GM gripes about players..

I wouldn't be surprised that my ears made a whistling noise when the steam started pouring out when this happened.

This is a case where my players frustrating me is a good thing.

First, I'm a lazy GM. I don't mind running games, it's just that I'm not motivated enough to prepare them.

Well, after one of them told me yet again that he's sure I'm not gonna run Shadowrun, I finally got pissed enough to schedule a session dedicated to a pre-campaign character-finishing meeting this Saturday, since we never have any time after/before games to get a lot done. I'll show them...

Starts muttering to himself as he walks away

edited 21st Feb '11 1:54:48 PM by WeirdUsername

I wonder if my players will stay on track once they've got their artifact instead of straining for a bunch of sidequests.

I mean if it was something worked into a character's backstory or something that'd be one thing, I'd be all for that. But I am not letting them take time out of their busy saving-the-world schedule to go get a Robe of the Archmagi. I'd much rather they just move along to the Very Definitely Final Dungeon so I can shoot them all with Schrödinger's Gun.

My players have finally found out that I suck at estimating distance and time. I've actually managed to come up with a humorous solution to it in my Dark Heresy campaign. All vehicles have 3 settings on their gear shift: stop, fast, and the speed of plot.

@Augustine:

All vehicles have 3 settings on their gear shift: stop, fast, and the speed of plot.

May I shamelessly steal that phrase? I have similar issues with grognard players.

Go right ahead.

I just joined a paragon game that's been going for awhile a few weeks ago. Apparently the party used to play in another game with a character that they considered 'Evil' who was controlled by a munchkin. Eventually they decided to come up with an emergency codeword to all kill him at once if he really pissed them off.

edited 13th Mar '11 4:03:29 PM by CommandoDude

Oh joy, a place were I can complain all I want about my players! Wall of text incomiiiiiing!

Before we begin, I must be honest. I almost always have a great time every time I play with my friends. It's mindless, railroaded fun that we all accept with grace, since it's an opportunity to kick asses and crack jokes at every opportunity. It doesn't mean we can't have a serious game once in a while; actually, we've played a Dark Heresy campaign where everyone was involved, even going as feeling sad when a favourite NPC went to his demise. It wasn't much more serious than our average game session, and certainly not a high point of roleplaying in History, but we were feeling comfortable in our characters, railroading wasn't all that bad after all, and we all keep fond memories of this time.

That being said, I grow more and more frustrated recently. I try to make our games a little more than just non-RP fun. Especially as a GM, I do my best to help my friend to try some more roleplaying, to make them understand that they have a weight on the world, and their actions have consequences. Sometimes, it works, like a short-lived D&D campaign for which I sometimes got request for a sequel; sometimes it goes all sour, like that time were pretty much all the party turned on me (as a PC), because I was healing some non-important NP Cs (my character grew up in a pain-filled country, and can't bear to see people suffering around him). I sometimes puts hours of work in a original and complete scenario, only to see it broken apart by my players who like to kill without thinking. Our faults are being shared, I presume... I'm not just looking for the same things as they do.

... That being said, there's a player who really pisses off all of us.

I won't say he's a munchkin, but he likes to twist the rules a lot. He will find the combination of rules who will make him not invincible, but certainly good at surviving. If we playe a X Men themed game, he will make a Kitty Pride-like character and max his reflex stats, so he could dodge bullets by simply phasing trough it. In a Dark Heresy setting, trust him to know every single minor psychic powers by heart. In every possible opportunity, he will take powers who will make him invisible, or otherwise undetectable without his consent.

This, in itself, is not a major crime, I've seen much more munchkinism in our games. The problem is his attitude about it. He will use the same tricks over, and over, and over, and over, and OVER again. While being smug about it all the time.

