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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kichwas" data-source="post: 6710816" data-attributes="member: 891">The next time you get a player like this, use Inspiration Points "AT THE START OF THINGS" before it gets to be an issue.Set up and Inspiration Point system (DMG pg. 240-241) with these variations:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Inspiration Points are awarded for Inspirational Actions that are Highly Genre Inspiring. Even if those actions go strongly against roleplay and character.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">By contrast actions that are great roleplay and highly in character, but go against genre, can result in Inspiration Point Penalties.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Inspiration Points are given to the player, not the character. They can even be rewarded as a result of character death, failure, or exit from the campaign.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Inspiration Points only stick around for 3 sessions after being earned.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">You can bank up to 6 Inspiration Points, instead of the DMG limit of 1. You can burn up to 2 at a time.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If you have negative inspiration, it will be used by the DM against you, as if your opponent had inspiration at an important moment where your actions might be essential to group or self victory, but are not being chosen specifically to advance genre. You can have up to 3 negative inspiration banked against you, they will only be used one at a time, and they can last up to 3 sessions from being earned. Earning an Inspiration point wipes out 2 negative points (so if you are at -1, you will be at 1 banked).</li> </ul>Now make a list of 3 to 10 things that will inspire you to hand out inspiration, and a list half as big of thing that will cause you to subtract it.- The point of the above is to have a carrot and a stick, but the carrot is bigger than the stick. The carrot can in fact get unbalancingly big... why? Because if your players start acting amazingly within your genre rules, more than likely the fun factor will be so much greater that people won't mind the loss of some of the challenge.It is also always useful to actively encourage people to sabotage their own characters in the interests of dramatic fun. Many players will balk at the idea, but over the years some of the best tales of RPG-play come from the heroic character who bought it with flare.Now... you have to set up a system like this at day one. You can't use something like this to repair a damaged situation because players will be on to you by then... you need to put something in place ahead of time, so it feels fair up front to everyone, and so that your potential problem player ends up using his 'self interest' altruistically without knowing it... Comes away thinking he is an amazing player for being so self-sacrificing, and never catches on that he's a puppy that's just been trained to do a trick. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />Best of all, if done early enough YOU might never learn which of your players was the one that was going to end up being a problem otherwise...</blockquote>

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