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hymer
2015-11-24, 02:35 PM
The first thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?373664-The-Worst-player-you-ve-ever-had-seen-been-heard-of) has come to a close, but somehow it seems unlikely that the talk of horrible players is about to do the same.

I believe the above suggestion of a title for the thread gathered the most support, and hence I've used it.


Also some links that should be close to the start of the thread; the SUE Files: (I (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?275152-What-am-I-supposed-to-do), II (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?282462-The-SUE-Files-Part-II), III (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?305986-The-SUE-Files-III-Basically-Exercising-Your-Cheese-Forging-Genes) & the blog (http://irolledazero.blogspot.ca/2013/04/what-is-this.html))

The last thread had started talking about players asking to be railroaded, and Cluedrew asked whether it was still railroading then.
I guess you can argue it either way depending on the definition of railroading. If it's the old-fashioned (forcing people to do things they don't want), then no. But I don't think that's what they mean when they ask for railroading. I believe they're asking for a tighter structure and a narrower focus.

YossarianLives
2015-11-24, 02:36 PM
Welcome all to the second iteration of the worst player's thread! Feel free to post your horror stories here.

Please keep in mind that this thread does not deal with bad GMs. There is another thread for that.


Here's to another fifty pages.

Cluedrew
2015-11-24, 02:44 PM
There was a consensuses that we would officially include game master tales in this thread, are we keeping that?

Also some links that should be close to the start of the thread; the SUE Files: (I (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?275152-What-am-I-supposed-to-do), II (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?282462-The-SUE-Files-Part-II), III (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?305986-The-SUE-Files-III-Basically-Exercising-Your-Cheese-Forging-Genes) & the blog (http://irolledazero.blogspot.ca/2013/04/what-is-this.html))

Actually there are a lot of other links that could go here but those are those are the ones I have.

Anonymouswizard
2015-11-24, 02:56 PM
(One of) my suggestion got used. :smallbiggrin:

There is a second new thread as well, The Worst player you've ever had/seen/been/heard of II: It's what my character would (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?463382-The-Worst-player-you-ve-ever-had-seen-been-heard-of-II-It-s-what-my-character-would), we may want to ask for a merger, although that one says it isn't for bad GMs, whereas I think the general consensus was that they counted as players, because the GM thread seemed to have died (I remember we did have a bad GM story or two in there anyway).

Anyway, railroading. I think the answer is simple: even if it's the classic 'telling players what to do', if that's what everybody but you wants, you're in the wrong, but if the majority is okay with freedom, then the player asking for more is in the wrong. Adjust for level of railroading asked for, or flip if players want more freedom.

Keltest
2015-11-24, 02:59 PM
There was a consensuses that we would officially include game master tales in this thread, are we keeping that?

Also some links that should be close to the start of the thread; the SUE Files: (I (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?275152-What-am-I-supposed-to-do), II (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?282462-The-SUE-Files-Part-II), III (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?305986-The-SUE-Files-III-Basically-Exercising-Your-Cheese-Forging-Genes) & the blog (http://irolledazero.blogspot.ca/2013/04/what-is-this.html))

Actually there are a lot of other links that could go here but those are those are the ones I have.

Im fine with including GM horror stories in the thread. Probably not enough room in the title to make that clear though.

YossarianLives
2015-11-24, 03:11 PM
I'll request a delete on the thread I made. I wasn't aware that we were including bad GM stories in this fine thread.

hymer
2015-11-24, 03:13 PM
I'll request a delete on the thread I made. I wasn't aware that we were including bad GM stories in this fine thread.

Very generous! I feel positively giddy for having made an iteration of a traditional thread. :smallbiggrin:

I was just looking through the first thread, and on page 45, Mark Hall himself endorses posting GM stories in it. Albeit without using his mod voice.

Chauncymancer
2015-11-24, 08:59 PM
I think "Illusionism" is the term for "railroading, but the party knows and wants it to happen".

The Fury
2015-11-24, 09:04 PM
A few times I've mentioned a player that I call "Wally." Not his real name, obviously. Though he was never a "good" player he started off what I'd call "harmlessly bad." Mainly with his shenanigans of being a CoDzilla but not knowing how buff spells are supposed to work. Then he took a turn for the strange... and I guess, sleepy.

I'll admit that I wasn't actually there for this part. There was a game that was a three-hour drive away from where I the rest of my group lived, I wasn't interested. Though there was someone in my group that was and carpooled there with some others including Wally. One session they played apparently involved a Sphere of Annihilation, which Wally loved after reading the description of what they do from the rulebook and became obsessed with obtaining it for himself. On the trip home, Wally was asleep in the back seat. When someone else in the car tried to get his attention he muttered "...Sphere of Annihilation..." in his sleep. OK, that's sort of weird.

Later in our group's games he'd frequently fall asleep at the table. He'd say that he had a late shift at work which he followed up by marathoning a season of Stargate SG1. Double annoying because he was hard to wake up. Being well aware of the fact that a late shift isn't anything that can be helped, we asked him to stop binge-watching Stargate before game night. He kept doing it anyway. Being the class act that I am, I figured I was well within rights to set up pranks for his character. I asked the GM what Wally's character was doing while Wally himself was asleep-- he ruled that they were in sort of a catatonic state. So I did things like tying the character up and hanging them by the ankles over a manure pile. Wally left shortly afterward. Or rather just stopped showing up. After a while we all sort of assumed that he wasn't interested in our group anymore and stopped calling him to let him know where where we were meeting.

Months later, Wally randomly showed up in the middle of a session. Apparently he went to all of our group's regular meeting places until he found us. OK... that's sort of creepy. We allowed him to join in anyway, so then he asked, "Where's my character right now?"

The GM replied, "I think The Fury left them tied up on a toilet in that nobleman's estate. Maybe you should roll up a new one."

Keltest
2015-11-24, 09:20 PM
A few times I've mentioned a player that I call "Wally." Not his real name, obviously. Though he was never a "good" player he started off what I'd call "harmlessly bad." Mainly with his shenanigans of being a CoDzilla but not knowing how buff spells are supposed to work. Then he took a turn for the strange... and I guess, sleepy.

I'll admit that I wasn't actually there for this part. There was a game that was a three-hour drive away from where I the rest of my group lived, I wasn't interested. Though there was someone in my group that was and carpooled there with some others including Wally. One session they played apparently involved a Sphere of Annihilation, which Wally loved after reading the description of what they do from the rulebook and became obsessed with obtaining it for himself. On the trip home, Wally was asleep in the back seat. When someone else in the car tried to get his attention he muttered "...Sphere of Annihilation..." in his sleep. OK, that's sort of weird.

Later in our group's games he'd frequently fall asleep at the table. He'd say that he had a late shift at work which he followed up by marathoning a season of Stargate SG1. Double annoying because he was hard to wake up. Being well aware of the fact that a late shift isn't anything that can be helped, we asked him to stop binge-watching Stargate before game night. He kept doing it anyway. Being the class act that I am, I figured I was well within rights to set up pranks for his character. I asked the GM what Wally's character was doing while Wally himself was asleep-- he ruled that they were in sort of a catatonic state. So I did things like tying the character up and hanging them by the ankles over a manure pile. Wally left shortly afterward. Or rather just stopped showing up. After a while we all sort of assumed that he wasn't interested in our group anymore and stopped calling him to let him know where where we were meeting.

Months later, Wally randomly showed up in the middle of a session. Apparently he went to all of our group's regular meeting places until he found us. OK... that's sort of creepy. We allowed him to join in anyway, so then he asked, "Where's my character right now?"

The GM replied, "I think The Fury left them tied up on a toilet in that nobleman's estate. Maybe you should roll up a new one."


Hmm. While I am by no means an expert, missing a single night of sleep doesn't seem like it would cause narcolepsy like that. Heck, ask any college student and they'll tell you. Does he still show up to your sessions?

The Fury
2015-11-24, 09:37 PM
Hmm. While I am by no means an expert, missing a single night of sleep doesn't seem like it would cause narcolepsy like that. Heck, ask any college student and they'll tell you. Does he still show up to your sessions?

No, he does not. It's just as well, from what I've heard his behavior got even stranger. I'd rather not get into that though, as that just seems gossipy.

I'm not sure how much sleep he actually missed, a lot I guess.

ComaVision
2015-11-24, 09:45 PM
Not like anyone knows him, and it does sound quite appropriate for the thread.

Steampunkette
2015-11-24, 10:41 PM
While I was in Orlando I met a gaming group that were all characters.

Mike, I'll call him, had been playing DnD for something like 5 years, but had played Evercrack for longer and WoW for 2 or 3 years at the time. During a Roleplaying Heavy game he spent every after encounter wrap up not only looting the dead, but taking heads or scalps, skinning owlbears, and the whole nine yards, completely ignoring the other characters, with the intent to schlep it all back to town to sell at a general store.

And he quit the game when he learned that no one wanted the goblin heads and such.

Shawn, on the other hand, was a solid diceroller who hated computers. Over the course of several games I noticed that he'd always use different mixes of d6s, but always at least one black one. All his black dice were loaded. We found that out after someone he was convinced was a changeling offered her hand and said "if you prick me, will I not bleed?" His response was to use only black dice to "prick" her with a max damage crit with a great axe.

When that happened I checked his dice and asked. He wasn't even ashamed.

goto124
2015-11-25, 12:44 AM
someone he was convinced was a changeling offered her hand and said "if you prick me, will I not bleed?" His response was to use only black dice to "prick" her with a max damage crit with a great axe.

Would you have been alright with it if he didn't cheat?

Steampunkette
2015-11-25, 01:19 AM
She was offering her hand so he could check her for red blood as opposed to blue.

If he hadn't been cheating the guards would've swarmed him and the party would have been in a bad situation as their patron turned against them.

Keltest
2015-11-25, 06:11 AM
She was offering her hand so he could check her for red blood as opposed to blue.

If he hadn't been cheating the guards would've swarmed him and the party would have been in a bad situation as their patron turned against them.

Clearly im not understanding something here.

Marlowe
2015-11-25, 06:32 AM
It is getting a mite surreal. Changes abruptly from an obviously OOC scenario to an IC one.

Unless, of course, Steampunkette plays her games surrounded by armed guards at the behest of a noble patron for the latter's entertainment, at the risk of getting executed if they're not entertaining. I don't know. I've heard bizarre stuff about D&D in Brazil, but I don't think Steampunkette lives there.

Steampunkette
2015-11-25, 07:16 AM
Because he was cheating I erased his character from history and kicked him off my table on the spot.

If he hadn't been cheating I'd have let it stand and he'd have been killed by her house guards.

Marlowe
2015-11-25, 08:03 AM
http://i.imgur.com/NNLzJFe.png

Steampunkette
2015-11-25, 08:35 AM
Character did something supremely stupid because the player hated an NPC who was giving the party support from a position of power.

The stupid act was getting offered to pinprick the NPC patron's finger to show she had human, not changeling, blood and using a greataxe to DESTROY the patron's hand, instead.

Player cheated to ensure his stupid act would do as much damage as possible to the NPC patron he didn't like3.

I removed his character from the game and banned the player from my table.

Had he not been cheating, the NPC's guards would have attacked the character and I would have let the action stand, whcih answers Goto's question.

I really hope we don't need further clarification.

goto124
2015-11-25, 09:01 AM
the player hated an NPC who was giving the party support from a position of power.

The stupid act was getting offered to pinprick the NPC patron's finger to show she had human, not changeling, blood and using a greataxe to DESTROY the patron's hand, instead.

Ah, that makes a lot more sense. Thank you for clarifying.

Anonymouswizard
2015-11-25, 09:18 AM
I think it's interesting that we've moved to horror stories being the exception into the levels of bad we can all relate to. I've never seen a player like The Fury's (is it okay if I drop the 'The'?), but my sleep schedule is out of sync enough that I know I'd be that player for a pre-noon session (P.S. you meant you didn't spend a session going back and looking for Wally's character? The stripy jumper and bobble hat should have made it easy).

I also have had a problem with cheating as well. In this case I found out that a player cheated in Dark Heresy by using the 'lowest first' trick (I plan to not inform him about how Unknown Armies works when I get it, bog UA and Eclipse Phase are 'roll under, roll high' systems). Two months after I stopped running the game to prepare for uni. The group also had an awesome player with insane luck (who had left due to semi-related problems, he had a good if railroady GM style) who rolled completely fairly (as in, rolled and called the tens, then rolled and called the units), which is why I didn't notice.

I also know someone who has a set of low-rolling d6s she refers to as her GURPS dice, but as far as I know she generally just uses the first dice out of her bag, like I use d6s that then to roll around a 4 (I'm too cheap to buy more dice, these are fair enough for most groups).

ComaVision
2015-11-25, 11:03 AM
Not meaning to derail at all but is there anything in D&D lore to suggest that changelings bleed a different colour? That's news to me.

YossarianLives
2015-11-25, 11:27 AM
Okay. So I'm currently dealing with a player I'll call "W".

W shys away from any major offensives but he does many, many, small and very annoying things. I'll list some of them.

Vehemently insulting my skills as a DM after they got lost in a dungeon due to his poor mapping skills. He gave no constructive criticism, which I would have been receptive to. He basically now spends every session harping on how I'm the worst DM ever. (this was an OD&D game.)

He rolled up a bard after he refused to continue with my campaign but whines endlessly about now weak bards are.

He freaked out when I presented my kobold wizard character to the table. He just assumed I was going to play Pun Pun.

Those are pretty much his worst offensives but I'll post again if he does anything notable.

The Fury
2015-11-25, 12:03 PM
I think it's interesting that we've moved to horror stories being the exception into the levels of bad we can all relate to. I've never seen a player like The Fury's (is it okay if I drop the 'The'?),

NO. You may not drop the "The." That's how you know I'm not one of those bargain bin Furies running around, I am in fact The Fury.

...I'm just joking of course. Go ahead and drop the "The" if you really want to.


but my sleep schedule is out of sync enough that I know I'd be that player for a pre-noon session (P.S. you meant you didn't spend a session going back and looking for Wally's character? The stripy jumper and bobble hat should have made it easy).


We might have gone back for Wally's character except the noble's estate was on a private island well away from where we were at the time. Plus we sort of lost the magical tchotchke for stopping the world from imploding and really didn't have time for another side quest.

FlumphPaladin
2015-11-25, 01:31 PM
I recall a time in a one-shot adventure where our hipster extraordinaire, whom I'll call Walden, was a half-orc. I don't remember his class, because it was his half-orcishness that defined him: half-*'s were mistreated and disdained in this setting, and so naturally his introduction to every PC and NPC carried some thinly-veiled threat to the tune of "try and oppress me, I dare you!"

Well, we discovered a cult who had been responsible for some kidnappings from the town we were in, and that led us to a strange temple, complete with (human) sacrificial victim and staffed by--you guessed it--half-orc clerics. We made our way through them, with one or two remaining unconscious. The victim was alive, and we hoped to return them to the town, and then our cleric (I'll call his player Jim) announced that he was going to deliver a coup de grâce on an unconscious half-orc.

Cue the shocked protestations from Walden, who had been okay up to now, what with saving a townsperson being just the postmodern twist to make society see how decent half-orcs can be. Something like this occurred:

Walden: "Look. We came in, we wrecked his dritt*, killed his leader, taught him a lesson. He's harmless. Maybe he knows something and can help us find if there are more."
Jim: "He's too dangerous to be kept alive."
Walden: "But look how people treat his kind! He's a victim just as much as anyone!"
Jim: "Yes, but he has proven himself willing to associate with evil people to do evil things. Killing their leader will only strengthen their resolve. I must act for the greater good. <to DM> What do I need to roll?"
Walden: <to DM> "Oh, faen come on! This is oksedritt!"
DM: "You don't even need to roll; he's defenseless."
Walden: "Some faen Good cleric you turned out to be!"
Jim: "I hit him with my sword."
Walden: "Faen ta this game! Faen idiot!"

Walden's half-orc did exactly what someone trying to show that half-orcs aren't evil would do: he approached the victim, still on the altar, and delivered a coup de grâce on her before storming out of the temple. Walden himself, meanwhile, scooted back, called Jim a faen idiot a few more times, and sulked while reading his favored blogs on his phone the rest of the night. I think he might have made some passive-aggressive remarks as we finished the session. Sadly, Walden was the oldest one in the room.

*For delicate ears, profanities appear translated into a foreign tongue.

MrStabby
2015-11-25, 01:44 PM
I recall a time in a one-shot adventure where our hipster extraordinaire, whom I'll call Walden, was a half-orc. I don't remember his class, because it was his half-orcishness that defined him: half-*'s were mistreated and disdained in this setting, and so naturally his introduction to every PC and NPC carried some thinly-veiled threat to the tune of "try and oppress me, I dare you!"

Well, we discovered a cult who had been responsible for some kidnappings from the town we were in, and that led us to a strange temple, complete with (human) sacrificial victim and staffed by--you guessed it--half-orc clerics. We made our way through them, with one or two remaining unconscious. The victim was alive, and we hoped to return them to the town, and then our cleric (I'll call his player Jim) announced that he was going to deliver a coup de grâce on an unconscious half-orc.

Cue the shocked protestations from Walden, who had been okay up to now, what with saving a townsperson being just the postmodern twist to make society see how decent half-orcs can be. Something like this occurred:

Walden: "Look. We came in, we wrecked his dritt*, killed his leader, taught him a lesson. He's harmless. Maybe he knows something and can help us find if there are more."
Jim: "He's too dangerous to be kept alive."
Walden: "But look how people treat his kind! He's a victim just as much as anyone!"
Jim: "Yes, but he has proven himself willing to associate with evil people to do evil things. Killing their leader will only strengthen their resolve. I must act for the greater good. <to DM> What do I need to roll?"
Walden: <to DM> "Oh, faen come on! This is oksedritt!"
DM: "You don't even need to roll; he's defenseless."
Walden: "Some faen Good cleric you turned out to be!"
Jim: "I hit him with my sword."
Walden: "Faen ta this game! Faen idiot!"

Walden's half-orc did exactly what someone trying to show that half-orcs aren't evil would do: he approached the victim, still on the altar, and delivered a coup de grâce on her before storming out of the temple. Walden himself, meanwhile, scooted back, called Jim a faen idiot a few more times, and sulked while reading his favored blogs on his phone the rest of the night. I think he might have made some passive-aggressive remarks as we finished the session. Sadly, Walden was the oldest one in the room.

*For delicate ears, profanities appear translated into a foreign tongue.

Actually I have a lot of sympathy with Walden here. I think much of D&D has to be done by consensus and what will be fun for everyone. Walden was not to first to break that unwritten rule.

LibraryOgre
2015-11-25, 01:47 PM
Have a similar story to FlumphPaladin, though I wouldn't call the player the worst I've played with, or even particularly bad. He was playing a Rodian Jedi with the idea of overcoming the stereotype of Rodians... but the player was, in real life, a tech support guy.

In an early adventure, his job was to cut down a fence and flank the bad guys. And, even with a lightsaber, he simply COULD NOT. His total was never above the laughably low difficulty, and he kept rolling a 1 on the Wild Die*, so he kept getting mishaps on top of that. He was getting more and more frustrated and then, finally, just shouted "FINE. I'll drop a force point to cut down the goddamn fence!" He cut it down... but was not happy when I gave him a Dark Side point on top of that.

This began his slide into the Dark Side, that culminated with him going to visit an informant in another city and getting targeted for arrest... and in deciding not to be arrested by the Empire, went on the run, killing several police officers in his flight.

*in WEG Star Wars, 2nd edition, one of the dice in your dice pool was designated the Wild Die. The wild die exploded, but a 1 on the wild die meant a mishap... not necessarily a failure, but some sort of complication, like shooting a panel to lock the door, only to realize that's where the controls to extend the bridge were, too.

FlumphPaladin
2015-11-25, 02:32 PM
Actually I have a lot of sympathy with Walden here. I think much of D&D has to be done by consensus and what will be fun for everyone. Walden was not to first to break that unwritten rule.
Touche. Walden definitely had a point, and it definitely could have been handled better by the rest of us as well.


Have a similar story to FlumphPaladin, though I wouldn't call the player the worst I've played with, or even particularly bad.
Walden isn't particularly bad, either. Apart from this incident (and a similar one when he argued that a warforged should be able to react fast enough to avoid being crushed by traps that they activate, Reflex saves be damned), he's really a good player.


He was playing a Rodian Jedi with the idea of overcoming the stereotype of Rodians... but the player was, in real life, a tech support guy.

In an early adventure, his job was to cut down a fence and flank the bad guys. And, even with a lightsaber, he simply COULD NOT. His total was never above the laughably low difficulty, and he kept rolling a 1 on the Wild Die*, so he kept getting mishaps on top of that. He was getting more and more frustrated and then, finally, just shouted "FINE. I'll drop a force point to cut down the goddamn fence!" He cut it down... but was not happy when I gave him a Dark Side point on top of that.

