D&D General Dumb Reasons To Get Booted From a Group.

[Lanefan]

I inherited a 2E half ogre in Al Qadim who had a 3 Intelligence and a 4 Wisdom. He also had the only canon +6 to hit item in the game: Mattock of the Titans.
The self-proclaimed leader of the PC's played a high INT high CHA wizard who told every player what their characters should do every single round. So I told the DM "My character is way too stupid to do the right thing. So whenever (that wizard) tells him what to do, he will do something else."

That resulted in my never* attacking with the mattock because "it's a shovel, not a weapon."

When the wizard's player missed a game, my PC attacked with the mattock. When he later found out, that drove the wizard's player crazy--and he doubled down on yelling at me to follow his orders.

Wizard's player should have ordered you to attack with some other weapon you were carrying, so you'd use the mattock.

 

[niklinna]

Wizard's player should have ordered you to attack with some other weapon you were carrying, so you'd use the mattock.

I guess his INT wasn't high enough to figure that out.

 

[Lanefan]

I guess his INT wasn't high enough to figure that out.

Which seems a bit odd, given as he was a wizard, but oh well...

 

[Mordhau]

Or maybe he decided that his prep time was better spent doing something other than drawing maps that only some players could see and thought they could be mature enough to play with the given restrictions.

While I'm sympathetic to the general principle that players should be able to separate out player knowledge and character knowledge and that it doesn't have to be "all immersion all the time" I think there's a serious issue in putting a map down and asking the players not to act on the map.

Part of the issue is that directions without knowledge are pretty arbtrary so there's no way not to be affected by the information you have in front of you. You either deliberately head towards your allies or head away from them. (Or possibly the GM can dangle some other direction in front of you, but this starts to feel like railroading as you can either do what the GM clearly wants or risk being seen as breaking character and acting on out of character knowledge.)

It isn't that the DM needs to blank out the map. Why not just describe what the players can see and keep the map to himself?

I have at times used maps already laid out, but this tends to be in situations where I don't mind the players knowing the layout, but they don't know what's in individual rooms. I wouldn't in such circumstances expect them not to act on what they can see on the map. If there's a big hall on the map and they wan't to head towards it, even though theoretically the characters can't see it, I would just roll with it.

 

[teitan]

During the height of social distancing a player in my group was insisting we start playing again at my place. I told my wife no, our place is too small and it is still bad (we wound up with Covid-19 two months later) and she went off on my wife saying "you can't do anything without his permission" and "he's so controlling" etc. Mind you I always... ALWAYS... tell my wife that she doesn't have to ask for anything. I tell her friend... why are you asking me for permission? We just don't have that kind of relationship and the only time I would say no was if we couldn't afford it such as the 3 week notice of this girl's wedding cruise that would have been a 5k investment. So she was told she can't play when we reboot and was also told she couldn't play in the pathfinder game that we were joining because of it as well. SO... does getting kicked out for accusing the DM of abusive behavior because he said "we can't play yet because it isn't safe" count?