How to deal with a "true roleplayer".

[James Gasik]

"I stab him to death in his sleep. It's what my character would do."

I don't think two wrongs make a right, but that did make me laugh.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Every player I've known like this was struggling with social issues outside of the game.

 

[Blue]

Then suddenly he'll declare that he refuses to use Thieves' Tools (despite being proficient in them) because he sees it as "dishonorable" and a reminder of his past transgressions. And you know, that's a cool quirk but when you point out he's putting himself (and possibly the rest of the party, if no one else can use those Tools) at a disadvantage, he just goes blank faced and says "but I'm roleplaying my character".

I don't really know what to do with that, and I'm pretty sure no one else does either.

"I understand you are playing your character. But D&D is a team game and the impression you gave when we designed a party together during Session 0 was that you would be covering circumstances needing thieves' tools - so based on what you said, no one else took proficiency in them - possibly to avoid stepping on your toes. Just like if you were to play a pacifist or a serial killer, your choices affect the entire team and there are some choices that are not fair to the others you are playing with if not discussed and agreed to ahead of time. We're not asking for any creative control over your character, just that we have an idea so we can make informed choices about our own character creation."

 

[MNblockhead]

Man, he would really hate me as a DM. I run rather sandboxy games where you can run into level "inappropriate" encounters. We've booted players for taking too long on their turns and being overly distracted by their phones. Not sure what to tell you, you know the person better than we do. You can tell him that the group isn't happy with the way he is playing, but if that is not how he likes to play he may not be happy with the game. I mean, he's already blamed the GM and other players. May be best to suggest he find another group and game to play in that is a better fit for him. Personally, I would have a difficult time keeping someone in the group that displayed this kind of behavior.

 

[Blue]

Every player I've known like this was struggling with social issues outside of the game.

Agreed, though I'd expand even further.

Had a good friend on the autism spectrum, what they used to call Aspergers. Could not read a room, and would have seen nothing wrong at all in the action because was just not picking up that others were upset - to some minor degree that others could be upset - about how he was playing. Same guy was a kick ass DM in his teens and 20s, though he still had issues with incorporating player feedback and interests into campaigns.

 

[AnotherGuy]

But what I understand is, choosing to swim against the current is going to complicate things for you.

My friend, sadly, seems unwilling to accept that his choices will lead to consequences, not just for himself, but for others.

Unfortunately, when I try to point this out to my friend, he just scoffs and continues to play this way, and when his decisions don't pan out, he doesn't want to accept that he might be responsible in any way for it- that he's playing the game "right" (as if there is a right way to play any TTRPG) and we're doing it "wrong somehow.

I feel your friend may have narcissistic tendencies. It is extremely difficult to reason with a person with that frame of mind.
Perhaps those amongst us with an understanding of psychology, know best how to approach such an individual.

EDIT: I have experienced a similar situation but with the problematic person being the min/maxer rather than the "true roleplayer". What I'm implying is the issue is not true roleplaying or min/maxing.

 

[The Shadow]

I feel your friend may have narcissistic tendencies. It is extremely difficult to reason with a person with that frame of mind.
Perhaps those amongst us with an understanding of psychology, know best how to approach such an individual.

I have no particular expertise in psychology, but my life experience strongly suggests that the best way to deal with narcissists is to not.

That is, not to have dealings with them at all. Life is too short.

 

[Lanefan]

I have this friend. I'm willing to bet a lot of you have a friend like this. He is convinced that "making a good character" consists of the following steps:

*Give the character a detailed backstory.
*Give the character unoptimized ability scores, justifying them with said backstory.
*Have the character make decisions based on the personality he gave them.

Now some might say this is a great way to go about things,

Count me as one such. That said, it's easy to go overboard on the sub-optimal ability scores.

In a recent battle, the party Wizard cast Web to give the group some breathing room while fighting some zombies. At which point my friend goes "great, now that the zombies can't move, I'll light them on fire!", which of course, destroyed sections of the Web. When pressed on this, he stated "it's what his character would do".

That's excellent! Love it! And of course any zombies caught in the web take x-amount of fire damage.

Web + torch = poor man's fireball, after all.

Further, he seems to have a terrible attitude towards players who don't make characters the way he does, even when he struggles in combats to hit enemies because he's decided a 12 Dexterity makes him a perfectly acceptable archer, or he'd rather use a sling than select an attack cantrip. And when he talks about his characters, he brings up all of these things as evidence for how "superior" his characters are.