This began his slide into the Dark Side, that culminated with him going to visit an informant in another city and getting targeted for arrest... and in deciding not to be arrested by the Empire, went on the run, killing several police officers in his flight.

I think I might have told the story of "T" in one of the WotC Star Wars d20 games I played, famously outwitted by a workaday NPC at the spaceport...

Customs: "Are you here for business or for pleasure?"
Tri (T's character): "Pleasure."
Customs: "And what do you intend to do while on <planet>?"
Tri: "I'm gonna meet some potential trade partners, scope out some new market opportunities."
Customs: "I thought you said you were here for pleasure."
Tri: "............My business IS my pleasure."
Customs officer makes his Sense Motive check and calls for his manager, which results in a firefight that almost kills us and, I think, blows our jedi's cover.

sktarq
2015-11-25, 03:04 PM
The player who wanted-nay demanded- to play a social powerhouse builds one (in a socially driven game) and then couldn't figure out anything to do with their character in social situations (an I wasn't looking for dialogue but basic goals that could be rolled for)

Same player was part of a party that agreed to make a team of "Supernatural Investigators" and who all had competent to elite levels of training in Investigation who never looked for evidence, talked to witnesses who were not still there, look at video footage (collected and destroyed to protect secrecy) or check records of who owned items involved (like cars or buildings which I put in for people who had bought special access to those data sets for their characters). . . It took some adjusting to.

Geddy2112
2015-11-25, 03:07 PM
A guy I used to play with rolled up a super lone wolf catfolk ranger. He followed us around from city to city, dungeon to dungeon, but never really interacted with the party. We were in a dungeon and being a ranger, he spotted a water elemental in a pool. Nobody else did, and he did not tell the party because "it was what his character would do." So, all of the party but his character and mine(I was looking at some other thing or whatnot) walked right by the pool thinking nothing was wrong. One character died and several others came close as it was down to me(a face skillmonkey) and him to kill the water elemental vortexing them all to death. He accused me of metagaming for not walking by the pool and getting hit by the water elemental, and insisted he did nothing wrong despite the group being furious with him.

The thing is, he rolled up the exact same character in every other game I played with him in. He never told anybody anything, went against party decisions(but never having input) and doing things that got other people killed. In the end, he has quit every game and group he has ever played in because people "metagame too much"... and every game he has left has been better without him.

Delicious Taffy
2015-11-25, 04:38 PM
I've got a player who has two functionally identical characters - a Demonborn DmC Dante clone named Dalius, and an albino Redflank (Minotaurs are called Redflanks in the setting) named Durrak. Their abilities are pretty near identical, and neither has a distinguishing personality trait beyond "Dalius is weirdly intense at random". I allowed him to play both because he was talking about having Durrak retire after sorting out his backstory-related hangup. That got resolved months ago, but he's still around. Now, he said he was going to retire him after this raid they're doing, but he also wants Durrak to have loot that would benefit the party if he stays, so it looks like he's staying. I wouldn't mind, if the two characters had distinct personalities, but he treats them as one character with twice the abilities.

TurboGhast
2015-11-25, 09:17 PM
Link (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?373664-The-Worst-player-you-ve-ever-had-seen-been-heard-of)back to the previous thread so that it's convenient to find.

EDIT: This message is redundant due to a thread merger.

YossarianLives
2015-11-25, 09:26 PM
Folks, please, this is the wrong worst players thread. Go post in the other one.

Other thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?463381-Worst-Players-Episode-II-Attack-of-the-Identical-Replacement-Characters)

The Mod Wonder: Fixed now. Sorry about that.

Raine_Sage
2015-11-25, 09:34 PM
I had one player who constantly moaned and gnashed his teeth if anyone made any changes to the campaign's default setting. I have no idea what this dude's hangups about canon were about or why he got so bothered if someone implied that "gasp the always benevolent ruler may not actually be benevolent" or "Maybe sometimes this monster behaves atypically for plot reasons" but he just could not leave it alone.


It sort of came to a head in a 4e homebrew campaign I was running where he complained that my portrayal of Drow as a desert dwelling neutral cult society instead of a cave dwelling chaotic evil cult society was "not true to the spirit of forgotten realms" at which point I had to calmly inform him that yes, yes he was correct it was not true to forgotten realms. And that this was because we were not playing forgotten realms. And because we weren't playing forgotten realms drow could be whatever I damn well wanted them to be. He shut up after that but he sulked the entire rest of the game.


I've given up ever dming for him again because I'm someone who, even when running an established setting, likes to challenge setting assumptions. And I just can't endure months of him calling my NPCs stupid for not following whatever approved script it is he's got running in his head. For one it's draining to have to stop every five minutes and explain that while Yes making new warforged is incredible illegal in Eberron that doesn't mean it's an invalid plotline. For another I work hard on these ideas and regularly getting called an idiot for thinking of them is not my idea of fun.


He did this with other people's character's too he'd basically threaten to kill them if he thought they were too "special snowlake" like I don't know if creative writing killed his dog or what but he had a serious hate-on for setting deviations.

YossarianLives
2015-11-25, 09:52 PM
snop
You have my sympathies pal. I hate players like that. The only reason I enjoy TTRPGs is because I get to challenge traditional assumptions. I would have quit long ago if I had to keep playing in generic fantasy settings. Shame you had to deal with somebody like that.

goto124
2015-11-25, 11:23 PM
The player who wanted-nay demanded- to play a social powerhouse builds one (in a socially driven game) and then couldn't figure out anything to do with their character in social situations (an I wasn't looking for dialogue but basic goals that could be rolled for)

Could you elaborate please? Many people on these forums say that the character's social skills should be separate from the player's, which sadly can end up as "I rolled a 20 in Diplomancy, I convince the king to hand over his kingdom!'

How do you run social skills? I never found anything satisfactory.

Steampunkette
2015-11-25, 11:35 PM
Not meaning to derail at all but is there anything in D&D lore to suggest that changelings bleed a different colour? That's news to me.

I had been adapting the DS9 changelings leading the Dominion War storyline into a D&D setting of my own design. The players were on the frontier, protecting a fortress near a recently opened tunnel into the Underdark. They had to keep the nearby village of humanoids safe while dealing with a slightly more remote village of humanoids who had previously conquered the ones they were protecting...

And their patron may or may not have been replaced by a doppelganger. To stay true to the storyline's ideas without being completely alien to D&D I used blue-black changeling blood instead of protoplasm.

TripleD
2015-11-26, 12:14 AM
For one it's draining to have to stop every five minutes and explain that while Yes making new warforged is incredible illegal in Eberron that doesn't mean it's an invalid plotline.

This one is especially confusing. Isn't "character doing something illegal" the backbone of pretty much every D&D adventure ever made?

Granted, wouldn't it be funny if, after capturing him, some shyster lawyer-bard got the BBEG off on the technicality that there isn't any specific law against building a tower and stocking it with eldritch horrors?

goto124
2015-11-26, 12:20 AM
"Those eldritch horrors? They're part of my security system! Those adventurers trespassed on my property!"

Raine_Sage
2015-11-26, 01:27 AM
This one is especially confusing. Isn't "character doing something illegal" the backbone of pretty much every D&D adventure ever made?

Granted, wouldn't it be funny if, after capturing him, some shyster lawyer-bard got the BBEG off on the technicality that there isn't any specific law against building a tower and stocking it with eldritch horrors?


Yeah that baffled me too but his basic argument boiled down to "Anyone who would try something that blatantly illegal would be executed by the proper authorities because that kind of mass production would be impossible to hide." His base assumptions about any given campaign seemed to be that anyone in authority will just kill all their problems away without things like due process or compassion for your fellow man. I feel its telling that his characters are always the first to suggest torture as a problem solving method.

Now that I think about it the majority of his issues seemed to center around the idea that the setting was static because the Authorities of that setting worked to keep it that way by any means necessary. "X wouldn't happen because Y would object." Because as we all know, people in positions of power are omniscient and capable of being everywhere at once I guess? Of course if I ever pointed out that his character's actions were far more likely to attract the attention of the authorities he'd backpedal and go "No one could possibly have known that was me! Where are the witnesses?!"

But yeah basically any time I tried to introduce a change or innovation to the setting (for example: peasants are uprising because they feel they've been abandoned by the crown) he'd shoot it down on the grounds of implausibility stating that the crown's forces would just mow them down anyway so what was even the point.

"Um the peasants don't actually have it that bad, if you'd read the setting you'd know they're really treated pretty fairly so they'd just be throwing their lives away for nothing because they have to know there's no way they could actually accomplish anything."

I think the worst thing was he was usually going off of incomplete information so sometimes he'd reach the right conclusion that something fishy was going on. But rather than assume things were intentionally a little off he'd just accuse my writing of being dumb. Then the twist would hit and he'd be quiet for a few games, so that was always kind of gratifying. Basically he was super unpleasant and I'm glad I don't play with him anymore.

sktarq
2015-11-26, 02:17 AM
Could you elaborate please?

How do you run social skills? I never found anything satisfactory.

I vary it to a point. We were playing mWoD (pre GodMachine). If they give me goal of what they are trying to accomplish with their social interaction I figure out penalties or bonus (with part of that from roleplay bonus if they do get into it). This person could not figure out ideas of what to do socially - like manipulate a person into telling them a vital bit of info. Or to intimidate them. Or to get them to distrust another NPC. Or to do anything really. They could figure out a dozen methods of attacking something but nothing in idea of what to do-basic lack of options even when I laid out a path (like get X bit of info from this person) they fumbled around lost-they couldn't pick up my hints of easy options when they were struggling. . . It was deeply frustrating.

Anonymouswizard
2015-11-26, 06:25 AM
The player who wanted-nay demanded- to play a social powerhouse builds one (in a socially driven game) and then couldn't figure out anything to do with their character in social situations (an I wasn't looking for dialogue but basic goals that could be rolled for)

Same player was part of a party that agreed to make a team of "Supernatural Investigators" and who all had competent to elite levels of training in Investigation who never looked for evidence, talked to witnesses who were not still there, look at video footage (collected and destroyed to protect secrecy) or check records of who owned items involved (like cars or buildings which I put in for people who had bought special access to those data sets for their characters). . . It took some adjusting to.

I've been in the same situation. The GM stated 'this is a combat game' and immediately three of us presented character concepts focused on different intelligence and investigation skills with barely any combat ability, one who had taken a vow not go hurt humans. Then we saw that thankfully one of us had decided to play someone with combat skills, so asked the fifth player to play a medic.

In this GM's current game we're more competent at magic, but that's because 2/3 of us have in our back stories 'fought in magical world war 1/2'. But one of us might be playing a dancing, compulsively pranking trickster elf. It might set off the first PvP in the party.

It's at least better than one group the GM and his wife know. The GM makes detailed world's for them to explore, and the players go and punch things.


I've got a player who has two functionally identical characters - a Demonborn DmC Dante clone named Dalius, and an albino Redflank (Minotaurs are called Redflanks in the setting) named Durrak. Their abilities are pretty near identical, and neither has a distinguishing personality trait beyond "Dalius is weirdly intense at random". I allowed him to play both because he was talking about having Durrak retire after sorting out his backstory-related hangup. That got resolved months ago, but he's still around. Now, he said he was going to retire him after this raid they're doing, but he also wants Durrak to have loot that would benefit the party if he stays, so it looks like he's staying. I wouldn't mind, if the two characters had distinct personalities, but he treats them as one character with twice the abilities.

Rocks fall, annoying DINO-clone dies?

Seriously, there's a reason I have a strict 'one character per player' rule. I'm less strict on the number of players per character though.

Keltest
2015-11-26, 08:25 AM
Yeah that baffled me too but his basic argument boiled down to "Anyone who would try something that blatantly illegal would be executed by the proper authorities because that kind of mass production would be impossible to hide." His base assumptions about any given campaign seemed to be that anyone in authority will just kill all their problems away without things like due process or compassion for your fellow man. I feel its telling that his characters are always the first to suggest torture as a problem solving method.

Now that I think about it the majority of his issues seemed to center around the idea that the setting was static because the Authorities of that setting worked to keep it that way by any means necessary. "X wouldn't happen because Y would object." Because as we all know, people in positions of power are omniscient and capable of being everywhere at once I guess? Of course if I ever pointed out that his character's actions were far more likely to attract the attention of the authorities he'd backpedal and go "No one could possibly have known that was me! Where are the witnesses?!"

But yeah basically any time I tried to introduce a change or innovation to the setting (for example: peasants are uprising because they feel they've been abandoned by the crown) he'd shoot it down on the grounds of implausibility stating that the crown's forces would just mow them down anyway so what was even the point.

"Um the peasants don't actually have it that bad, if you'd read the setting you'd know they're really treated pretty fairly so they'd just be throwing their lives away for nothing because they have to know there's no way they could actually accomplish anything."

I think the worst thing was he was usually going off of incomplete information so sometimes he'd reach the right conclusion that something fishy was going on. But rather than assume things were intentionally a little off he'd just accuse my writing of being dumb. Then the twist would hit and he'd be quiet for a few games, so that was always kind of gratifying. Basically he was super unpleasant and I'm glad I don't play with him anymore.


This is why I made my own setting. Nobody (except my co-creator) can tell me its wrong.

However, at least the basic premise of his argument makes sense. Your party is presumably not the only group of movers and shakers in the entire setting. Why DONT authorities notice that someone is making a warforged factory?

Anonymouswizard
2015-11-26, 08:35 AM
This is why I made my own setting. Nobody (except my co-creator) can tell me its wrong.

However, at least the basic premise of his argument makes sense. Your party is presumably not the only group of movers and shakers in the entire setting. Why DONT authorities notice that someone is making a warforged factory?

Ideas:
-luck (PCs noticed just as production is stepped up)
-distracted authorities
-location (who would go to the abandoned ruin 200 miles from the nearest town? The factory owner just uses a teleport circle to shift his goods and teleports in and out)
-someone in power supports it
-they are, but aren't powerful enough

And so on. Just because they are official characters does not mean that they are omnipotent omniscient gods.

goto124
2015-11-26, 08:45 AM
The players would have to put in a lot of effort to make sure it stays hidden. Such a thing would become the main plotline- oh, it IS the main plotline, and the GM would have to run along with it too.

slaydemons
2015-11-26, 11:21 AM
I have a fun story, this one is about a gm. Short story kept throwing waves of over challenge rating mobs at us, the world itself was against us, we used one trick that worked because that is all the worked and lots of railroads. Long story goes a little something like this.

Let me see in our group at the time, no one knew each other or what they were building, we ended up as an archer squad. The dm said this was fine and would balance things around us. We go on an adventure our characters all having some need to be an adventurer. The cave we cleared "magically" gets replaced with the exact numbers. We try and take a bunch of children to a church in another major city, we are accosted by galeforce winds and pelting rain. We got caught up to despite taking almost no breaks and they are on foot. We go back to first cave we cleared, get told there is no way we could beat the leader and to not try. we try and clear out a cave of zombies, we do quite well despite having killed basically a company of undead, around 40 if I remember right. we leveled from the cave we first cleared but not the zombies, we find magic items, the obviously cursed one and we all called it on what it is, helm of opposite alignment, True neutral tests it, turns Chaotic neutral, gm kept saying they did overly random things.

Zombies were the wave of over challenge rating mobs at us with little to no experience, Gm casually brought up about how they were like level six or four and our basic strategy of lighting up some oil on the ground to burn them kept working too well, she eventually said "Well I know how to make that plan of yours no longer valid."

awa
2015-11-26, 11:25 AM
Don't get me wrong the guy was a nice guy but he was a bad dm. He had a number of problems that individually might be fine but added but to a frustrating game. First he ran a fairly open world game, go wherever you want ect. Except he based what monster were there on what he considered "logical", which in and of itself is not a problem, the problem is this regularly led to problematic fights. This was most notable in a tower full of devils we repeatedly fought vast swarms of low level devils who due to resistances, high ac, hp, and the habit of summoning more of themselves were long drawn out slogs that would take hours. The worst fight was on a small platform with an invisible floor that neither blind sight nor true sight could detect, the problem was there were holes in the floor and a fall would have dealt 20d6 dam and worse taking like a half hour+ in game time to climb back up. So the cost of failure for moving was to high, so we just sat there in the one portion of the room we could accesses trading hits with these flying devils slowly chipping away at their hp through their dr and fast heal. While taking no meaningful damge yourself. the other worst was against a devilish swarm which being immune to the elemental dam, on hand having high sr, a super fast move speed and immunity to normal dam left the party fighting the thing for ours and by party i meant the casters the non-caster got to sit in the corner unable to interact with the monster not even tank.

The next problem (had a longer rant) but decided to just shorten it to the setting was illogically the people in it were illogical and this meant when their was supposed to be a plot twist or mystery it blended into all the other illogical stuff that was happening around it.

finally the quests, he routinely gave us plot hooks that were obviously either outright traps or had goals that were wildly against our interests. Like we used to visit this obnoxious bureaucratic kingdom to sell our stuff and stash our refuges becuase they were the only one not going to be immediately conquered by the evil empire do to their own strength and distance and also they were the only one with a market capable of actually paying for our loot. so along comes a chaotic good outsiders whose like hey want to help me over throw this kingdom becuase its lawful? Either that or they were just suicidal like a sphinx who rewarded us for answering her riddle by telling us about a horde guarded by three blue dragons we eventually narrowed down their age category and realized their cr was individually 5 higher then the party level and decided that picking a fight with dragons in their own home was not a smart move. and all his plot hooks were like this and he would always be surprised when we didn't bite and he would not pull punches at all so we could not just trust him to have a playable adventure and not just a Draconic curb stomp.

Honest Tiefling
2015-11-26, 12:17 PM
I had one player who constantly moaned and gnashed his teeth if anyone made any changes to the campaign's default setting. I have no idea what this dude's hangups about canon were about or why he got so bothered if someone implied that "gasp the always benevolent ruler may not actually be benevolent" or "Maybe sometimes this monster behaves atypically for plot reasons" but he just could not leave it alone.

Welp, I got a confession to make. I'm probably this type of player, because I hate it when DMs deviate from the setting everyone agreed on when the characters would have a chance of knowing and were not informed beforehand. Especially when it happens to the region the character is actually from.

Keltest
2015-11-26, 06:08 PM
Ideas:
-luck (PCs noticed just as production is stepped up)
-distracted authorities
-location (who would go to the abandoned ruin 200 miles from the nearest town? The factory owner just uses a teleport circle to shift his goods and teleports in and out)
-someone in power supports it
-they are, but aren't powerful enough

And so on. Just because they are official characters does not mean that they are omnipotent omniscient gods.

I can accept the premise that everything rests on the party, of course. That's practically a requisite for the adventure. But in any game where the setting is more than window dressing for your murderhoboing, at least some effort should be taken to answer that question.

goto124
2015-11-26, 07:37 PM
If/when it's the entire premise of the campaign, wouldn't the GM have already taken the time and effort to answer them?

In this case, it seems the player didn't even take the time to listen. The player claimed that authority will ALWAYS beat down anyone that opposes them, and that such authority has absolutely no holes.

Marlowe
2015-11-26, 08:00 PM
If/when it's the entire premise of the campaign, wouldn't the GM have already taken the time and effort to answer them?

In this case, it seems the player didn't even take the time to listen. The player claimed that authority will ALWAYS beat down anyone that opposes them, and that such authority has absolutely no holes.

A Lawful Evil Player, in fact.

Don't forget the complaint about a homebrew setting not being "in the spirit of Forgotten Realms" when presumably if you want "the spirit of Forgotten Realms" you don't play a homebrew setting. The guy sounds like he had serious control issues.

Let's not talk about what happens when you get someone like this DMing.

goto124
2015-11-26, 08:11 PM
A delusional LE, actually. A competent LE would realize he's not invincible.


Welp, I got a confession to make. I'm probably this type of player, because I hate it when DMs deviate from the setting everyone agreed on when the characters would have a chance of knowing and were not informed beforehand. Especially when it happens to the region the character is actually from.

It depends on whether the DM said 'we will the playing FR' or 'we will be playing my own version of FR'.

For the latter, the DM could provide an outline of the deviations from FR. But at least say 'there will be deviations from FR'.

If the DM did make it clear though? The player shouldn't have joined the game.

[Also, the player didn't just want the spirit of FR. He wanted FR itself. You can deviate from true blue original FR while still keeping to its spirit.]

Raine_Sage
2015-11-26, 09:17 PM
In that case I believe my exact words on the subject were "This is a homebrew setting, and we'll be using forgotten realms races for the purposes of making your PCs, if you're playing something other than human I'll let you know how they fit in to this setting. If you're playing human and still want to know for funsies then that's fine too."

