wingsandsword
Legend
We all talk about "That Guy", the bad gamer you talk about that chased you away from a gaming group or a campaign, or just can't get out of your head years later.
Have you ever been in a situation where to someone else, you were That Guy?
I was, here's my story. . .
It was Summer of '98, I was joining my first actual in-person D&D game. The first time it wasn't playing in an online chat room, or another RPG, or a D&D based video-game. I was very eager to have fun and do well.
I rolled up my first actual D&D PC (2e, with Skills & Powers), a Half-Elf Cleric named Eandra Moonsilver. I joined a very busy and very full campaign. I was the 10th PC, the campaign had been going for most of a year by now. I knew about half the players from the gaming club in college I had been a part of, including the DM, and they had played in my long-running Star Wars d6 campaign (how I had gotten invited to the game, I was invited to play in their game since they had played in mine).
I thought I was fitting in well, especially as the only Cleric in a 10-person party (composed mostly of Wizards, Fighters, or multiclassed demhumans with no cleric levels). I was having a lot of fun, and ended up playing in 12 sessions of the that campaign, when it ended. It was a blast, I was hooked and couldn't wait for my next chance to PC.
Now, the DM was running a very epic game, and had a plan for 7 year-long campaigns to be run in sequence in the same world. Each game would be set a couple of centuries after the previous one, dealing with a different aspect of a very-long-term epic.
So, the second game was starting up a few months after the first one ended. The DM decided that 10 PCs was way too many, and vowed to never run for more than 6 at at time. So, he set that limit, and it was first-come, first-served. Those that were in his game the longest had precedence over us newcomers, and a waiting list was created for those who wanted in but there wasn't space.
So, I was waitlisted for the game. After a few months, a few players dropped out of the game and it should have been my spot on the waiting list. However, oddly, someone who I know got on the list after me was brought into the game. I'd been skipped, and I'd been waiting to get Back in the Game for half a year by this point.
So, I go up to the DM, who I considered a friend, and brought up the point. I was hoping it was a simple mistake or oversight. I couldn't have been more mistaken.
Apparently, to one player in the group, I was her worst nightmare. He wouldn't say who it was, but apparently one player found me incredibly offensive, annoying, and troublesome and complained to him after every single session I was in. I later found out who it was, and it was someone who I barely even interacted with at the 10-person-game, I've still got no clue what I was doing to offend her (really, I sat on the opposite end of the table from her, our characters almost never even interacted, and I didn't talk with her much even out-of-character because I didn't even know her). As this person was ahead of me in the priority queue, and was an old friend of the DM, she'd asked I be banned from the game, and he'd quietly done so and hoped I wouldn't notice when I was skipped.
Well, I told him, politely, that I was offended and upset by this, that I liked his game, and didn't think it was fair that one player could have such a mighty veto over the game, especially since it was his campaign. He decided he would put my membership in the campaign to a vote. 5 players (with me as a candidate for the 6th seat), 5 votes, with him being a tiebreaker if necessary.
Well, she voted against me, obviously. My roommate's fiancee was in the game, and said she was glad for me to join, but wanted me to play a Cleric again since there wasn't one in the group. The GM counted that as "NO" since he figured anything other than a completely unconditional "YES" was "NO", so asking me to play something specific was a "NO". My roommate was in the campaign as well, and secretly voted against me (he apparently held a secret grudge against me for who-knows-why, blew up at me in a rage over something insignificant a few months after I moved out, stopped talking to him).
Well, it was 3 against to 2 in favor. I was banned from the campaign, out. The campaign went on for 6 more years, which was all of my undergrad years and a few years of still hanging out with the gaming club while getting on my feet in the world after college, while more and more players cycled through the gaming group over the years. I tried hard to ignore the talk of the game, but it was a popular game that most people in the club were in for a while at some point, so it was a common subject of conversation. . .and I was the guy who wasn't allowed in anymore.
It hurt, especially from some people I had thought of as friends, to be so disliked that they wouldn't even sit down and game with me, but they wouldn't event tell me why or let me address their concerns.
