Stupid Player Syndrome

[painandgreed]

We're playing Vampire, nobody has a combat character, and they're hunting some Baali(devil worshiper vampires) and other infernalist vampires. They're basically social/investigator types and have NPCs to do the combat once they find the target. One of the players convinces me he knows about Pentex, has stock and wants to head to a stockholder's meeting in Houston which is pretty much unrealted to the Baali but related to the one characters quest to eliminate such evil from the world (twisted upbringing: he and his childer weren't really vampires but preserved at the instant of death by the power fo God to hunt down evil). They fly down to Houston, catch a cab to the meeting, and the one main character goes inside for a boring meeting while the other two players hang out outside with all the Pentex stockholders chaufers. I decide to throw them a bone and they recognise one of the chaufers as Raven, then infernalist Gangrel that acts as muscle for the Baali. I expect them to lay low, get the licence plate number, pictures of the Baali when he comes out, and other information and follow up on it. Instead they decide to confront him.

PC: Are you Raven?
Raven: Ya? What of it?
PC: Well....we don't like what you're doing and we're going to take you down!
Raven: (still leaning against limo and only now looking at PC) So, what? You want to fight?
PC: (pause) Ya!. Ya, I'll fight you. (PC grabs dice)
Raven: Whoa, whoa! Not here. (Such disputes are unseemly but not uncommon so all the other fomorii and such around them aren't paying much attention) Let's go someplace private.
PC: OK.
Raven: Where do you want to go?
PC: Uh, we don't know the area.
Raven: Ok, get in your car and follow me.
PC: Uh, we don't have a car.
Raven: Ok, I'm not stupid enough to let you drive in the passanger seat behind me and hopefully you're not stupid enough to ride in my trunk, so call a cab.
PC: Uh, we don't have a phone.
Raven: Would you like for me to call you a cab?
PC: Please.

Raven reaches into the limo. Calls a cab for them and then they drive out to some fields within sight of the little airport that the PCs flew in to. Once out of the cars, raven tells them to wait till the cab is far enough away to not see them. They wait. Cab turn the corner about a mile down the country road. Raven says "Ok, now!", everybody rolls intintiative and combat begins. He proceded to kill the PC that had talked to him, ignoring the other one whose attacks were inefective. While the first PC was being diablerized, the other ran to the limo and I was kind and said the keys were still in it. As he's driving away, Raven jomps onto the back and smashes out the back window. PC decides to do some evasive manueverings and knock him off. I let him decide the target number they'll both need to roll on and he chooses a 9. It works and he is flung off into a feild. The surviving PC gets to the airport where the other PC is waiting and they climb into the plane and fly away while watching the vampire running towardds them about half a mile away.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Not as much stupid player as itchy trigger finger player syndrome from one of my Star Wars games here on ENWorld.

The PCs are Imperials that have just set down on an Imperial base to deal with defectors that are pinned down by the rest of the personnel in the base. Because of the amount of problems the defectors were causing, the base was nearly empty except for the section that had been sealed off.

When an officer came into the bay to greet them, the commander among the PCs punched the officer to the ground and threatened to kill him, accusing him of being a traitor. As they were expecting a Rebel fleet to come and get the defectors out, the young officer panicked and called for help, assuming these Imperials were actually Rebel spies. Well, the commander got annoyed and shot the kid in the face.

Biggest problem being that the kid(who was NOT a traitor) was the son of the General in charge of the base who the PCs have to take orders from. Needless to say, the PC was demoted on the spot. He's constantly been making sarcastic comments and I'm doing my best to keep the others from shooting him because of insubordination...

 

[Berandor]

Chimera, that really sounds like a RPG group gone wrong, by all participants. You seemingly had a DM vs player mentality at your table, and both sides probably acted somewhat rashly and sometimes badly.

Still nice stories, though.

 

[Chimera]

Chimera, that really sounds like a RPG group gone wrong, by all participants. You seemingly had a DM vs player mentality at your table, and both sides probably acted somewhat rashly and sometimes badly.

