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lytokk
2014-09-25, 07:11 AM
We've currently got threads going for the worst DM/GM and the worst gaming experiences, but I was wanting to give the DM/GMs here on the board a chance to vent.

Unfortunately, in my experiences, I'd have to say I've been the worst player I've ever seen. Granted, this was when I started playing D&D, so I think I get a little hand wave for that. In the first game I ever played, I stared out a standard elven ranger/wizard going arcane archer. At one point I was flipping through the Forgotten Realms setting, and I loved the look of the drow art. The one holding the two-sided sword. I started my own game 50 years in the past for the express purpose of starting a ritual that would have my elf turned into a drow. After annoying my DM constantly about turning my character into a drow, he kept saying no. Eventually my character was captured by some zhents and drow working toward some goal that was never explained. At that point I had to roll out a new character, and behold, I got to play my drow. This one was actually competent at fighting, so it had that going for it, but eventually the game ended.

Second game, Same DM. After he killed my wood elf fighter with a dire wolf, I had to re-roll a new character, and according to the DM's rules, 1 level down from my previous. The dire wolf encounter got the party's level up to 3, but I died at 2, so I came back at 1. So, I rolled up an elven ranger (what was it with me and elves back then). After a few more sessions, I'm still 2 levels behind, and a new player joins the party. Party is level 4, I'm level 2, and the new guy joins at level 4. New player has a secret race, which in conjuction with the fact I'm 2 levels behind the new guy, flipped my switch and turned me from role-player to whiney kid again. I think my constant complaining was the cause of the end of that game. Or it could have been when the DM killed 2 players in a fight and we learned he had no concept of encounter balance.

Anyway, share stories about worst players you've been unlucky enough to run games for or be in the parties with.

KillianHawkeye
2014-09-25, 08:21 AM
The worst player I've ever gamed with was a guy we recently uninvited from our group a couple of months ago. He was a decent enough guy on the surface, but he had a really confrontational attitude and semi-violent tendencies that eventually caused a serious split between himself and the rest of us.

I don't know if it was because he was a stoner, or just because it was how he was wired, but he harbored a paranoid dislike of several members of our gaming group which he managed to keep secret for over a year. He also had a bad temper, and he bragged about it like it was something he was proud of and something we should just accept and get used to. Whenever something didn't go his way, he would verbally lash out at people. He hated when other people knew the rules better than he did and shot down his foolish plans or wrong ideas, and blamed us for knowing more than him rather than taking the responsibility for his own ignorance. He took every suggestion and correction we gave him as though they were personal attacks rather than the helpful remarks they were meant as. He demanded that everyone else accommodate his play style when he was the only one ever going against what the rest of the group all agreed on. He had a serious lack of empathy, and perhaps worst of all he kept all of his resentment and malicious feelings bottled up inside until they grew into anger. If he had only spoken to us sooner about his feelings of inadequacy and belittlement, we might have been able to salvage our friendship. But as it turned out, he was never really our friend to begin with.

Despite how offended I was when it all came out, I was truly impressed by the sheer level of social suicide that his actions inevitably led to. I have honestly never seen bridges burned so thoroughly in my life.

Tengu_temp
2014-09-25, 08:29 AM
Let me repost something I wrote 3 years ago:

---

Over the years, I encountered a lot of drama queens, disruptive behaviour, people acting like jerks "because I'm roleplaying my character this way", general idiocy and terrible roleplaying, uncomfortable ideas and other horrible stuff, and it's hard to pick the one that was the worst. I'll go with the worst player I can remember and describe in an amusing way.

It was an Exalted Solar game. He created an apparently purposely underpowered Zenith who barely had any Zenith abilities and instead focused on sorcery. He was barely active and roleplayed his character in a very bland way, but whined that he doesn't have any opportunities to shine and play his character - and when the ST gave him opportunities, he ignored them most of the time. When people disagreed with him, he whined even harder. When we fought an equally numbered group of Terrestials, he complained that we have no chance because a full circle of Solars will always lose against 5 Dragonblooded with good teamwork (any more experienced Exalted player will tell you how ridiculous this claim is), and when we beat them without too much difficulty, he whined that the ST went easy on us.
The player left the group soon afterwards. His character became an NPC, and everyone agreed that the ST roleplayed it in a much more interesting way.

---

Since then, I've met several other horrible players. I might describe them later.

DontEatRawHagis
2014-09-25, 08:37 AM
Yesterday my group had two Paladins who thought the best strategy against 5e wolves with pack tactics is to let them surround them.

The result was they were down to 10 HP at lvl 3 in every encounter.

I wasn't too good either because I didn't remember that Bane was a 1d4 versus saving throws as well as attack rolls. So I was attacking the wrong guys technically.

Marlowe
2014-09-25, 08:53 AM
Our group has G.

G always plays a Fighter. Because Fighters Fight. And no other character class can Fight. And real men Fight. And G is a real man. So he plays a Fighter.

Sometimes he has Rogue or Ranger levels. Because then he can have two weapons and Fight twice as much. And/or have Sneak Attack so he can Sneak Attack when he Fights. But they are all still basically Fighters.

He does not understand Power Attack and does not take it; because how can you Fight if you are reducing your attack? He says.

Gs idea of a good Fighter is 2-weapon fighting, weapon focus (light flail), weapon specialisation (light flail), weapon focus (sling). Slings are good for Fighting, because you can add your strength, he says.

Gs idea of beginning an encounter is always to charge, without checking whether the other lot are hostile, aware of us, or even corporeal. Because how can you Fight without charging?

Gs usual position about round 3 of an encounter is flat on his back in a bloodied/strength damaged heap, complaining that nobody told him a level 6 Ogre Barbarian can do lots of damage, or that ghosts can't be hurt with mundane weapons.

Gs tactic when we confront something that he understands can Fight better than him is to sling a few stones, then retreat and let someone else do the Fighting.

G likes to run off on his own and attempt to "flank" (move around and attack from a different side from the rest of the party for no clear reason) large groups of enemies, then cannot understand why his attempts at stealth fail when he has a substantial Armour Check Penalty, no great Dex (G does not seem to realize that 2-weapon fighting has a dex requirement), not many ranks in Move Silently, and a dozen listen checks to beat.

G loves to interrupt the DM in the middle of descriptions to tell us what he is going to do, then gets angry and confused when he steps into a trap or monster that the DM was trying to tell him about. He appears to resent other players getting to ask the DM questions or their characters receiving any focus, and can hold up a session for a good half-hour monopolizing the DM with his own queries while shutting down the other players with a stream of "Just a minute here...give me a minute...just give me a minute here...just give me a minute."

Gs characters like to drink and gamble. Because that's what Real Men do when they are not Fighting. So G will like to waste another half-hour each session with a mini-game of his own where he role-plays gambling with NPC tavern-patrons. Generally, without asking permission to join their party. This will usually led to him getting poisoned and robbed.

G will blame everyone but himself when he suffers consequences for any of the above actions, and treat the healing he receives afterwards as his god-given right. Even screaming for healing while the Cleric is surrounded by Orcs that G himself brought down on us by attacking prematurely.

G keeps his character sheets on the back of crumbled supermarket receipts, and will always put skill ranks into Handle Animal for some reason that escapes us.

G will interrupt any attempt at giving him advice on how to play so he isn't a constant ongoing disaster for his team with the well-worn phrase; "I don't sweat the fiddly details I just like to get stuck in and Fight".

G has been playing D&D for almost 30 years now.

Sweet Dreams.

ElenionAncalima
2014-09-25, 09:59 AM
I don't think I have ever played with a truly awful player (ie. someone who was a bad person in and out of game).

The worst player I know is someone who I think was the victim of playing at lots of really bad tables, because we seem to have rehabilitated him over time. I think we were the first group he ever played with where he was held repsonsible for both having a legal build and his in game actions.

Some gems from his early days as a player:
-Introduced himself to a new party member by threatening them with a knife at their throat...for no apparant reason. (this one I heard about from another game).
-Tried to run a level one character with a strength score of 70 through the use of adding pretty much every strength boosting template in the game.
-Gave his PCs all of the Pathfinder 3rd party universal archetypes without replacing anything.
-Responded to my character's friendly question, "Hi, my name is Arasha...and you are?" with "Someone much smarter than you".
-Finally, my personal favorite: Myself and another player had a perfect set up against a boss character. Her AC was so buffed that the guy couldn't hit her and I was dealing major damage out of his reach. This player announced on his turn to the other player, "I am going to use an area spell that can kill him. You have one turn to move or I am killing you too". The player is mad, but moves because she doesn't want to take damage. Of course her standing there was the only reason the boss was staying put, so he just moves and smacks the offending PC in the face. When the player complains...the DM just rolls his eyes and says "Why would he stay there when no one is next to him and you just announced your plans to kill him?"

At this point everyone is pretty frustrated with him and he seems confused that people were responding negatively to his character. I address these problems OOC, as calmly as I can, saying, "We have known you in game for about 10 minutes. In that time you have called me stupid, threatened to kill another party member and generally been rude to everyone else. I'm usually a big advocate of finding reasons to keep the party together, but I'm struggling to come up with a reason why I would work with your character again." Everyone else agrees, especially the player who he threatened. To his credit, he actually processes what we are saying and admits that he doesn't really know why we would continue working with him. He also makes it pretty clear that he never really thought about it that way or played in a game where he was held accountable.

He basically decides to retire the character. He is still the quintessential munchkin and does a lot of things without thinking about consequences, but he has gotten way better about interacting with other characters in a way that doesn't make you want to smack him.

Velaryon
2014-09-25, 11:13 AM
G keeps his character sheets on the back of crumbled supermarket receipts, and will always put skill ranks into Handle Animal for some reason that escapes us.

This part is absolutely hilarious to me.


Anyway, I've been fortunate enough to never have the gaming horror stories that many people on these forums have. I've played with players who try to intentionally monopolize the DM's attention, players who have no idea how the game works, players who want to treat it like Grand Theft Auto and just go around murdering and stealing indiscriminately, players who want to always be a "special snowflake" character using overpowered homebrew junk they pulled from some place online and coincidentally can't find again...

But if I had to pick just one of them... well, I can't. I can narrow it down to two. Both of them are good friends and I still game with them regularly (when our schedules match up anyway) and even have a good time, but these players do frustrate me sometimes.

Let's call the first one E.

E has been playing D&D since 2002. In that time he has not learned how to create a character. He cannot even level up his character without someone else helping him. He can never remember how his spells work and needs to be constantly reminded of what his character can do. This is made worse by the fact that his handwriting is terrible and his sheets are thus nearly incomprehensible. He also writes all his character notes in the margins so they're really messy sheets.

E's two greatest interests are old-school JRPG games and ancient mythologies and religions. Just about every single one of his characters comes from one or the other source. Sometimes this results in characters difficult to translate into D&D, although he's gotten better about this over the years.

Some of his character ideas in the past:
1. a gargoyle, like the ones from the cartoon Gargoyles
2. a 3/4 elf (he insisted that it was not a full elf nor a half-elf - I as DM told him to just pick one or the other race and claim whatever degree of elfiness he felt like).
3. a Final Fantasy blue mage - he actually convinced another DM to homebrew this class for him just for this one character. It basically played like a Warmage that learned new spells by getting hit with them and not dying.

Unfortunately, E is no great shakes as a roleplayer either. Not only does he make no attempt at coming up with a backstory for his character, he actively resists if the DM asks for more than about three sentences. As a player he tends to just hang out in the background and go with whatever the majority of the group wants to do. He will occasionally come up with suggestions, some of them good and others so completely bizarre and out of left field that you wonder whether he's even playing the same game as the rest of the group.

He also isn't the most focused player. He regularly carries his DS with him and plays quietly when his character isn't involved in what's going on. We deal with it because we like him as a person and because it's better than the time he went to sleep in the middle of our Star Wars game. Just stretched out on the floor and five minutes later he was snoring.

Essentially, E contributes little to nothing as a player but we keep him around because we like him and we wouldn't see him much if we excluded him from games. And at least he doesn't actively cause problems at the table. The rest of us pretty much just take turns helping him fit whatever his weird character concept is into D&D terms and helping him maintain the character over the course of play.


And then there's T...

T has been playing almost as long as E. For a long time he didn't have much grasp of the rules either, but he's gotten the hang of it in recent years. We still need to correct him now and then when he tries two things that don't stack or whatever, but these come up less and less frequently.

T can only play two basic character types - the sneaky rogue and the angry barbarian. Oh, he'll play other classes, but will play them like a sneaky rogue or an angry barbarian. Even when he deliberately tries to step outside his comfort zone, he still ends up defaulting back to one of these two types.

He also goes through an average of three characters per campaign, in a group where others either don't die or die maybe once. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether his characters die to bad luck, poor judgment, or suicide-by-monster. I remember one time when I was DMing, and the group had just come back to town after a difficult fight. The rest of the party gets rooms at an inn and relaxes the rest of the day. Not T. He decides to take on another job all by himself (the party was getting their plot hooks from a bounty board at this early stage of the game).

The job he takes involves a little detective work in town and his half-orc druid knocks that out just fine. He learns that the guy he's supposed to bring in left the city several days ago, headed toward a forest to the north. A wiser player might decide this is good enough, then go back to his party and share the info. Not T. Despite being at less than half his HP, with most of his best spells for the day already spent, he buys a wagon and sets off in immediate pursuit, with naught but his gorilla animal companion for company. He ran into a random encounter and died. The rest of the party never even found his body.

Still, that's better than the times he actively causes problems for the party. T tends to play his characters with a "shoot first, forget the questions" mentality, and also either doesn't consider or doesn't care about the consequences of some of his actions. His characters are the type that will put their greatsword through the face of a random NPC that mouths off or doesn't cooperate, even when he's supposed to be playing a Lawful Good character. He's also actively betrayed the party at least one time.

Overall I don't mind gaming with these two - at least I get along with them both personally. But both provide their share of headdesk moments for sure.

The Random NPC
2014-09-25, 01:16 PM
I'd have to say my worst player, let's call them R, simply wanted to do things the game couldn't handle. For example, in a Pathfinder game, they wanted to make a crafting character. We warned them that nonmagical crafting doesn't have a lot of support, and they could be outshined by a 5th level caster, but they persisted. When they experienced the lack of depth involved in crafting, R got really depressed. When R found out how long it takes to make something like fullplate, they got angry at the system. Unfortunately, R decided that the system needed a better crafting system, and kept bugging the GM about it. Eventually, R decided to pick up magical crafting. They wanted to make a magical battery that a spellcaster could cast their spells into, and then anyone could use to cast a spell. "Like a scroll?" we asked, "No, a scroll can only cast one spell" they replied. Obviously the GM wanted R to work for that kind of power, but they got fed up at how slow the project was progressing, and left the game.

As another example of the kind of things R wanted to create, they called it the Cerberus, a siege engine that was 4 heavy crossbows attached to a platform. But because of the technological advances, the crossbows were all reloaded with 1 move action, and did 4d10 damage. In comparison, the cheapest and worst of the printed siege engines, the light ballista, does 3d8 damage and requires 2 full rounds to reload. The only balancing factor was the Cerberus cost 2000 gp, while the ballista cost 500. Except, as R was using revised crafting rules, it would only cost about 666 gp. Oh, did I mention that the Cerberus has an engine that allows it to move forward and backward, while the ballista requires a crew of 4 working for an hour to take it apart and another hour to build it again? Needless to say, the GM ruled it too powerful, and wanted it weakened before allowing it to be built. I suggested that the damage be applied to DR and Hardness separately, as it was supposed to be anti-infantry, but the suggestion was met with more depression. Basically, any time anything didn't go exactly as R wanted, they would pout.


...His characters are the type that will put their greatsword through the face of a random NPC that mouths off or doesn't cooperate, even when he's supposed to be playing a Lawful Good character....

I hope to never meet him :smalltongue:.

Velaryon
2014-09-25, 01:49 PM
I'd have to say my worst player, let's call them R, simply wanted to do things the game couldn't handle. For example, in a Pathfinder game, they wanted to make a crafting character. We warned them that nonmagical crafting doesn't have a lot of support, and they could be outshined by a 5th level caster, but they persisted. When they experienced the lack of depth involved in crafting, R got really depressed. When R found out how long it takes to make something like fullplate, they got angry at the system. Unfortunately, R decided that the system needed a better crafting system, and kept bugging the GM about it. Eventually, R decided to pick up magical crafting. They wanted to make a magical battery that a spellcaster could cast their spells into, and then anyone could use to to cast a spell. "Like a scroll?" we asked, "No, a scroll can only cast one spell" they replied. Obviously the GM wanted R to work for that kind of power, but they got fed up at how slow the project was progressing, and left the game.

As another example of the kind of things R wanted to create, they called it the Cerberus, a siege engine that was 4 heavy crossbows attached to a platform. But because of the technological advances, the crossbows were all reloaded with 1 move action, and did 4d10 damage. In comparison, the cheapest and worst of the printed siege engines, the light ballista, does 3d8 damage and requires 2 full rounds to reload. The only balancing factor was the Cerberus cost 2000 gp, while the ballista cost 500. Except, as R was using revised crafting rules, it would only cost about 666 gp. Oh, did I mention that the Cerberus has an engine that allows it to move forward and backward, while the ballista requires a crew of 4 working for an hour to take it apart and another hour to build it again? Needless to say, the GM ruled it too powerful, and wanted it weakened before allowing it to be built. I suggested that the damage be applied to DR and Hardness separately, as it was supposed to be anti-infantry, but the suggestion was met with more depression. Basically, any time anything didn't go exactly as R wanted, they would pout.

R's inventiveness actually sounds like fun. It's a shame the rules couldn't support what he wanted to do, and a greater shame that he didn't have the patience to try and figure out a way to work within the rules to achieve some of his ideas.

The Random NPC
2014-09-25, 01:56 PM
R's inventiveness actually sounds like fun. It's a shame the rules couldn't support what he wanted to do, and a greater shame that he didn't have the patience to try and figure out a way to work within the rules to achieve some of his ideas.

Honestly that was the biggest problem. R would either point out a problem with the system, or come up with an idea, and instead of doing anything about it, they would pout. The entire group was either willing to work with R, or allow changes to make R's character viable, but R just wanted to pout.

KnotKnormal
2014-09-25, 02:33 PM
Wow... Hearing these stories I feel lucky. the worst experiences I've ever had gaming are

M. who no matter how hard i tried to get him involved with roleplay and contribute to party conversation, He would stay leaned back in his chair and only contribute during combat, to which the only thing he would contribute is attack and damage rolls. I even gave him a pocket DM, to give advice and information to share with the party the he never did.

and G. who would scream "B**** I'm Chaos!!!" before doing something incredibly stupid.
Setting fire to the inn they were sleeping in.(burned to death)
Punting gnomes off a damn.(publicly executed)
Dropping another character off a cliff.(murdered by party)
Trying to kill, one of the most helpful NPCs I've ever created.(murdered by party)
Stealing the Cake at a wedding for royals.(publicly executed)
Pushing a towns only blacksmith into his forge.(publicly executed by party)
Poring drinks at a party from a bottle clearly labeled "POISON"(poisoned)
Asking a king to taste his food in case of poison.(publicly executed)

this list continues on and on

ComaVision
2014-09-25, 02:39 PM
The worst players I have played with are the ones that just never seem to really grasp the game. After 6+ months they'll still ask "Can I move and attack?" (in D&D 3.5). Of course, they're also incapable of creating characters or leveling characters, and tend to die the most frequently.

icefractal
2014-09-25, 03:43 PM
I haven't had anybody really terrible, but there's been some less than awesome people. Someone fairly recently:
* Didn't know/understand the rules that well, especially for making a character.
* Wanted to have an extremely powerful character, meaning he'd want to recalculate / rebuild his character (or actually, have someone else do it) whenever his performance wasn't dominatingly effective.
* Also lost his character sheet a fair amount, so even more rebuilding.
* Always wanted to go off and do solo stuff, and have the spotlight focused on him continually. Would try to interrupt anything other people were doing.
* Made strange plans that were hard for the GM to understand what he was even trying to accomplish.
* Got frustrated and huffy whenever he failed at something, or the spotlight was on someone else for too long.

The last few of these were so much of an issue that we had to basically soft-ban solo scouting / info gathering, by either all going to the place in question immediately, or by the GM fast-forwarding past it.

Velaryon
2014-09-25, 04:34 PM
And then there's T...

T has been playing almost as long as E. For a long time he didn't have much grasp of the rules either, but he's gotten the hang of it in recent years. We still need to correct him now and then when he tries two things that don't stack or whatever, but these come up less and less frequently.

T can only play two basic character types - the sneaky rogue and the angry barbarian. Oh, he'll play other classes, but will play them like a sneaky rogue or an angry barbarian. Even when he deliberately tries to step outside his comfort zone, he still ends up defaulting back to one of these two types.

He also goes through an average of three characters per campaign, in a group where others either don't die or die maybe once. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether his characters die to bad luck, poor judgment, or suicide-by-monster. I remember one time when I was DMing, and the group had just come back to town after a difficult fight. The rest of the party gets rooms at an inn and relaxes the rest of the day. Not T. He decides to take on another job all by himself (the party was getting their plot hooks from a bounty board at this early stage of the game).

The job he takes involves a little detective work in town and his half-orc druid knocks that out just fine. He learns that the guy he's supposed to bring in left the city several days ago, headed toward a forest to the north. A wiser player might decide this is good enough, then go back to his party and share the info. Not T. Despite being at less than half his HP, with most of his best spells for the day already spent, he buys a wagon and sets off in immediate pursuit, with naught but his gorilla animal companion for company. He ran into a random encounter and died. The rest of the party never even found his body.

Still, that's better than the times he actively causes problems for the party. T tends to play his characters with a "shoot first, forget the questions" mentality, and also either doesn't consider or doesn't care about the consequences of some of his actions. His characters are the type that will put their greatsword through the face of a random NPC that mouths off or doesn't cooperate, even when he's supposed to be playing a Lawful Good character. He's also actively betrayed the party at least one time.

Overall I don't mind gaming with these two - at least I get along with them both personally. But both provide their share of headdesk moments for sure.

I've remembered a couple more important details about T that I forgot to include before.

For one, he loses character sheets sometimes. He's had to retire at least two characters I can think of because he lost the sheet and couldn't remember enough of his spells, feats, items, etc. to reconstruct it properly. It's gotten to the point where the DM's usually keep his sheet or give it to one of the more reliable players to hold on to, so that he'll still have a character next time we play.

Second, he's not always reliable to show up to the game. Sometimes he will say the night before that he's good to to, or even the morning of, and then when it's game time he's "not feeling well" or his <insert family member> needs him for something. These things happen, but it's been common with him enough over the years that I at least wonder whether he just lies when he doesn't feel like playing D&D.

Jay R
2014-09-25, 05:21 PM
I've posted this in a previous thread, but it's still the answer.

In 1975 or 1976, there was a guy that several of us would not adventure with any longer; he was unsafe. Eventually, he was running his own party, all by himself. His most famed moment was with a party of first levels (because nobody survived to 2nd level).

DM: Going along the road, you see a sign saying, "Danger! Cockatrice Valley."
PC: We enter the Valley.
DM: At the Valley's entrance, there is another sign: "Turn Back! Cockatrice Valley."
PC. We keep going.
DM. The valley is filled with many stone statues, all looking up.
PC: We keep going.
DM: You hear large bodies moving around the bend.
PC: We run around the bend.
DM: You hear a heavy flapping above you.
PC: We look up.

Later the DM bemoaned the fact that he was trying to keep this PC's characters alive, and he couldn't do it.

Sith_Happens
2014-09-25, 06:16 PM
They wanted to make a magical battery that a spellcaster could cast their spells into, and then anyone could use to to cast a spell. "Like a scroll?" we asked, "No, a scroll can only cast one spell" they replied.

That's called a Ring of Spell Storing.

Amaril
2014-09-25, 07:03 PM
I've never even come close to some of the horror stories I've seen on here (for which I thank my lucky stars), but the worst player I've ever met, without question, was D. I played with D in a 4e group I joined a few years back, where he alternated between DMing and playing. He was a pretty bad DM too, incidentally--his NPCs hardly spoke and had no character whatsoever, all he ever wanted to run was combat (nothing wrong with that, but not my style), and most annoyingly, he would constantly suggest starting up new campaigns in new settings, run one session of each, and then the very next session want to scrap it and start something else.

As a fellow player, he was almost more irritating. He was a merciless power-gamer, which was useful because he always gave good optimization advice, but his PCs somehow managed to have even less personality than his NPCs. I don't think I can remember one time he spoke in character or made any meaningful roleplaying decisions the whole time I played with him. The really galling thing, though, was how incredibly obtuse and dismissive he was about party strategy. It seemed like every time we had to decide where to go or what to do next, while the rest of us did our best to advocate for following the seemingly practical courses of action we thought the DM expected us to take, he would stubbornly shoot down every single suggestion we put forth, no matter what it was. On the rare occasions when he would suggest something else instead, it would be something obviously ridiculous and suicidal. I remember one time, we were playing a high fantasy seafaring game in which an important location was being threatened by a huge enemy fleet that had us obviously outnumbered and outgunned, and every time we suggested going off and pursuing one of the numerous plot hooks we had kicking around, D would claim it was pointless and foolish, while suggesting instead that we attack the whole enemy fleet directly by ourselves. He seemed to think this was the only sensible thing to do. I have never been able to fathom his reasoning, and have, thankfully, moved on to a much better table since.

Oh, almost forgot to mention he was notably sexist. Figured I should throw that in there.

Harbinger
2014-09-25, 09:06 PM
The worst player I ever had?

Let's call him Ralph. Ralph wasn't like the other boys. Ralph was obsessed with Call of Duty to an almost creepy, unhealthy, degree (this will be important later). He had spent well over 800 hours playing Call of Duty: World of War. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't also all he talked about. He got angry and upset at any kind of negative mention of the game. When we wanted to play D&D we often had to coax and drag him off the computer. Still, he was our friend, so we invited him to play with us.

His first character was a WWII veteran with PTSD. This would be mildly eye-rolling, if it weren't for the fact that we were playing in a homebrewed setting based on Ancient Mesopotamia. I told he could be a guard in the city of Uruk. He seemed fine with that. His character class was a knight, though he was essentially a warrior because he didn't care to do anything other than move and attack. When we arrived in Uruk, he immediately started bossing people around, acting like he was the king. He assumed he was some kind of local celebrity. When this fell through, he told me he wanted to find "the hottest prostitute" in the city and have sex with her.

Much later, the players found the Garden of Proserpine, a garden in the Underworld with fruit that brings eternal life. They were presented with a choice, take the fruit for themselves, or destroy the garden and end the eternal suffering of a dry lich called Proserpine who had been trapped there for thousands of years. Ralph wanted to take the fruit, because he was convinced that the single fruit would end the "famine" in Uruk, which he believed was caused by dwarves. This was not a plot device I created. He made this up. When the other players disagreed, it turned into a PvP match: Ralph and a thri-kreen monk versus Proserpine (a sorcerer), a gnome archivist, and a hellbred rogue. Ralph grappled with the idea that the other players disagreed with him. He was convinced he was going to win, but when victory did not become apparent within three rounds, he became very sad and started making passive aggressive comments implying that I liked the other players better than him. When the monk (actually a very powerful character) crit the archivist and decapitated him, it became clear that Ralph was winning. It was very exciting for everyone, an intense battle. I eagerly asked Ralph what he was going to do next.

Ralph's response was succinct, as he slouched in his chair staring angrily at the floor. "I pull out my greatsword and kill myself." He then glared up at me. "I know you're just going to kill me anyway."

Much later, with the same characters (we talked him out of his pointless suicide), he was on a boat headed for the city of Babylon, when the players were attacked by water elementals. The other players were having an intense battle. Suddenly a loud voice rang out through the air.

GUYS

GUYS STOP

I'M HAVING A PTSD MOMENT

He decided that this would be the best time for some character introspection and, without missing a beat, began vividly describing an epic sea battle between Uruk and the dwarves (which he had made up). He described himself heroically leaping out of a ship and killing thirty dwarves in the water with his greatsword, twelve with his knife, and four with his bare fists. This ground the whole game to hault as he said this in the middle of the battle. I questioned him.

"Ralph, I have to ask: 1. How did you jump out of a ship in full plate armor? 2. Why are you bringing this up as the ship is attacked by elementals? Furthermore, there never was a war with the dwarves."

He glared at me for a second, then stared at the floor and said in a nasty voice "Stop undermining my roleplaying."

Even later, he was told by the leader of La Resistance in Babylon to come alone in order to join the resistance group. Not only did he disobey this by bringing another player, but he also brought along several beggars, two city guards, and an official of the very fascist government the resistance was trying to overthrow.

In the next game I ran, he played an undead gangster in a modern fantasy type game. That was mostly fine, aside from the occasional enthusiastic to WWII, except for the last session, when they were investigating the destroyed remains of Uruk from the last game. Upon finding out that the terrifying, moldering old corpse-man reciting creepy poetry as he stalked the players through an ancient dead city was Gilgamesh, and thus connected vaguely to his old character, he literally walked up to the hideous abomination and asked it if, and I quote, "You've ever heard anything about a badass city guard who gave his life saving the city." (The character actually died inconsequentially fighting a vicious were-elephant, which had nothing to do with Uruk) The creatures response was to age him until he turned to dust. At that point, he angrily shouted "RAGEQUIT" and ran upstairs to play Call of Duty.

We didn't invite him to our next game.

Velaryon
2014-09-25, 11:08 PM
He actually used the word ragequit? That's hilarious. :smallbiggrin:

The Random NPC
2014-09-26, 12:36 AM
That's called a Ring of Spell Storing.

Right, I'd have had no problems if that was all it could do, but they wanted it to be a programmable battery, where you put in the right configurations and cast any spell. Eventually they wanted to be able to gather latent magical energy from the environment to cast the spells. It would build up spell levels over time and then be discharged as any spell.

Sith_Happens
2014-09-26, 02:00 AM
Right, I'd have had no problems if that was all it could do, but they wanted it to be a programmable battery, where you put in the right configurations and cast any spell.

So basically a reverse-Spellpool? Put X total spell levels in, get X total levels' worth of whatever spells you want out? Needs a daily usage limit to keep from being massively overpowered, but besides that no more or less workable than any other magic item. Had I been R's DM I'd have just figured out how much I wanted the thing to be worth (definitely somewhere in the range of "a lot") and then told him he could craft it as normal. Which might have been what the actual DM did, what part of the process exactly was "taking too long?"


Eventually they wanted to be able to gather latent magical energy from the environment to cast the spells. It would build up spell levels over time and then be discharged as any spell.

Same procedure here, just WAY more expensive.

The Random NPC
2014-09-26, 03:15 AM
So basically a reverse-Spellpool? Put X total spell levels in, get X total levels' worth of whatever spells you want out? Needs a daily usage limit to keep from being massively overpowered, but besides that no more or less workable than any other magic item. Had I been R's DM I'd have just figured out how much I wanted the thing to be worth (definitely somewhere in the range of "a lot") and then told him he could craft it as normal. Which might have been what the actual DM did, what part of the process exactly was "taking too long?"



Same procedure here, just WAY more expensive.

After about 3 sessions of "research" R didn't have a reverse-Spellpool machine. Then came the pouting.

WrathMage
2014-09-26, 04:19 AM
Some of these stories are just priceless....

I am pretty fortunate that in 20 years of running TT RPGs I haven't really come across too many awful players, despite running at University societies (always a breeding ground for horror stories) and having lots of friends of friends join my groups. However I can think of 2 players who stand out in my memory as being particulary egregious. The names have been reduced to initials (which may or may not have been tinkered with) to protect their modesty.


The first one who springs to mind is HK, and is the more recent of my two stinkers. I had a friend who had recebtrly come out of hospital and was recovering. I offered to run a game for him as a way to keep him involved and catch up with him. The group would be my friend (HP) and a couple of my brothers (HI & VG). Also included was HK, my friend's significant other, who was apparently an enthusiastic player and really loved RPGs, as well being very big into playin their character.

Well I decided to run a one off VtM game for them, and I set the scenario and had them create characters the week before the game. Most people created normal (for VtM) characters. HK created a wanna-be Victorian Lady whose character portrait came from Twilight. This should have sounded alarm bells I think.

Day of teh game comes around and I kick off, with the set up playing out nicely, and the characters all interacting and things moving along reasonably well. The one thing that hadn't happened was combat as this was more of an investigative plot, with clues etc to think about. This carried on for about 90 minutes which i don't reckon is long in reality when HK pipes up with "Is this plot going anywhere?". The rest of teh players looked round at me and each other as I asked what HK meant. She went on to explain that as there had been no one to kill she considered this to be going nowhere, and she wanted some direction. The other players explained to her that they were looking into the (fairly obvious if I am honest) plot and that there would be action to follow. It wasn't enough for her, and she proceeded to go to another part of the city and attack the Prince!

Suffice to say the session wound up pretty quickly, with her attacking the Prince, and failing miserably, whilst the other players got the hell out of dodge. I wrapped it up after that, cut my losses and drove home wondering what had gone wrong!

Strcitly speaking this second one was me playing along side this player but it was... well yeah he was odd.


This was a light hearted game of Star Wars (WEG D6). We were all smugglers or scoundrels, fringe types. GM had us on Endor (before RoJ) tracking some slavers. BJ joined the game at this point, bringing in a minor force user (GM was dubious about but let it slide).

The gamegot started and we got on with our usual light hearted jinks until we met BJ's characters... who just misjudged the tone of the game totally. He played a miserable, down-beat Jedi (not the force user he originally was... and despite the GM telling him that he explicitly wasn't a Jedi), angry at the world and everyone in it. We were a bit thrown, but went with it... fewer jokes and fewer laughs now, until we reached the slavers camp. Here BJ went mental... his character started having flashbacks to... well 'Nam by the sounds of it! He went crazy, killing left right and centre.
We got the session finished and the players (minus BJ) agreed to not have him play again. Sad thing was, it left a bad taste and the campaign actually folded without another session being played...

