Have you ever had a player who was less skilled than the others to the point where it negatively affected the group's experience as a whole?

Have you ever had a player who was less skilled than the others to the point where it negatively affected the group's experience as a whole? How did you deal with it?

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Frequently. Bully them until they get good or give up.

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Growing up we had a local KKK chapter filled with Doctor Who fans. They used to play this during there meetings but instead of weakest link it was just Biggest Black person and they would have a bucket of paint thrown at them. It stopped when I think someone got hospitalized from the fumes.

    Also no I wasn't part of the KKK but my hometown was pretty accepting of them so members were well known and liked to the community

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Fricking Doctor Who fans, man.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      That's a KKK chapter I'd join

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Also no I wasn't part of the KKK
      Cringe

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Yes.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    His name was Kenny. "Skilled" isn't it. Each game he had a good grasp of rules and fairly good at making combat builds. But he failed basic RP that wasn't in line with his character mission. To the point on three separate times his character received vital information that would change the course of the game and he simply ignored it. Didn't tell us about it, didn't make real plans of his own. Just forgot about them.

    In one Pathfinder game he kept his belongings in a locked bag. He scooped up what we knew going into the place were going to be pieces of a Lich's phylactery and hid them from the rest of the party. Eventually The Lich reformed. TPK. Never got a good answer as to why he did this.

    In another PF game he played an oracle and got a revelation from a god about an impending disaster. But he didn't tell anyone. He wanted to tell an npc he was raised by but he'd been kidnapped, so he decided he'd figure it out once we found him. This lead to an invasion of the city we were based in. He thought watching the noteworthy tower on the battlements collapse onto the mayor was a metaphor. It was sappers. e survived but had to flee, leaving most of our belongings.

    After talking to him about this kind of behavior we played a Cyberpunk game. Due to light dickheadedness: he was imprisoned and overheard that six different gangs were going to team up to take us out. Never shared what he learned. TPK.

    We simply stopped inviting him to games after this.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I had a player like that. Nice guy but he constantly forgot rule basics like what to roll for intiative and he was very hard to motivate to take plot hooks, like he would stop in the middle of a trek to somewhere and question how this would affect his family of NPCs. He would not go along with a plot because it didnt have direct ties to his character personally even if it was about party members.

      For some reason he kept showing up faithfully even if it was just three of us.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >He thought watching the noteworthy tower on the battlements collapse onto the mayor was a metaphor. It was sappers.
      Had he not been an absolute bumble, this would honestly have been a pretty amazing moment.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      the simple solution here seems too be not telling him anything

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    He was dumb as rocks and played turbo edgelords who were pretty much pratfall generators. Interchangeably annoying and hilarious. Unfortunately now he just plays humorless dipshit political fanatics.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Depends, are they "less skilled" because they brought a suboptimal character with niche uses? That's fine, I try to find ways of including their character more by putting in things that their character can actually do reasonably well.
    Are they less skilled because they haven't read the rules and it shows? I tell them to read the fricking rule book.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      What if it's neither and they just make terrible decisions.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        That can be hilarious, if the other players are willing to put up with it I don't mind at all.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Yeah it was me and eventually they stopped inviting me, maybe after 5 or 6 sessions. Granted, they were a bunch of normalgays and I was a socially anxious autistic mess, and also they were already a friends group I was an outsider to, but me being shit at roleplaying probably didn't help.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I have a group of friends I've been running games for for years now.
    One of them is absolutely hopeless. Getting anything out of him during character creation more interesting than a new name on one of the few one-note archetypes he likes is like pulling teeth, and it ultimately doesn't matter because he's not going to do anything during the session anyway.
    Giving him the spotlight just results in awkward, stumbling nothing, and unless I prompt him every few minutes he'll just fade into the background and not even play most of the time.

