D&D 5E Dealing with a trouble player and a major blow up

[cmad1977]

'Pooh pooh! I certainly don't consider their RP ability to meet my lofty standards.'

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Here's the thing. You can't change him. You can only change you. And you just identified the problem.

"I have no idea how to handle people running and hiding"

So use your intellect and figure out a different way that YOU can respond, because the one you've been using ain't workin' and you can't change him.

Well, I don't have to deal with him anymore. But I don't know what I could have done differently. Every time he's blown up it's been when I was saying something that I didn't, even for a second, think would cause any problems. One time I said "There's no more information you can find about this mystery right now, maybe you'll find more information later" and he blew up. Another time I said "The bandits look up at your hiding location and...*rolls* see you, even with disadvantage. I rolled well." and he blew up. The 3rd time was a little more dicey. The subject of alignment is always a little bit of a touchy one, but I really took it as a productive discussion on why he hated Adventurer's League authors and particularly that adventure so much. I wanted to know why he had such a huge issue with the entire premise of the adventure. Particularly one that everyone else seemed to have no problem with. I had no idea it would lead in the direction it did with him deciding that you'd have to be evil to want to depose a tyrant from the throne and getting rather angry at me when I said it was good, not evil. As I said, that one I could have been a little more tactful about but I honestly thought he was arguing in good faith and although heated was still a rational discussion until he blew up that time, too.

It should be noted that we've had similar discussions that got a little heated by didn't end with him storming out of the room and slamming the door and telling me to leave his house before. So, I wasn't sure if this was one of the times we'd end the conversation or he'd blow up and leave.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

OP: First problem is you are trying to fix this guy. You are trying to point out what is wrong with him to his girlfriend. You are also putting words into her mouth ("I know you're only siding with him because you're dating him, but..." On a side note, this is really, really presumptuous of you to say. And worse, if you were actually right, it's exactly the wrong time to point that out.) The focus of your ire offends you on a personal level, and it's something you can't let go.

I only said that she HAD to side with him regardless of how she felt. I knew she would never admit one way or the other to me. It is presumptuous, but, as I said, I saw solid evidence of her disagreeing with him about this sort of thing multiple times. But in the end, agreeing with him because she had to. At least twice, she was angry at HIM when the situation ended, then as soon as I opened my mouth to say anything at all, her anger changed to me. Not because I did anything "wrong" per se but because the words out of my mouth were expressing frustration with him. It was clear that she was ALLOWED to be frustrated at his behavior. I was not.

Mainly, it appears because she feels I'm causing it. My position is that unless I'm physically pushing someone around or I just killed your dog or something, you can disagree with me, you can get angry at me. You can tell me you are offended and wait for me to apologize. But you can't run out of the room while punching walls, slamming books against the table and slamming doors. It's immature and I won't stand for it.

It was probably the wrong time to say it. But it was the only time I had left. I was never going to talk to her again.

Actually, scratch that. Your first and foremost problem is that you're emotionally invested in being RIGHT and letting other people know it. Majority of your posts have either been why other people were wrong, why your actions were justified, or how the other person is horrible. You needed to text your ex roommate because you needed her to understand your side of things. Even your DM style shows this.

It's true that when I believe in something, you need to make a pretty convincing argument to make me change my mind. It's not a matter of being "right". It's a matter of having discovered the best answer to a question over many years of having the same discussions over and over again.

I believe in stating my opinion and letting people know that, yes, *I* think it's the right answer. But simply because I think it's the right answer doesn't mean it is objectively right. I'm perfectly ok with disagreement. But I'd like constructive disagreement. A statement of "This battle doesn't seem that well balanced" will probably get me to say "I don't know, it seems fine to me." A statement of "This author is a moron, he's trying to kill us all." tends to get me angry. I know a bunch of the Organized Play authors from past experience and I know most of them are good people. When someone insults people I respect, they tend to make me a little angry. I've likely lashed out a little because of that. But once again, I expect constructive arguments, not personal insults and wide reaching generalizations. You can believe the author is a moron all you want, but you don't SAY that.

The same way I believed the guy in question was a moron for years, but I never actually SAID it. That's rude. People are entitled to their opinions, but they should be polite in expressing them.