So I don't know maybe he assumed "forgotten realms races" meant "basically forgotten realms" but I certainly wasn't hiding any of my changes. If he'd had a problem he had months to read the new race fluff. Or I would have been happy to give him a tl;dr version on demand.

Marlowe
2015-11-26, 09:18 PM
Strikes me that it would be relatively easy to deconstruct his thinking.

1, In a society so authoritarian and obsessed with control, there's little surplus energy available to assert that control. So much money and resources are being wasted monitoring on the citizenry, reading reports on the monitoring of the citizenry, monitoring the monitors of the citizenry, reading those reports, and monitoring the ones doing the reading and analysis. Every gold piece or man-hour spent on these activities are resources not being spent on actual assets.

2, Many members of government are quite aware of the existence of the illegal forge, and are in fact, covertly funding it in the hope of getting a controlling interest so they can use it as an asset in some upcoming power struggle.

3, The operator of the forge is quite happy to encourage the belief of the people under 2 that he's their man. Nobody really trusts him but nobody wants to alienate him either. He is the man with the private warforged army, after all.

4, Some members of government are on the level, but don't want to risk moving against the illegal forge because they don't know how many people under point 2 might wind up opposing them and they don't want to risk losing. Because if they lose they'll get blamed for the whole mess while weakened and get themselves, their family, and their supporters vapourised.

5, The entire realm is suffering severely from depopulation caused by peasants getting massacred or fleeing into the hinterlands to avoid getting massacred. The government keeps massacring them because they keep showing discontent, and they keep showing discontent because they keep getting massacred. Under these circumstances, nobody can afford to move against the guy with the private Warforged army. It's much safer to just keep collecting the taxes and hoard against the day the whole mess falls apart.

6, At some point everyone knows the rebel peasant groups in the hinterland are going to start calling themselves the "Principality of Zeon" or something equally moronic and destroy the capital in an orgy of Druidic magic or Warlockery or Pseudonatural Summons courtesy of Zceryll or something else that peasants are quite capable of doing given time and motivation. Everyone's more interested in planning against that day and trying to figure out a way they can save their own skin and power than they are risking everything fighting pointless fights.

If he wants to live in a Stupid Lawful Evil Dystopia, should be pretty easy to arrange one.

Traab
2015-11-26, 09:43 PM
Ideas:
-luck (PCs noticed just as production is stepped up)
-distracted authorities
-location (who would go to the abandoned ruin 200 miles from the nearest town? The factory owner just uses a teleport circle to shift his goods and teleports in and out)
-someone in power supports it
-they are, but aren't powerful enough

And so on. Just because they are official characters does not mean that they are omnipotent omniscient gods.

Dont forget bribery, "Oh, you heard reports this is a warforged factory? Well here, inside this briefcase are all the schematics of our factory and our records. (inside is a lot of gold coins) take it home and take a close look, im sure you will see everything is fine. In fact, feel free to come back every 6 months for another inspection just to make sure."

Or threats of retribution, either mafia style or otherwise. "So mr inspector guy, I have to say, you are a brave man for taking on risky jobs like this. Why, I imagine you must do it all to take care of that lovely daughter of yours that goes to school at this location across town. Be careful though, I heard there have been problems in your neighborhood with fires breaking out randomly. I hear the heat sometimes causes all the doors and windows to swell shut. Terrible way to go. So, how did the inspection turn out?"

sktarq
2015-11-27, 11:34 AM
I've been in the same situation. The GM stated 'this is a combat game' and immediately three of us presented character concepts focused on different intelligence and investigation skills with barely any combat ability, one who had taken a vow not go hurt humans. Then we saw that thankfully one of us had decided to play someone with combat skills, so asked the fifth player to play a medic.

That I wish was the problem. In mine the players picked the group theme and made PC's that matched very well. . . Had me build a setting to support this theme and PC choices. . . And then couldn't deliver the basics of their own plan. I ended up having everyone watch CSI a couple times to see if that got them thinking as investigators before game. Didn't work.
Stuff I was looking for:
I investigate the room for evidence,
Who were the witnesses?
I search city/legal records for anyone who would benefit/has involvement etc (one person had a purchased special bonus for this-never used)
I use my ability to see spirits in the area (for witnesses spiritual echos of the event etc-again an ability they purchased for this reason that was never turned on)
:smallsigh:


With the point of an illegal warforged forge. The government may have other things to deal with. Getting the cops of the take for smuggling (a known problem) and keeping the gangs down are more important right now than the possibility of a forge (a set of rumours until solid facts come up). So things that are immediate trumping an investigaton of possibility. Also if crime is rampant in one area the creation forge in the nice area of town with good secutiy and that causes no troubles people are just not going to be looking for problems there. Other areas that people don't go looking for problems are those who have power and protection. If the ir'Tarrn family are known to be very tight with the King, recommended the sherrif of the town for his job, provide tons of jobs, host the watch year end gala, etc a member of the local watch poking around their third estate in the round hills district is going to be told off by his supervisor and told to get back to real work-no direct bribes necessary.
Also denial, everyone knows the creation forges were shut down so people who say they were not are wrong. Evidence that supports the still active one is viewed in isolation and viewed as unlikely while alternate explanations (Karrnathi/Thane warforged freedom smuggling routes as explanation for new ones for example)

There are lots of ways big things can be hidden and just because it isn't obvious at first glance doesn't mean it isn't there.

MesiDoomstalker
2015-11-27, 01:58 PM
Welp, I got a confession to make. I'm probably this type of player, because I hate it when DMs deviate from the setting everyone agreed on when the characters would have a chance of knowing and were not informed beforehand. Especially when it happens to the region the character is actually from.

Its one thing to want to see a setting played (mostly) straight. Its another to want a completely different setting to run like a published setting that is entirely different.

Speaking of, I had a GM who insisted that I could not have a Half-Dwarf (Mul in 4e) who is the illegitimate son of a noble dwarf-woman from a xenophobic, wizard-heavy clan. Because Dwarves never breed with anything but dwarves, dwarves never practice magic, dwarf-women are never part of the nobility, dwarves are never any shade of Evil or Chaos, and dwarves are always accepting of other races. I should point out we were not in any established setting. When questioned about a setting, I was told 'Generic fantasy setting' and it was explicitly not one of the established settings. So with nothing to go on for established fluff, I went with an idea I thought would be fun and interesting.

Delicious Taffy
2015-11-27, 04:25 PM
Rocks fall, annoying DINO-clone dies?

Seriously, there's a reason I have a strict 'one character per player' rule. I'm less strict on the number of players per character though.

Unfortunately, Dalius is the one he means to keep. This player is weird about things. For instance, he'll quibble about how long it should take to get from one town to another, until he's basically insisting he can use his spirit horses to cross a continent overnight. Well, demanding more so than insisting. He's also taken to planning what loot he wants to get from a quest, long before the quest is actually over, without asking if the system and setting work with it. Another "fun" development is that he wants the Triceratops his Redflank owns to randomly eat a magical fruit and become a rhinoceros, for no apparent reason. It's all very confusing to keep track of. I'm planning on killing off or otherwise removing all of the NPC allies he gathered, since he's taken the party from 3 players and two NPC companions, to 2 players and around 9 NPCs. I only allowed it because I thought he was going somewhere with it, but now it's just gotten out of hand, so I have to put my foot down.

Keltest
2015-11-27, 05:02 PM
Unfortunately, Dalius is the one he means to keep. This player is weird about things. For instance, he'll quibble about how long it should take to get from one town to another, until he's basically insisting he can use his spirit horses to cross a continent overnight. Well, demanding more so than insisting. He's also taken to planning what loot he wants to get from a quest, long before the quest is actually over, without asking if the system and setting work with it. Another "fun" development is that he wants the Triceratops his Redflank owns to randomly eat a magical fruit and become a rhinoceros, for no apparent reason. It's all very confusing to keep track of. I'm planning on killing off or otherwise removing all of the NPC allies he gathered, since he's taken the party from 3 players and two NPC companions, to 2 players and around 9 NPCs. I only allowed it because I thought he was going somewhere with it, but now it's just gotten out of hand, so I have to put my foot down.

Well, if youre going to do that, I wouldn't bother with killing them off. Just tell him, to his face, that his NPC army is not acceptable and you will be culling it whether he likes it or not. Offer him the chance to work with you to do it so that he at least gets a say in which ones he wants to keep the most, but make it clear that most of them are going.

hymer
2015-11-28, 02:41 AM
NPC allies he gathered

Dragon Age player by any chance? :smalleek:

LibraryOgre
2015-11-28, 11:56 AM
The Mod Wonder: I could've SWORN I merged these threads earlier. Well, I have done so now.

Iron Angel
2015-11-28, 09:24 PM
After reading the first thread and this one, and having my mind absolutely blown, I have to ask. GMs, how do you let these people play your game? I'd be tempted to give them the boot permanently and shamefully the first time they threw dice, tried to murder other PCs out of spite, started stupid drama, or otherwise ground the game to a screeching halt for severely stupid and selfish reasons. I would simply tell them up front they were no longer welcome at the table, and to collect their things and leave. D&D is about having fun and if one player is causing so much trouble that it turns into a chore or another episode of Dramatic Bull****: The Series, then they are a problem and have to go.

Traab
2015-11-28, 09:45 PM
The problem is often a lack of options. If you boot this guy then you dont have enough players. Or the problem player is the one whose house you are using, or is giving a ride to someone who cant get there any other way, or any of a thousand reasons really. It would be nice to just boot and forget about any problem player, but sometimes its not an option the gm wants to exercise.

KillianHawkeye
2015-11-28, 10:06 PM
After reading the first thread and this one, and having my mind absolutely blown, I have to ask. GMs, how do you let these people play your game? I'd be tempted to give them the boot permanently and shamefully the first time they threw dice, tried to murder other PCs out of spite, started stupid drama, or otherwise ground the game to a screeching halt for severely stupid and selfish reasons. I would simply tell them up front they were no longer welcome at the table, and to collect their things and leave. D&D is about having fun and if one player is causing so much trouble that it turns into a chore or another episode of Dramatic Bull****: The Series, then they are a problem and have to go.


The problem is often a lack of options. If you boot this guy then you dont have enough players. Or the problem player is the one whose house you are using, or is giving a ride to someone who cant get there any other way, or any of a thousand reasons really. It would be nice to just boot and forget about any problem player, but sometimes its not an option the gm wants to exercise.

Traab is right. Going straight to "the nuclear option," as it were, might be an overreaction. I'd even call it escalation.

There are many cases where that isn't really necessary, and many more where the problem player's misbehavior worsens gradually over a long period of time (which makes it harder to "pull the trigger" than if it was somebody new to the group). And then, of course, some people are just hard wired to keep giving people another chance time after time.

The trick, as always, is knowing when somebody is truly a lost cause or actually worth some patience, and that isn't always easy (especially without the powers of hindsight).

Anxe
2015-11-28, 11:12 PM
And in many of these stories, the problem players are given the boot.

Anonymouswizard
2015-11-29, 07:10 AM
After reading the first thread and this one, and having my mind absolutely blown, I have to ask. GMs, how do you let these people play your game? I'd be tempted to give them the boot permanently and shamefully the first time they threw dice, tried to murder other PCs out of spite, started stupid drama, or otherwise ground the game to a screeching halt for severely stupid and selfish reasons. I would simply tell them up front they were no longer welcome at the table, and to collect their things and leave. D&D is about having fun and if one player is causing so much trouble that it turns into a chore or another episode of Dramatic Bull****: The Series, then they are a problem and have to go.

A variety of reasons, ranging from logistical to 'one last chance'. Some groups like a certain number of players and are wary of having below that. Some stories are a case of 'and then we booted them because they were annoying'. I think the weirdest I've seen is 'we plan to boot him, but are going to let him play until the end of the campaign'.

Telok
2015-11-30, 03:24 AM
One of my players may have just gassed 50,000 people on national television.

Ok, so, we're playing a superhero campaign set in a mostly fictional middle America medium-small city in 1989. In a fairly typical plot the bad guys want to slip a mind control drug into the city water supply. The PCs are all supers who work for a government agency that deals exclusively with supernatural and superpowered stuff. This is all public and aboveboard, the PCs all have known hero identities and are effectively US Marshalls. When the game started I asked, "Vigilanties, heroes, or government agents?" They chose to be g-men.

Property damage has been high (normal and expected), a couple of people accused of being supervillains (no evidence or signs of powers after the fight) are in the hospital for months or years, and three villian minions died after being trapped in cars that the heroes set on fire (this has not hit the news yet). But the PCs did pretty well in rescuing some hostages and tracking down the bad guy's main base. Then, since the PCs were laying low for a couple days healing and doing investigation in secret identitys, the BBEG decides to throw a party for his guys the night before they do the last phase of the evil plan. It's football night, there's a game at the local covered stadium but the party is at the villian base/mansion with a big projection TV and coolers of beer. Naturally the PCs find out and crash the party, they even managed to bluff thier way past the guards and get inside.

Eventually they get recognized and we cue the big fight. The PCs trash the place, beat down minions, thrash a couple low end supervillians, and the boss manages to get to his secret jetpack stash and computer lab with two of the four PCs on his heels. He gives his little rant, sits in his rocket chair, and blasts off through the roof. His rant was that while they foiled him this time he'll be back and they can't stop the four gas bombs on the stadium roof because they'll go off in five minutes and they're wired so that if you disarm one the others all go off.

Now the idea is this: That computer hijacked the TV satellite for the football game and broadcast what was going on in the room, it will switch back to the football game in two minutes. The boss villain flies off in his nice rocket chair while the PCs grab some of the jetpacks and make it over to the stadium in time to defuse all four bombs.

What happens is this: One PC checks the computer and notes that it's sending the video feed from this room to a hijacked satellite. Since he can't find a command to disarm any bombs in the menu he ignores the computer. This was the tech wiz character, he gets into a jetpack and takes off for the stadium after radioing the others. The kung-fu guy and strongman fail perception checks to note that the projection TV downstairs is showing the video feed of the hijacked broadcast (to be fair a smoke grenade had gone off in that room but that didn't give any penalties, it was just a straight check). Kung-fu goes upstairs, grabs a jetpack and heads off for the stadium.

The other guy in the jetpack/computer room was a martial arts teleporter guy, he asks what the top speed of the jetpacks are. It's about 288 kph. He then makes a great roll to estimate the top speed of the rocket chair, about 192 kph. He also gets that that's the non-combat speeds, the jetpacks combat maneuvering speed is 18 kph while the rocketchair has a 81 kph combat maneuvering speed and is about 30% more maneuverable. He is also informed that the jetpack has five minutes of fuel and it will take four minutes for it to get to the stadium. So he takes a jet pack and chases after the boss villain. Oops.

The strongman picks up a couple of unconsious secondary villains and walks out to the parking lot to put them in a car and drive the 45 minutes back to base.

We left off there.

I hadn't actually figured out what gas was in the bombs, just that they were foolproof to set up, simple enough for a ten year old to disarm, and that only the PCs were in a position to get to them in time. I do know that the gas isn't deadly, the villain isn't interested in being a mass murderer he just needed something to delay heroes if they busted in and thwarted him. And of course the threat was broadcast to everyone watching the game, but nobody in the stadium knows yet. Five minutes is not enough time to evacuate the stadium or get normal people up there in time to disarm the bombs.

Good job hero.

Keltest
2015-11-30, 06:27 AM
Wait wait wait. The gas bombs are in the stadium, right? And you said a preliminary search did not reveal any means to disable them from where the players were at the time?

What did you expect them to do, other than to head for the stadium then?

Anonymouswizard
2015-11-30, 06:52 AM
Wait wait wait. The gas bombs are in the stadium, right? And you said a preliminary search did not reveal any means to disable them from where the players were at the time?

What did you expect them to do, other than to head for the stadium then?

My guess? Head to the stadium and disarm all the bombs at once, rather than have one guy head back to base. Of course, if I was running it is already know what the gas does, due to the fifth bomb hidden under the pitch, with air holes leading to the sides.

Dycize
2015-11-30, 08:20 AM
Seems to me it was a case of the player not managing to put two and two together, which can happen.
I wouldn't call that player a horrible person for not realising it was a bad idea to not go after the villain (unless everyone bashed him over the head with "we need 4 people to disarm the bombs!").
Especially since he played the "strongman", he may have thought his character would not be able to disarm a bomb.
Also if the other players did not bash him over the head that they also needed him... Well it's also their fault.
Really unless the strongman just went all "no I'm not going even if you tell me to because that's what my character would do!" I'd say it's more of a poorly handled situation than a certain individual's fault.
And one of the big hints was also hidden behind a perception check, which he failed.
Also a scenario with only 1 possible outcome (ie : the 4 go disarm the bombs) and no thought put into the case of failure... Tends to attract this kind of really awkward sequences.

It reminds me of a one shot M&M game at a small convention. It's the story of a DM who wanted to run a game without having really prepared and forgot most of the rules, with a fondness for remotely but not entirely related info dumps.
The game's climax involved fighting a giant robot, except it took about an hour for him to find the robot's stats, but it was already so late, after this hour of searching, went all "oh we'll just cinematic it and say you beat it" and yay, we saved the day.
But mostly it reminds me of the fight before that one, which involved fighting the BBEG, his minions and a group of brainwashed heroes. This being M&M, the fight went on forever. When it was over, the DM told us we were supposed to appeal to the brainwashed heroes' heroic spirit to get them out of the brainwashing, which was something none of us in the group had an idea of doing (we mostly tried to beat the bad guy). We knew they were brainwashed but hadn't really interacted with them much before that, and the fight was pretty much all of us in battle mode, so we completely missed what would've made the fight much, much less of a slog.
I later learned from other conventions participants the reason why pretty much no one signed up to his table that night later (it was me, my brother who was new and two other new-ish guys) was that, well, he had this reputation of heavy info dumps and throwing fits over the convention's forum (which was actually why the game started late due to him, well, showing up late because of this), also fairly poor personal hygiene (something I had noticed instantly and made me sit away from him during the game, the smell...). So just generally unpleasant to play with.
Overall the game wasn't THAT bad and the other players didn't seem to have minded it much but... Augh, did those two (technically one) fights leave a bad taste in my mouth. Hours spent rolling dice for mostly ineffective attacks to hit and eventually winning (thank god for the player who picked the premade character with a wide range attack... oh btw, half the premade were actually from a previous M&M edition and he converted them on the fly... which also took time).

Guran
2015-11-30, 09:38 AM
After reading the first thread and this one, and having my mind absolutely blown, I have to ask. GMs, how do you let these people play your game? I'd be tempted to give them the boot permanently and shamefully the first time they threw dice, tried to murder other PCs out of spite, started stupid drama, or otherwise ground the game to a screeching halt for severely stupid and selfish reasons. I would simply tell them up front they were no longer welcome at the table, and to collect their things and leave. D&D is about having fun and if one player is causing so much trouble that it turns into a chore or another episode of Dramatic Bull****: The Series, then they are a problem and have to go.

Hard to say as things like this never happened at times I was DM-ing and while I want to say that I would give the player the boot immidiatly, I know that I will be too polite to do that. First of all I think we will try to pull the player straight and make him see why we do not appreciate his behavior. If it does not work, then yes, eventually I will give him the boot.

And as I am in this topic now anyway I might as well share a story from my very first D&D campaign. I was invited over by some people I had recently met at that point (and are now some of my best friends) to play D&D. There was another new guy to the group who will be called R from now on. R decided to play a lesbian barbarian who had more metal in her weapons then clothing covering her skin. The campaign started and everything went well. Now and then R made a somewhat dubious "character choice" but nothing deemed disruptive for the story, other characters or players. Then one gaming night R's barbarian came into an argument with our female bard. What the exact nature of the initial argument long forgotten, R's barbarian experienced a lot of arousel from the angry bard in front of her. R then looked at the bard's player and said 'well, I walk up to you and give you a long french kiss.' This offended the bard player, which R blatantly did not realise. The bard unleashed her powers on the barbarian to which R responded with; 'This turns me on even more.' And continued the ehm... Sexual assault of a fellow party member.
Luckily the DM and the dice gods were on the side of the bard. R's barbarian got her own ass handed to her.
R himself believed it all to be incredibly funny and any attempt to talk about it was thrown in the water when R started to laughingly tell how funny and hilarious the event was. That we had a shocked bard player completly eluded him.

Telok
2015-11-30, 01:13 PM
Wait wait wait. The gas bombs are in the stadium, right? And you said a preliminary search did not reveal any means to disable them from where the players were at the time?

What did you expect them to do, other than to head for the stadium then?

