The Worst player you've ever had/seen/been/heard of

[Telwar]

I didn't help matters when I decided to have my Ranger jump off the wall, trying to skewer the Hill Giant in the back with his swords.... Oh... And the fact that the 4 of us were level 2 taking 3 Hill Giants!!

...Attack on Titan game?

[Marlowe]

...Attack on Titan game?

I seem to remember were a little higher level. Martina (my character. Yes, based on

Spoiler: THAT Martina, with a dash of Lina

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had been throwing around Fireballs earlier that same combat. But that particular DM just basically throws swarms big uglies at you in a constant gauntlet while his superpowerful NPCs sneer at you from the sidelines.

That combat also featured one of Gs more memorable moments. After we defeated one set of monsters, the town we were defending was immediately attacked by another set from a different quarter. G had stated (repeatedly) that his character would be prioritizing looting the bodies of the fallen at the first battle site (while the rest of us ran off to fight the newcomers), and then couldn't understand why the DM wouldn't let him lead the charge in the new battle. He did not seem to understand that his character couldn't be in two places at once and practically started threatening the DM and other players with violence for "trying to cheat me".

It's also the combat where I figured out that Ray of Enfeeblement is better than Scorching Ray. I was very new then.

But still, we don't seem to have good luck with Rangers.

[Sith_Happens]

What kind of adventurer gives up just because a door was locked?

The kind that's playing D&D 5e.

[dragonjek]

The worst player I've experienced was one who played Chaotic Neutral as Chaotic Stupid. We did somehow manage to get through to him that CN did not equate to random. He answered by playing a shapechanger who worshiped the campaign equivalent to a god of slaadi with an entire crate of potions that let loose wild magic effects with thrown or drunk, which he threw around with horrifying abandon that once got us sucked into Hell along with the dragon we were fighting.

[Inevitability]

Okay...

I think my first PBP game was an example of: 'how not to play D&D'. I played a warforged artificer in a magic item-less setting (yeah, I know), and then was surprised I wasn't performing as well as everyone else.

My RP was near-zero, and everytime there was a character-defining event, my character acted... inconsistent. His actions ranged from CDG'ing already incapacitated foes to trying to sacrifice himself in order to give the party more time to escape.

Not to mention that my guy was also pretty disruptive. His first IC words were basically: 'how about we go make some fake money and then exchange it for gold at the bank?'

Yeah, I get sick just from looking at that thread. I'm glad things have changed since then.

[Silus]

The kind that's playing D&D 5e.

"The door is locked and resists all your attempts to batter it down or pick the lock."
"...What's the wall made of?"

[Segev]

The kind that's playing D&D 5e.

How does 5e encourage this behavior more than any other edition?

[Necroticplague]

How does 5e encourage this behavior more than any other edition?

By making doors a lot harder to smash down.

[Segev]

By making doors a lot harder to smash down.

Could you elaborate a bit, please? I don't even know where in the rules to look to begin this analysis.

[icefractal]

It's a Strength check, like in 3E. However, Strength caps at 20 now. And is lower even for monsters. There's been some strangeness noticed, like the Tarrasque not being reliably able to break down a barred wooden door.

Also, I'm not sure if there are rules for simply smashing the door down with HP damage, generally the more reliable strategy. I mean, yes, you can still do it - I would hope any GM who claimed otherwise would be laughed at - but it's a common enough activity it shouldn't have to be arbitrated on the spot.

[Sith_Happens]

"The door is locked and resists all your attempts to batter it down or pick the lock."
"...What's the wall made of?"

"Doors. The wall is made of doors."
"What about the--"
"THE ENTIRE DUNGEON IS DOORS."

[BeerMug Paladin]

"Doors. The wall is made of doors."
"What about the--"
"THE ENTIRE DUNGEON IS DOORS."

You know, I'm extremely tempted to do this. The dungeon of More Door!

[Arbane]

You know, I'm extremely tempted to do this. The dungeon of More Door!

One does not just walk into More Doors.

One knocks first. It's just polite.

[BootStrapTommy]

I'm the worst player I've ever been. And theoretically the best I've ever been, existentially speaking...

Or it could have been when the DM killed 2 players in a fight and we learned he had no concept of encounter balance.

I have no concept of encounter balance. But neither do my players...

