Creepiest Gamers You've Played With?

[kraftcheese]

Something about RPGs seems to occasionally attract people who are just a little bit odd. Not just unconventional, nerdy or socially awkward (all of which are fine) but strange, rude and committed to overstepping boundaries.

Whether it's people who take their roleplaying far outside the confines of the game, folks who use RPGs to explore fantasies the rest of the group finds uncomfortable or just players with the tact and hygiene of a goblin, I'm sure we all have a couple of odd stories to share!

I haven't played with a great deal of groups so my oddest fellow gamer was the dude who insisted on pulling his lips back over his teeth, extending his neck and plucking bites off a sandwich over our map during a game (chewing open-mouthed, of course); not sure whether that was just how he ate all the time, but I tell ya, he made a lot of crumbs.

[Max_Killjoy]

Let's see, there was the guy who really, really liked "German WW2-era" weapons, uniforms, and iconography...

There was the guy who constantly did stuff like this: one of his mage's spells were powered by a single material competent... toe jam.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Reposting this:

Dating The Creepiest Gamer Ever

The creepiest gamer I ever met was my ex-husband. There is so much creepy overflowing in that withered little man, but I will try to limit it to game-related, or we could be here for a very long time.

Let's call him Jake. Jake and I were high school sweethearts. At first he actively hid his role-playing from me, then after I found some of his books, he briefly explained what role-playing was. He started telling me about his campaigns and characters, at first keeping it vague, and only bringing it up during related conversation. Slowly and inexorably, every conversation started to turn to role-playing. During pillow talk, long walks, midnight phone calls, he would rush through the bare minimum of non-role-playing related discussion so he could get back to the important stuff: wizards, and whether they had bagged the goddess Isis yet.

I had assumed when he told me about his campaigns, he was describing things he had done with his friends. One day he admitted to me that he hadn't played in a campaign with other people in years (“not since I thought D&D was cool,” he'd scoff), but he made campaigns to play by himself, constantly. Not just brainstorming, not rolling up characters, not imagining storylines; he was actually creating a full contingent of players, NPCs, settings, and storylines and then playing them all by himself for months on end. He wouldn't sleep, he wouldn't eat, he would just roll roll roll, and then come over to my house in the middle of the night, stand outside my window while I was sleeping, and manically describe the battle his warriors had just had. He joked his one-man campaigns were like what they say about alcoholics and drinking alone. It was funny until I found all the places he was stashing his role-playing books, how many crevices of his life were filled with character sheets. He even stuffed them into my backpack, just in case.

I was actually pretty interested in role-playing, but every time I showed the barest glimmer of enjoyment he would keep me up all night long forcing me to make characters, like I was some RPG sweatshop. Did it matter if I had to work or go to school in the morning? No, I had to stay up to register on his role-playing forums so I could read his posts about role-playing, or I really couldn't understand the full flavor of it. I'd tell him I was getting burned out he would back off for maybe a day or two. But once he had proposed marriage and figured I was good and stuck with him, he would hit me with: “Well, you tell me about your day all the time and I don't care about that, but I listen because I'm not a bitch.” Once we had reached this point in our relationship, we no longer did things together. Instead, I would come over to his house and watch him roll up characters. Eventually I would fall asleep, and he would wake me up to yell about how rude I was being, coming over to his house just to fall asleep. So I tried to stay awake, talk to him, maybe even pitch some character ideas, but in the middle of my sentences he would leave the room to go read a role-playing book somewhere else. When I found him and asked why he'd left while I was talking, he'd say that I was always chattering at him when he was obviously trying to work.

Jake exclusively played games from the most rule-heavy, fanbase-screwing, complicated, nonsensical company out there (name omitted because I know how rabidly Jake googles any mention of his favorite company). For many years, I thought that was the only gaming system available, which served to crush most of my blossoming love for role-playing. There were times when he'd drag me out to a gaming store and I'd pick up a handbook that looked interesting, only to have him snatch it away and go on a long diatribe about how that wasn't a real role-playing game, and the people who liked it were simple-minded and boring because they didn't understand what role-playing was all about. Now, if you want a real role-playing book, you should buy this one for me...

Because of the complexity of the rules, and Jake's insistence that I also utilize the dozens of tables he had created for his own personal use, I was unable for about a year to make a character on my own without his assistance. If I managed to get through all the stats but couldn't handle equipment, Jake would pat me on the head, tell me I'd for sure get it next time, then hand me a character he had made for his lonesome one-man campaign. Did I want to give them a special power? Too bad, it doesn't work with the plot. Maybe they have a mysterious figure from the past? Oh, no, definitely not, I've already figured out who his father is, and it's a secret and I can't tell you but man it is such an awesome plot twist you are going to love it.

Despite all this, I somehow managed to enjoy role-playing, in concept if not in practice, and after about a year of directed study I managed to put together a few characters on my own, come up with a detailed backstory, and a framework for a basic campaign. I had hidden this from Jake because I wanted it to be a surprise. When I finally showed it to him, he spent a few silent moments looking it over, then told me my ideas were really amateur, and obviously I didn't understand the concept, or the rules, or how to run a game, that I was more or less just scribbling on paper, but it was cute that I tried. If I wanted to try making a real character, though, he had an idea he thought I would just love, and if I wanted to work on a real campaign I could copyedit his thirty page manifesto and his additional 10 page outline and timeline for an alternate universe. In fact, I did copyedit it, and even offered to write up some fiction interludes, which would give it enough meat to be its own role-playing book. Jake was very excited about the idea, until I pitched him the story I had come up with to illustrate one of his character concepts. He dismissed it as having too much “emotional stuff” going on (the character discovered her powers and pondered if it was moral to use them). You couldn't even tell what her stats were, he said. Nobody's going to read that.

