D&D 5E Dealing with a trouble player and a major blow up

[spinozajack]

This thread brings up another type of problem player : the one who just sits there and doesn't say anything. God, I can't stand those either. It's like, are you even having fun here? Over the years with these types of players, I see them gravitate towards CRPGs or MMOs or other places where they don't have to use their natural voice to contribute. There is always the desire to be around people, but sometimes you do have to step up and say something. If anything, that's part of what makes D&D great and important as a tool, for people to learn to get out of their shells. I wouldn't say like it like "you gotta be the party face all the time because you have high CHA score!!" But even with a low CHA score, or a middling one, each person at the table has to contribute something, and that something has to be more than just dealing damage to keep their spot at the table.

They have to add value to the experience. A damage bot or a healbot does not do that, for me. I had one friend, ironically, who was also playing a warlock who never said much (either in character or out), and when he finally left the game we barely noticed his departure, despite trying to get him engaged.

I think he's much happier playing Wow, to be honest. Aside from him being quiet, we never had a single issue with either his "roll playing" or him as a person at the table. It's just D&D is so much more than that, and I'd rather a table of 4 engaged players than 6, with one disruptive guy who shows up half the time, and another guy who doesn't say anything. Actually, in general, sometimes it's best to just end a campaign if the party vibe isn't working. And maybe start over with new people. People are interesting, give them a chance you might be surprised.

 

[Talmek]

Often when people are upset and argumentative it's because they feel they are not being heard. Everybody wants to be listened to; it's a form of validation and shows respect.

When I DM, my rule is: No arguments; but you always get a chance to state your case, once.

So if a player disagrees with the DM, great! I want to know about that! Let's pause the game, and let that person explain what they think I should do differently. And then I'll think about it, and maybe ask questions or solicit the other players for advice, or think out loud about the options. And then I decide.

I do this, but only if it's figuratively a life or death encounter. Otherwise I have a standing rule at the table that allows for rules discussion after the session. I don't want to slow the game down with argument or perspectives in the middle of the action, and my players (after experiencing it first-hand) have agreed that it works better for all of us as a group to debate and share opinions after the game has completed for the night. I also tend to end my sessions with about 10 minutes to spare specifically to gather feedback from the players and have these types of discussions.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I agree with that, however, it is true that there are a substantial number of players at the OP level who are like that. Life would be easier if we could just segregate those players off to their own table...

I agree. The problem is that there's definitely a spectrum of players and some are only mild and some are off the deep end. Take some my current group of OP players that come on Tuesday:

1. My Roommate - He is a rules lawyer to the nth degree. He likes to push rules to the breaking point if it helps him make a better character. He DMs most of the time and feels like people should be playing the game "properly". His idea of properly is that everyone has all the rules memorized, they never make mistakes, all damage is spread out equally among all of the PCs because they all leap in to take damage for one another, no one takes un-optimal actions, no one has taken un-optimal options during character creation, and no PC ever harms another PC for any reason whatsoever. Recently, he DMed a table and got very angry at the players because 4 of the players were playing Warlocks who could see in magical darkness and were hiding there. He had the enemies focus the 2 people who were outside of the darkness extremely hard. They knocked them unconscious and then proceeded to beat them to demand that the darkness be lowered or they'd kill their friend. When they didn't lower the darkness in 5 seconds, they immediately killed the unconscious person. He then gleefully pointed out to the player of the dead character that it was the rest of the player's fault for not taking their proper share of damage and for hiding in darkness. He feels the situation will resolve itself now since the player whose character died is now firmly blaming the other players and she has yelled at a couple of them. He feels the other players will learn their lesson and won't do that again.

A second person died at that table when one of the warlocks used a blast to push the enemy back. My roommate said "You know that the enemy won't be able to get within range to attack you next round if you push him back. But he WILL be within range to attack your unconscious friend over there. You'll likely kill her." This is because my roommate feels that having an enemy "waste" their turn by not attacking one round is a cardinal sin that should never be done. The warlock decided to push the enemy, so my roommate felt completely justified in killing another player's character to make a point.

2. Player who doesn't care about story at all. He spends most of his time on his phone and barely knows what's going on in the game. He shows up every week without fail, however, and LOVES playing. He currently plays a character who hits on every woman he meets in game and has made an insinuation that he plans on raping every unconscious woman he's ran into during the game. He picks them up and starts taking them back to his place before the other PCs have gotten involved and stopped him. About 5 times now. His other character is a copy of the League of Legends character Olaf. He's been super angry with my roommate since in that game mentioned above he ruled that darkvision could see through the darkness created by a spell because the spell didn't specify that the darkness was magical.

3. New player. He insists on roleplaying his character as completely evil and amoral. He the person who "contributed" to the killing of the second PC at my roommate's table. He said "I don't owe her anything. I barely know her. My character doesn't care about her." He often refuses to help even fight the bad guys. One session we found out that his Warlock had picked nearly ALL the invocations because he thought the chart of invocations was cumulative.

4. Stealth girl. She insists on trying to stealth her way past everything. Even impossible situations. She once attempted to steal a book from a high ranking member of the wizard's guild while his back was turned in his own office at the top floor of the guild tower. Then she expected to run for it, make a high stealth check and to get away completely free. When she realized that she couldn't stealth her way past the guards at the entrance to the tower because she had no cover she got angry. Also, the wizard chasing her down the stairs yelling "stop that woman! she took my book!" didn't help. She plays another character who is a "recovering" cannibal. The character attempts to eat his fellow party members continually.

