5 Players Who Drive Me Crazy - RPG Philosophy

This video was brought to you by Incogni. Hello, Internet. Seth Skorkowsky and it has been a long time since  I did one of my Player Types list videos - a couple years really - and I figured it was time  I could maybe get away with doing another. But instead of it being about bad players. Like "The  5 Worst Players" or "The 5 Most Awful Players That Ever Existed" or anything like that, none of these  are actual terrible things that are going to break up a group or cause any real issues. They're 

just things that personally just drive me nuts. Honestly, much of this is about my own group.  I mean, I love them. Some of them have been playing with me for many years now, and  they are my closest and dearest friends. But there are times that are just ... Phew And I'm sure that my own longtime players that are going to watch this are going  to recognize each and every one of these, as far as who it is that I'm referring to. And if any of my long-term players do not recognize who it is that I

'm talking  about - it's you. We've talked about this, but you never seem to remember. But it's you. Now to be clear, these are not Character traits. They're Player traits. Meaning that this is  not roleplay. This is what those players do no matter what character it is they're playing or  whatever system it is they're playing. Now some of them could be fun character traits, honestly.  But characters are temporary. These are really, really exhausting things, however, when  it's the player that's

doing it themselves. Okay, intros out of the way, let's get  started with Number 1: The Copper Thief. Copper Thieves are obsessively focused on  money to the point that they collect every rusty dagger off every dead goblin, strip  every stick of furniture, and light fixture, and minimally valuable item from the dungeon,  haul it all back to town in order to sell it. I have run campaigns where the Player Characters  are meant to be poor, and every copper and brass piece was sacred. But apart from

the very opening  of a campaign where they might be poor at the very start of the very first adventure, or even those  longer-term campaigns were being broke was part of the ongoing running theme of that, imaginary  money in RPGs just bores me to tears. Outside of a significant cost or special circumstances,  I usually ignore money altogether. I'm not going to nickel and dime every basic hotel room,  cab ride, dinner, pack of cigarettes that they buy. And one of the reasons that I love the  Cre

dit Rating mechanic in Call of Cthulhu is it allows us just to ignore the small amounts  of money and just focus on the big expenses. So while I totally get the idea of gathering  trophies - maybe that awesome chandelier that the bad guy had hanging in their evil lair,  and going ahead and keeping that cuz that was really cool - hauling a wagon-load of  scrap armor and doorknobs back to town in order to haggle the sales price of all that,  that is a completely different matter to me. It soaks up

a bunch of time, gives minimal  reward, and it's just exhausting. Especially in games where money isn't that  big of an issue in the first place. I found this most prevalent in players who  gravitate to video games were scavenging is a big focus, and they gleefully  strip out every root, and beer bottle, and shiny rock that's on the World Map. And  that is very fun to do in a video game where you can spend hours and hours alone gathering  ore, but in a group game where we're saving the the worl

d from evil cults and ruthless villains,  and performing daring heroics, Copper Thieves that are collecting just scraps for nickels, that  just... that just bores the hell out of me. Now speaking of thieves, what I  really hate are Identity Thieves. Which brings us to today's sponsor: Incogni. Right now, Data Brokers are collecting your information - gathering your name, address, date  of birth, buying habits, Social Security number, everything they can, and selling it to criminals.  Identity Th

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this video is not about my faults. It's about player faults. And in this case  what they do to my beautiful handouts. Searching the corpo's office, the three of you  find a handwritten note tucked inside one of the journals. Huh. Sweet! As the name implies, Handout Bandits  steal handouts. Be them Maps, or Clues, or whatever else, no handout is safe from them. Before he died, the victim wrote the word "Raptor" on the floor in his own blood. Wasn't there something about a raptor, earlier? Yeah.

It was in that article  we found. You got that handout? No, and I don't see it on the table anywhere. Yeah, I ain't got it here. Todd, do you have it? I don't know where it is. Did it fall on the floor somewhere? I don't even think I had a chance to read  it myself. Seth, do you still have it? No. I gave it to you guys. Todd, are you sure you don't have it? I don't have it. Could you double-check for us? Dude, I said I don't know  where it is. It's... oh. Ha ha! Don't know how that got there. Ha

ndout Bandits come in several forms. There's the type who just refuses to share the handouts  - thinking that they're personally theirs because their character made the successful die roll, or  that player was the first to grab the handout off the table when the Dungeon Master threw it out  there. But most don't mean to steal the handouts. They might tuck it in their book or  their folder without thinking about it, or just tuck it away for safekeeping so it  doesn't get lost, or if stuff is gett

