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I think we've all experienced this, either as GMs or as players. Maybe some of us ARE this person: the not-so-creative player.
You know the guy/girl. The one who writes down all his statistics and then neglects to name his character when game time comes around. Or even the player who comes up with a really cool concept, but when prodded for personality or backstory, can't come up with anything more than "amnesia."
I don't mean power gamers or munchkins, but honest players who just aren't that creative.
Recently, one joined a game of mine, and it got me wondering about others out here. What are some of your worst "non-creative player" stories? Or some of your best? Maybe you had a blank slate who became the deepest character in the game. Or maybe just the opposite: a character with a deep backstory and rich personality who just became "Heal B!tch" or "Tank" by the end.
-The Beast
I once played with one or two players back in 3.5 who would just recreate characters from books, every element of the character was based entirely on the book character.
I think we've all experienced this, either as GMs or as players. Maybe some of us ARE this person: the not-so-creative player.
You know the guy/girl. The one who writes down all his statistics and then neglects to name his character when game time comes around. Or even the player who comes up with a really cool concept, but when prodded for personality or backstory, can't come up with anything more than "amnesia."
I don't mean power gamers or munchkins, but honest players who just aren't that creative.
Recently, one joined a game of mine, and it got me wondering about others out here. What are some of your worst "non-creative player" stories? Or some of your best? Maybe you had a blank slate who became the deepest character in the game. Or maybe just the opposite: a character with a deep backstory and rich personality who just became "Heal B!tch" or "Tank" by the end.
-The Beast
I am thinking of making up traits based on backgrounds to encourage people to write backgrounds.
In those situations, I usually coax a backstory out by asking open-ended questions. If their answers are too vanilla, I ask some, "So it's like [blah blah], or is it more like [blah blah]".
I award bonus XP at the start for a write-up (even a small one) before game, and a smaller reward before second game. This gives them at least a session to get a feel for the personality of the character.
For example:
Me: What's your backstory?
Player: Oh, dunno, he has amnesia.
M: Oh? what happened to him?
P: He doesn't know
M: Right, I understand, but you do, you don't have amnesia
P: Um, he hit his head.
M: On what, how and why?
etc
I also tell players that I only allow orphan backstory for cross-breeds. If they want to be an orphan, they better have a darn good story as to who their parents really are and why they gave him up. I don't allow the war victim orphans, if their parents were killed they would have died, someone raised them.
I look at it as helping the uncreative see how they build a backstory just by answering questions about the character.
In those situations, I usually coax a backstory out by asking open-ended questions. If their answers are too vanilla, I ask some, "So it's like [blah blah], or is it more like [blah blah]".
For example:
Me: What's your backstory?
Player: Oh, dunno, he has amnesia.
M: Oh? what happened to him?
P: He doesn't know
M: Right, I understand, but you do, you don't have amnesia
P: Um, he hit his head.
M: On what, how and why?
etc
That is an excellent way to do it, I think! And shows good insight into the fact that the game exists on (at least) two levels; in-game and out-of-game, and a problem on one level can be a feature or strength on the other level. I like it! :)
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One of my player's joked that his Fighter's backstory was "He has amnesia, a wizard stole his memories; he's fighting to get them back." Assertion Twelve, I suppose.
I once played with one or two players back in 3.5 who would just recreate characters from books, every element of the character was based entirely on the book character.
I don't think that there's necessarily anything wrong with emulating a popular character, but I suppose everybody gets tired of those Drizzt clones every so often.
im not talking about emulating a character from a book, im talking i had a friend with a character named frodo who was a halfling, based 100% off of the books.
I don't think it's so much the guys/gals that are not-so-creative that bother me. It's the one's you know are creative, yet no matter what character they're playing, it's always the SAME that get me down.
Sounds like the not-so-creative ones being mentioned just need a little help. A quick, yet semi-detailed questionnaire in front of them usually does the trick!
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I'd like to point out that the opposite is also just as annoying sometimes.
What I mean is this kind of exchange
Player: Here's my character background
GM: It's 12 pages long...
Player: That's OK I'll give you an overview. You can read the whole thing later.
GM: Oh goody. *sigh* Go on then, what's the idea?
