Ever had a player get so bent out of shape over something small, then refused to play

[ThirdWizard]

D&D is not like a girlfriend, so your analogy doesn't work at all.

D&D is more of an orgy

Bad! Bad Numion! Bad mental image!

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Man, talk about a series of pissy replies.

Especially yours.

You realize that this is about the same thing as saying "My friend complains that he doesn't have a girlfriend. But when I tried to set him up with one girl, he said he found her physically repulsive and didn't want to go out with her, and I tried another girl and he said he didn't like her attitude and they didn't get along." and suddenly people are replying "If he wants a girlfriend so much he complains about it, he should take the girl you offer him regardless of whether he thinks she's a pig, or a raving bitch".[/QUOTE]

No. It's like a guy saying: "I'm so alone, no girl will want to go out with me." And then you start setting him up with girls, and he refuses because one has blue eyes instead of brown, which he likes. The second has her hair half an inch too long for his liking, so he just walks out on her after she went out of her way to go out with him. The third has a bit of an accent which he doesn't like. The fourth likes chocolate ice cream and he sure won't go out with a sick bitch like that.

Really. I'm a Seinfeld fan. I like the show because the situations are so far out that you can't help but laugh at them. For example, Elaine once ditched a guy because he wouldn't finish a note he took for her with an exclamation mark ("Jenny had a baby" instead of "Jenny had a baby!"). I now must see that they're actually nuts like that out there.

So the guy has some standards he's looking for in a game, so that makes him a nancy?

That's the understatement of the century.

Good lord, I think Planescape is the concept of someone who was too 'special' for the short bus, and psionics in fantasy is a sure sign someone's a little bit of a twit. What's that mean?

That means I understand perfectly why you can't find a gaming group. With that attitude, you could be lucky if we opened the door before throwing you out.

But I honestly can't understand the lynch-mob that's building over it.

I thought you wouldn't.

Your problem is: You fail to see that this guy is obviously nuts. He cancels one session because he's judgemental and doesn't realize that gnolls aren't evil outsiders, but humanoids, and another because of the starting scene of the campaign.

DnD is a cooperative game, and I think it works best when the group figures out what kind of game they are going to play before deciding what to do.

They did.

The GM should explain his dragon idea with the players before he starts really writing adventures and committing his time to this dragon campaign.

He did. Read the post again. It seems that he didn't have a problem with the dragon Idea. he had a problem with the fact that they started in a cave without other dragons. A guy who leaves a session because he didn't agree with the first 5 minutes? Good riddance.


Ditch the guy. If he should lament his lack of gaming again, tell him it's his fault because he's looking with a fine-toothed comb for anything to make him quit the session. He's wasting people's time.

 

[green slime]

Perhaps this guy should bring himself and his character sheet into my rose garden? Such a lovely collection of roses...

 

[tzor]

I'll second the notion that D&D is not like a girlfriend. Given a DM I know and like ... I'll try anything once! Can't say that about girlfriends.

I thought this was going to be something different from the thread title. I once played in a game a long time ago with a player who was culturally into the macho thing and the notion that guys are superior to gals. He was playing a paladin. The other player, a gal, was also playing a paladin. His character failed a check at one point and her character didn't so when she tried to correct him, he personally got upset and got literally into an OOC argument. She really wanted to leave the game after that, because it was not fun to have people not take you, the player seriously because of their gender, but it was him, so upset by the thought of having a female question him who actualy quit the game.

 

[wayne62682]

I think this brings up an interesting issue: The game is supposed to be about cooperation.. but where is the line drawn? If you have a group with 5 people: DM and 4 players, and three of those players want to play one type of game (we'll say high, LotR-esque fantasy) and the fourth doesn't like that type of game and wants to play a dark, gritty borderline-evil game instead, who wins out? Should the fourth person be told to suck it up or bow out since the majority wants to play something else? Or to be fair to everyone should they play the dark, gritty campaign (assuming that the other three aren't adverse to playing it, it just wasn't their preference)? Or should they keep discussing things back and forth ad infinitum until they (hopefully) find a type of campaign that all of them would like? If you want to be fair, what if you have the same situation? One person doesn't want to play a dark, gritty campaign.

In short: Where is the line drawn between "This is a cooperative game between friends and we should agree on something" and "We cannot agree on any one thing, so who has to be upset because we aren't playing what they want?". I've had an entire group split in two over something like this, because we had people who adamantly would not play a certain genre of game, but the rest of us wanted to (and voted to play it).

 

[Ashrum the Black]

Okay, in regards to the orginal poster I'd say it's time to pull him aside and talk to him. Let him know how his actions have hurt you, his friends. Also let him know that you would like to play a game that he would enjoy. Also let him know that while you want to help him play a game he'd be interested in, he needs to allow other folks to play the game they'd like to as well. In other words, each of you may need to comprimise to get a resolution. If either or both of you can't, then it may be time to reorganize the gaming group.

In regards to Wayne62682's last post, I'd have to say that the odd player out will need to bend to the will of the magority. This is not to say that folks shouldn't allow him to ever play what he wants. Offer him a one shout or a short miny arc to play the adventures as he'd like it would be a realy nice gesture. But by and large if he wants to play in the group he'll need to play what the group wants.

