Roleplaying overated?

[Mort]

I DM for one metagaming power-gaming stratagist freak-a-holic who never is satisfied with the campaign or me as DM. The rest are muchkins who show up inconsistantly at best. And yet when i ask him to help with some simple tasks to get the campaign up to the level we would like to operate at, he's like "what help you call people?"

I would kill for a fairly consistant and engaging group.

I’ll agree with this, to a point.
One thing you do not want is one player dictating all of the action at the expense of the rest of the party.
I had one player in my campaign that had a definite idea about what he wanted with his character, to heck with the rest of the group. He adamantly refused to compromise, literally going off on his own and leaving the rest of the group behind when he felt his agenda differed from theirs. We had a series of discussions about how player dynamics have to win over character ones (namely that the fun of the players is more important than character consistency and that character consistency should be adjusted if it wasn’t fun).
I tried heartily to explain that there was only one of me and if we do “his thing” all of the time the other players would be snoring in the corner; but in the end I don’t think he’ll be coming back to the table and I doubt the other players will miss him (had a fun character though).

 

[Dextolen]

It's a tough situation to deal with. A player working 'against the DM' can really slow the game down. Subtly guiding them through the grand story you have in your head can be even harder. If they detect any sort of forced situation you may have a revolt or lose face.

A carrot for the donkey
When you come to the 'fork in the road, or dungeon' where one path leads to further progression of your campaign and another leads into unprepared adlib city, try to give them subtle incentives to continue on the desired path. You need bait. A rumor of a magic item, mysterious person or something that ties into one of the PC's background stories. Once they are where you want them you can proceed as planned.

The X-Files
Remember how X-Files had episodes that related to Mulder's quest for his sister interspersed with those that didn't? Follow that methodology. Don't force feed your epic down their throats.

Loose Ends
Let a villian escape, leave weird letters around your dungeons - just keep them on the heels of your story by giving them tidbits that keep them interested.

Never Surrender
Never use a planned party surrender as part of your plot. Most players never think of surrender and it's a dead giveaway that you are guiding them along. Either they won't get it and will die fighting a challenge over their heads or they will saracstically go along with your plans and roll their eyes the rest of the evening. Being seperated from the gear that they've worked so hard to achieve is a real drag for most players, to drop it because they think that it is what they are 'supposed to do' is even worse.

Lose Elminster
Don't use bigwig NPCs to effectively 'direct traffic' towards your intended goal. You players don't want to hear a 20 minute boxed text description of a battle between two epic level npcs...they want to kill enough sh_t to BE those epic level pc's someday. If you use high level npcs or even deities to do your dirtywork, you better make it subtle. Epic level npcs would look at lower level characters and barely see them, let alone discuss why they can't go back home instead of ever onward. Next time you see a pop superstar on the street ask her to listen to your demo tape, get my meaning.

 

[Al]

Perhaps we should swap groups? Most of mine wouldn't go to the toilet without a high-level NPC telling them to...