Habits that kill fun in a session.

[bloodtide]

Overly Cautious Players: Oh yes, too often. This type of player some how thinks that 'any' damage or effect might kill them. They might have 25 HP's, but they worry if they take 2 points of damage. And they oddly over react to everything.

Recent game example:

DM:Up ahead in the you can see that a sheet of flame covers the passageway from floor to ceiling.
Players: OMG! A wall of fire 2d6+20 damage! We need to find another way around or..um..do something else.
....And the game slows to a crawl as they are afraid to go near the sheet of flame. (note-sheet of flame is a lesser wall of fire type spell, damage 1d6). Old School gamers would just walk right through it, and even if they took 6 points of damage, would shrug it off.

[The Glyphstone]

Overly Cautious Players: Oh yes, too often. This type of player some how thinks that 'any' damage or effect might kill them. They might have 25 HP's, but they worry if they take 2 points of damage. And they oddly over react to everything.

Recent game example:

DM:Up ahead in the you can see that a sheet of flame covers the passageway from floor to ceiling.
Players: OMG! A wall of fire 2d6+20 damage! We need to find another way around or..um..do something else.
....And the game slows to a crawl as they are afraid to go near the sheet of flame. (note-sheet of flame is a lesser wall of fire type spell, damage 1d6). Old School gamers would just walk right through it, and even if they took 6 points of damage, would shrug it off.

I'm pretty sure real old-school gamers would be even more wary of the wall of flame - every individual hit point was a lot more valuable back then, and harder to get/replace. They'd just invent a horrifically complex plan involving dire badgers, hired commoners, and ten-foot poles to tunnel around the wall.

[Drascin]

I'm pretty sure real old-school gamers would be even more wary of the wall of flame - every individual hit point was a lot more valuable back then, and harder to get/replace. They'd just invent a horrifically complex plan involving dire badgers, hired commoners, and ten-foot poles to tunnel around the wall.

Or would think that the wall of fire was a decoy for an even more fiendish trap, meant to lure players into security and only pay attention to the fire while (etc)...

You didn't last very long if you weren't cautious, in old-school gaming.

[One Step Two]

The guy who uses logic and physics to create situations that can be handled using related game rules-That in and of itself isn't usually bad because it helps the DM by pointing them to similar rules they can use as reference. However, when all sorts of math gets involved, thats when some DM's get pissed....

This is when I break out Spacemaster, and hand the offending player a graphics calculator, and his spaceship budget.

Either they be quiet and behave, or I get a new spaceship made for a later campaign :D

[bloodtide]

I'm pretty sure real old-school gamers would be even more wary of the wall of flame - every individual hit point was a lot more valuable back then, and harder to get/replace. They'd just invent a horrifically complex plan involving dire badgers, hired commoners, and ten-foot poles to tunnel around the wall.

LOL

I guess I had a good mix of Old School Gamers. While I have had players take over 30 minutes to just open a chest with like some rope, hired commoners, and ten-foot poles.....I've also had the ''I just swim across the lake of acid type''.

But I do recall an Old School game where the dwarf werebadger dung a tunnel under the sheet of flame......

[Flame of Anor]

Me: "I am capable of flying at 500 feet per 6 seconds if I spend a full round, so if I ram into that guy going at that speed, how much damage will I do to the catgirls?"

Fixed that for you.

[FatJose]

Overly Cautious Players: Oh yes, too often. This type of player some how thinks that 'any' damage or effect might kill them. They might have 25 HP's, but they worry if they take 2 points of damage. And they oddly over react to everything.

In a game I DM'ed one player, who is always the one to be super meta-cautious, slowed our game to crawl making every roll possible on anything in sight before acting and never actually moving the game along because he could never get any of the hints or clues to my puzzles no matter how easy they were. Another player then passed around a note with a scribble on it of the first player's character pointing at an armchair while saying "Sense Motive."

We all had a good laugh.

[Ya Ta Hey!]

Story Lawyering is an especially grating one.

You have some player who's there to win an Academy Award or something, and they want you to know what a horrible, lowbrow philistine you are when you don't match their idea of internal consistency.

Now, its good to have inquisitive players who keep you honest. A story lawyer, though, is someone who goes out of their way to pee on everything you have to say. Nothing is worthy of their suspension of disbelief, not even a genre staple or something trivial. It doesn't matter what justification you offer, they'll split the hairs as finely as they need to make the case that X could never, ever happen in a zillion years and that you're the worst GM ever.

