ylvathrall
2015-08-31, 03:59 AM
So I've got a troublesome player in my RL game, and I thought I would ask the Playground for some feedback on the situation.
First off, some background on the group. For about a year now I've played in a group with 3 other people, we'll call them A, B, and E. A is a good player, but sometimes throws a hissy fit when things don't go his way. B is extremely distractable, but otherwise fine. E is a little more level-headed than the other two. We've had some other people join, but they've all had to drop the game for RL reasons, and it usually ends up being just the 4 of us.
Which is fine, but we recently started another campaign. The idea is that it's a long-term sandbox campaign, with A and I trading off as GM. I start out running the game, and we also add another new player, we'll call him K.
Now, I'll openly admit that my perspective is likely biased. I do not like K. I could not tell you why; something about him just rubs me wrong. I'm guessing we've all met people that we disliked for no apparent reason, and he is one for me. So take all of the following with that in mind. My perspective on the following is biased, but the events themselves are accurate to the best of my ability. I'm splitting them up into spoilers for length.
So we start doing character generation, and almost immediately K is a bit of a problem. He wants to play an ogre, which seems like it's a bit disruptive to party cohesion. But I try to work with people if they have an offbeat concept, so I look into it a little and it turns out that Pathfinder has an official ogre race for PCs. So I tell him he can play that, but make a point of warning him that characters in the region don't have a pleasant relationship with ogres so he should be aware that they might not respond well to him at first. So far, so good.
Then he starts asking for special treatment. Not little things, which we as a group are fine with. Things like, "Well, ogres really ought to have this ability from another race, so can I just add it?" or "This class ability doesn't do what I want, can I trade it out for something much better?" I explain to him repeatedly that this isn't actually how the game works, and eventually he gets the idea.
So the game finally starts. The PCs all start out separately, exploring the city. We go through most of them without any trouble, and then get to K. Who intimidates an innkeeper into giving him a job, and then stands outside guarding the door for a few hours.
Well, at this point I figure the innkeeper was just intimidated by an ogre, so he sends someone to tell the king of the city. This is in an area where (and I made sure all of the players were aware of this) kings have to kill a dragon in single combat. They're more than a match for the PCs at this point, and they do most of their own law enforcement.
King shows up, and K gives him some hassle before letting him in to confirm what happened. K then bolts, at which point I figure I'll let him go. K got a reminder about not intimidating random citizens, and we can all move on.
K does not make it two minutes of play time without intimidating more random citizens.
The next day of game time, the PCs finally get together. A's character is paying the rest to help with a side quest. There's some friction with K about whether payment is up front or on completion, but everything gets settled out. They make it to the entrance to the underground tunnel before a city guard randomly encounters them. The guard tells K that his actions have been noticed and won't be tolerated. K tries to intimidate the guard, and fails miserably. The guard explicitly states that if K transgresses again the king won't need to get involved, because the guard will kill K himself. That's about as clear of a warning as I can give; I don't really know how much more explicit it gets than that.
At this point, A attempts to steal back the down payment for K's help. K notices, and initiates combat with A. Right next to the guard who threatened to kill him if he broke the rules again, and who didn't see the theft attempt. So a nasty, prolonged PvP fight begins in which there are also NPCs pitching in on one side. It drags on long enough that the king shows up and demands an explanation.
K gets one more chance to explain himself, and instead tries to run. The king instantly chases him down, crits on his first attack, and knocks K out.
After this session, everyone sat down and explained to K all the ways in which he was encouraging hostility in both the setting and other players. I point out all of the warnings I gave him, both IC and OOC, and eventually he seems to be getting the picture. I tell him that he can either keep playing the ogre character if he wants to, or switch to something easier to play without running into these problems. He eventually decides to run a gnome alchemist instead.
The best part? The entire fight was over 5 gp, a totally insignificant amount of money at this level.
So the side quest is resolved. The party meets with an assassin, and it turns out that it was all just a terrible misunderstanding and they don't actually need to fight after all. The power of diplomacy!
