Gary Stu living in the real world

[Fatty Tosscoble]

I have noticed at trend with one of my fellow PC that acts as if he is our stories Gary Stu, despite how practically nothing he does ever ends well for him (including many character deaths). He gets up to a lot of dumb shenanigans, like constant bar fights over nothing, ingesting random materials, and overall making strange decisions for no other reason than to be weird.

I assume he thinks, or wants us to think his characters are really funny and off the wall, but not only do the other PC not think so, but the DM doesn't ether. The problem is that in DnD you can't artificially be super funny and interesting, or a great creative fighter. So when you act as if the world around you should be playing off all your decisions in your favour, you come across as very self centred.

Can anyone put this problem into words better? I don't think I'm doing it justice. Does anyone know how to get through to a PC like this, as a PC?

[Doorhandle]

So he's the party Loonie? (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLoonie) Judging from that random behavior, (http://dragon.facetieux.free.fr/jdr/Munchkin.htm) that's more what he's getting at than "I am integral to the plot so even my worst ideas must go my way." In other words he's playing Deadpool except he has to pay the price for his insane antics. (To be fair that rarely works well for dead-pool either, it's just he gets away with it due to regeneration/plot Armour.) The're nothing wrong with this play-style but it can be disruptive if the group is not on the same wavelength.

The key problem here is that your player doesn't realize that just because you can do basically anything in an RPG doesn't mean it's good idea or even a funny idea. To an extent, you can expect actions to have realistic/verisimilitude consequences. if you explain this to him, and that he may have more luck if he's less random, he might improve. Consider suggesting better courses of action.

Edit: The way to find out whether or not he's a loonie is to ask if he did those things (like constant bar fights over nothing, ingesting random materials, and overall making strange decision) because it amused him at the time.

On the other hand, he may be entitled to think that he's the best player at the table (the before-mentioned "I am integral to the plot so even my worst ideas must go my way." thing), so you need to get him to work with, not against the party/DM: that he's not the only player there. If he's entitled this could be difficult; he probably won't react well to criticism, and i don;t have as much advice on that front.

Perhaps he'd just prefer a more flexible gaming system: D&D of all editions can be rigid in many ways.

[Willie the Duck]

Very occasionally say something like, "dude, you are trying too hard," or "can you let us know when your done roleplaying your basket case so we can get on with the game?" or refer to their character as "chaotic nuts." If they ask you about it say, "look, you keep trying to take the easy way out on funny and it isn't working. Humor takes actual inventiveness, this is justspooling out the same old humor tropes like randomness and insanity (https://xkcd.com/16/). Now if you have something genuinely funny to say or do as a character, we'd love to see it, but as it stands you are just forcing the rest of us to break role-play because realistically the rest of the party would have nothing to do with your characters."

But-- and I caution on this -- make sure that it is in fact everyone in the group that has a problem with this player's characters.

[JakOfAllTirades]

I've had disruptive "Loonies" in two campaigns, and successfully dealt with both of them in-game as the GM.

Long story short: Loonie #1 insisted that his character had to have some poison, even though he wasn't actually planning to poison anyone, and wasn't skilled in its use. By the end of the adventure, a helpful NPC had convinced the Loonie that some foul villain was out to poison him, and kindly gave him the "antidote". Later, he was challenged to a duel, and he noticed something on the enemy's blade! He drank the antidote... and found out it was poison. Stupid git. (The local Assassins' Guild didn't want his blood on their hands, so they set him up to kill himself.) The really funny thing was, everyone else at the table realized what was going on, and didn't tell him. It was hilarious. So after he makes his saving throw and survives, he decides to start taking the game a little more seriously. And one of the other players looks at me and says "You ad-libbed that whole scenario, didn't you?"

Yup!

My other group asked me to either remove Loonie #2 from the game or have a talk with him. I told 'em I'd handle it. Next game session, his character acquired a younger "protoge" NPC who acted even Loonie-er than him, and was given the task of "straightening the lad out." The results were comically epic... he was too busy riding herd on "Junior" to cause problems for anyone else, and he got a massive dose of his own medicine. Again, he started taking the game more seriously afterwards. And I rewarded his efforts by having Junior turn out OK in the long run.

[Arial Black]

I've had disruptive "Loonies" in two campaigns, and successfully dealt with both of them in-game as the GM.

Long story short: Loonie #1 insisted that his character had to have some poison, even though he wasn't actually planning to poison anyone, and wasn't skilled in its use. By the end of the adventure, a helpful NPC had convinced the Loonie that some foul villain was out to poison him, and kindly gave him the "antidote". Later, he was challenged to a duel, and he noticed something on the enemy's blade! He drank the antidote... and found out it was poison. Stupid git. (The local Assassins' Guild didn't want his blood on their hands, so they set him up to kill himself.) The really funny thing was, everyone else at the table realized what was going on, and didn't tell him. It was hilarious. So after he makes his saving throw and survives, he decides to start taking the game a little more seriously. And one of the other players looks at me and says "You ad-libbed that whole scenario, didn't you?"

Yup!

My other group asked me to either remove Loonie #2 from the game or have a talk with him. I told 'em I'd handle it. Next game session, his character acquired a younger "protoge" NPC who acted even Loonie-er than him, and was given the task of "straightening the lad out." The results were comically epic... he was too busy riding herd on "Junior" to cause problems for anyone else, and he got a massive dose of his own medicine. Again, he started taking the game more seriously afterwards. And I rewarded his efforts by having Junior turn out OK in the long run.

Very well played indeed sir! Hat's off to you.