After a while, Jake started running campaigns with real people (so to speak) and I was always dragged along, still determined to like role-playing despite him. His group was a collection of autistics, munchkins, and generally maladjusted misogynists who, session after session, could not fail to say "Why is she here?" or "Show us your tits, hur hur" in rapid succession. Rather than defend me, Jake would demand I sit near him so he could continually grope me throughout the session. When I told him I didn't appreciate him groping me when I'd asked him not to, he'd ask me why we were dating if he didn't get to grope me whenever he wanted, or, my personal favorite, he'd say he needed to do it so everybody else knew he was a “King Geek.”

After some time, I begged off the gaming sessions, saying I was happy to hear him talk about role-playing, happy to read his books, happy to help him make campaigns and characters, but I just didn't feel like playing anymore. We fought for hours while he called me lazy, boring, stupid, anti-social, neurotic, crazy, a quitter, etc. The arguments were non-stop, he would wake me up in the middle of the night just to tell me some zinger he had thought up about why my not role-playing was comparable to refusing to give him sex. I finally gave in and kept role-playing, until, well, until I left him.

No matter where he was, what was going on, who was talking, Jake was role-playing in some way, shape, or form. When Jake got home from class, he had no notes on the lecture, only notes on ninjas. He would wake me up in the middle of the night to make me look at a character he had just created. He would call me at work to inquire about whether I would be too tired and lazy to role-play when I got home. Sometimes I had to tell him to shut up during sex. When we walked down the street, he would sometimes jump back and forth, make odd creeping gestures, wave his hand in front of him, or lag behind me to check out surrounding scenery. He was fighting role-playing battles in his head. If we stopped on the street to talk to friends, he would pull out an imaginary laser gun and shoot at passerby for a while (thankfully, it was rare that he made the accompanying pyoo pyoo sounds, but it did happen). If he got bored with this, he would interrupt me and my friend mid-conversation in order to start talking about his latest character concept. Even at dinner with his family, if I looked under the table I would never fail to see him pulling an imaginary wakizashi out of its sheath to slay an imaginary demon. Near the end, he had even begun to do it over the table. His family would just glaze over and talk around him while he made threatening gestures at the turkey. His family never said anything to him; the closest they came was feebly joking about how astonishingly fast I was putting back the wine. During one Christmas dinner, Jake began talking rapidly about a wizard he had made with spells that killed babies. His family became increasingly more uncomfortable, yet nobody said anything. Finally, four glasses of wine in me, I managed to blurt out, “Darling, you have such stimulating dinner conversation!” as I slammed the butt of my fork on the table in a drunken temper tantrum. Still, nobody said anything to him, but it did shut him up, and I noticed after that his parents always made sure to set a bottle of wine next to my place setting.

Jake had a vast collection of books from that singular horrible role-playing company; it took up the entirety of a bookshelf I bought for him as a surprise present, but really as an attempt to get the role-playing books out of our bed. But Jake could never stand to be physically separated from his books for long. When I would force him to come to bed, he would bring a book, prop it up against my sleeping body, and take notes until I woke up and had to go work, at which point he would follow me into the bathroom, into the shower, and all the way out the door, telling me about the characters he had made while I slept. I learned pretty quickly not to complain about his obsessive reading habits or I would get subjected to a tirade about how my reading habits (history and social theory) were far worse, and my attempts to discuss the books I read banal and socially desperate.

The sheer amount of books he owned horrified all worthwhile guests, who never returned, and attracted other creepy gamers like snorting boystink flies. While at home, Jake always had a book in his lap. It didn't matter if we were watching a movie, eating dinner, had just finished sexin', if he was on the phone with his parents, if he was doing his homework at the same time. His books were an additional appendage. Once I was so foolish as to think there was an easy way to distract him from his books, and I offered him sexual acts I had heard boys were enamored of (i.e. oral sex). “Boys don't actually want that all the time,” he'd say. “That's a myth. It's really offensive that you think boys are that simple.” Although in all fairness, I should admit that it did work once, though I caught him glancing at his book out of the corner of his eye, and afterwards he picked it right back up and started reading where he left off, mentioning casually, “Now I know how much you must hate it when I bug you for sex.”

Nothing meant anything to Jake unless he could slap some stats on it. When we met new people we enjoyed, Jake would ask me later, "What character class do you think he would be?" When he tired of his usual solitary campaigns, Jake would try and stat out all his friends and family members and re-create them in his favorite role-playing setting. One of the sweetest compliments he ever gave me, which illustrates both what he thought was sweet and how rarely he complimented me, was when he statted me out and gave me a moderately high attractiveness rating (generalized terms used here
to avoid identification from the creepy googler ex-husband). "Oh, only 14?" I said, joking. "It's a 14 on paper," he told me, "but a 21 in my heart." Then he looked at me like he was waiting for me to melt. Oh god I am creeping out just thinking about it.

During one of these periods, he agonized for weeks over what level of intelligence to give his character and mine. Initially, he had given me the higher stat, then after thinking harder about it, gave himself just one point over me. "Oh, really?" I said. "And which one of us is flunking out of college, and which of us has a 4.0?" "Well, which one of us can't compute a tip? Huh? Huh? Why don't you try figuring out an equation for once?" I let it drop. Probably because I'm so dumb.

Gaming itself was an astonishing horror. Normal people fled in our wake, leaving behind only those who could stand a 24/7 stream of game talk. Any interruption for normal subjects of conversation were quickly assimilated into an idea for a new character. Let me give you an example:

Friend: So my grandma died not too long ago.
Me: Oh, man, I'm sorry. Was she sick?
Friend: No, she was just old, you know? We were expecting it.
Jake: Well, it's gotta happen sometime. I mean can you imagine if you were
immortal? It's for the best that we're not. I've thought about it and
decided that's not the superpower I'd want. Too hard to see the people you
love die.
Friend: Yeah... yeah, I guess.
Me: I think he knows how hard that is, Jake.
Jake: Yeah, definitely not immortality. What superpower would you have, if
you could have any?



