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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6646347" data-attributes="member: 5143">I'm not entirely sure about this one.  I've also met quite a few players over the years in Organized Play.  Most D&D players ARE fine, I agree, but there are quite a few bad apples as well.  Especially in OP where just being slightly annoying isn't against any rules and therefore the DM has to tolerate it.  I certainly couldn't see myself ever telling Dave Christ when DMing at GenCon that I kicked someone out of my table who paid money to be there simply because he was annoying.I've seen the gamut of personality types over the years.  Unfortunately, OP sometimes attracts powergamers who like to "win".  The guy in question has a number of those traits.  The problem is that he started playing D&D in Organized Play and not in a home game.  Some of my existing friends like to become twice as powergamey in Organized Play as they are in any other game.So he was taught early that completing the adventure was the number one priority in D&D.  You want to get to the end.  That means being the best at combat so that you can defeat all the challenges since they will all be very hard.  It means maximizing the skills that get asked for the most often.  It means not talking to an NPC unless you have the highest social skills in the party because the DM might ask you to roll them if you speak.  And succeeding in that roll might make the difference between finding a magic item in the adventure or getting a bunch of bonus XP.I love Organized Play but it can bring out the worst in some gamers.  My roommate can sometimes get very angry at people for not following the "unspoken rules" of the game.  Like: "All players have to take their share of the damage.  Anyone hiding in the back and refusing to ever get hit is not contributing and deserves to die.  After all, they are letting everyone else take the damage for them...so they are letting you die."So, I don't entirely blame his gaming attitude on him.  He was taught it by the people at our Living Forgotten Realms tables.  Though, the rest of the people I know relax that attitude when we switch to home games because it is a different atmosphere.  Also, they take it a little bit less seriously.  If someone with a CHA of 8 talks to an NPC and rolls a 9 when a 10 was needed to get a magic item in the adventure, they'll be disappointed and probably even say "Why did you do that?  Don't do that again!" but the guy in question will spend the next year in a backlash against anyone who even thinks about opening their mouth without an 18 CHA.  If someone does, he'll sulk for the next 30 minutes of the game.But D&D players are VERY different from one another.  Contrast the behaviour I'm used to that I just described above with a group I met using D&D Meetup.  The owner of the group said he doesn't really like to roll for initiative.  In 4e, he doesn't really like people to use a battlemap or minis.  He doesn't really feel the strict need to give people only one action a round.  If you need 2 and it's fun, you can go ahead and do that.  He doesn't really like the idea of people choosing an exact power to use.  Everyone in his group had incorrect bonuses in nearly every box on their character sheets but no one cared because the numbers were almost never used.Although the over-optimizing I'm used to can sometimes drive me insane, I was completely unable to stand the game with no rules and no structure.  I had to quit that game quickly.</blockquote>

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