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

[pawsplay]

My PC in a Vampire game once taunted another PC, causing him to frenzy and be humiliated by the Prince's bodyguards. The player claimed I was distracting from the storyline. He responded by having his character attack mine later; I escaped, then returned and staked his character and left him in a closet (one of my friends suggested we stick him on a quiet rooftop to watch the sunrise, but I felt that was a little extreme). Apparently, the humiliation was too much. He snap-kicked me in the leg. Lacking a really good response, and not wanting to damage him too much (his girlfriend was the GM *of course LOL*) I slapped him on the nose. Causing him to gush about a quart of bright red blood... apparently, he had never had his nose smacked before and I may have slightly fractured it. The GM said it was unfair, but under the circumstances, she had to ask me to leave. I didn't mind leaving at that point.

 

[sniffles]

Hello, my name is Peni and I'm a drama queen.

It is true that intense identification with characters can disrupt the game even with that. We're on extended hiatus from one long-running campaign because my priestess walked away. I couldn't stop her. She was a perfectionist, a snob, and a deeply committed team leader (I made it clear to the others that I personally didn't think she was the leader, but Sofia assumed that her social class and relationship to our patron automatically made her that) who freely delegated responsibility in order to get the best results. She was fanatical about keeping "her people" alive and thought they respected her in her own right, as priestess, and as the patron's representative. When we got an adventure hook that was planted through her as priestess instead of through the patron, she asked for volunteers and - I thought - made it clear that this was *her* mission for the church and that how things were done was every bit as important as what things were done.

I have no idea, and in retrospect he doesn't either, why my husband's half-elf ranger chose this time to make his control issues with her authority overt. He'd always had them and Sofia'd always been oblivious to them, and in its own weird way it worked. He'd always been the go-to guy for tactics and she'd always respected that. But for some reason, this mission, the one she considered to be personally hers, was different for him and he didn't stay out of it and wouldn't be subtle. He started openly doing things he knew she wouldn't approve, changing plans without warning, and ignoring what she said. Twice he forged ahead into melee when she called for retreat or ranged combat, twice everybody else in the party followed him in preference to her, and both times she was bloodily and spectacularly proved correct and had to extend heroic efforts to keep everybody alive. One of those times, this involved Raising Dead on him. And then, when things were about to be wrapped up, he went behind her back, with the help of another party member, and made a deal without consulting her.

So she quit. Who wouldn't? The magnitude of the disillusion and humiliation she felt still makes me sick to my stomach. I told people I'd make another character and Sofia could retire to her villa, but - here's the weird part - nobody wanted that. They wanted Sofia back. People came to me in character and tried to talk her out of it. Even the offending half-elf realized, eventually, that he'd been in the wrong, and my husband wrote an in-character letter of formal apology that makes it possible for the game to resume at some point with the same characters. But they'll never be in the same relationship again, because something broke in the team on that mission and no apology will ever put things back the way they were.

So now the ball's in my court and I need to bluebook something that will make it possible to figure out how to get the old gang back together on a new footing, but one way and another I haven't been able to put the creative energy into it that it would require. Sofia is not an easy play. She used to leave me with a big knot at the nape of my neck because she was so tense. She'll have to mellow a lot before I'm ready to get back into her prissy head.

While I wouldn't consider myself a drama queen, I've done something similar.

I was playing in a long-term RuneQuest campaign, in which my character was a member of a culture that was known for opposing the Lunar occupation. I decided as part of my PC's personality that she really didn't like Lunars and wouldn't do anything to help them if she could possibly avoid it.

Our party came across a relic weapon, but we'd have to take it back into the city of Pavis in order to give it to somebody. I can't recall all the details now (ain't old age sad?). We'd have to get past the Lunar guards and then they'd know about the weapon. My character of course didn't want the Lunars to know about the weapon at all, much less have a chance of getting their hands on it.