"Doors. The wall is made of doors."
"What about the--"
"THE ENTIRE DUNGEON IS DOORS."

This would really get my players going... They would break down all of them.

[blacklight101]

Current player that I have played my last two table games with has no concept of how to use her characters, their abilities, or roleplay a bit. Her worst one so far has been her second character, a Halfling rogue. Hiding, sneak attacks, and finding traps are all well-and-good; she takes this to such an extreme, like hiding before we try to go into a city -right infront of the town guards; trying to hide right beside the road instead of in the woods to ambush some orks. She will duck behind a couple barrels in a town and try to walk out from behind them, right down the middle of the street, still hidden. She just tries- and fails to- hide repeatedly, I hate to say its become a joke in our group now. "The only time she hides successfully is when she isn't here."

Hiding to try to sneak and observe someone is great, but this is a guy the DM said we could just go talk to. For some horrible reason, she uprooted some shrub (because she wanted to sneak behind cover in a desert) and crept around in it - but not in that funny cartoonish way. She was actually trying to make this work. At level 2.

She missed one trap. Once. In one place because she hadn't rolled well and then did the classic level of whining about how her character was bad and the game was unfair to her blah, blah. Now she obsessively searches every step of anywhere ingame that has a searchable tile. Granted, she does find traps now and then, but she does this to the degree that our DM told us (at a session she wasn't there) that she cut way down on traps after she started getting out of hand with it. After that we told her this too. She apparently didn't believe any of the group or the DM and continues the obsessive searching.

Sneak attacks are the other major in-character problem for her. She will complain that she doesn't get any opportunities to do any, but puts no effort into going around any of the enemies, or trying to sneak up a tree to get a shot with her crossbow, etc. We have tried to help her with this too, we have a good group like that most of the time. She is given chances to slip off and make her way around, but always says its too dangerous to go alone (our gnomes aren't the athletic types, so no climbing for them). Our DM tries to give all our characters a chance to shine now and then and pretty specifically, at times, points out which one of us it would be; nothing says the rest of us don't get the hint now and then. I think by level 6 she has only set her character up -other than by DM fiat- for something around 6 or 7 sneak attacks.

We try to help her with this, we really do. Last session, dice a book was thrown because she had "read up on the rules really well" and didn't pay attention to the multiple times our DM mentioned the word incorporeal, i.e. no sneak attacks. She actually did read most of the rules for sneak attack, but either missed or chose to ignore the couple sentences about the creatures it doesn't effect. The creatures we were fighting had two of the types: undead and incorporeal. She managed to worm her way back behind one of them and all we heard about for the next few minutes was how she finally gets a sneak attack after being given so few opportunities (when she wont take any put right in her face). Most of the group just stared at her for a second. For some reason I was the one that spoke up "Those are incorporeal undead, hon. It's regular damage. I think theyre immune to crits."

She replies with something akin to an "It can't be!" and flips hurriedly to the entry and skims through it. She finds what I was talking about.

I got to dodge a PHB that night. I did make my personal reflex save, by the by.


I know we are falling heavily into at least two of the fallacies of a gaming group, but sometimes she is a decent player and a good person to be around. Just, when things don't go her way... man, she throws a fit. She asks questions about her character's abilities and refuses to learn about her abilities in the same session and plods on in the same manner.




sorry for the tl;dr. I have a tendency to ramble.

[Mr Beer]

Wait, you helped someone out by telling them a relevant rule and they threw a book at your skull? I might take that quite badly.

[blacklight101]

Thats our problem player, alright. It definitely falls under the gaming group fallacies; its far smoother when she isnt gumming up the works. Like I said, she has her good and bad moments, the bad ones just really, really stick out.

[Milodiah]

2 stories of the worst players I've ever had, both in games of Delta Green, which is basically modern Call of Cthulhu with a touch of X-Files and conspiracy theory.

Spoiler: Wildman

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I wasn't GMing, but I was the person at the table with the most knowledge of the system, so the GM would occasionally look to me for help, and I was asked to help build a late-joining new player's character. He decided to play as an NSA agent, and the stats ended up so his starting sanity was 40. Now, 40 isn't good, but to give perspective one can still be a functioning member of society with 40 SAN, it's not insane asylum levels. I inform him that his character will probably be mildly neurotic, probably paranoia or something along those lines.

