D&D General What's the most problematic D&D player you've ever played with?

[Slit518]

I've had a few "bad" players.

Some, I just find their habits annoying, or their play style.

Others, were what you may call playing the Chaotic Stupid character.

Then, there are the players that always seem to have a grudge with every NPC that doesn't automatically say yes to them when they want something, and always lean toward some form of bullying/assault/murder to try and get what they want, even if it doesn't fit their character.

 

[Flamestrike]

The Tale of Mittens the Paladin

First ten minutes of the game, we meet our latest mark, Pally detects evil, and then in a room full of goons openly attacked the guy.

That's your DMs fault really.

If I was DMing, I'd clearly state such an act to be an act of Evil (this evil dude wasn't a threat to anyone), because you cant just murder people who 'ping' as evil (i.e simply because they've got history being bullies or not nice guys).

Heck, probably around 10-20 percent of most towns populations would be evilly aligned.

 

[Imaculata]

I used to play with two friends of mine, who over the course of several campaigns just started annoying me and my other friends so much.

One guy, was an adult Christian man, with a tendency to play creepy loli girls. Make of that what you will. He also liked turning on his party members, and try to kill their characters for reasons.

The other, a power player through and through, with a habit of using trick dice, or fudging his rolls. He could not stop cheating. He was just as bad as a DM, because he saw it as an opportunity to insert his own overpowered npc.

I distinctly remember us playing a Star Wars campaign with him. Our creepy loli player wanted to play a Jedi, and our DM added an old wise Jedi npc to the group, to teach him. So far so good.

But as we started playing, we noticed that our DM had basically set us up to fail. Rather than allowing us to feel like heroes, he rigged everything against us, and made every check impossibly high. And even if you succeeded by some miracle, he'd find a reason for another check, so you'd fail. And of course, in comes the super Jedi npc to save the day, played by the DM himself. Cue him slaughtering his way through dozens of Stormtroopers, while we make a disappointing escape.

Hey, remember how in Star Wars Luke, Han and Leia basically do nothing, and Ben Kenobi does everything? Me neither.

That campaign died after one session. You'd think that player feedback would be a call to action for that DM. But we attempted a Mech Warrior campaign with the same DM... same story.

Then I did, what everyone should do in such a situation:

I turned to the friends that I enjoyed playing with, and told them:

"Look, I feel like every session is a chore. I'm never looking forward to playing. Do any of you feel the same way?"

They agreed.

"So how about we form a new group, without creepy loli guy and our cheating DM? We can play at my house, and I'll DM. We can find someone else to fill out the group."

Long story short, we've been playing for over 20 years now. And without any issues. We separated from the troublesome two as players, but also as friends, and were strategic about our reasons for doing so. We didn't mention our new group to them.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I could tell you, but then the police would come and dig up my patio...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The worst would-be player I've ever met was basically an actual neo-nazi. I met him at uni and he seemed okay if a bit of a bore, didn't say anything racist/homophobic/misogynist, just boring obsession with WH40K and the Space Wolves (which I now consider a "warning sign" lol), and he was part of a group of us nerds (I was regarded as the "cool guy who is good at talking to people" of the group which is hilarious/terrifying depending on how you look at it) who were planning to rent a house together for the second term and when he found out I was a D&D DM, he was really bugging me to run a game for us. Then he gradually revealed his true form, first with creepy misogyny (which we shot down and he shut up about), then eventually just straight-up "but the immigrants are destroying our way of life" racism. It was clear this was entirely from his parents (given all the "my dad says..." stuff), so I tried to see if he could be talked into sanity, but whilst he admitted he was wrong and was clearly somewhat ashamed of himself, the racism etc. was equally clearly reflexive, so we just ditched him and never spoke to him again.

In terms of actual players who actually got to play, I'm usually able to be pretty selective, so I haven't had too many bad ones, but I did have a non-fire-able player (a family friend and my brother's best friend) go through a terrible munchkin phase in his teenage years, which he thankfully fully recovered from. Still, for about 4-5 years he made nothing but basically munchkin characters.

