TPK: Problem Players

Welcome back, my friends, to TPK. When I started this blog, I really didn't think I'd have to write too many of these. The biggest two things I've seen destroy games are disinterest and scheduling conflicts, and...there's not a whole lot I can say about those. Scheduling a game can be a lot like ordering a pizza for five or six people: It sounds super easy, but it never actually is. No, instead, we have a concept today inspired by last week's post on Cleverness. Unchecked, a single player with a bad habit can easily wreck a game: negative feelings build up until nobody wants to play anymore...and worse, they don't want to start a new game either, since they're expecting more of the same. We're talking about disruptive players and how to deal with them.

Just as a warning, this one's going to have some story time. The names won't be changed, because these people weren't innocent. If, for whatever reason, you find yourself reading about a situation you were a part of, don't take it the wrong way. I'm trying to teach, not shame.

So we discussed a lot of bad habits in the blog, but so far only cautions and tips on how to avoid them. The problem is that the social aspect of tabletop gaming is always going to be an X-factor. There are a ton of  ways someone can be disruptive, including ones that really have nothing to do with gaming. People who smoke, dip chewing tobacco or constantly drink too much at game might be obvious, but even someone who insists on snacks being offered, can't go five minutes without quoting Star Wars, or constantly show up in tiny shorts where you can kind of see their balls can be equally as bad as someone with a traditional vice. Internet based games also bring a more common problem of people who are doing something else while playing and thus aren't paying attention at all.

First, you have to analyze whether a character-focused problem is disruption, or character conflict. This can be really hard, but often this is as simple as watching and seeing if the 'problem player' is engaging those around him when challenged. There is a big difference between people who have a quirk or habit to their character because it will spark interaction and people who develop something ridiculous into their character because it's funny and they don't care what others think. You'll know which is which if the character seems to ignore or blow off others who confront or challenge them. The character who is open to IC interaction is not a problem player, and we will not be discussing them. We are splitting a fine hair here, but basically...you just have to get good at figuring out which is which. Don't jump to assuming an in character situation is an out of character problem, but don't think you can solve everything in character either. More on that later.

In my experience, simply letting people continue performing a disruptive or bad habit is a bad idea. Negative feelings will pile up until the game breaks, or worse, the group itself. People will start to resent game day and slowly stop showing up. Lord knows I've been there. Trying to squash confrontation to "keep the group together" will absolutely have the opposite effect. In fact, if you're trying to 'shut someone up'...all you're doing is becoming one more problem for them. It's not as if saying "It's fine" or "I don't have a problem" ever changed anyone's mind. There's only one healthy way to solve a problem player, and I want everyone to read what I'm about to say carefully.

Directly confronting the player in an out-of-character situation and diplomatically discussing the issue is the only thing that's going to work. 

Roll that around in your head until you're tired of thinking about it. Please. Talking to people is the only way you're ever going to fix your problems with people. Trying first to sanction them by penalizing their character will only breed resentment for being passive aggressive. Thinking you can "teach someone a lesson" by using in-character situations is arrogant, and not even very likely to work. They'll either blithely assume there's no problem since people naturally expect others to communicate with them, or they'll 'get it' and think you're being a passive-aggressive dickhead. That's because you ARE a passive aggressive dickhead if you think this is a good first attempt at solving a problem, but I digress.

This is a sidenote, but most people reading this are probably going to remember Blackjack's iron cow method. If you don't, this is a similar suggestion to mine, where Blackjack suggests penalizing them in a way that can't possibly be interpreted as being truly in-character: killing their character by dropping a cast-iron cow on them from the heavens. I appreciate the sentiment of making sure the problem player understands that your reaction was a purely out of character one, but overall I don't agree with the method, despite how popular it is. I find that, very often, people have no idea there was a problem right up until the first mention of one...and if your first mention of a problem is to severely penalize them, all you're going to do is make them mad. Remember, I keep saying that you're not as much an authority as you might feel. You're not their boss, you're their friend.

Nearly nobody likes confrontation. Out of the thirty or more people I can call a friend, I can think of three who enjoy confrontation.  Two have admitted to the behavior, and one just seems to. The rest of us? We'll DO it, but we don't like it. I've even met a lot of people who avoid confrontation as much as possible.

You can't avoid it. You just can't.