Terrible decision.

Scenario starts, hush-hush meeting with a contact in a warehouse. Even though the new guy's ostensibly on our team, he barges in separately from the rest of us, gun drawn, babbling nonsense as though he'd just squeezed out of a straitjacket and fought his way out of a padded room. We literally had to initiate combat to subdue him, and after disarming, cuffing, and I think gagging him we discovered, lo and behold, this is our new recruit. At this point I tried to explain to him that he should at least be pretending to be sane, otherwise he wouldn't get to be a government agent with a security clearance.

Game goes on. We were sent to check out a town that was literally vanishing, building by building, into the ground. Don't remember how, but an NPC refused to open up and let us, a group of total strangers who hadn't even introduced ourselves, into her home at 9 o'clock at night.

The guy kicks in the door, pistol whips her in the forehead, we manage to grapple with, physically restrain, and sedate a party member for the second time in as many hours for no apparent reason, and now we kinda have to explain this to the poor woman when she comes to.

Don't remember how it came to this (there weren't any armed hostiles in the scenario, so it was probably us), but shortly after killing another PC by knowingly handing them poisoned heroin (that PC was a recovering addict) he came to be beaten to an inch of his life to the point where his brain was peeking through a crack in his skull. I mercy-killed him, and the player drifted off, never to be seen again.

Second fellow's another murder-hobo, who was however taking the above advice and pretending to be sane.

Spoiler: Shovel Guy

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So I was invited to join an RPG group by a mutual friend, to whom I had introduced Delta Green. On the first night, however, he was sick and couldn't come, so I wound up being the stranger GM who was running a game for a group of people who had played together for months. Kinda awkward, obviously, but I wanted this to be my good first impression.

I didn't realize, however, that two of the four people actually weren't members of the core group, and had been recruited to basically fill party space.

First guy's a nice fellow, but pretty much never can be relied on to stay at the table. I don't know if it's the availability heuristic at work here, but all three times I've played with him, something came up and he had to rush home because of his wife, or his mother, or his dog, etc. Not his fault, of course, but still a little bothersome for the rest of us.

Second guy, however, should have thrown up red flags from the start. He's an FBI agent, and willingly reconfigures his already good stats to make INT and EDU a dump and turn himself into a towering bruiser (anyone who's played Call of Cthulhu can see the problem here, mechanically as well as idea-wise). Gives his Caucasian FBI agent a single Japanese-sounding name, which I cannot recall but would put money on being a character from Naruto. Asks if he can make Throw (as in knives) a professional skill, and I hesitantly allow it. After all, it's not like he asked for dual katanas or anything.

Game starts, disappearances are to be investigated in a Native American reservation in Arizona. They're caught in a jurisdictional...awkwardness...between the local sheriff, the Feds, and the state police, of whom the main representative, Major Garrett, is specifically written to be abrasive and boorish. I depict this faithfully, and it irritates the characters as is meant to be. More on that later, though...first...

They're investigating a house from which someone has disappeared. He's searching a closet alone, and finds a bloodied Winchester rifle that's clearly been recently used in brutal hand-to-hand combat. He opts to steal it. Yes, an FBI agent deliberately conceals key evidence just so he can come back and take it for himself later, when no one's looking.

Now, Major Garrett...they've spotted a strange reflection on the horizon from a helicopter, which turns out to be a buried car in the desert. They drive out with Major Garrett to investigate, and the major hands them all shovels and tells them to dig it up. Naturally he doesn't pull his fair share of the work. This incenses the psychopath, who tells me he's going to "accidentally" hit him in the head with a shovel. Roll is botched, and the major realizes that was a deliberate attack. Major pulls his nightstick, Shovel Guy overpowers him, and beats him to an inch of his life with the shovel while the other PCs look on in horror. He then gets on the phone and calls his boss to try to cover up the thing his boss has yet to, and possibly will never, find out about. Botches the roll. So the PCs are now standing in the desert, being held at gunpoint by this psycho while they all patiently wait for a helicopter full of SWAT guys to show up and bring down the nutcase. He tries to introduce a new character the same character as an identical twin who happens to have the same job and skills.

