DM-player conflict; input appreciated

[Joshua Randall]

I am going to make a controversial statement: I think that ForceUser should stop running his campaign the way he has been running it.

I think he should take a deep breath, read the first few sections of the DMG II, and remember that the goal of the game is to have fun -- not for the DM to force the players to behave a certain way. As someone once said, if you want total control over the characters, you're a novelist, not a DM.

It is completely reasonable and possible for a DM to run a game that includes both in-depth roleplaying and massive amounts of beatdown. It is completely reasonable for a DM to swallow his self-created notions of what a cleric "should be" and realize that the D&D classes are just words -- the cleric can represent a whole spectrum of characters, just as the wizard can represent anyone from Merlin to Gandalf to Elric to Harry Potter.

I also think the other players should get off their high horses and stop thinking that their way of playing is superior to Bob's. It's not. It's just different. If you cannot get over the fact that different people prefer different playstyles, then maybe you shouldn't be playing.

 

[fusangite]

Moogle has it absolutely right. You guys are mistaking Bob for a power gamer/munchkin. A power gamer/munchkin operates as efficiently as he possibly can within the rules of the game. Thus, if the rules of the game require that priests follow the teachings of their god and operate within the parameters set by the alignment system, a power gamer will be as powerfully kick-ass as humanly possible while adhering to the teachings of their character's god and following their alignment. Bob's not willing to do that.

Bob, instead, is demanding that rules that involve roleplay not apply to him. Basically, he is demanding an unfair advantage over every other player in the group and, if he doesn't get his way, he has a tantrum. This is not power gamer behaviour. This is jerk behaviour.

A middle ground can only be reached if both of the parties are prepared to compromise. I have yet to hear from the GM of a single thing on which he can get Bob to move. Bob believes he should be able to unilaterally choose his character class without requiring the approval of the GM. He believes that he should be able to select which PC conduct rules apply to him, again unilaterally.

Now, if, by compromise, those of your suggesting this course of action mean, "do whatever Bob wants," then I suppose ForceUser can just continue "compromising" as he has all along with this player. Also, to those of you who suggest that the entire campaign plot and world cosmology be re-written for Bob, GMs should write stuff that is fulfilling for them and the majority of their players. If you're going to get together with Bob every week and let him have his own special set of rules, chosen unilaterally by him, that apply just to his character and have everyone adventure in a world whose cosmology and plot have been specifically designed to accommodate him, you're not playing D&D anymore; you're playing Fellate Bob.

My advice: claim you have decided not to run the campaign and pick a new night to get together with a new group of players (many of whom may be in the current group) and don't tell Bob. If confrontation is unacceptable and caving is unacceptable, stealth is the only option that remains.

 

[Ahrimon]

Have you thought about a class modification to cater to Bob. One that keeps him happy but takes out the contentions with his views on clerics.

Call it a Magic Warrior or whatever. Remove the the healing spells, turn undead, and domains from the cleric and give him all martial weapons and maybee something else to make up for it. Then he's playing a what he wants. A self buffing "warrior" type while removing the conection to the way that the rest of the group feels clerics should be run.

Tell him: "Look Bob, I understand what you want to play, but the cleric, as the rest of the group feels it should be run, doesn't mesh with your playing style. So I came up with an alternitive that should match what you want as a player, while keeping the rest of us, and the game world, working as intended. What do you think?"

If you show a comprimise that caters to him, the rest of the group, and the campaign and he's still unwilling to budge then all I can say to you is good luck and it would probably be the best thing to remove him from the game. I would hate to do it personally. I'm sure it would cause things to be tense between everyone for a while. But in the end, I'd say everyone elses enjoyment is more important than just his.

Good luck to you.

 

[G-Monkey]

I told Bob to just request a list of tenants...

You mean tenets? ;-)

I haven't been able to read every post on this thread, but it all looks like good advice. I had a similar (although probably not as extreme) player in my last group, and he was my closest friend of the group. (I was DM) We just all learned to deal with it, because we were friends first and D&D players second. But it did get tedious at times.

Here's an idea I haven't seen suggested: How does the player's diety feel about all this? Perhaps the diety can visit the player in a dream - if the cleric isn't following his god's ways, why would the god continue to grant the cleric spells and powers? A warning might be apropos.

 

[Hjorimir]

I am going to make a controversial statement: I think that ForceUser should stop running his campaign the way he has been running it.

I think he should take a deep breath, read the first few sections of the DMG II, and remember that the goal of the game is to have fun -- not for the DM to force the players to behave a certain way. As someone once said, if you want total control over the characters, you're a novelist, not a DM.

