So how many of you have ever been THAT guy/girl?

[WarKitty]

I've been reading through all the horror story threads about bad players and bad dm's. What I wonder is, how many of us have stories about being the bad player or the bad dm? Mostly as proof that some of us turn out to be perfectly good players later. I have a few myself, but no time to type them out just yet...

[Ekul]

I've been reading through all the horror story threads about bad players and bad dm's. What I wonder is, how many of us have stories about being the bad player or the bad dm? Mostly as proof that some of us turn out to be perfectly good players later. I have a few myself, but no time to type them out just yet...

Guilty. I'm not often a bad player, but I've been that player before. I don't remember which classes I was, but early on I would get disillusioned and stop trying because I felt useless. Since then, I've done enough research that everyone asks me questions about character creation.

And I've been the bad GM before, much more often. I never prepare- but most of the time I can do it on the fly and I actually get complaints less regularly than my usual DM does from the same batch of players. One time, I just couldn't do anything. I was totally blank and nothing came. I just lay there on the couch as my players stared awkwardly. "So... are you going to do anything?"

Another time, I railroaded. Badly. That's what I get for trying to script something based on a video game. Ugh. It's embarrassing how poorly I railroaded. I'm loath to provide examples from the one session I did, but when a player tried to interact with the town, let's just say it was less alive than a cardboard cutout.

Since then I've developed techniques to prevent them from happening again. (Namely, how to prepare in ways so that player rail jumping doesn't matter.)

With one exception. I GM negated a Player vs Player action by having a powerful beast assume control of the PC's mind. I felt horrible for it. I know it's within my purview, but his character did have every motive to do it. Mainly, I actually had been so certain of the competency of my players in this situation that I hadn't planned for a loss condition or a betrayal, so I unrealistically intervened. Terrible storytelling.

[Comet]

I almost ruined a perfectly good friendship (maybe several) because I wanted everything to be all dramatic and personal and "roleplaing-y" while they just wanted to have a good time and roll some dice.

Sure, one of the players was something that could be classified as a munchkin, and the other had some trouble focusing on anything and so on, but in the end it really is all just a game and I'm happy I managed to let go of my, admittedly juvenile, ambitions of high drama and serious business and accepted that they were looking for different things in the game.

The funny part is, of course, that later on we did have sessions with a lot of high drama and intense storytelling. It was not quite the same kind of serious business as I had envisioned in my head back in the day, since there was also a lot of out of character joking and banter and everyone was keenly aware that it was still just a game, but in a way it was better than what I had hoped to achieve. I got to tell a good story and have a good time with friends.
We didn't act all serious and dramatic while telling that story but if you take out all the out of game banter and just analyze the actions of the characters it was still always a really decent piece of intrigue and suspense.

Lesson learned: if you feel the need to "teach" your group what a "deep and personal narrative" is, just go write a short story on your lonesome or something. It's just a game and friendship is more important than your ambitions as a storyteller. Besides, you might just find yourselves surprised at the willingness of players to take the story seriously as long as you don't stuff it down their throats by force. Relax.

I think this makes me an ex-THAT guy. I'm really grateful to my friends for putting up with me while I had my "GUYS LISTEN UP THIS IS ART I KNOW HOW TO BE DEEP AND STUFF" phase.

[Shadowknight12]

I made a promise to myself never to GM again unless it's as a special favour for someone. I am quite possibly the quickest GM to burn out in the history of gaming.

As a player, I tend to be a bit blunt and ignore people's sensibilities at times, but that's more of a personal issue than a specific problem as a player.

[starwoof]

I made a promise to myself never to GM again unless it's as a special favour for someone. I am quite possibly the quickest GM to burn out in the history of gaming.

Man I wish I could do that, but if I don't DM, nobody DMs.


A long time ago I acquired a lot of treasure without the knowledge of the other players in a Savage Species game. And by 'a lot of treasure' I mean roughly 90% of the treasure. For several sessions. I liquidated it all and went on a shopping spree.

MAN the other guys were not happy when my dude pulled out the +7 sword I had blown all the money on. Especially because I had never entered melee combat before that point (and actually... I never did).

