So this one time on a boat...

[Tyris1013]

'Ello,

Looking for second opinion on topic cause I'm second doubting myself as a DM regarding my players.

I'm running a campaign with eight people atm. While its not hard, the constant interrupting of players by other players is bit of a problem which I'm working on...

But that's not what I want to discuss. Thing is, I don't think my players care about the game as much as I do. That's ok, everyone has their taste, right? It's just that it bugs me when a player comes to play D&D, and hasn't read anything about their class, or spells that they can cast, which mainly would take up to one hour...

And we have our facebook page, along with gmail to notify eachother what's new, what to read, so I always notify them one week ahead of time.

Call me crazy, but someone would think player's guide was made for players to read? But eh... I said I'll read it, whoever wants read the book. But the requirement was just to read about your race, class and which background you want. Eventually combat and feats is just a bonus, spellcasting is advised.

Race, class is roughly about 10 pages, and takes half an hour to read. Background only for character creation (everyone read that one)

So here's the question to you. Would you be upset if a player would come to your session without know what their class can do after you reminded everyone to read and take notes of their features?

Maybe its just me and I exaggerate, considering how much work goes into preparing for a game...

Second part of problem is that my player lack creativity/imagination. They can't think of what to do, or how to solve the problem, while I can think of many ways. Has anyone ran into this problem?

Speaking of which, the same player - who is Half-Orc druid, always pulls strange moves in my session that just leaves me confused and speechless. Her wisdom and intelligence is not of negative values (16 wis, 12 int, so her character is not that clueless)

Here's couple of examples.

She went to the city barracks, two guardsman greeted her asking what she wants. She wanted to go down to the catacombs without her friends, leaving them behind. The soldiers declined her request because they do not have approval of their Captain to let her down there. So she gets all mad demanding to let her down there because she wants to speed up the game so they can finish their objective as soon as possible (basically rushing the game...) eventually she pulls out her sword on the guards and the guards react on this as assault. I'm stunned and say.. "Well, ok... Roll initiative" then all of a sudden she's upset why does she have to roll for initiative, can't she just hit them first while they just stand there? At this point I didn't know where to begin with... I just replied "Well... What do you think happens when you draw your swords on guards"? And basically after that I had to explain how initiative works ect...

And now this last session when they're all on a boat traveling to certain island which they have quest by a ship of kobold pirates led by human captain (long story). She kept looking/asking where to loot the ship, where to enter a ship just so she would get something. I wasn't aware that D&D was a looting based game? Besides that, its a pirate ship... And she wanted to loot it while bunch of kobold pirates are aware of her actions, what the heck?

Ooooh, but lets not forget the best part. The 5 minutes after they've boarded the ship, she brought up this crazy idea that they should just kill the crew and take the ship for their own. Now that really blown my ****ing mind.

Because of the whole 'hijacking' idea/conspiracy plot she was discussing among party members, but not everyone agreed, I've brought up with curse of the seas, sending in Sea Viper to assault the ship. It's similar concept to the rule when you invite someone to their home, offer them hospitality, you don't kill them unless you want bad luck on you... Same with boat hijacking. The pirates were transporting them willingly, she had no reason to kill them in the first place.

Eventually someone stole the tobacco on ship, forcing Captain to come out of his cabin and first thing she does when everyone gathered on top deck is walk up to him so she could charm her (regardless that she didn't hear me that charm has 30 feet range...) so that she would surprised that kobolds overwhelmed her, pinning her to the ground. And after that she would argue with me "No! I didn't want that to happen, bring it back to the point where they didn't ambush me so I can charm him"

And at that point I lost it. Just wanted her to shut up after arguing for so long that she already made her move, now suffer the consequences, but she would have none of that. Normally I wouldn't budge, but just wanted to cut her off, and gave her roll after all, which captain rolled saving throw without problem.

During the boss sea viper battle and initiative roll, she said she doesn't want to fight... I just stared at her, luckily my other player said 'roll anyway so we have the list, in case you want to do something else' or something like that. Afterwards she throws herself into the water and transforming herself into a fish... (oh yeah, she wanted to wild shape into a sea viper which was way above her challenge rating requirement...)

That's pretty much it, the whole problem. Looking for second opinion on this topic, and has anyone ran into problems like these? We're playing D&D 5e if it matters to anyone.

Thanks!