Player: OK so the character is called Vedrin Arness. He grew up on the streets of Absolom and soon fell in with the thieves guild. If you flick to page three that outlines the main power structures of the guild and appendix 1 gives a detailed spreadsheet of all the various income sources and outgoings of the guild.
GM: *rustle rustle* "Charitable donations?" "Leather polish costs?"
Player: That's tax deductable. Anyway, so Vedrin is a Capodecima which means he is in charge of a crew of 10 Sgarrista or footsoldiers for the uninitiated. This folder contains backgrounds and areas of expertise for all 10. I have colour coded any reference to them in the core background as well as making page references as appropriate. Appendix 2(a) details the activities of Vedrin's crew broken down by week, month and year.
GM: Er... Dave?
Player: Moving on, Appendix 2(b) details the main successes of Vedrin's crew...
GM: Dave?
Player: ...and his ingoings and outgoings in gold pieces as that appears to be the monetary standard...
GM: DAVE!!!!!?
Player: What?
GM: This is all very well and good but what is such an obviously experienced crime lord doing in Irissen and why, pray tell, is he 1st level!?
Player: Ah well, if you turn to page 6...
GM: *groan*
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I'd like to point out that the opposite is also just as annoying sometimes.
What I mean is this kind of exchange
Player: Here's my character background
GM: It's 12 pages long...
Player: That's OK I'll give you an overview. You can read the whole thing later.
GM: Oh goody. *sigh* Go on then, what's the idea?
Player: OK so the character is called Vedrin Arness. He grew up on the streets of Absolom and soon fell in with the thieves guild. If you flick to page three that outlines the main power structures of the guild and appendix 1 gives a detailed spreadsheet of all the various income sources and outgoings of the guild.
GM: *rustle rustle* "Charitable donations?" "Leather polish costs?"
Player: That's tax deductable. Anyway, so Vedrin is a Capodecima which means he is in charge of a crew of 10 Sgarrista or footsoldiers for the uninitiated. This folder contains backgrounds and areas of expertise for all 10. I have colour coded any reference to them in the core background as well as making page references as appropriate. Appendix 2(a) details the activities of Vedrin's crew broken down by week, month and year.
GM: Er... Dave?
Player: Moving on, Appendix 2(b) details the main successes of Vedrin's crew...
GM: Dave?
Player: ...and his ingoings and outgoings in gold pieces as that appears to be the monetary standard...
GM: DAVE!!!!!?
Player: What?
GM: This is all very well and good but what is such an obviously experienced crime lord doing in Irissen and why, pray tell, is he 1st level!?
Player: Ah well, if you turn to page 6...
GM: *groan*
Thank you, I really needed a laugh this morning.
And for what it's worth I actually would prefer the no background over this.
sometimes we are remembered not for the characters we play most, but the ones everyone has the most negative memories of.
i am remembered for playing 'japanese schoolgirls' and 'tortured children' but i don't play them as much as it seems i do.
yes, i enjoy playing the part of the token tagalong loli. but it's not for any sexual reasons. i just like disturbing characters, the fallen angel moe , and even the character who is more than meets the eye
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I think for players that have trouble being creative you can come up with rp/storytelling excersizes to warm up the creative muscles. Card games like werewolf or once upon a time are great examples of relatively free form games that just involve making up a story. Maybe playing a couple rounds of those games before a character creation session might help.
I recently had a player who was one of my regular player's girlfriends join my game for a while. She was into fantasy literature and such and wanted to get into gaming but whenever it came for her character to act or speak she just couldnt imagine herself as the character and think of what to do. So I ran through an excersize i got from the podcast narrative control, that had a few simple excersizes for roleplay in it. It actually helped alot. After that she really opened up.
I think for some Pathfinder or something similar is big and scary. People show up to games with in depth backgrounds, and complex character mechanics, and for someone new, or someone who has never really done a full background before it can be intimidating. So something that kind of breaks it down into parts so that the player can get a feel for it can be really helpful. And then it is really important that if the player does open up and start being creative that you reward that creativity in game by incorporating what they come up with.
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i find RPing in person to be intimidating as well. i can write a complex background at home. but at the table, expect me to be nervous and shaking.
In those situations, I usually coax a backstory out by asking open-ended questions. If their answers are too vanilla, I ask some, "So it's like [blah blah], or is it more like [blah blah]".
