I was once on a LARP team that dealt with this quite neatly. We were sent off into an Unseleighe forest to investigate and put a stop to the brutal slayings of peasants around the forest edge. Now, you must understand that we were only doing this because we were being paid, not out of any noble sentiment; the party’s alignment peaked somewhere around Chaotic Neutral. Plus, at least a couple of our characters were cowards. As a result, we approached this extremely high-risk game with the stated intention of talking it into submission, and we mostly did just that–talked our way past the border guards by claiming that we were diplomats, chatted amiably with the evil riddle hag until she gave away too many clues, and so forth.
Then we met the subplot, who happened to be an elven duke who was scheming to overthrow his queen and seize the throne, and wanted our help. The guy playing him is one of the best talkers in the club, and went all out to persuade us, but after a few minutes, we withdrew to consult, and were almost unanimously opposed to the idea. It went something like “trap, trap, trap, not a trap but a bad idea, trap, but he’s offering a lot of loot”. That last was our party leader, whose character lives for this kind of opportunity. As a result, the whole party turned him down…except the leader, who agreed to attempt to kill the queen. Sure enough, as soon as we reached the throne room, he started to make his move.
Then he froze with his hand halfway to his sword. When he walked through the door, our thief was right behind him with a needle covered in paralytic poison. As soon as he began his contracted attempt on her, the thief jabbed him. Thus, his bargain with the duke was fulfilled without preventing negotiations with the queen. (We walked out with a treaty in hand and engaged in a lot of legalistic arguments to coerce the uber-lawful knight who hired us to sign it. Of course, we also had the thief standing behind him at the time, just in case.)
The reason is humor, in the same way that my friend’s mom baked tuna-blueberry muffins because she wanted to give her children a treat. The road to hell, etc.
I had a one-shot with a similar player, who wanted to play a pixie barbarian who was terrified of combat, who wore purple lace, and who would squeal and hide behind the wizard whenever there was a threat. The player thought she’d created the funniest character ever, mistaking “obnoxious” for “clever.”
After she and her husband (who was equally annoying if not as memorable) left, we all looked at one another, stunned. I finally said, “Rocks fall on them. They die,” and we were able to continue the game.
I do think it’s possible to give PCs mildly (read: MILDLY) annoying habits that make them more entertaining for a group. A one-shot I playtested last night has a Norwegian actress with a penchant for humming Wagner, a private eye who notices everything but has a terrible habit of not telling the other PCs what he’s seen, a props-expert who believes movies should all have more explosions in them and never hesitates to explain why, and so forth.
The players spent maybe 5% of their time roleplaying these habits, and because none of them endangered anyone’s life (well, attaching an explosive onto their hijacked truck in order to turn it into a guided missile, while everyone was still inside, endangered their lives, but it was awesome), it was funny instead of excruciating.
There’s definitely a difference between quirks that color a character, flaws that can crop up at times providing story obstacles, and flat-out hindrances to actually playing the game.
It’s no different from someone playing an anti-social jerk who takes a seat in the farthest darkest corner of the tavern and absolutely refuses to participate in whatever interaction brings the rest of the group together, because it’s not what his character would do. Welp, guess you don’t actually want to play the game, then.
I have a player who does this sometimes, although in a slightly different direction. He roles up a character that’s got very strong social and interaction skills, with almost no combat skills or useful magic. He does great in the “everyone’s gathered at the inn part,” but when it’s time to go off to the dungeon, it’s “My character wouldn’t be interested in going to a dungeon!”
Okay, fine. Me and the other three players are going to go through this dungeon. You sit there and make Profession: Barmaid checks every twenty minutes.
Given that JohnT was 15 at the time, it would not at all surprise me to learn that the DM in question was also 15 (give or take a year). “Douche move” and “entirely unreasonable” are entirely typical (and probably even expected) behavior for many 15-year-old boys.