Actually the gas bombs are on the top of the dome of a covered stadium and I did expect the four heroes to run off and disarm the four bombs. In fact that's even what the main villain intended which is why they're set up that way.

The guy chasing the main villain knows what he did. He said that he wanted to "make the story interesting". I'm running this game pretty transparently, everyone knows the combat values of the people they're fighting (like knowing the exact AC, attack bonus, and saves of every monster you encounter in D&D) and I've made it clear that I'm running this closer to a traditional combic book style than to a modern dark or gritty style.

The guy heading back to base on the long drive made his decision after Mr. "Interesting" announced what he was doing and started using his walkie talkie to try and raise a National Guard base some twenty plus miles away. He wants then to send a fighter plane to shoot this guy down with a missile. His jetpack will run out of fuel in five minutes and the differences in combat speeds and skill levels (villain has flying combat skills, hero has no jetpack or flying combat skills) means he can't actually hit the villain with anything barring a minor miracle.

The Fury
2015-11-30, 09:27 PM
The guy chasing the main villain knows what he did. He said that he wanted to "make the story interesting". I'm running this game pretty transparently, everyone knows the combat values of the people they're fighting (like knowing the exact AC, attack bonus, and saves of every monster you encounter in D&D) and I've made it clear that I'm running this closer to a traditional combic book style than to a modern dark or gritty style.


Maybe the comic book he was thinking of was Youngblood. Though even in the tradition of conventional superheroics there's a precedent for not going along with a supervillain's sadistic choice. Though there's usually some kind of alternate plan involved, not just "I bet my teammates can figure out a solution to yer crazy deathtrap while I take you down!"

Telok
2015-12-01, 12:39 AM
Maybe the comic book he was thinking of was Youngblood. Though even in the tradition of conventional superheroics there's a precedent for not going along with a supervillain's sadistic choice. Though there's usually some kind of alternate plan involved, not just "I bet my teammates can figure out a solution to yer crazy deathtrap while I take you down!"

Nah. This guy has also had D&D characters throw part of an anti-demon artifact away into a lava pool in a ruined demon fortress "because it didn't do anything". He's jumped into planar portals "to see where they go" when we already knew they were one way trips to the Abyss. He's eaten a chunk of pure Chaos "to see what it tastes like".

Besides, he doesn't read comic books. This is just part of his pattern.

Ah well. The heroes have killed and hospitalized more people than the villains so far.

goto124
2015-12-01, 06:53 AM
Sounds like a video gamer.

MrZJunior
2015-12-01, 10:02 AM
Ah well. The heroes have killed and hospitalized more people than the villains so far.

This sounds like the sort of superheroics that ends with the party standing trial.

Unscrewed
2015-12-01, 10:56 AM
I've been pretty lucky when it comes to players. The two worst I've had to deal with were both in a Genius: The Transgression game. He wasn't a bad player or creepy, he just had a death wish- he died 3 times across the campaign. The wouldn't be nearly so bad, except he took other characters with him. His first death (Charge a machine gun nest) also took out physical-focused character with him, though that wasn't directly his fault. His second death by high-powered NPC could have resulted in a TPK if I hadn't diplomatically thrown him to the dogs. To his credit, he held no grudge over that. His third death was when he decided to fight an army of Nazis, which wouldn't have been bad except I had put myself under mind-control from him as part of a con (long story), so I couldn't actually abandon him until he died. He also did lesser stupid **** from time to time.

The other bad player in that game was the literal nazi, but thankfully the GM was in no mood to put up with that and he ending up leaving/getting kicked out, so we didn't see much of that.

Ironically, the campaign was great.

MrZJunior
2015-12-01, 11:46 AM
I've been pretty lucky when it comes to players. The two worst I've had to deal with were both in a Genius: The Transgression game. He wasn't a bad player or creepy, he just had a death wish- he died 3 times across the campaign. The wouldn't be nearly so bad, except he took other characters with him. His first death (Charge a machine gun nest) also took out physical-focused character with him, though that wasn't directly his fault. His second death by high-powered NPC could have resulted in a TPK if I hadn't diplomatically thrown him to the dogs. To his credit, he held no grudge over that. His third death was when he decided to fight an army of Nazis, which wouldn't have been bad except I had put myself under mind-control from him as part of a con (long story), so I couldn't actually abandon him until he died. He also did lesser stupid **** from time to time.

The other bad player in that game was the literal nazi, but thankfully the GM was in no mood to put up with that and he ending up leaving/getting kicked out, so we didn't see much of that.

Ironically, the campaign was great.

Dying can be quite entertaining in the right circumstances, some of my fondest role playing memories are from when my character got shot in the face and died.

DireSickFish
2015-12-01, 11:49 AM
To die would be an awfully big adventure.

Malifice
2015-12-01, 11:53 AM
I'm DMing a game at present and 1 player is doing the whole 'roll and quickly snatch the dice before I can see it' number. Im obviously gonna call for a 'general rule' of 'if the DM doesn't see the roll it doesn't count' and police it evenly, but it's kinda annoying (and obvious).

DireSickFish
2015-12-01, 12:06 PM
I'm DMing a game at present and 1 player is doing the whole 'roll and quickly snatch the dice before I can see it' number. Im obviously gonna call for a 'general rule' of 'if the DM doesn't see the roll it doesn't count' and police it evenly, but it's kinda annoying (and obvious).

Cheating is one of the few things that crosses an immediate line for me at the table. I'd just tell him to leave the die on the table so I know he isn't cheating, because if I think he's can't trust to play with you then you're out.

The Fury
2015-12-01, 12:14 PM
Nah. This guy has also had D&D characters throw part of an anti-demon artifact away into a lava pool in a ruined demon fortress "because it didn't do anything". He's jumped into planar portals "to see where they go" when we already knew they were one way trips to the Abyss. He's eaten a chunk of pure Chaos "to see what it tastes like".

Besides, he doesn't read comic books. This is just part of his pattern.

My group used to have a couple players that did stuff like that. Only one of them usually did so because he honestly didn't understand the situation fully for some reason. The other would do so when he'd assign Intelligence as a dump stat.




Ah well. The heroes have killed and hospitalized more people than the villains so far.

Depending on what sort of villains you're dealing with, they might want to bring this fact up to sway public opinion against the heroes.

Malifice
2015-12-01, 12:28 PM
Cheating is one of the few things that crosses an immediate line for me at the table. I'd just tell him to leave the die on the table so I know he isn't cheating, because if I think he's can't trust to play with you then you're out.

Yeah but I don't want to start with exposing him as a cheat straight up. It would be super awkward for everyone at the table.

There might be ways to resolve it (and set him straight) a bit subtler and not lose a mate.

You catch more flies with honey than vinegar and all that.

hymer
2015-12-01, 12:55 PM
Yeah but I don't want to start with exposing him as a cheat straight up. It would be super awkward for everyone at the table.

There might be ways to resolve it (and set him straight) a bit subtler and not lose a mate.

You catch more flies with honey than vinegar and all that.

May I suggest telling him to stop doing it, because it makes him look like he's cheating? That worked very well for me once (though I honestly don't know if the guy was cheating, because I stopped him pretty quickly). If he gets defensive, keep talking about how it looks rather than what it is.
You can even get help from one of the other players: Have him do the snatch thing (maybe twice), then you react like it's the last straw: No more of that from anyone!

Malifice
2015-12-01, 01:21 PM
May I suggest telling him to stop doing it, because it makes him look like he's cheating? That worked very well for me once (though I honestly don't know if the guy was cheating, because I stopped him pretty quickly). If he gets defensive, keep talking about how it looks rather than what it is.
You can even get help from one of the other players: Have him do the snatch thing (maybe twice), then you react like it's the last straw: No more of that from anyone!

Yeah. I'm thinking of implementing a 'if the DM doesn't see it, the roll don't count' general rule.

I've already tried 'one at a time rolling' for things like initiative and group checks and that didn't stop him which is worrying. Still does it. He just looks guilty as heck too. It's kinda awkward for the other guys too.

It's kinda an unspoken thing at the table. Nice guy too. Its just a level of meta game worry that I don't want to de with - but I also don't want to ostracise him publicly.

I'll try the 'open rolls and the DMs gotta see them' rule (and my players will probably think I'm a ****, but I have my reaons) first. Then I may try and resolve it with a quiet chat away from the others.

TheTeaMustFlow
2015-12-01, 01:30 PM
Dying can be quite entertaining in the right circumstances, some of my fondest role playing memories are from when my character got shot in the face and died.

Indeed - my confidence in one of my DMs has just been restored after he finished off half of the party (myself included) with one fireball.

The Fury
2015-12-01, 01:35 PM
There's a type of bad player that's not been mentioned all that often. Maybe I'm the only one to ever encounter this type, or maybe I'm the sort of player that brings out this tendency. I'm not sure. But I've dubbed this type the "Would-be Chessmaster." This type will generally have their character assume a leadership role and assign the best characters roles where they can be most effective. They also tend to have any "useless" characters stay out of the way somehow. Wally was a bit of this player type, but so was another player, whom I'll call "Moe."

In a dungeon crawl, Moe formulated their plan to investigate a passage behind a locked door: The Monk and the Wizard would come with them, (a Rogue.) The Monk was an experienced player and the Wizard was an unknown quantity that showed promise. The Cleric and the Fighter, (me,) were to wait outside the door and stand guard. Now, in fairness to Moe they were absolutely correct about me-- I'm a bad player myself. In fact the primary quality I have as a player is "useless." This is not to say that I can't and don't take a certain vindictive joy out of throwing a monkey-wrench into their carefully planned schemes. Ironically, the best way I found for doing this to a Would-be Chessmaster is to do exactly as I'm told.

Standing guard with the Cleric we joked back and forth in-character while consciously ignoring what was happening to the rest of the party. After all, our characters can't see or hear what's happening. It wasn't until the DM actually told us that we heard screaming and sounds of combat that we actually took an interest in what was going on. When it was clear that they were actually in over their heads, we did show up to help. Hoo-boy, was Moe mad at us though. "What were you two thinking? What is the matter with you? We're getting the crap kicked out of us and you two clowns are standing around telling 'knock knock' jokes!"

I guess the moral to this is either, "Structure your plans and orders more carefully," or "There's a time and a place to disobey orders, make sure you know what it is."

Or the classic one that seems to apply to so many of my roleplaying stories: "Nobody likes a wise-ass."

MrStabby
2015-12-01, 01:53 PM
Reading these I feel very lucky with all of my groups.

The worst I have had are players who don't know their rules and every time it comes to their turn they re-read every description of every spell they have prepared. 90% of the time taken is used up by one person.

They also get petulant when as DM I point out that their spell doesn't actually do what they want it to and insist that the rules are wrong. I think they think it is endearing but no one else at the table seems to appreciate it.

nedz
2015-12-01, 02:12 PM
Unfortunately, Dalius is the one he means to keep. This player is weird about things. For instance, he'll quibble about how long it should take to get from one town to another, until he's basically insisting he can use his spirit horses to cross a continent overnight. Well, demanding more so than insisting. He's also taken to planning what loot he wants to get from a quest, long before the quest is actually over, without asking if the system and setting work with it. Another "fun" development is that he wants the Triceratops his Redflank owns to randomly eat a magical fruit and become a rhinoceros, for no apparent reason. It's all very confusing to keep track of. I'm planning on killing off or otherwise removing all of the NPC allies he gathered, since he's taken the party from 3 players and two NPC companions, to 2 players and around 9 NPCs. I only allowed it because I thought he was going somewhere with it, but now it's just gotten out of hand, so I have to put my foot down.

Just have them mutiny over something. If that's not realistic then have them mind controlled/possessed/etc. into rebellion.

This way it's an encounter rather than a D ex M.

JetThomasBoat
2015-12-01, 02:23 PM
I have a new one that...wasn't especially bad, I guess, but it felt pretty insulting.

Okay, so I'm a fairly inexperienced DM, but I'm usually the only one willing to take the time and energy to get a game together, so I always have to try to get something started. Also, I've had the 5e rules for months now and have never gotten to play or run it. So I am eager to try it out. Perhaps if I had explained that to all involved, it would have compelled someone to be a little less unpleasant.

Anyway, I get a wild notion to go for a real world 1800s game in a vein similar to Castlevania or Shadow Hearts. My two players are A and B. A is an old friend, played with him for years. He...makes a lot of Identical Replacement Characters, actually, and none of them really ever have much personality. His approach is that of a Elder Scrolls character, completely new to the land and situation, so has no important past or history or connections. Which is fine, if someone that makes a good party face is around, otherwise he's the table-top equivalent of a video gamer who is just mashing the A button to get through the dialogue so he knows what items he has to go fetch. It was sometimes worse, though, when for about five years on the rare occasions he was a player, he would roll up the same two characters. A wizard triple specialized in evocation (which, can I get a ruling, is that even legal? He seemed to think it was totally cool RAW) or else he rolled up the same thing but with some cleric of a god with the healing domain tacked on because he wanted to Mystic Theurge, but then was the most un-religious character. No attempt to RP whatsoever. Might as well have just expanded his wizard spell list. Anyway, for my 5e game, A rolled up a changeling rogue, formerly a con artist, who is trying to flee from his guild. Good enough. If I planned on continuing the campaign, I'd have him flesh out the guild, but...

B is A's fiance. And though she's a long time video game and fantasy fan, she's only barely a better player than A's ex girlfriend, who only played because A couldn't be aloud to be off having fun without her, lest A realize how horrible she was. Anyway, B doesn't have a character done, which is fine, since they didn't have access to the books for very long to write up characters. She starts annoying me right away. I explain that basically half of skills and starting equipment come from class and the other half from background. She has a huge problem with this. Proceeded to say either "This is ****ing stupid!" or "This is ****ing bull****!" probably fifteen times over the course of the next 45 minutes. I get not liking something but if someone takes the time to try to write up and run a D&D session for you, maybe the slightest bit of tact or restraint might be wise.

As a side note, I personally love the backgrounds thing. It makes people give even a bare minimum of thought to their character, aside from how tall are you, what color is your skin, and what do you use to kill people. And it's not like it's some huge load, like if you want to not worry about it at all, it doens't need to really ever come up much, or it can give the DM volumes to work with as far as possible plot hooks or sub-quests.

Anyway, little miss ****ing bull**** was having none of it. Apparently she hated the skill system and thought all the possible backgrounds were all stupid. She said she couldn't customize her characters because she didn't have skill points. Her last character was a fighter, so much characterization came from him being able to jump and climb good? More on their other campaign in a minute.

So as she's sitting there complaining (is there a good word that means doing a combination of complaining and insulting?), I remember months before when I first showed them the 5e books and she was looking through the MM and she just shined a spotlight on how super abbrasive she can be. Like as a for instance, any time you are watching something she didn't put on, she will make fun of the people in the show and/or tell you how poor of a casting choice it was. So naturally, she had to tell me how bad all the artwork was in the 5e stuff and then complain about the order the monsters were but in. Cause guys, didn't you know? Alphabetic order is ****ing bull****. Lamias? Yuan-Ti? Nagas? All that should be in the "things that look like snakes" section. You know how Rocs and Kenkus have nothing to do with each other? Well, beaks and feathers, so they should be right beside each other.

Anyway, she finally settles on a background. She makes a tiefling monk from a monestary somewhere in the Far East. Whatever. By that point I had already gone out to chainsmoke in the snow for fifteen minutes while I tried to calm down. We start playing and...I dunno, taking ques from A, the two of them and my DMPC, an aging Japanese paladin, take forever leaving town because they are super suspicious about this secret back way into the castle they plan to sneak into (to kill a Romanian vampire), and when they finally get to the caves, they run into a potentially helpful tribe of Lizardfolk. I always do something like this, in maybe a misguided attempt to teach my players to occasionally try something other than letting their swords do the talking. If A paid more attention, he would recognize such a pattern.

So the changeling had a plan that involved poor logic. He wanted to...scare the lizardfolk sentries into running down the path the adventurers hadn't explored? Potentially leading them to go and put their fellows on high alert? I dunno. Anyway, once that goes poorly, he starts trying diplomacy. He's not picking super great questions or answers, so it's taking a bit of time. Well, about three sentences for him and two and half for me. Before B gets bored and just lays into one of them. And she is a fair attacker, what with holding a quarterstaff in two hands and adding that extra unarmed attack from being a monk. Luckily the lizardfolk had a lot of health and I managed to think of having the paladin intercede before any permanent damage was done.

Yadda yadda yadda, the party goes to kill the lizardfolk's neighbors, grmlocks that are weakening them by using a ritual to make the temperature lower in the caves so the lizardfolk can't fight near as well, the get to it. This part, I think I handled poorly because I didn't give the enemy enough of a chance to percieve the threat. The party was relatively sneaky, but I probably should have given the grimlocks more chances to hear them. Basically, it ends up being sneak up, kill real fast, sneak up, kill real fast, continue. They kept bugging me about experience and I'm terrible at understanding how to properly allocate experience, so near the end of the dungeon, I let them level. To level 2. Figure why not, I probably balanced the last fight poorly anyway.

For those that don't remember or don't know, in 5e, rogues and monks get some similar bonuses at level 2. The rogue can now dash or disengage as a bonus action. For free. The monk can do the same thing, but doing either action costs one of the two ki points the monk has at this level. Can you guess what B thought of that? She just saw the two things similar to the rogue, not the other, third use for her new ki points. The thing that lets her, if she spends 1 ki point, get one attack and then two bonus attacks as long as they're unarmed strikes. You know, three attacks at level 2, way before anyone else even gets a second attack. Which, I would have thought would please her, since attacking was all she had the patience to do anyway.

After that, I just kind of gave up. They continued on to the pre-boss minion hoard fight, I fudged the dice rolls because they didn't think to used ranged weapons to thin the herd, even when the paladin moved into position to set up a bottle neck. They survived (barely, even with my fudging) and I barely managed to get to quest reward before telling them I was done for the night.

I'm actually anticipating when A calls me up again and asks when I want to pick up the game again so I can tell him I'm never DMing 5e for his fiance again. I can run a monster killing fest in 3.5 some time if they want, but I'm not going to take time and energy and write story for her to just ruin with her disrespect. I'll probably be nice but I don't particularly want to.

I think part of the problem is her most recent 3.5 game. It's one A is running and here are some gems from that.

Okay, so to start with, the game has three regular players, and me. And A as the DM. The plot involves some crap about there being a tournament among the gods to determine the diefic hierarchy. It ends up coming down to dragons, demons (or devils, I don't remember) and abberations. And example of A's over the top, not very detail or RP heavy campaigns, usually just dungeon slogfests. B is playing a duel wielding dwarven fighter, and the two new players R and V (with weird as hell real names) are playing a druid and a wizard respectively and the wizard was talked into going into Mystic Theurge by A (cause healing, nevermind that even in a campaign about gods, no one seems to even really remember the cleric is a friggin' priest of anyone). Neither really know what spells to pick or when is a good time for them.

So with that stage set, I was in a couple sessions, not right in a row or anything. The first two times, I was playing some scout built I always wanted to try. But by the time of the last session, they were around level 18 or so? And I had found out that A was largely ingoring rules about stacking bonuses or how high bonuses could get per item. And he was giving them so much money. I wrote up a 17th level character with equivalent starting wealth, but they had probably already spent like five times that much among the three of them. They were just loaded down with magic items. And I wanted to try and make my character completely by the book and have it be a private victory for myself that I could still do that. But I know some basic ideas of high optimization, but didn't have the finer points, and I didn't want to look up spells all day.

So I decided to go with binder, on a whim, because I love the flavor and I think they're super neat. And it worked out pretty well. And for the magic items, I knew I couldn't buy more than them, so I broke out the Magic Item Compendium and bought much smarter than them. We always use a mix of 3.0 and 3.5, so I got the item that enchants your natural weapons from the Savage Species book and focused on keeping Ronove bound because she would give me the unarmed damage of a monk my level and focused on charging and punching. And I had all these crazy tricks.

Anyway, we get to playing and I soon realize combat usually comes down to us doing a little while we wait for B to kill everything. I had some gems where I outshone them because of just knowing what most of my vestiges could do as opposed to the casters taking like five minutes to pick a spell some turns. But I'm getting away from my main point. Game was fun...ish? But let me see if I can list the things that were just...out of hand.

B's character had more than the seven attacks she should have had. B's character was duel weilding dwarven waraxes because her boyfriend ruled that mythril weapons, like mythril armor, are treated as a weapon class lighter than their normal one. B's weapons did like 2 extra d10 damage or something stupid like that. A let magic items give bonuses to like three different stats, like B had a belt of Giant Strength, Health, and...Dexterity? And the bonuses had to be above +6 because she had a STR modifier of like +15. B's character had a magic item for like every kind of bonus to AC, like natural armor, a sheild bonus, etc., and half of them I think were just for that specific purpose, just made up on the fly. And the bonuses were SO high. She had an AC of like sixty when we started that session. Literally, she had to roll a one to miss an enemy and they needed a 20 to hit her. Which, they got fairly often, I think, since to compensate for her HP (four times mine when I was 1 level lower) and hugely high AC, every monster we fought had like six attacks.

