Bitching About Players Thread

[Prophet]

In the spirit of the Bitching About ST Thread I bring the other side of the coin! A place for the ST's complain about their players and for players to learn a few things.

Since I don't ST I leave you with "The Michelle Chronicles" from the old forums which is the true accounts of funny gaming sessions that Marc the Draconian Garden Gnome (patron Saint of patient Storytellers) had to put up with.

Completely hilarious: http://www.angelfire.com/rpg/michelle/

[Papa Bear]

Sorry, but I have to gripe about my one time running a Hunter: the Reckoning game. It was shortly after the game came out and put me off being an ST for a couple of years. Yeah, it was that bad.

Since it was shortly after the game came out, I was dealing with a bunch of players that were accustomed to playing nigh-unkillable vampires and werewolves and mages, which I think contributed to a lot of the problems. I am not the kind of ST to keep PCs alive just because they're the PCs. If they do something monumentally stupid, sorry, your character died. I ran 3 sessions of the game, everybody had to make another character by the middle of the second session. Some died in the first session. I wasn't throwing anything major at them, just PC level monsters that they'd been able to deal with before..........as supernatural monsters themselves. I was hoping that by the third session, it would sink in that they were mortals fighting things that were way more poerful and they'd have to start getting clever and creative and work as a team to take them down. Silly me.

The incident that made me stand up and declare the game over was our resident "Wolverine wanna be, I always gotta to face the bad guys by myself". After some (but still not all) of the players decided that working together might not be a bad idea, this putz still has to tell me his character is going to go off to the warehouse where they think a monster is hiding and take it on himself. Despite my warnings about it being a bad idea, he insists.

His character drives to the warehouse, breaks into the place.....noisily....and starts flashing his light around to find something. He discovers a homeless guy and HITS him until he wakes up. He decides to start badgering him about being the monster or seeing something. Turns out the first part was right. He's a Bone Gnawer Ahroun camped out there to keep an eye on a Pentex facility nearby. The PC unloads a few rounds from a handgun and runs back to his car. I was hoping it was to flee back to his friends because he realized it was a bad idea. Nope, pops the trunk for his shotgun and turns back to see the werewolf slowly coming out to get him. I was trying to be nice and let him get away, so I say "50 feet away". He fires, werewolf keeps coming. "40 feet away", he fires, werewolf keeps coming. 30 feet, 20 feet.....10....5.....he just keeps standing there firing and reloading. In total frustration, I stand up and declare that the werewolf has ripped him apart and that the other members of his pack were alerted the second he entered the warehouse and they were busy tracking him back to his base and found the other hunters there and ripped them all apart, too. Game over, man, game over! Everybody go home!



Fortunately, the NWOD made the PCs a little more vulnerable, so I haven't encountered this since.

[Kat]

Fortunately, the NWOD made the PCs a little more vulnerable, so I haven't encountered this since.

Jesus Christ, since I got into NWoD I cannot look at 6/4/3 mortal attributes spread of OWoD seriously, because that feels too much.

[AzraelFirestorm]

I can never truly complain about my players from any game. They are all far more sane than I, and trusted hours of their time and mental energy to my fever-dream-written stories and homemade madness. I can only think of them as heroes. True Heroes Are They, That Trusted My Dice. Saints Among Men, Through Story They Fight.

[Prophet]

@Papa Bear ALL PCs are vulnerable, no exception. And I play Exalted!

Still, the problem wasn't the game but the closed mentality of the players. When I played Dark Ages Inquisitor, we got to a point the group was powerful, had overpowered relics and still we approached the supernatural monsters with caution, even my hot headed Poor Knight!

Although that Inquisitor Chronicle had me nerdraging against a fellow PC. There was a Vampire immobilized by a holy power (can't recall which one) and I was pinned down by a ghoul with Potence breaking my bones and my dear friend and Poor Knight comrade moves in for the kill, takes the vampire's head with glory as I give up my last breath with the Ghoul smashing my had Mountain - Oberan Style.

[Kat]

My players/co-players are too psycho to handle them without a Henderson tier derail.

So looking forward to Karen raping that poor Demon. Literally. Because she wants to have a mix blooded off-spring for eugenics program. She expressed recently disappointment in not managing to dissect that True Fae whom our knife nut killed with one stab.

Meanwhile my PC goes around dressed as a Catholic priest to "fool" a local Angel. And he is the sanest cellmate in spite of believing that Angels are cyborgs sent by US government.

[Mockery]

Let's see. There was the guy playing an Assamite who insisted the Path of Blood obliged him to hurl himself bodily off a cliff after a lower-gen vampire, and insisted the ST should cut him some slack on that whole gravity thing. And then buried a knife in the table when he turned into a red smear on the ground.

