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And i do not mean the same character every time. This guy loves rogues. So no matter what, he always plays EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER, REGARDLESS OF CLASS like a rogue.
We cannot dissuade him from this. Any tips on how we should proceed to wean him of this?
I mean his last character is an elf generalist wizard who uses Hand of the apprentice with a rapier. And that is his primary mode of attack. Not spells. Dude. Why.
Agree with the peeps....why is him doing what makes him happy hurting your fun?
Have to agree with all these people saying you should not be urging this player to expand his game repertoire. After all if he liked sitting around in kindergarten eating cookies, nobody ever should have suggested he learn anything new. He was probably happy as a clam sitting there eating cookies, why mess with him?
Doesn't sound like its a suggestion, it sounds like the guy is getting genuinely upset at the fact another person likes playing a game a certain way. This isn't about expanding horizons it's being upset that someone doesn't play pretend the way you want them too.
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Have to agree with all these people saying you should not be urging this player to expand his game repertoire. After all if he liked sitting around in kindergarten eating cookies, nobody ever should have suggested he learn anything new. He was probably happy as a clam sitting there eating cookies, why mess with him?
Gaming is about fun. If somebody has the most fun sitting eating cookies then fine by me.
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If the problem is that you were counting on him to function as a wizard, and he's not... well, next time know better. This time, just deal with it. Part of a social game is getting to know that other participants and adjust yourself to their certain kind of special.
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Hama, I feel your pain. I have a player with the very same obsession on Rogues in my latest group. Although his take on it is more in the way he roleplays his characters than how he acts in combat. It does get tedious after some time.
He currently plays a Cleric of Milani and I had to remind him that Milani may be the goddess of evading oppression, but NOT of evading taxes :-(
Come to think of it, AFAIK there is not really a god of thieves, nor of VERY free trade, in Golarion. Maybe I should design one so that he can secretly worship him while pretending to worship Milani.
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Have to agree with all these people saying you should not be urging this player to expand his game repertoire. After all if he liked sitting around in kindergarten eating cookies, nobody ever should have suggested he learn anything new. He was probably happy as a clam sitting there eating cookies, why mess with him?Gaming is about fun. If somebody has the most fun sitting eating cookies then fine by me.
Gaming is part of life. Life is about learning and growing. If people can be encouraged to learn and grow in gaming, it is part of learning and growing in life.
I routinely attempt to provide suggestions and opportunities for my friends to grow as gamers as well as generally. And they do the same for me. It's part of mutually supportive relationships.
Of course it requires a level of maturity and empathy on both sides, which if that is lacking, then of course things should probably be left alone.
I mean his last character is an elf generalist wizard who uses Hand of the apprentice with a rapier. And that is his primary mode of attack. Not spells. Dude. Why.
While this might be kind of cool for a multi-class character who relies more on his fighting abilities, it's kind of lame for a full blown wizard. You're probably having him multi-class as a rogue and working that angle while someone else covers the wizard niche.
Ideally, players should try out a number of different classes over their gaming lives, but not everyone is going to do it. It's kind of unfortunate because variety really does add a lot of spice to life, but if he really is having fun and it's not causing the rest of you major problems, you might as well let him play in his rut as much as he wants.
To play the other side of the coin, there ARE classes and archetypes that fit the Rogue type better than force feed a Wizard. Try a Bard or Archeologist. There is the Trapper Ranger. There is the Ninja. He could even try the Dawnflower Dervish.
Adamantine has already said it pretty well, but I'll chip in as well. Let him play a rogue, thief, scoundrel, dodgy char if he has to. Let it go, and go with the flow.
Eventually, this player will move on to something else. It is cyclical. Wait till he gets to barbarians, it will be the time of crunch.
If he is already playing a barbarian and playing them like a thief, well, he is playing Conan.
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Nobody forced him to do anything. When i asked him what he wants to play, he said a wizard. So i said ok.
And then he pulls that stuff.
The main problem is, any time he is not playing a rogue, his characters are useless. And i don't mean unoptimized. I actually encourage my players not to optimize when we aren't playing dungeon crawls.
