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

[prosfilaes]

Also your games do not seem to change depending on who you are playing with. That is just bad DMing.

As a DM you are primarily a entertainer!

I don't hire Lars Ulrich if I want Chumbawamba, and I don't hire Eddie Murphy if I want Melissa McCarthy. Entertainers are not interchangable.

 

[Will Doyle]

I wrote the scenario you were playing (Outlaws of the Iron Route), so I'm sorry to hear it all fell through for you.

The situation is designed to encourage planning - crazy or otherwise - so I did get a chuckle from reading about "arrange yourself in fireball formation" In your particular case, I'd have made the kobolds panic a bit more when they found the murdered corpses of their companions, but it's easy to say that in retrospect. In general, I tend to roll with plans wherever I can, but each DM's style is different. Sounds like yours doesn't mesh with your players, so in normal circumstances you'd need to change your group or change your style.

However, as this is an organized play game, it's worth taking a read of the Code of Conduct section of the Adventurers League Player's Guide. There are certain protocols for dealing with disruptive players that you should probably look into. Good luck!

 

[GameOgre]

I don't hire Lars Ulrich if I want Chumbawamba, and I don't hire Eddie Murphy if I want Melissa McCarthy. Entertainers are not interchangable.

Very True! If the DM wants a tough and down to earth kind of game with classic type characters and a simple story arch then he better damn well hope for players with matching needs, otherwise congrats you are a DM sitting alone at a table.

The same as if you are a player who wants rich characterization and story elements in a deeply political thriller type campaign. Unless you can find that DM wanting to run that, welcome to staring at the players handbook.

Everyone negotiates with each other to hopefully find the right balance of styles to make a good campaign. Since only one of you creates 99.9% of the fiction for the game guess whop has to drastically change to fit the other?

Now granted players have to re-envision their characters based on the DM's wants(ok no Pirate but instead a Rich merchants son who travels by sea all over the lands to carry out his fathers orders) and hints of where the game is pointed.

It's just not the same though.

In a perfect world you are right. The DM and players are all well suited to each others tastes and needs. No one has to compromise because all want the same thing.

In the real world though, our friend here doesn't feel like he will even have a game if he asks one player to not show up for his table.

 

[Celtavian]

Both. He complains constantly about the difficulty of adventures every time his character gets close to dying or takes a large hit. Though he does it less often when his gf is DMing. My roommate complains about it sometimes but mostly he says he doesn't mind tolerating it when he's DMing. He just ignores him.

But he is especially bad when I DM. When I first met him he rubbed me the wrong way as I mention in a previous post. He said a lot of kinda dumb things and dumb people are kind of my pet peeve. Once someone says something incomprehensibly stupid I tend to view everything they say through that lens. He managed to trigger my stupid meter 5 times a week for 4 months straight. I complained to my friends about it because I didn't know him well and it helped me cope with playing with him again the next week. He didn't know since I never said anything to his face, so everyone got along.

Then, my friend, his gf now, started dating him and told him pretty much everything I had ever said about him. He's held it against me since then so he will assume everything I say is a slight against him.

This right here tells me everything.This information changes everything. If I was him and dealing with you, I would screw with you even worse than this guy. Only a full apology by you would rectify anything at this point. You call a guy stupid whether it's true or not, you and he are never going to get along. I'm surprised he hasn't tried to start a fight with you. Maybe he knows he can't win or it would cost him. I can completely understand and sympathize with his reaction. Some chump DM calls you stupid behind your back, you know he has it in for you. Not even sure why he is willing to sit at your table. I would never let a guy DM me that thought of me like you do this guy and I knew. If I spoke to you face to face at all, I would surprise myself. I'd take a few shots back at you whenever possible.

You are at fault. If the Adventurer's League has anything to say in the matter, they should not let you DM this guy. You called him stupid and insulted him because "dumb people are your pet peeve." I'm surprised the AL doesn't vet people like yourself. A DM that prejudges people based on his idea of what constitutes an intelligent comment shouldn't be given power over groups of people playing in organized play.

This situation sounds irreparable. You should avoid each other if neither of you wants to leave. The player has every reason to believe you are screwing him over given what you've said about him. He can only trust your magnanimity as to why you won't. I would not trust you in the same situation. You have no reason to change your opinion of the man. You seem to want to antagonize him or at least dominate this social situation. It is an unhealthy, mutually antagonistic relationship that most likely will not be resolvable save by mutual avoidance.

 

[Bayonet]

Stop hanging out with the type of people who will throw hissy fits over a game.

 

[Sacrosanct]

This right here tells me everything.This information changes everything. If I was him and dealing with you, I would screw with you even worse than this guy.

Well this certainly explains a lot.

 

[Jester David]

If he only acts like that when you DM, it sounds mostly like a personality conflict. Some people just react badly to each other, responding to each other in the worst possible way and feeding off each other emotionally.

 

[The Human Target]

That guy is awful, and you shouldn't play with him.

If I was also in your group, after the second or third outburst I would tell you "its him or me but someone is leaving."

 

[spinozajack]

Such an approach really isn't about "saying yes for the sake of saying yes." We say "Yes, and..." to accept someone's idea as valid and then add to it. This makes other people feel good that their ideas are being acknowledged, it moves the scene forward in a positive way, and doesn't take away from the DM's ability to challenge them.

Why is it the DM's job to validate terrible ideas from an immature player? It's not. Saying "yes, and..." devalues actual good ideas. If someone's too dumb to be clever on a consistent basis, the answer isn't to treat them with kid gloves so they don't get frustrated, it's to treat them like an adult and say, "No". Period. Your idea won't work, so the answer is no.

Acknowledging and validating bad ideas like the "we're here to fix the plumbing" (when there was no plumbing), only further encourages completely off the wall, moronic suggestions. Reading more about how this guy reacts to having his terrible ideas shot down makes me think that guy spent too much of his youth being told he was smart by his entourage when he really isn't, and should have been told to study more. Critical reasoning is not democratic, some people just don't have it, probably because they never bothered to (or maybe they're just too dumb to begin with), and now it's coming back to haunt them.

"Yes, and..." is something I would only do if I were DMing children playing D&D for the first time, but I would wean them off it. It's damaging to children to worry more about their self-esteem than them actually thinking properly. You're not doing them any favors by doing that, they will have no incentive to improve their thought process or to think things through if you treat good and bad ideas as having equal merit.

Countries that worry about grades more than self-worth are generally way more academically successful. This "yes, and..." mentality to me seems like a byproduct of the ongoing infantilization of students in western education. Doing "yes, and...." would only further enable this terrible player to think he's the man. Which he isn't. Sometimes the truth hurts. I wonder if the guy is built or if anyone has ever told him he's dumb to his face. That would do a world of good to a person like this. He's probably not even aware of how bad his ideas are, which is why he's blaming the DM instead of himself (or his parents, or his environment, or his education), which is where the true blame lies.

Majoru's DMing seems fine to me. And yes, I am allowed to judge things. I reserve that right to myself. I agree with some of the other comments that long-term enabling of such behavior is like poor parenting, the fault does like somewhat with the parent as well. But this player is an adult, so it's not the DM's job to teach them how to behave. It is, however, the DM's job to keep his game running smoothly and for that reason alone, this disruptive player should have been booted long ago. Or had this kind of whiney, immature behavior nipped hard.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If he only acts like that when you DM, it sounds mostly like a personality conflict. Some people just react badly to each other, responding to each other in the worst possible way and feeding off each other emotionally.

As MO stated, he's a problem for other GMs- even the one he's dating.