Here's some of his personnal record:

• In a Exalted game, he put his finger on a charm which allowed him to hide in sahdows. The description is very clear: unless he really wants to be heard or seen, he CANNOT be seen (even worse, we could, but we have to make a Willpower check against one of his maxed abilites, so no one on the group could achieve such a feat). He spends all his time under that cover, while making snarky comments on the action, claming that's OOC and no one can hear him actually said it. He came out of every encounter unharmed this way. I'm pretty sure no one even know his name in the group... we never saw him, but he's always there anyway!
• In Dark Heresy, he will use and abuse every minor psychic power. I've never saw him walking down the street, let alone engaging a battle, without being under Chameleon, and so near-invisible. He linked his sword with a teleportation power, wich means he could summon it any time; so, of course, he always insist on getting everywhere completely un-armed, even pointing that he left his sword in his room, and gleefully put it out of nowhere every time a combat starts. Once, he even 'linked' a coin, so that he could repay a debt one coin at a time... while always getting it back.
  • And let's not talk over his abuse of the Healing power, which simultaneously removes any tension coming from fatal wounds AND is a very potent weapon (it heals the first time, but wound every time after). Which, as he points every time, doesn't have any visual cues. He could kill every NPC just by looking at it (and he did once). Perils from the Warp? What's that! He's so lucky with dices and optimised that he never suffers any trouble.

And, yet again, he uses those tricks over and over again, with the excuse that's the only efficient way to use them. It wouldn't be so bad, if he didn't say every time that he doesn't have to make this check, or that he's completely safe, or pointing out his clever trick... Every. Single. F*cking. Time.

Add to that a complete and utter disrespect of every NPC he meets, openly mocking their opinion and feeling absolutely free to not listening to them. Once, he got in prison for disturbing the public order, and decided just to not care, sit in his prison cell and wait. We were all happy to let him rot in there... except after half an hour, we were practically forced to pay to let him go, just to shut him up about that situation. Seriously, every two minutes, he was narrating something completely useless to recall us that he was still in prison and didn't care! Of course, when we finally freed him, he didn't pay back any of us, claiming that he was at ease on the cell. Yeah, but the railroaded plot needed you outside...

And, worse of all, he's a complete Karma Houdini. Every time we tought a situation would bite him in the ass, his amazing rolls just keeping him intact and safe. He can roll four critical hits in front of us every time it's needed (and there's no way he could cheat them, because he rolled them before our very eyes, with dices that didn't belong to him).

Last but not least, when we actually point out to him all his devious schemes, munchkin combos and overall min-maxing, he will completely reverse the situation and become the victim, claiming that he's actually playing a very weak class that he had to min-max in order to make it up to par. We're talking about a guy who thinks Psykers in Dark Heresy are underpowered, despite every evidence we produced, and the fact that he fights incarnated demons in close combat.

Needless to say, our games seriously improved once we decided to exclude him from certain campaign.

I'd be sorely tempted to GM-fiat the healing power into having visual cues, unless it specifically says it doesn't (and as far as I remember, it doesn't).

Its ok. My guardsman PC just taunted a dark eldar in the last game. I'll tell the story if you want but its a long one.

Yes please!

I have a guardsman PC that is getting near That Guy levels. He thinks his character is completely invincible and talks shit to everybody. Normally I'm fine with this, but he really took it too far, and I'm not sure I reacted correctly.

So the party is working with a mercenary group that isn't exactly adhering to the Imperial Dogma that much. Tech heresy, and xenos are everywhere. The party doesn't know this yet. They are exploring the camp when the walk into one of the tents. I tell them that the tent is filled with a bunch of incredibly tough and bloodthirsty looking soldiers, and when they try to go to the commander's portion of the tent, these soldiers get scared looks on their faces and tell the party not to. Naturally they go anyway.

Inside the tent is the commander, who is a Dark Eldar, and her cronies. She is not the pretty type of dark eldar. Her face is nailed to the skull and her mouth is full of needle teeth. The party is rightfully freaked out, as I never actually said its a dark eldar, they only heard her say "Mon Keigh". That fucking guardsman though. He lights a lho stick and says "Looks like you need to see a dentist".

I roll a little agility test, and I tell the party that in the blink of an eye the dark eldar is at the guardsman's throat with her venom blades. At this point, my psyker and scum are freaking out, demanding that the guardsman apologize before the dark eldar kills every one of them. The tech priest actually left the room. But that damn guardsman. He says "You won't. I'll shove my autogun down that maw of yours". The dark eldar smiles, which in my games, is code for "I'm going to kill you now". But the psyker manages to somehow calm her down. I still don't know if I actually should have killed him. What do you all think?

