Your Bad Habits

Well, there's threads for complaining about your GM, complaining about the players in games you run, and complaining about the players in games you don't run (I think...?), so let's round it off with a thread for complaining about yourself.

I like roleplaying and problem-solving, rather than just rolling dice, but I don't ever get to because I naturally assume sort of a follower role in games; I can never seem to speak up when I have ideas, or instigate a good in-character conversation. And for the same reason, when it's my turn at bat I tend to freeze a bit. So I settle for planning builds and spell/item research that I never get to do, making easy jokes, and festering in my self-hatred.

The comics equivalent of PTSD.

Left to my own devices, I tend to be so cautious my character would never do any adventuring. To avoid this, I have to play reckless dumbasses of the Kamina, Largo, or Max varieties.

edited 14th Jan '11 10:37:59 PM by arbane

I have a very short tolerance for out-of-game conversation. Not out-of-character stuff, which is fine, but tangents away from the game. My attitude is basically, "Damnit, I'm here to game, so let's game, and quit talking about fucking World Of Warcraft  ^*

already!"

I seem incapable of playing D&D without ending up having levels in a divine spellcasting class. Admittedly, I don't play D&D very often, but I realized this recently, and find it somewhat disappointing; it sort of implies that I am not as creative or flexible as I'd like to think I am.

Outside of D&D, I tend to play brainy types, usually with a large helping of arrogance that I don't have  ^*

IRL. In WW games I'm especially bad at this, usually going with a science-geek type of PC.

Regardless of the system, I tend to be a bit of a Rules Lawyer. Not in the sense that I abuse loopholes, but I learn the rules as quickly, and accurately, as possible, and point out when the GM or fellow players get something wrong. The group I gamed with in Fresno, I was one of three players like this, so we could derail from in-character actions without being off the game very easily, and I recognize that it's frustrating for the players who don't give a damn about the rules.  ^*

I have freaked out players by in-character hitting on them if my character was attracted to their character. I don't consider this a gripe from my point of view.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

I have a bad habit of getting very out of character whenever i start getting frustrated. my noramlly lawful good characers become chaotic destructive especially when Failure Is the Only Option.

Add me on skype! Dynamod1990

I appear to become petulant when severely sleep-deprived. This meant it was less than perfect when, after two or three days short of sleep playing through much of the night, we pulled an all-nighter, and my Elf Barbarian jumped onto the enemy ship- the rest of the party were a little behind and I fluffed Initiative, so I spent a round having the crap beaten out of me by about five half-dragon Monks. I did survive, but I wouldn't've done without the immediate tactical retreat from the (massive) enemy ship onto our (tiny) one.

Kinda embarassed about my reaction...

I GM a Pathfinder game, and two faults come immediately to mind:

1) I'm too strict about game rules, sometimes to the point of anal retention. There are times that following the rules made things less fun.
2) Rail Roading. I suck at improvisation, and I have a tendency to bully my players—either IC or OOC—into sticking to the script. I REALLY need to work on that.

Groovy.

yeah, that would make me want to kill shit that shouldnt die. I remember playing a paladin that was constantly being dogged by the law, being chased into becoming renegades WHEN I WAS TRYING TO CLEAN MY NAME. eventually i got so frustrated because they destroy my boat i was sailing away on, so what do i do? i comandeer their boat of course! not only were the rolls hard, but i repeatedly met them, throwing both innocents and bad guys of the boat in truckloads. when they finally realized that i might actually sucseed, what do they do but blow up their own boat, killing themselves in the process. In the end of it all, turns out we were supposed to fall in the water anyways, and wash up on the shore. also, there was only 1 survivor. i killed him.

edited 15th Jan '11 12:19:04 PM by Dynamod

Add me on skype! Dynamod1990

As a GM:

• Loads And Loads Of Characters (I average at least two plot-important NPCs per session, which really adds up after six months of playing)
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot, which doesn't work very well in a medium where you can't reread/rewatch to pick up on obscure clues
• Railroading, which comes from the above. At least my players and I generally arrive at an unspoken agreement that I let them do pretty much anything in-character so long as they follow the plot hooks as they come.