Almost instantly after resolving this, K starts interacting with A in ways that are just strange. Most notable is that he asks A to assassinate someone for him in town, and then when A refuses starts pressuring him and calling him a coward. It's all IC, but it still comes across as weird and aggressive, especially since they were just talking to someone who literally does that kind of work for a living. A takes a moment to explain OOC that this interaction is weird and makes no sense, and also that his character would be getting offended by these accusations of cowardice. K complains but eventually agrees to stop pushing on this topic.
The PCs hear about a profitable mine that's infested with some kind of monster, and decide that it might be worth checking out. So they travel out in that direction and encounter an odd town on the way. It turns out the town is controlled by a vampire. At this point K again starts having these weird interactions with A, egging him on to fight the vampire and calling him a coward when he doesn't particularly want to. At this point his interactions with all of the other characters are odd, but nowhere near as weird and aggressive as with A.
They do eventually fight the vampire, and K is not a lot of fun during the fight. He doesn't understand his own character's abilities well at all, and he's argumentative when I point this out to him. At one point everyone else there is telling him that an ability works a certain way, and he's disagreeing on the basis of "that rule is not convenient for my character."
Eventually the vampire is killed, and the group makes it to the mine. They start into the mine tunnels and start clearing out the infestation, which turns out to be duergar. K is gone for the first session of this, and relatively pleasant for the next one. Towards the end of the session, though, E's character is in the thick of things and K decides to use an area damage ability. Long story short, E is knocked unconscious and on the brink of death for much of the fight.
Afterwards, K says that he's satisfied with how it went and that all of the characters came through it well. When I point out that one character was dying, which is about as far from doing well as it's possible to get, he shrugged it off and didn't seem to get what I was saying.
TL;DR: K is behaving in ways that are disruptive to the party as a whole, and is also interacting with another player in weird and hostile ways that that player isn't comfortable with. His characters go out of their way to antagonize NPCs and PCs alike, and when called on this he just says that this is how CE characters act (even though the entire party is either CE or evil-leaning CN, and he's the only one having these problems). He argues about every ruling, even when every other player agrees that the rules explicitly state that he's wrong.
So...thoughts? At this point my inclination is to tell him that he isn't a good fit for this group. It would be really nice to have another player, and I am honestly unsure how much of this is me seeing problems where they don't exist because I'm predisposed against him, but it really doesn't seem like it's working out.
First off, some background on the group. For about a year now I've played in a group with 3 other people, we'll call them A, B, and E. A is a good player, but sometimes throws a hissy fit when things don't go his way. B is extremely distractable, but otherwise fine. E is a little more level-headed than the other two. We've had some other people join, but they've all had to drop the game for RL reasons, and it usually ends up being just the 4 of us.
Which is fine, but we recently started another campaign. The idea is that it's a long-term sandbox campaign, with A and I trading off as GM. I start out running the game, and we also add another new player, we'll call him K.
Now, I'll openly admit that my perspective is likely biased. I do not like K. I could not tell you why; something about him just rubs me wrong. I'm guessing we've all met people that we disliked for no apparent reason, and he is one for me. So take all of the following with that in mind. My perspective on the following is biased, but the events themselves are accurate to the best of my ability. I'm splitting them up into spoilers for length.
So we start doing character generation, and almost immediately K is a bit of a problem. He wants to play an ogre, which seems like it's a bit disruptive to party cohesion. But I try to work with people if they have an offbeat concept, so I look into it a little and it turns out that Pathfinder has an official ogre race for PCs. So I tell him he can play that, but make a point of warning him that characters in the region don't have a pleasant relationship with ogres so he should be aware that they might not respond well to him at first. So far, so good.
Then he starts asking for special treatment. Not little things, which we as a group are fine with. Things like, "Well, ogres really ought to have this ability from another race, so can I just add it?" or "This class ability doesn't do what I want, can I trade it out for something much better?" I explain to him repeatedly that this isn't actually how the game works, and eventually he gets the idea.
So the game finally starts. The PCs all start out separately, exploring the city. We go through most of them without any trouble, and then get to K. Who intimidates an innkeeper into giving him a job, and then stands outside guarding the door for a few hours.
Well, at this point I figure the innkeeper was just intimidated by an ogre, so he sends someone to tell the king of the city. This is in an area where (and I made sure all of the players were aware of this) kings have to kill a dragon in single combat. They're more than a match for the PCs at this point, and they do most of their own law enforcement.
