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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elf Witch" data-source="post: 3212278" data-attributes="member: 9037">I often read how players are driving the DM crazy by their behavior and the DMs come  and wring their hands asking for advice on how to handle the problem player. Now granted I am sure that a lot of the times the player or players are at fault but after a conversation with a friend and DM last night I wonder if sometimes the DMs have not created the problems by their actions.The DM in question was complaining about the lack of team work and the hostile behavior that some of the players are showing at the table. For example my roommate who plays in the game is often playing her cleric as very judgemental and critical of the other characters.He wanted my advice on how to get her to chill. Well he seemed really shocked to find out that the reason she is acting this way is because of the fact that two of the players are hoarding magic items they find. Now since her character does not know it she cannot address it in character but the player sits at the table and hears and sees the players looting and hiding items while she is busy tending to wounds of the other players. And her anger at the situation is coming out in character.He was like well I can't help that they are doing this. he seemed really surprised when I pointed out by letting them constanly find magic items that he knew they were not going to share was going to cause problems because their wealth is now much higher than the other players. He should have become proactive and talked to the players and suggest that they stop the hoarding or just stop putting so much magic in their hands. As for lack of team effort well he has allowed lone wolf behavior and rewarded it, one of the players is going off on his own a lot and doing things wothout including the others now this DM does not like to railroad his players so he has gone along with it and though he has thrown somethings that should have really hurt the character or even killed it they have overcome it so to be fair the DM has given them XP and treasure for overcoming the obstucles so now this one player is two levels higher than everyone else and has more wealth than anyone else. So now the rest of the players are trying lone wolf tactics to gain extra XP and goodies and the game bogs down with one player getting the spotlight while the rest twiddle their thumbs. He can't see how he helped cause this situation.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" /> When I pointed out to him he could have killed the character by throwing out an impossble encounter or he could have not given the amount of XP and treasure that he did he was like but that would not have been fair. Fair to who? The other players who had to sit there while they  did the encounter he then told me no he got together with the one player on a different day and ran him through the encounter so the others would not be bored.So not only did the guy get extra XP enough to level two levels higher plus a ton of gold he got to have a one on one session with the DM to boot. So I suggested he maybe give each player the same chance and he told me that it would be impossible to schedule and that it worked with the one player because they also socialize out of the game they have been friends for over 20 years.So I pointed out that that just made it look like favortism and he just seemed totally clueless and kept protesting that he treats all the players the same and that he does not abuse his DM power and that he does not ever railroad.He just does not seem to get it that in his quest for being fair and not ever railroading or what he thinks as taking away a player's freedom of choice that he is just making the problems in the game worse.My final suggestion was that he take it all out of game amd talk to the players and let them talk and see if they can work out the issues.So was I wrong in thinking that the DM did have a lot to do with this mess?</blockquote>

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