Ever had a player in your group throw a tantrum or worse? Most uncomfortable moment?

[painandgreed]

Let's hear yours!

There was one long running D&D campaign I was in with a really good DM, except, about once a game session (which ran from noon to midnight every Sun), would get into an arguement with a player. It was about 50/50 who I thought was in the wrong for any given arguement, but once it started, I knew what was coming, would excuse myself and go to the store to buy munchies and something to drink. I'd come back and they'd still be argueing. The arguing would usually take about an hour and result in some change in the rules that would get written in the big book of house rules. It was usually over spells as the magic user would figure out a near way to use a 1E spell (such as using Sepia Snake Sigil on a near dead PC to protect him from harm rather than on the monster attacking) and the DM wouldn't like it and nerf it.

The biggest freak out I saw was in a Vampire LARP. Second session and the agenda was to decide on a Prince and various people were making their pleas and bargining. Then the noticably absent shoe in showed up with some thugs and began to take control. After some words were excahnged between characters he told one of his thugs to apprehend the other player. The (rather large) thug took a few quick and determined steps towards the guy and the guy flipped, threw his drink in the guys face, hit him a couple of times, and then ran. Everybody was sort of stunned and the first comment was by the ST saying "I suspect that was a violation of the no touching rule." I talked to the guy that freaked later and he appologised to some of us, but was still sure that guy was really coming at him and he had to fight. Needless to say, he never tried to rejoin the LARP.

The for the last one, I'm the guilty party. Understand it was the 80's and I was a punk rocker and had an attitude to defend. Me and my normal gamer friends were in an elevator at a gaming/sci-fi con riding up to our room. As usual for the time period, I had a mohawk, black lipstick and nail polish and ripped clothes. In the elevator with us was an old couple and I overheard the gentleman say, in not a quiet voice to his wife, "Isn't it ridiculous how kids will dress up these days?" I jumped up and yelled "What the *bleep* did you say OLD MAN!" I glared at them and they just stared at the floor not saying anything. It was an uncomforatble silence, especially since this was in the south before MTV made colored hair reasonable to those sort so I was in the wrong no matter what had happened if they talked to hotel management. "We'll get to our floor and I'll never see them again", I thought. They got off first. "Well, 50/50 chance they'll go the opposite direction from us." Nope. "Ok, they'll keep going and won't see where I'm staying." Nope, turns out they were in the room right next door to ours. We hurried in and never spoke of it again and I never saw the couple either. A few years later, a friend who was in the elevator said "Remember that time you scared Robert Bloch?" and proceeded to describe in detail me yelling at the con's guest, including another recounting read out of the con's fanzine from that time because he thought it was the funniest thing in the world, scaring the guy that wrote Psycho.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I have a couple decent ones....

1. Warhammer 40k

We didn't have a whole lot of people to choose from for our weekly games, so even through we didn't really care for X, we put up with him just to have more opponents at the table. He played Eldar. Really really really cheesy Eldar. He wasn't the best player.

In one game, I had a Genestealer Cult army versus his Eldar cheezefest and soundly trounced him 2 games in a row. He started to complain about how the rules were unfair and how it was impossible for him to win. So, being neighborly I offered to trade armies for the third battle. I soundly trounced him a third time, this time with his own guys.

In another game (and the last time we saw him) he had an Extra Cheesy Eldar army (normally at our point buy an army would have 25-30 figures on the table, more for low point armies) with only 6! people and NO vehicles. He probably had sunk about 90% of his points on one super beefed up commander that he was sure was invincable. His guy died in the first turn, prompting him to throw his army list on the table and shout WORTHLESS. He quit that game and I turned to everyone else and say "Does anybody else want to play Xs incredibly stupid and not-fun army?" Everyone said....Nope. X packed up his 6 figures, grabbed his books, and walked out without saying anything to anyone and never came back.

2. Diplomacy

I ran a game of diplomacy at work...2 turns a week to promote deals and discussions. Right before the start the guy playing Germany quit and I had to get a temporary fill in. The fill in himself quit and I had to find another player to take over. Enter Bob. Bob was young, foolish, and full of himself. He was the self-described MASTER of Diplomacy and was certain he was going to get a full victory in 6-8 turns. Bob goes to all the other players and crafts this awesome plan of world domination turning everyone against each other. At least thats what he thougt.

In reality, NOBODY (including myself) really liked Bob and all the other players had already made a pact that basically said...everyone takes one turn off and we utterly destroy Germany. Moves are turned in and Bob eagerly awaits the results, so he can see his glorious Germany expand. When I hand out the color coded maps the next day the black (germanys color) section of the map had entirely disappeard. Bob was flabbergasted at having been backstabbed worse than Caeser in March. He crumples up his map, throws it across the room and says "If you guys didn't want me to play, then you should have just said so!"

DS

 

[RodneyThompson]

I had a relatively laid back group back in Tennessee who all got along really well and were friends in real life. The only awkward moments were, I'm a bit embarassed to say, caused by me. Well, not really me, but me + my brother.

See, my brother and I are best friends even though he is four years younger than I am. We've grown up liking all the same things, playing all the same things, and (except for a 4-year gap while I was off in college) we lived together our whole lives until last month. We're pretty much clones of one another (we even look and sound a like) and have all the same friends. We're thick as thieves.

