Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="SweeneyTodd" data-source="post: 2407570" data-attributes="member: 9391">The worst thing you could do is what you're doing now: Vent to strangers, calm down, then relent and let him do &quot;whatever&quot;. 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 &quot;Geek&quot; as an insult; what it really means in this context is &quot;making social decisions based on non-social indicators&quot;.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 &quot;You can't play a cleric&quot; 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. &quot;Cleric&quot; 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 &quot;THIS DOESN'T FIT&quot;. 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 &quot;real&quot; 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 &quot;He's a fighter touched by the gods&quot; 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 &quot;He's here, but the stuff he does breaks our sense of immersion every single session&quot; is the worst thing you could do.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="SweeneyTodd, post: 2407570, member: 9391"] 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? [i]He couldn't care less about it.[/i] "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 [i]just do it[/i]. 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. [/QUOTE]

Verification