Gwazi Magnum
2015-08-22, 02:39 PM
**Disclaimer: I'll note in advance this would probably belong in the General Roleplay Section. However, this relates to a Player I had came to the 3.5 community with help for before known as "Player D". So I figured I should ask for help in the area where people are most likely to remember the history, as I remember the 'Player D' incident was a rather popular topic on this forum for a while... To the point it actually got me invited into a Roll20 Group for a time.**
Now a brief run-down of the past for those who don't know or do know but want a refresher.
Player D was a player in a 3.5 Campaign that I was a fellow Player in.
He had joined the Group at the start of a new campaign, when we already had a semi-completed one under our belt.
And from the start there were minor concerns with him among others, mainly his lack of ability to Roleplay.
No real problem though, everyone struggles here. We'll just work with him to improve over time.
Except it didn't simply remain there. Rather quickly his difficulty in roleplaying turned into an aggressive eagerness to become the center of attention.
This ranged from activities such as:
Outright taking plot items from others because he wanted something to do.
Shoe Horning himself into RP situations his character wasn't present for.
In some cases getting Violent when he was struggiling, may it be RP or Combat.
Throwing Tantrums (literally) when a battle or roleplay became difficult or challenging.
Outright crying for 3 hours straight when a character of his died. Even when told in advance by the DM he'd be revived after the fight.
Passive-Aggressively comparing us to table top groups at a Game Store. With stuff such as how his other groups were so much better at roleplaying.
Now it should be noted that Player D has Aspergers Autism.
But at the time so do I and another player in the group during all of this (I'll bring him up again briefly later, so I'll call him Player L).
Now though that other Player has left (largely out of not wanting to deal with Player D, but also out of a dislike for the mechanics we tend to use and household hostilities, I'll get to that later).
So for about the following year we were working on ways to get through this and help him past this while keeping the rest of the group happy (and it was around this time I was coming here for help).
This resulted in a lot of discussions among the rest of group as to what to do, including frequent contemplation on removing him entirely. However, we ended up taking a different approach in the end. Now our D&D room was located in the basement, in a room directly besides my Mom's bedroom simply due to how the rooms are laid out. As a result she could overhear a lot of this, and because she outright adores Player D she ended up stepping in constantly, calming him down and then essentially inserting (Not asked to clarify, she forces herself in) herself as a median between the group, Player D and his Mom to try to find a compromise and as a way for Player D and his own Mom to work on his difficulties at home the week before the following session (and note everyone in this group other than Player D are either college students, working or in an apprenticeship. Player D is just finishing high school via home school).
This ended up as a long and stressful period. One where many of our players and you guys who responded alike vouched for outright removing him from the group end of story.
However, we managed to reach the Campaign end with Player D and has a satisfying ending. And Player D has actually managed to get better at the issues he was having (The Violent one vanishing entirely).
Afterwards we switched a GURPS style Space RP, where I took a group world generation system and tweaked it to be for Sci-Fi. I then used it with the whole group so everyone including Player D had some involvement in world creation, and it was set up to a Group DM system where everyone would get a turn in the DM chair.
Player D instantly tried to make humanity as a highly espionage like people, with the objective of them taking over the Galaxy by assassinating all other important figures and then impersonating them. And when asked as to how he would say "By being stealthy", and when asked for specifics he simply stated by being stealthy one again. And when anyone did a thing to make their civilizations more secure (skilled in security, bigger armies etc.) he threw some mini-tantrums claiming we were meta-gaming. And then in-game continued to do so when humanity reached any sort of difficulty.
This RP ended rather early (like 2-3 sessions in early) simply because our group wasn't clicking with the mechanics.
But we then learned Player D had in fact been planning (behind everyone's backs, despite it being a Group DM game) to go canon breaking.
To have this humans open a portal connecting to other worlds, summoning creatures such as Reapers from Mass Effect and TF2 FemScout (for some reason) to invade the Galaxy and destroy everything not human.