Last time he played a lightly armored fighter with two rapiers who focused on dexterity. And tried to play the role of a front line heavy. And he was in his negatives most of the time.
The worst thing, he is terrible as a rogue as well. A little better then when he plays anything else, but still bad.
We try and try and try to help him, to suggest stuff that would work, but he obviously doesn't listen.
I mean, one of the best jokes at his expense was when he was playing a summoner (his eidolon was a joke, and he summoned "interesting" monsters) and a huge monster attacked the party. One of the other players then said "Miron takes out his cooking knife and says "good thing i took spell focus: illusion"" and charges". We were laughing for a good ten minutes.
What peeves me is that he is not trying to make an effort not to make useless characters. And we love this guy. He is a good friend, fun to be around and we always enjoy his company.
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Agree with the peeps....why is him doing what makes him happy hurting your fun?
The only thing I would say to the contrary is this. If the character is getting stale and making the game stale, I can see this being a problem.
If the player just keeps re-rolling "Rogue 2.0" over and over, game after game, year after year....that can get old.
But the only real solution I can see to that, beyond asking him to try something new, is just moving on to some new players with new ideas.
One idea is to find out what type of character he wants to play and then make sure that party roles are filled out by other players to compensate for the fact that his "wizard" is not a caster, his "fighter" is not a heavy or even his "rogue" is not "roguey" enough.
Also, in the case of the fighter, how did he not die? Make sure that there are FAIR consequences to being a mediocre fighter who stands at the front of the party. He doesn't seem too worried that his characters are ineffective, which is fine, but in real life combat situations someone like that would end up being fodder. If he must be fodder, make sure his death is well played out so he can understand that he is not being picked on.
It would probably do the rest of the table good as well.
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We get players from time to time who get stuck in this mode or that.
Right now we've got a drizzt clone ranger/rogue and a guy who's been in 'explosions and minions' mode for at least 4 different campaigns in 4 separate systems. I know our bombs and minion guy plays bombs and minions because he thinks in his head about scenes where his bombs and minions will just totally decimate an encounter, turning what seemed insurmountable into a shoulder shrug. There is a palpable sense of glee just roiling off of him about it. During the week he plays out these scenes in his head over and over and then come game day.... No satisfaction. He's never outright stated it... But it's unmistakable.
Our gms lately have all expressed their hatred for bombs and minions by carefully making sure that no encounter ever ends up being this thing that I can obviously see that he wants. If he got to have even one encounter that played out to his fantasy, he'd move on. Guaranteed. It's no longer just a want. It's a need. Until the hero giets the girl, this movie ain't over... And in this players case the girl is 'turning impossible odds into exposive torrential overwhelming carnage..' He wants a hulk moment... Punching out the worm a thousand times his size. He wants a 'puny gods' moment. Why did everyone laugh at that? Catharsis. Plain and simple.
They're obviously not bored with it or they'd make a change... But this other possibility... That they have some goal in their head of something they want to accomplish with that build and they won't stop playing that concept until it happens. Some scene of awesomeness they want to play out that hasn't come to fruition yet and they're waiting for that perfect moment. Let them have their moment.
Catharsis can help players get over that hump real quick.
Skillfully craft that scene into being and you'll be the best gm they've ever had. Do it in a way that didn't seem like it was your plan all along? Even better. And they'll be ready to move on to whatever your 'next great idea is' in a heartbeat. One... Heart.... Beat... If I had to explain in one way what a gm's job actually is... This is a gm's One Job. Figure out the player's Awesome Button and push it.
Thank you for that. I'm probably on the scoreboard for some of the worst posts on the board as well. I tend to hang out on the extremes I guess.. I wonder if they're related...
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Not to derail a bit but in thinking about how it relates to the other thread where i'm not doing so hot... I suppose theres a bit of an epiphany lurking around in my head that the same could go in the opposite direction.
