Are you a "problem player"?

[Noumenon]

I'm a bad player because I want to change D&D so it's fun, where fun is determined by me -- so after every session, instead of "thanks for taking time to bring my familiar into things," it's "I just don't see why you would risk killing the game by surrounding us with that boiling water," or "how can you just switch characters between sessions like that? It's hardly even worth getting to know anyone when they keep dying and leaving!"

I'm the new guy, too, but I keep pushing that 4E philosophy with the storytelling and the heroic characters on people who have been playing with frequent death since 1995.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm a bad player because I want to change D&D so it's fun, where fun is determined by me -- so after every session, instead of "thanks for taking time to bring my familiar into things," it's "I just don't see why you would risk killing the game by surrounding us with that boiling water," or "how can you just switch characters between sessions like that? It's hardly even worth getting to know anyone when they keep dying and leaving!"

I'm the new guy, too, but I keep pushing that 4E philosophy with the storytelling and the heroic characters on people who have been playing with frequent death since 1995.

I'm puzzled by certain aspects of your post:

1) Your juxtaposition between "thanks for taking time to bring my familiar into things," and the phrases "I just don't see why you would risk killing the game by surrounding us with that boiling water," and "how can you just switch characters between sessions like that?" sound to me like just potentially different points within a campaign.

For me, at least, if the threat of PC demise isn't real, my sense that I'm overcoming obstacles is diminished somewhat.

2) Your phrase "I keep pushing that 4E philosophy with the storytelling and the heroic characters on people who have been playing with frequent death since 1995" also puzzles me.

I can't say I've seen any change in PC mortality in D&D over my 30+ years. Except for the element of chance introduced by rolling dice, PC deaths are entirely within the control of the various players (on both sides of the screen) regardless of edition.

 

[Rel]

My problem is that I tend to get really immersed into the game; I wrote long backgrounds for my characters, regular journal entries, and the like. When I'm a spellcaster, I get even worse. I actually write out incantations for my spells, and then pronounce them when he casts them. Sadly, the other players aren't that involved; they will roleplay, but not to that extent. So I often get grumpy because they just shrug off my efforts .

I enjoy the story aspect of the game, and I like to contribute, but it never seems to work out. I write backgrounds for my story so that the DM will have options. But since we always play preplanned adventure paths, by character background is of no importance. Which is one reason I hate adventure modules: they are more focused on a story, and less focused on the characters. Heck, the characters are replaceable; if my adventure party wiped next session, our new characters could easily pick up where we left off.

It's too bad that the GM doesn't incorporate your background and motivations into the game more. But it maybe isn't such a bad thing that the whole group isn't as involved as you are.

There was a time when I had multiple players like that who wrote detailed and very descriptive backgrounds for their PC's. So much so that the characters were fully fleshed before the first session of the campaign. This became somewhat of a problem in that these strong motivations would sometimes clash with other PC's (who had their own sets of motivations) to the detriment of the game. What was needed was some room left for character development so that the group could grow together as a team in addition to being individuals.

The next campaign I ran after this problem was identified had the following rules for character creation:

Any player who writes a short paragraph about their character's personality, motivation and background gets 100 bonus XP on the first night of the campaign.

Any player who writes more than half a page about their character's personality, motivation and background gets a 100 XP penalty on the first night of the campaign.

Haven't had a problem since.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It's too bad that the GM doesn't incorporate your background and motivations into the game more. But it maybe isn't such a bad thing that the whole group isn't as involved as you are.

For the most part, I find players who give me a bunch of info on their PC are easier to deal with than those who don't. But that's me- a lot of time running HERO has honed that aspect of my game a bit more than for those who stick to D&D or other systems.

Any player who writes a short paragraph about their character's personality, motivation and background gets 100 bonus XP on the first night of the campaign.

Any player who writes more than half a page about their character's personality, motivation and background gets a 100 XP penalty on the first night of the campaign.

I generally don't use hard & fast limits, but if I did, I'd have given them a whole page to play with.

If someone gives me a 1st level PC with a background worthy of inclusion as a main character in the Illiad, I just say "Really? Really? At 1st level?" and hand it back to them, asking them to tone it down to something more realistic. Ditto backgrounds that sound like shopping lists or equipment grabs.

 

[C_M2008]

I am a bit of a problem player/DM.

I'm a fair bit more into the roleplay/story aspects than the rest of the group(who to be fair are fairly new to the game and rpgs in general for the most part) and tend to try to force the group into roleplaying more. This might be a bad tendancy, but I'm not about to stop; it seems to be working.

Of course requesting and actually using pieces of each of their backrounds helps a lot.


Since much of the group is new I tend to lead the play when I am playing too, I've got to stop doing that so much.

 

[mmu1]

It's a trick question, because IMO everyone has little ticks and stuff that impacts the fun of other players. Do you recognize yours? If so, do you do anything to ameliorate it? If so, what do you do?

Me, I'm a bit of a control freak. This manifests in various ways.

(1) Players in the two games in which I'm a player look to me with rules questions -- and worse, actual rulings -- before they look to the other DMs. (Even one of the DMs does this.)

(2) I get very impatient when the same players constantly slow the game down. (I growl, "Roll the damn die; if it's a 20, it doesn't matter if you're +8 or +9," or some variant, every single game session.)

(3) I'm similarly impatient when my fellow players make horrible tactical decisions simply because they aren't paying attention. ("I've got a 34 AC, an aberration-bane hammer, 110 HP, and a speed of 20', and you're shooting at the monster on me instead of the monster ripping up the wizard? Seriously?")

