Players that just don't *get* the genre

[Bullgrit]

Have you had a Player who just doesn't *get* the genre for the game you're playing? What kind of mistakes did they make? Did they ever come around to getting the idea? Did the whole game/campaign suffer for the Player's misunderstanding?

For instance:

I've seen a Player not understand how superheroes in the [Marvel] genre don't kill. They especially don't slaughter or execute bad guys. And then the Player complained about never gaining karma.

I've seen more than one Player loot defeated enemies in modern-genre games. They don't understand how that takes a scenario from "self defense" to "murder and robbery". It's especially funny to hear a private investigator explain to the police detective why the dead man has no weapon: "I took it." (...and his wallet, and his car keys.) Players don't like having their PC arrested for looting enemies.

Bullgrit

 

[Doug McCrae]

In the last superhero campaign I ran there was one player who doesn't get superheroes. He doesn't read superhero comics or watch superhero movies. His preference is for dark rpgs such as Rogue Trader or SLA Industries.

His PC resembled John Steed of the Avengers, or Sapphire and Steel, a very British agent for a secret organisation, very much with his own agenda. A good character, but not a superhero. I thought that was just about acceptable as it was only one player out of four or five. More than one non-superhero would have definitely been too many though.

The player, John, I don't think will ever get superhero, it's just not his, very British, cup of tea.

 

[DragonLancer]

I've had that sort of player once or twice before. They don't tend to last though, and go back to WoW or whatever MMORPG they came from.

 

[greatamericanfolkher]

Have you had a Player who just doesn't *get* the genre for the game you're playing? What kind of mistakes did they make? Did they ever come around to getting the idea? Did the whole game/campaign suffer for the Player's misunderstanding?

For instance:

I've seen a Player not understand how superheroes in the [Marvel] genre don't kill. They especially don't slaughter or execute bad guys. And then the Player complained about never gaining karma.

I've seen more than one Player loot defeated enemies in modern-genre games. They don't understand how that takes a scenario from "self defense" to "murder and robbery". It's especially funny to hear a private investigator explain to the police detective why the dead man has no weapon: "I took it." (...and his wallet, and his car keys.) Players don't like having their PC arrested for looting enemies.

Bullgrit

In my view this is actually a communication issue between the player and the GM. I learned this the hard way after a time travel game collapsed because one player essentially refused to get out of the time machine and interact with the settings the machine landed in. My co-gm and I were getting tired of having to contrive reasons that he couldn't just simply sit in the thing waiting for the batteries to recharge.

It was only later that we realized that we never made it explicit that the group wasn't going to lose the machine and be trapped in one particular era.

If a game has genre conceits like "heroes don't kill/loot" or "it's a time travel game, it's relatively safe to get out of the machine" then communicate them up front.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

In my view this is actually a communication issue between the player and the GM.

Agreed, managing player expectations is crucial. Running a 7th Sea game for those expecting a 1st edition DnD dungeon crawl isn't going to work (an ongoing struggle at the moment )

I like to give some touch stone movies or books that I know the players have seen or read. Saying your tone is like A Song of Ice and Fire where anyone can die or like Wheel of Time where characters have limited immortality really helps. If you are running a Superhero game, you might say your tone is like Ironman (if it's light hearted) or The Dark Knight (if its an 11 on the 1-10 serious scale).

 

[Bluenose]

Some of my worst:

Traveller, a "scientific investigations" game where the characters were investigating various scientific mysteries and dealing with unusual medical situations. Players rolled up scientists, doctors, one ex-Scout survey expert... and a Marine Commando with a gauss rifle.

Pendragon, a campaign based on the concept of a group of young knights looking to ride around the tournament circuit, making a name for themselves, picking up a bit of money (which assumed they'd be successful), maybe meeting some famous knights or attractive ladies. Plus one player who came with a lady-in-waiting character, and wanted to have all sorts of romantic entanglements and chances for intrigue. To be fair, that is something that fits the genre, just not that particular game. It doubled the amount of work I had to do and meant one player was out of the action a significant portion of the time, while the others weren't as involved the rest.

D&D, where someone tried to run an acquatic elf character in a fairly traditional land-based campaign. I think it was some sort of misunderstanding, because I'd mentioned the campaign was in a coastal region, but I never got the story.

One where I was a player. A game of Heroquest, in the "Magical Girl" manga/anime genre. A group of young female witches just graduated from a magical academy and looking for employment in a world where there were lots of magic users around with more experience and skill. And their cat, who wasn't a magical cat and didn't talk and was in fact a perfectly normal cat in every way. I'm not certain the player wasn't doing it because he hated the concept of the game.

And that's excluding all the strange ones where someone was totally out of place. I never did find out why a Kralori farmer would be in Balazar, a Vargr would be anything but a smear on the deckplates in a family of K'kree, or what an elf was doing in Stalingrad in WW2.

 

[jonesy]

In my view this is actually a communication issue between the player and the GM.

A lot of the time, yeah.

I was a player in a game of CoC where one player just couldn't understand why running at an ancient horror with a shotgun was a bad idea. She'd never heard of Lovecraft, didn't play horror games or read the stories, and the best horror movie she said she'd seen was Naked Fear. Although, to be fair, she was kind of dragged along to the game by her boyfriend.

 

[Elf Witch]

I was once a player in a Shadowrun game and we had a player who had only played DnD make an elf who fought only with swords and shorted out all tech equipment if she touched it. It was a relief when her character was killed.

When I was running my game set in a home brew I asked the players to design characters who Bahmut would call to help the fight against Tiamat. I asked them to talk with each other to come up with character concepts that would work together. So I got a lawful good cleric who was going to become a paladin, a lawful good monk, a neutral good ranger and a chaotic neutral beguiler/ warlock who was touched by hellfire.

When I sat and down and talked to the player to find out more about this character. The player claimed they wanted to explore redeeming their character and moving towards a good alignment.

My thought was cool so Bahmut saw into the character soul and saw someone worth redeeming.

The player instead of playing a character who wanted to be redeemed instead did horrible things like torture prisoners, torture people who had done nothing wrong but maybe had information. I asked him so when are we going to start seeing a shift and his answer was well they haven't convinced me that being good is the way to go.

I reminded him that everyone had said that they wanted to play in a heroic game with little PC vs PC conflict.

But I try not to squash players desires for their PCs and the game went on and eventually the player did something so offensive to the rest of the party they attacked him and killed his character.

I told the player if he chose to come back he had to make a character who was inline with what the rest of the table wanted which was a team player with a good PC.

 

[Kzach]

I would say this accounts for 90% of the players I encounter. Not only that, but none of them seem to get that it's a team game that they're playing with other people. I honestly believe it's a symptom of video-gaming and a lack of social skills.

Video games don't generally have consequences for stupid actions and promote and reward inherently selfish behaviour. Video games tend to focus on one character rather than a team and even team games tend to put one character (the player's) as being of primary importance. And in almost all video games, you kill it and you loot it.

Then there's the fundamental selfishness that has them work only for their own character's benefit or amusement and often against other people in the party. These people don't seem to be able to see other people at the table as people. They seem not to comprehend that pissing off people's characters at the table tends to piss off the person playing it.

I'd blame this on the younger generation but the fact is that I tend to put together a new group every few months and experience the same sorts of behaviours from people over and over and over again. Just once I'd like to put together a random group of people who sit down at the table and act like rational, intelligent and socially adept adults. Is that too much to ask?

 

[enworldatemylogin]

We just recently had a player not understand his cyberpunk biker gang wasn't the kind of organization that liked puppies and rainbows and that it was a world in which not everybody gets along.