What I'm seeing a lot on these boards is this "player mind" making being a gm frustrating... If you're gming with a 'the motivations of a player' you have the same kind of thing going on in your own head... Now instead though as a GM you have some epic scene you're trying to use to blow your player's minds, and getting the buy-in from 4 other people to stick with your game long enough to have your catharsis moment as well could be much more frustrating because, mathematically your catharsis may be 4 times more rare. I bet a lot of lamentation on the other thread is gm's feeling this and struggling with not taking it out on the players or lamenting about how frustrating it is and thinking unwilling/ungrateful players are the cause of the trouble... Or how much easier it is to just give up and go back to being a player...
I don't think i've quite got the right way to word it but there's an identical but much more powerful feeling in some gm's that 'my catharsis is even more rare than a player's.... Would be nice if I could get mine too.' I think that's why I gm more than I play. Because my catharsis is figuring out what the player's button is and pushing it. That's why I became a GM. When I play my mind is entirely on my own awesome buttons and when I'm a gm my mind is entirely on everyone else's awesome buttons... Having an awesome button that can only be hit by putting out a scene that I want to go "just so" or a particular way, despite having 4 other contributors to the scene would be a much more difficult/rare (rewarding?) thing...
I can totally understand the frustration if the rare starts outweighing the rewarding for that though. If a gm had a plot/theme catharsis Awesome Button that's never been hit because it's probably been brewing 4 times as long. I guess I enjoy finding other people's awesome buttons more than I enjoy developing awesome buttons of my own to torment myself with. In a great irony I think the people who are most attatched to having their story/theme button pushed should be players instead of gms... And that the one who's least invested in his own story/theme should be the one running the game. That's how my mind works.
I think thats a relevant thing to think about though. I can see being the other way being really tough on a person. Maybe it's chicken and the egg. You go so many years with gms that don't let you have your awesome moment that you decide to be a gm because you feel it should give you more control over what's happening and so you expect more of your own personal awesome buttons to be hit, but then the players aren't on board with it and so suddenly it's only gotten worse... And you worked 10 times as hard. How can it be your fault... Now you've got catgirls running around in your scene and it's all gone topsy turvy... Everyone's upset and nobodys buttons are being pushed... Seems like a horrifying way to game.
Gotta be brutal. Gotta admit that as a player I've never felt a responsibility or an onus to make sure the gm got to tell the story he wanted to tell because I only play at tables where the gm is a sandboxer like me and just rolls with whatever I throw his way. That's why I know I'm the worst kind of player for a gm who's theme or world or narrative is more important to him than the players. The other threads I've been in really showcase how a gm with an unpressed awesome button of his own can be made miserable by folks like me who's goal isn't to help get that particular button pushed. Powerful perspective.
Sorry for the derail... Somehow I just feel like these two ideas belong together....
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Must find the awesome button.
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TLDR:
If you want to tell a story or
If you want your story told
Ironically... you should be a player
If your awesome button is finding out what stories others want to be told about themselves and then telling that story... That's gonna make you a gm that every player loves.
IMHO...
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Hm, I tend to always try and help the GM move the story along. I actually get a bit dumbfounded when we're playing a sandbox, as there usually is no overarching story or plot. Just people doing stuff and the GM rolling with it.
That is not what i want in a game. I want a story.
One of the reasons i hate multiplayer first games. I play games for the story, not for the gameplay.
Then when they love you and its time to say 'I had an idea for a campaign where we're all pirates... No ninjas' they'll respond 'hellz yeah! Lets do this... I'll be happy to play a turd in a horsetraugh if *you're* running the game
Hm, I tend to always try and help the GM move the story along. I actually get a bit dumbfounded when we're playing a sandbox, as there usually is no overarching story or plot. Just people doing stuff and the GM rolling with it.
That is not what i want in a game. I want a story.
One of the reasons i hate multiplayer first games. I play games for the story, not for the gameplay.
See Hama. Being willing and able to roll with someone else's story might make you an awesome GM!
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Thats why I like this hobby so much more and find it so much more fulfilling than MMO's and Magic the Gathering.
Magic the gathering is for the 'builder and optimizer types... Plain and simple.