King shows up, and K gives him some hassle before letting him in to confirm what happened. K then bolts, at which point I figure I'll let him go. K got a reminder about not intimidating random citizens, and we can all move on.
K does not make it two minutes of play time without intimidating more random citizens.
The next day of game time, the PCs finally get together. A's character is paying the rest to help with a side quest. There's some friction with K about whether payment is up front or on completion, but everything gets settled out. They make it to the entrance to the underground tunnel before a city guard randomly encounters them. The guard tells K that his actions have been noticed and won't be tolerated. K tries to intimidate the guard, and fails miserably. The guard explicitly states that if K transgresses again the king won't need to get involved, because the guard will kill K himself. That's about as clear of a warning as I can give; I don't really know how much more explicit it gets than that.
At this point, A attempts to steal back the down payment for K's help. K notices, and initiates combat with A. Right next to the guard who threatened to kill him if he broke the rules again, and who didn't see the theft attempt. So a nasty, prolonged PvP fight begins in which there are also NPCs pitching in on one side. It drags on long enough that the king shows up and demands an explanation.
K gets one more chance to explain himself, and instead tries to run. The king instantly chases him down, crits on his first attack, and knocks K out.
After this session, everyone sat down and explained to K all the ways in which he was encouraging hostility in both the setting and other players. I point out all of the warnings I gave him, both IC and OOC, and eventually he seems to be getting the picture. I tell him that he can either keep playing the ogre character if he wants to, or switch to something easier to play without running into these problems. He eventually decides to run a gnome alchemist instead.
The best part? The entire fight was over 5 gp, a totally insignificant amount of money at this level.
So the side quest is resolved. The party meets with an assassin, and it turns out that it was all just a terrible misunderstanding and they don't actually need to fight after all. The power of diplomacy!
Almost instantly after resolving this, K starts interacting with A in ways that are just strange. Most notable is that he asks A to assassinate someone for him in town, and then when A refuses starts pressuring him and calling him a coward. It's all IC, but it still comes across as weird and aggressive, especially since they were just talking to someone who literally does that kind of work for a living. A takes a moment to explain OOC that this interaction is weird and makes no sense, and also that his character would be getting offended by these accusations of cowardice. K complains but eventually agrees to stop pushing on this topic.
The PCs hear about a profitable mine that's infested with some kind of monster, and decide that it might be worth checking out. So they travel out in that direction and encounter an odd town on the way. It turns out the town is controlled by a vampire. At this point K again starts having these weird interactions with A, egging him on to fight the vampire and calling him a coward when he doesn't particularly want to. At this point his interactions with all of the other characters are odd, but nowhere near as weird and aggressive as with A.
They do eventually fight the vampire, and K is not a lot of fun during the fight. He doesn't understand his own character's abilities well at all, and he's argumentative when I point this out to him. At one point everyone else there is telling him that an ability works a certain way, and he's disagreeing on the basis of "that rule is not convenient for my character."
Eventually the vampire is killed, and the group makes it to the mine. They start into the mine tunnels and start clearing out the infestation, which turns out to be duergar. K is gone for the first session of this, and relatively pleasant for the next one. Towards the end of the session, though, E's character is in the thick of things and K decides to use an area damage ability. Long story short, E is knocked unconscious and on the brink of death for much of the fight.
Afterwards, K says that he's satisfied with how it went and that all of the characters came through it well. When I point out that one character was dying, which is about as far from doing well as it's possible to get, he shrugged it off and didn't seem to get what I was saying.
TL;DR: K is behaving in ways that are disruptive to the party as a whole, and is also interacting with another player in weird and hostile ways that that player isn't comfortable with. His characters go out of their way to antagonize NPCs and PCs alike, and when called on this he just says that this is how CE characters act (even though the entire party is either CE or evil-leaning CN, and he's the only one having these problems). He argues about every ruling, even when every other player agrees that the rules explicitly state that he's wrong.
So...thoughts? At this point my inclination is to tell him that he isn't a good fit for this group. It would be really nice to have another player, and I am honestly unsure how much of this is me seeing problems where they don't exist because I'm predisposed against him, but it really doesn't seem like it's working out.