How do you handle problem players?

Yes but what does Risk2099 think of this suggestion.

If I get Risk's posts correctly it sounds like the issue is already resolved. But as was just mentioned a person in the time of the Roman empire could actually be a mutant. I believe Apocalypse is considered to be the first mutant and he goes back to around then. From there you can give one of a hundred reasons to have him be in modern times. In fact if you want to be real twisted you could alway have him be a former horseman of Apocalypse. Death doesn't sound like much of a stretch, War would work too. I could see Apocalypse putting one of his early horsemen away as a backup if he ever needed one. And maybe he could be found by the new group or even revived by someone like Doom. It could make for some really interesting gaming. I do sympathize with you though. I actually have three people at my table every week that try as hard as they can to mess up any plans I have. Fortunately I'm a quick thinker so they don't usually get to run rampant. But there's nothing wrong in people surprising you on occassion. In fact creativity and ingenuity should be rewarded. As long as everyone is having fun then it's all good. But if you're not having fun too then it's time to pass the dice. It almost sounded like you were giving up before you started. Don't do that. Don't let others scare you away from what you want to do. Besides the only way to get any better through experience. I think you'll find that with each game, maybe even each session that you GM you'll get better. Good luck to ya!

Skarlett Spyder Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Of course, all of this is moot, since you've
> already stated that the guy was just screwing with
> you and has conformed.

Yeah, thank god the GM didn't have to put up with an origional idea! 8-)

> And I don't know what the hell michael was talking
> about, but many of us need to just have a coke and
> a smile.

And some of us need to take the X-Men Clone blinders off (even if it is the majority) and risk having a 'non-standard mutant' players. It will make them much better GM's! And it will make for much more interesting games.

That's what I'm talking about!

michael

Michael,

I get it ok, so please drop out of this thread. According to you, and you know me only from my couple of post here, I am an egotistical, immature, insecure gm who is afraid of original ideas (that aren't my own) and wanting to run a specific type of campaign is not a gms right, but rather a gm should be at the mercy of the whims of a single solitary player. I get it - the insults and assumptions have continued from you throughout this thread.

Here is what you don't know about me. I have collected comics for 21 years, gamed almost as long,and worked in comic and gaming shops for 10 years of my life. I have been happily married to a non-gamer, non-comic reading wife for 11 years. I have twin seven year old boys and between my family and my 40+ hours a week job (working evenings in a group home with kids who have real problems), my gaming time is at a maximum one night every couple of weeks, if I am lucky. I don't have the luxury of time to deal with players bent on gm frustration and I don't have the pacience to deal with judgemental posts from someone who does not know me.

Enough is enough, if you find a need to insult my gm ability or my personal character some more, please don't. It is people like you who make me regret posting on boards in the first place. Better to be a lurker than to have to defend yourself from people like you.

My long overdue two cents (which should have interest by now),
Risk2099

I think that is the GM that spends the most time and resources on developeing and maintaining a campaign, so that makes his/her word final on any matter pertaining to the campaign. Like it, or lump it. Were the players paying the GM, as they would a video game company or a movie theatre or a bookstore or something, that might make the matter quite different, but as it is largly a labour of love on behlaf of the GM, that can be quite time consuming outside of actual play time, that is worthy of some respect and due regard on behalf of the players.

As for the Roman Gladiator idea; I know the point is moot, but my idea would be a modern day mutant capable of accessing, at least limitedly, his genetic memory or something like that. This could give him the all of the skills that his "past life" had, perhaps make it hard to distinguish between were his former life eneded and where his modern identity began, but its all nice and tidy and mutie-like.

Then again, I also thought the Nova Rome or whatever was agood idea too.

I have run an X-men style team in the past for about 3 years or so, in the course of that time the team included an undead knight, an Ironman wannabe, an android and even the Hulk. Its all about working out a Plausible "comic" backstory and you can probably add anything to your X-team.

I had a guy who wanted to play a garden gnome. Didn't even try to talk him out of it. We had a team of twelve at the time, a round of combat took about twenty five minutes, so between the S&M angels and the guy who made fire by farting over his flaming thumb, nobody noticed the garden gnome.


That was the month I had Thanos come along and do some weeding out


make sure the Roman has the power to change the flavor of things before he stabs them to death.