Now we're getting into problematic territory.

It came to a head last session where we had a TPK because he got it into his head to attack a Hill Giant that was in the area. The DM had told everyone they spotted the Giant, and could easily avoid it; it was simply a warning that there was a Giant in the area, not an encounter. My friend fired a crossbow at it to get it's attention, and said he would run from it and then the party could attack it from behind. So they all hid, and he led it on a chase into the woods.

Well, he thought it would be a chase, but the Giant has a speed of 40, and his Dwarf has a speed of 25. He tried to hide in the underbrush, in heavy armor, with his Dexterity of 9, and failed to get anywhere near the Giant's passive perception. Now, remember, this wasn't intended to be an encounter at all, and I don't think the DM was trying to kill anyone. Instead of attacking, the Giant taunted the "silly little man".

"I don't take insults at all!", says the Dwarf. "He has offended my honor! I jump out and attack him!"

Again, bravo!

I did the same thing to my crew - threw a Hill Giant at their 1st level party (1e-variant game) to see what they'd do with it in a situation where they had every opportunity to safely ignore it - which is what I thought they'd do. So of course they face-charged the thing, and much to my utter amazement managed to kill it at cost of only three characters out of seven.

The result was one splattered Dwarf, and the rest of the party decided not to engage the Giant. Afterwards, my friend had nothing but scorn for us for not following his "foolproof" plan, and complained that the DM was a "killer DM" for using a Hill Giant as an encounter. When the DM said that's not what was intended, the response was, "I'm a Dwarf! We hate Giants! If I see a Giant, I'm going to try and kill it! So yes, that's an encounter!"

I can see the player being annoyed that the party left his Dwarf hung out to dry like that...but at the same time the player had to see that possibility coming, particularly if the party didn't otherwise have the chops to take on a Giant (you don't mention the edition, thus I've no idea how tough a Giant is relative to what seems like a low-level crew). As for the "killer DM" chirp, that's uncalled for; though he then turns around and makes a valid point about the typical Dwarf reaction to seeing a Giant.

I haven't heard anything but complaints from him since, about how it's the DM's fault, it's the system's fault for not rewarding his "good play",

Invaild complaints, in that the DM did the right thing and the system rewarded his good play as one would expect: he played his character straight into the grave. And I say "good play" in all sincerity there; I just love what he did with that Dwarf - and just imagine if he'd somehow managed to defeat that thing!

and then he backhandedly insulted me, because I'm playing a "min/maxxed character". I'm playing a Kobold Wizard with more Dexterity than Intelligence, who took the Healer Feat to help the Cleric keep the party healed! What in the...

I've known this guy for awhile and I consider him a friend, but what can I say to him to get him to realize that "good roleplaying" doesn't necessarily mean "sabotage your character, then try to blame everything else for your bad decisions"?

Personally, other than the complaining piece I find players like this are often the heart and soul of what makes this game fun: their characters are almost invariably entertaining, you never know what they'll do next, and they lead the party into all sorts of wonderful mayhem just by doing what they would do.

 

[Lanefan]

And making a character who can't or won't perform their role in the party is just dumb. That's not roleplaying, that's suicide. What, are his characters incapable of learning that burning a Web is a bad idea?

Er...unless there's party members stuck in it, why is burning a Web ever a bad idea?

 

[Lanefan]

"I understand you are playing your character. But D&D is a team game and the impression you gave when we designed a party together during Session 0 was that you would be covering circumstances needing thieves' tools - so based on what you said, no one else took proficiency in them - possibly to avoid stepping on your toes. Just like if you were to play a pacifist or a serial killer, your choices affect the entire team and there are some choices that are not fair to the others you are playing with if not discussed and agreed to ahead of time. We're not asking for any creative control over your character, just that we have an idea so we can make informed choices about our own character creation."

Sorry, @Blue , but this sort of metagame stuff is exactly why I try to have players roll up characters (at campaign start, anyway) without telling each other what they're playing; so each can play what they in fact want to play. If two or more players end up playing the same thing it's not a question of stepping on each other's toes*, it just means the party is really good at whatever it is those characters do and probably has a hole somewhere else in its lineup (for the filling of which they can always recruit an NPC if they so desire).

* - where does this dumb notion come from anyway? Just 'cause I'm playing a Thief doesn't and shouldn't exclude anyone else from playing one at the same time; never mind that when (not if!) my character dies I might want to come back with something different, and then we won't have a Thief in the crew.