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View Full Version : Player Help I am pretty pissed off right now, help me to handle it



Spore
2014-10-09, 03:58 AM
Greetings playground,

We play Pathfinder with several parties with shifting players under different DMs. Lately I have grown to hate some of my fellow players for shutting down any and all of my ideas, playing their characters with a non-partyfriendly attitude and increased character drama. So while none of these things is an offense in my eyes, I am quite displeased to say the least. Let me explain the ingame situations.

1) My Oni Spawn (Asianesque) Alchemist is in a party with a Paladin, a Ranger (who he lived with for nearly 6 years) and a newly joined Oracle of Flames. The party also has a fallen Angel (Erinyes for the stat block) financing our endeavors and aiding us in battle no strings attached (no souls traded, nothing). If we continue our quest to foil the plans of the noble house who tortured her into becoming a devil. The Paladin has her concerns and problems about it.

Now my PC has told the NPC that he has a daughter in a coastal village that is being looked for by what is essentially the Yakuza before he mentioned it to the party. He told the devil where she was and asked her to keep her safe. So she did. The Paladin condemned my actions for being careless. The Ranger is pissed off because he didn't get informed beforehand and questions his friendship to my Alchemist. The Oracle is generally left out (because the player changed her character recently so idk how I could roleplay with her).

Now the daughter has been kidnapped by her grandfather and I needed the aid of the group to help me get her back. While this is a generally good RP story I HATE the kind of soap opera drama involved in it. I just dislike this as a player but telling my party to stop the cheap drama is likely frowned upon because that is what they define under "social roleplaying". This is partly my own fault but I play Pathfinder to go on adventures and have related social roleplay. Not to have a fully blown soap opera with the PCs as main actors.

And a similar situation is brewing in my other group.

2) The party consists of an evil priestess, a rogue, a witch, a fighter and me, an oracle of bones (not necromancing). We try to stop the literal apocalypse (freeing the riders from their prisons onto the material plane) but bickering distrust and useless drama has foiled our endeavors from turn 1. Now these are older characters and all players insist on playing their characters like they want.

The 11th level fighter distrusts arcane magic, distrusts the rogue and even distrusts his newly enchanted intelligent weapon. He would like to duel with the insanely powerful NPCs with artifact weapons which is noble but a suicide in and of itself.

The rogue is part of a secret cult (actually fighting evil) and has no permission to tell anyone about them. So he basically sneaks out comes back and never tells us what happened. He also worked for BBEG not two years ago so I figure distrust in his actions is a given.

The witch and the evil priestess are what keep me playing. My PC distrusts the cleric heavily but not upon her actions but her beliefs. This is not enough for me to stop doomsday though.

As you can imagine the fighter in particular and the rogue in special situations tend to provoke the most annoying situations. I just find it odd that a 11th level fighter jumps every time something happens. He is reasonably smart and wise (Int 12, Wis 10, Cha ?) but has a tribal background.

So please tell: Where is the problem? Is it really me? Is it my conception of what is roleplaying? Am I wrong that I want to have a fun experience rather than grinding drama? And why do I get turned down every time my character has an idea? Why does the 2) party feel like it's two males trying to establish dominance like a pack of wolves rather than sensible roleplaying? Why does the 1) party feel like a cheap Spanish soap opera (or is my chauvinistic mind just pointing towards that because the two female players start with the drama)?

Lathund
2014-10-09, 04:37 AM
I'm afraid I don't have too much of an answer for you, but it does seem that you seem to be looking for somewhat other things than some of your party members. D&D consists of various elements of course: hack 'n slash, role-playing, overcoming non-combat obstacles, finding clues etc.. Different people enjoy different aspects.

You say you're mostly in it for the adventures. That means you'll enjoy different aspects of the game than someone who's a heavy role-player, for instance. If there's too much of a mismatch between what people enjoy, it can cause friction within the party. One thing you could do is invite the whole party to talk about everyone enjoys, then see if you can find a way to give everyone something they enjoy. The DM should play a balancing factor in this.

But the biggest common denominator seems to be that both parties have internal business going on. This distracts from what you like, obviously: less time for adventures. And if that goes on too long, it can get frustrating. So I think that if you get into a conversation, you should at least put this on the table. Not so much 'we should RP less', but mostly 'I really crave adventures'.

Is that of any help?

Vitruviansquid
2014-10-09, 04:58 AM
My ironbound rule as a DM is that nobody at the table tells other players how to roleplay. Outside of situations where you are kind of creeping us out IRL, like if you're giving overwhelming vibes of hitting on another player who doesn't want your advances or you're going into wayyyyy taboo subject matter, you don't have a right to tell another player he or she is playing too gritty, playing too gung-ho, playing too soap opera, not playing soap opera enough, playing too much rollplay, playing too much roleplay, and so on. The way I see it, these are simply pointless arguments that don't get anyone anywhere and only creates hurt feelings. After all, people roleplay the way they want... because that's how they want to roleplay. So, while I can see where you're coming from when you say you don't like the way the rest of your group is roleplaying, I don't really feel like you should bring it up, or try to get them to change. The first thing I would do is try to *get into it* with them. Play along and try to find the appeal, maybe it'll grow on you.