I had a guy who wanted to play a garden gnome. Didn't even try to talk him out of it. We had a team of twelve at the time, a round of combat took about twenty five minutes, so between the S&M angels and the guy who made fire by passing gas over his flaming thumb, nobody noticed the garden gnome.


That was the month I had Thanos come along and do some weeding out


make sure the Roman has the power to change the flavor of things before he stabs them to death.

Risk2099 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Michael,
>
> I get it ok, so please drop out of this thread.

No I wont. Because you obviously don't get it.

> According to you, and you know me only from my
> couple of post here, I am an egotistical,
> immature, insecure gm who is afraid of original
> ideas (that aren't my own) and wanting to run a
> specific type of campaign is not a gms right, but
> rather a gm should be at the mercy of the whims of
> a single solitary player. I get it - the insults
> and assumptions have continued from you throughout
> this thread.

First of all, if you were legitimately being insulted, you could simply have hit the "Quote" button to find out what I meant.

But instead you find you have to 'rephrase' everything to work up your righteous indignation so that you respond by saying "You don't like that I disagree with you."

If the moderator decides I don't have a right to answer a question that you asked. He is more than welcome to take that right away from me.

But that's okay, you're attacking me, but since you're ignoring the actual words I wrote I don't take it personally.

And therefore I have to need to defend myself for things I didn't say.

But of course, I did have to make assumptions about the situation based on what you wrote. That's what you asked for (and I quote "Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated. Thanks. ").

Well, you were under no obligation to like the suggestions and advice, but you did ask for it.

> Here is what you don't know about me. I have
> collected comics for 21 years, gamed almost as
> long, and worked in comic and gaming shops for 10
> years of my life. I have been happily married to a
> non-gamer, non-comic reading wife for 11 years. I
> have twin seven year old boys and between my
> family and my 40+ hours a week job (working
> evenings in a group home with kids who have real
> problems), my gaming time is at a maximum one
> night every couple of weeks, if I am lucky. I
> don't have the luxury of time to deal with players
> bent on gm frustration and I don't have the
> patience to deal with judgmental posts from
> someone who does not know me.

LOL! Oh! So you were only asking for advice from people who know you and your wife and kids and background?

No you weren't. None of that is in the post you wrote. HERE is what you wrote about yourself:

"I have not played or run a group in about seven years or so."

> Enough is enough, if you find a need to insult my
> gm ability or my personal character some more,
> please don't.

I have done no such thing at all. If I have, please do me the courtesy of quoting exactly what you think of as "insulting" and I will be more than happy to explain what I meant by something you misunderstood.

But all I did was answer neutrally your post at face value. You maligned your friend without any explanation at all, and yet everything you said about what he wanted to do was perfectly reasonable.

You made no statements at all about what your campaign was going to be like and gave no reasons at all for why his character wouldn't fit.

And yet, the advice I gave you - which you seem to regard as an insult - is Talk to your Players and Work With Him Instead of Against Him.

Advice which - even though you thought it was insulting for me to give you - you actually followed! I quote: "I have since talked to this player and he admits to messing with me on purpose. "

>It is people like you who make me
> regret posting on boards in the first place.

If you are going say that you have been 'insulted' every time you hear advice that you don't agree with or like then you should not post.

And it's rather ironic how well you know "people like me" when your complaint seems to be that I shouldn't be allowed to post unless I know your age and how many comic books you read! A little calling the kettle isn't it?

> Better to be a lurker than to have to defend
> yourself from people like you.

You only have to defend yourself if you have been attacked, and you have given me no reason to believe that I did. And it was certainly not my intention to.

I responded to the post that you wrote. Everything I saw and responded to was directly related to what YOU said about YOURSELF and the SITUATION.

I'm sorry if you took that as an insult, but I called it like I saw it. Which is what you requested (and I quote "Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated. Thanks. ").

If you want different answers to your questions, you're going to have to put all your background information in the question instead of crying 'foul' because people who answer don't "know" you.

Or just don't ask if you don't want an honest answer.


michael

Michael,
Here is the quote that gave me the insecure comment:

"if the GM truly feels he can't handle anything but "standard mutants" then he should say so (as I said). But that's not what Good GM's do. It's what insecure GM's do."

