hammer that he named "Oppai".
We were 17 at the time, but, I'll be honest, that wasn't too terribly long ago.

Using anime as your base if fine, I've done it myself, but if someone who is not a fierce fan of whatever you're using can see through the idea, you've gone too far. I'd describe my player in more detail, but, again, I'd almost be repeating Than's post. Even the stood up part.

That's horrifying. Please, please tell us about some of the others?


I think the tricky part about the mary sue test is that its so subjective. It starts of by saying that the answer is yes or technically yes only if such a thing isnt considered commonplace within the context of its world... If evey player builds a character whose 'name is exotic' then at least within the context of player characters, having an exotic name doesnt really make them unique... So what at first starts of seeming like a pretty low bar, when put into context, isn't as mary sue as one might think. You have given your character hobbies that you think would be cool to have... uh... ok... But does doing so make them stand out?

If we ignore the qualifier 'unless such a thing wouldnt make your character stand out.. unless such a thing is so commonplace in the setting that it would be overlooked'... Well, I can't imagine many characters at all that aren't mary sues.

The thing about the Sue test is that you're trying to score in the midrange. Anything from 5-16 is considered probably not a sue so the test DOES expect you to tick some of those boxes. Lower than 5 is considered undeveloped.

[goto124]

Also, wouldn't someone who has a Mary Sue be in denial, giving false negatives because the player simply doesn't answer the questions correctly, giving 'justifications' as to why this and that characteristic does not count to the Mary-sueness?

Still, it does good for someone who actually wants to avoid the Mary-sue, to see if she is accidentally sliding there.

Side note: I scored below a 5. My characters aren't developed enough for this test. Often I would think 'well I haven't had the chance to do that...', and Mary-sueing is easier in stories where you control all the characters.

Though Mary-sueing in RPGs is a lot more unpleasant.

[Sir Chuckles]

Also, wouldn't someone who has a Mary Sue be in denial, giving false negatives because the player simply doesn't answer the questions correctly, giving 'justifications' as to why this and that characteristic does not count to the Mary-sueness?

Still, it does good for someone who actually wants to avoid the Mary-sue, to see if she is accidentally sliding there.

Side note: I scored below a 5. My characters aren't developed enough for this test. Often I would think 'well I haven't had the chance to do that...', and Mary-sueing is easier in stories where you control all the characters.

Though Mary-sueing in RPGs is a lot more unpleasant.

Yes, a person could easily attempt justify certain points. For instance, having a pet such as a wolf is a check box in the test. However, if one is playing a Druid whose class feature is essentially "Here have a wolf", it's excusable. However this does not excuse you from checking the box. What it does mean is that you cannot, even with a litmus test, be completely unobjective. You have to dig down and use the points not as the conclusion, but as the thesis. "I got a 47" is not the final answer, but why it is 47 is the question, and what you can do to lower it, or even if you need to lower it.

It's far more difficult to score an original RPG character via Mary Sue than it is most other works. This is usually due to a lack of backstory, underdeveloped backstory, or the character simply being too low level level to have a truly established persona. As for the other statements, a self-insert is a form of Mary Sue, but remember than individual elements of Sue does not a Sue make. My most develop character readily scores a 22-27*. They were the main good-guy villain of an epic level plot, so many Sue aspects could be written off as "It's the setting".

*I give a range on that score because it is often beneficial for more than one person to run the test with the same character. The 22 was given to me by one of my players. The 27 was when I scored him myself. The other three scores fell within that range. It is how we often know about my player's high scores. Yes, he frequently gave his own characters lower scores, but while I would place them in the 40-60 range, he would place them in the 30-40. I was able to do this because I parse my player's backstories, mostly for spellchecking and continuity within the campaign.

While it is true that you must take every individual score with a fistful of salt, it's a good baseline to understand what doesn't do anything to make the character more of a character, and what fat can be trimmed, and, in the case in he above quote, what lipids could be added. Though I think in your case it's not "under"developed, it's "yet to be" developed.


That's horrifying. Please, please tell us about some of the others?

I admire your curiosity. I'll tell you about Jonathan "Boomer" Lockwood, his response to the group being tired of "Object-pronoun Half-Breed #17, who is a Monk".
Boomer was a simple Ranger 1/Sorcerer 5 focused on blasting, hence the name. Now, as I stated before, I parse backstories for continuity reasons. In this campaign, it was a plain 'ol kitchen sink. If I couldn't pin you down in the current area, I had a world map drawn up where nine tenths of it hadn't been visited by the PCs that I could handwave you from. His backstory had him be from a village stated to be five miles away from the town they were currently in.

That's fine and dandy, tiny village inserted. But no, this village was a "thriving farm town" (note that they were currently surrounded by rocky highlands) that was destroyed by Yuan-Ti. Now here's the thing, the current arc of the campaign had a cabal of Yuan-Ti as the main antagonists, and I'm frequently uncomfortable with introducing those kind of conveniently relevant to the plot type characters, especially since the Yuan-Ti were more "BBEG of the month" rather than the campaign's focus. Another particular issue I had was that he rolled his stats in secret, something that I expressly disallowed because of him, and handed me a sheet with three 18s, a 12 in Dex, and two 15s. Not wanting to call him out in front of the group, especially since one of my players is non-confrontational to the point of crying if people can't decide on what kind of pizza topping they want, I let it slide. He was a blaster and they were fighting intelligent enemies with good reflex saves. Whatever.

Back to the backstory. Boomer was born with strange powers that his parents and whole village ostracised him for (in a campaign where Gnomes were actively developing Steampunk and people with half a dozen Ioun stones was the norm), causing him to be a social outcast, and the "Boomer" name being an insult. Then the Fire Nation Yuan-Ti attacked. Now, here's the rub. He had written it as if the Yuan-Ti were bandits, which I had not been showing. I had been showing them as conniving snake people who were in hiding. He was the only survivor, and the village was burned to the ground (maybe it was the Fire Nation!). He then wandered the wood for a year, his justification for the Ranger level, before meeting a Wizard who took him under his wing and become his mentor. Then the mentor was killed by Yuan-Ti, so he left the forest and came to the town were the rest of the PCs were.

His alignment was Chaotic Neutral, and there was a variety of physical descriptions that made his 17 year old Sorcerer appear as a character from Naruto. I don't remember which one, as I am both terrible with names and have little love for the series. To this day, I have my doubts on whether or not he was genuinely trying or if it was some form of elaborate joke.

The big point that simply aggravated me to the point of making a Bad DM Move (killing a character out of spite) was his insistence on not doing anything in combat, unless victory was already guaranteed. The point at which I executed this character was after a fight with Yuan-Ti that quickly went south. I pre-roll treasure so that the intelligent enemies have fauncy things to use to make the fights a touch more memorable, and some horrid rolls by the party, a Trident of Fish Command, and one Halfling Wizard/Rogue being grappled by an Octopus that would not stop rolling high later, the party was captured. Every turn was "I'm not doing anything!".

When he demanded release on the grounds of "I did not attack your people. I am not with these murderers.", an IC argument broke out in which I was already particularly annoyed, he was a gagged, weighted, and drowned.

[Flashy]

When he demanded release on the grounds of "I did not attack your people. I am not with these murderers.", an IC argument broke out in which I was already particularly annoyed, he was a gagged, weighted, and drowned.

I hate it when people act like npcs have to be perfectly aware of exactly what their character did and did not do in every situation.

[Arbane]

The point at which I executed this character was after a fight with Yuan-Ti
(SNIP)

When he demanded release on the grounds of "I did not attack your people. I am not with these murderers.", an IC argument broke out in which I was already particularly annoyed, he was a gagged, weighted, and drowned.

...And he expected them to care why, exactly? I can't see that flying with most human bandits, let alone Yuan-ti.

[Sparx MacGyver]

I've always held firm to the simple truth of reality is stranger is fiction. You could easily make up loads of these bad players and DM/GMs, but After my own experience's outside gaming I wouldn't put ti past anybody to have suffered through any of that. And I'm sorry y'all have these horror stories.

For myself, the worst I've encountered thus far is actually mild. A few players in particular, we'll go with M, N., and B

M was mostly just irritating - doodles and draws at the table, doesn't always pay attention, tends to have lackluster role playing, and is kind of useless in combat due to being a charisma based (if it's pathfinder, always a bard - always) - the worst offense? Grabbing the dice before the GM (me) can see them. She doesn't out right cheat, at first, but I think she gets frustrated at her lack of capability in combat and so resorts to trying to get away with it. Unreliable. Will randomly not show up to a game, will not respond to you only to find out she went shopping or something and then weeks later wonder why you never invited her back. She's a good friend, so I tolerate her.

N is intelligent. Like really smart. Smarter than the rest of us for sure. His RP is great - probably the best rp'er we've had. He's arrogant and sadly we found out he stopped recording anything on his character sheet at level 5 (we were level 14 at this point). He was also manipulative, and we allowed him to effectively lead us in kicking out a player, B. Not out right telling him to leave, but by following N's lead we made him uncomfortable and made it clear we didn't want him there without saying a word.