Being Married to the Creepiest Gamer Ever

To add to his phenomenal qualities, Jake had become a drug addict. For a while I welcomed his new habit – for once, we could talk about something else. Now I do not say "addicted" lightly, har har, who gets addicted to that plant? No, really. This addiction ended in several arrests, a terrible hospital stay that racked up over 20k, shady friends with bad connections who hid unpleasant items in our home, and the consistent siphoning of my money to pay for his habit. I had to work full-time while I went to college full-time so I could support his habits. He'd steal my ATM card to buy drugs and books, would lambast me for ever “skimming” his stash, tell me every time I glanced at one of his books that I ought to buy them for him if I was interested in reading them, too. Jake did work, at a minimum wage delivery boy job chosen specifically because it was known as drug addict central. I can't tell you how many times I brought Jake the drugs or book he'd left at home and had to step over his managers and co-workers, passed out on the floor.

The end result of all this was that our only friends were people who could stand constant gamer talk cross-sectioned with the kind of people who were as addicted as he was. Thrilling combination! We had such parties. Our gaming sessions were frequently interrupted by the downing of a whole bottle of whiskey while Jake was in the bathroom (he had, prudently, outlawed drinking during gaming), gamers tripping on acid and flipping their **** when we went on dungeon crawls (“oh ****, guys, this is bad, real bad, we have to get out of here, right now, I'm not dealing with any trolls OH **** TROLLS THEY HAVE FACES LIKE LITTLE PEOPLE”), dealers arriving with twenty people in tow to sell in our living room, and massive smoke breaks every half an hour. The woozy alternative states made gamers easily distractable, which Jake would take out on me, dressing me down in front of all the players for “distracting” them by making jokes, dressing cute, expressing ideas, discussing my day, doing my homework, and bringing everybody beverages and pieces of cake I had baked just for that gaming session. Once I arrived for a gaming session and everybody was busy making characters, so I went to my room to do more homework and Jake burst in red-faced and horrified. “We¹re gaming, dear,” he said vilely. “It looks like everybody's just make characters.” “Well, it¹s rude for you not to be there.” “But I have a character, I don't need to make one.” “But you need to know what they're making. Stop being so antisocial and get out here. It's like pulling teeth, trying to get you to make friends.”

Once I asked him why he yelled at me more than the other gamers, and he responded, “You're my wife. I expect better out of you.”

Jake had a favorite character that he “always returned to.” He would re-create him, build him up to King **** of Munchkin Mountain, the kind of character who spent his time ****ing goddesses and killing unkillable entities of pure darkness. Then he'd get bored and re-create him again and again, ad nauseum. This character was his baby, his lifeblood. I once made what was supposed to be a ridiculous suggestion: he had re-made this character so many times and played out all possible scenarios with him that obviously the next step was to make a post-modernist campaign in which this "wizard" (generic term) crossed the boundary of imagination and met his creator, and he and Jake could have tea and discuss life and philosophy. Well, he ****ing tried, no kidding, but couldn't get the table he made to work right.

But let me get to the heart of it. One night, while very very drunk, after talking to me about his newest campaign for several hours, Jake admitted to me that he thought about his wizard so much that sometimes when he jerked off he would call out his name. I must have made a horrified face, because he quickly stuttered out that it was probably because his name was so similar to mine (it was not), and he was used to calling out my name (he never had).

Jake loved to make his own tables, ones that were twice as complicated as anything his favorite company could put out. He created highly detailed sexual orientation tables with a hundred separate and distinct options (you do not want to know what occupied the 100 slot). He created a table that described in detail the sexual compatibility of characters, again, 100 options. He created a table that illustrated all the horrifying deformities any given character could acquire. 100 options. If you're clever, you can probably find abbreviated versions of these on his favorite role-playing board – they're quite popular.

Our five-year anniversary coincided with weekly gaming. Jake argued that it would be too hard to reschedule, but promised he'd make it a worthwhile day. He demanded that all gamers arrive with an enormous quantity of drugs, which they were to give to the two of us in “celebration,” and that gaming had to end by 5 pm, rather than 8 pm, because he was going to make me a fantastic dinner. At 10 pm, the last excruciatingly high gamer left, at which point Jake set about making the dinner which promised to astound and thrill me. I worked at 7 am, so by that point I had passed out. Jake awoke me with a plate of steak and potatoes, and lambasted me for falling asleep on our anniversary, which was supposed to be a special day.

On our wedding night, Jake brought a role-playing book to read in the hotel room. I made some overtures to, you know, it's our wedding night and all, and shimmied around a little, until he pulled out a notepad and started writing up a character, telling me he just needed to do this thing and I was bothering him which was really inconsiderate because he hadn't had time to do this for like a whole day with on account of the wedding. I gave up and took a shower, and when I came back he had finally put down the role-playing book, in order to call another woman and ask her to come over and have sex with him. Skipping over what happened next, which is non-role-playing related but rest assured truly creepy, the next day we went to his parents' house to open our presents. All pictures of the event show me holding up pots and pans, towels, appliances, while next to me Jake reads his role-playing book. At one point his mother admonished him for not being involved, and his father responded, "We're just glad she married him before she found out what he was really like! Ha ha..." Awkward laughter rippled around the room. They repeated this statement with frightening consistency and increasing tones of desperation until the day I divorced him.

