
Rawr! |
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Yeah, I would probably rate my favorite comic book movies would probably be
1. Ant-Man
2. Deadpool
3. Guardians of the Galaxy, which are all pretty much tied for first, depending on mood
4. Batman Begins
5. Iron Man
6. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
7. The Avengers
Hmmm...
1. Guardians of the Galaxy
2. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
3. The Dark Knight
4. Deadpool
5. Iron Man
6. Captain America: Civil War (IMO, a better Avengers movie than the others)
7. The Avengers

Rawr! |
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Rawr! wrote:It also holds a special place in my heart, saw it in the theater more then any other movie. :-)I also fully admit to Batman being a nostalgic choice. I was 20, and I liked Tim Burton's work (before he became a caricature of himself :( ).
Robocop carries that distinction for me.

NobodysHome |
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Since people have alluded to the AP I'm running, I'll
So I've droned on ad nauseam about this guy and his play style:
So I took him aside and explained to him that his constant demands for free stuff "because in real life people would do it" are a distraction, and that this AP gives me great leeway in slaughtering NPCs wholesale, so I'd appreciate it if he'd stop asking. That worked for all of what? 2? 3 sessions?
In his latest e-mail, *all* he wants is unlimited free access to an entire library of spellbooks so he can get every spell in the game, plus an Amulet of Proof Against Detection and Location. All for free, of course. His argument is, "This is a mage academy in a beleaguered city, so of course they'd do everything in their power to help us, because we're their only hope."
So I told him to stop asking or I'd start killing NPCs, and he's still asking.
Yep, I consulted with the other players, and I get to burn down a mage academy, slaughter all the students, and do unprintable things to the headmaster.
When I bounced my idea off of them, my other players welcomed it.
I am disturbingly satisfied with this decision.
EDIT: And the sad thing is, playing with a bunch of 10-year-olds is what prepared me for dealing with this guy.
NH: If you do xxx, yyy will happen.
PP: I don't believe you, so I'm going to do xxx anyway.
NH: yyy happens.
PP: You're a sucky GM!

thegreenteagamer |
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Since people have alluded to the AP I'm running, I'll
** spoiler omitted **EDIT: And the sad thing is, playing with a bunch of 10-year-olds is what prepared me for dealing with this guy.
NH: If you do xxx, yyy will happen.
PP: I don't believe you, so I'm going to do xxx anyway.
NH: yyy happens.
PP: You're a sucky GM!
You're a masochist to continue to play with this human. No friendship is worth that.

NobodysHome |
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NobodysHome wrote:You're a masochist to continue to play with this human. No friendship is worth that.Since people have alluded to the AP I'm running, I'll
** spoiler omitted **EDIT: And the sad thing is, playing with a bunch of 10-year-olds is what prepared me for dealing with this guy.
NH: If you do xxx, yyy will happen.
PP: I don't believe you, so I'm going to do xxx anyway.
NH: yyy happens.
PP: You're a sucky GM!
To each his own. I prefer friendship over gaming. Of course, I have more games than I can run right now, so I just don't mind if some of 'em die...

thegreenteagamer |

thegreenteagamer wrote:NobodysHome wrote:You're a masochist to continue to play with this human. No friendship is worth that.Since people have alluded to the AP I'm running, I'll
** spoiler omitted **EDIT: And the sad thing is, playing with a bunch of 10-year-olds is what prepared me for dealing with this guy.
NH: If you do xxx, yyy will happen.
PP: I don't believe you, so I'm going to do xxx anyway.
NH: yyy happens.
PP: You're a sucky GM!
To each his own. I prefer friendship over gaming. Of course, I have more games than I can run right now, so I just don't mind if some of 'em die...
I prefer friendship, too, but I couldn't be friends with someone so selfish. Selfishness isn't compartmentalized... that kind of behavior is typically a symptom of a greater personality trait, and if it doesn't show elsewhere, it just means they're good at hiding it.