Wow BJ was odd....

GungHo
2014-09-26, 09:14 AM
(The character actually died inconsequentially fighting a vicious were-elephant, which had nothing to do with Uruk)
The next time you tell this story, lead with the were-elephant.

Wraith
2014-09-26, 11:00 AM
My worst player by a long shot was 'Red'.

Now, don't get me wrong - I like Red. He's my friend, we share a lot of interests and he can be fun to hang out with. But when it comes to tabletop, his worst habit is that he tells blatant lies and expects no one to notice.

I'm not even saying that he cheats, because he doesn't. Nothing to crass as to add skills or equipment to his characters without permission, at any rate. It's just the one lie, in fact, but it accounts for a lot of his problems.

"I prefer to roleplay rather than just fight".

Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics and Red. :smallbiggrin:

Example: A homebrew campaign that fell somewhere roughly between D&D and GURPs - high fantasy with the usual menagerie or Orcs, Elves and the likes, but d6 based and rather more free form than you'd expect to see in a published work - written and run by a mutual friend that I shall refer to as Gabe.

Gabe and Red were very close friends, and as such Red had virtually unrestricted access to the written rules, and so spent plenty of time trawling through them for his perfect PC. "I want to play something that I can roleplay with".

His "roleplay orientated" Character ended up as a Gestault Druid/Were-Griffon who, as a free action, could triple in size, quadruple it's physical stats, and still cast a large number of badly balanced spells. To top it off, said-PC also had the personality of sandpaper Harpy that spent most of it's time standing 20feet away from the party and venomously sniping at NPCs.

Fortunately, that one managed to die in hilarious circumstances (I like Gabe a lot, but until you've read his rules for Grappling and Subdual Damage then you don't get to complain about any other system's! :smalltongue: ) and so he went looking for another "good roleplay character".

He chose the Death Knight monster class.
In this system, Death Knights are incredibly tough melee powerhouses that are controlled by Master Necromancers as bodyguards, and also as conduits - if a Death Knight can see you, it's Master can too, AND he can cast his spells through the Death Knight as though he were in the room with you.
Red's "Master" was not only of an ungodly power level (I don't think we ever managed to find out was his Dismiss/Control rank was, and certainly no one ever managed to Counter any of his spells) but he was also mysteriously absent and/or silent. Net result: a nigh indestructible Revenant who could also cast unstoppable Death Magic.

...And who also featured the "miserable, stoic" personality type that some people play out as "personal Code of Honour", but in this came out as "don't tell anyone else about your plot points and kill any NPC who even suggests that he might get in the way".

Were this bad enough, as we were effectively still writing this system we were allowed to play multiple characters, just to test out different classes and see how they fared, provided of course that no one was deliberately conjoining their characters' abilities for unfair benefit.

"I'd like to play another character, that way I can do more roleplay."

Ent High Mage/Water Elementalist.
Because Ents are physically massive, don't need to breathe or eat (food), and - sheer coincidence, I'm sure - took less damage from water-based AoE spells and could even be healed by some of them. And that's all I can tell you about that character, because that's pretty much all it ever did; tank damage, negate it's Weakness To Fire drawback by "always being wet or having a source of water near it" and hit massive AoE effects that necessitated it standing well away from the rest of the party.

Eventually were decided to try a very different game to see if we could curb his 'enthusiasm', so we chose a system about as far away from Dragon Lance-esque Hack 'n' Slash as you can get: Mouseguard.

Long story short, Red's character started out as a Lawful Compassionate Healer/Alchemist-type character who refused to even carry a weapon "because I won't need it, I'm a healer". A dedicated, dyed-in-the-wool Pacifist. Within 3 in-character days, I and another player had to threaten Red's character with in-game Conflict (effectively, Mouseguard's equivalent to PvP) to physically prevent him from slitting the throats of captured, unarmed, uninjured prisoners, because "after I was injured in that first fight, I'm now all jaded and traumatised".

He sulked for the rest of the evening, left early and hasn't RP'd with that group since. I don't think he's even spoken to the other player and the GM, though I seem to have been forgiven.

BeerMug Paladin
2014-09-29, 09:14 AM
I've posted this in a previous thread, but it's still the answer.

In 1975 or 1976, there was a guy that several of us would not adventure with any longer; he was unsafe. Eventually, he was running his own party, all by himself. His most famed moment was with a party of first levels (because nobody survived to 2nd level).

DM: Going along the road, you see a sign saying, "Danger! Cockatrice Valley."
PC: We enter the Valley.
DM: At the Valley's entrance, there is another sign: "Turn Back! Cockatrice Valley."
PC. We keep going.
DM. The valley is filled with many stone statues, all looking up.
PC: We keep going.
DM: You hear large bodies moving around the bend.
PC: We run around the bend.
DM: You hear a heavy flapping above you.
PC: We look up.

Later the DM bemoaned the fact that he was trying to keep this PC's characters alive, and he couldn't do it.

This is so perfect, it almost seems like an urban legend one might recieve a story about in an email.


This isn't really a bad player (but is probably the closest thing I've had to one), as he was generally a source of hilarity for games he was in and was lots of fun. Even so, he would frequently swap out characters, try to solo encounters, be oddly convinced his overpowered builds were too weak so wanted to switch, asked for special custom character options to play, wouldn't write things down on his character sheet (like equipment, feats), had characters take actions based on information they had no way of knowing. (Kind of annoying to handle as a DM at times, but not enough to be bad. You just had to deal with a certain eccentric behavior. He was good at doing roleplaying when he liked a character enough to do it.) He also attacked the party with two different characters during a character's introduction to the party! He got killed instead both times.

For an example of some of the madness, here's a brief recounting of some of his actions in one campaign. This whole thing only spans a grand total of two sessions. His character was an human ranger, I believe. We were doing a dungeon dive for adventurer reasons. We came out to a cliff face and walked along a narrow path leading along the side of a rocky pathway.

This ranger decided now was the perfect time to climb up the cliff. 100 feet or so. Without the rest of the party and without any sort of climbing gear. Just up he went, with no warning whatsoever. I think it was because he wanted to know if the well we descended to get to where we were now was at the top of that sheer cliff face.

I think we were level 3 or 4 at the time. Through a series of lucky rolls, he made it all the way up, and so the DM threw a full level appropriate random encounter at him (intended to make him flee or perhaps discourage this behavior in the future). After winning, he decided to rejoin the rest of the party, so began to climb down the cliff again. Without rope or anything. Failing, he plummeted to the pathway and died on impact.

He had a backup character all ready to go. And so, we have a new character! A monkey (spider monkey, maybe?), which had up until then been his previous character's animal companion but now had a character class (rogue levels, I think) and was completely unable to talk to the party. (I pictured a body slamming into the ground and the new character bouncing out of the old character's backpack as miscellaneous other gear splashes out.)

Anyway, we were by then suffering a major party split, so I was the only other character present at the time. I figure I may as well gather the valuable things up, since I couldn't do anything else about the death. One item I had a particular interest in looking for was a strange evil artifact we had found who that dead ranger had been carrying around. I intended to keep it secure so someone wouldn't use it carelessly (and get rid of it ASAP).

The player then insists to me that the loot should belong to his monkey character, but I point out that monkeys can't really use any of the loot in theory and my character would have no reason to think the random monkey belonging to the now dead ranger is now a party member. What happens (and a huge part of why this player is not a bad player) is that we determine how this plays out in character.

Really, the only thing the player really wants is to still possess the evil artifact, so he has his monkey go grab the pack in a mad search to find it before I can get ahold of it and seal it away. I think at one point I had a monkey on my back and was having my stuff rifled through, jumping and twisting around in circles while balancing on a rocky outcrop over a fall to certain death.

He found what he wanted, and I chased the monkey, but he used the artifact and got some weird glowy purple limb thing because of it. The player never attacked me, just ran away when I made advances towards him and hung around the party. (Events are compounded further when later in the same session me and another player engage in direct PvP resulting in a death.)

Now there's a creepy monkey hanging around me and following me everywhere. He possesses an evil artifact and has some weird blacklight emitting arm. On top of that a trusted friend had just betrayed me and I had just killed them. No efforts to scare the monkey away seemed to work (after all, he is a party member).

On going back to town, my character decides to hire someone to hunt the monkey and kill it. In part to retrieve the artifact, but also to get rid of a creepy monkey. What follows is a solo-character adventure the whole group finds hilarious.

The monkey fights his tracker several times and flees. Highlights include sneaking into a merchant's working office behind a store, and getting a description of several things sitting on a desk, and immediately upon hearing, "... a small vial full of black liquid," replies, "I drink it!"

Monkey-player then starts laughing before the DM can reply and asks. "It's ink, isn't it?" DM confirms. Monkey now has wet ink smeared around his mouth and down his front.

A fight took place inside a bar with the hunter NPC smashing the whole place up and monkey generally causing a huge ruckus as it ran from cover to cover.

It finally ended as the monkey found himself trying to buy a potion in a potion shop. Unable to speak and being illiterate, the monkey communicated with screeches, furious pointing and waving a little bag of coins around that he had stolen from all over town. Apparently dancing on the countertop, performing monkey cherades is highly effective.

The merchant selling the potions pointed from potion to potion, helpfully naming all the wares in stock for the illiterate monkey to choose between "Potion of stinking cloud, potion of magic missile, potion of hold person, potion of enfeeblement, potion of inflict moderate wounds, potion..."

Monkey dancing, pointing and screeching as the illiterate player bought the potion when he heard, "moderate wounds" and drank it on the spot. The DM gave him a will save, but he failed, so the creepy monkey died.

DM Nate
2014-09-29, 11:44 AM
(I pictured a body slamming into the ground and the new character bouncing out of the old character's backpack as miscellaneous other gear splashes out.)

I laughed so hard at this image I think I scared my cats.

The Hanged Man
2014-09-29, 12:28 PM
Let's see.

There was the player who basically lived at the comic shop. His wife had kicked him out after he'd spent over a year without showing any inclination to even look for a job. So he would come to the comic shop and sleep on the couches in the basement during the day, then at night he'd just wander around nearby, bumming cigarettes off of tourists, and occasionally take a halfhearted stab at cleaning himself in the public showers by the beach. Any time anyone was running a game in store, he'd invite himself to it. I believe weeks went by at a time where the only food he ate was pizza and soda that other people brought for games. But somehow he scrounged the money to buy like $400 of Warhammer stuff a month, so the owners turned a blind eye to all this. The store had a rule that if you were using their tables to run your games, you had to have an open sign-up sheet for it. So the only way to make sure your game didn't include this guy was to make sure all the players you actually wanted were there with you to sign up immediately when you posted the notice.

Or there was the player who tried to badger the GM into letting him rebuild his character every single time he failed a skill roll, or encountered a scenario that he wasn't specifically geared to dominate. "You didn't tell me the game was going to be about [recent event], so I didn't know how to make my character properly." I don't know why the GM put up with it. As a result this guy made no observable contributions to the game. He was always too busy rebuilding his character to be involved in any scene. Eventually the GM started designing scenarios that were explicitly about things this guy's character used to be good at, before the current rebuild. So when he'd get upset that he wasn't correctly configured to effortlessly steamroll a challenge, the GM could say "well, you used to be set up pretty well for [recent event], but you complained and changed your character before it became useful."

Or there was the player who tried to join my online Mage: the Ascension campaign. Her character was actually from Exalted, but we entertained the idea, because this is back when White Wolf was still advertising Exalted as a "prehistory" of the World of Darkness, and we didn't know any better until after this player caused us to investigate. Her character sheet showed up with a bunch of nonsensical traits from out-of-print Vampire: the Masquerade books, and a backstory about how she had been in stasis since the fall of the Second Age, only to awaken in the Age of Darkness, befriend an Appearance 8 (on a scale of 1-5) Lesbian Stripper Elder Tzimesce Vampire, and learn secret vampire fleshcrafting magic on top of her Solar Exalted powers, which she used to give herself all kinds of exotic sexual features. Also her attached character pictures were of a very NSFW latex fetish model, with said exotic sexual features very prominently photoshopped in. We denied her application, and she formally declared Nemesis against us, vowing to rally all the forces of the Internet to break up our vile RP "Clique". We actually got a couple new players who only heard about us in the first place from her ranting.

Inevitability
2014-09-29, 12:30 PM
Sounds like the player roleplayed that monkey just as he should have. :smalltongue:

Diachronos
2014-09-29, 12:59 PM
There's one player in my group who is our personal definition of a bad player. Among the things she's done are:
* Built a half-elf cleric because she was told she could play pretty much anything she wanted. When the party included a Half-Celestial Monkadin, a Drider, and an INCUBUS. Said cleric then proceeded to never prepare spells and try to punch things. If I recall correctly, it was also public knowledge at the time that the DM hated any sort of elf.
* Wheel of Time RPG: She built an Aes Sedai Initiate... and proceeded to sneak after the Wanderer (failing, of course), and when attacked by a Trolloc decided to use her dagger instead of magic to fight back.
* Current PF game: She built a bard... with 6 Wisdom, 7 Dex, 13 Str, and NO RANKS IN PERFORM. Oh, and did I mention that she insists on using her bow instead of her rapier, and didn't realize her stats like HP and BAB went up when she leveled? And her spell choices revolved around "oh, this spell sounds good for a scoundrel", only to learn later that you can't pick pockets with Unseen Servant? She was also told that she could reroll her ability scores as many times as she wanted (the DM even gave everyone a free 18)... and never tried to reroll.

The joke has become that she needs someone to build her character for her. And play it for her. Because even Warriors are too complex for her.

Inevitability
2014-09-29, 02:12 PM
The joke has become that she needs someone to build her character for her. And play it for her. Because even Warriors are too complex for her.

This, my friend, is why the commoner class was invented. Although I suppose the descision of which weapon to get proficiency in might be best left to someone else. :smallwink:

Diachronos
2014-09-29, 03:45 PM
This, my friend, is why the commoner class was invented. Although I suppose the descision of which weapon to get proficiency in might be best left to someone else. :smallwink:

See, that's why we say Warrior. Warrior doesn't give you proficiency choices.

Inevitability
2014-09-29, 11:38 PM
See, that's why we say Warrior. Warrior doesn't give you proficiency choices.

But warrior will bring the question of which weapon to pick with it. For commoner, you have one decision point before the game starts, but if she plays a warrior, she'll spend hours in every shop, looking through all the weapons from all the books.

Sith_Happens
2014-09-30, 03:47 AM
But warrior will bring the question of which weapon to pick with it. For commoner, you have one decision point before the game starts, but if she plays a warrior, she'll spend hours in every shop, looking through all the weapons from all the books.

And probably end up meleeing with an arrow.

ReaderAt2046
2014-09-30, 11:51 AM
Trump: http://irolledazero.blogspot.com/2013/08/not-suethulhu-marty-player.html

Arbane
2014-09-30, 01:28 PM
Trump: http://irolledazero.blogspot.com/2013/08/not-suethulhu-marty-player.html

I'll see you and raise you the entire contents of The Binder Of Shame (http://albruno3.blogspot.com/p/the-binder-of-shame-rpg-rants-and-other.html). :smallbiggrin:

Diachronos
2014-09-30, 01:42 PM
But warrior will bring the question of which weapon to pick with it. For commoner, you have one decision point before the game starts, but if she plays a warrior, she'll spend hours in every shop, looking through all the weapons from all the books.

She's good about picking the weapon she wants to use. Just not about using the one that she doesn't take penalties to.

LibraryOgre
2014-09-30, 01:55 PM
Originally, I was going to mention the guy who kept a copy of the megadungeon in his backpack, and would excuse himself to the bathroom every five minutes, taking his backpack with him, and come back with a great idea about where we should go next.

But, instead, there's Creepy Dude. Creepy Dude decided that he wanted to play a cleric of Talos, despite being asked to create good, or at least neutral, characters. He decided that his cleric of Talos was going to be trying to breed goats... he wanted to breed some variety of goats from a 3.x book, but since we weren't playing 3.x, he settled for "I'm trying to make a breed of goats like these." He talked about goat breeding a lot.

His character took trophies from things we killed... not ears or hair, which is not unusual, but blood, urine, and other bodily fluids.

He offered to heal a player's wizard, but insisted he needed to touch the player in order to cast the spell.

This man was in his early-to-mid forties. His wife, also at the game, muttered "Don't get us kicked out of another group...". But that was actually the final straw. I'm not going to teach basic behavior to a 40 year old who's already been kicked out of other groups for acting in ways that would get a 13 year old a stern talking to.

Libertad
2014-09-30, 09:54 PM
Between powergamers ruining the game to incompetent players, I've been particularly unlucky to have a creep player with a fixation on rape. I'll spoiler the thing in case folks don't want to see it.

I once had DMed for a group of new players from one of the local high schools about a decade ago. For a time the game ran normally, showing them the ropes, and of course the typical love of reckless decision that only a group of teenaged gamers can get up to.

Things turned south when one of the players wanted his character to rape a quest-giver NPC as soon as they appeared to the group; the rest of the party turned on him before he could even attempt the act by throwing him in the half-way explored dungeon to fend for himself.

He was quite angry that we wouldn't let him rape anyone. Needless to say I never invited him back.

Ettina
2014-09-30, 10:06 PM
Worst I've had was a PC I suspect is dyslexic because he seems to need a lot of help with fairly basic reading and spelling when filling out his character sheet. Other than that, he's a fine guy to game with.

ReaderAt2046
2014-10-01, 12:29 AM
Between powergamers ruining the game to incompetent players, I've been particularly unlucky to have a creep player with a fixation on rape. I'll spoiler the thing in case folks don't want to see it.

I once had DMed for a group of new players from one of the local high schools about a decade ago. For a time the game ran normally, showing them the ropes, and of course the typical love of reckless decision that only a group of teenaged gamers can get up to.

Things turned south when one of the players wanted his character to rape a quest-giver NPC as soon as they appeared to the group; the rest of the party turned on him before he could even attempt the act by throwing him in the half-way explored dungeon to fend for himself.

He was quite angry that we wouldn't let him rape anyone. Needless to say I never invited him back.

I am quite pleased at the reaction of the rest of the party. A bright spot in a dark day.

Faily
2014-10-01, 07:14 AM
Reading through all this, I will say that the "bad players" I've encountered are incredibly tame in comparison.

First story:
Player H was a relatively decent girl. A bit odd, but who isn't in this hobby? :smallwink: She was very good at taking notes of what happened during the sessions, but she contributed hardly anything to each session herself through the terms of actually participating apart from combat, or using one of her gadgets called a Multiscanner (game was Dragonstar. D&D in space. Multiscanner was basically a geiger-counter+other types of scanning). She played a Cleric of The Warrior, and the party was a group of mercenaries.
In an attempt to get her to roleplay a bit more, before going out on our mission, this happened:
Player 1: Dear priest, since we are about to embark upon a very dangerous mission, may we ask you for a brief communal prayer to The Warrior to bless us and grant us his strength?
Player H: ... What?
Player 2: You are our link to the divine warrior. It sounds like a good idea, a communal prayer could certainly lift our spirits and boost morale.
Player H: No.
Player 1: Uhm, please. It would mean much for us.
Player H: I don't believe in that kind of stuff!

Turns out that the player was an atheist... like all the rest of the players. But just couldn't make the jump of make-believing to believe in a divine entity (which also granted her all her class abilities and spells).

Later in the same mission, the GM gives a final shot of trying to coax some minor roleplaying out of her.

Player H: I will cast Magic Weapon on my gun.
GM: Ok. Would you want to describe how the casting of the spell appears, or what you say to make The Warrior to enhance your weapon?
Player H: Ok... uhmm... "Dear Warrior, blessed by thy name, if it's not too much of a bother, it would be very nice if you could take the time and perhaps make my weapon magical? It would be very nice. Appriciate it. Thanks."

-----

Another player, whom we shall call Player Z, is a notorious cheater, solo-er and wannabe-munchkin (I say wannabe because he can't really construct a decent character without ignoring rules).

- He have several times, for mysterious reasons, had more Experience Points (in various systems) than any other character in the party.
- He has ignored alignment-rules in D&D 3.5, without even talking with the GM about it first, because "he thought it was stupid so we didn't use them". The character he had in this case was a LG Half-Celestial Mindbender.
- He goes off on his own to take on the entire dungeon and ends up hurt, dying, dead, incapacited or in need of rescue, and whines that he cannot take on everything on his own.
- He has always managed to get incredible successes whenever it is needed... because he's cheated on dicerolls.
- At one time in Legend of the Five Rings, his fire-breathing monk was chasing down a suspect while running through the "Red Light district", and he quickly grew tired of running after this person and announced, after having chased him into a building, that he was just gonna breathe fire on the bastard. The GM quickly pointed out that he, the player, was much faster than the culprit and would be able to catch up to him soon. He didn't care and started rolling his damage roll. The GM points out that the building is made of wood and paper. He didn't care and started calculating his damage roll. The GM points out that there are people inside the house. He announced that it would be a disservice to the one who had given him his mystical powers to not use them when his damage roll was so amazingly good, he wanted to go through with it anyway. So he sat fire to the culprit, to the geisha behind him, the wall behind them, and the fires spread quickly and the Party spent the next hour helping to put out the fire that had started in the pleasure quarters.

----

Other players I've encountered are not really that bad, but have their elements that make you want to sigh.

- The player who has played D&D for 15+ years and third edition since it came out (more or less), but still need to be told how Spell DCs work, how the Concentration skill works, or most skills in general.
As a DM, he thinks casters are OP, but refuses to allow mundanes to shine. At one point my Ranger was not allowed to Track a mummy that had escaped 1 round ago... because reasons (even when my skill check went well and beyond what counts as a surface that leaves no trace), but later that same session I could search through a room that had been abandoned for a hundred years or more and in true Aragorn-style point out what had happened when it was left.
As a player, he mostly plays casters, who blow off all of their best spells (or just all) at the first combat of the day, and then demand that we must now rest. 5 minute adventuring day. Even when his character have the best AC, the most HP and the best Saves, he will hang around in the back and will always be the first one to say that we should flee.

- The player who, when playing women (and he is a man), more often than not plays them as someone who will sleep with almost anything. Who will, regardless of his ranks in Diplomacy/Bluff, say the most inane or weird things that muck things up. He is a pretty good guy apart from this and contributes alot of fun to the table otherwise.

- The player who claims to be a power-player, but cannot build his Pathfinder Sorcerer to even do what he claims he wants them to do. He claims the Sorcerer is supposed to be a battlefield controller, but insofar as Control goes, he has Slow and Black Tentacles. The rest is mostly evocation, which is mostly Fire. When confronted with Spell Resistance, he mostly uses only Acid Arrow.

MReav
2014-10-01, 09:45 AM
The worst player I played with was in an online freeform game. I'll admit, I don't remember much, but I'll try. By the way, this will probably cross into worst gaming experience.

It felt like one of those games where the GM and his girlfriend were hogging all the screentime and everyone else was just background characters (I don't even remember if the player and the GM were the same person). We were playing angels and demons in the modern age with a Romeo and Juliet-style love affair between the daughter of God. I was playing an angel who mentored inner-city kids (and would teach them water-based magic off the record). I ended up being strong-armed into chaperoning the princess by Archangel Michael (who IIRC, they were planning on making an arranged marriage between him and the princess) because of my extracurricular activities, but she completely ignored me and pulled out some sort of teleportation that let her bypass whatever wards against this sort of thing they should have (admittedly, she was like the second-most powerful angel in heaven) and I get stuck having to track her down even though I'm well below any sort of power level to keep her in check and have only known her for about 10 minutes before she pulled this thus I didn't have any sort of emotional connection I could leverage.

So, I have to go to Hell, unaided (the forces of heaven in this universe aren't particularly good or bright) to track her down, taking whatever precautions I could and I get immediately captured and tossed into where they were keeping her. She tries to make small talk, but my character's rightfully terrified and I manage to guilt her into going back because not only did my character feel like she was in danger, like "given as a prize to whatever loyal minion the antichrist had" terrified, but she was risking a war between heaven and hell for whatever jollies she could get. So, she teleports us out of Hell, bypassing whatever security they have, and goes back to Heaven. Then after getting me back, she up and teleports back to Hell to be with her boyfriend, IIRC after an argument with Michael.

After more stuff where I can only be uselessly in the background while the princess and the antichrist get their jollies on, eventually, she gives birth to the antichrist's child during his assault on Heaven after he got upset and suppressed his good side (I'd call bullcrap on the short gestation time since it was only an afternoon, but mythology is rife with nigh-instant pregnancies, so I complained more about how this was a plot point that came out of nowhere). I believe she and the antichrist made up when he discovered she just bore his child, but again, her player and the GM were sidelining everyone for their story.

I don't remember if I got sick of it and quit at that point, or if the game just petered out like so many online play by post games do, but I'm pretty sure if the latter didn't happen, I was definitely going to do the former.

The second worst player I'm going to admit is myself, based on this one incident, where, frustrated at my character's uselessness, spiked a pen and yelled like a petulant child. I felt bad about it immediately afterwards, but I really shouldn't have done that, especially at someone else's house.

I was playing a Nephilim in a high-powered Armageddon (Witchcraft's spinoff) game. The ability to regenerate and no sell magic is neat, but at the level we were playing, magic was pretty game breaking and anything we could fight physically was going to have way more strength, dexterity, and constitution than I could ever, and there were very few things I could put points into to make myself more badass, while the wizard of the party figured out how to break the game with item creation rules after the game broke its own rules (there were limitations on how well you could put certain spells in magical items, but then a later supplement ignored those rules so we did too). Unfortunately, there weren't any rules about getting magical items, so I couldn't just buy with points a magical sword or magically enhanced armour. I don't know why we didn't try to work around that limitation but I think we moved back to DND shortly afterwards.

geeky_monkey
2014-10-01, 11:55 AM
The worst player I ever had was in an open game in a comic book store.

The party were part of a large group of refugees fleeing an unstoppable army that had taken over their kingdom, as well as several neighbouring ones (basically they were up against the Adversary from Fables).

Most of the party were content to follow the plot hooks but one player decided to attack the enemy horde on his own. As a lv 1 character with no resources other than the clothes on his back.

Needless to say it didn't go well and he rolled a new character.

And then decided to attack the army solo again.

And then a third time.

At this point he declared the game was fixed, I was cheating, he wasn't being allowed to play his character 'properly', and stormed off.

The rest of the group, meanwhile had formed a rudimentary resistance, and were enjoying a campaign of spying, misinformation, guerilla warfare and diplomacy that ran for several months before I had to move away.

Malak'ai
2014-10-02, 04:09 AM
Story about "G" and his Manly-man Fighters.

I'd just like to say that I was generally the poor sod who would end up DM'ing for "G", and as such, there are a few things I'd like to add.
Not only did "G" not use proper character sheets, he wouldn't even have things grouped togther in any logical order. He'd have his stats all together, but his AC would be 3/4's of the way down the page.
His attack details would be on the back of the page and listed like this:
Light Flail 1: 5+Weapon Focus+Str+Masterwork+Magic
And yes, he used the words, not the numerical bonuses they actually gave, and he would never total it. The same went for his skills, which were right under his stats.

He never wrote down his languages. He never wrote down racial traits.

He did try playing a caster once. A Half-Orc Wujen. Admittedly this is because the DM for that particular game made us roll random races and classes from a list he had made, but the way "G" assigned his stats were just weird... The following is how he assigned his rolls, before racial bonuses.

STR: 17
DEX: 15
CON: 9
INT: 13
WIS: 15
CHA: 12

Yeah... Marlowe and I just sat there gaping for a moment.
His first action with this character was to throw his spellbook at a group of monkeys that had thrown a stone in our direction, hoping it would travel the 60' - 70' between us and them. He claimed that it has heavy, thus would do substancial damage. He also would not be convinced that wearing a chainshirt and carrying a heavy wooden shield was not a good idea for a spell caster.

In the same game, after Marlowe and I came up with a plan to deal with the encounter we were in, he threw hissyfit when that plan went against everything he wanted to do, stating that we never even asked him even though we had asked him multiple times to contribute, but he was too busy reading the fluff of the Wujen class to pay attention.

This character eventually meet it's end when he had his character place it's arm around my female Gnome Barbarians shoulders (and his around mine... he has no clue about personal boundries) and said "And I own a Gnome!"... I had already made it clear that my character dispised being reminded she was a Gnome (self hating all the way :smallwink:), and was also an ex-pit slave and had faught her way to freedom, vowing never to be someones peoperty again, and would react violently when someone tried to, or claimed to have taken her freedom away from her.... A raging Gnome Barbarian with natural STR 16, Power Attacking with a +1 Maul against a Wujen with CON 9... Yeah... wasn't nice.... I did nearly twice his HP before I stopped counting.

These are just a couple of the tings off the top of my head that I can think of about gaming with "G", which I don't believe will happen again as he stated to another player in our group that he "wont play with Marlowe and Malak'ai again because the don't let him do anything and their playstyles are s***".

Mnemophage
2014-10-02, 05:20 AM
I'm worried it's me in my current group, actually.

Out of all of us, I'm the only one who's played D&D 3.5 before. I'm not a powergamer, but I know how things fit together. The party is built and we fit together nicely as it comes to roles, with no one really stepping on each other's toes or building their characters as any sort of monster: we are a cleric/rogue, defensive monk, status effect monk, barbarian, and I'm a combat sorcerer. A bunch of house rules are handed down, one of which being that sorcerers gain bonus feats as a wizard.

I start doing some math. I start hucking out 11 STR damage, no save Rays of Enfeeblement and high-damage metamagic-powered spells that eviscerate encounters before they begin. I never really intended to nuke the campaign, I just built my character to be Good At Shooting Guys and, with increased access to metamagic, got Really Good At Shooting Guys. I did some diplomacy with my DM, exchanging a couple feats for the ability to stamp a Cleric domain onto my spell list. I picked Knowledge, and now I'm leading the party around by the nose and unmaking challenges as soon as we get to where the plot is. I feel kind of icky, as everyone else rolled up fun, unoptimized characters and though I tried to do the same, I wound up blowing up the entire world. I get the feeling the campaign is ending soon, but if not, I might want to throw this character on a bus and roll up a utility wizard instead.

Next campaign is Shadowrun. I've played this before, as well. I have access to spell creation tools. Argh. Argh.

*****

As for the worst player I have ever personally played with, that would be the Perpetually Distractable Bard.

During my high school years, I played with a group that met after school. We were composed of the nerds and outcasts of our particular social group, a pile of metalheads and art enthusiasts who threw knives into drywall in between throwing dice at trolls. We did our gaming in the basement of one of our players, and after a time, that player's little brother wanted to join in. He was maybe two years younger than the rest of us, so it seemed like an okay thing. He rolled up a gnome bard, and we got to ineffectively hitting golems.

The problem with this kid was that the room where we did our gaming was also the room that contained his PC, and this guy had a MMO addiction the likes of which I have not since encountered, and I am speaking here from the lofty perspective of someone who has broken up with her boyfriend to be able to raid more in EverQuest. I was the mezzer, dangit, I was needed. Anyway. The point is that his seat of choice was always by his PC, and though at the start of the game he would be as active and engaged as the rest of us, he would swiftly swivel around, fire up his online crack of choice (Ragnarok Online), and before long be more engaged in online anime games than with the people in his basement.

In-game, he was the perpetual tagalong. We had to constantly remind ourselves that he was there wherever we were, and had skills and things that we might find useful. He never developed a personality, but was just That Guy with the Knowledge Skills and Illusions Sometimes, to the point that we would suggest "Hey, we could probably use someone with Knowledge Nature here", and he would just sort of roll a dice, tell us the number, and go back to the game. He seemed to actually resent it when we got into combat, as he would have to be regularly distracted from his game to focus on the other one, even for so long as to just fire a crossbow at whatever was in sight until he ran out of ammo.

Things worked a little better the few times we met either at someone else's house or a neutral locationlike a library. Then, he was actually involved, and managed some surprisingly creative and funny hijinks, like earning himself a Sentai set of mephit fangirls and thieving the artifact that would eventually implode the campaign. But whenever a PC was near, he was always talking to his Ragnarok friends, looking up items or area maps, growing more and more disengaged with the game while never quite denying that he didn't really want to be a part of it. And whenever HIS PC was near, he would inevitably be playing the thing we weren't, at least until we needed someone to Bardic Knowledge a thing for the rest of us.

Diachronos
2014-10-02, 08:25 AM
Before yesterday, I didn't think the player I talked about in my original post could be any worse. In fact, for a moment I thought there might be hope for her when she drew her rapier to attack a bulette that we'd run into in yesterday's session.

She proceeded to prove me wrong. By declaring that she was going to throw her rapier at it. I actually had to ask her to repeat herself, and then tell her that she wasn't going to throw it.

It got worse: she asked what she was supposed to do with it instead.

...I'm sorry, but with this player, I just can't. I've lost the ability to can.

Leon
2014-10-02, 08:37 AM
Our group has G.


Wow... just wow

Segev
2014-10-02, 01:06 PM
Before yesterday, I didn't think the player I talked about in my original post could be any worse. In fact, for a moment I thought there might be hope for her when she drew her rapier to attack a bulette that we'd run into in yesterday's session.

She proceeded to prove me wrong. By declaring that she was going to throw her rapier at it. I actually had to ask her to repeat herself, and then tell her that she wasn't going to throw it.

It got worse: she asked what she was supposed to do with it instead.

...I'm sorry, but with this player, I just can't. I've lost the ability to can.

Perhaps ask her to explain her thought process? Ask her, "Why are you throwing it?" And then, if the reason is unclear from her answer, say something like, "They're melee weapons; why is your character not moving into melee to attack with it?"