MMos don't tell you *your* story... They tell you *their* story and try and fool you into thinking its your story by putting you in it. Even if the story is built like a choose your own adventure book. It's still just 20 versions of *their* story. If I want to play someone elses story I'll go play grand theft auto or skyrim or dragons age or oblivion or fable or final fantasy...
I think telling a players story is unique to this particular hobby and that's what makes it awesome.
Again. Sorry for the derail.
TLDR:
If you want to tell a story or
If you want your story toldIronically... you should be a player
If your awesome button is finding out what stories others want to be told about themselves and then telling that story... That's gonna make you a gm that every player loves.
IMHO...
Hai! Thank you wise Takeda sensei. *Bows*
Ever hear of this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C5%ABrinkazan
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Yeah, he has a goal, one i probably cannot get him to accomplish. He wants to play a rogue from 1st to 20th level. My games end somewhere around level 9. The only game ever that went from 1 to 20 (it was Age of Worms, and it took us around a year to complete), he couldn't play because he was deployed in another town.
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@Vincent - The problem being that you are assuming that once the "Awesome" button is pushed the player will smile, retire the concept and move on to the next idea.
While the messageboards seem to indicate that once a GM provides that "awesome" button it is then expected that the "awesome" button always be available, and GM's not providing the "awesome" button do so by "fiat".
Your post of the "awesome" button description I find revealing it that it was "a" players awesome button. "A" players dream fulfilled.
All of my best memories of gaming were when we, as a group, did something awesome.
That you think of the job of the GM being to make "a" player happy is where the split for me comes.
My job as a GM is to make players, plural, happy.
And if one person is hogging the limelight or demanding special treatment, it makes it harder for me to do my job.
YMMV.
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TLDR:
If you want to tell a story or
If you want your story toldIronically... you should be a player
If your awesome button is finding out what stories others want to be told about themselves and then telling that story... That's gonna make you a gm that every player loves.
IMHO...
Hai! Thank you wise Takeda sensei. *Bows*
Ever hear of this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C5%ABrinkazan
Yep! There's a reason I picked Takeda and it's not Jin from Samurai Champuru
@Vincent - The problem being that you are assuming that once the "Awesome" button is pushed the player will smile, retire the concept and move on to the next idea.
While the messageboards seem to indicate that once a GM provides that "awesome" button it is then expected that the "awesome" button always be available, and GM's not providing the "awesome" button do so by "fiat".
Your post of the "awesome" button description I find revealing it that it was "a" players awesome button. "A" players dream fulfilled.
All of my best memories of gaming were when we, as a group, did something awesome.
That you think of the job of the GM being to make "a" player happy is where the split for me comes.
My job as a GM is to make players, plural, happy.
And if one person is hogging the limelight or demanding special treatment, it makes it harder for me to do my job.
YMMV.
I think you apply the word assuming, and you assume 'a' player singular signfificance where it is not due, (pedantic semantics) but your perspective isn't wrong. It should be a gm's job to tell every player's story. Clearly you may have a player who continues to play a concept even if things are going his way possibly even 'because' things are going his way by doing so... That's a valid problem as well. Two sides to every coin. I can always count on you to advocate on the devil's behalf. World's big enough for a two sided coin... Nobody's gonna argue you're one of the best at flipping every coin you find. Which side each person prefers is a question I'll leave to the philosophers... (read: people at our gaming tables) and is a moving goalpost at best.
Again everyone... Sorry for the derail...
@Ciretose. Any suggestions on the op's problem then other than 'restrict the setting/boot them from the table/chide them into changing their mind? I'm a big fan of 'punish them with their own build' if that's where you're going. Thats always a fun challenge facing your own doppleganger or charming their character to wreak havok on their own party... Kinda underhanded IMHO sometimes, but fun! Or did you just show up because you lurve me?
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TLDR:
If you want to tell a story or
If you want your story toldIronically... you should be a player
I find that boil-down a bit too simplistic. Sometimes, as a GM, you want to see how the players interact with the story you want to tell and see where it goes from there. GM's get to tell stories too - that is not solely the domain of the player.