They still give me crap for that. They should have stopped talking to each other and listened to the DM though.

[Heliomance]

My first time DMing was atrociously bad, and put one of my friends off roleplaying at all for a year and a half. It was a bad dungeon crawl, I almost threw in the towel half way through when they nearly managed to circumvent half the puzzles, the puzzles only had one correct solution and I didn't accept any others, and the final boss was a catgirl. Not any catgirl, but one that was immune to damage. To defeat her, they had to use the meme of "every time you bring real life physics into a discussion about a fantasy world, God kills a catgirl."

I cringe in shame every time I remember that game.

[Gamgee]

Guilty, I was a complete *******. Ruined the whole campaign in one session and it never got off the ground. It wasn't all my fault. But me and one other guy primarily were the ones to blame. Don't feel like sharing.

[pyrefiend]

Ayup. I was pretty bad.

I was the first person in our group to actually learn the rules and figure out how to play, and consequentially I was the best at optimizing. Not really complicated builds or anything (no Pun-Pun) just basic knowledge we all take for granted now, like knowing that skill checks are really easy to buff. That, combined with the fact that our current DM gave away waaay too much treasure and wasn't confident enough to really shut me down, resulted in my character having a +50 bluff modifier at 6th level.

I was a telepath, but my class didnt really matter. Combat was a joke, everything got bluffed into submission. We sold our treasure for absurdly high prices, because every salesman believed without a doubt my tales of how everything was a major artifact.

Even worse, that was back when party members were allowed to use interaction skills on each other, and our resident warmage got manipulated into doing anything I didn't want to do. Eventually he was actually considering taking feats to defend himself from my skill checks/psionics, because he felt he couldn't sort it out in game because I never ever actually got caught in a lie. His character had no reason to suspect I told anything but the truth. I still get a lot of grief from him about that.

[Trellan]

Probably one of the things I'm least proud of was the time that I decided to play an entire campaign with a passive aggressive "me vs. the dm" approach because I didn't like some aspects of how he ran games. I'd been in 4 or 5 games with him by this point, and he was definitely the type to put his narrative over the actions of the players. He completely ignored even the most basic of game rules if it conflicted with his stories, and he constantly had these recurring villains that were able to win just by power of plot. Certainly, that is bad, but I really should have talked to him about it out of game.

Instead, I decided to create the most broken character I possibly could just to make his job of railroading us harder. Even worse, I conspired with two other players to do this, so it was the three of us running incredibly broken characters (okay, two. One tried, but he didn't quite pull it off) while the one guy that wasn't in on the plan got to feel incredibly useless. I feel even worse about it because I was primarily the ring leader and was playing the most broken character. The campaign didn't last long...

[Balain]

I was running an campaign that was going okay. Not an award winning campaign but no complaints.

At the time I was reading some books which influenced me to try something along the same lines. It been seen before I'm sure. I was going to have this newly introduced npc get infected with this ooze like creature. The ooze like creature starts to make the npc more and more powerful and he starts having this internal struggle between his ever growing power and his humnanity...Ahhh elvenity..what ever lol.

Anyaways one of the players gets involved and saves the elf nps and gets in the way of the ooze and he gets infected. Well that screws up my plans. I let the player know in private later on my plans. He's all cool with that and promises me he can roleplay it. So being a young DM I listen to him and let him play it and slowly start giving him the powers the npc would get.....


Yeah bad mistake. The campaign went down hill shortly after.

I'm sure I have other stories of me being a bad player or DM just to tired right now to think of any.

Oh wait there was one time playing 2nd edition. Using the legand and lores made the CG Paladin. Again was reading a book and was influenced to try something. For one fight I decide I can fight way better without my armour like the knight/paladin in the story I was reading...I didn't lol

[Coidzor]

I did introduce one of my DMs to the horrors of warbeast mules backed up by a 5th level Inspire Courage bard.... with a wild cohort heavy horse trained into a heavy warhorse...

[Totally Guy]

I think I'm might be becoming that guy in a delta green game...

I'm not having fun. Well I am but I'm not getting any satisfaction from it. Every week I plan on quitting and every week I go along and have fun and think it's all good after all. Then by next week I'm ready to quit again.

