How to Manage a Player

Banshee16

First Post
I've got a player in my group who has been somewhat problematic. We had started a new campaign in the spring, and played through the summer into the fall. During that time, we had gone up to lvl 4, and the characters were about to reach lvl 5.

During the one of the last sessions in September, the players made a mistake, and had their characters execute some NPC villains (inquisitors) that they had defeated. That crossed the line from being adventurers to being criminals. The characters fled, to avoid being arrested.

One of the players in the group seems to be the type that likes "winning". He likes having the strongest character, and doesn't like it when his characters "lose"....ie. things don't go his way. This has always been a characteristic that has rubbed me the wrong way. It's the same character who in our last campaign had a dwarven monk with the vow of poverty, who rather ran roughshod over the group.

In the last session in the game, while the characters were on the run, they decided to flee through a woodland, that was actually haunted. They didn't know it was haunted, as they weren't familiar with the area, and had been avoiding any contact with other people (since they're fugitives). In any case, they went through it, at night, without preparing, and ran into the creatures which infest the forest. In any case, the end result was that it was one of those nights where the dice just weren't rolling for the players. The enemies were very weak....they were like CR 1/4, against lvl 4 characters. The characters had a horrible time, rolling poorly, whereas the enemies were rolling really well. In the middle of the fight, this problem player speaks up and says "just call it. The game's over". I look at him, and say it's not over.....no characters are down, and they've just been getting some bad rolls. It won't continue forever". Two rounds later, one of the PCs was killed. The player looks at me, and I just shake my head. Then, the dice turn around, and several rounds later, the party defeats the enemies.

That was the last session of that game. I was unable to run the game for about 2 months, due to real life events. Recently, we've been talking about getting the game started again. We had a Midnight campaign that we'd also discussed trying out. They'd already rolled up characters and such, and asked if we could try that for a bit. I was a bit burned out on the previous campaign, so decided "sure".

We just recruited two new players into the group, and last night they joined us, with the intent of participating in both campaigns....Midnight, and Swashbuckling Adventures (the one where the character died). Anyways, we're all saying our hellos and such, and people are chatting, and Swashbuckling Adventures comes up, because the two new guys are very interested in it. The player who said "call it", turns to them, and says "that campaign's over". I pointed out to him that it's not. We'll be going back to it, and he says "it's over, it died in the last adventure".

Anyways, I didn't want to confront him in front of the rest of the group, particularly since this particular night, we were playing at his house.

In my mind, the other campaign isn't over. I do plan on going back to it, once I have more material prepared. And I don't appreciate a single player telling me what I can, or can't run. None of the other players have said anything of the sort.

How would be the best way to address this?

Banshee
 
Last edited:

log in or register to remove this ad


Well, maybe it's over

Sounds like the players made a bad choice in the last adventure (becoming criminals) and would rather put that experience behind them.

It might be easier for your players to chalk up the last game as a lesson learned rather than take the harder road of redeeming themselves. Call the death in the haunted forest "bad karma" for their poor choice and move on.
 

Quartz said:
Heh. The easy option is to say that if he doesn't want to play in it, it's his choice.

Yep. That's pretty much what it boils down to. You can tell him that if it's "over" for him, that's fine, but that he'll probably want to make plans to do something else on game night once the rest of you get back to the campaign in question. And, hey, if it makes you feel any better "just call it" is a mild response.

I've played with the same kind of fellow. Only with my guy, his response to things not going his was was to use his own character as a kind of 'deadman switch' in an attempt to kill the whole party, thus ruining the campaign for everybody. I recall a Star Wars (WEG) campaign in particular. . . .

The party is hiding inside a treeline, observing a secret Empire research facility from afar, when we see an old foe -- who happens to be an acquaintance of the Self-Destructing Player's character. And he doesn't like where this is going -- so, after we spend an hour of actual play planning an assault on the facility, this turd has his character run out of the treeline in plain sight of the Stormtrooper patrols, waving his blaster over his head and alerting base security to the party's presence.

What. A. Total. Bastard.

Remarkably, the campaign didn't end there, but if our GM had been a "let the dice fall where they may" kind of guy, it almost certainly would have. Fortunately, for us, he didn't make the whole play group suffer because one player wanted to be an :):):):):):):) -- SDP's character was shot dead immediately (admittedly, that was part of SDP's plan) and the rest of us got to make some hide checks vs a very low difficulty (purposely lowered by the gM to avoid a totally anticlimactic TPK) to remain hidden from the Stormtroopers.

