A little background information: Since we’re all busy adults, our group plays mostly via chat instead of meeting in-person. And I don’t mean voice chat, but taking turns typing out the actions of your characters in an actual text-based chat. Occasionally, we get a newbie wanting to join and usually embrace them with open arms.
Recently a new player joined our group and gameplay has been a hot mess since then, as she legit can’t distinguish between “her stories & NPCs” and the ones that belong to other people. I’ve been playing for more than 20 years and literally never had this problem with anyone, as I always thought it was an unspoken rule amongst roleplayers that characters and storylines belong to the people who introduced them.
One recent example: I was trying to DM a simple story - haunted house, desparate questgiver trying to drive the ghost out, nothing too complicated but I’ve had prepared the whole story nonetheless and slowly introduced more information to the group. Then they meet the actual questgiver, and suddenly SHE takes control of the story, describes in detail what the questgiver said about the house and what happened there, introduces his wife and kids (her creations, not mine) and then graciously allowed the others to continue after basically hijacking my plot. She did not ask beforehand whether it was ok, nor did she know anything about the plot that I wanted to DM.
We were all flabberghasted and tried to explain to her that she can introduce her own NPCs whenever she wants but should leave the effing PLOT to the DM. She didn’t understand what she did wrong and started asking questions about which characters she was “allowed” to play, then seemed confused when the obvious answer was always; only your own.
I have nothing against my players temporarily taking control of unimportant “faceless” standard NPCs like stable boys, waitresses in a tavern etc. to speed up the unimportant parts of the gameplay like ordering food and the like, but those were named, detailed NPCs that were very obviously important to the overarching story and originally introduced by me. And the best part is that she then expected the other players to take control of the wife and kid SHE tossed into the game, because her character started interacting with them and she didn’t want to “play by herself”.
Similar situations have happened with the NPCs of other players. She takes control of NPCs that are not her own, expects other people to take control of NPCs she introduced herself, and doesn’t get why we won’t do that. How are other people supposed to know the background stories of HER NPCs?!
I have never had such a player in over two decades yet she claims that this is how she had always played and it had never been an issue for anyone. And I currently have no idea how to deal with it. On one hand, she is a friendly person and her characters fit right into the universe we created, but on the other hand it drives me nuts that I have to get my mind out of the in-game zone every three paragraphs to tell her to stop doing this stuff. If this continues I will have to kick her out of the group, which I’d like to avoid … but I can’t seem to make her understand the concept of “leave the creations of other people to them”.
Did anyone have similar experiences with a player? And if so, how did you deal with it?
So I generally agree with the prevailing wisdom on what to do about a player that’s interfering with the game – talk to them, talk to them again, and if they’re still doing it, remove them from the game. It’s a tough thing to do and that article talks a little bit about the downsides and things to consider, esp if they’re generally a friend to you, but at the end of the day you’re trying to run a good game, and if someone’s persisting in interfering with that mission, they shouldn’t be playing. Personally, I’ve never had this type of issue persist beyond that first conversation and “oh crap, I didn’t realize that, yes I’ll adjust what I’m doing,” but some people are more stubborn than others.
Pretty much the only thing I would add to the article above is: Sometime during that second conversation I would make it explicit that you plan to kick them out if they don’t change. Something like, “Look, please take this with all the kindness in the world, but I don’t want to play with you if this is the way you’re playing. I would want you to stop doing this and still play with us, but if you’re really set on playing this way I think it might be better to find another game. IDK, what do you think, what do you want to do?” It’s tough to phrase it in a way that’s clear and at the same time non-confrontational but you gotta do your best sometimes and just the chips fall where they may. But, if your conversations with her are just general conversations about play style (and especially if she’s coming back with things like this is how she had always played) I think there’s some benefit to being explicit about the possibility of kicking her out before the conversation where you pull the trigger on kicking her out.
Thanks. I think I’ll do that … the “first conversation” has already happened, but directly telling her that she either has to adjust her playstyle of find a different group, that’s something I’ve put off for a bit too long now.
It still feels weird tho. In all those years we very, VERY rarely had to remove someone from the group, and in all cases so far those have been jerks who deliberately disrupted the gameplay, so they deserved to be kicked out. In her case tho I’m positive that she doesn’t do it on purpose and just genuinely doesn’t understand, and kicking someone out for not understanding a concept feels strangely wrong. On the other hand, it dampens the mood for everyone else in the group, which is something that can not continue infinitely.
Feels like the choice between the plague and cholera.
(Lemmy ate the first reply, so sorry in advance if the former comment pops up later and reads like a duplicate)
Yeah, it’s just a tough thing to do in general. Any time you’re setting a boundary, there’s a pretty good chance the other person will take it as some kind of insult or an attempt to control them. I mean, she doesn’t “have to” adjust her playstyle; you’re just making a choice of which playstyles are ones that you want to have involved in your specific game, which is clearly within your rights.
Actually, I’m thinking back on it now, and I think the one time I did have this conversation in a game I was running, it took until the second conversation before the person changed what they were doing. It was sort of similar to what you’re talking about, where the first time he blew it off, and the second time when I was explicit about “Yo this is not something I want to have in a game that I’m running,” and at that point he took it more seriously. Also, I was very above-board about things I’d been doing to aim to accommodate the way he liked things to be – making it clear it’s not like “my way or the highway” but more like “Yo man, I’m trying to work with you so everyone has fun, can you just work with me also in exchange?” which made it a more low-confrontation conversation.
I like this approach. I can’t stand direct confrontations IRL (personal issue unrelated to the group) but the way you worded it sounds great and is still to the point - we are trying to have a good time together, after all.