Greenfield
Adventurer
Answers in no particular order:
TranceJeremy: The player is an odd hopscotch of "familiar with 3X". Knows a lot of tricks and clever builds, knows obscure rules, but show surprising gaps in that knowledge. Often convenient gaps, but sometimes just plain doesn't know things. For example, challenegd the Spiked chain, demanding to know if that was from an approved source.
The gender thing was the most recent and blatant example. The trend is the problem. I let the "I have lighter armor" thing go, as we had just begun the adventure and the party had had time to equip in town. I allowed that the PC could have anticipated a problem that the player didn't. The "I'm not wearing armor" thing I didn't let pass. But there have been other issues where the player may have actually believed that he said things that never left his lips, or he's blatantly lying and more or less daring someone to make an issue of it. Normally I'd be happy to make the issue, but I hate to tie up the game, session after session dealing with it.
DannyAlcatraz: I do say "no" when I'm DM (we pass the duty around), and I play "no" when I'm not. The player goes off, insisting that I'm wrong, that my PC can't tell his female character isn't male. (BTW: There's a medical reason girls "throw like a girl" and "run like a girl". It has to do with hip joints and the presence of a birth canal requiring a wider pelvic ring, among other things.)
I asked him once for a disguise check, when his female character was bunking with the male crew of the ship. The result was a 12, which according to RAW sets the target number of someone to Spot/Observe that something's wrong. That was when I had to ask how many ranks of Disguise she had. Even with the -5 Distracted penalty on the Spot/Perception check, 12 was hardly a safe number. And that's ignoring the RAW requirement of a 30.
Herobizkit: That would be the one. Knows obscure rules well enough to take advantage of them, but doesn't know them enough to know why he can't.
TheJester: Because of the way we run our game, everybody gets a chance to be a player in the game. We pass the DM hat around. I wrote and DMd our last adventure, but right now I'm a player. Personally, I'd humor the person and call her a "him". My character isn't that polite, a point I made before I ever know about this masquerade. My Ranger is a hard drinking lout without a diplomatic or polite bone in his body.
Starfox: First, we're playing in a semi-historical setting, rather than an enlightened 21st century one. Women in leadership or combat roles is part of the game, so we play an "equal rights" version of the age, but the relatively recent acceptance of "alternate sexual behaviors" probably isn't going to translate well. Most would think that it calls for a Remove Curse or whatever gets used to cure insanity in your game world.
I have no problem with the player exploring the transgender thing. Last campaign, the player would often declare, "My character has a wand in his hand", referring to one of several Eternal Wants h e owned. And somehow it always turned out to have been the one that was needed when trouble started, whether it was Mage Armor or Alter Self or Invisibility or whatever else. And he got offended when I, as DM, had the nerve to ask, "Which wand is that?" to his declaration. He commonly tries to make retroactive claims about action and preparation. Or to put it more succinctly, he cheats, and gets pissed when we notice.
Second, thanks for the laugh.
Shiroken: I'm not the DM all the time, and I really don't want to spend my game session being his adult supervision. It's not that I'm afraid of being disliked for playing the spoiler, it just takes me away from my fun at the table. I mean, what kind of person actually enjoys spending their game time preparing to pounce on another player? I don't like playing with that person, and I sure as hell don't want to *be* that person.
Steeldragons: Not only was a "bathing suit" not specified, the character enjoyed the "help" of a man in her bathing. I could be more explicit but forum rules discourage that sort of detail.
The player insists that he had declared that this was in a private place. One of those things that he somehow managed to say without he DM or anyone else ever hearing. Normally I might have even given it, retroactively, because no woman is seriously going to strip down and cavort like that in public unless she's very drunk or very exhibitionist. In this case though, there was no "private place" in the middle of the Fey Court, and the Unseelie are just debauched enough not to care about participating in such a display. Also, at the time I specifically pointed out that this "hot bath" required undressing, and that several men offered that "help". There was absolutely no room for doubt about there being witnesses, no possibility that it was private.
Yet the player now insists that it was, and that nobody in the group knows that she's not a man.
Hence my description, "Gaming through denial".
And, to be clear, the player lied about having bought a rank in the skill. The character has *HALF* a rank in the skill, a condition allowed under the rules for acquiring skills, but for which there are no rules for play. All we have is the general, "Halves round down" rule. Being reasonable, I might say tht it's enough to allow use of a "trained only" skill with no actual bonus, although the RAW says "You must have at least one rank in the skill.
A correction on myself: Looking at the skill text it says that "Disguising as a different gender" carries a -2 penalty, not a "30 minimum". 30 may apply to disguising gender in a bath or similar situation.
It should be observed that while the party has been invited to, or paid for the use of public bath houses, this PC has always made it clear that he/she would like a private bath. It was my character's offer to watch the door for her that set off our most recent argument on the issue.