I'll take "call it" any day of the week ;)
 

jdrakeh said:
Yep. That's pretty much what it boils down to. You can tell him that if it's "over" for him, that's fine, but that he'll probably want to make plans to do something else on game night once the rest of you get back to the campaign in question. And, hey, if it makes you feel any better "just call it" is a mild response.

I've played with the same kind of fellow. Only with my guy, his response to things not going his was was to use his own character as a kind of 'deadman switch' in an attempt to kill the whole party, thus ruining the campaign for everybody. I recall a Star Wars (WEG) campaign in particular. . . .

The party is hiding inside a treeline, observing a secret Empire research facility from afar, when we see an old foe -- who happens to be an acquaintance of the Self-Destructing Player's character. And he doesn't like where this is going -- so, after we spend an hour of actual play planning an assault on the facility, this turd has his character run out of the treeline in plain sight of the Stormtrooper patrols, waving his blaster over his head and alerting base security to the party's presence.

What. A. Total. Bastard.

Remarkably, the campaign didn't end there, but if our GM had been a "let the dice fall where they may" kind of guy, it almost certainly would have. Fortunately, for us, he didn't make the whole play group suffer because one player wanted to be an :):):):):):):) -- SDP's character was shot dead immediately (admittedly, that was part of SDP's plan) and the rest of us got to make some hide checks vs a very low difficulty (purposely lowered by the gM to avoid a totally anticlimactic TPK) to remain hidden from the Stormtroopers.

I'll take "call it" any day of the week ;)

In 16 years of gaming, I've only had this happen once before. That time, my Dragonlance characters had been absorbed by the mists into Ravenloft. One of the players saw the Ravenloft book, realized what was going on, and had his character murder the other characters.

Needless to say, my attempt at DMing Ravenloft lasted one session.

Banshee
 

Banshee16 said:
In 16 years of gaming, I've only had this happen once before.

That sounds like heaven. The guy in question, he pulled crap like this about once every month. I saw it in Vampire: Dark Ages, Vampire LARP, Deadlands, D&D, Palladium Fantasy, Hercules & Xena, etc, etc, etc. . . it was what the guy was 'known for' in local gaming circles. Oddly, he was a hugely fun guy to do other stuff with, but gaming? People started to hide the existence of their campaigns from him :(
 

Generally, you need to have A Talk with all your players, singly or together. Tell them that you still have plans for the campaign, but that you're prepared to do a "restart" with a different gang and different starting adventures (eventually working back in to your overall storyline, if any). You pretty much already know how Loudmouth feels... now find out how the others feel. Be prepared to restart if necessary.

While you as the DM have total power over the campaign world, this doesn't mean you wield this kind of power over the players. You don't have to let a forceful personality walk all over you, but you can't assume their opinions will always jive with yours either. This doesn't sound like he's killing everyone's fun - he just isn't personally having fun at the moment. Concentrate on the "fun" issue when confronting him (which you will probably need to do).
 

Yeah, you gotta talk to him, and just him.

If he insists that the game is over and you want to continue, then buck up and straight out tell him that he can quit if he wants to, but it's your game and you want to continue it.

Look, the bottom line is whether or not YOU want to keep playing/running it and whether or not you're going to let ONE GUY stop you from doing it.

I'd say - you want to play, the two new guys want to play...the one guy doesn't and he has 'issues'. So continue without him. He may change his mind, he may move on.

OH WELL.

Don't throw away your own desires and fun over someone else.
 

Banshee16 said:
During the one of the last sessions in September, the players made a mistake, and had their characters execute some NPC villains (inquisitors) that they had defeated. That crossed the line from being adventurers to being criminals. The characters fled, to avoid being arrested.

This is really tangential, but...

Is this more of a vigilantism charge situation or cold-blooded murder?
Who were the villains the PCs killed? What had they done?
Did the players and/or PCs know this would make them criminals?
 

There is always the passive-aggressive option:

Move the game to another night, and somewhere other than his house.

Tell everyone else but him.

Thus he gets his own little reality-bubble in which the game is over, and everyone else gets to play the game. :)
 

Pets & Sidekicks

Remove ads

Top