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DontEatRawHagis
2014-09-28, 10:59 PM
So one of my players is causing a negative play experience within the party. Most notably in that she is being passive aggressive in order to force the party to agree with her.

In the most recent case she ran her character towards a dragon pair when the rest of the party agreed they wouldn't go there. Knowing full well the rest of the party wouldn't let her run off alone.

From my perspective this is the equivellent of saying if you don't do as I say I will kill my character.

At this point in the game the PC has done nothing to aid the party at all and honestly the party has done more than enough to, in my eyes, show friendship to this character.

How do I explain to her this situation? I am planning on telling her she is causing a negative play experience and that if she keeps it up I will ask her to leave. But how do I explain to her why this is a negative play experience.

Curbstomp
2014-09-28, 11:39 PM
Let. Her. Die.

She leads the way against the other party members' will into a dragon cave: hit her with a trap, level-draining breath weapon (shadow), or a save or die breath weapon (pyroclastic). Sure she might not lose her PC the 1st time, but it will happen eventually. Or if you are very fortunate she might actually learn that railroading the other characters is not without its dangers.

In this way you address in-game behavior with in-game consequences. If she leads the way into danger despite the efforts of the rest of the party to avoid it then she should suffer the consequences.

Mastikator
2014-09-29, 12:54 AM
"You are being passive aggressive in order to force the party to agree with you and it's causing a negative experience within the party. If you won't stop being selfish then we'll have to ask you to leave."

MrNobody
2014-09-29, 06:27 AM
Is she an experienced player or is she new to the game?
In both cases you should talk to her, explaining that her behaviour is ruining everyone's fun, but if she's a newbie be sure to be gentle. Everyone had its "firsts" and made its mistakes: as a DM and (i suppose) more experienced player you have the task to make her "grow".

In both case, explain her that there is a line between playing the selfish lone wolf and constantly forcing the party (and the DM) to follow her idea of the game, and that she has crossed it! There is nothing wrong about going solo from time to time, seeking some personal quests and so on, but D&D is a game and every player (also the DM) must have fun.
Also, D&D is a cooperative game, so she is expected to help the party: some PvP may be fun, make the game spicy, but there's a limit!
Her behaviour is hindering this fun, because she is basically forcing the others to do thing they don't want to do, and this is not good. Ask her politely to mitigate her playstyle, ask her why she is acting like that AND be ready to change a little your DMing style according to her answer: like i said, everyone have the right to have fun, so if she accept to change for the party to have fun, be sure you can also change to make her continue to have fun.*

If she refuses to listen and continues in her negative playstyle, advise her that you'll put some extra effort to keep her on the way (do your worst): if the party is sailing the sea and she decided that she kills the helmsman becuse she wants to stop the boat, take a bath and search for treasure underwater (without motivation) be sure to have ready two dozens of half-dragons half farspawn half-whatever-you-like-most Great White sharks to bring her back to the ship.
If she is ok with that, really do your worst and tell the rest of the party to ignore her not justified digressions: you'll take care of that.

At this point, there are 3 possible scenarios:
-She understand that she can no longer continue with her behaviour, lessen her blackmailing, become helpful to the team.
-She take the thing as a personal challenge, and worsen her behaviour to challenge you back: this leaves you the only option to ask her to leave.
-She becomes upset (expecially if her Pc is killed in on of her solos), tells you that you are not even able to play, leaves the game.

If you do't want to go through all of this, ask her to leave as soon as she refuses to soften her playstyle.


*I really hope that all stops here... if not, continue reading.

Jornophelanthas
2014-09-29, 08:19 AM
First, talk to the player.
Ask her if she is having fun with the game that you prepare. It could be that she is somehow bored, and tries to do wacky things in order to entertain herself (and dragging everyone else along with her). If this is the case, ask her how you can make the game more interesting for her, and try to reach an agreement that if you offer her a bit more of the things she likes in the game, that she will stop sabotaging the things the other players want to do. (If this agreement is made, make sure to inform the other players as well!)
If you cannot reach an agreement, explain that she should not expect to have her way every time (when the other players disagree with what she wants), and that it is a game of "give and take". If needed, warn her that if she is not willing to compromise, the other players might decide not to help her when she forces their hand, and that you (as DM) will do nothing to prevent such a thing - after all, you cannot control the actions of the player characters.