I'm not really sure why.


I believe that the game itself is pretty much the most important thing in the session but I keep that to myself. The others two people in the group say that the players is by far the most important thing in the session. They say this regularly...

I can't seem to communicate that I'm not happy without telling them it's personal. Plus if I can't communicate why I'm dissatisfied then I don't really know how talking about it will improve things.

So each session they ask me "Are you happy?" and I find that there's pressure on me to be happy so the the group doesn't meltdown.

[Totally Guy]

I think I'm might be becoming that guy in a delta green game...

I'm not having fun. Well I am but I'm not getting any satisfaction from it. Every week I plan on quitting and every week I go along and have fun and think it's all good after all. Then by next week I'm ready to quit again.

I'm not really sure why.


I believe that the game itself is pretty much the most important thing in the session but I keep that to myself. The others two people in the group say that the players is by far the most important thing in the session. They say this regularly...

I can't seem to communicate that I'm not happy without telling them it's personal. Plus if I can't communicate why I'm dissatisfied then I don't really know how talking about it will improve things.

So each session they ask me "Are you happy?" and I find that there's pressure on me to be happy so the the group doesn't meltdown.

[Silus]

I've tried to "cheat the system" once or twice. You know, trying to beat the DM. Using unorthodox, sometime overly complex and right-out-of-left-field plans to try and catch the DM off guard.

I've stacked a Deck of Many Things and ended up with like 21 Wishes. Then tried to wish for more wishes (first time ever dealing with a Wish spell mind you) via wishing for Rings of Three Wishes.

Also, on the topic of Wishes, I'm that guy that will word a wish in such a way as to try to cut out any loopholes to the point where a single wish will take minutes to complete. Like if I wished for a weapon, I'd state that I don't want it cursed, owned by anyone, be teleported to its location, jinxed so I can't use it, the wrong size, ect. ect..

I tend to surf the internet/play games/**** around on my laptop when it's either not my turn or when my character is not involved at the task at hand (like in split party situations).

I semi-railroaded the players on my first DM game, though it was more a case of "The entrance is blocked, the only way out is through" situation.

I also for the life of me can't remember how to properly roll attack and damage dice for OWoD.

And lastly, with 3.5, I tend to complain quite a bit if any of the classes are altered in any way or outright cut without a decent explanation. Like making Warlock blasts #/day like one DM tried to do. Or cutting all casting classes and making Adept the only usable magic class. That stuff ticks me off to no end.

[icefractal]

I was that guy once - actually twice.

The first time, it had been a while since I'd been able to play, and I'd been reading the CharOp board to pass the time. So I had like a dozen ideas for characters, a whole bag of crazy tricks, and not enough restraint. I made a character that was crazy overpowered (not just optimized, but on the verge of TO), was not subtle about it, and then kept playing it after it should have been obvious there was an issue. Eventually things came to a head and I changed it.

The second time, somewhat related, I built a character with lots of power in reserve, but planning to use it as little as possible - do mostly light battlefield control, only unleash when absolutely necessary. The problem was that combat got very slow (15 minutes a round slow), and I got bored. Bored to the extent that I started unleashing my full arsenal, in the hopes that things would end a round or two sooner. Well, this started an arms-spiral with the GM, where most of the other characters got left behind and became ineffective. This time at least I was quicker to realize the problem, and just took a break from that game. The slowness situation was sort of resolved later (by having very few combats).

[Werekat]

I was "that girl" in a LARP three years ago, and didn't even know it until someone on the Internet posted that she still remembered that incident and avoided me IRL because of it.

Long story short: the abovementioned poster's in-game husband tried to kill my character in broad daylight and with numerous witnesses. Due to a couple of special abilities my character had, he failed. Instead of just continuing to play, the whole thing devolved into a pretty ugly shouting match (as in "you had no right to have that special ability, call the DM!"). It ended with my imprisoning the attacker (I really hated to kill other people's characters then).