My favorite part though? She had spent none of that dragon's hoard of gold she had spent to gain an item granting flight or anything to increase her base land speed. We kept finding obstacles where they were like "Crap, we either need to sleep to switch the spellcaster's spells, or go and buy items with the exploration ability we need." and I would be flipping through my Tome of Magic like "I think I got a vestige for that."

It's sad, really, because A running that kind of game is only going to make his future wife a worse, more entitled player that just expects to be buried in gold and magic items.

MrZJunior
2015-12-01, 02:55 PM
It's sad, really, because A running that kind of game is only going to make his future wife a worse, more entitled player that just expects to be buried in gold and magic items.

Sounds like you need better gaming buddies.

The Fury
2015-12-01, 02:59 PM
I'm not even sure what "triple specialization" actually is. Where would I even find the appropriate passage in the rules for that?

JetThomasBoat
2015-12-01, 03:09 PM
Well, normal wizard specialization in 3.5 makes it so you are unable to cast spells from two schools of your choice, other than divination, and then you can cast spells of your specialized school at +1 caster level and have one additional spell slot per day that can only be filled with that school's spell. He believed that in the rules, if you banned six schools, you would get three extra spell slots per level as long as they held that school's spells, and that you got +3 to your caster level for spells of that school. So he would have a character who could only cast evocation and divination spells.

To MrZJunior:

Honestly, A isn't so bad when there are others of our old group around to reign him in a little more. And I'm moving so I'll be hopefully working on finding a new group when I move.

MesiDoomstalker
2015-12-01, 04:08 PM
SNIP

Well I can't confirm for certain, some of B's magic item shenanigans are common powergame suggestions (for 3.5, which is what the second spoiler is about). Multiple items that buff AC using different bonus type to inflate AC quickly (relative to price), combining simply numeric bonuses into one item is legal by Magic Item Compendium (though A Belt of Str, Con and Dex would be silly since Dex isn't tied to the Belt slot). A Strength of 40 at high levels isn't unheard of but it is quite difficult especially on a Dwarven Defender base. That being said, B seemed to be able to powergame because A did everything he could to let her.

icefractal
2015-12-01, 04:36 PM
There is no "triple specialization" in 3.5, although there's a Focused Specialist option that's pretty much double specialization. Also, specialization doesn't give a CL boost.

That said, if someone wanted to drop everything except Evocation and Divination for more slots, I'd probably let them, though I'd warn them they're making themselves weaker by doing so.



Actually the gas bombs are on the top of the dome of a covered stadium and I did expect the four heroes to run off and disarm the four bombs. In fact that's even what the main villain intended which is why they're set up that way.I have to confess - I'd probably try to do something other than that too. Because doing exactly what the villain intended seems so strongly like playing into his hands, and - putting myself in the villain's mindset - why wouldn't there be a 5th bomb? Or the four bombs are set up to go off when all the heroes are next to them and do something nasty? It feels a bit much like "Heroes, the only way you could defeat me is to stand on the big red 'X' on the floor and close your eyes!"

Which I know is incorrect for the genre. But when playing in anything like 'character stance', I have a hard time ignoring it. And that's as someone who has read comics. If the player hasn't, I'm not surprised at all that they'd do this.

JetThomasBoat
2015-12-01, 04:42 PM
Well I can't confirm for certain, some of B's magic item shenanigans are common powergame suggestions (for 3.5, which is what the second spoiler is about). Multiple items that buff AC using different bonus type to inflate AC quickly (relative to price), combining simply numeric bonuses into one item is legal by Magic Item Compendium (though A Belt of Str, Con and Dex would be silly since Dex isn't tied to the Belt slot). A Strength of 40 at high levels isn't unheard of but it is quite difficult especially on a Dwarven Defender base. That being said, B seemed to be able to powergame because A did everything he could to let her.

Not dwarven defender, just fighter. Nothing else. And I had less of a problem with the stacking multiple things on one item, I more had a problem with the fact that we they were given the money to do it. Also, I think some of it was them just deciding that it was cool to have an numeric enhancement to AC, like the enchantment bonus to AC on a +2 chain shirt, but they were having these enhancements on like other non-armor or sheild magic items, I think.

Also, I'm sure a lot of it wasn't like she paid the actual amount in the book for an amulet of natural armor, he was just like "Oh, this is a kind of bonus to AC? Here's an item that grants one for some arbitrary price. Luck bonus to armor class? Even though I think that's a pretty rare one? Here's an item that's conveniently in one of the only slots you don't have filled up, for a similar arbitrary price." I mean I know they weren't completely perfect with setting prices and making magic items in the books, but I figure some of the ways they priced things was to try and make it not easy to just load up on every kind of bonus to AC possible. Some things, like armor enhancements, are cheaper than others, or in an inconvenient slot or something.

But you basically hit the nail on the head. She probably complained the first few times she couldn't hit something and he was probably like "Well, here's everything you need to raise your to hit bonus. I put them on the character sheet myself so you wouldn't risk a paper cut looking things up yourself, pumpkin." I have to assume, anyway, because even after we both told her in the 5e game that her using a 3.5 character sheet would be super confusing, she had the gall to chew him out when she got confused by how HE filled out HER character sheet.

Also, funny story, after she saw all the magic items I had that I had to look in a lot of books to find, she was like "Babe, why didn't you tell me about any of that stuff?".

The Fury
2015-12-01, 07:25 PM
Well, normal wizard specialization in 3.5 makes it so you are unable to cast spells from two schools of your choice, other than divination, and then you can cast spells of your specialized school at +1 caster level and have one additional spell slot per day that can only be filled with that school's spell. He believed that in the rules, if you banned six schools, you would get three extra spell slots per level as long as they held that school's spells, and that you got +3 to your caster level for spells of that school. So he would have a character who could only cast evocation and divination spells.


In most D20-derived systems the rules will say whether an ability can be used multiple times and how would work. For example, Feats that can be taken multiple times will usually say so in the feat description. Generally, if it doesn't say specifically that a wizard can specialize multiple times he probably can't. At the very least, A doesn't have a very strong case for this being OK under RAW.


There is no "triple specialization" in 3.5, although there's a Focused Specialist option that's pretty much double specialization. Also, specialization doesn't give a CL boost.

That said, if someone wanted to drop everything except Evocation and Divination for more slots, I'd probably let them, though I'd warn them they're making themselves weaker by doing so.


True, though considering how A was described I'm not sure he'd buy that. "Oh, I'll be weaker but really good at blowing stuff up? Otherwise known as the only ability in the game that actually matters? Ha! I think I'll manage to cope, pal. By the way is there any way I can trade in these lame Divination spells for something more... y'know, explodey?"

JetThomasBoat
2015-12-01, 08:12 PM
I guess the casting spells of your school at an increased caster level was a house rule from like thirteen years ago when my friend's older brother taught us to play and I just never looked it up. Feel kinda dumb now.

But yeah, that's him in a nutshell. When I just want to use blasty spells, I go warmage. Loves me some warmage. I'd rather go to magic boot camp than the library anyway...

Anxe
2015-12-01, 11:05 PM
There is no "triple specialization" in 3.5, although there's a Focused Specialist option that's pretty much double specialization. Also, specialization doesn't give a CL boost.

That said, if someone wanted to drop everything except Evocation and Divination for more slots, I'd probably let them, though I'd warn them they're making themselves weaker by doing so.

Red Wizard prestige class would be the "third specialization" added on to Focused Specialist if we were going the RAW route for this.

TheTeaMustFlow
2015-12-02, 01:40 AM
There is no "triple specialization" in 3.5, although there's a Focused Specialist option that's pretty much double specialization. Also, specialization doesn't give a CL boost.

That said, if someone wanted to drop everything except Evocation and Divination for more slots, I'd probably let them, though I'd warn them they're making themselves weaker by doing so.


I'd actually be almost tempted by that in a lower-op game, if I could just keep abjuration. Blasting may be far from the best strategy, but damn if it ain't one of the funner ones.

JetThomasBoat
2015-12-02, 08:27 AM
I'd actually be almost tempted by that in a lower-op game, if I could just keep abjuration. Blasting may be far from the best strategy, but damn if it ain't one of the funner ones.

It probably was a lot of fun for him. Especially when the party consisted of three new players playing a whiny bard that could never be decisive in combat, a wizard that kept picking getting spells confused ( "Yeah, I have fireball prepared,see, right here on my list it says...flaming...sphere..."), and an elven archery ranger that got AoO'd to bloody pieces becaus she couldn't remember her bow was a friggin' ranged weapon. And I had to skill monkey for all of them.

That may be a bit too harsh, as they were getting better all the time, but it just drove me nuts because when we would round robin, A would bring in his fancy blaster mage and just blast everything and then he would be really smug about it. Like basically tell everyone else he was carrying the party. Like wow, that's a good way to encourage new people to the hobby, make them feel useless. Oh, and piss off your old friend that's handling the locked stuff, too, that's good.

Anonymouswizard
2015-12-02, 08:50 AM
It probably was a lot of fun for him. Especially when the party consisted of three new players playing a whiny bard that could never be decisive in combat, a wizard that kept picking getting spells confused ( "Yeah, I have fireball prepared,see, right here on my list it says...flaming...sphere..."), and an elven archery ranger that got AoO'd to bloody pieces becaus she couldn't remember her bow was a friggin' ranged weapon. And I had to skill monkey for all of them.

Slight note, in 3.5 you can avoid AoOs with a ranged weapon by taking the full attack action (my personal theory is that you're firing so fast they can't react). But this is why I avoid using a battle gird, I just make is opposed dexterity/agility (depending on the system) checks to successfully escape from melee (I'd probably throw in BAB as well in 3.5) and block firing in melee, it's simpler and is only annoying when a player decides to play a low-dex melee character.

(for the record, Dex only comes into short-range movement and dodging terrain for me, raw speed is strength and endurance is constitution, and marching effectively is INT/WIS)


That may be a bit too harsh, as they were getting better all the time, but it just drove me nuts because when we would round robin, A would bring in his fancy blaster mage and just blast everything and then he would be really smug about it. Like basically tell everyone else he was carrying the party. Like wow, that's a good way to encourage new people to the hobby, make them feel useless. Oh, and piss off your old friend that's handling the locked stuff, too, that's good.

Yeah, that's horrible, there's a reason I haven't played a D&D style wizard in a while (I prefer more support characters because in a pinch I can carry a party). I think the only time I would is if I got to play Anima and summoning was banned (because summoning is oh so obvious to abuse), so the likelihood is as close to zero as makes no odds. New players should feel like the ones contributing the most (without awesome magical items just for them), I hope he didn't scare them off, and that you find a group without such a horrible player.

Now, If you'll excuse me, I need a wizard triple specialised in necromancy. No, wait, there are 8 schools, so if I ban all 8 I can be quadruple specialised in universal spells! Where's the DMG, I think they had that class in it, under C :smalltongue:

The Fury
2015-12-02, 01:15 PM
It probably was a lot of fun for him. Especially when the party consisted of three new players playing a whiny bard that could never be decisive in combat, a wizard that kept picking getting spells confused ( "Yeah, I have fireball prepared,see, right here on my list it says...flaming...sphere..."), and an elven archery ranger that got AoO'd to bloody pieces becaus she couldn't remember her bow was a friggin' ranged weapon. And I had to skill monkey for all of them.

That may be a bit too harsh, as they were getting better all the time, but it just drove me nuts because when we would round robin, A would bring in his fancy blaster mage and just blast everything and then he would be really smug about it. Like basically tell everyone else he was carrying the party. Like wow, that's a good way to encourage new people to the hobby, make them feel useless. Oh, and piss off your old friend that's handling the locked stuff, too, that's good.

Maybe you could put them through a dungeon based on the one from The Goonies? A blaster mage would be kind of useful in something like that, but the Ranger and the Bard might actually be the ones to carry the party through it. Heck, there's a deathtrap that needs someone to play music to disarm it.

The Random NPC
2015-12-03, 06:54 PM
Slight note, in 3.5 you can avoid AoOs with a ranged weapon by taking the full attack action (my personal theory is that you're firing so fast they can't react).

Wait, what?

Anonymouswizard
2015-12-03, 07:05 PM
Wait, what?

It's obvious not RAI, but the way the rules are set up the action attack (ranged) says it grants an AoO, but next to Full Attack in full-round actions the AoOs column says it doesn't grant one. I'd never allow a player to get away with it, but then again I plan to move to Anima as my fantasy system of choice, which allows you to make counterattacks against archers in exactly the same way you can make them against swordsmen: be within melee range when they attack and have them roll low enough.

nedz
2015-12-03, 07:28 PM
It's obvious not RAI, but the way the rules are set up the action attack (ranged) says it grants an AoO, but next to Full Attack in full-round actions the AoOs column says it doesn't grant one. I'd never allow a player to get away with it, but then again I plan to move to Anima as my fantasy system of choice, which allows you to make counterattacks against archers in exactly the same way you can make them against swordsmen: be within melee range when they attack and have them roll low enough.

The full attack action seems to assume Attack (melee) and is silent on unarmed and missile — if you read the text.

Incidentally this reading of the RAW leads to an exploit where you can full attack with a bow, without provoking, but then, after just one attack, switch to a move action; because:

Deciding between an Attack or a Full Attack

After your first attack, you can decide to take a move action instead of making your remaining attacks, depending on how the first attack turns out. If you’ve already taken a 5-foot step, you can’t use your move action to move any distance, but you could still use a different kind of move action.
So you have taken a standard attack with a bow and dodged the AoO because you were "Full attacking", and AoOs occur before the action so your opponent has missed out.

slaydemons
2015-12-03, 07:50 PM
I plan to move to Anima as my fantasy system of choice, which allows you to make counterattacks against archers in exactly the same way you can make them against swordsmen: be within melee range when they attack and have them roll low enough.

As someone who has played anima this is good, though anima can get a bit silly with defenses vs attack.

And now a story from me again, short story short, he refused to read the rules, played the highest book keeping class and constantly asked things he wouldn't know in character.

To make it longer goes a little like this

This is my first time gming, a friend suggested we play my preferred reading material dungeons and dragons 3.5 specifically, I suggested we play the next week and told everyone exactly where to look to learn their classes of choice. he chose wizard, I had them roll out there stats and if they got really poor on their rolls they could roll again, we only had one player needing a reroll, it wasn't the wizard. I helped them all with there character sheets as I understand if you don't know it it can be daunting. we finish after two hours and then delay it for the next week so they can work on a backstory and for the spell caster to learn his first level spells, everyone else wrote a nice paragraph nothing much, the wizard had a line saying he was a wizards apprentice, and he sought unrivaled power. That was fine with me, we could flesh it out more as the game unfurls I start them in a dungeon rather then a tavern because new gm thought more about dungeon crawling and finding hidden treasure and storys that sprung from there. The first fight is against kobolds, it gets to the wizards turn and asks for the players handbook to look up what spells do. he takes five minutes before asking "what are these kobolds weak to." I know his character sheet off of my head so I say to him "They are weak to bleeding out." as straight faced as possible, everyone gives a small chuckle but he asks again I reply this time to him "a lot of creatures don't just have weaknesses." and it takes him another minute to finally pick a spell after me reminding him he can only cast level 1 spells at this time and he apparently didn't prepare any so after he regains spells slots again he has to tell me or say what he has prepared. it slowly came to me over the next few fights and I asked him "how much research did you put into learning your class." he said straight faced "Why would I do that when you will just tell me." and that is when I decided that table gaming with that group is not worth it.

JetThomasBoat
2015-12-03, 08:42 PM
and that is when I decided that table gaming with that group is not worth it.

Were any of the other players showing redeemable qualities? Because I'm sure I would be far from the only person here that would advise maybe just cutting out the wizard player in some kind of diplamatic way if possible.

And I've seen players like that before, but it's usually the DM's girlfriend in my experiences.

slaydemons
2015-12-03, 08:53 PM
Were any of the other players showing redeemable qualities? Because I'm sure I would be far from the only person here that would advise maybe just cutting out the wizard player in some kind of diplamatic way if possible.

And I've seen players like that before, but it's usually the DM's girlfriend in my experiences.

The rest of the group was fine if not new. the major problem was that I would always feel awkward playing the game since we only ever go to that guys house, and we tried to play one more session I didn't feel awkward then because another player also lived there and was his brother, he was just... disruptive.


Edit: For fun facts I have played in about 5 different group, and have picked up what I consider to be the best from those groups to be my current gaming group, and I have had 5 bad players i'm unlucky, very unlucky.

Cluedrew
2015-12-04, 06:35 PM
"what are these kobolds weak to." [...] I say to him "They are weak to bleeding out." as straight faced as possibleI like that one. As for the player... that one thing is a fixable problem but that sense of entitlement there.

slaydemons
2015-12-04, 09:44 PM
I like that one. As for the player... that one thing is a fixable problem but that sense of entitlement there.

I could of, but I probably wouldn't enjoy tabletopping anymore by that point.

Rusvul
2015-12-08, 03:53 AM
I've played with a few people who could be abrasive, but nothing too bad. I don't play with all of them currently, but I still like all of them as people and talk to them regularly.


I have a friend who I'll call L. I've played 3.5 with him before and I will again, and he's a pretty nice guy.

L is a pretty good role player. He always plays more or less the same character (stereotypical dwarf, loves ale, absurdly high CON score, usually a CoDzilla) but to his credit he does it pretty well. He's played other races and classes, but his characters (with one or two exceptions) all tend to have similar personalities. A little odd, but harmless.

Where L becomes more problematic is out of game. At one point he asked me to run a game for a friend of his, who I'll call J- over Roll20 because J is across the country. I asked if he'd like to try 5e, because I'd been wanting to and it's easier for beginners. He was alright with that, so we built characters and had our first session. Everything went fine, and I found out that J is exactly the type of person I like to play with. Great.

Next session, L had invited another player, H. I know H and I'm fine playing with him, he's pretty cool, but it was a little frustrating that L invited someone without asking the group first. So H rolls up a rogue and session 2 happens.

J's character actually dies here (or shortly after, I don't remember) due to a mix of poor planning on the party's part (Hey, I know, if we act recklessly, we can get the attention of every cultist at once!) and poor balance on my part. J doesn't get upset and rolls up a very similar (but slightly different) character- his old character's twin. A little odd, but he's new to RPGs so I let it slide without a sideways glance.

One or two more sessions happened, and then L invited another player without asking. The new-new guy, T, is more of an acquaintance to me, but I don't mind playing with new people, so I silence my concerns and help T build a Druid. T turns out to be a lethargic player who doesn't do anything without DM prompts and always shows up late or not at all.

A few sessions later, the party decides to kick T because he is so often late or just doesn't show up. I took a neutral stance because it seemed like the easiest option for me. So T was booted (partially by L, I might add, who invited him in the first place) and I felt kind of bad. Fortunately, I don't think he actually cared.

A few sessions later, the party finds a small hunk of Adamantine. L has an Adamantine Dwarven war axe in another (3.5) game, and automatically assumes it will work the same way, so he needs it. This sparks an argument between L and H about who gets to make a cool weapon. It explodes into L declaring he hates 5e and quitting the game.

A week or so later, L and J tell me that they want me to run a game for just them. This was their original request, before they invited more people and subsequently got mad at them. I was miffed but I wanted everyone to have fun.

So I announce that I'm changing the style of my game so that I can be more impartial and let my players arrange themselves as they will, in multiple parties if need be.

L and J party up and play a session, which goes well. Then they decide to get mad at each other and refuse to play with each other.

So now L and H play together. I've extended an offer to J, but he's done nothing with it yet. My group is weird. But hey, I've made myself impartial, so it's not my problem!



A year ago I played online with different people- U and C.

U is fun to be around and is overall pretty cool. The worst thing he ever did was just not show up. More on that later.

C is a good guy. He likes to fanboy over things (birds, fish, insects, and mushrooms- the more anthropomorphic the better.) for very little reason he could explain. He likes birds because they're 'the best,' 'cute,' or 'awesome.' He is apparently incapable of giving any reasoning beyond that. This bugs me, but that's as much a flaw of mine as it is of his. (Still, I'd feel a lot better if he could say he likes birds because they're independent or pretty or they can fly or, heck, an 'I don't know' would pacify me well enough. Still, not a big deal.)