B is an OK guy. Not terrible or anything. While i didn't notice it, apparently, the others in the group at that time had noticed he had an odor. I dunno, I have a son so maybe I'm immune ot average odor's. He chipped in for food, brought sodas and rp'ed OK. Not great, but at least he gave his characters personality (even if it stereotypical Scottish dwarf that drinks heavily). The worst of him was he did odd rolling, doing the dice grabbing thing and always being at the far end of the table from the GM - and his character sheets were written in Celtic runes that only Odin himself could decipher.

And of course myself: I've plotted with the GM to kill N's character, even went so far as to purposely kill of my character to bring in a new one with a droid - both specifically purpose built to bring his down. I've fudged dice a few times, not trying crits, but claiming a higher number than it was, and asking the GM for certain items. My rp probably leaves much to be desired, and my characters tend to be clones of each other - the crafter/skill monkey/MacGyver type. Of course my writing is bad too, so a lot of the time my character sheets aren't always greatly legible.

I could list others, like a different M who played a half-orc that I talked about in the 'Worst DM' thread decided in the first game he's ever played, the very first action he's going to take (besides walking) is to stick his penis in the key of a door. And then Y, who is a good friend of mine. She's OK at rp, and makes some fun characters, but man she is not reliable to show up ever - either on time or even just not showing up at all. At least she lets me know in advance. A bunch of what I've posted happened over various campaigns of Pathfinder, Star Wars Saga Edition, and Savage Worlds.

[Traab]

About the hammer named Oppai, isnt oppai a japanese anime term for giant breasts?

[TheThan]

About the hammer named Oppai, isnt oppai a japanese anime term for giant breasts?

I thought it was gigantic jiggling breasts... maybe someone who knows more about anime than us can answer.

But in the meantime let me regal you with another tale of another awful player/Dm.

We’ll call this guy “J”. I knew J back in highschool, he was a band geek. He was an alright guy, but a terrible player/Dm. I haven’t spoken to him a while, probably wouldn’t play D&D with him if the opportunity arose.


So I get in this game with X, and a couple of others, this was long enough ago that I’ve completely forgotten what the characters were, but we were playing at lunch during high school. Anyway the game starts, we’re traveling through this dark and scary forest, there is this thick fog surrounding us and we can’t see far so we’re basically blind to the world. Fortunately we’re on a road so we just follow it and it eventually leads to a town.

This town had a high stone wall and a large rot-iron gate. We tried the gate but it wouldn’t budge. We figured out that it was magically sealed and we couldn’t open it. So we decided that we should try to squeeze through or climb over. Climbing over seem the best idea. So we start climbing over. Apparently this gate was made of oiled Teflon. Because it took some incredibly high climb rolls to get over it. So we spent at least an hour (all of lunch) to climb this stupid fence, constantly slipping and falling off of it as we tried. We just couldn’t get over it. eventually we managed to succeed at the very end.

Now we had thought it was kind of strange that there were no guards, this is a town after all, and they should have guards posted at the gate. But they didn’t so we moved on and explored the town. There were no lights in the buildings, no people in the streets at all. We were starting to think this was some sort of ghost town. But then we found one single light, naturally we went towards it to find it was a shopkeeper. So we introduced ourselves and started browsing. The guy had noting of real interest except for some healing potions. But he wanted an outrageous price for them .But we managed to haggle him down to something reasonable.

Eventually something interesting happens. The fog lifts rapidly and we hear a crash, the magically sealed gate had been kicked in and a hoard of goblins… (or were they kobolds, I don’t recall) was invading the town. Most of us were bored to tears so we were glad there was something to do.
Anyway it’s soon apparent that there are way too many goblins for us to take alone but we draw a small group off from the main body and fight them anyway. We notice that all the goblins are heading in one direction so we check it out.

There we find the center of town, there’s a large fountain with four gargoyles sitting around it. They animate and start fighting goblins. I mean they are trouncing them, after they killed all the goblins minus the half dozen we took on, they warned us off of something, honestly forgot and then flew away.

Talk about getting your thunder stolen. Goblins invade a town that adventurers happen to be in and they don’t even get to do anything about it. Half of us were a bit tired of it by this point. Over the course of four or more sessions, we had accomplished nothing, done nothing of note, had no idea what we were supposed to be doing and basically did nothing but witness a cut scene. When we did find someone that knew anything, all we get are threats. Any attempt to interact with his story or universe was met with stiff resistance, magic gates that (seemingly random) goblins can beat down but heroes can’t, badass (I’m assuming these things had class levels) gargoyles telling you to stay home, shop keepers that don’t want to sell their wares (and when you convinced them to, it’s at extortionist prices). He a fog of war preventing you from going off the plot rails.

So the game pretty much ended there. I dunno if he was trying to set the stage, or if he was padding for time, or honestly thought this was good storytelling. But the thing that really sealed it is that every single time we tried something, anything the Dm would snicker at us like he knew we were going to fail before we even rolled dice, indicating he knew the results of our efforts before we did and that everything in this world was significantly more powerful than you.


I managed to get some friends together for a game of Star Wars D20… saga edition? Noooo, it was the original D20 version, (yeah, that one wasn’t so great). One of my players was J. J wanted to be a Jedi, even though I was setting this in the dark times, where there are no Jedi. But I was sorta short of potential players so I allow it. He decides to wants to play not only a Jedi but a Codru-Ji jedi.

I just heard everyone who knows anything about the star wars expanded universe just groaned. Now if you don’t know anything about the star wars expanded universe, then I’ll have to explain them. Codru-Ji are four limbed humanoids that have a rather xenophobic culture. So what we have xenophobic Jedi, that wields four lightsaber. I, in my inexperience at the time, allowed this character. Bad move? Yeah, but oh well I’ve since learned my lesson.

So I start these guys out on what amounts to a passenger liner. They were promptly attacked by space pirates. My goal was to give them a ship and let them go and find an adventure. I knew the other players wanted somewhat a sandbox game, and I was trying to oblige them. So they capture the enemy shuttle, a lambda class shuttle, which is hyperspace capable. Apparently they didn’t bother to even consider this, as you’ll find out later.
They take the shuttle and immediately land. Now this planet is an ice planet, while not quite Hoth, it’s still the a$$ end of nowhere, and really not much to do there. there are a few settlements but not much is going on and there’s virtually no space traffic.

I explained to them the situation as clearly as I could but the seemed content on doing the most boneheaded move I’ve seen. They contacted the black market and made arrangements to sell their stolen shuttle. The very craft that would allow them to go anywhere, they were going to hock for cash. OOOKKAY

So they arrange a time and they get read to meet with the shady people of this ice world. This is where J decided this was his story. Along the way there, he’s looking down streets and in alleys for something, anything. I had not planned on giving anyone any one on one time since this is a group game after all. So he eventually finds something, a bum bundled up against the cold near a trash can fire. He “B” lines straight for this guy, thinking this is a plot hook, it was just scenery dressing. He interrogates the guy, nothing (really this guy is scared to death of a four armed 7 foot guy with four lightsabers). Coming up with nothing he continues down the alley and literally just waits there for a plot hook to fall in his lap. I honestly didn’t have anything prepared for him, and I wouldn’t have knowing he was going to try to take over my game with his character.

Meanwhile the other players are busy selling their ship. They got what they thought was a good sum of money for it (but it was like a quarter of what the ship was actually worth) and they’re happy. They’re rolling in credits. The problem is now they’re basically completely stranded on an ice planet with little to no space traffic. Good one guys, good one.

So J eventually meets back up with the others and finds out what they’ve done, he’s cool with it and I explain to them that they’re now stranded on the planet. They were shocked, they didn’t realize they could have gone anywhere in their ship, and that this planet is hard to get off of. Despite me dropping obvious hints and outright telling them. They were so deadest on selling this ship that they just ignored not only my hints but my blatant warnings that this was a bad idea.

The game sort of fell apart after that, I suspect they were a little embarrassed to have just missed the totally obvious. It’s not like I couldn’t salvage the game, heck if anything they had a direction (get their ship back, find a new ship, find some other way to escape the planet etc).
The most irritating part was J’s ridiculous character just standing in a snowy alley waiting for a plot hook to fall into his lap.


I’ve since learned some more things about J’s Dming style since that first session. He’s apparently really plays favorites, going so far as to outright ignore others besides his favorite, bend the rules so his favorite always comes out on top and generally tries to humiliate anyone else. For example two characters would have an identical to hit modifiers, both would swing at an enemy, both would roll the same number on their dice but only the one that he favored more would be the one that hit the monster; even though all variables were exactly the same, only one character would hit. he also allowed his favorite to take double or triple turns, and let them get away with easily manipulating NPCs and whatnot without skill rolls etc. Just awful crap like that. On top of belittling everyone else who wasn't on his favorite list.

[Solaris]

About the hammer named Oppai, isnt oppai a japanese anime term for giant breasts?

Yeah, I kinda giggled like a twelve-year-old when I saw that. I'm not sure whether it'd be funnier if the kid knew what it really meant or not.

[Sir Chuckles]

Yeah, I kinda giggled like a twelve-year-old when I saw that. I'm not sure whether it'd be funnier if the kid knew what it really meant or not.

He knew what it meant, reminded us what it meant every session, and directly told us that it looked like what it meant.