*And to address Player L and "Household Hostilities".
Player L is in most intents a troll player. He has no qualms with playing characters who will stab the party in the back.
But he does it in a way that works with the campaign, for a roleplayed reason and not simply for the sake of hurting people.
Regardless though, this tendency of his has pissed off Player D a lot. To the point my Mom practically hate's his guts for it.
And then once learning me and Player L were more acquaintances then friends (this was after Player L stepped out of his own will) declared she then wouldn't tolerate him in the house any more.
Now, this seems like an easy thing for me to negotiate away should Player L ever show a desire in rejoining.
But still the contempt for him from my Mom is there, and comtempt that is strictly there because of how Player D responds to him.
And that's basically where I left off with you guys on Player D.
Now, after that Campaign Player D had removed himself and retreated to tabletop RPG's at a Game Store mentioned above.
Now to note, tales from this Group include incidents such as Call of Cthulhu where the only player death was via a random Bear. Where Player D had actually strapped a bomb to his chest and detonated it... only to live because he 'rolled well'.
And without Player D our group continued to dabble in smaller campaigns over the following year and a half, but still kept contact with Player D out of game via Skype.
It was around this time we were looking at doing another Table Top, another D&D 3.5
We tried it, and it ended quickly because Player D was playing a Vampire and ended up getting into a squabble with the Party Druid.
And by squabble I mean his undead status was discovered, the players 'started' combat with one another and then Player D had a meltdown and stormed out...
Without combat taking place. And when I sat down and ran the numbers with their characters... Player D had zero chance of dying, he was guaranteed to win assuming he stepped into shade, which he easily could with a single move action.
Regardless a week or so was spent talking that out, and in that time our DM fessed up to not actually enjoying DM'ing that much and wanting to become a player...
Thus leading to the new game where a new issue as arised.
This time with me as the DM with the Star Wars D6 system.
But not just that system, I was taking it and refining/homebrewing the hell out if it in an attempt to make it more expansive.
Note, because of this I made the players aware and agree in advance that for all purposes this was a "Alpha Test System" and that it could be changed at any moment as a result to help with balance, mechanics, flow etc. Which it has been several times since we started playing.
Player D showed interest, and since over the time we last played with him he had actually been able to calm down a lot with the issues above whenever table top discussion did arise we decided to let him in and give it a shot.
And for the majority of this Campaign things went smooth sailing, everyone had a blast there outside of one incident of a Player (who wasn't Player D) trying to cheese the game with Explosives Galore things have been swell... Until 2 weeks ago.
Now it should also be clarified that when I had the group agree to this being an Alpha system, I also had them agree to that this Campaign would be more realistic in nature.
More specifically, if the players put themselves in a stupid/dangerous situation, it would be completely on them to get out of it, and there would be no DM intervention to save the day.
Exception being if the situation wasn't the players fault, but my own fault for mis-balancing an encounter (which being an Alpha System has happened several times now), in those cases I would step in and give them some breathing and wiggle room.
But 2 weeks ago the group did something rather reckless.
Specifically the group decided to go Nal Hutta.
For those who don't know Star Wars this is one of the planets the Hutts control, it is full of Hutt gangs, Bounty Hunters etc.
The groups Explosive Expert while there bartered with a sleezy merchant, getting a rather good deal and as part of the exchanged moulded one of his Thermal Detonators.
This Merchant wasn't pleased about the 'Good deal' because it meant less cash for himself, and a few hours later sent four battle droids (we're talking episode 1 quality, outright pathetic ones) after them. The group handled them with ease, and the Explosives expert now annoyed with the merchant set off the detonator from a distance (moulding it he snuck in a way to control it remotely). But he did so, without knowing where the hell the Detonator was.
It should be noted, Immediately after this it dawned on them the Detonator could have been placed on their ship, which there were currently on board. It wasn't, but they rolled the damage any ways just to see what would happen... It would have been a total party wipe. Instead it had been left in a lockbox in the Bounty Hunters Guild... blowing a sizable hole in the building, killing several bounty hunters.