    I can't run most of the things I'd like to with him and one other troublesome frick making up half my players, but ditching the pair of them would upset one of my good players, so I've just been doing my best for the two that care and feeling my enjoyment of all of this slowly drain away.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I always wanted to know, why do these people show up in the first place if they don't even play the game?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I wish I knew.
        I'd guess it was just an excuse to hang out, but he's not much more active socially than he is as a player.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Giving him the spotlight just results in awkward, stumbling nothing, and unless I prompt him every few minutes he'll just fade into the background and not even play most of the time.
      You hurt me

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        The worst thing about this is that because Fatt Colville did that video on how it's okay for some players to be "spectators" you can have people there who simply don't really want to actually play the game the way it's intended (player choice driving the story) and just sit there on their phones instead.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Oh yeah it was definitely Matt's video that single-handedly created this behavior.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          I have a session coming up, my first, and one of my players is autistic and wants to play as non violently and non confrontational as possible. Totally doable with the system i'm using but I wonder how to handle it. The other players could pick up the slack but should I encourage her to get into the action when it happens? It isn't necessarily a combat heavy system but when the action does hit it can get crazy.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Have the player focusing on helping, defending and healing it's allies instead of confronting the enemy, a sustain.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Absolutely, I've had a player who just refused to read the rules and slowed down combat because he had to be reminded of his options. Ultimately, the only solution was to kick him, and he started getting passive-aggressive. Some people just don't want to put in the work.
    Then there was a party face who was incredibly socially awkward. He just couldn't communicate with anyone without stuttering and getting sweaty, yet still insisted on playing a high-Charisma character.
    In the end I had to kick him too, but mostly for his own sake. You've got to know your limits: It's just really annoying to see that happens.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >kick him, and he started getting passive-aggressive
      you kicked him and THEN he started getting passive aggressive?
      >but mostly for his own sake
      How was it for his own sake? Was he not having fun or enjoying his time? If he was ruining the game, he was ruining the game, fine. But how was it for his own sake specifically?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        > you kicked him and THEN he started getting passive aggressive?
        Yes he was all like "Oh, I totally want to play but you guys won't let me"
        "If only you could see this really cool build I had
        > How was it for his own sake?
        It spared him further embarrassement, because it was making us actively dislike him as a person

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Then there was a party face who was incredibly socially awkward. He just couldn't communicate with anyone without stuttering and getting sweaty, yet still insisted on playing a high-Charisma character.

      >get a guy who picks the social skill focused race
      >doesn't talk during the adventure where the team was supposed to interact with random citizens
      >quits
      The literal combat monster with a 13% success chance on the social skill ended up being the party face.
      (Many such cases. Sad!)

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Then there was a party face who was incredibly socially awkward.
      This is just the problem with social stats in general, but intelligence and charisma in particular. A charismatic player can easily talk his way through situations without needing a roll, and an intelligent player can make 800IQ stratagems (and it's impossible to use rolls to prevent that).
      The only thing preventing players from abusing that is the players themselves.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous
  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Been DMing 5e for a bit.
    If someone is struggling, first I'll take them aside and try to teach them. Give them one on one time and explain things to them. Encourage them to read the PHB or have their class open during the game. I'll do this for an hour or two, their own personal class.
    I will do this twice. First time I'll assume it's because they're a new player. Second time, maybe they're a slow learner.
    After that? I stop caring. Let them drown. Learn the rules or be beat over the head with them.
    I will let this combat come to a complete stop every time it's your turn so you can feel the shame of the entire table looking at you while you fumble with your sheet and your book because you still don't fricking know basic rules.
    They usually just stop coming to sessions.
    I can fix ignorance, but not stupidity. TTRPGs aren't for everyone.

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I have this one guy in my group who is way behind the others and learns really slowly but he is still learning and he is buddies with my most trusted long time player (whatever the female equivalent of a greybeard is) and she refused to play if he cant have a spot.
    So I talked with everyone else in the group about how we were there to have some fun and play some sloppy but fun shit and they mostly have gotten over it. Except for one player who is super into RP and likes to have the party be a well oiled machine purely because she wants to have fights that as are cool as she feels her character deserves, but even she has mellowed out over it and is good besides that.
    But there have been times where they both have gotten frustrated at each other and need to walk away from the table to cool down and I have to have the "you doing ok?" talk and so on.

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    A while back, I was running a Dragonquest game. One of the playable races is "shapeshifter", a kind of lycanthrope who has enormous control over their transformations. Think someone like Beorn from the Hobbit. On the plus side, they get to turn into a were-monster which is incredibly powerful and invulnerable to normal weapons. On the minus side, they get HUGE XP penalties for trying to level up anything. (It's a classless system where you use accumulated XP to buy skills, weapon ranks, abilities with spells, etc.)