There was the guy who played a monstrously offensive hibachi chef trying to make new flavors of blood.

There was the guy who took the approach that if they shouted anything loud enough it would become patently awesome to everyone at the table.

Then there was the cast from my Exalted game:
The one who by the end of the second session had become his player's mouthpiece on how boned the world was and all the things that needed to be done to save it ("I think we need to find our Lunar mates and go to Yu-shan" was on the list, despite none of these having been mentioned before.)
There was the player running an online game, who would bring her laptop, do stuff with her other game while sitting in the background of what was going on, browse the web, and at least once burst out laughing mid-session to show everyone the Lego bible.
There were the players who didn't do ANYTHING. One had the sole function of "I have a boat" and I cannot tell you a single facet of her personality. The other actually had a good character when she showed up and occasionally did stuff, but like the other she was there to be sociable, and would often tune things out to play on her DS or knit.
There was the woman who quit repeatedly.
There was the guy who first made a Killfuck Soulshitter before that was a meme, and then when we all realized he was a poor fit, made a new character who was blandly useful as a Fighter, and spent most of his time in Great Forks.

And then..Hoo boy.

All right, so this is where things really went south for my Exalted game. Owing to inter-player strife and/or deciding to get married and move to Denmark, the players invested in the story and bearing plot hooks had all left. I had a new player waiting in the wings, though, so I was willing to keep trying.

To his credit, he's enthusiastic and tries to keep involved. However, like one of the guys mentioned above he's loud, kind of obnoxious, grabs the spotlight, and occasionally misses the point entirely--like when he decided to play a Lunar, upon realizing Lunar Exalted were--in 2e--civilization-builders, he tried to make a whole eugenically-formed nation Dragon-blooded, and pass this off as an unambiguously good thing.

when we moved onto Scion, he tried to stay in the spotlight at all times; when a government agency started looking at them sideways, he wanted to be the awesome guy who tracked them down, knocked on their door, and told them in no uncertain terms how things were going to go. He was PAINFULLY put out when the character who had actually been an agent in her backstory, without prompting or encouragement, initiated contact on her own and made for a much more cordial state of affairs.

I'm pretty sure I could go on, but it's not 100% fair to the people who subject themselves to my whim, and also typing all this out on a phone is a little more laborious than I'd like.

[Papa Bear]

@Papa Bear ALL PCs are vulnerable, no exception. And I play Exalted!

Still, the problem wasn't the game but the closed mentality of the players.

That is what I think, too, which is why I was bitching about the players not the game.

It's taken some time for a lot of RPG players to get over to the mentality of "your character can die, too, y'know."

[Prophet]

Let's see. There was the guy playing an Assamite who insisted the Path of Blood obliged him to hurl himself bodily off a cliff after a lower-gen vampire, and insisted the ST should cut him some slack on that whole gravity thing.

Loved this one. Although the knife part sounds a bit too psycho... not very mentally stable the fellow.

@Papa Bear Exactly. One game I missed of D&D, my friends were epic level characters and they ran away from a Kobold because all their powers told them it was just Kobold and their thought was "This is some powerful shit, none of our powers work. Better go away and do not make him mad." LoL The DM had the time of his life.

[Kat]

^We have exactly opposite attitude in DnD. We try to kill everything that looks nasty and moves, even if clearly outmatche.

[semicasual]

I don't really want to trash any of my players, but I will share a collection of stories about idiotic shadowrunners:

http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/gaming/shadowrun/clue-files.html

[Mockery]

Although the knife part sounds a bit too psycho... not very mentally stable the fellow.

He wasn't. He could be friendly and generous, but was very clearly always high-strung and was always smiling in a way that just had too many teeth, if you get my meaning.

He was also a relentless powergamer who insisted he had fantastic luck with dice, as shown by his rolling, quickly picking up a bunch, and then saying that the ones he was holding in his hand were his successes.

[Darksider]

I personally enjoy introducing Killstick McFuckyou players to the old Paranoia rpg. I just don't fell them I've changed games.

[Papa Bear]

^We have exactly opposite attitude in DnD. We try to kill everything that looks nasty and moves, even if clearly outmatche.

As long as you never face the dreaded gazebo, you'll be fine.

[Kat]

I killed off bodyguard in a duel of a fatman who turned out to be a member of grand council and escaped to sewers. At least I got shitload of XP for that because NPC was twice stronger than me but I punched him to death anyway.

And that rich guy thinks other PC killed me, so other player got prize for my head (without showing body because he rolled natural 20 on Bluff) and I'm officially dead. I will wait in wilderness for others to catch up.