Wasn't that way on my end. Was all the players deciding that I should let them get away with anything they wanted to do, regardless of how silly, suicidal or just plain stupid their plan was. Then deciding that they should argue with the GM when he(me) said that their plan wouldn't work and they should do something else.

Me, I would take that as a firm clue that I should do something else...


Such as in the last case. I asked them why they decided the business manager was guilty and threatened him with death in the common room of the inn owned by a guy the wizard had deliberately declared to be his enemy (for no apparent reason). They had no real answer for me.

I pulled their butts out of it by having the guy come to them after the kidnapping attempt (surrounded by town guards) to tell them the information that they SHOULD have gotten from him peacefully.

I went out of my way to salvage adventures and hand-hold them through even simple adventures, because they were intent on arguing every freaking thing that didn't go their way.

Fourth Story (to illustrate the point).

During some downtime, Corm the Dwarf Ranger, takes on a job supervising six commoner dwarves digging sewer tunnels. After six months of this, the group decides to go adventuring again.

Corm leaves his gold (8 bars totalling 20,000 silver dollars value) in the custody of the six commoners while he goes off. Of course, when he returns two months later, one of the dwarves is gone - with Corm's gold. To me, no big surprise. These commoners make 125 dollars a month.

(Imagine that you supervise six mooks making $15,000 per year digging tunnels. Would you take off for several months, trusting them to guard your suitcase filled with $200,000 in cash?)

Well, the entire purpose of this was to set up the next adventure, entitled "The Search for Corm's Gold".

But the player in question had a fit. I was stealing his gold, I was unfair, the dwarf should never have stolen it....whine, whine, whine. The wizard player (another whining git) backed him up. The group nearly broke up just over that!

 

[kigmatzomat]

Ahhh, the stupid things players do.

Shadowrun:
We've been tracking down organleggers and have managed to find one of the chopshops. My character (ganger shaman with lots of social skills) is playing the role of the "freelance" collector while dwarf samurai and human mage are the "meat." The plan is to wait until the people inside get into a position that I, the only one who will have any significant ability observe the environment, feel is appropriate and give the triggerphrase "sure was a hot day."
The organlegger (who I know is not alone but I haven't found his buddy's hiding place yet) tosses me my pay across the bodies of my "dead" team mates. The Mage reaches his hand up to grab the chip and says "thanks." Not a half-second later the buddy, a mage, drops a massive spell on the party while the organlegger uses the HEAVY ASSAULT RIFLE he'd been carrying the whole time that I'd been hoping he'd set down to riddle the mage with bullets.
"Thanks" is now a comedy word for "stupidity" in our party.

Earthdawn:
This is less a stupid player syndrome than poor communication. Though if there is a stupid player it was me and not Krunk. We're hunting a chimera and have found its underground lair. The plan is to set a net on top of it and then entice it out with a lot of noise.
"Krunk, when I say 'now!' I want you to start banging your shield."
"Got it."
"Right so now we need to-" BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG
"What the heck are you doing?!"
"You said 'now'."
The chimera leapt out and only by the grace that the GM was too busy laughing to fight particularly well did we manage to survive *that* little screwup.

D&D 3e
The 12th level party acquires a new character with a player new to our game (but that we've gamed with in the past). The female spellsword has decided that she's going to prove her combat abilities during one of their first encounters. The party has managed to drop one of the three manticores that ambushed them so she charges to finish it, more than 100 yards away through nearly-shoulder high savannah grass.
It dropped to the ground hoping to avoid more of those painful arrows and spells while slinking off but when a small human charges up with no idea where he is (having failed her spot check) he proceeds to riddle her with tail spikes and claws.