I honestly hope that she's misperceiving the shared imaginary world somehow in a way that makes this make sense. Because ... I just want to know what's going through her head. Really. This seems downright insane, in the Mad Hatter/March Hare/Tea Party sense.

Requiem_Jeer
2014-10-02, 01:13 PM
It's entirely likely she just didn't know what the hell a rapier was, and thought you were supposed to throw it.

Marlowe
2014-10-02, 01:25 PM
His first action with this character was to throw his spellbook at a group of monkeys that had thrown a stone in our direction, hoping it would travel the 60' - 70' between us and them. He claimed that it has heavy, thus would do substancial damage. He also would not be convinced that wearing a chainshirt and carrying a heavy wooden shield was not a good idea for a spell caster.

You forgot to mention that after he attacked the random vermin, and after they hit him with a volley of thrown stones (for some decent damage) he just blandly said: "I haven't done my hit points yet". As though it was the most natural thing in the world to initiate combat without finishing such a basic piece of character information, and after he'd had a couple of hours to get himself together. Needless to say, with a level 3 Con 9 Wu Jen, he wasn't exactly in a good position.

I was chatting with him last night, as it happens. Afraid I'm really not exaggerating. To him, the whole point of D&D is to play a Fighter, charge at things, ....?, and profit. If any class has mechanical advantages over a Fighter (even the Barbarian) he dismisses it as broken, ridiculous or "gay", and denies that they count as valid comparisons. It wouldn't be so bad if he could make competent Fighters.

Diachronos
2014-10-02, 02:31 PM
It's entirely likely she just didn't know what the hell a rapier was, and thought you were supposed to throw it.
Considering she picked out most of her equipment hetself....

Alent
2014-10-02, 04:31 PM
Hmm... There's a few candidates, but we shall talk about F. It's no Lankey bugger story with knives and such, but creepy enough. Most of this actually happened in an MMO, but I'll try to leave the MMO details to a minimum.

The cast:

F used to DM a 2e group where everything not gygaxian was rejected on principle, so the whole thing was one big meatgrinder. He was a bit of a grognard but he wasn't actually an oldschool DM. I guess you'd say he was a hipster grognard? Hipster hadn't emerged as a term back then, tho'.

L is the friend that got me to play WoW, raving about how awesome it was only to end up not actually playing with me once I caught up to his level. I have horror stories about L as a person, but they're not quite as bad as F.

The Lead in:

L played in F's 2e campaign and wanted a bard to raise his renown, and knew I liked playing bards in some of the other MMOs I played after he ditched me in WoW, so he invited me to come play a bard in the group's 2e campaign. I had never played before and was intrigued, so I came to try it out and when I was told that the story was more important than the actual rules, so I made a bard and just let my inner storyteller go nuts and F loved it.

Later on, F revealed that his idea of bardic song "protecting against magical fear" was "while the bard is singing music you CANNOT FEEL ANY FEAR WHAT SO EVER." This horrific misreading of the rules I couldn't correct him on nearly TPK'd us.

Now, this was pretty much normal F behavior. F is a classic DM vs players meatgrinder DM of the Potterian cheddar monk Order. Anything he can misinterpret to cause you pain, death, and suffering is his duty to inflict on you. No rule is permanent, if the rule screwed you last time, but via the interpretation will work for you this time? No, it's going to screw you this time because it's like quantum physics, it changes as soon as you observe it.

F saw no problem with this, nor did he really think he was being a jerk. He was nice, friendly, and sympathetic about it... but that didn't stop him from handing you a character sheet and ritualistically chanting: "here's a blank, 3D6 place 'em where you roll 'em if you roll below a 6 on anything you die in character creation start over."

Despite the near TPK, I had fun but didn't get to go back for various IRL reasons ranging from work to social obligations, they DMPC'd my character and kept playing it as I had the one night because they really liked it. A month later the reasons had cleared up and I went back only to find they weren't playing anymore because people's schedules changed.

A few weeks later, they call me and tell me they're playing WoW together as a D&D group and to reactivate my account "'cause this is going to be awesome."

Now, mind you, I had gone to D&D because I was sick of MMO balance patches/nerfs constantly ruining the play experience, but liked the fantasy RPG experience, but meh, IRL friends and whatnot. So I reactivated, moved my paladin back to our "home server", and started touching base with old friends as I could catch them online. A few days later, F and L weren't online, but I ended up getting a hold of some old friends I hadn't chatted with in over a year and we talked about various things we've seen... And then the old Sarth 3 drake zerg run came up.

For those of you who haven't played WoW, Sartharion was sort of a novel play experiment early on in the second expansion pack. Basically, in his dungeon were three drake lieutenants, each of which you could hunt down and kill individually, but if you left them alive they would contribute to the fight against Sartharion, making the fight even harder. You got extra loot and nerd cred for being able to leave all three alive (3 drake), and when it was new content, it had been responsible for my raid group falling apart because a bunch of people just decided it was impossible and stopped showing up. The people I was speaking with were friends from that group.

Somewhere along the line, long after our group had been forced to disband, some group of raiders had figured out that if you killed the 10 man version of Sartharion fast enough, primarily by omitting a healer and offtank to get extra damage dealers, you could actually kill him before the second drake shows up and makes the fight almost impossible. You had to have a single, totally awesome, amazing healer to pull this off.

Since we were all higher end players and Sartharion was older content by a few major patches, we got it in our heads that we could EASILY make the damage quota. So we started trying to scrape together a group on the spur of the moment by finding friends we knew. We were mostly full, but had no healer...

This is when F signs in.

When F finds out what we're doing, he immediately wants to heal it on his druid. There's a problem, F can't heal. We had done a pug raid the night before and not only was he the weakest healer in the raid, he was so incompetent at healing that when we looked at the healing logs, the tank he was assigned to heal had gotten no heals and been forced to do the healing to himself with bandages, potions, and reactive heals, and the logs showed it with the tank healing 13x as much as F.

Literally, F couldn't have been worse at healing if he physically left the keyboard and went and stood in the shower, waited for the hot water to get hot, and shouted "heal!" at the top of his lungs.

I politely declined his offer, explained I'm doing this run with old friends, not eager to bash the guy in front of my old friends. I figured he's new, he'll learn, etc.

But instead of getting the hint, F got insistent. He thought he was awesome enough to heal our raid solo, and openly proclaimed as much in the guild voice chat we're all idling in. I kept trying to dissuade him diplomatically... Finally, annoyed with the situation, one of my friends asked in a whisper what the new druid's heals are... and then F had placed me in a horrible spot where I had to choose between embarrassing F with his own incompetence or letting my friends down by building a group that can't succeed. While I was trying to decide what to do, F took the conundrum and made it a slam dunk decision by openly daring me to prove that he couldn't do it.

It was a crappy situation to be in. Do I side with the people I've known for three years, and played with for hundreds of hours? Or the stranger I've only known a month and hung out with for maybe 7 hours? I posted the recount log from the night before, revealing how bad he was to the raid party. He didn't see this, but then they knew why I wasn't letting F heal. He'd hopelessly burned bridges with them but couldn't tell yet. Despite this I was still trying to be diplomatic about the whole thing.

F got even more insistent. Finally, he started using real life names in a way that just crossed the line for me... and I let him have it in voice chat by explaining just how bad his healing last night was, and how I'm not going to let him ruin a social gathering by being "that guy".

F just left vent, logged out of the game, and disappeared. The guy organizing the raid with me in vent said something along the lines of "... D'ja think you could've been less blunt about that?" and life moved on for us.

... the problem is it didn't for F.

F left his house, and went to L's grocery store where L was working, at 7 PM, and proceeded to rant (loudly) about me betraying him. I don't know how long it lasted, just that when F got really bad and loud, L had to go on break and take it outside... and then when he had to go inside because he'd used up his break time for the day he told F that if F kept causing problems in his store he was going to have to call the police.

Two days later, F signed in and was still acting neurotic and using long strings of expletives to refer to me, he never signed back in after that. A few days later L heard from F's wife that F had begun to act stranger and stranger.

Two weeks later, we found out that F had decided out of the blue to divorce his wife, asked her to move out of their bedroom into their 1 year old son's bedroom, and brought in some jailbait 17 year old girl he'd known about a week to live with him in their bedroom because she made him feel awesome again. F's wife was, understandably, extremely upset and moved out, taking her son with her.

No one ever talked to F after that... and we jokingly refer to it as the time that I ruined F's marriage.

Edit: In hindsight, I have no idea how I even got into this hobby after being effectively introduced to it by a bad DM that was an even worse player.

Strigon
2014-10-02, 06:03 PM
The horrible story of how I ruined F's marriage

I... Um... Ahh...
What just happened?

I sincerely hope I never meet anybody like that.

Elurindel
2014-10-02, 06:36 PM
This is the story a player that we'll call T.

T always had to play a speshul snowflake, whatever game we were playing. Worse still, whatever game we were playing, he'd play like we were playing something else. To top it all off, he would powergame the **** out of things under the pretense that he was roleplaying

When we were playing Dark Heresy, he insisted on playing an assassin who was sleeping with the Inquisitor. And he just so happened to roll amazing stats that gave him 4 Fate Points so he could basically avoid dying altogether. He would then insist on sleeping in a camo net on a set of ropes invisibly above the players so nobody could find him, and would remain annoyingly aloof. Because he was playing a female character and he himself had some second wave feminist views, he once took offence out of character to one of the characters calling her "luv". He then refused to continue playing until that player apologised.
He would also flip his lid when things didn't go exactly the way he wanted them to. For instance, when he had a shot lined up, he claimed he should just get the shot without having to roll. I told him no, because there was always a chance of weapon jams, and he got angry. When I tell him he can't flawlessly pick out a single zombie in a horde, he gets angry. When I tell him he can't persuade the controller of a Titan to bombard an area because it has concerns with defending the city and Mechanicus Shrine rather than following them round doing their work for them (even though I told him "The Titan is a set-piece. Don't rely on it always being there") he got mad.

He would also seek to disrupt the narrative at any given opportunity, because he once read the Serenity RPG book and decided that the established narrative was an enemy to be fought at every opportunity. He was also under the impression that he was playing Exalted, and demand that things be easier to accomplish if they were cool, despite being in a system where things get harder to accomplish if they're more difficult.
His next character's background was that he was personally vetted by the Inquisitor for a command position over the other PCs, and was statistically great at social stuff, except he himself was absolutely hopeless at not treating the other PCs like lesser beings who should stand in awe of him.

And then there was The Titan Incident.

In a later game of Dark Heresy where we had reached Ascension, the group met the same Titan they had seen a few decades earlier, only it had been corrupted by Chaos, and was now standing guard over a corrupt Hive city that required all of its citizens have identification chips that identified what profession they were.
One guy jokingly suggests that they beat the Reaver Titan by climbing it. This was then unfortunately taken to heart by T, who at the time was playing a character who was the most popular so far, on account of him almost never saying anything. His weapons included a double-handed sword and a one-shot digi-melta. He decided that they would approach the Titan, convince the guards that they were there to clean the Titan (yes, really). Then climb up it, breach the cockpit, and challenge the Princeps to a duel. Yes, really.
Fully half the party, the Inquisitor, and everybody I asked IRL afterwards agreed the idea was suicide, to put it politely.
Through a mix of sleep deprivation and my own misguided unwillingness to kill off PCs, the half of the party that went somehow managed to scale the Titan. They then banged on the glass, the digi-melta punching a small hole through the armaglas. It was then that they discovered the full extent of the corruption of the Princeps: He had become endowed with sorcerous powers, and proceeded to maim and cripple T's character, and send them off with their tails between their legs.
This was all after I had subtly and not-so-subtly told the players throughout the week that what they were going to attempt was unlikely to work. This only further increased T's resolve to prove me wrong, to the point where I partly wanted to see him fail just to prove a point. Although if I was really going to prove a point I should have had the guards watching the Titan show that their ID chips didn't check out and have the Titan step on them. However they lived, albeit scarred and disgraced to fight another day while the more intelligent half the party figured out a better way to destroy it.
Since then, T has told me that I am apparently his "Worst GM ever" story. Well T, you are my worst player story.

Raine_Sage
2014-10-03, 01:11 AM
I used to play with a guy who, looking back on it, I'm pretty sure probably had undiagnosed bipolar disorder. He was all over the place. You never knew if you were getting chill happy Carl or sad mopey Carl. Now if he did have it his case wasn't very severe, he wouldn't throw things or fly off the handle, but his more "manic" states would definitely transfer over to his characters.

We're starting up 4ed. It's our first time playing and the first session in the new system. Carl has rolled up a dragonborn barbarian with a great axe. We all start out on a ship destined for a remote island continent and the DM has us go around and say what we're all doing on the boat to help us get into character. The ranger is being sea sick, the sorcerer is rooting through his luggage below deck, the halfling rogue is up in the crows nest etc.

Carl is having a good time waits eagerly for his turn, then announces his character is attempting to chop down the mast of the ship. I wish I could accurately describe the look on the GMs face when he asked carl Why he was doing this, but I could never do it justice. Carl's response was "Well, because I can?"

So of course the dragon born gets tackled by like 5 different ship hands and tossed in the brig with a muzzle. Later when the ship gets ambushed by pirates, the ranger thinks that maybe crazy dragon axe guy might be useful in a fight, and ducks downstairs to let him loose. Upon undoing the muzzle the dragonborn melts the bars with acid breath and tells the gm he's diving head first through the hole he made.

GM: You know you can just step through the hole right? It's big enough that you can do that without needing to roll?

Carl: No I want him to leap through the hole! It'll look cooler!

GM: -heavy sigh- Ok roll athletics, DC 10 (his modifier was 8 so he'd have had to roll a 1 to fail)

Carl rolls a 1 of course, so his character manages to trip himself up and hurtles headlong into the opposite wall, knocking him out for two rounds. We end up finishing off the last of the pirates with him still unconscious.

One could chalk this up to first game inexperience but Carl never really learned from his mistake. Most of the time he'd just sort of stand in the background while we all did things, until he got some hair brained idea into his head and then come hell or high water he was going to carry out that plan. If the DM tried to stop him he'd complain loudly about being railroaded until he caved. If the PCs tried to stop him he'd complain loudly about being ganged up on. If we ever joked about his exploits OOC (the same way we joked about literally every other player at that table because over time we all accumulated our own epic fail stories) he'd get quiet and sulky and then tell anyone who would listen that we were calling him an idiot (we weren't). Despite this he'd get just as sulky if we didn't invite him to play.

So we just let Carl do his thing, didn't comment on it, didn't try and stop it, and the game progressed in relative peace for a while. Then the DM decided he was going to try and afford Carl a roleplaying opportunity. The next city we needed to go to had a strict gate check, and any PC who'd had contact with devils, undead, or were otherwise considered a liability had to have an escort with them in the city.

This included me, the bard, and Carl's Dragonborn. The DM said that Carl's character had gained a reputation for being destructive (to put it mildly) and would have an escort. The escort in question was a pretty, good natured, and incredibly friendly elven woman who seemed to think of this as a chance to make a new friend rather than keeping a dangerous madman on a leash. It was clearly trying to give carl a chance to interact with the world in a nonviolent low key manner. With a pretty girl who was interested in him and where he came from. Mine and the Bard's escorts were much colder towards us.

Carl flipped. his. ****.
He accused the DM of playing favorites, of singling him out, of insinuating that he was going to do something stupid without giving him a chance to...not do something stupid? It didn't make a lot of sense and we were all completely floored.

Worgwood
2014-10-03, 02:50 AM
Oh, I have one of these guys! I have tons of stories about him, but these are the three best (in my opinion).

A) I'm playing a barbarian in a level 3 campaign (no magic items). My character's primary trait is that he's ballsy and proud, and whenever we take down one of our rivals, he takes a trophy from them. From one character he takes his boots, he takes another's helmet, the ornate hair ribbon from another, etc. It's worth noting at this point that these enemies were taken down as part of a tournament organized by the city's military commander. None of these items have statistical bonuses. Then, my barbarian single-handedly kills our next major enemy. When I go to take my trophy, the DM informs me that the enemy in question has a dagger that is "incredibly ornate", "set with jewels", "stamped with a family seal". Our party's paladin interprets this as meaning I have found a masterwork weapon.

Now, the paladin was an archery build (DM ruled he could Smite at range) with 7 con before applying elf racial modifiers. Suffice to say, he was about as deadly as wet paper if you could get within melee range of him. At the beginning of the game, he had begged the DM to let him take a magic weapon, and when that didn't fly, a masterwork weapon. He was insistent! The DM wanted to make that stuff rare and valuable, however. Fair call, but the paladin didn't think so.

He approached me OOC and asked me for the dagger as a "backup weapon". I tell him that the weapon hasn't been appraised, that my character isn't the type to relinquish trophies, and that he's dead if he's up close anyway: so, overall, the answer is of course no.

This exchange very clearly took place OOC. But the player begins to throw a fit and takes it IC. His character immediately goes to the city's commander and informs him that my character has been stealing from our kills, and of course this leads to my character being investigated for the crime, with the items in question being confiscated. During this time, the paladin simultaneously attempts to steal the dagger and destroy the other items so that my character can't have them. This doesn't work. He manages to escape without punishment, but the items are returned to me and the investigation dropped.

Having clearly failed, the paladin tries the direct approach: he walks up to my character and challenges him to an honor duel, informing me that by the city's law I'm not allowed to refuse. My character accepts and names the bastard sword as the duel's weapon. (I had proficiency for fluff reasons and was a melee build. He didn't and was a ranged build.) Realizing that he's hopelessly outmatched, the paladin retracts his duel challenge, then immediately runs to 120ft and declares that he attacks with a Longbow Smite once my back is turned. The DM points out that not only is this a clear violation of the paladin's code of honor and grounds for falling, but he knows that my character isn't evil so Smite won't work. The paladin argues that since my character has been stealing and killing he should be Evil, but he drops that, too, once it's pointed out that he's been doing pretty much exactly the same thing.

He continued to make that game painful for me, but he never really raised the issue again, and I just ignored him.

B) I'm running an introductory game for a new player who recently expressed interest in D&D. He's the classic human sword-and-board fighter. The player is part of his school's theater group, likes acting, and love storytelling, so naturally he immediately gets into the spirit of the game. Honestly, I don't think I've ever had a better player. The story was simple enough: you start in the tavern, smugglers kidnapped the princess, please save the princess.

The player from before is now playing an elf ranger. He's insistent on being cool and dramatic and wants to start separately from the party, so I'm like sure, the ranger and the druid are tracking the princess separately. Meanwhile, the fighter (beaming with delight) and the bard are chasing after the smugglers.

The party joins up about half an hour in as they close in from both sides on two of the bad guy's mooks. This is an intro to combat to ease the new guy in, so that the larger combat I have coming up be a little less confusing. The ranger declares that the elves start in the treetops. I let this fly because it's cool and elfy. Both elves proceed to roll natural 1s on their bow attacks, so I rule that the rain has weakened their bowstrings and they snap when drawn.

The ranger immediately declares that he's going to drop his bow, jump down from the trees, draw his sword, and charge. Having already used his standard, I tell him he can jump down as a move and draw as a swift, but he'll have to wait until his next turn to charge.

Surprise, surprise: he throws a fit. He insists that it's possible to do all that in one turn and demands I hand him both the player's handbook and the dungeon master's guide, he's going to find the rule that says so, etc. He's choking up play and making a scene during a game that I threw together specifically to show the new guy the ropes. I tell him that I'm making a ruling as DM, but he goes into rules lawyer mode and tells me that's against the rules. I show him Rule 0 in the DMG, and he just gets madder. Finally, after about fifteen minutes of arguing with me and the other players, he gives it up but he proceeds to sulk endlessly and he makes the rest of the session a pain for everyone.

The fighter never played D&D again after that I'm afraid.

C) This time, the ranger/paladin is running a game. He puts a lot of effort into his world but his story is a little bland and the intro he gives us sounds a lot like Star Wars, unintentionally on his part. Playing into this, I ask him if I can roll up a Drow smuggler with the intention of playing a Han Solo-esque character, albeit with a little more black humor. Someone else even rolled a Shifter as my Chewie.

My character is wearing a painted wooden mask to hide his species and posing as a priest of Mask to justify it (legal in this setting). Still, despite agreeing to let me play the character, the DM at every turn tries to unmask my character publicly, up to and including having guards randomly grapple me and yanking it off. It's pretty clear he has something of a vendetta against me and I start to suspect that the only reason he let me roll a Drow is so that it would be that much easier for him to just kill me off. Anyway, in true Han Solo style, my character slips the guards at every opportunity and continues to supply the rebels with Drow adamantine weapons. This pisses off the DM because these aren't the rails he laid down, and he doesn't exactly make a secret of it, but he wasn't giving the group enough guidance with his plot anyway.

Anyway, things came to a head when we were sent by the rebels to investigate a sympathetic village where people were dying. All evidence points towards a ghost possessing and murdering people. We follow the clues for about half the session until we're led to a house on the outskirts of town that reeks "evil"; bodies everywhere, symbols painted in blood, etc. At this point my character makes a reasonable judgement call to give these people a quick burial by fire so that their ghosts/zombies won't bother anybody.

The DM immediately freaks out and accuses me of trying to ruin his campaign. Apparently the quest revolves strongly around this evil death house, but if it was destroyed then we'd have finished the story like three sessions early, and he had no contingency plans for this. The game petered out pretty quickly after that.

I really liked that character, too.
This guy I gamed with this guy for a long time - we both started playing D&D in the same game, actually. We were good friends, which is why my group was so tolerant of him, but he got really selfish, greedy, and argumentative over time. He doesn't game with me anymore.

Marlowe
2014-10-03, 07:56 AM
Both elves proceed to roll natural 1s on their bow attacks, so I rule that the rain has weakened their bowstrings and they snap when drawn.

While it doesn't excuse the guy, this sort of thing was a very bad call.

Worgwood
2014-10-03, 08:01 AM
While it doesn't excuse the guy, this sort of thing was a very bad call.
My group runs by the house rule that natural 20 means something interesting happens, natural 1 means something unfortunate happens. It wasn't wholly unprecedented, and the other character restrung her bow as a move action.

comicshorse
2014-10-03, 08:25 AM
While it doesn't excuse the guy, this sort of thing was a very bad call.

Gotta disagree, provided the G.M. doesn't make re-stringing the bow stupidly difficult, this seems fine. Lots of groups use the 'crit on a D20, something bad happens on a 1' rule

Marlowe
2014-10-03, 08:29 AM
It's up to your group, but it's the sort of strictly optional self-sabotage you should probably not inflict upon ourselves when you are breaking in a new player.

I must admit, I've got a particular hatred for that particular type of fumble. Having been in a campaign where the DM flim-flamed everyone into thinking it was an official rule. It came up every combat, often more than once, and turned the Ranger into a joke.

I presume you discussed this sort of thing with the new guy beforehand, and let him know it was a houserule?

Worgwood
2014-10-03, 08:42 AM
It's up to your group, but it's the sort of strictly optional self-sabotage you should probably not inflict upon ourselves when you are breaking in a new player.

I must admit, I've got a particular hatred for that particular type of fumble. Having been in a campaign where the DM flim-flamed everyone into thinking it was an official rule. It came up every combat, often more than once, and turned the Ranger into a joke.

I presume you discussed this sort of thing with the new guy beforehand, and let him know it was a houserule?
The new guy barely knew the rules of the game as standard. I would have been relaxed with him on that rule - just as I would have been relaxed with him on written rules. Such as grapple attempts or critical hits. The player to which the story pertains was already familiar with our house rules, however. It wasn't even that he was complaining about - he took that in stride, because for us it was normal - but when he couldn't perform all the actions he wanted to in a single turn, he got very difficult very quickly, seizing up play and making the rest of the game unpleasant to participate in.

The reason we use that particular rule is because Dungeons and Dragons doesn't really accommodate for small mishaps or little fortunes of that sort, and trying to implement rules for them just bogs it down. My group finds that it adds flavor. It never goes as far as doing HP damage to yourself or your allies, or as far as losing thousands of gold worth of equipment, and it can also mean things like doing a single point of damage to all enemies adjacent to a target on a natural 20, etc. It goes both ways.

As a matter of fact, when Fantasy Flight released Edge of the Empire, I explained the "luck dice" mechanic to one of my players and she asked me "can't you just do that with natural 1s and 20s?"

Ravian
2014-10-03, 11:28 AM
I don't think I've had any that are quite that bad, but there are a few players that have caused some problems for me as a GM.

I had one person who had a bit of chronic character switching syndrome, with a touch of special snowflake, who we will call C. C was invited to try to increase the party number (since before than we had been having to have people play two characters at a time.) while the others ranged in quality (some were quite good while others were clearly more interested in just hanging out than playing the game.) C was the only one that was actually disruptive. We were playing 4e D&D and despite this being his first time playing, C immediately decided to play a psionic character (a shardmind). The encounter involved hunting a phasing creature in a building with a lot of walls and passages for it to escape through. The party's plan was to split up in groups of two (each containing a frontline hitter and a backline support) to take each of the passages so it couldn't catch them alone and couldn't just escape to another passage while they regrouped. Simple but effective, but apparently after everyone else took their moves, C decided he wanted to do something entirely different, hang back by himself. Obviously given the choice between three groups each containing guys with big weapons, or the more fragile looking crystal man with a staff, the monster chose the latter. This was admittedly a tactical error for someone relatively new to the game, however the reactions from there were far less mature. After realizing that his character wasn't particularly effective in this situation (he was a shaping psion so he more effective at battlefield control than removing meleeing monsters) we allowed C to change his build to a telekinetic psion with some melee capabilities. (the character sheet had already been made for a player who hadn't shown up, so it wasn't much hassle.) This was clearly a mistake because throughout the rest of the session C continued to demand to change his character, sometimes when the situation changed, other times when he was simply glancing through the books. Note that many of these changes didn't even wait until after the same combat we were in. It also seemed like he was entirely limiting his options to the third book, with wilden, and minotaurs being his prime choices for new races. It just seemed like he really wanted the weirdest character he could think of, while whining whenever said character wasn't perfect in the actual game.

While C certainly doesn't reach the heights of most of the players here, he was very much one of the worst I had. (which is why we didn't invite him or the completely uninterested guy back after the first session.)

Gnoman
2014-10-03, 02:33 PM
My worst player was actually the guy that introduced me to the game back in high school. His great fault was an obsessive sense of the rules, to the point that things like raising the price of weapons (after the party got all their initial equipment free) due to a war scare caused a thirty minute tantrum, and every single ruling provoked a similar argument (the worst was a two-stage trap that sprayed a solid layer of darts that could only be dodged by going prone, which triggered a second trap firing downward, which did less damage but was harder to dodge. He threw a fit because I was "telling him how to play his character" and would have flipped the table if he had been strong enough to lift it.) Out of game, he started acting more and more creepily obsessive with my sister, and I stopped inviting him over. Then my dad threatened him when he wouldn't stop inviting himself over.

Malak'ai
2014-10-03, 06:47 PM
It's up to your group, but it's the sort of strictly optional self-sabotage you should probably not inflict upon ourselves when you are breaking in a new player.

I must admit, I've got a particular hatred for that particular type of fumble. Having been in a campaign where the DM flim-flamed everyone into thinking it was an official rule. It came up every combat, often more than once, and turned the Ranger into a joke.

I presume you discussed this sort of thing with the new guy beforehand, and let him know it was a houserule?

I didn't help matters when I decided to have my Ranger jump off the wall, trying to skewer the Hill Giant in the back with his swords.... Oh... And the fact that the 4 of us were level 2 taking 3 Hill Giants!!

Dapifer
2014-10-06, 03:05 AM
Two somewhat mild examples:



This guy roled a 3E half-orc barbarian straight from the book. We were coming from a succesful foray into A&D2E and due to life complications, our DM left so I was going to be the one running the game. It seemed to fit, new campaign, new GM, new game.

I invited him because, as a Player alongside him, I really enjoyed the humourous panache he brings to his characters, never really doing disruptive stuff, more like brewing his own alcohol and trying to sell it on the streets, or colecting bugs. Sadly, what as a Player didn't realize is that, mainly because of a lifetime with killer DMs, this guy kind of saw the game as an "us vs them" situation. As his DM, he always made efforts to antagonise me with things like "I use the rope I bought earlier", when he never did so in game, but I had to take him at his word because it was written on his sheet.

Or the fact that he mentioned rules in supposed suplements that I never heard of, or disagreeing with my ruling by misreading the rules on purpose. If only he would called my mistakes, but most of the times he just called my ruling citing things that weren't in the book, like saying "that's not how grappe works" but citing things that are not in the handbook.

He was a fun lad I give him that. Eventually he moved to another city and left the game.




This guy was actually a sad surprise. His personality is extremely polite and always very helpful and all around nice guy. This tale begins right after the Antagonist moved away, I added another player who had never played tabletop rpgs before, but liked reading books and fantasy in general. This guy is named Charles. Chuck turned out to be a perfect match for our group and playstyle.

Then another player moved away so we had one more slot on the table. Chuck introduced me to Starscream some months back, a guy that likes to read Tolkien and the Never Ending Story, and the stand up, all around cool and nice guy I knew him to be, I thought he would also be a perfect match.

Because the party had advanced to level 9 already, I thought I played a little bit with Starscream for a three session arc from level 5 so he can get the ropes of the game better, as he also had no experience with tabletop rpgs before, I guessed it was best to ease him into the hobby starting lower, than throwing him at the party at lv. 9, feeling that he would experience severe option paralysis as he would be constantly remembering the basic rules on top of everything else his character would be able to do.

So, I go over to his house on three separate ocations and we play out his part, ending with the perfect setup for him to meet the rest of the characters. He was actually a rather glad surprise on those one on one sessions. He roleplayed well, invested in his character with different speech patterns and mannerisms, and devoted time to master the rules. So, when the time finally came for him to join the party, that's when the problems started.

Maybe it was my fault for doing the solo introduction sessions, but I did one solo intro for every other player, I just added two more sessions in his case so he could catch up. Maybe it was always meant to be this way, I don't know. But the problem I found that, he was very competitive.

He would keep track of who did more things like killing and dealing damage, and then bragged if he was on top. On itself, not bad enough, but things got worst when he wasn't on top. Because then he would complain that his class or that his character would suck. He wanted to play something like a Jedi, because he's a fan of Star Wars. I went over every class on the Player's Handbook, and I went and bought the Psionics Handbook so we could go over the psionic classes to see if one suited his vision. He liked the Monk and the Psychic Warrior, he wen for P. Warrior in the end. I went to great deals to make his character viable, no one really char opped so it was not a big deal really.

Of course, one character being a wizard and another a cleric, it was bound to happen that they would get the glory some times at the very least. But the worst part I guess, was that the other player rolled a Paladin.

Now this is 3.0 Paladin straight from player's handbook, so is nothing fancy but it's pretty cool to play. Naturally, this player fancied himself a Knight-Errant, apart from me, he had the most time playing tabletop and we pretty much knew 2E by memory. We quickly learned the new book as well, even though his Paladin never made the most kills or had amazing nuking the encounter moments, his roleplaying and mastery of the rules inspired the other players to accept him as a defacto leader of the party.

I told Starscream this before we played a single game, that he would be eventually introduced to an already stablished adventuring party, now this doesn't mean he had to follow suit or get the boot, as the Paladin never really gave orders to the other characters/players. However, Starscream just couldn't take it.

After months gaming together, I sadly learned that he recented his position as the leader, but also noticed that he antagonised him at the table, with some off-hand remarks. I let it slide for a while because I thought he was just yanking his chain, we joke with each other around the table, I didn't noticed at the moment he picked only on the Paladin, though.

Eventually, Starscream decided to make his move, and challenged Chuck's Wizard to a "friendly" duel. He had rerolled his Psychic Warrior because I just couldn't take the whines about not making top list on damage dealing. So I gave him a chance to reroll and helped him char op the hell out of it. I figured the rest of the table would mind at all, since we weren't that kind of crowd anyways. The first thing he does as we sit on the table is fighting another PC.

In a final attempt to discourage this kind of behaviour, I warned him that if maim or mutilation came about as a result of this combat, he would have to live with that character for the rest of the campaign.

Sure and eager to prove the results of our improvements, he accepted. The combat was not that brutal actually, I don't know if Chuck pulled punches, or was caught of guard because he accepts the spells he has prepared if he doesn't declare that he changed the list, so maybe he was not suited to fight him. For whatever reason, Starscream triumphs by a hair. And did not suffered greatly from the combat. Chuck's Wizard lost the right arm.

So next week, he decides to tackle on the cleric. Sadly for him, an 11th level cleric is a complete beast that was far, faaaaaar beyond his ken. After a devastating loss, he threw what I can only define as a tantrum, and complained the whole session that his character was crap, and that it was not fair that the a cleric of his same level could have so much power over his character.

I told him that I acknowledge that the cleric was a superior class than the P. Warrior, but I also reminded him that it was his choice to roll the class twice, and I explained him that magic was slow at first but became very powerful and still he wanted a psychic.

Anyways, we had a huge discussion and he confessed that he wanted to eventually challenge and defeat the Paladin, because then he would prove that his character was the strongest, and thus, that his character should be the leader. Sadly, the cleric was the nuke of the table, so he torched him in combat.

He never returned after that session. Honestly, I wouldn't have expected things turning out this way by how he conveys in real life. I was truly shocked to learn that he always recented the Paladin's player and him not being the leader. In hindsight, the signs were there since the beginning, but I just kept trying my best to make him happy.




I feel somewhat of a failure for how things end up with both of them. I feel it was on my end to do something about it and to make things work at the table. Honestly, I am sad things ended up the way they did.

