I have a player in my group, who will remain unnamed, who is getting to be quite a detriment to the overall enjoyment of the campaign. He didn't always act this way, but recently he seems to have developed some very narrow-minded and/or obstrutive attitudes. For one, he seems to be unable to roleplay his character without the DM giving him constant guidence. His character has been given a great deal of freedom to pursue her own goals and develop her ambitions, and he has not made use of this freedom, instead whining that he has nothing to do while the other players roleplay, saying he has run out of RP ideas for his character, even though I was able to think of 50 ideas for her in one hour. Could it be that he wants on-rails DMing?!
Also, he says that we should "scrap" the campaign. Now, I spent many hours on the campaign's story, and the reason the player has given for wanting to stop is that the party level is TOO HIGH. Now, the game has been running for a couple of months now, and the PC are 6-7th level. In previous campaigns, he has played characters from 1st level thru 40th, but now he says that he only wants to play level 1 campaigns, and possibly up to level 3 campaigns. When I asked him (sarcastically) what he wanted to play now, he said he didn't know, he just doesn't want to go past low levels. GREAT for story development, those perpetual beginner PCs (sarcasm). Woe to him if a level 1 PC warrior-type lucky in a scrap with a level 3 Sorc (1st level spells only, an average 9 or so HP)- that would give the PC 900 (*shudder*) XP!!!
Also, he contradicts himself at every turn. He says he does not want the PCs to advance past 3rd level, but whenever I give low CR opponents with, say, STRATEGY at the party, and they are tough to defeat, he complains that they should give him more XP. After a session with about 1 hour of battles (in a 6 hour session) and the party gets a lot of XP, he complains there are too many battles. However, in a later session where there is a similar (slightly less) amount of battle time but much less XP for the battles, he complains there are too few battles. This is the session when the other PCs were doing "boring talking" (his words) aka roleplaying and he was walking around town looking for on-rails NPC/authority-given quests to do.
He also expresses the view that if something is not in a book, it is invalid, but he has a double standard on that too. He is totally against homebrewed monsters (all 3 or so per campaign that I threw at the party), monsters with class levels ("It's not in any books such as the FRCS, so I don't buy it"- this said AFTER he said he hated FR), or even ROLLING STATS FOR MONSTERS (*gasp*). Now, none of the homebrews I made were unbeatable, the party beat all of them without great difficulty except the one they fought like idiots using horrible strategy, not using any divinations to help them, and ignoring obvious in and out of game hints... and they still almost won. If the PCs have to win or suffer terrible consequences, I always give them a chance to win, but the player lacks any trust in me as a DM (even though I'm the best DM our group has had, even he agrees) and rags on me everytime an unfamiliar creature appears before his PC. However, he has not problem with PCs using unofficial PrCs and feats, as long as they're from a printable source (e.g. website) and are not hideously broken. I suppose if I had a website and had my monsters there, and didn't tell him it was my website, he would accept them. He accepted an unofficial 3E conversion of Demogorgon that was supposedly CR 63!!!
Obviously he has no respect for my creative output. How does he think the printed material is made? PEOPLE make them!!! Am I not a valid person to be making things for my own campaign? Has he forgotten the beginning of the DMG? BTW, once he asked me if he could play a PrC with Harm as a 2nd level spell and Create Greater Undead as a 3rd level spell. He also introduced our 3E campaign to the broken Dragoon and Zombie Master PrCs, one with auto-crits the other granting the ability to control 4X your HD in undead. WHOOO that's not a hypocrite! What a paragon of balance. If he wants to always play level 1, he should just roll up a new character and refuse to gain levels as that character, or gain the levels and pretend (in game) to be a beginner. I think OTHER players don't fancy only being able to use only 10% of the material in the core books... if even that much.Oh yeah he also thinks it's his god-given right to metagame constantly and asks about every foe's stats. Granted all the players tend to ask that but he DEMANDS to know them and if it is something he considers "unbalanced" even if it is official (straight from the core books) he whines. He nevers complain about his own 2- 18 stat character... Any comment?
Also, he says that we should "scrap" the campaign. Now, I spent many hours on the campaign's story, and the reason the player has given for wanting to stop is that the party level is TOO HIGH. Now, the game has been running for a couple of months now, and the PC are 6-7th level. In previous campaigns, he has played characters from 1st level thru 40th, but now he says that he only wants to play level 1 campaigns, and possibly up to level 3 campaigns. When I asked him (sarcastically) what he wanted to play now, he said he didn't know, he just doesn't want to go past low levels. GREAT for story development, those perpetual beginner PCs (sarcasm). Woe to him if a level 1 PC warrior-type lucky in a scrap with a level 3 Sorc (1st level spells only, an average 9 or so HP)- that would give the PC 900 (*shudder*) XP!!!
Also, he contradicts himself at every turn. He says he does not want the PCs to advance past 3rd level, but whenever I give low CR opponents with, say, STRATEGY at the party, and they are tough to defeat, he complains that they should give him more XP. After a session with about 1 hour of battles (in a 6 hour session) and the party gets a lot of XP, he complains there are too many battles. However, in a later session where there is a similar (slightly less) amount of battle time but much less XP for the battles, he complains there are too few battles. This is the session when the other PCs were doing "boring talking" (his words) aka roleplaying and he was walking around town looking for on-rails NPC/authority-given quests to do.
He also expresses the view that if something is not in a book, it is invalid, but he has a double standard on that too. He is totally against homebrewed monsters (all 3 or so per campaign that I threw at the party), monsters with class levels ("It's not in any books such as the FRCS, so I don't buy it"- this said AFTER he said he hated FR), or even ROLLING STATS FOR MONSTERS (*gasp*). Now, none of the homebrews I made were unbeatable, the party beat all of them without great difficulty except the one they fought like idiots using horrible strategy, not using any divinations to help them, and ignoring obvious in and out of game hints... and they still almost won. If the PCs have to win or suffer terrible consequences, I always give them a chance to win, but the player lacks any trust in me as a DM (even though I'm the best DM our group has had, even he agrees) and rags on me everytime an unfamiliar creature appears before his PC. However, he has not problem with PCs using unofficial PrCs and feats, as long as they're from a printable source (e.g. website) and are not hideously broken. I suppose if I had a website and had my monsters there, and didn't tell him it was my website, he would accept them. He accepted an unofficial 3E conversion of Demogorgon that was supposedly CR 63!!!
Obviously he has no respect for my creative output. How does he think the printed material is made? PEOPLE make them!!! Am I not a valid person to be making things for my own campaign? Has he forgotten the beginning of the DMG? BTW, once he asked me if he could play a PrC with Harm as a 2nd level spell and Create Greater Undead as a 3rd level spell. He also introduced our 3E campaign to the broken Dragoon and Zombie Master PrCs, one with auto-crits the other granting the ability to control 4X your HD in undead. WHOOO that's not a hypocrite! What a paragon of balance. If he wants to always play level 1, he should just roll up a new character and refuse to gain levels as that character, or gain the levels and pretend (in game) to be a beginner. I think OTHER players don't fancy only being able to use only 10% of the material in the core books... if even that much.Oh yeah he also thinks it's his god-given right to metagame constantly and asks about every foe's stats. Granted all the players tend to ask that but he DEMANDS to know them and if it is something he considers "unbalanced" even if it is official (straight from the core books) he whines. He nevers complain about his own 2- 18 stat character... Any comment?