As a player:

• Tragic Heroes—they will always have a set of beliefs about the world that will lead them to ruin.
• Arcane casters, in settings where they are allowed
• Intellectual characters—my characters are almost always very knowledgeable about things

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

i guess I should add some of my GM bad habits;

• I like to indulge in Scenery Porn, to the point that i can bore the players. sometimes its helpful for combat, most of the time its just useless info to them.
• I make my games in that Anyone Can Die, even Plot sensitive NPC's. thing is, I dont tell the players who's important and who isnt. so they end up killing potential employers every now and then, I try to give extra details to important characters, but every now and then I have to pull from my list of character names because my party delights too much in killing everything, making new NPC's on the spot just to keep the game rolling.
• I put WAY too many traps in my encounters. it almost reaches on Tomb Of Horrors levels. collapsing ceilings,runaway boulders, arrows shooting out of every orifice that can been seen AND CANT BE SEEN. magic items that are cursed. I once had an arrow shoot out of a keyhole right into our lockpickers eye. poison killed him pretty quick.

Add me on skype! Dynamod1990

Oh, just remembered: I sometimes notice I've become a bit whiny about bad things that happen to my character. In my defense, though, that's because I've spent quite some time with a Killer Game Master, and I get tired of always thinking the next thing that happens is going to be a Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies or a Hopeless Boss Fight. Especially when I'm often the one guy in the group who sets up my character with goofy things like, oh, say, a backstory and goals.

edited 15th Jan '11 4:09:22 PM by Ezekiel

The comics equivalent of PTSD.

Heh. Better rationale there than my whininess, it definitely isn't a Killer GM.

He definitely knows how much effort I put into backstory, since the character I wanted to play was actually moderately significant in shaping parts of the setting (for example, I'm not sure the elves would have been American First Nations-style if I hadn't said, as soon as we started talking about playing a game, "I fancy trying an Elf Barbarian..."). Whining is definitely my fault.

edited 15th Jan '11 5:03:18 PM by MorkaisChosen

I play incredibly social characters, in part because I'm fairly good at reading both social situations and story patterns (you know... tropes!) and it's REALLY hard for me to dumb down enough to play a non-savvy character.

Also, it takes me a LONG time to connect with a new charcter (made worse by how rarely our group can actually get together to play). So one-shots are pretty much out. And for similar reasons, I'm very picky about which games I want to play - if it's that much work to connect with my character, it darn well better be a setting that grabs me.

I seem to be better at thinking up complicated backstories for characters than at actually roleplaying the conflicted emotions that would result from those backstories.

Also, I get really, really antsy when the rest of the party tries to kill an innocent, rob somebody, or otherwise commit "evil" acts. I think I feel just as uncomfortable as if they were talking about killing a real person. I actually consider this healthy, since it means I won't become a monster if I'm put into a real-life situation that dehumanizes people (e.g. Guantanamo Bay), but I acknowledge that it can be a problem in collaborative gaming.

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

I dunno, I think if the party isn't supposed to be evil, that sort of thing should be reined in by the GM and anyone in the party who's actually sane.

The comics equivalent of PTSD.

My Character is always the Jack-Of-All-Trades type. I realized this with my most recent one and tried to specialize a bit.

Result: I have 2 or 3 in most talents. But hey, I went with 3 str, 4 dex, and 1 stam! That's a bit more specialized, at least! And I'm also grabbing the Jack-Of-All-Trades merit. Le sigh.

Vampire The Masquerade, in case you were wondering.

I also tend to not come up with character backstories (or personalities, even) until the last second. Better work on that as well.

One of my few regrets about being born female is the inability to grow a handlebar mustache. -Landstander

Masquerade is 7-5-3 for stats right? I assume you put the 7 in mental attributes and the 3 in social, then?

I try to get a pretty varied gaming diet. I tend more towards roleplay-heavy characters with excellent social and mental skills, but occasionally make a big brute to let off some steam and turn off my brain for a while. The problem comes when I build one type of character when the game in question calls for another. Ask Funnyguts sometime about the half-elf bard I built for her  ^*

D&D hackfest.