So, what about you, have you ever been "That Guy"?
Have you ever been in a situation where to someone else, you were That Guy?
I was, here's my story. . .
It was Summer of '98, I was joining my first actual in-person D&D game. The first time it wasn't playing in an online chat room, or another RPG, or a D&D based video-game. I was very eager to have fun and do well.
I rolled up my first actual D&D PC (2e, with Skills & Powers), a Half-Elf Cleric named Eandra Moonsilver. I joined a very busy and very full campaign. I was the 10th PC, the campaign had been going for most of a year by now. I knew about half the players from the gaming club in college I had been a part of, including the DM, and they had played in my long-running Star Wars d6 campaign (how I had gotten invited to the game, I was invited to play in their game since they had played in mine).
I thought I was fitting in well, especially as the only Cleric in a 10-person party (composed mostly of Wizards, Fighters, or multiclassed demhumans with no cleric levels). I was having a lot of fun, and ended up playing in 12 sessions of the that campaign, when it ended. It was a blast, I was hooked and couldn't wait for my next chance to PC.
Now, the DM was running a very epic game, and had a plan for 7 year-long campaigns to be run in sequence in the same world. Each game would be set a couple of centuries after the previous one, dealing with a different aspect of a very-long-term epic.
So, the second game was starting up a few months after the first one ended. The DM decided that 10 PCs was way too many, and vowed to never run for more than 6 at at time. So, he set that limit, and it was first-come, first-served. Those that were in his game the longest had precedence over us newcomers, and a waiting list was created for those who wanted in but there wasn't space.
So, I was waitlisted for the game. After a few months, a few players dropped out of the game and it should have been my spot on the waiting list. However, oddly, someone who I know got on the list after me was brought into the game. I'd been skipped, and I'd been waiting to get Back in the Game for half a year by this point.
So, I go up to the DM, who I considered a friend, and brought up the point. I was hoping it was a simple mistake or oversight. I couldn't have been more mistaken.
Apparently, to one player in the group, I was her worst nightmare. He wouldn't say who it was, but apparently one player found me incredibly offensive, annoying, and troublesome and complained to him after every single session I was in. I later found out who it was, and it was someone who I barely even interacted with at the 10-person-game, I've still got no clue what I was doing to offend her (really, I sat on the opposite end of the table from her, our characters almost never even interacted, and I didn't talk with her much even out-of-character because I didn't even know her). As this person was ahead of me in the priority queue, and was an old friend of the DM, she'd asked I be banned from the game, and he'd quietly done so and hoped I wouldn't notice when I was skipped.
Well, I told him, politely, that I was offended and upset by this, that I liked his game, and didn't think it was fair that one player could have such a mighty veto over the game, especially since it was his campaign. He decided he would put my membership in the campaign to a vote. 5 players (with me as a candidate for the 6th seat), 5 votes, with him being a tiebreaker if necessary.
Well, she voted against me, obviously. My roommate's fiancee was in the game, and said she was glad for me to join, but wanted me to play a Cleric again since there wasn't one in the group. The GM counted that as "NO" since he figured anything other than a completely unconditional "YES" was "NO", so asking me to play something specific was a "NO". My roommate was in the campaign as well, and secretly voted against me (he apparently held a secret grudge against me for who-knows-why, blew up at me in a rage over something insignificant a few months after I moved out, stopped talking to him).
Well, it was 3 against to 2 in favor. I was banned from the campaign, out. The campaign went on for 6 more years, which was all of my undergrad years and a few years of still hanging out with the gaming club while getting on my feet in the world after college, while more and more players cycled through the gaming group over the years. I tried hard to ignore the talk of the game, but it was a popular game that most people in the club were in for a while at some point, so it was a common subject of conversation. . .and I was the guy who wasn't allowed in anymore.
It hurt, especially from some people I had thought of as friends, to be so disliked that they wouldn't even sit down and game with me, but they wouldn't event tell me why or let me address their concerns.
So, what about you, have you ever been "That Guy"?
