D&D General What is an Adversarial Player?

[Shiroiken]

Just like with an adversarial DM, there's good and bad ones.

Bad for the Group:

• Competitive against other players
• Spotlight hog (often lone wolf types)
• PvP types (including treasure theft)

Bad for the DM

• Rules Lawyers that manipulate everything
• Contrarians* who defy the adventure hook
• Power Gamers that believe they should be able to overcome anything

Good for the Group

• Intelligent player in a good Adversarial DM's game

* I have to add a special case. I've only run across this one guy, but he truly believes that his job as a player is to ruin the DM's plot. Not just adventure hooks, but any possible plan the DM might have. He'll kill any important NPC and destroy any McGuffin. This guy was so bad he annoyed the other players. I booted him from my games, but he was a player in a game I played in.

 

[Malmuria]

I don't know if it is adversarial per se, but players who get upset when the world reacts in a reasonable way, the extreme example of a combat leading to character death. What's "reasonable" is of course subjective, which is why people turn to rule sets for answers, but a dynamic where player or dm don't trust the other's investment in the world is unhealthy if not adversarial. Players don't need to take the fiction of the world seriously, but then they shouldn't be upset when the world reacts to whatever they are doing.

If an adversarial DM says "rocks fall, you die," you also have players that will have their characters stand underneath falling rocks, so to speak, and are upset when their character dies.

 

[overgeeked]

I don't know if it is adversarial per se, but players who get upset when the world reacts in a reasonable way, the extreme example of a combat leading to character death. What's "reasonable" is of course subjective, which is why people turn to rule sets for answers, but a dynamic where player or dm don't trust the other's investment in the world is unhealthy if not adversarial. Players don't need to take the fiction of the world seriously, but then they shouldn't be upset when the world reacts to whatever they are doing.

If an adversarial DM says "rocks fall, you die," you also have players that will have their characters stand underneath falling rocks, so to speak, and are upset when their character dies.

Yeah. Those players are...precious.

Or murderhobos who get upset when the world reacts negatively to the characters.

“But they didn’t see us murder all the guards!”

“No, but you walked into the town square covered in their blood, brandishing their weapons, had a few of their heads on spears, and tried to sell whatever you looted off their bodies to the townsfolk.”

 

[Helpful NPC Thom]

There aren't adversarial players. The power disparity and role differences between GMs and players means that there is not a mirror term. There are specific problem player traits and we use different terminology for them: munchkins and rules lawyers come to mind. We could use a term for the players that say, "I make a [skill] check," then roll the dice without any input from the GM whatsoever.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I'd say that an adversarial player is any player whose enjoyment of the game is increased by purposefully (but perhaps not always knowingly) decreasing someone else's fun at the table. And that "someone" can be a DM or a player.

 

[Krachek]

Usullay an Adversarial DM, who got kick out, and then return to player status.

 

[Oofta]

Just like with an adversarial DM, there's good and bad ones.

Bad for the Group:

• Competitive against other players
• Spotlight hog (often lone wolf types)
• PvP types (including treasure theft)

Bad for the DM

• Rules Lawyers that manipulate everything
• Contrarians* who defy the adventure hook
• Power Gamers that believe they should be able to overcome anything

Good for the Group

• Intelligent player in a good Adversarial DM's game

* I have to add a special case. I've only run across this one guy, but he truly believes that his job as a player is to ruin the DM's plot. Not just adventure hooks, but any possible plan the DM might have. He'll kill any important NPC and destroy any McGuffin. This guy was so bad he annoyed the other players. I booted him from my games, but he was a player in a game I played in.

I don't suppose his name was Jack by any chance? In any case, Jack was my contrarian. If there was a plot hook, he'd ignore it. If there was a reason for his PC to care he'd blow it off. If he thought I had X planned he'd do Y. All while gloating about not "falling for that". Then he'd insist that I was railroading because I'm good enough at improvisational DMing and could keep the game moving forward for anyone else.

When I asked what he wanted from the game, he just said that he wanted to "hang out in a tavern and have things happen". What things? Heck if I know. I threw out plot hooks for helping fellow dwarves, dungeon crawls, revenge, a variety of save the [fill in the blank] quests he ignored them or tried to sabotage them all. Thankfully as I was about to kick him out he left on his own.

Didn't go quite as far as killing off important NPCs or destroying McGuffins, so I guess I should count my blessings. I still don't know what he wanted to get out of the game other than perhaps to practice being a jackass.

 

[ad_hoc]

We could use a term for the players that say, "I make a [skill] check," then roll the dice without any input from the GM whatsoever.

Those are called '3e players'.

 

[Steampunkette]

How about the

"Perfectly normal and decent sort of player who shows up regularly and is affable and amusing in play until one day a relationship is harmed or something particularly important to them doesn't go the way they're expecting it and then they do their best to utterly nuke the campaign during the next session before blowing up in a pointless and utterly disgusting argument with another player or DM over the perceived slight before never playing again?"

I've had a few of those. One was even aimed at me 'cause when the player confessed to the cops in the game that she and her friends had been taking evidence from crime scenes (In the form of illegal as heck powerful weapons they intended to use for themselves) she was expecting the cops to be really happy she came forward and work with the party. They tried to arrest her, instead, along with her friends who were angry at her for doing that.

I had "Put her in a bad position" so she tried to derail and end the campaign.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I recommend the excellent no-budget film Gamers: Dorkness Rising (which can currently be streamed for free from several outlets). The entire motivating incident for the plot is a player insisting that the group replay the campaign they just got TPKed in for a second time because he refuses to let the DM and "some unpublished module" beat him. That, to me, is the platonic form of an adversarial player (played up rather over-the-top, because they needed to set the plot in motion).