D&D
One shot game: hideous monster is purging less-hideous monsters from their lairs and the players are guarding a caravan trying to escape. A trio of purple worms burrow out of the ground and begin attacking people and oxen. The party's mage (!!!) decides to use his bow instead of a spell since "he'll draw an attack of opportunity if he casts." (which tells you how close he is) He manages a crit on his first shot, which only encourages him, though it does cause the worm to pay attention to things in his direction.
He now decides to flee, but on foot instead of using a spell to avoid an AoO, which of course draws the worm's attention and AoO. The mage is swallowed and dies before the rest of the party can save him.
.....
Same player, same one shot, different character. Less stupid, more unfortunate. Attacked by several fiendish dire tigers his rogue charges forward to engage. Unfortunately he gets criticaled in the AoO after fumbling his tumble check and is again slain before the party can rescue him.

 

[Bisquet]

Couple of good ones to share. Both by the same character, and both in the same night, if I recall.

The group has just traveled to a vast desert. In order to set the tone, and to let the players know this is a dangerous place, I describe a large blue winged creature flying off in the distance. Naturally the party assumes (correctly) that it's a Blue Dragon, and is suitably awed and cautious. Except for the Ftr/Mage (this is 2nd edition). He has, of all things, a Shout spell memorized, and uses it loudly and graphically insult the dragon (who hadn't noticed the group before this). This results in several Lightning strafing runs by the dragon before they chase him off.

Later that night, the group is attacked by a Wyvren, and the same Ftr/Mage is grabbed by the Wyvren. It flaps it's wings and launches into the air, intent on taking the character back to its lair. The Ftr/Mage manages to get out of it's claws and climbs on it's back. He then proceeds to stab it with his sword (it was pretty hurt by the rest of the party), and manages to kill it. As the rest of the party questions his sanity, wondering how he'll survive the fall...he calmly explains that he'll just glide the corpse in and land it safely. You know, because of rigor mortis setting in. In about 3 seconds.

Man, we laughed about that for weeks.

-bisquet-

 

[demiurge1138]

In a Spycraft game I was playing, one of the players was going a bit crazy. Note I say not character. Player. Despite his constant whining that there was too much combat and not enough role-playing in the D&D game I ran, in Spycraft he wanted to kill everything. This despite the fact that his character was a nebbish techie working for a Swiss bank. So, on the Orient Express bent for St. Petersburg, the DM aquiesced to his kill-hungry streak and threw in a battle with a pack of winter wolves, courtesy of a Monster Manual.

My character, a petty thief, gadgeteer and conspiracy buff, who was quite good with both a pistol and a claw hammer, managed to kill two of the three wolves with a bit of team work, since that's the idea of a roleplaying game. Teamwork. But no. The kill-crazy tech goes on about how I "stole his kills", as if it's an FPS, and only with both in-and-out-of-game diplomacy did I manage to survive.

So I, in a revenge intended to be humorous and harmless, used zip-tie restraints to bind his arms and legs for the remainder of the voyage.

Only the fact that I carryed him out of harm's way from the mad bomber who we discovered was on the train a little too late kept me from getting killed by him for that.

So, in St. Petersburg, we were supposed to spy on a Russian mob-boss, and we eventually tracked him down to a snowy little tavern. The faceman, who was none-too-bright, decided to wait until the boss went into the bathroom (with bodyguards, of course), then sidle into the urinal next to his and chat him up. The mobster didn't take to this idea, and a bodyguard grabbed him by the neck.

Enter kill-crazy tech, guns-a-blazing.

Both the faceman and the tech die chunky deaths in the resulting fight. The rest of the characters, myself included, run off into the night, and thus did that campaign end.