[Vknight]

My worst player was/is awful and I have too remove him from my gaming group.
No stories about him because they make me rant, and rant, and rant. This guy, I lets say if there is any one trait I hate more then any other it is willful ignorance and misplaced dislike.
And when a person can't seem too get that actions have consequences that lead too your character dying because he's the gosh darn god of dragons and insulting him isn't a good idea... I'm calm cool collected.

Hate is all... Calm.
The biggest example of just how tiresome is that until I caught myself I was forming a paragraph long rant.
His actions in the most recent session of my games made me have too call the online game I had the next day off because I was too angry and exhausted by his actions. Mind you he is not in that game the after shock just left that much of an impact

[Sith_Happens]

No stories about him because they make me rant, and rant, and rant.

Once again, you say "I'm not telling you this story because it's that bad," we all hear "Well now you have to tell us.":smalltongue:

[Talakeal]

Once again, you say "I'm not telling you this story because it's that bad," we all hear "Well now you have to tell us.":smalltongue:

I second that motion.

[Mr Beer]

Once again, you say "I'm not telling you this story because it's that bad," we all hear "Well now you have to tell us.":smalltongue:

This, it's like having a thread called 'sexiest story thread' and saying 'well I would tell you my story but it's just too sexy'.

[(Un)Inspired]

This, it's like having a thread called 'sexiest story thread' and saying 'well I would tell you my story but it's just too sexy'.

Lol it's exactly like that.


Dear Penthouse,

This incredibly erotic thing happened to me the other day. So erotic you can't even handle it.

Sincerely,
Penthousefan69

[lytokk]

Seriously Vknight, you've gotta share now. That's the whole point of this thread.

[Vknight]

Some experts from his most glorious moments

At level 2 he decided too challenge a elder silver dragon too a duel.

Deciding too play a Minotaur Paladin after being told it would be a game of intrigue and politics so his character wouldn't deal with any criminal elements and the nobles could not stand the 9' cow man

Deciding too sleep in a house in Centralia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania) despite the fact his character was not tired and I said he could continue on... after part of the house had already collapsed

Casting a spell after taking 7 drain as a mage.
Playing a mage because fireballs when the party had a mage like that

Playing a wizard from the rival magical academy too the king and calling him a half baked wizard... too his face. The king in question has Gate ready too summon a solar if he needs backup(He is also human and 85 so can't go adventuring)

Trying too be bitten by a werewolf too become a werewolf in a World of Darkness game. Yes he knew. Better yet a Vampire/Geist game with the first session determining what you became.

Attempting to play Vincent from Final Fantasy 7 in a Wild Talents superhero game.

Attempting to play an Angel in a game where i did not want divinity or gods involved. Trying too claim he is part angel sent by god which lets him use his flaming sword on the unholy

Playing a guy with time freezing and only 3 ranks in the power. In a mutants and masterminds game at Power Level 8.

Being taught Warmachine/Hordes(the wargames) and failing too realize that all the little lizard things without guns can't shoot and need too engage in melee thus getting shot by his opponent... in both games after having this explained, both times.

Trying too sneak into a fortress by climbing up the falls with a pair of axes in the middle of the day only using invisibility too hide his 'location'

Tackling the Heirophant of a god because the guy registers as lawful evil. Said god is Lawful Neutral and the guy was a bad person but followed his gods teachings he just also happened too have a loose moral compass.

Creating a weird clone baby using Mi-Go technology

Signing his soul and brain too a ghoul magic user

Shooting the only party member who could speak latin and thus save them from the hell-hound

Destroying the magical crystal that keeps the fortress city the party is in afloat(Yup he's the one who did that thing he struck the final blow and sealed the parties fate)

Likes too pseudo LARP during sessions which when the play area is around a coffee table with 2 rocking chairs, 2 swivel chairs and a couch and he's on the couch is awkward for everyone.

Leaving his bad behind one time and me picking it up and it falling open too reveal he was entirely serious about having a ballgag in his bag...

Losing a copy of game he brought and tearing up my house looking for it and almost walking out with my copy of it(This one is just kind of annoying)

Trying too fight a Elder God and getting upset when it just eats him... repeat with Dragon... repeat with Dragon again at least 2 more times actually...

Challenging a old man who has shown the ability too casually throw boulders to a unarmed duel, when he was a polearm expert

Playing a Dragonblooded in a Lunar/Abyssal/Solar's game and getting upset at the power difference

Claiming that actions having consequences is a bad thing... I don't know how else too describe someone who gets upset when his actions has consequences and he blames the Gm

Lording over another player when he is told by his god too guide them down the path of the righteous

Playing the worst type of paladin every-time

Not understanding that a mystery game has mystery and vice-versa for horror. Getting upset at not being able too take solve the mystery skill.

Complaining about other players minor actions

Destroying a guys house looking for evidence and only finding a dream catcher. Then burning the house after he realizes that there will be no way too clean the place of all the DNA evidence

Falling asleep in the middle of the road... mark this down 5 times

All his characters being based on something. By that i mean a character from a final fantasy game or other similar property. Talking about the inspiration for said characters.

Punching a Archmages Familiar because it was a lobster and had taken his arm(He was a warforged and it was upgrading it... after he asked the archmage too upgrade it)

Showing up at the journeyman league I am attending and getting me angry enough too yell. Because he won't stop going on about how I torture him in our games for his actions having consequences and endlessly about Rooster Teeth/Final Fantasy.

There you are all happy now? Yes? No? That get your thirst quenched for a bit? If you want me too expand on these. Sure, also just look at some of my older posts about the floating fortress.

[Arbane]

My worst player was/is awful and I have too remove him from my gaming group.


You haven't done so YET? :smalleek:

[Vknight]

You haven't done so YET? :smalleek:

I am too much of a good person at times. And can have the patience of a saint. Also helps that the 6 years we have known each other. Only the first 2 did we game together and he didn't rejoin the group until 1 year ago for a combined time of 3 years(Had hoped his antics had improved... they have not)
And with the fact the local store most of the people there won't join my games. After a few jerks at the Pathfinder Society started up a rumor of some sort. Which has damaged my reputation there with those that do not know me. So with a low player count an inability too recruit new players easily because he its that guy the Society people talk about... yeah.

Also the society people I'll have up something for them soon enough and there problem with me, that they thought it was ok to do something like that

[Mr Beer]

There you are all happy now? Yes? No? That get your thirst quenched for a bit? If you want me too expand on these. Sure, also just look at some of my older posts about the floating fortress.

Heh heh heh, awesome.

I particularly liked the ballgag story, although that's not really terrible player stuff, it's kind of like a (kinky) cherry on top of the dessert.

Have to say, I would have banned him a long time ago and it's possible your low player count problem is not unrelated to having this guy in your group. I mean, if I rocked up to a game, and he's arguing with the GM, being a Lawful Stupid paladin and talking up his ballgag...I wouldn't stick around.

[Milodiah]

So this is from last night. It's a long post, as I usually do write them long, but it's kinda me venting at the same time as sharing.


We're playing Rifts, a ridiculous(ly awesome) scifi/fantasy blend game, and Player J decides he's bored with his current character. Granted, it's rather reasonable to retire him anyway, since he has in-character racked up more than enough cash, real estate, and a supermodel wife and no one would blame him for retiring in this situation.

He says he wants to play a Crazy next. For those of you who don't know Rifts, a Crazy is a human augmented with electrodes in the brain which literally reprogram it to pump out muscle growth, reflex enhancement, heightened senses, faster thought, etc. at the cost of literally programming over such boring things as mental stability, reducing a high-level Crazy to a variably-functional gibbering madman as the handbasket of madnesses build up.

Since I have a mild one built already as a backup character, exactly to the GM's specifications in character level and power level, I offer it to him. He looks it over, and agrees to take it. Except he re-rolls the psychoses (which the dice had let me off easy on, just ending up with mild paranoia and a slightly-higher-than-the-average-RPG-player-character lust for fame and glory). He also uses the wrong chart, for the full-on rebuilt-brain Crazy as opposed to the much more mild Wired Gunslinger I had built. He ends up with six different personalities, two of which the book literally describes as "Jack the Ripper".

We do our first mission together, it's a resounding success, the GM congratulates us on how well we pulled it off (just an aside, this is a GM who, if the object you're stealing in a game of D&D belongs to a level 20 wizard, will not pull punches in designing a security system appropriate for a level 20 wizard, and that's essentially who we were stealing from...enough patting myself on the back though, this theme will come back later) Afterwards, Player J rolls a d6 to determine the presonality he ends up with after a brush with the law. It's Jack the Ripper.

I don't blame him for what happened next, it's what happened as a result that lands the story here, so bear with me. He wanders off alone, spots a woman walking down an alley alone at night, pulls a magnum revolver, and blows out her knees. He then drags her into a dumpster with him and starts going full-on Black Dahlia on her, although specifically leaving her alive and screaming. We are in Lazlo. It is an incredibly magic-heavy city with one of the best police forces in the world. So naturally the cops show up to check on the two gunshots and the screaming bloody murder in that dumpster over yonder, next to all the bloodstains.

Except when the GM says, "You hear sirens approaching", what does J do? He says (word-for-word, as testified by everyone at the table) "Ok, then I slit her throat and start cutting out her heart."