TranceJeremy: The player is an odd hopscotch of "familiar with 3X". Knows a lot of tricks and clever builds, knows obscure rules, but show surprising gaps in that knowledge. Often convenient gaps, but sometimes just plain doesn't know things. For example, challenegd the Spiked chain, demanding to know if that was from an approved source.
The gender thing was the most recent and blatant example. The trend is the problem. I let the "I have lighter armor" thing go, as we had just begun the adventure and the party had had time to equip in town. I allowed that the PC could have anticipated a problem that the player didn't. The "I'm not wearing armor" thing I didn't let pass. But there have been other issues where the player may have actually believed that he said things that never left his lips, or he's blatantly lying and more or less daring someone to make an issue of it. Normally I'd be happy to make the issue, but I hate to tie up the game, session after session dealing with it.
DannyAlcatraz: I do say "no" when I'm DM (we pass the duty around), and I play "no" when I'm not. The player goes off, insisting that I'm wrong, that my PC can't tell his female character isn't male. (BTW: There's a medical reason girls "throw like a girl" and "run like a girl". It has to do with hip joints and the presence of a birth canal requiring a wider pelvic ring, among other things.)
I asked him once for a disguise check, when his female character was bunking with the male crew of the ship. The result was a 12, which according to RAW sets the target number of someone to Spot/Observe that something's wrong. That was when I had to ask how many ranks of Disguise she had. Even with the -5 Distracted penalty on the Spot/Perception check, 12 was hardly a safe number. And that's ignoring the RAW requirement of a 30.
Herobizkit: That would be the one. Knows obscure rules well enough to take advantage of them, but doesn't know them enough to know why he can't.
TheJester: Because of the way we run our game, everybody gets a chance to be a player in the game. We pass the DM hat around. I wrote and DMd our last adventure, but right now I'm a player. Personally, I'd humor the person and call her a "him". My character isn't that polite, a point I made before I ever know about this masquerade. My Ranger is a hard drinking lout without a diplomatic or polite bone in his body.
Starfox: First, we're playing in a semi-historical setting, rather than an enlightened 21st century one. Women in leadership or combat roles is part of the game, so we play an "equal rights" version of the age, but the relatively recent acceptance of "alternate sexual behaviors" probably isn't going to translate well. Most would think that it calls for a Remove Curse or whatever gets used to cure insanity in your game world.
I have no problem with the player exploring the transgender thing. Last campaign, the player would often declare, "My character has a wand in his hand", referring to one of several Eternal Wants h e owned. And somehow it always turned out to have been the one that was needed when trouble started, whether it was Mage Armor or Alter Self or Invisibility or whatever else. And he got offended when I, as DM, had the nerve to ask, "Which wand is that?" to his declaration. He commonly tries to make retroactive claims about action and preparation. Or to put it more succinctly, he cheats, and gets pissed when we notice.
Second, thanks for the laugh.
Shiroken: I'm not the DM all the time, and I really don't want to spend my game session being his adult supervision. It's not that I'm afraid of being disliked for playing the spoiler, it just takes me away from my fun at the table. I mean, what kind of person actually enjoys spending their game time preparing to pounce on another player? I don't like playing with that person, and I sure as hell don't want to *be* that person.
Steeldragons: Not only was a "bathing suit" not specified, the character enjoyed the "help" of a man in her bathing. I could be more explicit but forum rules discourage that sort of detail.
The player insists that he had declared that this was in a private place. One of those things that he somehow managed to say without he DM or anyone else ever hearing. Normally I might have even given it, retroactively, because no woman is seriously going to strip down and cavort like that in public unless she's very drunk or very exhibitionist. In this case though, there was no "private place" in the middle of the Fey Court, and the Unseelie are just debauched enough not to care about participating in such a display. Also, at the time I specifically pointed out that this "hot bath" required undressing, and that several men offered that "help". There was absolutely no room for doubt about there being witnesses, no possibility that it was private.
Yet the player now insists that it was, and that nobody in the group knows that she's not a man.
Hence my description, "Gaming through denial".
And, to be clear, the player lied about having bought a rank in the skill. The character has *HALF* a rank in the skill, a condition allowed under the rules for acquiring skills, but for which there are no rules for play. All we have is the general, "Halves round down" rule. Being reasonable, I might say tht it's enough to allow use of a "trained only" skill with no actual bonus, although the RAW says "You must have at least one rank in the skill.
A correction on myself: Looking at the skill text it says that "Disguising as a different gender" carries a -2 penalty, not a "30 minimum". 30 may apply to disguising gender in a bath or similar situation.
It should be observed that while the party has been invited to, or paid for the use of public bath houses, this PC has always made it clear that he/she would like a private bath. It was my character's offer to watch the door for her that set off our most recent argument on the issue.
