Pielorinho
Iron Fist of Pelor
I had a player like this in my game for a short while. Part of the trouble is that you want to keep everyone's mood light while you give him the smackdown.
I tended to do this by not stopping the game for his concerns. If he wanted to argue about elvish culture, I'd treat the argument as occurring in-game -- which led to NPCs considering him a real nutjob and ignoring his other contributions to conversations. If he argued about what happened in combat, I told him that he was spending his round confused at events around him, and skipped him. He never spent more than one round arguing in combat
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As for tall elves: that's clearly a DM-call. Personally as a DM, I'd allow someone to play an exotic elf from the hinterlands who was exceptionally tall -- my world's not so well-defined that such elves are an impossibility.
But if someone wanted something that I didn't allow (if, for example, tall elves didn't exist in my world), I'd explain it to them once. After that, I'd tell them that their character was free to operate under the delusion that she was tall, and I'd treat any further argument as manifestation of that delusion. I'd wink ostentatiously at the other players and encourage them to play along. Dollars to doughnuts the ranter will give up if he doesn't get an argument.
(He may, of course, persist in acting as if he's tall -- jumping up to ledges beyond his reach, or something. In this case, make it clear that he's done nothing of the sort, and any insistence that he has done so is further manifestation of the delusion).
Daniel
I tended to do this by not stopping the game for his concerns. If he wanted to argue about elvish culture, I'd treat the argument as occurring in-game -- which led to NPCs considering him a real nutjob and ignoring his other contributions to conversations. If he argued about what happened in combat, I told him that he was spending his round confused at events around him, and skipped him. He never spent more than one round arguing in combat
.As for tall elves: that's clearly a DM-call. Personally as a DM, I'd allow someone to play an exotic elf from the hinterlands who was exceptionally tall -- my world's not so well-defined that such elves are an impossibility.
But if someone wanted something that I didn't allow (if, for example, tall elves didn't exist in my world), I'd explain it to them once. After that, I'd tell them that their character was free to operate under the delusion that she was tall, and I'd treat any further argument as manifestation of that delusion. I'd wink ostentatiously at the other players and encourage them to play along. Dollars to doughnuts the ranter will give up if he doesn't get an argument.
(He may, of course, persist in acting as if he's tall -- jumping up to ledges beyond his reach, or something. In this case, make it clear that he's done nothing of the sort, and any insistence that he has done so is further manifestation of the delusion).
Daniel