Their standards of what makes sense usually reek of suburbia, too. Its like, if they can't see it happening to them on the way to Applebee's, its absolutely inconceivable in any realm of human experience. Ergo, you suck.

Anyway, the upside is that these people usually don't last very long before they storm off. I always feel bad though, I always end up wondering how I could have come through for them, but it really seems clear that they've made up their minds not to have fun.

[Sipex]

Story Lawyering is an especially grating one.

You have some player who's there to win an Academy Award or something, and they want you to know what a horrible, lowbrow philistine you are when you don't match their idea of internal consistency.

Now, its good to have inquisitive players who keep you honest. A story lawyer, though, is someone who goes out of their way to pee on everything you have to say. Nothing is worthy of their suspension of disbelief, not even a genre staple or something trivial. It doesn't matter what justification you offer, they'll split the hairs as finely as they need to make the case that X could never, ever happen in a zillion years and that you're the worst GM ever.

The standards of what makes sense usually reek of suburbia, too. Its like, if they can't see it happening to them on the way to Applebee's, its absolutely inconceivable in any realm of human experience. Ergo, you suck.

Anyway, the upside is that these people usually don't last very long before they storm off. I always feel bad though, I always end up wondering how I could have come through for them, but it really seems clear that they've made up their minds not to have fun.

You are a stronger man than I.

I would've kicked their butts to the curb after the second incident.

edit: Unless I thought the story was weak too, then I'd try to fix it.

[Lamech]

Me: "I am capable of flying at 500 feet per 6 seconds if I spend a full round, so if I ram into that guy going at that speed, how much damage will I do to us? If we just calculate how far you had to have fallen to reach that speed we can just use the falling damage rules..."
DM: "I flipping hate you"

The correct response to this is "He probably takes less than you do when you hit him at 500 feet per round. So how much will you be taking?"

[Tzi]

3) Players/DM's who insist on always hogging the spotlight. Everyone needs their time in the spotlight, so when it's shining on you feel free to ham it up. However, when you feel the need to always be the one in the spotlight, we have a problem.

Big problem in the campaign I play in. It also doesn't help that the main attention whore is also someone who likes to be a **** OOC and IC and usually plays characters that are for all intensive purposes meant to be ***** to the rest of the party.

Also if RP seems to have to have this player as its center or he just doesn't even want to do it and voices that opinion and tells us to get to another encounter with combat.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Big problem in the campaign I play in. It also doesn't help that the main attention whore is also someone who likes to be a **** OOC and IC and usually plays characters that are for all intensive purposes meant to be ***** to the rest of the party.

Also if RP seems to have to have this player as its center or he just doesn't even want to do it and voices that opinion and tells us to get to another encounter with combat.

Why don't you just make him leave?

[Flame of Anor]

The correct response to this is "He probably takes less than you do when you hit him at 500 feet per round. So how much will you be taking?"

Newton says you take the exact same amount of damage.

[ryu]

No they receive equal and opposite force. Little guy with less mass will feel more acceleration.

[ScionoftheVoid]

Newton says you take the exact same amount of damage.

Newton obviously didn't piss off his DM.

[Combat Reflexes]

Newton obviously didn't piss off his DM.

Newton is his own DM. Everybody obeys his laws.

[ScionoftheVoid]

Newton is his own DM. Everybody obeys his laws.

Einstein is the uppity new DM making houserules and switching the group to the newest edition.

A history of physics in the form of the dynamics of a D&D group, awesome.

[Combat Reflexes]

awesome.

Agreed


What's this? Players have found loopholes in Einstein's system!

[/derail]


ps. wasn't it Einstein who said "God doesn't play D&D."

[Qwertystop]

And then the kobolds trap the traps on their traps. A kobold silverware drawer is really just one very well-trapped fork.

Can I sig this?

[The Glyphstone]

Can I sig this?

It's not my quote originally, I stole it from someone else's sig a long time ago, but go for it.

[Flame of Anor]

Newton is his own DM. Everybody obeys his laws.

Newton hates catgirls.

[Razgriez]

The One PC show:
It happens every so often, but occasionally, an entire game session ends up revolving around one PC. Most of us have probably done this one time or another, and we've probably all had to deal with it at least once.

