4th & Dragon : Dungeons and Dragons...and stuff

I’ve been sorely tempted. But I’ve seen it in action, and it has the side effect of creating distrust and tension around the table, for *all* the players.

An out-of-game problem needs an out-of-game solution. Reason with the annoying player, and if that doesn’t work tell him to go rot in hell. Don’t make up reasons in-game to get rid of the character; just deal with the actual problem.

Ditto LP.

they are never solely out of game.  problems like these bleed into in game a lot.

Yeah but they’re from out of game. So, if it really comes to that, I think saying GTFO is a perfectly valid response, which is what happened in my group as told above.

You misunderstand.  It is inherently an out-of-game problem--a bad player.  That requires an out of game solution.  No one is disputing the idea that a jerk makes jerk moves in game, but that the best solution is not to kill the jerk’s character.  Instead the best solution is to talk to the jerk, and if that fails, drop the jerk from the game.  Killing a character of a player you dislike is a textbook case study of passive-aggressive behavior.  Passive aggression does not solve problems.  Indeed, it compounds them.  Because now you have a jerk player who knows that you’re out to get him personally, which leaves you with not only a jerk, but an angry jerk.  Not only that, but he has a right to be angry.

It’s the same idea as teacher/student problems.  If you are a teacher and you have a student who is just an utter (Gibbering Mouther Ate Your Word!), you don’t have any right to fail him provided he does the work.  You can discipline him, give him detention, call his parents, etc, but that cannot be allowed to affect his grades.  If an (Gibbering Mouther Ate Your Word!) does A quality work, he deserves an A, regardless of how much of an (Gibbering Mouther Ate Your Word!) he is.

Cameron, that post was awesome, gibbering mouther was hilarious.

I see your point though.  I won’t defend my childish behavior, I put in the time trying to communicate but as some point we all revert back to a 3 year old.  Mine just happens a little sooner then most .

So if i kick them out of the game and then kill their player off in a hilarious fashion is that okay?

That is more ok, we did that for a game the player was an (Gibbering Mouther Ate Your Word!) and we kick him and then the other player had fun killing his character

We rotated through characters soo much it didnt’ matter that I killed the guy off when he was annoying, but only once did I do it where the dice didn’t decide it.

Most of the time he could easily have escaped instead of standing toe to toe with the baddy or not running from the fire gaint he woke up.

He would always then make a new character, but he did tend to lay off the annoying stuff for some sessions.  He ran a game once and I turned the tables on him as a player.  That did a lot of good since he knew how much time he put into making the adventure to only have it easily destroyed by overly annoying actions.

A game I currently play in has a player that has anger management issues.  He can get upset at the silliest thing.  His character a couple of inter party conflicts but nothing major.  The last time he had an outburst I put him in his place.  He was ready to rip up his character and create a new one.  I told him that it wasn’t the character that was the problem.  He could create a new character and end up having the very same issue again and it wouldn’t have anything to do with the character then either.  The conflict was something happening between him and another player and it was as simple as that.  Until that conflict was settled it didn’t matter what characters the two players played with but there would be conflict. 

I then told him that those issues needed to be taken care of before he could consider playing a game without the out of character drama bleeding into the game.  This particular player hates meta-gaming as much as I do so I pointed out to him how his attitude out of character bleeding over to his in character actions was, in fact, metagaming.  I told him that I didn’t want to be in a game with that kind of metagaming and he understood.  I also explained that I don’t come to games to get involved in such drama and in fact try to escape that drama by gaming with my friends.  If this kind of drama was bound to continue there was no reason for me to play as it ruined the fun of the game for me and that is the whole reason to play D&D. 

Both of the players in question (the other is also quite obstanant in her own way) understood what I was saying and decided a peaceful game was in everyone’s best interest.  From that point on the game has improved a lot.  There was one other incident since then in which I simply packed up my stuff and left the game table without saying a word.  Afterwords I heard that 2 other players did the same thing and the game that night got canceled.  The players began to realize that the drama wasn’t worth it if they wanted to have fun and so far that hasn’t been a problem since. 

Drama + D&D = not fun for anyone.

they are never solely out of game.  problems like these bleed into in game a lot.

Oh, also wanted to point out that this quote set sparks flying in my mind.  It reminded me of something and I just figured out what it was. 

You ever hear about how people talk of the kid from MSU who entered the steam tunnels and commited suicide?  It was the (grossly distorted) basis of the Mazes and Monsters.  Anyway, some people get all up in arms about how D&D is evil and how it can cause people to go insane and then ingorantly site this as an example.  Well...what is inevitably the response to this from the role playing community?  Its something fairly similar to, “That kid was a crackpot before he ever got involved in D&D.  You can’t blame the fact that he was a fruit loop on the game when he was like that long before he started playing.”

Well...doesn’t the same logic hold true here?  If the guy was a jerk before he started playing why would you believe he would act any differently in the game?  Sure he is role playing and one can expect someone to not meta game but that only goes so far.  I mean, I hear Robin Williams is an avid D&D player but can you imagine playing with that cat?  I’d be all, “Robin...its awesome playing with you and I know you love the spot light but dang man, you gotta let some other people play a bit and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP WALKING ON THE COUCH AND SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP FOR 2 MINUTES!”

Er...know what I mean?