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Do I know how to pick ‘em or what?

We geeks are an eclectic bunch. Some of us have social skills. Some of us do not. Some of us think that RPGs should be played a certain way and refuse to deviate from this path. Some will go with the flow and play just to play. Most gaming groups will go through many iterations until they have a group of core gamers whom they may game with for a long time.

For myself, I’ve been lucky enough to have the same core group of players for the last three or four years now. We normally meet every Saturday unless someone is working. One of the guys, Mike, has been in our group for seven years.

But to get to this point, I’ve had to weed my way through some pretty weird folks. Let me give you a quick synopsis:

There was the guy playing an elf who almost jumped across the table and choked the DM after a bad guy stole the elf’s sword to advance the plot. We tracked down the sword and got it back, but I’ve never seen anyone get so angry after a character had something stolen from them, especially since the sword wasn’t anything special beyond a +1 longsword.
I had a DM penalize me because my bladesinger attacked and killed an unarmed kobold. Nevermind the fact that this particular kobold was part of a group that had just attacked my village and killed innocents and that I had chased him after the attack and that the only reason he was unarmed is because he had lost his dagger when he trip and it went flying out of his hands. Apparently, since I was in the Air Force and so was the DM, I was supposed to follow the Law of Armed Conflict.
There was the married player who, because he and my wife roleplayed a romance in game, decided to tell her that he loved her in real life.
I had a DM who had me lose my paladin abilities because I dared to attack an enemy from behind.
One time, a DM decided he wanted to use some traps from Grimtooth’s Traps. That’s fine but when we get absolutely no chance to not get caught by the traps, it’s not fun.
I gamed with a guy for a long time and, after he moved away, I found out that he had lied to me and my friends, causing hurt feelings between us all. He also borrowed money from everyone, but no one else knew it. He still owes me a lot of money and I know I’ll never see it again.

I’m sure there are more examples but that’s all I can think of right now. Luckily, I’ve never had any problems even remotely close to anything like these with my current group and I doubt I ever will.

So what about you? Ever gamed with someone completely insane? What are your stories?

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Posted in: Culture, Gamer Life, Geek Life, RPG

6 Responses to “Do I know how to pick ‘em or what?”

Guy October 20th, 2008 at 5:53 PM

“So what about you? Ever gamed with someone completely insane?”

You.

Mike has a story to tell of this ilk – hopefully this will prod him into finally telling it.

Joshua October 20th, 2008 at 11:16 PM

Actually, depending on the setting I might well ding a paladin for attacking somebody from behind. But if I were GM of such a setting it wouldn’t come as a surprise to the paladin’s player that he was expected to fight honorably.

Joshua´s last blog post..Special Purpose Wikis

Sandie October 21st, 2008 at 6:28 AM

Any stories to tell about players that you LIKE?

reveal October 21st, 2008 at 8:51 AM

@Joshua – I agree. But, in this case, it was completely out of the blue.

@Sandie – Yep but that’s another post.

Kyosunim January 13th, 2009 at 11:17 AM

Luckily for me, at my home games, I didn’t run into the weird players. I ran into them at conventions though, but I’m sure we’ve all met these types:

1. A guy who stinks so bad and dresses so poorly, you thought you were playing with a homeless guy (but you know he’s not from conversations, he’s just a slob).

2. A person whose view of the rules is so skewed, that it’s just strange (such a player who has a paladin who thinks that the rules allows him to cast evil spells).

3. An over-the-top, over-caffeinated, sugared-up player who seems like they can’t handle themselves in real life (one guy had to shout and scream to get attention for every little thing he did).

4. A guy who was definitely a loser, but would say anything to add value to himself and thinking you’d be stupid enough to believe it (a guy bragged how he worked for a regular company and would put him on first class flights to France, Europe, etc. to just deliver packages). Why not use Fed Ex or UPS?

5. My personal favorite is the guy who watched a few of those Japanese cartoons, knows a couple of Japanese words and is suddenly the World’s Foremost Expert of Japanese Culture. They have to make the point of telling you whether you’ve asked or not. These guys number in the 100′s at conventions.

oldNewTimer January 13th, 2009 at 3:17 PM

Regarding the stolen longsword, at least you didn’t introduce an NPC by backstabbing him to get the sword

When I was much younger and always wanting to play with my older brother, his favorite task as DM was to kill my characters off. Boy I rolled a lot of characters up!