At one point Jake had an affair. The woman he had an affair with was a close friend of mine, and he had told her that I was totally cool with them having sex. It was more complicated than that (**** always is), but it's still a painful topic, so I'll keep it at that. She was of an inappropriate (though legal) age, and he took terrible advantage of her, treating her much the same way he treated me. She and I are still friends, maybe better friends now that we've dated the same horrible man, and she told me later that they would go and have their affair time, after which he would pull out some books and demand she make a character. She gamely tried to get involved, and though she loved role-playing and still does to this day, she could not care about his terrible books, tables, and campaigns. She has a picture of them together, in which he is gesturing vehemently at his books, and she has quite clearly fallen asleep sitting up. Despite her disinterest in his gaming system, and her quite clear interest in other systems, for Christmas he spent a ridiculous amount of money (much more than he spent on me) buying her several books she had specifically indicated that she hated, because possession of these books would enable her to play in the campaign he was about to run.




Divorcing the Creepiest Gamer Ever

Just before he had worked us so far into debt that we had to move into his parents' basement, I met another man that I thought I might want to be with instead of Jake. I told Jake all of this upfront, and told him all the things that would need to change for me to want to be with him, because I felt like I was losing my mind. He listened quietly, nodded, then told me about his new campaign idea in such a level of detail that it lasted three hours. At the end of that three hours, I reminded him that things needed to change. He agreed, and suggested we find a new group of role-players so I could have fun with other people. As he saw it, my inability to make friends was what made me feel like I was losing my mind, and caused me to be so easily swindled by any guy who came along and was “nice” or “listened to what I said.” Then he told me about a character he'd just made. I repeated everything I'd just said, astounded at his blasé reaction, and he nodded again and asked me not to interrupt him when he was talking.

Later I told him I was going to spend a day with this man to talk to him and try and sort out my feelings. He kept right on telling me about his campaign. I asked him over and over again if he was upset, if he wanted to talk, if he was okay with me going to see the guy. Yes yes, he's just fine, if I would just stop interrupting him. Suddenly, the next day, Jake announced that he had scheduled role-playing for the day I was to see the guy. I said that sounded great, it would be something for him to do while I went out. He stared at me angrily, then told me he'd scheduled it so I could play with him. He had already made me a character, and planned out the entire campaign around me, so I had to come. I told him I still planned on seeing this guy but guessed I could hang out till then, and he nodded, then told me all about the campaign. Gaming day came. I told Jake I would be leaving at such-and-such a time, and he said nothing, but immediately set about derailing the game, so that by the time I had to leave, we had just gotten started. I announced that I had to leave, I had a meeting with a friend. Jake said, “Okay, but if you leave, I'm going to hate you.” I left anyway. Jake followed me out onto the porch, enraged, shouting, “I'm going to be so mad at you if you leave in the middle of the game.” I left, and when I returned home that night I was prepared to talk about what had happened with the other man (nothing) and what I'd decided (to stay with Jake). I never got to tell him, and he never asked. Instead, I was subjected to a long diatribe about how I'd humiliated him in front of his role-playing friends and completely ruined his game. This conversation lasted until about 2 a.m., at which point he gave up trying to “talk sense” into me, and started angrily rolling dice. Have you ever heard angrily rolled dice? It is a sound you will never forget, it's so small and sad. Anyway, you can consider that whole episode a delayed or sublimated reaction to my nearly leaving him, but honestly, I don't think he cared what was happening, or even realized what it meant, until it interfered with his game. Telling him I was in love with another man was one thing. Going to see that man on game day was beyond the pale.

Miracle of all miracles, after a lifetime of playing the same system, Jake got interested in another role-playing game. He immediately asked me to roll up a character, and when I refused, saying I had spent the last seven years learning his damn horrible system and I wasn't about to learn another, he told me it wasn't fair, he had agreed to go to marriage counseling and I wouldn't agree to play in his new campaign, and relationships were about compromise, and I was a bitch. I left the house for several hours. When I returned and told him he could not call me names, he looked perplexed and said his calling me a bitch wasn't any worse than me telling him he was always forcing role-playing on me, because saying "always" was a cruel and dehumanizing insult. I insisted it was, in fact, an entirely different thing, and he told me I was dramatizing things, which I always did, because I was in emotional turmoil, whereas he wasn't angry at all. Finally, to reconcile, he suggested that perhaps if I at least read through one of his books I could prove to him I was not, in fact, a bitch.


After seven years, I told Jake I wanted a divorce on Tuesday and moved out on a Friday. Saturday was gaming day, and you better believe it was still on. Jake proceeded to murder everybody's character in slow, brutal, and deliberate fashions. When one player complained, Jake shot back that they couldn't handle the game. They postulated that perhaps he couldn't handle his wife leaving him because she didn't love him anymore. There was a long pause, then Jake rolled a d20, and they went on, never mentioning it again.

When I told Jake I wanted a divorce, he vacillated between hysterical crying and total denial. I encouraged his denial, because while hysterically crying he was prone to do things like stand at the bathroom door sobbing “Don't leave me” while I brushed my teeth, or stand at the window staring bug-eyed at me as I walked to the bus stop, or call me at work and leave messages that consisted of several minutes of crying, and then “I promised myself I wouldn't cry,” and then several more minutes of crying. Or, since we¹re being creepy here, my personal favorite, waking up at 3 a.m. to find him
standing next to my bed staring at me eerily; once he saw I was awake, he told me he had been standing there thinking of strangling me. I told him that was a scary and ****ed-up thing to tell somebody, and he told me that was okay because he felt scared and ****ed-up, and I was cruel to hold it against him. But I digress from gaming creepy. During one of his periods of denial, in which he lived in a fantasy world in which we were going to be friends or friends with benefits or just dating, he brightened considerably and said, “Do you know, this will really be best for us, because when we¹re just friends you can play in my new campaign.”