ing moved around the table - like we're clearing the board  for something like that. Either good intentions, or no intention, but just terrible memory. Now this can be made worse in a mystery or investigative adventure, especially when  the player ends up missing the next session, and they're the one that's got the  handout that was given out to them. We used to have a guy who regularly  had to miss a lot of sessions - Family, Work - he had a lot of stuff going on, and  he had to miss it. Life g

ets in the way. No big deal. But he was really open about that  when he joined, so we all knew that coming in. However, he was also notorious for stealing  all the handouts - just gathering them up and sticking them in his binder and keeping  them, even though we all knew he only had about a 60% chance of making it to the next  session. He was going to grab those handouts off the table if we gave him half a second to. Now, actually, our group we have a Game Journal that we keep that we keep all

the handouts in. And  this thing doesn't ever leave my house. So we've always got anything that's in there available for  the next session, and that was great. However, if you took your eyes off those handouts for  a moment, he was going to grab them and stick them in his folder, and we just had to  cross our fingers and hope that he was going to make it to the next game. Number 3: The Numbers Thrower. And I hit! Great! What's my damage? 15. Okay... 15 points of damage. No, that was the To Hit.

Oh. Okay, then. What is the damage? 12. Okay... 12 points of damage. Plus 7 because I got 7 above 8. Oh, so 7 more points? And I forgot my Aiming Bonus of +2.  So that 15 should have been a 17, making it a +9. So 9 more? No, the +7 should have been a +9 because I got  a 17 instead of a 15, which is 9 above 8. So +2. So 2 more damage from what I've already put? Yeah. Okay... Okay, Dweebles, it's now- Hold on. We're not done yet. So I had specialty  sabot rounds that were loaded in my rifle. And t

hose are Armor Piercing at x3 for each  Damage Dice. Which my case is 4. So 4x3 is 12, so I get to ignore 12 points of armor. Okay, so 12 points that would have gone to armor was actually Armor Piercing, so  we should put that over to damage? Got it. Okay. ...and 12 more. Perfect Okay, Dweebles, it's now your turn- However, the sabot rounds also reduce damage by 1 point per die - in my case 4. So -4. -4 more damage? -4 from the damage that I did. So some of this damage you didn't do? Now some ga

mes out there, or certain combinations  of Character Abilities and Specialized Equipment can make for a lot of number-crunching during a  game. The Game Master is trying to get through all of this turn as fast as possible in order  to get from one player to the next player, and keep everything moving quickly, and hope  nobody gets bored, and nobody forgets what's going on. So when the Game Master asks what the damage  is, give the final number to them. Don't stagger it out with each declaration

sounding like it was  the final one, or just throwing out a tsunami of extra numbers. Either take a moment to do the  math and give the Game Master the final number, or if you do need help calculating it, you just  make it obvious that you're not finished once you start telling them and what numbers there are  and we can calculate all that stuff together, and then the Game Master can apply that one time. Remember, the Game Master is also doing subtraction from whatever the bad guy's armor  and h

it points is. So they're actually doing more math on top of whatever numbers are  getting thrown at them. So they've already got a bunch of figures going on through their  head. So, please, don't make it more confusing for them. I am begging you here. I am terrible  at math. Please don't make this harder for me. Great! What's my damage? Okay... Hold on... Okay, 17 points of damage at Armored Piercing 12. Okay, perfect. Dweebles, it's now your turn. What do you do? Number 4: The Conspiracy Theori

st. A lot of games, especially  investigative adventures, involve the players piecing together clues  and figuring out the nature of their enemy or the plot. Now sometimes the players are  going to make some incorrect assumptions, only to discover that they're mistakes as new  evidence emerges. Conspiracy Theorist players however, that is a different matter entirely. Searching the crime scene at the museum, you find a little bit of blood on  the glass of the broken display. They must have cut th

emselves  when they stole the Jade Idol. Okay, so we found a woman's footprint in the mud  outside that jimmied window that somebody used to get inside, and the security guard said that he  saw one person that had long blonde hair right before a second person snuck up behind him and  clubbed him in the back of the head. So there's got to be at least two of them were working that  night, and one of them's probably going to have a cut in their hand that could give 'em away. Wasn't Professor Dunmar