Takeda and Ciretose sitting in a tree
Ninja viking pirate catgirl rainbow pony!
(mushroom cloud of fiery death)
I'll probably bow out now. I have a hard time keeping it classy when certain people show up. They're all so much better at this 'gaming' thing than I am.
Derail is no longer my fault.
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@Vincent - On topic if you've talked to the player and explained they are making the game less fun and they won't change, you eventually get to a point where that slot at the table is better filled by someone else and your buddy gets to be a drinking buddy.
Personally nothing that was described in the behavior of the player would bother me. I don't need my fellow adventurers to be optimized and his buddy doesn't feel like aquaman.
But apparently it is causing enough of a problem in the game that he is posting on on the boards for help.
If that is they style his buddy likes, that is the style his buddy likes. No one is wrong.
On side topic, part of why I am so anal about the creation threads is I think it is absolutely the GMs job to make sure everyone who comes into the game has a reason not just to be a part of the world (big) but this campaign and this party.
If you are going to make an epic adventure that give opportunities for everyone to have a moment, you can do that particularly well if the group is a group that has a bond that makes those moments shared moments, rather than just a series of bioware style side quests for each hero.
This is why I ask people what sort of character they want to play before they actually build it. Not everyone knows that there's a more effective way to go about something than the first option they see.
If this player had told me he wanted to play a stealth combat mage, I would have told him he would be much more effective as a magus with stealth-focused spells. I'm sure he'd go for that, unless he's gung-ho on being a wizard for some other reason.
We cannot dissuade him from this. Any tips on how we should proceed to wean him of this?
These two sentences in sequence amuse me.
We used to have a player that kinda did that.
Except for him it was the classic big hit damage reduction barbarian. Every PC would charge in as quickly as possible trying to do so much damage so fast that he would survive. He would ignore everything else to do that. The really weird thing is that he absolutely refused to play a barbarian. He would play fighters, rangers, cavaliers, samurai, etc... But he would always play them the same way.
I really wouldn't have a problem with it except his builds, equipment purchases, and tactics always seemed to make the rest of us spend a lot of effort and resources keeping him alive. They were not just glass cannons. They were paper thin porcelain cannons.
Eventually we got him to improve a bit, by not always hauling his butt out of the fire. I think he kinda resented it at first. He still plays his characters the same way, but he includes thoughts of defense and saving throws in his builds. And he will at least give us a chance to discuss tactics and possibly throw in an area effect spell before he charges.
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I have a guy who always plays "flawed almost useless charectors (his words) because if he played up to his capability he would outshine everyone all the time. I let him do it but as someone who has been in this hobby for years and played with over a hundred different gamers i can say with pretty fair accuracy that his "A" game will not make the entire table quit and go home cause they are not that cool.
Just One time i want to see that "A" game... but i dont think we ever will
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I had a similar player. He always used to handicap his characters in some way. And it was annoying. Because he liked the challenge. The end result was the party dragging his unconscious ass around and we booting him from the group after a few years of those shenanigans.
We were hoping he would grow out of it. He didn't.
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we have come to believe its his defense mechanism.He isnt new to gaming but. . . his experiance compared to ours is like veteran sports athelete to say a rookie just drafted. We believe its like a well if i suck this game you guys cant blame me cause my charector was meant to suck. Its annoying but he is an alright enough guy to not get too bent out of shape about it. I mean every charector i have built when iplay not gm has some sort of hinderance like a dislike of a certain race or class, or a specialist wizard not using certain spells or my one bard who wouldnt harm a female no matter what. Nothing super game breaking. Anywho just thought i would add our resident same style guy.
Lastly, anytime i end up in a random group i find myself rolling up some form of elven ranger unless its not apropriate to the campaign type, cause i am effective with that build and dont want new groups thinking im a bad... but thats like a first time in group thing
We care about characters in fiction not for the victory, but for the trevails they went through to get that victory.