Actually, a further distinction is needed, here. I’ve known players who will have their stupid or foolish characters do stupid or foolish things because it’s in character, but those players don’t always play stupid or foolish characters, and when they play smart, sensible characters, they do smart, sensible things.
Case in point: I once saw someone with a low-Wis character attempt to open a stuck trap door by jumping on it. He succeeded. The player, though, is the wisest person I know, and in other campaigns was often the one who got the rest of the party out of trouble.
I think the key distinction is that a good player with a stupid character will be stupid in ways that are genuinely amusing or interesting for everyone at the table, not just for themselves.
Nah, in my group it was a Richie. We still talk about “pulling a Richie”. Richie was one of two players in the group who wouldn’t have touched a paladin with a ten-foot pole, since paladins have to follow rules.
Both of those players bore easily and have problems tracking more than one thing at the same time, see: Richie simply happens to also be bad at entertaining himself. Negotiations and planning could take place in a civilized fashion when the Evil Golem, the Feminist Paladin(1), the Assault Dwarf(2) or the Unconscious-Again Cleric were in the group; they might even proceed apace with Mr Gravity(3) around, but as soon as Richie was around, games needed a minimum amount of bashing or the other players would be asking for his blood (putting the Evil Golem in a bind, as Richie happens to be his cousin).
1: Littlebro.
2: Hi!
3: I fought the Law, and Gravity won. Middlebro.
No one was amused, except maybe him. And he makes a habit of these sorts of characters I’m told.
Though, it did lead to a funny thing indirectly. After a short campaign hiatus, we got the band back together, and my Elf came upon this Barbarian, bound and gagged in the dark - the prisoner of some defilers that had been hunting us all. Sure, I freed him … by terrifying him with my character’s own mental speech power to the point that he burst his bonds.
We used to know a guy whose absolute favorite thing in an RPG was fucking with other players. In D&D he always played the halfling thief, and always stole from the party. We once brought him into a game of Marvel Super Heroes, where to my great chagrin he rolled ‘mind control’ as one of his powers. Even in a game of HeroQuest, which is mostly an RPG-style board game, he would screw the party he was depending on for the success of the quest. That’s why I make it clear at the start of the campaign that inter-party conflict would be brutally dealt with in a conspiracy between the GM and the other players.
There’s quite a bit of leeway, as long as you don’t either make yourself dead weight or hinder everybody else’s attempts to play their own characters.
This is also why I think all DMs should ban the Frenzied Berserkers and Apostles of Peace PrCs. My best character ever was in a game with an Apostle of Peace. I liked the player fine, and my character liked the character fine, but a single failed Will save turned what should have been a climatic moment into a whimper*.
* My character, a member of a Neutral-to-Good aligned party, was put in a situation where she would murder an unarmed prisoner. It made perfect sense as she was an escaped slave who had been transformed into an inhuman creature with inherent evil tendencies and the prisoner was a slaver taunting her about what was done to her, and the aftermath should have been interesting for everyone involved. Unfortunately, an Apostle of Peace has an always-on you-don’t-feel-murderously-angry aura, and my character failed her save.
I still remember a short-lived campaign I got into one time, something over 20 years ago. One of these it’s-what-my-character-would-do always-plays-an-asshole types rolled up a half-orc assassin “but my charisma is 12 so you totally can’t tell I’m not human”. My druid was quite neutral about the whole thing but let him know that if there was any trouble he would be introduced to the unfriendly end of a very large dog.
Session 2, I wasn’t there, the party meets a bunch of orcs and the asshole promptly cuts a deal with them to murder the rest of the party so he can nick a large share of their stuff and get an experience advantage over the replacement characters when they’re rolled up.
We didn’t have a word for that way back in the dark ages when I DM’d…but I killed them off quickly without damage to the group. Players that knew me well knew this would happen and smirk.
For example, one guy did something like in the OP and I just had an anvil fall off the building and kill him. No dice rolls…nothing.
2 rules I had when DMing:
Don’t be an asshole.
You can’t split up the group. Sorry, my time is limited and i aint running 2 groups in the same world.