Yeah, hair trigger reflexes plus venom blades? Sitting here at home, I think killing him is the best solution in a case where you've given him that much warning. I might play it like you did face-to-face with actual players and then regret it, though, I'm not sure.

The thing is, she is not his enemy... yet. If she does become hostile, she is going for him first.

Fair. Depends very much on how you're characterising her- if she's quite violent and short-tempered, the autogun comment probably would have got at least an artful maiming...

(And, of course, it can be difficult to start maiming P Cs suddenly without giving them a chance to act. I'd feel mean, though probably justified, if I actually went through with it.)

Her fighting style is completely home brewed. If I did decide to kill him, this is how it would have gone. She would have attacked, and dealt however much damage. Hopefully at this point the rest would stop him from estimating. Then, 10 minutes later I would say, "make a toughness test at minus (10 for however much damage he took). If he failed, you take (1d10 for every 2 points of damage inflicted, yes the toxin is very deadly).

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice.

"She moves her hand slightly, and the blade takes a slice out of your chest- not crippling, but certainly painful. "I don't advise mocking me," she says."

Continue situation, and ten minutes later, loldeath.

>:-D

Indeed, pretty much word for word. And I would describe every agonizing second of his death. He would say something like "Couldn't kill me huh?". She would respond with, "No. I could have cut your throat, spilt your blood across the floor. I chose not to." She smiles, "It would have been too good for you. I gifted you with a slow death". Roll for damage. My description "You fall to your knees, pain filling your entire body. Your heart beats faster than it ever should. Blood and pus are pouring out of your eyes, ears, and mouth. If he burns his fate points I say "You are now blind, deaf, mute, and any touch to your body sends you shaking in agony, as you can't scream. You are alive, but not alive. All you can feel is pain, for the rest of your miserable life".

I have great players. :D Want to know my secret?

KILL THEM.

Seriously. Half the problems in this thread involve not taking proper control. Grab 'em by the gibblies! A player who won't play by the rules is a player you don't need. Kill their character and kick them out.

Be an iron gauntlet, wrapped inside another iron gauntlet.

And don't railroad. Combine the two. Incredible harshness on dickery, freedom in the plot.

It's the sweet spot. Enough freedom to let them feel like they matter, enough asskicking that they respect you enough not to fuck around.

See, Asskicking Equals Authority, it turns out, works for tabletop games too.

And then realize that many people don't like that method, and will, in fact, leave your game if you try it. Have fun wielding your authority over no-one.

Okay, so, I have a player gripe about a player, and a related player gripe about a GM that's rooted in a previous situation in which our positions were reversed. The former is mostly to set up the latter, and I really wouldn't have much of a complaint about the situation other than "that was kind of dumb" if it weren't for a comment that made, so I'm classifying the overall deal as a GM gripe about a player.

And, fair warning, I'm going to describe both situations in their entirety for purposes of context, so... this might be a little long.

In a campaign I'm currently in, I'm playing a psychotically paranoid dwarf. So, yes, I am being The Loonie, playing a character who's actually completely insane. We were staying at an inn, and a storm came up, preventing us from moving out of town when we planned to, and the innkeeper was extremely accomodating, wrangling a farmer into giving us a ride to our destination. Of course, since we had been shipwrecked by a storm in this island nation while investigating a previous ship's disappearance, and had begun to suspect that someone was controlling the weather for nefarious purposes, my character wasn't the only one who was suspicious of this. So I concocted a plan to investigate. That day I searched the innkeeper's room for evidence of wrongdoing, and couldn't find any; that night I searched his office, with the aid of the other player, a Warforged Wizard, and one of the party's NPCs, a human fighter.

Searching the office, however, didn't go very well; my (improvised) Open Lock attempts ended up jamming the lock, so I had to saw open the door. Since this would be impossible to conceal, and we found nothing, I decided that we should frame up the scene to look like a robbery. We accomplished this by stealing some probably-illicit gold (the inn turned out to be far more profitable than should have been reasonable), having the NPC throw the chest into the nearby lake (since as a warforged and a dwarf respectively our tracks would be too distinctive to leave footprints), messing up the room, and breaking parts of the doors so it would look like someone from outside smashed the locks. Overall, I think if it had been left at that, then there's a good chance that would've been the end of that situation.

