Player Problems..

[JoeGKushner]

The golden brick is the dm's perogative to drop a completly unfair and often near fatal or definatly fatal encounter or situationon any pc in his campaign. "Don't piss off the dm"

We call it blue bolt where I'm from.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Sigh. The player who wants to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, with no restrictions or limitations on his character's behaviour b/c he's a "free spirit". Been dere. Done dat.

Buh-bye. Don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out.

 

[LostSoul]

We call it blue bolt where I'm from.

I'd call that bullying.

 

[KRT]

I'd call that bullying.

I totally agree. Its very easy to get upset about innapropriate ingame play and to try to fix the problem ingame with threats and punishments. However, the only way to fix it is to stop the game by calling a break (everyone take 5, hit the washroom, have a smoke or refill your drinks). Then take the player aside who is causing you concern and try to resolve it by finding out what's wrong. This provides real world consequences to bad behaviour rather than ingame consequences that a player can just rationalize don't matter. Sometimes a player gets out of hand and decides to ruin it for everyone else (i.e tries to get the party killed because they aren't enjoying the game and want it to end). As a DM i dissallow this unless the player has a good reason that fits with the storyline and isn't actually out to ruin the game. Its essentially like pulling out the cable to his controller in a video game. His character can do nothing until "out of game" the situation is resolved. If they can't do that then their character gets taken offgame (suddenly ill, or gone on an important errand) for the session. If next time you play they want to work it out and rejoin then fine otherwise it is best for all players involved that they are absent.

 

[Aaron L]

We call it blue bolt where I'm from.

Ethereal Mummies.

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

We played the game and he's changed quite a lot since the original two sessions.

It appears the beef was regarding a seeming inability to participate in any of the actual occurences in game. (I blame this on his character choice more than anything. I didn't know what the character was before the first session.) He assumed due to the fact we were adventuring around the dwarven mountains, his character couldn't/wouldn't interact. He basically ruined his own fun; I feel much less worried.


Anyway, his character is now much more on-line with both the party and the setting. The adventure I ran was much lighter on RP, much heavier on combat and strategy (Players particular love) and so on. I cut the game short due to medical reasons, but trying a slightly different tack meant the other players were less interested, but he himself was more interested.

I'll go back to the original way. I was bored by a game filled mainly with combat (Though admittedly, it was combat for a cause.) Sort of like a large-ish sidequest. If the player assumes his character is ignored by me because we aren't focusing on him specifically, I reckon he can deal. I've made the effort to include him.