You are correct that I have a need to make the people around me understand my thinking and my point of view. I believe that my viewpoints are well thought out and well reasoned. Which means, deep down, I believe that if people can see all the facts from my point of view that they'll come to the same conclusion I did. When people come to different conclusions than I do, I assume either one of 4 things is true:

1. The person doesn't understand all the facts
2. They understand all the facts but they are letting their emotions cloud their judgement and aren't thinking rationally
3. One of the facts that I'm basing my decision around is wrong and I haven't realized it yet
4. I am letting my emotions cloud my judgement and my decision was not made rationally

So, I spend a lot of time explaining my rationale for making decisions in the hope that I can minimize all 4 factors. It helps the other person understand the facts so they can come to the same conclusion. If they have more information, they are less likely to respond emotionally. If I have made an error in judgement due to basing it on incorrect facts, they can see those incorrect facts and point them out to me. If I'm being emotional, they can point out what I should logically do based on the facts that I provided them and I should be able to see that if presented in a logical way.

That's why you'll see a lot of me over-explaining on this thread and over-explaining to my friends. I feel that disagreements are mostly misunderstanding and given enough information, they often turn into agreements.

Owning up to a personality flaw doesn't excuse it causing altercations. This is akin to saying "well, we got in a brawl, but I'm just an a**hole who likes punching people." I'm not telling you to fix yourself, but you really need to take responsibility for problems that your personality causes. The first step is a sincere apology. The second is finding a way to avoid future problems, if you're not willing to work on that aspect of yourself.

I don't consider being opinionated to be a character flaw. I prefer to be around opinionated people. Even when they disagree with me. To me, being opinionated is a sign of intelligence. In this guy's case, he was also opinionated, which means we clashed sometimes. But I enjoy clashing. It helps to be a more well rounded person if your opinions are challenged on a regular basis. I don't want to be stuck in an echo chamber of just people who agree with me. Which means, sometimes, I argue. But I'm still friends with the people afterward.

To paraphrase a cliche: yes, he may be a mouthbreathing knuckle dragging moron with the social grace of a particularly boorish gorilla. But what does that make you for 1) trying to argue with him, and 2) putting yourself in situations where you're likely to clash with him?

I wasn't trying to argue with him any of the times. Every time he blew up it was an issue that required an answer. Failure to come up with an answer meant an end to the D&D game we were playing and that involved everyone else at the table. I don't think I was putting myself into a situation where I was likely to clash with him simply by DMing for him. I'd DMed for him hundreds of times and although he complains a lot and is a little annoying, it usually doesn't go too badly.

But by the same token, I couldn't just drop the issue of whether or not the enemies spotted the PCs. It determined what happened next in the adventure. He felt that I was having the enemies purposefully spot him because I didn't like him and I was making all his plans fail despite the obvious superiority of the plan. Only one of our opinions can be right if we are going to keep playing D&D for the rest of the evening.

The same thing was true of the argument about alignments. He was stating that he was thinking of not coming to our Tuesday Adventurer's League games anymore because of how stupid the authors were and how they were out to get him all the time and writing adventures that no rightful thinking person would ever go on. I wanted them to keep coming to the games because I enjoyed seeing them there. So, I was trying to figure out what the root of his problem was so I could help to fix it the best I could.

I wasn't arguing, per se, I was just trying to make him see reason and not let him unwarranted hatred of mod authors prevent him(and the rest of us) from having fun. Once again, I couldn't exactly give that one up. Because giving it up would mean them withdrawing from the Tuesday game. And I needed his girlfriend as a backup DM. She is one of the only people who will run tables except me. And, frankly, is the best DM there. Even better than me. So, agreeing with him meant not seeing them come to our games anymore. And given, we were about to start running a game for everyone so that we could prepare for the Tuesday game, it was pointless to play the game we were about to play if he hated the games that much.

One is stating a difference, the other is casting a personal value judgment on their qualifications to play with you.

Why shouldn't I cast personal value judgments on their qualifications to play with me? It's my game. What other things should I use to determine which people to play with other than my opinions of the players?