As a result the group now has the bounty on them, but not directly.
The Guild is still investigating the explosion, trying to learn who to link it to. So although there is a bounty now, it's more of a "Find out who did this" job instead of a "Catch this Individual" job.
And because of this the group were actually assigned their own bounty, their employer saying it might be a good pay day... unaware that they *are* the bounty.
Because of this the group is now in a very tight/dangerous situation, with an entire planets worth of Bounty Hunters trying to find out who they are, and then aim to kill them.
But the group has been given an opening to manipulate this situation in their favour.
However, Player D is not happy.
He see's this as me unfairly getting his character killed "Because of something stupid the Demo Player did".
To the Point hew as borderline crying two weeks ago, and last week we didn't even start the session because Player D had an outright Tantrum and meltdown storming off, because he knew this challenging situation was approaching and because one of our players who normally plays on Skype was able to show in person for a bit. So got distracted socializing for a bit, and he was getting eager to step right into the campaign rather than socialize a bit first.
So now, it's this week the players will end up dealing with this situation.
And Player D over the following week on Skype has down zero signs of calming down about the challenge the group is up against, so concerns about it going badly are high.
So any advice on this regard would be most appreciated, because from what I can see I can't avoid this without either making Player D freak out completely or dismissing any sort of challenge or realism in the campaign for the rest of the party.
--------------------------
Now that is only one of two issues with Player D at the moment though.
The other is him trying to DM a group with us.
To Clarify, he's already tried this about a month ago (we took a break from my campaign for half a day to do so).
He used the Edge of the Empire module, and at the start our characters had to reject a quest sent our way because it didn't match our skill sets at all.
We were a more social group, he sent us a combat mission.
Player D's response to this was... I'm not sure how to describe it.
A Meltdown? He literally went to curl up on the couch, cried and constantly beat himself up (not literally) claiming he didn't know what do, that he couldn't DM, that he was worthless etc. And the entire group watching this had a mixed reaction of "Damn, I feel really bad for him" and "Holy ****, another Meltdown? Come on!". And when the players tried to put their heads together to figure out a way to do his quest anyway's he interrupted going "Oh no! Don't exhaust yourselves on my part! I just can't DM for ****!".
Which led to him giving up the DM mantle and then us resuming with my Campaign, which by the end of the night Player D was actually leaving with a smile thankfully.
However, it wasn't long after before he said "I think I know what my issue was. I relied too much on one quest line, I didn't give myself a world to be flexible in". Which I agreed with him, and gave him credit for noticing that difficulty and coming up with a way to overcome it. Which as a result he's now pushing to DM a second time, this time with a Mass Effect D6 system (he's taking my homebrewed Star Wars D6 system and tweaking it to be Mass Effect friendly).
Our group had a lot of doubts about this happening this so soon given his last situation, but we figured he at least found it own difficulty this time we might as well at least start tossing character concepts around... And then that's when concerns started all over again.
Every, single, concept we proposed to Player D he was shooting down. It was either "Too Powerful", "Too Silly", "Too Focused" etc.
Note the concepts proposed were: Krogan Sentinel, Elcor Biotic and Volus Biotic.
And he wasn't just shooting them down, he shoot them done while instantly getting nervous and panicked. Like he was bordering a meltdown already.
And the real kicker? The Mass Effect D6 System hasn't even been made yet! I know this because he's constantly been poking me to help him make it and doesn't want to start on it without me.
He's shooting down character's before even seeing the sheet, where he could easily make the system in a way those concepts would actually work and not be broken. But he's rejecting them simply because of how they sound.
+He's also been claiming we're a combat group.
That we may enjoy roleplaying, but ultimately we'll always run towards combat. So he *has* to set up constant combat for us, and that means broken characters are very bad for him.
Despite the fact in our entire tabletop history our group has done nothing but express exhaustion at how slow combat is, and having spent entire 8-12 hour sessions without a single combat encounter before.
