Flamestrike
Legend
First, thanks for everyone's feedback, even those who felt off-put.
Context: it's not a school club, it's a house game of adults ranging from 20s to 50s. We just call it the "D&D Club."
I admit that the language is hard and confrontational and wounded (non-secure) in places, because I have felt repeatedly chafed and crazed by certain experiences. It came to a head this week, and I felt I was living in a crazening co-dependent DM's nightmare.
These Table Rules were a first draft, which I may (and probably should) further hone, thanks to your suggestions. I haven't yet shared it with the other members of the group (beyond my problem-player), and it makes sense to tone down and streamline some of the wording.
Yet I'm hoping that this ultra-frank draft will sink into the player's memory, because the player has a tendency to forget things, and to renege on agreements, and we repeatedly fall back into difficult dynamics.
I'm sorry to say: there's a reason why each point is there.
This was my attempt to salvage the group, by making a frank inventory of my sore spots, and presenting it in an actionable way.
In regard to the parts of Rule Zero which chafed the most readers in this thread:
The DM can make up rules on the spot, fudge the dice, repeatedly change rules, alter a monster's hit points and stats on the fly, retcon the story, switch to a different rules system, and even modify your character's traits, stats, and features!
Well, I have not been that way as a DM -- if you read some of the other, nicer table rules, you'll see my more usual tenor. Yes, if that was the invitational document to a new player, I can see how it'd be daunting and off-putting...yet at this point, this document is more a "medicinal" antidote and "wake-up call" directed to this specific player. The intense wording is a countermeasure, to moderate the opposite expectation--for the past year, the player has expected me to bend and sway to entertain his wishes.
For example: I told the table that I want to play 5E RAW. I wanted to spend 6 months running a straight RAW campaign, so that I have that as skill-set, and then at the end of the 6 months, I'd be open to considering new house rules, or switching to another RPG system.
So, a day or two later, the player calls me and says he saw a cool Youtube video where the DMs recommend giving out bonus feats as story rewards. At the end, he's like: "So, are you up for that?" I was like: "That's cool, but no, I'm playing RAW". And he got angry. He can't take "No" for an answer.
He was like: "But you gave us other stuff, like letting us become Knights of the White Dragon and Saints of Namyats, and we received titles from the Harpers and Lords' Alliance." I was like: "I'm glad you enjoyed those. But that's story! There were no mechanical benefits. But a bonus feat is a big mechanical boon. Gaining a feat is really rare in 5e." He didn't know what Factions and Renown was -- and he thought that those are commensurate to receiving bonus Feats. He was disappointed that I wouldn't hand out Feats as treasure, like I handed out titles for Faction rewards.
If I say "no", he pouts, and grumbles about me being a stingy, un-free, box-minded, linear DM. (At the same time, last summer, I invented a freeform LARP version of D&D which he enjoyed playing -- somehow he forgets that. But now I want to play 5E RAW.)
As for emotional serenity. He gets disturbed and has nightmares afterward. He grits his teeth and yells loudly in anger when he rolls low or makes a mistake. Which is a bummer.
At some point in the Phandelver adventure, I got tired of coddling his party with kid gloves. (At that point, we were playing one-on-one, since we hadn't found other players yet.)
So I resolved to play Cragmaw Castle with my very best monster tactics.
SPOILER ALERT:
So he went up to the side door and found it locked. He was running multiple characters, one of which is a thief, with proficiency in lockpicks. But he said: "Well, I guess there's no other way than through the front gate." Long story short: after a long attricious fight in the entryway, one thing led to another, and the doppleganger drew him into the central room...where he was surrounded by dozens of goblins + the big boss and his pet, and the doppleganger. And his entire party was felled. Total Party Loss. I played it totally straight.
Two characters made their death saves and were made slaves of the Cragmaw boss. I was ready to move on -- I was planning to pick up a Slavers adventure. But he was like: "I don't have time to make up a new character! I didn't sign up for this!" I'm like: "You didn't sign up for the possibility of your characters dying in D&D?!"
He was emotionally bent out of shape. So basically, I felt I was at the mercy of his wishes and emotions and distress - like I'm just there to entertain him and make sure that his PCs don't die, no matter what. So I let him replay Cragmaw Castle, and retconned the previous TPL to be a dream-sequence.
And I even flat out told him: "Okay, for the rest of this adventure, so let's just play that your characters can't die." And he was happy with that. And I even said: "If you don't like how a scene went, you can either replay the scene, or just retcon it yourself, and tell me how the story actually went." haha - I thought was being pretty generous as a DM.But seriously, I was trying to be 'therapeutic' when faced with some major emotional troubles.
In regard to the Cragmaw TPL, he even admitted later that "I was testing you to see how far I could go."
