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Author Topic: How to make a D&D player stop being a decerebrate  (Read 11765 times)

Scoops Novel

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Re: How to make a D&D player stop being a decerebrate
« Reply #15 on: January 28, 2013, 02:17:47 pm »

Cut the knot, Kajiyuu ;).
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shadenight123

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Re: How to make a D&D player stop being a decerebrate
« Reply #16 on: January 28, 2013, 02:20:51 pm »

One of the players, my 'lovely' brother, (of 21 years old mind you) has become with the age rotten and arrogant. (Age does wonders to wine, not to people).
The result is that conversation with him are as if he were fifteen years old or less.
I'm just posting to say this is quite amusing. First you say that getting older makes someone worse, then say that they're acting younger than they are (implying it's a bad thing), thus saying both being young and being old are bad.

That's all. Continue with your regularly scheduled bad D&D player discussion.

D'oh! (Quoting Homer) Didn't see it that way.
It is kind of amusing now that I think about it XD
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“Well,” he said. “We’re in the Forgotten hunting grounds I take it. Your screams just woke them up early. Congratulations, Lyara.”
“Do something!” she whispered, trying to keep her sight on all of them at once.
Basileus clapped his hands once. The Forgotten took a step forward, attracted by the sound.
“There, I did something. I clapped. I like clapping,” he said. -The Investigator And The Case Of The Missing Brain.

Scoops Novel

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Re: How to make a D&D player stop being a decerebrate
« Reply #17 on: January 28, 2013, 02:38:53 pm »

And ambiguous statements show their worth again :D.
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nenjin

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Re: How to make a D&D player stop being a decerebrate
« Reply #18 on: January 28, 2013, 03:09:59 pm »

Quote
If he pisses enough people off, they decide to kill him. Give everyone a set number of lives, and every time anyone dies, they lose one.

Otherwise known as the "Full Metal Jacket" method of party conflict resolution.
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Moghjubar

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Re: How to make a D&D player stop being a decerebrate
« Reply #19 on: January 28, 2013, 03:28:44 pm »

Just make it so that every time he does something stupid he somehow gets stabbed in the face, dies, and has to fetch you a beer / go buy shit from the store.  Also, he has to play a premade character and act out pre-written traits before he can reroll again, and his new character comes in 2 levels lower, with junk, and a party veto option. 
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shadenight123

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Re: How to make a D&D player stop being a decerebrate
« Reply #20 on: January 28, 2013, 03:49:57 pm »

Just make it so that every time he does something stupid he somehow gets stabbed in the face, dies, and has to fetch you a beer / go buy shit from the store.  Also, he has to play a premade character and act out pre-written traits before he can reroll again, and his new character comes in 2 levels lower, with junk, and a party veto option.

He refused the premade character the one time we tried to tell him that 'a barbarian half-orc KID with 3 int' was his perfect candidate. He held the barbarian though. And he IS two level lower. I have one of my players at level 7, another at 6, most at 5 going for 6 with a small effort and he is still at the beginning of level 5!
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“Well,” he said. “We’re in the Forgotten hunting grounds I take it. Your screams just woke them up early. Congratulations, Lyara.”
“Do something!” she whispered, trying to keep her sight on all of them at once.
Basileus clapped his hands once. The Forgotten took a step forward, attracted by the sound.
“There, I did something. I clapped. I like clapping,” he said. -The Investigator And The Case Of The Missing Brain.

Heron TSG

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Re: How to make a D&D player stop being a decerebrate
« Reply #21 on: January 28, 2013, 04:58:16 pm »

If the problem is him ignoring death by having a hoard of sheets, institute a 1-hour 'respawn' time, or have him wait until it would be convenient to recruit a new person into the party.
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Flying Dice

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Re: How to make a D&D player stop being a decerebrate
« Reply #22 on: January 28, 2013, 05:04:57 pm »

If the problem is him ignoring death by having a hoard of sheets, institute a 1-hour 'respawn' time, or have him wait until it would be convenient to recruit a new person into the party.
This. It's a rather subtle way of reinforcing the narrative if you don't let him rejoin until it's plausible, rather than just having his new characters drop from the sky, so to speak. If the party is deep in a dungeon or cave system and stays there over multiple sessions, well, tough luck.  ;)
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GreatWyrmGold

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Re: How to make a D&D player stop being a decerebrate
« Reply #23 on: January 28, 2013, 05:56:10 pm »

I feel your pain. I have a brother who makes...suboptimal choices whilst gaming as well as in real life. One memorable incident had him (well, his drow rogue) thrown down the stairs to a hydra due to annoying the other players by (for instance) killing the NPC cleric sent along so the group would have a healer. (This tale is only slightly dampened by the fact that the others didn't know the hydra was down there.)
The biggest problem? He tried to argue that his pet bird grabbed his rapier and killed the hydra somehow.
His next character? Tried to kill the kobold wizard that the rest of the group was talking to.
...Yeah. Not quite as bad as your brother, but then again I've never tried much in the way of curses. In the aforedescribed campaign, he complained for sessions (not constantly) about a pair of gloves he thought were Gloves of Dexterity but which turned out to be cursed.

Back to you.