So if people also have advice on how to handle this situation it would be appreciated.
At the moment we're all just debating just telling him no outright, saying "We'd prefer to keep the DM role to those who have proven to have past experience".
Now a brief run-down of the past for those who don't know or do know but want a refresher.
Player D was a player in a 3.5 Campaign that I was a fellow Player in.
He had joined the Group at the start of a new campaign, when we already had a semi-completed one under our belt.
And from the start there were minor concerns with him among others, mainly his lack of ability to Roleplay.
No real problem though, everyone struggles here. We'll just work with him to improve over time.
Except it didn't simply remain there. Rather quickly his difficulty in roleplaying turned into an aggressive eagerness to become the center of attention.
This ranged from activities such as:
Outright taking plot items from others because he wanted something to do.
Shoe Horning himself into RP situations his character wasn't present for.
In some cases getting Violent when he was struggiling, may it be RP or Combat.
Throwing Tantrums (literally) when a battle or roleplay became difficult or challenging.
Outright crying for 3 hours straight when a character of his died. Even when told in advance by the DM he'd be revived after the fight.
Passive-Aggressively comparing us to table top groups at a Game Store. With stuff such as how his other groups were so much better at roleplaying.
Now it should be noted that Player D has Aspergers Autism.
But at the time so do I and another player in the group during all of this (I'll bring him up again briefly later, so I'll call him Player L).
Now though that other Player has left (largely out of not wanting to deal with Player D, but also out of a dislike for the mechanics we tend to use and household hostilities, I'll get to that later).
So for about the following year we were working on ways to get through this and help him past this while keeping the rest of the group happy (and it was around this time I was coming here for help).
This resulted in a lot of discussions among the rest of group as to what to do, including frequent contemplation on removing him entirely. However, we ended up taking a different approach in the end. Now our D&D room was located in the basement, in a room directly besides my Mom's bedroom simply due to how the rooms are laid out. As a result she could overhear a lot of this, and because she outright adores Player D she ended up stepping in constantly, calming him down and then essentially inserting (Not asked to clarify, she forces herself in) herself as a median between the group, Player D and his Mom to try to find a compromise and as a way for Player D and his own Mom to work on his difficulties at home the week before the following session (and note everyone in this group other than Player D are either college students, working or in an apprenticeship. Player D is just finishing high school via home school).
This ended up as a long and stressful period. One where many of our players and you guys who responded alike vouched for outright removing him from the group end of story.
However, we managed to reach the Campaign end with Player D and has a satisfying ending. And Player D has actually managed to get better at the issues he was having (The Violent one vanishing entirely).
Afterwards we switched a GURPS style Space RP, where I took a group world generation system and tweaked it to be for Sci-Fi. I then used it with the whole group so everyone including Player D had some involvement in world creation, and it was set up to a Group DM system where everyone would get a turn in the DM chair.
Player D instantly tried to make humanity as a highly espionage like people, with the objective of them taking over the Galaxy by assassinating all other important figures and then impersonating them. And when asked as to how he would say "By being stealthy", and when asked for specifics he simply stated by being stealthy one again. And when anyone did a thing to make their civilizations more secure (skilled in security, bigger armies etc.) he threw some mini-tantrums claiming we were meta-gaming. And then in-game continued to do so when humanity reached any sort of difficulty.
This RP ended rather early (like 2-3 sessions in early) simply because our group wasn't clicking with the mechanics.
But we then learned Player D had in fact been planning (behind everyone's backs, despite it being a Group DM game) to go canon breaking.
To have this humans open a portal connecting to other worlds, summoning creatures such as Reapers from Mass Effect and TF2 FemScout (for some reason) to invade the Galaxy and destroy everything not human.
*And to address Player L and "Household Hostilities".
Player L is in most intents a troll player. He has no qualms with playing characters who will stab the party in the back.
But he does it in a way that works with the campaign, for a roleplayed reason and not simply for the sake of hurting people.