And I do mean munchkin, not "power gamer" or min-maxer or w/e. Where a power-gamer or min-maxer will stick inside both the rules and the spirit of the rules, and often be otherwise a nice player and sometimes a good RPer, a munchkin will push the rules to absolute breaking point and use every exploit they can get away with, and will continually influence the game situation to show off how powerful their PC is, even at the expense of the other players having fun.

As he generally built combat monsters, he'd try to turn everything into combat. This was worse in some games than others. Like, in Vampire, he'd just get shut down, because he wasn't so dumb he wanted to die, so he couldn't start stuff with stronger vampires (yet desperately wanted to because Diablerie), and in other situations, he got threatened with mind-control or the like if he didn't behave, and he didn't want that either. Also you just couldn't be that great at fighting - a starting vampire is always going to be shredded by a werewolf, no matter how badass you think you are. So that was okay.

But Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun or anything GURPS set in the modern day or future where you had more than like 150 points, or any number of other games? Oh boy. So many NPCs got shot in the face. So many plans got ruined because he couldn't not kill people. Even in Superhero games where he was supposed to be a good guy he just couldn't keep it under control, but I think I finally broke it when, as a DM, when his vigilante superhero (like an extra-violent Batman with a low-end version of Superman's powers) was stalking through the bad part of some city chasing a ninja-ish supervillain, and he heard someone coming up behind him. I knew the person coming up behind was a cop, and I expected him to turn and have to argue with them (because he'd been framed by said supervillain for a heist, but the cops were sympathetic to him and might buy that). But no. He specifically waits until the guy is really close behind him (on a blind corner), then kicks out backwards with maximum super-strength. I'm like "Uhhhh, are you sure? You don't wanna turn?!" and he's like "No, this time I'll surprise [supervillain]! He thinks he's so sneaky!" and hit attack hits, and he rolls high on damage, so a cop's dead body goes hurtling through the brick wall of a nearby house. SIGH. I admit the weeping grandma telling him he's "no hero" I said the house contained might have been laying it on a bit thick, but he seemed to revise a lot of his behaviours after that (I suspect getting past the "hormonal" stage of teenagerhood helped).

 

[Dire Bare]

Story 1: First game I ever played in, at boy scout summer camp (we were counselors). Dude saw my D&D books, invited me into their existing game they'd been playing all summer. I was excited! During that evenings session, we come across a caravan of traveling priestesses, of which we needed some sort of macguffin or information (can't recall). The party rudely demands the priestesses give us what we want, they naturally refuse . . . and the party proceeds to rape and murder the entire group. That was the first and last time I ever played D&D at summer camp.

Story 2: In high school, was invited to play in a friend's ongoing Shadowrun game. I had purchased and read the rulebooks (and a few novels), but had never played. GM told me to roll up whatever kind of character I wanted to . . . I was incredibly confused all evening, as this group moved FAST (they were all very familiar with the rules), but what made this my first and last Shadowrun game was one of the other players . . . a huge, angry-seeming dude . . . constantly yelling at me for not bringing a "tank" to the table, because that's what the party needed. I had no idea (at the time) what the hell a "tank" was.

Story 3: Much later in college, a bunch of us are playing . . . gads, I don't remember what . . . and our host had invited a curious friend over to observe us play. We were told he was interested in perhaps joining, but just wanted to observe and get a feel for what D&D is all about (or whatever RPG we were playing at the time). Seemed okay, then . . . this guy turned out to be ex-military, goes to his car, comes back in with a disassembled assault rifle, proceeds to assemble it on the couch, and then curl up with it and take a nap. It was so bizarre and disturbing, not to mention more than a little scary, nobody said a damn thing. Weird gun fetish guy was never invited to anything ever again.

Story 4: I was running this game, during grad school. One of my players asks if he can bring a friend, and can that friend use his own custom-created class? I knew the guy from work, knew that he was a bit quiet and weird (by our standards), but he seemed OK. Brings his "candle mage" class which somehow managed to be both ridiculously overpowered and incredibly boring. I actually don't remember much from our actual play experience, just that odd combination of overpowered/boring "candle mage".

