This is how normal people game.

[1337 b4k4]

So, that's my story. Not really sure what to think about, and I don't really have a question for the forum. I just needed to share this story with someone. Anyone have any comments or thoughts on the situation?

I have to mostly agree with Beta, the take away lesson here is don't waste your time (or your players) playing something they don't want to play. It ends in frustration both for you and the players. That isn't to say you did anything "wrong" per se, but that you misread the situation and pushed yourself and your players beyond where you should have. Sometimes your players aren't in the mood to game, or to take the game seriously. And it's not always a matter of them "being rude" or even not liking your game, sometimes everyone is just in a weird mood. On those days it's best to do something else. And sure it sucks when you have very limited time, and rare opportunities to game, but it's all part of the gaming experience especially if you're irregularly joining an otherwise regular group. I have some friends that I manage to get together with maybe twice a year to game, and drive hours to do that. Sometimes we get an awesome full on blasting game going and other times we barely eke out a single battle. It is what it is and you take the good with the bad.

As to the specifics of this, again I agree with Beta, given that they didn't seem interested in playing or taking it seriously, wrapping it up after the sheriff would have been for the best. It would have felt a natural stopping point and let them walk away feeling like big damn heroes rather than feeling like the DM was out to kill them. By your own admission, at this point in addition to not being into it IRL, the players were also out of resources and capability IC. When the bounty hunter's showed up, especially if they hadn't been encountered before, it probably looked to them like "grudgey DM is pissed that we killed his BBEG and is going to kill us no matter what we do". At that point, it is actually rather common for "normal" gamers to start taking increasingly suicidal and disruptive actions in game. The mindset is basically if there's no way to win, they're at least going to take the game down with them.

I would suggest not cutting off all communication with your friend quite yet. In fact, I'd give yourself a day or two to calm down and get a change to view this with a detached eye and ask about what you could or should have done differently and what you missed. I'm not sure that immediately after a dissatisfying game and a ~10-12 hour day (3-4 hours to drive, 4 hours couch camping and another 2-4 hours of gaming) is the best time to get perspective on what went wrong. Emotions are high and nerves are frayed. A few days distance might let you look at everything with a clearer head and even if it ends with not gaming with them anymore, it might give you some future insight into handling something like this before it all goes south.

There is no such thing as normal. If you think your not weird, your just aware of yourself enough. I would not game with anyone who declares others "freaks" and "weirdoes" just because they roleplay differently.

All of humanity are weirdoes. Some of us just can't seem to stand someone else's flavor of weirdness.

In general I agree with you, but if we take Talakeal's stories at their face value (the ones outside of this thread included), then the people Talakeal plays with are often weirder than even most gamers are. The fact is, Talakeal either has the worst luck or the worst judgement in people when it comes to gaming and at best those groups could be described as "amusingly dysfunctional".