D&D 5E Dealing with a trouble player and a major blow up

[billd91]

That's one piece of this I don't have an issue with.

They're romantic partners! They shouldn't be keeping secrets from each other. It isn't like there's legal issues or professional ethics involved. You should have no expectation that your friendship trumps their relationship, or that she otherwise won't speak to him about things you say.

Baloney. It's not a secret, per se, but it was information that predated the romantic relationship that could do nothing but further undermine the relationship between MO and Mr. Tantrum. As such, she should have kept her trap shut. Romantic relationships don't mean you throw other friends under the bus for your partner.

 

[steeldragons]

Right.

Soooo, that's me done, then.

Majoru, I wish you happy gaming....you won't have any, but I'll wish it for you at some point, some future time, when you grow/wise up, nonetheless.

Come and complain and vent any time you want...since, of course, you will have to as the bad behavior and dysfunction will continue unabated. BUT you'll have a couple of "mutual friends" [that apparently you care enough about to fear "losing"] and some girl-who's-dating-an--instead-of-you sitting at tables of games you're in/running...so...BULLY for you!

Don't expect a shred of sympathy or advice. But feel free to come complain more.

See ya 'round the forums.

 

[JackOfAllTirades]

The thread at large hasn't exactly been a place of warm fuzzies or avoiding being judgmental. Kudos to Jester for giving a heartfelt apology (or, at least, an apology that reads heartfelt to me) though.

Amen.

 

[JamesonCourage]

They're romantic partners! They shouldn't be keeping secrets from each other.

Off-topic, but I always thought this was a really stupid policy. I've seen one relationship in real life where this works (and I'm involved in that relationship). Outside of that, nope. Some level of secrets and holding back is necessary for peace. And I don't think that's a bad thing, or a cynical thing. But that's just me.

If it works for select other relationships out there, awesome. It works for me and my best friend, but I think she and I are definitely the exception to the "keep no secrets" rule (and we don't even date).

(If Umbran meant more of a 'no secrets on decisions that affect both parties in the relationship,', I can get more on board. But even then, not completely.)

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Majoru, I wish you happy gaming....you won't have any, but I'll wish it for you at some point, some future time, when you grow/wise up, nonetheless.

I enjoy gaming most for the story and the chatter around the table. To me, it's always been like watching a movie with a bunch of friends and making mocking comments throughout the whole thing. Sometimes we get to make some decisions to steer the direction of the story and sometimes we get to grandstand by talking in a funny voice and "inflicting" our character's personality on everyone else.

I'll continue to have fun doing that regardless of whether he is there or not. In fact, given that most of the time he sits there at the table saying almost nothing at all is precisely what makes it just fine. I pretend he isn't there and he laughs at my stupid jokes. To me, is isn't the cause of my fun but he isn't much of a hindrance most of the time. When he pulls crap like this it makes me frustrated. So, yes, I vent by making a post about it.

But I show up because of the joy or roleplaying out the stupid situations we've come across. We're making up new characters for our Sunday game because a mutual friend of ours, Dave, is becoming our new DM. He is going to run Princes of the Apocalypse for us. It'll be me, my roommate, Mr. Tantrum, his gf, and 2 more mutual friends.

Our DM is running the game in Eberron and we've all gotten together to make up characters already. His gf has decided that she's a pirate who used to own an airship but it crashed(since the DM didn't want us having an airship). Meanwhile, my roommate decided to play the most pathetic character ever. He is a halfling Urchin who saved up money his whole like to buy a hovel in the woods, only to have it destroyed by a falling airship. I'm playing a Dwarven Ranger with 8 Intelligence who was literally raised by wolves and comes across them in order to help them all find their way back to civilization. Unfortunately, the rest of our party's character concepts are "I'm a Rogue", "I'm a Warlock", and "I'll decide on something eventually". The Rogue and Warlock seem to both be members of the airship crew since they had no other ideas for their characters. The Warlock is the guy in question since, as I said above, he plays nothing other than Warlocks(or monks) with no back story.

But I can already see the fun ensuing from the interactions between our characters. At least the 3 of us. Since I will enjoy that interaction enough, the other players really don't matter. We need enough people to play in order to make sure we don't die. But I've been playing Organized Play for years. I'm used to showing up for a table in a public location and having 3 of the people at the table be pretty much completely useless or extremely annoying. I've learned to tune them out and figure out which members of the group know how to roleplay and engage with them.