KillianHawkeye
2014-10-06, 06:09 AM
Two somewhat mild examples:



This guy roled a 3E half-orc barbarian straight from the book. We were coming from a succesful foray into A&D2E and due to life complications, our DM left so I was going to be the one running the game. It seemed to fit, new campaign, new GM, new game.

I invited him because, as a Player alongside him, I really enjoyed the humourous panache he brings to his characters, never really doing disruptive stuff, more like brewing his own alcohol and trying to sell it on the streets, or colecting bugs. Sadly, what as a Player didn't realize is that, mainly because of a lifetime with killer DMs, this guy kind of saw the game as an "us vs them" situation. As his DM, he always made efforts to antagonise me with things like "I use the rope I bought earlier", when he never did so in game, but I had to take him at his word because it was written on his sheet.

Or the fact that he mentioned rules in supposed suplements that I never heard of, or disagreeing with my ruling by misreading the rules on purpose. If only he would called my mistakes, but most of the times he just called my ruling citing things that weren't in the book, like saying "that's not how grappe works" but citing things that are not in the handbook.

He was a fun lad I give him that. Eventually he moved to another city and left the game.




This guy was actually a sad surprise. His personality is extremely polite and always very helpful and all around nice guy. This tale begins right after the Antagonist moved away, I added another player who had never played tabletop rpgs before, but liked reading books and fantasy in general. This guy is named Charles. Chuck turned out to be a perfect match for our group and playstyle.

Then another player moved away so we had one more slot on the table. Chuck introduced me to Starscream some months back, a guy that likes to read Tolkien and the Never Ending Story, and the stand up, all around cool and nice guy I knew him to be, I thought he would also be a perfect match.

Because the party had advanced to level 9 already, I thought I played a little bit with Starscream for a three session arc from level 5 so he can get the ropes of the game better, as he also had no experience with tabletop rpgs before, I guessed it was best to ease him into the hobby starting lower, than throwing him at the party at lv. 9, feeling that he would experience severe option paralysis as he would be constantly remembering the basic rules on top of everything else his character would be able to do.

So, I go over to his house on three separate ocations and we play out his part, ending with the perfect setup for him to meet the rest of the characters. He was actually a rather glad surprise on those one on one sessions. He roleplayed well, invested in his character with different speech patterns and mannerisms, and devoted time to master the rules. So, when the time finally came for him to join the party, that's when the problems started.

Maybe it was my fault for doing the solo introduction sessions, but I did one solo intro for every other player, I just added two more sessions in his case so he could catch up. Maybe it was always meant to be this way, I don't know. But the problem I found that, he was very competitive.

He would keep track of who did more things like killing and dealing damage, and then bragged if he was on top. On itself, not bad enough, but things got worst when he wasn't on top. Because then he would complain that his class or that his character would suck. He wanted to play something like a Jedi, because he's a fan of Star Wars. I went over every class on the Player's Handbook, and I went and bought the Psionics Handbook so we could go over the psionic classes to see if one suited his vision. He liked the Monk and the Psychic Warrior, he wen for P. Warrior in the end. I went to great deals to make his character viable, no one really char opped so it was not a big deal really.

Of course, one character being a wizard and another a cleric, it was bound to happen that they would get the glory some times at the very least. But the worst part I guess, was that the other player rolled a Paladin.

Now this is 3.0 Paladin straight from player's handbook, so is nothing fancy but it's pretty cool to play. Naturally, this player fancied himself a Knight-Errant, apart from me, he had the most time playing tabletop and we pretty much knew 2E by memory. We quickly learned the new book as well, even though his Paladin never made the most kills or had amazing nuking the encounter moments, his roleplaying and mastery of the rules inspired the other players to accept him as a defacto leader of the party.

I told Starscream this before we played a single game, that he would be eventually introduced to an already stablished adventuring party, now this doesn't mean he had to follow suit or get the boot, as the Paladin never really gave orders to the other characters/players. However, Starscream just couldn't take it.

After months gaming together, I sadly learned that he recented his position as the leader, but also noticed that he antagonised him at the table, with some off-hand remarks. I let it slide for a while because I thought he was just yanking his chain, we joke with each other around the table, I didn't noticed at the moment he picked only on the Paladin, though.

Eventually, Starscream decided to make his move, and challenged Chuck's Wizard to a "friendly" duel. He had rerolled his Psychic Warrior because I just couldn't take the whines about not making top list on damage dealing. So I gave him a chance to reroll and helped him char op the hell out of it. I figured the rest of the table would mind at all, since we weren't that kind of crowd anyways. The first thing he does as we sit on the table is fighting another PC.

In a final attempt to discourage this kind of behaviour, I warned him that if maim or mutilation came about as a result of this combat, he would have to live with that character for the rest of the campaign.

Sure and eager to prove the results of our improvements, he accepted. The combat was not that brutal actually, I don't know if Chuck pulled punches, or was caught of guard because he accepts the spells he has prepared if he doesn't declare that he changed the list, so maybe he was not suited to fight him. For whatever reason, Starscream triumphs by a hair. And did not suffered greatly from the combat. Chuck's Wizard lost the right arm.

So next week, he decides to tackle on the cleric. Sadly for him, an 11th level cleric is a complete beast that was far, faaaaaar beyond his ken. After a devastating loss, he threw what I can only define as a tantrum, and complained the whole session that his character was crap, and that it was not fair that the a cleric of his same level could have so much power over his character.

I told him that I acknowledge that the cleric was a superior class than the P. Warrior, but I also reminded him that it was his choice to roll the class twice, and I explained him that magic was slow at first but became very powerful and still he wanted a psychic.

Anyways, we had a huge discussion and he confessed that he wanted to eventually challenge and defeat the Paladin, because then he would prove that his character was the strongest, and thus, that his character should be the leader. Sadly, the cleric was the nuke of the table, so he torched him in combat.

He never returned after that session. Honestly, I wouldn't have expected things turning out this way by how he conveys in real life. I was truly shocked to learn that he always recented the Paladin's player and him not being the leader. In hindsight, the signs were there since the beginning, but I just kept trying my best to make him happy.




I feel somewhat of a failure for how things end up with both of them. I feel it was on my end to do something about it and to make things work at the table. Honestly, I am sad things ended up the way they did.

Hey, man, don't blame yourself! It can be really hard to see what's going on underneath that causes people to act in certain ways. Hindsight really is 20/20 in most cases. Also, you shouldn't expect to know how to deal with these kinds of situations unless you've had something like it happen before.

Dapifer
2014-10-07, 02:12 AM
Hey, man, don't blame yourself! It can be really hard to see what's going on underneath that causes people to act in certain ways. Hindsight really is 20/20 in most cases. Also, you shouldn't expect to know how to deal with these kinds of situations unless you've had something like it happen before.

Thank you!

I guess what caught me off guard is the difference between his regular persona. Most jerks I've met on the table are mostly the same kind of people outside of the table, I just didn't expect someone I had concidered a close friend could end up behaving like that.

And I feel bad because I still think we could have worked things out if he had spoken openly about how he felt instead of holding grudges and wanting to 'one up' the rest of the Players.

But, thanks again for your reply.

Stuebi
2014-10-07, 08:49 AM
I have one from recent memory, the group does not play anymore, and I dont talk to the player in question anymore.

While I definetely try to act like my character would, I tend to avoid PvP or anything provoking it. I prefer it when the group gets along for the most part, and every case of PvP I have seen usually ends with one or moe people being unhappy. A few weeks ago, I amde an exception to this rule.

We were playing DSA (The Dark Eye), the system is probably not very well known to non-german speakers, so I wont go into detail. Basically, I amde my character early, as the DM is a good friend and we pretty much seeing each other all the time. I posted the finished Character for the other players to see. It was a warrior-type from a somewhat primitive mountain tribe with a rather vicious religion. The general idea was to slowly turn him from a rather merciless killer into a proud warrior with pride and a sense of morality. The other group members liked the idea, one designed a scholar who wanted to become a mage. Someone else a hunter and leatherworker from the north. Lastly, the new addition to the group, a guy I did not really like, played the son of a rich noblehouse.

For the most part, it went great. My character started out as a prisoner, and was freed by the scholar and the hunter (The former was strictly against slavery, and the latter needed a hunting partner.). Even tough my character was rather wild, and barely spoke their language (Which was challenging, since I had to talk like a caveman for a while), they got along nicely. Being a rather decent hunter, I made quick friends with the man from the north, and the scholar had a lot of fun learning about the mountaintribes while teaching me his language and other things.

The Nobleman on the other hand, did nothing but hate on my Character. He would belittle and insult him, order him around and complain when he would not follow. I was fine with that, since he was a relatively young kid from a rich house it was fitting. But after 3 sessions of basically only arguments, and the guy calling my Character a wild animal that should be put down, the group, and especially me, grew tired of the whole thing. I can handle a bit of arguing, and it's normal for some people not geting along 100% with each other. But if a session of 3 hours consists of someone antagonising you all the time, it becomes annoying.

However, there seemed to be no solution. Even after saving the guys life, repeated attempts at "Maybe you should stop treating him like a dog." form the rest of the group and finally, even after he was fluently speaking the common language, it would continue this way. If this was an NPC, my guy would've snapped his neck at night weeks ago.

Eventually, we ended up in another life threatening situation. We (Me and Mr. Hateyourguts) were cornered at a cliffside, with 3 Bandits at our neck, and the only way to get out was either a fight, or trying to climb. The Nobleman deemed combat hopeless without the rest of the group, and started climbing right away. I had chosen to fight, and a very decent first roll wounded one of our pursuers. My character being very large and intimidating, the other two decided to not take their chances with a guy that looked like he didnt have any money anyway.

My companion was around half way down the cliff now, rapidly getting tired. Not a very fantastic climber in the first place it was obvious that he would fall if no help was provided. Checking the cliffside, the DM said that I could probably secure myself with some rope and climb after the guy. My Con and STR was high and my character had a phenomenal climbing skill. However, the cliff seemed treacherous, and after all the stuff from the past days, there would've been no way my Character would try rescuing that guy.

Normally, at this point I would have went with a "Change of heart" or something of the sort. But after no signs of diplomacy from the other player, and 3 sessions consisting of arguments and the usual "It's what my character would do, if you cant handle that, it's your problem.", I decided against that. The guy dropped, a fall hopefully long enough for him to contemplate if being a hostile idiot really payed off in the end, and promptly broke every bone in his body.

Character dead, cue a OOC Flamewar with insults, yelling, and finally angrily leaving the skypecall. We played another session later, with a new character that promptly started the same thing over again. I stood up and left.

Some people from that particular circle of friends call me petty, especially since I refuse to even talk to the guy in question. But I have absolutely no interest in playing with someone that has absolutely no interest in a decent chemistry and atmosphere in the group. If I wanted to argue with fictional characters over the Internet, I would reactivate my old EVE-Account.

DM Nate
2014-10-07, 09:24 AM
If I wanted to argue with fictional characters over the Internet, I would reactivate my old EVE-Account.

And at least there, you can backstab and steal from them as part of the game!

LibraryOgre
2014-10-07, 02:18 PM
Some people from that particular circle of friends call me petty, especially since I refuse to even talk to the guy in question. But I have absolutely no interest in playing with someone that has absolutely no interest in a decent chemistry and atmosphere in the group. If I wanted to argue with fictional characters over the Internet, I would reactivate my old EVE-Account.

Yeah, I can kinda see his actions with the old character (as you said, it made sense for a spoiled nobleman to put down an uncultured barbarian), but when he started it up with character number 2? I'd have been tempted to just say "You know what, after weeks up putting up with Herr GesaeBkopf, I'm just gonna break his face."

ReaderAt2046
2014-10-07, 10:47 PM
I have one from recent memory, the group does not play anymore, and I dont talk to the player in question anymore.

While I definetely try to act like my character would, I tend to avoid PvP or anything provoking it. I prefer it when the group gets along for the most part, and every case of PvP I have seen usually ends with one or moe people being unhappy. A few weeks ago, I amde an exception to this rule.

We were playing DSA (The Dark Eye), the system is probably not very well known to non-german speakers, so I wont go into detail. Basically, I amde my character early, as the DM is a good friend and we pretty much seeing each other all the time. I posted the finished Character for the other players to see. It was a warrior-type from a somewhat primitive mountain tribe with a rather vicious religion. The general idea was to slowly turn him from a rather merciless killer into a proud warrior with pride and a sense of morality. The other group members liked the idea, one designed a scholar who wanted to become a mage. Someone else a hunter and leatherworker from the north. Lastly, the new addition to the group, a guy I did not really like, played the son of a rich noblehouse.

For the most part, it went great. My character started out as a prisoner, and was freed by the scholar and the hunter (The former was strictly against slavery, and the latter needed a hunting partner.). Even tough my character was rather wild, and barely spoke their language (Which was challenging, since I had to talk like a caveman for a while), they got along nicely. Being a rather decent hunter, I made quick friends with the man from the north, and the scholar had a lot of fun learning about the mountaintribes while teaching me his language and other things.

The Nobleman on the other hand, did nothing but hate on my Character. He would belittle and insult him, order him around and complain when he would not follow. I was fine with that, since he was a relatively young kid from a rich house it was fitting. But after 3 sessions of basically only arguments, and the guy calling my Character a wild animal that should be put down, the group, and especially me, grew tired of the whole thing. I can handle a bit of arguing, and it's normal for some people not geting along 100% with each other. But if a session of 3 hours consists of someone antagonising you all the time, it becomes annoying.

However, there seemed to be no solution. Even after saving the guys life, repeated attempts at "Maybe you should stop treating him like a dog." form the rest of the group and finally, even after he was fluently speaking the common language, it would continue this way. If this was an NPC, my guy would've snapped his neck at night weeks ago.

Eventually, we ended up in another life threatening situation. We (Me and Mr. Hateyourguts) were cornered at a cliffside, with 3 Bandits at our neck, and the only way to get out was either a fight, or trying to climb. The Nobleman deemed combat hopeless without the rest of the group, and started climbing right away. I had chosen to fight, and a very decent first roll wounded one of our pursuers. My character being very large and intimidating, the other two decided to not take their chances with a guy that looked like he didnt have any money anyway.

My companion was around half way down the cliff now, rapidly getting tired. Not a very fantastic climber in the first place it was obvious that he would fall if no help was provided. Checking the cliffside, the DM said that I could probably secure myself with some rope and climb after the guy. My Con and STR was high and my character had a phenomenal climbing skill. However, the cliff seemed treacherous, and after all the stuff from the past days, there would've been no way my Character would try rescuing that guy.

Normally, at this point I would have went with a "Change of heart" or something of the sort. But after no signs of diplomacy from the other player, and 3 sessions consisting of arguments and the usual "It's what my character would do, if you cant handle that, it's your problem.", I decided against that. The guy dropped, a fall hopefully long enough for him to contemplate if being a hostile idiot really payed off in the end, and promptly broke every bone in his body.

Character dead, cue a OOC Flamewar with insults, yelling, and finally angrily leaving the skypecall. We played another session later, with a new character that promptly started the same thing over again. I stood up and left.

Some people from that particular circle of friends call me petty, especially since I refuse to even talk to the guy in question. But I have absolutely no interest in playing with someone that has absolutely no interest in a decent chemistry and atmosphere in the group. If I wanted to argue with fictional characters over the Internet, I would reactivate my old EVE-Account.

It might (I'm not totally sure) have been a good idea to warn Mr. Brat after maybe the second or third session. Take him aside and OOC tell him "your character's insults and belittlement are seriously pissing off my character. If your guy doesn't change his ways soon, my guy will kill him and/or leave him for dead."

Stuebi
2014-10-08, 03:09 AM
It might (I'm not totally sure) have been a good idea to warn Mr. Brat after maybe the second or third session. Take him aside and OOC tell him "your character's insults and belittlement are seriously pissing off my character. If your guy doesn't change his ways soon, my guy will kill him and/or leave him for dead."

It came up once or twice. The first time when the two of them almost started fighting in a village we were visiting, and the second time in skype when I voiced some annoyance at his character. He seemed completely aware of the thing, at least to me. Maybe he expected something specific to happen, or my guy to actually bow down and play doggie. I have no idea.

And I want to point out, I could've dealt with his "WAH my Char is dead!"-whining and general borderline ****ty-attitude. It was the fact that he booted out a second Character with exactly the same issues, appearantly just out of spite, that made me quit. But now that I'm out, I dont really miss it anyway, it was really one of the few rounds where I barely had any fun.

Xerlith
2014-10-08, 02:05 PM
It was a year ago. And began so innocently...
Here's a story of how I met not a person, but two. And they weren't simply your average problem players. They were quadratic problem players. Alone, each was at worst disruptive. Together they were... Well.
This is a story of what happens if two people who dislike each other decide to participate in a social event together despite it.
A very long story. And I can't really convey the details that made the pair so disruptive. Which makes me sad. :<


The setting: Forgotten Realms, with some homebrewed changes to it. Not relevant. 3.P (if it ever comes up).
The players:
M - a fairly experienced with RPGs, although not yet accustomed to tabletops, my girlfriend. Human Wu Jen/Crusader into JPM.
K - A new, quickly learning player, my good friend. D's girlfriend. Played an elf Spellshot Marksman (homebrewed class).
S - An acquaintance of ours, bit eccentric and snarky. First of the duo. Played a Human Warblade tripper.
D - K's boyfriend. A new blood, allegedly experienced in tabletop gaming. Started off as an Elan PsyWar. Second of the duo.

The game began at 3rd level, everyone in different places, all the opening stories more or less tied together. Each backstory crafted with the player to ensure commitment and fun.
The Warblade was a Kara-Tur yakuza member, the Wu Jen was a priestess he was meant to meet and protect during a certain ritual, blah, plot stuff. So far so good. Everyone but M got an introductory session each of which went quite well. D's Elan was in a somewhat futuristic Illithid facility, sent with a mission and an agenda to Faerun. I was a bit surprised when D declared his character wears a full-face mask and a hood, all the time, but shrugged and put it on personal preferences.

K meets D's character and they somehow come to an understanding (also, K's elf is bound to an artifact D was meant to find. Without raising attention, so killing her was out of question). More or less fully IC.
Meanwhile S and M gracefully fail at their task and unleash the BBEG (A close call. Well, they didn't make it) and get thrown through planes, by a lucky coincidence (read: DM Fiat) landing near K&D.
They meet and take up a task together (a third party managed to get on their nerves and make them cooperate). And then it all started.

I start describing the local colour. D's attention instantly centers on a random noble pissing on the inner wall (as in, standing on it and pissing). And he exclaims: "Bet I can shoot it off from here" and readies his crossbow. Well. He's threatening a noble, so naturally after a long staredown he gets surrounded by city guard (remember, he's still masked). That's when the rest backs off a bit, leaving D's character alone amidst of the guards. What does the character (a LN Elan, somewhat a spy and researcher working for Mindflayers) do?
...He spits the captain in the face.
Well, the guards make a short work of D's character, strip him off his crossbow and a few HPs, leaving him lying tripped on the ground. He starts (almost literally) crying that I made the guards overpowered. I point out they outnumbered him and had reach. He pouts. Oh, okay.

A bit later, when the party's on the road to find and put a stop to Goblin attacks on traveling merchants, D at last breaks. "Let me make a new character, this one sucks". As in mechanically. Because he didn't wreck the city guards.

I sigh and allow it, expecting the quality of roleplay (ever seen someone roleplay a chair? I might as well have...) to rise at least a bit.
So he rolls up a dwarf Magus War Warder, one of whose possession is (flavorful and fun, also a portable base, so why not) a carriage with a brewery/portable bar.

So when they enter the ancient tomb, now a Goblin village, we go with his character being conditioned to eliminate obstacles after a certain time, some hot and steamy PvP ensues - in which D's character shows that he CAN whoop some ass, almost killing two of his former party members. Okay, he went down in a blaze of glory. D's happy, because somewhere in there his Dwarf Magus With A Portable Brewery waits for him. The catch - I told him he'd start captured by the goblins. So he had to wait till they find him. So what did the guy do? Well. This. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vUBsTJYK28) Did I mention he was all the time "playfully" taunted by S? Well, he was.

Then the party ignores EVERY hint I throw at them that they might want to capture one of the goblins, once literally killing one that exclaimed anything like "stop" (The Warblade did most of the slaughtering. The girls at this point were a bit overwhelmed with the S vs D thing).

Finally, they meet the dwarf, imprisoned by the goblins.
He explicitly knew the Goblin language AND got my description of the miniboss at the end of this dungeon, of which I used both in HEAVILY hinting at the fact that the goblins were in fact forced to attack the merchant caravans. Well, I literally pointed it out IC to his character.

This is important, because he never spoke of it until it was after they met the miniboss. But let's not be hasty.

They slaughtered each and every man, woman and child that stood in their way. Also the goblin's pet and a random Derro that had a hideout behind a rubble in a far, unused corner of the dungeon.

And there was the door to the lower level. A big, heavy wooden door. With a biig, visible and well-lit writing (in goblin) on it.
"Don't open. Dead walk". D kept silent, they joyfully marched in.

Two rooms later, the Warblade orders a rest because Constitution damage almost killed him.

Opportunity to roleplay. Dwarf insults S's character, S insults D, the players start insulting each other. It was then that it really hit me that D was insanely envious of S being friends with K and plainly saw him as an adversary.
Yeah, that's it for roleplaying, i guess. They wait, boring rolls (no random undead, no random undead, no random undead), food shortage, more boring rolls, Warblade upgrades his Ancestral Relic.
But they can't come back up now, as some goblins noticed the unlocked Door and locked it.

So, after slaughtering some more undead and zombies (and trying to somehow heal a semi-undead ghoul-to-be (a homebrew creature) captured soldier (that's racist, you had A LOT of goblins to question, guys)) and failing, they get to the further level.

Goblins. As slave labour. At last it occurs to the players that asking some questions might be a good idea... So the Warblade grabs one of the goblins, forces it to at last admit they're being kept threatened by a necromancer. The goblin begs for help.
So S threatens it for some reason. And then kills it (he was CN, as of then). The dwarf kicks in, asking why he killed a cooperating person.
S insults D for asking. D insults S. Insults start flying for a few minutes, even though I forcefully shut the two up.

Things happen, miniboss dies, loot gets looted, goblins left without as much as an afterthought.

They track the NPC that this time stole the carriage, get their money and stuff back, get treated with some plot exposition...
Warblade decides it's a good moment to walk away. Literally. Probably forgetting his honor and the promise to protect the priestess. Or, well, anything.

Blah, blah, JPM exposition, Warblade asks the guy to prove it. Okay, that sounds ridiculous, glad he's sceptic. The NPC explains. Shows and presents knowledge hidden and ancient.
Nope, doesn't work.
The player literally spent an hour explaining IC and OOC WHY his character doesn't believe in JPM's existence (Tied to BBEG, which he himself accidentaly unleashed). Even got asked to stop doing that by the other players.

After literally EVERY session I had to have The Talk with the guys and was in a situation that may very well be a textbook example of a Geek Social Fallacy trap. Resetting.

Sadly (Thankfully?) the story never saw any continuation, because D got maniacal, K broke up with him, D started flinging accusations and threats at S for allegedly stealing his girlfriend, S started playing along to piss him off, pandemonium ensued.


Yeah, that was my first big campaign and it blew up beautifully. Since then I prefer to run premade modules. It doesn't hurt that much.

EvilAnagram
2014-10-08, 02:11 PM
There is one player, we'll call him Ryan, who frequents the local game store. He plays 40k and D&D, and he is a ridiculous, tantrum-throwing baby. When I say tantrum-throwing, I mean he literally threw his dice across the room after a bad round in 40k. He pouts, snaps at people, and generally ruins good table vibes anytime he plays. He has repeatedly soured games and left in the middle of tournaments.

He's also a terrible player. The first time I played with him, it was an Encounters session. He was trapped in a room with a web of ropes covered in a fine dust running across the ceiling. There were spikes on the floor, and rats in crevices along the wall, about rope-height. After some trial and error, it became obvious to everyone else that the trick to opening the door was getting rats covered in rope-dust and pressing them onto the spikes. For some reason, he decided that the trick was to throw the rats onto the spikes. It took him forty minute of his character being alone in a room for him to figure out what took everyone else ten. He then threw a tantrum because his goblin rogue was KOed when he attacked a Troll. This included throwing his dice.

The shop owner gives out an MVP award, voted on by players, and the winner gets $15 store credit. He has only ever voted for himself, despite being terrible. Sometimes his wife shows up, and she only votes for him to keep him from throwing a tantrum, so he has a reliable voting block. Other players try to spread the love around because otherwise it's not fun. Ryan, however, is a ****.

Here's a longer story:

Ryan eventually noticed that the MVP would often go to me because I consistently play well and create enjoyable characters who keep other players entertained. (When I didn't need to buy another source book or Dungeon Command set, I usually bought a few packs of cards for the kids who frequent the place because why not.) He decided that the key to winning votes was to be "funny." He is not funny. He plays goblins who are annoying. He decided that one was going to be a crazy stab-happy rogue based off of Cicero from Skyrim. His "hilarious" antics involved doing "random" things and staring at everyone expectantly, hoping for a laugh. We didn't laugh. It was painful.

Eventually, we were confronted by a boss-level villain who appeared, made his evil speech, and left as zombies showed up to fight us. Ryan decided to chase after the boss. The cleric and I both clearly stated that we weren't going to help him. We weren't as mobile, and zombies were about. In fact, we assumed that he was just going for it because, as he told us earlier, they couldn't find a babysitter for Wednesdays and he had to stop coming to Encounters. Yeah, the tantrum-throwing man-baby has a child. Have I mentioned that he still lives with his parents?

Anyways, he goes after the boss, we figure he just wants to go out in a blaze of glory, and we tell him flat-out that we won't help. We don't have the mobility to help anyways, but I wouldn't have if we did. Puff the entirely non-magical dragonborn wasn't going to ignore those zombies. So, he spends two full turns devoting all of his actions to going after the necromancer, and ends up coming around a corner just in time to see him and not have an action left. The necromancer KOs him in one hit.

We figure that he knew he'd die and continue doing what we do. The DM actually rolls a coup de grace attempt immediately after knocking him out and succeeds, but doesn't tell us. Douchebag's turn comes around again, the DM lets him roll a save, he fails, DM lets him know that the necromancer kills him. Cue tantrum. Ryan whines because the DM didn't even roll. DM, who is a very kind and nonconfrontational guy, says he rolled. Cue dice throwing and whining that he didn't see the roll. DM rolls again, still a coup de grace. Cue more whining and pouting. Whole table atmosphere goes from fun to awkward in a matter of seconds.

tl:dr; he tried to solo a boss as a goblin rogue, and then he threw a tantrum when he died.

I have since lost all patience for this kind of crap from adults.

lytokk
2014-10-08, 03:02 PM
Cover the rats in rope dust and press them on the spikes... I'm sorry to ask, but how do you come to this conclusion? I don't think I could figure it out, of course I've never played in an encounters game, so I don't know if stuff like this is normal.

EvilAnagram
2014-10-08, 03:37 PM
Cover the rats in rope dust and press them on the spikes... I'm sorry to ask, but how do you come to this conclusion? I don't think I could figure it out, of course I've never played in an encounters game, so I don't know if stuff like this is normal.


He grabbed a rat and stuck it one of the three spikes in the middle of the room. Nothing happened.
He jumped up and clung onto the netting.
The rats climbed over it, and the DM mentioned multiple times that they were covered in dust.
He grabs a rat and throws it on a spike. Not 20, it gets impaled There's a click. DM makes sure to focus on the dust on the rat.
The DM constantly mentions the dust as he throws rats at the remaining spikes for twenty minutes, constantly missing.
The DM says the now dust-covered rats are hiding off of the net.
He spends ten minutes trying to catch new rats instead of using the rat corpses on the floor. Which the DM keeps mentioning are covered in magic dust.
He finally uses those corpses ten minutes later without ever figuring out that the DM was shouting the answer at him.

Sajiri
2014-10-08, 04:08 PM
The worst player I've played with was interesting because he....didn't actually play :smallconfused:

When we were all starting out with the DM teaching me and some others to play, this guy who's real name I can't actually even remember anymore, so I'll just say R, wanted to play with us. We hadn't known him long but he was kind of attached to us so we said sure, brush up on the rules and make a character, don't worry if you don't grasp it all we're all new and the DM will help along the way. For starters, he never made an attempt to learn any rules, or make his own character.

He had the DM make him one, then on the night before we were due to start, changed his mind and had the DM make him a different character instead. I'll admit I got a little jealous/annoyed because R wasnt putting any effort in but was getting special treatment and the DM admitted was making a pretty OP character for him, while I was actually in a relationship with the DM and didn't get any help with mine (nor did the other players). We did our first session online and R only did one thing all night, saying he sensed undead or something (which he only said because I pointed out to him he had that ability and that he should say something). By the time we finally made it to combat, when we really needed him, he wasnt even planning to do anything and had the DM control his character- which meant the DM wasnt going to do anything with it (had it knocked out right away then only used it to stop us dying after we were jumped by the big bad at the end)

For the next 2-3 weeks he didnt show up at all and we'd have to cancel. Tried telling R as gently as we could that if he didn't want to play that was fine, just say so and we can do something else together but he treated it as though we were kicking him out and got super upset and didn't want to leave (even though, again, he wasnt showing up anyway). Offered to set aside an afternoon to go through his character sheet and all the rules and teach him the basics so he could join in a bit, which he agreed to, so I spent a few hours reading through it all to understand it myself so I could help him, only to have him, surprise, not show up again.

He started asking the DM for a solo adventure to help him learn, which the DM agreed to (and again hadn't given that opportunity to anyone else), so we had to postpone even longer while the DM made up a little adventure just for him which, again, he never showed up to. I think he actually just had a crush on the DM and was looking for an excuse to have alone time with him and would back out when he realised I was around. When I finally put my foot down and told him we were getting kind of tired of setting up these situations for him only to have him never show so we were going to go ahead without him if he didnt show again, he got all weird and emo and disappeared for a few weeks again. We did go on without him, but I think the 4th player left because he was tired of always waiting, and even though we got some reps we couldn't really get back into it after that and the game died. Which was a shame because it was a pretty cool setting.

I think the DM sometimes thinks Im the worst player too sometimes :p

Somehow I seem to keep making OP characters, or at least OP compared to the other players in our group. It annoys the hell out of him because then he has to try to balance the encounters so they dont destroy other players but arent facerolled by my character (at least I can take the hint when he's trying to split us up and draw me away to something harder than what others are fighting). Thing is Im not actually TRYING to make or pick OP things, I just look at something and think "hey that looks neat!" and use it, and it turns out to be a lot stronger than what others chose :smalleek:

Then the other that I come across as special snowflake by the character personalities/backgrounds. Again this isn't something I try to do, in fact I think Im being pretty unoriginal and just tend to go by what the race descriptions say which apparently...others dont read. Like when I wanted to make a gloaming in 3.5, and I read that their alignment is usually in conflict with the majority alignment of the society they live in, so I made a CN character in a LN community. Then when I was convinced to try a star wars RP, which I don't know much about since I was never all that into it, I made a twi'lek that I read are usually sold into slavery by their own parents because thats a better alternative to living on their planet, so I made a twi'lek that was owned by some rich guy who actually treated her well, who died and left her his stuff so she could set out and do...whatever star wars adventurers do. Apparently that made me a special snowflake that wanted everything about myself (even though the game never actually started) :smallfrown:

Now we've moved beyond that and Im unknowingly breaking boss encounters which the DM doesnt like, such as the other day when I won over and recruited a character that I didn't realise was meant to be the boss of the session that I was supposed to kill. All his planning for that awesome battle went down the drain.

Red Fel
2014-10-08, 09:15 PM
He grabbed a rat and stuck it one of the three spikes in the middle of the room. Nothing happened.
He jumped up and clung onto the netting.
The rats climbed over it, and the DM mentioned multiple times that they were covered in dust.
He grabs a rat and throws it on a spike. Not 20, it gets impaled There's a click. DM makes sure to focus on the dust on the rat.
The DM constantly mentions the dust as he throws rats at the remaining spikes for twenty minutes, constantly missing.
The DM says the now dust-covered rats are hiding off of the net.
He spends ten minutes trying to catch new rats instead of using the rat corpses on the floor. Which the DM keeps mentioning are covered in magic dust.
He finally uses those corpses ten minutes later without ever figuring out that the DM was shouting the answer at him.


I'm going to agree with Lytokk here - this is a puzzle with (1) only one solution, (2) which is extremely obtuse, and (3) makes no logical sense, even by the standards of fantasy tabletop roleplaying. #1 is a problem because anytime you devise a puzzle with a single solution, you can guarantee your players won't figure it out. (See the "rule of three" in designing puzzles.) #2 and #3 are problems because of #1. Now, it sounds like the player was generally a spoilsport and an unpleasant person, but I could see even the most even-tempered players growing a bit frustrated with this one.

Tanngrisnir
2014-10-08, 11:10 PM
It was a year ago. And began so innocently...

I would have walked after the player-to-player insults started flying, that's just no fun for anybody.

lytokk
2014-10-09, 06:35 AM
Don't get me wrong, the guy was a bad player no doubt, but the puzzle did seem a little over the top, and I do play a lot of puzzle solving games. Also, I can't see a good druid making it through a puzzle which requires you to kill some animals, even rats, for no reason. Or at least I wouldn't expect it. Assuming of course this was a D&D encounters game and not something else.

Honest Tiefling
2014-10-09, 12:31 PM
Spend 10 minutes explaining to a player how the nobles of a certain region worked, glad someone was taking an interest in the setting. Quickly explain the feuds they have, hoping someone would nibble at the plot hook bait. Instead, he turns around and explains something entirely different to the party. Why? Because he wasn't paying attention and decided to make something up on the spot. I didn't quite get if he expected it to be canonical or what, but I wasn't about to force the Queen to have a quick gender change because of this. I might ramble, but come on!