One of the two players in question has an obsession with hiding with every character she plays. She has been explained the hiding rules about 40 times now since every time she wants to hide, it's is impossible. She'll be standing 5 feet in front of someone and say "I hide, then I steal his money without him seeing it" and I'll say "You can't hide, he's looking right at you. You'd need cover or some sort of obscurement so that he doesn't know where you are. Then you could hide." and each time she gets angry at me because she has a good hide and I'm "trying to prevent her from using it".

She is one of our Tuesday Organized Play players and no matter how many times she's explained how hiding works, she insists on trying it again the next week. My roommate who is the other DM has noticed it as well and complains to me about it all the time.

When she used to be in my old home group in 4e, she kept asking me to break the rules constantly. She wanted to be a race from a novel she read where there were elves who changed into wolves. I said no, only things from the book. She pretty much complained continuously and asked me why I wouldn't allow her to be a perfectly valid option. She pretty much refused to play until I agreed. But I told her it would be cosmetic only and more an illusion of a wolf than being an actual wolf to avoid game balance issues. But then she insisted on taking the Vampire class, so she took damage from sunlight. But kept trying to change into a wolf to avoid taking sunlight damage. I explained to her that I agreed to her race choice only as long as it didn't give her a real power bonus and being able to change into a wolf at will to avoid the sun removed the disadvantage of being a vampire. She got very angry at me for making the game make no sense. She was covered in fur, how could the sun affect her?

She eventually left our group and everyone was rather happy she was gone. So, now she wants to join the new group and I don't want to be rude and say "You were causing a lot of problems last time you played with us and we'd prefer not to have those problems in our new group."

I used the phrase "role playing ability" more generically to mean their ability to play the game.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

'Pooh pooh! I certainly don't consider their RP ability to meet my lofty standards.'

Heh. Yeah, well, I've played too many years with a group that was 80% major powergamers with no desire to roleplay at all. It wore me out as a DM so badly that I didn't want to DM anymore for nearly a year afterward. I've decided that if I'm going to start running a long term game again, I'm going to prune the group to the point that it is fun for me to DM.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

She is one of our Tuesday Organized Play players and no matter how many times she's explained how hiding works, she insists on trying it again the next week. My roommate who is the other DM has noticed it as well and complains to me about it all the time.

When she used to be in my old home group in 4e, she kept asking me to break the rules constantly. She wanted to be a race from a novel she read where there were elves who changed into wolves. I said no, only things from the book. She pretty much complained continuously and asked me why I wouldn't allow her to be a perfectly valid option. She pretty much refused to play until I agreed. But I told her it would be cosmetic only and more an illusion of a wolf than being an actual wolf to avoid game balance issues. But then she insisted on taking the Vampire class, so she took damage from sunlight. But kept trying to change into a wolf to avoid taking sunlight damage. I explained to her that I agreed to her race choice only as long as it didn't give her a real power bonus and being able to change into a wolf at will to avoid the sun removed the disadvantage of being a vampire. She got very angry at me for making the game make no sense. She was covered in fur, how could the sun affect her?

She eventually left our group and everyone was rather happy she was gone. So, now she wants to join the new group and I don't want to be rude and say "You were causing a lot of problems last time you played with us and we'd prefer not to have those problems in our new group."

I used the phrase "role playing ability" more generically to mean their ability to play the game.

this annoys me to no end. You are now going to start bad mouthing another player who just wants to play because her style doesn't mesh with yours....

Majoru Oakheart think about this, you do things that annoy people, and they do things that annoy you. Would you like her to come to enworld and post about your game "My DM made a race that could shift into a wolf, and since the vampire class can wear a damn hoodie and not take damage by the rules, I wanted my fur to work too..." no, you would want both sides explained... yet here we go again.

As for hiding... just try working with her...

example

Player: I Hide and steal his gold..
DM A: You can't he's looking right at you

DM B: OK, so you walk away and blend into the crowd, that's a dex check or two, but lets see if you can pull it off...

DM A just says no, DM B goes farther to make it possible... one leads to a stop and argument, the other to the game continueing... witch do you belive is right?

 

[Kichwas]

The next time you get a player like this, use Inspiration Points "AT THE START OF THINGS" before it gets to be an issue.