 

[Umbran]

(If Umbran meant more of a 'no secrets on decisions that affect both parties in the relationship,', I can get more on board. But even then, not completely.)

I did mean it in a broad and general sense. More in line with the simple fact that their romantic relationship is going to trump other relationships in terms of privacy. She may not tell him literally everything, but you should not *expect* her to keep any particular secret for you, especially concerning her SO.

I mean, think about it - if the subject of the game come up, and they were, say, discussing some level of dissatisfaction, the GM's attitude toward him becomes quite relevant. You figure she's going to bite her tongue about it?

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Off-topic, but I always thought this was a really stupid policy. I've seen one relationship in real life where this works (and I'm involved in that relationship). Outside of that, nope. Some level of secrets and holding back is necessary for peace. And I don't think that's a bad thing, or a cynical thing. But that's just me.

If it works for select other relationships out there, awesome. It works for me and my best friend, but I think she and I are definitely the exception to the "keep no secrets" rule (and we don't even date).

(If Umbran meant more of a 'no secrets on decisions that affect both parties in the relationship,', I can get more on board. But even then, not completely.)

I'm in agreement. I expected that we'd been friends for so many years that she would say "Alright, we're dating now, you have to stop insulting him. I like him and it's annoying." but I didn't expect her to go "Oh, and I told him everything you said because we were talking about it one day." Especially given they had only been dating for 3 weeks or something. But then again, nothing about their relationship seemed normal.

One day she was making fun of him along side me and the next she's moving in with him after 3 dates. She also spent the last 4 years making fun of people who would play MMORPGs, she'd go on about how stupid WoW was and how people were wasting their time. We got kind of tired of her rants, to be fair. But he loved WoW. She tried it "just to make him feel like she had tried". Now, she's in a raiding group that meets 3 days a week and we aren't allowed to do anything at all together on those 3 days because she HAS to be online those 3 days every week to play. Plus, she's forcing us all to build costumes for the premiere of the Warcraft movie.

She's the sort of woman who is willing to completely subsume her own personality for the sake of a relationship. I've seen her do it before. Her ex bf used to constantly verbally abuse her and she'd end up agreeing with him half the time.

She dates people who are not good for her at all but then completely looks past all their flaws and spends 100% of her time with them and changes all her opinions to agree with them. It's probably not healthy but she's been doing it for the 12 or so years that I've known her for. It's really not my place to say anything about it. But I worry about her sometimes.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

One day she was making fun of him along side me and the next she's moving in with him after 3 dates. She also spent the last 4 years making fun of people who would play MMORPGs, she'd go on about how stupid WoW was and how people were wasting their time. We got kind of tired of her rants, to be fair. But he loved WoW. She tried it "just to make him feel like she had tried". Now, she's in a raiding group that meets 3 days a week and we aren't allowed to do anything at all together on those 3 days because she HAS to be online those 3 days every week to play. Plus, she's forcing us all to build costumes for the premiere of the Warcraft movie.

She's the sort of woman who is willing to completely subsume her own personality for the sake of a relationship. I've seen her do it before. Her ex bf used to constantly verbally abuse her and she'd end up agreeing with him half the time.

Smells strongly of low self-esteem, to me.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

So, Majoru Oakheart, I apologize again for calling you a wuss. But I wish you'd stiffen up and do the right thing here.

I understand where you are coming from and I REALLY considered it. But I wasn't just making a decision for me. My roommate looks forward to playing this game every week since he joined a short while ago. He's an interesting case himself, but he doesn't have a job or a car and he doesn't much like leaving the house. He's pretty much told me that if I choose not to game with them anymore that means he can't go anymore. He's made it clear to me(since he likes to point out to me, repeatedly and half seriously, that one day he will kill me in my sleep and doesn't care about my feelings...it's his thing) that his not going has nothing to do with solidarity with me or friendship but because he couldn't be bothered catching a bus every week to go to their house. But that I should understand that if I left he would leave the group as well and he'd be disappointed about having to leave.

Leaving means no longer being friends with his gf. I don't like ending 12 year friendships over something this small.

I understand that putting my foot down would feel good and would make a point. I'm just not sure it would accomplish anyone. He has the mentality of a 4 year old. I expect that he'll respond like one in any serious discussion about what happened. And he's gf will support him even if she disagrees with him because...well, see the above post about her and relationships.

