Things that annoy you as DM?

[Caspiar]

Players who are obsessed with playing an evil character, and will attempt to turn any character they already play evil.

Players who carry over rivalries from different campaigns.

 

[KenM]

Players that think playing a outcast drow ranger with two swords is totally orginal.

 

[KenM]

Players that think playing a outcast drow ranger with two swords is orginal.
Drizzit clones.

 

[Woas]

Players who lay nasty farts then leave the room to go get some snacks and leave us with a bomb while I'm trying to freaking discribe some important or dramatic event, but our eyes are watering and when I take a breath I choke and gag!

 

[Kichwas]

Funny thing is, my wife knits all the time during games. It helps her focus on the game itself; she's always more mentally alert if she's got somethign manual going on as well.

I'll often pace around for the same result. Of course I GM 2 of the three games I'm in, so it's not disruptive in those.


Top of my annoyance list: making a drug deal on your cell phone during the game...

Other favorites that I've been hit with over the years:

• Bringing your drugs or drug paraphenilia to the game.
• Having your supplier show up when we go out so you can make a buy off him.
• Staring at the female players. Putting a chair in front of them and staring without moving for hours...
• Showing up high.
• Rubbing up against the female players and 'feeling' them with your entire body until the men in the room form a body shield around them to keep you away.
• Sending emails to the entire group that quote random lines of poetry, random posts by other members to online forums from years back, and strange cryptic threats if you don't get your way. Note that all the above elements are sent in fragments that often cut off in mid word, so the group doesn't even know it's a threat until they all put their emails together and find the full word or full sentence...
• Challenging the DM online in public forums where you attack all the DMs rulings, claim they have no right to make rulings about the game or even the rules of the house, and using racial slurs or political and religious attacks when doing so.
• Shooting everything with your crossbow before you know what it is.
• Peering at the map and saying you're going to the hidden castle / ruins / dungeon / etc - before your character knows it's there.
• Insisting on having all the abilities and powers of every other PC in the game.
• Picking verbal fights out of character - ending with physical threats
• In character gang-raping all the female PCs.
• In character gang-raping all the PCs of female players.
• Insisting on bringing rape into the game in one form or another.

 

[Gothmog]

I'll often pace around for the same result. Of course I GM 2 of the three games I'm in, so it's not disruptive in those.


Top of my annoyance list: making a drug deal on your cell phone during the game...

Other favorites that I've been hit with over the years:

• Bringing your drugs or drug paraphenilia to the game.
• Having your supplier show up when we go out so you can make a buy off him.
• Staring at the female players. Putting a chair in front of them and staring without moving for hours...
• Showing up high.
• Rubbing up against the female players and 'feeling' them with your entire body until the men in the room form a body shield around them to keep you away.
• Sending emails to the entire group that quote random lines of poetry, random posts by other members to online forums from years back, and strange cryptic threats if you don't get your way. Note that all the above elements are sent in fragments that often cut off in mid word, so the group doesn't even know it's a threat until they all put their emails together and find the full word or full sentence...
• Challenging the DM online in public forums where you attack all the DMs rulings, claim they have no right to make rulings about the game or even the rules of the house, and using racial slurs or political and religious attacks when doing so.
• Shooting everything with your crossbow before you know what it is.
• Peering at the map and saying you're going to the hidden castle / ruins / dungeon / etc - before your character knows it's there.
• Insisting on having all the abilities and powers of every other PC in the game.
• Picking verbal fights out of character - ending with physical threats
• In character gang-raping all the female PCs.
• In character gang-raping all the PCs of female players.
• Insisting on bringing rape into the game in one form or another.

Holy crap dude! Any of those things would have lasted about 10 seconds in my game, before I forcibly threw the bum out the door. I hope you're not putting up with this sort of thing from these players anymore.

 

[Gothmog]

Thats not a powergamer IMO. The CHARACTER has good diplomacy, the PLAYER does not. If the player was playing a nuclear scientest, would you expect him to accually come up with a formula for something or make a roll? I'm not that good with fast talk or diplomacy, but some of my characters are. I should not be expected to come up with what I'm saying when my character has the skills the player does not.

Hmm, you have a point, but I think there is a distinction you are missing. D&D and RPGs in general are SOCIAL games. You get together, play with friends, and have some human interaction. Knowledge skills are based on what the character knows (or IRL, what you know), and about such fictional things are magic, monsters, and world lore, are more appropriate to rolling to determine success, since a player won't know every detail their character will. Social skills like Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, etc are things real-life people have some experience with, so I don't think its out of line to require the player to make SOME effort to justify their using the skill. Granted, a player might not be a master orator (lord knows I'm not), but as long as he makes some effort, most DMs would give the player the benefit of the doubt. Without the RPing requirement, D&D might as well be like Baldur's Gate or a CRPG with scripted events and dialogue, and based solely on the mathematical probabilities. This is where I begin to see the powergamer emerge- someone who refuses to engage in roleplaying their character and instead focuses on the numbers and rules to maximize the benefit they receive while playing. I'm not saying all people who focus on the numbers are like this, but its a trend I have seen dozens of times over the years.

 

[Kichwas]

Holy crap dude! Any of those things would have lasted about 10 seconds in my game, before I forcibly threw the bum out the door. I hope you're not putting up with this sort of thing from these players anymore.

They're assorted incidents over the years that have caused me to have a very poor opinion of my fellow gamer (sorry folks, but after what I've been through you have to earn it with me). There's several different people in the above, as well as multiple people having done some of these offenses at different points in time.

None of those sorts of people are in my current batch - but everytime I do a recruitment phase for myself or am party to assisting someone else we always turn up one or more people like this. Our last case was the guy who sent the strange emails...

roughly 40 of them per day, written as unusual poems composed of things he'd found by searching on my name with google and elsewhere. He'd break them up in mid word and send half to me, half to some of my players, and some random portion to other players. It looked really strange until we compared emails, at which point it looked scary. He only lasted three sessions with us, even though my instinct was telling me to lose him much earlier.

Almost invariably, I get people like this when I get tired and relax my process of recruitment screening a little - so the lesson there is to be a hard-a** in how you recruit and never relax it one inch. It's better to have no players than to have players like I've seen.

 

[Kichwas]

I don't have an organized system for how I deal with social moments. I'll vary from roleplay it all out and give me a roll, to just give me a roll - it really depends on the pacing of the game at that moment. Most of the time it's a middle ground - roleplay out some portion or at least describe the 'tactical plan' in use, and then roll the dice.

If I had to guess, I think it's the players that decide what method is used at a given moment. Or perhaps a bit of them and me together. If they say they do something and I respond in character they usually come back in character and that sets it. Likewise if they start the in character I try to respond in kind. At other moments it's more of a description of actions on both sides. There doesn't seem to be a formalized process for picking on this though.

 

[Shemeska]

Players with wonky character concepts that, after several poor decisions that led to permenant character death, finally get a likable character. They then proceed to roleplay the character into being an NPC.

Players who tell you too late about a health warning on the label of a bottle of hot sauce you eat 1/3 of with one of them that read 'Do not consume if you have heart or lung problems, use caution around children and the elderly. Use diluted drop-wise in food, not intended for direct human consumption." This then leads to a capsaicin and endorphin high, pot level giggle fits, deleriousness, and finally the 24 hours of horrific cramping. Curse you my players, curse you...

Luck bonuses and mercurial greatswords