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

[EyeontheMountain]

Hmm, I fear i have to go all the way back to College for one gem.

At my dorm there were two D&D 2E campaigns going. I ran one on Friday night and a friend ran one on Sautrday night. We had msotly the same players, and he played in my game but I did not play in his (too much D&D)

Now there was a guy named Brian who was really really unstable. In everything he did. Driving a car, walking around, and playing D&D. Well in my game I had a strict no party infighting rule (mostly becasue of the other gmae) and people lived with it, even though Brian's character was ass unstable as his player was, maybe even mroe. Well, the party was going through some publsied adventure whereh tey had to get three star gems and they gothe first one. Well, this guy decided he was goingto keep it, and no amount of persuasion could convince him to give it back. He even boasted he could tkae the entire party if they tried to take it.

Well one player asked me to rescind the no-inter-parrty violence rule and I did. Well, this player's entire fightwas rolling low on initiative and getting kicked to the curb in less than one round. It was brutal. He stromed out cursing about me, the gmae and life in general and never played with us again. Good riddance. He even caused the pharase "do a Brian" which lasted until the next hyear when a sane Brian joined the group, and the phrase was discontinued.

 

[robberbaron]

Not exactly a tantrum (no anger and we were all laughing) but:

Playing World's Largest Dungeon I lost my character (my fault, forgot to move out of Ogre's reach before trying to shoot it). Luckily, I had a backup all ready to go so I joined in the back of the same fight.
Got stuck in, all the other characters went before me and moved back, leaving me on my own, in front of the ogre. Who hit me twice, turning my Halfling Rogue into a hubcap.

I looked at the battle for a second, rolled up the character sheet and tossed it over my shoulder. "Next!"

 

[William drake]

Yes, I've had thrown dice, and lots of cussing. I've had character sheets thrown at me after I told the player "you might not want to do that" my fave though was I had a player who always tried to play the "I'm smarter than all of of your NPC's" and then after he tried to screw over one to many NPC's, a powerful one found out, and strung him up....I let alot of clues that he was on to him, but he kept saying "well, he won't chatch me...." w/e yes, he slammed dice and got all pissed.


he broke the one rule "don't think that your the best at what you do, and don't try and be the gloating I WIN charcter in a story where you belittle the DM's NPC's at every turn thinking that sooner or later they wont find out."

 

[Midknightsun]

Oh man, let me see . . .

#1 Turning the Tables

First time I can remember (mind you, I was younger and dumber). We were playing a second edition game. One of the players was a friend of mine from high school. He was a bit hyperactive and prone to saying some stupid-silly stuff. Another player, who was slightly older than us, was your typical "I'm grumpy if the game isn't going my way" player. Normally, we dealt with both of them, but it seemed they were getting on each other's nerves more and more.

You could feel the tension around the table sometimes, and it was starting to get on my nerves. We'll, anyway, my hyperactive friend, we'll call him Joe, knew he could get under my grumpy friend's (Ben, we'll call him) skin. He decided to push his buttons all day. Now note that Ben had been pretty intimidating towards Joe in the past, and I think Joe had had enough.

Well, an in character argument quickly turned into an out of character argument. Ben flipped over our gaming table and went for Joe. I stuck myself between the two of them and got tagged by Ben in the head.

Being fed up with this whole thing, I guess I just lost it and swung at Ben, knocking his glasses across the room.

Suddenly,everyone got quiet. Yeah, I was the quiet and calm one, so I guess it took them all by surprise . . . even me.

We decided it was probably a good time to take a break and called it a day.

Amazingly, everyone was much more civil during our next game, and no one left the group . . .


#2 Conan, the Munchkinarian

This wasn't exactly a tantrum, but we had a player for about a year who really liked to get into character by changing his voice. Hey, we all thought that was kinda cool, so no problem. Of course, we later found out he used the same "I'm an illiterate barbarian doofus" voice for 90% of his characters, but that's neither here nor there.

He wasn't your typical player, either, the guy was big and tall, built like a construction worker. He liked to play intimidating characters, and frankly, it really wasn't much of a stretch for him.

The sticking point is that Conan also liked to find new and interesting ways to break the game. He was demanding, always asking to draw from sourcebooks that I had said, over and over, that I would not use. When I said no, I got the look of death. When his character would pull something stupid, like go 1 on 1 with the BBEG and his many minions, he'd get pissed when the character basically got a beat down.

"Hey, what do you expect when you go all cowboy on the big leader? Ya think his minions are going to stand there and let you fight one on one? Seriously now."

*look of death*

"Dude, calm down already. I'm not going to play them stupid."

Eventually, I'd cave a little and give him some feats or magic items to help him fit his character concept.

That one came to bite me later, when his careful plan of feat and item stacking, along with subtle house rule changes he pushed for all lined up.

Then Conan went all Darth Vader and started killing innocent unconscious NPCs, snapping necks of anything he could that looked at him the wrong way, and attacking and nearly killing another NPC "because I don't trust him". Even though the rest of the party did, and decidedly did not want to wantonly attack any NPC that could potentially turn against them (read as: any NPC who had class levels).

