At my wit's end! Looking for advice on problem players...

[Emirikol]

>>>Originally Posted by Ellie_the_Elf
Yes, p5 is *extremely* defensive if called on his behaviour/silly decisions/anything really. Believe me, I didn't want to be that nice in my email to him! Case in point here, my boyfriend, who is playing a paladin in the campaign, .. p5 completely blew up at him and sent him a reply accusing my boyfriend of thinking he was stupid/a child/etc. So avoiding direct criticism is pretty much the only way to get through to this player.
>>>>>>>>


Uhm, yea. Kick him the heck out now. "You're not welcome back here. Good luck on your future gaming endeavours." Let all the other players know and have them support you.

Great gaming ahead. To get a good group, you just have to refine your membership We've done it several times over the years and it always pays off to fire bad players early.

Peace,

Jayh

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

He joined in my last campaign about midway through and the only problem there was his chosen PC was somewhat fragile and since he always, always buried himself in the middle of melee (he was playing a rogue, and an ECL 2 or 3 race), and didn't always think about his actions, he tended to die a lot.

Sheer folly!

I've got a player that would things like this until I took the extra time to spell out plainly his characters strengths & weaknesses; I'd actually spell out the repercusions of a d6hd & +0 con modifier to him, for example. He is actually one of the better tactical minds now, he just needed a jump start.

 

[S'mon]

So I honestly think if he'll agree to changing from a psion and setting his character on the road to redemption, things will work out. Otherwise, kicking-out will commence!

Ellie.

OK, sounds good. Good luck!

 

[DM-Rocco]

Hi all,

Last night I ran the second session of my new campaign.

Or, at least, tried to....

We start playing at 7. 7pm, two players were there (p1 and p2). A third (p3) showed up at 7.30, and another (p4) shortly after (to give him credit though, he is new to the group, and had got confused anout the start time). The final player (p5) showed up at 8.30 with the excuse of 'bad day at work'. As he works in a shop which closes at 5.30, I'm not sure what took him so long, but it was already so late I didn't bother discussing it.

The first hour or so went okay, except for p4 *constantly* talking over me (when I was giving descriptions or NPCs were talking) . This was in character, as his PC is fairly loud, but still getting annoying.

Then they get back to town and p5 decides it'll be really funny to use one of his mind control powers on a girl in the village, and get her to follow another pc around. While this is going on p1 and p3 try to do some roleplay with various NPCs and actually continue the adventure we're in the middle of but we're getting drowned out/interrupted every 5 seconds by p4 and his attempts to roleplay with various NPCs.

p5, by the way, is playing a psion. Something I've never allowed until this campaign, but I was feeling generous. I didn't get to see his character sheet before the game since he was late last week as well. Turns out, he's playing this character as a complete weirdo (constantly mutters to himself when the rest of the party are talking, shouts at NPCs who are minding their own business to leave him alone etc.) My players were asked to make heroic characters for this game- this one certainly isn't. And he (the player) gets very oversensitive at the slightest criticism. It also turns out he barely knows the psionics rules, and as we've not used them before, neither do the rest of us. A lot of his powers seem a lot better than a PC should have at 3rd level (we started the game at 3rd) but although I've read the psionics book, Im not clear enough on the whole thing to catch his mistakes (for example, first week, he used something like 5 power points on one casting- we realised later that the max is 3 at 3rd level and told him not to do it. He claims he didn't know that rule) I am tempted to retract my ruling on psionics and have p5 remake his character as a wizard or sorceror, but this is bound to cause major sulking.

Most of the rest of the night is taken up by fallout from the NPC mind control incident, after p4 mentioned in front of her that she'd had a spell cast on her. The roleplay got loud enough to seriously annoy our host's girlfriend (remember how I mentioned we were all having to talk over one player if we wanted to get a word in edgeways?). p1, p2 and p3 repeatedly try to get on with things, but the other two are more interested in roleplaying their little tiff following the mind control.

From reading what Ive written, it seems fairly obvious what I should do- but if I don't want to kick anyone out of the game, how would you handle this situation?

And yes, we're all adults. I know it's hard to believe.

Ellie.

Problem player creep into every group, all of mine are problems .

I have one who likes to min max everything and then tell others how to play the game to min max their characters too, which totally ruins everything you have planned for their level. You as the DM need to step up to the plate and just tell them that things are bothering you and the others. You will either be surprise that such a simple and direct approach has worked or you will be writing back, "told ya so," as the player goes nuts on ya, either way you have a solution.

Side note on the Psion, they can be very broken as a class. Many don't allow them because they can be more powerful than other spell casters. The miscomception of the amount of power you can place in a power comes up a lot and when reading a new book with new powers, we missed that section, even though it is in the class description, many times. I would allow it to give him a chance to play things the players like, but inform him that the class has flaws and certain parts of the class or powers might not fit into the game and could be removed if need be. Some powers are okay at lower levels, but then add in epic levels and you get a completely different effect or use, as an example.

