2 stories of the worst players I've ever had, both in games of Delta Green, which is basically modern Call of Cthulhu with a touch of X-Files and conspiracy theory.
Spoiler: Wildman
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I wasn't GMing, but I was the person at the table with the most knowledge of the system, so the GM would occasionally look to me for help, and I was asked to help build a late-joining new player's character. He decided to play as an NSA agent, and the stats ended up so his starting sanity was 40. Now, 40 isn't good, but to give perspective one can still be a functioning member of society with 40 SAN, it's not insane asylum levels. I inform him that his character will probably be mildly neurotic, probably paranoia or something along those lines.
Terrible decision.
Scenario starts, hush-hush meeting with a contact in a warehouse. Even though the new guy's ostensibly on our team, he barges in separately from the rest of us, gun drawn, babbling nonsense as though he'd just squeezed out of a straitjacket and fought his way out of a padded room. We literally had to initiate combat to subdue him, and after disarming, cuffing, and I think gagging him we discovered, lo and behold, this is our new recruit. At this point I tried to explain to him that he should at least be pretending to be sane, otherwise he wouldn't get to be a government agent with a security clearance.
Game goes on. We were sent to check out a town that was literally vanishing, building by building, into the ground. Don't remember how, but an NPC refused to open up and let us, a group of total strangers who hadn't even introduced ourselves, into her home at 9 o'clock at night.
The guy kicks in the door, pistol whips her in the forehead, we manage to grapple with, physically restrain, and sedate a party member for the second time in as many hours for no apparent reason, and now we kinda have to explain this to the poor woman when she comes to.
Don't remember how it came to this (there weren't any armed hostiles in the scenario, so it was probably us), but shortly after killing another PC by knowingly handing them poisoned heroin (that PC was a recovering addict) he came to be beaten to an inch of his life to the point where his brain was peeking through a crack in his skull. I mercy-killed him, and the player drifted off, never to be seen again.
Second fellow's another murder-hobo, who was however taking the above advice and
pretending to be sane.
Spoiler: Shovel Guy
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So I was invited to join an RPG group by a mutual friend, to whom I had introduced Delta Green. On the first night, however, he was sick and couldn't come, so I wound up being the stranger GM who was running a game for a group of people who had played together for months. Kinda awkward, obviously, but I wanted this to be my good first impression.
I didn't realize, however, that two of the four people actually weren't members of the core group, and had been recruited to basically fill party space.
First guy's a nice fellow, but pretty much never can be relied on to stay at the table. I don't know if it's the availability heuristic at work here, but all three times I've played with him, something came up and he had to rush home because of his wife, or his mother, or his dog, etc. Not his fault, of course, but still a little bothersome for the rest of us.
Second guy, however, should have thrown up red flags from the start. He's an FBI agent, and willingly reconfigures his already good stats to make INT and EDU a dump and turn himself into a towering bruiser (anyone who's played Call of Cthulhu can see the problem here, mechanically as well as idea-wise). Gives his Caucasian FBI agent a single Japanese-sounding name, which I cannot recall but would put money on being a character from Naruto. Asks if he can make Throw (as in knives) a professional skill, and I hesitantly allow it. After all, it's not like he asked for dual katanas or anything.
Game starts, disappearances are to be investigated in a Native American reservation in Arizona. They're caught in a jurisdictional...awkwardness...between the local sheriff, the Feds, and the state police, of whom the main representative, Major Garrett, is specifically written to be abrasive and boorish. I depict this faithfully, and it irritates the characters as is meant to be. More on that later, though...first...
They're investigating a house from which someone has disappeared. He's searching a closet alone, and finds a bloodied Winchester rifle that's clearly been recently used in brutal hand-to-hand combat. He opts to steal it. Yes, an FBI agent deliberately conceals key evidence just so he can come back and take it for himself later, when no one's looking.
Now, Major Garrett...they've spotted a strange reflection on the horizon from a helicopter, which turns out to be a buried car in the desert. They drive out with Major Garrett to investigate, and the major hands them all shovels and tells them to dig it up. Naturally he doesn't pull his fair share of the work. This incenses the psychopath, who tells me he's going to "accidentally" hit him in the head with a shovel. Roll is botched, and the major realizes that was a deliberate attack. Major pulls his nightstick, Shovel Guy overpowers him, and beats him to an inch of his life with the shovel while the other PCs look on in horror. He then gets on the phone and calls his boss to try to cover up the thing his boss has yet to, and possibly will never, find out about. Botches the roll. So the PCs are now standing in the desert, being held at gunpoint by this psycho while they all patiently wait for a helicopter full of SWAT guys to show up and bring down the nutcase. He tries to introduce a new character the same character as an identical twin who happens to have the same job and skills.
Suffice it to say the game trailed off after that, and fortunately it wasn't a group-breaker. We still have weekly gaming nights, and enjoy each other's company in the absence of psychopaths.
Originally Posted by Milodiah
2 stories of the worst players I've ever had, both in games of Delta Green, which is basically modern Call of Cthulhu with a touch of X-Files and conspiracy theory.
Re: The Worst player you've ever had/seen/been/heard of