So now he hears footsteps outside the dumpster, someone bangs on it and yells to come out with your hands up. He knows for certain there are three cops out there. I remind him of some of his class abilities that make him the best in the party for dealing with this situation, suggest things like blind-firing his auto-pistols through the dumpster on full auto to make the cops dive for cover and negate their readied action to shoot him when he comes out, etc. etc.

He doesn't do any of it. He literally just leaps out of the dumpster, guns in hand, and gets the absolute **** tased out of him thanks to three cops having readied actions at point-blank range (although he managed to dodge 2 of 3 shots, as a testament to the Wired Gunslinger) with magic tasers that pierce armor and wrap the victim in fast-hardening bulletproof resin. Because this is Lazlo, city of magic, and the police most certainly do have that. He subsequently gets thrown in the hover-squadcar, taken to a holding cell, and he commits suicide after he realizes that in-character he's just a hired merc to the rest of the party and we're certainly not gonna bail him out of that if we even find out.

All of that isn't what puts the story here, except for the stupid decisions. They were slightly stupider than the average stupid decision, but at least half of us have done stupider and it could conceivably be chalked up to his character being mentally ill.

It's the amount of complaining he starts as soon as he hands me back the character sheet. First comes the good old fashioned "But I was just roleplaying my character!" argument, word-for-word, as if that's supposed to waive the fact that police tend to investigate gunshots and screams, then arrest serial killers they catch red-handed. Then he insists he didn't say he stopped to cut out the woman's heart after the GM said there were sirens, but everyone at the table backed up the GM and quoted him verbatim. Then he says the GM didn't give him enough warnings on how close the police actually were. Then he starts arguing on exactly what he meant by "cutting out her heart", and how long it should have taken to do so. Then he said he misheard the GM and should get to go back to that point so he could get a do-over. Then he said he hated this game and never wanted to play it anyway. Then the session stopped for the night, we switched to a new campaign in a new system, and I really hope Rifts isn't over but kinda suspect it might be now.

I'll add that the GM did eventually say he could go back after he pretty much said he wouldn't make another character and was leaving the campaign entirely, but he declined. Of course the GM slips into self-doubt at this point, which tends to happen when a campaign explodes in your face from a single minor incident you didn't even plan to happen. We did the best we could to convince him he was in the right, but I dunno how well it worked. This GM is a fair person overall, but at the same time he is one of the best optimizers I have ever seen, and as mentioned earlier he will build our opposition to exactly where it realistically should be in terms of power level. He rolled for the police response instead of spawning them as a morality lesson, the device he used for the cops was completely legal (and even low-tier in the construction matrices), he didn't fudge any of the rolls, he accepted everything I as a fellow GM suggested as a negative modifier (two out of three cops even failed the Horror Factor check I suggested when they saw what was in the dumpster, which caused them to miss abysmally with their shots), etc etc. Recall also the multiple options I suggested to the player of what is essentially my character, which he considered with all due diligence and then rejected for no clear reason.

So, yeah...campaign on life-support thanks to a hissy-fit triggered by the DM and dice reacting appropriately to a stupid idea.

[Vknight]

Heh heh heh, awesome.

I particularly liked the ballgag story, although that's not really terrible player stuff, it's kind of like a (kinky) cherry on top of the dessert.

Have to say, I would have banned him a long time ago and it's possible your low player count problem is not unrelated to having this guy in your group. I mean, if I rocked up to a game, and he's arguing with the GM, being a Lawful Stupid paladin and talking up his ballgag...I wouldn't stick around.

I expect it has contributed too the more recent inability too get new people. Along with those rumors

[Milodiah]

-Pissed off Rifts dude story-

So, update...amazingly the guy came back the next session, picked up the previously-retired character without saying a word, and rejoined the campaign. Granted he's not pitching in as often as he usually does (in the other campaign he and I are practically the plot pilot/copilot duo) but still, no hard feelings on his end.

Really rather odd, I suppose...but appreciated nonetheless.

[Lord Torath]

Always good to hear of a Bad Player story that ends well. Hope things go well in your Rifts campaign! :smallsmile:

[Technetium]

I've heard of a guy who did his basic stats like this;

Str: 18
Int: 17
Wis: 16
Dex: 18
Cha: 17

Obviously, Constitution was going to be his dump, and the DM asked him whether it would be fine to make it extremely low, since he seemed to be such a 'talented individual.' The guy agreed to make it four, and the DM replied 'Well then, seeing as you had such a low Constitution, you died shortly of an unspecified illness after being born. Do you want to roll another character now?"

I didn't hear what happened after that, but he either grudgingly rolled or rage-quitted.

[Anonymouswizard]

I've heard of a guy who did his basic stats like this;

Str: 18
Int: 17
Wis: 16
Dex: 18
Cha: 17

Obviously, Constitution was going to be his dump, and the DM asked him whether it would be fine to make it extremely low, since he seemed to be such a 'talented individual.' The guy agreed to make it four, and the DM replied 'Well then, seeing as you had such a low Constitution, you died shortly of an unspecified illness after being born. Do you want to roll another character now?"

I didn't hear what happened after that, but he either grudgingly rolled or rage-quitted.

Those stats should appear some stupidly low percentage of the time, so I can except getting angry if they were legitimately rolled (which I doubt), and the GM could have handled it better, but this character seems to be a super-Roy (who to me has 12-14 in everything except STR and INT, which probably both began at 14-16). The character is just so high in terms of raw talent that I wouldn't allow it in a game (whereas I would allow an array of 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18) unless the other players had also rolled really well.

[MReav]

I've heard of a guy who did his basic stats like this;

Str: 18
Int: 17
Wis: 16
Dex: 18
Cha: 17

Obviously, Constitution was going to be his dump, and the DM asked him whether it would be fine to make it extremely low, since he seemed to be such a 'talented individual.' The guy agreed to make it four, and the DM replied 'Well then, seeing as you had such a low Constitution, you died shortly of an unspecified illness after being born. Do you want to roll another character now?"

I didn't hear what happened after that, but he either grudgingly rolled or rage-quitted.

Unless you have proof that the player fudged his dice, this sounds more like it would be better posted in the worst DMs thread.


Those stats should appear some stupidly low percentage of the time, so I can except getting angry if they were legitimately rolled (which I doubt), and the GM could have handled it better, but this character seems to be a super-Roy (who to me has 12-14 in everything except STR and INT, which probably both began at 14-16). The character is just so high in terms of raw talent that I wouldn't allow it in a game (whereas I would allow an array of 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18) unless the other players had also rolled really well.

Roy strikes me as having dumped his Dex.

[Anonymouswizard]

Unless you have proof that the player fudged his dice, this sounds more like it would be better posted in the worst DMs thread.

Basically agree here. This should have been "please reroll", with letting him keep an 18 as a show of good faith, not "lol, no, your character dead, reroll?"


Roy strikes me as having dumped his Dex.

I could see his dex as being a 10, maybe an 8-9 as a stretch, but Roy strikes me as the guy who rolled 2 good scores, 3 decent scores, and 1 average to above average. Dump stat by comparison.

Elan and V would be the guys with a 17/18, a couple of 14s or 15s, and a lot of about average scores, as a comparison. Unlike them Roy doesn't have natural amazing scores in anything, merely outstanding, but does have a broader base to work from.

[illyahr]

Check the Class and Level Geekery thread in the OotS forum. Roy's dump stat is Charisma, listed as 12+ and next lowest is Dexterity at 13+. They use in-comic evidence and word of Giant to determine the closest 3.5 stats for each character.

[Kalmageddon]

I have two contenders for "worst player", for very different, almost opposite reasons.

One is a PvP fanatic, to the point of making any campaign unplayable.
The jist of it is that he starts of with a character that looks fair enough. Often he comes up with some cool concepts and roleplays them accordingly for a session or two.
Then, inevitably, something snaps inside of him and his characters start becoming more and more brutal and evil.
Like for example, he started off with a paladin once. It was definitly on the strict and stern side of things, but not evil. Then starts the violent interrogation of his enemies. Then he threatens our patrons for more money. Then he flat out murders one when we weren't looking.
And then comes the PvP. Serial killer style.
See, at this point, we are all starting to get fed up with him OOC, so he starts picking us off one by one without any warning or real IC reason. For example, during combat one of us could go down to negative hit points or the equivalent and he would rush over pretending to help and instead coup de grace the character. With the help of a complacent DM none of us have any reason to doubt his character anyway and the spree continues until one of three things happen:
- Some other players, his closest friends IRL, play along and basically become his evil minions. Every other character at this point is offered the chance, OOC I might add, to either submit or be treated as bonus loot for the whole group.
- Everyone starts rolling characters specifically designed to kill his. If they succeed, he comes back with another character that initiates PvP as soon as he's introduced. This goes on until everyone gets tired of it or the campaign becomes unplayable.
- Everyone quits and he insults us or justifies himself with the good old "but I was just doing what my character would do". Campaign ruined.