's daughter a blonde? Yeah she was. And her fiancé  was suspected of burglary right before he died under mysterious circumstances. Wasn't her. It was a security guard Jack O'Connor. He didn't have any cuts on his hand.  And somebody clearly tried to brain him. Misdirection, my friends. He just planted  some evidence and told us a story. And then he bashed in the back of his own head? He must have been betrayed by a partner. Possibly a brother who got in deep with the Chicago Mob. Chicago? Brothe

r, we're in Massachusetts. That's a long way from here. And does he even have a brother? And he's not going to admit to it either. So we  have got to get to Chicago to get some answers. Conspiracy Theorists find links, or they make up  clues, that just aren't there. Often to support some sort of predetermined theory that they  have, which may or may not make the least bit of sense. And any evidence that they discover  to the contrary is just simply written off as misdirection or somehow confirms

the player's  wild claim in their mind, which results in very wildly convoluted and over-complicated plots. This wastes a ton of time and can cause a lot of frustration as all the players are debating  amongst themselves. And a popular sentiment that I found online is that Game Masters should change  the adventure up to make it where the Conspiracy Theorist's plan and what their idea was was right  - that they had the correct solution all along. Then that player can feel clever for solving  it

and knowing what the answer is. And yeah, that might sound really nice in theory. But it's  possibly undermining the rest of the group who was actually following the clues, and it also implies  that the Conspiracy Theorist solution was remotely logical in some way, and not just chopped full of  gaping holes that a child could have seen through. This can be made a lot worse if  the same player also happens to be Number 1: The Unqualified Expert. These are players who speak with authority on matte

rs that they know nothing about. Instead of asking the Game Master or referencing the book, they present their  claim with absolute conviction. After making it through the mountain pass,  you finally reach the town of Martal. Sweet. Then I'm going to find myself  a blacksmith to get my helmet fixed. There's no blacksmith in this town.  You're going to have to wait until we get to the city in order to get that fixed. Damn. Well, I guess we'll just pass on through. As you're passing through the to

wn, a clanging  of an anvil draws your attention to a blacksmith. Oh, they do have one, then? Yeah, they've got one here. Oh. Well I didn't think there'd be one. Sometimes it's about the Game World. Other times they make incorrect assumptions,  and share those with the rest of the table, about how the Game Mechanics work. Mike's bullet catches the monster, driving it a little bit further back towards the cliff  edge. But then the hole closes before your eyes. Maybe I could shove it off the cliff

. It's too large to attempt to Shove on it. Damn. Well, in that case, I could um... It's not too large to attempt to Shove. You can attempt that. Oh. Well I thought it was. The problem with these players isn't just  that they make incorrect assumptions. I make incorrect assumptions all the time. It's one of my  superpowers. But it's their declaration of them as indisputable fact with this authority to the rest  of the group, and in a way it sounds like it was just an established truth that every

body  else at the table should have known. So, therefore, they believe them when they say that. So, while yes, the other players around the table should question why the Unqualified Expert  believes this - as often as as not - they just accept this confident declaration as being true. So to those players out there that do this, please, instead of just declaring something as  100 % established fact, maybe add the clause of, "I think," or "My character believes," or  simply ask "Is there a blacksm

ith in this town?" Sometimes, like in those example skits, I  can correct the declaration around the table to the rest of the players. But other times I  can't correct them. Either because it would be a spoiler if I do - because if I correct them  it's giving away something - or I just simply missed it when they did that. Like I was talking  to somebody else, or I went to the bathroom, or maybe they just whispered it to each other. Or in those cases where I am able to correct them to the rest of

the players, as the Unqualified  Expert's claim, the damage has already been done. And now that incorrect information is now firmly  lodged in everybody's brain and is going to come back to haunt them later on because they now  believe something that they now know isn't true, but it's kind of lodged on their brain as, "Oh  yeah, I guess I do remember that being true." So just please, guys, if you are going to  be making assumptions, don't declare them as absolute truths to everybody. My job  is

to make the game challenging already, so there's no need to help me out but by  making it more challenging for yourself and for everybody else at the table. Now, as I said, none of these are terrible deal breakers for me. And if  these were just simply Character Roleplay instead of Player Habits I could handle  it ... in small doses I could handle it. But... man, they just drive me nuts. Hey, thanks for watching. If you enjoyed the video,  please give it a Thumbs Up. If you want to see some mor

e of our stuff -  such as Game Reviews or How Tos - just hit that Subscribe Button. And a huge thank you  to Incogni for sponsoring this video. Make sure you hit them up at the link below.  Till next time, Amigos, stay awesome. Okay, man, I got to know. Where did that whole  thing with the Chicago Mob come from? Because I've been thinking about it and trying to piece  it together, and I still can't figure that out. I don't know, dude. It didn't  make any sense at all to me, but Dweebles was the

one pushing for it. That guy gets lost down some rabbit holes.