What's more abrasive is that he usually doesn't have in character interests, nor does he seperate what he has IC interests from his OOC. His Druid spent every single spare moment combing the woodland for a mushroom being that doesn't exist. Again, not a big deal (especially since he doesn't get mad at failing to find a shroom-man, or whatever the equivalent might be) but a little annoying.

Unfortunately, the same holds true for when C DMs. U had an Acherai egg fall (literally out of a planar rift) into his lap... and it hatched into a friendly little fuzzball who bore no vestiges of the alignment listed in the MM- Always Lawful Evil.

Now again, this isn't something that would bother me if it was a theme of the campaign- if we were marching not alongside reformed Succubi and an Efreeti Cleric of Pelor, I wouldn't have batted an eye. But it was just the Acherai that got to be a good person because it was raised with kindness, and that was purely because it was a bird-thing and he likes birds. He'd do stuff like that.

The other problem that group had was scheduling. We found a day and it worked... About 1/3 of the time. The other 2/3 of the time, either U or C would inexplicably just not show up, and then apologize profusely a few hours later. Sometimes they were asleep, sometimes they had random obligations, sometimes they just forgot because we hadn't played in weeks due to their persistent absences. They both have functioning cell phones, but Pelor forbid they ever use them to text a few hours early and tell us they'll be absent. That happened maybe twice- all the other times they just didn't show up. I got (very and unreasonably) angry and that game sort of stopped happening. And that brings us to another of the worst players I've aged with: Me!




I am by no means innocent. When I was a newer player, I always built totally flat characters with no personality. I also tend to metagame when it comes to creature stats, and I think I've been annoying on more than one occasion because I sort of go on autopilot and mention the CR of whatever we're fighting. I also have engaged in unwanted PVP due to significant alignment differences and because... *shudder* "I was just playing my character."

...

I repent! I repent! D:

I haven't done the PVP thing ever again, and I try to do as little of the others as I can. I like to think I'm improving, and that most of that is behind me now.

(Hey, at least that last one didn't end as badly as it could have. Everybody lived... Then I retired my character. Which was probably wise.)

Inevitability
2015-12-10, 11:47 AM
I've played with a few people who could be abrasive, but nothing too bad. I don't play with all of them currently, but I still like all of them as people and talk to them regularly.


I have a friend who I'll call L. I've played 3.5 with him before and I will again, and he's a pretty nice guy.

L is a pretty good role player. He always plays more or less the same character (stereotypical dwarf, loves ale, absurdly high CON score, usually a CoDzilla) but to his credit he does it pretty well. He's played other races and classes, but his characters (with one or two exceptions) all tend to have similar personalities. A little odd, but harmless.

Where L becomes more problematic is out of game. At one point he asked me to run a game for a friend of his, who I'll call J- over Roll20 because J is across the country. I asked if he'd like to try 5e, because I'd been wanting to and it's easier for beginners. He was alright with that, so we built characters and had our first session. Everything went fine, and I found out that J is exactly the type of person I like to play with. Great.

Next session, L had invited another player, H. I know H and I'm fine playing with him, he's pretty cool, but it was a little frustrating that L invited someone without asking the group first. So H rolls up a rogue and session 2 happens.

J's character actually dies here (or shortly after, I don't remember) due to a mix of poor planning on the party's part (Hey, I know, if we act recklessly, we can get the attention of every cultist at once!) and poor balance on my part. J doesn't get upset and rolls up a very similar (but slightly different) character- his old character's twin. A little odd, but he's new to RPGs so I let it slide without a sideways glance.

One or two more sessions happened, and then L invited another player without asking. The new-new guy, T, is more of an acquaintance to me, but I don't mind playing with new people, so I silence my concerns and help T build a Druid. T turns out to be a lethargic player who doesn't do anything without DM prompts and always shows up late or not at all.

A few sessions later, the party decides to kick T because he is so often late or just doesn't show up. I took a neutral stance because it seemed like the easiest option for me. So T was booted (partially by L, I might add, who invited him in the first place) and I felt kind of bad. Fortunately, I don't think he actually cared.

A few sessions later, the party finds a small hunk of Adamantine. L has an Adamantine Dwarven war axe in another (3.5) game, and automatically assumes it will work the same way, so he needs it. This sparks an argument between L and H about who gets to make a cool weapon. It explodes into L declaring he hates 5e and quitting the game.

A week or so later, L and J tell me that they want me to run a game for just them. This was their original request, before they invited more people and subsequently got mad at them. I was miffed but I wanted everyone to have fun.

So I announce that I'm changing the style of my game so that I can be more impartial and let my players arrange themselves as they will, in multiple parties if need be.

L and J party up and play a session, which goes well. Then they decide to get mad at each other and refuse to play with each other.

So now L and H play together. I've extended an offer to J, but he's done nothing with it yet. My group is weird. But hey, I've made myself impartial, so it's not my problem!



A year ago I played online with different people- U and C.

U is fun to be around and is overall pretty cool. The worst thing he ever did was just not show up. More on that later.

C is a good guy. He likes to fanboy over things (birds, fish, insects, and mushrooms- the more anthropomorphic the better.) for very little reason he could explain. He likes birds because they're 'the best,' 'cute,' or 'awesome.' He is apparently incapable of giving any reasoning beyond that. This bugs me, but that's as much a flaw of mine as it is of his. (Still, I'd feel a lot better if he could say he likes birds because they're independent or pretty or they can fly or, heck, an 'I don't know' would pacify me well enough. Still, not a big deal.)

What's more abrasive is that he usually doesn't have in character interests, nor does he seperate what he has IC interests from his OOC. His Druid spent every single spare moment combing the woodland for a mushroom being that doesn't exist. Again, not a big deal (especially since he doesn't get mad at failing to find a shroom-man, or whatever the equivalent might be) but a little annoying.

Unfortunately, the same holds true for when C DMs. U had an Acherai egg fall (literally out of a planar rift) into his lap... and it hatched into a friendly little fuzzball who bore no vestiges of the alignment listed in the MM- Always Lawful Evil.

Now again, this isn't something that would bother me if it was a theme of the campaign- if we were marching not alongside reformed Succubi and an Efreeti Cleric of Pelor, I wouldn't have batted an eye. But it was just the Acherai that got to be a good person because it was raised with kindness, and that was purely because it was a bird-thing and he likes birds. He'd do stuff like that.

The other problem that group had was scheduling. We found a day and it worked... About 1/3 of the time. The other 2/3 of the time, either U or C would inexplicably just not show up, and then apologize profusely a few hours later. Sometimes they were asleep, sometimes they had random obligations, sometimes they just forgot because we hadn't played in weeks due to their persistent absences. They both have functioning cell phones, but Pelor forbid they ever use them to text a few hours early and tell us they'll be absent. That happened maybe twice- all the other times they just didn't show up. I got (very and unreasonably) angry and that game sort of stopped happening. And that brings us to another of the worst players I've aged with: Me!




I am by no means innocent. When I was a newer player, I always built totally flat characters with no personality. I also tend to metagame when it comes to creature stats, and I think I've been annoying on more than one occasion because I sort of go on autopilot and mention the CR of whatever we're fighting. I also have engaged in unwanted PVP due to significant alignment differences and because... *shudder* "I was just playing my character."

...

I repent! I repent! D:

I haven't done the PVP thing ever again, and I try to do as little of the others as I can. I like to think I'm improving, and that most of that is behind me now.

(Hey, at least that last one didn't end as badly as it could have. Everybody lived... Then I retired my character. Which was probably wise.)


If those are your worst players, consider yourself lucky.

Clumsyninja23
2015-12-12, 10:21 AM
I haven't had nearly as bad as the rest of you, but I do have something. I'll go with 2 stories.

The first story is about someone I'll call R. R was a friend of a friend that was brought into the group, and he mingled well. Pretty nice guy. Same hobbies and interests as the rest (LoL, WoW). The problem came from his characters. They all had 2 similar traits: they all stole whatever they could, and they were all only out for themselves, at some point leaving/backstabing the party. And I'm not talking, "hey, I'm bored of this character, I want to start a new one. Can this character's exit be interesting though?" I'd be all for that, instead of his character disappearing and magically another one appears. But no. That's just what he wanted his character to do.

So, without fail, the game would either spiral into PVP, or it would split into 2 groups and eventually pvp, and ended up killing the campaign.

One time in particular stood out, as R brought 2 friends into a new game, and I brought a good friend and new player in. R and his buddies made 3 dwarves who were brothers, a fighter, a monk, and a druid. My new player, a veteran, and my current girlfriend made a sorc, a ranger(?), and a druid. Within 10 minutes of being a party, team R made it very clear that they intended to attack the other half. Seperate camps, whispering and planning. So the other side had to prepare themselves for what was coming.

This was not a pvp game, I had quests and plot laid out in front of them. I do not game with R anymore.


This one, I want to get your opinion on. I joined a new group at a comic shop that a friend invited me to. The group consisted of a paladin, a rogue, a bard, a ranger, a fighter, a cleric, and me as a wizard. This is in Ravenloft, so evil=big deal. I got to know everybody in the group pretty well pretty fast, and got along with everybody. My friend that invited me and her actual friends that were there I got to be friends with first, but the Bard player (not of those friends) was kind of awkward and antisocial.

I am not wanting the bard to feel left out, so I made buddy buddy with him and the rogue that also wasn't part of the big group.

A few weeks go by, and were making good progress in the campaign. I'm having a great time and I'm really enjoying this group. At this point, the road stopped showing up. Our paladin is probably the best role player out of all of us, and was role playing a holy man bent on destroying all evil (with a loose screw or two). Most of the party was good aligned, except for the rogue who is now gone and the bard who is neutral.

At one point in a dungeon, the bard finally takes out his hidden instrument that he has not used the entire time. Please keep in mind that this is Ravenloft, in a group with a fanatical paladin and all good aligned members.

The instrument was a fiddle. Cool, that's fine. But let me describe this -thing- that he brought out. His instrument, in his own words, was made from the spine and rib cage of his deceased mother, who passed away when he was a child. I forget what the bow was made of, but it followed the same idea.

Directly after he begins playing this depraved instrument, the DM said to all of us, and emphasized at the Paladin, that we all felt the presence of evil come over us as he was playing this abomination. The Paladin player immediately ran over to the Bard , hit him as hard as he could nearly killing him, picking up the instrument, and snapping it in half.

I was less experience then, so I just kind of stood in horror as PvP is it generally supposed to happen like this. But thinking back, he had to have purposely had that instrument, and thought it was a good idea to play it while in Ravenloft? in a party of good aligned people who are led by a slightly crazed paladin.

The game relocated after that session, and dropped the bard in the move. What do you think of this incident?

Inevitability
2015-12-12, 11:04 AM
This one, I want to get your opinion on. I joined a new group at a comic shop that a friend invited me to. The group consisted of a paladin, a rogue, a bard, a ranger, a fighter, a cleric, and me as a wizard. This is in Ravenloft, so evil=big deal. I got to know everybody in the group pretty well pretty fast, and got along with everybody. My friend that invited me and her actual friends that were there I got to be friends with first, but the Bard player (not of those friends) was kind of awkward and antisocial.

I am not wanting the bard to feel left out, so I made buddy buddy with him and the rogue that also wasn't part of the big group.

A few weeks go by, and were making good progress in the campaign. I'm having a great time and I'm really enjoying this group. At this point, the road stopped showing up. Our paladin is probably the best role player out of all of us, and was role playing a holy man bent on destroying all evil (with a loose screw or two). Most of the party was good aligned, except for the rogue who is now gone and the bard who is neutral.

At one point in a dungeon, the bard finally takes out his hidden instrument that he has not used the entire time. Please keep in mind that this is Ravenloft, in a group with a fanatical paladin and all good aligned members.

The instrument was a fiddle. Cool, that's fine. But let me describe this -thing- that he brought out. His instrument, in his own words, was made from the spine and rib cage of his deceased mother, who passed away when he was a child. I forget what the bow was made of, but it followed the same idea.

Directly after he begins playing this depraved instrument, the DM said to all of us, and emphasized at the Paladin, that we all felt the presence of evil come over us as he was playing this abomination. The Paladin player immediately ran over to the Bard , hit him as hard as he could nearly killing him, picking up the instrument, and snapping it in half.

I was less experience then, so I just kind of stood in horror as PvP is it generally supposed to happen like this. But thinking back, he had to have purposely had that instrument, and thought it was a good idea to play it while in Ravenloft? in a party of good aligned people who are led by a slightly crazed paladin.

The game relocated after that session, and dropped the bard in the move. What do you think of this incident?

The bard should've created a character that fit with the group.
The DM should just have stopped the bard from creating macabre ribcage fiddles.
The paladin might have overreacted. Depending on his IC personality and the DM's description, it might very well have been the natural thing for his character to do.
You did well staying out of it.

goto124
2015-12-12, 11:26 AM
Due to the presence of evil, the paladin probably thought the instrument was literally summoning an Evil entity.

That was my impression, and I would've done it to ensure a Balor doesn't descend on the party or something. I'm not even fond of playing paladins, just people who like to survive.

Anonymouswizard
2015-12-12, 12:54 PM
Being somebody who has recently been the cause of the 'lawful good issue' (a string of unlucky rolls caused the party to get thrown out of a NPC's home due to my character calling her a liar*), this doesn't sound too bad. It sounds like something intentionally designed to cause the Paladin to act to destroy it, I'd literally leave the paladin off the hook if it was only the evil that made him destroy it.

Also, although the instrument sounds like the creepiest thing ever, it can be made far less creepy. I might include a culture in my next game where it's traditional to form the remains of the deceased into an instrument, as in take the bones and use them to build a normal looking instrument.

So I'd place the most blame on the DM there for the aura of evil.

* The only reason I'm not in trouble with this? The effectively 'chaotic neutral' player's mental disadvantages are more annoying, mine mainly stop my character from acting shifty claiming the elf did nothing, unless I critically fail. He got the whole party in trouble twice from messing around with stuff he really shouldn't have, and would have been killed if not for the fact that the skaven grovelled.

sktarq
2015-12-12, 03:50 PM
The thread title reminded me of an annoying former player. He was rarely terrible but had three very significant flaws

1) Always the same character. Roughly, depending on the system he was that world's version of a Ninja/Navy Seal (okay he would say this but I swear his characters were afraid of water so more like Rangers say). Always gruff, seen-too-much 1000 yard stare fixed before he vanishes into the shadows. Same archtype in Rokugan, Shadowrun, Vampire the Requiem, or classic D&D. I think it was wish fulfillment issues-he was a security guard through college and had to be repeatedly told to leave his sword and/or kendo sticks in car (getting him fired at least once)

2) He always thought if he could see it or nothing stopped him from interacting with it, then it must be level appropriate to fight. This caused most of the problems with the player actually. It could be managed with careful teamwork but with the character concept described above you can imagine he spent lots of time off alone "scouting".

3) Personal skills. The player's skills were fine, funny, considerate, punctual all the good stuff in a player. His characters? Used various intimidate type checks as his main social interaction. Doesn't matter who or what skills he might have. Bad enough that we would sometimes ask him to shadow us invisibly "for protection" just so he wouldn't cause problems-and as a DM for him it was just odd (would have been disruptive if I had had a plan)

He was managable but I've often seem how his problems could be taken to the next level as horrible.

Milo v3
2015-12-13, 11:39 PM
My worst player was the type of guy who played a CN Rogue and took that as an excuse to steal the parties stuff... like the paladins holy symbol...., he is better know though and is currently one of the best roleplayers in the group.

Malifice
2015-12-14, 01:14 AM
he had to be repeatedly told to leave his sword in the car (getting him fired at least once)

That.. doesnt really compute with:


His personal skills were fine.

Then again, I suppose for a roleplayer thats pretty par for the course!

:smallbiggrin:

Rusvul
2015-12-14, 01:53 AM
If those are your worst players, consider yourself lucky.

I certainly do. At the time of posting, some of my players were very much a current frustration- hence the rant-y tone of my post. I really don't have it bad compared to lots of you guys.

Nahro
2015-12-14, 05:47 AM
My Current Worst-Player is really rather tame, and most of it I guess could be attributed to him being in the first Group that is more centered on the RP rather than the Game Mechanics.

It all begann with our Elf Wizard Player leaving our game due to him being in to many games allready - and he wanted to try to DM himself. In the Same Time we met our new Player (an old Childhood friend) - who tells us that he bought a DnD Board Game and he would be interrested to play the actual game again - but has nobody that was interrested.
As he was playing way back when our Games actually were nothing more than a linear string of encounters, he was playing too - so I thought he will pick up on the rules quick enough, and offered him to join us.

I gave him the whole run-down what has happened, what the flavour of the world was, and what character creation looked like.
Down the line: Only Base Classes, Base Races - and no Evil Aligned Characters (we're playing Pathfinder).
His first draft: A Drow Wizard with Dragon bloodline...who was Neutral Evil...well he got 1/3 right at least.
The Jist of him was that he was born into a Dragon worshipping Cult of Drows, and he himself was supposed to become the Vessel of an evil Dragon God, which he was not cool with and ran away, incidently arriving where the rest of the group is.
We settlet on him being Chaotic Neutral, with more of an "does not want to be used evil, and tries to find a place for himself"

First Session Starts and in the Process of 1 hour he tries:
- Getting away from the Group as FAAAAR as Possible
- Outright attacking Guards that have Orders not to let him out of the place until the Head-honcho has a talk with him (which would lead for him being tied into the story)
- Refusing to communicate with anyone outside of snarling or growling at them (including other Players)
- At least begrudgingly talked to the Head-honcho, refused all Plot hooks and tried to escape again, this time I let him

I had planned from the beginning that if he was to wander alone in the Outskirts that Members of his Cult that tracked him will be ambushing him - to show him he is not in the clear, and have the other players help him out, as a matter of getting them to know each other.
This worked sort of - he basically ran away into the Outskirst got ambushed, and the Fighter of the Group sees the Magical Fireballs rising in the Distance and comes to help. After the Fight he takes all the loot from the guys (wasn't all that much so no biggie here) and went ahead walking away from everyone at that point I made it clear: "If you keep going this character leaves the story, I am not going to twist it any further for you to be involved in this. You will get either another Character, or thats it for you. Your choice"

It was just a very furstrating introduction to a character that could have been great, but he refuses to interact with the World, or even TALK to people or other players.
We talked it out with him after the second session of our growl elf, to basically contribute nothing nor interacting with anything, asked if we are overburding him, or what it needs for him to be more involved - he said he was fine, and that "it is just his character". After telling him that sometimes a Characters just has to be a bit adapted (or more social at least) to play more nicely with the group, he said he would try - so I am waiting on this...

hymer
2015-12-14, 06:59 AM
Getting away from the Group as FAAAAR as Possible

At this point, I like to ask the player "Do you want to play this campaign?" If the following conversation doesn't make him see sense, I let him run off (cutting off any of the other players if they try to stop this behaviour with in-game actions), and tell the problem player to make a character that can fit with the rest of the group if he wants to play sometime.
The fact that he didn't make a character according to campaign requirements should have set off a lot of alarm bells...

Faily
2015-12-14, 10:00 AM
Some players just have the need to make the character that maybe would've been more suited to a solo-campaign, or the self-proclaimed star of the show. I have one such player in one of my groups. The GM said we were going to play very old-school style of D&D, where you start as 1st level shmuck-nobodies (who have now become high-level somebodies, as in accordance to old D&D)... so I rolled an elf that had never left her forest before until now, the other player rolled a cleric that had lived in the starting-town all her life in the temple there, and... this guy rolled up a runaway princess from a country that's not even on the same continent as this, with a long and convoluted backstory about how she is the only family-member left for her grand-uncle to choose as his heir and he's been very controlling of her, etc...

Not so bad as to require it's full honorable mention in this thread, but I just find it annoying when some players have to make themselves the Main Character in a group and thus overshadow everyone else. Especially before the game has even properly started (I don't mind natural development through the course of a campaign that one character might become more important than others).

Lord Torath
2015-12-14, 02:57 PM
At one point in a dungeon, the bard finally takes out his hidden instrument that he has not used the entire time. Please keep in mind that this is Ravenloft, in a group with a fanatical paladin and all good aligned members.

The instrument was a fiddle. Cool, that's fine. But let me describe this -thing- that he brought out. His instrument, in his own words, was made from the spine and rib cage of his deceased mother, who passed away when he was a child. I forget what the bow was made of, but it followed the same idea.

Directly after he begins playing this depraved instrument, the DM said to all of us, and emphasized at the Paladin, that we all felt the presence of evil come over us as he was playing this abomination. The Paladin player immediately ran over to the Bard , hit him as hard as he could nearly killing him, picking up the instrument, and snapping it in half.

I was less experience then, so I just kind of stood in horror as PvP is it generally supposed to happen like this. But thinking back, he had to have purposely had that instrument, and thought it was a good idea to play it while in Ravenloft? in a party of good aligned people who are led by a slightly crazed paladin.