Set up and Inspiration Point system (DMG pg. 240-241) with these variations:

• Inspiration Points are awarded for Inspirational Actions that are Highly Genre Inspiring. Even if those actions go strongly against roleplay and character.
• By contrast actions that are great roleplay and highly in character, but go against genre, can result in Inspiration Point Penalties.
• Inspiration Points are given to the player, not the character. They can even be rewarded as a result of character death, failure, or exit from the campaign.
• Inspiration Points only stick around for 3 sessions after being earned.
• You can bank up to 6 Inspiration Points, instead of the DMG limit of 1. You can burn up to 2 at a time.
• If you have negative inspiration, it will be used by the DM against you, as if your opponent had inspiration at an important moment where your actions might be essential to group or self victory, but are not being chosen specifically to advance genre. You can have up to 3 negative inspiration banked against you, they will only be used one at a time, and they can last up to 3 sessions from being earned. Earning an Inspiration point wipes out 2 negative points (so if you are at -1, you will be at 1 banked).

Now make a list of 3 to 10 things that will inspire you to hand out inspiration, and a list half as big of thing that will cause you to subtract it.

- The point of the above is to have a carrot and a stick, but the carrot is bigger than the stick. The carrot can in fact get unbalancingly big... why? Because if your players start acting amazingly within your genre rules, more than likely the fun factor will be so much greater that people won't mind the loss of some of the challenge.

It is also always useful to actively encourage people to sabotage their own characters in the interests of dramatic fun. Many players will balk at the idea, but over the years some of the best tales of RPG-play come from the heroic character who bought it with flare.

Now... you have to set up a system like this at day one. You can't use something like this to repair a damaged situation because players will be on to you by then... you need to put something in place ahead of time, so it feels fair up front to everyone, and so that your potential problem player ends up using his 'self interest' altruistically without knowing it... Comes away thinking he is an amazing player for being so self-sacrificing, and never catches on that he's a puppy that's just been trained to do a trick.

Best of all, if done early enough YOU might never learn which of your players was the one that was going to end up being a problem otherwise...

 

[imabaer]

I believe in stating my opinion and letting people know that, yes, *I* think it's the right answer. But simply because I think it's the right answer doesn't mean it is objectively right. I'm perfectly ok with disagreement. But I'd like constructive disagreement. A statement of "This battle doesn't seem that well balanced" will probably get me to say "I don't know, it seems fine to me." A statement of "This author is a moron, he's trying to kill us all." tends to get me angry. I know a bunch of the Organized Play authors from past experience and I know most of them are good people. When someone insults people I respect, they tend to make me a little angry. I've likely lashed out a little because of that. But once again, I expect constructive arguments, not personal insults and wide reaching generalizations. You can believe the author is a moron all you want, but you don't SAY that.The same way I believed the guy in question was a moron for years, but I never actually SAID it. That's rude. People are entitled to their opinions, but they should be polite in expressing them.

I agree with you on this. People too often hide behind "well you've outraged me so I'm going to shut down discourse"; it's one of the reasons I avoid political discussions like the plague.It costs you nothing to be polite.

It's true that when I believe in something, you need to make a pretty convincing argument to make me change my mind. It's not a matter of being "right". It's a matter of having discovered the best answer to a question over many years of having the same discussions over and over again.You are correct that I have a need to make the people around me understand my thinking and my point of view. I believe that my viewpoints are well thought out and well reasoned. Which means, deep down, I believe that if people can see all the facts from my point of view that they'll come to the same conclusion I did. When people come to different conclusions than I do, I assume either one of 4 things is true: 1. The person doesn't understand all the facts2. They understand all the facts but they are letting their emotions cloud their judgement and aren't thinking rationally3. One of the facts that I'm basing my decision around is wrong and I haven't realized it yet4. I am letting my emotions cloud my judgement and my decision was not made rationallySo, I spend a lot of time explaining my rationale for making decisions in the hope that I can minimize all 4 factors. It helps the other person understand the facts so they can come to the same conclusion. If they have more information, they are less likely to respond emotionally. If I have made an error in judgement due to basing it on incorrect facts, they can see those incorrect facts and point them out to me. If I'm being emotional, they can point out what I should logically do based on the facts that I provided them and I should be able to see that if presented in a logical way.That's why you'll see a lot of me over-explaining on this thread and over-explaining to my friends. I feel that disagreements are mostly misunderstanding and given enough information, they often turn into agreements.

