DM's Suport Group: Most Cliche Player Behaviors Ever

[aboyd]

It is taking ears and or teeth off the most resent encounter. Typically its goblins or it can be wolf pelts. Pretty much this lasts for a game or 2, then the novelity wears off. It is pretty much a give away its the player's first D&D game, so I don't give them that hard of a time about it.

For what it's worth, D&D 3.5 edition has at least 1 feat that give you bonuses for collecting ears or teeth. So it's difficult to break people of the desire to do it when the game rules foster it. It doesn't sound like your players were familiar with that feat, though.

One of my biggest character pet peeves is the "slutty rogue" often played by the nerdiest guy in the room. The assumption being that the character can saunter up to any NPC and seduce or charm needed information/action out of them at all times (with no rolls involved).

Yeah, I experienced this as a DM. The player was a 300 pound virgin. At least he backed up the character concept using game mechanics -- maxed out Charisma & Diplomacy. So if he legitimately got an amazing roll that would change the disposition of an NPC, I'd usually roll with it. However, the player had a very difficult time understanding that some things couldn't be changed even with an amazing roll. A guard might look the other way for something plausible, but the odds that he would abandon his post & lose his job because a pretty girl told him to? No, sorry. Likewise, convincing a vampire to cease combat and enter into a dialogue, maybe works... but convincing said vampire to allow the cleric to immolate it? No.

This utterly perplexed the guy playing the pretty female character. I even tried to put it into real world terms for him: "If a pretty woman asked you to rob a bank for her, would you?" No, he says. "If a pretty woman asked you to stand still so I could disembowel you, would you?" No, he says. "So why do you think being pretty in D&D is different?"

He still wasn't getting it, and replied, "But my PC is really hot."

*sigh*

I don't know what it is, but most of the people I play with can easily recall or whip out some obscure rule or similar, proving they read the literature in depth, but when I give them a one page primer for a campaign which clearly spells out what kind characters not to make they show up with that very thing and look at me like, "wha?".

I've experienced similar. I had a house rules post on the forum for my game. If you printed the post, it was about 1 printed page of bulleted house rules. Almost nobody read it, and of those who did, they insisted that it was too much to remember. I sorta looked at them incredulously and said, "So you remember the book and page number that skill tricks are on, but you can't handle a single page of house rules? Really?"

Over the last few years, I've ended up rewording most of my house rules to work as benefits that only work if the player speaks up. So that if players whine that the house rules are too extensive, I just shrug. Then they get surprised when other players take advantage and have a better time of things. If players can't handle reading a single page after going through 2000 pages of game books, their loss.

 

[aboyd]

I'm about to run a Viking-style campaign in the near future, and I just know I'm going to end up with 6 mages or something.

I have an ex-girlfriend who had this problem, and it almost caused her to quit DMing. She was so excited to be running a game for the first time, and so she over-prepared, had friends review her custom-built module, etc. She put out the call for heroes -- good-aligned souls who would bring justice to the downtrodden. And she got it, except for one. Her best friend was like, "I think I'll play a drow." And she was kinda hopeful, saying, "But all heroic, like that Drizzy guy, right?" And her friend said, "I dunno, maybe. Kinda feeling the evil vibe."

She desperately wanted her best friend there, so she worked hard to bring him in line with the rest of the group. I think the best she could do was get him to play a neutral, emo, misunderstood drow teenager (the player is a 35 year old male). At the table, he was totally uncooperative. Her first game, and she spent it trying to reign in a troublesome player. She didn't want to do *any* gaming for months after. We got her to re-run the module without him recently, and now she's much happier about DMing.

(As an aside, that same player caused me to fold a campaign recently. We had been playing one-shot games, each unrelated to the previous game. But people were having fun, so we turned it into a campaign. However, he had grown attached to a character from one of the one-shot games, and brought that character to the campaign games. Everyone had rolled up new starting characters for the campaign, and he had too, but he kept playing the higher-level character. I repeatedly told him that his high-level character was retired or safe in town and wasn't part of the game. He'd just smile and say, "Yes, he is." And then he'd make rolls as if the character was there, and so on. Eventually, after arguing about it for a while, I just smiled, said "I don't care," and when everyone went home that night, I folded the campaign and decided to avoid inviting the guy to anything, ever.)

