Help! I Have An Indecisive Player!

[Umbran]

Indeed. I asked her just the other day how she was getting on with her character - due to her complaints about the warlock (see above), I offered her the chance to rebuild her PC or make a new one even - and she replied that she wasn't because she couldn't make up her mind. I said that I'd observed that that seemed to be a regular thing for her and asked if there was anything I could do to help. I'm still waiting for a response.

Are you having this discussion in e-mail?

Note that, while marvelous, the written word is just about the lowest-bandwidth communication available to mankind. Do this in person, if you can. Non-verbal communication helps a lot in these situations.

 

[pukunui]

Private messages on Facebook. She seems unable or unwilling to meet with me face-to-face outside the sessions.

 

[Umbran]

Sounds like this player is a whole sack of problems.

hyper indecisiveness: How does she decide to eat, poop or get dressed? Assuming she's mastered those, the rest of life isn't rocket surgery either.

argumentative and wrong: people who can't keep things straight in their head AND argue about those things instead of accept that they are frequently wrong and should defer to others are a menace to polite society.

I will not be surprised if these issues are context-dependent. She may be indecisive *in game* and argumentative *in game*, but not in all other matters of her life.

The behavior, for example, is consistent with some variation of anxiety - being afraid of doing it wrong (either in terms of performance, or in terms of looking stupid in front of others) can lead to an inability to make choices, but also defensiveness when called out for doing it wrong. This is by *no* means the only explanation for her behavior.

Keep in mind, you are not a trained therapist, fixing somebody else is very likely beyond the mission scope of "playing D&D together". Though there's been a few cases of it working, thinking you can fix severe problems like that may lead to making things worse.

Yah. I know of one particular case on these boards - the GM came, asking for help with a player. If I recall correctly, she had anxiety issues. We gave advice, but he also asked questions and *listened*. She eventually blossomed into a stellar player. And they got married, too. It was an awesome development, but hardly the norm.

On the wrongly arguing problem, there's multiple factors.
a) arguing about rules is disruptive to game play
b) incompetent people tend to think they are more competent

Note that folks tend to dig in their heels when challenged. One possibility is that is what is happening, and that the key is not to say, "Nope, you're wrong!" but to lead the player around to the correct rule less confrontationally, without making her look stupid in front of others.

Now, to look at the problem as "the GM's fault", consider that indecisive behavior may be a result of "screwedya" GMing where every choice is a trap.

To follow in my own line - also watch how you present it when she's on the wrong track. Similar to the above, "No. That won't work. Try something else," will tend to increase pressure, and thus increase indecision. You may get more mileage out of, "Well, not quite, but you could do X...." Offer alternatives that seem to be in the same line as what the player wanted to do, helping guide them to a decision. When working with kids, I found walking them through a decision tree can help, "What do you want to accomplish? You want to hurt it? Okay, what are your damaging spells? Well, X and Y have too short a range. Want to try Z?" Remember that giving people "blue sky decisions space often contributes to option paralysis. Give their decision a framework, and they may do better.

 

[pukunui]

The rules confusion isn't so much a matter of "No, that won't work. Try something else" as it is:
"Standing up provokes an attack of opportunity!"
"Not in this edition it doesn't; you're thinking of 3.5."
"But I'm sure it does!"
"Look it up. You'll see that it doesn't."

This sort of rules stuff comes up even when it's not her character being directly affected by said rule. It can be something somebody else wants to do and she'll butt in with "But I thought ...", "But I'm sure it's ...", "No, it's ..."

Sometimes she has to have something explained to her multiple times before she gets it. Other times, no matter how many times we try to explain it, she just shakes her head and gives up.

 

[Mark CMG]

With this information from your most recent post in mind, it sounds like the player has problems that extend outside of gaming, in that she seems to be behaving in a habitually contentious manner. I do know that I would allow her to continue to damage the game for the other players (including yourself) unless she at least was willing to set aside whatever problems she is having come game time each session.

All of this is assuming you are GMing well, getting rules right when they come into play and being consistent when you stray from the rules as written. I see nothing in your posts to lead me to believe this is a reaction to anything you are doing wrong as a GM in this thread or any thread where I have read your posts.

Anyway, if you really want to take on a deeper social relationship and try to help a player through personal problems, more power to you, but I think I would let the player know that the behavior needs to change if she wants to keep playing, citing that she is making things problematic for everyone. It sounds to me, again with the extra info in your most recent post, like this has to do with much more than just an indecisive person.

 

[Umbran]

With this information from your most recent post in mind, it sounds like the player has problems that extend outside of gaming, in that she seems to be behaving in a habitually contentious manner.

The *result* may be repeated contentious behavior, but I wouldn't call it "habitual". Is she contentious about anything other than rules? If she argues about *everything*, then I'd see your point.

If she honestly has problems keeping rules straight in her head, the GM would deal with that differently than, "This person is just habitually argumentative." And, honestly, if they've been switching between multiple d20 games, one can hardly blame her. Even the best of us can lose track of which rule applies in Pathfinder, which in 3e, and such.

 

[Umbran]

The rules confusion isn't so much a matter of "No, that won't work. Try something else" as it is:
"Standing up provokes an attack of opportunity!"
"Not in this edition it doesn't; you're thinking of 3.5."
"But I'm sure it does!"
"Look it up. You'll see that it doesn't."

This sort of rules stuff comes up even when it's not her character being directly affected by said rule. It can be something somebody else wants to do and she'll butt in with "But I thought ...", "But I'm sure it's ...", "No, it's ..."

Sometimes she has to have something explained to her multiple times before she gets it. Other times, no matter how many times we try to explain it, she just shakes her head and gives up.