The game relocated after that session, and dropped the bard in the move. What do you think of this incident?I can't see why you'd want to make a fiddle out of bones. Be very hard to build a resonant chamber out of human ribs. By the time you had all the pieces smoothed and joined, you'd probably be hard-pressed to tell it was made of bone. Maybe a nice harp...

That being said, I'd agree that there's nothing inherently evil about building a musical instrument out of bone. The reason you want one made of bone, and the methods used to acquire the building materials, however, could be an issue. As the DM, I'd want to know why the character wanted a fiddleharp made of bone, how he expects the party to react when they see it, and discuss how it fits into Ravenloft, all before I'd let him have it. Maybe he (the DM) did, and that's why there was a feeling of evil, and maybe the DM just assumed that's what would happen with such an instrument from the description. If I was the bard, and I didn't intend an evil effect, I'd certainly have said, "Wait, what? Why'd I attract an evil presence?" Since he didn't, he was presumably okay with that effect of his playing. Which, again, brings up his decision to perform an evil act (summoning evil) in Ravenloft.

Nahro
2015-12-15, 08:09 AM
At this point, I like to ask the player "Do you want to play this campaign?" If the following conversation doesn't make him see sense, I let him run off (cutting off any of the other players if they try to stop this behaviour with in-game actions), and tell the problem player to make a character that can fit with the rest of the group if he wants to play sometime.
The fact that he didn't make a character according to campaign requirements should have set off a lot of alarm bells...

Well before I cleared the character we changed things - specifically the alignment and the angle I would accept from the character. I found the Backstory interresting enough and it actually fits into the World we play in rather nicely, hence why I allowed it.

It is just weird, if he would make the Campaign about him I at least would understand what the problem is - but he is just not interacting with anything or only if he is actually forced to.
Even if it would be something that concerns him and his backstory he is not approaching it, but the other way around he is also not interruptive when other Characters get the spotlight.
The Rest of the group tries hard to include him, but can't fault them for giving up after the x-th of only getting growled at and him just walking off basically...

Honest Tiefling
2015-12-15, 01:25 PM
In that case I believe my exact words on the subject were "This is a homebrew setting, and we'll be using forgotten realms races for the purposes of making your PCs, if you're playing something other than human I'll let you know how they fit in to this setting. If you're playing human and still want to know for funsies then that's fine too."

So I don't know maybe he assumed "forgotten realms races" meant "basically forgotten realms" but I certainly wasn't hiding any of my changes. If he'd had a problem he had months to read the new race fluff. Or I would have been happy to give him a tl;dr version on demand.

I might be a little late to the party, but I think I misread. If you laid it out that clearly, then I don't really understand what the complaint or expectation was. Admittedly, I also hate it when there's a very clearly laid out homebrew setting and people try to bring in Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk stuff in. Why can't anyone try to be a part of the normal setting and not be a planar traveler?

sktarq
2015-12-15, 03:18 PM
That.. doesnt really compute with: (snip-him taking weapons to work)
:smallbiggrin:

Sounds weird, I'll grant but His take your weapons with you aspect did seem linked to his job as a night watchman (didn't keep bringing them when he started to manage a Game Stop). And he wasn't threatening anyone with them-so you could regularly ignore them and he seemed like a totally nice guy with a very narrow gameplay style.

(and that kendo club what a decent source of players)

MesiDoomstalker
2015-12-15, 04:42 PM
Sounds weird, I'll grant but His take your weapons with you aspect did seem linked to his job as a night watchman (didn't keep bringing them when he started to manage a Game Stop). And he wasn't threatening anyone with them-so you could regularly ignore them and he seemed like a totally nice guy with a very narrow gameplay style.

(and that kendo club what a decent source of players)

Uh... if your working any kind of security your employer provides all the gear you need. Anything more is inviting trouble. If your working as a mall-cop and you get a tazer, brining in your switchblade is not kosher.

Malifice
2015-12-16, 12:40 AM
Uh... if your working any kind of security your employer provides all the gear you need. Anything more is inviting trouble. If your working as a mall-cop and you get a tazer, brining in your switchblade is not kosher.

He brought a katana.

A mall cop with a katana...

Inevitability
2015-12-16, 02:04 AM
He brought a katana.

A mall cop with a katana...

I'd watch that movie.

Keltest
2015-12-16, 07:32 AM
I'd watch that movie.

That sounds like a tragedy in the making.

Anonymouswizard
2015-12-16, 08:18 AM
We need a better title though, Mall Cop with a Katana is boring and will only sell a few tickets, even if completely basass/hilarious/tragic [delete as appropriate].

I suggest Mall Ninja, because ninja are obviously cool. If it works we can consider a sequel, maybe Supermarket Samurai. :smalltongue:

In all seriousness I want to use this as an idea for a game now I've done that. Probably with 50 point GURPS characters, for extra lols.

nedz
2015-12-16, 08:48 AM
We need a better title though, Mall Cop with a Katana is boring and will only sell a few tickets, even if completely basass/hilarious/tragic [delete as appropriate].

I suggest Mall Ninja, because ninja are obviously cool. If it works we can consider a sequel, maybe Supermarket Samurai. :smalltongue:

In all seriousness I want to use this as an idea for a game now I've done that. Probably with 50 point GURPS characters, for extra lols.

Slashing Prices
Trolley Knights
Seven Shoplifters

goto124
2015-12-16, 10:04 AM
Mall Cop with a Katana is boring?

Anonymouswizard
2015-12-16, 10:08 AM
Seven Shoplifters

This one reminds me, I still want to see a film called 'Those Magnificent Seven Samurai in their Flying Machines'.

And to the general public, Mall Cop with a Katana would be boring, we need some way to get them to see the awesomeness.

Anxe
2015-12-16, 10:08 AM
Segway Samurai

ComaVision
2015-12-16, 11:23 AM
I suggest Mall Ninja, because ninja are obviously cool. If it works we can consider a sequel, maybe Supermarket Samurai. :smalltongue:


Ninja talk makes me think of Naruto like vampire talk makes me think of Twilight. I avoid either in mainstream media.

FlumphPaladin
2015-12-16, 11:31 AM
Ninja talk makes me think of Naruto like vampire talk makes me think of Twilight. I avoid either in mainstream media.

Naruto is part of the reason why I endorse the pirates instead.

nedz
2015-12-16, 11:38 AM
This one reminds me, I still want to see a film called 'Those Magnificent Seven Samurai in their Flying Machines'.

And to the general public, Mall Cop with a Katana would be boring, we need some way to get them to see the awesomeness.

Samurai Slasher and the Shoplifter's Trolley Suppository

The Supermarket Seven

MrStabby
2015-12-16, 11:51 AM
Segway Samurai

So who can we get to make this?

FlumphPaladin
2015-12-16, 12:37 PM
So who can we get to make this?

As was said in a certain video from Collegehumor, "We'll just get Bruckheimer on the horn, and..."

Broutchev
2015-12-16, 04:20 PM
I started DMing this group around a year ago, and until now they fulfilled me of stories, some cringe-worthy, some full-on anger inducing.

Context is quite simple, I had dmed a few times, not a pro, but not a rookie anymore. So I started with an entire new group (first time tabletop gaming, english being their second language (hardly))

no one has optimized, books are all complete (CW, CS, CA, Etc.) and core
lvl4
S: plays a Marshall half/elf, high charisma party face, unofficial leader
T: Dwarf cleric of Pelor, healbuffbot, then healbot, then uttercr*p
Sa:Plays human samurai, yes the cw samurai... tried to convince him to change to OA samurai but didn't work, so I had to tweak in his favor so he stays relevant (if he had optimized, he would be on par)
E:Shifter favored soul retcon to shifter druid (summon bot)

First game, they have not bothered do any backstory so I made it that they are a band of do-gooders wandering and a misunderstanding brought them in jail. So jail-breaking as start of campaign, kinda to let em understand and explore what they can do. so far no big problem. They end up in sewer and when they are about to exit into city, trouble points is nose. marshall and cleric who are friends IRL have an opinion, samurai disagree. he wants to sneak out of city and the 2 other wants to go and ask guards why they were imprisonned. So sneak out to ask why, while getting guards a reason to put you in jail again (breaking out). The Fav soul kinda just follow. This player is quite the Npc follower type, if not mentionned consider he has no opinion.

So they end up waltzing in the city to get to the exit, (screw my sewer system that obviously go out of city with encounter, but open world is open). Takes no long for them to be spotted by guards, that alerts more guards and when they arrived at the gate, surprise a possibly lethal corps is gathered. Guards doesn,t attack and make it clear that they are waiting and the PC should too.

PC attacks. except cleric who is a smart cookie and healed the guards who fell.
Guard captain arrive explain misunderstanding... plot hooks... King is acting weird, guards have an oath to not interfere so PC are hired to. (in hindsight, so much flaws)

Anyway they get there, homebrew version of succubus (read tweaked) is there with king, samurai and Fav soul gets charmed. Samurai go as close to now obviously harmful succubus as possible because
'' seeing her in need I would go close her to help instead of fighting those who threatens''
Anyway they punch her Inconscious, samurai says interrogate her (OMG ALL OF MY PLOT seriously instead of going blind and wandering they could have gotten hints and what ifs... so yeah smart move)
Samurai says we should tie her, no rope, oh look, my bow string could do, facepalm imminent.
But Marshall and cleric are no, screw this coup de grace that.
They argue, they kill her.
Samurai thinks meh and basically say well I'm gonna rob the king in retaliation for not doing my (actually good) idea.
I tell him, he's lawfull, so no can do. he complain about the fact he can't do what he wants but he has to follow hat the others wants.

And that my friend is the first step down the spiral.

Broutchev
2015-12-16, 04:55 PM
I think this game is dead and I'm pretty sure no one playing that game is frequenting that forum, if so welp spoiling time.
I realized that at first it doesn't seem like bad players but it will become apparent, and it more of a bad player clashing another bad player, and at the last story, the dickest move i've ever saw.

They leave that city, and go elsewhere on the continent to a city name no one care. They got clued that some things weren't going right over there, and they should investigate. It took some effort to link this, yet I managed to get them there. One travel with the classic random encounter, they get there. Upon arrival they go and meet the contact and get sent to an embassy. There is a Drow, lvl4 monk, detained. She was Lawfull neutral and it didn't fly well in her little drow community. I didn't find anywhere if Drow could be other than evil so I though a dilemma could be interesting. She didn't commit any crimes but was still viewed as a threat. The authorities asked to keep an eye on her for a while in case of trouble, for a price, they accept. But one. Dwarf cleric distrust her to a point you can't imagine. Some night they got attacked by a ninja drow to assassinate the exilee so she would not give secrets and stuff. He failed, he got taken hostage, yay for newly bought rope. He confessed for EVERYTHING. Going as far as litteraly saying: She is not one of us anymore we have to kill us before she helps you against us. Marshall with lot of diplomacy and gather info, samurai with intimidate. So you'd think Mr. grumpy cleric would trust Ms. Drow a little more... Not at all. At that point I tried too much to make it clear and other players advocated it too, there was nothing we could do.

They then got attacked by another drow, one who was infiltrated in the city for a while, BOSS alert. They were surveilling her and saw her (the bad one) kill the barman of the Inn they were at in one slice. Did Mr.Cleric changed is opinion, you guessed it. Battle broke out, intense as hell about 2 hour IRL, the 4 PC and the (monk) drow were wounded a lot, but won. But cleric never healed the monk, because, nor did it buff, or let her near him. All in all the monk was charge free, and got a job in the city as counter spy. Months later I still hear about the cleric player say things like. F*****g drow, we should have killed her.


Side note, Samurai and cleric were totally bound to the idea that they should really go clear the whole undergound city of drow. Being 4 lvl against I don't know tens of thousands of Npc with a La of +1 off the bat.
I should have let them and finished the campaign in a blood bath with a told you so.

New player, J: Halfling ninja, never played before but wanted to join the fray, and thank God he did, he kinda brought back the party together a bit more. As I said Samurai was more than constantly against cleric and marshall.
Ninja, well he put weight to the samurai opinion when it made sense, or side for a 3 to 1 if the opposite, and well it looked less like 2 guys ganging against, just to be against. it helped.

But anyway, cleric and samurai had such a hard time getting along, they actually always told the other players how they should play theyr characters and complaining about what someone did. At that point I just started doing the railroad Dm (Ugh) Ennemy is blatantly evil, you kill him, if not, he's cool, side with. That and Humanoid=good, else=not good. I felt like Thog Dming. It helped, but in combat they still told each other what to do.
First out of game interventions. With each one individually, ''Hey he plays his character you play your, in combat you don't have the time to monitor everything and argue. Also, why are you not just agreeing or voting stuff instead of being pissed and declaring stuff without consensus''
They played the victim card, each, single, one, of, them. one is 20, the other is 27.
So much hints of a game that should stop. But I liked what I did, and I like dnd.

Broutchev
2015-12-16, 05:38 PM
I will add 4th and 5th part tomorrow.

ComaVision
2015-12-16, 05:49 PM
He confessed for EVERYTHING. Going as far as litteraly saying: She is not one of us anymore we have to kill us before she helps you against us. Marshall with lot of diplomacy and gather info, samurai with intimidate. So you'd think Mr. grumpy cleric would trust Ms. Drow a little more... Not at all. At that point I tried too much to make it clear and other players advocated it too, there was nothing we could do.
[/SPOILER]



To be fair, in the last long-running campaign I played my character was always suspicious of one NPC that was "too good" but the DM assured me in-game and out-of-game that I could trust said NPC so, rather than be difficult, I trusted the NPC.

In the last session of the game, it turned out that NPC had been playing us the whole time. :smallfurious:

Mongobear
2015-12-17, 02:04 AM
So who can we get to make this?

Make it into a video game first and you have like an 89% chance that Uwe Boll will make a ****ty "made for tv" movie out of it that has nothing to do with the actual concept of the game.

Dr TPK
2015-12-17, 03:07 AM
I have a player that calculates the attack bonus of his primary attack every time there's a fight. And he sucks at it, he needs lots of help and he refuses to write anything down. I feel like strangling him. And he just laughs about it. He genuinely loves to be an idiot. I'm not kidding! Whenever his stupidity is called out, he starts laughing.

Anonymouswizard
2015-12-17, 07:53 AM
I have a player that calculates the attack bonus of his primary attack every time there's a fight. And he sucks at it, he needs lots of help and he refuses to write anything down. I feel like strangling him. And he just laughs about it. He genuinely loves to be an idiot. I'm not kidding! Whenever his stupidity is called out, he starts laughing.

Reminds me of G from the first thread. If I remember he'd calculate his attack bonus every turn.

Please tell me your player doesn't make his character sheets on the back of a reciept. G apparently did so.

Also, while not horrible, that's just annoying. While I have problems with some games not giving enough space on their character sheets (Qin, I'm looking at you!), if they have the space then not writing it down is just lazy. I suggest two bats, one labeled 'learn to do mental maths' and the other 'note down your attack bonus', ask him which he'd prefer to do and then hit him with that bat until the problem is solved.

Note: this is a comedy solution intended for comedy purposes only, if you actually do this the Anonymouswizard is not to be held responsible for any broken bones, lost friends, or destroyed gaming groups.

goto124
2015-12-17, 09:47 AM
http://www.selfhelpwarehouse.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/foam-bat-ball.jpg

Note: this is a comedy solution intended for comedy purposes only, as a foam bat is no guarantee that everything will be safe. If you actually do this the goto124 is not to be held responsible for any broken bones, lost friends, destroyed gaming groups, or plagiarism.

nedz
2015-12-17, 11:05 AM
Also, while not horrible, that's just annoying. While I have problems with some games not giving enough space on their character sheets (Qin, I'm looking at you!), if they have the space then not writing it down is just lazy. I suggest two bats, one labeled 'learn to do mental maths' and the other 'note down your attack bonus', ask him which he'd prefer to do and then hit him with that bat until the problem is solved.

No no, to teach anyone anything you have to keep hitting them with a slightly flexible stick. Making them wear D Wizard's pointy hat will help here too.

FlumphPaladin
2015-12-17, 11:28 AM
http://www.selfhelpwarehouse.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/foam-bat-ball.jpg

Note: this is a comedy solution intended for comedy purposes only, as a foam bat is no guarantee that everything will be safe. If you actually do this the goto124 is not to be held responsible for any broken bones, lost friends, destroyed gaming groups, or plagiarism.

http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130721004737/cartoonnetwork/images/7/7a/Puppet_Pals.jpg

Broutchev
2015-12-17, 02:50 PM
To be fair, in the last long-running campaign I played my character was always suspicious of one NPC that was "too good" but the DM assured me in-game and out-of-game that I could trust said NPC so, rather than be difficult, I trusted the NPC.

In the last session of the game, it turned out that NPC had been playing us the whole time. :smallfurious:

I assure you, that NPC while being still alive and in that said city, haven't come up in a couple of sessions. But every often I heard the player go on about it. The other PC were all pretty much my side with the Marshall sense motive and even a zone of truth. I know it could be a BBEG playing them but when the NPC is inactive and far away for session, stop pestering me about her, in and mostly out of game, in everyday normal life. I work with that guy.
Also made it clear that boss, semi-boss and etc. are mostly 90% devil/demon (never figured the distinction apart trivial stuff: LE, CE)

Here's the last of my rant, I'll try to be more concise.

At that point the 4 PC, Marshall wasn't there, are just going place to place collecting lore to uncover the impending armageddon and stop it before it happens. (read gate of hell open, halflings and gnomes running with their hats on fire, Ride of the Valkyrie in background, so much for being concise). They got attacked by 2 bandits, got dispatched quick enough but due to confusion (involving kidnapping Princess) they are wanted. 2 of them go undercover in a city to rent horse and they made it fine, the other 2 waiting outside. I had prepared a Paladin to go look for clue about the kidnapping and few failed bluff later, the PCs escape on horse, while the Paladin is after them while reciting whatever official paper he has in hand. They manage to lure him out of town and gang-beat him, while he only defend himself and try to heal but 3 rounds and that's it. Cleric is rightfully mad, but start insulting other players and start flipping ****. Samurai player reacts as well, saying they had to, so to stay undercover. Anyway session ends prematurely because of that and 2 players arguing and insulting and then just left angry. Ninja was visibly not impressed, and Druid was about clueless as ever, saying stuff like ''man that sucks''

Yep it did

We had a session between 4 and 5, but mostly go there get info, lore and stuff random encounter etc. They end up knowing that the princess they helped escape, yep she wanted to kidnap herself, was back to her castle with rebel because the king was held hostage of a demon and BLABLABLA made her escape at first place. Skipping to interesting part. Session go well, they actually made plans and even the only sneak player wasn't there, in fact ninja and Marshall were absent, they had something feasible, that did not require an awful lot of skill checks. While the rebels battle lesser demon at the front gate for diversion they sneak back, the session is going A-Ok, the feeling when all of the problems are gone. Guess what. Start combat against demon (Palrethee mm2).I tweaked it down because party of 5 now 3, need to be tweaked, TPK when they just get to work together, no way. battle commence, Samurai charge, druid used flame strike, mentioned hey, he's made of fire, he doesn't look to care. Then some call lighting, and cleric well, in 3 rounds he had charged, use his mace, didn't land any hit past DR, burned as backlash from demonic burn. At some point Samurai IC says I'm really hurt, cleric ignore and keep meleeing, Druid summon to wolftrip. Samurai pissed go back and use bow and arrow, demon pummel cleric, cleric complains that samurai is front fighter to soak for him, I glance at samurai sheet, 4/80 hp. Cleric go back start shooting with bow, demon attacks druid mostly because I don't care anymore at this point I just want it all to end. I cut like half the demon h and proceed to take the DR to 3 which is normally 20. They barely manage, mainly because a cleric only melee, a druid that summon and a samurai with a bow... Utter crap. I'm about to do the debriefing, cleric character stands up pack his things and declared he's not playing with samurai again, as he's too self-centered and childish and it was his last game with us. Sigh maybe it's for good.

What I'm wondering is, everything went well that last session until he decided to screw things up to prove his point and then everything he blame is what he did, I.E. being childish, self-centered... So if he didn't liked it, it was his own doing, and shouldn't have made it bad for everyone. I don't know if he understood he was a big part of the problem.

Rant over.

NotThog
2015-12-17, 07:26 PM
This one reminds me, I still want to see a film called 'Those Magnificent Seven Samurai in their Flying Machines'.
Are you hinting at "Snow White and the Seven Samurai" (which apparently exists as a book)?

Arbane
2015-12-18, 08:02 PM
We need a better title though, Mall Cop with a Katana is boring and will only sell a few tickets, even if completely basass/hilarious/tragic [delete as appropriate].