 

[twisted.fate]

(As an aside, that same player caused me to fold a campaign recently. [...snip...] Eventually, after arguing about it for a while, I just smiled, said "I don't care," and when everyone went home that night, I folded the campaign and decided to avoid inviting the guy to anything, ever.)

Why not just tell him the campaign was over, then quietly invite everyone else back to keep going? No reason to drop a fun campaign just because ONE guy was a butthead.

I've experienced similar. I had a house rules post on the forum for my game. If you printed the post, it was about 1 printed page of bulleted house rules. Almost nobody read it, and of those who did, they insisted that it was too much to remember. I sorta looked at them incredulously and said, "So you remember the book and page number that skill tricks are on, but you can't handle a single page of house rules? Really?"

Better yet, when you allow players to do something unusual through house rules on the basis of them being mature enough not to exploit it, and then they try to anyway. I had a guy (experienced player) want to play a blind sorcerer who used his hawk familiar to see in the first game I ever DM'd.

I was like "don't, it's complicated and exploitable [as in, what's to stop him sending the bird forty feet away and scouting with it? no thanks] and I'm new and it's complicated argh." He was like, "No it'll be fun." Eventually, being a n00b, I compromised and said he could get empathic impressions through the hawk familiar - stuff like, "you can feel that that person is hostile towards you," so he knew not to target friends with spells.

He agreed, and the first thing he did in the first combat we did was say, "Okay, I fly my bird over to the archer who's over there [fifty feet away]. Now that I can see him clearly, I attack."

I came this close to slapping him out of his seat.

The "I'm going to create the strangest possible character I can, even when the game calls for something very, very specific" guy.

"Whaddya MEAN we're only using PHB races and classes because we're going for a classic feel? I wanna be a SHARDMIND! Who's an artificer! With a mithril hand! The mithril hand is intelligent and I'm EVIL because that's awesome!"

 

[SkredlitheOgre]

Well, you do... You're saying that some D&D game is more important than spending time with one's children. From what you're saying he didn't know the custody timing when you all decided the time of the game.
I know it's pretty hard to come up with a schedule that works for everyone, but that's no reason to get angry at someone.

No, I'm not saying that D&D is more important. Far from it. What I AM saying (and DID say in my original post) is that he knew about his commitment to his children, including when he was to have custody (that info was JUST given to the rest of us), before he agreed to the game. I'm not angry at him, I'm more confused as to why he would commit to something that take away from his other, more important, responsibilities.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Lack of communication is the root of most of these problems.

Players being human beings are at the root of the rest.

But good stories.

 

[aboyd]

Why not just tell him the campaign was over, then quietly invite everyone else back to keep going? No reason to drop a fun campaign just because ONE guy was a butthead.

He is liked and admired by many people in the game. Not only would it get back to him, but odds are good he would just show up, as others would assume he was invited, and bring him.

Also, his behavior sorta broke me. I just haven't wanted to restart after dealing with him. I'm sure I will get my motivation back eventually, and I'll cherry-pick some of the best players I can find. But for now, taking a break.

"Okay, I fly my bird over to the archer who's over there [fifty feet away]. Now that I can see him clearly, I attack."

I came this close to slapping him out of his seat.

Who could blame you?

 

[billd91]

She desperately wanted her best friend there, so she worked hard to bring him in line with the rest of the group. I think the best she could do was get him to play a neutral, emo, misunderstood drow teenager (the player is a 35 year old male). At the table, he was totally uncooperative. Her first game, and she spent it trying to reign in a troublesome player. She didn't want to do *any* gaming for months after. We got her to re-run the module without him recently, and now she's much happier about DMing.