4 here. 4 so much that you can't see the forest for the trees, and I have a feeling it's 4 more often than you admit to yourself.Note that I didn't say that it was WRONG to be right, or that you should never try to explain your side. I said you were emotionally invested in being proven right. Your response as a whole, if anything, seems to lend credence to that.Sometimes, people don't want the discourse. Sometimes, it should be obvious that the discourse is not a good idea. Using facts and logic as a means of solving disagreements only works if your audience operates the same way. Insisting upon it after it's clear it's not working is outright irrational.

I don't consider being opinionated to be a character flaw. I prefer to be around opinionated people. Even when they disagree with me. To me, being opinionated is a sign of intelligence. In this guy's case, he was also opinionated, which means we clashed sometimes. But I enjoy clashing. It helps to be a more well rounded person if your opinions are challenged on a regular basis. I don't want to be stuck in an echo chamber of just people who agree with me. Which means, sometimes, I argue. But I'm still friends with the people afterward.I wasn't trying to argue with him any of the times. Every time he blew up it was an issue that required an answer. Failure to come up with an answer meant an end to the D&D game we were playing and that involved everyone else at the table. I don't think I was putting myself into a situation where I was likely to clash with him simply by DMing for him. I'd DMed for him hundreds of times and although he complains a lot and is a little annoying, it usually doesn't go too badly.But by the same token, I couldn't just drop the issue of whether or not the enemies spotted the PCs. It determined what happened next in the adventure. He felt that I was having the enemies purposefully spot him because I didn't like him and I was making all his plans fail despite the obvious superiority of the plan. Only one of our opinions can be right if we are going to keep playing D&D for the rest of the evening.The same thing was true of the argument about alignments. He was stating that he was thinking of not coming to our Tuesday Adventurer's League games anymore because of how stupid the authors were and how they were out to get him all the time and writing adventures that no rightful thinking person would ever go on. I wanted them to keep coming to the games because I enjoyed seeing them there. So, I was trying to figure out what the root of his problem was so I could help to fix it the best I could.I wasn't arguing, per se, I was just trying to make him see reason and not let him unwarranted hatred of mod authors prevent him(and the rest of us) from having fun. Once again, I couldn't exactly give that one up. Because giving it up would mean them withdrawing from the Tuesday game. And I needed his girlfriend as a backup DM. She is one of the only people who will run tables except me. And, frankly, is the best DM there. Even better than me. So, agreeing with him meant not seeing them come to our games anymore. And given, we were about to start running a game for everyone so that we could prepare for the Tuesday game, it was pointless to play the game we were about to play if he hated the games that much.

Literally everyone has opinions. The flaw part comes in when you try to convert others to your way of thinking, and don't take the hint of when it's not welcome.Again, you are trying to fix something you know from experience is unfixable. You know he's operating from an irrational hatred of things, you know he dislikes you, and you know that discourse isn't something likely to work. You are presenting your solution (a person he hates explaining to his face why his way of thinking is wrong, yet again) as the only viable option, when in fact:-You could've surreptitiously asked his girlfriend to help convince him, instead of directly confronting him.-You could've basically given him a compliment and said something along the lines of "look, I know you're not comfortable with the storyline. But you're an important member of the group and we really appreciate you being around."-You could've gone for a compromise; since it seems like you guys can homebrew, maybe have his GF run a custom campaign after about overthrowing the evil government?-You could've done almost ANYTHING else that while less based in logic, would be more rational for a social setting.Logic is not a cudgel for all of life's disagreements.

Why shouldn't I cast personal value judgments on their qualifications to play with me? It's my game. What other things should I use to determine which people to play with other than my opinions of the players?

Because one is implying that a playstyle aside from yours is incorrect and inadequate; the followup implication is that they either need to "fix" themselves or leave. The other is acknowledging that different people are good at and enjoy different things. One is rigid and inflexible, the other comes off as way less uptight.It's normally not the sort of thing I would even comment on, but it's the core of your problem.