    "Bob" made a shapeshifter character and then for a roughly 20 session long campaign never once shapeshifted into his wolf form. He basically gave himself a colossal XP penalty and was way behind everyone else and declined to use the upshot of it. He always seemed to think of a good reason to transform after it was too late, but that resolution never made it into the next problem they found themselves in.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Reminds me of my 5e player who took Berseker path Barbarian on two separate campaigns, rarely if ever used Berserker Rage and NEVER used Frenzy, which hey I get it the drawback is pretty big but it's also literally the entire suboptimal point of playing Berserker

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Change what night we play and never tell the shithead.

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >skilled

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Mechanically? Even if we did, it was never particularly relevant. Roleplay-wise? More times than I'd like. Though, I guess now that I think about it, the guy who was the weakest roleplayer also had a mechanically-redundant character.

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    In every game I have joined save for one I was always the most skilled player in every aspect of the game. Because of that the bar was set so low where the weakest link of the group was somebody who never paid attention or in some cases outright tried to sabotage the game. I was the one always having to pick up the slack both as a player and when I GM and got burn out because of that. Hell I was the only one to bring up the fact "that guy" tried to kill us for no reason and how much of a problem player he really was when he took things too far one game and despite nobody speaking up with me everyone agreed to kick him out in private DM's.

    I tried teaching the other players how not to suck ass at the game and what proper roleplaying is like but all that ended up happening was everyone sat around waiting for me to do something and what to do next.

  18. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I didn't invite them to the next game, which had a slightly more complex system.
    Mostly it was because they weren't trying.
    I've also had players who were struggling but trying and I have a lot of patience for those. They all either got better outright or made enough notes to avoid slowing down the game more than a little bit.
    I have no patience for someone who can't be bothered. I understand everyone will have a brainfart now and then but if you just don't know what the frick is going on ever and make no effort to improve or note your abilities and expect your turn to last minutes while you ask about the same spells every time and you don't remember who or what anyone else is in the party and thus keep asking irrelevant random shit during RP based on some shit you made up in your head instead of paying attention, please leave.

  19. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Yeah, I've seen someone cause a TPK due to literally forgetting an important halfling reroll that - we checked later - would have hit and killed the last monster.

    Then again, this guy was a bad player. Would come to groups in the area, get keen for a session or two but just constantly trolled and fricked around. He'd then get bored and start flaking whenever consequencesof his actionscaught up with him. He wouldn't give up the chair and would insist he was just busy but clearly was just stroppy that he couldn't troll any more. I genuinely don't know why local GMs let him at rhein tables, I sure as frick didn't.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >I've seen someone cause a TPK due to literally forgetting an important halfling reroll that - we checked later - would have hit and killed the last monster.
      I had somebody almost cause a TPK because they decided to throw a fireball at a pacified adult red dragon that let us go. Only survived because I told everyone to fall back and GTFO after three rounds face tanking damage and our TWO clerics only focusing on damage instead of heals. Also our DM was holding back

  20. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Here it is:

    >Party is teifling alchemist, Orc bezerker, a naga rogue, a cleric and me, a Paladin
    >So they walk down the stairs, and the lobby is right around the corner
    >Rogue hears something
    >someone creeping up the stairs behind them
    >giant cultist cube out for our souls
    >Run from the murder cube
    >Nobody says shit about the cleric
    >He also didn't get the hint
    >Rogue just shrugs at me
    >DM gives me a weird look
    >NEar total party wipe, due to bad rolls. My Paladin is only one left, and on low health.
    >Everyone else is bleeding out
    >BBEG "Stand down, stop fighting me, and I shall let you live. Join with me, and serve me, and I shall bring back your beloved, gifted with life so she never has to leave you again."
    >The rest of the players are silent
    >Deal with glares
    >Phew
    >The dick-ass DM ain't having any of that
    >I look at him
    >I calmly point his "mistake"
    >he becomes visibly upset, draws attention from everyone else
    >Won't show it to anyone due to it being shiny.
    >silence in the room
    >spots the squishy members of the party
    >Cleric puts up shields to defend them
    >Mishap temporarily averted.
    >HOWEVER, not the fallen will ragequit
    >Cleric opens a door
    >Call bullshit
    >DM claims the cleric cast the spell
    >Call bullshit on that
    >DM's face is anus-red

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      AI post? they're usually more coherent

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Glad I wasn't the only one who thought he was having a stroke.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Me three.

  21. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I was that player in Exalted, I asked questions and made an effort to remember and look up charm combos other players told me about.

  22. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    One of the reasons one of my campaigns fell apart is because it was text only and one guy typed way too slow and was kinda low engagement in general.