So, the next day, there's a commotion, which wakes up the warforged. Then the dumb thing happens. The warforged sees one of the inn staff heading to the innkeeper's room to inform him of the "break-in", and follows him upstairs. Then, with no ranks in Bluff and no Charisma modifier, he attempts to lie to the innkeeper. I facepalm repeatedly through the entire conversation. Our party is almost immediately under investigation. I'm called for questioning - I'll note that I also have no ranks in Bluff and no Charisma modifier, but then again I'm not the one who tried bluffing the innkeeper. Somehow, we manage to get away with it, despite repeatedly rolling poorly - I thought we were going to be caught, and honestly aside from the fact that it was one of the dumbest ways to get caught ever I was perfectly fine with it, it was basically the logical result of the chain of events - but while all that is going on, the GM makes a comment, asking me if the situation reminds me of anything, and when I say no, he brings up a campaign I was running where the party tried to rob a bank and, in his own words, the town guard "magically" knew what had happened.

And now is when I describe that situation. I actually made a thread ranting about it when it happened, but that's gone now, and the fact that the guy reminded me of it is the whole reason I'm making this post. Another warning now: This is kind of long-winded because it actually covers more than one session and many, many stupid things.

In one of my campaigns, the party tried to rob a bank. That's... pretty much it, really. They just decided they wanted some money so three of them tried robbing the bank. This was, bear in mind, a pretty large city, large enough to have a theater district in a pseudo-medieval world. Further, the quest NPC was explicitly a powerful enough wizard to teach the party's NPC some things he couldn't have done otherwise, and an apprentice in the area up until recently when his master dismissed him for reckless and insane magical activity. I think it is not unreasonable to conclude in that situation that the bank's defenses will not be easy to breach. In fact they knew ahead of time what kind of defenses the bank had because they actually already cased the place, and still didn't reconsider or make special preparations.

So, of course, they failed. In attempting to break the spells protecting the vault, they set off the alarm spell. The town guard was alerted and came running. Now - yes, there are actually two parallels between the stories, and here's the first. Had the party just escaped, instead of attempting to mislead the authorities, they would have been long gone by the time the town guard got there and there would have been no need to manufacture an escape. They would have left a witness, a guard they had knocked out, but he didn't see any of them due to a Darkness spell and hadn't heard their voices before so he couldn't have told anyone who they were. Other than that... what happened next was, the ringleader waited for the town guard to show up, claimed to be a "witness" but to have not seen anyone other than himself and his associates and concluding on those grounds that the culprits must have been magically aided to avoid notice, and offered his spellcasting services to help find the robbers.

Now here's the second parallel. A guy with no bonus to Bluff was attempting to bluff the town guard. He claimed he didn't need to roll a Bluff check because the things he was saying were true (he was a "witness" because he had been there when it happened, as one of the ones doing it; he didn't see anyone other than himself and his associates because they were the only ones there and also the ones who did it; he could conclude that the would-be robbers used magic to hide themselves because he was one of them so he knew how they'd gone about it). Of course I didn't allow that and made him roll the check. Results: Not good enough to not raise a few eyebrows, but good enough not to get them caught outright.

The town guard found the guard who had been knocked out and woke him up. While they were questioning him the guard mentioned that he had heard a voice. The ringleader, who I was beginning to suspect may be functionally retarded, inquired further, and with a check I determined that the guard was in fact able to recognize the voice as the one he had heard. It was at this point that the player did something that ticked me off probably worse than anything that's ever happened in a game; he actually successfully fast-talked me directly. He rolled a natural 20 on a Bluff check to convince the guard that he was mistaken, declared it a success even though opposed rolls don't work that way, and caught me so off-guard he was able to get the scene to move on before I realized that he was wrong.

Well, over the course of the week I realized what exactly had happened and it was incidentally during that time that I posted the aforementioned thread about it. The next time we played I had determined that if they were going to bring a challenge like this on themselves, and especially if they were going to do so by acting (in all but one of their cases) out-of-character, then they were going to face it, and actually succeed or else face the consequences. So, the guards take him up on his offer of spellcasting aid. I'm not particularly proud of what I did next, as it WAS kind of using a Deus ex Machina against them, but I do feel it was justified by the situation.