Here's where my mistake comes in: in a LARP, if you imprison someone, you should keep them in game - whether by negotiation, torture, or whatever. It's considered bad form to just take someone out of the game. I at the time I a) believed that IC actions = IC consequences, without any concern for game dynamics, b) really didn't want to deal with players who got into shouting matches at the drop of a hat. So I just left him locked for a couple of hours until the abovementioned poster got tired of pestering me every half an hour and busted him out.

It was a case of both sides being utter idiots, but, yeah, that was wrong of me.

[Coidzor]

I was "that girl" in a LARP three years ago, and didn't even know it until someone on the Internet posted that she still remembered that incident and avoided me IRL because of it.

Long story short: the abovementioned poster's in-game husband tried to kill my character in broad daylight and with numerous witnesses. Due to a couple of special abilities my character had, he failed. Instead of just continuing to play, the whole thing devolved into a pretty ugly shouting match (as in "you had no right to have that special ability, call the DM!"). It ended with my imprisoning the attacker (I really hated to kill other people's characters then).

Here's where my mistake comes in: in a LARP, if you imprison someone, you should keep them in game - whether by negotiation, torture, or whatever. It's considered bad form to just take someone out of the game. I at the time I a) believed that IC actions = IC consequences, without any concern for game dynamics, b) really didn't want to deal with players who got into shouting matches at the drop of a hat. So I just left him locked for a couple of hours until the abovementioned poster got tired of pestering me every half an hour and busted him out.

It was a case of both sides being utter idiots, but, yeah, that was wrong of me.

Sounds like they were immature and best avoided anyway.

[navar100]

When I first started to DM I relied heavily on puzzles. I learned that lesson. I'm good at creating and running one shot adventures for conventions, but regular campaigns I still have diffiulty with. I'm mostly a player anyway.

Twice I have been wrongly considered a bad player. The first was in college when two other players were hyperventillatingly upset I would have my 2E cleric cast spells that were not Cure Light Wounds. They were aghast I would even swing my staff in combat for a round or two because I wasn't a fighter. They literally stopped being my friends because of this. We were never best buddies, but our relationship became cold. After graduation and seeing each other occasionally at reunions and conventions over the years we're cordial to each other and can have friendly conversations now. I'm sure growing up and maturity for all of us account for that.

The second time was at a gaming convention where another player told me I was the worst cleric player he ever met. My crime? I was roleplaying! I was playing a 3E lawful good halfling cleric and chose to accept the surrender of a bad guy mook on a raft after I just Commanded his partner to Flee!, meaning he ran overboard into the river and drowned. The other player, when he arrived on the raft, wanted to kill the prisoner but I wouldn't allow it. I was fine with the prisoner just being tied up. He was insistant he would escape and attack us from behind. He made his worst player statement to me when my argument won out. The player decided to have his character stay behind because he was so sure the prisoner would do something significant against us. Therefore, he was out of the combat the rest of had as we stormed the main compound. When we accomplished our goal and leaving, he took pot shots with his bow at bad guys still chasing us, but the game was pretty much over. The prisoner never escaped his bonds or otherwise did anything.

[Xerinous]

I've been a bad DM. I will admit that, but I will also hide behind the excuse of being really new to RPGs at the time. My storytelling was bad, my plan for the world developed late (admittedly, the whole DM thing was sprung on me before I was ready), I burned out far quicker than I think I should have, and I let some stuff slide I shouldn't have (i.e. revolving door of PCs, one player had 4 characters that campaign).

I think I've gotten better, haven't been DM since then though so I really can't be sure.

[Zaq]

The very first campaign I was ever in, I kinda got thrust into the role of GM without planning for it. (The initial GM got burned out, and I stepped up to the plate rather than let the game fizzle out.) Unfortunately, not only was I still learning the rules of the game, I was still learning the rules of how to GM properly.

Good god. That was an AWFUL campaign. Just about the only cardinal GM sin I DIDN'T commit was making a DMPC. Even I knew better than that . . . though I did retcon the character I abandoned (starting as a player, remember) into actually having been an illusion this whole time, and he was really an echo of the fellow who would eventually be the BBEG. Or something. It was really stupid. Other than that, though . . . railroading? Check, try as I did to not do so. Bad ad-hoc rulings that I didn't always remember? Check. Making the NPCs more important than the PCs? Eh . . . half-check. Getting upset when the players didn't see my solutions to the puzzles? Check. Getting REALLY upset when they wouldn't go along with the dialogue? Check. Making totally unbalanced homebrew monsters just because I could? Check, though I TRIED to keep them in line with the party. Making plots that were WAY too detailed for the players to give a crap about, then expecting them to remember the finer details of the Russian novels I typed up? You better believe that's a check.