Suffice it to say the game trailed off after that, and fortunately it wasn't a group-breaker. We still have weekly gaming nights, and enjoy each other's company in the absence of psychopaths.

[azoetia]

The worst player with whom I've gamed is pretty tame compared to a lot of these horror stories. But I'm still glad he's gone.

His biggest issue is that he slept through sessions, only waking up for combat. The only way he'd stay awake is if someone left a muted television on; he'd stare at informercials all night with half-lidded eyes, only peeling them away for combat. In the campaign where he did this the most his PC was the main character and his personal story was central to what everyone else was doing, but he couldn't be bothered to take part in very much of it. Gradually the other characters took over and shifted the focus onto what they wanted to do. We have so many hilarious stories from that campaign, just crazy things the PCs did or got themselves into, that we still talk about to this day. And his character is totally absent from any of them except for occasionally telling everyone not to do something cool or fun.

I DMed a campaign a year later in which I pre-generated PCs and let everyone draw one at random. This wasn't anything I forced on anyone; there was consensual buy-in to the concept, which was experimental and remains the only time we have ever done this. Two of the players got a kick out of their characters because one was getting to play his favourite type of PC and go nuts while the other was enjoying the challenge of playing something completely new for him. But sleepyhead seemed discontented and gradually became more and more unhappy and would randomly pout without saying why, eventually telling me, "This campaign was a good idea in theory but it was a total dud in execution." He was the only one not having loads of fun, but somehow the entire thing was an objective failure in his eyes, and more importantly my fault. He never said why he didn't enjoy the game and never gave any useful feedback, but I got the feeling it was because his randomly chosen character was a woman.

Soon after that he DMed one session of what was supposed to be a new campaign. He repeatedly singled out my character to get victimized or miraculously miss the DC of every challenge by 1, so that skill DCs (announced after my roll) were consistently odd numbers like 17 if I rolled a 16 or 21 if I rolled a 20. That campaign lasted all of an hour. Afterward I said, "What the hell was that?" and he just shrugged.

[Arbane]

Soon after that he DMed one session of what was supposed to be a new campaign. He repeatedly singled out my character to get victimized or miraculously miss the DC of every challenge by 1, so that skill DCs (announced after my roll) were consistently odd numbers like 17 if I rolled a 16 or 21 if I rolled a 20. That campaign lasted all of an hour. Afterward I said, "What the hell was that?" and he just shrugged.

Wow, that's impressively petty.
For future reference, the best way to deal with that is to 'forget' a +1 from something, then add it in AFTER he says you've missed.

[azoetia]

Wow, that's impressively petty.
For future reference, the best way to deal with that is to 'forget' a +1 from something, then add it in AFTER he says you've missed.

Oh, as soon as I called him out on it he stopped, but then he made my fighter lose her sword hand in the first combat, had her nearly bleed out, and then imposed massive permanent penalties. This was executed with secret rolls, bizarre circumstances, and a smug grin. It wasn't for a story hook or anything interesting, it was just to be a **** toward specifically my character.

So I quit.

He did run one more session a year later. I had a new significant other and wanted to introduce her to gaming after having talked up how great our group was. A friend who is a fantastic GM but who is very difficult to talk into running a game had had a burst of creativity and put together a really amazingly developed and compelling setting that we had been using for about a month. Unfortunately he had had a really bad day and was too exhausted to run the game that evening, but was fine with someone stepping in for him while he played that person's character. Sleepyhead said "I'll GM!" and got thoroughly hammered before utterly destroying the campaign. He ran roughshod over the entire world and turned it into burning chaos, screwed over the PCs, and concentrated all the action on whores and stupid hi-jinks that didn't interest anyone else. By the time I stormed out in disgust and embarrassment he was just grinning stupidly with his eyes closed, telling people to make various random rolls that came to his head about things like drugs and hookers while chuckling to himself. At that point there wasn't even a story anymore, just a drunk GM saying, "Hey you, roll for if you're high on heroin, ha ha ha." This was the last time that he ever gamed with my group, but he took the campaign down with him. The experience was so universally sour that we all took two years off from gaming. The guy who created the setting was just going "I'm sorry, I had no idea he was going to do that. I just wanted the week off."

[Honest Tiefling]

I hope your significant other was not scared off by that...I admit, I might have been if that was my first encounter.

