Export thread

Ok, I've got a question for the G/DMs out there who have experience dealing with players who always want to be the most specialist snowflake EVAR no matter what they're playing. Short of telling them to sit and spin, how can I convince them that they need to just be content playing within the system provided by the setting?

Background: I've got a Friday night group with only a couple of friends in it. Originally, we were playing Shadowrun 4th Ed, but we've been playing nothing but SR4 for the past 4 years and I'm sick of it. I need a break from SR4, and I've always found D&D to be a good GM-brain-reset game, to let me back off of having to provide high-end content and RP scenarios for my players and let me go back to that nice, lovely little tavern at the edge of town and start fresh. Unfortunately, one of my players is a snowflake player. If we play SR4 and everyone else is playing normal meta-humans, he's gotta play a vampiric human who spreads HMHVV and turns trolls into one type of monsters and dwarves into another and he looks like an elf and only mages with magic at 8 or higher have a chance of breaking through his masking and all of his skills are critter powers so no one has any defense against them. Or he plays a pixie, or a drake, or a shifter, or anything other than a human, ork, troll, elf, or dwarf. If we're playing OWoD VtM he wants to play an Independent member of a clan normally reserved for Sabbat who has 50 different combo disciplines and can shoot frikkin' laser beams out of his fangs and walk in daylight with no penalty.

Sadly enough, he thinks he understands power balancing and tries to impose limits on his characters to prevent them from becoming completely OP - but he usually fails to keep them from being OP and just makes them Extremely OP in half of their abilities and completely useless in the other half, thereby completely negating any benefits he would have gotten from - for lack of a better term - multi-classing in the first place. Or he'll limit himself in other ways, like making a character that's amazingly overpowered, but if it takes more than 3 points of damage it's dead and nothing can be done to revive it and he has to reroll (but of course it's nigh impossible to anything to effect the character enough to cause 3 points of damage in the same hit and the character regenerates to full health each round).

And he's a nice guy, he's one of my best friends. In fact, whenever my fiancee and I can afford to get married he'll be my best man. So I can't just tell him that he's not welcome to play (game nights are the only chance we have to see him due to family drama on his end), but I need him to recognize that these ridiculously special characters are game breaking for other players, for the GM, and for the game world itself - without hurting his feelings.

I can't game with my best friend. It just doesn't work.

If you want to continue gaming with him and you're the GM, you have to set strict rules such as "Characters can only be from X book." No special characters for anyone. If he doesn't want to play, tough.

Or make it a low magic/power game with characters who have no stat above a 12 (or whatever). No magic users are allowed. Only fighter type or thief characters. Unless it's 4e in which case you can't do this as everyone is OP.

The last guy that I was in a group with wanted to play a Pixie/Brownie/whatever the hell. The GM let him, and for 10 levels his character was basically invulnerable because it took a +2 weapon to touch him. We never got to level 10, my character fell on his own sword, and I walked out of the game. Because he used all his GM granted powers to fuck with other player characters.

No rules rapers need apply.

Dave said:

Unless it's 4e in which case you can't do this as everyone is OP.

Click to expand...

If everyone is OP then no one is.

Gusto said:

If everyone is OP then no one is.

Click to expand...

Players are OP, not the monsters.

I always had a NPC party made up of equal or greater stats to be a rival test for my players. I'd pull them out of my proverbial arse when the PC's pissed me off to much.

I have a group of friend who I game with for over 15 years. They are great guys. If he is your best friend, then he would understand and just stick with the rules given by the GM (in this case you) we all want to be "special" in our character, but also have to be limited.

SR3 (we don't have SR4 books) we initially forgo the 1 mage to every 5 street sam type. I was the street sam. eventually at high level we were pretty much OP. We actually limit ourselves when we have a new go around.

D&D - We just follow the books. We DO have custom race party that we created, but if you don't want to deal with that, just say "characters/class/race are only allow from this book"

If he is as close as you say he is you should just confront him on it.

