In all the  years  I GMed here, I  Kicked  one  player out  who became overly excessive  on 'how the game should me"...nope? My game... I take in put, but not demands... it bubbled over into the game where actions effected  other Characters..so..yeah. he was gone...I don't get paid  enough  to put up with that.

the flip side, I had a pair of players who seemed dead set  on  messing up each other's RP.... a PM  that said "..if you can't get along, perhaps  this isn't the game for you".

 they  settled down  and have been decent  players  for the last couple years.

 My advice..as a GM/DM... you run the game how you envision it...look at  requests  and suggestions  sent to you in PM with an eye that says " will this help the game"

 I have seen players in the past ( tons of the  in the older days  before I came here)..that are  only there  to screw up games...Don't let them ruin the game for you as a GM, or the other players.

The flip-side is, RPOL makes it extremely easy to deal with players whose style of play rubs yoh the wrong way.  Your game, run it your way...there's nothing that says you can't PM a player and say, "I feel like your approach to the game is flippant and impeding the experience for others, and I'd appreciate you taking things more seriously or finding a game that fits your style better."

Granted, with everything already said about cause and effect and consequences...doing that will have repercussions.  He could quit and take other players with him, he could bad-mouth about you to everyone he knows...other players could take exception to your method and jump ship.  It's largely a question of how much his play-style bothers you.

The whole 'consequences' thing may be too burdensome to correct the current problem...but instituting it right from the start in future games could spare you additional frustration.  Personally, I've always played my characters with the thought that their actions would have consequences...sometimes they talk big, but it's generally either a situation where they've already beaten the bad guy, or they have reinforcements coming and even if they get slapped down for mouthing off to the Big Bad, it will set up the reinforcements for a great initial strike, or the situation appears beyond all hope and the best apparent option is to make a brave stand and go down swinging.  But I had the benefit of having a string of GMs, when I was getting into gaming, who operated with the philosophy of, "I will not kill your character...but if you decide to do something suicidally stupid, I won't save your character, either."  That did a lot to encourage thinking about the possible fallout of your actions...
This message was last edited by the user at 05:30, Wed 08 Aug 2018.

Indeed.. with  what facemaker  said.... in  my  RTJ interviews  I state..and sometimes have the Vets  recount it in OOC....".. I am not a character Killer, but if you walk into a Dragon's mouth, to get the gem stuck in its teeth , yoou are going to get eaten"

Heh. I had a similar situation once. Player started out making some helpful suggestions, but over the course of several weeks his ongoing suggestions became demands, he was 'flipping off' a local gang leader that I'd already warned him not to antagonize, both IC and OOC, and he even wanted to dictate how I handled recruits to the game. He resigned the day I was going to fire him.



A man (or woman?) after my own heart. :)

Most of the comments are about irritating (or worse) the more powerful characters or monsters, but even the barmaid at the local dive probably has friends and family.  They might not attack you face to face, but they can sure make your life miserable, even deadly if you persist in being rude and insulting to her.  No fire in your room, or it's in the attic?  So sorry.  Cramps all night because there was a little extra something in your dinner or drink?  Oh, dear, you must have caught the 'bug' that's been going around.  And if you still don't get it, next you find all the inns are full, a lot of the shops are very expensive, none have any (decent) food left, or it's actually a deadly poison next time.

There is an NPC Mafia boss in one of my games that, should someone disrespect him, he apologizes to them and concludes their meeting immediately. If they get the point and apologize, he will forgive them up to three times. After that, or if they don't apologize for disrespecting him, he puts a hit out on them as soon as they leave. He has been disrespected in a game exactly one time.

By sheer coincidence, I was looking through my back threads for something else, and stumbled across an example of an IC warning I gave to set a scene:

Lincoln’s Inn.
Mr Price was sitting at his desk as Alexander entered the office. He cocked half an ear to his assistant’s query as he continued to browse a sheaf of papers.
“Oh, he’s contacted you, has he? That’s good. The Earl is perhaps the stoutest string I can pull for your friends.” He looked over his glasses. “Make sure everyone is on their best behaviour when you meet him, Alexander, the Lord Chief Justice of Middlesex is not a man that you  - or I - would desire to offend.”

This was a great group of players, who would be sensible without a heads up, but I often add guidelines automatically.

Apologies for the italics, but Rpol won't let me post the extract as a quote!