And I'll add in one of my worst moments: When I first saw the rules, I tried to convince the DM to allow me to be another player's griffon animal companion. I am not surprised they were not impressed by this decision of mine, nor gave me any lee-way in making characters after that. (In my defense, the druid player seemed excited by it)

[azoetia]

I hope your significant other was not scared off by that...I admit, I might have been if that was my first encounter.

Nope, she could tell that that wasn't normal by my reaction. Eventually when we got back to it she took his place and is still with us (and me specifically) today.

[Arbane]

It wasn't for a story hook or anything interesting, it was just to be a **** toward specifically my character.

So I quit.

Definitely the best decision.

He did run one more session a year later. I had a new significant other and wanted to introduce her to gaming after having talked up how great our group was. A friend who is a fantastic GM but who is very difficult to talk into running a game had had a burst of creativity and put together a really amazingly developed and compelling setting that we had been using for about a month. Unfortunately he had had a really bad day and was too exhausted to run the game that evening, but was fine with someone stepping in for him while he played that person's character.

Definitely the worst decision.

This was the last time that he ever gamed with my group, but he took the campaign down with him. The experience was so universally sour that we all took two years off from gaming.

Wow, that's terrible. Nobody wanted to just say 'that session never happened'?

Now, one I saw on Tumblr today (it's long):

Spoiler: Chronicles of Camelguy, and Dwhitler’s Document.

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This is the story of my very first Pathfinder campaign, my introduction to tabletop gaming. This will mostly be revolving around the antics my character (Finn the rogue) got into with another player’s PCs,

We had a couple of other people involved, all of whom were also new, and they came and went throughout the campaign.

Camelguy, the cavalier, was the only player who had any previous experience, and for some reason, all of the many times he had played before, everybody lost interest very quickly.

Camelguy’s namesake was due to his mount, a large camel that for some reason or another had nearly three times as much health as the rest of the party, even the Barbarian.

We set off from town on our first quest as a group, stuck in a single file line due to a narrow road. Immediately he decides that despite the fact that he had a strong mount, he would be standing in the middle of the group. This prevented him from charging, and left our new lightly armoured barbarian to take up the front. Eventually, we managed to convince him to lead us onwards, when we got into our first combat.

His mount was hit twice, and still had twice as much health as the rest of us, but he then hid behind the rest of us and adamantly refused to be on the front line again.

Later on, we end up in combat with our first group of intelligent enemies. At this point, we had stumbled upon them as they finished killing a group of merchants. This is the moment Camelguy decides to inform us that he is a member of the Order of the Blue Rose. Due to this, he forbid us from engaging in combat until he finished negotiating with them. Obviously this didn’t work out because these bandits just wiped out some innocent merchants, and once we get attacked he continues to avoid directly contributing to combat because he didn’t want to get damaged, even though we had a healer with all of his daily spells remaining.

As we’re cleaning up the battle, one of the bandits starts to run away, so I take out my back-up bow, and try to maim him so that we can catch him. I stated this as I began my attack action. I missed my first shot and he proceeded to tackle me to the ground, grab my bow, and then break it over his knee, because I had been trying to cause needless bloodshed by hurting the vicious murderer.

I was obviously pretty pissed, he didn’t need to destroy my gear, but I just grumbled and moved on not intending to make a scene.

Much later, this happened AGAIN, but the enemy I was aiming for was an archer. He was still actively attacking us, but apparently we could have talked him down instead of hurting him. That’s when everybody told him he was overstepping his boundaries.

The next session, Camelguy showed up with a new character because “Nobody likes the way I play my Cavalier, so apparently I had to make a new character for you guys.”

This is when he introduced us to his Dwarf Wizard, who’s back story was dreaming of attaining ultimate enlightenment which he would then use to eradicate all non-dwarves. My character was, coincidentally, the only non-dwarf in the party other than his cavalier at the time. All the while, he argued he was Neutral Good. This is why his character’s name was quickly forgotten because we would constantly refer to him from that point on as Dwhitler.

Dwhitler had no spells that were useful in combat, and every single time we went to town and suggested he buy himself some scrolls to learn, he would try to murder the shopkeeper and steal everything in the store. Thankfully the GM veto’d that course of action, but he was always too cheap to spend any money to get useful spells. He actually sat out of combat nearly every single fight. The GM even offered him half price scrolls, just to convince him to get something useful, but he refused to spend his money. We had even offered to buy them for him, but he said his character was too proud to accept charity.

