Role playing to the detriment of the game

[roguerouge]

As an educator myself, I don't think apportioning blame is helpful. However, it is my job to motivate that student, and I am paid to do so. RPGs by contrast are an unpaid leisure activity, no one is paying me to motivate the difficult player.

As an educator, sometimes you have to recognize that it's not all about you. Students have lives outside of class. They have self-destructive habits. They have different priorities. They have crises. They make bad choices. They have a bad day, week, or month. You have to let go. Let there be consequences for their actions. Sometimes, that's what you're there to teach them. I think that applies to DMs with players too.

However, I do agree with S'mon in that teachers are paid to motivate students and that an unmotivated student is an opportunity to grow as a teacher. That student may be a sign that you're getting stale with this material. It may motivate you to try new techniques. Or maybe it's something about you, and not the techniques or material, that needs changing. And that applies to DMs too.

 

[buzz]

I do love for Players to seriously role play their characters, but there is a limit. There is a line between playing a role to the benefit of the game and playing the role to the detriment of the game.

The common term for the kinds of players you are describing is "dickweed."

It's also sometimes called "my guy" play. I.e., "My guy wouldn't do that!" being said in response to any attempts to, you know, actually get the game moving forward n an enjoyable fashion.

Easy fix: Don't play with these people.

 

[buzz]

Yeah, this seems more like a DM problem...

It's a two-way street. Everyone at the table is responsible for making the experience enjoyable. Anyone who throws up roadblocks is being counter-productive.

That said, the "my family would never have flown me out there" player is pulling a classic dickweed move. No different from he player who, when the GM opens up an adventure with the PCs meeting in a tavern to talk to an mysterious old man, says something like, "My character would never set foot in a tavern!" He's being obstructionist.

Granted, the ideal situation involves good communication amongst the group. The players are clear about what kinds of situations in which they are interested, and the GM is crafting adventures that push those buttons. Or, at least, everyone has agreed that, hey, we're gonna play published module X, so there's no excuse for anyone to be getting in the way of our playing published module X.

 

[buzz]

But these issues are minor. They shouldn't bring the game screeching to a halt. The DM can prevent this. If the DM chooses not to, I can't understand why. Nobody ties the DM's hand.

Except that, with D&D specifically, DM'ing tends to involve a not-insignificant amount of prep work. If a player is putting up enough roadblocks that they invalidate that prep, the whole session is going to suffer, and everyone's enjoyment is affected.

Again, the ideal situation has these sorts of issues being hashed out pre-game. If the player isn't interested in the adventures the DM is prepping, the place to address that is person-to-person, out of game. Using a "my guy" defense to handle the issue in-character is immature, unhealthy, and waste of everyone's time.

 

[Mallus]

The common term for the kinds of players you are describing is "dickweed."

I prefer the term "prick".

And on a more thoughtful note, it occurs to me this kind of behavior might sometimes have to do with the player's perception that they don't have access to any --or enough-- ability to affect the game world. That the main power they have in the game world is to say 'no' to whatever the DM is doing. D&D by way of Bartleby the Scrivener. The only response of the powerless to the powerful is to say 'I prefer not to'.

This is elegantly solved by the DM 'loosening the reins' and sharing a little narrative authority with the players, which is what I was getting at earlier in the thread. If a player declares their character is too poor to afford a flight on Value Jet, allow them to also declare they rode a freight train cross country in the company of folk-signing hobos.

 

[buzz]

And on a more thoughtful note, it occurs to me this kind of behavior might sometimes have to do with the player's perception that they don't have access to any --or enough-- ability to affect the game world.

This is certainly true.

Again, what we're talking about is a symptom of a problem that really occurred prior to the point in the game we're focusing upon. Once recognized, it's time to step out of character and start talking about it.

 

[SteveC]

This is certainly true.

Again, what we're talking about is a symptom of a problem that really occurred prior to the point in the game we're focusing upon. Once recognized, it's time to step out of character and start talking about it.

I agree with Buzz 100% (which is nothing unusual).

In situations like this you have two choices: deal with it as an out of character player to player (or player to GM) problem, or deal with it in character.

In just about every game I've played a character who disagrees with something that an NPC or other PC does, and usually I just let it go. When it comes down to someone saying "I'm just playing my character!" to excuse something truly horrible that they want to do, I'll usually say, "okay, then I'll just play mine too, and we'll see where this goes." Usually no one likes the results of that, so why not just discuss it out of character and come to a solution that everyone can live with?

That and have no one be a jerk in the game...