I'll comment first when someone referenced LoTR, and the council that decided upon the fellowship.    While the whole saga is told around the hobbits, you also have to remember that they were (as far as the rest of the world was concerned) nobody.   What was going to happen to them was going to be decided without them having any say or input.

Edit: The two things to bear most often in mind are "Actions have Consequences" as well as "Player Characters tend to have Delusions of Grandeur".

Concerning social conventions:
You might be a high-level fighter, but you're still just a farmer with knife as far as the rest of the world is concerned.    So don't be surprised when the King doesn't have time to deal with you and you get shuffled off onto some low level courtier.

You might be the youngest son of a high ranking noble, but unless you're the heir, then you're expected to do what you're told.    See the movie Solomon Kane for an idea how that tends to work.

You might be the newest hotshot prodigy, but you're still a grunt.

And so on.

---

You also have to be careful on how you handle modern ideas in a non-modern setting.   Yeah, a flying machine might seem like a great idea...but where did the idea come from.    The old AD&D flashlight idea jumps to mind.

As an example:
While alcohol use was common in medieval times, many players still try to stop underage drinking.   Even though that's what everyone drank because the water wasn't safe to drink.
See Life on a Mediaeval Barony by William Stearns Davis for a basic grasp of social structure of the time period.
This message was last edited by the user at 03:21, Thu 09 Aug 2018.

Except the Ringbearer, who was seen as touched by Fate enough to have a voice in Council despite humble origins.  Tolkien Elves took the machinations of Fate very seriously.  Otherwise, largely true - the Hobbit species was generally seen, by those who even knew they existed, as rustic, naive and unimportant.

The Hobbits, though, were not D&D characters.  Aragorn, Legolas, Gandalf, Boromir, and Gimli represent much more archetypal D&D characters.  The Hobbits were part of their escort quest.  Appropriately for players, they lost the two important ones.

IF the issue is the players being "too big for their britches", then the NPCs need to be bumped up.  The King need not be a high-level anything, but his guards should be.  In a Fantasy setting his guards should be at least the same level as the highest level PC or higher.  And there should be a least one Mage and Cleric near the King.  It would be a suicide run.  Remember, those guards have adventured before becoming royal guards. And they have magic items too.

If it's just a character not being afraid of something that can kill him, look at video game players. Thye have become used to running head-on into deadly situations because if you die, you respawn. Or, as in the case of WoW, there really are not deadly situations until you reach major bosses. This is the mental state they have.

And let's face it, its hard to scared of what you're reading. No one wants to play the coward.  We can do that in real life.  In the game, we want to be bigger and stronger than our real selves.

I think there's a wide gap between 'playing a coward' and 'displaying appropriate caution.'  You don't have to quake and cower at every major threat...or ANY major threat, for that matter.  But displaying some recognition that, say, this alien creature that you've never seen before, or the mature dragon whose lair you just stumbled into, could seriously mess you up adds dimension to the game.  You can still go ahead and attack...but the rest of your group will resent having to drag out what's left of your mangled corpse a lot less if you didn't just blindly charge in, totally heedless of the danger (unless that's just how your character is...I played in a party with a paladin who was like that, and it became a major and enjoyable part of the game, protecting the paladin from his own stupidity...but it was a character choice by the player, not just a player who charged headlong into everything.  He sometimes spent a lot of time fretting over the fact that he was likely to lose his character going after this or that bad guy, and making sure that he wasn't screwing the game up for anyone else by playing that way.)

I suspect your point about MMO tactics becoming part of 'regular' RPGs is a big part of the problem...but I never got into MMOs, so I have no first-hand experience to support that assertion.

I second the assertion that mmo thinking likely plays into it, though I am of the opinion that mmos were designed based on "playing the rules" type of play and thus the two have entered into a feedback loop, strengthening that type of thinking both at the table and the monitor.

Kill them.

In reply to engine (msg # 9):


If you got people together for a volleyball game and one person was diving under the net and tackling opponents because he wanted to play rugby, what would you do?

Or you could just wound them enough to show them their butts can be kicked -- that they are not the baddest-apple son of a buckwheat in the valley.

Players such as those described should be made to understand they do not always have enough firepower, that bigger, badder, and stronger adversaries await them as they gain experience.  That sometimes they can run into those bigger, badder and stronger adversaries before they are ready.