Later on, we end up “accepting a quest” from a drunk man who was complaining about the native population stirring up trouble. It turns out the pesky natives were demanding the many acres of land that was stolen from them was returned to them.

This ended with our party going on a diplomacy mission to meet up with the local tribesmen and negotiate land ownership. I never stopped reminding the party that we actually had no authority over the situation, and were only here because of the drunken ramblings of a racist capitalist.

Now, I was the only one of the party to have put points into social skills, and was delegated to the role of the party’s “Face”, so of course I was in charge of these negotiations we had no actual right to engage in.

Throughout my attempts to negotiate, Dwhitler would interrupt me both in character and out every couple sentences to correct me over semantics like “don’t say ‘we’ would like to speak to you, you have to say ‘they’ because if they get mad at the city of Belta, we don’t want them to get mad at us!” despite the fact that Belta was the only city for miles due to the recent colonization attempts.

Eventually, I got sick of him interrupting me and passed control of the situation over to him for the next day of negotiations. When we woke up in the morning, our dwarves had felt strange vibrations through the ground, and there was a large amount of smoke coming from the peak of a nearby “mountain”. Obviously there was an active volcano nearby.

The next day within five minutes, he had managed to piss off the entire gathering of all of the local tribesmen. He had stated that the Beltans were going to be taking the land. When the locals said they weren’t alright with that, he said that it was going to happen regardless. When they expressed outright rage at the thought, Dwhitler decided to tell them that since we weren’t going to be able to go home with good news about the land issue, we needed to come back with offerings. He asked the natives to pay tribute to us to keep us from stealing their land.

A large orc, leader of a tribe living on the now smoking mountain gets up, and says that if the foreigners were going to be so forceful, he would kill anyone that got anywhere near his mountain, and if the mountain spirit became any more agitated than it had become since the establishment of the city, he would declare outright war.

Dwhitler responds by igniting the ancient racial tensions between dwarves and orcs by calling after the warchief and saying “Please, friend! There’s no need to be so sensitive! I love orcs! I was raised by orcs!” Obviously this was a complete and utter lie. That didn’t make things much better for us. We were now getting kicked out, and the huge population of natives attending this meeting (there were roughly three times as many warriors as there were Beltans at this meeting) all wanted us to go back from whence we came.

Now, knowing that volcano was ready to blow any moment, causing the locals to go into a frenzy and wipe out the city’s population that had no idea we were even out here, most of whom didn’t even know the natives weren’t happy with the situation with the land, my chaotic neutral self had to do something to slow the impeding war efforts, at least long enough to get the city to prepare itself.

For some reason, as I had found out after scouting the village out the night before, the tribes had a communal food storage area that all of the tribes contributed to and used. My reasoning was that should they have no food stocked, they would have to focus on replenishing their food supplies instead of waging all out war with our poor community. So I did the only thing a rogue could do in the situation. I tried to destroy their food supplies. When I went and tried to set the area on fire, I was told that this room was made entirely of stone, and the food was also all grains that were inflammable. Okay, that’s inconvenient, but give me a minute and I can figure this out. I leave the area to go find my friend’s druid.

Now, at this point, everybody out of character knows what I’m up to. Dwhitler decides that he doesn’t want to let me carry out my mission, and the moment my character runs into him, he starts interrogating me about what I had been up to in an attempt to get me to slip up so he had an in character reason to attack me.

Multiple successful bluff checks later, I grab a hold of my druid friend, and manage to sneak back to the food supplies while Dwhitler is arguing with another party member over whether or not it was okay for him to be harassing me with so many questions just because I wasn’t a Dwarf.

Once we get back downstairs, I get my friend to cast the cantrip “Summon Water” on the grain until it is soaked through and going to mold.

We return to the party, and as we’re leaving Dwhitler once again starts grilling me about my activities. He still can’t beat my multiple bluff checks, so he turns to my friend who had a horrible charisma stat and no points in bluff. Two or three attempts and he realizes that my friend is lying.

This ends with me getting attacked immediately afterwards, before they even figure out the truth. I end up surrendering after nearly getting destroyed by the rest of the party while the druid is left alone.