NobodysHome |
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NobodysHome wrote:I prefer friendship, too, but I couldn't be friends with someone so selfish. Selfishness isn't compartmentalized... that kind of behavior is typically a symptom of a greater personality trait, and if it doesn't show elsewhere, it just means they're good at hiding it.thegreenteagamer wrote:NobodysHome wrote:You're a masochist to continue to play with this human. No friendship is worth that.Since people have alluded to the AP I'm running, I'll
** spoiler omitted **EDIT: And the sad thing is, playing with a bunch of 10-year-olds is what prepared me for dealing with this guy.
NH: If you do xxx, yyy will happen.
PP: I don't believe you, so I'm going to do xxx anyway.
NH: yyy happens.
PP: You're a sucky GM!
To each his own. I prefer friendship over gaming. Of course, I have more games than I can run right now, so I just don't mind if some of 'em die...
It's interesting -- this guy would be an absolutely fascinating psychological case study.
In life, he is VERY dedicated to philanthropy. He teaches underprivileged kids for free. He works for nonprofits (and ONLY nonprofits) and sacrifices a great deal to make sure he's "doing good in the world". If you have problems, he'll give you the shirt off his back.
But you're absolutely right -- if he's in his "down time", time when he's not teaching or volunteering or what-have-you, he's an unbelievably selfish S.O.B. It's basically, "I gave at the office, so now leave me alone."
But it's selfish in the sense of, "I am relaxing, and am no longer obligated to lift a finger," rather than any, "I am going to ruthlessly take advantage of you," sense. So the only one who suffers from that behavior is his wife, and if she puts up with it, who am I to intervene? Let's be blunt: MOST gamers just want to sit there and have food, drink, and games placed before them on game day. The only difference between him and any of them is that he has a couple of young kids he SHOULD be watching, but he leaves 95% of kid-watching to his wife and Impus Major (until I explicitly instructed Impus Major that he was NOT to watch the kids unless he was paid for his time, and that abuse stopped).
He's a blast to play board games and card games with. When we last stopped RPG'ing with him, we cheerfully did board games for nearly a year with no interpersonal issues at all.
It's only in RPGs that we see his truly dark behavior, and it's in every RPG we play with him. It's kind of like our friend the cop: "Y'know, in real life I do my best to be the best 'good guy' I can be, because I have to be an example. So when I game, I want to be a jerk."
He's like that, but the jerkiness carries over from the PC to the person, which is unfortunate.

Ambrosia Slaad |
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Ambrosia Slaad wrote:I just want my own Silver Centurion briefcase armor from Iron Man 2.don't you mean iron man mark iv armor?
Nope. I know the Mark IV is better in every technical spec, but the Silver Centurion (Mark V) is much much cooler.

NobodysHome |
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There are some people who I am still friends with that I would never invite to a table. You don't have to game with everyone you are friends with, and not doing so will make everyone happier in the long run.
LOL. Like I said, we managed to stop for an entire year, but he and his wife BEGGED us to run, so I agreed to run an AP I'd run before because it just wouldn't impact me that much. He's been much better-behaved this AP, knowing it's basically his last chance to convince any other GMs to run him.
He failed. Every GM at the table has said, "Nope. I'm not running him. Never."
So I'm just dutifully finishing off the AP, then we're done running games for him.
Doesn't mean I don't complain when he really goes off the rails, though.

captain yesterday |
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One of my friends once, feeling bold, wanted his character to become a god, and since forgotten realms established that by killing a god you can absorb all or part of it's portfolio. So he asked if he could fight a god, so I asked if his 7th level ranger was capable of defeating a god, he said "absolutely" or something of the sort. If course I didn't have any books with gods (all my monsters I got from Monster Manual 2 (first edition, the best monster manual ever!) but I did have Hall of Heroes, so I had him fight Cyric, after he killed him he was disappointed "I thought we were going to fight a god?" "You did, or at least he would've been if you didn't kill him"
After that they didn't kill anyone with a name, took them all prisoners, hoping beyond hope one of them would become a god so they could fight them.
Perhaps, if I was older then fourteen I wouldn't have let it get quite so dark. :-)

