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Supplemental books: Why the compulsion to buy and use, but complain about it?
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<blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6405603" data-attributes="member: 5143"><p>I agree. Some of the time though interpersonal relationships can put a damper on this sort of self-reflection.</p><p></p><p>For instance, the last game I started running was mostly because I missed playing with an old friend of mine. So I suggested we start up a game and she was very interested. The problem is that I knew that playing with her pretty much meant playing with her boyfriend. He hates mysteries of any kind. It's extremely frustrating playing with him since every time he doesn't have all the information extremely quickly he gets more and more irritable. I eventually gave up running the game when she suggested she take over(after a couple of times of me blowing up when I got overly frustrated). When I'm only playing with him and not DMing, I can handle it. He's also a little bit more patient when she's DMing.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>As an example of what I'm talking about:</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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."</p><p></p><p>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?"</p><p></p><p>I said "Well, you could observe who it jumps into next and try to figure out what they have in common"</p><p></p><p>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?"</p><p></p><p>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!"</p><p></p><p>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!"</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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. He almost blew a gasket when I suggested that I MIGHT not allow feats. 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).</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Majoru Oakheart, post: 6405603, member: 5143"] I agree. Some of the time though interpersonal relationships can put a damper on this sort of self-reflection. For instance, the last game I started running was mostly because I missed playing with an old friend of mine. So I suggested we start up a game and she was very interested. The problem is that I knew that playing with her pretty much meant playing with her boyfriend. He hates mysteries of any kind. It's extremely frustrating playing with him since every time he doesn't have all the information extremely quickly he gets more and more irritable. I eventually gave up running the game when she suggested she take over(after a couple of times of me blowing up when I got overly frustrated). When I'm only playing with him and not DMing, I can handle it. He's also a little bit more patient when she's DMing. 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. 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. 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. 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?" 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!" 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!" 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. 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. He almost blew a gasket when I suggested that I MIGHT not allow feats. 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). 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. 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. [/QUOTE]
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