Traab
2014-10-09, 12:33 PM
Normally I would agree, because that is a very illogical puzzle, but considering how hard the dm was hinting at the solution, my pity swings back the other way. The dm was doing everything but grabbing him by the shoulders and saying, "FOR GODS SAKE! USE THE DUST COVERED RATS! THEY ARE RIGHT THERE!!!!!!"

DireSickFish
2014-10-09, 12:57 PM
This isn't my worst player ever, he usually isn't that bad but this is a recent problem I had happen with a player.

I'm the primary DM for a rather large group that we have to split into two groups to run sessions. So we tend to all run very modular one shot adventures that any payer can drop in and out of. I've got the setup for the adventure as a Dwarf nobel needing someone to clear out an infestation in his quarry. He doesn't know why but if he has all of these walking plants killed more will appear overnight.

The opening goes well, they help out an unrelated group kill some slavers to keep my meta-plot going. Meet up with the Dwarf Noble in an inn while he's drinking and telling stories. When they get down to price the Wizard doesn't think the 50gp per person to do the job is enough. He rolls really well on diplomacy and makes a decent argument and gets it upped all the way to 100gp a person.

The next morning when they are leaving a femail pair of Dwarven barbarians are talking with the Dwarf Noble and are trying to get the job the party already took. The party recoginzes them from an adventure where they ended up fighting the barbarians. They are not happy to get a job snaked by the party.

So the party heads to the quarry. I'm still working on balancing encounters in 5th ed and am planning on using the Blighted Plants to have a tree grown from a vampire staked by the Dwarf Noble in his past. They are low CR creatures and I threw quite a few at the party, possibly to many for a lvl4 party of 4. Two players end up dropping to 0 during the fight, and after the dust clears the Wizard does -not- think the 100gp is enough. As he assumes it will only get more dangerous from here on out. I don't have the Dwarf Noble give and and he says he can just go higher the barbarians that wanted the job instead of the party.

It will be 1 day before he gets back and the Wizard wants to watch them fail. About evening I have them see great pillars of flame in the woods to the north. They go to investigate prompted by the party Cleric. It's an Archdruid who is being corned by a highly damaged blighted Shambling mound that breaks her leg. She drops exposition that the forest is being blighted and she is trying to find out why. Party doesn't care to much about the blight even with a druid so whatever.

Next day the barbarians show up and clean up some more blight creatures that fell into the pit. Suffice to say they did not fial. So the Wizard has had enough and with ought the increased payment decides theres nothing in it for him and wants to go home. One of the other players even gave him 100gp to go along with it but by that point he was done. I was a bit deflated but just told him he was done as the rest of the party wanted to follow the Barbarians and lend them a hand in stopping this. So the Wizards player left the game.

I had never had a player leave mid game in an event before. In retrospect I made the fight to hard but that doesn't justify his leaving.

Inevitability
2014-10-09, 03:07 PM
Maybe make the thread's title: The Worst player you've ever had/seen/been? I have a story to tell about myself here.

DireSickFish
2014-10-09, 03:42 PM
Maybe make the thread's title: The Worst player you've ever had/seen/been? I have a story to tell about myself here.

We've had a plethora of those already. Add yours to the pile!

EvilAnagram
2014-10-09, 03:45 PM
Don't get me wrong, the guy was a bad player no doubt, but the puzzle did seem a little over the top, and I do play a lot of puzzle solving games. Also, I can't see a good druid making it through a puzzle which requires you to kill some animals, even rats, for no reason. Or at least I wouldn't expect it. Assuming of course this was a D&D encounters game and not something else.


I'm going to agree with Lytokk here - this is a puzzle with (1) only one solution, (2) which is extremely obtuse, and (3) makes no logical sense, even by the standards of fantasy tabletop roleplaying. #1 is a problem because anytime you devise a puzzle with a single solution, you can guarantee your players won't figure it out. (See the "rule of three" in designing puzzles.) #2 and #3 are problems because of #1. Now, it sounds like the player was generally a spoilsport and an unpleasant person, but I could see even the most even-tempered players growing a bit frustrated with this one.

I don't disagree with any of your points, but the DM was practically shouting the answer at him, and he was not getting it. That's the part that was annoying, not the fact that he had trouble with an obtuse puzzle.

The Random NPC
2014-10-09, 04:10 PM
I don't disagree with any of your points, but the DM was practically shouting the answer at him, and he was not getting it. That's the part that was annoying, not the fact that he had trouble with an obtuse puzzle.

Some people are pretty dense, and can easily miss clues that others find obvious.

Honest Tiefling
2014-10-09, 04:12 PM
I could easily see not picking up the hints because...The hints imply something so strange, I would be wondering what the hints meant. I admit I am bad at puzzles and would likely have been that player who spend half an hour on it because I wouldn't quite get this dust business. Heck, I might have eaten the dust out of desperation.

icefractal
2014-10-09, 06:26 PM
It sounds like the player still qualifies for this list, having plenty of other unpleasant qualities. However ...

That puzzle. WTF. Who the hell builds something like that? And why?!
It needs blood to open? Ok, sure, cultists make stuff like that. It needs magic dust? Fine - but if the dust is stored in the same room, it's not like it's a very secure lock. Might as well just have a lever at that point. It needs ... rats that have been dipped in magic dust? What? "The builder was insane" or "this is a temple to a god with very odd rituals" are about the only things that make sense.

I feel like my solution would have been to:
1) If I know the dust is magic, fill a bag to take with me, in case it's useful for something.
2) Avoid the spikes, those look like a trap.
3) Break the door down. What kind of adventurer gives up just because a door was locked?

Telwar
2014-10-09, 09:37 PM
I didn't help matters when I decided to have my Ranger jump off the wall, trying to skewer the Hill Giant in the back with his swords.... Oh... And the fact that the 4 of us were level 2 taking 3 Hill Giants!!

...Attack on Titan game?

Marlowe
2014-10-09, 10:08 PM
...Attack on Titan game?

I seem to remember were a little higher level. Martina (my character. Yes, based on http://www.inverse.org/e/bkg/chars/martina-trans.gif had been throwing around Fireballs earlier that same combat. But that particular DM just basically throws swarms big uglies at you in a constant gauntlet while his superpowerful NPCs sneer at you from the sidelines.

That combat also featured one of Gs more memorable moments. After we defeated one set of monsters, the town we were defending was immediately attacked by another set from a different quarter. G had stated (repeatedly) that his character would be prioritizing looting the bodies of the fallen at the first battle site (while the rest of us ran off to fight the newcomers), and then couldn't understand why the DM wouldn't let him lead the charge in the new battle. He did not seem to understand that his character couldn't be in two places at once and practically started threatening the DM and other players with violence for "trying to cheat me".

It's also the combat where I figured out that Ray of Enfeeblement is better than Scorching Ray. I was very new then.

But still, we don't seem to have good luck with Rangers.

Sith_Happens
2014-10-09, 11:01 PM
What kind of adventurer gives up just because a door was locked?

The kind that's playing D&D 5e.:smalltongue:

dragonjek
2014-10-09, 11:30 PM
The worst player I've experienced was one who played Chaotic Neutral as Chaotic Stupid. We did somehow manage to get through to him that CN did not equate to random. He answered by playing a shapechanger who worshiped the campaign equivalent to a god of slaadi with an entire crate of potions that let loose wild magic effects with thrown or drunk, which he threw around with horrifying abandon that once got us sucked into Hell along with the dragon we were fighting.

Inevitability
2014-10-10, 07:56 AM
Okay...

I think my first PBP game was an example of: 'how not to play D&D'. I played a warforged artificer in a magic item-less setting (yeah, I know), and then was surprised I wasn't performing as well as everyone else.

My RP was near-zero, and everytime there was a character-defining event, my character acted... inconsistent. His actions ranged from CDG'ing already incapacitated foes to trying to sacrifice himself in order to give the party more time to escape.

Not to mention that my guy was also pretty disruptive. His first IC words were basically: 'how about we go make some fake money and then exchange it for gold at the bank?'

Yeah, I get sick just from looking at that thread. I'm glad things have changed since then.

Silus
2014-10-10, 08:05 AM
The kind that's playing D&D 5e.:smalltongue:

"The door is locked and resists all your attempts to batter it down or pick the lock."
"...What's the wall made of?"

Segev
2014-10-10, 09:01 AM
The kind that's playing D&D 5e.:smalltongue:

How does 5e encourage this behavior more than any other edition?

Necroticplague
2014-10-10, 10:29 AM
How does 5e encourage this behavior more than any other edition?

By making doors a lot harder to smash down.

Segev
2014-10-10, 10:51 AM
By making doors a lot harder to smash down.

Could you elaborate a bit, please? I don't even know where in the rules to look to begin this analysis.

icefractal
2014-10-10, 12:44 PM
It's a Strength check, like in 3E. However, Strength caps at 20 now. And is lower even for monsters. There's been some strangeness noticed, like the Tarrasque not being reliably able to break down a barred wooden door.

Also, I'm not sure if there are rules for simply smashing the door down with HP damage, generally the more reliable strategy. I mean, yes, you can still do it - I would hope any GM who claimed otherwise would be laughed at - but it's a common enough activity it shouldn't have to be arbitrated on the spot.

Sith_Happens
2014-10-11, 02:27 PM
"The door is locked and resists all your attempts to batter it down or pick the lock."
"...What's the wall made of?"

"Doors. The wall is made of doors."
"What about the--"
"THE ENTIRE DUNGEON IS DOORS."

BeerMug Paladin
2014-10-11, 04:07 PM
"Doors. The wall is made of doors."
"What about the--"
"THE ENTIRE DUNGEON IS DOORS."
You know, I'm extremely tempted to do this. The dungeon of More Door!

Arbane
2014-10-11, 08:41 PM
You know, I'm extremely tempted to do this. The dungeon of More Door!

One does not just walk into More Doors.

One knocks first. It's just polite.

BootStrapTommy
2014-10-11, 11:27 PM
I'm the worst player I've ever been. And theoretically the best I've ever been, existentially speaking...

Or it could have been when the DM killed 2 players in a fight and we learned he had no concept of encounter balance.
I have no concept of encounter balance. But neither do my players...

"Doors. The wall is made of doors."
"What about the--"
"THE ENTIRE DUNGEON IS DOORS."
This would really get my players going... They would break down all of them.

blacklight101
2014-10-12, 08:40 AM
Current player that I have played my last two table games with has no concept of how to use her characters, their abilities, or roleplay a bit. Her worst one so far has been her second character, a Halfling rogue. Hiding, sneak attacks, and finding traps are all well-and-good; she takes this to such an extreme, like hiding before we try to go into a city -right infront of the town guards; trying to hide right beside the road instead of in the woods to ambush some orks. She will duck behind a couple barrels in a town and try to walk out from behind them, right down the middle of the street, still hidden. She just tries- and fails to- hide repeatedly, I hate to say its become a joke in our group now. "The only time she hides successfully is when she isn't here."

Hiding to try to sneak and observe someone is great, but this is a guy the DM said we could just go talk to. For some horrible reason, she uprooted some shrub (because she wanted to sneak behind cover in a desert) and crept around in it - but not in that funny cartoonish way. She was actually trying to make this work. At level 2.

She missed one trap. Once. In one place because she hadn't rolled well and then did the classic level of whining about how her character was bad and the game was unfair to her blah, blah. Now she obsessively searches every step of anywhere ingame that has a searchable tile. Granted, she does find traps now and then, but she does this to the degree that our DM told us (at a session she wasn't there) that she cut way down on traps after she started getting out of hand with it. After that we told her this too. She apparently didn't believe any of the group or the DM and continues the obsessive searching.

Sneak attacks are the other major in-character problem for her. She will complain that she doesn't get any opportunities to do any, but puts no effort into going around any of the enemies, or trying to sneak up a tree to get a shot with her crossbow, etc. We have tried to help her with this too, we have a good group like that most of the time. She is given chances to slip off and make her way around, but always says its too dangerous to go alone (our gnomes aren't the athletic types, so no climbing for them). Our DM tries to give all our characters a chance to shine now and then and pretty specifically, at times, points out which one of us it would be; nothing says the rest of us don't get the hint now and then. I think by level 6 she has only set her character up -other than by DM fiat- for something around 6 or 7 sneak attacks.

We try to help her with this, we really do. Last session, dice a book was thrown because she had "read up on the rules really well" and didn't pay attention to the multiple times our DM mentioned the word incorporeal, i.e. no sneak attacks. She actually did read most of the rules for sneak attack, but either missed or chose to ignore the couple sentences about the creatures it doesn't effect. The creatures we were fighting had two of the types: undead and incorporeal. She managed to worm her way back behind one of them and all we heard about for the next few minutes was how she finally gets a sneak attack after being given so few opportunities (when she wont take any put right in her face). Most of the group just stared at her for a second. For some reason I was the one that spoke up "Those are incorporeal undead, hon. It's regular damage. I think theyre immune to crits."

She replies with something akin to an "It can't be!" and flips hurriedly to the entry and skims through it. She finds what I was talking about.

I got to dodge a PHB that night. I did make my personal reflex save, by the by.


I know we are falling heavily into at least two of the fallacies of a gaming group, but sometimes she is a decent player and a good person to be around. Just, when things don't go her way... man, she throws a fit. She asks questions about her character's abilities and refuses to learn about her abilities in the same session and plods on in the same manner.




sorry for the tl;dr. I have a tendency to ramble.

Mr Beer
2014-10-12, 09:20 PM
Wait, you helped someone out by telling them a relevant rule and they threw a book at your skull? I might take that quite badly.

blacklight101
2014-10-12, 09:50 PM
Thats our problem player, alright. It definitely falls under the gaming group fallacies; its far smoother when she isnt gumming up the works. Like I said, she has her good and bad moments, the bad ones just really, really stick out.

Milodiah
2014-10-12, 09:52 PM
2 stories of the worst players I've ever had, both in games of Delta Green, which is basically modern Call of Cthulhu with a touch of X-Files and conspiracy theory.


I wasn't GMing, but I was the person at the table with the most knowledge of the system, so the GM would occasionally look to me for help, and I was asked to help build a late-joining new player's character. He decided to play as an NSA agent, and the stats ended up so his starting sanity was 40. Now, 40 isn't good, but to give perspective one can still be a functioning member of society with 40 SAN, it's not insane asylum levels. I inform him that his character will probably be mildly neurotic, probably paranoia or something along those lines.

Terrible decision.

Scenario starts, hush-hush meeting with a contact in a warehouse. Even though the new guy's ostensibly on our team, he barges in separately from the rest of us, gun drawn, babbling nonsense as though he'd just squeezed out of a straitjacket and fought his way out of a padded room. We literally had to initiate combat to subdue him, and after disarming, cuffing, and I think gagging him we discovered, lo and behold, this is our new recruit. At this point I tried to explain to him that he should at least be pretending to be sane, otherwise he wouldn't get to be a government agent with a security clearance.

Game goes on. We were sent to check out a town that was literally vanishing, building by building, into the ground. Don't remember how, but an NPC refused to open up and let us, a group of total strangers who hadn't even introduced ourselves, into her home at 9 o'clock at night.

The guy kicks in the door, pistol whips her in the forehead, we manage to grapple with, physically restrain, and sedate a party member for the second time in as many hours for no apparent reason, and now we kinda have to explain this to the poor woman when she comes to.

Don't remember how it came to this (there weren't any armed hostiles in the scenario, so it was probably us), but shortly after killing another PC by knowingly handing them poisoned heroin (that PC was a recovering addict) he came to be beaten to an inch of his life to the point where his brain was peeking through a crack in his skull. I mercy-killed him, and the player drifted off, never to be seen again.


Second fellow's another murder-hobo, who was however taking the above advice and pretending to be sane.

So I was invited to join an RPG group by a mutual friend, to whom I had introduced Delta Green. On the first night, however, he was sick and couldn't come, so I wound up being the stranger GM who was running a game for a group of people who had played together for months. Kinda awkward, obviously, but I wanted this to be my good first impression.

I didn't realize, however, that two of the four people actually weren't members of the core group, and had been recruited to basically fill party space.

First guy's a nice fellow, but pretty much never can be relied on to stay at the table. I don't know if it's the availability heuristic at work here, but all three times I've played with him, something came up and he had to rush home because of his wife, or his mother, or his dog, etc. Not his fault, of course, but still a little bothersome for the rest of us.

Second guy, however, should have thrown up red flags from the start. He's an FBI agent, and willingly reconfigures his already good stats to make INT and EDU a dump and turn himself into a towering bruiser (anyone who's played Call of Cthulhu can see the problem here, mechanically as well as idea-wise). Gives his Caucasian FBI agent a single Japanese-sounding name, which I cannot recall but would put money on being a character from Naruto. Asks if he can make Throw (as in knives) a professional skill, and I hesitantly allow it. After all, it's not like he asked for dual katanas or anything.

Game starts, disappearances are to be investigated in a Native American reservation in Arizona. They're caught in a jurisdictional...awkwardness...between the local sheriff, the Feds, and the state police, of whom the main representative, Major Garrett, is specifically written to be abrasive and boorish. I depict this faithfully, and it irritates the characters as is meant to be. More on that later, though...first...

They're investigating a house from which someone has disappeared. He's searching a closet alone, and finds a bloodied Winchester rifle that's clearly been recently used in brutal hand-to-hand combat. He opts to steal it. Yes, an FBI agent deliberately conceals key evidence just so he can come back and take it for himself later, when no one's looking.

Now, Major Garrett...they've spotted a strange reflection on the horizon from a helicopter, which turns out to be a buried car in the desert. They drive out with Major Garrett to investigate, and the major hands them all shovels and tells them to dig it up. Naturally he doesn't pull his fair share of the work. This incenses the psychopath, who tells me he's going to "accidentally" hit him in the head with a shovel. Roll is botched, and the major realizes that was a deliberate attack. Major pulls his nightstick, Shovel Guy overpowers him, and beats him to an inch of his life with the shovel while the other PCs look on in horror. He then gets on the phone and calls his boss to try to cover up the thing his boss has yet to, and possibly will never, find out about. Botches the roll. So the PCs are now standing in the desert, being held at gunpoint by this psycho while they all patiently wait for a helicopter full of SWAT guys to show up and bring down the nutcase. He tries to introduce a new character the same character as an identical twin who happens to have the same job and skills.

Suffice it to say the game trailed off after that, and fortunately it wasn't a group-breaker. We still have weekly gaming nights, and enjoy each other's company in the absence of psychopaths.

azoetia
2014-10-14, 03:26 AM
The worst player with whom I've gamed is pretty tame compared to a lot of these horror stories. But I'm still glad he's gone.

His biggest issue is that he slept through sessions, only waking up for combat. The only way he'd stay awake is if someone left a muted television on; he'd stare at informercials all night with half-lidded eyes, only peeling them away for combat. In the campaign where he did this the most his PC was the main character and his personal story was central to what everyone else was doing, but he couldn't be bothered to take part in very much of it. Gradually the other characters took over and shifted the focus onto what they wanted to do. We have so many hilarious stories from that campaign, just crazy things the PCs did or got themselves into, that we still talk about to this day. And his character is totally absent from any of them except for occasionally telling everyone not to do something cool or fun.

I DMed a campaign a year later in which I pre-generated PCs and let everyone draw one at random. This wasn't anything I forced on anyone; there was consensual buy-in to the concept, which was experimental and remains the only time we have ever done this. Two of the players got a kick out of their characters because one was getting to play his favourite type of PC and go nuts while the other was enjoying the challenge of playing something completely new for him. But sleepyhead seemed discontented and gradually became more and more unhappy and would randomly pout without saying why, eventually telling me, "This campaign was a good idea in theory but it was a total dud in execution." He was the only one not having loads of fun, but somehow the entire thing was an objective failure in his eyes, and more importantly my fault. He never said why he didn't enjoy the game and never gave any useful feedback, but I got the feeling it was because his randomly chosen character was a woman.

Soon after that he DMed one session of what was supposed to be a new campaign. He repeatedly singled out my character to get victimized or miraculously miss the DC of every challenge by 1, so that skill DCs (announced after my roll) were consistently odd numbers like 17 if I rolled a 16 or 21 if I rolled a 20. That campaign lasted all of an hour. Afterward I said, "What the hell was that?" and he just shrugged.

Arbane
2014-10-14, 05:13 PM
Soon after that he DMed one session of what was supposed to be a new campaign. He repeatedly singled out my character to get victimized or miraculously miss the DC of every challenge by 1, so that skill DCs (announced after my roll) were consistently odd numbers like 17 if I rolled a 16 or 21 if I rolled a 20. That campaign lasted all of an hour. Afterward I said, "What the hell was that?" and he just shrugged.

Wow, that's impressively petty.
For future reference, the best way to deal with that is to 'forget' a +1 from something, then add it in AFTER he says you've missed.

azoetia
2014-10-14, 06:12 PM
Wow, that's impressively petty.
For future reference, the best way to deal with that is to 'forget' a +1 from something, then add it in AFTER he says you've missed.
Oh, as soon as I called him out on it he stopped, but then he made my fighter lose her sword hand in the first combat, had her nearly bleed out, and then imposed massive permanent penalties. This was executed with secret rolls, bizarre circumstances, and a smug grin. It wasn't for a story hook or anything interesting, it was just to be a **** toward specifically my character.

So I quit.

He did run one more session a year later. I had a new significant other and wanted to introduce her to gaming after having talked up how great our group was. A friend who is a fantastic GM but who is very difficult to talk into running a game had had a burst of creativity and put together a really amazingly developed and compelling setting that we had been using for about a month. Unfortunately he had had a really bad day and was too exhausted to run the game that evening, but was fine with someone stepping in for him while he played that person's character. Sleepyhead said "I'll GM!" and got thoroughly hammered before utterly destroying the campaign. He ran roughshod over the entire world and turned it into burning chaos, screwed over the PCs, and concentrated all the action on whores and stupid hi-jinks that didn't interest anyone else. By the time I stormed out in disgust and embarrassment he was just grinning stupidly with his eyes closed, telling people to make various random rolls that came to his head about things like drugs and hookers while chuckling to himself. At that point there wasn't even a story anymore, just a drunk GM saying, "Hey you, roll for if you're high on heroin, ha ha ha." This was the last time that he ever gamed with my group, but he took the campaign down with him. The experience was so universally sour that we all took two years off from gaming. The guy who created the setting was just going "I'm sorry, I had no idea he was going to do that. I just wanted the week off."

Honest Tiefling
2014-10-14, 07:44 PM
I hope your significant other was not scared off by that...I admit, I might have been if that was my first encounter.

And I'll add in one of my worst moments: When I first saw the rules, I tried to convince the DM to allow me to be another player's griffon animal companion. I am not surprised they were not impressed by this decision of mine, nor gave me any lee-way in making characters after that. (In my defense, the druid player seemed excited by it)

azoetia
2014-10-15, 01:46 AM
I hope your significant other was not scared off by that...I admit, I might have been if that was my first encounter.
Nope, she could tell that that wasn't normal by my reaction. Eventually when we got back to it she took his place and is still with us (and me specifically) today.

Arbane
2014-10-15, 03:30 AM
It wasn't for a story hook or anything interesting, it was just to be a **** toward specifically my character.

So I quit.

Definitely the best decision.



He did run one more session a year later. I had a new significant other and wanted to introduce her to gaming after having talked up how great our group was. A friend who is a fantastic GM but who is very difficult to talk into running a game had had a burst of creativity and put together a really amazingly developed and compelling setting that we had been using for about a month. Unfortunately he had had a really bad day and was too exhausted to run the game that evening, but was fine with someone stepping in for him while he played that person's character.


Definitely the worst decision. :smallyuk:


This was the last time that he ever gamed with my group, but he took the campaign down with him. The experience was so universally sour that we all took two years off from gaming.

Wow, that's terrible. Nobody wanted to just say 'that session never happened'?

Now, one I saw on Tumblr (http://tales-from-the-tabletop.tumblr.com/post/100056540081/chronicles-of-camelguy-and-dwhitlers-document) today (it's long):
This is the story of my very first Pathfinder campaign, my introduction to tabletop gaming. This will mostly be revolving around the antics my character (Finn the rogue) got into with another player’s PCs,

We had a couple of other people involved, all of whom were also new, and they came and went throughout the campaign.

Camelguy, the cavalier, was the only player who had any previous experience, and for some reason, all of the many times he had played before, everybody lost interest very quickly.

Camelguy’s namesake was due to his mount, a large camel that for some reason or another had nearly three times as much health as the rest of the party, even the Barbarian.

We set off from town on our first quest as a group, stuck in a single file line due to a narrow road. Immediately he decides that despite the fact that he had a strong mount, he would be standing in the middle of the group. This prevented him from charging, and left our new lightly armoured barbarian to take up the front. Eventually, we managed to convince him to lead us onwards, when we got into our first combat.

His mount was hit twice, and still had twice as much health as the rest of us, but he then hid behind the rest of us and adamantly refused to be on the front line again.

Later on, we end up in combat with our first group of intelligent enemies. At this point, we had stumbled upon them as they finished killing a group of merchants. This is the moment Camelguy decides to inform us that he is a member of the Order of the Blue Rose. Due to this, he forbid us from engaging in combat until he finished negotiating with them. Obviously this didn’t work out because these bandits just wiped out some innocent merchants, and once we get attacked he continues to avoid directly contributing to combat because he didn’t want to get damaged, even though we had a healer with all of his daily spells remaining.

As we’re cleaning up the battle, one of the bandits starts to run away, so I take out my back-up bow, and try to maim him so that we can catch him. I stated this as I began my attack action. I missed my first shot and he proceeded to tackle me to the ground, grab my bow, and then break it over his knee, because I had been trying to cause needless bloodshed by hurting the vicious murderer.

I was obviously pretty pissed, he didn’t need to destroy my gear, but I just grumbled and moved on not intending to make a scene.

Much later, this happened AGAIN, but the enemy I was aiming for was an archer. He was still actively attacking us, but apparently we could have talked him down instead of hurting him. That’s when everybody told him he was overstepping his boundaries.

The next session, Camelguy showed up with a new character because “Nobody likes the way I play my Cavalier, so apparently I had to make a new character for you guys.”

This is when he introduced us to his Dwarf Wizard, who’s back story was dreaming of attaining ultimate enlightenment which he would then use to eradicate all non-dwarves. My character was, coincidentally, the only non-dwarf in the party other than his cavalier at the time. All the while, he argued he was Neutral Good. This is why his character’s name was quickly forgotten because we would constantly refer to him from that point on as Dwhitler.

Dwhitler had no spells that were useful in combat, and every single time we went to town and suggested he buy himself some scrolls to learn, he would try to murder the shopkeeper and steal everything in the store. Thankfully the GM veto’d that course of action, but he was always too cheap to spend any money to get useful spells. He actually sat out of combat nearly every single fight. The GM even offered him half price scrolls, just to convince him to get something useful, but he refused to spend his money. We had even offered to buy them for him, but he said his character was too proud to accept charity.

Later on, we end up “accepting a quest” from a drunk man who was complaining about the native population stirring up trouble. It turns out the pesky natives were demanding the many acres of land that was stolen from them was returned to them.

This ended with our party going on a diplomacy mission to meet up with the local tribesmen and negotiate land ownership. I never stopped reminding the party that we actually had no authority over the situation, and were only here because of the drunken ramblings of a racist capitalist.

Now, I was the only one of the party to have put points into social skills, and was delegated to the role of the party’s “Face”, so of course I was in charge of these negotiations we had no actual right to engage in.

Throughout my attempts to negotiate, Dwhitler would interrupt me both in character and out every couple sentences to correct me over semantics like “don’t say ‘we’ would like to speak to you, you have to say ‘they’ because if they get mad at the city of Belta, we don’t want them to get mad at us!” despite the fact that Belta was the only city for miles due to the recent colonization attempts.

Eventually, I got sick of him interrupting me and passed control of the situation over to him for the next day of negotiations. When we woke up in the morning, our dwarves had felt strange vibrations through the ground, and there was a large amount of smoke coming from the peak of a nearby “mountain”. Obviously there was an active volcano nearby.

The next day within five minutes, he had managed to piss off the entire gathering of all of the local tribesmen. He had stated that the Beltans were going to be taking the land. When the locals said they weren’t alright with that, he said that it was going to happen regardless. When they expressed outright rage at the thought, Dwhitler decided to tell them that since we weren’t going to be able to go home with good news about the land issue, we needed to come back with offerings. He asked the natives to pay tribute to us to keep us from stealing their land.

A large orc, leader of a tribe living on the now smoking mountain gets up, and says that if the foreigners were going to be so forceful, he would kill anyone that got anywhere near his mountain, and if the mountain spirit became any more agitated than it had become since the establishment of the city, he would declare outright war.

Dwhitler responds by igniting the ancient racial tensions between dwarves and orcs by calling after the warchief and saying “Please, friend! There’s no need to be so sensitive! I love orcs! I was raised by orcs!” Obviously this was a complete and utter lie. That didn’t make things much better for us. We were now getting kicked out, and the huge population of natives attending this meeting (there were roughly three times as many warriors as there were Beltans at this meeting) all wanted us to go back from whence we came.

Now, knowing that volcano was ready to blow any moment, causing the locals to go into a frenzy and wipe out the city’s population that had no idea we were even out here, most of whom didn’t even know the natives weren’t happy with the situation with the land, my chaotic neutral self had to do something to slow the impeding war efforts, at least long enough to get the city to prepare itself.

For some reason, as I had found out after scouting the village out the night before, the tribes had a communal food storage area that all of the tribes contributed to and used. My reasoning was that should they have no food stocked, they would have to focus on replenishing their food supplies instead of waging all out war with our poor community. So I did the only thing a rogue could do in the situation. I tried to destroy their food supplies. When I went and tried to set the area on fire, I was told that this room was made entirely of stone, and the food was also all grains that were inflammable. Okay, that’s inconvenient, but give me a minute and I can figure this out. I leave the area to go find my friend’s druid.

Now, at this point, everybody out of character knows what I’m up to. Dwhitler decides that he doesn’t want to let me carry out my mission, and the moment my character runs into him, he starts interrogating me about what I had been up to in an attempt to get me to slip up so he had an in character reason to attack me.

Multiple successful bluff checks later, I grab a hold of my druid friend, and manage to sneak back to the food supplies while Dwhitler is arguing with another party member over whether or not it was okay for him to be harassing me with so many questions just because I wasn’t a Dwarf.

Once we get back downstairs, I get my friend to cast the cantrip “Summon Water” on the grain until it is soaked through and going to mold.

We return to the party, and as we’re leaving Dwhitler once again starts grilling me about my activities. He still can’t beat my multiple bluff checks, so he turns to my friend who had a horrible charisma stat and no points in bluff. Two or three attempts and he realizes that my friend is lying.

This ends with me getting attacked immediately afterwards, before they even figure out the truth. I end up surrendering after nearly getting destroyed by the rest of the party while the druid is left alone.

They then proceed to bring me to the tribe’s chief and turn me in, all without even asking me what we had done.

Due to our GM being incredibly merciful, twenty minutes later and I had just lost all of my money, gear, and magic items. (I had the only magical items, and the more gold than the rest of the group combined due to smart decisions and kinder rewards.) I was literally naked, and I had been bound and stranded in the middle of the desert. The druid wasn’t implicated by the rest of the party, and I had no intention of bringing him down with me, so I was all alone out there.

That was the last most people ever heard of Finn the rogue. A strange coincidence did occur where the friendly monk in the party (the one who had distracted Dwhitler when he had been harassing me with questions) happened upon an unlucky cleric, who had been robed of all he owned, and helped him get back on his feet.

Thus began the tale known as: The Revenge of “Ginn the ‘Cleric’”.

TechnoWarforged
2014-10-24, 04:38 PM
THis is Call of Cthulhu, Ofcourse there will be Psychopaths!

The Fact that these psychopaths happens to be FBI agents just happens to be a plot twist. :smallbiggrin::smalltongue:


2 stories of the worst players I've ever had, both in games of Delta Green, which is basically modern Call of Cthulhu with a touch of X-Files and conspiracy theory.


I wasn't GMing, but I was the person at the table with the most knowledge of the system, so the GM would occasionally look to me for help, and I was asked to help build a late-joining new player's character. He decided to play as an NSA agent, and the stats ended up so his starting sanity was 40. Now, 40 isn't good, but to give perspective one can still be a functioning member of society with 40 SAN, it's not insane asylum levels. I inform him that his character will probably be mildly neurotic, probably paranoia or something along those lines.

Terrible decision.

Scenario starts, hush-hush meeting with a contact in a warehouse. Even though the new guy's ostensibly on our team, he barges in separately from the rest of us, gun drawn, babbling nonsense as though he'd just squeezed out of a straitjacket and fought his way out of a padded room. We literally had to initiate combat to subdue him, and after disarming, cuffing, and I think gagging him we discovered, lo and behold, this is our new recruit. At this point I tried to explain to him that he should at least be pretending to be sane, otherwise he wouldn't get to be a government agent with a security clearance.

Game goes on. We were sent to check out a town that was literally vanishing, building by building, into the ground. Don't remember how, but an NPC refused to open up and let us, a group of total strangers who hadn't even introduced ourselves, into her home at 9 o'clock at night.

The guy kicks in the door, pistol whips her in the forehead, we manage to grapple with, physically restrain, and sedate a party member for the second time in as many hours for no apparent reason, and now we kinda have to explain this to the poor woman when she comes to.

Don't remember how it came to this (there weren't any armed hostiles in the scenario, so it was probably us), but shortly after killing another PC by knowingly handing them poisoned heroin (that PC was a recovering addict) he came to be beaten to an inch of his life to the point where his brain was peeking through a crack in his skull. I mercy-killed him, and the player drifted off, never to be seen again.