The reason why it kills fun is simple enough: it's because everyone else ends up doing nothing.

[big teej]

The One PC show:
It happens every so often, but occasionally, an entire game session ends up revolving around one PC. Most of us have probably done this one time or another, and we've probably all had to deal with it at least once.

The reason why it kills fun is simple enough: it's because everyone else ends up doing nothing.

on the other end of the spectrum

The Everyone But YOU show

this is the gaming session where everyone contributes (to some degree) except your character. this could be due to a failed save or x spell, a key element of your backstory preventing you from contributing, or a decision made without all the information required.

such as making a decision to stay outside the slum-tavern when the rest of the session will be spent there....

[Choco]

on the other end of the spectrum

The Everyone But YOU show

this is the gaming session where everyone contributes (to some degree) except your character. this could be due to a failed save or x spell, a key element of your backstory preventing you from contributing, or a decision made without all the information required.

such as making a decision to stay outside the slum-tavern when the rest of the session will be spent there....

Oh God, both of those are equally terrible. One time that really annoyed me is when we were just starting the much-looked-forward-to fight against a blue dragon and it's minions, which was to last all session. Very first round of combat, an enemy caster hits me with some paralysis spell (I think it was Hold Person) and I roll a 1 on my save. And of course I was the ONLY ONE in the party with any spells/items that could counter that spell. Lets just say it was quite a boring fight for me...

And while I'm here, let me present the flipside of the "The Everyone But YOU show" (and yes, versions of this have come up before too...):

The "So Let's Get Back To Me" Show
So the party goes off on a grand adventure, except of course one guy who for whatever reason refuses to go and insists on doing his own thing instead. Then every 5 minutes into the epic combat the party is in, he whines at the DM asking when he can play. The DM gives multiple chances for him to change his mind and jump into combat, but that's not good enough as he REALLY wants to do his own personal side quests. ALL THE TIME.

That in itself though is IMO just a subset of:

Mr. Solo-This guy always rolls characters who not only have no reason to be in the party, but in fact ARE NOT in the party most of the time. Whatever the party does, he just has to do something different by himself. And they can either go along with him or split the DM's time, because there is no way he is coming with the party, cause that's not "what his character would do."

Of course the solution to both of those is for the DM and rest of the party to say "Your character dies, now roll up one that can work with the group!"

[navar100]

The One PC show:
It happens every so often, but occasionally, an entire game session ends up revolving around one PC. Most of us have probably done this one time or another, and we've probably all had to deal with it at least once.

The reason why it kills fun is simple enough: it's because everyone else ends up doing nothing.

Thinks back to a particular Fantasy Warhammer game session during college.

<shudder>

DM Has A Crush:
Not related to above incident. DM has a crush on a player, teaching said player how to play in her first session. She Just Cannot Do Any Wrong. All NPCs agree with her. All her ideas work. She'll get hurt in combat, but she never gets to Death's Door. She will get the killing blow. The DM will constantly praise her how well she's doing.

[Elyssian]

DM Has A Crush:
Not related to above incident. DM has a crush on a player, teaching said player how to play in her first session. She Just Cannot Do Any Wrong. All NPCs agree with her. All her ideas work. She'll get hurt in combat, but she never gets to Death's Door. She will get the killing blow. The DM will constantly praise her how well she's doing.

I've had this happen a couple times with new groups but never so bad just a lot af hand holding to get the PC through the session, whats worse is when they want to help too much during character creation, IE sure you can bump up your charisma and dex to 18... even though you rolled nothing higher than 14 or sure you can have a bag of holding/wand/ect.

[Kjata]

God, I just read the entire thread, now I feel like I should contribute.

Mr. I am only good at this, so it's fair
This guy number crunches the hell out of his character to the point of ridiculousness, then justifies it by saying "but this is all I do." It doesn't matter that he can win any battle with any party that doesn't get one-shotted because he heals so well, or he is absolutely indestructible to anything that wouldn't insta kill anyone else, he says its fine because it's all he does.

AN example was during an M&M game. The player in question literally couldn't be hurt by anything than a LVL15 juggernaut that would absolutely squish anyone else. He even takes a hit with minimal damage, then complains that he was able to be damaged. The point wasn't to fight the damn thing, it was to lure it away from the city until it could calm down (it was a mutant baby, that when it got upset would grow to monstrous size and be godzilla). When everyone else realizes this, they try to lure it away. Which he then complains was unfair, because he was useless. The dm just looked at him and said "To damn bad, you made a character that is a one trick pony."

