How to deal with looter-shooter zoomer type gamers in your DnD group?
He's a good player and roleplays but he seems to expect that he should be getting tons of loot to sort through at every encounter and he becomes really frustrated if he can't solve a quest very quickly to get the reward, always trying to come up with crazy schemes to shortcut the adventure and get to the loot so he can get the level up for the next part of his build or a piece of equipment he wants.
"Guys we should leave this dungeon, doesn't seem like we're really getting much loot"
I want him to have a good time but i can't just cut narratives short all the time so he can get what he wants.
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Maybe you could run a game that isn't so loot focused? Maybe something like...not D&D?
I use a pretty normal amount of loot for a DnD game with random loot chests throughout in addition to the planning, but he's from the background of video games like cyberpunk or apex legends where you loot a body and it's just this long list of equipment that you sort through and constantly upgrading.
So a less loot focused game would probably be too boring for him.
If he's just playing it to get endorphins from finding an imaginary item, is he someone you really want as a player? I assume you've talked to him about it and that didn't work, because of course you wouldn't make a thread complaining about an interpersonal problem on /tg/ without doing the obvious first would you?
>zoomer
D&D literally started out as having Gold as XP.
Tenser's Floating Disk is literally designed to carry off more stuff.
Buying followers and castles was literally hardwired in from day one.
YOU are the one ignorant here.
D&D is fundamentally about getting stuff and finding ways to get stuff fast.
Don't call it Zoomer just because you're a Millenial mired in Stranger Things and Critical Role style epic storyline plots.
Run something else or pare down.
See . He's not the problem, anon, you and your flawed expectations are the problem. D&D is fundamentally a game about dungeons, dangers, and treasure. It sounds like he gets it and you don't.
1) Your player is invested enough in the game to be planning things out and strategizing to accomplish things quickly. This is good, and you should provide them with more opportunities to do this and reward them for doing so (not with loot, obviously)
2) Your player expects something out of your game that you aren't willing to provide and is unaware of that fact. You need to sit down and talk to them about what kind of game you're running and make it clear that the pace at which they're trying to get loot is far faster than you're willing to give it out.
Nobody is in the wrong here. The player has certain expectations because of how D&D is commonly played and OP has different expectations for how they want to run their game. There's no universal law stating that one must run D&D as a dungeon crawling looter game, although I would advise against using D&D for anything other than that given the poor quality of its rules.
>It's the DM's job to cater to ADHD kids
Tell me you're butthurt nogames homosexuals without saying so
yes, it literally is
a DM without players is just jerking off. it's your job to keep the players interested.
>calling people nogames when it’s apparent that you never played D&D pre-WotC which means you must be a turbo zoomer
People have fake nostalgia about D&D.
I remember when they showcased 4E and it looked like a miniature combat game, there were tons of discussions about how some players missed the original D&D versions that "were all a about immersion and old school roleplaying."
>People have fake nostalgia about D&D.
That's pretty much any tabletop game that tries to modernize.
I deal with it by flavoring the loot harder, giving them more of it, and then taking it away from them for plot points.
Based
Don't have a D&D group, and you won't have those kinds of players in your D&D group.
Honestly that is what DnD is made for. Even if he is taking it to an extreme. I wouldn’t want a player like that in my group to be honest. People like that kill any sense of adventure and turn the game into an analog mmorpg.
>People like that kill any sense of adventure and turn the game into an analog mmorpg.
I fail to see how a tabletop game that requires very little physical media played by 3-10 people led by an arbiter enacting fluid events based on party decisions is analogous, to any meaningful degree, to a game which requires appropriate hardware/software played simultaneously by millions of players led by unthinking server code rigidly moving every player down the same story path with the same npcs every time.
But hey, video games bad, so playing something that couldn't be further from a video game the wrong way definitely still means it's video games.
Terrible take.
it sounds like you're doing the correct thing already: running the game normally
if i were you, i would deny him any loot, but that's bound to cause friction
>i can't just cut narratives short all the time so he can get what he wants.
correct
try to create more character focused narratives/ quests. like literally have a small set of characters that the story centers around. even some simple thing like saving the princess from the bad knights. there's no promise of treasure but there's a moral obligation to see things through.