Blast from the Past – Dealing with Problem RPG Players

Since my last blast from the past went over so well, I thought I’d pull up another old post. I’m really interested in hearing some of my new readers’ thoughts on this one! – Bob

A while back, I wrote about how, as a DM, I tend to make one of the worst players. I think this is pretty common among DMs. It is a different feeling, being on the other side of the screen.

So, let me tell you about my character. If you’re not interested, skip to the list down there at the end of the post.

A few years back, my wife ran a D&D campaign set in the Forgotten Realms, which we affectionately referred to as the “Flowers and Unicorns Campaign.” (Come up with your own acronym.) Now, I’ve only ever played in a handful of campaigns in my life, but this one was by far my favorite. Yep, I’m partial, but I think that most of the folks who played in that game had a good time.

That campaign was also the scene of the second scariest night I’ve ever had in D&D.

You see, I was playing an elven sorcerer. His name was Boskan, and he was something of a wunderkind. In fact, he and his sister, Yimsha, were thought to be the subjects of a prophecy spelling either the doom or the salvation of Faerun, depending on who you asked. Boskan wasn’t especially powerful, but he had attitude. See, Boskan had been raised by monks specifically to fulfill this prophecy. He knew his destiny (or thought he did) and he was driven to fulfill it, regardless of the cost to anyone around him.

The difficulty for Boskan came in that he had never met Yimsha; the pair had been separated at birth (think Luke and Leia stuff here). Yimsha was much more skeptical about the prophecy, as was the rest of the party.

Long story short (too late, I know) Boskan tended to rub everyone the wrong way. He wouldn’t entertain any efforts to question his destiny, not even from Yimsha, and he was determined that they would fulfill their roles in history.

Now, here is where the metagame comes in. I like to play ideologues when I do play. My characters, more often than not, tend to be driven, and often arrogant. Let’s just say that my characters tend to express the lesser angels of my nature. Deep down inside, there’s a part of me that’s just an asshole. My characters tend to take on that part of my personality perhaps more than any other part.

Anyways, in the process of playing this role, I crossed lines. I became heated, animated, and downright rude in character. This probably would have been fine, except that the person playing Yimsha and I had, in the past, had some personality tussles in real life, and this aggravated those sensitive areas for both of us.

Before the night was over, Yimsha’s player’s husband nearly handed me my teeth, and my wife kicked the two of them out of our house. It was the only time Angie has ever done that, and it was especially unfortunate given that Yimsha’s player and Angie were best friends. In the long run, it was OK; we had the two over the following day, and talked through the situation, and made nice. But it’s still something of a sore spot, all these years later.

So, what’s the point? Well, I think there are reasons that DMs often make the worst players. (These don’t all apply to every DM, I realize, but I can only speak from personal experience):

• First, as DMs, we are used to creating conflict. We run the bad guys, who argue with PCs, fight them, and are all-around pains in the ass to characters. It’s our job to be challenging.
• Second, we are all too often inexperienced as players. Mechanically, Boskan was weak, not for flavor’s sake, but because I didn’t build him right. I built him the way I would have built a single encounter creature, and that didn’t play right.
• Because of this inexperience as players, we often display our lesser angels. Most players figure out, in their first few characters, which of their own personality traits to project, and which ones to not project. We’ve never had to go through this process of trial and error. (My next character, by the way, was much less of an ass.)
• We also tend, as I talked about before, to mimic what we perceive to be player actions. In other words, on some level, I am disruptive as a player because I’ve had disruptive players as a DM. This isn’t a conscious decision, but I think it does happen from time to time.
• When we are playing, we can relax. DMing can be hard work; we feel like playing is something of a day off from the rigors of running the game.

So… how does your experience as a DM translate when you are on the other side of the screen?