Yeah. It was bad. I've gotten better, but I'm still infinitely more comfortable as a player than a GM.

[NikitaDarkstar]

I've been one of THOSE players. When I was playing with my IRL group I had serious issues showing up on time or just having other things come up all the time. We played every other Saturday and I'd email or call the DM the same day, which tended to be an issue since some of us had 2 hours travel time. Granted I wasn't alone in this, but I was still without a doubt a problem.

I could also add that I was a new player without my own books or any serious understanding of the systems we played (we switched around a lot), but well I tried and I did lean fairly quick. (well d100 anyway... drove my next DM insane for 6 months when playing DnD which obviously is a D20 system... which are polar opposites...) And I did buy my own dice on my second session (Sadly my own books were so not an option due to price). So I'm not sure if that's really a problem, everyone are newbies at some point.

[Half-Orc Rage]

Early on when 3rd edition came out I was horrible. I had only played 2nd, and honestly it was more "look at the books" than actual playing. I had a wood elf ranger that I tried to twink out as an archer. I had a mediocre Con score and failed a lot of saves. The poor elf was mind controlled by a horse, swallowed whole by a giant frog, turned to stone, paralyzed, blinded, and virtually everything else that can happen to a D&D character happened to him. Even when everything went right, the two players with a cleric maxed out to hell and a psychic warrior/paladin were really dominant, and myself and a fourth player felt like their sidekicks.

[bokodasu]

I was "That DM". Dungeon crawls were fine, but anything more free-form I'd panic and turn it into a huge railroad. I had a bad case of DM's Girlfriend (except it was DM's boyfriend in my case, still - hey, you want shiny superenchanted magic armor and an intelligent +3 sword while everyone else is just about allowed a rock and a stick, as long as it's not a sharp stick? Why of course that's reasonable!) But the worst was my DMPC - I've actually thought about calling everyone from that campaign and apologizing for Mary Sue Godlike Stabsyouintheback, except that this was 20 years ago and hopefully they've all forgotten by now.

I can't remember ever being That Player - by the time I got to play, I'd DMed long enough to get most of it out of my system, I think. Anyway, I got better.

[Choco]

As a player, I tend to be a bit blunt and ignore people's sensibilities at times, but that's more of a personal issue than a specific problem as a player.

Exactly! It is their personal issue for being so hyper-sensitive, don't beat yourself up over it

On topic, I used to be "that guy", bad...

I used to play in specific D&D groups, the kind where no one sees eachother or does anything together outside of D&D. D&D was the reason we hung out. So obviously we took our D&D seriously.

Now fast forward a few years (and a few moves, across a few COUNTRIES) and I am trying to start a D&D group with a few friends. Only one other person had D&D experience and the rest were exposed to it via video games and thought it would be fun to try. However, they were of the type that just wanted to sit around BS'ing and on occasion roll some dice.

Yeah, I almost lost it on them a few times cause I was trying to have a serious game, and these clowns are here screwing it up. Once they were talking about removing me from the group I got the point and quickly shaped up. I just had to realize and accept that I probably will not have another serious PnP RP game again unless I specifically join a group that does nothing but that together again, which I ended up doing.

[Kiero]

I did cut loose and do my own thing in absolute frustration once. Though I don't think it was too disruptive and it ultimately shook the group out of their playstyle rut. So I suppose it wasn't all bad.

[Akal Saris]

I think the only time that I feel bad about is when I went to college and my friends back home started a campaign without me - when I came back for Christmas the DM reluctantly let me join the group temporarily, and the character I made was deliberately underpowered and kind of disruptive. It would have been better if I hadn't joined at all. With that said, there was no bad blood over it or anything.

[Velaryon]

I've been THAT guy a couple times, mostly when I was an inexperienced DM, and only once that I can think of as a player.