I also have multiple conflated memories of being invited to join existing D&D campaigns, told to roll up whatever type of character I wanted, level them up, purchase appropriate magic items and gear . . . . only for the DM to use the "you wake up naked in a cell" trope to introduce me to the suspicious party who'd just as rather take all my gear in the chest in the next room. I even remember once, having the party force me to walk at the front, being given a rusty sword (rather than my gear they kept), to "clear traps" for the party until I "proved my worth". Strangely, none of these experiences convinced me to return for a second session.

 

[Shiroiken]

While I've had quite a few bad players over the decades (and sadly been one myself), there's one guy who stands out above the rest. He took the DM vs player to the extreme, feeling that his job as a player was to ruin the DMs plot as much as possible. He'd regularly trash plot hooks to the other players, trying to force the DM to improvise the session. If our job was to protect an NPC, he'd try to get them killed (even poisoning one in his sleep). At one point in a 4E game, we found the magic sword we'd quested for about 3 months, then immediately disenchanted it into the magic dust used to create magic items, because he correctly assumed the sword would lead to the next part of the campaign. While one DM (his best friend) kept putting up with it, the rest of our DMs eventually told him to take a hike.

One of the players was openly gay and took SO MUCH FLACK about it.

Interesting. When I was young, one group did a lot of the "gay jokes" with each other, but we never did one guy in the group. For whatever reason, it just never happened. After a couple years, he came out to us as actually being gay, and had been since before he knew us! He never took offense at our jokes, because he knew they were very common at the time (the 90s), and found several of them quite funny. Part of me thinks the reason we never did the jokes with him was that we subconsciously suspected, but that's probably just wishful thinking on my part.

 

[Zardnaar]

While I've had quite a few bad players over the decades (and sadly been one myself), there's one guy who stands out above the rest. He took the DM vs player to the extreme, feeling that his job as a player was to ruin the DMs plot as much as possible. He'd regularly trash plot hooks to the other players, trying to force the DM to improvise the session. If our job was to protect an NPC, he'd try to get them killed (even poisoning one in his sleep). At one point in a 4E game, we found the magic sword we'd quested for about 3 months, then immediately disenchanted it into the magic dust used to create magic items, because he correctly assumed the sword would lead to the next part of the campaign. While one DM (his best friend) kept putting up with it, the rest of our DMs eventually told him to take a hike.


Interesting. When I was young, one group did a lot of the "gay jokes" with each other, but we never did one guy in the group. For whatever reason, it just never happened. After a couple years, he came out to us as actually being gay, and had been since before he knew us! He never took offense at our jokes, because he knew they were very common at the time (the 90s), and found several of them quite funny. Part of me thinks the reason we never did the jokes with him was that we subconsciously suspected, but that's probably just wishful thinking on my part.

I had a gay player circa 1999/2000. He came out as he was leaving town. We had figured it out months ago.

 

[GuyBoy]

Nothing too extreme, happily.
We had a player a few years back in our weekly pub evening game who was always late for the start. Doesn’t sound too bad, but all the group were hard working professionals, with busy schedules, who made it work for our 7-10pm Thursday slot. Said player was the only one who didn’t actually work but still got there really late every week, delaying the start of our games. We finally ended things when she turned up at 9.30pm saying she’d been going to leave on time but had decided to paint a flower on her face first.
Then there was the player who always attacked everything on sight. Any role play situation, any conversation would always be ignored and the NPC attacked immediately.

We briefly had a bloke come to our club, who told us he was in legal trouble for beating his wife. Asked him to leave.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I once had a player who needed to always play a custom class AND refluff elemental damage to STD (or such) damage...yeah...gonorrhea wall, AIDS storm etc

real mature for a 27-ish y.o

Then got angry because I started their campaign at level 1, when he was ''used'' from a game 15 years ago to play a 3rd edition 20/20 multiclass wizard fighting against whole cities of undead, raking 1 000 000 xp per turn.

eye roll