Have your Players Ruined Your DMing?

[Vyvyan Basterd]

On the contrary. The bad habits of my otherwise good players and just outright bad players over the years has caused me to improve as a DM. I've learned to deal with power gamers, munchkins, cheaters, drama queens, rules lawyers, amateur thespians and many more and still make the game enjoyable for myself and my players.

 

[ExploderWizard]

On the contrary. The bad habits of my otherwise good players and just outright bad players over the years has caused me to improve as a DM. I've learned to deal with power gamers, munchkins, cheaters, drama queens, rules lawyers, amateur thespians and many more and still make the game enjoyable for myself and my players.

Thats a great positive way to view things. Better DMing through resistance training!

 

[Oryan77]

I don't actually see it as ruining my DMing. At the time, they caused a lot of problems, but in the long run, those pain in the ass players improved my DMing more than anything.

The constant arguing & bickering with me forced me to become more knowledgeable about the rules, which actually made it easier to DM.

The "never happy with what you get" players taught me to pay less attention to whining and pay more attention to catering to the good players.

The powergamers showed me that my style of DMing doesn't work well with a powergamer. He'll just make my job as DM much harder and ruin the fun of other players.

Powergamers also taught me to be on my toes anytime someone asks me if I'll allow some obscure feat/ability/spell/magic item. I've made the mistake of looking at the surface of the request and thinking, "that looks harmless enough, of course he can use it!" Then I find out the real reason he wanted it...so he can use it to supplement something else and gain a huge benefit for it. Now I always start off with the reply, "What exactly do you want that for and in what ways is it going to benefit your PC?"

All of the problem players showed me that it is so much easier to just boot them from the game and get a better player than it is to deal with their BS and try to work things out. I never would have met the great players that I've played with if the bad players were still in the group.

 

[Zoric]

Interesting angle to say the least... I sometimes wonder if this isn't half the issue with my current gaming group (I'm a player, mind). As a recent member, it's hard to tell how the group worked together previously. The little I've gathered is that a majority of them are borderline to being "loonies", and that may have given rise to our current problem of excessive railroading, broken enemies and "creative" interpretations of certain rules on the part of our GM.

Not withstanding my other GM, who has a strict no gender-bending policy in place now, based mainly around a RIFTs player who once played a pair of lesbian Juicers...

 

[pogre]

There are certain personalities and play styles that do not mesh with my style. I've learned this over the years. I now say to such players, "You are a great player, but I don't think our styles mesh to make an enjoyable game. I'm asking you to leave the group. I hope there are no hard feelings."

 

[MoxieFu]

Back when I was DMing I had a player who was hell-bent on "winning" the game. He didn't just want to just beat the DM, he also wanted to dominate the other players and their characters. He cheated on die rolls. He also had a very consistent tendency to "just happen to" forget the disadvantages his characters had as well as how spells, magic items, etc worked.

I and my co-dm distributed magic items with making sure that all members in the party could have something to use, but every time something was found, he wound up with it. In our 3.5E game the co-dm and I calculated magic item values and he had MORE than the rest of the entire party COMBINED. The players would just allow him to absorb all the items given out but then expected the DM's to do something about it.

We (the DM's) even went so far as to post emails to all the players lists of items all the characters had and how much total value each character had. I hated doing this because it absolutely destroys all verisimilitude, but that's what we did. Though I no longer play they are still gaming and STILL do this as a standard practice after five years!

The other DM and I talked to him and he begrudgingly allowed us to reduce the power of an insanely unbalanced item that the other DM had created but he still had more value in magic items than any other party member by far.

Between cheating and hoarding magic items he could destroy any creature in one round that would wipe the floor with the rest of the party. He made it impossible to create encounters that would challenge the entire party without risking a TPK, with the possible exception of his character.

We couldn't kick him out of the game because we are all old friends from college and even high school back in the early 80's. We only get together to game as friends and don't take the game too seriously, but his determination to absolutely dominate the game completely destroyed the fun of it for me.

I had other reasons for quitting that were more important than this, but it was a significant factor in my decision. I would love to be able to still get together with them to have a laugh, but not so much for the gaming. Gaming with them as a player it would still irk me when he was obviously cheating. But I couldn't tolerate it DMing.

 

[Oryan77]

There are certain personalities and play styles that do not mesh with my style. I've learned this over the years. I now say to such players, "You are a great player, but I don't think our styles mesh to make an enjoyable game. I'm asking you to leave the group. I hope there are no hard feelings."

If I knew what a jib was and why you'd cut it, I'd say, "I like the cut of your jib."

I share that same opinion that you do. I've even had to say that exact same thing to a couple of players before. A couple times it was after meeting them as potential players for our group and realizing that after talking to them, they would not be a good fit for the group. And the one time I said it to a player in the group, she turned around and posted all kinds of crap about me right here on Enworld (that proved to me that my impression of her was correct and I didn't want to DM her).

 

[Neonchameleon]

If I knew what a jib was and why you'd cut it, I'd say, "I like the cut of your jib."

Offtopic:
A jib is the small triangular sail (or sails on larger boats) at the front of a sailing boat - the one that isn't anchored to a boom. The cut of the jib refers to the exact shape of the triangular sail.

In the age of sail, different nations had different conventions on how many and what shape of jibs to fly on their ships. They were also easy to alter - not requiring booms. Therefore, if a ship wasn't flying colours, a good rule of thumb for telling which country they were from (or where the captain trained) was what they were flying as jibs. And being on the front of the boat it was often the first thing to be seen.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Some of my previous players have certainly made me appreciate my current players more!

If anything, I am less inclined to let any of my players try out anything too far outside the rules after letting one of my previous players play the minds of 2 characters trapped in one body. What started out as a bit of a roleplaying thing seemed to turn into a way that he could have a Sorcerer's spells with a Barbarian's combat abilities.

Fortunately all but one of my current players tend not to push the boundaries too much in regards to classes, feats, PrC, etc. The one player that does (the resident powergamer ) doesn't kick up too much of a fuss when I say no to certain non-core stuff he wants to use.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Wild Gazebo]

While I can honestly say I've become lazier as a DM I would have a hard time trying to blame it on my players.

I feel that when I was in my mid to late twenties I was more invested in the game, cared more, did more prep, and actively tried to get responses from my players. Now, I'm more about setting a scene trying to find a level style so that all will have a good time; and then allotting responsibilites so that everyone shares a part of the world and game.

So, while I've seen a downward curve of what I consider 'good' DMing from myself...I don't think it was the result of my player so much as the way I've slotted the game into my life.