What do you think of reality-sim players?

[S'mon]

Maybe the solution is just to talk to her and day, "Hey, if you recognize the Picts then don't try to make them into the frontiers Indians of the 19th century."

REH's Picts are heavily based on the frontier Indians of the 18th century, though - as seen by the American colonists fighting them.

 

[Jack7]

Maybe I should have said this earlier in my response rather than just kinda skipping around between them in my reply.

and ran into a large enough tribe of Picts (the real ones or Howard's version) on the warpath it would sure scare the hell outta me

 

[Teflon Billy]

I've had a couple of players like that in the past, and thought they were really valuable resources to the game.

But as with any gaming resource, I take what I want and leave the rest.

 

[I'm A Banana]

She is not at all antagonistic, but sometimes I feel that there is a sort of disconnect between her very real-world simulationist approach, which takes joy in the anthropological details of language, clothing etc, and my heavily pulp-fantasy approach, which is aiming more at the mood and feel of swords & sorcery, fantasy and myth, rather than reality.

Coming at it from an angle as a person who LOVES the anthropological details of everything, here's a fairly simple fix:

Make them clearly supernatural monsters.

Things that are basically humans in funny clothes can be hard to suspend disbelief for -- even many other humanoids fall into the camp of "well, they have a culture!" It's kind of like asking a doctor to suspend disbelief while you describe how magic heals wounds instantly -- it's going to be hard to do.

But the less recognizably human they are, the easier it is to say "Oh! FANTASY!"

Make them unnatural. Fangs and bestial animal heads and obviously supernatural powers. Tentacles. Eyestalks. Demons or devils. Extraplanar. Alien. The only thing "humanoid" about them is their shape.

OR, just use actual monsters. This is D&D, a raiding group of savage barbarians can just as easily be a raiding group of savage...I dunno...beholders.

The less recognizably human these things are, the easier it will be to resist the impulse to say "Ah! The fact that they are wearing wolf pelts means they use the wolf culturally and symbolically to signify their ferocity! The wolf is an honored animal among them!" and such like.

And, of course, throw her a bone when dealing with other cities. Think about the clothing and language of people from another kingdom, or orcs or dwarves or whatever.

Give her stuff to work on, and make sure to keep her away from the stuff you don't want her working on, and you should be able to have the kind of psychological effect you want. Keep them horrific, alien, and bizarre, and make them less linked to the logic of humanity.

 

[ST]

I'm always happy when someone is describing the game world in ways that the people at the table can relate to. Sometimes that's real-world analogues, sometimes something from a book or movie. Sometimes it is just that little color like briefly describing a mossy, ivy-covered wall.

I figure that stuff like that is useful the way details in a story are useful. They're not necessarily exactly describing what you'd see if you could theoretically go into the game world and take pictures. They're more like mental crib notes.

Think about a memory or a dream you had, then try to fill in specific details. Sometimes it's hard to say whether you're remembering them or creating them. Stuff that's similar to other stuff, your brain abstracts. When I first went to college, I kept going "Wait, is that so and so I knew from home?" After a couple of false starts, I realized that it was just that my brain saw a sort-of-familiar face, and filled in details from what I remembered of someone else.

The best way to present this I heard recently was "OK, this character doesn't look like Richard Gere. But in terms of, like, a police mugshot sense, he's close enough that you'd need a second look."

 

[roguerouge]

Well, sort of: when I said "The Raven Clan have burned Fort Brathis!" it didn't inspire any fear or consternation, which it might have if my original vision had been enforced.

She's the PC. Make her realize how mistaken she is in her softening of the Picts when they come across them.

You're the DM. You get veto power.

 

[S'mon]

She's the PC. Make her realize how mistaken she is in her softening of the Picts when they come across them.

You're the DM. You get veto power.

Her PC background included years spent living with them.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

Her PC background included years spent living with them.

Player has a background that annoys you?

Wipe them out. All of them. Every last one.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Her PC background included years spent living with them.

Her character isn't going to be afraid of them.

They're normal to her. Family -- if you're from a broken home, certainly that same broken home is going to make you any more upset than it did when you were fourteen.

If you want them to be terrifying to her character specifically, it seems like you'll need to get her to make a new character.

My own strategy would be to roll with what the player now feels -- and how terrified people are of her knowing that she was raised by such animals -- and use that as a new kind of psychological hook. But that means that you'll have to accept that these thugs aren't going to freak her out, though they may freak out every peasant on the planet. If it's important to you to have them be terrifying, it's probably not going to happen with her current character.

 

[Mort]

Her PC background included years spent living with them.

Actually can't that be a really good thing? You then have at least 3 options you otherwise wouldn't:


1) She knows just how primal, brutal etc. these guys can be. Leading to the "you're not scared of these guys? you should be!" to the rest of the party.

or

2) She doesn't remember the picts being nearly this bad - was her tribe a milder different sort?

or (and I happen to like this one)

3) She doesn't remember the picts being so bad - and she had experience with multiple tribes - they'd gotten over the human sacrifice and they never actually chased people down like prey just for sport etc. There must be some thing odd here, something extra driving them on - something supernatural and evil - and she, along with the group, are in a unique position to figure this out.

It's good to have a sociological/anthropological angle it can add much flavor. But it's not going to explain things when the Picts are turning out half-demon babies with a thirst for human blood - here the fantasy is going to step in - hopefuly she can go with it.