Eventually we got into quite an argument over what to do with this weapon. One of the other PCs who'd only joined the party recently was from a different culture and didn't have my PC's problems with letting the Lunars know about this weapon. His character and mine got into a shouting match (via email) over dealing with the Lunars, until it got to the point where the other character basically said, "I can't be in a group where I'm going to be treated this way. I'm out of here."

I was mortified, because I'd never intended it to go that far. Since his character was new I didn't want him to have to make yet another new character. But I also felt my character wouldn't back down on this issue.

I finally ended up having my character leave the group so my friend could keep his new character. I try to keep that incident in mind whenever I get too wrapped up in roleplaying my character.

 

[Storyteller01]

Not sure this counts, but myself and one of my players get into it via passive/aggressive nastiness on occasion. We're cordial at the game, but our arguements on our yahoo page can go on for awhile.

 

[Thotas]

Mike was a dice-thrower. Not when he got angry with other players or DM; we had a pretty good group as far as that sort of thing, and we didn't have those sorts of conflicts. Mike did have a problem with the fact that his dice were subject to the full distribution predicted by laws of probability, and would fling them (not just the offending dice, oh no) about and loudly complain in colorful vocabularies when the low end came up under severely dangerous conditions. It was simply an emotional release for Mike, and we laughed about it rather than complain about it.

But the one we all remember was the day a die was flung with full force and zero regard to which direction it was flying. It struck the DM in the center of his forehead, just above the eyes. The hollow "thonk" sound immediately ended his fit, as he froze in place and silence descended on the whole table.

The pause was broken by the DM saying, quite flatly and plainly, "That felt like a six." We all busted up laughing and play resumed.

 

[Storyteller01]

Here's one:


My players asked if another person could join. They said that he was looking for a group at school but couldn't find any. I said okay, and asked them to have him give me a call.

He called me, asked some questions and the like. I explained the rules: you have to be okayed by the then wife, no extra friends without my then wife's approval, I had to witness all character generation rolls, and a basic run down of the material I was using.


he shows up the next game day... with his girlfriend and a friend of his from school. He shows me three pre-generated characters, all with materilas I wasn't using (metals from FR, unpublished feats from on-line sources, IK quickplates, + 6 ecl worth of savage species templates, etc) and exceptionally high stats across the boards. I explain, again, that I have to observe stat rolls. He gets flushered but makes the rolls. Nothing lower than a 13, with two 17's. He gripes that this is a completely unplayable character, and asks to sit this one out. No problem; he wants to observe.

Five minutes later he and his friends walk out complaining that I don't know how to play the game. He called back later asking to be part of the group again, claiming 'I'll help you get the game right'. He never showed.

The kicker was how close I was to pitching a fit! After the player left, other players showed me noted they had passed while watching the conversation. Changes in facial expressions, comments he made that they knew would have ticked me off, etc. They were placing bets on how soon I'd snap! Must not have been in as much control as I thought I was.

 

[Storyteller01]

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...."

TRead that tract. Damned funny.

 

[Storyteller01]

I've thrown dice, not out of anger, but for a laugh.

I've been tempted to buy giant fuzzy dice, just for this reason.

'DM PUNISHMENT!!!!' *flumph*

 

[Peni Griffin]

Where it gets fun, though, is trying to explain the concept of your character doing something you didn't expect to a non-gamer.

-Hyp.

Happens to me all the time, but then character is where I enter the game. If you write character-driven fiction you have to start by writing people you don't control, and if you write plot-based fiction and don't want the audience to jeer, you have to create characters for whom doing the plot-necessary actions is natural; so I don't even try to run the PC. My husband's entry to the game is the rules, which is why he tends to create tactical geniuses. Not that he isn't interested in playing different characters - he is, and he does - but he approaches them differently and has more conscious control over them than I do. I suspect, since Robyn suddenly tanked on tacticals twice in a row in that adventure, that what happened there was that he lost control of the character and didn't realize it till the harm was done.

