How badly have past DMs screwed up your current Players?

[Bullgrit]

How badly have you found Players screwed up by their previous DM(s)?

Have you seen Players "fall" for obvious villainous tricks because they've been trained to hop on board the railroad train? Have you seen Players attack anything and everything encountered outside a city because they've been trained that everything outside a city is a monster?

What bad traits have you seen in a Player that came about because he/she learned the trait from his/her previous DM?

Have you ever been able to untrain a bad Player?

Have you ever discovered that you are a bad DM by seeing how a Player reacts to your world because he previously played under a good DM?

Bullgrit

 

[ExploderWizard]

Interesting question. Having had a fairly stable group for the past 20 or so years my opportunities to game with people that I don't know well are limited to gamedays, and events at the FLGS. I've met a fairly diverse bunch of folks at these public games. I wouldn't know how well any of them would react to our home games until they joined.

 

[carmachu]

Well as a player, anytime a DM starts with "you're going to the market shopping, plan spells and weapons accodinging" usually means for me now full combat mode. After a few times of that in the RPGA years back, ist now full armor and weapons and combat spells. No exceptions no matter what the DM says.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I've not met a 'broken player' for almost twenty years now and I've gamed with a lot of different people in that time. In the early 90s I encountered a couple of players screwed up by, I think, Tomb of Horrors-style D&D to be uber-paranoid.

 

[Dausuul]

How badly have you found Players screwed up by their previous DM(s)?

Have you seen Players "fall" for obvious villainous tricks because they've been trained to hop on board the railroad train? Have you seen Players attack anything and everything encountered outside a city because they've been trained that everything outside a city is a monster?

I would not describe the first item as "screwed up," just "different expectations." Frankly, I'd much rather have a player who was overly willing to bite on plot hooks than one who had to be argued into it every time.

It's very easy to stop the action and say, "Okay, guys, speaking out of character for a sec - it's not going to break my plot if you don't go along with this. Do what you think your PC would do." Much harder to explain to a recalcitrant player that "roleplaying your character" does not mean "refusing to go along with a perfectly reasonable plot hook, which is entirely in keeping with your character's stated alignment and objectives, out of pure contrariness."

The second is an issue, but in my experience it's less often because of a hack-and-slash DM than because a player new to RPGs is falling back on his/her habits from playing video games.

 

[Gilladian]

Hmmm... I have a fairly stable group, too.

My husband and I have been playing together for 30 years, so his bad habits all come from me, or from his own personal style. He's fairly paranoid, but trusts me to essentially tell the truth, or give some hints to it, anyway. He's certainly willing to leave "most" of the armor home when they go shopping!

My best friend has been playing with us for over 15 years, now. She's a roleplayer, and while she likes combat, she'll find a way to twist anything into a more complex plot than it was originally. Again, though, she's not paranoid about things; she just likes to find connections to things.

Scotty and Kyle are my newer players (only one full year with us); they're father and son. We're Kyle's first full-time experience, so he's learning caution and forethought as he plays (he's 13). Scotty is a wild-hare player, ready to leap in any direction at a moment's notice. He's never too trusting, but he often goes along with plots because he wants to see where they end up.

Bobby is another long-term player (about 20 years) with a few gaps in there... but he's steeped in the comic book style of play. He'll trust anyone, multiple times, and take their betrayals in stride with a grin. He's cautious physically, but never worries about the future.

So I would say that none of them have been "spoiled"... they each have a distinct way of looking at things, and a distinct set of things they enjoy. I try to give them all what they want, and we go from there.

 

[weem]

I've never ran games for what I would call broken players.

With that said, I have played with some overly cautious players - but I used to be that DM when I was much younger, so I get where it comes from. Not that it's a bad thing, I just go for a much more balanced approach then I used to.

I like to show players opportunities they miss when they are overly cautious for example. I like to show them that most NPC's are nice enough people, or at least easy enough to deal with. I don't think there are as many issues when you approach it that way.

 

[Mallus]

How badly? Not at all.

 

[CleverNickName]

Players pick up bad ideas from just about everywhere, not just from bad DMs. That said, I know of at least a couple of people who have been warped by previous DMs.

There was this one girl, I'll call her Jane, who once dated her DM in high school. Apparently he was into slasher-horror a bit too much, and his adventures were always overtly sexual and violent to the extreme. She said that every single adventure was about some kind of demon doing horrific and perverse things to innocent people, all described in vivid detail. It creeped her out enough to make her break up with the guy and leave the group. She didn't play again for years.

Well, one weekend I was running an adventure at her friend's house. It was nothing special; just a little quest for a magic sword in a "haunted" forest. (I did that old Scooby-Doo bit, where the forest was home to some griggs who were scaring people away.) Jane didn't want to play, so she just sat in the other room and listened. Afterward, she said she didn't know that D&D could be about faeries and unicorns and magic swords, and still be fun. She joined us for a couple of games after that, and had a good time, but she never could get into it as a hobby.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I don't think I've seen players "screwed up" that badly. Mostly what I've seen are cases of "Murphy's Gamers." These are players who have come to expect that whatever could be the worst possible outcome of something, that is what will happen.

One consequence of this has been games that move at a snails pace from players who have to analyze every option for problems, check every section of floor for traps etc.

The other consequence has been players who refuse to provide any kind of story for their PC so the DM has nothing to "use against them." This one bothers me the most because I prefer to get the players to feel like their PCs are really part of the world. Sometimes it is a note or package from Mom, other times it is a family connection that opens doors while investigating a quest, and yes, sometimes it is bad news that become a new adventure hook. Unfortunately, if the players give you nothing, then they are just PCs who suddenly appear in the world with no connections to anything, and often they will continue to be that way because they don't want any possible weakness that the DM can exploit.