Creepy Player Habits - WARNING: reading may require a Sanity Check!

[VirgilCaine]

I played percussion in the school band for 3 years and gamed for 3 years with a guy who killed someone right after high school because, "I wanted to see what it was like." He made sure he did it before he was 18 because, "I didn't want to get punished as an adult. I'm still a kid, so what can they do?"

He took two friends, though I somehow doubt the victim was a friend really, to a place out in the country to shoot at targets. When the "friend" went down to change the targets he was shot repeatedly. At the end he walked down and put another one in the kids head to make sure. The other 'friend' just went along with things until they got home and he could tell his parents. I was always amazed that nobody dragged the D&D angle into it, as this happened in the 1980s.

He was always a little off at the game table and instigated a few fist fights, but I never had a clue he was that off.

Okay, thats cold. Killing a friend? Not even someone creepy or old or a random person, but a friend of yours, just to see what it was like?

My guess is that the psychic deformation seems too extensive for rehabilitation. That one's only good for pig food.

Man, where to start?

Then the guy who burst into our Saturday night game with an arsenal of firearms, all cranked up on whatever. I'd never met him before, so everyone had to speak fairly quickly to keep him from pushing a pistol at me. After he took some more pills he pulled out a character sheet and played the game as if he were a regular member of the party...with a pile of guns underneath his pillows on the floor.

Thats one way to make sure the DM accepts your characters uberl00t.
Although, I have to say I might have shot him first, coming in all armed like that.

 

[VirgilCaine]

.........................

 

[Drifter Bob]

Man, where to start?

There's the guy who wasn't really all that creepy most of the time, except years later when everyone got called to testify in court because the cops finally had enough evidence to prove that he had bashed his ex-wife's head in with a brick and then laid her across the train tracks because he wanted to see his kid.

Then the guy who burst into our Saturday night game with an arsenal of firearms, all cranked up on whatever. I'd never met him before, so everyone had to speak fairly quickly to keep him from pushing a pistol at me. After he took some more pills he pulled out a character sheet and played the game as if he were a regular member of the party...with a pile of guns underneath his pillows on the floor.

One of my friends killed himself with a shotgun early one Saturday morning. They had barely taken away the body when apparently one of the other players showed up and said, "I just heard, can I have X's Magic Cards?" and walked in and tried to take them from the grieving widow.

I've had players go out for snacks during a break and end up in prison, players literally knocking down walls of the house we were playing in, thieves, creepy molester type guys, pauses for drug deals, pauses for sex, sex at the game table, general inappropriateness, fistfights, knives drawn, unexpected revelations about sexual orientation and disturbing crushes , and unwanted sexual advances in general. I've even had a fire started by a disgruntled player kicked out for this crap.

I think only the potty-pants guy over at RPG.net really significantly overshadows my own experiences with creepy and disturbing players, but at least I'm confident that anyone doing that around any of my players would probably face a lot more significant peril than social rejection. Guns Guy would probably make him eat his own teeth, for instance.

Just to be clear though, most of these 'creepy' people weren't really bad people (except the murderer and magic cards guy). They were just screwed up young people like myself at the time that I and my friends were around already because of work or whatever and we just were really good at getting EVERYONE to game with us. And when everyone works in 'shady professions' and bars for the most part, well I guess it's probably different than when your players are all lawyers and firemen.

I have had a lot of similar experiences here in New Orleans. Your post was very amusing. I think I game in a similar demographic (or used to)

DB

 

[Drifter Bob]

Then the guy who burst into our Saturday night game with an arsenal of firearms, all cranked up on whatever. I'd never met him before, so everyone had to speak fairly quickly to keep him from pushing a pistol at me. After he took some more pills he pulled out a character sheet and played the game as if he were a regular member of the party...with a pile of guns underneath his pillows on the floor.

Just do go further with the idea of how different a gaming demographic can get...