His character changed personality, and I called him on it. I told him that it was poor roleplaying and definitely not the character as he had played him up to now. I called him on all the manipulations of my better nature so that he could get a character that would allow him to use and abuse every rule loophole he could.

He was smiling, because he knew it.

I almost lost it, but instead, we tried to play it out in character with the other players reacting to his murgerous rampage. He didn't want to talk about it.

So I told him his roleplaying sucked, and his DM vs Player mentality sucked even worse, and I was tired of it (after a year plus, and a couple campaigns of the same BS). He gave me the look of death and started loudly arguing about it, and everyone else sat there uncomfortably.

Fortunately, he decided to just leave, which was good because we were about to univite him.

 

[krunchyfrogg]

Huh? You wish you had more bad experiences with roleplayers?

Why don't you just come over. Tell us what you hate most at roleplaying, what style makes you sicker than anything else and what system you really hate, and we'll play that game that way with all the little things you came to loathe. That's what friends are for!

LOL, yeah man! Some of these stories are priceless! It's a fuggin' GAME!! That's ALL! I love stories of unstable people.

 

[Dragon Snack]

Yeah, makes me worry about having to find a new group. Mine may have "issues", but nothing like some of these stories.

Axis and Allies has destroyed more friendships...

Ooh, I didn't think that qualified. I've got a good one...

I once "won" a game of Axis and Allies in the first turn (for those who have never played, it usually takes quite some time to play). I was the Allies and attacked and conquered Eastern Europe with Russia (it's right next to Germany on the A&A map), it was a pretty standard move for our group. I did well, having about 4 units left to take the area.

He buys his units, standard gear up to attack the UK (mostly naval units). Then he makes his combat moves, obviously trying to take back Eastern Europe, but also making quite a few other moves. We do the other combats first and he does quite well, but ends up losing most of his aircraft (good defensive rolls from the UK navy).

Then we move to the battle for Eastern Europe. He rolled HORRIBLE on his attacks and I rolled AMAZING on my defense. Suddenly we were even. The second round of combat was just as bad for him and just as good for me. Now I had the advantage. Since he had bought nothing for ground units, he couldn't stop now. His luck didn't improve though and I managed to keep Eastern Europe.

This left him with the option of leaving Western Europe wide open, with the UK and USA with naval units within striking distance (and still having yet to go), or leaving Germany defended by only an Army unit, a Fighter, and a Bomber (the USSR had Tanks and Fighters within striking distance). He chose the other option of flipping the game board over and throwing a fit about how I was cheating on my rolls.

Oddly, after a 30 minute tirade, he wanted a rematch...

 

[Dragonbait]

Oddly, after a 30 minute tirade, he wanted a rematch...

You can practically hear the guillotine falling.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I love the character sheet rippers.
jh

I played in a group where one player just loved his character. When the character was killed the DM took his character sheet and ripped it up right in front of him. The player went nuts, had to be restrained from hitting the DM, and then stormed off. He never played with that DM again and years later would still bring it up if anyone mentioned the DMs name.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

One player, who would have been happier had he been born in ancient Japan with samurai and bushido and that stuff, played a fighter. Another player who did acting in college played a thief named Ollimar Rumblebutt - basically a Kender-like character. He was always cracking jokes in character and stole things all the time. He didn't take from party members (usually), but if we hit a town and we ended up in a store, he acquired all kinds of things. I really enjoyed the player and character, his antics made for an unpredictable game.

The player of the fighter unfortunately had very strong feelings about theft. Even though his character was unaware that Ollimar had been stealing things from the stores, the player was unable to separate the knowledge and so his fighter started following Ollimar everywhere he went in order to prevent him from stealing. When Ollie was able to steal things right under the fighter's nose, the player got upset and tried to have his fighter kill him, even though once again the character had no knowledge of what had happened. The two players argued about it and we decided to end the session.

A few days later everybody in the group got an e-mail from the player of the fighter that printed out to three pages. In that e-mail he ranted about how stealing was immoral and he had no tolerance for it and went on to describe his expectations as to how characters should be played in the game. After some responses began flying back and forth, we all got together to try and work it out face to face. We tried a couple more sessions, but they were so strained that we gave up and disbanded the group (although we later got back together with a few new players and without the fighter's player).

 

[Dragon Snack]

You can practically hear the guillotine falling.

Hehe, he was actually a very good Axis player, which made his ranting even more hillarious.

When he claimed that the USSR shouldn't be able to attack the Germans in the first round because "that didn't happen in RL", I pointed out that Japan never attacked the USSR (until late in the war) in RL either (a favorite tactic of his). That only infuriated him more.

I teased him about it for years and he always maintained that his reaction was perfectly reasonable...

Side note: You made me break out Piledriver - Metal Inquisition and listen to it. I needed to hear the guillotine. Thanks!