The other contestant for worst player is a guy that is actually pretty cool IRL. He's a bit strange, but a good person and real fun to hang out with.
However, he's completely unable to understand rules in any RPG. Basically, he doesn't have any ability in mediating his intention with the DM, who finds himself dealing with stuff like:
- During a fight in a forest against some creatures, his character spends the whole combat rolling on the ground, throwing pepper in the air. This was meant to provide cover and/or concealment for himself and his allies.
- Another fight, he's being chased by a some enemy armed with a melee weapon. He runs for one round, then determines that the enemy, who simply ran after him and was therefore in melee again, was impossibile to outrun and spends the rest of the fight running circles around said enemy, without attacking, without attempting any meaningful action. Just run in circle. This was meant to somehow shake him off and allow an escape.
-During a session taking place in a besieged town, he spends the whole session thinking he's in a forest or that somehow there is a forest within reach of a short walk. This forest was pivotal to his plans and he was utterly dismayed to find out that there wasn't a forest, there was never a forest and he was still in a besieged town. After 2 hours.
- During the same session described above, when he finally understands the situation, he decides his priority is to defend his best friends: meaning the random, unnamed NPCs he found in a tavern. While the rest of the group was out fighting off the assailants.
And the list goes on... Basically, this guy is impossibile to handle.

[LibraryOgre]

Unless you have proof that the player fudged his dice, this sounds more like it would be better posted in the worst DMs thread.


This is why you roll in front of the DM, and DMs shouldn't let home-rolled characters fly.

(There's a great panel in Knights of the Dinner Table where BA, the GM, is questioning Bob's exceptional stats. Dave offers his support and says "No way, I saw him roll those stats! He must've rolled 150 characters that night!")

[Solaris]

Basically agree here. This should have been "please reroll", with letting him keep an 18 as a show of good faith, not "lol, no, your character dead, reroll?"

I've seen my brother roll straight 18s with 4d6 drop low. He never played that character, he just did it to prove he could. One of his first characters in AD&D was a paladin with an 18/00 Strength and 18s in all abilities except Intelligence, which was a 15, and Wisdom, which was a 16 (made my fighter with a 17 Str and 18 Con look like a wuss). He just knows how to roll dice and make them land on what he wants.

The only thing that keeps me from joining in on the 'chuck it into the bad DM' pile is the fact that the player didn't have a Constitution score - indicating to me he'd just picked out stats and got lazy about it. That's just stupid. I wouldn't have handled it the way the DM did, though, especially if the character was a fairly low-op design. High stats only break the game if you're a lousy DM, and really stop mattering after about 5th or 6th level.

[Anonymouswizard]

I've seen my brother roll straight 18s with 4d6 drop low. He never played that character, he just did it to prove he could. One of his first characters in AD&D was a paladin with an 18/00 Strength and 18s in all abilities except Intelligence, which was a 15, and Wisdom, which was a 16 (made my fighter with a 17 Str and 18 Con look like a wuss). He just knows how to roll dice and make them land on what he wants.

The only thing that keeps me from joining in on the 'chuck it into the bad DM' pile is the fact that the player didn't have a Constitution score - indicating to me he'd just picked out stats and got lazy about it. That's just stupid. I wouldn't have handled it the way the DM did, though, especially if the character was a fairly low-op design. High stats only break the game if you're a lousy DM, and really stop mattering after about 5th or 6th level.

I've been assuming a home rolled, I myself know how to curve my throw to skew dice, but I personally think the difficulty isn't worth it (I have dyspraxia).

I also tend towards classless systems, so I see stats as more important than they are in D&D.

[VincentTakeda]

What are the odds on that. Even 4d6 drop lowest we're still talking what. One in 1.5 trillion?
Even rolling 2d6+6 is still like one in 2.1 billion.

[Arbane]

I have two contenders for "worst player", for very different, almost opposite reasons.

One is a PvP fanatic, to the point of making any campaign unplayable.
(Snip)
And then comes the PvP. Serial killer style.

:smalleek:
I hope fervently that this is not indicative of some real-world issues.
Why would anyone play with this guy twice?



The other contestant for worst player is a guy that is actually pretty cool IRL. He's a bit strange, but a good person and real fun to hang out with.
However, he's completely unable to understand rules in any RPG. Basically, he doesn't have any ability in mediating his intention with the DM, who finds himself dealing with stuff like:


This guy OTOH, sounds easy to handle: Just assume he'll be completely useless and plan accordingly.

[Kalmageddon]

:smalleek:
I hope fervently that this is not indicative of some real-world issues.
Why would anyone play with this guy twice?
It... uhm... It sort of was.
He didn't kill anybody, mind you. He just had some HUGE issues that made him treat everybody like crap just to feel important, which is why we stopped playing with him. And the reason we played with him in the frist place was that, as mentioned, the DM was incredibly pleased with this guy and LOVED all the PvP going on, mainly because it allowed him to not come up with anything for the session. Oh, as a bonus, the DM was also a sex offender.
... I'm having one of those moments where I wonder how desperate I was for a D&D game at the time. Although to be fair I didn't put up with them on a regualr basis, I was mostly a guest player when other friends went and played with these two.

This guy OTOH, sounds easy to handle: Just assume he'll be completely useless and plan accordingly.
Well, that's not very fun for anyone, isn't it? Beside, he got frustrated as well in seeing how useless he was. In his mind, everything made perfect sense. He wanted for his plans to succeed, the problem is that this simply wasn't possibile, seeing how half the times we had no idea what he was trying to do.

[Feddlefew]

Oh, as a bonus, the DM was also a sex offender.

I choked on my drink. That's just, uh... wow...

[Zyzzyva]

It... uhm... It sort of was.
Oh, as a bonus, the DM was also a sex offender.

That's its own "Worst DM Ever" thread post all by itself right there. :smalleek:

[Ravian]

This guy OTOH, sounds easy to handle: Just assume he'll be completely useless and plan accordingly.

Yeah but I can understand the issue. I understand that some people have more interest in the social event than the game itself, but it does get annoying when you get some who slows the game down due to inability to understand the basic rules.

I had a couple of players like this, both are pretty fun to hang out with but didn't really get the rules of the games. The difference however is that one of them, as unable as he was, at least made a very great effort to contribute anyway, even if he did need help with it. (He actually told me, after five years since I introduced him to the hobby, that he finally understood the basic mechanic of "roll dice, add numbers" It was a little pathetic, I'll admit (particularly since we'd been playing nearly the same campaign throughout that entire period) but I never had a serious complaint against him during that full five-year period because he was probably one of my most enthusiastic players and was still a valuable member of the team with a little help from the DM and the other players.)

The other player, who deserves place on this list, made little to no effort to contribute to the game itself, was far more interested in off-topic conversation, and actually told me as the GM to go ahead and take his turns for him. That's the kind of player I dislike, when the effort isn't even given.

[Kalmageddon]

That's its own "Worst DM Ever" thread post all by itself right there. :smalleek:

Oh, trust me, I have a LONG list of entries for both this and the Worst DM threads, the problem is that most of them would be inappropriate for this forum, seeing how rape, necrophilia and the... "political bieliefs" of the candidates play a major part in them.

[Mr Beer]

rape, necrophilia

wtf!!!!!!!

EDIT

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't go to this guy's house and if I did...I'm not taking any food or drink he prepared.

EDIT2

You win the worst GM thread BTW.

[nedz]

What are the odds on that. Even 4d6 drop lowest we're still talking what. One in 1.5 trillion?
Even rolling 2d6+6 is still like one in 2.1 billion.

Your mistake is in assuming that Dice are random. Now rolled properly they are, more or less, but there is a technique whereby you can get 6s almost all of the time. It's all in the wrist.


and the... "political bieliefs" of the candidates play a major part in them.

I once saw someone play a conservative barbarian :smallsigh: It was slightly tongue in cheek, but not entirely.

[Kalmageddon]

wtf!!!!!!!

EDIT

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't go to this guy's house and if I did...I'm not taking any food or drink he prepared.
Let's just say this guy and most of the players at that game didn't know where to draw the line when it came to dark humor... Or just common decency... The entire campaign operated with hentai logic mixed in with the most offensive and gross stuff you could come up with after having one drink too many, even if the DM was mostly sober.
Best part? He run these games with his girlfriend, who was totally on board with the idea.

[Mr Beer]

Let's just say this guy and most of the players at that game didn't know where to draw the line when it came to dark humor... Or just common decency... The entire campaign operated with hentai logic mixed in with the most offensive and gross stuff you could come up with after having one drink too many, even if the DM was mostly sober.
Best part? He run these games with his girlfriend, who was totally on board with the idea.

H-h-his what now?

[Zyzzyva]

You win the worst GM thread BTW.

From a different thread, even!


I once saw someone play a conservative barbarian :smallsigh: It was slightly tongue in cheek, but not entirely.

Seems eminently plausible to me... :smallconfused: I'm not sure what about being a barbarian would suggest or foreclose political leanings of any kind.

[Kalmageddon]

H-h-his what now?
Oh, I forgot the best part: the DM ran this campaign only because he didn't want to be alone with his girlfriend, out of fear that she wanted to have sex with him.
The whole thing is messed up from beginning to end. It involved IRL drama such as stealing from the players, practicing ninjutsu on me after an OOC discussion (spoilers: it wasn't ninjutsu and the DM's half my size, didn't end well) and a lot of darker stuff that honestly makes the concerns presented in Mazes and Monsters sound legit.
All I can say is that nobody got seriously hurt and there was no long term consequences outside of broken friendships and minor legal action
But, I am getting OT and as I said, it would be hard to discuss it within the boundaries of forum rules.