When I was just out of the army, I had these friends who lived in this big house in what was then a really bad neighborhood in new orleans on Jackson Avenue. Their address was actually 911. It was a big bachelor pad where you could do whatever you liked and a constant 'party' was going on. We all used to go over there and play rpg's and wargames all the time with this very eclectic mix of people, punk rockers, skinheads, wierd gamer types, musicians, bartenders, drug dealers, waitresses, buggy drivers (the worst of the lot!)

At one point we got really into this homebrew game which was set in a post apocalypse, kind of road-warrior setting. Sometimes we used to do scenarios where it was like, the Public Warning is on the TV, the world is going to end in five minutes, what do you do? We used to argue about what survivalist gear we could actually get our hands on. One night we decided to call everybodies bluff, and have everybody show up with the weapons and other major survival gear they could actually get a hold of.

Everybody showed up with guns and swords and knives bows, crossbows, pipes, bats, helmets and flak jackets and gas masks and other less mentionable items. I think we had gotten a little warped at this point as a group from too much constant drinking and drugs. The scariest guy was the really hyper Nicaraguan kid whose dad was some kind of Contra or something and was a gun dealer. He showed up with this van full of machine guns and sniper rifles and stuff, all kinds of communication equipment and everything. A lot more impresssive than my bayonett and my .25 automatic.

We ended up getting really drunk and shooting some guns off on the front porch which was always a generally good policy since the place was only half a block from the St. Thomas housing project, and it helped to project an alarming image in the nieghborhood.

It all seemed like a whole lot of fun, but by the middle of the week we had through several phone discussions that we wouldn't ever do that again.

Those wild days of my youth are largely behind me now, these days guns stay locked up safely far away, but I still like to have a few swords and daggers lying around the table as props....


DB

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

OMG...I'd forgotten about this until my wife reminded me. This guy she dated before me was a gamer as well as owning a couple of bookstores that also sold RPG's. Besides selling and renting porn to minors, he killed his fiancee and another man. After a manhunt lasting several months and covering several states, he was arrested and convicted.

 

[Droid101]

It's probably better for your Sanity.

However, if you should someday decide to read it, for the Love of God do not google for any of the names found there!

There are many people who wished that they had heard this advice before reading it...

What names? I googled a couple and didn't find anything.

???

 

[JesterPoet]

and THEN HE ATE IT!!!! Urrrrrhhhh!!!! I ran from the table because I thought that I was going to puke.

Well, that just made my yogurt significantly less enjoyable.

 

[Droid101]

What names? I googled a couple and didn't find anything.

???

Nevermind, found it... :: puke ::

 

[Anabstercorian]

Wimp.

 

[Nisarg]

Well, I guess the next time I make a post about the problems gaming faces with "cat-piss men" and the need for us to police our own gaming tables and FLGSs more effectively, and I get the regular bunch of ostriches telling me that no such problems exist or that I'm being cruel or that its not gamer's fault its "society's prejudice", I'll just post a link to this thread (and the RPG.net one, which is far worse).

In my case, I've run into a lot of people with serious hygene or social retardation issues, but nothing on the level of the stories in this thread.

I suppose that the most extreme case I ran into was the guy who had an unhealthy obsession with the kid who played Anakin Skywalker in Phantom Menace. That was one of a number of wierd and annoying things that led me to kick him out of my gaming group; another was the fact that he was a 27 year old still living in his mom's house... which in and of itself is a serious social problem but not uncommon among gamers, only this guy is the only one I ever met who STILL HAD A CURFEW. His mom would call him at around 11pm to remind him he had to be home by midnight (our games usually ran to 3am) and if he didn't go home his brother would come by to pick him up (the whole family seemed very strange to me).
When I told him not to come back he broke into tears, and on three seperate occasions he came back on a gaming night to try to get back in.. the first time he actually tried to convince my players to "refuse to play" until I brought him back (they all but laughed in his face), and the last time he came back was about six months after he'd been kicked out and over three since any of us had seen him.

Anyways, that's only some of the annoying things about him, but even with all that he doesn't really compare to the rest of the examples in this thread.

Nisarg