The day I left Jake, he called me several hours after I had moved everything out of his parents' basement. I was eating a celebratory dinner with a friend who had helped me move. First he asked me how moving had gone, then he told me about his day, then, after a slight pause, he began to tell me about an idea for a character he'd had while at his Narcotics Anonymous meeting. I was so conditioned to just nod and say, “uh huh” at appropriate intervals that I might have continued doing it for quite some time. Luckily, the friend I was with had an obnoxious personal habit of shouting at me whenever I was on the phone. “Tell that ******* you left him because he can never shut up!” she yelled. “Tell him nobody wants to hear about his creepy ****! Tell him he's lonely and depressed and ****ing weird!” Jake heard her yelling, and raised his voice until he was yelling character ideas into the phone. I interrupted and told him, “You know, we are divorced now. You cannot call me to tell me about role-playing.” I believe it finally sunk in for him at that moment, when he said, “Oh. Oh. We're... we're really broken up, aren't we?”

You may consider this a story of the triumph of the human spirit over enormous odds, because I still like role-playing.

Post stolen from RPGnet.

[legomaster00156]

I have had the fortune to not really know any gamers I'd consider creepy (though at least one of my current players is strangely obsessed with Sonic vs. Goku arguments). I just have to comment on the sheer horror of the person above me, because wow.

[Max_Killjoy]

Ugh.

She was right to leave him, and he was creepy as heck from that description, and I'm not going down "two sides to every story" lane.

But... I also feel some human pity for "Jake" too. Sounds like he had some serious stuff wrong in his brain that could have used some help, that he probably never got.

[Eldan]

Nothing really creepy, ever. Worst I had was a guy who played in several of my groups. Good roleplayer, generally, the one who got people to play things out instead of just rushing to objectives, interesting backstories, all fine. He also played a lot of female characters. Sure, fine, no problem with that, I've played female characters before. Really attractive female characters. With really large breasts. Which he sometimes mentioned five or six times per game evening. What made it even weirder was that he was gay, so it wasn't even the usual cliché.

After we kept looking at him strangely every time he did that and he caused a few awkward silences, he got bashful, dropped the subject and never mentioned breasts again.

So yeah, nothing to compare here to other stories I've heard.

[JNAProductions]

Nothing really creepy, ever. Worst I had was a guy who played in several of my groups. Good roleplayer, generally, the one who got people to play things out instead of just rushing to objectives, interesting backstories, all fine. He also played a lot of female characters. Sure, fine, no problem with that, I've played female characters before. Really attractive female characters. With really large breasts. Which he sometimes mentioned five or six times per game evening. What made it even weirder was that he was gay, so it wasn't even the usual cliché.

After we kept looking at him strangely every time he did that and he caused a few awkward silences, he got bashful, dropped the subject and never mentioned breasts again.

So yeah, nothing to compare here to other stories I've heard.

That's just odd. But hey, at least it had a good ending!

[BWR]

I have nothing to compare with that horror story.

The closest is one of the founding members of the gaming club I hung out at some years back. Most of the members were decent people, even if the 'awkward teen boy' factor was high. M, however, was different. Mostly he was just a mousey quiet type, probably a bit misogynistic (or just scared of girls). He was never much into RPGs, being more into board games. Even that was not his true passion. His number one pleasure was being a bureaucrat. Organizing things, having meetings, arranging jobs to get money for the club, doing paperwork, etc. And he was good at it. For years he was in the Triumvirate (I regret making that joke), often in the role of treasurer. The problems showed up after I stopped attending the club. He was apparently too fond of being in charge and started ignoring the actual members of the club if possible. more and more money went to things like laminating machines, copying machines, printers, safes, cupboards, office supplies etc., far more than the club needed, and less money was going to actual games. He became terribly rude to people, but they put up with him because he was doing a job no one else wanted to do. Eventually everyone got fed up with him, especially after the incident where he told one girl the only reason an ugly thing like her was welcome in the club was that people pitied her.

He was unanimously voted out of the Triumvirate and expelled from the club for being a ****, unsurprisingly. He then refused to hand over the keys to the safe and cupboards where the papers and games were, and tried to sabotage the club by canceling jobs they had lined up and more. The new leader had to get the police to come over with a court order to get him to hand over the keys and whatnot. I can't recall if he'd done anything to the money, but it would not surprise me if he had.

[Donnadogsoth]

Probably a 1/10 on the Gamer Creepiness Scale, was a group I joined...for a day. On the telephone interview I was instructed that this group was super-politically correct, not tolerating racism, sexism, etc.. Fine, I said. A few days later I visited the house, a student house. Gamer/nerd junk everywhere. Open, well-used catbox in the kitchen. Stacks of pizza boxes on the counter amidst the unwashed pots. The games room itself was Modern Nerd Deco with unopened (and never-to-be-opened) toys hung like trophies on the wall. "Play with me..." they said in a tiny voice, "Please play with me...". I settled in, the room swelled with gamers. And then the DM fondly recounted to me in loving detail a gamer tale climaxing in a homosexual rape...of a dwarf by a minotaur...played for laughs. Right. We played a bit of D&D after that, and after my character had been killed I suddenly informed them I had had my fill of roleplaying, and then made my way to the door, never to darken it again. Like I said, 1/10, not super creepy, but, there you have it.

[BayardSPSR]

Reposting this:

...

Post stolen from RPGnet.

... No words for that one.

The worst I've gamed with was That Guy Who Insists on Playing a Scantily-Clad Female Elf in a Misogynistic Manner, but that was only for one session. I had to take my dice away from him because we were gaming on a moving, rickety train at night, and he dropped the dice every single time he rolled. There were eight or so people in the group, and not enough dice for everybody, so we would have been in a pickle if they'd gotten lost.