Edit: looks like I have a new signature! :smalltongue:

[Anonymouswizard]

I once saw someone play a conservative barbarian :smallsigh: It was slightly tongue in cheek, but not entirely.

I assume his axe wasn't named Justice. I need to bring out a socialist Barbarian in a game at some point, which will be less amusing in my current group because half of us are left wing.


Oh, I forgot the best part: the DM ran this campaign only because he didn't want to be alone with his girlfriend, out of fear that she wanted to have sex with him.

Waitaminute, he ran a (horrific-)sex-filled campaign so that he wouldn't have to have sex. Has he ever heard of logic?


The whole thing is messed up from beginning to end. It involved IRL drama such as stealing from the players, practicing ninjutsu on me after an OOC discussion (spoilers: it wasn't ninjutsu and the DM's half my size, didn't end well) and a lot of darker stuff that honestly makes the concerns presented in Mazes and Monsters sound legit.
All I can say is that nobody got seriously hurt and there was no long term consequences outside of broken friendships and minor legal action
But, I am getting OT and as I said, it would be hard to discuss it within the boundaries of forum rules.

Edit: looks like I have a new signature! :smalltongue:

Legal action!? That alone qualifies it for the 'worst game shortlist' in my book, no matter how minor.

[Kesnit]

Oh, as a bonus, the DM was also a sex offender.


I choked on my drink. That's just, uh... wow...


That's its own "Worst DM Ever" thread post all by itself right there. :smalleek:

Sex offender does not necessarily mean what most people think of. A person can be put on the registry for a conviction of being naked in public, or being a flasher.

[Solaris]

What are the odds on that. Even 4d6 drop lowest we're still talking what. One in 1.5 trillion?
Even rolling 2d6+6 is still like one in 2.1 billion.

Your mistake is in assuming that Dice are random. Now rolled properly they are, more or less, but there is a technique whereby you can get 6s almost all of the time. It's all in the wrist.

Pretty much that. At first we tried making him roll all four dice at the same time, but he just responded by making 'em all land on a 6 (give or take a reasonable margin of error). It would've been really impressive if I weren't the DM and/or I could roll better than a single-digit average with the same dice. Fortunately for all involved, he didn't do it as often as you might think after the first few times; he'd discovered the fact that ultra-powered characters (which they were, at the low levels we played in) were less fun than medium-to-high-powered characters.

[Milodiah]

Sex offender does not necessarily mean what most people think of. A person can be put on the registry for a conviction of being naked in public, or being a flasher.

...did you miss that the poster specified later? And it's almost worse than what most people think of?

[nedz]

I assume his axe wasn't named Justice. I need to bring out a socialist Barbarian in a game at some point, which will be less amusing in my current group because half of us are left wing.

I don't really care what people's RL politics are, but this is a fantasy game: I like my Verisimilitude.


Pretty much that. At first we tried making him roll all four dice at the same time, but he just responded by making 'em all land on a 6 (give or take a reasonable margin of error). It would've been really impressive if I weren't the DM and/or I could roll better than a single-digit average with the same dice. Fortunately for all involved, he didn't do it as often as you might think after the first few times; he'd discovered the fact that ultra-powered characters (which they were, at the low levels we played in) were less fun than medium-to-high-powered characters.

I taught myself how to do this when I was a kid for some reason. It is a lot easier with just 1d6. I don't use this trick in games of any sort — spoils the fun.

[LooseCannoneer]

Sex offender does not necessarily mean what most people think of. A person can be put on the registry for a conviction of being naked in public, or being a flasher.

I think you missed the part where he specified it was for rape and necrophilia.

[VincentTakeda]

Sex offender does not necessarily mean what most people think of. A person can be put on the registry for a conviction of being naked in public, or being a flasher.

Yeah. With poor legal defense and a bad attitude, one can easily parley public urination into indecent exposure and voila... Sex offender. Its fantastically broader than most people give it credit for.

[ORione]

...did you miss that the poster specified later? And it's almost worse than what most people think of?

I thought he meant that stuff happened in-game.

[Zyzzyva]

Sex offender does not necessarily mean what most people think of. A person can be put on the registry for a conviction of being naked in public, or being a flasher.


Yeah. With poor legal defense and a bad attitude, one can easily parley public urination into indecent exposure and voila... Sex offender. Its fantastically broader than most people give it credit for.

Oh, definitely, but in this context it didn't seem likely that that's what Kalmageddon meant - if the DM had gotten a conviction for public urination he probably wouldn't have mentioned it, and indeed that's not what Kalmageddon meant as born out by later posts.


I don't really care what people's RL politics are, but this is a fantasy game: I like my Verisimilitude.

Sure; I'm just very very confused why "conservative barbarian" is such an apparent contradiction in terms. :smallconfused:

[Marlowe]

Sure; I'm just very very confused why "conservative barbarian" is such an apparent contradiction in terms. :smallconfused:

It isn't. Most "Barbaric" (preliterate, tribal) cultures tend to be inherently conservative. If they aren't they tend not to remain barbaric for long.

I think this might be one of those cases where "Conservative" means something completely different from what the word actually means.

[TeChameleon]

It doesn't help that not all of us involved in the thread are American, either, so even 'Politically Conservative' doesn't help much (for example, as a Canadian, I'd consider myself... Libertarian with Conservative leanings, I guess?.. but the American Conservatives just kind of make me tilt my head a bit in bemusement).

Granted, a stereotypically Republican Barbarian could be pretty funny if the player had decent comedic timing.

I suppose I should count myself lucky that the worst behaviour I've had from any of my players to date is (what I suspect to be a willful) mild misinterpretation of the rules for a bit of an advantage during character generation.

[Zyzzyva]

It isn't. Most "Barbaric" (preliterate, tribal) cultures tend to be inherently conservative. If they aren't they tend not to remain barbaric for long.

Exactly!


I think this might be one of those cases where "Conservative" means something completely different from what the word actually means.


Granted, a stereotypically Republican Barbarian could be pretty funny if the player had decent comedic timing.

Yeah, maybe that's what he meant? Steve King the Barbarian would be pretty funny, if done right, I suppose.

[Arbane]

Exactly!

Yeah, maybe that's what he meant? Steve King the Barbarian would be pretty funny, if done right, I suppose.

"Conan the Republican".

[Marlowe]

I think Conan would make an excellent candidate for the moderate Republican ticket.

Fafhrd; now. That guy would give your Liberal Arts lecturer nightmares. Of course, he'd be great in debates.

[Anonymouswizard]

I don't really care what people's RL politics are, but this is a fantasy game: I like my Verisimilitude.

And a barbarian can't have reasoned opinions that just so happen to coincide with certain political beliefs? Especially when they see the inequality in many d&d cultures.


It doesn't help that not all of us involved in the thread are American, either, so even 'Politically Conservative' doesn't help much (for example, as a Canadian, I'd consider myself... Libertarian with Conservative leanings, I guess?.. but the American Conservatives just kind of make me tilt my head a bit in bemusement).

Also, this. Being from the UK I have a tendency to see all Americans as being conservatives until proven otherwise. I mean, why else would anyone dislike public healthcare?

And stopping before I breach forum rules.

[Kalmageddon]

I thought he meant that stuff happened in-game.

Yes, absolutely. The situation was bad but there wasn't anything THAT bad happening IRL.
Although I can guarantee you, having to deal with that stuff IC, handled in an extremely disrespectful and gross manner, was less than plesant.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Yes, absolutely. The situation was bad but there wasn't anything THAT bad happening IRL.
Although I can guarantee you, having to deal with that stuff IC, handled in an extremely disrespectful and gross manner, was less than plesant.

I'm certainly glad to hear he didn't practice necromancy, somehow manage to make a free-willed undead. Then performed additional bodily violations upon it.

Although, is it weird that reading the misunderstanding, I laughed at seeing that people seemed to be saying they thought this was the thing that was happening?

[Zyzzyva]

Yes, absolutely. The situation was bad but there wasn't anything THAT bad happening IRL.
Although I can guarantee you, having to deal with that stuff IC, handled in an extremely disrespectful and gross manner, was less than plesant.

...Oh. Well, that's a little less terrible. Just garden-variety really really bad DMing.

[nedz]

Yeah, sorry — I was forgetting that the c word has different meanings.

Note: I would have no problem with a conservative Barbarian, but a Conservative Barbarian would break verisimilitude in most settings.

[Zyzzyva]

Yeah, sorry — I was forgetting that the c word has different meanings.

Note: I would have no problem with a conservative Barbarian, but a Conservative Barbarian would break verisimilitude in most settings.

Like, a hardcore supporter of the Tories? "GROKNOR BREAK YOU LIKE THATCHER BROKE UNION!"

[illyahr]

Like, a hardcore supporter of the Tories? "GROKNOR BREAK YOU LIKE THATCHER BROKE UNION!"

Don't say stuff like that while I'm drinking soda! :smallbiggrin:

[ComaVision]

I'm certainly glad to hear he didn't practice necromancy, somehow manage to make a free-willed undead. Then performed additional bodily violations upon it.