The only problem is, we're so comfortable with one another that we can rant and rave at one another, yell and complain and gripe and argue, and then not think a thing of it and go about our business as though nothing had happened. Now, it didn't happen often, but every now and then we'd get into an argument that had us screaming at one another and then 30 seconds later we'd be laughing over beers.

The problem came when I DMed and he played in my game. See, my brother knows the rules very, very well, probably pretty close to as well as I do. He's got a bit of an eye for game mechanic design, and unfortunately this lets him spot the flaws in systems. My brother then likes to figure out what *he* would do, even if he just isn't seeing one other tiny thing about the mechanic that changes everything about it. The real difficulty comes in that sometimes he confuses what *he* would do with the rule with what the actual rule is, and tried to argue with me as the DM when I make a call that doesn't go his (or the other players') way.

Needless to say, there were more than a few sessions during our Shackled City and Age of Worms campaigns that featured him questioning a rules call I made, me responding with the actual rules, a brief argument breaking out, and then we'd move on as if nothing happened. The rest of the players definitely felt awkward a few times, but we just assured them that we weren't really mad at one another, we just weren't afraid to argue our points passionately because we knew we wouldn't offend one another.

Though it was mostly my brother's reaction to me as the DM, to be fair he also argued rules with another player to the point where the other player, possibly the most chilled out person I know, yelled at him and told him that he didn't want to hear my brother's rules lawyering ever again. That was a sobering moment.


Oh yeah, I gotta tell this story, even though I wasn't there for it (though I did cause it to happen). See, one of the players in my game had a new girlfriend who was a total space cadet but wanted to learn how to play. We let her play for a bit, then I had to leave the game because of work commitments. She said she wanted to run a Star Wars game, and I suggested she do so. Big mistake. Though tales of how horrible this game were are legendary, apparently the heroes, in the course of a single session, learned that they were all clones who were only 9 years old (but looked fully grown), had chips implanted in them that would make them explode that had been in their bodies for at least 30 years, and when they faced off against the Hutt crime lord that had implanted these chips into them (as well as into every single person in the entire galaxy) he had them surrounded, in a two-story warehouse, by billions of stormtroopers. That is not a typo. They thought she was joking, but no; she was serious. At one point, one player who is normally mild as milk stood up, yelled "This is the most asinine spectacle I have ever been witness to" and went on a tirade about how brain-dead she was.

Let me tell you, that girl was about as crazy as it gets.

 

[Monstrosity]

I once had to deal with two tantrums over the phone. I was getting ready to DM and had 4 players with me when I received a phone call from one of the players saying that he and his girlfriend, also a player, couldn't make it to the game. I was fine with that and told him I'd tell them about the game after we were done and that they wouldn't miss anything. His girlfriend picked up the phone and they both started arguing that they were valuable players and that the game should be cancelled since they couldn't be there. I explained that I already had 4 players over and that it was quite enough to run a game and promised them that they wouldn't miss anything important. After much arguing and tantrums from both players, the girl said that she was tired of playing anyway and wouldn't be coming back. She hung up when I started laughing. The good part? My phone is loud and they were shouting so my players heard everything.

 

[enlightened]

While I was DMing, I had a player get mad at me for not letting his character have something (I can't even remember what), so when I looked away he whipped his PHB at my head frisbee style from across the table.

The corner of the book hit me just below the eye.

I sat there bleeding and in shock for a second, and when I finally realized what had happened I went over the table at him and we just started tearing into each other.

 

[Drowbane]

Hah, memories. Let me see what I can drudge up.

<snip>

There are more tales, but I cannot recall them all now. He isn't the worst gamer in the world, but his name, among our old group, is a general term for socially retarded.

haha, hiyas man. Long time and all that.

 

[Qualidar]

haha, hiyas man. Long time and all that.

[falsetto voice] awkward [/falsetto voice]

 

[Dragon Snack]

Girlfriends! How could I forget the time when this one girlfriend joined our group?

Things went well for a couple of weeks (just standard newbie stuff), until she must have gone off her meds. In the middle of game, without warning, she suddenly yelled out "I'm tired!" and threw herself forward, slumped over the table with her arms stretched out above her head. The GM, having been interupted in mid sentence, looked at her for a second and then continued with his description. She sat there motionless for almost 10 minutes while we played around her (didn't use minis at the time, luckily).

She finally got up and went into the other room to ask the wife of the guy whose house we played at for an aspirin. I don't know what went on with that, but she (the wife) came into the room we were playing in and told the boyfriend she didn't want "that psycho" coming over any more...

Addendum: I ended up buying the boyfriends mobile home (didn't see that coming, did ya?) a couple years later. She was still getting mail there, addressed to her - with his last name (no, they never even got close to being married).

I don't think we've had a girlfriend join our group since then and that was way before 3rd edition came out. Had a couple of guys talk about it, but it's never happened.

(edit: It's probably semi-appropriate that this was my 13th post here...)

 

[Jdvn1]

Ooooooo! That is really annoying! My players do it all the time since they think I'm not giving them enough XP (they are right of course, because i don't like super fast leveling, so i always give them a bit less than what the DMG says)

I like to speed up levelling through the super low levels (about 1-3 or so) and spend more time at the mid-ish levels (5-10) so I give more XP at low levels and then slow down the progression afterwards.

 

[The Crippler]

Back in High School my friends and I were in a group DM'd by one of the teachers. Then my friend's character died. She said, "No, not Blackleaf...."

That's funny because I know exactly what you're talking about. I wish Jack Chick wrote more D&D cartoon parables.