Second, talk to the other players.
Ask them whether they indeed perceive this player's behaviour as a problem. If not, then it will be a short conversation.
However, if they do have a problem, you could advise them to talk to the player in question. Offer to mediate if one of the two camps wants you to. Ideally, the players need to sort this out amongst themselves, out of character.

---

(As an aside, if I were a player in this group, I would have considered going after the player who went for the dragons and warn her to come back, and make it very, very clear that I don't want to fight those dragons and will not help her if she starts the fight. If she starts the fight anyway, and if enough of the other players would agree with me, I would shout: "Oh no, they're too strong! Run!" and start to run away. It's then up to her to flee with the rest of the party, or fight two dragons by herself.

ElenionAncalima
2014-09-29, 09:03 AM
Definitley agree that should should talk to her.

Perhaps you should also talk to your other players too. First, you should make sure that they are bothered by her behavior. You have probably already done this, but I figured I would mention it just in case. Second, I would let them know that are allowed put their foot down and not do what she wants. As you said, she ran off because she knew they would follow her. If they won't follow her, she may not run off.

Rondodu
2014-09-29, 10:08 AM
So one of my players is causing a negative play experience within the party. Most notably in that she is being passive aggressive in order to force the party to agree with her.

In the most recent case she ran her character towards a dragon pair when the rest of the party agreed they wouldn't go there. Knowing full well the rest of the party wouldn't let her run off alone.

From my perspective this is the equivellent of saying if you don't do as I say I will kill my character.

At this point in the game the PC has done nothing to aid the party at all and honestly the party has done more than enough to, in my eyes, show friendship to this character.

How do I explain to her this situation? I am planning on telling her she is causing a negative play experience and that if she keeps it up I will ask her to leave. But how do I explain to her why this is a negative play experience.I’m quite confused. Is she or is her character the issue? Because if her character decides to go head on against the will of the party (by which I mean the group of PCs) and the party decides to let her have her way, I say it’s an in-game issue that has to be resolved between characters. Typically, I believe a reasonable character would throw a fit and say something along the line of “next time you do that, don’t count on me to come and save your skin”. Or other anatomical references.

This case would not be an issue. I would however ensure that every player, her included, is clear on the in-character dimension of the issue.

If, however, the issue is not exclusively in character, indeed a discussion is in order. No need to add on other posters recommendations.

LibraryOgre
2014-09-29, 10:40 AM
Once upon a time, we had a party, and a character... a bard called Maxwell D. Mented... died. Max was a perennial pain in everyone's ass, and all the characters hated him (we loved the player, incidentally; he's one of by best friends to this day, though I don't get to see him as often as I'd like).

Now, the party was getting together, trying to figure out how to resurrect* Max, and, finally, my mage/thief cut in with "...why are we trying to bring him back? We don't like him. We've never liked him. He gets us into trouble. Why are we spending a ton of money to bring someone back we hate?"

And so Max wasn't resurrected.

Now, this sounds like a player problem, not a character problem, so the story of Max might not be useful, but...

A "negative play experience" is when one player is having fun at the expense of everyone else's fun. It could be a player who has a ton of power so the rest of the party is superfluous. It could be someone who always cracks inappropriate jokes and ruins the mood, or someone who delays the game because they've got something else they're doing. It can even be a DM who is having a power trip, and decides that railroading or unbeatable bad guys is fun for him, so that's what he's going to do. Or, it could be someone who insists on having their own way all the time.

D&D is a cooperative game. Sometimes there's elements of competition (and there usually is at least some of that between players and DM), but part of it is cooperating to be sure that everyone is having fun. Some sessions become all about one player. Hopefully, another session will become all about another player. But there should be a balance, and everyone should be able to engage with the game in a meaningful way, not just the one person who insists that the game revolve around them.

