Pre-briefing: Dealing with non-Who-y players

[buccaneer]

This is my first post here.

I received DWAiTaS (is that how you spell it?) for my birthday, and I'm lookng forward to playing a game of it soon, probably with my two available players. Unfortunately, they're not the best of players...

Player 1: The Decent One.
This player is one who is okay with going along with almost any plot or series, but if it's too boring, he'll speak up about it. That's fine, but he also tends to defend player 2. On his own, I'm sure he'd make a great player.

Player 2: ISE
I have nicknamed this player "ISE", or "Impulsively Suicidal Elf" for long. He has several flaws as a player:
1. He wants all of his characters to be named after elves in space that he made up one day and expects me to believe are real.
2. He will ignore the plot and try to brag about or find the elves in space.
3. He will ignore any plot, story, limitation, or rule that gets in the way of him juxtapositioning his game over mine.
4. At the slightest show of interference by me as a GM, he will kill himself in-game and come back several hours later to rinse and repeat.
HELP.

[Siskoid]

That is nonsense. The only real solution is to not play with him.

Or if you must (I imagine you're strapped for players), you have to speak to him beforehand and tell him that you will NOT allow him to play unless he behaves. You can even compromise and let him be a space elf (the Whoniverse is big enough to have them, I'm sure). But the buck stops there. He'll find elves when you make the TARDIS materialize on the elf planet once per "season". And he can't commit suicide. DWAITAS emulates the SHOW. On the show, the characters do not die willy-nilly, and the game gives many more outs for death. A big sacrifice at season's end should be about all that could lethally affect a character (the GM can allow a killed character to live at the cost of some Story Points, gaining the Unadventurous Bad Trait).

[Craig Oxbrow]

Welcome aboard.

The only advice I can offer is this: No gaming is better than bad gaming.

I'd recommend setting up a play-by-post game on a forum like this or RPGnet instead.

[Siskoid]

I'm with Craig that NPE (Negative Play Experience) is worse than not gaming at all. But I suspect that these players are friends of yours and you want to do something with them (or at least with one of them) regardless of their playing abilities. I used to have some problem players when I GMed through high school. They were friends, but did have bad gaming habits. Eventually, we had to ask them (ok, HIM) to leave, and were better off without him. It was that or quitting the hobby, all of us, because games were becoming a pain.

So if you do want to salvage this group, I think you can. It's all in the GM-player contract. Sometimes people don't realize they're misbehaving and think it's all fun and games. That player needs to know that his behavior is not good and that you are not playing around when you get upset about it. If he doesn't want to play by your rules, then he doesn't want to play at all.

[knasser]

How old is this player? Eight?

Ditch him, go out and make some new friends. You'll both get rid of an idiot player who enjoys spoiling things for you, and you'll have more friends.

K.

[buccaneer]

0. Thank you all for your responses.
1. Yep, I basically have no players at all.
2. If you give ISE an inch, he'll go a mile. I can probably simulate a bit of gaming with him:
Me: Okay, listen. You can't kill the Doctor.
ISE: Yes I can. I have a sword forged from the heart of a billion suns!
Me: No, you don't.
ISE: Then I take the TARDIS and fly it into the sun!
3. Yeah, did I mention the elves were also 16 feet tall, really cool warriors, basically gods, had a lot of species, and could use magic and lived to be billions of years old? And that apparently ISE has an army of dragons with them to destroy all of the universe that doesn't reshape itself in his image? And in one game we played, he (as a completely new-to-magic level one weakling sorceror) claimed to create A PLANE OF PURE LIGHT (complete with dramatic hand motion). When faced with logic, he declared that HE WAS MORE POWERFUL THAN YOU CAN BELIEVE.
4. I've been getting the advice "No gaming is better than bad gaming" a LOT. I guess I'll have to get rid of him.

[maddoctor]

I wonder if the ISE player would get a maturity boost if forced to GM a session or two.

I always give immature players the parents' curse (you know, the one that goes: "I hope that when you grow up you have kids who are just like you!").

Sadly, some people never get the message and have trouble playing with others.

[Siskoid]

ISE doesn't seem to understand how role-playing games work. At all.

I can't believe you played that many games with him.

[da professor]

Jul 20, 2010 17:34:27 GMT Siskoid said:

ISE doesn't seem to understand how role-playing games work. At all.

I can't believe you played that many games with him.

What he said. I'd have played one then told him to [expletive deleted] off if he didn't amend his behaviour before session end.

[buccaneer]

I'm convinced now that the only reason I've tolerated IE is because I've never really played an RPG.
Literally, I have only RUN RPGs, sometimes with a bit of help, except for one time (that I can remember) when one of my players did a oneshot involving a really fancy psionic lord and a brain-eating thief.
Anyway.

[zebaroth]

get some new players look up game stores on the net for your area

[maddoctor]

I will venture that a lot of immature players (young and old) cling to the RPG hobby because it gives them a sense of power and control that they otherwise lack. The DW:AiTaS game might be a tough sell for those players. After all, this is a game where "Let's get captured to find out what the villain's plan is" and "Let's try to talk sense into the mindless killing machine" are not terrible plans.