If you can't make them understand that, go ahead, nuke 'em from orbit.  It's the only way to be sure.
This message was last edited by the user at 07:42, Mon 13 Aug 2018.

there are worst things  then killing them...

If they are just sloppy,  they get wounded.. lose a level..knocked  down in rank ect ect.

 If they  are hurting  the game.. or  do , overly stupid stuff...then, of course, they die.

Lol. the last few posts remind me of the 'cut their gooseberries off' sketch on the UK comedy show Not the Nine O'Clock News, a couple of decades back. (Edit: it's on You Tube, but I'm probably not allowed to link to it).

I like the volleyball analogy. :)
This message was last edited by the user at 05:46, Mon 13 Aug 2018.

Yeah, those are all viable alternatives to the nuke from orbit thing, but I think the original poster's take on this is that the character(s) in question have already hurt a game or games.

Anyhoo, here we are suggesting, in the words of Khan Noonian Singh, that the GM hurt such players, and go on hurting them.  That's gotta take the fun out of it for somebody (probably somebody for whom RPGs are about "winning" and "losing".)

Any D&D style world (or Traveller style world) I've ever played in was a mean son of a biscuit eater to players such as this.

A little home-brewed monster like the Giggle Stones (which cause any who pick them up to laugh uncontrollably until they pass out, then become from 2-12 new Giggle Stones if they fail their saving throw vs paralysis) can also add spice to a campaign.  There are all sorts of traps the GM can set for the unwary that are not traps in the classical sense.

The correctives that can be applied in these types of situations are virtually limitless (or, more correctly, only as limited as the GM's fiendish imagination).

I'm not suggesting any vindictiveness or vengeful motive on the part of the GM is at all necessary.  Consider these occasions "teachable moments", if you will.  Become the impartial, dispassionate, uncaring Chaos at the center of your universe.

I mean, what character of any level wants a piece of that?

I've found that that attitude is worse than useless, it's actively harmful.

I would not necessarily call it actively harmful, no more than giving a sound butt-kicking to someone who thinks they can interfere with your volleyball game. That said, I do think most people deserve a "talking to" first, just to make sure they aren't simply misunderstanding things, which is sadly very possible given that no one wants to admit to the varieties of rpg styles as being anything more complex than combat vs intrigue.

But that "talking to" need not always be a literal ooc talk. Sometimes things can be done in-game to make things evidently different from expectations, and not all such options need to be the sort that kicks the pcs butt.

Just look to movies, books, comics, and other media for all kinds of ideas.

It happens in many stories that the bad guy gets away and/or achieves the next step of their plans without defeating the heroes in combat.

Sometimes the villain is distracting the heroes while minions steal the mcguffin, then escape.

Another thing that has happened in a game I played in, though for different reasons, was we went after the bbeg, and the whole time the bbeg sat in her throne while her guards fought us, until our monk attacked the bbeg directly killing her with a single blow, only to discover that the bbeg was actually the kidnapped girl we were sent to rescue under an illusion, thus our monk actually killed the girl were trying to rescue.

Doing something similar might drive home the need to avoid making assumptions about who to attack.

Not some, all people.


Yes it should be.  Otherwise all your showing is that it is a competition of who can win.  And the GM can always win.

Honestly, it's usually us as GMs that are at fault when players get this way.  We have coddled them and gave them way too much magic or OP characters and they start to get that unkillable feeling. I can't say I have ever seen a 1st level character that didn't cringe in fear for the 2nd giant centipede they met.  :-)

In reply to Nazid (msg # 50):

Usually but not always.    Back when I was still learning to GM, I gave Top Secret a spin.   Unfortunately for me, the people playing decided that they'd rather do some variant of grand theft auto.    Game didn't last the full session.

In the end?  You want to make the game fun for  players...but you also have to keep it out of the realms of god-mode.

 players have been warned in my games.... some choose to ignore it . If it  effects my  game  and  my 'good' players, I will suggest to then, that perhaps my game isn't the best fit for them( which is true).

 some of the  ...more   hard headed players... tend to put themselves in the postion, where their  characters   can..and sometimes do..die..

 they generally leave after that, rather then start all over with a new Character.

 None of us here get paid enough to put  up  which players  who disrupt , or steal enjoyment from the   better players..there is no reason, at all, to keep someone around  who does this.