    Now we're on the 2.5th iteration and one of the prospective players is very engaged but types just as slow.

  23. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I can have trouble remembering rules and the like, I tend to try and take notes for anything my character has that might be plot-important though and I do my best to RP in situations where there's capability to do that. Some of the other players though don't usually even bother with that, which tends to bother me. I usually have to be the one to prompt conversation unless someone more experienced is at the table that week. It has me worried to try more narrative driven TTRPGs when I do get my rare chance to DM because I feel like I'll have to drag my friends around and prod them to actually try and roleplay.

    I'm excited for Convictor Drive to the point of waiting for the KS and I swear to god I think I'll break down in tears if they bungle up an attempt to run that game by simply not bothering to lend to the narrative at all

  24. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Only whenever we have a new guy, but in that situation you have to be willing to tolerate it until they get used to tabletop.

  25. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Yes, we just stopped telling them when the next session was.

  26. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Had a friend I went way back with. Let’s call him frank. Frank is the type of guy who sucked ass at any type of math he tried to do, and would accidentally push his frustrations onto everyone else. If he ever got a few bad rolls in a row, or had to be corrected for his shit math, he would be an inch away from throwing a fricking temper tantrum, and would sigh and say something like “oh I’m sorry guys, I’m just too tired to keep going”. Finally we got tired of his shit as a player and hoped being a dm would fix his issues. It didn’t. To give a brief summary, he railroaded the story from being an expedition story in the first session to a dmpc wankfest where we got railroaded into traveling the world to “experience” his dmpcs who are all immortal and did way more important things than the players. Basically just a getting the band back together story where we did nothing beyond walk up to guy and tell him bad thing. We gave him 6 sessions because we were still friends for reasons beyond dnd but had to just quietly stop showing up to later sessions. Dude ghosted us for a while after that

  27. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Yes, and he also tried to cheat all the time by fricking with the dice.

    >He spun the dice like a israeli dreidel, only thing that the dice would always land high numbers.

    >He would drop the dice with a high number ontop

    >He would have a D20 face up, and do the switch-a-ro when he rolled and say he rolled 20.

    He played some sort of weird acrobatic legolas archer, but would position himself in stupid ways that he would be unable to shoot, stand next to danger, or trigger traps.

  28. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Ian, 5E isn't a hard game. We specifically chose it because you're a goddamn moron. Stop being so moronic you can't even make a saving throw.

  29. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I had one player who never read the GM's posts, never read anyone else's posts. I called him out on it, and he started abusing me and my character for the rest of the campaign, and into the next, until the GM quit.

    I saw a game online that had one guy with superspeed and (informed) superintelligence, who would lose every fight for the team. Nimbus got Bladedancer's throat cut when he just chose to ignore a hostage situation and attack, he sunk a ship loaded with a city-destroying bomb that they were trying to get out of the harbour, and he taunted a giant supervillain about the size of his genitals until he got mad and threw a courthouse at them.

    Every goddamn time, Nimbus. God fricking damn it.

  30. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Have you ever had a player who was less skilled than the others to the point where it negatively affected the group's experience as a whole?
    No. I'm not even sure what that'd look like. I mean I've had morons in my group that have negatively affected our experience, but the "skill level" has literally never mattered. I've played several characters myself that sucked ass, but we always had a great time. I honestly don't understand the mindset at all.
    >How did you deal with it?
    We didn't.

  31. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    In the one game I GM'd, TSR Marvel, I had it all set up so the heroes would win by the skin of their teeth, but the last guy just ran. TPK.
    And they were yelling at me for using the Sisters of Sin dressed as nuns, which they have canonically done. I mean frick, I described them as wearing makeup, one had long nails, one was buff AF, one had a hood and was going HUEHUEHUEHUEHUE, I wasn't being subtle here.
    They were pissed because "They aren't nuns!" yes, it was a DISGUISE! (Highlander Kurgan voice) "I AM IN DISGUISE! THIS WAY NO ONE WILL RECOGNISE ME!"

    And in another game I played with the same guys, the guy playing The Hulk was supposed to get an EMP bomb from Reed Richards, across town at Four Freedoms Plaza, to fight N'astirh in his techno-organic form, but for some reason he would dither at the idea of jumping all the way there in one jump, and would only make a leap of half the remaining distance each round. For the entire game. Yes, basically Aristotle's Tortoise. I like to think that he's still there to this day, just outside the Fantastic Fours' base, making progressively smaller and smaller jumps.

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