He sounds like kind of a crappy friend to me, at least within the context of gaming. You should be able to expect your friends to help you out and cooperate, not undermine.

(As an aside, that same player caused me to fold a campaign recently. We had been playing one-shot games, each unrelated to the previous game. But people were having fun, so we turned it into a campaign. However, he had grown attached to a character from one of the one-shot games, and brought that character to the campaign games. Everyone had rolled up new starting characters for the campaign, and he had too, but he kept playing the higher-level character. I repeatedly told him that his high-level character was retired or safe in town and wasn't part of the game. He'd just smile and say, "Yes, he is." And then he'd make rolls as if the character was there, and so on. Eventually, after arguing about it for a while, I just smiled, said "I don't care," and when everyone went home that night, I folded the campaign and decided to avoid inviting the guy to anything, ever.)

Gotta put your foot down about old characters who are not part of the current campaign. Once a player retires a PC in favor of a new one, the old one is run by me as an NPC for any interactions with the current group of PCs.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

"Whaddya MEAN we're only using PHB races and classes because we're going for a classic feel? I wanna be a SHARDMIND! Who's an artificer! With a mithril hand! The mithril hand is intelligent and I'm EVIL because that's awesome!"

I learned very quickly to be leery of players who want to play "out there" class/race combinations. It's not universal, but it's a strong indicator of a player who can't even handle the basics well. (Like artists say, "You gotta know all of the rules before you can know when to break them for good effect.")

 

[twisted.fate]

I learned very quickly to be leery of players who want to play "out there" class/race combinations. It's not universal, but it's a strong indicator of a player who can't even handle the basics well. (Like artists say, "You gotta know all of the rules before you can know when to break them for good effect.")

It's so true. People who want to play stuff that's TOTALLY WEIRD BUT AWESOME GUYS REALLY, and can't/won't come up with a reasonable character and a story base for it generally just don't know what they're doing. I can handle it if someone wants to play exotic, and they bring a cool and campaign-appropriate fluff-based reason as to why there's a wilden hybrid monk sorcerer in this urban, low-magic setting. Something that'll make it not only reasonable that they're there, but allows you to integrate that reason into the campaign. But 9/10 times, you know that just isn't going to happen.

 

[A flannel shirt]

I dunno, man. This seems kind of unfair to me. First of all, why does he need to drop his hammer to get into the cave at all? Is it a huge-size hammer and a really really small cave?

Second, if the hammer is the source of his power, why is the DM setting up a situation where he alone arbitrarily cannot use his powers? Unless everyone else was being penalized too?

It sounds to me that he wasn't so much acting like a jerk just to be a jerk, as he was acting like a jerk because he'd been placed in the illogical and frustrating situation of "You need to go in there, but you can't take your powers with you. Sorry. Lol."

The game was a module I was running that was meant for Thor and in the module it said that Thor couldn't bring in Mjöllnir. There were some runes or something that prevented it being taken in. This was my adaptation of the module that the player just like Thor couldn't bring his hammer in.

As it has already been said. It is rather common in the genre to lose your powers. But even without his powers he wasn't as useless as sticking his nose in the air and pouting. He could still punch, kick, throw, and get the other weapon that is already in the cave!

To not even try to be hero because you don't like the situation is juvenile. I'm going to be a jerk because I think you are being a jerk? How old are we? My friends and party members are getting their ass kicked so what do I do? I protest because life isn't fair and I won't be as useful.

Get your whining self in the cave, remove the sword from the rock, and go kick some butt! Guess what the sword would have given your powers back and made you super strong but you don't know that because the character decided to not even try. That is my fault? There were enough clues.

My point is you don't know if you don't try. Pouting about it not being fair will accomplish nothing.

Another thing that is a theme of the comic genre is to rely on your friends and team members. He decided to not get by with a little help from his friends. His choice was to sacrifice the entire team for a concept and felt justified because that is what his "hero" would do.