***
Last adventure, I just gave up, and decided to fulfill his wildest dreams. He had repeatedly griped that he should have a +2 weapon by now (he was 4th level), and that since the Lost Mine of Phandelver is rumored to have a magical forge, then the module is dumb for not having magic weapons lying around, and that I should change whatever magic weapons are in the adventure so that it matches his own character (e.g. instead of a magic sword, it should be a magic pole arm -- which is not a terrible idea, but I simply prefer to play the module-as-written, like I did back in the old days of BECMI. And he doesn't like it.)
Anyway, for the final room of the Lost Mine, I filled the treasure room with 101 magic items, including a vorpal sword, and all the specific magic items he'd asked for (ring of protection, cloak of protection, girdle of giant strength, etc).
Result? As I read the list off, the player's face drooped more and more, and he became emotionally distressed. He was totally unhappy. Afterward he said he "hated that", and said I was being "vindictive". I was like: "Vindictive is a strong word. My jest was no more intense than your repeated griping."
***
Another example: he would get angry that I don't accept his proposed changes to the class features of his character (to make them more powerful) -- for example, he wanted me to house-rule that a Fighter could take more than one Fighting Style, and switch between them, from round to round. I'm like: "Dude, I told you I want to learn to play RAW." And he pouts and gets angry, and labels me as being "constrictive of player freedom."
He'll read some article online, and then swear by it. Even though he hasn't read the PHB or DMG himself. Ever since he read some article about how there shouldn't be traps in D&D, he wants me to delete all traps from D&D adventures. I'm like: "Dude, it's D&D! There are going to be traps!" He portrays me as a crotchety DM for not going along with his wish that there be no traps in D&D!
***
In regard to Shield Master. He made up a character with Shield Master feat- and before the character entered play I ruled for the latest (revised) Sage Advice on that feat; but he pouted and wouldn't play that character. Then, as a sop, I wrote up a new ruling which salvaged the original (pre-revision) Sage Advice, but required the Shield Master to actually follow through with their declared attack (no matter what), if they took the bonus Shove before the attack. He didn't like that, and so he wrote his own version.
I even provisionally agreed to the intent of his Shield Master hack, but when I asked for clarification about his wording, it all unraveled. He offered various explanations: "If I fail on the Shove, I suffer Disadvantage to attack that creature for the rest of this turn (but not any other creature), or maybe there'd be four different degrees of success or failure on the Shove." He suggested that we playtest the various proposals. I became frustrated with the lack of firmness and contour. And didn't relish drawing it out even further by a playtest. I said that if we are going to totally homebrew the Shield Master feat, ideally we would first gather all the various online hacks of the feat which others have written, so as to see ways others have done it, as due diligence. But he lightly dismissed this as being uncreative, saying: "We should just trust our own creativity." This happened a couple days ago. We had spent months wrangling over this feat, just because he wouldn't really accept either of the Sage Advice rulings which I adopted.
At the same time as he was proposing these changes in how feats and fighter styles work, he didn't even know the rules well enough to roll ability scores. His character had a wild array of numbers: like several 18s and 17s, and some like 3s or 4s (or something like that). I was like: "What method did you use to roll up your character?" And he was like: "d20s."
At the same time, he was busting my chops for not going along with his proposals to change the RAW . He seems to think that just because he read it online, and he thinks it's a good idea for his character (i.e. makes his character more powerful), then it's ingeniously inspired, and I should adopt it. And that I'm a mephistophelean gear-head for trying to play the RAW.
In hopes of salvaging things, I recently announced that I'm starting a new campaign, where everyone is going to start on a level playing field. Partly because, when we first started playing, he would roll multiple sets of ability scores, and choose the highest. And I have another player whose character has suspiciously high scores (IIRC, the scores are all 14 or higher) So I wanted to head off that temptation. So I was like: if you want bring an old character into this new campaign, I need you to redo their ability scores using the Standard Array or Point Buy. But he was like: "I rolled an 18 for the druid, and I don't want to give it up."
That blew my fuse. I felt I could literally not make any rulings or table parameters without being endlessly challenged and pushed and prodded.
I said: "Well, photocopy the sheet, and keep its stats for use in another campaign."
But I went to bed feeling like I was trapped in a crazed codependent DMs nightmare.
The next morning, I wrote up and sent the Twenty Table Rules. Which was just yesterday.
So you see I'm still in the thick of some tumult - that is why some of the wording is too hard and harsh.
You guys are right that this player-constellation may not be salvageable. These "Twenty Table Rules" are really a last-ditch effort, in hopes that my dynamics with this player would truly and lastingly change.
Lastly, believe it or not, we are best friends. His wife warned me that he has emotional trouble when playing games. That is something to consider.
Well, I've gone and "aired the laundry" in public, and "called out the cavalry" in this thread.
-Travis
Sack this dude from your table. Immediately.
Seriously, why on earth would you spend your free time hanging out with a self entitled, whiny, oversensitive, demanding, cheating, sooky player who cant be assed reading the rules (but clearly spends a lot of time reading up on how to wreck games)?
If someone was like that to me, they would be instantly booted from the group. No ifs buts or maybes. If they were like that to me in ANY context, I would flat out refuse to hang with them under any circumstance.