[Piedmon_Sama]

Fun fact about me: I like to draw. I basically am constantly drawing. When I play I usually have a sketchbook open and am working on something. So, a couple years back I'm doodling some thing or another.... ah right, okay so this was a D20 Modern campaign influenced by Call of Cthulhu. GM wanted everybody to play "normal people." Some of my friends' concepts for "normal people" included "a lost cat detective," and "a Russian lion-tamer from the circus." (In best Yakov Smirnov impression: "ohhhh boyy, dey're naht goink to like disz...") Sensing the way the wind was shifting, my character pitch to the GM was "a mystery-solving nun" which I proceeded to illustrate. I basically drew Velma Dinkley in a nun's habit, more or less exactly what you'd picture if I said "mystery-solving nun" right?

So back in the day my friends and I played in the back of our local game store. It was something of an "open table" basically you could bring friends of friends or even just show up and ask to play, we'd let in anybody. So we had this guy there for the first time and he was basically what you'd expect----potato shaped, face like sweaty mozzarella, what hair he had forming a whirlpool of grease, had a tattoo of his dwarf PC from AD&D-times "which reached level 40, totally legit" (like okay dude, I believe you).

So basically as a joke I scratch out a drawing of this four-eyed nun and am like "how about it?" and this dude who I don't know at all is sitting next to me and when I withdraw the sketchbook he leans in, glances at the rest of the table like he doesn't want them to hear, looks at me very seriously and says "d--do you do..... nudes? Female nudes?"

Me: Uhh---n--no. No I don't.

That guy clung on for a few more sessions. I tried not to sit next to him again.

[Max_Killjoy]

Fun fact about me: I like to draw. I basically am constantly drawing. When I play I usually have a sketchbook open and am working on something. So, a couple years back I'm doodling some thing or another.... ah right, okay so this was a D20 Modern campaign influenced by Call of Cthulhu. GM wanted everybody to play "normal people." Some of my friends' concepts for "normal people" included "a lost cat detective," and "a Russian lion-tamer from the circus." (In best Yakov Smirnov impression: "ohhhh boyy, dey're naht goink to like disz...") Sensing the way the wind was shifting, my character pitch to the GM was "a mystery-solving nun" which I proceeded to illustrate. I basically drew Velma Dinkley in a nun's habit, more or less exactly what you'd picture if I said "mystery-solving nun" right?

So back in the day my friends and I played in the back of our local game store. It was something of an "open table" basically you could bring friends of friends or even just show up and ask to play, we'd let in anybody. So we had this guy there for the first time and he was basically what you'd expect----potato shaped, face like sweaty mozzarella, what hair he had forming a whirlpool of grease, had a tattoo of his dwarf PC from AD&D-times "which reached level 40, totally legit" (like okay dude, I believe you).

So basically as a joke I scratch out a drawing of this four-eyed nun and am like "how about it?" and this dude who I don't know at all is sitting next to me and when I withdraw the sketchbook he leans in, glances at the rest of the table like he doesn't want them to hear, looks at me very seriously and says "d--do you do..... nudes? Female nudes?"

Me: Uhh---n--no. No I don't.

That guy clung on for a few more sessions. I tried not to sit next to him again.

Bleah... real life needs a -1 button.

[CharonsHelper]

The worst I've had are at conventions where people were stinky and didn't know the rules. I did have one of those with a really badly built PFS rogue - and got offended when I asked why he didn't have a buckler since he wasn't TWF (he wasn't "some munchkin") - and then in the middle of the session got up and threw a hissy fit about how the GM was horrible and the session was horrible etc. and left the table.

The GM wasn't amazing, but he was okay. We'd been having trouble since he and another rogue were pretty sub-par, but that wasn't the GM's fault, so it was mostly me (drunken master monk) and a mediocre dex fighter doing the heavy lifting. I got the impression that he'd been grumpy since I'd dared imply that he could improve his character.

[Knaight]

The worst I had was a teenage guy (which described most of the group at that point, because I was GMing for friends and siblings of friends and I was about 15 at the time) who decided to play a lesbian nymphomaniac, and who played it exactly as well as the first part of the sentence suggested. It's not much, and it's especially not much compared to that nightmare story upthread.

[bryce0lynch]

My wife used to run a 2000+ member D&D meetup. A few times a year we would have LARGE roleplaying events at our house; 50-75 people. She usually charged $1, under the philosophy that people who could not or would not spend $1, to be fed pizza & beer, chips & soda, were not people to invite to your home.

One event, a new guy kept contacting her beforehand about the $1. This, that, can he pay by check, etc. Day of the event comes and there's a group playing Call of Cthulhu in the backroom, and he's a part of the game. He starts to REALLY freak out when the stage cigarettes come out (its a 1920's jazz club) about people smoking in the house. Later, a woman in a minivan shows up with eight young kids. "Woah, lady, what are you doing dropping those kids off! You can't do that!" "Why not?! The meetup said it was a public event!" The kids start to freak when she tells them I won't let them stay and use our pool. It's dudes foster mother and family. Fine. Dude, you need to watch the kids by the pool. [No, I'm going to crush the hearts of a bunch of young foster kids. Instead I'm going to thank Pazuzu that I have a good home owners policy and sit nervously the rest of the day.]

Later the kids leave. We have a real red velvet cake in the form of a dragon. The dude eats the cake like he's never tasted cake before in his life. I mean just smashing it in. It's like a cartoon, with bits of icing and red velvet around his mouth. He eats about a third of the cake by himself. It's getting late, the dude doesn't get several references to "its time to leave" ... maybe because there's one table of people who haven't finished up yet. My wife puts on something on skinimax. Dude holds himself with both hands and starts rocking back and forth staying "I'm very uncomfortable." Finally, he just walks out the door, down the long driveway, and off down the street, at 2am.