They then proceed to bring me to the tribe’s chief and turn me in, all without even asking me what we had done.

Due to our GM being incredibly merciful, twenty minutes later and I had just lost all of my money, gear, and magic items. (I had the only magical items, and the more gold than the rest of the group combined due to smart decisions and kinder rewards.) I was literally naked, and I had been bound and stranded in the middle of the desert. The druid wasn’t implicated by the rest of the party, and I had no intention of bringing him down with me, so I was all alone out there.

That was the last most people ever heard of Finn the rogue. A strange coincidence did occur where the friendly monk in the party (the one who had distracted Dwhitler when he had been harassing me with questions) happened upon an unlucky cleric, who had been robed of all he owned, and helped him get back on his feet.

Thus began the tale known as: The Revenge of “Ginn the ‘Cleric’”.

[TechnoWarforged]

THis is Call of Cthulhu, Ofcourse there will be Psychopaths!

The Fact that these psychopaths happens to be FBI agents just happens to be a plot twist.

2 stories of the worst players I've ever had, both in games of Delta Green, which is basically modern Call of Cthulhu with a touch of X-Files and conspiracy theory.

Spoiler: Wildman

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I wasn't GMing, but I was the person at the table with the most knowledge of the system, so the GM would occasionally look to me for help, and I was asked to help build a late-joining new player's character. He decided to play as an NSA agent, and the stats ended up so his starting sanity was 40. Now, 40 isn't good, but to give perspective one can still be a functioning member of society with 40 SAN, it's not insane asylum levels. I inform him that his character will probably be mildly neurotic, probably paranoia or something along those lines.

Terrible decision.

Scenario starts, hush-hush meeting with a contact in a warehouse. Even though the new guy's ostensibly on our team, he barges in separately from the rest of us, gun drawn, babbling nonsense as though he'd just squeezed out of a straitjacket and fought his way out of a padded room. We literally had to initiate combat to subdue him, and after disarming, cuffing, and I think gagging him we discovered, lo and behold, this is our new recruit. At this point I tried to explain to him that he should at least be pretending to be sane, otherwise he wouldn't get to be a government agent with a security clearance.

Game goes on. We were sent to check out a town that was literally vanishing, building by building, into the ground. Don't remember how, but an NPC refused to open up and let us, a group of total strangers who hadn't even introduced ourselves, into her home at 9 o'clock at night.

The guy kicks in the door, pistol whips her in the forehead, we manage to grapple with, physically restrain, and sedate a party member for the second time in as many hours for no apparent reason, and now we kinda have to explain this to the poor woman when she comes to.

Don't remember how it came to this (there weren't any armed hostiles in the scenario, so it was probably us), but shortly after killing another PC by knowingly handing them poisoned heroin (that PC was a recovering addict) he came to be beaten to an inch of his life to the point where his brain was peeking through a crack in his skull. I mercy-killed him, and the player drifted off, never to be seen again.

Second fellow's another murder-hobo, who was however taking the above advice and pretending to be sane.

Spoiler: Shovel Guy

Show

So I was invited to join an RPG group by a mutual friend, to whom I had introduced Delta Green. On the first night, however, he was sick and couldn't come, so I wound up being the stranger GM who was running a game for a group of people who had played together for months. Kinda awkward, obviously, but I wanted this to be my good first impression.

I didn't realize, however, that two of the four people actually weren't members of the core group, and had been recruited to basically fill party space.

First guy's a nice fellow, but pretty much never can be relied on to stay at the table. I don't know if it's the availability heuristic at work here, but all three times I've played with him, something came up and he had to rush home because of his wife, or his mother, or his dog, etc. Not his fault, of course, but still a little bothersome for the rest of us.

Second guy, however, should have thrown up red flags from the start. He's an FBI agent, and willingly reconfigures his already good stats to make INT and EDU a dump and turn himself into a towering bruiser (anyone who's played Call of Cthulhu can see the problem here, mechanically as well as idea-wise). Gives his Caucasian FBI agent a single Japanese-sounding name, which I cannot recall but would put money on being a character from Naruto. Asks if he can make Throw (as in knives) a professional skill, and I hesitantly allow it. After all, it's not like he asked for dual katanas or anything.