Most of my current D&D group learned the game from me. It was their first time playing, my first time DMing, and I made just about every mistake in the book. I got rules wrong all the time and wouldn't catch it until weeks, months later. I used a pet NPC, though I quickly figured out he was a problem and removed him for awhile, only to bring him back as a minor villain later. I gave my players more treasure than I was capable of dealing with, and also gave each of them a template without taking a level adjustment (one of them was a vampire, two more became lycanthropes, etc.)

The worst thing I ever did as a DM though, was a failure to deal with something that was becoming a problem. One character had found a Ring of Chameleon Power and was annoying the hell out of everyone with it. The party rogue, who had joined the game later on, was overshadowed at what he considered his signature skill, and resented the ranger being better than him at it. Everyone else was just annoyed at how the player would go on endlessly describing random ways he would change his appearance on a whim.

I never did anything about it, despite the fact it was becoming obvious the character's actions were a problem to the rest of the group. It came to a head when his player happened to miss a session, and the rest of the party took advantage by gang-tackling him to the ground, taking away his ring, and having an NPC sorcerer disenchant it. The player came back the following session to learn that his favorite item was taken away from him, and him not knowing why. I really dropped the ball there, because if I had just talked to him about how much he was annoying everyone, he would probably have toned it down and that would have solved most of the issue.

As a player, the one time I was ever THAT guy was with another group, with which I have gamed for nearly 7 years now. We got in a rut for awhile where we were changing games every month or two, and at one point somebody brought out a MERP book. A few people decided that would be fun, and so they started up rolling characters.

At the time, my only experience was with d20 systems, mostly D&D and Star Wars. I didn't want to waste time learning a whole new system, especially since game nights with this group were shorter than I was used to (~4 or 5 hours a night instead of marathon 8-10 hour games like my other group used to do).

I outright refused to play, and told them that I would come back when they were finished with the campaign. Naturally, they didn't want to exclude me, so they scrapped the game and started up a D&D campaign. To this day I feel bad about that. And so when I have something I want to play with that group, but someone there isn't really digging it, I won't push the issue. After all, if I almost left the group (even if only temporarily) because of one game that I didn't want to play, how can I try to push a game on somebody else who's not interested?

[Lonely Tylenol]

Good god. That was an AWFUL campaign. Just about the only cardinal GM sin I DIDN'T commit was making a DMPC. Even I knew better than that . . . though I did retcon the character I abandoned (starting as a player, remember) into actually having been an illusion this whole time, and he was really an echo of the fellow who would eventually be the BBEG. Or something. It was really stupid. Other than that, though . . . railroading? Check, try as I did to not do so. Bad ad-hoc rulings that I didn't always remember? Check. Making the NPCs more important than the PCs? Eh . . . half-check. Getting upset when the players didn't see my solutions to the puzzles? Check. Getting REALLY upset when they wouldn't go along with the dialogue? Check. Making totally unbalanced homebrew monsters just because I could? Check, though I TRIED to keep them in line with the party. Making plots that were WAY too detailed for the players to give a crap about, then expecting them to remember the finer details of the Russian novels I typed up? You better believe that's a check.

Yeah. It was bad. I've gotten better, but I'm still infinitely more comfortable as a player than a GM.

This sounds like the campaign I've been in for the last year, only there have been two DMPCs thus far (and one is still around, and periodically ends fights with a surprise insta-kill or two). The DM commits another sin not yet mentioned on top of all this: he beta-tested his entire campaign with two of the players who are currently playing it with us now (this time for the second time for them), so both of them have intimate knowledge of the entire campaign's workings from start to finish, which they have been using (overtly and covertly) for much of the last year. Oh, and the DM has forbidden us multiple times from "reading the books", and gets angry whenever one of us contradicts him on a ruling, even when he's wrong--and we can prove it. (This came out once recently when a handful of store clerks pulled knives on my fellow adventurers, at which time I attempted to conceal a casting of Slow against the enemy party, something of a surprise action--at which point all five of the enemies got full-round actions in the surprise round, considering me flat-footed, to try to interrupt my spellcasting. His claim was that every single enemy had readied an action specifically to prevent a spell from being cast--which my "frantic arm-waving and loud chanting" had provoked, even though "frantic arm-waving" and "loud chanting" had never been features of my spells, ever. This was met by repeated protests from half the table that you can't ready a set of actions against a specific action that takes longer than the original action itself, all of which were ignored until the session completely imploded, at which most of the people left, and I pointed out to him, calmly, where it states that you may ready a standard action, a move action, or a swift action--but not a full-round action--so none of the bizarre tricks that people were pulling from around corners and in other rooms should have ever happened. His response was, "see, this is why I don't want you guys reading the books!")