Though I run them from the gut and don't try to control them overmuch, it's still possible to get the old character surprise. The biggest one happened when one of them fell in love with another PC. We were conversing with an NPC in the process of figuring out she was a vampire, and she picked Konrad as the person she wanted to charm. Garnet, a frighteningly intelligent wizard with permanent detect magic, saw the charm take, and I heard her think: "Oh, no you don't, bitch, he's mine!" It annoyed me a lot and I tried to fight it, because Konrad's player doesn't like "soap opera" and btw wasn't my husband, so I didn't anticipate his being comfortable playing it out. But we worked it out in the long run.

 

[Amitiel]

Over the game itself: once. While running 2ed in a game store, a new player joined my already large group (he was player 9) made no attempt to introduce his PC to the other PCs. Just walked aboard their ship. Naturally my paranoid(with good reason) player's PCs were less than thrilled when a strange Mage just walks on board their ship without so much as a hello. They accosted him and demanded an explaination, they ended up killing his hawk familier when he (rather than answer) ordered it to divebomb the PC holding him over the rail demanding answers. (Those who remember 2ed should remember what used to happen when you killed a familier with a wince.) The PC did let him go and he hit the dock, took 6 points of damage and not so promptly died of System Shock roll failure. He was of coarse pissed about this and it took a lot of hammering to get the 'roleplaying' part of rpg into his skull. After 30 minutes of argument he rolled a new character. His new character was a dwarf and he then proceeded to win creepy guy award by hitting on an underage 1/2 elf in the Inn's tavern, the daughter of the barkeep, and tried to persuade him (and me) that he should be aloud to 'make a woman out of her' and the barkeep should 'pay him for the priviledge. When pointed out she was the equivilent of a 10 year old, he said quoting one of the rapist in the movie 'A Time to Kill' 'If she can walk she can wiggle'. He doesn't come near us anymore, or walk straight.

As for at the table but not game related, we had one player quit because they had slept with another player while they were drunk but the other player wasn't interested in a relationship.

We had one tossed out for discussing one of the other players having been in a mental hospital when that person wasn't there (we all knew but we were in a public space). He got banned later for telling customers to go to another store.

We had one guy who used to stand behind female players trying to see down their shirts or rub up against them. One of them threatened him with a mace (not the spray the weapon) to get him to stop.

Then we had the player who would not shut up. He talked and talked and talked. He at one point talked so much during character creation his (2ed) bard had no spells, not that he couldn't cast them, just that he never picked any. His talking was so loud to, his speaking voice could be heard across a football stadium. he was also tossed for disturbing customers.

 

[Mercule]

I like Shadowrun, but I haven't found a group to play with since college. I finally talked my current D&D group, plus a couple of associated friends into trying it. One of these "associated friends" is a know-it-all, but generally constrains herself to bragging. Annoying, but she'd played SR before and I could use another person familiar with the rules to help the players.

It's probably relevant that I've been told that Shadowrun is my best game, as a GM. I do okay at D&D, but I used to have people practically begging me to run SR.

I thought a "baptism by fire" might help the group get used to the danger level of firearms, what their characters can do, etc. So, I have them get jumped pretty early on. The experienced player is running a decker (aka computer geek) and pretty much hides, but manages to get clipped running for cover.

She goes completely ballistic about my throwing in a scenario that's not decker friendly, starting things off with a combat, choosing too hard of foes, and a few other bits. I explained what my thoughts were -- pretty much what I said above -- and the fact that I used the standard stats for mook gangbangers, which wasn't exactly a hard fight. She storms out.

The next day, she sends an email to everyone at the game telling them what a bad GM I am and ranting for a page. She says that I have permanently ruined the hobby of gaming for her and she is going to have to bow out of all of her games that she is in because I'm such a horrible jerk, despite the fact that she and I didn't actually have any in common at the time.

We eventually kinda patched things up, but I certainly don't talk gaming with her if possible -- she didn't actually give up gaming, BTW. The Shadowrun game was made well and truly dead, though. Pity.