Game starts, disappearances are to be investigated in a Native American reservation in Arizona. They're caught in a jurisdictional...awkwardness...between the local sheriff, the Feds, and the state police, of whom the main representative, Major Garrett, is specifically written to be abrasive and boorish. I depict this faithfully, and it irritates the characters as is meant to be. More on that later, though...first...

They're investigating a house from which someone has disappeared. He's searching a closet alone, and finds a bloodied Winchester rifle that's clearly been recently used in brutal hand-to-hand combat. He opts to steal it. Yes, an FBI agent deliberately conceals key evidence just so he can come back and take it for himself later, when no one's looking.

Now, Major Garrett...they've spotted a strange reflection on the horizon from a helicopter, which turns out to be a buried car in the desert. They drive out with Major Garrett to investigate, and the major hands them all shovels and tells them to dig it up. Naturally he doesn't pull his fair share of the work. This incenses the psychopath, who tells me he's going to "accidentally" hit him in the head with a shovel. Roll is botched, and the major realizes that was a deliberate attack. Major pulls his nightstick, Shovel Guy overpowers him, and beats him to an inch of his life with the shovel while the other PCs look on in horror. He then gets on the phone and calls his boss to try to cover up the thing his boss has yet to, and possibly will never, find out about. Botches the roll. So the PCs are now standing in the desert, being held at gunpoint by this psycho while they all patiently wait for a helicopter full of SWAT guys to show up and bring down the nutcase. He tries to introduce a new character the same character as an identical twin who happens to have the same job and skills.

Suffice it to say the game trailed off after that, and fortunately it wasn't a group-breaker. We still have weekly gaming nights, and enjoy each other's company in the absence of psychopaths.

[FearlessGnome]

I have been runnng my first tabletop campaign for the last few weeks. I have a player playing a Paladin. A Paladin who:

1) Robs rotting commoner corpses, loots houses belonging to dead NPCs, and lies when convenient.

2) Absolutely refuses to deal with evil characters.

3) Has sworn to murder all undead he comes across, whether they are evil or not.

It just seems to me that number 1 and 2 don't go together that well. It's not bad enough to make him Fall, but... Seriously? You'll rob someone's house without knowing whether they have relatives who have a right to their stuff, but you refuse to hear out the Lawful Evil nobleman who has an interest in your quest succeeding?

And number 3 is just... Yeah, the campaign involves a lot of undead enemies, but you've got Detect Evil as a class feature, man. One of these days he's going to come across an exalted undead florist in the middle of a city and he's going to Fall.

I realize he's nowhere near as bad as some of these guys, but it's creating a lot of frustration in the group. Last session the party had to lock him up in a dungeon so they could strike a bargain with a minor demon who was willing to tell them who the local big bad was in exchange for letting it go.

[Honest Tiefling]

I cannot say that one is entirely the player's fault...The PHB does say, do not associate with evil and punish those who harm innocents, not to mention, don't do evil acts. Did you at all make it clear that you intended him to have a different sort of oath, or that the gods had a different pact with their followers?

[Mr Beer]

Continual corpse looting would end up making him Fall if I was running it, unless he donated every coin to charity or something.

[Arbane]

Continual corpse looting would end up making him Fall if I was running it, unless he donated every coin to charity or something.

Paladins only fall for evil acts. If looting corpses was evil, there wouldn't be a single PC in all of D&Ddom north of Neutral.

[FearlessGnome]

I cannot say that one is entirely the player's fault...The PHB does say, do not associate with evil and punish those who harm innocents, not to mention, don't do evil acts. Did you at all make it clear that you intended him to have a different sort of oath, or that the gods had a different pact with their followers?

It does, but it also talks about exceptions when there's a bigger bad to be fought. And *listening* to the evil but lawfully appointed (Well, born) nobleman who wants to help you stop a plague of undead doesn't sound like it should be a hard choice. Plus the inconsistency with going out of his way to burglarize dead NPCs and swearing to murder non-evil undead whereever he finds them and all that.

I did make it clear that I wouldn't be too strict with the code of conduct, since I wanted him to be able to work well with the group (Which is a mix of Good and Neutral, with one (intelligent) exalted character), but that point he just brings up when the exalted guy tells him not to burglarize people.