--Steve

 

[Jack Colby]

Remind such players that the point of gathering to play an RPG is to enjoy a game and have fun. The roleplaying is a part of that, but is not the entire point of it! If they don't get that, kick them out of the group, as they are problem players and don't care about you or your other players and that you are all having fun. Nobody needs people like that around... they clearly have messed-up priorities.

 

[El Mahdi]

I am confused by this story and your statements. You claim metagaming is so horrible that you will not do it, but you expect the DM to wave his hands and get you back into the game after you make a bad decision. It seems like you are complaining about not being able to have your cake and eat it too. What am I not getting here?

Then I'll attempt to clear up the confusion. Bad decision or not, it's the GM's responsibility to keep the game moving, and keep players involved. There's no way, in any of the myriad aproaches to GM'ing, where leaving a player sitting with nothing to do for over three hours is a good thing to do.

The decision to stay and guard the spacecraft was not taken as a completely arbitrary decision. I and the group (but mostly me) asked the GM questions after we arrived at our landing sight. Questions such as; "Is there any way to secure our spacecraft?" - answer "No", "Would guarding the spacecraft be a good idea?" - answer "Do whatever you feel you need to do." So, it was decided that the spacecraft needed to be guarded. There was the worry that we may not necessarily be on a "friendly" planet, or that the Empire may have followed us.

None of us in the group realized that the GM had an extensive tomb/dungeon encounter planned. When it became obvious that this wasn't going to be a quick encounter (after twiddling my thumbs for the first hour). I tried to get the GM to help me out with a reason why my character would leave off from his "duty" of guarding the ship, and even gave him ideas or "outs", but he refused all of them.

At any time the GM could have said that there was no reason to guard the spacecraft, or could have said my character was getting a feeling of unease through the force that my friends needed help, none of which is "hand waving", but is actually good GM'ing. Having a player sitting with nothing to do for three hours, and not doing anything to get the player involved, and actually actively shooting down ideas from that player that could get the player involved, is nothing short of horrible GM'ing.

After being left out of the game for over three hours, and then having my character killed with no saving throw, defence roll, or anything, I'd had enough.

I don't feel asking the GM for help was outside of the concept of the game. While GM's should try and avoid GM fiat as much as possible, there are times where it becomes necessary to keep the game going and the players involved. Conversely there is no such thing as Player fiat, it's the GM's world and rules, not the other way around. The only option other than GM help, was for me to say "I'm tired of guarding this ship (something a Jedi wouldn't do) and since I'm bored and want something to do, I'm going to go down in this tomb (of which my character had no knowledge that there was anything untoward, or that there even was a tomb) and go have some fun." all of which was outside of character knowledge. All I did was give the GM ideas for getting my character involved, ideas that he should have already had, and he shot every one of them down. To this day I still don't know if it was incompetence, ignorance, or just spite, but it was the end of my gaming with this group.

 

[Merkuri]

I love to roleplay my characters. One of the things I really enjoy about D&D is the ability to put on somebody else's skin and explore the way someone else might think and act. I loved "playing pretend" as a little girl, and D&D is my grown-up version of that. Doing things that are true to my character's personality is very important to me.

At the same time, I believe in the idea that the players have to meet the DM half way. The DM takes the time to prepare an adventure, and it's my responsibility to motivate my character to get involved. If being true to my character and playing the adventure are mutually exclusive then it's time to rethink my character. After all, this is a game, and I belive that you have to play along at some point to get the most out of it. Being able to completely derail an adventure and go way off track is one of the glories of D&D, but I believe that a player should at least try to become motivated to go through the material that the DM has prepared as a courtesy to the DM.

I recall that there was one time in the last campaign that I felt like my character would not want to go on the adventure that was being presented to us. The exact details are foggy as it was a little while ago now, but I believe we were being asked/threatened to go to a far off continent and gather artifacts for a person we had just met and whose motivations were unclear to us. I as the player wanted to go, but I felt like my character would want nothing to do with it. Out of character I asked the other PCs to convince me, and we did a little roleplaying to finally convince my PC that this was the best course of action.

That, to me, was fun. I wasn't just saying, "my character wouldn't do that!" I was saying, "my character wouldn't do that without a good reason... help me think up one!" I got to be true to my character and go on the fun adventure. You're usually able to do both at the same time if you're determined enough to make it work. I feel like people who just say, "my character wouldn't do that" and leave it there probably have other motivations in mind, like acting out about the above-mentioned feeling that they cannot affect anything in the game world, or they have picked the wrong character for the game they're playing.