Greedy player, what should we do?

[Ridley's Cohort]

Bingo. His behavior can be explained. It is a self image thing. Acquistion of wealth and material things = better or improved self image. To him, he has to have the best and the most to feel equal or better than his peers. The proverbial 'keeping up with the Jones' syndrome.

He needs to discover that self worth is more than material gain. Until then, he will most likely continue to act the way he is.

I agree. The player is locked in a competitive mindset because he is unconsicously worried over his self-image. He is tracking the gold because he obsessively wants reassurance that he is "keeping up" or "winning".

I think the key is to teach this player other ways to "win". He will be difficult to retrain without changing the tone of the campaign. I would suggest some one-shot adventures or small side campaigns where there is absolutely no material reward. Furthermore, in sufficiently harsh conditions you may be able to instill the idea is success is survival or dying bravely to so that your friends live to complete the mission. Old-style Call of Cthulu is good for this.

 

[Ricochet]

I would kick his ass to the curb. "Go find a new gaming circle".

That is guaranteed to solve your problem, no matter what.

(and yes - if you give away magic like this and then allow it to be sold, you are contributing to the problem.)

Well, I can't kick him because of friendship. This is our "holy grail" gaming group of friends, so that's a no-go.

And I don't allow items to just be sold, as I have previously stated. The problem is just that another character is "carrying potential wealth".

We will try to use some of the advice from this thread when we game next wednesday, and I'll write how it went afterwards.

 

[Ricochet]

I agree. The player is locked in a competitive mindset because he is unconsicously worried over his self-image. He is tracking the gold because he obsessively wants reassurance that he is "keeping up" or "winning".

I think the key is to teach this player other ways to "win". He will be difficult to retrain without changing the tone of the campaign. I would suggest some one-shot adventures or small side campaigns where there is absolutely no material reward. Furthermore, in sufficiently harsh conditions you may be able to instill the idea is success is survival or dying bravely to so that your friends live to complete the mission. Old-style Call of Cthulu is good for this.

We have tried games like that, and to some extent had succes. The problem comes when he is faced with the challenge, he goes "what's in it for me?" and becomes un-cooperative.
Also, we play Cthulhu sometimes (great game, my favorite to GM), but he doesn't participate because he doesn't know how to play it. He can't get past the "we are gonna' die" part of the game, and has simply bowed out of Cthulhu-games. And no, the solution is not to play Cthulhu all the time

To everyone else: Yes, this person probably has self-esteem or competitive social problems, I actually pointed that out in my original post. The good thing is he has become aware of it, now we will try to focus a bit more on it in our games. Next wednesday we play again, and I'll update this thread telling everyone how it went.

 

[rvalle]

We had issues sort of like this in our game. One of our players came up with a 'magic point' system. Its been years since we used it so I'm a bit scetch on some of the finer points.


Basicly we would add up the worth (selling price) of all the items we recived on that adventure. Divide by the number of players and that was the number of MP's each player recieved.

The person with the highest number of MP's had first pick for items. You 'paid' for the item with your MP's ( and you could go negitive).

It sounds kind of weird but it worked out really well. If there was a high powered item everyone on that adventure got a 'share' of it since they got part of the selling cost. If a player did not get an item for a couple of adventures their MP's would pile up and they would get first pick later. If some one did take a high powered item they went negitive for a while and pretty much had to take a pass on the good stuff later. There was usually enough items that we went down the list and then back up again (1-6 and then 6 back to 1 was the picking order). It helped in cases where a player was tempted to take an item they couldn't really use just to sell it because 'they had first pick'. You cold take an item and then sell it for gold or take a pass and save the points.

We also 'sold' items in the party using MP's, GP's or a combo of both so it became an in group currency.

I don't know if that would help you much. Some of the players we had were not happy with the system but could live with it (they wanted a chance for first pick every time). This would not help in the cases where the player was upset he did not have an item from an adventure he was not on.
rv

 

[taliesin15]

My suggestion is somewhat similar to Crothian's. Yeah. Let him have his way. Even moreso. In fact, find some way in the game for his character to get granted a wish for "all the gold he could possibly want"--i.e., can ya say King Midas? EVERYthing he touches turns to gold. His food, water, his women, his horse, and so on. I know its an in-game suggestion, but I think its also both a good psychological wakeup call. AND its a Myth, well related to the fantasy RPG tropes AD&D is based on.

