Abusive Party Members

[Solaris]

Yes, and I've long since lost tolerance of them. "It's what my character would do." or "I'm just roleplaying" is never the right response when questioned on being a donkey cavity. The player chose to be one. More often it's not about the character but the player himself/herself. (I have experienced male and female jerks.) The player just doesn't given a damn about you and only cares about his/her fun to accomplish whatever personal goals he/she has for the character. Your fun is irrelevant. It only gets worse if the DM enables it either through approving of such behavior or thinking being neutral about it is the proper thing to do.

Should you have such a player in your group you could try speaking to him/her, but it usually doesn't work. You get the "I'm just roleplaying" pablum and accusations of you being a whiner. Talk to the DM. If the DM doesn't stop it, leave the game. It's not worth it. I've had quit games because of such players, but sometimes it was the jerk who quit.

^ This. Emphasis mine; I can negotiate with hostile local nationals, I can negotiate with pissed off employees, I can negotiate with incredibly irate staff officers who were last told "No" sometime in the Reagan Administration. I cannot, for the life of me, get jerk players to quit misbehaving. This is speaking as both a player and a GM.

That's why I have the general policy of booting people who even begin to show the tendencies. Not once has giving someone a second or third chance ended well if they're willing to behave so awfully to people they've just met. If they're that maladjusted, you're not fixing them.

Corollary to that, of course, is if you see someone in your group being abusive and you don't intervene, you're just as guilty as the abuser because you're enabling it.