That said, just make everyone else in the party as awesome as he is. He'll probably through a fit despite claiming that he doesn't mean/want to be OP, but it will make him aware of what he's doing.

Note this works also for players that want to play evil, or "chaotic neutral" (also known as evil on a budget).

I always had a problem with PC wanting to play evil...

"So what is your characters motivation to save the world, save the damsel in distress, or just not kick the puppy on the street?"

Yeah, I think we got it worked out. I just told him in no uncertain terms that I'm running a basic campaign full of basic characters because I need a break from power-gaming and I don't give a damn that he's not able to play a special snowflake character without being handicapped by the setting for doing it.

But yeah, I've been gaming with this guy for 10 years. I can't not let him play because he needs to stop playing snowflakes.

Depends on the type of evil you're talking about. If they are the kind that will use the law to exploit it to harm others it's pretty easy to do/roleplay/contain. If they are in it only for themselves, that's fine as well albeit a bit more interesting to deal with. The only kind of evil is the batshit insane evil that quite frankly are throw away characters and any able DM wants no part of. You simply can't invest in that.

As far as your original problem goes it's a big issue and something that honestly, you allowed to transpire. A DM is a lot like good parenting. Beyond preparation and patience. You want to say yes to your players and you want to reward them for doing things right and making the whole thing enjoyable. If players cross any lines, it is your responsibility to slap them back into their places. If you allow this to happen long term any remedy you enforce will HAVE to be dramatic.

Oh no, I'm not taking the blame for his special snowflaking - he's the DM for the SR4 group. But I understand exactly what you mean.

sixpackshaker said:

"So what is your characters motivation to save the world,

Click to expand...

I happen to live in it...

sixpackshaker said:

save the damsel in distress,

Click to expand...

So i can seduce her and then leave before she wakes up...

sixpackshaker said:

or just not kick the puppy on the street?"

Click to expand...

Because i got past that faze when i was 12 and now i need more to satisfy me... like killing the equivalent of a small town on a weekly basis while getting treasure, exp and praise for it...and then eventually betraying my companions and making off with all the loot when it's safe and most profitable to do so...

You don't have to be moustache twirling Stupid Evil you know. Or a murdering psychopath that would get caught easily if there was actually any sort of actual working law enforcement in the setting, even vigilante mobs.

no you just have to want to fuck over the party. Evil players are their own brand of special snowflakes.

We did an evil party (not throw away characters) it was interesting since our main objective was to take over multiple empires and establish ourselves as leaders, but we were low level and have to work our way up. We finally did it after 5 years of playing (it was long) ironically, while trying to establish ourselves and NOT get backstab by NPC minions/followers, most of us turn to "somewhat" good cause we don't want to get overthrown like the others.

note: some of the kingdom/empires WERE already evil, but we displace some good kings and queens as well which was interesting cause they want revenge and their land back.

Yea, playing an evil party/game is IMO very different from a player who wants to play evil (or evil on a budget).

Simple, let them roll whatever character they want then have them encounter a powerful witch/wizard/lich/god whatever in the first few minutes of the game who they piss off causing said entity to curse the character with normalcy. Then have the character slowly gain back powers over the course of adventures to keep their power level in line with the rest of the party.

I took an even simpler approach. I told him no. Then I pointed out the cases in which I told my other players no so he could see I wasn't singling him out. Then I explained to him why, while I normally don't mind specialness/diversity of characters in most settings, I wanted to keep this one very specifically basic.

Covar said:

no you just have to want to fuck over the party. Evil players are their own brand of special snowflakes.

Click to expand...

But that's a problem with the player, not the character being evil.

Look at Loki as depicted in norse myth, he helps the gods as much as he screws with them...

Ours wasn't as bad as the others described, but when our old DM decided he wanted to play, he always chose to portray a character so far out in left field...a roleplay challenge. This caused a lot of friction in the group as it often came across as him trying to screw with whoever was DMing, although we, as players, never really did it to him.