[Rant] Oh. My. God. He said no!

[Grendel]

[edit post deleted]
oops jumped on the bandwagon too late

 

[Psion]

As I play with a group of friends, booting is never an option for me, and neither would I recommend it to anyone else. People can change. Rather discuss with this player, in the groups presence, about what this game is about. Characters can die.

I think that it is best to emphasize these things up front, especially if you have not been playing with the group for a long time. A lot of groups sort of have an unspoken rule that death only happens if the player wants it to (among other things). If this is not the cant that you take, it is best to be explicit about it so the players understand ahead of time.

 

[Ravellion]

Read this out loud:"I can not Dm for a group which does not even let the DM have even a minimum of impact on his own world. I am not saving your behinds with my pet NPC's, I hand out a balanced amount of treasure, I make it clear that the game is here for the all of us and I try and create the closest thing to a living, breathing world as I can. Now, 2 things can happen after last weeks debacle: 1) I stop DMing for people who won't respect me for the work and effort I put in the game; in effect let someone else have a go behind the screen. 2) Everyone starts respecting all of each other, stops metagaming and tries to have fun in a mature way. If you don't like either of these options, you are welcome to walk."

I am guessing he would walk.

Rav

 

[Tewligan]

I'll not say "boot him"... I always give a player a strike or two saftey margin. Everyone can be having a really lousey day from time to time.

It sounds like this guy has already burned up his "jerk days", though - it was mentioned earlier that the guy was problematic and bitchy. If someone did this in my game - and especially if he was already on my list - he would be expelled from the game in no uncertain terms, washed away on a wave of language that would doubtless not win me any approval from Eric's grandmother.

 

[Whodat]

You can talk to some people until you are blue in the face, it won’t change the fact that you have a definite personality conflict on your hands. It isn’t your job to get inside your players' heads and be some kind of baby sitter for their “inner child.”

There is a mantra that experienced gamers will acknowledge: In a contest between the Game Master and the players, the players lose. Every. Single. Time.


I say killing him is okay… but have fun with him first.

Start by stripping his power: break his favorite weapon, lose his spellbook, or whatever.

Then have his character fall into deep water. As he starts sinking – fast, explain that he has a choice: either he must jettison all of his equipment, or he drowns.

When he gets back to town, have all of the local villagers harass him. All of them. At the same time, the villagers extend the usual courtesy to his party members.

Have a doppelganger pop up and start destroying his credibility by committing heinous crimes. Make him a wanted man, and encourage his fellow party members to turn him in.

In short, destroy him (thoroughly) before you give him the luxury of death.

Then raise his character. Bring him back as an NPC, and have him become the antithesis of whatever his character used to hate. If he was a thief, make him a perfect paladin. If he was a fighter, make him a healer. You get the idea.

If you allow “Bob” to re-join your game, you can even bring this character back to become a recurring menace to his new character – and only his new character. The rest of the party may not even know about (or even believe in) this mysterious pursuer who seems to lurk around every corner.

OH, the possibilities. And at the same time, you instill the fear of GM in the players. It’s a win, win situation! (Except for “Bob”.)

But then, some people accuse me of rooting for the bad guys in all of the Bond movies, too. Go figure.

 

[Fenes 2]

<Snip>
There is a mantra that experienced gamers will acknowledge: In a contest between the Game Master and the players, the players lose. Every. Single. Time.
<Snip>

Not really. If the DM goes against his group, he usually stops being the DM pretty fast. We had such a case once, when the entire group was so fed up with a DM that we stopped the session and ignored his whole adventure, and never let him DM again.

 

[Wayside]

Well, that's partly why I didn't kick him out right then and there. The point is for everyone to have fun, and if someone isn't having fun at the game I want to do something about it. On the other hand, there's no excuse for being an immature ass and refusing to play until you get your way. You're right, you are only getting one side of the story, but that's why I put the rant disclaimer up.

In my biased opinion, I don't think I was being unfair. The adventure was going fairly well, but the players as a whole made a bunch of bad choices. They ran from fights they could have won and charged into situations that they would have been better off sneaking around. In the end, they backed themselves into a situation that they couldn't possibly win. The combat lasted about ten rounds too long, since I was seriously underplaying the NPCs to give them a chance to run away. Finally I decided that they wouldn't get the message until bad things started happening, so I played the NPCs normally and stopped fudging rolls. Everything from that point on was completely legit and by the book.

Oh don't get me wrong, I think you are totally in the right, even over-accomadating to the player in question. It's just all the people that treat D&D as more than a game and DM's as more than an extra player that get annoying after a while. Your head is obviously level; some of the people (that would be 'some,' meaning 'not all,') who responded, on the other hand...

 

[Wayside]

To say I was read the riot act by these guys is an understatement. One wrote a very long and ugly letter and mailed it to my apartment. Another demanded I reverse time and let them play the adventure over again, claiming it was all my fault. Some just stopped returning my phone calls!

Wow. You could (statistically) make this comment about pretty much any group of people, but RPG'ers seem to have, mixed in our ranks, some of the saddest, most retarded people I've ever heard about. I hope they weren't friends of yours outside the game.

 

[Fenes 2]

Wow. You could (statistically) make this comment about pretty much any group of people, but RPG'ers seem to have, mixed in our ranks, some of the saddest, most retarded people I've ever heard about. I hope they weren't friends of yours outside the game.

The reactions were not that much different from some of the suggestions I have read on this board on how to deal with Bob.

It is always a matter of perspective, which is why it is so important to discuss beforehand what kind of game it is going to be. I would be pretty miffed as well - and I was miffed - when I was expecting an adventure set in a city, dealing with the society of that city and I got a dungeon crawl without any connection to the city, where the whole party background gets ignored.

 

[Paradoxish]

Re: Re: [Rant] Oh. My. God. He said no!

Wow. I didn't expect this thread to go on for so long. I appreciate all of the replies... and don't think that I'm saying I wasn't at fault at all. It's possible that I did back the players into this situation somehow, but I don't think I did and I normally avoid railroading at all costs.

At the point where Bob said that you'd never let them die, that was your cue to say "Bob, that is incorrect, characters can die in this game." I would have been doubled over laughing if a PC said to another one that I wouldn't "let" them die.

Oh, trust me, I did. I didn't feel like typing up a twenty paragraph post at the time so I just cut out the smaller details, but that's always my response when a player metagames. Even though this is a fairly new campaign, these people have played with me for a while and they know that I don't usually pull punches. This case was different, though, because I didn't want them to have to go through a TPK so early in the campaign. Anyway, I also said "No, they are dead. Let's move on." after he flat out said no to me, but he literally refused to go on with the game. My only options at that point were to give in, kick him out then and there, or end the game for the night. I figured ending the game for the night was a fair compromise and that it might give him time to reconsider his position and come to his senses.