[Curufea]

Maybe you could break them in with Call of Cthulhu

[knasser]

Jul 20, 2010 14:29:57 GMT buccaneer said:

0. Thank you all for your responses.
1. Yep, I basically have no players at all.
2. If you give ISE an inch, he'll go a mile. I can probably simulate a bit of gaming with him:
Me: Okay, listen. You can't kill the Doctor.
ISE: Yes I can. I have a sword forged from the heart of a billion suns!
Me: No, you don't.
ISE: Then I take the TARDIS and fly it into the sun!
3. Yeah, did I mention the elves were also 16 feet tall, really cool warriors, basically gods, had a lot of species, and could use magic and lived to be billions of years old? And that apparently ISE has an army of dragons with them to destroy all of the universe that doesn't reshape itself in his image? And in one game we played, he (as a completely new-to-magic level one weakling sorceror) claimed to create A PLANE OF PURE LIGHT (complete with dramatic hand motion). When faced with logic, he declared that HE WAS MORE POWERFUL THAN YOU CAN BELIEVE.
4. I've been getting the advice "No gaming is better than bad gaming" a LOT. I guess I'll have to get rid of him.

It's been said in this thread that no gaming is better than negative gaming. I'm going to expand on that and say that negative gaming is better than this guy. We need a whole new word to describe what playing with him must be like.

Seriously, the guy must be aware he is irritating you. In which case there's no excuse. Find others and good luck.

[imajica]

The Internet is your friend. RPOL.net, NextGenRPG.com and any number of other online gaming sites. Take your time with the gaming, craft wonderful stories, interact with strange beings from around the globe from the comfort of your computer. All safe in the knowledge that (1) you'll probably never meet these people in real life and (2) you can always pull the plug and start fresh on another site if it really goes wrong.

And if you're GM'ing on these sites, you can pull the player's access to the game. (and if you help run one of these sites you can just delete their account and block their IP, their email, their chosen usernames, stick them on spam lists... Not that I'd do such a thing, obviously...)

[danceswithdaleks]

He Reminds me of a guy I once new, always had to have the strongest character and if he couldnt do what HE wanted, then he'd kill him self in stupid ways, and he was a worse GM he'd give him self all of the best gear and kit(I.E. "Im a 20th level demigod with a epic dragon mount that always strikes first on Init and kills every thing in one blast due to its never miss flame breath that deals 8d100 of damage with a +97 damage mod.") I say Teach him a lesson with a session of the old Gamma World system. That thing is a huge player killer, he'll die before he gets the chance to off him self. of course you could just not let him play. it sounds like ISE is like drugs Just Say NO!

[Eryx]

So what happenedwith this guy? Did you resolve anything?

[gmjake]

I've never had such a problem with nutcases, but have had plenty of bad players. My current group (not dr. who) consists of a nut, a pervert, a boy/girlfriend pair that don't pay attention half the time, my older brother, and whatever random prepubescent relatives the afformentioned girlfriend brings along. On top of that, my 9 year old brother and my challenged 12 year old brother always want to play rpgs with me. None of the little kids ever get it. The nut and the pervert usually arent much of a bother though. Just occasionally. It is really distracting when the boyfriend and girlfriend make out while we're playing.

[gmjake]

you're player sounds SO much worse than anything I have to deal with though. Will the first friend not be your friend if you exclude the annoying one?

[buccaneer]

It's been a while, but here's the conclusion:
ISE had his magic disarmed and his character was killed permanently. He no longer plays with me.
The Decent One had another RPG group, which I joined. It's okay, but it's not what I'm looking for, currently.
Two more bad players (One didn't understand that I dictated the story in an RPG and the other just wasn't good at Paranoia) and another Decent One joined the gaming group, although I don't play with any of them currently.
I never managed to run anything in Adventures in Time and Space, nor Call of Cthulhu, and I have yet to do a good Paranoia game, so I'm going to try Play-by-post in the hopes that it'll be better and more manageable.
(End Season One)

[knasser]

Feb 17, 2011 2:04:13 GMT buccaneer said:

It's been a while, but here's the conclusion:
ISE had his magic disarmed and his character was killed permanently. He no longer plays with me.
The Decent One had another RPG group, which I joined. It's okay, but it's not what I'm looking for, currently.
Two more bad players (One didn't understand that I dictated the story in an RPG and the other just wasn't good at Paranoia) and another Decent One joined the gaming group, although I don't play with any of them currently.
I never managed to run anything in Adventures in Time and Space, nor Call of Cthulhu, and I have yet to do a good Paranoia game, so I'm going to try Play-by-post in the hopes that it'll be better and more manageable.
(End Season One)

Sorry to hear that. But you can't put up with behaviour like that. Imagine trying to play a football game where someone kept picking up the ball and running between the goal posts. It would be stupid.

K.

[monkeylite]

It might be worth mentioning that Paranoia is probably the worst game to play with people who aren't on the same page when it comes to game expectations and mutual trust. It deliberately subverts the rules of party interaction. So, you need to be clear about the differences between that game and a conventional game. I really wouldn't recommend playing it with new players.

[Craig Oxbrow]

Sorry to hear about your further lack of luck.