We no longer do public games.

[Velaryon]

I haven't had anybody too bad; certainly some folks in this thread have had much bigger creeps in their groups. I can think or one or two that bear mention, though.

The first, let's call him Z, is maybe 8-10 years younger than the rest of my regulars. He's a pretty okay guy for the most part, though he seems a bit hyper sometimes, and tends to play pretty much the same one or two characters every campaign - badass swordsman or generic barbarian. Where the creepy bit comes in is that he will hit on pretty much any female character, PC or NPC. I don't spend much time with Z outside of game nights, but I am under the impression that he's somewhat like this in real life as well. He'll usually drop it after it's been made clear the character isn't interesting, but it still provokes an eyeroll, and makes me hesitant to cross-play characters because I don't want to deal with it. However, our group tends to juggle several games at once and he's only in one of them, so I don't see him that often.

Another, slightly more annoying guy, we'll call M. The problem with M is he has absolutely no shame and therefore no boundaries. He'll talk about any sort of thing, up to and including sexual things, right there at the table even if it's not relevant to what's going on. And when asked to drop the subject, he'll act as though the person who requested it is hyper-sensitive, rather than acknowledge that there may be a time and place for that kind of thing, but at the gaming table during D&D isn't it. Only one of us even likes M to begin with, but unfortunately that person is usually the one hosting the game. Thankfully, M doesn't live in the area anymore, so we only have to put up with a visit from him once every couple of years.

[souridealist]

I've had a guy playing a beautiful diplomancer dread necromancer (no, of course he didn't roleplay the diplomacy! "I roll a diplomacy. I get a 48 at first level. Now this NPC is going to do everything I say. What do you mean, what did I just say to him? It doesn't matter, I got a 48.")

Same game had a guy who thought every plan out of my mouth was the stupidest idea possible... until one of the other players suggested the same plan. I was also the only woman at the table. I'm sure these were totally unrelated. (I had a pretty good track record, too.) My now-husband persuaded me to drop that group and found me another one, and I give it a good fifty-fifty chance he saved my interest in roleplaying.

In a different group, there was one guy who always seemed a little skeezy, got uncomfortably intense about guns, things like that, but he was married with a kid and never actually did or said anything to me, so I just thought of him as kind of annoying. In one Call of Cthulhu one-shot he played a fedora-tipping m'lady-saying gangster, and I made a crack about coming off as creepy. At the time, the only way I had to get to games was cadging rides from the other players; he was my ride home that night. A few blocks out, he says "You know, you're in my car. I could make you get out and walk home. Now, aren't you sorry you called me creepy?"

I was not sorry I called him creepy. I thought I'd hit the nail on the head. I was sure as hell sorry I'd gotten into his car, though. I guess it's possible, maybe, that he didn't know I'd hear "you're stuck in my car, and I have the power to make you walk home" with the subtext of "I also have the power to lock the doors, pull off onto a back road, rape you, and leave you in a ditch," but that's what was in my head right then. So, uh, PSA to guys who really are nice, just kind of awkward: don't do what that guy did.

On a brighter note, both of the older, balding guys with a persistent aroma of weed and beards in which you could lose a small squirrel turned out to be genuinely good guys.

[ross]

personifcation of /tg/

I don't get it. Like how lonely and depressed does a guy have to get before he decides to sort his ****ing life out? christ

[Corsair14]

Lets see, had an older guy who was one of the heads of our college gaming group. Nice enough guy, fairly loud. About ten years older than the rest of us, I was 26ish at the time. He was a tall, overweight, bald black dude(note I am just giving the description of what he looked like), had a horrible habit of wearing fishnet tops(we finally got him to stop by telling him he couldn't hang out with us dressed like that) and super baggy black pants with the chain danglies and stuff. Like I said, nice enough guy, he fully funded the Crux Shadows(goth electro music very interesting lyrics) to come play a free concert at school. He disappeared for awhile and his arch-nemesis, a much less likable guy who we totally thought would be the one who did this, came to one game session with a print out and handed it to us. Apparently our guy did the whole luring an under-aged chick to his apartment/statutory rape thing and was sitting in a prison cell in southern GA. His arch nemesis printed up his mug shot and rap sheet along with where he was incarcerated. Yeah good times.

[Quertus]

Hmmm... Let me instead describe the creepiest gamer I'd continue gaming with.

His iconic t-shirt read, "you can't have manslaughter without laughter". I'm pretty sure he was wearing it when I met him, and (it felt like) at least half the times when we gamed. Might just be a trick of my memory.

Although his characters were certainly never paladin material, it wasn't until he played a Cultist of Slanesh that he truly shined. I couldn't even think up half the things he'd say or do with that character, let alone deliver them with anything remotely resembling in-character delight. It's possible I've applied a little brain bleach to forget a few of the more disturbing examples.

But I'd gladly play with him again. The reason is, he kept it 100% in the game.

Nothing really creepy, ever. Worst I had was a guy who played in several of my groups. Good roleplayer, generally, the one who got people to play things out instead of just rushing to objectives, interesting backstories, all fine. He also played a lot of female characters. Sure, fine, no problem with that, I've played female characters before. Really attractive female characters. With really large breasts. Which he sometimes mentioned five or six times per game evening. What made it even weirder was that he was gay, so it wasn't even the usual cliché.

After we kept looking at him strangely every time he did that and he caused a few awkward silences, he got bashful, dropped the subject and never mentioned breasts again.

So yeah, nothing to compare here to other stories I've heard.

... His attempt to get guys to talk sexy to him through the proxy of his very feminine character?

