Tewligan
First Post
Hobby =/= jobSpell said:to me, this is a bit like saying: "since you like your job, we'll stop paying you..."
Hobby =/= jobSpell said:to me, this is a bit like saying: "since you like your job, we'll stop paying you..."
100 percent agree with this. She could very well be famous in Sharn under an assumed name (thus solving two problems, her husband doesnt find her and she's famous).phindar said:It sounds like you have a personal dislike for how this person plays her characters, which is, sad to say, tough noogies. .
DonTadow said:Edit: Now I"ve had some problem players.
Guy who threw dice at another player
Guy who fell asleep during games
Woman who always tried to get the party killed
Woman who tried to play every d and d game like it was a module with clearcut paths and complained and interuprted the game when the obvious solution was not the most positive one
Player who came drunk
Couple who argued at every game and had a fist fight which led to him dumping her computer out the window and leaving
Two players whom did not know each other before my game, meeting, making out and sharing baby pictures in the middle of the game, then no showing for three weeks and eloping in Texas.
These were problem players
Nellisir said:Give her a fan. A really loud, vocal, fan of her character's performances. He shows up at all her gigs, and constantly wants to meet her/have dinner/rub shoulders with the great and wonderful her.
And then he wants to snoop around a bit and find out where she came from, and meet some people from her past.
Like I said in my post, giving out individual xp with the DM rating who did the best role playing job is a sure way of singling out and alienating players. Everyone doesn't come to the game to be a thespian. If so, I have a player in my game who would win every single time because he's a real actor. Instead, I let the players choose who they want rp bonuses to go to. This way they determine the rules and not me. I"m suppose to be an arbitrary judge and theres no arbitrary way to judge role playing. One person might see a guy as really carrying his character and the other might see it as a silly attempt at attention.Spell said:to me, this is a bit like saying: "since you like your job, we'll stop paying you..."
DonTadow said:I would suggest giving everyone the same total of rpg bonus (and total it based on how the party role played as a whole) or have the players vote for a player of the game that gets a bonus based on any criteria they wish.
Isida Kep'Tukari said:[snip]Her immersion in the fantasy world isn't the problem either.
What she has is no sense of wonder. All of her characters, from her epic-level fighter to her first level bard, are blase about everything. Even the most mind-blowing possible descriptions of world-shaking events are met with a "Huh... wow. Ok, that was cool. What did we find for treasure?" Not to toot my own horn, but the other players in the group were suitably awed (or, more fairly, their characters were) by said descriptions.
She also likes to be the best at what she does. I mean, most players like their characters to be effective, and those of us with more D&D experience help her tweak her character to be as bad-ass as is legally allowed (because some of us are powergamers, and she is relatively new to the game), but she seems to focus on these mechanics in-game, and her roleplaying suffers. Or, alternately, she tries to lean too heavily on her roleplaying to the detriment of her mechanics. It's the roleplaying, more than anything else, that concerns me.
The current campaign I am running required everyone to have a reason to run and hide in a big city (Sharn, in the Eberron setting). She's playing a 1st level bard/researcher that ran away from a powerful and abusive husband who's still searching for her. However, whenever we've met an NPC, she always says, "Surely you've heard of me!" because her character sings at a reasonably well-known inn. With any other character, any other player, I could just say her character was just having happy delusions of grandure with naivty of youth.
But no, the player really seems to believe her character should be famous. Granted, we're playing in Eberron, where there aren't a boatload of high-level NPCs, and a relatively low-level character could be famous. And she's had the rolls to start to raise her character to greater venues (and fame) than she's had. However, she's still in hiding. The last thing she should want to do is become famous! Yet she's blase about the whole thing.
Every single character I've seen her run casually approaches everything as something she's seen before. Even when the DM tells her, "Dude, you've never seen this before," she just has her character shrug, say "Huh, ok, so that's what that looks like," and goes on.
I don't know if this is a consequence of all the books she's read. I don't know if she's thinking, perhaps subconsciously, "Well, I've read about dragons/demons/ancient horrors from beyond the pale, so it's no big deal," and then projecting these onto her characters.
She doesn't emote her characters that much, other than for the usual game quips and jokes around the table. There is no wonder, there is no delight, there is no awe, unless she manages to get her hands on some shiny treasure, or take down a monster single-handedly, and even then it's transitory.
When it comes to XP, I do doll out roleplaying XP, and she pretty much always gets the short end of the stick there. However, I do it in private, on separate pieces of paper, because I find that more fair. When she does attempt to emote, I try to praise her for that.
What else can I do to draw this player further into the wonder of the game? Should I focus a few more scenes on her? Do I bite the bullet and have a private conversation or e-mail? What do you people suggest to bring the glory back to the game?
Spell said:talking to her might not bear the fruits you want, depending on the type of person she is. from what you say, i don't think it would help much.
maybe she's the type of player that is less interested by role playing and more about the tactical side of the game. if that's the case, you simply have to live with it: things are not going to change.
[snip]
1. make the XP rewards public. if she like to succeed so much, knowing that she is being given less XPs for roleplaying might be helpful to make her be so blase.
Cool. Don't forget to pop back in after a session or two and let us know how it went.Isida Kep'Tukari said:Thank you for all the thoughtful replies!
I will take full responsibility for the fact that I sound like an arrogant twerp in the original post for saying, "Well, everyone liked my FABULOUS descriptions but this one player!" There was probably a better way to phrase that. It also isn't just me. In the game that her husband DMs she does the same kind of thing, which means it's not a unique occurance.
Other players have noticed her roleplaying peculiarities, so I'm not hallucinating.
However, in the grand scheme of things, this is small potatoes. I've been in bad groups with bad players. Not as bad as some players (sorry Don!), but bad enough that I know I've been lucky.
And her roleplaying isn't really game-disrupting, it's just... There's a certain je ne sais quoi that's lacking. It's not even the fame-in-hiding thing, it's the blaseness... *sigh* It's difficult to describe. I know I have a pretty darn good gaming group going on here, and I just don't want this little quirk to turn into something that starts to bug the living snot out of me. So I'm trying to figure out a way to fix/compromise/learn to ignore it.
But, thanks to your advice, I will be going with some consequences to her desire for fame (the good and the bad). The doing the roleplaying XP as an average isn't a bad idea either, and I may give that a whirl. I think I'll also start writing out some specific "I really liked your roleplaying of dealing with that shopkeeper" type of notes to the players, or things of that sort.