It is completely reasonable and possible for a DM to run a game that includes both in-depth roleplaying and massive amounts of beatdown. It is completely reasonable for a DM to swallow his self-created notions of what a cleric "should be" and realize that the D&D classes are just words -- the cleric can represent a whole spectrum of characters, just as the wizard can represent anyone from Merlin to Gandalf to Elric to Harry Potter.

I also think the other players should get off their high horses and stop thinking that their way of playing is superior to Bob's. It's not. It's just different. If you cannot get over the fact that different people prefer different playstyles, then maybe you shouldn't be playing.

Yes, we take a literary approach to our games. We don't make any excuses for it either. It's how we like to run our games. /shrug

I know it isn't for everyone...and there is where the problem is.

 

[Hjorimir]

You mean tenets? ;-)

I haven't been able to read every post on this thread, but it all looks like good advice. I had a similar (although probably not as extreme) player in my last group, and he was my closest friend of the group. (I was DM) We just all learned to deal with it, because we were friends first and D&D players second. But it did get tedious at times.

Here's an idea I haven't seen suggested: How does the player's diety feel about all this? Perhaps the diety can visit the player in a dream - if the cleric isn't following his god's ways, why would the god continue to grant the cleric spells and powers? A warning might be apropos.

No! Tenants! It is important for Bob to know who he's going to be living with...err...yeah...

Tenets for the win!

 

[SweeneyTodd]

The worst thing you could do is what you're doing now: Vent to strangers, calm down, then relent and let him do "whatever". You're risking falling into classic geek passive-aggressive behavior that way. Please don't take offense, this is just what the pattern of behavior looks like from where I'm sitting.

If you haven't read that Geek Social Fallacies article linked on the last page, hoo boy, it's well worth reading. Don't read "Geek" as an insult; what it really means in this context is "making social decisions based on non-social indicators".

You have to make a decision, an explicit one, and come to terms with it. Either modify the game slightly to minimize the friction Bob will cause within it, or exclude him from the game. (I think "You can't play a cleric" is just a passive-aggressive way of kicking him out, in this case.)

Look, the shared imaginative content Bob wants to inject is minimal. He wants a mechanical character class, called Cleric in the book, that can do cool stuff. He wants to kick down doors and slay orcs. All that carefully constructed imagined content you've come up with for the game? He couldn't care less about it. "Cleric" is just a bag o' cool powers to him.

If you try to force him to engage with that content in-game, by making him come up with his deity's tenants, or properly behave according to his status, or whatever, it will make that disconnect between what you want his character to be and what he wants it to be a giant glowing neon sign of "THIS DOESN'T FIT". It will bug you and spoil that sense of vermillisitude you're trying so hard to create.

If you just let him be Smashdor already, and say, oh, I dunno, he's a mad friar, or he's some guy touched by the gods to test the faith of the "real" Clerics, then once you make that small adjustment to include an anomalous element in the game, there's no neon sign. You won't have that constant disconnect that what this guy's doing isn't fitting with your game world. Everybody at the table can go "He's a fighter touched by the gods" or something, and move on. It's not like he's going to get involved in your big, serious plots anyway; he just wants to smash stuff.

Doing anything else is really just trying to get him out of the group, whether it's proscribing the character class or putting in-game restrictions on his behavior. If you want to do that, then just do it. But the middle ground of "He's here, but the stuff he does breaks our sense of immersion every single session" is the worst thing you could do.

 

[DarrenGMiller]

I am going to make a controversial statement: I think that ForceUser should stop running his campaign the way he has been running it.

I think he should take a deep breath, read the first few sections of the DMG II, and remember that the goal of the game is to have fun -- not for the DM to force the players to behave a certain way. As someone once said, if you want total control over the characters, you're a novelist, not a DM.

It is completely reasonable and possible for a DM to run a game that includes both in-depth roleplaying and massive amounts of beatdown. It is completely reasonable for a DM to swallow his self-created notions of what a cleric "should be" and realize that the D&D classes are just words -- the cleric can represent a whole spectrum of characters, just as the wizard can represent anyone from Merlin to Gandalf to Elric to Harry Potter.

I also think the other players should get off their high horses and stop thinking that their way of playing is superior to Bob's. It's not. It's just different. If you cannot get over the fact that different people prefer different playstyles, then maybe you shouldn't be playing.

Having everyone change their playing styles, along with changing the game, for the preferences of a single player, is absolutely crazy.

