I've only been playing for about 18 months, and I'm now learning to DM with a new group. (yay!)
I'm having a challenge with one of my players. She is playing a rogue with the pirate background, and she doing mildly annoying behavior like hoarding loot and stealing good from other PC's. Not a huge deal, until we noticed that she is targeting one particularly good-natured player who keeps allowing it, but she hasn't targeted any other players. She is also displaying some manipulative behavior, like "you need to heal ME, NOW," (even though she let's running recklessly into traps and we all need the healing), and talking over this girl in role-playing situations.
She is pushy with the whole group, hurrying them out of RP situations and into battles before they can prep or plan, and generally pushing the story in her own direction without allowing everyone to participate. The experienced DM who is training me is also frustrated with her, because her controlling play style is making the group skip past a lot of encounters and items.
Biggest concern: Out-of-game, the good-natured girl is her coworker. She says things loudly, with our large group of people present, that she is the only reason this girl got her job, and she owes her, she better be grateful etc. This is a timid group of polite young girls, and no one has said anything outright, but we exchange a lot of uncomfortable glances when she says these mean things.
How can we breach the subject without creating drama? Experienced DM's, how do you deal with mildly abusive players? Advice for this noobie would be much appreciated!!
I must ask if you do have plans on talking to this player about this behavior? I would recommend at least telling her that this is unacceptable, and will not be tolerated any longer if she wants to play. As your other players they may feel obligated to do things like heal her PC, but keep in mind that even in real life some people would simply have enough and let's say no healing for that player, especially after she has been told about her behaviour. I wish you the best of luck in this matter and I am interested in what other DM's would have to say.
There are going to be many ways of fixing this situation but I am just going to go into a few here:
so the first and the one I prefer is having a quite open and honest conversation with the player about shifting their behaviour, sometimes this type of behaviour is pursued out of a simple lack of realisation about the effects that they are having on other players. Try and talk to this player about some of the behaviour that the table is finding uncomfortable and asking them to consider their actions to facilitate the whole tables fun. As I read above I understand this blunt and honest approach may not be a practical option, but its one that I think you should seriously consider as long as it does not turn into an inquisition this can be the most long term fix to this type of problem as the player actually realises there behaviour and fixes it themselves.
After this it's mostly about in character action tbh the best way of fixing out of character problems is out of character.
The second and maybe a less honest one you can go to the player and not actually confront the players behaviour, talk to the player about party composition and how you are hoping to make the party more friendly with each other ask them how they could see there character changing that type of behaviour and focusing on that. keep it focused on character actions.
You could also try to incentivize other ways of playing trying to give them a focus in game that will take their attention away from disruptive stuff.
There are many options in these situations and sadly I do not have the ability to have an 8-hour conversation on it and help you with more than general advice (i think I could write an essay on this topic). But I would try to go in assuming best intention on the disruptive person's part, I don't know how many times bad player behaviour has just actually been a bad attempt at RP.
In the end, you need to trust yourself to judge people's maturity, sadly there is no miracle cure and sometimes people have to leave a table. we play a game of respect and trust and sometimes that is breached to badly to be fixed while doing the same thing that broke it.
Hope this is helpful, and just remember that everyone eventually has to deal with these types of problems (And i have failed to mange them many times in the past) hope everything goes well for you.
Hello!
I've only been playing for about 18 months, and I'm now learning to DM with a new group. (yay!)
I'm having a challenge with one of my players. She is playing a rogue with the pirate background, and she doing mildly annoying behavior like hoarding loot and stealing good from other PC's. Not a huge deal, until we noticed that she is targeting one particularly good-natured player who keeps allowing it, but she hasn't targeted any other players. She is also displaying some manipulative behavior, like "you need to heal ME, NOW," (even though she let's running recklessly into traps and we all need the healing), and talking over this girl in role-playing situations.
She is pushy with the whole group, hurrying them out of RP situations and into battles before they can prep or plan, and generally pushing the story in her own direction without allowing everyone to participate. The experienced DM who is training me is also frustrated with her, because her controlling play style is making the group skip past a lot of encounters and items.
Biggest concern: Out-of-game, the good-natured girl is her coworker. She says things loudly, with our large group of people present, that she is the only reason this girl got her job, and she owes her, she better be grateful etc. This is a timid group of polite young girls, and no one has said anything outright, but we exchange a lot of uncomfortable glances when she says these mean things.
How can we breach the subject without creating drama? Experienced DM's, how do you deal with mildly abusive players? Advice for this noobie would be much appreciated!!
:)
I must ask if you do have plans on talking to this player about this behavior? I would recommend at least telling her that this is unacceptable, and will not be tolerated any longer if she wants to play. As your other players they may feel obligated to do things like heal her PC, but keep in mind that even in real life some people would simply have enough and let's say no healing for that player, especially after she has been told about her behaviour. I wish you the best of luck in this matter and I am interested in what other DM's would have to say.
Sadly this is never a fun situation to be in.
There are going to be many ways of fixing this situation but I am just going to go into a few here:
so the first and the one I prefer is having a quite open and honest conversation with the player about shifting their behaviour, sometimes this type of behaviour is pursued out of a simple lack of realisation about the effects that they are having on other players. Try and talk to this player about some of the behaviour that the table is finding uncomfortable and asking them to consider their actions to facilitate the whole tables fun. As I read above I understand this blunt and honest approach may not be a practical option, but its one that I think you should seriously consider as long as it does not turn into an inquisition this can be the most long term fix to this type of problem as the player actually realises there behaviour and fixes it themselves.
After this it's mostly about in character action tbh the best way of fixing out of character problems is out of character.
The second and maybe a less honest one you can go to the player and not actually confront the players behaviour, talk to the player about party composition and how you are hoping to make the party more friendly with each other ask them how they could see there character changing that type of behaviour and focusing on that. keep it focused on character actions.
You could also try to incentivize other ways of playing trying to give them a focus in game that will take their attention away from disruptive stuff.
There are many options in these situations and sadly I do not have the ability to have an 8-hour conversation on it and help you with more than general advice (i think I could write an essay on this topic). But I would try to go in assuming best intention on the disruptive person's part, I don't know how many times bad player behaviour has just actually been a bad attempt at RP.
In the end, you need to trust yourself to judge people's maturity, sadly there is no miracle cure and sometimes people have to leave a table. we play a game of respect and trust and sometimes that is breached to badly to be fixed while doing the same thing that broke it.
Hope this is helpful, and just remember that everyone eventually has to deal with these types of problems (And i have failed to mange them many times in the past) hope everything goes well for you.