If that was not you calling me insecure please explain it to me. I explained before that the majority of players wanted to play a beginning group of mutants not warriors with thousands of years of experience. You never asked for more information, you just assumed alot.

Risk2099

> And some of us need to take the X-Men Clone
> blinders off (even if it is the majority) and risk
> having a 'non-standard mutant' players. It will
> make them much better GM's! And it will make for
> much more interesting games.

Nothing wrong with a GM wanting to run an X-Men style campaign, it does not make them a bad GM especially if that is what most of their players want. Why the elitist chip on your shoulder towards the X-men? To each their own, I guess. Oh and how do you judge how interesting the campaign would be? Another elitist judgement call in my book.

Risk2099

Michael,

I already replied to where you made the insecure comment and the comment about "the might of his ego" was in the same post. You are right that I could have quoted you to see what you meant, but in the same regard you could have sent me a private message for clarification at any time. Like I said, I am new to posting on boards, and I could not figure out how to quote from more than one of your posts.

I appreciate opinions and advice, what I did not appreciate was the condescending tone of your posts. No one deserves to be talked down to. If you would have asked what I meant by standard mutant types, I could have told you they were a psychic character who can command with his voice, a darkforce using martial artist, and a nightcrawler wannabe (to be honest, that gets on my nerves too, but he is a young guy who works at the comic shop I used to manage- and he has his heart set on it).

I don't know why I took offense at your posts, but like I said you come off as harsh not helpful.

Hopefully my final 2 cents on the issue,
Risk2099

michael Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yeah, thank god the GM didn't have to put up with
> an origional idea!

I believe that is an example of the "condescending" statements Risk was speaking of. I'm not sure...but yeah, I think that's it.

And let me just say (to any who care to read the rant) that original and dumbassed are two entirely different animals, mi amigo. Of course there are ways to work any character into any group given an equally retarded character background and insanely (or early X-treme X-menish) reasoning for it to be happening, but a rose is still a rose, and many Judges just don't have the infinite patience that you do to smell it for too long.

> And some of us need to take the X-Men Clone
> blinders off (even if it is the majority) and risk
> having a 'non-standard mutant' players.

Ok, I do agree with that somewhat, but as Risk has already stated, to each his own.

>It will make them much better GM's! And it will make for
> much more interesting games.

-an excerpt from the forthcoming "Michael's Guide To Why He's a Better Judge Than You" :P

> That's what I'm talking about!

Um...Ok?



Skarlett da 'Non-Standard' Spyder

:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D




________________________________________________________________________________
"All who wander are not lost." J.R.R. Tolkein

"History and experience have taught us that the oldest among our kind invariably prove the most formidable." Sage, X-Treme X-Men #43

"You leap like a hyena in heat!!" Conan to Wolverine, What If...? #16

"Useless, all useless...I was once a MAN!!" Cobra Commander, G.I. Joe the Movie

Hi Risk,
sorry about the situation that has occured. Majority of people are here to assist and provide constructive feedback. Every now and again conflicts do occur. I would like to be one of the first to encourage you to ignore the bad and focus on the good. Please continue to post on this site.

I for one am glad to have new members.

By the way..... welcome.

regards
Fangs

Risk2099 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Michael,
> Here is the quote that gave me the insecure
> comment:
>
> "if the GM truly feels he can't handle anything
> but "standard mutants" then he should say so (as I
> said). But that's not what Good GM's do. It's what
> insecure GM's do."
>
> If that was not you calling me insecure please
> explain it to me.

Well, it seemed pretty straigthforward to me, but let me rephrase it. It's a general statement that GM's who say, "It's my way or the highway are insecure in their ability to run a game, without everything happening exactly the way they plan."

And I don't mean 'insecure' as in the same as 'immature'. If someone hasn't run a game in a while (as you said you hadn't) you should be insecure! GMing is much harder to do well than it looks.

So if you're truly not confident enough to handle a wide variety of player types - i.e., insecure - then by all means tell your players ahead of time you can only handle these types of characters.

That's what I do! And instead of getting mad about the limitations I've put on them, they get excited about the possiblities - but within the lines that I've drawn. Which beats the heck out of a player getting excited about an idea they like that I don't.