If you can, just don't let him play. You can say that running the adventure with this many players is a bit taxing on you, and ask for the players to vote on who leaves.
If you can't, here's my two cents.
Talk to him and explain why what he is doing is making the game less fun for everyone. The other players' experiences are suffering? You have an excellent arrow in your quiver: The fact that you're not the only person who finds his antics irritating. Does this help you any?
If that fails, next time he makes a "new" character, go over his character bit by bit. Point to each number and definition, and explain what it means. "'Barbarian' means you have little education and can channel your anger in combat. 'Int 15' means you're basically a genius. 'Wis 13' means you're a bit more insightful than normal..." If he causes issues, you can point to the bits of his character sheet which explain why his character probably wouldn't do that, and ask if he wants to reconsider.
When all else fails, if he tries to do something absolutely idiotic, just act as if he didn't say anything for that sentence.
And if that, too, fails, simply don't let him come near enough to your games to touch a rulebook with a standard-issue 10-foot pole.

A more short-term bit of advice is simple: Have the game work realistically. You die? Make a character who could logically be wherever the other PCs are (say, in the Underdark, a fled slave of the drow) or wait until the group gets back to town. You attack someone? You get chucked in jail for years to life and the other PCs are likely to abandon your trollish hindquarters. Activate a trap? You get killed by the trap. Try to minimize the amount that these punishments affect the other PCs. For instance, that time with the Emperor? You shouldn't have had the party thrown into prison, you should have had a guard state his condolences for the PCs having to put up with that idiot...or just had the offensive idiot killed.
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Solifuge

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Re: How to make a D&D player stop being a decerebrate
« Reply #24 on: January 28, 2013, 06:18:04 pm »

Question being thus the following:
Barring killing the guy, how the hell can I manage to get him to understand that what he did and is doing is nothing short of being a spoiled brat who endangers and ruins the fun to the other member of the group?

Note that you're bitter about things with him, so like it or not it's going to come out in your GMing. If you try to bring this up passively through gameplay and such, you're liable to anger him, and make him feel like you're singling him out... and that will only fuel the feelings of unfairness.

I'd suggest going for the direct approach. Try taking him aside, and talking to him about it. Say how you like gaming with him, but you game as a group. Like GWG said, explaining what he's doing to irritate the group is a good thing, but I'd also ask for his side of the story as well; ask him why he does those things. Often the act of explaining oneself can help them reflect on what's wrong about it.
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penguinofhonor

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Re: How to make a D&D player stop being a decerebrate
« Reply #25 on: January 28, 2013, 06:22:35 pm »

I really can't comprehend the title past it having something to do with this thing.
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Mimidormi

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Re: How to make a D&D player stop being a decerebrate
« Reply #26 on: January 28, 2013, 09:18:29 pm »

He acts like a little kid because he can.
Not as a challenge to authority, not because he thinks he can get away with it (as a matter of fact, he doesn't, he's just depriving himself of a good D&D session to play class clown), just because he can.

The message you want to send him is that he is being an inconsiderate childish prick.
The message he gets instead is that you want to allow only your brand of fun in the session.

I know it's gonna be hard, but you have to resist the temptation to punish him personally through the game, while at the same time dishing out the serious consequences his character is meant to face if (role)played so poorly.

You can't force maturity on him, he'll understand when he'll grow out of it. What you can do in the meanwhile is to give the good example by respecting roles (even if he himself doesn't respect them), by treating him like the other players.
Either he'll get tired of his own antics and get on with the game, or he'll ramp up the idiocy and give you a definite reason to ban him. Just remember to separate the player and brother from the character.
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Neonivek

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Re: How to make a D&D player stop being a decerebrate
« Reply #27 on: January 28, 2013, 09:23:58 pm »

The way to walk around the issue isn't to add in concequences.

It would be to set up the world not to have these sort of interactions where he can be pissy on.
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Max White

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Re: How to make a D&D player stop being a decerebrate
« Reply #28 on: January 28, 2013, 09:28:14 pm »

Some people play the same game for different reasons.
If your brothers way of playing D&D is just too incompatible with everybody elses, just kick him out. Don't make a big deal of it, don't make it emotional, just tell him to get the fuck out. He is an adult, you need to treat him like it, as that is the only way he will start to act like it.
There are people out there who play D&D on a level more akin to your brothers methods. Wish him the best of luck finding a new party.

penguinofhonor

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Re: How to make a D&D player stop being a decerebrate
« Reply #29 on: January 28, 2013, 09:47:01 pm »

I've got a vaguely similar friend. He always plays a chaotic neutral "what's in it for me" grumpy-ass character, and all he wants to do in D&D is roll his dice to kill monsters so everyone can see how good he is at killing monsters.

So my friend M had a brilliant idea: make a campaign with absolutely no fighting in it. Everyone else has to be aware of this for it to work, so they walk around trying to be diplomatic and the dumb guy tries to pick fights. Every time, the party stops him and apologizes to the NPCs for their retarded friend. It was apparently hilarious for everyone involved except for dumb guy, who ended up spending half the sessions on his computer because he wasn't having fun and eventually stopped showing up.

For this to work, you've got to make sure that
A) The party is fully prepared to player kill the dumb guy if he endangers them or tries to turn to evil.
B) You don't put in any encounters where the dumb guy can singlehandedly doom the party. If he aggros some enemies, the party needs to be able to go "Hey, we're not your enemies. We'll help you kill him if you don't attack us!"
C) Don't let the dumb guy get powerful enough to take on the whole party at once.
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