It's hard to say how to combat this. Some folks will fall in line when you point it out... they didn't realize they were being a jerk. Others will have to be confronted again and again, or simply, slowly, excluded until they decide to play nice with others. It really comes down to the person you're dealing with, though.

*Fun fact: Despite playing D&D for a quarter of a century, I can almost never spell "resurrect" right on the first time.

thomaslieb
2014-10-01, 07:44 AM
a passion must be there while playing.. but an agressive and harsh behaviour creates negative effect..
pocker (http://www.ohiodocsformidwives.org/)

DontEatRawHagis
2014-10-02, 11:45 AM
The players definitely are finding it frustrating. I talked with them after the player Rage Quitted. Asked if everything was alright and they complained that the player was being selfish and petty.

Talking with the player she felt the other players were bullying her.

Now we have the session tonight to talk this out, but one of the players can't make it(not the problem one). As a result the other players want to hold off on the "therapy session" till everyone is there.

The problem player and I agree we should still have the talk. I think if they ignore what happened last week it'll just hurt them tonight especially if the problem player decides to take petty revenge.

I'm going to ask her f she wants to talk away from everyone first.

Vitruviansquid
2014-10-02, 12:59 PM
It all depends on how well you know the player, what her personality out-of-game is like, what kind of dynamic your group has, and such...

Sometimes talking to her about it, as other people have said, is the correct option. Other times, you'd want to just kill her dude and laugh about it. There are still other times when you should just suggest she find something else to do on Saturday nights, because if she's not causing trouble for your group in this way, she'll cause trouble in another way. There are still other times when you should shut your mouth and not do anything at all because everybody else at the table "gets it" but you.

DontEatRawHagis
2014-10-03, 07:43 AM
Well I talked with her.

She brought up the following issues:
1. Too Many Players
2. Different people than she expected.
3. Different play styles.
4. She has a character objective/mission that is based on social interactions between her and the PCs.

I brought up leaving to her but she feels she can talk it out with the others.

I brought up that her mission to cure her character of her multi personality disorder is going to be really difficult. Especially since her character is an antagonist 20% of the time. She dialed the character's persona down because she realized that a sociopath that kills anyone who annoys her is not going to do well.

I also brought up the passive aggressive decision making. Apparently she doesn't like how it takes so long for everyone to make decisions. I told her she can't make the executive decision for everyone. This is a team game. Hopefully that helps.

The session that night was mostly puzzle and encounter dependent. So there weren't many major decisions for me to gauge her disposition.

All and all good outcome.

Curbstomp
2014-10-03, 11:59 PM
I played an idiotic orc with limited patience once. He did not generate ideas of his own. Instead, he would wait for 5 minutes of (in real life) of the other PC's talking about a problem or plan. Then act at the 5 minute mark on the last idea suggested. Once the other players figured out what I was doing with the character they found it hilarious. It also speeded up game play in that particular campaign.

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-10-04, 12:07 AM
Wait, the character has a multiple personality disorder?

...oh dear.

Sorry, it's just that--most of the time, that's the sort of thing which works out terribly in practice. IRL, it's something that can be a serious impairment to normal life. Now consider it in the context of adventurers, who have to deal with life-or-death situations. More often than not, it's disruptive at best and dangerous at worst.

DontEatRawHagis
2014-10-08, 08:43 AM
Wait, the character has a multiple personality disorder?

...oh dear.

Sorry, it's just that--most of the time, that's the sort of thing which works out terribly in practice. IRL, it's something that can be a serious impairment to normal life. Now consider it in the context of adventurers, who have to deal with life-or-death situations. More often than not, it's disruptive at best and dangerous at worst.

Spoiler for my campaign:

Originally the players were going to be given the choice between killing their previous characters or activating towers to complete the main quest.

They have since chosen killing their previous characters. But if they had done the Towers they would have had to make sacrifices. The tower of Self Sacrifice would remove all personalities from the person who activated it. And I would make sure her character activated it first.

Sadly not going to happen.