Oh, and don't every give him the stones that decrease his power points for activating a power, that starts you down the dark side.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

We start playing at 7. 7pm, two players were there (p1 and p2). A third (p3) showed up at 7.30, and another (p4) shortly after (to give him credit though, he is new to the group, and had got confused anout the start time). The final player (p5) showed up at 8.30 with the excuse of 'bad day at work'.

You can't really prevent this. If your players are rude or simply don't place a high priority on participation in the game it's going to happen. I've never really had much of a problem with this in the past. If I tell players that the game begins at noon, well it's been very rare for anyone to show up later than 1:00. Of course we rarely actually begin PLAYING at even 1:00... but that's a different problem.

I don't think you can do much more than simply make a general announcement that because you have a limited amount of time in which to play it'd be considerate of players to EACH OTHER that they arrive reasonably on time and if they're going to be late to call ahead with an ETA so that other players are not wasting time waiting on you.

The first hour or so went okay, except for p4 *constantly* talking over me (when I was giving descriptions or NPCs were talking) . This was in character, as his PC is fairly loud, but still getting annoying.

??? It's in character to CONSTANTLY talk over the DM's descriptions or conversation as an NPC? That's not roleplaying that's OBNOXIOUS. A player can play a loud PC without the player needing to be an ass. Obnoxious characters are a VERY difficult roleplaying choice. It takes a VERY good roleplayer to portray an obnoxious character without simply being an obnoxious PLAYER. Inform the player accordingly. Tell him to change personalities or find an acceptable roleplaying approach to the personality he has chosen. Inform him that this is NOT an unreasonable burden on his roleplaying freedom to play a character that BOTH other players and their characters will be able to tolerate.

Then they get back to town and p5 decides it'll be really funny to use one of his mind control powers on a girl in the village, and get her to follow another pc around. While this is going on p1 and p3 try to do some roleplay with various NPCs and actually continue the adventure we're in the middle of but we're getting drowned out/interrupted every 5 seconds by p4 and his attempts to roleplay with various NPCs.

When players do this simply politely inform them that again, because of limited time for the game as a whole, you are not going to accommodate each roleplaying whim. You are going to assign more attention to those players who are contributing to the game at hand rather than distracting. Also inform them that this is NOT an unreasonable burden upon their roleplaying freedom that they GET WITH THE PROGRAM.

p5, by the way, is playing a psion. Something I've never allowed until this campaign, but I was feeling generous. I didn't get to see his character sheet before the game since he was late last week as well.

You have only yourself to blame for this one. NEVER, EVER, allow characters that you haven't seen before the game, and if you're going to allow a character class that uses rules that you're not familiar with you have no excuse for not GETTING familiar with those rules. I suggest you either do so or apologize to the player for failing in your DMing duties and ask him to create a new character.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

The DMGII ... a work-environment psychology textbook masquerading as a gaming aid.

I have personally often referred to "The great Unspoken Rule of DMing" which is the fact that you're not just adjudicating rules - you're handling players, people in the real world. Like it or not, unless you're lucky to always have the same group of excellent, mature players then among the things a DM MUST learn is the ability to deal with a variety of real-world situations and to develop people-skills. It is NOT by accident that "How to deal with DM/Players" is a discussion category all of its own on nearly every RPG board. You can be dismissive of it if you want - but it's a HIGHLY significant part of the game whether you think it is or not.

 

[BurkerKing]

I think you should also bear in mind that whilst DnD is designed for four characters - and so in effeect you have a 'spare' character who you could loose without affceting the game - it is possible to play the game with three PC's, ie your three supportive players. You should not be afraid to remove those players who are being a pain. My criteria has always been "If I'm not enjoying my hobby why am I doing it?"

If these two players are making you dread gaming night then they need to be removed: Harsh but let them find someone else to offload their troubles on to.

 

[scourger]

There's an old saying in business: HIRE SLOW - FIRE FAST...

You're awesome. I'm glad I don't have any of the problems listed, but I have enjoyed this thread; and I think the advice to cut the problem player is dead-on.

 

[Django]

p5 is an ass.

The sooner you give him the boot, the happier you and your players will be.

 

[Ellie_the_Elf]

Small update on the whole situation...

I saw p4 tonight and we spent some time talking about the loudness etc. It turns out one of my other players had a chat with him about how it might be viewed by other members of the group etc. I think once we get all get used to each other's playing styles we'll be fine there.

I've had one email from p5 dropping out of the game in response to the email I sent him which I posted earlier in the thread, and he's also posted on our group message board, very contrite, asking to make a new character and promising to make one that will fit in the group better- both came in the past few hours as I was on the pc before going out for the evening, but I'm trying to figure out which message came first at the moment, as the clock on our messageboard is screwy....But either way I have lost my psycho psion

Ellie.