I award bonus XP at the start for a write-up (even a small one) before game, and a smaller reward before second game. This gives them at least a session to get a feel for the personality of the character.
For example:
Me: What's your backstory?
Player: Oh, dunno, he has amnesia.
M: Oh? what happened to him?
P: He doesn't know
M: Right, I understand, but you do, you don't have amnesia
P: Um, he hit his head.
M: On what, how and why?
etcI also tell players that I only allow orphan backstory for cross-breeds. If they want to be an orphan, they better have a darn good story as to who their parents really are and why they gave him up. I don't allow the war victim orphans, if their parents were killed they would have died, someone raised them.
I look at it as helping the uncreative see how they build a backstory just by answering questions about the character.
In relation to this idea...I find using the 'Twenty Questions' from L5R helps people develope their characters more in any game with only slight mod to the questions.
While I do like to roleplay, sometimes I also take a while to think of a background.
Also there are those people who <gasp> play the game just as a game. They aren't so much into the role playing aspect. They want to roll dice and kill things. I don't really think that's so wrong.
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I once had a player who used one of the premades. That in itself wasn't so bad, until he asks if I can look up higher level state block of the same premades for him to auto level up. Like I as a GM didn't haven't enough stuff to do...
In terms of giving exp, here's my 2 cents. This incentive is a balancing act. You need to give out enough exp for it to matter but not too much for the character to eclipse others. To elaborate, if everyone is still going to level at the same time, then the significant of bg exp is null. But if the bg exp results in a lvl difference of more than one, then the party will become unbalanced.
Instead of exp, maybe the better route is personal side quests + signature loot. This way, the bg will actually contribute to the story and hey, getting a MW scimitar or +1 longbow from u personal side quest is pretty cool. I found that these kind of little gifts, especially in adventure paths you earn 100,000+ gp anyway, tend to give a meaningful yet non-game-altering impact.
While I do like to roleplay, sometimes I also take a while to think of a background.
Also there are those people who <gasp> play the game just as a game. They aren't so much into the role playing aspect. They want to roll dice and kill things. I don't really think that's so wrong.
Good points here. I usually like to play a bit and get a feel for the campaign before committing too much to background. My inital idea of my character always morphs over time.
Then there are players who just want to play. "I'm playing a gnome. He's just a gnome from Gnomeland with weird hair. He likes to kill things and get treasure."
For some campaigns, that's more than enough. ;)
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Actual table discussion, while introducing two new party members to the group...
GM: Ok, <name redacted>, describe your character as he others see him.
Player: He's an archer. An elf. He has a greatbow.
GM: Does he have a name?
Player: Archer.
GM: ... Ok, what about how he look? What's he wearing?
Player: He's a generic elf, wearing generic leather armor.
How a player can spend hours pouring over the then-new 4E rules to make the most optimized, exploit-laden archery build I've ever seen but not bother to take 5m to come up with a better name than Archer the Archer I can't even comprehend. He didn't last too long in our campaign.
Our GM is generally pretty good about working with players who need a little help in the backstory department - he'll write some generic parts into his plotline, talk to players about their backstory, and have old friends or enemies fill these roles. Goes a long way in assuring characters have some compelling reason to follow along with the story.
I think for players that have trouble being creative you can come up with rp/storytelling excersizes to warm up the creative muscles. Card games like werewolf or once upon a time are great examples of relatively free form games that just involve making up a story. Maybe playing a couple rounds of those games before a character creation session might help.
I recently had a player who was one of my regular player's girlfriends join my game for a while. She was into fantasy literature and such and wanted to get into gaming but whenever it came for her character to act or speak she just couldnt imagine herself as the character and think of what to do. So I ran through an excersize i got from the podcast narrative control, that had a few simple excersizes for roleplay in it. It actually helped alot. After that she really opened up.
I think for some Pathfinder or something similar is big and scary. People show up to games with in depth backgrounds, and complex character mechanics, and for someone new, or someone who has never really done a full background before it can be intimidating. So something that kind of breaks it down into parts so that the player can get a feel for it can be really helpful. And then it is really important that if the player does open up and start being creative that you reward that creativity in game by incorporating what they come up with.