 

[Dareoon Dalandrove]

I think you really have some great advice here and potential story lines that you could use for you game.

1. You could place curse on him like the one that was on Kelmevor's family from FR novels. The old cleric needs the party to do the good deed but your player wont because he needs compensation. Cursed: cannot accept payment for work.

2. You could also give him all that he desires. Allow him to sell everything and split the treasure. It provides a story line that the party has to request for the item.

3. I'm sure at some point his greed as effected other outside of the party. Maybe he is the target of good aligned npcs going after him. What's his alignment anyway? It sounds like he might be playing NE. IF so spells would affect him.


On the whole D&D and role-playing games are very social. If after identifying that this player has destructive tendencies that make things difficult for themselves and those around them maybe he should take a break from the group and deal with his problem.

Or since he's your friend and you don't want to stop playing at any cost tell him to stop. Say something to the effect "Look we talked already, if you know that you’re acting like a jerk then stop. I'm your friend and I'm here for you, but if your problem is getting in the way of your fun and others YOU NEED to get a handle on it." Maybe after him deliberately not trying to sell stuff and divided everything up he might get over his anxiety.


Here is another idea. Do you think that you or the group might be the problem? You said that one character gave items that the party couldn't use to his new cohort. That's benefiting that one character. Do the characters have treasure of their appropriate lvl? I was involved in a campaign where we were all about 8-10th lvl and had very little magic items. We were playing a high fantasy setting and having problems because of our lack of resources. It made us all very focused on material wealth. Is the campaign very focus of self sacrificing heroics where you have paladins and holy crusaders in the group with one mercenary? Is your player stuck playing a character that he really wanted to play but you have changed the campaign on him to something that it originally wasn't?

 

[Henry]

My personal advice is to hunt down and read "Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering" (now available in PDF from www.warehouse23.com ).

Robin laws would probably refer to this as "powergamer" behavior. This is not meant to be a derogatory term, but rather a label for a gamer who's "emotional kick" is an award or significant advancement. The trick is to see that his need is met in the game, just as all the others' needs are met through the story, through combat, through character development, etc.

However, he needs to also sympathize and respect that there's not going to be funds that can be equitably split at every game session, and some limited number of "payoffs" are going to be more long-term. The best thing is to see what other in-game rewards also interest him. Prestige with NPCs that can be tangibly called upon? Acquisition of temporal power? Acquisition of PERSONAL power, slightly more so than what the other players get? In other words, find multiple ways that he can get his "fix" and try to integrate that without harming the others' fun - because it sounds like it's harming EVERYONE's fun right now.

As for "kicking him out of the group", if gaming with friends, as is the case with most gaming groups, then that's not an option.

DISCLAIMER: ROBIN LAWS' book will not work for everyone, clean your car, or shine your shoes. However, to me it's a pretty darned good book that every prospective game master should at least be familiar with, if not agree with.

 

[scrubkai]

Another Thought

If I ran into this in my game....

I'd start giving the party some "Custom" magic items....Thing's that are hard to calculate the value of. For example:
A headband of Precise Shot...
A user activated sword with a +5 bonus but only for 5 rounds a day.
A magic Weapon that can change from Silver, to Cold Iron to Lawful (but only one at a time) at will.
A scarab that allows the Wearer to sneak attack Constructs and Undead.
Or a flawed ring of protection, that gives you +4 to AC but drops your dex by 4 (min 3)....

Sure he can guess that the item is worth X, ( I could be argued that the flawed ring is worth someplace around a ring +2) but a fighter with a 3 dex would put a MUCH higher value on it then my rogue with an 18 dex.

It would be a little more work for you, but it takes some of the "Accounting" out of character. Each player starts picking the items they like best and often other characters are happy to let the item go, as they think the item has no use to them and would have no clue what it's worth anyway.

Given this won't work for every item, but I would think that after throwing a few of these items into the mix the values of each characters items will be so variable that it will be hard to know if one character got his fair gp share or not. As I've seen it the party just starts handing out items to the people who can use it best and just kinda know when everyone is even in power level.

 

[MaxKaladin]

Would it work for the rest of the party to 'buy him out'? If he's worried about the potential wealth concentrated in the Miracle scroll, for instance, would it work for the party to just come up with his share of the value of the scroll and pay it out to him or would he keep worrying about the scroll anyway?

Yeah, it isn't fair to the other players but if it will keep the peace it might be the lesser evil, so to speak.