That's the Lichloved feat.

[SimonMoon6]

I could see a barbarian (or more likely a druid) having a pet fox that he gets all his news from.

[Traab]

"Conan the Republican".

Rush Limbbreaker. :smallbiggrin: Its a perfect barbarian type name and a VERY sneaky and subtle name that I bet noone will ever be able to decipher.

[TheEmperor]

A small response to the British "ignore it" discussion would be that you guys managed to stick that attitude in (I'm assuming) every colony. As an Indian (not the Red kind), I'm confirming that.


Anyways, the worst player I've ever seen has been someone I've known for a few, but only online. We'll call him NC, because those are his handle's initials. NC is generally an arse, and in my group of online friends (who happen to be way too forgiving) have generally reached a point of disliking him. Except for the extremely nice guy. He's apparently 15, and he's sexist, talks about how he's done drugs, generally pissed off everyone, and few other things that are too out of hand for me to speak about here.

Anyways, it was my third GMing experience, and the one that informed me of my inability to GM (a few years more might change that.), and I'd put a lot into the story, trying to adhere to the advice I'd received from all those people online, guides, and Darths And Droids comic strips. To this day, I maintain that it was a better than average campaign, although I can never confirm that.

So, the characters were level 4 (Pathfinder, for those who care), and generally newbies (I was the more experienced in PF and ttrpgs in general, but not by much), and were starting off in a camp that they'd set up after a day of traveling.

Of course, they were attacked by orcs, because I'd recently done an LOTR marathon, and they attacked back. Eh, easy fight, just orcs, right? Well, it turns out that NC wanted to not kill them, because he was CN (I can hear the groans from you guys), and wanted randomness. So, Mr. NC, the Fighter, goes and solos the thing. He just barely survives because of the -4 penalty to his attacks, and then demands the ranger to tie them up.

Then he slits their throats. What? Alright???

Stuff like this goes on, until they encountered a rather large fire elemental, a keeper of THE MACGUFFIN, who spoke to them, and then opened a portal (keep in mind this was 13 year old me with not much experience with the rules) to a gauntlet they'd have to fight through to retrieve it.

NC "NOPE. I SET THE FIRE ELEMENTAL ON FIRE!"
Me "Erm, alright? Lemme check the rules on that... No, you can't do that."
NC "%$&@ you! I'm going to do it, you piece of trash!" (it was actually some far more racist)

and then proceeds to rolls thousands of dice that breaks roll20.

And then proceeds to let loose with a stream of insults against me, my mother, and apparently my lost lost sister who's dead and belongs to him.

Of course, relatively good compared to most stories, but I've generally had nothing but three experiences GMing with that group, and then the rest being me playing pbp with people here.


Sorry if it seems all over the place. I'm a bit sick, and can't really think well

[goto124]

"NOPE. I SET THE FIRE ELEMENTAL ON FIRE!"

It's already on fire, actually :smallbiggrin:

[TheEmperor]

Yeah, that's just one of those things that made me laugh, whenever I look back. I'm a door mat guy, except I'm not nice about being a door mat (read: sarcasm is like air to me), so I'm still friends with the guy.

"Friends" is if you call generally avoiding and only internally disliking "friendship"

[Gritmonger]

and then proceeds to rolls thousands of dice that breaks roll20.


Electronic tableflip. Wow, what a dunce.

[TheEmperor]

Well, that's a better way of putting it.

Unfortunately, I did try a fourth time, despite all previous experiences, with Dark Heresy.

That Inquisitor didn't like him trying to mind rape him.
Nor did the daemons.

[BootStrapTommy]

I have to say none of my players are that good. Bunch of whiney no good clowns. :p

Recently plans for our D&D night went haywire when two participants showed up ridiculously late after choosing to go try LARPing instead of showing up like they agreed. Given recent weather playing with attendance, the slight was forgiven.

The normal DM was by that point tired, and recruited me to adlib a session (a skill I'm known for). One of our newcomers was an old friend and veteren player who for brevity sake we'll call Turdblossom. He is one of the most skilled and well versed players I know, but like all of us, he is fresh with 5e. Somehow that failed to curb his normal RAW rule-fascism.

Normally I've never had too much of a problem with him challenging on rules. After all if I'm wrong and it adversely affected players, I owe it to the players correct. As much as I can be the "near-death experience" kind of DM, I respect the guys I play with, know what they are capable of, and want to fairly challenge them (unlike the DM I was replacing, who knows nothing of encounter balance). If it turns out I'm wrong, we all learn the rules a little better.

Yet that night Turdblossom went farther to challenge me than he ever had before. Not only where he sought to benefit from it, but also to the detriment of some of his party members. And when I didn't read an ambiguity as he saw it, he railed me for it.

Like I said, I'm used to this. I just make him cite a rulebook, and if he can't we move on. Usually it slows play a bit, but its never been much of an issue. But that night he keep bringing the campaign to a halt. Eventually the original DM called it a night, while the rest of us choose to persist.

About then the party faced a combat encounter. Some Helmed Horrors and Shield Guardians. The players (a bard, a fighter, a sorc, and Turdblossom) holed themselves in a room with a small door while the fighter played untouchable meatshield in the doorway.

At the top of the initiave order, Turdblossom slips past the Shield Guardian that's blocking escape, placing himself outside the room. The fighter lays into the Guardian, and it's bloodied. Badly. When the Guardian acts next, he evokes an OA from Turdblossom and the fighter.

You see, Turdblossom has meticulously ensured advantage throughout the session. it's been his thing. So after the fighter cuts the Guardian's health to size, he claims advantage by virtue of flanking.

Problemis, he wasn't flanking. A line straight from his center to the fighter's center did not pass through the opposite sides or corners of the Guardian. In fact, it passed through a wall. He tells me I'm wrong. I request a citation. The DMG vindicates me.

And here's where things went wrong. Turdblossom says "Well, if I had known it wasn't flanking I would have moved over there." "Over there" being the adjacent space to his character's right. He then begins to insist that THAT is where he actually was. That's right, during a reaction to an enemies action two turns after his, he was trying to renig on where HE moved HIS character! He was arguing based on his ignorance of the rule! Incredulous, I told him I wasn't gunna let him do it.

So he walked out. Took the other late player with him.

On Sunday I'll see him again, during the renewal of an old campaign, run by a great DM who admire.

TL;DR a close friend and rule-zealous veteran player walked out on a session because I wouldn't let him relocate his character during a monster's turn to get advantage on an OA.

[TeChameleon]

A small response to the British "ignore it" discussion would be that you guys managed to stick that attitude in (I'm assuming) every colony. As an Indian (not the Red kind), I'm confirming that.

Speaking (like I said) as a Canadian, yup, that's over here too. Although in our case, it's less 'if you ignore it long enough, it will go away' and more 'if you ignore it long enough, it will freeze to death and won't be your problem anymore' :smalltongue:

Also, if you have the right feats (at least in D&D 4e), you can set the fire elemental on (more?) fire. My pyromancer has done that on more than one occasion, somewhat to the bemusement of my DM, including the time that I completely broke an encounter on the Elemental Plane of Fire by rendering myself immune to flame and then completely ignoring the large, nasty elemental guarding our objective. Then the second member of our three-person (that night) group revealed that the DM had given him a single-function joke magic item months ago... that just so happened to render him completely invisible to fire elementals. This left the last party member a bit annoyed, as he ended up having to sprint all over the map as the stupid elemental chased him, heh.

Then, once we had completed our objective and the portals were collapsing, I paused for a moment, burned the elemental to death (it had been heavily damaged previously, no ridiculous nova bursting on my part or anything), looted it, and left just as the portal closed. That was a fun encounter :smallamused:

[Obak]

L is playing this Paladin and we have just arrived at a cursed town taken over by a powerful undead and his minions, our mission is of course to stop him and lift the towns curse.
Because of this curse, the town is blocked of from any communication to the outside world, you acn get in but not out.
Before us, there have been other agents trying to infiltrate the town, but what happened to them is unknown (propably dead, but since qe don't have any leads we try to get on thwir trail).
Our investigations lead us to the cemetary, where we find the towns underground resistance, the undertaker and his daughter. After a conversation with them, we find out that they are in need of help in enacting a plan to bring down the undead. We agree to help them and in return we are given some magical items that they have relieved from the recently deceased. When L hears this he exclaims "What? Are they grave robbers? I kill them!"
"-what? Why?"
"-grave robbing is evil, I am a paladin!"
"-but they are helping us against a greater evil!"
"-Doesn't matter, I am roleplaying!"

[VincentTakeda]

Yeah, that's just one of those things that made me laugh, whenever I look back. I'm a door mat guy, except I'm not nice about being a door mat (read: sarcasm is like air to me), so I'm still friends with the guy.

"Friends" is if you call generally avoiding and only internally disliking "friendship"

Lifehack: You don't have to be friends with people you don't like.

[Sajiri]

I haven't actually played with all that many people, to be honest I only started in tabletops a couple years ago. But Im guessing the worst person was from my very first group, an (ex) friend of myself and my at the time boyfriend (now husband).