But to tell people to give you character ideas - and then shoot down the ones you don't like, that's just not being confident enough to handle what the players think of.

After all, there are plenty of great ideas in this discussion about

And that was the situation that you seemed to be outlining. Now I realize the origonal situation has been dealt with so I'm only talking about theoretical situations.

Has it ever happened to you? It's defintely happened to me as a player. I'll write pages of background information and come up with a really great idea and then the GM will say no, for no real reason except that he didn't want that conception in his campaign.

That's okay, if the GM tells you ahead of time what he's looking, but it's really annoying otherwise.

So, I suppose an alternative word would be 'under-confident' but I don't really think that's a word!


> I explained before that the
> majority of players wanted to play a beginning
> group of mutants not warriors with thousands of
> years of experience.

You said that "3 of my 4 players want to play fairly standard mutant types." But so what? I mean there's nothing I know about role-playing that says that every character has to play the same type of character?

In fact, it's usually pretty dull if that happens. It's one thing if the GM says that everyone should be "standard mutant types". In fact, you would never have had the problem in the first place if that's what you had done. Say to the players, "I want you to all build standard mutant types."!

No one would have a problem with that, and the ones who did wouldn't play.

Going with the majority just means the dumbest brain wins. If I have four friends and three of them want to play mutants and the fourth one doesn't, then why would I make him play a mutant?

So that only three of my friends have fun and the fourth one doesn't? No, I work it so that ALL of my friends can have fun no matter how dumb a character idea it is!

>You never asked for more
> information, you just assumed alot.

I didn't need any more information. I still don't think I assumed anything frankly. The words are there.

What I read was that a GM didn't like one of the player's ideas and wanted to shoot it down or change it on the basic of everyone else wanting to play characters the GM was more comfortable with.

There are a lot of good reasons to adjust a PC's characters. I still don't think that's one of them.

I'm still pretty sure that better games occur when the GM accomodates the players and they build a story together. In fact, I think lots of the other ideas that have been proposed to how the Roman Gladiator could work and still be a mutant are much more interesting than just a regular old 'standard mutant' team. Don't you?


That way even the minority has fun as well.

YMMV



michael



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/13/2005 04:21PM by michael.

Risk2099 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Michael,
>
> ego" was in the same post. You are right that I
> could have quoted you to see what you meant,

I always appreciate that because sometimes it does happen that something comes out harsher sounding than it was meant to, and a second reading at a later date can see that.

> but
> in the same regard you could have sent me a
> private message for clarification at any time.

Well, I really felt like I didn't need clarification. You pretty much spelled it out, and that's what I based my reply on. I think this is one of those things that *does* happen when asking for replies - alot of information is left out that maybe shouldn't.

I'll try to ask for more details next time.

> Like I said, I am new to posting on boards, and I
> could not figure out how to quote from more than
> one of your posts.

:) Fair enough!

> I appreciate opinions and advice, what I did not
> appreciate was the condescending tone of your
> posts. No one deserves to be talked down to.

Well, keep in mind that its very tough to interpret 'tone' accurately from email. I've been on both sides, and it's a very slippery slope, but for me, it wasn't about being condescending to you as a person, but letting you know as GM that there are better ways to handle something from experience.

It's very hard to yell 'rookie mistake - don't do that!' without sounding condescending, but I'll certainly try to be more mindful of it. It's the kind of thing I would want done to me if I were about to make a mistake.

> If you would have asked what I meant by standard
> mutant types, I could have told you they were a
> psychic character who can command with his voice,
> a darkforce using martial artist, and a
> nightcrawler wannabe (to be honest, that gets on
> my nerves too, but he is a young guy who works at
> the comic shop I used to manage- and he has his
> heart set on it).

Yeah, but I don't really think it matters what the other characters are per se. Well, there's a difference between running an "X-Man-Only" game and a Comic-Book game.

If you've decided that you ONLY want an X-Man style game, that's a fair requirement to make - but before you're characters get ideas. Even if they are random ones.

One of my rules for this is that I make the players give me their character write-ups a week ahead of time. This means that if someone is throwing out a wild idea just to mess with me as a GM. Thinking about having to actually play that character will generally make the 'joke' a lot less funny.

> I don't know why I took offense at your posts, but
> like I said you come off as harsh not helpful.