Heck for me, I don't do evil campaigns. Period. Don't like them, don't want to like them. Morally grey? Great! But no evil. I also happen to be the primary DM for the group and have been for the last four years. I've had a player that wants to play a high level evil campaign for the longest time, but since I, as the DM, won't, he doesn't get that particular itch scratched.

I allowed him to play an evil spy within the group once, working to subvert them from within. That worked for a while as he pretty much just played as normal but got to wright CE on his character sheet. :\ But after about six months he swapped the character out for something different, it just wasn't doing it for him.

As a matter of fact he just bowed out because he was unhappy with the heroic fight against evil campaign I'm running, and the slower than normal level prgression I've been using. His choice was to move over to another group that played his kinds of high level evil games that he loves so much. I'm fine with it and feel it is probably for the best. Nobody else seems to have had a problem with the no evil characters policy. Nobody had any issues with the leveling either. So he was pretty much never going to get the itch scratched even by the other DM's as they had no love of that style of campaign either.

So yes, the lone man out may need to capitulate, to the will of the magority. Of course if you can, I always recommend an attempt at comprimise.

-Ashrum

 

[Taraxia]

Man, talk about a series of pissy replies.

You realize that this is about the same thing as saying "My friend complains that he doesn't have a girlfriend. But when I tried to set him up with one girl, he said he found her physically repulsive and didn't want to go out with her, and I tried another girl and he said he didn't like her attitude and they didn't get along." and suddenly people are replying "If he wants a girlfriend so much he complains about it, he should take the girl you offer him regardless of whether he thinks she's a pig, or a raving bitch". So the guy has some standards he's looking for in a game, so that makes him a nancy?

You're allowed to have high standards. You're just not allowed to complain all the time and make everyone else angry and upset because of your high standards.

That is, there's nothing wrong with you rejecting girls left and right because none of them appeal to you -- however, you have to realize after a while that the reason you don't have a girlfriend is because of *you*, in this case, and that even if you're unhappy about it there's really no call whatsoever to complain constantly to your friends about it, not after they made good-faith efforts to find the best dates for you they could.

Same with this guy -- the stand-up thing for him to do would be to tell people, "Yeah, I have a really personal, really restricted idea of the kind of consistency I like in a game-world, so it makes me hard to find games". *Complaining* about the lack of games around for him to play in as though it's other people's *fault* that he has so much more exacting standards than they? Not cool.

Just like he should've been a hell of a lot more gracious about bowing out of those other people's campaigns rather than "shooting them down" and being a jerk about them. It's *fine* if you don't want to play in a psionics game, but you shouldn't be surprised if calling people "too special for the short bus" or "a twit" to their face (not accusing Wolverine of this, but this sounds like what the OP's friend was doing) makes them not want to play with you, period, regardless of what kind of world they're running.

The OP's friend might've gotten somewhere, you know, if he'd tried constructively adding to the concept the other players were going for instead of loudly complaining that they were "taking liberties just cuz" and storming out. Or he could have left those games and quietly talked about the problems he had with them in private and actually *explained* what kind of game he wanted, and the OP might still be willing to help him find a game. Or he could have done none of these things but at least kept his mouth shut about his contempt for his fellow players, in which case he might not have a game but at least his friends wouldn't all think he was a jerk. You see?

 

[Taraxia]

I'll second the notion that D&D is not like a girlfriend. Given a DM I know and like ... I'll try anything once! Can't say that about girlfriends.

I thought this was going to be something different from the thread title. I once played in a game a long time ago with a player who was culturally into the macho thing and the notion that guys are superior to gals. He was playing a paladin. The other player, a gal, was also playing a paladin. His character failed a check at one point and her character didn't so when she tried to correct him, he personally got upset and got literally into an OOC argument. She really wanted to leave the game after that, because it was not fun to have people not take you, the player seriously because of their gender, but it was him, so upset by the thought of having a female question him who actualy quit the game.

*sigh* Every day I find another little reason to be slightly ashamed of my hobby.

And I seriously thought I personally was one of the most screwed-up unsocial geeks I knew.

 

[Taraxia]

I think this brings up an interesting issue: The game is supposed to be about cooperation.. but where is the line drawn? If you have a group with 5 people: DM and 4 players, and three of those players want to play one type of game (we'll say high, LotR-esque fantasy) and the fourth doesn't like that type of game and wants to play a dark, gritty borderline-evil game instead, who wins out? Should the fourth person be told to suck it up or bow out since the majority wants to play something else? Or to be fair to everyone should they play the dark, gritty campaign (assuming that the other three aren't adverse to playing it, it just wasn't their preference)? Or should they keep discussing things back and forth ad infinitum until they (hopefully) find a type of campaign that all of them would like? If you want to be fair, what if you have the same situation? One person doesn't want to play a dark, gritty campaign.

In short: Where is the line drawn between "This is a cooperative game between friends and we should agree on something" and "We cannot agree on any one thing, so who has to be upset because we aren't playing what they want?". I've had an entire group split in two over something like this, because we had people who adamantly would not play a certain genre of game, but the rest of us wanted to (and voted to play it).

This is a problem with *all* kinds of social activities, not just D&D -- what restaurant should we go to? what movie should we rent? what city shall we visit on vacation this year? -- and it's really up to each group to solve it in their own way, based on their own personalities.

 

[lrsach01]

This has happened to us before. We let the guy go. After a while, he came back and there were no problems. Sometimes people just need to let off steam, clam down, and get their head on straight.