D&D 5E Your Biggest Gaming Pet Peeve

[iserith]

My biggest pet peeve is that one player (you know who you are) that simply cannot, for the life of him/her, create a serious character. And by that I don't mean creating a character that has no personality/quirks; I'm not expecting every character out there to play out as a stereotypical Lawful Good paladin.

I mean that inevitably, whatever they choose to create, it ends up more caricature than character. Their creation could make a guest appearance in a Looney Tunes cartoon and no one would suspect the character hadn't been specifically created for that entertainment medium. They can often be spotted by their names, which are pun-filled, double entendres, or both.

Yep, that's me - the high concept character with the pun for a name. "Immovable Rod" Manleigh the brawler fighter with the professional wrestler persona. Chuck Dagger, my blade-throwing rogue. Wei of the Shadows, my shadow monk. Ebenezer Switch, the druid/transmuter alchemist.

The trick is to be effective and drive the game forward while being subtly comical. Disrupting the plot or being silly for silly's sake is when it gets to be a problem in my experience.

 

[Sunseeker]

Yep, that's me - the high concept character with the pun for a name. "Immovable Rod" Manleigh the brawler fighter with the professional wrestler persona. Chuck Dagger, my blade-throwing rogue. Wei of the Shadows, my shadow monk. Ebenezer Switch, the druid/transmuter alchemist.

The trick is to be effective and drive the game forward while being subtly comical. Disrupting the plot or being silly for silly's sake is when it gets to be a problem in my experience.

Basically, this. The key is to be subtly comical. For example, I had a were-bear monk named "Obearon". The character himself was serious, but everyone snickered whenever he had to introduce himself or say his name. Went by "Obie" for short, which is really just more adorable. Was going for a "boy named Sue" kind of concept.

But frankly: comedy is hard. Really. Most people couldn't make a good joke that would get everyone laughing to save their lives.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Thus our group was saddled with Captain Jackson Titanium Dirk for the better part of 9 months. (I suppose it could be argued that this isn't even a caricature, but a parody of a parody of Bill Shatner, as it were. But while IRL I respected the player of Captain Dirk tremendously, it was still annoying.)

Why would the GM even allow that? Unless s/he's setting out to run a comedy game, any GM shouldn't even hesitate to disallow something that's going to be that irritatingly mood-shattering.

 

[innerdude]

Why would the GM even allow that? Unless s/he's setting out to run a comedy game, any GM shouldn't even hesitate to disallow something that's going to be that irritatingly mood-shattering.

Yeah, I don't know. We were all reasonably good friends (though I was much better friends with the GM and his brother). I think the GM simply didn't want to deal with the "friend capital" he would have had to expend. He was a very gentle, somewhat shy person by nature.

And truthfully, the actual in-game effect of these "caricatures" isn't world-ending for me. I can generally hum along on my own, play my character from the perspective I see them and have a good time. But it is annoying, all the more so because of its predictability.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Y'd think, know'n me, it'd be balance, but nope...

"Battletech Syndrome." That what I started calling it back in the 80s, every game had always suffered from it, but Battletech (which I didn't even like, but which all my gaming buddies insisted on playing) brought it to new heights of WTF. It's the glaring disconnect you get among the illustrations, descriptive text, and mechanics in RPGs. I'm not talking mere abstraction, but outright contradiction. So, like, a character is described as 'heavily armored,' is statted out with a chain shirt, and the illo has no armor at all. That kind of thing. Continuity errors, really.

I've only ever seen one game /not/ do that at least a little, and, ironically, it was a parody game (called HoL - I'll be shocked if anyone's even heard of it - c1994, I think). It not only matched those three things up, it lampshaded 'em - for instance, there was an entry in the weapon table for "spikey-chainy thing on pageXX" (with an actual number, not 'XX' - the right page number, even!) with stats that made some modicum of sense for the crazy thing.

 

[MechaPilot]

My biggest gaming pet peeve is when realism is used as an excuse to a) do horrible things to people, like violating captive characters; or b) otherwise infringe on the group having fun.

 

[Jacob Marley]

Players who habitually arrive unprepared, late, or no show without explanation. I understand we are all busy people, and that things come up from time to time, but to do so on a regular basis just pisses me off.

 

[mrpopstar]

My biggest gaming pet peeve is when realism is used as an excuse to a) do horrible things to people, like violating captive characters; or b) otherwise infringe on the group having fun.

Yuck!

 

[Croesus]

Their interactions with NPCs range from outlandish at best to downright ignorant of any convention how their character looks to others inside the fiction. If other players in the group or GM are looking for something more "grounded" from their gameplay, the players of these characters are generally indifferent to such pleas.

You've described a slightly less troublesome aspect of my main pet peeve: players who, intentionally or not, ruin other players' fun. Whether it's the guy who insists on playing an evil thief assassin in a party with a lawful good paladin, or who plays comedy when the GM is trying to run a serious adventure, or who thinks it's hilarious to run away from a fight, sealing the exit so the rest of the party is trapped...ugh.

And yes, all of the above happened at one time or another in games I've been involved in. The lesson I learned: don't be a jerk, and if a player/GM can't help themselves, don't game with them.

 

[RedSiegfried]

When players try to argue with me pre-emtively or trick me (as the DM) into letting them do something instead of just asking, or better yet, just telling me what they want to do. If they listened to what I told them many times while we play, it's never necessary to play these sort of word games or mind games with me. Just tell me what your character does and that will happen, sometimes with a check to see what results from it, other times without a check. It's that simple. You don't need to wheedle or beg or manipulate. I'm not out to screw you. I'm here to help everyone at the table (including myself) have fun.