Mr. I make NPCc that are in god mode, then give you a way to help that actually bites you in the ass
The DM has a party of 5 lvl 10 characters plus a level 10 NpC fight 3 lvl 12s and a lvl 15. He game somebody a nullification blast, which when he uses nullifies everyone but the lvl 15 (including the party). This led to an argument which elevated to a screaming match, which ended the campaign and made one of my friends quit coming to our local gaming store for everything, including MTG tournaments.

Yeah, these were the same guy. 2 campaigns, 4 sessions. ALmost made me quit roleplaying games for good, seeing as how I was a new player and was only playing because my friends wanted me to play. I figured why play in a co-op game that had more complaints in a month than an entire year of playing a competetive game?

[Silus]

Not ragemode worthy, but still kinda annoying:

Mr. Can't/Won't get into the spirit of the game

This is particularly annoying when doing a horror game. My first campaign was a horror game in fact. Two players (out of 5) either couldn't or wouldn't get into the horror "mode". One was Mormon, so I reckon he didn't have much of a horror genre frame of reference, and the other was (I suppose) just not genre savvy enough (the guy went upstairs alone in a newly discovered house. Should have thrown the Evolved Shadows at him then).

[Choco]

Mr. I am only good at this, so it's fair
This guy number crunches the hell out of his character to the point of ridiculousness, then justifies it by saying "but this is all I do." It doesn't matter that he can win any battle with any party that doesn't get one-shotted because he heals so well, or he is absolutely indestructible to anything that wouldn't insta kill anyone else, he says its fine because it's all he does.

AN example was during an M&M game. The player in question literally couldn't be hurt by anything than a LVL15 juggernaut that would absolutely squish anyone else. He even takes a hit with minimal damage, then complains that he was able to be damaged. The point wasn't to fight the damn thing, it was to lure it away from the city until it could calm down (it was a mutant baby, that when it got upset would grow to monstrous size and be godzilla). When everyone else realizes this, they try to lure it away. Which he then complains was unfair, because he was useless. The dm just looked at him and said "To damn bad, you made a character that is a one trick pony."

Oh man, I hate people who make one trick ponies and then complain that they are useless in other situations. That alone completely destroys their argument of "but this is all I do." If the one thing you do is the only thing you ever allow the group to do, then it KINDA isn't fair is it? I wonder how people like that would react if someone else created a one trick pony (for a different trick of course) and always complained they are useless when forced to do the problem player's stuff. Actually I would love to see that happen, get an uber combat munchkin and an uber diplomancer munchkin together in a group and grab the popcorn....

I make one trick ponies myself on occasion, but I do so knowing that when outside my one thing I am going to be improvising like mad.

Also may as well add another one that I have noticed more often recently, that is really more sad then anything:

Mr. Lost Potential-As a player, this is the guy who writes a long and complex backstory, and otherwise just works with the DM to create a truly great character with great personality quirks and a great history. Then plays said character like a combat bot. If the player is new and/or has poor social/acting skills this is excusable, but I am talking about players that actually KNOW how to RP and have done it before, but for some reason just don't feel like it this time. As DM, this is the guy who creates a living, breathing world that is completely fleshed out, and then proceeds to run a kick in the door, monster of the week type game.

I guess both types of the above can just be summed up as having high expectations and then being let down. I guess some people wear themselves out before the game even starts!

[Totally Guy]

Roll until you succeed/fail gaming.

The other week I was playing in a mystery Delta Green game. And I was rolling a Library Use skill check.

Fail! Fail! Fail! Success! You get the information that tells you what to do next!

The is the reason we have things like "Take 10/20" and "Say Yes or roll the dice". If there's no consequence for failure then what's the point?

Alternatively, I'm trying to sneak through a palace to confront the count. But the GM thinks that being captured would be better. So you roll hide and move silently. But the more times you roll the better the chance that you'll fail. The GM can make the space arbitrarily large.

Room 1: Success Success
Room 2: Success Success
Room 3: Success Success
Room 4: Success Success
Room 5: Success Failure - Ha! You get captured and thrown into the Labyrinth of Knossos!

You roll until it comes the way the GM would prefer. And that frustrates me.