Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Booting a Player (and setting a good example?)
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Harzel" data-source="post: 7400270" data-attributes="member: 6857506"><p>I can understand your pessimism about whether talking will do any good, but I agree with the others that you should give it a shot. The fact that he "tries to be nice off table" is at least a small reason for hope.</p><p></p><p>However, that is a considerable list of sins that he has compiled in a relatively short time. I am not by any means an expert on these things, but my gut would be that you'll have to walk a fine line between letting him know that there are a number of separate issues with his behavior, and not overwhelming him during the initial moments of the conversation.</p><p></p><p>One thing that you might do is to try first to get him to talk about things that he might already realize are making things go sideways, as in your item (b). That might give you an entree into at least a couple of the items.</p><p></p><p>More generally, I think you need to make sure that at some point you describe the problematic behaviors, say very clearly that they are unacceptable (but see comments on item (d) below), and tell him that if any of them happen again he will be uninvited from the group. If you want to go to the extra effort of helping him see a way to modify his behavior, then to me it seems that each of the items may need a somewhat different kind of conversation.</p><p></p><p>(a) I can't be sure how this happens for others, but thinking back about the times that I can recall doing things like this myself as a kid, it seems like it was very impulsive, not something planned or considered in advance. Also something that is embarrassing to be called on, because <em>everybody</em> knows it's wrong. Probably the one that he is most likely to deny. I don't know, it seems.... hard. The only probably-not-very-helpful advice I have is that I don't think I would lead with it.</p><p></p><p>(b) Has some things in common with (d) in that he needs to realize that what he thinks he knows is not always going to be correct in your world. And that creates a no-win situation: if he is wrong, he gets the party in trouble; if he is right, he is spoiling other peoples' fun. But really, I would heavily encourage him to just quit one group or the other - playing two instances of the same adventure at once is just asking for trouble (unless you are really good at compartmentalizing, which he clearly isn't).</p><p></p><p>(c) Maybe walk him through the consequences of doing this. What does he really think about the possible outcomes? Side note: with players who don't know each other, maybe the acceptability of selfish PCs is something to be addressed in session 0?</p><p></p><p>(d) On this item, I'm inclined to pushback a bit on the notion that the problem lies solely with the player. Knowing about a monster is not necessarily metagaming - maybe his PC knows about the creatures. Have you clarified with the group what the assumptions are about what the PCs know about the world? I know that having something exposed that you intended to be mysterious and horrifying can be disappointing, but I've never found it rewarding to force the separation of player vs. PC knowledge about the world. Reskinning monsters can be an alternative. OTOH, PLAYER needs to know clearly that what he thinks he knows <em>could be wrong</em>.</p><p></p><p>YMMV.</p><p></p><p>Good luck; I hope things work out.</p><p></p><p>Amusing post-script: The "Similar Threads" section includes this one: <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?175963-Non-Booting-PC" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?175963-Non-Booting-PC</a> . Yay for keyword matching. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Harzel, post: 7400270, member: 6857506"] I can understand your pessimism about whether talking will do any good, but I agree with the others that you should give it a shot. The fact that he "tries to be nice off table" is at least a small reason for hope. However, that is a considerable list of sins that he has compiled in a relatively short time. I am not by any means an expert on these things, but my gut would be that you'll have to walk a fine line between letting him know that there are a number of separate issues with his behavior, and not overwhelming him during the initial moments of the conversation. One thing that you might do is to try first to get him to talk about things that he might already realize are making things go sideways, as in your item (b). That might give you an entree into at least a couple of the items. More generally, I think you need to make sure that at some point you describe the problematic behaviors, say very clearly that they are unacceptable (but see comments on item (d) below), and tell him that if any of them happen again he will be uninvited from the group. If you want to go to the extra effort of helping him see a way to modify his behavior, then to me it seems that each of the items may need a somewhat different kind of conversation. (a) I can't be sure how this happens for others, but thinking back about the times that I can recall doing things like this myself as a kid, it seems like it was very impulsive, not something planned or considered in advance. Also something that is embarrassing to be called on, because [I]everybody[/I] knows it's wrong. Probably the one that he is most likely to deny. I don't know, it seems.... hard. The only probably-not-very-helpful advice I have is that I don't think I would lead with it. (b) Has some things in common with (d) in that he needs to realize that what he thinks he knows is not always going to be correct in your world. And that creates a no-win situation: if he is wrong, he gets the party in trouble; if he is right, he is spoiling other peoples' fun. But really, I would heavily encourage him to just quit one group or the other - playing two instances of the same adventure at once is just asking for trouble (unless you are really good at compartmentalizing, which he clearly isn't). (c) Maybe walk him through the consequences of doing this. What does he really think about the possible outcomes? Side note: with players who don't know each other, maybe the acceptability of selfish PCs is something to be addressed in session 0? (d) On this item, I'm inclined to pushback a bit on the notion that the problem lies solely with the player. Knowing about a monster is not necessarily metagaming - maybe his PC knows about the creatures. Have you clarified with the group what the assumptions are about what the PCs know about the world? I know that having something exposed that you intended to be mysterious and horrifying can be disappointing, but I've never found it rewarding to force the separation of player vs. PC knowledge about the world. Reskinning monsters can be an alternative. OTOH, PLAYER needs to know clearly that what he thinks he knows [I]could be wrong[/I]. YMMV. Good luck; I hope things work out. Amusing post-script: The "Similar Threads" section includes this one: [URL]http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?175963-Non-Booting-PC[/URL] . Yay for keyword matching. ;) [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Booting a Player (and setting a good example?)
Top