The guards, you see, found hairs from the tiefling rogue at the crime scene; the hairs noticeable because they were in a place that civilians would not have been allowed, and because they were a distinctive white, not matching any authorized personnel of the bank. They also had a scroll, a spell that would display an image of whoever a given focus belonged to, which of course they wanted him to help them cast. The ringleader, in this case, had to either bluff his way out, or make good on his offer. He decided cast the spell, then try to bluff that he had never seen the tiefling before, despite the fact that they were actually known associates, believed (incorrectly, due to the nature of their first victory) to be a traveling performance troupe. He rolled another natural 20 on his bluff check and again declared himself successful, but this time I quickly corrected him. The guards, with appropriate modifiers for the situation, were able to beat his roll.

Had he come up with something half as clever as he thinks he is, some miraculous escape, or a bargain of some kind, he might have still gotten away with it. Had he accepted defeat, the party would've probably spent a day in jail or had a very small fine - I wasn't going for Disproportionate Retribution or anything, all they really ended up doing was fail to rob a bank. Instead, he decided to attack the town guard. Alone. In a confined space. With at least four of them there. This, to his credit, or rather not at all, was actually an intentional suicide tactic; when he found himself at 0 hitpoints he decided to cast another spell and die rather than save himself (and due to some very much metagaming intervention from another player he even had a chance to win at that point). I have no idea why he suddenly decided it was a good day to die, in or out of character.

So, yeah, overall it was generally irritating.

edited 22nd Mar '11 12:05:43 AM by Ezekiel

Soooo...

The town guard magically found out who did it.

(Sorry, saw the opportunity for that one and I just had to go for it. I'm a horrible person.)

I'd be sorely tempted to GM-fiat the healing power into having visual cues, unless it specifically says it doesn't (and as far as I remember, it doesn't).

Oh, I agree. At least, some glowing eyes or weird distortions in space would be a nice visual effect. Unfortunately, I was not the GM in that game, only a fellow player. And, as a good Rules Lawyer that he is, he pointed that nothing on the general description of psychic powers includes visual cues. No hand-waving, no magical chanting, no outerworldly lighting, no nothing. And we all know how Rules Lawyer tend to be anal about what's written...

Besides, it doesn't change the broken use he made of that power. No 'to hit' roll is necessary, no direct contact with the target either, it completely bypasses any armoured protection and Toughness, it deals a surprisingly high amount of damage, and he will succeed on casting nine time out of ten.

An yes, he brags about the superiority of his powers over a simple handgun every single time, why do you ask? -_-

Wow. GM needs to take him aside and talk to him about how annoying he is. Heck, from the way you describe it, if he just used the power without bragging about it he wouldn't be so bad.

That definitely seems like an abuse of the rules, too. One way to deal with it if he, or anyone else, tries that is (if this fits with the rule in the book) to rule that it's a Healing Hands type power- you need to touch them to heal them. You're assumed to be able to touch the willing, of course, but it'd take an attack roll to hit an unwilling character.

How does it compare to dedicated killy powers like all of Pyromancy?

I realise I'm painting the poor bastard a little too harshly. The "Healing case" is probably the most egregious example, I could as much give many examples were he wasn't so much a pain.

I just re-read the power description... and realized he's just plain cheating with us.

First, the power must be used on a willing target, so he can't use it on helpless prisonners (but could still mislead them to believe it's something else). Second, the power can only heals once every 6 hours without danger. That's how he uses it: he heals once, then use it again to cause damage instead. However, it doesn't automatically hurt: the target must take a Toughness check, and in case of failure receive damage instead. The way he played it? Automatic damage after the first one, no check.

This revelation will only... hurt his reputation. YYEEEAAAAAAAAAHH !!!

(However, everything I said earlier was still right: with clever use of rules, he could cast Healing as much as he wants without failure, it stills ignore any protection and hit without check. He was just "forgetting" some restrictions, apparently...)

edited 22nd Mar '11 9:05:35 AM by Talden