"Paul Blart: Mall Cop III was a rather different movie than its predecessors...."


I suggest Mall Ninja, because ninja are obviously cool. If it works we can consider a sequel, maybe Supermarket Samurai. :smalltongue:

In all seriousness I want to use this as an idea for a game now I've done that. Probably with 50 point GURPS characters, for extra lols.

You do not know the power of the Mall Ninjas (http://lonelymachines.org/mall-ninjas/)! (Not safe for Keyboard.)

Grizl' Bjorn
2015-12-19, 04:38 AM
One of my players, a really lovely guy actually, was in a low to mid level fight (Old world of darkness). He blew up an iconic Sydney Apartment bloc (Barangaroo) to solve the problem using a gas-fire. Thousands died.

I dunno if this qualifies as a 'horror story' though- none of us really minded. We worked the story around it, but by god it was a shock. The other players tried to execute him for his crimes but he got away. Think he rolled up another character.

(EDIT: When I say 'low to mid level battle' I mean 'a coupla guys with machine guns who they were most of the way to defeating anyway.')

YossarianLives
2015-12-19, 10:37 PM
You do not know the power of the Mall Ninjas (http://lonelymachines.org/mall-ninjas/)! (Not safe for Keyboard.)
I just read through that entire thing. It was... Disturbing. I really have to wonder what the person who wrote that was thinking. I particularly enjoyed the part about shooting teenagers who take double samples.

Anonymouswizard
2015-12-20, 08:33 AM
You do not know the power of the Mall Ninjas (http://lonelymachines.org/mall-ninjas/)! (Not safe for Keyboard.)

There are seriously people who believe that being a shopping centre security guard is dangerous? I mean, I don't live in the degenerate parts of America, or even the dangerous parts of my own country, but do people really think that anything more dangerous than a good stick is needed to stop shoplifters? For people taking double samples a stern look should be all that's required. Heck, I've occasionally taken a second sample when shopping because what they're pushing is so bland I have to taste it again to know if it's worthwhile, nobody minds until the third. But then again that's me generally trying out cheese and sausages (you've got to love butchers who do that), not fruitcake.

I mean, I know that there are problems with nonlethal weapons, but the escalation seems like something for a combat zone and not a place to do my Christmas shopping. Extra fun is, because I don't know anything about firearms (we have relatively sane gun laws, I've never even seen a firearm in real life), trying to work out what bits of the gun discussion are true and how much is the posters talking out of their arse. I'm guessing about 102% of it, but that's just me.

But mostly I'm laughing at stuff and wondering if I should look into the 'Mortal Compact' game series. Not one I'm particularly familiar with, I believe it must be made by a company that doesn't distribute in Europe. :smalltongue:

Oh, I'm totally taking notes for if I run a Pink Mohawks Shadowrun game. It'll be great fun, the players as the ultimate High Threat Response Team for all the Malls in the area, having to go in to deal with gangs armed with fully automatic weapons robbing the shops. The final session of the campaign will consist of the players having to stop a three way battle between a gang of assault cannon wielding orks, a gang of humans armed with rocket launchers, and a gang of trolls with machine guns.

EDIT: just to say that I do know the majority of it was probably either trolling or somebody talking out of their arse.

ComaVision
2015-12-21, 12:27 PM
but do people really think that anything more dangerous than a good stick is needed to stop shoplifters?

Not that I believe anything Geeko wrote but there are a multitude of tales in North America of employees chasing shoplifters and being stabbed. Murders during armed robberies are fairly frequent in parts of America.

Traab
2015-12-21, 01:19 PM
Not that I believe anything Geeko wrote but there are a multitude of tales in North America of employees chasing shoplifters and being stabbed. Murders during armed robberies are fairly frequent in parts of America.

Yeah thats why most stores have a very strict leave em alone policy in regards to shoplifting. Its not worth getting hurt over whatever they are taking. Then there is the danger of a bystander getting hurt in the crossfire, and litigation arising from that. Not too mention even the thief himself could sue if he got hurt being gang tackled by an overzealous cashier who saw him pocket that candy bar without paying. Most stores have budgets in place specifically to deal with absorbing shop lifting losses. Its far cheaper than the alternatives.

Keltest
2015-12-21, 01:44 PM
Yeah thats why most stores have a very strict leave em alone policy in regards to shoplifting. Its not worth getting hurt over whatever they are taking. Then there is the danger of a bystander getting hurt in the crossfire, and litigation arising from that. Not too mention even the thief himself could sue if he got hurt being gang tackled by an overzealous cashier who saw him pocket that candy bar without paying. Most stores have budgets in place specifically to deal with absorbing shop lifting losses. Its far cheaper than the alternatives.

Can confirm. At the place I work at, we aren't even allowed to ask a customer to see a receipt unless we are in the process of checking them out and need to make sure they were charged the correct amount.

nedz
2015-12-21, 03:28 PM
Not that I believe anything Geeko wrote but there are a multitude of tales in North America of employees chasing shoplifters and being stabbed. Murders during armed robberies are fairly frequent in parts of America.

You have to distinguish between what's in the newspapers and reality.
The risk of homicide during an armed robbery is about 5% in the USA - check out reference 34 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbery#United_States)
Now this is during an armed robbery - not shoplifting.

That's still pretty bad

Malifice
2015-12-22, 10:04 AM
You have to distinguish between what's in the newspapers and reality.
The risk of homicide during an armed robbery is about 5% in the USA - check out reference 34 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbery#United_States)
Now this is during an armed robbery - not shoplifting.

That's still pretty bad

As an Australian I tripped out seeing ticket inspectors on Miami trains carrying pistols.

I was like 'Is fare evasion really that big a thing here?'

Went from there to London where even the cops arent armed. We pretty much straddle the middle ground here in Oz (cops and armored truck security carry gats, thats about it).

Still; the image of a mall cop in chainmail and dual weilding katanas is hillarious.

Susano-wo
2015-12-28, 11:17 PM
I must thank you heartily for the tale of the Mall Ninja. That was a blast. :smallbiggrin:

Stuebi
2015-12-29, 05:14 AM
I'm not entirely sure if I should laugh or cry at this point.

As I mentioned before, I've been DMing now for a while. Around 10 sesseions now, across two different groups. It's getting better and better over time, but one thing I still struggle with is "voiceacting". I usually try to avoid having too many NPC talks with NPC-situations, because that's basically me talking with myself. And the harder I try to use different voices in that scenario, the worse it actually sounds. I can handle one NPC at a time, but swapping accents and the like on the fly in a live conversation is still very hard. It was never that big of an issue before.

A couple weeks ago, one of our regulars dropped. And since we usually play as 5, one of the others got a new player in. I actually didnt know until she was suddenly in our Skype-Convo, but she had a character ready and it wasnt too hard to get her into things. So I improvised something and the first session with her went smoothly.

After a bit of establishing in the party, which went surprisingly well, she started showing interest in a lot of NPC's that were part of the adventure. The party had never shown particular interest in anything beyond Antagonists or the ocassional helping hand, so she caught me off guard the first time she got into a longer conversation with one of them. In the midway toilet/cigarette/whatamidoingwithmylifeplayingDSAthedayafterchristm as-break, I was informed that she likes to play around with stuff like this, having connections, and generally likes to play more on the social side. Again, not a problem. Just gonna add some extra notes to my NPC's here and there, give them some stuff to figure out so she has a good time.

And then it went downhill, fast.

From the tavernkeep, to the shopkeep's son, over the fisherman and towards the farmer outside the city walls, she talked to ALL of them. And not just "Hey, lovely pitchfork you got there.". She literally tried to have them tell her their lifestories! It got to the point where after the sixth or seventh question, the guy/gal just went "Now hold on, why is random stranger asking me so many questions?". Usually when that happened, she hightailed it out and looked for the next innocent bystander, as if she was a talentscout looking for the next Dicaprio among townsfolk.

Meanwhile I'm juggling the other partymembers, who are actually following the current plot. You have to imagine, on one hand there's interrogations going on, chases trough the slums, even a little fight inside a warehouse. And every now and then I have to put all that on hold and go back to Grey's Anatomy: Medieval Edition.

Eventually, I just tried to "gently" move her towards the rest. So when she talked up the local Blacksmith about his ties to the craftsmen-Guild, he basically went "I heard sounds from the warehouse over there. Almost like a fight. SOMEBODY might just want to check that out.". That's basically the equivalent of putting up a 15 foot Neon Sign saying "PLOT OVER HERE. AT LEAST ONE DM OUT OF RANDOM CONVERSATIONS REQUIRED TO ENTER."

She eventually, finally, caught up to the group. And a tiny little part of me wanted to evacuate the town in the meantime to get rid of anyone capable of saying more than 3 words. It lasted for a good hour, before she found a secretary as her new victim inside the Governors Residence. I was thankfully saved by the bell, as the others were getting tired and it was late.


Never before did I have to open a wikipedia page about farming, manure and cows, just so one of my NPC's had something to say. I'm scarred for life.

Anonymouswizard
2015-12-29, 07:18 AM
Wow.

I mean, I'd love to have players more interested in the game world than face-punching (unfortunately I never get to GM those groups, curse all these awesome GMs in my life!), but that's going a bit far.

Remember, not everybody is interested in socialising or has the time. After a line or two feel free for an NPC to say 'sorry, I've got work to do' or 'excuse me, I have a friend I promised to meet'. It helps with that v-word, verisimilitude?

Traab
2015-12-29, 11:56 AM
Heh, sounds a bit like a classic rpg player. When you reach a town, (Or see people anywhere) you talk to them, about everything you are given the option to talk to them about. Most of the time it doesnt do anything, but sometimes there are clues, quests, even secrets to discover. Heck, every time something big happens you go back and talk to literally everyone you ever met just in case they now have something new to say. Often times its the only way to move the story forward. Especially if the next step isnt blatantly obvious.

goto124
2015-12-29, 12:05 PM
CRPG player. Where C stands for Computer!

ellindsey
2015-12-29, 01:06 PM
Heh, sounds a bit like a classic rpg player. When you reach a town, (Or see people anywhere) you talk to them, about everything you are given the option to talk to them about. Most of the time it doesnt do anything, but sometimes there are clues, quests, even secrets to discover. Heck, every time something big happens you go back and talk to literally everyone you ever met just in case they now have something new to say. Often times its the only way to move the story forward. Especially if the next step isnt blatantly obvious.

In that case, the obvious result is for the unimportant NPCs to just have a single line they repeat over and over until the player gets the hint to move on.

nedz
2015-12-30, 12:04 AM
As I mentioned before, I've been DMing now for a while. Around 10 sesseions now, across two different groups. It's getting better and better over time, but one thing I still struggle with is "voiceacting". I usually try to avoid having too many NPC talks with NPC-situations, because that's basically me talking with myself. And the harder I try to use different voices in that scenario, the worse it actually sounds. I can handle one NPC at a time, but swapping accents and the like on the fly in a live conversation is still very hard. It was never that big of an issue before.
Many years ago my players once manipulated a couple of NPCs I was playing so that I spent quite a long time roleplaying with myself. They were having a good time of it, until I twigged what was happening.:smallbiggrin:

A couple weeks ago, one of our regulars dropped. And since we usually play as 5, one of the others got a new player in. I actually didnt know until she was suddenly in our Skype-Convo, but she had a character ready and it wasnt too hard to get her into things. So I improvised something and the first session with her went smoothly.

After a bit of establishing in the party, which went surprisingly well, she started showing interest in a lot of NPC's that were part of the adventure. The party had never shown particular interest in anything beyond Antagonists or the ocassional helping hand, so she caught me off guard the first time she got into a longer conversation with one of them. In the midway toilet/cigarette/whatamidoingwithmylifeplayingDSAthedayafterchristm as-break, I was informed that she likes to play around with stuff like this, having connections, and generally likes to play more on the social side. Again, not a problem. Just gonna add some extra notes to my NPC's here and there, give them some stuff to figure out so she has a good time.

And then it went downhill, fast.

From the tavernkeep, to the shopkeep's son, over the fisherman and towards the farmer outside the city walls, she talked to ALL of them. And not just "Hey, lovely pitchfork you got there.". She literally tried to have them tell her their lifestories! It got to the point where after the sixth or seventh question, the guy/gal just went "Now hold on, why is random stranger asking me so many questions?". Usually when that happened, she hightailed it out and looked for the next innocent bystander, as if she was a talentscout looking for the next Dicaprio among townsfolk.

Meanwhile I'm juggling the other partymembers, who are actually following the current plot. You have to imagine, on one hand there's interrogations going on, chases trough the slums, even a little fight inside a warehouse. And every now and then I have to put all that on hold and go back to Grey's Anatomy: Medieval Edition.

Eventually, I just tried to "gently" move her towards the rest. So when she talked up the local Blacksmith about his ties to the craftsmen-Guild, he basically went "I heard sounds from the warehouse over there. Almost like a fight. SOMEBODY might just want to check that out.". That's basically the equivalent of putting up a 15 foot Neon Sign saying "PLOT OVER HERE. AT LEAST ONE DM OUT OF RANDOM CONVERSATIONS REQUIRED TO ENTER."

She eventually, finally, caught up to the group. And a tiny little part of me wanted to evacuate the town in the meantime to get rid of anyone capable of saying more than 3 words. It lasted for a good hour, before she found a secretary as her new victim inside the Governors Residence. I was thankfully saved by the bell, as the others were getting tired and it was late.


Never before did I have to open a wikipedia page about farming, manure and cows, just so one of my NPC's had something to say. I'm scarred for life.

Turn the tables: have an NPC turn up who stalks her character with relentless questions - maybe a journalist or something.

Seriously: this can be quite a problem if your other players aren't into this. You may find that they start to get bored if this eats up too much time. All groups have a variety of playstyles but some are not all that compatible. I used to do a lot of LARP where this was the norm, though PC on PC rather than NPCs — as a rule — as players explored their characters and developed their personas. My D&D groups are much more into the Action side of things - as are you and your other players by the sounds of it. Maybe she belongs in another group ?

Marlowe
2015-12-30, 07:40 AM
A traveling bard who stalks adventuring groups and attempts to interview them for their life stories. Why has this idea not occurred to me before?:smalleek:

The Fury
2015-12-30, 11:05 PM
I'm not entirely sure if I should laugh or cry at this point.

As I mentioned before, I've been DMing now for a while. Around 10 sesseions now, across two different groups. It's getting better and better over time, but one thing I still struggle with is "voiceacting". I usually try to avoid having too many NPC talks with NPC-situations, because that's basically me talking with myself. And the harder I try to use different voices in that scenario, the worse it actually sounds. I can handle one NPC at a time, but swapping accents and the like on the fly in a live conversation is still very hard. It was never that big of an issue before.

A couple weeks ago, one of our regulars dropped. And since we usually play as 5, one of the others got a new player in. I actually didnt know until she was suddenly in our Skype-Convo, but she had a character ready and it wasnt too hard to get her into things. So I improvised something and the first session with her went smoothly.

After a bit of establishing in the party, which went surprisingly well, she started showing interest in a lot of NPC's that were part of the adventure. The party had never shown particular interest in anything beyond Antagonists or the ocassional helping hand, so she caught me off guard the first time she got into a longer conversation with one of them. In the midway toilet/cigarette/whatamidoingwithmylifeplayingDSAthedayafterchristm as-break, I was informed that she likes to play around with stuff like this, having connections, and generally likes to play more on the social side. Again, not a problem. Just gonna add some extra notes to my NPC's here and there, give them some stuff to figure out so she has a good time.

And then it went downhill, fast.

From the tavernkeep, to the shopkeep's son, over the fisherman and towards the farmer outside the city walls, she talked to ALL of them. And not just "Hey, lovely pitchfork you got there.". She literally tried to have them tell her their lifestories! It got to the point where after the sixth or seventh question, the guy/gal just went "Now hold on, why is random stranger asking me so many questions?". Usually when that happened, she hightailed it out and looked for the next innocent bystander, as if she was a talentscout looking for the next Dicaprio among townsfolk.

Meanwhile I'm juggling the other partymembers, who are actually following the current plot. You have to imagine, on one hand there's interrogations going on, chases trough the slums, even a little fight inside a warehouse. And every now and then I have to put all that on hold and go back to Grey's Anatomy: Medieval Edition.

Eventually, I just tried to "gently" move her towards the rest. So when she talked up the local Blacksmith about his ties to the craftsmen-Guild, he basically went "I heard sounds from the warehouse over there. Almost like a fight. SOMEBODY might just want to check that out.". That's basically the equivalent of putting up a 15 foot Neon Sign saying "PLOT OVER HERE. AT LEAST ONE DM OUT OF RANDOM CONVERSATIONS REQUIRED TO ENTER."

She eventually, finally, caught up to the group. And a tiny little part of me wanted to evacuate the town in the meantime to get rid of anyone capable of saying more than 3 words. It lasted for a good hour, before she found a secretary as her new victim inside the Governors Residence. I was thankfully saved by the bell, as the others were getting tired and it was late.


Never before did I have to open a wikipedia page about farming, manure and cows, just so one of my NPC's had something to say. I'm scarred for life.

Ha! In honesty, I like interacting with NPCs too. It can add a lot of flavor to the campaign and you can get some useful plot information that way. I have been asked to tone it down a bit though. Because, hey-- these other players didn't show up for The Fury Show, and that's understandable. This though... I'm surprised that the various NPCs tolerated her as long as they did. In my own experience, I can only ask a shopkeep so many questions before she asks, "Are you gonna buy something or not?"

Do you suppose this player's character might get a reputation as that crazy lady that asks random questions to passers by? I wonder what she'd do if she met people that had taken vows of silence.

Anti-Eagle
2016-01-21, 01:03 AM
I'm not sure how this stacks up to people here and I can't remember it all because it's been awhile since I've dealt with the guy but... My worst player was a guy who seemed to think he was an adept from shadowrun in real life. He played a cleric, refused to heal anyone or use spells, and only fought unarmed. So he was a useless monk with some weird habits, not that bad.

He spent all of his time talking about his crazy youth, he was thirty at the time, in which he got tazed for innocently throwing a brick through a window during a riot and then a bottle at a cop. Now, this isn't that bad yet but in his last couple of sessions with the group he turned into what I would compare to a paranoid schizophrenic after he missed a session.

When he showed up the next week he told us that it was because he picked a fight with the cops, nearly beat one to death, was again tazed and somehow managed to escape. The only reason this was believable was because of the injuries he showed up with, what was violent paranoia in the mind of everyone there, and that he had looked like he had been living on the streets for the past week.

After he left there was a discussion of how to deal with him and nervous chuckling about what we had hoped was this guy joking around. We played with him again the next week and he was even worse, he also believed we were all plotting against him and after he started threatening one of the other players in public we told him that we were done and that he was out of the group.

So of course he showed up for the next game even more disheveled. He threatened us with a knife when we told him to leave, one of the other groups in the area where we met decided to call the cops, he ran, escaped again, and we once again nervously chuckled about it.

He showed up again and before anything could happen again we called the cops and found another building to meet in. The last time I heard about him he had apparently been caught and ended up in a psych ward for treatment.

goto124
2016-01-21, 01:07 AM
I'm not sure how this stacks up to people here

Cops were involved! I think that's plenty bad even by the standards of this thread.

MesiDoomstalker
2016-01-21, 01:29 AM
Cops were involved! I think that's plenty bad even by the standards of this thread.

Its only trumped by that one story of the dude who went ballistic over an anime drawing (which ended with the cops being called). Anyone have a link to that old thread? I wanna read it again.

Anti-Eagle
2016-01-21, 01:33 AM
Cops were involved! I think that's plenty bad even by the standards of this thread.

The other horror stories on here made me question how bad being threatened by a homeless person at knifepoint actually was.

Edit:


Its only trumped by that one story of the dude who went ballistic over an anime drawing (which ended with the cops being called). Anyone have a link to that old thread? I wanna read it again.

That's probably the lanky bugger.

The Lanky Bugger: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?23784
Lanky Bugger 2: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?93633
Lanky 3: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?95189

Morrver
2016-01-21, 02:07 AM
I don't know if you guys would classify this as a bad player but I'm going to.
So its 5e, we have a half-orc barbarian and we've played about ten sessions with him (long sessions, lots of encounters), now here's the problem he doesn't rage; a barbarian that doesn't rage! I can't emphasis how much this screws up encounters.

Arbane
2016-01-21, 03:13 AM
I don't know if you guys would classify this as a bad player but I'm going to.
So its 5e, we have a half-orc barbarian and we've played about ten sessions with him (long sessions, lots of encounters), now here's the problem he doesn't rage; a barbarian that doesn't rage! I can't emphasis how much this screws up encounters.

So, he has anger management problems?