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Message: <blockquote data-quote="HeapThaumaturgist" data-source="post: 2768019" data-attributes="member: 12332">The fundamental disconnect is really amazing.I'll say this:  I had a group.  It included three people who were very good friends who sort of moved "as a pack" and came as a whole or not at all, for the most part.  Two of them were fantastic players ... involved in the game, in their characters, and in making the campaign alot of fun.  They caught on to my every subtle clue, and even took things in directions I would often wish I'd thought of first.One of them ... not.  That person's play style was just very very "out there" compared to the tone and style of the game.  If the adventure called for quiet infiltration, that person would bring fireballs and the shout spell to bear at the earliest encounter.  The kind of player that thinks, since they looked up black powder on the internet last week, their character should be able to build a cannon and destroy a castle in the game ... even if their character is a street urchin from the wrong side of town or whatever.  Just the kind of player that person was.Made me want to pull my hair out.  If I said:  "JUMP!" that person would invariably duck under the table ... and think it was an okay maneuver because I'd probably said jump because of an incoming rocket and getting under the table was ALSO okay.  They weren't stupid or unthinking ... we just didn't think of things in the same way.So I had a decision.  I either had to include elements that fit Player X, and do so pretty much every session, or I was going to have to cut the rest of that clique loose.  So I sat down, and every adventure, and every session, I'd try to think of how Player X might see things ... if I figured the party would retreat from an encounter with heavily armed bugbears, well, Player X would probably charge them.  So I'd place the bugbears in a position that couldn't be charged or I'd find another way to have the encounter.  Did I have to change my entire game for one person?Yup.Did that ruin it?Nope.If it's the difference between coming upon a group of bugbears in a clearing or spying them from afar on the other side of a cliff, and one of those situations keeps it from turning into a suicide combat ... I chose B.  It was still fun, I just had to think about it a little more.  Even if I were running prepackaged modules ... if there was an obviously locked door that couldn't be picked, Player X would attempt to build C4 out of moss and Gelatinous Cube remains and I had to be ready for that.  It was actually very creative ... just not what I wanted at all.  But I had to grin and tilt my head to the side and figure out what the heck I'd do if Player X wanted to sled down The Perilous Mountainside of Doom on a tower shield instead of taking The Dwarven Tunnels as I'd planned.I'd definately suggest grabbing the DMG II and giving the first chapter two or three read throughs.  It's basically an essential primer on businessplace psychology with a gamer spin, and something I think all DMs should be handed with their first module.--fje</blockquote>

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