Have you considered making rules Quick-Reference sheets for her? Such things float around my tables all the time, and are generally far faster to use than the full rulebooks.

 

[Janx]

The *result* may be repeated contentious behavior, but I wouldn't call it "habitual". Is she contentious about anything other than rules? If she argues about *everything*, then I'd see your point.

If she honestly has problems keeping rules straight in her head, the GM would deal with that differently than, "This person is just habitually argumentative." And, honestly, if they've been switching between multiple d20 games, one can hardly blame her. Even the best of us can lose track of which rule applies in Pathfinder, which in 3e, and such.

Far more likely, it's not the group that's been changing rules, she's been changing what games she's been playing in. This groups is likely to have picked her up online, and has not been playing with her for 20 years or something.

clues:
A) the OP said they'd only changed rulesets a few times
b) the OP is discussing things over FB, not in person or on phone
c) the OP said she's played a long list of d20 games

It is probable she spent the most time in 3.x (based on example argument) and thus the other d20 games' differences trigger her to cite 3.x rules (that she knows) when she hits rules she doesn't understand.

One possible reason for the arguing is that some people question or argue about things when they are out of their element. I've seen it in project meetings. The guy who is in over his head will not only ask a lot of questions, he'll challenge certain points and bring up "why don't we do it this other way" discussions that side-track the meeting. Now initially, it'll seem OK. You should ask questions when you don't understand something. But the problem is that a guy on the team to build a bridge from NY to NJ is supposed to know how to build bridges in general and understand that it's important to build one from NY to NJ. When you get a guy who is supposed to be those things, it is disruptive to progress when every meeting is bogged down in challenges over "does it have to be a bridge?"

So part of the OP's problem might be that they are trying to play 5E (or whatever), and the problem player is only prepared to play 3.xE. I seriously doubt she's read the rules, dug into it as everybody else has.


Another consideration is that some people have piss poor memories. I have had work conversations with people and 2 weeks later, when I check on the progress, they have no recollection of what I'm even talking about. Not just forgot to do it, they won't remember that we talked, they won't even vaguely recall the subject of moving the MacGuffins from the old closet to the new one. They'll ask "what's a MacGuffin?"

Drives me nuts. Lack of memory makes people look stupid. Asimov wrote a short story about how a memory enhancer made a "dull" man appear to be sharp. It's a valid observation. Some people can't remember any darn thing, and it shows up when they do stuff like play a game that they don't ever remember the rules to.

 

[pukunui]

The *result* may be repeated contentious behavior, but I wouldn't call it "habitual". Is she contentious about anything other than rules? If she argues about *everything*, then I'd see your point.

If she honestly has problems keeping rules straight in her head, the GM would deal with that differently than, "This person is just habitually argumentative." And, honestly, if they've been switching between multiple d20 games, one can hardly blame her. Even the best of us can lose track of which rule applies in Pathfinder, which in 3e, and such.

Bear in mind that we're talking about a woman in her mid-thirties who still counts on her fingers ...

Have you considered making rules Quick-Reference sheets for her? Such things float around my tables all the time, and are generally far faster to use than the full rulebooks.

Yes, I've considered it. I've done such things in the past. I've also been posting "helpful hints" in my campaign Facebook page. After tomorrow night's session, we'll be taking a six-week break for the summer holidays (too many players going away), so I'll have more time to come up with a cheat sheet.

Far more likely, it's not the group that's been changing rules, she's been changing what games she's been playing in. This groups is likely to have picked her up online, and has not been playing with her for 20 years or something.

Indeed. She got her RPG start playing D&D 3.0 in a PbP campaign. I actually recruited her from EN World to join my fortnightly Star Wars Saga Edition campaign. Another player in the group was also running a D&D 4e campaign on the other Fridays, so she had to learn both those systems at the same time. When those campaigns finished a year or two later, we played Bulldogs! (a FATE-based sci-fi game) for a year or two, before moving to the Next playtest, which took us from the open beta to the closed 'alpha' to the final 5e rules. At some point, she also joined a mutual acquaintance's long-running Pathfinder game. She's currently playing in at least three different 5e games (including an Encounters program game) and has recently started DMing (!) a 5e Encounters game.

It is probable she spent the most time in 3.x (based on example argument) and thus the other d20 games' differences trigger her to cite 3.x rules (that she knows) when she hits rules she doesn't understand.

Yes!


EDIT: Also, when she posted in my campaign's FB group that she's dropping her current PC, she asked if anyone had any "possible relationships that they would like somebody to fill". This reminds me that she does this when first creating a character too - instead of coming up with a concept she wants to play, she asks the group if there's a role or class that needs to be filled (like cleric, which most people in my group tend to avoid for some reason). We always just tell her to play whatever she wants to play, but now I'm wondering if maybe we should just let her "fill a gap", since having her create her own character with no concern for what the others are doing has most recently resulted in a character with no connections to any of the other PCs.

On that note, the player who thinks she needs to come out of her "goody two shoes" comfort zone is the one playing a street urchin whose mother is a prostitute. He thinks she should play his PC's mother. Now there's a possible relationship that somebody would like her to fill! (I have mentioned it to her but I doubt she'll go along with it. That seems a little too far out of her comfort zone. I'm foreseeing either a cleric or a beastmaster ranger, although she may yet surprise me ...)

 

[Darth Quiris]

Why does she play? What's her fun? If you can answer these two questions than you can better manage the game as a whole.

There is a Youtube video of a guy who talks about the 8 kinds of player fun on his GM Academy youtube channel and the title of the video is... hold on *goes to youtube*...

ahh here's the video...

[video=youtube;dqPp1U4KpWE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqPp1U4KpWE[/video]

Watch this and learn... I recommend every single role player on these boards watch this video. You will learn something about yourself and why you game.