Here is what happens after ForceUser changes everything to suit Bob:

First, Bob realizes that the squeaky wheel gets the oil and acts extremely annoying and whines and complains everytime he wants something. Bob gets his own customized game as his behavior becomes progressively more repulsive to everyone else at the table. As this happens, the game ceases to be as rewarding for ForceUser, the friendly neighborhood DM. As the game provides him with less of an enjoyable experience, he puts less effort into preparing for each session and grows tired of always giving in to Bob. One by one, the players leave the game as they grow weary of living in the shadow of Bob's whims and desires. Those that do stay now grumble and make sarcastic comments about Bob, who has "ruined their game." They also realize what it takes to get ForceUser to bend over backwards to give them what they want. They, like Bob, try to manipulate FU. This creates conflict and some of that is expressed in-game. When there are only a few disgruntled players left and ForceUser is dreading every session that he limps through with no preparation, while in his "spare" time, he either finds a new hobby, new system, or is designing a new campaign that he loves and is dreaming of having a group he can use it with. Just when things seem to be at their worst, Bob say, "You know, I'm not really getting what I want out of this game anymore and haven't been since (insert date FU altered his game to make it Bob-centric). I am thinking of running my own game (or I want to try something different). By this time, FU is so frustrated that he considers strangling Bob, but settles on selling his D&D books on Ebay and finds another way to spend his time. Years later, ForceUser stumbles across ENWORLD and reminisces about gaming. He buys whatever edition of the game he can find and starts looking for a group. As he gets things together, he gets a call. Bob has heard he is starting a game and wants to play.

DM

 

[SweeneyTodd]

Okay, enough of the social issues, here's a possible in-game justification.

I like the idea of a god deciding to grant his full spread of holy powers to a guy who doesn't do anything for the church at all. Wow, that would really make the church higher-ups nervous, wouldn't it? They can't just thro the guy in prison, because a god's favored him, but it puts their faith into question.

You know what they might do with somebody like that, who doesn't fit in their precise beliefs and hierarcy? Send him off on adventures to get him out of their hair.

Norse God analogy: One day this guy shows up who's clearly blessed by Thor. He's a mighty warrior, yadda yadda, but he doesn't act like the worshippers of Thor would at all. Man, it bugs them. So what's the deal? Simple, he's actually a cleric of Loki, who's set this up to nettle his brother.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

Sorry to post so many times, but I'm trying to separate out different points. Here's an analogy that attempts to take the whole powergamer angle out of it, and just hit the creative disconnect.

Let's say you had a player, Betty, who really wants purple butterfly wings. REALLY wants them, and you wont kick them, and can't get them to budge on the wing thing. The system you're playing allows the character to have flight, but it's defined as mental levitation or something. So Betty picks the levitation power, but says "Hey I have cool butterfly wings." 'Cause for whatever reason, that's why Betty wanted to play.

You could do things like have NPCs frightened and disturbed by her wings, and have her have to buy custom-made armor, and struggle with getting through doors, etc. etc. Because you really didn't want her to have those wings, and it bugs you. It's a point of contention every session. And you know what? Everybody at the table can't get those d*mn purple fluttery butterfly wings out of their heads.

Or you could just ignore it, except for the few times Betty goes "Hey, I fly up and save the cat in the tree." And everybody goes, yeah, Betty's character can fly, fine. And sometimes she mentions how they sparkle with spring dew on them, and nobody pays any attention, or says "Cool" just so she won't get huffy. Some people at the table are going "Whatever, she can levitate, and she has delusions of wings". Some people just ignore it the best they can.

In the latter case, those stupid wings aren't even in the imagined head-space of anybody but Betty 90% of the time.

(Or, of course, she could get captured and have her wings cut off, in which case she gets mad and storms out in a huff because the GM is "out to get her".)

The thing is, people edit the shared imagined space all the time, to subconsciously ignore or discredit the things they don't "buy in" to. I've had a player describe their PC wearing the tackiest outfit you can imagine, and I just didn't imagine it that way. That's pretty much what I suggest you do with Bob. If you're going to give in and give him his cleric powers, do so and then just you, and the rest of the group, pretend it's something different. Don't force him to see it as something different, just let him have his wings.

(I've had a Betty before, though her special powers were "I'm so hot, everybody wants me". Yeesh, talk about issues. I let her narrate seducing some random NPC from time to time, and 90% of the time we were able to ignore it, though I'm sure her character was way hotter in her head than she was in ours.)

This is all waaaay down on the list after the stuff that isn't going to happen, like making sure when you get a group together to share an imagined space that you want to imagine compatible things.