NobodysHome |
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I don't know if I've asked before, but have you actually informed this guy of that? That nobody else will run with him? That literally everyone else who knows him thinks he's toxic? Is he ignorant of his own foul stench, figuratively speaking?
Short answer: No one has managed to speak long enough to get it all across to him, so, "No."
He is aware that people do not like running for him, and people do not like playing with him. He is ignorant as to why. In fact, he and I used to get into weekly arguments because I'd tell him, "No," he'd ask, "Why do you always accuse me of power-gaming?", and I'd explain how unfair he was being to other players. It never stuck.
On multiple occasions I have written up detailed notes for him, and each time the other players have said, "You can't tell him that!"
On occasions, some aspect of his toxic behavior has been pointed out to him. He wants to turn every such discussion into a debate. It helps to mention that he was on his debate team in both high school and college, and got his Ph.D. in essentially "Verbal combat". So while on most occasions it's unpleasant to tell someone, "You have issues with your playing style, and they are...", with him it's, "You have issues with your playing style..." and you immediately get interrupted with, "No no no. We need to define terms here. YOU have issues with MY playing style. I like my playing style just fine. And I like it because..."
It's agony to try to talk to the man. Which is why I write notes. Which the other players won't let me send.
As I said, I'm ending it all after this AP. If he asks me why, I'll tell him. I've gone so far as to ask his wife to talk to him about it, and she says he won't listen to her, either. So talking doesn't work (he basically "wins" the argument and in his mind that means there's no issue), no one likes notes, so we're just shutting him down.

NobodysHome |
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Sounds like my brothers, everything is a debate, except no one's really listening to each other, except to set up their next rebuttal. :-)
YES!!! That's it precisely. Thank you!
Anyway, off "work" soon (I did my handoff a couple of hours ago, so it's waiting to see whether any emergencies come up before EOD), so I'll be offline, but I apologize for turning FaWtL into a full-blown discussion of one player.
I feel like I'm finally managing him decently, and a lot of the other players are relieved that over the next few sessions his execrable behavior so far will come to fruition in the deaths of many he holds dear.
But sometimes, I just have to vent about him.
Because when your player asks, "Can I have every spell in the book and a 35,000 gold piece item for free? Because I want them?" I think you should get a little vent time...

thegreenteagamer |
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thegreenteagamer wrote:I don't know if I've asked before, but have you actually informed this guy of that? That nobody else will run with him? That literally everyone else who knows him thinks he's toxic? Is he ignorant of his own foul stench, figuratively speaking?Short answer: No one has managed to speak long enough to get it all across to him, so, "No."
He is aware that people do not like running for him, and people do not like playing with him. He is ignorant as to why. In fact, he and I used to get into weekly arguments because I'd tell him, "No," he'd ask, "Why do you always accuse me of power-gaming?", and I'd explain how unfair he was being to other players. It never stuck.
On multiple occasions I have written up detailed notes for him, and each time the other players have said, "You can't tell him that!"On occasions, some aspect of his toxic behavior has been pointed out to him. He wants to turn every such discussion into a debate. It helps to mention that he was on his debate team in both high school and college, and got his Ph.D. in essentially "Verbal combat". So while on most occasions it's unpleasant to tell someone, "You have issues with your playing style, and they are...", with him it's, "You have issues with your playing style..." and you immediately get interrupted with, "No no no. We need to define terms here. YOU have issues with MY playing style. I like my playing style just fine. And I like it because..."
It's agony to try to talk to the man. Which is why I write notes. Which the other players won't let me send.
As I said, I'm ending it all after this AP. If he asks me why, I'll tell him. I've gone so far as to ask his wife to talk to him about it, and she says he won't listen to her, either. So talking doesn't work (he basically "wins" the argument and in his mind that means there's no issue), no one likes notes, so we're just shutting him down.
Sounds like a serious case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder...

Freehold DM |
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Freehold DM wrote:Nope. I know the Mark IV is better in every technical spec, but the Silver Centurion (Mark V) is much much cooler.Ambrosia Slaad wrote:I just want my own Silver Centurion briefcase armor from Iron Man 2.don't you mean iron man mark iv armor?
I...I am humbled...

Sharoth |
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captain yesterday wrote:Sounds like my brothers, everything is a debate, except no one's really listening to each other, except to set up their next rebuttal. :-)YES!!! That's it precisely. Thank you!
Anyway, off "work" soon (I did my handoff a couple of hours ago, so it's waiting to see whether any emergencies come up before EOD), so I'll be offline, but I apologize for turning FaWtL into a full-blown discussion of one player.
I feel like I'm finally managing him decently, and a lot of the other players are relieved that over the next few sessions his execrable behavior so far will come to fruition in the deaths of many he holds dear.
But sometimes, I just have to vent about him.
Because when your player asks, "Can I have every spell in the book and a 35,000 gold piece item for free? Because I want them?" I think you should get a little vent time...
Huh? Were you saying something? If so, then I did not hear it because I was ignoring you and working on how to weasel out of you anything that I can.
~grins~ j / k ! Vent away!