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Tell Me About Your Problem Players and Your Solutions
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<blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 7794172" data-attributes="member: 97077"><p>I have the luxury of being picky with my players and I have a screening process that separates the wheat from the chaff. Then I leave the chaff to other DMs, poor suckers.</p><p></p><p>One of the main offenders that will see players not make it through my screening is people who just can't bring themselves to go along with other players' plans. No matter how rife with fantastic drama a plan is offered to them or how reasonable, they cannot find a way to say "Yes" and go along with it. In a world teeming with monsters and villains, the conflict they seek is <em>within the party</em>, particularly when it comes to choosing a quest or devising a plan. What's more, they often don't even have their own ideas, just a lot of reasons why someone else's plan won't work or why their character can't participate in it.</p><p></p><p>The rest of the group has to spend valuable session time basically trying to get this player to play. And sometimes, despite everyone's best efforts, they won't even do that. They'll have their character sit off to the side observing or doing some low-stakes activity that they think demonstrates their acting chops. One wonders why these folks bothered to show up. I suspect it has something to do with aversion to failure and wanting to stick to intra-party drama since failure in that doesn't result in death or loss (usually), outside of loss of session time and, in my case, <em>patience</em>.</p><p></p><p>I've told this story before, but I would occasionally play with this group where one of the regulars was one of these types of players. In every session it was the same thing. No matter the idea, no matter which of the players suggested it, his character just wasn't having it. But neither did he have ideas of his own. It got to the point where I decided to use some reverse psychology: I would basically suggest a plan and say I didn't want to do it. Or I'd suggest a plan that was the <em>opposite</em> of the plan I really wanted to do. And you know what? That worked! He'd argue for the plan I didn't want, which was the plan I wanted all along anyway. After that worked a couple of times, I quit playing with that group. It was just too much effort, though in the end it was a pretty good learning experience.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="iserith, post: 7794172, member: 97077"] I have the luxury of being picky with my players and I have a screening process that separates the wheat from the chaff. Then I leave the chaff to other DMs, poor suckers. One of the main offenders that will see players not make it through my screening is people who just can't bring themselves to go along with other players' plans. No matter how rife with fantastic drama a plan is offered to them or how reasonable, they cannot find a way to say "Yes" and go along with it. In a world teeming with monsters and villains, the conflict they seek is [I]within the party[/I], particularly when it comes to choosing a quest or devising a plan. What's more, they often don't even have their own ideas, just a lot of reasons why someone else's plan won't work or why their character can't participate in it. The rest of the group has to spend valuable session time basically trying to get this player to play. And sometimes, despite everyone's best efforts, they won't even do that. They'll have their character sit off to the side observing or doing some low-stakes activity that they think demonstrates their acting chops. One wonders why these folks bothered to show up. I suspect it has something to do with aversion to failure and wanting to stick to intra-party drama since failure in that doesn't result in death or loss (usually), outside of loss of session time and, in my case, [I]patience[/I]. I've told this story before, but I would occasionally play with this group where one of the regulars was one of these types of players. In every session it was the same thing. No matter the idea, no matter which of the players suggested it, his character just wasn't having it. But neither did he have ideas of his own. It got to the point where I decided to use some reverse psychology: I would basically suggest a plan and say I didn't want to do it. Or I'd suggest a plan that was the [I]opposite[/I] of the plan I really wanted to do. And you know what? That worked! He'd argue for the plan I didn't want, which was the plan I wanted all along anyway. After that worked a couple of times, I quit playing with that group. It was just too much effort, though in the end it was a pretty good learning experience. [/QUOTE]
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