Casual Player, Casual Roleplaying, Sucking the Wonder Away

[Tewligan]

to me, this is a bit like saying: "since you like your job, we'll stop paying you..."

Hobby =/= job

 

[DonTadow]

It sounds like you have a personal dislike for how this person plays her characters, which is, sad to say, tough noogies. .

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).

She's also playing a bard, and i remember my first bard character was a sort of know it all too. Whereas the character really didnt know it, he acted like he did. She could be going for that. Or her character may have come across it before or heard of it. Bards have a way of knowing about things. As a character levels in bard their bardic knowledge gets better. One way to explain this is that they have heard these tails from well before adventuring (and during) but their memory and recall is getting better. So for her to say "oh thats what that is" could be her recalling them.

If i was you, i'd eliminate the individual rpg bonuses for each person. It's very subjective and considering your biased is not fare for her. She's the wife of another player, so of course she knows what other players are getting and that can't possibley make her feel like one of the team. 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.



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

 

[billd91]

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

<rolling and.... action!>
"Don Tadow," <looks directly at camera> "Weirdness Magnet!"


<....and cut, OK we're clear. nice take...>

 

[Spell]

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.

man, this made me laugh so loud!
i am a musician myself, stuff like that has happened to me, and i can tell you, it's embarassing! one one hand, you are happy that someone likes you. on the other, they guy in question was a bit of a freak... i couldn't help but asking myself: "geee... ehm... should i be worried?!?!" luckily, things have gone better.
god bless them loud vocal ones!

 

[DonTadow]

to me, this is a bit like saying: "since you like your job, we'll stop paying you..."

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.

By changing your rp rules you'll be making a small step into making more cohesion in the game. Also, I'd pick up a copy of the dmg2. You got to identify the types of players you have and make the game for them. A prepared DM should always have overarching plots but the day to day stuff should be moved by the pcs. Ifshe wants to be famous, let her be famous. Help her make that famous character backstory. For 6 hours this is why she roleplays, why stop her from that because it inconveniences the way you've set up the world.

I have a player who makes every character a member of the same family for 3 straight campaigns. I know he'll do this so when i get his background i know i'm going to have to change some world stuff to make sure this family survives. I have a player who loves playing smart alleck characters with mysterious pasts, so I know I have to work a lot of plot elements into his mysteries. I got another character who makes a character to oppose the first character, every game without fails. I got to accomodate for this too.

Be happy to have players who want to come to your game every week and don't cause any ingame disruptions. If all she wants is a star on hollywood give it to her.

 

[Nellisir]

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.

If you have to give out individual XP bonuses, don't show them to anyone. Figure out bonuses for everyone, then add them together and divide equally between players. Reward the group rather than the individual, and encourage them to support one another.

 

[Isida Kep'Tukari]

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.

 

[woodelf]

[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?

I think you're dealing with someone who simply has a different goal for RPing than you do, and your options are (1) compromise or (2) don't play together. I say this because it sounds like an almost exact description of a player i knew. I don't think Paula plays RPGs in order to immerse herself in a rich detailed believable world.

Here's my little theory: the common element of all RPG players' motivations is escapism. However, what you want to escape in your real life, and thus what you want out of your fantasy life, varies tremendously. Some people have a dull life and want something more interesting--that's where the doing dangerous/daring things comes in. Some people feel unimportant and/or unliked in real life, so they want to play a rockstar or mover-and-shaker. And other people feel their talents are underappreciated, so they want to appear competent.

I think Paula is related to this last one: the appeal of an RPG is to not suffer the foibles and limitations of real life, to be hyper-competent and always in control of herself. Fear is a loss of control. And approaching the game from an in-game viewpoint leaves the player just as vulnerable as she would be in real life. By remaining distanced from the game--seeing it from an audience or author, rather than participant or actor, viewpoint--she is protecting herself from violating her escapism. IOW, the very actions that are ruining what makes the game appealing for you, are necessary for the game to be appealing to her.

Now, if she's like the player i've known who sounds the same, the good news is that what you want out of the game *doesn't* interfere with what she wants out of the game--it's not a mutual incompatibility, just a one-way incompatibility. So long as she both gets her moments to shine, and isn't forced to give up her complete control over her character (such as by suffering fear or being comically incompetent), your immersive RPing doesn't interfere with her fun. And don't mistake her need for competency and control for overcoming-obstacles gamism. It's related, but not quite the same. She's probably perfectly happy when she fails, so long as it's because the task was beyond her character's abilities, not because her character screwed up or was made to look a fool. Whereas a gamist is likely to be upset because the challenge was "unfair" if it was so hard that he never could've succeeded.

So, in short, there's likely nothing you can do. She's not there for the wonder. Treat her the same way you do the guy who only likes combat--quit trying to make them have your sort of fun, and don't worry about whether or not they're not having fun when you think they "should" be. The only difference is the combat-only guy doesn't interfere with your fun, because when you're not fighting, he just comes along for the ride. Paula's way of "not playing along" still involves her actively participating--unfortunately for the rest of the group. So, we're back to the beginning: your options are probably to compromise (i.e., allow her to not participate in the sense of wonder, and not immerse herself), or not play with her.

Oh, one other thing that came to mind: differing notions of the importance of verisimiltude, as well as what constitutes it. I have a player in my game right now who can't seem to wrap his head around the notion of anyone doing anything other than in the most optimal way. So if a spell of level X can give a +3 to soak, the notion of a level X spell existing that toughens the caster's skin and therefore gives +3 to soak and -1 to anything that requires a delicate sense of touch just doens't make sense--why would anyone have invented such a thing? The guidelines don't require it, so the fact that providing an in-world explanation of the toughening, and considering a reasonable ramification of that explanation, leads to it, apparently carries no weight. Whereas i--and i suspect you--see the spell that has an in-world mechanism as the more obvious.

 

[woodelf]

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.

Unless, of course, she knows exactly how she gets her fun, and then you might just be punishing her for having her kind of fun, instead of your kind of fun.

 

[shilsen]

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.

Cool. Don't forget to pop back in after a session or two and let us know how it went.