Are you a "problem player"?

[Krensky]

(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.)

I'm in the same boat in one 3.5 game. After fretting and worrying about it for a while I finally just shrugged and decided to give them what they wanted. I'd find the rule if needed, tell the table, mention whatever errata or sage advice there was on the issue, and let the DM decide. What he decided stood, regardless of what the book said. I've never been described as a rules lawyer, probably because I don't argue, and I don't bring it up. Best I can figure, this happens because I own a large pile of books and have a head for game minutia and rules.

(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.)

I was worried about this at one point in the first game I mentioned, but looking over the whole span, it was because for the longest time I was the character with the best Cha and the only one with social skills (1 cross class rank of Diplomacy). The begining also focused more on things related to my character then the others. My character is still one of the leaders (as much as a group of friends have a leader), but at the moment the Cleric's calling most of the shots, largely because we're all currently in his employ.

 

[Set]

My number one problem is that I get bored *very* quickly.

I write up a four page novella for my character, and the DM-of-the-minute says, 'Whatever. You meet some guys in a bar...'

This frustrates me, and it's entirely my fault. I usually can roll with it, and toss aside whatever characters I had intended to play and replace them with a Brujah with a 5 Potence who believes that every problem in the world can be replicated with a display of superhuman strength*, but other times I get discouraged.

*Examples;

Don't have Obfuscate? Punch the guy who saw you until he forgets he did.

Don't have Dominate? Hit someone until he agrees to do what you wanted him to do.

Don't have a network of Contacts? Beat people up. Somebody is gonna know *something!*

Don't have a Herd? Bust down the door to a blood bank and make an early withdrawal.

Potence! It's the uber-discipline!

 

[SpiderMonkey]

Yup. I DM 95+% of the time, and I definitely notice the fact that there's much less to do. Couple that with my nearly non-existent attention span and you see the fidgety guy. The last time I really played was in a group of people that I normally didn't game with. I'm friends/co-workers with one of the people. In addition to the clash of styles, it was a much more DM-monologic game than I'm used to, and much more prone to split up (noooo!!!!), so I spent most of the time playing Diablo 2 on my laptop waiting for the "privilege" to actually get to do something. Most of the time I'm pretty able to reign it in.

My players, especially now, all have their quirks. The two experienced ones tend to be pretty whiny when they aren't succeeding all the time (and this is actually heightened by the math behind 4e, which assumes a roughly 50% success rate on a given roll), and the other two are quite casual (our patient wives and all that), so they're only vaguely concerned with what's going on or how fast their actions play, which makes a slower system in combat than I'm used to even slower.

Even still, I wouldn't trade 'em for anything.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I am a problem player.

I get really frustrated with other players who take their time during combat - I want everyone to be like me, make a decision, stick with it and hang the consequences!

That being said, my decisions are normally pretty solid, so far as I know.

I'm also very story focused, in that I enjoy the game much more when I have a plot to follow. I struggle a bit and get a bit difficult when it opens up and is more freeform and character driven.

I recently had an example when a fellow player, after 15 minutes of a fight, suddenly announced he wasn't sure which miniatures were allies and which were enemies on the battlemat. I boggled at him and got a bit snappy as it was bluntly obvious to me. I guess I should have been a bit more patient.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

I am a rules lawyer who lawyers on the DM's behalf. I don't use my knowledge to dominate the game and frustrate the DM, but to prevent other players from misinterpreting, or exploiting grey areas in the rules.

 

[Mallus]

When I get on a roll in-character I can be a bit of a spotlight hog --but, judging from the laughter coming from my fellow players, a reasonably entertaining one.

Other than that, my only problem as a player is awesomeness.

 

[Rel]

I think that overall I'm an excellent player. Any group would be lucky to have me!

I'm not without a few faults however:

I suffer from the some of the problem that others have mentioned with GMs. I never second guess a firm decision by the GM of the moment but, if they ask my advice, I tend to be more in touch with opinions of "the gaming community at large" and the various rules interpretations found therein. Also, I'm only able to sublimate my desire to GM for about 6 months or so before it becomes pretty strong and I'm ready for the current campaign to end and get back in the GM chair. Luckily I've been able to battle this bit by a combination of very fun characters, good GMing by my counterparts and venting my desire to run games at GenCon and the NC Game Days.

My other fault comes in the form of me being not only a Tactician, but also a Strategist. This manifests itself first by me being incapable of playing a stupid character for an extended period (I find it refreshing and very fun to play them in one-shot games). But it also sometimes leads me to come up with (sometimes elaborate) plans to get maximum reward for minimum risk. Like if we need to recover a stolen artifact from some bad guys in a warehouse, the GM expects us to kick in the door and fight the bad guys and take back the artifact. I will instead suggest the idea of setting the warehouse on fire, retreat, cast some kind of fire resistance magic, wait for the bad guys to escape the burning building and then teleport in and grab the artifact without ever fighting the bad guys.

It's kinda cool coming up with these ideas but it leads to sessions where we spend too much time planning and too little time executing. And the worst thing that can happen to us is that we're successful because we as players would have had more fun just kicking in the door and fighting.

I've been able to curb this tendency a lot in more recent years and adopt more of a "A simple plan NOW will be a lot more fun that an elaborate one that takes us an hour to hash out. Let's just GO!" attitude. I sometimes slip a bit though and fortunately, most of the time, the GM helps me out by saying, "You set the warehouse on fire. Moments later you see the Bad Guys escaping on foot, carrying the Artifact."

Then we battle them in the streets rather than not battling them at all but the fact that we flushed them out of the warehouse means they don't have whatever prepared defenses available to them. This means that my plan gave us an advantage, which makes me happy, but it doesn't circumvent the fun of the combat, which also makes me happy.

 

[amysrevenge]

I swear to gord, if I didn't see your name on the thread plain as day, I'd have thought that I posted this myself. I think we're twins or something.

In case my meaning wasn't clear, I am of the exact same sort as this.

Big Mike

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.

(2) I get very impatient when the same players constantly slow the game down.

(3) I'm similarly impatient when my fellow players make horrible tactical decisions simply because they aren't paying attention.

(4) I make 90 percent of the decisions for the two groups I play in, and drive the action 90 percent of the time.

 

[Dragonbait]

I used to GM 90% of the time, and now I play. I still have GM tendencies in me.

I metagame bad - I think in terms of the game being self-contained. Anything the DM wants us to know, he will tell us right away. If we have to prod and pry, it's not worth knowing or the GM is hiding the info too much. I'm right about this almost all the time, but it still means that my characters are done with conversations much earlier than other players.
I would spout off info on monsters before our characters would know about it. I remedied this by often giving my characters high Knowledge skills (Arana 28, for instance) to remedy this. Since 4E is still new, I do not do this.

For some reason I have a difficult time really getting into other people's characters when I'm a player. I often really like my character, but am ambiguous about everyone else's.

I'm bored unless everyone is involved in the game. I hate spotlight scenes where only 1 character can act for a series of encounters/rolls/real-time hours, even if they are about my character. While I actually don't see this as a negative. Unfortunately one of my GMs often does this and it derails my enjoyment of the game... Granted he has gotten better and he's using a new system and setting..

I will often make OOC comments and jokes in the game, but if I'm a GM, I'm very serious (D&D: Serious buisness!) and dislike the derailments that I would cause as a player. I'm really trying to stop this.

 

[ExploderWizard]

For some reason I have a difficult time really getting into other people's characters when I'm a player. I often really like my character, but am ambiguous about everyone else's.

Why would you need to get into other people's characters when you are playing? Impersonation? Parody/ mimic/ ridicule?