(4) I make 90 percent of the decisions for the two groups I play in, and drive the action 90 percent of the time. (I'm not talking about spotlight hogging. For instance, I might suggest, "Nathan, why don't you wild shape and scout things out for us?" At which point the druid and his player rightly have the spotlight.)

That sounds a lot like my situation.

(1) It's a hard one to deal with, because even the DMs have a tendency to take advantage of this kind of "problem player" when they know it'll save them time looking up the rules. This sometimes makes those occasions when a DM and I disagree about something really awkward - I know that I know the rules better, but he's the DM, something's got to give.
I try to just say "ok, it's your call" in those situations, but sometimes I can't help it and it comes out as "ok, I think you're completely wrong, but let's agree to disagree" which doesn't necessarily go over well.

(2) Yeah. Though pretty often, I remember what their modifier is from watching them agonize over the same check before, so rather than telling them to hurry up, I just tell them what their roll is.

(3) I tend to play hard to kill characters, so unless it looks like they're going to get everyone killed, I tamp it down pretty well, but sometimes you just can't help it... Fortunately, these days I play with friends who know me well enough I always give the heads back after biting them off. (and it's really something I try to keep under control)

(4) Again, maybe not quite 90%, but it easily could be, if I wanted to or if I let it. Last session, one of the players sort of floored me by going "Ok, you're the de facto party leader, so..." I think this goes hand in hand with playing characters who visibly end up doing most of the heavy lifting when things get tough. I rarely play characters designed to be the charismatic leader type, though, and tend to role-play them in ways that make it clear they don't want to be in charge. Obviously, as I indicated above, this often doesn't work anyway.

An extreme example of this happened when one of the groups I was in took a break from Shadowrun (in which I actually did end up playing a leader-type, albeit a reluctant one) to play a short GURPS module using pre-generated characters. I picked a 10 year old child prodigy for a change of pace from my battle-scarred Street Sam... and three sessions later, he somehow was in charge of the party. *facepalm*

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

An extreme example of this happened when one of the groups I was in took a break from Shadowrun (in which I actually did end up playing a leader-type, albeit a reluctant one) to play a short GURPS module using pre-generated characters. I picked a 10 year old child prodigy for a change of pace from my battle-scarred Street Sam... and three sessions later, he somehow was in charge of the party. *facepalm*

If you don't want your PC to lead the party ever, the one archetype to play is "Big Dumb Muscle." Most players will follow someone smart, or a charismatic or crafty warrior, but very few people will willingly let an idiot make the decisions.

When I played Bear, a 1Ed Ftr (Str18/00, Dex18, Con18, Int6, Wis6, Cha6), he was not only clearly incapable of leading, he was in the thrall of the party's second most intelligent PC, an Int17 Thief, who had "befriended" the poor lug...making the Thief the de facto party leader. Nobody wanted to fight Bear to to challenge his decisions. When the Thief finally went too far and stole something he really shouldn't have, it was Bear who held the bridge the party crossed while they escaped. Bear's death holding off the City Guard was instrumental in the Thief being turned in (dead) for the reward money.

Good times, good times.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Dannyalcatraz wrote:
If you don't want your PC to lead the party ever, the one archetype to play is "Big Dumb Muscle." Most players will follow someone smart, or a charismatic or crafty warrior, but very few people will willingly let an idiot make the decisions.

Alas not always. Years ago playing the old Marvel FASERIP game my character was a hugely muscled Olympian moron. My mate was playing a clever Asgardian sorcerer. My Olympian made all the decisions. And by Zeus' beard they were bad decisions. (like the time I used the Asgardian as a ground to bad guy missile. I asked first. ) And this came down to my mate (not his character) tending to be more of a follower and me being more of an instigator.

EDIT: oh yeah, my main problem as a player is that, I'm so used to GMing, I tend towards taking over the plot by coming up with my own.

 

[Lanefan]

I enjoy the story aspect of the game, and I like to contribute, but it never seems to work out. I write backgrounds for my story so that the DM will have options. But since we always play preplanned adventure paths, by character background is of no importance.

To solve: have your character/party take a complete left turn between adventures on the path and abandon the path for something else...

"Mr. DM - last time we were by this place you mentioned something about there being a ruined temple nearby...we're gonna go check it out."

"Mr. DM - we're at a harbour town, right? How much will it cost us to buy a boat and hire crew for it for a couple of months...2000 g.p.? Right. Done. We're gonna sail up north and raid some Viking villages!"

Your DM can either handle this or he can't; and if he can't may I respectfully suggest it's time for a new DM.

Which is one reason I hate adventure modules: they are more focused on a story, and less focused on the characters. Heck, the characters are replaceable; if my adventure party wiped next session, our new characters could easily pick up where we left off.

Modules in and of themselves are OK; the game is mostly about adventuring, and that's what they do. The characterizations etc. tend to come out more between modules, so if nothing else get the DM to slow things down while you're in town resting and see what happens.

Lanefan

 

[Noumenon]

1) Your juxtaposition between "thanks for taking time to bring my familiar into things," and the phrases "I just don't see why you would risk killing the game by surrounding us with that boiling water," and "how can you just switch characters between sessions like that?" sound to me like just potentially different points within a campaign.

They're just examples of praise versus criticism. The thing is, usually I didn't even die -- so instead of focusing on things that actually happened like the focus on my chameleon, I'm criticizing because the way I could have died didn't match my philosophy.

I can't say I've seen any change in PC mortality in D&D over my 30+ years. Except for the element of chance introduced by rolling dice, PC deaths are entirely within the control of the various players (on both sides of the screen) regardless of edition.

Yeah, but in 1st edition people controlled their death by gingerly poking everything with a 10-foot pole and avoiding combat. In 4E you go out like a hero in a fight you chose to get into.