Help! I Have An Indecisive Player!

[Darth Quiris]

I still say figure out why she plays these games and have her figure out what her fun is.

As for using terms like 'role playing style' or 'combat style' those don't really exist as far as the 8 Kinds of Fun because deep down we all like role playing and combat and exploration and discovering and loosing ourselves in the fantasy of gaming and expressing ourselves and all that... none of us are just One thing or One style. We are all a blend of all of this. Or else why are we role playing and playing make believe at a table?

If a person just wants to throw down some dice and do battles, that's what miniature games are for.

 

[Koloth]

One method my group has used is letting game play design the character.
Example: Assume a D&D 3.5 type game system.
The only thing she defines before the 1st game session is race and sex of character. Assume no feats or skills and 10s in all stats.
In this example, play starts with her walking through town on her way to the tavern where all adventures start. An orc leaps out and starts to attack. Does she want to Bash with club, Slash with sword, zap with spell, talk to it, shoot with arrow, stab in back, kick in nuts or have mad passionate sex with it? Now that her first weapon is defined(cost of which is deducted from her starting cash) 0 cost if she picks talk, kick or sex, it appears in her hand through magic and she attacks. Say she rolls a 14 and needs a 16 to hit. She can either choose to miss, add enough points to the proper stat from her point pool to get a +2 or pick a class that gives a +2 BAB or talking or sex bonus. Continue with normal game play until her character is developed.

Note that she is really working from somewhat of a disadvantage until she mostly defines the character since at the start she is basically a classless commoner, but it will let her play without having to decide ahead of time every aspect of the character. That encourages picking of character traits sooner rather than later.

 

[Boris2112]

I suggest getting her out of her comfort zone. In my group we had one player who was indecisive and kinda just went through the motions. So we made him the leader of the group. I know this sounds intense but he eventually came out of the shell and is one of the best players at the table now. And to be honest, the other players had a blast trying to keep it together as the new leader blew it and fumbled again and again. As I don't know the personality of the gal in your group I can't say for certain that this will help or hinder. And as for rules, we had one of those too. When we started playing she would constantly quote rules and to make things worse she has an eidetic memory. So she can give you chapter and verse word for word. I was a player in that campaign for about a year and we suffered. But as the GM roll past to me I was able to take the experience and come up with a couple of things that really shut the door on it. When a rule dispute would come up I would say one of two things. 1. "When you are running the game you can choose how to run it in regards to the rules. That may be how the rules are on page whatever, paragraph whatever, line whatever, but that is not what the rule states in the campaign setting that I have written for the GMs eyes only. I wish I could show you but I don't want to ruin the game experience for you by providing you with information that is for the GM. Now lets move on." 2. As it states in almost ever game rule book that I have ever read. "The rules are merely a framework and are not to be taken as set in stone."

 

[pukunui]

We tried making her the de facto leader once. Didn't really work. She naturally gravitates towards being the motherly conscience of the group anyway, though.

 

[SirAntoine]

Greetings!

One of the players in my group suffers from some serious indecisiveness. She often struggles to make up her mind when creating a character (eg. despite having had two weeks to make her PC, she still showed up to the first session of my current campaign with an incomplete character), and when we're actually playing, she frequently suffers from decision paralysis. She doesn't appear to plan ahead during combat and seems to be unable to handle the pressure of being put on the spot when it's her turn. (IIRC she got her start with PbP, and I sometimes wonder if she'd be happier still playing that way than face-to-face.)

She also always plays a Lawful Goody-Two-Shoes type of character. One of the other players said to me recently that he felt we needed to get her to come out of her shell a little and try playing something a little more chaotic. (Her current PC is technically Chaotic Good but she hasn't been roleplaying her that way.)

In addition, over the past few years, she has played multiple different versions of D&D (3.0, 3.5, Pathfinder, 4e, NEXT, and 5e) plus FATE Bulldogs!, and she frequently gets confused about which rules are in which game - sometimes quite stubbornly so, too, much to the frustration of myself and the other people in the group. I'm always telling her "not in this edition" or "you must unlearn what you have learned".

I don't want to kick her out of the group merely because she can be slow and confused. The trouble is that I've got six players, which means that encounters can sometimes take a while as it is, even when everyone is on the ball. Coaxing decisions/answers out of her can be quite trying sometimes. I don't want to punish her by putting her on a time limit (after which time her character automatically delays or something) either.

Do you think it would be worth teaching her how to be more decisive, especially at the table, or should I just leave her be? If yes, has anyone got any good suggestions on how I can go about doing it in a considerate way? If no, has anyone got any viable workarounds for minimizing the disruptive effects of her indecisiveness?


Thanks in advance!

It's a chore to learn the rule changes made by a new edition. Your player sounds like she is doing fine. As long as she is having fun, don't make any changes. In fact, reconsider your position, particularly about alignment play. Let her play the character she wants to. If it doesn't mesh with your opinion of her character's alignment, just ignore it. She is entitled to see it differently, and there are players who can't stand alignment.

 

[pukunui]

She finds it difficult when we play games that don't have alignment, and she finds the fact that 5e's alignments have no real mechanical impact confusing.