We run into a problem with player characters in RPGs because there's an incentive to make sure that they are "bulletproof" - their weaknesses get downplayed, the underlying assumption of Pathfinder means that you're much likelier to wade through a combat scene than you are to skulk past the giants holding a diplomatic fete, and you can build your character to varying degrees of efficiency.
So, throw character-driven conflicts at the Turns Everything Into A Rogue guy.
Have his Skulky Wizard get fingered by the Thieves Guild; they got shook down by the local magistrate and had to turn over some low members for a Tough On Crime program - now the city watch in your home city is coming after Rogue 2.2: Wizard Boogaloo.
To make matters worse, perhaps the Thieves Guild wants to talk to him about those back membership dues, and how he can work them off by making slippers of spider climb for them...say about 30 pairs...and then they'll let his son go in the same number of pieces he was kidnapped in.
What's happening here is you're focusing on mechanics and niches, not motivations and roles.
To the OP.
Of my 5 regular players, I have 4 that tend to play by the following types:
The Aloof Magician
The Socialite
The Bullheaded Tank
The Paladin Martyr
The fifth member is new-ish to the group, a young adult, and she is the daughter of the Aloof Magician, so as a DM I'm still learning her style of play.
The Aloof Magician player always plays spellcasters and plays them smartly. He has them wait to see what the melee guys are getting themselves into and then engages from range, typically. He's also a very experienced DM. So at the end of most battles, while everyone else is bloody and recovering from/bandaging their wounds, the Aloof Magician is sitting back cleaning his fingernails.
The Socialite player tends to over emphasize social encounters as a solo endeavor; meaning he will be happy having his bard play in a band at a noble's party, flirt with the noble's between sets, etc, while others are itching to push the adventure along. Myself and the other DM are currently in the process of implementing the Downtime rules from the Ultimate Campaign book as a way to segregate and satisfy this player's needs from the adventuring/heroic aspects of play.
The Bullheaded Tank is the closest player-type to the one described in the OP. Except inversely so. He hates/isn't interested in playing a melee brute...but he plays his rogues, spellcasters, bards, etc. as brute force tanks. This is reflected in him having the highest PC death out of our entire group. The disappointing thing is that the first barbarian he played met with a terrible end (as related here: Part 1, Part 2 )
The Paladin Martyr player always plays by some bizarre morale code that tends to always include "full disclosure." It doesn't matter if he's actually playing a paladin who's talking to the head of his order or a sorcerer on the edge of society talking to a city guard or innkeeper...his characters are going to fully disclose every party secret to anyone who asks and take on the guilt/responsibility of everything. "Where you people comin' from," the barmaid asks while setting down the party's ale. "Why, we come from the ancient evil ruins. We just unleashed an ancient evil imprisoned demon and also an undead horde...now headed to the towns to the north. All by accident, of course. But how were we to know that removing the evil necromantic tome, an artifact of great power really, from the ruins would do all that. It's my fault, really, and I'm sorry, but, well, my sister wanted me to get the book for her wizard guild and..." (and this really becomes an issue when playing Star Wars or Shadowrun.)
Each player can cause frustration in the other players or me. Sometimes the other players see the Aloof Magician as not helping out. Sometimes the Socialite is seen as distracting from the main play/focus. Sometimes the Bullheaded Tank is seen as needlessly throwing away the life of his characters. And sometimes the Paladin Martyr is seen as always "bringing the heat down upon the party."
But in each of these cases they all bring a richness to the game. And as a DM, understanding your players' strengths and weaknesses as players allows you to play to them. Players will pigeonhole themselves...there's no need for the DM, or other players, to attempt to re-pigeonhole them into something else...as long as they're having fun.
Instead of being annoyed by the rogue-like Wizard, simply point out the Arcane Trickster prestige class and use the player's desires, wants, and needs to generate role-playing hooks to new adventures.
I did. He does not want to be an arcane trickster. He wants to be a wizard. But the only class he knows how to play is a rogue. And badly at that.
I mean he takes the dirty fighter trait. Because he thinks it is good. Not because it complements his backstory.
What level is the character? What is the character's back story?