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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Keeper of Secrets" data-source="post: 3693656" data-attributes="member: 13836">One of the most unusual player meltdowns I have ever experienced happened at last night's session.  Some background is required but bear with me . . .I run Mutants & Masterminds every Friday night and have been running the same supers campaign for years.  Last night a player of mine (who has always been kind of a manic/depressive fellow, prone to bouts of quirky behavior) finally fell apart.His character is the resident occultist and wizard.  Morose and eerie is his personality and he has a variety of magical gadgets which help during investigations.  Now, his character was center stage.  He was a approached by a woman for a new story arc.  She expressed romantic interest in him and they began a few days of seeing each other (Now, the woman is actually dead and he is talking to her ghost as the ghost is subtly trying to warn him of the big bad who killed her and she wants him to solver her murder, etc.)  Meanwhile I go back and forth to the other players in between mysterious and romantic dates and so on with the meltdown player.  They go about their lives and follow up on some leads for their own personal investigations.  The set up for the meltdown player's mystery is that he is finally invited back to the dead woman's 'home' (which actually will end up being a creepy condemned apartment where she was killed about a week ago in a ritualistic murder in the basement.  As I am ready to go back to the meltdown player to explain how he drives up to the apartment, he says he has to talk to me right now - in private.  I don't think much of it as he is the kind of player who constantly asks to see me in private because he is often too shy to have his character be romantic or submit an interesting idea for fear of the others making fun of him.As we are going into the next room the other players are mumbling something about a trap ready to be sprung on him by the mysterious (ghost) woman.  In the next room meltdown player proceeds to tell me how he 'can't do this.'  I am wondering if he means the romance angle (since I know the romance angle is done at this point and all he has to do is stumble across the body).  I assure him we'll get through this, he should trust me, etc.  Then he proceeds to clarify.  He can't do this character.  He can't be an occult expert.  He doesn't know what he is doing.  The other players will laugh at him and give him a hard time.  He is sick to his stomach over the grief.My jaw drops.  I am stunned.  I have no idea what to say next.To make matters worse, the clues that are supposed to be found with the dead woman are to lead into the next chapter of the campaign.  Cultists.  Coming of a Lovecraft style god, etc.  I can't have him back out.  I can't start over again. I beg him to just make it through the next 15 minutes.So like some director, trying to film the last 20 minutes of a movie with a slung out, coked up starlet, I push him through the next scene as he enters the creepy apartment, finds the body and then the player freezes.He freezes.  About a minute of silence as he has his head down in his hands, looking at the floor.  (Try this experiment.  Get your gaming group to sit in utter silence, waiting for something to happen.  1 minute feels like 20 and is very awkward.)Eventually I put my years of GM experience to use and have meltdown's character's phone dial another PC and have ghost voices threaten the other PC which prompts a callback to meltdown.  Meltdown manages to pull it together a little bit but as soon as he eeks out his weak description of what his character saw, I end the game early.  I sent an email to meltdown player this morning and am waiting for a response.  I politely asked him, 'WTF!?!?!?!?!' Any thoughts, ideas, advice or observations would be appreciated.  I have been running games over 20 years and never had anything this strange happen.</blockquote>

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