Second fellow's another murder-hobo, who was however taking the above advice and pretending to be sane.

So I was invited to join an RPG group by a mutual friend, to whom I had introduced Delta Green. On the first night, however, he was sick and couldn't come, so I wound up being the stranger GM who was running a game for a group of people who had played together for months. Kinda awkward, obviously, but I wanted this to be my good first impression.

I didn't realize, however, that two of the four people actually weren't members of the core group, and had been recruited to basically fill party space.

First guy's a nice fellow, but pretty much never can be relied on to stay at the table. I don't know if it's the availability heuristic at work here, but all three times I've played with him, something came up and he had to rush home because of his wife, or his mother, or his dog, etc. Not his fault, of course, but still a little bothersome for the rest of us.

Second guy, however, should have thrown up red flags from the start. He's an FBI agent, and willingly reconfigures his already good stats to make INT and EDU a dump and turn himself into a towering bruiser (anyone who's played Call of Cthulhu can see the problem here, mechanically as well as idea-wise). Gives his Caucasian FBI agent a single Japanese-sounding name, which I cannot recall but would put money on being a character from Naruto. Asks if he can make Throw (as in knives) a professional skill, and I hesitantly allow it. After all, it's not like he asked for dual katanas or anything.

Game starts, disappearances are to be investigated in a Native American reservation in Arizona. They're caught in a jurisdictional...awkwardness...between the local sheriff, the Feds, and the state police, of whom the main representative, Major Garrett, is specifically written to be abrasive and boorish. I depict this faithfully, and it irritates the characters as is meant to be. More on that later, though...first...

They're investigating a house from which someone has disappeared. He's searching a closet alone, and finds a bloodied Winchester rifle that's clearly been recently used in brutal hand-to-hand combat. He opts to steal it. Yes, an FBI agent deliberately conceals key evidence just so he can come back and take it for himself later, when no one's looking.

Now, Major Garrett...they've spotted a strange reflection on the horizon from a helicopter, which turns out to be a buried car in the desert. They drive out with Major Garrett to investigate, and the major hands them all shovels and tells them to dig it up. Naturally he doesn't pull his fair share of the work. This incenses the psychopath, who tells me he's going to "accidentally" hit him in the head with a shovel. Roll is botched, and the major realizes that was a deliberate attack. Major pulls his nightstick, Shovel Guy overpowers him, and beats him to an inch of his life with the shovel while the other PCs look on in horror. He then gets on the phone and calls his boss to try to cover up the thing his boss has yet to, and possibly will never, find out about. Botches the roll. So the PCs are now standing in the desert, being held at gunpoint by this psycho while they all patiently wait for a helicopter full of SWAT guys to show up and bring down the nutcase. He tries to introduce a new character the same character as an identical twin who happens to have the same job and skills.

Suffice it to say the game trailed off after that, and fortunately it wasn't a group-breaker. We still have weekly gaming nights, and enjoy each other's company in the absence of psychopaths.

FearlessGnome
2014-10-24, 05:32 PM
I have been runnng my first tabletop campaign for the last few weeks. I have a player playing a Paladin. A Paladin who:

1) Robs rotting commoner corpses, loots houses belonging to dead NPCs, and lies when convenient.

2) Absolutely refuses to deal with evil characters.

3) Has sworn to murder all undead he comes across, whether they are evil or not.

It just seems to me that number 1 and 2 don't go together that well. It's not bad enough to make him Fall, but... Seriously? You'll rob someone's house without knowing whether they have relatives who have a right to their stuff, but you refuse to hear out the Lawful Evil nobleman who has an interest in your quest succeeding?

And number 3 is just... Yeah, the campaign involves a lot of undead enemies, but you've got Detect Evil as a class feature, man. One of these days he's going to come across an exalted undead florist in the middle of a city and he's going to Fall.

I realize he's nowhere near as bad as some of these guys, but it's creating a lot of frustration in the group. Last session the party had to lock him up in a dungeon so they could strike a bargain with a minor demon who was willing to tell them who the local big bad was in exchange for letting it go.

Honest Tiefling
2014-10-24, 10:53 PM
I cannot say that one is entirely the player's fault...The PHB does say, do not associate with evil and punish those who harm innocents, not to mention, don't do evil acts. Did you at all make it clear that you intended him to have a different sort of oath, or that the gods had a different pact with their followers?

Mr Beer
2014-10-25, 12:01 AM
Continual corpse looting would end up making him Fall if I was running it, unless he donated every coin to charity or something.

Arbane
2014-10-25, 12:06 AM
Continual corpse looting would end up making him Fall if I was running it, unless he donated every coin to charity or something.

Paladins only fall for evil acts. If looting corpses was evil, there wouldn't be a single PC in all of D&Ddom north of Neutral.

FearlessGnome
2014-10-25, 07:49 AM
I cannot say that one is entirely the player's fault...The PHB does say, do not associate with evil and punish those who harm innocents, not to mention, don't do evil acts. Did you at all make it clear that you intended him to have a different sort of oath, or that the gods had a different pact with their followers?

It does, but it also talks about exceptions when there's a bigger bad to be fought. And *listening* to the evil but lawfully appointed (Well, born) nobleman who wants to help you stop a plague of undead doesn't sound like it should be a hard choice. Plus the inconsistency with going out of his way to burglarize dead NPCs and swearing to murder non-evil undead whereever he finds them and all that.

I did make it clear that I wouldn't be too strict with the code of conduct, since I wanted him to be able to work well with the group (Which is a mix of Good and Neutral, with one (intelligent) exalted character), but that point he just brings up when the exalted guy tells him not to burglarize people.

SickBritKid
2014-10-25, 02:43 PM
It's a Strength check, like in 3E. However, Strength caps at 20 now. And is lower even for monsters. There's been some strangeness noticed, like the Tarrasque not being reliably able to break down a barred wooden door.

Also, I'm not sure if there are rules for simply smashing the door down with HP damage, generally the more reliable strategy. I mean, yes, you can still do it - I would hope any GM who claimed otherwise would be laughed at - but it's a common enough activity it shouldn't have to be arbitrated on the spot.

I thought 5e was supposed to CORRECT the problems with 4e, not make them EXPONENTIALLY WORSE!

illyahr
2014-10-27, 12:36 PM
Paladins only fall for evil acts. If looting corpses was evil, there wouldn't be a single PC in all of D&Ddom north of Neutral.

Willingly committing evil acts, or for gross violations of his Paladin's Code. Point #1 is enough to make him fall. Point #2 is iffy, depending on how he plays it. As stated before, mouthing off to legitimate authority because they happen to be evil might violate his code. Point #3 might make him fall if one of them asks for mercy.

Mr Beer
2014-10-27, 06:24 PM
Paladins only fall for evil acts. If looting corpses was evil, there wouldn't be a single PC in all of D&Ddom north of Neutral.

Looting foes honourably defeated in battle is one thing, it sounds like this guy actively looks for murder victims in order to loot them.

Sith_Happens
2014-10-27, 09:43 PM
I thought 5e was supposed to CORRECT the problems with 4e, not make them EXPONENTIALLY WORSE!

Nah, 5e is supposed to correct the problems with 3.5 while pretending that 4e never existed (because WotC's D&D wing sucks at market research so badly that they apparently didn't notice that 4e has in fact been quite successful). From what I've heard, it's somewhat better on class balance and LOLWUT on everything else.

Milodiah
2014-10-27, 11:13 PM
Nah, 5e is supposed to correct the problems with 3.5 while pretending that 4e never existed (because WotC's D&D wing sucks at market research so badly that they apparently didn't notice that 4e has in fact been quite successful). From what I've heard, it's somewhat better on class balance and LOLWUT on everything else.

The nice thing about tabletop games is it's not like a multiplayer video game where they quietly drop server support and you're **** out of luck...the folks who like 4e can keep playing it just like my group's still playing 3.5e.

Necroticplague
2014-10-28, 01:59 AM
Doesn't 4e have pretty much the opposite problem concerning doors and the smashing thereof? Since hardness didn't exist, anyone can punch through a wall given enough time.

DM Nate
2014-10-28, 06:43 AM
Doesn't 4e have pretty much the opposite problem concerning doors and the smashing thereof? Since hardness didn't exist, anyone can punch through a wall given enough time.

Wait...you actually run systems RAW? :smallconfused:

Forrestfire
2014-10-28, 06:52 AM
Personally, I don't see a problem with that. Sequence-breaking dungeons is a time-honored tradition in most of the groups I've played in.

Angel Bob
2014-10-28, 08:17 AM
I've been lucky enough to normally have pretty good players. However, back in the first campaign I ever played, there were two players whose single, solitary concern was loot. Nothing else mattered to them -- not roleplaying, not plotlines, not even a good chance of survival. As long as they were swimming in loot, they would be happy. On several occasions, they ditched combat to loot the surroundings. The DM enabled these sorts of shenanigans by handing out too much loot anyway, but that was more due to inexperience and incompetence than anything else.

Eventually, we ended up fighting a red dragon, because the DM wanted us to level up before our next adventure. Immediately upon sighting a dragon, however, these two players (a psion and a rogue) break off from the group and maneuver ASAP to the dragon's cave, leaving four characters (with two players to their name, because some people were absent) to fight a dragon already several levels higher than us. While two of us worked our butts off trying to whittle down the dragon's HP with our low-op characters, the psion and rogue spent a half dozen rounds gathering up insane amounts of loot and stuffing it into their bags of holding. Once their bags got filled (!), they still didn't give up, and started stuffing coins into the folds of their cloaks, their boots, and everywhere else they could feasibly fit them.

By the end of it, the psion was carrying so much weight that she could barely walk, and the rogue wasn't doing much better. They crossed the battlefield at a painstakingly slow speed, until they finally reached their four beleaguered teammates. (I should mention that the dragon wasn't exactly going easy on us, either; it was actually dropping boulders on us from above, as a matter of fact. Ruthless thing.) My warlord and an absent player's paladin had single-digit HP, but we were determined to keep fighting. I asked the rogue if she'd found any magic items in the mix; she produced a magic sword and threw it to me. The DM called for a Dexterity check on both ends to make a successful pass, which makes sense. Regrettably, Dexterity was my dump stat. I failed catastrophically to catch the sword and actually got hit in the face, knocking me into the negatives. A moment later, the paladin went down as well. The death saving throws started up. Every time I rolled for the paladin, I got an 18 or higher. Twice, I rolled a natural 20 and got up to start fighting. For the warlord, I never rolled anything above a 5. Three rounds later, we had our first -- and only -- by-the-book, unplanned character death.

The psion and the rogue, for the record, never learned anything from the incident, and continued to ditch the party at the soonest opportunity to search for loot. Thankfully, the psion left a few months later due to school concerns, and the rogue was only in the group because she was the psion's BFF. We brought in a few new players to replace them, and the group was much improved.

AceAwesome96
2014-10-28, 10:32 AM
Thankfully, I have not yet had a bad player, but all of the ones that I'm currently GMing all have their quirks. I wish to contribute to this fun thread anyway, despite my lack of having a horror story of a player like the others that I'm seeing here.

Firstly, most all (4/6) of the players that have left my group just left without telling me anything. They still lurk around in our Facebook Group Chat, but have never felt it important to confirm my suspicions of their leaving. These days, I just consider them inactive, but it used to be really irritating as a host for a while. With the exception of one of them that told me after the fact (and actually had very understandable reasons), the only way I knew the reasons of some of the others was through my brother. My brother, mind you, that isn't part of my group, but they told him without a second thought. Here are their reasons:
Gnome Sorcerer: Quit because he wasn't "into RPGs anymore", my brother found out that he quit because he wanted to be in a clique within the youth group I attended.
Half-Elf Druid: Assumed to be too busy. Still never attends or tells me if we can work out a schedule.
Human Rogue: To be honest, he's been a flake more and more throughout the campaign. After hearing that I'm going to start a new campaign, he claims he just doesn't want to make another character to manage. I only knew this because he told my brother.

Looking back, perhaps the most annoying thing is that maybe they felt that they couldn't tell me because I would make it difficult for them. Honestly, it's just polite to tell a GM/host these things, and if you really don't want to give me a reason, that's okay, just tell me that you're leaving.

The second (and final) one is still ongoing. So there's this player, he loves the game, he gets into the fiction I create for it, he gets along great with the group, but he does something that is somewhat... difficult for me to accept as a GM. After I invited him to my group, I learned that he's a fanfic writer, that's not a problem for me, but he started to show little concern over his increasing creativity. He started with including major characters in his backstory without my consent, but it really wasn't a big deal and didn't bother me. He then started to guest GM after a short while in the group, and that's when stuff started to get out of hand. He realized that he now had the power to morph a story in the way that he wanted, even with my original characters without my assistance (to ensure that they stayed true to character). Since then, he has gotten away with creating his mirror versions of my main villains and our party, playing my villains out of character, organizing his NPC characters in a way that is only making his character more powerful and influential, creating two super continents, and now he's copied the Shredder (from the 2003 series) into the current game (and he's actually called that in-game) that runs a clan of Ninjas. He's continually copying from fictions that he's currently into and placing seemingly permanent characters and has even wanted to re-create the Magneto bridge scene.
He's run fun sessions as a guest GM until he hit dialogue, which feels like I'm trapped in a bad fanfic. I like this player, he's a close friend of mine, and at least he's having fun with it. So I really wouldn't call him the worst player, just the most difficult to manage.


Sorry for the long blog-like post, but it feels great for me to vent that out.

ComaVision
2014-10-28, 11:32 AM
@Ace

I feel you, bro. I don't care if people drop out of my game, I just want to be told so I can plan for it. I've had a group where a couple guys would show up less than once a month (in a weekly group) and have no idea what's going on and complain about their character being behind in levels.

SimonMoon6
2014-10-28, 12:12 PM
If looting corpses was evil, there wouldn't be a single PC in all of D&Ddom north of Neutral.

Very true.

Loosely related, I once had a player decide to hire an army of mercenaries to deal with a problem. During the battle, a bunch of the mercenaries died. So, the PC went and got his money back from the mercenaries who died.

Personally, I thought that was a bit tacky (as did the dead guys who came back as revenants).

Milodiah
2014-10-28, 03:25 PM
See, I've only had one player truly drop from the group, and "getting stationed on an LHD in the Pacific Ocean" is a pretty good excuse for doing so in my book. Sad he doesn't stop by when he's on leave, but I hardly blame him, and I've heard he's gotten a few other squids addicted to RPGs since there isn't all that much to do for fun on a Navy ship other than the huge ones like carriers.

And God, I'd be slightly terrified of a player grabbing my story in that way...especially since I run a 100% homebrew setting and the only info my players have is what they know IC and what I gave them to help with character creation. Sure, my players have made history the normal way, but I don't trust the idea of one of them doing it that way.

KillianHawkeye
2014-10-28, 03:58 PM
Yeah, if a player want to take turns DMing, let them come up with their own world if they're so creative rather than completely wrecking the one you've made.

AceAwesome96
2014-10-28, 08:35 PM
ComaVision, that happened to me with the Elf Bard in the group.

Milodiah, the game that I'm GMing currently is a home-brewed world that a friend of mine made. He's the guy that introduced me to table-top RPGs and while he's been away at college, I've running as the main GM. I keep in contact with him to keep him in the know and to ask for advice (and checking with what's okay and what's not). So it really makes me wish that said player would at least notify me of the big things first.

KillianHawkeye, oh, how I wish that I had thought of that a while ago.

Anyways, thank you all for the replies and support. Still, I'm thankful that my experiences aren't nearly as bad as some others... yet. :smallbiggrin:

Nobot
2014-10-31, 04:53 AM
The worst in my experience is a cheat, who added gold, stats and skills to his character. It got to the point where I had to surprise-inspect his character sheet, recalculate his skills and abilities (they were way too high), asks questions about magic items I did not remember giving him or selling to him and finally openly conclude he was cheating and tell him to stop doing so because that would ruin the game for others (they were not cheating and were constantly being outshined by the character that had everything and could do everything). I also started checking his character sheet every session after that.

Additionally, he always tried to insist on playing some overpowered homebrew thingamajig. The discussions were tiring to say the least, although the creations did make me laugh.

BRKNdevil
2014-11-01, 08:09 AM
I thought 5e was supposed to CORRECT the problems with 4e, not make them EXPONENTIALLY WORSE!


Nah, 5e is supposed to correct the problems with 3.5 while pretending that 4e never existed (because WotC's D&D wing sucks at market research so badly that they apparently didn't notice that 4e has in fact been quite successful). From what I've heard, it's somewhat better on class balance and LOLWUT on everything else.


The nice thing about tabletop games is it's not like a multiplayer video game where they quietly drop server support and you're **** out of luck...the folks who like 4e can keep playing it just like my group's still playing 3.5e.

Nah, been DMing 5e and basically it plays a lot like 3.5, but with better class balance where party makeup is the major thing, instead of having an overpowered wizard that can do anything(3.5), or a wizard/mage that can barely do anything (4e). The things like capped Str and such makes it so that generalized DC's can be set without having it so that if you don't happen to have your stats in that way you are screwed. Easy is a DC 10, Hard is a DC 15, and very Hard is a DC 20. "Impossible" rolls go to 25 and generally an optimized character can start making them around 10-15. Rules are generalized so you don't have to keep checking the books to see if by RAW or RAI if that is possible and combat is faster then both 3.5 and 4e. Basically, its more meant for people who don't want to keep with rule heavy scenarios and favors playing by ear. So if you like it you like it, but if you like rule heavy games such as 3.5 then you might or might not like it. Things like breaking down doors would be made a improvised action and the DM would make a ruling on the fly on how hard it would be to break. Where i would probably rule a DC15 for a wood door and higher for metal doors.

As for really bad players... Haven't had any really bad players as of yet, maybe some mediocre ones, but that's the worst of it. Also the mediocre ones tend to want to turn to Murderhobos

comicshorse
2014-11-01, 08:40 AM
One player I've had cheated and did so blatantly that even I noticed. In Shadowrun you have a priority system for character creation (A is best, B slightly worse, etc. If you take A for your stats, you need to take something else for skills, wealth, etc)
One day he left his character sheet behind and I checked it, having already been rendered suspicious by how tough his character was and a few other things he'd tried (like making the magical fraternity he belonged to so powerful every Shaman in Seattle would have had to belong to it). To get his character he would have had to take priority A in everything and gained a million extra in cash and around 100 extra Karma.
Some time latter chatting to another G.M. I learned said player was notorious for turning up to Cyberpunk games with characters he had pre-rolled where he had got 10's in every stat but one (his idea of being subtle)

Marlowe
2014-11-01, 06:22 PM
Back in 2nd edition era it was noticable that people that turned up to a session with their character all made would generally have better stats than those that rolled theirs up before witnesses on the day.

Then again, stats hardly ever seemed to effect anything back then, so bit of a wash.

Sith_Happens
2014-11-02, 06:15 PM
Doesn't 4e have pretty much the opposite problem concerning doors and the smashing thereof? Since hardness didn't exist, anyone can punch through a wall given enough time.

That's nothing, in Mutants & Masterminds object toughness scales logarithmically with thickness rather than linearly and objects are subject to critical hits, with the end result that most starting characters can shatter a six foot thick stone wall in two attacks on average. Of course, M&M characters are supposed to be superheroes so that's definitely on purpose.

demonwalker
2014-11-02, 06:32 PM
Thankfully, the players I've met aren't anywhere near as bad as these horror stories. But I do have my share of problems.

In a game of Anima, there is a player I shall call L. L is one of those people that wants overpowered characters. But rather than rerolling when his character fails something, he just makes sure his characters can't fail. When rolling stats, he will roll until he gets a set of stats he likes. We have a range of legal stats set up based on the point buy system for Anima. If you get above or below this set, it's an automatic reroll. He will reroll if it is at the min, and will try to take stats above the max. When assigning skill points, he will somehow screw up and spend 1.2x more points than he has. On one occasion, when rolling for wealth, he decided to claim that he was of higher social status than he rolled. Then he proceeded to complain that someone who DID roll higher was treated better than him. Despite there being an actual thing he could take if he wanted such a background.

On several occasions, we have called him out on this. All of the GMs have seen him do this, yet he denies it every time. It's at the point that no one wants to GM for him. I have even kicked him out of the game I was Gming. Yet it doesn't stop there. When he rolls a fumble (Which is rare), the GM will start describing what happens. He will fight with the GM, saying that his character wouldn't do that. We have told him many times the dice tell the story, but he refuses to listen.

To top this off, he speaks over everyone. The GM, the other players, it doesn't matter. He will go off on a tangent to where no one even remembers what was happening. And it's not even about useful things. He does this for flirting with NPCs that have no meaning whatsoever, or thinks he needs to go into detail describing his yawning. That one was what got him kicked from my game.

This guy was the one that really bothered me, and made me wish I was gming that particular game. In his backstory, a man I will call P created a Paladin/Hellknight that had lost almost everything from another PC's character. Apparently the other player had agreed with this ahead of time. Alright. This gives some ability to roleplay and both people to become friends, pushing past differences, right? Nope. First thing the PC does when introduced to the group: Attack the other player. Now at the time, I was playing a succubus anti-paladin and the Gm for some reason wanted to roll to see what characters 'fell in love' with my character. Both of these PC's did. So the fight goes under way, and honestly starts to take a while, as the Paladin refuses to stop until the other is dead, but can't hit to save his life. The GM looks at ME expecting for an Anti-Paladin to stop what should have been a Paladin's fall, something that my character enjoyed watching happen due to backstory and caused it as much as possible. After an hour of many people saying stop, P finally kills the guy. An hour of possible gaming wasted due to one idiot. What really irritated me: He didn't fall. So kind of bad GM and player. Thankfully that game didn't go on much longer.

Honest Tiefling
2014-11-02, 06:51 PM
This guy wasn't the worst, but he did do some things that irk me, even in a game where no one (especially not me) were on their game. Let's call him Z.

1) Complain that I didn't want to do what the rest of the party wanted to do. Now, I don't mind compromising in many cases, but the first problem was that not the entire party (Only 2 out of 5 did) wanted to do this action, yet he was adamant that it should be done because the party wanted to. Nevermind that an equal amount of people didn't want to, this was what the party wanted! Apparently I didn't get a vote or something.

2) And the thing they wanted to do? They wanted to work with some people, one of which was a demon, the other was a well known mass-murderer, and a few other probably evil baddies such as undead. This was in a good aligned party, and he was playing a good aligned cleric of a good aligned god.

3) I get sick, they force my PC into a portal made by a demon. This I could have forgiven, if I had not written into my PC's back story that he hated demons and we didn't have the issue numbers 1-2.

4) He told me that I should have made a PC with a more group oriented mentality. Never mind the only time he had an issue with what the group was doing was when the party was trying to bargain with demons and I was trying to RP that he was making friends with other group members.

Mr Beer
2014-11-02, 07:11 PM
I get tired of people forgetting their character sheets so I keep them all on my PC and print them out. That also makes it much harder for people to cheat with their stats, possessions etc. - I had one player who was a known cheat but because I own the sheets, a lot of his usual shenanigans were prevented.

Raine_Sage
2014-11-03, 03:11 AM
This isn't so much a "bad gamer story" as it is a quirk of behavior that I'm wondering how common it is.

Basically there's this guy I play with who always has to remind everyone that his character could totally kill us all if he wanted. Like, unprovoked will just tell us straight up "Oh and by the way he could totally murder you all if he wanted to."

And it's weird because he never tries to PVP or antagonize the party. He generally plays heros and isn't a bad roleplayer. It's just this constant OOC reminder that his character is totally deadly and Not to be Crossed even when they're all getting along just fine. I have no idea why he feels like he needs to do this but frankly it's obnoxious. And it's not like we all brag about our character's relative deadliness. Or even other areas where we might excel. No one is sitting at the table going "Oh just a reminder, my Bard can totally out bluff all you guys. Don't even try to see through it."

I might talk to him about it soon actually because constantly bringing up how effectively violent he could be towards the other PCs is begining to cross over into creepy territory. Especially when he brings it up in response to someone doing something IC that he doesn't approve of OOC.

KillianHawkeye
2014-11-03, 06:30 AM
This isn't so much a "bad gamer story" as it is a quirk of behavior that I'm wondering how common it is.

Basically there's this guy I play with who always has to remind everyone that his character could totally kill us all if he wanted. Like, unprovoked will just tell us straight up "Oh and by the way he could totally murder you all if he wanted to."

And it's weird because he never tries to PVP or antagonize the party. He generally plays heros and isn't a bad roleplayer. It's just this constant OOC reminder that his character is totally deadly and Not to be Crossed even when they're all getting along just fine. I have no idea why he feels like he needs to do this but frankly it's obnoxious. And it's not like we all brag about our character's relative deadliness. Or even other areas where we might excel. No one is sitting at the table going "Oh just a reminder, my Bard can totally out bluff all you guys. Don't even try to see through it."

I might talk to him about it soon actually because constantly bringing up how effectively violent he could be towards the other PCs is begining to cross over into creepy territory. Especially when he brings it up in response to someone doing something IC that he doesn't approve of OOC.

The only people that I've seen who have displayed this type of behavior have been either children or teenagers, so in my experience I would chalk that up to immaturity.

Necroticplague
2014-11-03, 06:53 AM
The only people that I've seen who have displayed this type of behavior have been either children or teenagers, so in my experience I would chalk that up to immaturity.

Ditto. Though I've also found the bragging is hilariously wrong, made by a dude who stumbled upon something he thinks is OP, but is actually pretty crappy.

ElenionAncalima
2014-11-03, 10:16 AM
This isn't so much a "bad gamer story" as it is a quirk of behavior that I'm wondering how common it is.

Basically there's this guy I play with who always has to remind everyone that his character could totally kill us all if he wanted. Like, unprovoked will just tell us straight up "Oh and by the way he could totally murder you all if he wanted to."


Actually the guy from my worst player story in the beginning of the thread totally does this as well. I remember when he had tried DMing he had built a character for one of the players who was a vampire, despite an existing player being built to hate and kill undead. His defense was that the build was so strong she would easily be able to kill us all. Of course, we bent over backwards to avoid PvP, because it wasn't the girl's fault...but it was pretty obvious that the vampire monk would not have won against an Oracle of Life/Synthesist Summoner gestault...let alone the rest of the party.

As a player he was even worse with this. It got pretty annoying, because everyone's first instinct is to defend their character. However, nothing good comes from that type of conversation. Towards the end of the game we would just reply, "...and why exactly are you killing us all?" anytime he started talking that way, usually bringing the dicussion to a screeching halt.

rgrekejin
2014-11-03, 02:46 PM
Basically there's this guy I play with who always has to remind everyone that his character could totally kill us all if he wanted. Like, unprovoked will just tell us straight up "Oh and by the way he could totally murder you all if he wanted to."

I do this more or less backwards. Whenever I play, I always make sure that I have a spell or an item or an ability or two that will allow me to incapacitate (or at least severely cripple) all the other members of the party in the event that they go rogue (inevitable puns in 3... 2... 1...). I never tell anyone that I do this, and it's only ever come up once (stupid Mace of Blood). But I, like Batman, believe it's best to always be prepared to incapacitate your allies at a moment's notice.

For the record, my worst player (let's call her H.) was the girlfriend/new wife of our longtime DM (we'd been gaming with him for four years, she'd been his girlfriend for one and a half years at this point). Her personality clashed with virtually everyone else in the group, and she once threatened bodily harm to S. (another longtime member of our group, and the sweetest person you'll ever meet) because S. wanted to keep a piece of party loot and H. wanted to sell it. Two sessions after that, the campaign was cancelled, and I've never seen H. or her husband our DM again in the five-plus years since (which is a shame, I really liked that DM. He was my old college roommate). S. and I eventually set up a new gaming group with some of her friends from work and a handful of my numerous siblings. The new group is super relaxed, and is easily the most fun group I've ever gamed with, so I guess it all worked out in the end.

(Un)Inspired
2014-11-03, 03:55 PM
This isn't so much a "bad gamer story" as it is a quirk of behavior that I'm wondering how common it is.

Basically there's this guy I play with who always has to remind everyone that his character could totally kill us all if he wanted. Like, unprovoked will just tell us straight up "Oh and by the way he could totally murder you all if he wanted to."

And it's weird because he never tries to PVP or antagonize the party. He generally plays heros and isn't a bad roleplayer. It's just this constant OOC reminder that his character is totally deadly and Not to be Crossed even when they're all getting along just fine. I have no idea why he feels like he needs to do this but frankly it's obnoxious. And it's not like we all brag about our character's relative deadliness. Or even other areas where we might excel. No one is sitting at the table going "Oh just a reminder, my Bard can totally out bluff all you guys. Don't even try to see through it."

I might talk to him about it soon actually because constantly bringing up how effectively violent he could be towards the other PCs is begining to cross over into creepy territory. Especially when he brings it up in response to someone doing something IC that he doesn't approve of OOC.

This is pretty hilarious. I could see it as incredibly annoying if he tried to pull some pvp or was a bad role player otherwise but you say that he's never been actual aggressive and he's a good roleplayer.

It's like he just legitimately worried you guys might have forgot he's super deadly and junk. Not because he wants to fight you, just because it's really, truly, intrinsically important information.

Surrealistik
2014-11-03, 04:24 PM
"Oh just a reminder, my Bard can totally out bluff all you guys. Don't even try to see through it."

Don't. Even. Try.

Sith_Happens
2014-11-03, 04:52 PM
I might talk to him about it soon actually because constantly bringing up how effectively violent he could be towards the other PCs is begining to cross over into creepy territory. Especially when he brings it up in response to someone doing something IC that he doesn't approve of OOC.

One player in my group (maybe two depending on which campaign) does this, with an emphasis on the bolded bit. I think the rest of us have learned to just ignore it, at least I know I have. The hilarious part is that the non-maybe player's characters are both supposed to be Good-aligned.

Raine_Sage
2014-11-04, 12:03 AM
This is pretty hilarious. I could see it as incredibly annoying if he tried to pull some pvp or was a bad role player otherwise but you say that he's never been actual aggressive and he's a good roleplayer.

It's like he just legitimately worried you guys might have forgot he's super deadly and junk. Not because he wants to fight you, just because it's really, truly, intrinsically important information.

Yeah that's definitely what it comes across as. Like he's playing a pacifist in our current game, but he always has to remind us that the pacifist has plasma cutters. You know, in case we forgot he had those.

Sith_Happens
2014-11-04, 02:25 PM
Yeah that's definitely what it comes across as. Like he's playing a pacifist in our current game, but he always has to remind us that the pacifist has plasma cutters. You know, in case we forgot he had those.

Hey, what if you come across a particularly obstinate door that needs a good plasma cutting?:smalltongue:

nedz
2014-11-04, 03:35 PM
This isn't so much a "bad gamer story" as it is a quirk of behavior that I'm wondering how common it is.

Basically there's this guy I play with who always has to remind everyone that his character could totally kill us all if he wanted. Like, unprovoked will just tell us straight up "Oh and by the way he could totally murder you all if he wanted to."

And it's weird because he never tries to PVP or antagonize the party. He generally plays heros and isn't a bad roleplayer. It's just this constant OOC reminder that his character is totally deadly and Not to be Crossed even when they're all getting along just fine. I have no idea why he feels like he needs to do this but frankly it's obnoxious. And it's not like we all brag about our character's relative deadliness. Or even other areas where we might excel. No one is sitting at the table going "Oh just a reminder, my Bard can totally out bluff all you guys. Don't even try to see through it."

I might talk to him about it soon actually because constantly bringing up how effectively violent he could be towards the other PCs is begining to cross over into creepy territory. Especially when he brings it up in response to someone doing something IC that he doesn't approve of OOC.
This sounds like competitiveness mixed with insecurity — which is apparently quite common. I'm not sure how to deal with this, it would depend too much upon the individuals concerned.

Honest Tiefling
2014-11-04, 05:09 PM
Reply that your character can so totally out pacifist HIS character any day of the week. Just keep repeating with non-nonsensical or mundane abilities until he gets the hint? "Oh yeah, I am so washing the **** out of this car, see if you can beat that!"

Mr Beer
2014-11-04, 06:09 PM
Basically there's this guy I play with who always has to remind everyone that his character could totally kill us all if he wanted. Like, unprovoked will just tell us straight up "Oh and by the way he could totally murder you all if he wanted to."

I would respond with "Are you really warning me that your imaginary friend can beat up my imaginary friend?". Hopefully this will drive home the silliness of such boasts.

Anxe
2014-11-05, 02:21 PM
The only people that I've seen who have displayed this type of behavior have been either children or teenagers, so in my experience I would chalk that up to immaturity.

My group does that sort of stuff pretty often. We even used to run character contests to see who would actually win in a fight. For us, its just another fun part of the game. We trash talk each other about how strong our characters are, actually roll out a theoretical fight, and then move on with the game. We also do actual PvP a decent amount, but we try to avoid PvP that upsets us OOC. I could see that type of bragging being creepy if its constantly repeated and not reciprocated.

commander panda
2014-11-05, 02:50 PM
Yeah that's definitely what it comes across as. Like he's playing a pacifist in our current game, but he always has to remind us that the pacifist has plasma cutters. You know, in case we forgot he had those.

like, actual plasma cutters, or some kind of plasma sword weapon?
because it's possible he just wants to make sure everyone is aware of his utility abilities because he can't fight. a normal plasma cutter would be useless as a Weapon.

The Random NPC
2014-11-05, 03:03 PM
like, actual plasma cutters, or some kind of plasma sword weapon?
because it's possible he just wants to make sure everyone is aware of his utility abilities because he can't fight. a normal plasma cutter would be useless as a Weapon.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/98/Isaac_Clarke.png
Isaac says hi.