That's certainly wasn't my intent - and thank you for sticking out to correct me. I'd rather be aware of something I'm doing wrong and have the opportunity to correct it than not.

PAX



michael

Risk2099 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Nothing wrong with a GM wanting to run an X-Men
> style campaign, it does not make them a bad GM
> especially if that is what most of their players
> want. Why the elitist chip on your shoulder
> towards the X-men? To each their own, I guess.


I don't think there is anything wrong with an X-Men style campaign, but I don't think it's fair not to tell players that up front before asking for characters that this is what it is going to be.

And even then, the Roman Gladiator character is perfectly doable even an X-Men campaign! In fact I think you mentioned 'Warlock' (?) or something where a similar character was in an X-Men book!

Let me repeat this back to you to make sure I understand.

I won't accept any characters except the standard mutant X-Man type character = NOT ELITIST.

Most of the characters will be standard mutant X-Man type characters, but if you have another idea you think would be fun to play, that's okay too, I'll figure out a way to work it in = ELITIST.

I don't see how it's elitist to want games to be more diverse than "make X-Men clones"! 8-)

> Oh
> and how do you judge how interesting the campaign
> would be? Another elitist judgement call in my
> book.
>

Here's how I do it. I ask the players what they want to play. For the campaign I'm currently running, I gave them a choice:

1. 4-color, no holds barred. Like the 'Justice League'.
2. Dark Heroes, street-level crimefighters. Like 'Batman the Animated Series'
3. Dark Future, cyberpunk with Superheroes.
4. Teen Heroes. Like the movie 'Sky High'.

The players talked it over, I stayed out of it. They all chose as a group what they wanted and I got a game I was interested in running. Win-Win.

So far, it's worked out much better than the 'audition' method of making people create characters that might get rejected later on.

michael

Skarlett Spyder Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> michael Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Yeah, thank god the GM didn't have to put up
> with
> > an origional idea!
>
> I believe that is an example of the
> "condescending" statements Risk was speaking of.
> I'm not sure...but yeah, I think that's it.

Fair enough. I apologize for being sacrcastic and I'll try to refain in the future. It was meant as nothing more than illustrative.

> Of course there are
> ways to work any character into any group given an
> equally retarded character background and insanely
> (or early X-treme X-menish) reasoning for it to be
> happening, but a rose is still a rose, and many
> Judges just don't have the infinite patience that
> you do to smell it for too long.
>
> Ok, I do agree with that somewhat, but as Risk has
> already stated, to each his own.

Sure, but the GM didn't say that HE wanted to run an X-Men only style campaign. He seemed to only think that because all the players made X-men clones then the minority player should HAVE to make an x-man character and was being a putz for not wanting to.

> >It will make them much better GM's! And it
> will make for
> > much more interesting games.
> > That's what I'm talking about!
>
> Um...Ok?

No, now that's completely bogus. I can understand sacracism being misinterpreted but are you telling me that a GM who's willing to listen to all character ideas isn't better than a GM who rejects ideas out of hand without even thinking about the many possible ways - ESPECIALLY in a comic book - that they can't be used?

There's no condescension to that at all. Open-minded GM's are better than closed-minded GM's. I don't think that having that belief and sharing it with someone who admittedly hasn't run in a long time is at all condescending. Fair is fair.








michael

michael,

To clarify, I didn't mean to imply that your last statement was condescending. I was just saying...ok. Missed the question mark.:(

Skarlett da Clarifying Spyder

________________________________________________________________________________
"All who wander are not lost." J.R.R. Tolkein

"History and experience have taught us that the oldest among our kind invariably prove the most formidable." Sage, X-Treme X-Men #43

"You leap like a hyena in heat!!" Conan to Wolverine, What If...? #16

"Useless, all useless...I was once a MAN!!" Cobra Commander, G.I. Joe the Movie

Skarlett Spyder Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> michael,
>
> To clarify, I didn't mean to imply that your last
> statement was condescending. I was just
> saying...ok. Missed the question mark.
>
> Skarlett da Clarifying Spyder
>
> So many worlds, so much to do ~ Alfred Lord
> Tennyson


My bad then! I was just trying to help the guy out. I'll try to be less snarkastic in the future.

michael