MerakSpielman
First Post
OK, I don't normally bitch about my players, but she's driving me nuts...
My group meets every saturday, and we play two campaigns, alternating weeks. She already dropped out of one of the campaigns because she needed more time to herself, but she seemed to do so with hesitation and regret. That would seem normal. I'd hate to not have time to game. I'd be regretting not going.
But in her case, I have no idea why she games. She doesn't seem to like it at all.
OK. I think we can largely agree that D&D games tend to break down into two portions: Combat (which is in our case largely a tactical wargame) and Roleplaying (what we do when we're not combatting - talk, plan, and say what our characters do based on their background and personality. Perhaps I didn't define the two portions well, but I think you're getting my point.
She seems bored during combat. She waits with annoyance during the other players turns, doens't seem interested in what's going on (unless it's happening to her character), and gets totally flustered if she can't figure out a way to do damage to the enemies on her turn. (And woe should her character become Held, or somehow taken out of the action!) She will outright say that she's bored and can we hurry it up.
OK, so she doesn't like combat. With 6 PCs, it can take a while to get back to your turn again. I can understand being a bit bored, maybe. Surely, then, she must game for the role-playing, to act out her character and her part in the story!
No.
She does all right with NPCs. Pretty well in fact. But PC/PC interaction... Oh dear god... She must have some sort of mental problem with it. She shuts down entirely. She can't deal with not knowing every. single. thing. about everybody elses characters. It irks her to no end if she doesn't know their histories intimitely, their motivations, their deepest secrets. Her character has nothing to hide, why should theirs? And I'm not really talking Big Secrets here. Just ANYTHING the other character doesn't feel like talking about is just... unacceptable to her.
And the worst part is if any of the PCs disagree with each other. Even the faintest hint of confrontation. Of conflict. Discord. She can't deal with it. She starts getting upset. There is no differentiation between how she feels and how her character feels. If she, as a player, is upset with another player for something, her character will sure as hell be upset too. Everybody else at the table has no trouble separating in-character and out-of-character speech and behavior. But she does. She can't understand - something seems wrong in her brain - that somebody else's character being upset and her character doesn't mean they're mad at her. She gets flustered and upset, has pushed heavily for ending the session early so she could have 2 weeks to figure out what her character would do, or even left the table and taken a long walk outside to cool off.
Now I'm finding myself skipping half a day of in-game time just to get them out of the part of the story where her character is involved, becuase strife at the end of the last session was just too much, and I'm sick of it. We're skipping ahead to them leaving the area and heading off to the next adventure, so I don't have to deal with any more of her shennigans. I'm thinking of writing her character out of the ongoing story entirely, since every time her character becomes of central importance Bad Things Happen.
She is a long-time friend, and also a coworker of mine. Simply cutting her out of the game doesn't seem doable. She says she loves coming, but frankly I don't see it. I'm just at my wit's end. I want very much for all my friends to enjoy the campaign I'm running, but I can't think of how to get her enthusiastic about it, and now it's starting to effect everybody else's enjoyment, too.
My group meets every saturday, and we play two campaigns, alternating weeks. She already dropped out of one of the campaigns because she needed more time to herself, but she seemed to do so with hesitation and regret. That would seem normal. I'd hate to not have time to game. I'd be regretting not going.
But in her case, I have no idea why she games. She doesn't seem to like it at all.
OK. I think we can largely agree that D&D games tend to break down into two portions: Combat (which is in our case largely a tactical wargame) and Roleplaying (what we do when we're not combatting - talk, plan, and say what our characters do based on their background and personality. Perhaps I didn't define the two portions well, but I think you're getting my point.
She seems bored during combat. She waits with annoyance during the other players turns, doens't seem interested in what's going on (unless it's happening to her character), and gets totally flustered if she can't figure out a way to do damage to the enemies on her turn. (And woe should her character become Held, or somehow taken out of the action!) She will outright say that she's bored and can we hurry it up.
OK, so she doesn't like combat. With 6 PCs, it can take a while to get back to your turn again. I can understand being a bit bored, maybe. Surely, then, she must game for the role-playing, to act out her character and her part in the story!
No.
She does all right with NPCs. Pretty well in fact. But PC/PC interaction... Oh dear god... She must have some sort of mental problem with it. She shuts down entirely. She can't deal with not knowing every. single. thing. about everybody elses characters. It irks her to no end if she doesn't know their histories intimitely, their motivations, their deepest secrets. Her character has nothing to hide, why should theirs? And I'm not really talking Big Secrets here. Just ANYTHING the other character doesn't feel like talking about is just... unacceptable to her.
And the worst part is if any of the PCs disagree with each other. Even the faintest hint of confrontation. Of conflict. Discord. She can't deal with it. She starts getting upset. There is no differentiation between how she feels and how her character feels. If she, as a player, is upset with another player for something, her character will sure as hell be upset too. Everybody else at the table has no trouble separating in-character and out-of-character speech and behavior. But she does. She can't understand - something seems wrong in her brain - that somebody else's character being upset and her character doesn't mean they're mad at her. She gets flustered and upset, has pushed heavily for ending the session early so she could have 2 weeks to figure out what her character would do, or even left the table and taken a long walk outside to cool off.
Now I'm finding myself skipping half a day of in-game time just to get them out of the part of the story where her character is involved, becuase strife at the end of the last session was just too much, and I'm sick of it. We're skipping ahead to them leaving the area and heading off to the next adventure, so I don't have to deal with any more of her shennigans. I'm thinking of writing her character out of the ongoing story entirely, since every time her character becomes of central importance Bad Things Happen.
She is a long-time friend, and also a coworker of mine. Simply cutting her out of the game doesn't seem doable. She says she loves coming, but frankly I don't see it. I'm just at my wit's end. I want very much for all my friends to enjoy the campaign I'm running, but I can't think of how to get her enthusiastic about it, and now it's starting to effect everybody else's enjoyment, too.
