Player Problems..

[Nebulous]

I run Midnight now and it can be brutal. If your wildman insists on acting wild all the time, which DOES sound true to character, have the adventure follow a logical course: insulting hill dwarves will get you a pickaxe in your skull, and no more wildman. I think the problem could probably weed itself out and the player can pick a more suitable option.

 

[shilsen]

One of sophistication and class.

I always imagined your username was an anguished cry from a player as you made his PC bite the dust

 

[Michikawa]

These are always hard problems to solve. One question that comes to my mind is this:

What is the motivation for the character to stay in the party/group and what motivates the other characters to keep him in the party/group? Sometimes only reason is the fact that he is a player character and so he has to be in the group. This usually causes most of the problems, because in-game it wouldn't probably happen, if the way he sees world differs so much from the others and surroundings.

If you discuss about this point of view with the player, it could resolve the situation somehow - maybe he decides to change to a character who'd have ingame motivation to stay in the group etc...

 

[Nebulous]

I always imagined your username was an anguished cry from a player as you made his PC bite the dust

Yeah, what DOES your name mean? The above sounds pretty plausible. In which case your screenname could also be "That's Not Fair you Son of a B****!"

 

[pntbllr]

What's the golden brick...? I've never heard that term before.

The golden brick is the dm's perogative to drop a completly unfair and often near fatal or definatly fatal encounter or situationon any pc in his campaign. "Don't piss off the dm"

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I've asked the player about this, and his answer goes along the lines of because he doesn't know a lot about the setting (As if anyone else does, mind you) he's playing a wild man who obeys no law, and doing whatever he wants is by my own rules (Roleplay what your character would do) admissable. He says he is unsure about his character, though, and might change it. I'm uncertain whether this would really help things.

I don't want to kick him out - he's been in my group for five years now. Any clues on how to deal with this?

Not all character concepts are equally valid, neither in and of themselves nor in the context of a given campaign. A "wild man who obeys no law and does whatever he wants" may be technically admissible by your own rules - but is it really at ALL a sensible PC to have in an unfamiliar campaign that seems to be heavy on NOT just doing whatever you want and willingly disregarding law?

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

Again, thanks for the replies!

Upon my username: More an odd happening than anything else. As my scrawl is practically unreadable, it doesn't make much sense that I hand out notes all the time. Any note from anyone in my group cues a few moments of puzzled silence as we make our Decipher Script check.

Anyway, one of my notes was something like the bad guy of the moment (A vampire) had tried to dominate one of the PC's, but the PC had got away. The PC on the other hand had misunderstood and thought that he had not suceeded, and must lead the PC's to the awaiting trap.

So he did. Under no domination effect. I assumed he had a plan. Unfortunately, he did not. When they finally got out of it (Lots of pretending to roll low) I questioned him about it and found out he thought he was dominated the whole time. Turns out he had read the opposite side of the paper twice and got two different messages from it.

Cue lots of frustrated "Arrgh! Mark!" from the people who had their character die.




Anyway, I'll have to wait till we play on sunday to see how he goes. If he keeps up the vicious aggressive insulting, the character dies - or he makes another. Or he leaves. To be honest, his character has a lot of potential, which is the problem.

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

Got back an E-mail from the guy, who is still keen on the game.

His beef seems to be with the fact he regards the game as not fun, and 'treat his character like nothing', whatever that means. I've asked him to clarify and I'll talk to him tonight.

From the other side, it seems three of the players are happier than they have been before and the others are simply happy to be playing.

Eh.

 

[Acid_crash]

Again, thanks for the replies!

Upon my username: More an odd happening than anything else. As my scrawl is practically unreadable, it doesn't make much sense that I hand out notes all the time. Any note from anyone in my group cues a few moments of puzzled silence as we make our Decipher Script check.

Anyway, one of my notes was something like the bad guy of the moment (A vampire) had tried to dominate one of the PC's, but the PC had got away. The PC on the other hand had misunderstood and thought that he had not suceeded, and must lead the PC's to the awaiting trap.

So he did. Under no domination effect. I assumed he had a plan. Unfortunately, he did not. When they finally got out of it (Lots of pretending to roll low) I questioned him about it and found out he thought he was dominated the whole time. Turns out he had read the opposite side of the paper twice and got two different messages from it.

Cue lots of frustrated "Arrgh! Mark!" from the people who had their character die.




Anyway, I'll have to wait till we play on sunday to see how he goes. If he keeps up the vicious aggressive insulting, the character dies - or he makes another. Or he leaves. To be honest, his character has a lot of potential, which is the problem.

Now that is funny.

 

[DrNilesCrane]

Got back an E-mail from the guy, who is still keen on the game.

His beef seems to be with the fact he regards the game as not fun, and 'treat his character like nothing', whatever that means. I've asked him to clarify and I'll talk to him tonight.

From the other side, it seems three of the players are happier than they have been before and the others are simply happy to be playing.

Eh.

Sometimes you end up with a player who just isn't happy no matter what. Good luck with the situation and my only advice is to talk to him in person and one on one if at all possible.