Inept players....

[Mulkhoran]

I think the advice given so far is pretty good.

I'm just here to pimp the NC Game Day Thread .

Come and join us, Shub. Bring your problem player too. He might learn something. Or at least some of us other GM's could have fun killing him.

I'll kill 'im. Kill 'im DEAD. Yauh.

Then I'll set to workin' on 'im. Ayuh.


I'm with hong on this. Sometimes people just need a little straightforward clarity. "U do stuff now or die with bitz. No jokey!"

(end of constructive comments)


Also, I NC Game Day Thread think that you should NC Game Day Thread , and see if he's just NC Game Day Thread for munchkin-loot, or if he just doesn't have a good NC Game Day Thread on how things work in a team environment. Good communication NC Game Day Thread will solve problems NC Game Day Thread .

 

[Pielorinho]

Another NC fella checking in. . . .

Sometimes I have players who ignore big, important scenes, who want to focus on trivial game-rule issues while ignoring the slavering God staring at them. I've found that saying things like, "Your character has the unsettling feeling that his next action will determine his fate," can get people to sit up and pay attention.

Daniel

 

[Nareau]

Being the player on the receiving end of Pielorinho's "Your character has the unsettling feeling that his next action will determine his fate," I agree that it's an effective way to get the character to act. They might surprise you (and still get themselves killed), but at least they'll do something.

As for how to deal with him otherwise...it sounds like a pretty high-level campaign, with enemies tough enough to kill just about anyone if they do something foolish. While it sounds also like you're giving him some pretty good clues that he's about to get killed, he might not see it that way. If you talk to him out of game, ask him what he thinks went wrong in the sessions (ie, let him figure out how he screwed up). Ask him what he thinks his characters could have done to avoid death. Ask him what he was thinking.

If he's unable or unwilling to act intelligently, see if he'd be willing to play someone with both an Int and Wis of 6. But if there's no way to make it fun for everybody, let him go.

Good luck!

 

[dpdx]

Can non-Tarheels play? My parents once lived in Oriental.

People like this often have at least maturity problems, if not psychological problems. It may be more than you want to deal with (or have time for) to try and 'reform' this player to work with your group, Shub. After all, it's about having collective fun, not about therapy.

I'd probably have the energy to give one in-game warning, one extra-game conversation, and a final warning, before booting the guy.

Another, possibly bad idea: this person seems to like working against the group. Maybe you can pull his PC, and make him the special assistant DM in charge of bad guy actions.

 

[barsoomcore]

Just to offer a somewhat different (probably cause I'm not from NC (which is where, exactly? New Caledonia? Nubian Canyons?)) perspective...

Don't kill him next time. There are far, far more entertaining things you can do to his character than kill him.

Remove his legs.
Turn him into a black pudding.
Burn his eyes out.
Imprison him with an affectionate Giant Space Hamster.

Make bad guys who don't necessarily want to kill him but want something else very particular from him (like, say, his legs).

It's much more fun.

 

[Victim]

NC = North Carolina, one of the states (territories, provinces) of the United States of America.

 

[Mulkhoran]

NC = North Carolina, one of the states (territories, provinces) of the United States of America.

Is not!

Nubile Crocodiles, baby.............

 

[Shub-Niggurath]

I've killed one of my own NPC's in the game, who later got raised, but I don't single anyone out.

*chuckle* As far as there being "far, far more entertaining things you can do to his character than kill him." I've done far more interesting things, one of the current characters started the game by waking up in the gatetown of Hopeless with his clothes, a sword, cut purse strings, a smooth black gem embedded in his ankle, and no memories whatsoever. In fact that character for the first plot of the game would periodically lose time as he was posessed by an outside force exerting its control over him through the gem in his ankle. Ended up using that as a subtle tool to manipulate what the entire group did, letting them think they were doing things of their own motivation, or against the forces they suspected of having taken the one characters memory.

Wasn't until the end of the current plot that the character ended up regaining full control of himself, and most of his memories, and a full understanding of just what had happened to him leading up to his waking up in the gatetown to the Grey Waste. The player of the character was having both an amazing amount of fun with her character, but was joyously frustrated at times trying to figure out just what was playing with her PC.

Fun plot element it was. The same character may have inadvertantly overexposed themselves to heavy magic, with some nasty side effects, depending on your perspective. I don't give out power items without their being potentially horrific side effects for having them. I'd say a few things about an item floating around the group, but a few of them may read these boards, so I'm loathe to mention it specifically.

But yeah, there's many other fun things to do besides kill a PC for doing something stupid, unfortunately the prior two times in question for my original problem player, that was the only real option on my part. We'll see how it goes in the future though once I have a talk with the player.

And with the NC game day, I'll have to see if I can't attend.

 

[jdavis]

Have you ruled out that he just may be a idiot yet? We played with a guy years ago that was just plain stupid, he died on a regular basis and he seemed to go off on his own a lot like that. His big excuse was "I wasn't ready".

 

[Shub-Niggurath]

Idiot is a harsh word here.... lets just say he lacks the same social graces and abilities that all of his characters do. Intelligent yes, but wisdom's got a definate negative mod in real life frequently.

I havn't even gone into him wanting to play an Ooze mephit perfume dealer after his ascended succubus got finger o' deathed and her essence partially devoured to the point of no raising.