So leading up to this, I'd played D&D stuff through PC games before, I'd read my bf's 3.5 books constantly, and I was pretty eager to actually play for a change except that 1. Nobody where I live really plays anything like D&D and 2. the people my bf played with wouldn't want me because I was completely new. I started asking him about doing a single player game to help me learn the rules (even though I'd read the books a ton, its not really the same until you actually play it and put the rules to use) and he refused, saying if he was going to make up a setting and game he wanted several people. Fair enough, he started gathering some online friends together to play over skype.

Here's where the players come in. A (a good friend of mine, also completely new), D (the DM) another player who's name I forget, we'll call him B (a friend of the DM's, I didnt know him well, had experience with RPGs but not D&D specifically) and finally R, a mutual friend of our's who claimed to have played in various tabletops and online RPs before. Myself and A made up our characters, went over the rules, talked with each other to make sure we wouldnt be stepping on each others toes or conflicting so that we could just get in and have fun. B was kind of difficult to deal with, nothing to do with him personally, but he was younger than us and had schooling so wasnt always available, we were okay with it though because he'd let us know if he couldnt make it at least. But then there's R. Remember, despite claiming to have experience with it, he had absolutely no idea what to do, nor did he make any attempt to learn, or even be involved. He asked the DM to make him a character, which I was a little annoyed he agreed to I'll admit, since he was refusing to give us much input aside from rule clarifications. So he made up a character for R (I forget what it was), then the night before we were due to start he suddenly decided he didnt want to play that character. He wanted a cleric healbot instead. We explained that the class doesnt really work that way in D&D but nope he wants to be a healer. Okay, so the DM decided to put the first session off another week while he made a new character for him instead (which he later admitted to me was actually pretty broken and powerful).

So we eventually, finally, made it to our first session. We were all a little unsure of what to do but we had PDFs of our books ready and were eager to start. Throughout the session, R's input was....minimal, to put it lightly. Im fairly sure the only time he even said anything was when we were trying to get him to interact with the game and I sent him a seperate skype message saying 'psst, you're a cleric, you'll know there's undead nearby. Say so' so he says in game 'there are undead nearby'. That was the extent of his contribution to the game.

There was a DMPC with us for this session, also a cleric of some kind that couldn't actually heal, supposed to help us out as we were learning. As we progressed to the first combat encounter, R was strangely...absent...I think. He claimed as soon as the encounter was over that he had to afk from his computer right when it started and didnt have time to say anything, even though I knew he had an afk timer set on his messenger for 5 minutes and it never went off. Whatever though, we continued on. At some point he just decided he wasnt even going to claim to be a part of the game, and asked the DM to play for him while he watched...but he didnt actually tell the rest of us. The climax of the session had the DMPC turning on us, and turning out to be an enemy. Immediately he knocks out R's cleric, because the DM didnt want to control an overpowered healer for us. Thanks to some unlucky rolls, my character got taken out after one turn, B's character was completely useless (I don't recall what he was, some special build that was meant to be OP at higher lvls but very weak at the lvl we were starting at), A made a marvelous stand with some humour thrown in but eventually fell and we lost the fight. Only then did the DM have R's character crawl around and stabilise us before we died. It was a pretty disappointing first session in the end, and we were all more than a little annoyed at R's flakiness.

Okay so, sounds like new guy was just nervous and confused right? Remember, he claimed he had experience, and also made no effort to actually learn or involve himself in any of this. So he didn't really want to play then right and we shouldn't force him? Thats one of the first things I thought, so I told him as delicately as I could that if he didn't actually want to play he didn't have to. We still had plenty of MMOs and such to play together if he'd rather do that instead, we were all fine with it and didnt want to force him into something he didn't want to do. Instead he immediately took it as we were kicking him out and that he did WANT to be there. So we decided to carry on and schedule the next session for him as well. Over the next couple weeks he just didn't show up. He usually lived in front of his computer and was signed in to skype (or whatever program we used back then) since he had no job, didn't go to school, and openly admitted he didn't really have friends outside of online, but he was suddenly absent about an hour before our scheduled time each week. It was impossible for us to reschedule thanks to us all being on very different timezones and the rest of us have work and school to worry about. For the first two weeks, we cancelled without him there. After that B got a bit busy and couldnt show up, so we cancelled again with half our group missing.

Eventually I started to get bothered, mainly at the fact he kept insisting he wanted to be there, then wouldnt show without so much as an apology or a 'sorry Im busy, cant make it today.' I told him again multiple times it was fine if he didn't want to play, just say so, but each time he'd be upset that he was 'getting kicked out' when we had never said we'd do such a thing. Finally I started offering to help him go through his character and his rules, and even help him out during the game with tips if he'd like. He agreed he'd like that so we organised a time for the next day and....he didn't show up ._.

Eventually he started begging the DM for a solo game, to help him learn. Which the DM agreed to. I will point out that this is what I originally asked the DM for and was told no. So we put the main game off for another 1-2 weeks while the DM organised that, and again for another 2 weeks R did not show. I forget how long it was by that point, but you have to admit this was an immensely patient group. By this point B had to just apologise and leave, as school was picking up for him and he couldnt keep showing up and waiting around for nothing to happen. As it happened, we discovered that while R was becoming more and more absent he was becoming more and more talkative with the DM. To cut ahead, we eventually realised the whole thing was he was trying to get himself in an alone situation with the DM to flirt with him, despite that 1. he knew the DM was my boyfriend and 2. DM was not gay.

We finally gave up on expecting him to ever show and tried to move the game forward, picking up a replacement for B...then another replacement for that replacement when life got busy for him too. The game fell apart, which was sad because it was a really interesting setting. Although years later, the DM is now talking about how he'd like to get a group to restart it someday, since we have a few more D&D players as friends these days.

So there you have it, my worst player was someone who didn't even actually play.

[Sliver]

Why did the DM refuse you the same things he would later agree to do for a guy hitting on him? :smallconfused:

[Sajiri]

Why did the DM refuse you the same things he would later agree to do for a guy hitting on him? :smallconfused:

Pity, mostly. The guy was having a rough time so we were in the habit of making exceptions for him, but as time went on he seemed to take advantage of it more and more, then do that whole thing of crying and being upset if we ever said no thinking (or acting like it anyway) that we didnt want him around anymore.

[Solaris]

Pity, mostly. The guy was having a rough time so we were in the habit of making exceptions for him, but as time went on he seemed to take advantage of it more and more, then do that whole thing of crying and being upset if we ever said no thinking (or acting like it anyway) that we didnt want him around anymore.

So, playing the victim and manipulating y'all to feel pity for him, essentially.
Sounds like a lovely character.

[TheEmperor]

Lifehack: You don't have to be friends with people you don't like.

Sadly doesn't work when you can alienate half of your own friends by letting that knowledge seep out.

Generally, over time, I've been slowly moving my stuff over to here, so not too much of an issue.

Also, Sajiri's story?
I'm suddenly worried, because that sounds a lot like something I used to do a few years back, except with cricket in real life.

Except for the hitting on the DM part. I don't think 11 year old me knew what hitting on even meant.

[Sajiri]

Also, Sajiri's story?
I'm suddenly worried, because that sounds a lot like something I used to do a few years back, except with cricket in real life.

Except for the hitting on the DM part. I don't think 11 year old me knew what hitting on even meant.

You used to do it, which implies you don't anymore :p I dont think you can be faulted for how you acted as an 11 year old if you've grown since then. R was in his early 20s at the time and as far as I know, he still acts that way, with no job or life outside the computer. Although I think he might actually be a she now, I dont talk to him anymore to be sure.

[TheEmperor]

Hopefully I've grown, although three years isn't enough to see that.

Anyways, I'm going through the older editions, and I find references to "the worst player ever", a story which I can't seem to find. Anyone able to point me in the right direction?

[Sliver]

I know about the worst DM ever (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?23784-I-think-I-just-dealt-with-the-worst-gaming-session), but player? Not sure...

[TheEmperor]

Hum, I'm a bit terrified that people like that exist.
Anyways, I found it.

[Zyzzyva]

Hum, I'm a bit terrified that people like that exist.
Anyways, I found it.

Well, then, link for the rest of us? :smallwink:

[Roxxy]

This is why you roll in front of the DM, and DMs shouldn't let home-rolled characters fly.

(There's a great panel in Knights of the Dinner Table where BA, the GM, is questioning Bob's exceptional stats. Dave offers his support and says "No way, I saw him roll those stats! He must've rolled 150 characters that night!")

This is why I no longer allow rolled stats in 3.5 or PF. Well, that and the issues of somebody rolling meh stats.

[comicshorse]

This is why you roll in front of the DM, and DMs shouldn't let home-rolled characters fly.

(There's a great panel in Knights of the Dinner Table where BA, the GM, is questioning Bob's exceptional stats. Dave offers his support and says "No way, I saw him roll those stats! He must've rolled 150 characters that night!")

I knew a player who would kinda do that, he'd roll about five characters and if they weren't god-like say 'Well I'll just keep going until I get 'X' stats so I might as well just create the character with them'

[(Un)Inspired]

I knew a player who would kinda do that, he'd roll about five characters and if they weren't god-like say 'Well I'll just keep going until I get 'X' stats so I might as well just create the character with them'

What a turd.