I agree. Some of the time though interpersonal relationships can put a damper on this sort of self-reflection.
especially when it is a friend who takes things in the worst light no matter how you try to suger coat it... there are somethings you just can't do or say...
I can't tell Jimmy or Tony that they do anything wrong... even if we catch them cheating, or if they are ruining other peoples fun (we don't play with them anymore because of this)
I can't tell Ross to make a different character no matter how much he doesn't fit. (Playing a star wars rebel era game, he is a dark jedi with imperial leanings, want to play superheroes he is a mass murderer, want to play D&D he wants sci fi, run sci fi he wants to play with magic)
I can't explain to jon anything... ever,
But it's a similar situation. He gets angry when he feels powerless or cheated by an adventure. I run prewritten adventures and my hands are partially tied due to the railroady nature of some of those adventures. Everyone else at the table was perfectly ok with it.
I hate that excuse... the prewritten adventure needs atleast a bit of adaption and you need to work with your players.
another Mutants and Masterminds example: the Mod said that there were enough people on the bridge in danger that it would take 5-10 minutes to clear it. We had a super speedster with super speed 14, there would have to be almost a million people on the bridge for it to take him 1 minute to clear. When he declaired he would handel the suvilians if we stoped the bad guy the GM said "No the mod says..." game eneded that night
As an example of what I'm talking about:
There was a magical artifact in an adventure I ran that would cause electricity to jump from person to person. It would do damage until they fell unconscious and then leap to another person. The only way to stop the artifact was to hold it when the electricity jumped to you, which would cause it to jump back into the artifact and be contained.
ok, sounds good so far
The player in question said "I make an Arcana check!" I told him the above: You need to be holding the artifact when it jumps into you to contain it.
great...
He said "Alright, who is it jumping into next?" and I said "You don't know, you think it is driven by some kind of force of will, which means it is choosing its targets based on some criteria but you don't know what that is."
He said "Well, that's stupid! I made an Arcana check, I rolled high, I should know! How else am I supposed to know how to solve this?"
bad player... you don't get everything with one check
I said "Well, you could observe who it jumps into next and try to figure out what they have in common"
He said "It's jumped into 2 people and they don't appear to have anything in common at all. What skill check can I make to figure out what they have in common?"
I said "There isn't a skill check for that. Ask me questions, tell me what your character is looking at or doing and try to figure it out!"
wait what?!?!? there is no skill in the entire game that can help you here?!??
He said "This is stupid! Who writes these crappy adventures? Seriously! We're just supposed to figure things out without them telling us anything at all?!?! What a waste of time!"
I would have been more polite, but I agree with your player, if there is a way to figure it out, then there is a way to figure it out, if it is random it is random. why couldn't a high persception or insight or notice, or investigate, or some skill help?
Which is when I looked at the time and saw I needed to leave in about 10 minutes so I bashed them over the head with a clue to solve the puzzle and he calmed down.
wow... yea if you had to even worry about "bashing them over the head" then it needed more clues... this adventure sound like a Pain in the butt
I understand that this is tangential to the topic in this thread. However, the person in question also hates when I restrict anything at all. He got angry at me when I said I wasn't allowing Kender or Warforged in my Forgotten Realms game.
so again, the player wanted to play X and the DM wanted to run Y... so how did the others feel, because it sounds like you didn't all agree to play the same game. He wanted to play D&D as a horrible monster that should never have been written, or a warforged....
He almost blew a gasket when I suggested that I MIGHT not allow feats.
I don't know any PCs who would not be mad at that, however most would be respectful and not 'blow a gasket'
He got really angry when I said I was rolling for stats and although he went along with it, he complained that the game was horrible for the first 3 or 4 sessions because he had the lowest stats in the group and how was he expected to play with such horrible stats. Until I finally let him reroll(since his stats really WERE horrible compared to everyone else).
DANGER DANGER.... BAD DMing to the worst I have heard on these boards in a while... YOU KNEW and AGREED he had "horrible" stats and you made him play them...
I hate rolling for this very reason... I let my players roll if they insist on it (witch they often do) then I make them play with the stats so that everytime someone complains I say "That's why I like point buy"
I rarely if ever hear a story about how much someone loves to play an underdog so much that they like having the worst stats in a game...
I will share one with you though just for the sake of arguments... we had the worst forgotten realms game ever, but it had 2 break out awesome characters. Azrithel was the wizard god with a 19 int starting, and a 17 con, 17 dex, 17 cha... and Moonflower a half drow Ranger with a 14 str, 12 dex 12 con 8 int 12 wis and 6 cha... if anything the ranger was the best thing to come out of that game. The player ran him as a border line mental handy cap who was ugly and a bit rude (imagine an ugly Sheldon from big bang theory who had rain man's brain)
Though, I had to play with him because I wanted to play with my friend and he came with the package. We were playing at their house and another one of the players was their roommate. Basically, it was accept the deal or the game wouldn't happen. I hadn't really gotten a chance to spend any time with my friend in the past year or two since our 4e game fell apart. So, I sucked it up and dealt with it.
a common enough story
Which is a really long winded way of saying "Just don't play with people like that" is easy to say but there's almost always circumstances that prevent it from being that easy.
just like in my 2 groups I can't walk out, without endeing the campaign... you just gotta roll with it sometimes...