This captures my experience pretty well. I just joined my first RP group last year, and I wanted to have characters with unique personalities and backgrounds, but I often found myself writing one up then being unsure how to translate it to RPing at the table. Especially if your character has *any* secrets or private embarrassments at all. I'm not talking about being a completely blank slate or super-mysterious lone wolf. I just mean: you planned your character to feel hesitant about X or to need to grow up a little with regard to Y. It's not always easy to know how to play that at the table.
Additionally, I struggled to figure out what *kind* of backstory would be cooperative with the GM's vision / the expectations of the rest of the players. My first character was a level 1 gnome rogue. I did not build her well, but I didn't know that at the time. I didn't even really understand what a Rogue is for. (I thought my goal for the game should be to acquire as many of the abilities the other characters had that I had started out lacking, rather than to embrace my specialization. I have no idea where I got this notion).
I knew I was supposed to create a back story for my character, and the way my GM described a Rogue to me, it seemed like I was going to be some kind of Master Criminal! So I tried to create a back story that said, 'Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!' or 'Moriarty, King of Crime!'
First, I said I thought she was an undercover cop. I was - sensibly and justifiably - talked down from that one.
Then I came up with this story about how rank in gnome society is recognized by fanciness of gnome hat, and my character had stolen another gnome's hat and identity and was on the run from the police.
I think at that point they gave up on me coming up with something helpful, so they let me run with it. But I never really used the bg, because it so quickly became clear that I wasn't the right sort of character to fit in the overall story. It's taken me a couple of times through starting a new campaign and coming up with characters to feel like I come up with a kind of character that works for RP.
I once played with one or two players back in 3.5 who would just recreate characters from books, every element of the character was based entirely on the book character.
Used to play Recon with a guy like that, only worse -- they were movie characters, and he wouldn't even file the serial numbers off. Hence, one of his characters was named, I kid you not, Gunny Highway.
im not talking about emulating a character from a book, im talking i had a friend with a character named frodo who was a halfling, based 100% off of the books.
... Spooky coincidence. His name didn't start with a J did it?
The worst for me, was a player whose characters were just ‘yes men’ to the characters of another player in the group, and it was always the same player. Which was pretty bad, but the worst part about it was the player the yes man guy always followed loved to make characters that ranged from somewhat off to bat s$+@ crazy. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it made it very difficult to hand-wave a reason why say, the NG farm boy cleric sees eye to eye with drug addicted CN city slicker rogue on everything. I’ve literally seen animal companions with more individuality and independence.
From what I could tell the yes man guy was just not into the game enough to actually learn the rules and was not confident enough to just give it the old college try, so he latched onto the coat tails of the most rules-savvy player in the group figuring that’s how he could win. Unfortunately, in this group the rules-guy was also the most-likely-to-get-his- character-killed-in-a-ridiculous-way guy. The yes man always had a decent character background, he just seemed to completely ignore it in favor of being in lock-step with the other guy’s character after the first session or so.
This guy was a first-timer that played with us through 3 characters (same campaign) before disappearing into the mist without warning. We tried to bring him out of his shell and get him to take control of his own destiny, but he never seemed to be able to muster up the interest or the courage. We’re not sure which.
To me the biggest problem is that players will never think outside the box. Say they are trying get a favor from a local crimelord and he asks in turn that they kill someone for him. The paladin player whines at me for the rest of the session that I'm "forcing him to fall". Next session a new guy joins who points out that they can tell the target what is happening and help them skip town while making it look like they died.
I'd like to point out that the opposite is also just as annoying sometimes.
What I mean is this kind of exchange
GM: This is all very well and good but what is such an obviously experienced crime lord doing in Irissen and why, pray tell, is he 1st level!?
Player: Ah well, if you turn to page 6...
GM: *groan*
I actually did this one time. I made a character with a super detailed history and background that was well beyond his 3rd-level of experience, and then at the end of his history he was level drained by wights and left for dead. The lone survivor of his latest foray into a dungeon with a group of characters he had met in a tavern that very morning...
Alas. That was a SWEEET character.
Of course, the whole character background thing was sort of the gimmick that this particular character was hinged on...
