CheeseM0nkey
2018-08-21, 07:59 PM
Hello GITP community. I am Cheesemonkey, a longtime lurker around here, DND player, and OOTS fan. I've been using this community as a resource for ideas, and advice for many years, hidden in the shadows, watching, learning.
I'm a fairly regular dungeon master for a group of friends (sometimes we switch up who DMs). One of my players, let's call him MP, has been giving me a lot of grief. However, I'm wondering if it's me and I'm just overwhelmed (he's very smart) by his shenanigans. He's creative and hilarious at times. I would be very welcome to an experienced outsider perspective on how you see some of his choices.
MP insists on being the black-sheep in the group. More often then not, he builds characters that intentionally subvert the theme of the campaign. His general temperament is verbally harassing everyone he meets, but avoiding combat as much as possible (except with PCs). He avoid most classic DNDisms, and almost never loots bodies. He won't write down gold on his character sheet because he "doesn't need it". He doesn't worry about any in world problems (your family has been kidnapped, the Duke is oppressing people, two nations disagree on how to handle war prisoners...) and actively avoid things not related to the specific script of his own personality features. Here are some of the characters he's come up with, in order (as they get increasingly insane, in my opinion). Also, I have talked to him about this up front. I've said I find his characters difficult to work with, and he basically said "that's how I like to play, deal with it." The two biggest issues, which are avoiding participating in the spirit of the adventure and intentionally obsoleting the rest of the party, he has said "are not on purpose" and he's just trying to make "creative characters". I also want to note I encourage players to optimize, and I have no problems challenging them, but I care a lot when they obsolete and ruin the fun of other party members.
#1
Setting: In a campaign where the PCs are convicted criminals (either justly or unjustly, player's choice) in a corrupt world, they must fight through a complex gladiator pit to earn fame, power, and freedom, while uncovering the mysterious powers behind the their incarceration.
MP: He made his character a mute slave named Oarsman 413, who is incapable of anything other than single word utterances. He has zero understanding of anything outside of the oar he was chained to from birth, and fights with it in the pits, hitting people with it. His actual ability scores are a highly optimized monk who was by far the most powerful PC in the group. However, he refused to ever interact with any NPC, ever, the entire campaign. This made it very difficult to involve him in any dimension of the story. The campaign ended with most PCs dying after constantly trying to fight their prison wardens, and some escaping the pits to freedom, but literally all they did was fight gladiator battles every week.
#2
Setting: Star Wars, expanded universe, New Republic Era, aftermath of the Yuuzhan Vong Invasion / Legacy EU. The PCs are free to make any character they want, but I requested they give a reason why they're affiliated with each other.
MP: He made his character a shard (force sensitive droid). To hide his race, he spoke exclusively through a vox box (ten programmed phrases). He also maxxed out his use of the Farseeing power (including taking the talent that doubles your farseeing uses, and the one that lets Farseeing swap with any other force power you have prepared). Using this, he spams telekinetic combat while walking around with his hands in his pockets whistling, dressed as a normal civilian. Again, his character was significantly more optimized than the rest of the party, to the point where he could effortlessly solo the whole group. He also mind tricked/future sighted every single NPC, including using destiny points and force points to do this across planets. Basically his character ended up playing something akin to the Oracle from the matrix, never needing leaving his bunker, and not coming with the rest of the party on adventures. This took many set pieces, moments, and character interactions and made them largely pointless, as one character was completely absent, yet was so powerful with force abilities he could mind control anyone else. The campaign ended with the other PCs working out the story, and MP's character doing nothing the final few sessions.
#3
Setting: Star Wars, hypothetical story connecting Return of the Jedi to The Force Awakens
MP: He named his character "Hennet the Sorcerer" and believes the entire world is a mirage arcana, and he's actually a wizard. His only goal is to escape this cursed labyrinth and get back to his real home. He refers to starships as "lame planeshifting magic items", glowsticks as sunrods, and "casts" lightning bolt at people. He also complained whenever I gave him darkside points for using Force Lightning because in his mind he's just using lightning bolt and believed his intent matters more. As the story went on, he shifted from assuming this world was fake into knowing he's in a DND game, a meaningful difference. He quickly ended up in character referring to sidequests, NPCs, and "lame plot hooks". Frequently he would verbally abuse characters because "Hennet believes they are NPCs, and they don't have any minds." I pointed out that is a lot different than his initial idea, but he just laughed it off and said "Hennet is a senile old man. You can't really take what he says seriously." The campaign ended in PVP, and Hennet the Sorcerer killed everyone.