Plus, the guy and his gf that I've been discussing in this thread.

There's a couple of other colourful personalities as well. But everyone has their own issues that make playing with them...interesting.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

If he tried that crap at MY table there would be ONE warning to knock it off or he goes bye-bye. Being a tad annoying to the DM is one thing, berating other players and telling them how to play their characters is another. That shouldn't fly at any game, home or organized.

I try not to involve myself too much unless the problem gets extremely out of hand. There will always be issues between the players at the table. See my post immediately above this one for some examples.

The gf in question also plays a cleric who refuses to heal people who are unconscious because death is the natural order of things. A couple people have kind of complained that her character is an attempt to purposefully antagonize people. But she's been upfront with everyone at the beginning of each session that that's what her character is.
In his case, I did tell him not to tell everyone else how to play. And he was doing the reverse to me when I was playing with him. I was playing a character who only has a 12 charisma but every time I'd start talking to an NPC he'd interrupt me and talk over top of me. Because he was playing an 20 charisma Warlock. He'd never admit that is WHY he was doing it....but I could tell. He would get angry at me and give me a glare each time I'd start talking to an NPC. I eventually berated him at a table for it and told him I could speak for myself and I didn't need him to interpret my words for me. He's been letting other people speak.

I DM for fun. I don't HAVE to tolerate anything that ruins a good time for myself or other players. Jerks can only keep playing so long as there are suckers who believe that they have no choice but to include them.

Obviously, I don't HAVE to do anything. But I feel compelled to be as accepting of others as possible. I'm Canadian. Also, as I've said above, I've run OP tables at GenCon. I understand that whoever shows up at my table, I have to deal with unless they blatantly break the rules of OP. Being a little bit annoying or antagonistic isn't really breaking the rules. It's not nice, but what IS nice, really? He did break the rules when he blew up and left in the middle of the game. Which is why I actually had the choice of letting him back or not. Which is what the thread was about.

You SHOULD blame his attitude on him. Organized play or not, being rude to other players is HIS fault. Organized play cannot be blamed for a general lack of common courtesy.

The thing is that it's not really about common courtesy. OP has taught a lot of people that WINNING is the only important thing. The adventures are going to throw really nasty encounters at you designed to challenge the most power gamed parties. You are going to need every advantage you can get in order to win. That means powergaming your character as best as possible. It means only allowing the character with the best bonus at the table to make a roll.

In 5e, OP has relaxed a lot and is much less cutthroat and dangerous. But after years of playing OP in 3e and 4e, many players were trained to take every action extremely seriously and assume every roll is life or death.

This player views someone talking to an NPC while having a charisma of 8 the same as one of your teammates taking off their skates in the middle of a hockey game. They are purposefully trying to lose the game and he doesn't understand why.

That doesn't mean he ISN'T a jerk. He's also that. But I understand where he's coming from.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I figured I'd give people who are interested a little bit of an update. Our Tuesday OP game appears to be going back to normal. I'm still not running any games for the player in question. It's been working out well.

On the other hand, we started a new home game campaign on Sunday...we started with the first session of Princes of the Apocalypse with both the guy and his gf playing in it. One of our other friends who is fairly new to DMing is running the game.

Short form is that he managed to do a total party kill during the first session. We all died because the adventure has a 1st level section with a CR 2 monster in it. The DM decided to combine the encounter with another encounter and killed us all. The gf got super angry over it. She is playing a character who uses a chair as a weapon(having taking the Tavern Brawler feat). She feels that she didn't power game enough to win, obviously and now needs to roll up a character that is completely power gamed in order to deal with the obviously overpowered adventures written by WOTC. The guy in question agreed with her 100% and felt that the adventure is stupid.

The DM was going to make us start over again from the beginning of the adventure with different characters but appears to have had a change in heart and is admitting that maybe he made the encounter a little too deadly so is assuming we won and is allowing us to continue from where we left off. He is also giving the gf special bonuses to make her character more effective while using improvised weapons. We'll see if that makes the two of them happier.

 

[Hussar]

Gack dude. Go for online games and all these problems go away. Fantasy Grounds or Maptool is your friend.

 

[Celtavian]

Hmm. I have never heard of a group this insane. I might actually watch a few episodes of this if it were a gamer reality TV show.

 

[billd91]

That's... pretty much a completely dysfunctional group of players, in my eyes. If your roommate runs like that in organized play, I'd never come back. I've never encountered a GM like that in OP with Living Greyhawk or Pathfinder Society. He's like anti-marketing for the hobby.

 

[JackOfAllTirades]

Seriously, it's time to find a new gaming group. These people don't sound like any fun at all.

This is supposed to be fun, right?

 

[Thotas]

"...he ruled that darkvision could see through the darkness created by a spell because the spell didn't specify that the darkness was magical."

It shouldn't have to, because it's clear from the concept of "what words mean". If someone had used a dispel magic on the area, and the spell was broken, would he have ruled that while the spell was undone, the darkness remained because it wasn't magical? Then what would be the point of dispelling it in the first place? Why does the darkness go away when the duration of the spell ends? If magic brings about darkness, and the darkness persists for as long as the magic does, then the darkness is magical.