The "forgetting minute details of Russian novels" came out as recently as last session, where I was chided by the DM for forgetting that the color of the adamantine longsword entrusted upon our party's Cleric that we received six months ago was black--a fact I don't recall any of us ever being told. It came back to bite me during a word riddle (another cardinal sin?) that made absolutely no sense to anybody in the party, because nobody knew from memory that the sword was black.

This was my first real campaign, so I've been complacent for nigh on a year now, but a combination of this and two players who are currently each being THAT guy by antagonizing the DM with reckless abandon by acting in stupid or evil ways (this is an "exalted" campaign) and trolling the players by refusing to make themselves in the remotest bit useful in the planning (or execution) stage of missions is making me want to become THAT guy for the first time--by becoming a total munchkin and trivializing entire encounters to the point of nothingness (which shouldn't be hard to do unless DM fiat cancels me out, as I'm the party's Wizard).

[askandarion]

Lesson learned: if you feel the need to "teach" your group what a "deep and personal narrative" is, just go write a short story on your lonesome or something. It's just a game and friendship is more important than your ambitions as a storyteller. Besides, you might just find yourselves surprised at the willingness of players to take the story seriously as long as you don't stuff it down their throats by force. Relax.

Can I sig that?

[askandarion]

I was "that guy", not just because of hang-ups, but for the sake of others too.

We have a friend/DM who's pretty big on overbearing evil that has to be constantly fought against with major sacrifices for minor victories. Stuff like Dragonlance novels or Game of Swords, that level of... grittiness? Unfortunately, a couple of people I know are going through a rough patch, and after the last campaign the DM ran, where the thought of going to the game literally filled them with dread and despair, were pretty worried about this one, too. (But hey, gotta get that gaming fix...)

Our DM had, after finding out years after the fact about how people had felt about his game, asked for people to come to him with problems. Now, my first problem (turning me into "that guy") was that I had created an NPC for his game when I was just advising/helping, sort of what my ideal sort of character would be. All within rules, and underpowered. A ship captain with a crew in an epic game, and I didn't feel it would be realistic to have 20th level sailors.

I didn't think anything of his power level, since he was more of a random person in the world. But I ended up joining the game, and decided to play as this NPC- my ideal sort of character, in a game he very much is not fit for. He wasn't accomplishing too much, and unfortunately lost the crew of his ship TWICE due to bad guys and plot (first crew ran off after the first session where they aged 10 years or so due to failing epic save rolls, second crew got turned insane by one roll due to Sanity rules and killed each other). So, I felt useless and depressed. We were trying to address that issue and I had no clear immediate answers for solving my problems all at once, which frustrates this DM as I meander trying to figure out what could make me feel better about the character.

At the same time, I was trying to address the DM's playstyle, trying to encourage him to make some changes to avoid depressing the other players even more. My first attempt, the direct attempt ("come to me if you have problems") just made him angry. My second attempt, the indirect, at the same time as my character concerns with constantly having my crew destroyed, ended up with the decision that I'm just not a good fit and shouldn't be playing, since I have issues with constant setbacks and overwhelming evil if I haven't planned a character that could better deal with them. So I'm "that guy", too picky for the DM to bother with, because I started with an NPC that honestly shouldn't have been used and was trying to convince him to change his style so as to not push a couple of other players into absolute despair (again). He ignored my other (asked for) advice for trying to take them into account and avoid setting a bad tone for the campaign when starting out, so I should have known better.

TL;DR: whiny player who can't decide what he wants to do with his character also trying to get the DM to change his style, when we know going in what his games are like.