#4
Setting: Fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Edition cosmology, but the material plane has been shattered into pieces by an unknown cataclysm, 12 years ago. Regular races like humans and dwarves have drifted through the astral plane and been forced to make a living in the exotic outer planes. PCs can choose any of the major inner planes which they have built a home on, and are required to give a reason why they want to figure out what happened 12 years ago.
MP: He named his character Dr. Astros and basically copied Dr. Strange from the MCU, but a sorcerer. He's a doctor who very quickly became a master of the arcane arts. After some bad experiences with 3.5's balance, I had let the players use core (PHB 1/2, Complete Series) plus one other splatbook of their choice that was thematically related to their build. MP selected Dragon Magic, because "he's a powerful mage", and spammed wings of cover + dragon magic to the point where he could easily handle epic level monsters while the rest of the party had members such as a non-multiclassed 8th level paladin. In addition to literally blowing up whatever he felt like, he dominated the evil PCs who disagreed with him. His character's only goal was to become headmaster of a secretly run free astral deva clinic in the City of Brass. We had a TPK when the party decided to planeshift into the Water Plane without any form of underwater breathing (I even butted in and stopped them, and asked for Knowledge the planes checks, which they all passed and I explained the properties to the water plane).
#5
Setting: Pathfinder, a sequel to one of our older campaigns, 100 years after. Steampunk / magi-tech dystopia. Small group (3) so each PC made 2 characters.
MP: He made both his character recurring NPCs from the older campaign... that were humans. So they were 124 years old. He appropriately applied age penalties and everything. He went into great detail on trying to accurately portray being a 124 year old fossil, including running from most character he met, needing a walker to get around, forgetting everyone's names, and very specific dietary restrictions. Oh, and divine metamagic cheese cleric buffing, so he could turn into an unstoppable juggernaut whenever he felt like winning. This was very sneaky, because the rest of the party had no idea how strong his characters were. And honestly, it was funny. But there wasn't a single encounter of normal DnD combat, no puzzle of how to overcome a specific obstacle. The rest of the group plugged along, but were so disorganized, even level appropriate encounters were overpowering them.
The general trend: MP is a very funny guy, and a good friend of mine. However, on a campaign level, he picks characters that really badly (in my opinion) hurt the immersion of the world, especially the fun of a fantasy adventure. I've told him this, and he just flat out disagrees with me. He also likes to sit out for extended period, let the rest of the group talk, then teleport in and solve things himself.
Session by session: I've asked MP many times if he actually finds this fun, and if DnD is the right game for him. He always says yes. But every session, he seems to get the most fun out of insulting my ideas. I'm not a great DM, but I try my best. Our more recent sessions have gone something like:
>Introduce some element of the world
>"What do you do?"
>MP remarks how stupid and lame it is
>Rest of party tries dumb things because none of them are very genre savvy, get themselves into trouble and complain
>MP then solves the puzzle in the most efficient way he can using his highly optimized characters, and remarks how stupid the rest of the group is for not immediately understanding my stupid ideas
>MP tells the party: "Cheese clearly wants us to to explore this temple, so we should explore it. Otherwise, we'll have wasted his time preparing."
>I tell them they can do what they want, it's a free world
>"Let's go climb that mountain in the distance"
>I remind them they learned five minutes ago the mountain is ruled by aboleth seers who have been pulling strings behind the scenes and they're fifth level
>They go anyway
>I give them a tough encounter and present some sidequests. They ignore them all.
>"He really doesn't want us to go into the mountain"
>"We keep going. He's going to be so mad at us, teehee."
>I remind them the campaign ends if they die
>"We keep going."
>MP rolls up his sleeves and opens up Dragon Magic
>One or two players dies, MP and the others escape
>"What now?"