That said, if you really can't stand the way these people roleplay, it'd make sense to leave the group. It'd also make sense to give yourself a break, and maybe ask the DM to put the game on hold for a one-shot of a different tone and system that perhaps you would run. I would generally recommend you switch systems if you want to get players to change up the way they approach the game.

Also, sometimes you just find yourself at a table with some folks you find obnoxious. The worst game of anything in my life was when I found myself at a table with a nitpicker (I swear to god, he said, "but GM, these raptors shouldn't attack us because they're too small to consider us prey"), a person whose idea of wit and sarcasm was to say that something obvious would be very bad ("lighting a torch while carrying oil would cause a fireball, and while you're holding the fireball, that would be very very bad"), and a yeller. I don't want to sound elitist or like a bully, but sitting at the table with these people made me realize I wouldn't just not want to play RPG's with them, I really wouldn't want to be around them for even a couple minutes at a time in any situation... so if that's how you feel about the dudes/chicks at your table, I'd suggest you just leave and try to find another group. There's nothing in the world that will make you like gaming with them, even if they changed the way they RP.

Spore
2014-10-09, 05:45 AM
My ironbound rule as a DM is that nobody at the table tells other players how to roleplay.

That's actually good advice. I should maybe pause for a bit.

It's not that I do not enjoy the company of my fellow players. But I'm quite infuriated by minor disruptions, so my reaction would be disruptive. I become very cynical and sarcastic when I am not in a good mood. Maybe I should cut down on my participation a tad bit. If the next sessions will further displease me I will talk to the DM and if he sees no problem I will pause for the story arc.

Now I need further advise: I have played with them since a long period of time and I enjoy particular parties (with the same players just different characters) and dislike others. How can I make sure the DM and the players don't feel insulted by my absence? Is a white lie acceptable here? Or should I be upfront about it?

Stuebi
2014-10-09, 06:09 AM
If you really want to drop out of the bad parts, be upfront about it. I'm pretty sure nobody feels insulted if you plain tell them that the way the group interacts isn't your thing.

On the other hand, when confronted with similiar situations, I tend to just walk ahead with my Character, and do something productive. This usually helps to cut the "soap opera" by quite a bit, once the rest notices how their constant drama annoys other party members. Or it doesnt, but then I just leave the two or three Drama queens behind for a while and either forge onward with one that's also not into drama, or alone. You can't tell people how to roleplay, but nobody expects you or your character to put up with it either.

oxybe
2014-10-12, 11:20 AM
I stopped playing with my group of 7+ years for a while because the campaign wasn't going in a direction I was caring for and I was getting frustrated with their system of choice.

So I told them, very clearly "I love playing with you guys, but this campaign just isn't vibing with me. If you guys start up something different between arcs while the GM preps stuff, and you want me in, give me a shout."

Since they played at the FLGS, I still dropped by before the session began and hung out, played cards/nintendo 3DS/whatnot, I just left when they started.

I ended up rejoining up with the same campaign again 7 months later as it had taken a different turn in the meanwhile (though I will admit, them inviting me for a cake and pizza between-session party was sneaky, pushing my old PC in front of me...) and i've been enjoying it more.

veti
2014-10-12, 04:33 PM
It seems to me that both of these situations have characteristics that are ... odd, and could do with some elaboration.

1) Your PC told a devil about their daughter? And now said daughter has been kidnapped... by her grandfather?

First, I agree with your fellow PCs that your choice of confidant is bizarre. And "kidnapped by her grandfather" is not even remotely the same thing as "kidnapped by gangsters, insane cultists or a mass murderer". Of course all kinds of circumstances may affect this, but the baseline assumption in this story would be that this is a family dispute, a situation for relationship counsellors and maybe, if things get really nasty, lawyers. Not paladins.

2)

The rogue is part of a secret cult (actually fighting evil) and has no permission to tell anyone about them. So he basically sneaks out comes back and never tells us what happened.

Then how come you know about it?


So please tell: Where is the problem? Is it really me? Is it my conception of what is roleplaying? Am I wrong that I want to have a fun experience rather than grinding drama? And why do I get turned down every time my character has an idea? Why does the 2) party feel like it's two males trying to establish dominance like a pack of wolves rather than sensible roleplaying? Why does the 1) party feel like a cheap Spanish soap opera (or is my chauvinistic mind just pointing towards that because the two female players start with the drama)?

As to "why you get turned down every time you have an idea", I can think of two possibilities. One, your ideas are not in line with what your teammates are actually trying to achieve right now. (Bear in mind that "what they're really trying to achieve" may not be exactly what they say it is. There will be 'constraints', both acknowledged and subconscious, that will make them rule out a whole lot of what-might-otherwise-be possibilities.) Two, it may be your presentation. Persuading people is an art, there's lots of advice (good and bad) online on how to set about it. As a bonus, it's a very valuable real-life skill. If you're young, it's arguably the most useful thing you could be studying and practising.

The 2) party - well, conflict over dominance is always inherent, to some extent, in evil parties, because each participant has their own selfish objective that they want to promote, and the party can (usually) only focus on one thing at a time. If that's the climate where your suggestions are being shot down, then your persuasion could take the form "we can promote your agenda at the same time, look, it's on the way". The 1) party, to be honest, sounds like a cheap Spanish soap opera to me. However, I don't think taking a hiatus from it would be a good idea: sounds to me as if that group is rapidly approaching a critical point that is likely to change everything you know about it. (What cheap soap opera isn't?)