CantigThimble
2014-11-05, 05:55 PM
I did once tell the party I could kill them both if I felt like it but it was totally in character. They had just found out I was the only evil member of the party, but two 4th level casters aren't much of a match for a well statted fighter rogue with a bastard sword and a pistol (Renaissance) as well as the feats to use them. I wish that campaign had gone on longer, I enjoyed playing that character. He ended up saving both of their lives on several occasions because he thought of them as pets.

Sith_Happens
2014-11-05, 07:48 PM
but two 4th level casters aren't much of a match for a well statted fighter rogue with a bastard sword and a pistol (Renaissance) as well as the feats to use them.

...Should I tell him or does someone else want to?

(Un)Inspired
2014-11-05, 07:51 PM
...Should I tell him or does someone else want to?

I was waiting for someone else to jump in there. I'm feeling too burnt out to get into this conversation today

Prince Raven
2014-11-05, 08:55 PM
...Should I tell him or does someone else want to?

He's actually right, provided you wait for them to use up all their spells before attacking.

Forrestfire
2014-11-05, 09:15 PM
He's actually right, provided you wait for them to use up all their spells before attacking.

And he could be much higher level than them!

CantigThimble
2014-11-05, 11:09 PM
I'm not sure what system you're playing under or what levels of optimization you imagine, all I know is that that character was fully capable of beating both of them at the same time. He was consistently more effective than either, not to mention a size category larger (halfling and gnome), which pretty much negates spellcasting the instant he reaches melee range.

...
2014-11-05, 11:28 PM
This isn't so much a "bad gamer story" as it is a quirk of behavior that I'm wondering how common it is.

Basically there's this guy I play with who always has to remind everyone that his character could totally kill us all if he wanted. Like, unprovoked will just tell us straight up "Oh and by the way he could totally murder you all if he wanted to."

And it's weird because he never tries to PVP or antagonize the party. He generally plays heros and isn't a bad roleplayer. It's just this constant OOC reminder that his character is totally deadly and Not to be Crossed even when they're all getting along just fine. I have no idea why he feels like he needs to do this but frankly it's obnoxious. And it's not like we all brag about our character's relative deadliness. Or even other areas where we might excel. No one is sitting at the table going "Oh just a reminder, my Bard can totally out bluff all you guys. Don't even try to see through it."

I might talk to him about it soon actually because constantly bringing up how effectively violent he could be towards the other PCs is begining to cross over into creepy territory. Especially when he brings it up in response to someone doing something IC that he doesn't approve of OOC.

I've been trying to do this IC in a 5e campaign, but only because it fits with the character's personality and is a blatant lie.

Prince Raven
2014-11-05, 11:51 PM
I'm not sure what system you're playing under or what levels of optimization you imagine, all I know is that that character was fully capable of beating both of them at the same time. He was consistently more effective than either, not to mention a size category larger (halfling and gnome), which pretty much negates spellcasting the instant he reaches melee range.

And neither one of them would simply 5 foot step away and Glitterdust him?

CantigThimble
2014-11-06, 12:09 AM
No, they wouldn't. I have never seen anyone even look twice at that spell.

Milodiah
2014-11-06, 12:15 AM
No, they wouldn't. I have never seen anyone even look twice at that spell.

Been cast at least four times in my most recent campaign, mate.

Sir Chuckles
2014-11-06, 12:32 AM
I'm not sure what system you're playing under or what levels of optimization you imagine, all I know is that that character was fully capable of beating both of them at the same time. He was consistently more effective than either, not to mention a size category larger (halfling and gnome), which pretty much negates spellcasting the instant he reaches melee range.

We don't deny that he possibly could beat them both, but it would be an outlier to expectations. And, given the claim that being a size category larger negates spellcasting, I doubt we know what system you're in. As for optimization, the bastard sword statement would lead most to believe that you're on the low end of op-fu. Again, does not mean you're wrong. Just means that that you're an outlier. A fun old time, but not the common expectation nonetheless.
Exasperated further by the Glitterdust statement.

Now then, I don't really have many stories, as my worst player is usually nothing more than "merely frustrating". Usually. But, I'm posting, so I should post that one story of how one of my players did a genuine rage-quit.

I've always run campaigns that lead up to a short-lived Shamamallama style twist. In this particular campaign, I had it so that the party would end up in an area of dead magic, caused by a planar breach. It would entail the planet's colonization story, spill into "spell"jammer, and so on. I never got to actually play it out.

Enter Agatha. Gnome Wizard/Cleric/Mystic Theurge, claimed by the player to be extremely OP (because of Mystic Theurge). Agatha had already not been jiving with the party too well, as the player had somewhat different expectations about the campaign than the other players. My players, while complete idiots, are the most lovable idiots a DM could ask for. Where else would you get a buffalo riding archer but my idiots? This led to a rift in play styles, where Agatha would constantly play the straight man, even when there was no place for one. They frequently questioned the plot, even getting angry when things didn't quite fall perfectly into place, even making assumptions and calling out cliches, even if they weren't there. "Yes, he's your smarmy captain. No, he's not going to turn evil. Fair assumption, but would you please stop rolling your eyes at every NPC?"

Back to the dead magic zone. Obviously, a Mystic Theurge was not exactly equipped for such a scenario, but neither was the Gnome Druid or Over-WBL Halfling Arcane Trickster who relied on hordes of magic items. I was seeing some obvious resentment in Agatha, and was trying to find a solution, but after an underwater version of the fox-chicken-bag of grain puzzle, he was visibly upset. I figured it was time to step in an intervene, but at the time it appeared to be mainly an in-character issue, what with most of their frustration being expressed IC. Enter Mr. Usually Only Frustrating, we'll call him B. B has always had a problem of overstaying his time in the spotlight, and has yet to get over a serious problems with believing that insults and antagonistic words are a form of Diplomacy (maybe more on that later). This threw gasoline on what could have been nothing more than a few embers. Once this fire was roaring and faces started turning red, the situation was, unfortunately, out of my control. Agatha as clenching fists at B, and B had a ****-eating grin (and later claimed that he was "winning" the argument). Enter player C, who is non-confrontational to the point of begging others to stop fighting. He physically stood between the two and announced that, IC, he was knocking them both out.

Now, to C's credit, this ended the argument. I figured it would be best to end the session and speak with Agatha about what was going on. Unfortunately, he was not willing to do so, though I managed to cool the room with the magic of "I have several series of anime on my laptop and a HDMI cord". The next day, we get a message from him complaining about the actions of the group on our Facebook group message. Rightfully so, I type out a response asking him what we would like us to do, and asking B to apologize. This response is ignored, and Agatha continues on a long rant about how everyone in the group is horrible at roleplay and tabletop in general. He then followed that with a long rant about each and every one of my character, past and present, and how I was an awful DM.

He then left the group chat, unfriended everyone except C and another person not involved that evening, and has not been heard from by anyone other than C since. C has informed us that he has all but stopped playing tabletop due to other reasons.

Prince Raven
2014-11-06, 01:10 AM
He then left the group chat, unfriended everyone except C and another person not involved that evening, and has not been heard from by anyone other than C since. C has informed us that he has all but stopped playing tabletop due to other reasons.

I like that there was a happy ending for story time.

Necroticplague
2014-11-06, 04:56 AM
I'm not sure what system you're playing under or what levels of optimization you imagine, all I know is that that character was fully capable of beating both of them at the same time. He was consistently more effective than either, not to mention a size category larger (halfling and gnome), which pretty much negates spellcasting the instant he reaches melee range.

1: Being of a smaller size category is actually an advantage unless you specialize in combat maneuvers, thanks to the fact that small size increases both to-hit and AC.
2:I imagine a couple of casters of basic competence who knows what spells are good. Just off the top of my head, Color Spray, Daze, Sleep, Daze, Glitterdust, Blindness, Ghoul Touch could all let them win against you by eliminating your actions or the utility of their actions.

Thus, if your statement that your fighter could kill both of them is true, it only proves that the specific spellcasters involved are incompetent. Your general statement "two 4th level caster aren't much of a match for a well statted fighter rogue" is still utter crap. Especially since the bastard sword is a crappy weapon, dual wielding is horrible, and based on the description, that character doesn't have a very focused build. Unless you mean they weild the two seperately, in which case that charactr has the problem that the resources he invests into pistol-shooting are useless when he's using the bastard sword, and his sword-swinging investments are worthless when he's shooting.

Marlowe
2014-11-06, 08:45 AM
You said Daze twice...you like Daze?

Fumble Jack
2014-11-06, 09:24 AM
Hmm unless the Dm has something against casters and is playing favorites with the large bastard sword wielding, pistol using fighter/rogue boosted my magic items. Well that might be for another thread.

As to not derail, some of my own players.

Had one player, P who seemed to play generally anti-group characters and was more interested in pvp. It became an issue since I don't run pvp games, closest one I had was where they were able to test their skills in an arena but that was til knockout, anyway we had to sit him down and talk to him. On the bright side, it worked, he has his occasional slip, but it's better than it used to be.

Now, this was a time when our group was short a 3rd player and FT came in to fill up that role.
First was in a Vampire the Requiem game. I had picked up the source book shadows over Mexico, it had a heavy vampire theme and I was intrigued by the dynamic of how ancient Aztec vampires awakening from torpor, might throw kinks into the established system. Enter the players with their characters. One was an academic type character that was part of the Ordo Dracul, another was the vampire version of Hannibal Lecter in the Invictus and last was FT, whom played a Mekhet Lancea Sanctum, and concept was border guard. As we go into player intros and setting up the characters to meet in Elysium. FT's intro he's paused by a cop, that thinks he's suspiciously out of place, but thinks, since I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt here, since he does have his border guard badge on him, that he might be hunting a coyote. FT lies to him and fails the roll. Cop asks him to come with him. FT's response, boost his str with vitae, kill cop, take bike, leave cop on back, head bobbing along the street. I'm face palming at this point. He continues his spree and the group is bound together due to the bloodhunt called on FT due to his actions, all in the first session of the game.

There are other tales of FT, I'll post them later.

Necroticplague
2014-11-06, 09:31 AM
You said Daze twice...you like Daze?

I jut thought it desired repeating he could be made useless by a cantrip.

CantigThimble
2014-11-06, 10:44 AM
I'm not going to continue discussion here as it's obvious that the play experiences of people on here have been quite different than mine and any statements I base on my play experience won't make any sense to you.

I should point out that no one in my group ever considered trying to optimize and just played whatever they felt appropriate. In my opinion character optimization is just spending a lot of time and energy to start an arms race with your dungeon master, which wouldn't benefit anyone.

Nagash
2014-11-06, 04:18 PM
I jut thought it desired repeating he could be made useless by a cantrip.

Umm no not at all. Daze only lasts 1 round and then your immune to it for a minute per the pathfinder SRD. And that one round? well the wizard used it casting daze. So it really just makes a null round, no one got an advantage.

Glitterdust isnt a fight winner either actually. It blinds the fighter sure, but thats just a miss chance, which can be reduced with the blind fighting feat and it allows a save each round. Plus it covers a 10 ft spread. So if a caster takes a 5ft step back to cast it he can still be blinded by his own spell

icefractal
2014-11-06, 04:30 PM
Those changes are both new in Pathfinder. In 3E, you don't become immune to Daze (although it isn't at-will either) and Glitterdust has only a single save. Also you don't have to center the effect on the opponent, so blinding yourself isn't an issue unless you're fighting inside a closet.

Anyway, it's certainly possible that this particular character could defeat two other specific characters - Player > Build > Class, after all. Saying that - in general - a ~4th level fighter/rogue could easily defeat two 4th level casters would be a bit ridiculous though.

The Random NPC
2014-11-06, 04:41 PM
Umm no not at all. Daze only lasts 1 round and then your immune to it for a minute per the pathfinder SRD. And that one round? well the wizard used it casting daze. So it really just makes a null round, no one got an advantage.

Many, if not most, of the stories seem to be 3.5, so it's not unreasonable to assume they're talking about the 3.5 Daze (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/daze.htm), which has no such restriction. Furthermore, there are 2 casters, if one of them trades their round to negate the Fighter's, the other can poke him with a stick until he dies.


Glitterdust isnt a fight winner either actually. It blinds the fighter sure, but thats just a miss chance, which can be reduced with the blind fighting feat and it allows a save each round. Plus it covers a 10 ft spread. So if a caster takes a 5ft step back to cast it he can still be blinded by his own spell

In my experience, very few people take Blind Fighting. Even still, they have to guess at which square their opponent is. The Wizard can target an arbitrary point in space that will hit the Fighter, but not the casters. Also, once again, in 3.5 there is no save per round.

EDIT: As an aside, since the 3.5 DMG has rules for guns, organized by time period (Renaissance for example), I'm going to assume the game from the story is 3.5

Raine_Sage
2014-11-06, 06:25 PM
like, actual plasma cutters, or some kind of plasma sword weapon?
because it's possible he just wants to make sure everyone is aware of his utility abilities because he can't fight. a normal plasma cutter would be useless as a Weapon.

Apparently these can double as weapons? I'm a bit fuzzy on the actual mechanics but I think they can be used as weapons the same way a chainsaw can be a useful logging tool or a deadly instrument of face murder depending on the situation. Either way he's definitely reminding us of them in the "weapons" capacity. Like "Haha if my character was a different kind of person that totally would have earned a plasma cutter to the face."

Sir Chuckles
2014-11-06, 06:34 PM
I'm not going to continue discussion here as it's obvious that the play experiences of people on here have been quite different than mine and any statements I base on my play experience won't make any sense to you.

I should point out that no one in my group ever considered trying to optimize and just played whatever they felt appropriate. In my opinion character optimization is just spending a lot of time and energy to start an arms race with your dungeon master, which wouldn't benefit anyone.

Welp, then you'd be objectively wrong.

Though I'm still genuinely curious. How does being a size category smaller completely negate their casting?

Honest Tiefling
2014-11-06, 06:39 PM
To be fair, regardless of the difference in skills by the players, he did seem to say that his bragging was in-character. I would assume the other players would have said something if they were not enjoying the PC's antics. I also think it is slightly different because 1) The character said it ONCE 2) it was in-character. Bragging that your PC can own the party out of character ad nauseam is completely different in my opinion, regardless on stances of optimization or player skill.

Milodiah
2014-11-06, 06:43 PM
How does being a size category smaller completely negate their casting?

I suppose I'll have to go and retroactively reset every combat encounter our Tiny-class fairy cleric has fought in so he can be curb-stomped, as is apparently the new universal order...damn, I thought he was doing so well by defeating those enemies before I discovered this new rule!

Eisenheim
2014-11-06, 07:15 PM
Hey everyone, this has been a lovely and interesting thread, please don't derail it onto arguing about this one particular scenario. If you really care, start a thread about that, please.

Sudokori
2014-11-06, 09:21 PM
This reminds me a lot about one of my friends I played with. He was one of the bragging types mentioned before, but only in one game. This game happened to be champions.

For those of you who don't know, champions is a super hero rpg based on a point buy system for powers, skills, stats, etc... Oh, and it only uses d6's. Now in champions you get a base pool of points to make a hero, which can be increased by adding disatvantages to your character (like being hunted by organizations or personality issues) and a certain limit of maximum points is made depending on what power level campaign you wanted.

So my group of friends makes character during the first session, which I missed due to medical issues, and I come back two weeks later and joined. Ended up making a character with a point total of about 160 (100 base points plus disatvantages). Pretty nice fighter, can take a hit, just a little less hard hitting then the other characters. My friend's hero had 190 points to use, but used a bunch of point cost reducing methods (that I had no idea about) and came out with a character that had a build of effectively 300+ points (counting power/skill cost as if bought without these cost reducing methods) and would remind me a lot that his guy could kill my guy one-on-one any day. I started asking about the system so I could better understand it and every change I suggested for my character would be met with a answer and something along the lines of "my guy would still easily kill your guy". It got annoying after a while and another friend who had a 150 some point character got annoyed at the bragging too and we decided to do something about it.

So we challenged our bragging friend to do a 2 vs 1 against his character with me and my friend's characters. Ended with me and my friend's low (in comparison) power characters barely managing to incapacitate his character because of lucky rolls on our side. Afterwards we had a long chat and agreed that either his character needed to be toned down a bit or our characters could re-stat our main superpower by using one of the cost reducing methods so our party would be balanced.

So I guess I'm saying is that I had a bragging player issue stemmed from power imbalance that was resolved because of communication and help from party members. Or something like that.

Nagash
2014-11-06, 10:01 PM
Many, if not most, of the stories seem to be 3.5, so it's not unreasonable to assume they're talking about the 3.5 Daze (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/daze.htm), which has no such restriction. Furthermore, there are 2 casters, if one of them trades their round to negate the Fighter's, the other can poke him with a stick until he dies.


Meh, unlikely. in 3.5 a 4th level caster would run out cantrips even with 2 casters a long time before killing a fighter with a stick. By that level they cant even hit him without an extremely high roll and the fighter will occassionally make his save as well.

2 on 1 sucks but its by no means a gimme for any caster, especially a wizard. A cleric or druid would have a much better chance.

Although this does remind me of the worst player I ever played with.

I had played with him in a campaign a few years before this incident when we were both players so when he emailed me that he was getting back into gaming I invited him to the one I was running at the time.

Apparently in the years he had been out of gaming he had been spending a lot of time on forums and absorbing a lot of the charop nonsense on these things as gospel truth.

We were running a core only 3.5 game set in a homebrew world I created from the first dragon age game (the first game was the only one out at the time so I made up the rest of the world). If your not familiar with that game arcane users arent trusted and are mainly stuck living in prison like towers guarded by templars of the major religion.

I've got one player whose backstory is that he became a templar (fighter planning to multi to palidin) because his family was killed before his eyes by a demon possessed blood wizard and so by 5th level he has spent all of his time and resources becoming a mage hunter. Feats spent to boost saves, save boosting items, everything he could think of to optimize to kill wizards.

New guy naturally makes a bossy as hell wizard who because he's been on too many forums thinks that he's the end all be all of power and can push everyone around. Before too long him and the templar get into into it and the fighter makes his first 2 saves and cuts the wizard to shreds....

The wizard player throws a huge hissy fit insisting that he must have been cheating, so I look over the character sheet and everything was completely plausible and legal so naturally I must be cheating too.

After spending 20 minutes of the whole table telling him to stop being a baby he literally yells that no tier 1 could lose to a straight fighter and storms out of the game, then goes online to the local gamer website and starts a bunch of forum threads about how we're all cheaters and no one should ever play with us

The Random NPC
2014-11-07, 12:41 AM
Meh, unlikely. in 3.5 a 4th level caster would run out cantrips even with 2 casters a long time before killing a fighter with a stick. By that level they cant even hit him without an extremely high roll and the fighter will occassionally make his save as well.

2 on 1 sucks but its by no means a gimme for any caster, especially a wizard. A cleric or druid would have a much better chance.

Although this does remind me of the worst player I ever played with.

I had played with him in a campaign a few years before this incident when we were both players so when he emailed me that he was getting back into gaming I invited him to the one I was running at the time.

Apparently in the years he had been out of gaming he had been spending a lot of time on forums and absorbing a lot of the charop nonsense on these things as gospel truth.

We were running a core only 3.5 game set in a homebrew world I created from the first dragon age game (the first game was the only one out at the time so I made up the rest of the world). If your not familiar with that game arcane users arent trusted and are mainly stuck living in prison like towers guarded by templars of the major religion.

I've got one player whose backstory is that he became a templar (fighter planning to multi to palidin) because his family was killed before his eyes by a demon possessed blood wizard and so by 5th level he has spent all of his time and resources becoming a mage hunter. Feats spent to boost saves, save boosting items, everything he could think of to optimize to kill wizards.

New guy naturally makes a bossy as hell wizard who because he's been on too many forums thinks that he's the end all be all of power and can push everyone around. Before too long him and the templar get into into it and the fighter makes his first 2 saves and cuts the wizard to shreds....

The wizard player throws a huge hissy fit insisting that he must have been cheating, so I look over the character sheet and everything was completely plausible and legal so naturally I must be cheating too.

After spending 20 minutes of the whole table telling him to stop being a baby he literally yells that no tier 1 could lose to a straight fighter and storms out of the game, then goes online to the local gamer website and starts a bunch of forum threads about how we're all cheaters and no one should ever play with us

Poking with a stick was hyperbole, though if they play their cards right (mostly Sleep) that can still work. As for the rest of your story, against a purpose build anti-mage Fighter, especially at 5th level, you have to at least be willing to cut your losses and run. With only of few of the game changing spells, you're very likely to run out before permanently dealing with your enemies by yourself. Either way, the mage in no longer a PC, and is functionally defeated. Unless it's the Fighter's fault, then they're no longer a PC.

Nagash
2014-11-09, 06:45 AM
Poking with a stick was hyperbole, though if they play their cards right (mostly Sleep) that can still work. As for the rest of your story, against a purpose build anti-mage Fighter, especially at 5th level, you have to at least be willing to cut your losses and run. With only of few of the game changing spells, you're very likely to run out before permanently dealing with your enemies by yourself. Either way, the mage in no longer a PC, and is functionally defeated. Unless it's the Fighter's fault, then they're no longer a PC.

I'm pretty sure you technically wake up if your damaged after sleep. Not sure, i rule it that way.

But yeah that was kind of my point, I wouldnt say it was anyones fault. Both were roleplaying. The fighter made quips about mages being untrustworthy and prone to posession and occasionally mutants. Not great stuff, but certainly fitting in character.

And the mage was a nobleman's 2nd son who saw his magic as a route to power and planned to help overthrow the religious order that policed mages as part of an established underground rebel movement.

So I would say that both were playing their characters believably, it was just a bad mix of personalities in character. Which to me is fine. It was the blowup out of character that blew me away and I find unacceptable.

Nexahs
2014-11-09, 05:40 PM
Well my worst player is nowhere near as bad as some others on here, but he was still a handful. We'll call him Z.

In the first campaign I ever ran (D&D 3.5), Z wanted to play a Shifter druid. Being new to the game myself I didn't realize that shifter was a playable race in 3.5, so I took a look at the race in 4e and toned it down to match 3.5 (it should be noted that, while I don't remember all the specifics, it was slightly stronger than the actual 3.5 race - and he often complained that it was useless and he wouldn't have played this if he knew it would suck). Z was a classic murderhobo who generally didn't take the game seriously - not a problem with a similarly-minded group, but the campaign setting was pretty grim and intended to have a serious tone. The biggest problem with Z, though, was his complete lack of any druid-ly instincts. At one point the party encountered several poachers who were in the process of trapping a pseudodragon (which, for those who don't know, is a cat-sized dragon of human intelligence). Most of the party rushed to the aid of the creature, but Z? Z loudly defended the poachers, saying that hunting was "their livelihood," completely refusing to take part in the fight. He also was an obsessive hoarder, claiming he was part raccoon, and made the party repay him for a set of curtains before he would allow them to use the curtains to put out a fire which would have burned down a decent-sized chunk of forest. Those are the two biggest examples I can remember, but the campaign was filled with his complete lack of concern for nature, to the point where I had to genuinely consider taking away his druidic powers multiple times.

Marlowe
2014-11-09, 09:59 PM
But yeah that was kind of my point, I wouldnt say it was anyones fault. Both were roleplaying. The fighter made quips about mages being untrustworthy and prone to posession and occasionally mutants. Not great stuff, but certainly fitting in character.


Sounds like the Fighter's player played too much 40K. But I repeat myself.


*SNIP*

If we're ever bored we could probably fill an entire thread with "useless Druid" stories.

I adventured with one briefly whose only contributions were chit-chatting with animal companion, complaining my character didn't know his name (no, he never introduced himself. Why do you ask?) and suggesting we cut down a tree to cross a river.

Another seemed to be under the impression he was a Ranger or Rogue, and kept attempting to do stealthy stuff with a dex penalty, armour check penalty, and no actual ranks in Hide/Move Silently. He also constantly made excuses to avoid contributing to anything he hadn't thought of himself. Which, since he never thought of anything, was kind of limiting.

Druid is a powerful class, but there's no class or build so powerful it can't be messed up.

Milodiah
2014-11-09, 10:04 PM
We all know most people pick druids for the 'turn into a bear and rip **** up' class feature, treating them like a fighter with some kind of Polymorph Self item...and from that only the good ones go on to acknowledge everything else. Y'know, like nature. I mean, not every class is like this, but when you're playing one of the archetypal classes (Druid, Paladin, Wizard, Barbarian, etc.) I should be able to guess your class based on your dialogue and actions.

Honest Tiefling
2014-11-09, 10:06 PM
It doesn't help if they go completely the other way, and refuse to help the rest of the party against rampaging beasts or extinguish their fire in the middle of a storm. Still not helpful.

Marlowe
2014-11-09, 10:29 PM
I think Druids suffer from a few issues in play, which have just been touched on.

People know they're very powerful, so they play one and expect to be really powerful without using their brain to help them. A lot of Druid spells and abilities are actually quite specialised and have to be used quite pro-actively and carefully.

People see the wildshape and assume that will take care of everything, and then find themselves in a low-level game with no wildshape yet and no idea how to contribute.

But probably the biggest one is that the fluff for Druids seems to encourage people to play them as a "lone wolf", self-reliant and uncaring. And forget that that archetype is only cool when it's backed up by positive contribution and accomplishment and that without these things you're just an anti-social pill who never does anything.

None of these things are a problem with the class. They're problems with the player. It's just these sort of player issues that the Druid makes very obvious.

Sir Chuckles
2014-11-09, 11:37 PM
Oooh, one of my oldest players does a lot of the "I'm X class, but I will never use the features of said class."
As a 15th level Druid, he would, more often than not, wade into melee with a Masterwork scimitar and little to no previous buffing. I honestly can't remember a single time he used Wild Shape. Often, he would not remember that he ever had an animal companion. When he did cast spells, Flamestrike, Produce Flame, and Fire Seeds were all he would cast, unless the party begged him to use a Cure spell. Which he often did not have prepared, if he prepared spells at all.

And additional time was when he was playing a Cleric 10/Inquisitor 10/Wizard 3. I was throwing mid-level "Super Mooks" at them, less to fight them, more to kill the low level crewmen they had on a fleet of ships. How does the unarmed Cleric with a strength penalty and several unrelated penalties to hit attempt to deal with a 10th level Rogue? Charges it. He died that encounter. There were dozens of ways to circumvent that, with sme dropping hints and other party members directly telling him how to survive, but, nope, ended up dead.

Dire Moose
2014-11-10, 12:48 AM
I play druids a lot and I've rarely used Wild Shape. I tend to prefer utility spells and summoning lots of animals for battlefield control. I usually avoid melee combat and leave that to my animal companion and summoned creatures.

Silus
2014-11-10, 05:02 AM
I play druids a lot and I've rarely used Wild Shape. I tend to prefer utility spells and summoning lots of animals for battlefield control. I usually avoid melee combat and leave that to my animal companion and summoned creatures.

Well it also depends on what you're fighting. I've got a Druid for Pathfinder Society that runs off Fort-save spells (Mostly diseases and the like) but I'm all but useless against constructs and undead. So when that happens I just whip out a Large-sized Dire Tiger Wildshape (Bumped to Huge with a magic item) and hit myself with Strong Jaw for Colossal sized damage + Grab + Pounce at level 8. Works just fine, even though I built the character as a Plague Druid with little in the way of direct combat capabilities.

LibraryOgre
2014-11-12, 02:09 PM
The Mod Wonder: The mechanics of a caster on a fighter/rogue is appropriate to the 3.x forum, not here.

Marlowe
2014-11-12, 11:02 PM
Just to clarify; nobody said that Druids weren't powerful or that they had to be played in a certain way. Just that they need to be played.

In the first "useless Druid" example I gave the party Monk was at least as useless as the Druid. The difference is that the Monk player was trying to be helpful but simply had no relevant skills or abilities. The Druid did in spades, but was simply too lazy and indifferent to use them.

BeerMug Paladin
2014-11-13, 12:58 AM
Back in my early days of gaming, shortly after 3rd edition happened, I got to witness a game (played in a public space in college) where a player had a character that I think was a druid. The description the player gave for their character was someone who was kind of fat, ugly, and (apparently) didn't bathe regularly.

The player had somewhat of an abrasive personality, and kind of grated on the nerves of several people. I recall his character also had a tendency to scold people and be an insufferable jerk to people for no reason (think Arnold Rimmer).

He had a high charisma (I think it was 16). I think people tried to give him the benefit of the doubt that he just didn't know how to really roleplay someone who was charming, but for some reason when people tried to help him figure out how to roleplay better, he insisted that his character really would act that way and really would be so abrasive without provocation.

I think he had max ranks in diplomacy (for some weird reason) and some other social skills too. But that just didn't translate into his character's behavior in any way.

Of course, he was newer to roleplaying than even I was.

Kurald Galain
2014-11-14, 06:10 PM
Wow. I've been roleplaying for many years and have had numerous players that had one or two annoying traits to them, but the guy I met today takes the cake as literally the worst player ever. It's like somebody compiled a list of all the negative traits a roleplayer could have, and wrapped them all up together in one convenient package. To wit,


His most annoying trait is that he constantly demands attention. He will routinely interrupt any other players or the DM whenever the focus is not on him, personally, for more than ten seconds or so.
He badgers the DM by repeating questions until he gets a more favorable ruling; when that didn't work he dove into the books for several minutes while the party moved on, then during the next scene he came with his "proof" that the DM's ruling in the previous scene was wrong, and demanded that we rewind to the last scene to "fix" that.
Refuses to accept penalties on skill checks for attempting things that are ludicrous or just plain impossible, claiming that is "just fluff" that can be changed and he shouldn't be penalized for "roleplaying".
Displays "The Loonie" or "Mr. Welsh" levels of ridiculousness, but without actually being funny. Most of his actions consist of utterly crazy and random things that he does just for the sake of being random; then later he openly brags about derailing the plot.
Of course his randomness includes cold-blooded murder, slaughter, and torture of NPCs, despite nominally being a non-evil character.
His character is min-maxed well above the level that other players are comfortable with, and he openly mocks other players for having less effective characters.
He's rules-savvy enough to point out other players' mistakes, but conveniently "forgets" that certain aspects of his own character don't work the way he claims.
And to top it all off, he cheats. He had a consistent lucky streak of rarely rolling below 15 and never below 10, until we caught him at making rolls several times in a row until he got one he likes, and ignoring the others.


I wish I had some funny anecdotes from his antics but really all of it was either annoying or just plain stupid. Guess who I won't be playing with again...

VincentTakeda
2014-11-20, 03:22 PM
T is for Traitor

We had a guy who had spent nearly a decade securing his position as a guy who, when bored, would instigate traitorous wacky hijinx... Lets see. I'd say his top three memorable escapades...


Wanted to play a death master (silver anniversary dragon magazine if I remember correctly) who got xp for digging up graves. Our group joins him to help him get some silly paltry xp from digging up graves, and when the night watch comes around and he's the only one in the party that fails his hide check... he points into the trees we've hidden in and shouts 'look! grave robbers!' and slinks away while the authorities are chasing us down.
Another player with a penchant for armed and armored vehicles has procured himself one of those CJ style military jeeps with a 50 cal on the back. We've got to enter a military base and he simply wants to drive the jeep through the front doors with someone on the back guns a blazing... Who volunteers? The traitor of course. Everyone knowingly bows their heads as Traitor jumps into the back of the jeep and promptly uses the 50 cal to shoot the Jeep loving driver in the back of the head.
Party is tasked with entering another military base that is surrounded by chickenwire fence and a mine field. Character with some ability to handle that jumps the fence but trips a lazer defense grid. It is clear that the player will be captured. Party chooses to let that happen and now the infiltration has become a rescue mission as well, but as the trucks roll up on the guy being captured, traitor decides to shoot him dead so he can't be interrogated. Blows off the captured party member's jaw instead. Player is grievously wounded but still alive. This shot also gives away the party's position... The jig is up. Time for full assault mode... Traitor then very generously 'helps' the party member he shot by cauterizing his wound with a light saber. What a pal, heheheh.


T's not a gamer anymore.

SowZ
2014-11-20, 03:55 PM
This guy wasn't a bad dude, really, though his Naruto obsession was pretty high. But he played a Barbarian that was the dumbest character you've ever seen. Once, we had to fight our way up an orc controlled mountain in order to meet with the goddess of the mountain. We reached the top after a couple in game days and there was nothing. No shrine, no temple, just a bluff with a sheer drop. We figure we will camp for the night and solve the puzzle in the morning.

Then the barb player gets a magical twinkle in his eye. "No," he says. "I know what we have to do. It is a test of faith."

"Oh," the rest of say. "What's your plan?"

"We have to jump off the cliff."

Mind you we are fifth level with no method to prevent fall damage. The rest of us ask him what gives him this idea since there was literally zero indication and the DM looked as dumbfounded as the rest of us.

"I don't think that's it," I tell him. But he insists. The other players try and talk him down but can't stop him from what happens next.

Crazypants McBarb: I leap off the cliff.

DM: Well, uh--

Crazypants McBarb: No, it already happened. I did it.

DM: Are you sure?

Crazypants McBarb: Yes.

We eventually managed to find the goddess. Suffice it to say, leaping a half mile high mountain was not part of the summoning.

Sudokori
2014-11-20, 09:53 PM
We eventually managed to find the goddess. Suffice it to say, leaping a half mile high mountain was not part of the summoning.

I'm really curious to what the summoning ritual was. The barbarian was kinda half justified in this high jinks because there was no indication that anything else would have worked to summon the mountain goddes after finding the summoning place was (I assume due to the contents of the post) completely bare and empty. The Dm should have at least left a tiny clue. Something like a rock with a few pictures on it that say "don't jump off the cliff". I'm not defending the barbarian though. Because in reality, who jumps off a cliff to summon a rock spirit?