Regardless though, this tendency of his has pissed off Player D a lot. To the point my Mom practically hate's his guts for it.
And then once learning me and Player L were more acquaintances then friends (this was after Player L stepped out of his own will) declared she then wouldn't tolerate him in the house any more.
Now, this seems like an easy thing for me to negotiate away should Player L ever show a desire in rejoining.
But still the contempt for him from my Mom is there, and comtempt that is strictly there because of how Player D responds to him.
And that's basically where I left off with you guys on Player D.
Now, after that Campaign Player D had removed himself and retreated to tabletop RPG's at a Game Store mentioned above.
Now to note, tales from this Group include incidents such as Call of Cthulhu where the only player death was via a random Bear. Where Player D had actually strapped a bomb to his chest and detonated it... only to live because he 'rolled well'.
And without Player D our group continued to dabble in smaller campaigns over the following year and a half, but still kept contact with Player D out of game via Skype.
It was around this time we were looking at doing another Table Top, another D&D 3.5
We tried it, and it ended quickly because Player D was playing a Vampire and ended up getting into a squabble with the Party Druid.
And by squabble I mean his undead status was discovered, the players 'started' combat with one another and then Player D had a meltdown and stormed out...
Without combat taking place. And when I sat down and ran the numbers with their characters... Player D had zero chance of dying, he was guaranteed to win assuming he stepped into shade, which he easily could with a single move action.
Regardless a week or so was spent talking that out, and in that time our DM fessed up to not actually enjoying DM'ing that much and wanting to become a player...
Thus leading to the new game where a new issue as arised.
This time with me as the DM with the Star Wars D6 system.
But not just that system, I was taking it and refining/homebrewing the hell out if it in an attempt to make it more expansive.
Note, because of this I made the players aware and agree in advance that for all purposes this was a "Alpha Test System" and that it could be changed at any moment as a result to help with balance, mechanics, flow etc. Which it has been several times since we started playing.
Player D showed interest, and since over the time we last played with him he had actually been able to calm down a lot with the issues above whenever table top discussion did arise we decided to let him in and give it a shot.
And for the majority of this Campaign things went smooth sailing, everyone had a blast there outside of one incident of a Player (who wasn't Player D) trying to cheese the game with Explosives Galore things have been swell... Until 2 weeks ago.
Now it should also be clarified that when I had the group agree to this being an Alpha system, I also had them agree to that this Campaign would be more realistic in nature.
More specifically, if the players put themselves in a stupid/dangerous situation, it would be completely on them to get out of it, and there would be no DM intervention to save the day.
Exception being if the situation wasn't the players fault, but my own fault for mis-balancing an encounter (which being an Alpha System has happened several times now), in those cases I would step in and give them some breathing and wiggle room.
But 2 weeks ago the group did something rather reckless.
Specifically the group decided to go Nal Hutta.
For those who don't know Star Wars this is one of the planets the Hutts control, it is full of Hutt gangs, Bounty Hunters etc.
The groups Explosive Expert while there bartered with a sleezy merchant, getting a rather good deal and as part of the exchanged moulded one of his Thermal Detonators.
This Merchant wasn't pleased about the 'Good deal' because it meant less cash for himself, and a few hours later sent four battle droids (we're talking episode 1 quality, outright pathetic ones) after them. The group handled them with ease, and the Explosives expert now annoyed with the merchant set off the detonator from a distance (moulding it he snuck in a way to control it remotely). But he did so, without knowing where the hell the Detonator was.
It should be noted, Immediately after this it dawned on them the Detonator could have been placed on their ship, which there were currently on board. It wasn't, but they rolled the damage any ways just to see what would happen... It would have been a total party wipe. Instead it had been left in a lockbox in the Bounty Hunters Guild... blowing a sizable hole in the building, killing several bounty hunters.
As a result the group now has the bounty on them, but not directly.
The Guild is still investigating the explosion, trying to learn who to link it to. So although there is a bounty now, it's more of a "Find out who did this" job instead of a "Catch this Individual" job.
