But I play with a more or less fixed group of friends that do more then just RP together and as we grew up from late teens to early thirties (now) everybody had periods when he was a fun guy but agressive in an RPG. Somehow playing an RPG while having stuff in your reallife that is frustrating/bad/etc brings it out and it is hard or even impossible to control.

We’re talking stuff like serious break-ups, realising you’ll drop out of college, getting stuck in the wrong job, unemployement, dead-end relations, loosing friends to girlfriends, death of loved ones, debts, whatever life throws at us.

As we are friends first and RPG players second we ended up ‘putting D&D on ice’ more then once during the years, simply because as a group we lost the capacity (and interest) to play.

But we have also ran games while accepting (and limiting) the crap just to keep in touch and give a guy a place to vent off a bit without causing real world secondairy damage. In game trick, tempt them to go off solo somewhere. Once isolated grant them the game time they deserve fairly (or even a tad more, no one will mind) and have the realfun with the other players.

Guess its about beeing a friend first or and RPG-player first.

Each situation is different and should be handled in a manner that is appropriate to the given situation. If a player was disruptive more than three times they were politely asked to leave and not return.

What about GM sanctioned PvP? It can work to some extent where a Player plays an NPC villain while you put their character on a bus.
.-= Katana Geldar´s last blog ..Did I Just Gain Some Xp? =-.

I gave him an off-table talking to, also pointing out how he could play to the strengths of the rogue class. He also perked up a lot when he got spotlight time defusing some deadly trapped doors while the rest of the party watched with baited breath…. After that he started working with the group again.

With kids you have to deal with the fact that they are, at the lower levels, not as uber as they expected: that got a lot easier in 4e. You have to help them find the strengths in their character (challenge I have right now with the party Warlord).

Some bad behaviour is frustration, some is acting-out that they bring to the table from elsewhere. Clear communication is always best and I use the model from “Talking so Kids will Listen and Listening so Kids will Talk” by by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish:
1. Express your feelings strongly, without attacking character “I hate it when the actions of your character derail the session and endanger the others”
2. State your expectations. “I will never accept bullying behaviour in this group”
S. Show the player how to make amends. “I expect you to help the party get through the next town without any trouble”
6. Give the player a choice “Either work constructively with the others or leave the game”
7. Let the player experience the consequences of her actions.: “you cannot be in the next two sessions”
.-= Tim´s last blog ..Burning up your will-power =-.

However, sometimes the players can deal with selfish/disruptive player. In the RPGA things are handicapped by a no PvP rule. So, let me introduce you to “The Stupid Tax.”

Here is my example from the LFR mail list that I used illustrate the stupid tax in action:

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After allowing selfish players do whatever they want and nearly getting my PC (plus those of my party) killed trying to bail him/her out I have found ways to punish those players that will not play nice with the rest of us.

Since I am not allowed to kill/maim their PCs directly I let the judge and the mod do it for me.

Example: In LG I asked the player not to continue to grapple the Sea Lion (it was anineffective attack) so the ranged party members could blast it down. He refused because it was his PCs only shtick. So, after 3 rounds of this monster mauling his PC (and the rest of the party for that matter) he was hurting for hp.

So, he asked my Druid for healing and I hit him with my “cleric-on-a-stick” for 1d8+3. It was enough to get him out of harms way (he could survive a non-crit opportunity attack) but not enough to keep fighting. I told him to pull back and let the rest of the party take the monster down.

He of course went right back in and tried grappled the Sea Lion, again. After a claw, claw, rend, and critical bite he was just a red mist in the water. Problem solved. He got to sit out the rest of the mod while we finished it without him (we had no way to raise him in the mod).

Now I could have wasted a much more powerful magic effect to heal him effectively for combat but that would have been completely unfun for the rest of the party and a complete waste of my own asset that I would probably need for party members that where actually cooperating with me.

He chose to pay the stupid tax. I gave him every opportunity to stop being a jerk and he refused.