Back in 1st edition I ran a one-shot adventure for about 8 people and everyone made up their PCs at the table before we got rolling. The last player was still finishing his up as we got started, and when I announced "The journey from Tilverton to the mine takes you 10 days, please mark off your rations" the player smacked his forehead and started laughing. He hadn't bought any rations.
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I'd like to point out that the opposite is also just as annoying sometimes.
Send them my way. I enjoy players that put that much effort into their characters.
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I find that the best backstories are developed during play, rather than prior to it. Things like, when you roll a "1" on an attack roll against a giant rat during an adventure, you say off the cuff, "It's because I'm afraid of rats!" The DM then looks at you funny. "You are?" And you ad lib: "Sure! As a kid our family was ousted from our manor and had to seek shelter in an abandoned mill, and the rats there gnawed on my ear while I was asleep -- that kind of thing leaves a mark on an 8-year-old, let me tell you!" These sorts of things gradually accrete to form a pretty cool backstory, in a lot of cases.
I had a friend who named all his characters after real-life celebrities. They'd start out looking like them, acting like them, etc. And it would be really lame if Cindy Crawford actually remained Cindy Crawford... but by 2 or so adventures into the campaign they'd have evolved into completely unique characters, with unique personalities, goals, backstories, etc., and "Cyndi Orcslayer" would be a unique fantasy character with no resemblance to any other person, real or ficticious. The celebrity was just a starting point, not the intended end character.
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i will hand out minor background rewards
and i am also pro-loli
loli are awesome. watch the little girl defeat enlightened master Norris with his own spin kick.
loli are awesome. watch the little girl defeat enlightened master Norris with his own spin kick.
Until the 12,285th time you see it, at which point it just gets dumb. Like, if you've ever watched someone play "Street Fighter II" for a couple of minutes, the novelty has already long since worn off. And if you've sat through at least half of "Kick-Ass," you can't wait for that trope to just go away.
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But then Street Fighter X+1 comes out!! That's worth watching!!
No doubt. I'm just thinking back to the early 90s; this guy I knew had become obsessed with the arcade game, and had been practicing daily with the Russian-looking guy, and had gotten nowhere. On a lark he plunked one quarter in, picked the little girl, pressed the attack button idly, and watched the little girl's slap take away like 90% of the bad guy's life instantly. My buddy stared at the screen incredulously and just started pressing the button at random; before you knew it he'd almost finished the game -- on his 1st quarter. "You don't have to know anything!" he exclaimed. "Just play the girl -- you automatically win!"
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Our group has a guy. Sad fact is, he used to be a really creative energetic fellow. Life gave him a bad deal, and he didn't take it well. He is a friend. His only time out of the house is when he is in one of our games.
The group ends up creating his character's backstory.
Shortly after 3.5 came out, we played a higher level game. Everyone had a few weeks to spend ooodles of gold on stuff (homes,magic,servents, stuff) come up with where they were from. All that.
He spent none of his gold. Enter the miserly rogue from Sembia.
Good times.
Greg
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I always hate it when a player fixates on one particular facet of a particular class, race, or religion and that becomes the entirety of the character: the surly dwarf; the drunken cleric of Cayden Cailean; the rogue constantly causing party strife by stealing anything the other PCs don't have constant eyes on. It's a sort of hyper one-dimensionality that just drives me crazy.
I find that the best backstories are developed during play, rather than prior to it. Things like, when you roll a "1" on an attack roll against a giant rat during an adventure, you say off the cuff, "It's because I'm afraid of rats!" The DM then looks at you funny. "You are?" And you ad lib: "Sure! As a kid our family was ousted from our manor and had to seek shelter in an abandoned mill, and the rats there gnawed on my ear while I was asleep -- that kind of thing leaves a mark on an 8-year-old, let me tell you!" These sorts of things gradually accrete to form a pretty cool backstory, in a lot of cases.
I've developed a method that combines the best of both. My GM is also my best friend. I usually roll up a new character at least 1-2 weeks prior to the start of a new campaign, including the background story. Then over the intervening time between chargen and playing, I'll have conversations about the character with my buddy via phone, email, text and IM's (We're 2 time zones apart and PBC). By the time I actually play the character, it has usually undergone quite a bit of evolution, both in background story and in stats -- the dice rolls stay the same, but how applied, skills, feats, etc. often change. My most recent character, he even went so far, because we had roleplayed the character without any dice rolling at all for the first two sessions, as to allow me at level-up to sacrifice all the experience I'd earned to go from his starting level (2) to L3, in exchange for letting me do one last major revision of the character -- same class, same background story, but everything else got tweaked.