One of the two players in question has an obsession with hiding with every character she plays. She has been explained the hiding rules about 40 times now since every time she wants to hide, it's is impossible. She'll be standing 5 feet in front of someone and say "I hide, then I steal his money without him seeing it" and I'll say "You can't hide, he's looking right at you. You'd need cover or some sort of obscurement so that he doesn't know where you are. Then you could hide." and each time she gets angry at me because she has a good hide and I'm "trying to prevent her from using it".She is one of our Tuesday Organized Play players and no matter how many times she's explained how hiding works, she insists on trying it again the next week. My roommate who is the other DM has noticed it as well and complains to me about it all the time.When she used to be in my old home group in 4e, she kept asking me to break the rules constantly. She wanted to be a race from a novel she read where there were elves who changed into wolves. I said no, only things from the book. She pretty much complained continuously and asked me why I wouldn't allow her to be a perfectly valid option. She pretty much refused to play until I agreed. But I told her it would be cosmetic only and more an illusion of a wolf than being an actual wolf to avoid game balance issues. But then she insisted on taking the Vampire class, so she took damage from sunlight. But kept trying to change into a wolf to avoid taking sunlight damage. I explained to her that I agreed to her race choice only as long as it didn't give her a real power bonus and being able to change into a wolf at will to avoid the sun removed the disadvantage of being a vampire. She got very angry at me for making the game make no sense. She was covered in fur, how could the sun affect her?She eventually left our group and everyone was rather happy she was gone. So, now she wants to join the new group and I don't want to be rude and say "You were causing a lot of problems last time you played with us and we'd prefer not to have those problems in our new group."I used the phrase "role playing ability" more generically to mean their ability to play the game.

Actually look at what you wrote, though: this is more than you trying to be factually accurate. This is you giving me a blow by blow of why a player you don't like was wrong, and why you were justified in your actions. The details are important enough for you to not only remember, but to tell me exactly how she's breaking the rules and display her idiocy/irrationality for all to see."She doesn't understand the rules" or "She's a disruptive player who constantly causes problems" or "It's incredibly to frustrating to play with her and she left on her own steam anyway" would have all sufficed. Had I called that into question, the details would've been helpful. But it's something that's eating away at you badly enough for you to include by default.Your old group has also imploded, (arguably) partially due to you. You can't expect perfection from the get go, and weak players can eventually become stronger players. But you were dismissive before you even started.Also, pedantic side note to try to point something out:

My roommate who is the other DM has noticed it as well and complains to me about it all the time.

This is, logically speaking, a poor argument. You're appealing to the majority here. But you're still using it as additional justification. While illogical, it's still a rational thing to do. Nobody uses solely facts and logic to prove their point. Social dynamics matter as well, which is some of the less trollish responses have been trying to communicate. You were probably factually correct in how you dealt with your problem player, but socially? You botched your rolls there.

 

[Delazar]

((only read the OP))

There's one thing I try to avoid when I DM, and that is explaining myself or my calls. Especially in a game among friends, and I believe also in an AL game, there must be TRUST. The players need to trust the DM to make the right call to have a fair and fun game.

If I as a DM say something happens, I trust the players understand that I thought this through, and I'm making a fair decision. If a CHARACTER is hidden, and I say "the guard saw you", I do not expect the PLAYER to tell me "he couldn't have!". I expect the CHARACTER to react to the information I just gave him.

Obviously, trust must be earned, but I always give a new DM the benefit of the doubt. If then I lose trust in him, then it's time for me to leave that game.

As a DM, I'm very clear with my players, and I tell them than any disagreement with my calls (if any) must be made known AFTER the game has ended, not during the session.

 

[delericho]

Well, I don't have to deal with him anymore. But I don't know what I could have done differently.

There are things you could have done differently, but they probably weren't apparent at the time.

However, at this point I'd recommend walking away from this thread, too. The issue has been resolved, and hopefully permanently, so I'm not sure what can be gained from picking the bones. And just as life is too short for bad gaming, it's also too short for internet post-mortems.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*