Also, I think you may have to write off the girlfriend. It doesn't sound like she has a problem with the present situation, and her willingness to break your confidence vis-a-vis the bf doesn't speak well of her. It also sounds like she values her relationship with him more than her relationship with you. I dunno about this part, but your reluctance to address all the questions about her in this thread seems to kind of say something in itself. Could be that there's a lot of reading in in those questions; could be that there's something there you're not consciously aware of; could be that there's an ugly kernel of jealousy somewhere in the mix. I don't know. But it really sounds like she's chosen who she's with, despite your opinion of the guy.

I just didn't want to get into it because of the complication of the story. But since I've told half of it a couple of posts up, here's the deal:

She dated a guy for years, since I've known her. He was horrible to her. She wasn't allowed to do anything with us unless he said it was ok. He used to call her an idiot and stupid repeatedly right to her face in a group with 5 other people. She'd often agree with him to get him to stop. She had to leave in the middle of D&D games before because her bf would call and demand that she came home immediately because of something stupid like his inability to find something. She'd apologize profusely and you can tell she didn't want to go, but she'd leave anyways because she has a fanatical devotion to whoever she is dating. But when he wasn't around, you could see her real personality shining through...and I liked her.

But she was dating someone and devoted to him so I stayed away. When they broke up though, she turned to me for a place to live. We started hanging out and watching movies together and it was fun. It only lasted a month before she started dating this new guy, however.

I was going to ask her out but she had just broken up with a guy after years of being together. I felt I should give her at least a couple of months to get over the relationship before I even tried to move in.

After I found out that she started dating the new guy, I was flabbergasted, I admit. We had a conversation about it where I brought up my concerns that maybe she was moving too fast and that she was on the rebound and just looking for the first guy to come along and maybe she should give herself some time before dating anyone at all.

I believe she made some comment that she didn't pick the first person to come along, that she wasn't dating ME, was she? I think I asked why it would be so bad to date me and she pretty much said that she was not attracted to me in any way, shape, or form. That the idea of dating me was something she could just not comprehend. I cried that day and moved on. No use pining after something that was impossible. Besides, after she said that, my desire to date her went completely out the window.

But as for how it relates to the guy. I disliked the guy and was complaining about him for months before I had any inkling that she liked him. I never even considered the possibility of her dating him because...well, he was kind of an idiot and I didn't think she'd do that to herself. So, I was never jealous of him. I just didn't like the way he played D&D. And, really, his personality in general. I admit the day I found out he didn't know what the word constable meant(or how to pronounce it) and had to suffer through an adventure read in monotone where I had absolutely NO idea what the adventure was about by the end because I don't think even HE knew what it was about, was the day that I completely lost it and haven't had any respect for him since then. It was one of the worst D&D experiences of my life and he was singlehandedly the worst DM I've ever seen. And that's saying something, in my travels I've met some bad DMs.

When they started dating, it was one of the worst days of my life, I admit. Not only was a woman I liked dating someone else, but it was someone I couldn't stand and could see no conceivable reason why she'd pick him over me. Also, it meant solidifying him in our friend pool since being friends with her meant being friends with him.

But over the years, I've learned the proper way to handle the situation and fit in the best I can. I limit my interaction with him to non-emotional topics. I can discuss how we both feel about a D&D class or a new board game. I don't talk to him about relationships. I no longer bring up my objections to their relationship. I have my own girlfriend who I'm happy with. I don't have any desire to date his gf any more. I still think she should dump him because she's my friend and I see him as a corrupting influence on her. I think he holds her back from realizing her true potential and as her friend I'd like to see her reach that. Plus, then he wouldn't be around anymore which would remove one more annoyance from my life.

So, in short, I don't think my feelings towards her were the cause of the problem. But because I care about her well being it probably makes my annoyance with him worse.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Smells strongly of low self-esteem, to me.

I agree. Though there isn't much I can do about it. And she'll say it's the exact opposite. She'll tell you that she wears the pants in the relationship and her bf will do anything she tells him to. But that isn't true at all. She's wanted to come to GenCon with us for years but he kept saying that he wasn't sure it would be fun and therefore she'd always change her mind at the last minute.

They've decided to go to BlizzCon this year instead of GenCon but they said that they MIGHT go again next year. I'm not holding out hope.