Point is, I don't remember the last time one of my characters made it from conceptualization to play without already having been modified and his background story quasi-roleplayed out.
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I once played with one or two players back in 3.5 who would just recreate characters from books, every element of the character was based entirely on the book character.
I have a guy who does this. He even uses the names of the characters be blantantly rips off.
He made a monk awhile back. His name was Seraph. Then he tells me the character is exactly like "Seraph" from the Matrix movies. I gave up on this player after this. He has ZERO imagination.
Our group has a guy. Sad fact is, he used to be a really creative energetic fellow. Life gave him a bad deal, and he didn't take it well. He is a friend. His only time out of the house is when he is in one of our games.
The group ends up creating his character's backstory.
Shortly after 3.5 came out, we played a higher level game. Everyone had a few weeks to spend ooodles of gold on stuff (homes,magic,servents, stuff) come up with where they were from. All that.
He spent none of his gold. Enter the miserly rogue from Sembia.
Good times.
Greg
I just can't fault a guy for that, if the circumstances are as bad as you make it sound. And you have my respect for doing your best to keep him included. As someone who could easily end up like that with just the right nudge, you both have my empathy.
I once played with one or two players back in 3.5 who would just recreate characters from books, every element of the character was based entirely on the book character.I have a guy who does this. He even uses the names of the characters be blantantly rips off.
He made a monk awhile back. His name was Seraph. Then he tells me the character is exactly like "Seraph" from the Matrix movies. I gave up on this player after this. He has ZERO imagination.
See my reply above, there seem to be a lot more players like that than I had feared. Is it just me or do such players usually cause other issues when it comes to group dynamics? Maybe that was just what happened to us, not a trend...
I have a guy who does this. He even uses the names of the characters be blantantly rips off. He made a monk awhile back. His name was Seraph. Then he tells me the character is exactly like "Seraph" from the Matrix movies. I gave up on this player after this. He has ZERO imagination.
See my post above about Cindy Crawford. The real question is, does the character STAY the same as the Matrix character, or does he evolve into an individual over the course of the campaign?
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See my reply above, there seem to be a lot more players like that than I had feared. Is it just me or do such players usually cause other issues when it comes to group dynamics? Maybe that was just what happened to us, not a trend...I once played with one or two players back in 3.5 who would just recreate characters from books, every element of the character was based entirely on the book character.I have a guy who does this. He even uses the names of the characters be blantantly rips off.
He made a monk awhile back. His name was Seraph. Then he tells me the character is exactly like "Seraph" from the Matrix movies. I gave up on this player after this. He has ZERO imagination.
This same guy is all about blatant intraparty conflict as well. One time, when the group was being attacked by a band of Kobolds, he ran away, saying he refused to slaughter sentient creatures. The fight went terribly because he refused to help his fellows. Later, he gleefully slaughterd human bandits and looted their stuff. He's just so random and crazy that we don't play with him anymore. I booted him from the group when he said he was going to take on a Kobold cohort, just to agitate the player of the Gnome who hated Kobolds. Thats right. He was metagaming just to make another player upset.
I have a guy who does this. He even uses the names of the characters be blantantly rips off. He made a monk awhile back. His name was Seraph. Then he tells me the character is exactly like "Seraph" from the Matrix movies. I gave up on this player after this. He has ZERO imagination.See my post above about Cindy Crawford. The real question is, does the character STAY the same as the Matrix character, or does he evolve into an individual over the course of the campaign?
I know in the case of the player I mentioned, he pretty much kept them as close to the original fictional characters as possible. Sad, really.
This same guy is all about blatant intraparty conflict as well. One time, when the group was being attacked by a band of Kobolds, he ran away, saying he refused to slaughter sentient creatures. The fight went terribly because he refused to help his fellows. Later, he gleefully slaughterd human bandits and looted their stuff. He's just so random and crazy that we don't play with him anymore. I booted him from the group when he said he was going to take on a Kobold cohort, just to agitate the player of the Gnome who hated Kobolds. Thats right. He was metagaming just to make another player upset.See my reply above, there seem to be a lot more players like that than I had feared. Is it just me or do such players usually cause other issues when it comes to group dynamics? Maybe that was just what happened to us, not a trend...I once played with one or two players back in 3.5 who would just recreate characters from books, every element of the character was based entirely on the book character.I have a guy who does this. He even uses the names of the characters be blantantly rips off.