>"The story is ruined if some of us are dead. We should start a new campaign."
>I tell them they can make new characters and I'll introduce them into the world
>"I can't wait to derail Cheese's next adventure. He's gonna be so mad."
>MP tells them they're all bad and they suck for dying
It's also significant to mention that when the other group members occasionally DM, MP is generally a much tamer, more normal player. He made a normal duskblade who had lost his crew and was trying to lead people to freedom, a posh butler germaphobe, etc. But he participated in the story as a member of the adventuring party like a normal PC would, and didn't constantly berate the DM. Just me he does this to. MP is absolutely not a murderhobo. In fact, he avoid fighting most of the time, and enjoys fighting fellow PCs much more than NPCs or monsters. He complains at every dungeon crawl, and will often spout "AHHA! I knew this was a dungeon crawl. Almost fooled me there."
One final point. As a person, I'm very soft spoken. Most people call me gentle, and I'm the listener in all my social groups. Because of this, I've earned a reputation as an extremely lenient DM. To the point where my group says "Cheese will let us get away with literally anything. Isn't that great??" Some of the more serious / quiet players have also approached me in private and requested I increase the severity of my punishments, as they don't like their fellow players ruining the session with their tomfoolery. Yet, I've wiped the party dozens of times. In the past year and a half we've been through 5 campaigns and at least fifty PCs. Almost every world ends with everyone in the world trying to kill most of the PCs for various reasons and, depending on the lore I've set up, the authorities after them have mixed success.
It's my personal motto of "Talk to players, punish PCs". I feel like I'm punishing PCs as much as I can, but they a) don't seem to feel it, as they keep making very poor decisions and b) don't seem to feel it, because they've told me they want more severe punishments. So I guess that's a separate, related issue.
Personally, I feel like I've talked to my group enough that I'm ready to walk away and tell them to find another player. They don't seem to enjoy the game the same way I do, and every conversation ends with them asserting yes, they are having fun. Likewise, I find the way MP sits back and picks apart things frustrating, but he doesn't see it as a problem.
What do all you veterans think? Is this just a very bright guy who is competitive and wants a bigger challenge? Is there anything from an adventure design standpoint you've picked up to help with players like this?
Thank you kindly for your time.
I'm a fairly regular dungeon master for a group of friends (sometimes we switch up who DMs). One of my players, let's call him MP, has been giving me a lot of grief. However, I'm wondering if it's me and I'm just overwhelmed (he's very smart) by his shenanigans. He's creative and hilarious at times. I would be very welcome to an experienced outsider perspective on how you see some of his choices.
MP insists on being the black-sheep in the group. More often then not, he builds characters that intentionally subvert the theme of the campaign. His general temperament is verbally harassing everyone he meets, but avoiding combat as much as possible (except with PCs). He avoid most classic DNDisms, and almost never loots bodies. He won't write down gold on his character sheet because he "doesn't need it". He doesn't worry about any in world problems (your family has been kidnapped, the Duke is oppressing people, two nations disagree on how to handle war prisoners...) and actively avoid things not related to the specific script of his own personality features. Here are some of the characters he's come up with, in order (as they get increasingly insane, in my opinion). Also, I have talked to him about this up front. I've said I find his characters difficult to work with, and he basically said "that's how I like to play, deal with it." The two biggest issues, which are avoiding participating in the spirit of the adventure and intentionally obsoleting the rest of the party, he has said "are not on purpose" and he's just trying to make "creative characters". I also want to note I encourage players to optimize, and I have no problems challenging them, but I care a lot when they obsolete and ruin the fun of other party members.
#1
Setting: In a campaign where the PCs are convicted criminals (either justly or unjustly, player's choice) in a corrupt world, they must fight through a complex gladiator pit to earn fame, power, and freedom, while uncovering the mysterious powers behind the their incarceration.
MP: He made his character a mute slave named Oarsman 413, who is incapable of anything other than single word utterances. He has zero understanding of anything outside of the oar he was chained to from birth, and fights with it in the pits, hitting people with it. His actual ability scores are a highly optimized monk who was by far the most powerful PC in the group. However, he refused to ever interact with any NPC, ever, the entire campaign. This made it very difficult to involve him in any dimension of the story. The campaign ended with most PCs dying after constantly trying to fight their prison wardens, and some escaping the pits to freedom, but literally all they did was fight gladiator battles every week.
