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

[Voadam]

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.

Wow, yes it is quite different IME, our group is two lawyers, two former-fireman, and an engineer.

No drugs, sex, or guns at the game table IRL in over 20 years of playing with these guys.

My condolences on the loss of your friend who shot himself.

 

[FoolishFrost]

This is the reason I play mostly D&D/d20 instead of WoD. I got very, Very, VERY tired of having to psych profile all of my players to make sure they weren't going to become freaks in short order...

I will NOT get in to the horror stories I have seen, but I have to say this:

RPGs seem to have the sad side effect of attracting nutcases. Much in the same way a bar attracts alcoholics...

You just have to filter the ones that become or attract problems... Sometimes you just need to do it with a crowbar. Alot.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

Sometimes I get freaked out by the stuff I see over at Something Awful. This is the first time I have been revolted and afraid after coming to ENWorld. specifically I am talking about the neck acne guy. Even the poop guy is not nearly as frightening, though it may have been if I knew him.

And here I am thinking I am some great storyteller of freaks because I knew a guy in my dorm who lost his dice in the folds of fat on his body. I am blown away by the sheer morbid creepiness.

Though, to be fair, and I believe it was said above me somewhere, the d20 people are nowhere near as horrid as some of the WoD people I have come across. The d20 geeks are smelly and socially inept. The WoD people often make me fear for my life (and actually, their own).

 

[Krieg]

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 wouldn't say that. A good portion of the folks I gamed with for years after I got out of the 'Corps (including myself) were bartenders, doormen & servers.

We all managed to carry on productive relatively normal lives despite our weird hours and copious intake of alcohol...

Have you read the RPGNet story about the guy who wore diapers so that he wouldn't have to do breaks during the game session?

That was the story that I was referring to specifically when I made my post.

The truly scary thing is that he didn't wear diapers, he would just void on himself.

He only wore diapers to a convention so that he would not be kicked out for defecating upon himself...as he had been the preivous year!!

Things that make you go....Hmmm....arrrgghh....ralphh....blech.

 

[rowport]

The hobby doesn't make these people. I'd wager that most were sad, lost or broken long before they encountered gaming, as we can see in the case of S. They game for the same reasons the rest of us do. It's liberating, expansive, and utterly opposed to the mundane. The way in which well adjusted gamers differ from those poor souls is that we have something else to go back to and lives to lead when the books close and the game ends. Who knows, maybe the game provides some joy in an otherwise miserable life. For that I'm willing to accept them as compatriots in our lil hobby, just not neccessarily at my game table.

Fafhrd-

This is a really interesting point. I will have to think more about it. I am not sure that I am quite that forgiving a soul, as to overlook the kind of behaviors cited here, but maybe I need to be less critical. *shrug* Honestly, I suppose that I would rather encounter somebody who I find repulsive (i.e. Poop Boy) that somebody who I find repugnant (i.e. Widow Thief). Still, my gut reaction would be to avoid both of them entirely. :\

 

[Belen]

This is just a freaking thread. A lot of people are watching it. I have never encountered this level of bad before.

I once gamed with a guy who later told me that he could do real magic of the black variety (luckily, we no longer gamed together when he told me).

Other than that, the worst is some people that felt the need to disappear during gaming breaks to smoke pot, which eventually ended my involvement with that group.

 

[Mr. Kaze]

A minor entry...

It's relatively mild as there's no body count, claims of the supernatural, or criminal activity -- this is much more mild than the rest of that.

So a hyper drama queen/novice player/my wife's friend wanted to play a leatherette rogue in the game I was starting to replace a previous DM -- it fit her style very well. And I figured that this was okay. And it was okay, in the way that novice players vs. stock modules is "okay" in a painful way that ends in much bloodshed, except for one thing that happened around level 4:

Me: "The beach is swarming with vicious, evil pirates. It's doubtful that your group can take them in a straight fight."

Her: <Enthusiastically Role-Playing> "I know how we can get by them... I'll dress up as a shipwrecked maiden and then swoooon into their midst. They'll be so distracted with concern for me that they won't notice everybody else sneak by!"

<Stunned Gawking Silence>

Other Players: "Uh. No."

Having NPCs flirt with her -- something the previous DM had refused to do with any of the NPCs to female characters -- was one thing. The first time it happened, my wife laughed at the rogue's shocked embarrassment. But you know, letting her be the centerpiece of an pirate orgy was just way the heck out of bounds.

::Kaze (happily notes that the other freakish behaviors at his table were more eccentric than creepy)

 

[rgard]

Creepiest player? I think we have a winner.

Worse than creepy. I bet he has to register with the local police whenever he moves.

 

[rgard]

<snip>

He also started off every combat by throwing a spear into the nearest orc and yelling, "Hold my spear, F***er!" which I found sort of endearing.

Thanks, that is great!

 

[rgard]

<snip>

but the wiredest "player" i ever met was back when i was still at home in St.Lucia. this american woman (i think she was peace corps) found out we played and approached us at the bar we hung out at. i say "player" coz we never actually gamed with her and it wasn't even the joker grin that she had plastered on her face the entire time she talked to you, or her strange habit of yelling out "interestiiiiiiiiiiiing!!!!!" and "that's so, intrestiiiiiiiiiing!!!" in response to everything you said. it was her insistence that she wanted to play a hermaphrodite half-elf bard with a 12" ... no not the "d" word, the "c" one. *shudder*

~NegZ

I'm reading these from the beginning of the thread and that is the best example of creepy yet.