Disruptive newbie

[ZenBear]

So I ran into an old high school friend and invited him to join my DnD group. He's stoked but has never played before. I'm stoked to teach him! He decides to play the exact same race/class/archetype as my gf, an elf moon druid (unfortunate but oh well), and then proceeds to never use his wild shape ability. The DM allows him to be mentally linked with another player because of a random joke, and now all he wants to do is mind control everyone into following his every whim. First fight is against giant scorpions terrorizing archeologists, decides his Druid would rather heal the scorpions than help the party. I grapple him to prevent the heals, he grapples my character's junk and gets frustrated that that doesn't automatically free him. He eventually escapes, heals scorpions again and DM has him roll Animal Handling. Nat 20, scorpions run away. Next fight he tries to stab my character in the back. The rest of the party pursuades him not to do that by threatening to kill him. End of the session I'm worried he won't want to come back.

I'm looking for advice on how to teach him that D&D is a cooperative game, but he's a free-spirit/starving artist type who chafes at the slightest resistance to his whims. Everyone likes him and tried to be accommodating but he was too disruptive and started getting on everyone's nerves. Thoughts?

[MaxWilson]

That's a rough situation, not least because a certain amount of outside-the-box thinking is good--but he went over the top, and also started arguing with the DM about a ruling (getting free of the grapple) and also hindered the party instead of helping them.

So, it's basically an issue of social norms, and "we like this guy but right now we don't want him on our team." I guess the next question is for him: does he want to play on a team, or is he more interested in disrupting one? If the latter he might make a good DM someday, maybe, but he's not suited to play at the table you're at. If the former then he'll have to make some adjustments to fit in.

He sounds like a good guy, he just needs to tone it down a little and be more considerate.

Edit: also, it might help if he knew his options a little better. I don't normally write down players' abilities and things for them but in this case that might be helpful. Instead of "I know I'm mentally linked to someone else--what can I do with that?" maybe he'll be like "I know I can turn into any animal I have seen before--what can I do with that?" It might also help for the DM to lay out some specific options when asking him for action declarations. "You can either talk to the bugbear chief and ask him what his hat means, or try to scare him, or start a fight, or do something else. What do you do?"

[Ninja_Prawn]

So, it's basically an issue of social norms

It is. This player seems to have completely misread the situation and trampled all over the social contract. Worse, it sounds like this player is an adult, which means you can't exactly sit him down and lecture him about 'how to play nicely with others.'

I guess the first thing is to see if he actually wants to come back. If he does, you're going to have to do something, because this is spoiling everyone's day. Maybe do it like an intervention? Wait until he does something exceptionally egregious, and then break the game, plonk him on a sofa, arrange a semicircle of chairs facing him and explain kindly but clearly that "we love you, but if you want to keep playing with us, you have to appreciate that this is a social activity..."

I dunno. Maybe that's a terrible idea. I just feel like a real bolt of revaltion is needed for this guy.

[MaxWilson]

On reflection, I wonder if perhaps the player wasn't more inspired by the descriptive text of the Moon Druid as "guardians of the wild" than by the mechanical abilities. When he was trying to mind-control other PCs, was he trying to mind-control them in a way that would protect nature? When he tried to backstab a PC, was it to protect nature?

There's a part of me that thinks at least part of the problem is a more rules- and expectation-related than purely social; that he maybe thinking of this more as an improv activity (where the other participants say yes and roll with your punches) than an RPG with rules and a DM (who tells you the result of your declared actions, which might be "your mind-control attempt has no effect whatsoever"). But, that part of me also thinks it's very possible that D&D is not the game for this guy and that he might turn out to be happier in a storytelling system like Feng Shui or a White Wolf game rather than D&D.

Might be worth having a conversation with him though about what he expects out of the game, what is potentially possible, and how hard he is willing to work to get there. D&D is not a game of instant gratification, but if he wants to make it a long-term PC goal to learn the Geas spell and go around Geasing random peasants and knights to "stay out of these woods forever on pain of death!" he can totally do that. Just not in the first session.

Also, emphasize to him that whereas improv wants you to focus on the other actors in the scene, D&D wants you to focus on other characters in the world, most of whom are played by the DM. So most of his antagonistic activities should be directed toward NPCs in the person of the DM, and not toward other PCs. D&D works best when your party is on your side, and he needs to come up with a reason to want them on his side, even if it's just "so I can survive long enough to become powerful and start Geasing peasants."