#2
Setting: Star Wars, expanded universe, New Republic Era, aftermath of the Yuuzhan Vong Invasion / Legacy EU. The PCs are free to make any character they want, but I requested they give a reason why they're affiliated with each other.
MP: He made his character a shard (force sensitive droid). To hide his race, he spoke exclusively through a vox box (ten programmed phrases). He also maxxed out his use of the Farseeing power (including taking the talent that doubles your farseeing uses, and the one that lets Farseeing swap with any other force power you have prepared). Using this, he spams telekinetic combat while walking around with his hands in his pockets whistling, dressed as a normal civilian. Again, his character was significantly more optimized than the rest of the party, to the point where he could effortlessly solo the whole group. He also mind tricked/future sighted every single NPC, including using destiny points and force points to do this across planets. Basically his character ended up playing something akin to the Oracle from the matrix, never needing leaving his bunker, and not coming with the rest of the party on adventures. This took many set pieces, moments, and character interactions and made them largely pointless, as one character was completely absent, yet was so powerful with force abilities he could mind control anyone else. The campaign ended with the other PCs working out the story, and MP's character doing nothing the final few sessions.
#3
Setting: Star Wars, hypothetical story connecting Return of the Jedi to The Force Awakens
MP: He named his character "Hennet the Sorcerer" and believes the entire world is a mirage arcana, and he's actually a wizard. His only goal is to escape this cursed labyrinth and get back to his real home. He refers to starships as "lame planeshifting magic items", glowsticks as sunrods, and "casts" lightning bolt at people. He also complained whenever I gave him darkside points for using Force Lightning because in his mind he's just using lightning bolt and believed his intent matters more. As the story went on, he shifted from assuming this world was fake into knowing he's in a DND game, a meaningful difference. He quickly ended up in character referring to sidequests, NPCs, and "lame plot hooks". Frequently he would verbally abuse characters because "Hennet believes they are NPCs, and they don't have any minds." I pointed out that is a lot different than his initial idea, but he just laughed it off and said "Hennet is a senile old man. You can't really take what he says seriously." The campaign ended in PVP, and Hennet the Sorcerer killed everyone.
#4
Setting: Fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Edition cosmology, but the material plane has been shattered into pieces by an unknown cataclysm, 12 years ago. Regular races like humans and dwarves have drifted through the astral plane and been forced to make a living in the exotic outer planes. PCs can choose any of the major inner planes which they have built a home on, and are required to give a reason why they want to figure out what happened 12 years ago.
MP: He named his character Dr. Astros and basically copied Dr. Strange from the MCU, but a sorcerer. He's a doctor who very quickly became a master of the arcane arts. After some bad experiences with 3.5's balance, I had let the players use core (PHB 1/2, Complete Series) plus one other splatbook of their choice that was thematically related to their build. MP selected Dragon Magic, because "he's a powerful mage", and spammed wings of cover + dragon magic to the point where he could easily handle epic level monsters while the rest of the party had members such as a non-multiclassed 8th level paladin. In addition to literally blowing up whatever he felt like, he dominated the evil PCs who disagreed with him. His character's only goal was to become headmaster of a secretly run free astral deva clinic in the City of Brass. We had a TPK when the party decided to planeshift into the Water Plane without any form of underwater breathing (I even butted in and stopped them, and asked for Knowledge the planes checks, which they all passed and I explained the properties to the water plane).
#5
Setting: Pathfinder, a sequel to one of our older campaigns, 100 years after. Steampunk / magi-tech dystopia. Small group (3) so each PC made 2 characters.
MP: He made both his character recurring NPCs from the older campaign... that were humans. So they were 124 years old. He appropriately applied age penalties and everything. He went into great detail on trying to accurately portray being a 124 year old fossil, including running from most character he met, needing a walker to get around, forgetting everyone's names, and very specific dietary restrictions. Oh, and divine metamagic cheese cleric buffing, so he could turn into an unstoppable juggernaut whenever he felt like winning. This was very sneaky, because the rest of the party had no idea how strong his characters were. And honestly, it was funny. But there wasn't a single encounter of normal DnD combat, no puzzle of how to overcome a specific obstacle. The rest of the group plugged along, but were so disorganized, even level appropriate encounters were overpowering them.