Add me on Skype: Al Cook (darnpenguin)

Or NPC law enforcement. Always good to have some generic "town guard" stat blocks on hand.

Groovy.

NPC law enforcement? With generic stat blocks? Are you kidding me? You're joking, right now. Seriously. All that would do is add to the pile of freshly-murdered corpses. Generic stat blocks aren't worth the paper they may or may not be printed on.

The comics equivalent of PTSD.

I'm a GM for Changeling, and at the moment, I have trouble making antagonists, though I'm trying to correct this. At the moment, I always chicken out and make them good at heart.

That's not a bad thing, if done properly. An Evil Overlord is generic, but an Evil Overlord trying to carve out a place for his people in a nation that has wronged them is memorable.

As a DM: I torture my players if they get Chaotic Stupid. At one point in time my nephew Jurael's Dragonborn Fighter lost his tail (Dragonborn don't normally have tails, but they do in my setting) for trying to kill an important NPC. I also suck at starting games at first level; the lowest I can manage decently is around level five.

As a player: I suck at backstory. I'm very enthusiastic about Role Playing, and I give my characters very detailed personalities with enough conflicts to make it interesting... but I can't come up with backstory for crap, with only about four exceptions in my entire gaming career. I've been gaming for eight years.

My name is Cu Chulainn. Beside the raging sea I am left to moan. Sorrow I am, for I brought down my only son.

Here are a few of mine, as a GM and as a player...

-As A GM:

• Everybody Has Lots of Sex: I do tend to get sidetracked by romantic subplots. I've gotten better, but this was big in my games for a long while.
• Rule of Cool / Rule of Drama: way more important than Reality Ensues, most of the time.
• Dice? What dice??
• Draco in Leather Pants: Most of my villains are sexy Bad Ass types, usually designed to elicit some sympathy.
• Gray-and-Gray Morality: Black and White are for amateurs.

-As A Player:

• My female characters are always bitches in some way.
• All my characters have dark pasts.
• I hate OOC natter during scenes.
• I've been told I "roleplay too much" as in, even when I'm not talking I'm doing non-verbal exposition while waiting for my turn; Its a holdover from my days at LARP, where you're default setting is "in character".
• Most of my characters have accents, and most of them are cheesy.

edited 20th Jan '11 11:57:39 PM by drunkscriblerian

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~

Welcome to my role in my current group. Yay for being the only Lawful good character.

As for my faults, my number 1 thing is that I suck at talking. I'd like to be better at making up conversation on the fly, because I like to face and do more than be the "hit it with sticks" guy and my inability to make stuff up really limits that and I think it holds my party back sometimes, since I'm a back up face who can't really think of anything. I play characters who pretty much are built around fighting too much, as I alluded to that in the previous sentence. I also tend to put too much of myself in characters sometimes, especially when I plan them to be different than myself and myself slips back in. I also tend to get along w/ some of my friends characters easier than I really should, because our friendship ends up slipping into my R Ping.

Finally, I meta-game too much, which I do to make up for my lack a creativity at times.

edited 22nd Jan '11 9:26:08 PM by Thenamelesssamurai

Imagine Rakan applying Calling Your Attacks to doing paperwork.~Anarchy Rakan for the hell of it COMMISSION THIS BRIDGE!~EHK

The main problem was, I wasn't willing to let them do anything evil. Or even disagreeable. The main antagonists would be these nice guys who happened to be in the wrong and would immediately capitulate and change their ways.

Goddamn it, that looks really pathetic even now. This time, ruthlessness.

Ruthlessness for a good cause migh be the way to go...

It'd be easy to turn them into proper Well Intentioned Extremists. The main thing is, they need to not believe it when told that they're in the wrong. They need to be so heavily invested in their course of action being right that even hard evidence and a talented speaker might not be able to convince them otherwise. Or else they need to be working for, or with, someone else, someone who won't let them be wrong.

edited 21st Jan '11 12:45:29 PM by Ezekiel

The comics equivalent of PTSD.