He made a monk awhile back. His name was Seraph. Then he tells me the character is exactly like "Seraph" from the Matrix movies. I gave up on this player after this. He has ZERO imagination.
Yup. The guy to whom I refer intentionally sold our CT team out to a terrorist organization just for the fun of playing a traitor, and he was also about intraparty conflict OUTSIDE the game too. We dumped him as soon as it was clear what was going on.
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Yup. The guy to whom I refer intentionally sold our CT team out to a terrorist organization just for the fun of playing a traitor, and he was also about intraparty conflict OUTSIDE the game too. We dumped him as soon as it was clear what was going on.This same guy is all about blatant intraparty conflict as well. One time, when the group was being attacked by a band of Kobolds, he ran away, saying he refused to slaughter sentient creatures. The fight went terribly because he refused to help his fellows. Later, he gleefully slaughterd human bandits and looted their stuff. He's just so random and crazy that we don't play with him anymore. I booted him from the group when he said he was going to take on a Kobold cohort, just to agitate the player of the Gnome who hated Kobolds. Thats right. He was metagaming just to make another player upset.See my reply above, there seem to be a lot more players like that than I had feared. Is it just me or do such players usually cause other issues when it comes to group dynamics? Maybe that was just what happened to us, not a trend...I once played with one or two players back in 3.5 who would just recreate characters from books, every element of the character was based entirely on the book character.I have a guy who does this. He even uses the names of the characters be blantantly rips off.
He made a monk awhile back. His name was Seraph. Then he tells me the character is exactly like "Seraph" from the Matrix movies. I gave up on this player after this. He has ZERO imagination.
We put up with this douche for four years. Then one night, he couldn't make it, so we had a long talk. We gave him one more chance, and he blew it when he wanted to metagame aggravation for the PC that hated Kobolds.
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The only problem I have with too much background is what a waste of time it is if the DM can't use it. I've experienced this from both sides, as a DM (just couldn't/didn't fit it in) and a player... so everything I just told you was ignored.. \excellent\.
I've also found that certain types just don't fit in a role-playing game, no matter how cool they are. The lone wolf (wolverine at some of his best moments), the silent type (Batman all the g!* d*@ned time), and arrogant jerk (Spock at his worst moments).
- The lone wolf in a cooperative game is a problem. If you go off on your own, you die, and/or there are other players here they want to play too.
- The silent type has to talk more, not less (a lesson learned the hard way) then all the other players, because he's describing all his actions, while the character says nothing. Most players don't realize this until it's too late: not talking is also not role-playing.
- The arrogant jerk causes trouble, for all the same reasons they do in real life, no one wants to be around them. I don't care how powerful you are, I don't want to deal with you.
It's frustrating saying not to do it to a player, as a DM or a fellow player, and every single one likes to argue,
"No, I can do it!"
Fine, try, when you fail don't blame me.
i am also pro-loli
I am also pro-loli, I'm currently playing a 4'9" 95lbs 19year old girl that is the head treasurer of a growing kingdom (Kingmaker) gives me the giggles every time i think about it... 10th level sorcerer/rogue(gestalt), all kinds of bad-@$$ness, cute as a button too.
I've also seen the extensive backstory used to get Role-playing benefits in game.
We were playing Star Wars (the 4E transition) and he wrote into his backstory that he had Corelleon Blood Stripes (I don't know SW that well, but it is some great honor). And somehow he did this by single-handedly crashing a ship (which required a crew of at least 15) into a starship and destroying it yet surviving himself.
So during an in character falling out, he tries to use this great honor he earned onlky in backstory, to command the other Corelleon in the party to attack us. Saying that he had rank and that she had to follow his orders.
We tried to warn the GM that this player would try to abuse his backstory in game, but he said he wouldn't let him...
Then again, we also called this player "The campaign killer". Started this thread about him even, not sure how to link, did it work?