The general trend: MP is a very funny guy, and a good friend of mine. However, on a campaign level, he picks characters that really badly (in my opinion) hurt the immersion of the world, especially the fun of a fantasy adventure. I've told him this, and he just flat out disagrees with me. He also likes to sit out for extended period, let the rest of the group talk, then teleport in and solve things himself.
Session by session: I've asked MP many times if he actually finds this fun, and if DnD is the right game for him. He always says yes. But every session, he seems to get the most fun out of insulting my ideas. I'm not a great DM, but I try my best. Our more recent sessions have gone something like:
>Introduce some element of the world
>"What do you do?"
>MP remarks how stupid and lame it is
>Rest of party tries dumb things because none of them are very genre savvy, get themselves into trouble and complain
>MP then solves the puzzle in the most efficient way he can using his highly optimized characters, and remarks how stupid the rest of the group is for not immediately understanding my stupid ideas
>MP tells the party: "Cheese clearly wants us to to explore this temple, so we should explore it. Otherwise, we'll have wasted his time preparing."
>I tell them they can do what they want, it's a free world
>"Let's go climb that mountain in the distance"
>I remind them they learned five minutes ago the mountain is ruled by aboleth seers who have been pulling strings behind the scenes and they're fifth level
>They go anyway
>I give them a tough encounter and present some sidequests. They ignore them all.
>"He really doesn't want us to go into the mountain"
>"We keep going. He's going to be so mad at us, teehee."
>I remind them the campaign ends if they die
>"We keep going."
>MP rolls up his sleeves and opens up Dragon Magic
>One or two players dies, MP and the others escape
>"What now?"
>"The story is ruined if some of us are dead. We should start a new campaign."
>I tell them they can make new characters and I'll introduce them into the world
>"I can't wait to derail Cheese's next adventure. He's gonna be so mad."
>MP tells them they're all bad and they suck for dying
It's also significant to mention that when the other group members occasionally DM, MP is generally a much tamer, more normal player. He made a normal duskblade who had lost his crew and was trying to lead people to freedom, a posh butler germaphobe, etc. But he participated in the story as a member of the adventuring party like a normal PC would, and didn't constantly berate the DM. Just me he does this to. MP is absolutely not a murderhobo. In fact, he avoid fighting most of the time, and enjoys fighting fellow PCs much more than NPCs or monsters. He complains at every dungeon crawl, and will often spout "AHHA! I knew this was a dungeon crawl. Almost fooled me there."
One final point. As a person, I'm very soft spoken. Most people call me gentle, and I'm the listener in all my social groups. Because of this, I've earned a reputation as an extremely lenient DM. To the point where my group says "Cheese will let us get away with literally anything. Isn't that great??" Some of the more serious / quiet players have also approached me in private and requested I increase the severity of my punishments, as they don't like their fellow players ruining the session with their tomfoolery. Yet, I've wiped the party dozens of times. In the past year and a half we've been through 5 campaigns and at least fifty PCs. Almost every world ends with everyone in the world trying to kill most of the PCs for various reasons and, depending on the lore I've set up, the authorities after them have mixed success.
It's my personal motto of "Talk to players, punish PCs". I feel like I'm punishing PCs as much as I can, but they a) don't seem to feel it, as they keep making very poor decisions and b) don't seem to feel it, because they've told me they want more severe punishments. So I guess that's a separate, related issue.
Personally, I feel like I've talked to my group enough that I'm ready to walk away and tell them to find another player. They don't seem to enjoy the game the same way I do, and every conversation ends with them asserting yes, they are having fun. Likewise, I find the way MP sits back and picks apart things frustrating, but he doesn't see it as a problem.
What do all you veterans think? Is this just a very bright guy who is competitive and wants a bigger challenge? Is there anything from an adventure design standpoint you've picked up to help with players like this?
Thank you kindly for your time.