Moronic Players in P-B-P games (A rant thread)

[Wreckingrocc]

Have any of you viewing this thread had really, really stupid players in Play-By-Post games? This is a thread about players ranting and agreeing about how stupid some players can be.

My story begins in a little place called Myth-Weavers. I make this game, start a recruitment thread, get 9 options and five places, and make a cutoff.

The next day, I send PMs to all those players who have made it into the game, and they send submissions to the game. I then start a thread for the game.

One of the players who applied and did not make the cutoff then starts posting in the gaming thread, and begins interacting with other players, despite the fact that:
A) He has not received a private message telling him he has been accepted.
B) He has not submitted his character to the game.
C) His character is not in the game.
Has this ever happened to anyone else? I feel like my game just lost five points on the awesomeness scale from 1 to 10.

[Kyeudo]

Never ran into anyone like that. Sounds like you should PM a moderator about the problem. His behavior probably violates some rules, especially since Myth-Weavers is a big PbP site.

[Skjaldbakka]

You could just instruct your players to put the offending poster on their [ignore] list.

[Bayar]

Never had this happening.

But I suffer from other moronic chases over PbP's...

[Wreckingrocc]

Tell us about them! As it says above, this is a rant thread.

[Skjaldbakka]

My main disappointment with PbP is that most of the PbP games I've been in die after 3 months (and thats being generous).

My only PbP 'horror story' is one where I tried to play a truenamer. I'd worked out a build with Item Familiar and UMD that made a pretty strong healer. It was going to take some extra care to be viable, but it was something that I felt pretty confident that I could pull it off. I'd put a lot of work into the character's personality and backstory: he was an abbot at a monastery of Pelor, and the Item Familiar was a book of his teachings, etc, etc.

Anyway, we start off getting onto an airship, and the first encounter is something like this:

DM: A bunch of pirates swarm aboard the ship, everbody take [rolls an aribitrary amount of damage], and then [spiked chain monkey] kill all the pirates but a handful that look more powerful than the others, roll initiative.

Note, the damage was enough to flat out kill my character. With no possibility to avoid it, at all.

[Wreckingrocc]

Maybe the DM thought it was a 'swarm', as swarms don't make attack rolls.

Man, I pity you. I wouldn't blame you for reusing that character in a game :smallamused:

[Helgraf]

My main disappointment with PbP is that most of the PbP games I've been in die after 3 months (and thats being generous).

My only PbP 'horror story' is one where I tried to play a truenamer. I'd worked out a build with Item Familiar and UMD that made a pretty strong healer. It was going to take some extra care to be viable, but it was something that I felt pretty confident that I could pull it off. I'd put a lot of work into the character's personality and backstory: he was an abbot at a monastery of Pelor, and the Item Familiar was a book of his teachings, etc, etc.

Anyway, we start off getting onto an airship, and the first encounter is something like this:

DM: A bunch of pirates swarm aboard the ship, everbody take [rolls an aribitrary amount of damage], and then [spiked chain monkey] kill all the pirates but a handful that look more powerful than the others, roll initiative.

Note, the damage was enough to flat out kill my character. With no possibility to avoid it, at all.

That sounds ... dreadfully poorly managed on the part of the DM. My condolensces.

[SilverSheriff]

I'm currently signed up for a PBP game on Myth-Weavers, but the DM won't start until people stop pulling out.:frown:

[JeminiZero]

I opened this thread expecting stories about how some player kept editting and re-editing his combat action until everyone was confused as to what he was actually doing. :smallbiggrin:

As a minor note, I would like to point out that technically, your problem does not actually arise from a PbP player, but from a PbP invader.

[Bayar]

My main concern with PbP's are the fact that rime is no real issue. I tried to DM the World's largest Dungeon and people would have taken 10/20 to find secret doors and what-not even though I said that taking 10/20 is not allowed :smallmad:

[Khanderas]

My main concern with PbP's are the fact that rime is no real issue. I tried to DM the World's largest Dungeon and people would have taken 10/20 to find secret doors and what-not even though I said that taking 10/20 is not allowed :smallmad:
I don't see how that is different from normal tabletop taking 10/20.
I mean its not like taking 20 means that guy has to sit out for 20 minutes or something. It is just assumed he takes alot of time in searching.
Sometimes that is inadvisable (impatient NPC's, random encounters, simply not enough time (chased or such things) but still no different from normal tabletop.

The OP's guy probelbly missed the "You get a PM if you are in, else you are not in" part, implied to explicit. Just PM him that he did not make the cut unfortunatly. If that fails then the mods can be summoned.

[Kalirren]

Yeah, OP, from what you described, he probably just started posting in the IC thread because thats all he saw happen. You said you PM'ed everyone you accepted, yes, but if you never annnounced publicly who was accepted and who wasn't, he would have had no way of knowing. From his perspective, he's been waiting for n days, with no word from you, and then the IC thread goes up all of a sudden. He therefore steps in and roleplays. Some DM's do prefer a method by which the characters commence roleplaying -first- and the sheets are largely finished before the first combat, after all.

[Wreckingrocc]

The sad thing is, though, I said specifically in the first post: "2 paragraph backstory minimum (Each paragraph must be at least five lines in length)", and his entire backstory was one paragraph four lines long that included, "My character was on a boat in the middle of the ocean, and it sank. An iceberg was floating by, and he jumped on. The iceberg floated down into the area the game takes place in, and my character jumped off and goes to the area."

The game premise included "Your characters are well-known adventurers who have received invitations to a private employer." How did his character know where to go? That's what really got me.