SowZ
2014-11-20, 10:07 PM
I'm really curious to what the summoning ritual was. The barbarian was kinda half justified in this high jinks because there was no indication that anything else would have worked to summon the mountain goddes after finding the summoning place was (I assume due to the contents of the post) completely bare and empty. The Dm should have at least left a tiny clue. Something like a rock with a few pictures on it that say "don't jump off the cliff". I'm not defending the barbarian though. Because in reality, who jumps off a cliff to summon a rock spirit?

The fact that the DM said, "Are you sure?" was enough for me to say yeah, he had it coming. I can't remember what we did, to be honest. This was seven years ago.

VincentTakeda
2014-11-20, 11:24 PM
It was probably bringing a rock up to the top of the peak... I see that kind of ritual respect for the mountain all the time. Every peak has a little pile of rocks at the top.

FearlessGnome
2014-11-21, 07:01 AM
One of my players just switched to playing a druid. Always in dinosaur form, and he wants a dinosaur companion. Yesterday he asked what the rules were for breeding dinosaurs.

Yael
2014-11-21, 07:07 AM
Just this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?355989-3-5-Aiming-for-the-head&highlight=Aiming+for+the+Head) guy. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?371116-About-PC-Killing&highlight=Aiming+for+the+Head)

Marlowe
2014-11-21, 07:23 AM
You might be amused to know that that second thread inspired one of my character backstories.

Bruc can generally be relied on to tell outrageous lies about how he lost his hand. The favourites being "Bit myself shaving", "Lost it at cards", and "Halfling made off with it."

The truth is more tiresomely melodramatic. At an early stage in his adventuring career, Bruc met and was defeated by the colossal jerk Malisuvial Ilbarius the Quick Razor of Legends; Drow Sorcadin and strong contender for the title of Worst Person In The Entire World. It was Malisuvial who disarmed and dehanded the young de Ironstaunche, left sneering and making racist jokes, and forced him to crawl to a healer to reevaluate his life and his muscle memory.

Needless to say, Bruc swore revenge. Swore, in fact, not to see about getting his hand regenerated until he had rid the world of the enormity that was Malisuviel Ilbarius the Yadda Yadda Yuk.

However, not too long into embarking on his quest, word came that Malisuviel Ilbarius the Small Bowl of Fruit had been defeated and rather comprehensively killed by a group composed of a number of his other former victims--specifically, a Psion whom he'd blinded, a Factotum whose tongue he'd cut out, and a Warlock whose legs he'd cut off.

Malisuviel Ilbarius the Quick Razor of Legends had a real genius for mutilating his enemies in ways that didn't do much to reduce their effectiveness.

This puts Bruc in an awkward situation, since now he cannot fulfill his vow. As a stockgap measure, he has elected to continue his quest until he has rid the world of a violation of decency and common sense at least equivalent to Malisuviel.

However, since Malisuviel Ilbarius the Quick Razor of Legends was the sort of person who'd push his own mother into a blender just to see if it was funny, finding such a person might take some time.

Fumble Jack
2014-11-21, 02:12 PM
I've had a player bring random blind dates to games, either turning up at the gaming table before the group did or stalling game so a group member would have to fetch the blind date over or would arrive with blind date in tow. It was disruptive. This happened 3 times. They are no longer in my games.

Sith_Happens
2014-11-21, 08:14 PM
One of my players just switched to playing a druid. Always in dinosaur form, and he wants a dinosaur companion. Yesterday he asked what the rules were for breeding dinosaurs.

Is he playing a male or female druid? Make his animal companion male either way, then report back here with the results.:smallwink:

Sholos
2014-11-22, 11:11 AM
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.

SowZ
2014-11-22, 02:13 PM
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.

By the rules, this sort of behavior should make her fall almost immediately.

Inevitability
2014-11-22, 03:30 PM
By the rules, this sort of behavior should make her fall almost immediately.

I don't see why (sadly). Attacking Evil beings may be Neutral, or Chaotic, but it surely isn't Evil. Otherwise, I'd say most adventuring parties are CN at best.

And distrust may be annoying, but distrusting someone isn't Evil either.

ghendrickson
2014-11-22, 03:35 PM
I've probably been the worst player in a friend's campaign. I made a dwarf barbarian that pissed on everything for a very small amount of acid damage. I think I made him do that because I was bored, but it was still very rude.

Prince Raven
2014-11-22, 09:22 PM
I don't see why (sadly). Attacking Evil beings may be Neutral, or Chaotic, but it surely isn't Evil. Otherwise, I'd say most adventuring parties are CN at best.

Attempted murder of a being who you have no evidence of doing anything deserving of death is definitely an evil act, regardless of their alignment. Most adventuring parties have some sort of justification for the things they kill, such as "they tried to kill us first".

Gnomes2169
2014-11-22, 09:51 PM
Attempted murder of a being who you have no evidence of doing anything deserving of death is definitely an evil act, regardless of their alignment. Most adventuring parties have some sort of justification for the things they kill, such as "they tried to kill us first".

Or even, "I really wanted his hat."

Milodiah
2014-11-22, 09:57 PM
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.

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?

SowZ
2014-11-22, 10:43 PM
I don't see why (sadly). Attacking Evil beings may be Neutral, or Chaotic, but it surely isn't Evil. Otherwise, I'd say most adventuring parties are CN at best.

And distrust may be annoying, but distrusting someone isn't Evil either.

The Book of Exalted deeds makes killing an Evil aligned character who hasn't done a crime worthy of death a very evil act. No less evil than just murdering a neutral character for being Chaotic. Not sharing your alignment is not a death sentence, even from a Paladin.

Marlowe
2014-11-22, 11:39 PM
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?

Our G, in an Epic-level campaign, managed to spend all his WBL on a castle in the middle of the desert and a diamond mine.

His staff wages bill per month wiped out any profits aforesaid mine generated.

Synar
2014-11-23, 05:51 AM
The Book of Exalted deeds makes killing an Evil aligned character who hasn't done a crime worthy of death a very evil act. No less evil than just murdering a neutral character for being Chaotic. Not sharing your alignment is not a death sentence, even from a Paladin.

I guess it depends of your interpretation of the alignement system and what you believes Evil means. Is the old greedy, embittered, mean and bickering woman personn Evil, or is she merly neutral? What does she needs to have done to be Evil? Humiliating someone? Creating rumors? Kicking in a milk buckedt? In a puppy? Trying to get someone banned from the place? And is it the intentions or the acts that really count?

SowZ
2014-11-23, 02:36 PM
I guess it depends of your interpretation of the alignement system and what you believes Evil means. Is the old greedy, embittered, mean and bickering woman personn Evil, or is she merly neutral? What does she needs to have done to be Evil? Humiliating someone? Creating rumors? Kicking in a milk buckedt? In a puppy? Trying to get someone banned from the place? And is it the intentions or the acts that really count?

By RAW, one's personal interpretation of alignment is irrelevant to whether an action is evil. There is literally no room for debate that the rules of 3.5 make this Paladin fall. The behavior being mentioned is specifically called out as Evil in the official 3.5 guidebook of Goodness. Being Evil is not a death sentence, and killing someone for their alignment is straight up murder. You can house-rule that away, of course. But any Paladin that is allowed to kill Evil beings on sight is following a heavily home-brewed alteration of the Paladin Code.

Prince Raven
2014-11-23, 09:55 PM
Well, there are gods that would support a character murdering everyone they can find of a given alignment, like Crotoan. :smallbiggrin:

Sartharina
2014-11-23, 11:05 PM
By RAW, one's personal interpretation of alignment is irrelevant to whether an action is evil. There is literally no room for debate that the rules of 3.5 make this Paladin fall. The behavior being mentioned is specifically called out as Evil in the official 3.5 guidebook of Goodness. Being Evil is not a death sentence, and killing someone for their alignment is straight up murder. You can house-rule that away, of course. But any Paladin that is allowed to kill Evil beings on sight is following a heavily home-brewed alteration of the Paladin Code.Actually - Killing Fiends is always a Good act, not Evil, and Everyone Else has to earn an Evil alignment by committing atrocities worth being removed from the world by swordpoint, at the Witness-Judge-Jury-Executioner's discretion.

The 3.5 rulebook says killing is NOT an Evil Act.

Alignment is not like Nationality or Skin Color. Alignment is a choice. People with an alignment are soldiers for their cosmic force. If you don't want to be killed by (Enemies of Nation X), don't sign up to join the army of (Nation X). If you don't want to join an army for a cosmic force, do not adopt an alignment.

Sith_Happens
2014-11-23, 11:39 PM
Actually - Killing Fiends is always a Good act, not Evil, and Everyone Else has to earn an Evil alignment by committing atrocities worth being removed from the world by swordpoint, at the Witness-Judge-Jury-Executioner's discretion.

Serial [insert very-mildly-Evil action here] does not a killing justify.

Prince Raven
2014-11-24, 12:25 AM
Actually - Killing Fiends is always a Good act, not Evil, and Everyone Else has to earn an Evil alignment by committing atrocities worth being removed from the world by swordpoint, at the Witness-Judge-Jury-Executioner's discretion.

Killing Evil given flesh is a bit different from killing anyone of a certain alignment, and there are plenty of ways to play an Evil character beyond mustache-twirling, puppy-kicking, genocidal super villain. In all the games I've played and runthere are plenty of characters with evil alignments that haven't done anything worthy of capital punishment.


The 3.5 rulebook says killing is NOT an Evil Act.

Not inherently, no. Unjustified and cold-blooded murder outside of combat on the other hand...


People with an alignment are soldiers for their cosmic force.

"Soldier" implies some sort of unity, I don't see a petty thief assisting a vicious and genocidial tyrant just because they share an Alignment.

TheJoker116
2014-11-24, 12:31 AM
I had my share of players with really bad habits but as for the worst player I ever met, well ... gather round, fellow players and let me tell you about Shteve. Yes, Shteve with an "H". Not his real name, of course but I still try to respect this poor excuse for a player's anonymity. We played D&D 3.5, by the way.

Now, Shteve is a player who watches an awful lot of anime. Like, a lot ... and if his character did not revolve around some angel/demon background that more often than not included some unusual ancestry, such as celestial blood, most of the time. Because we all know the base races suck and so does the Assimar. after all, who would play a race that DOES NOT have poison resistance/immunity, damage resistance and insane abilities bonus? Yes, this was the powergaming fool who wanted to be the great hero of a great story ... even though his cahracter was level 1.

So, Shteve, being the "awesome" player he was would go for the most ridiculous race/class combo he could think off, because we all know that you can't be an hardcore Bleach/Naruto/[insert anime with crazy powerful guys title here] fan and not try to be the ultimate warrior angel/ celestial Robocop.

Now, some of Shteve's habits would be:

- Playing his character like he'd play a god ... even though he's level 1 ("You can't speak for so long, you're fighting the ranger!" "Speaking's a free action!"
- Mysteriously knowing what's going on everywhere during combat ("Dude .. you're fighting the ranger inside his hideout ... you can't see what the others are doing outside!")
- Trying to be badass without thinking his **** through ("You're the only winged humanoid in the area, the guards will know you attacked the palace!" "I'll just cover myself with a blackcloack and chains to disguise myself!")
- Always asking his cousin, another player and eventually, DM, for the best builds ever, just so he can be the most badass mother****er in the group
- Being a friggin' loudmouth. Seriously, no matter how many times we asked him to lower the volume, it just never worked and I still need new eardrums.
- Being a jerk. I mean, he was annoying, yeah ... but the thing is, we had two noobs at the table, one being 12 years old, with enough patience and maturity to be there every friday and to warn us in advance if he couldn't. Being 12 and all and not having much experience with tabletop RPGs, he would sometimes forget rules and Shteve made sure to make the kid remember how annoying it is ("We keep telling him but it never gets through his goddamn skull!"). Did I mention Shteve has kids? Yes, fellow players, the guy has kids, which he lost custody of, by the way and doesn't even have the slightest amount of patience for a mature kid who's actively trying to enjoy a good game.


Now, let's not forget that poor ****ty player is playing a level 1 half-celestial ... and though the Player's Handbook specifies speaking is a free action, I think anyone would assume it's a free action if you don't say more than about 5 or 6 words ... but as the human rogue tried to tie up my halfling rogue because long story, Shteve's half-celestial actively tried to ask questions about why my character's being tied up ... while his head was turned toward me and the other rogue and while he was fighting a level 4 or 5 ranger with two-weapons fighting. and of course, when I pointed how ridiculous it was, he argued while yelling at me.

So yeah, there's my worst player Shteve. A dumb loudmouth who roleplayed with his cousin for years but could never learn to not be a spotlight-hogging anime-obsessed noob lacking any social skill. If you ever get a Shteve in your group, I offer you my sympathies (and a big purse full of D4's so you can whack him in the back of the head, Garfield-style).

Demonstration by Garfield and Jon:

http://asset-c.soup.io/asset/4018/3778_c4f6.gif

Gnoman
2014-11-24, 02:16 AM
Alignment is a choice. People with an alignment are soldiers for their cosmic force. If you don't want to be killed by (Enemies of Nation X), don't sign up to join the army of (Nation X). If you don't want to join an army for a cosmic force, do not adopt an alignment.

You must be thinking of some non-3.5 edition of D&D, or some other roleplaying system, because in D&D 3.5 there's no such thing as a person, animal, sentient cosmic force, magically sentient item, or any other thinking being without an alignment. If you scrimp and save excessively in order to have money available to support the poor, your alignment is Good. If your main entertainment is kicking nerds in the face and taking their lunch money, you're Evil. That doesn't mean homeless shelter volunteers have the right to execute schoolyard bullies on sight, and doing so would be a very Evil act.

Milodiah
2014-11-24, 02:21 AM
You must be thinking of some non-3.5 edition of D&D, or some other roleplaying system, because in D&D 3.5 there's no such thing as a person, animal, sentient cosmic force, magically sentient item, or any other thinking being without an alignment. If you scrimp and save excessively in order to have money available to support the poor, your alignment is Good. If your main entertainment is kicking nerds in the face and taking their lunch money, you're Evil. That doesn't mean homeless shelter volunteers have the right to execute schoolyard bullies on sight, and doing so would be a very Evil act.


Also I somehow think prison authorities would be rather irritated at a Paladin breaking in, subduing all the guards, and pulling a cell-by-cell coup de grace on all the sleeping prisoners just because they ping Evil...

Feverdream
2014-11-24, 02:51 AM
I would argue that the worst players I've ever had were all Werewolf: the Apocalypse players.

Before I get the flood of hate, let me continue.

I still have the email from her dated August 21, 2002. Whenever I feel like I'm doing a poor job as a GM or player in a game, I read that email and immediately feel that I could be playing with a far worse group. But it wasn't just her, it was all the Werewolf players in my hometown.

Here's a list of their behaviors. It's not comprehensive, but it is common behavior amongst all the players of that game:

They all had Breed, Auspice, and Tribe tattoos. No joke. They permanently etched tattoos of what they felt they would be in a game. This was during the time I called "the Fractional-American" era. It was the period when very young Americans felt they had to point out their lineage. For example, Her excuse for her anger was that she was "half-Cajun, one quarter-Scottish, one-quarter viking". It was the Viking part that made her feel the need for the Get of Fenris tattoo.
They'd loiter around game stores in hopes of any World of Darkness game would start up. They'd then ask to be invited, and regardless of the game, they'd immediately whip out the Werewolf core rulebook and make a character. Any protestations would get them slamming their pencils down and screaming (yes, screaming, no joke) how they were, and I quote, "expert role-players". Let that sink in.
They would complain about making a starting level character, too. As they were such "expert role-players", they felt that starting new was beneath them.
They would throw dice against a wall if something negative happened to their characters. Being wounded in battle was fine. But if they suffered the consequences of their actions, such as a governmental raid on their holdings in the woods, they'd go ballistic and shout out of character that that would never happen to them.
They held the game as something holy. They had the fervor of a religious fundamental apologist. Anything negative would be met with hostility. They wanted to take the Darkness out of World of Darkness when it came to Werewolf. They were righteous, they were above reproach, they deserved no criticism.
If they actually got into a Werewolf game, they would always try to change it to a war party. If a Caern was dedicated to a spirit of Cunning, they would demand the Caern be rededicated to Wolverine. All games had to have Wolverine in it. If you pointed out that the game was more of a social game (with some combat), they'd point out that Wolverine gave out Stamina, not just Rage, and that the stamina would make them more resistance if someone attacked them first! Ergo, not a war totem.
Should they be permitted to join a non-Werewolf World of Darkness game, they'd metagame the hell out of it, knowing everything about Vampire society, and try to say their character was of importance in said society, such as being the Keeper of Elysium for the local Camarilla group.


I would say that that was back in 2002. But I recently received a phone call where a new ST said she and her entourage has resurfaced, and their behavior has not changed.

Raine_Sage
2014-11-24, 03:21 AM
They held the game as something holy. They had the fervor of a religious fundamental apologist. Anything negative would be met with hostility. They wanted to take the Darkness out of World of Darkness when it came to Werewolf. They were righteous, they were above reproach, they deserved no criticism.

The group sounds thoroughly awful but I'm wondering what you mean by this point. Did they play the game in a light hearted and silly manner, did they try and make their werewolves holy crusaders, did they ignore rage mechanics? I'm honestly very curious about they wanted to do WoD without the D.

You have my condolences though. That sounds just awful

Arbane
2014-11-24, 03:41 AM
They held the game as something holy. They had the fervor of a religious fundamental apologist. Anything negative would be met with hostility. They wanted to take the Darkness out of World of Darkness when it came to Werewolf. They were righteous, they were above reproach, they deserved no criticism.


The above part sounds rather in-character for Werewolves, IIRC the backstory of WtA, didn't the ancient werewolves genocide some of the other were-critters for not being sufficiently fanatical?

In real life though, wow. Glad you got out of that group in one piece....

Feverdream
2014-11-24, 03:43 AM
The group sounds thoroughly awful but I'm wondering what you mean by this point. Did they play the game in a light hearted and silly manner, did they try and make their werewolves holy crusaders, did they ignore rage mechanics? I'm honestly very curious about they wanted to do WoD without the D.

You have my condolences though. That sounds just awful

This was OOC. If you mentioned anything negative (such as the neo-Nazi Get of Fenris), they would say the equivalent of "nuh-uh", cite non-canonical reasons, or just say "the rest of the tribe would kill them!". If they were pushed on the subject, they'd start listing all the negatives of Mage and Vampire.

Edited to add: It's one thing when we were angsty teens. It's another that a decade later, they're still acting that way. Since then, I've given W:tA a go. I like it. Or maybe because my players are all Finns. I've moved to Finland, far away from such bizarre players. See? Maybe I can play the bloodline game!

Sith_Happens
2014-11-24, 03:52 AM
I still have the email from her dated August 21, 2002. Whenever I feel like I'm doing a poor job as a GM or player in a game, I read that email and immediately feel that I could be playing with a far worse group.

You do realize we have to see this email now. Or at the very least hear more about "her" specifically.

Feverdream
2014-11-24, 03:59 AM
You do realize we have to see this email now. Or at the very least hear more about "her" specifically.

Here:


Wednesday, August 21, 2002 2:06 A

I did not make my character to be a kill VAMPIRES character. No one in our group did. Wolverine also grants stamina not just rage. Garou fight the Wyrm.... thats what they were created for, the Wyrm takes MANY forms not just vampires and well that assumption on anyones part be it player or ST is just bad. Are we also going to have to revert to buying Potence/Fortitude/ and Celerity like we did before the WW books came out since we have to buy lores for everything else when that would normally not be the case? Do I have to buy the "Thats my butt lore" just to know my ass from a hole in the ground. Cut the WW players some slack and quit giving into the paranoia of the kindred players. Most of whom have never seen me play garou, let alone anyone who came in with me. Like a theurge if going to kill a kindred with "mothers touch" oh my....oh please don't heal me..... (see the point)

I know of atleast 4 if not more people who are willing to drop there ww characters just because they are sick of the "rule of the week" crap. Hell I got a long distance phone call about it while I was in Pennsylvania. We needed to form a pack... for protection if nothing else... wanna know what our group is prime pickings for.... BSD's , if our characters are forced to "suck off " the kindred we will get so hammered on renown that we will never see rank 2 and will probably drop back to "cub" status. I'm an experianced garou player and if I wanted to walk around blind/deaf/ dumb and drooling I would have played a cub, I have had that experiance already. I can understand wanting the newbies to learn about things.... but cut a little slack to those of us who have a clue. If the others want to play know nothing cubs let them thats an option at character creation. As it sits right now the garou would not even know what they are because we don't have garou lore. Hell I have played a black fury ahroun who yes did kill kindred when she needed to but was also Sheriff along with being pack alpha... we can work with and around them when we need to without being reduced to drooling masses of blubber.


The game was a political vampire game. I told them ahead of time. The Caern was protected by Cuckoo, who has one of the most powerful blessings in the game: If you aren't drawing attention, no one will believe you don't belong there. Perfect for gathering information to bring the Kindred down.

Milodiah
2014-11-24, 04:17 AM
Edited to add: It's one thing when we were angsty teens. It's another that a decade later, they're still acting that way. Since then, I've given W:tA a go. I like it. Or maybe because my players are all Finns. I've moved to Finland, far away from such bizarre players. See? Maybe I can play the bloodline game!

...maybe once you get the tattoos you decide you'd just look silly trying to be a normal person with normal-people sanity?

Kesnit
2014-11-24, 06:48 AM
They all had Breed, Auspice, and Tribe tattoos. No joke. They permanently etched tattoos of what they felt they would be in a game.

Personally, I don't think this is too bad. Tattoos are supposed to be personally significant. From the sound of things, this group was really invested in WtA, so it makes sense that they would have WtA tattoos.


They'd loiter around game stores in hopes of any World of Darkness game would start up. They'd then ask to be invited, and regardless of the game, they'd immediately whip out the Werewolf core rulebook and make a character.

In nWoD, this would work since the games are designed to work with each other. In fact, I would find it amusing to include werewolves in the Requiem game I'm running.

However, this isn't nWoD. If they had that much experience with the system, they would know that cross-overs don't work!


They would complain about making a starting level character, too. As they were such "expert role-players", they felt that starting new was beneath them.

"OK, if you don't want to use just starting XP, you can make a character with more. You are a wolf-blooded. Enjoy."


They would throw dice against a wall if something negative happened to their characters. Being wounded in battle was fine. But if they suffered the consequences of their actions, such as a governmental raid on their holdings in the woods, they'd go ballistic and shout out of character that that would never happen to them.

"While you were having a fit, the government agents shot and killed your character. Maybe you should have fought back."


If they actually got into a Werewolf game, they would always try to change it to a war party.

So let them, but run the game you were going to anyway. So they are statted out for combat, but there's no combat. They knew that from the start. Let them sit around and do nothing while the players who paid attention to the theme of the game actually played.


Should they be permitted to join a non-Werewolf World of Darkness game, they'd metagame the hell out of it, knowing everything about Vampire society, and try to say their character was of importance in said society, such as being the Keeper of Elysium for the local Camarilla group.

"Camarilla? This is a Sabat city!"
"Uh, we're all Anarchs."
"There's already a Keeper of Elysium. And a Sheriff, Prince, Harpy, and every other position. You are, of course, welcome to stay, so long as you stay on the Prince's good side..."

Or let them try to metagame, but change the rules of the city. The Prince is a figurehead, with the real power in someone else. The Camarilla, Anarchs, and Sabat are in a three-way fight for the city, with no one really in control (though each claims they are). I'm sure there are a lot more options, but I'm more familiar with nWoD than oWoD.

Feverdream
2014-11-24, 07:52 AM
In nWoD, this would work since the games are designed to work with each other. In fact, I would find it amusing to include werewolves in the Requiem game I'm running.

I really like the emphasis on the "supernatural monster" part. I also like that they distilled everything into 5 "ideals", then had lodges to return to the more regional cultural way. No Get or Black Furies? Well, there's the Valkyria Mot!

And so on. nMage is the only one I pretend that doesn't exist. I can be just as stubborn when it comes to the Technocracy. I love me some Technocracy.


However, this isn't nWoD. If they had that much experience with the system, they would know that cross-overs don't work!

"OK, if you don't want to use just starting XP, you can make a character with more. You are a wolf-blooded. Enjoy."

"While you were having a fit, the government agents shot and killed your character. Maybe you should have fought back."

So let them, but run the game you were going to anyway. So they are statted out for combat, but there's no combat. They knew that from the start. Let them sit around and do nothing while the players who paid attention to the theme of the game actually played.

"Camarilla? This is a Sabat city!"
"Uh, we're all Anarchs."
"There's already a Keeper of Elysium. And a Sheriff, Prince, Harpy, and every other position. You are, of course, welcome to stay, so long as you stay on the Prince's good side..."

Or let them try to metagame, but change the rules of the city. The Prince is a figurehead, with the real power in someone else. The Camarilla, Anarchs, and Sabat are in a three-way fight for the city, with no one really in control (though each claims they are). I'm sure there are a lot more options, but I'm more familiar with nWoD than oWoD.

This would've been fantastic advice over 10 years ago when I was a fairly green ST. Nowadays, if we play oWoD, I've learned to say "No." or "Non." or "Nein." or "Ei." or "Nej." or "Hapana."

Sith_Happens
2014-11-24, 04:57 PM
Here:

So if I'm reading this right, and I'm not sure I am, she's pissed about not being able to turn the chronicle into "aw3s0m3 werewlf pack kills da vamps," and also wanted free power dots and/or more starting XP?

SowZ
2014-11-24, 06:44 PM
Actually - Killing Fiends is always a Good act, not Evil, and Everyone Else has to earn an Evil alignment by committing atrocities worth being removed from the world by swordpoint, at the Witness-Judge-Jury-Executioner's discretion.

The 3.5 rulebook says killing is NOT an Evil Act.

Alignment is not like Nationality or Skin Color. Alignment is a choice. People with an alignment are soldiers for their cosmic force. If you don't want to be killed by (Enemies of Nation X), don't sign up to join the army of (Nation X). If you don't want to join an army for a cosmic force, do not adopt an alignment.

Yes, inherently Evil beings is an exception. That doesn't change that the rules explicitly state that killing someone without a specific justified reason is murder, and by RAW someone's alignment is not a justified reason. Saying being Evil means someone has done something worthy of being murdered is something people made up. I behoove you to find that in the rules. Even if you found it, that doesn't change the fact that what you are advocating is murder according to the Book of Exalted Deeds. RAW is pretty clear that you can't just go around wiping out people of the Evil alignment and remain Good. Maybe you could make a case that such a character could be neutral, but beyond that this is pretty unambiguous.

Tengu_temp
2014-11-24, 07:50 PM
Actually - Killing Fiends is always a Good act, not Evil, and Everyone Else has to earn an Evil alignment by committing atrocities worth being removed from the world by swordpoint, at the Witness-Judge-Jury-Executioner's discretion.

The 3.5 rulebook says killing is NOT an Evil Act.


Killing someone just because they ping on your evildar is not enough justification. It's an official rule, and it makes sense - a professional thief who never does anything good and only cares about himself is most likely evil, but just stealing is not enough to warrant killing.

Being good or evil does not mean consciously siding with the universal cosmic forces of good or evil. It just means you're doing enough good/evil deeds in your life and not enough of the opposite that you no longer count as neutral.

Feverdream
2014-11-25, 12:58 AM
So if I'm reading this right, and I'm not sure I am, she's pissed about not being able to turn the chronicle into "aw3s0m3 werewlf pack kills da vamps," and also wanted free power dots and/or more starting XP?

No, no. I you have it fairly correct. She felt she had the power to rededicate a Caern's totem. I told her she and her pack don't have the Rites to do that. She wanted to immediately take a position in the local Camarilla's group, knowing all the clans and all the positions. I told her she was a Cliath and that even most Elder Garou do not know (or care to know) Vampire society. Hence the "I need 'that's my butt lore'?"

I suppose what irked me the most was that she basically told me that I was not running Werewolf how it's supposed to be run. At least, that's the impression I got after all these years.

Threatening to have her and four players leave the game, a game she asked to join, was, I think, very telling of her personality.

Edited to add: This was why it was over 15 years before I opened a Werewolf: the Apocalypse book. I knew about the tribes and the metaplot, but I never got into the nitty-gritty. I didn't give the game a chance because I hated the behavior of the players who told me how they played is the basis of the game's core.

VincentTakeda
2014-11-25, 02:30 AM
They're nihilists Donnie... I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.

Synar
2014-11-25, 03:38 PM
By RAW, one's personal interpretation of alignment is irrelevant to whether an action is evil. There is literally no room for debate that the rules of 3.5 make this Paladin fall. The behavior being mentioned is specifically called out as Evil in the official 3.5 guidebook of Goodness. Being Evil is not a death sentence, and killing someone for their alignment is straight up murder. You can house-rule that away, of course. But any Paladin that is allowed to kill Evil beings on sight is following a heavily home-brewed alteration of the Paladin Code.

Yeah, right the book that contained the ravages aka good posons that differs from their evil counterpart because they only ravage and make suffer evil guys. Because killing an evil person because of his evilness is bad, but toruring such a being for its evilness is good - and we all now poisons are badly considered because they risk to hit inconsiderately, and even if specifically killing an evil being is evil, indiscriminately killing them is good, right?
Right.

I think we can safely consider that BOED/BOVD are not the ultimate source regarding alignement, not even one that makes consensus in the community, and far from that.

However I would like to add that issues regarding alignement, its nature, interpretation and more specifically paladin's oath are actually one of the most subjective and polemical issue in D&D. So unless we are in a RAW thread (we're not), please stop waving that silly self-contradictory thing you call RAW, and please accept that issues regarding alignement are subject to interpretation.

Else we could spend hours trying to discuss RAW views on alignement and the alignement system* while ignoring that as it is (vague and incomplete) it still clearly doesn't make sense.

No rudness meant, though.

*Or goodness prevails, discuss wether a specific character or action is evil and wether paldins should use lifeboats (yes there has been such a discussion - multiple 50 pages threads long).

Synar
2014-11-25, 03:46 PM
You must be thinking of some non-3.5 edition of D&D, or some other roleplaying system, because in D&D 3.5 there's no such thing as a person, animal, sentient cosmic force, magically sentient item, or any other thinking being without an alignment. If you scrimp and save excessively in order to have money available to support the poor, your alignment is Good. If your main entertainment is kicking nerds in the face and taking their lunch money, you're Evil. That doesn't mean homeless shelter volunteers have the right to execute schoolyard bullies on sight, and doing so would be a very Evil act.

True, but there is such a thing as an interpretation that would consider all those people to be merely neutral.

Tengu_temp
2014-11-25, 04:07 PM
An alignment system where you need to be a saint among saints to be good, and a monster among monsters to be evil, is useless even by alignment system standards, because 99% of people will be neutral - even those you'd consider good or evil in real life.

But then, I suppose some people enjoy morally simplistic, black and white games where guiltless killing of anything that pings on your evildar is not just allowed, but even encouraged.

McBars
2014-11-25, 04:15 PM
But then, I suppose some people enjoy morally simplistic, black and white games where guiltless killing of anything that pings on your evildar is not just allowed, but even encouraged.

Yup.

Plenty of complicated grey morality for everyone out of game, don't need it getting in the way of my Orc genocide.... Step aside philosophy of alignment, you're getting in the way of my beer & pretzels.

Mr Beer
2014-11-25, 08:00 PM
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.

Mr Beer
2014-11-25, 08:01 PM
Threatening to have her and four players leave the game, a game she asked to join, was, I think, very telling of her personality.

I hope you accepted her generous offer to leave and take her "pack" with her? Sounds like a bargain to me.

Sartharina
2014-11-26, 12:57 AM
An alignment system where you need to be a saint among saints to be good, and a monster among monsters to be evil, is useless even by alignment system standards, because 99% of people will be neutral - even those you'd consider good or evil in real life.This isn't D&D 3.5's alignment. OD&D, AD&D, and D&D 4e all had Alignments merely be Commitments. You don't have to be a saint to be Good, but you do have to fight for Good as a Cause. Likewise, you don't have to be a monster to be Evil - you just have to fight for Evil.

The tyrannical overlord, psychotic berzerker, and selfish catburglar-assassin may not get along or even work directly with each other, but their actions and outlook all serve the same vile master (That master being Cosmic Evil).

Likewise, the Humble Ascetic Pacifist, strong-willed and firmly-moral zealot, and Minsc may not all get along and may even see/fight each other on moral principals, but their actions all support and progress the cause of Cosmic Good (The pacifist progresses Good by inspiring others to also reject vices and embrace virtues, the Zealot refuses to let people slip toward Evil and protects Good people ferverently, and Minsc's butt-kicking for Goodness with his Swords For Everybody dramatically reduces the servants of Evil, and gives a strong warning about what happens to those who reject Goodness)

SowZ
2014-11-26, 11:36 AM
Yeah, right the book that contained the ravages aka good posons that differs from their evil counterpart because they only ravage and make suffer evil guys. Because killing an evil person because of his evilness is bad, but toruring such a being for its evilness is good - and we all now poisons are badly considered because they risk to hit inconsiderately, and even if specifically killing an evil being is evil, indiscriminately killing them is good, right?
Right.

I think we can safely consider that BOED/BOVD are not the ultimate source regarding alignement, not even one that makes consensus in the community, and far from that.

However I would like to add that issues regarding alignement, its nature, interpretation and more specifically paladin's oath are actually one of the most subjective and polemical issue in D&D. So unless we are in a RAW thread (we're not), please stop waving that silly self-contradictory thing you call RAW, and please accept that issues regarding alignement are subject to interpretation.

Else we could spend hours trying to discuss RAW views on alignement and the alignement system* while ignoring that as it is (vague and incomplete) it still clearly doesn't make sense.

No rudness meant, though.

*Or goodness prevails, discuss wether a specific character or action is evil and wether paldins should use lifeboats (yes there has been such a discussion - multiple 50 pages threads long).

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.