Thinking you can by using other methods has strong potential to make everything worse. I don't think I've ever seen it go well at all. In fact, I can trace the beginning of the end of a friendship to something just like this. Someone I knew by the name of John had come to us with a new idea for a Shadowrun game where we all have to "play against type" by taking on severe character restrictions. I had to make someone who looked normal. Dino had to play someone who didn't. Dale had to play an unoptimized character(because John is Dale's brother, and thus uncommonly mean to him). I was behind this idea until he told us that he already came up with all of the restrictions himself, and his wife already had her character finished. I don't remember being told what her restriction was, either. I started to grow uncomfortable when the only plot of the game beyond basic Shadowrunning was my character being mistaken for a child molester with a very high price on his head. Then, my good friend Jason caught him gloating about how he was going to graphically kill my character to prove I take gaming too seriously.

This line break is here so you have time to think about how fucking stupid his plan was.

Once Jason warned me, I started to realize this game only existed so he could do this to me. I was angry, and I won't lie, I was very close to violently angry. It felt like a violation of trust. Probably because it was. I confronted him directly, and he had no reasonable answer for me. It was obvious that John didn't want to actually discuss the problem with me, for whatever reason, and cooked this up so he either didn't have to or held a position of power in the following discussion, assuming one followed at all. We never played that game again.

After that, Jason, Dino and I discussed the problem that John set out to "fix". The core of the problem was that I was constantly leaving another game angry due to Dino's(The GM) love of picking on my character. I was playing a hateful little Jawa technician and I guess it was irresistible. He even cooked up a scenario once where everyone got a nice vacation except for my character, who was stuck dealing with PIT droids and mercenaries, for no reason. After months of being completely unsatisfied with my character, I asked if I could make a new one, and the answer was 'no'. So obviously, this led to anger and dissatisfaction. We talked it out, and I promised to try and step back more often. I don't think we even played many more sessions of that game after that, but Dino did back off too. He later apologized.

So! Colloquial evidence is fun, right? Which method worked, and which ended in a broken friendship? I really can point at that situation as the beginning of the loss of my friendship with John, though. Every time you're passive aggressive or 'sneaky' with your methods of solving problems, you flirt with this disaster. Even something as simple as beginning with in-game penalties or sanctions is very likely to backfire on you: When trying to 'solve' a problem of Ray's attention constantly wandering to his phone, John decided to begin with experience penalties every time it happened. He tried to apply this once, and Ray completely ignored him. That was the end of that idea. It could have gone even worse, though, because if Ray had challenged the idea, John would not have an answer to "why didn't you talk to me first?" and it could have ended with the loss of a player, or worse, over what was a minor problem at best.

I said there's only one healthy way to solve the problem, but there is another way. It's just really shitty of you. When someone's just not working out or being so disruptive that talking isn't working, you can just ditch them. Change game day, stop calling them, lie...whatever. Sometimes, this is the kindest let-down when someone just isn't going to work out. Others, it's really your only recourse. We would have needed to do this in the past, if a particular disruptive player hadn't disappeared just as the confrontation was going to begin. Dale had a roommate who would insist on charging party members listed book price for spells and do whatever it took to keep the game's plot to himself. He'd order us around and, at one point, pointlessly trying to keep us out of an important meeting with a King simply so HE'D get to make all of the decisions and we wouldn't even know what was discussed. He even literally hid treasure and important plot items from us.

Someone like this isn't always proven to be a douchebag in other areas of his life, but it's probably not likely that he's going to change, either. Our nasty little example boy disappeared from our group as he skipped out on over a thousand dollars owed to Dale, but...sometimes, people are just stubborn in their entertainment and otherwise stand-up people. If you tried diplomacy more than once and it's failed, or it's a problem that's too severe to try discussing, you have to skip to the next step of solving the problem.

You kick them out of the group.

Yeah, sorry. There really aren't many steps to this method. There's no tips, or tricks, or little methods I can give you. You have to either talk your problems out, accept some minor annoyance or compromise, or simply not game with that person again. It helps to be willing to compromise or discuss a problem more than once. It also helps to know exactly how many people are being disrupted before you bring it up, and try not to make it a situation similar to an intervention, where one person is socially assaulted by several. Be kind, and be courteous, but make it clear that the game can't go on while they're acting the way they are.

I hope nobody has to use this advice. Truth be told, I don't have as many horror stories of wanton douchebags as other people I know personally. Being up-front with someone is sometimes the hardest thing you can do, but it's the kindest and most effective way to solve a social conflict. Overall, take that away from this: Confronting someone about a problem does not mean you're allowed to throw kindness and compromise out of the window.