When do you know your players are ‘whiners’?

[RamYaz]

When do you know your players are ‘whiners’?

I am always reading threads thrashing GMs for sport. What say you GMs and players if I ask you:

When do you know your players are ‘whiners’?

• When they keep mentioning how poor they are.
• When they don't want to open a door because it's risky!
• When they object the DM's decision, stalling the game session twice, thrice...
• When they often suggest the DM (as if he/she needed it!), which magic items or spells they'd like their characters to obtain.
• When they assume a defensive position, trying to beat the DM, instead of playing the game.
• When they blame the DM for the villains'/monsters' cunning and intelligence.
• When they envy every villains' resources.

 

[Agamon]

When they start talking like my co-workers.

 

[Crothian]

In all seriousness my players don't, but if they did:

If they complain they are poor I tell them to figure out a way to make money, get money, whatever. I encourage my players to be solution oriented.

If they come to a door and don't want to open it, fine with me my players have Free Will.

All objections are noted and we talk about them after the game. This is an agreed upon policy.

I love to get feed back from players telling me what they want. This is very helpful and I wish players would do it more. But just becasue they want it, doesn't mean they will get it.

I honestly have no idea what you are talking about with the defensive position and beating the DM.

If the villians they fight are too smart, I tell them to go after stupider villians.

See the answer to the first question.

 

[Agent Oracle]

I am a big violater of number one.

My current adventure, for instance, I and three other players started at level 10, with 2k in gear. The other two players are also level 10, but since they are playing legacy characters, they have about the correct amount of equipment. Compair the combat effectiveness of a paladin in +4 mythril fullplate with a holy avenger Vs. a Knight in a breastplate with a masterwork longsword.

But in the past, i've been financially well-off, but magic item poor, and whined about it. It's rough having 30,000 gold pieces, and nowhere to spend 'em because it's a wilderness adventure and you haven't seen a town in 3 levels.

 

[waterdhavian]

Mine always whine around XP time. It seems they can never just be happy with what they got. This is the best whining that I can recall. Otherwise its game times and game length. Sometimes we cant play on a certain day or time and they will get all up in arms about it, otherwise somedays a game may run short and they will complain "what are we finished?"

 

[Agent Oracle]

well, right now we're whining about EXP too. when we only got 150 for the first session, it made some sense, 'cause all we did was make some skill checks and get involved in a barfight. But after fighting off nine trolls in two seperate encounters, only getting 180xp is kinda insulting, especially since the entire party was unarmed, and most were unarmored, and I nearly drowned saving the life of a commoner who had been swept into a storm-swollen river... yeah, lots of stuff. The GM says he's using alow EXP, and we can credit him for that, since at the rate we're going, it'll take us just over a year to go from level 10 to level 11.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

"That encounter is too hard!"

Yeah, okay, maybe you should have thought of that before you did something stupid to summon the SWAT Team!

 

[shilsen]

Mine tend to complain a bit about XP, but that's mainly a couple of them and they're mostly joking. I told them right at the start of the campaign that XP in the game is going to be awarded so that PCs advance at a rate that I'm comfortable with. Combat and other factors are irrelevant.

 

[Insight]

Your whiny players should be happy they get to game. A lot of people (myself included) are unable to game due to circumstances beyond my control (my crappy work hours). I would be happy to have the time to game at all.

 

[EricNoah]

Well if I may take the devil's advocate position here... one of the DM's many jobs is to listen. Even if they aren't saying it well, or effectively, or nicely ... there may be something to the players' complaints. Trying to take the criticism without getting caught up in the emotional aspect of it is tough. But if you can do it, you may be able to find our what is wrong and fix it with minimal trouble.

The "we're too poor" example ... I'm in a group where the PCs were in fact too poor. It took a near catastrophic event (a battle where we were so overmatched it wasn't funny or fun!) for our DM to realize how under equipped we were (my wizard had 12000 gp worth of gear, vs. about 85000 gp per the DMG guidelines for his level). The thing was .... we DIDN'T whine about it. The DM had no way of knowing how things were going until he nearly had an undesired TPK on his hands. If we had whined a little more (and of course "whined" is the wrong word), he could have been making sure to adjust treasure the way he was adjusting the opponents.