On a brighter note, both of the older, balding guys with a persistent aroma of weed and beards in which you could lose a small squirrel turned out to be genuinely good guys.

Tends to be the case

[Anonymouswizard]

On a brighter note, both of the older, balding guys with a persistent aroma of weed and beards in which you could lose a small squirrel turned out to be genuinely good guys.

I'll agree it tends to be the case (even if you leave out the weed), the best guy in a group I was once in was invited along by his daughter and was a barrel of laughs. Very old school, but that meant he could be depended upon while the rest of the party went a bit more wild, and a great guy who bought me drinks because I was a penniless student. Also about as socialist as you can get, which caused a tad of friction about a year ago because I'm significantly more moderate and a committed floating voter, and we disagreed significantly on one particular area.

Although I think that group in total was the creepiest group I've ever played with, his daughter had to deal with more sex jokes after he joined because everyone was just a lot more relaxed.

(Outside that group I'm probably the creepiest gamer I've met, but that's more because I've lucked out and not played with real weirdos*)

* Well, there was the one guy who, when he joined my Shadowrun game** (I should run that again at some point because I love the setting, I might do it in Savage Worlds and give weaker races bonus skill points) immediately created a troll focused on unarmed combat, spent some money on his lifestyle to have a flat for a few months, bought ten finger compartments, and then spent every last nuyen on novacoke, always carrying a dose in each finger compartment. He only stuck around for one session though, which is a shame as I'd had his flat raided by the police while he was on the run because a) he was suspected of being a drug dealer, and b) he was by far the most dangerous member of the group, and they wanted him to b captured walking into the trap they set up.
** I was a bit of a weirdo in that one myself, my pet NPC was a ghoul Street Samurai with cybereyes trying too hard to be cool (mirrorshades, trenchcoat, katana, grizzly voice, the works), unfortunately nobody got the joke.

[GungHo]

Reposting this:



Post stolen from RPGnet.

Yeah, you win the forum. GG, everyone. Looks I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

[hymer]

... His attempt to get guys to talk sexy to him through the proxy of his very feminine character?

Or his attempt to put the het boys at ease, seeing as they always seem to be talking/thinking about breasts?

[Beans]

Or his attempt to put the het boys at ease, seeing as they always seem to be talking/thinking about breasts?

If so, apparently a misjudgment on his part, given the emphasis he placed on his character's breasts baffled the "het boys".

Oh, those "het boys" and their crippling fixation on the female mammary to the apparent exclusion of all other topics of contemplation or conversation.

[thamolas]

Years ago, a guy I worked with (he was a part-timer with bad hygiene, but we got along) invited me to come to his apartment to play D&D with his buddies. I went.

It was a studio apartment with 5 guys who all had bad hygiene. They stank so badly (like rotten cheese and ass) that my eyes watered when I entered and I insisted on opening some windows.

They played uber-powerful "evil" characters and the "story" was just them murdering innocents and stomping heroes who came to stop them. No biggie. I've played evil murder hobo before. But their playstyle was pretty freakin' repetitive. Very little dialogue. And I got the impression that this was the only style they were interested in playing.

During breaks in game play, I learned that they each worked 2 days a week and lived together in the studio apartment, gaming 5 days a week. I can't begin to describe the Eldritch Horror that was the bathroom. It was gross beyond words.

They only ate fast food and spilled stuff on the floor (where they slept) and never cleaned up. The guy I worked with was skinny (I think he had a gland problem) and the other 4 dudes were dangerously obese.

None of them had interests outside of roleplaying and video games (aside from one dude who swilled booze and smoked weed while playing). Boozer guy's (the only one who didn't act like a 30+ yr old virgin) "girlfriend" came over, ate a bunch of their food (don't remember which fast food chain it was that day) and left.

When I noticed that none of them were washing their hands before leaving the bathroom, I made up an excuse and got the hell out of there. I can't believe it took 20 year old me that long to bail. 40 year old me would have said "nope" and took off after looking in through the front door.

[thamolas]

On a brighter note, both of the older, balding guys with a persistent aroma of weed...

The old weed dudes are usually great. At least, in my experience.

[Knaight]

When I noticed that none of them were washing their hands before leaving the bathroom, I made up an excuse and got the hell out of there. I can't believe it took 20 year old me that long to bail. 40 year old me would have said "nope" and took off after looking in through the front door.

I'm pretty sure 15 year old me would have bailed roughly after looking in the front door. Showering once in a while (I'm not even asking for daily here, but at least most days and when people are coming over) is not that much to ask. Neither is breaking out a mop every so often (seriously, monthly or so would be progress from the sounds of things).

[thamolas]

I'm pretty sure 15 year old me would have bailed roughly after looking in the front door. Showering once in a while (I'm not even asking for daily here, but at least most days and when people are coming over) is not that much to ask. Neither is breaking out a mop every so often (seriously, monthly or so would be progress from the sounds of things).

You're right. When I was a teenager, a lot of the young people were into grunge or gutter punk, so I didn't start paying attention to my nose until mid-20s. In my early 20s, most of the gamers I encountered were at least mildly disgusting, so it took some serious stuff to rattle me.

[Honest Tiefling]

... His attempt to get guys to talk sexy to him through the proxy of his very feminine character?

Roleplay on MMORPGS, where you get two straight guys flirting with each other. Danged if I understand the phenomenon.

Speaking of online, I've encountered such weirdness as a supposedly straight guy trying to get gay guys to bang his female avatar that was...Shall we say, uniquely equipped? Oddly enough the last part doesn't confuse me (straight dudes tend to be more into the chicks with alternate equipment after all), but the former was really odd.

[logic_error]

Reposting this:



Post stolen from RPGnet.

That post was made by Jake, role playing as his own ex-wife.