And because of this the group were actually assigned their own bounty, their employer saying it might be a good pay day... unaware that they *are* the bounty.
Because of this the group is now in a very tight/dangerous situation, with an entire planets worth of Bounty Hunters trying to find out who they are, and then aim to kill them.
But the group has been given an opening to manipulate this situation in their favour.
However, Player D is not happy.
He see's this as me unfairly getting his character killed "Because of something stupid the Demo Player did".
To the Point hew as borderline crying two weeks ago, and last week we didn't even start the session because Player D had an outright Tantrum and meltdown storming off, because he knew this challenging situation was approaching and because one of our players who normally plays on Skype was able to show in person for a bit. So got distracted socializing for a bit, and he was getting eager to step right into the campaign rather than socialize a bit first.
So now, it's this week the players will end up dealing with this situation.
And Player D over the following week on Skype has down zero signs of calming down about the challenge the group is up against, so concerns about it going badly are high.
So any advice on this regard would be most appreciated, because from what I can see I can't avoid this without either making Player D freak out completely or dismissing any sort of challenge or realism in the campaign for the rest of the party.
--------------------------
Now that is only one of two issues with Player D at the moment though.
The other is him trying to DM a group with us.
To Clarify, he's already tried this about a month ago (we took a break from my campaign for half a day to do so).
He used the Edge of the Empire module, and at the start our characters had to reject a quest sent our way because it didn't match our skill sets at all.
We were a more social group, he sent us a combat mission.
Player D's response to this was... I'm not sure how to describe it.
A Meltdown? He literally went to curl up on the couch, cried and constantly beat himself up (not literally) claiming he didn't know what do, that he couldn't DM, that he was worthless etc. And the entire group watching this had a mixed reaction of "Damn, I feel really bad for him" and "Holy ****, another Meltdown? Come on!". And when the players tried to put their heads together to figure out a way to do his quest anyway's he interrupted going "Oh no! Don't exhaust yourselves on my part! I just can't DM for ****!".
Which led to him giving up the DM mantle and then us resuming with my Campaign, which by the end of the night Player D was actually leaving with a smile thankfully.
However, it wasn't long after before he said "I think I know what my issue was. I relied too much on one quest line, I didn't give myself a world to be flexible in". Which I agreed with him, and gave him credit for noticing that difficulty and coming up with a way to overcome it. Which as a result he's now pushing to DM a second time, this time with a Mass Effect D6 system (he's taking my homebrewed Star Wars D6 system and tweaking it to be Mass Effect friendly).
Our group had a lot of doubts about this happening this so soon given his last situation, but we figured he at least found it own difficulty this time we might as well at least start tossing character concepts around... And then that's when concerns started all over again.
Every, single, concept we proposed to Player D he was shooting down. It was either "Too Powerful", "Too Silly", "Too Focused" etc.
Note the concepts proposed were: Krogan Sentinel, Elcor Biotic and Volus Biotic.
And he wasn't just shooting them down, he shoot them done while instantly getting nervous and panicked. Like he was bordering a meltdown already.
And the real kicker? The Mass Effect D6 System hasn't even been made yet! I know this because he's constantly been poking me to help him make it and doesn't want to start on it without me.
He's shooting down character's before even seeing the sheet, where he could easily make the system in a way those concepts would actually work and not be broken. But he's rejecting them simply because of how they sound.
+He's also been claiming we're a combat group.
That we may enjoy roleplaying, but ultimately we'll always run towards combat. So he *has* to set up constant combat for us, and that means broken characters are very bad for him.
Despite the fact in our entire tabletop history our group has done nothing but express exhaustion at how slow combat is, and having spent entire 8-12 hour sessions without a single combat encounter before.
So if people also have advice on how to handle this situation it would be appreciated.
At the moment we're all just debating just telling him no outright, saying "We'd prefer to keep the DM role to those who have proven to have past experience".