If there is no consequence to being selfish there is no incentive to change the behavior.

My only other option is to not play with that player again during muster.

Being the vengeful type I usually do both.
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Thanks one and all.

I think the only game where it’s can be a good idea to incorporate sex is Vampire or any game in that style. Vampire has a mature flair to it. Many expansions from Blackdog are very hardcore (Gore & sexual). But a D&D game… weird.

In retrospect, though? Yeah, utterly hilarious.
.-= d7´s last blog ..The treasure of Strolen’s Citadel =-.

The only player I ever had to deal with who was disruptive at all didn’t last more than a couple of sessions. There were three players and the adventure called for 6-8, so everyone had two characters. He had a Kender (naturally—I didn’t yet know better) and a female mage; at the first inn the party reached he had them seduce each other and was indignant that I skipped over the, ah, results with handwaving and cutting to the next morning. That, among other disruptions and the standard problems when someone plays the Kender stereotype, just made DMing him an uncomfortable experience.

I don’t even remember how it came to be that he didn’t play in my game anymore since it was so long ago. I’m glad it didn’t drag on since that game turned into my longest-running campaign ever.
.-= d7´s last blog ..The treasure of Strolen’s Citadel =-.

I had one nasty player (cheater, but not necessarily the type of jerk described here). I handled it passive aggressively and used petty excuses to no longer invite him, but I was very young at the time. In my current state of evolution, I think being honest is the best way to kick people out (also the most difficult way).

Anyway, great post, I had been anxious to read it and the comments; good stuff!
Cheers!

I’ve experienced two versions of this one. The first was a fathead who made big, buff characters and then physically bullied anyone who happened to catch his interest. He wasn’t very good at planning or jiggering the systems to make his character more powerful than he should be but then he was focused about what he wanted so he could still generally brute force a character that wasn’t designed for the front lines. The second time my character was the entire focus of his attentions I begged the GM to either take away the magic sword he was using to push me around or give me something useful I could do myself when he came around with it. This person’s characters would also bully NPC’s quite often. The only solution we ever found in trying to deal with him off and on for several years was to just shut him down completely. He stopped playing whenever his power was threatened successfully.

If you use that method to deal with one of these people, don’t do half measures. On multiple occasions this one tried to make revenge characters, once even suiciding his current character to make one after a run-in with another PC didn’t go his way. I’m all for explaining problems to people and giving second chances but don’t deal with anything like this.

The second example was more clever. He would play different types of characters and professed to be into roleplay more than systems. And he was, in a way. In the D&D games he would try the most torturously convoluted uses of spells because he never read past the spell name and “it sounded like it ought to be able to do that”. There were numerous headaches from DMs trying to be nice about that (which happened to waste a lot of table time). But the real problem he had was in political maneuverings to make the whole campaign crash down like a house of cards. He was especially brutal in the Vampire games where he would get to a position of minor political/social power, then either go completely cutthroat on one of the other PCs for no reason or sell everyone out to some powerful enemy like the werewolves. Even when taking such actions would leave him with no reasonable way to even bargain for his own survival. He’d just suicide and take the whole game with him.

There were a lot of warnings, second chances and just outright “no, your character doesn’t do that, I don’t care what you think their justifications are, I’m not going to self-destruct my campaign on your whim”. In the end we just stopped inviting him to games.

As far as I know, both of these people have stopped gaming. I think that’s a good thing for them and everyone else. I understand people having issues that they need a release for, I really do. For me, that’s diving into an imaginary world and becoming someone else now and then. I get my satisfaction from seeing bits of life from a different perspective, even if it is in a game. Their satisfaction always seemed to be based more on how much annoyance they could spread around. And it was a destructive release because it kept me and everyone else from getting what they wanted out of the game.

Ultimately that’s your guideline if you’re not sure if someone’s being this sort of asshat or not. Are they really keeping anyone else from having fun? Are they doing this regularly?