Demiurge out.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Shadowrun: We're playing a government interagency black ops team. One of the players, the secondary samurai/learning-to-be-a-decker-because-he-had-free-Essence, has cyberdeck parts that we need to turn into a cyberdeck. He goes to this 'net gang in Kansas City and gets them to work on it, but he has to blow up this one teacher's car to get them to do it. He does it, but gets spotted doing it. He gets the idea that he'll go and fix this by putting an entry into the Federal Terrorist Database for an urban terrorist, referred to as "Carloss the Jackal." To preserve authenticity, he puts his picture into the new file. So, for ever after, this ATF agent was pursued as a terrorist. (However, the funny thing is that any car the guy drove? Blew up, and not just because the GM thought it was funny)

In a much earlier game (a one-shot, really), a team goes in and knocks over an S-K facility to steal this disease cure. We go in, and get the stuff, and get out. Then, as we're driving away, one of the players decides that we should patent the disease cure, as, obviously, it's patentable and we can make drekloads of money off of this. We then spend the next three hours, real time, arguing about this. I *knew* my character should've capped his before we got out of the car.

D&D 2E:

This is from the first game I ever played. We were in a dungeon, and got teleported out by a good lich, who just wanted someone to talk to. Well, the CN dwarven vindicator decides that, well, he'll attack him. The lich, being a nice lich, just tosses him into a Otiluke's Telekinetic Sphere, so he can't do anything. The rest of the party, including the LG mage, lay into the lich. Sigh... The CN player, BTW, liked using lucern hammers and going for "grazing hits" into the crotch, so it'd hurt more. Oy.

Brad

 

[kigmatzomat]

D&D
The heroes are wandering through an equatorial grassland (think Kenya) at night (to limit exposure to the heat) and approach a water hole. The lead riders encounter a strange massive ox with flat-sided, forward curving horns and almost rhinocerous-like hide (Dire cape buffalo).
They try to shoo it off while still riding straight for it. Melee ensues as the cape buffalo proceed to slaughter their horses. One guy decides to try an unusual gambit and tosses a thunderstone, but the target doesn't stun. Three rounds later, though, the buffalo suddenly decide to flee in a direction away from the waterhole. The horses begin getting antsy and the rogues begin hearing thunder in the distance.
The cleric (high wisdom that he has) realizes it's a stampede of some fashion, tosses up a wall of stone and dives behind it. The others begin doing the same.
Except for the spellsword. She goes to save her horse, a horse she just bought that session for this mission, a horse that's quite a distance from the wall of stone she is currently standing next to. A horse that she just manages to get to before the herd of gazelle slam into the party. The ogre-paladin, caught on the wrong side of the wall, just barely survived at -8hp while the spellsword and her horse are reduced to a jelly-like consistency.
The cleric brings her back to life, they wander on, and three in-game hours later the player smacks himself in the head as he realizes he was wearing boots of springing and striding and never marked the speed increase on his character sheet.

 

[rumblehed]

Stay together

My players seem to do really well so long as they stay together and work together. It's usually when they get separated or one party member decides to go it alone that things spin out of control.

D&D:

The party is contracted by the master of the local library to journey into the lower vaults and restore the balance in the resting place of a powerful cursed item. The librarian warns the PC's not to touch the item. The party works to together to navigate a series of trapped rooms. An order of actions must be performed in each of the trapped areas to open a door into the further reaches of the vaults. Two of the party members arrive ahead of the others, the rogue halfling and the elven fighter/wizard. The halfling managed to get slightly sizzled in a fire trap in the previous room and stops to rest and wait for the remainder of the party to reach them. The elf decides to explore a little further, does not inform the halfling of where he's going, and sets out into the unknown dungeon alone. Eventually, the elf discovers a room with not one item but three. The items are not setting properly in their resting places.

DM: What do you do now?
PC: I reach out and push the item back into place.
DM: With your hand?
PC: Yes.
DM: Are you sure you want to do that?
PC: Yes.
DM: You remember the librarian told you not to touch the item?
PC: I remember.
DM: Do you still want to push the item back into place with your hand?
PC: Yes.
DM: Ooooookkkaaaayyyyy. Make a Will Save please.
PC: Uhhhh....14
DM: No. I'm sorry. You feel compelled to take the item and, by any means necessary, remove it from this place to guard it.

Well, the elf ended up killing the party cleric while trying to get away with the cursed item. The elf perished alone after fleeing into the dungeon. The other party members never even found the elf's remains.