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My player's character, the enigma
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6280533" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>It's possible that Bob is just a bad player who takes pleasure in disrupting others' fun. If that's true, the advice from others upthread about stern words and/or booting from the group seem sensible enough.</p><p></p><p>The rest of my post works on the assumption that Bob is still going to be part of the game, and that what is going on here is a clash of playstyle expectations.</p><p></p><p>From the extracts I've quoted from your OP, it looks like Bob is trying to keep his PC's backstory secret to (i) prevent it being used against him by the GM, and (ii) as a possible protection against future GM force. I don't know how much GM force you use in your game - your OP doesn't make that clear - but you do refer to the campaign world being "pretty much [your] baby", and you also seem to imply that, as GM, you will tell a player that his/her PC is acting "out of character" and use that as a device for pressuring the player to change his/her PC's declared actions.</p><p></p><p>I think one way to try and deal with (i) is to make it clear to Bob that he doesn't have to worry about (ii). That is, if Bob is more confident that backstory won't be used by the GM as a device for pressuring the players into making particular action declarations for their PCs, then Bob might realise that the way you have <em>fun</em> in an RPG is precisely by telling the GM your PC backstory so that the GM can then use it to come up with interesting situations for your PC to deal with. How can the GM do that if s/he doesn't know what your backstory is? For instance, how you can give Bob interesting situations that relate to Stormageddon's background as a slave if Bob hasn't told you who the enslavers were?</p><p></p><p>Of course, if Bob is just an unreasonable, disruptive person then the above has no applicability. It is predicated on the assumption that he is a reasonable person looking to have fun RPGing.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6280533, member: 42582"] It's possible that Bob is just a bad player who takes pleasure in disrupting others' fun. If that's true, the advice from others upthread about stern words and/or booting from the group seem sensible enough. The rest of my post works on the assumption that Bob is still going to be part of the game, and that what is going on here is a clash of playstyle expectations. From the extracts I've quoted from your OP, it looks like Bob is trying to keep his PC's backstory secret to (i) prevent it being used against him by the GM, and (ii) as a possible protection against future GM force. I don't know how much GM force you use in your game - your OP doesn't make that clear - but you do refer to the campaign world being "pretty much [your] baby", and you also seem to imply that, as GM, you will tell a player that his/her PC is acting "out of character" and use that as a device for pressuring the player to change his/her PC's declared actions. I think one way to try and deal with (i) is to make it clear to Bob that he doesn't have to worry about (ii). That is, if Bob is more confident that backstory won't be used by the GM as a device for pressuring the players into making particular action declarations for their PCs, then Bob might realise that the way you have [I]fun[/I] in an RPG is precisely by telling the GM your PC backstory so that the GM can then use it to come up with interesting situations for your PC to deal with. How can the GM do that if s/he doesn't know what your backstory is? For instance, how you can give Bob interesting situations that relate to Stormageddon's background as a slave if Bob hasn't told you who the enslavers were? Of course, if Bob is just an unreasonable, disruptive person then the above has no applicability. It is predicated on the assumption that he is a reasonable person looking to have fun RPGing. [/QUOTE]
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