I'm running a series of one-shots where people on our discord server sign up on a week by week basis. Some people are there every week, others join in once in a while. Each week's encounter is unrelated to the previous one. Players can use the same character every time, or a different character every time. It's a venue for people to try stuff.
One player has joined in two or three sessions (out of about 10 so far). We had a game yesterday on Roll20, with voice chat on discord. This player – “Q” – was difficult. When he arrived he said he'd be using a character he'd used before. I soon found out that his character sheet was badly underprepared. All characters are level 7 and get to choose gear before we start the session. His sheet showed his HP max was 10, and his inventory was empty. I found these out at different times, and had to take a moment to resolve each of these. He also stopped us once or twice more to check and re-check his HP. I tried to make a DM call, giving a fair value, but he was fairly insistent on doing it properly mid-session. He also missed interrupted to ask if he could swap his ability score increase for a feat, because he meant to do that earlier. I told him no, he had to do that between sessions.
What became apparent as the session progressed was that he knew a lot of lore: “We have a kenku in the party? How can she be talking to us?” “Does anyone know Dimension Door” (could have been a very useful spell here) “I think we're fighting a Ullitharid.” He clearly knows some stuff, but he had a few metagame moments where he was trying to reconcile the scenario with the lore. At one point he was looking up monster stats during a fight, and we all told him to stop. (It didn't matter much, since it was a partly homebrewed monster, but we were all annoyed.)
He didn't seem willing to accept that his character didn't know something in particular. There was strange writing in the dungeon. I checked with everyone in the party, asking what languages they knew. It was deep speech, but nobody could read it. Q asked if it resembled any other languages he knew. It didn't. He asked again a little later if he could interpret the language at all. I said no again.
He did something similar when fighting the monster. “Do I know what this is?” “Roll this or that.” “I roll this.” 4. “You don't know.” He tried the other skill a little later, and rolled low again. After defeating the monster, he asked if he could examine the body. He rolled low on a third skill. None of these are bad in and of themselves. However, I think they are indicative of his desire to KNOW what's going on. He struggles to accept the limitations of his character.
By contrast, his grasp of gameplay was weak. These happened over a few turns: He wanted to attack the monster with his quarterstaff. I pointed out that he couldn't reach because his friends were in the way. He wanted to cast lightning bolt. I warned him that his friends would get hit. He wanted to throw a dagger. Ok, roll an attack. “How do I do that?” This became a problem with his other weapon attacks as well. I said the dagger was a d20 plus dexterity modifier plus proficiency. He rolled a d20, then rolled a dexterity check (roll20 auto-rolls a lot of checks) then I interrupted, saying the d20 was too low (4) to possibly hit the monster.
If you know roll20, you'll know that players can have their attacks prepared on their character sheet. You can just click “quarterstaff“ to make an attack. He hadn't prepared his sheet with these attacks, and he also didn't know what to add to a d20 roll. It was very annoying.
Other issues were around talking over people unnecessarily, asking questions we've had answers to already, rolling the saving throw I'd asked a different player for (thinking he had to do it), and interrupting the game to ask “What did I miss?”
It was bad enough that, within the first hour, another player in the session messaged me privately to say she was having a hard time playing with Q. During the monster fight, she told me she'd had enough of this guy and was going to duck out when combat ended. (She made it clear that her problem was with Q, not with me or anyone else, in case you were wondering).
Q seems like a nice guy - he's never said anything unkind to anyone, seems eager to help out when he can (or thinks he can) and genuinely wants to have fun in a group. I think he really likes the lore of the game – he's playing as a tiefling sorcerer. He seems unwilling to accept the limitations that the rules present, though. It's a meta-game issue, partly. He wants his character to have all his knowledge AND be a skilled spellcaster and combatant. I want to give the guy a chance, but don't quite know how to do it.
I think that the best thing to do is just have an out-of-game talk with the player. Explain to them what metagaming is, and character knowledge vs. player knowledge. In addition, you could talk to them about how to play and help them build a character.
(Side note, this is the wrong forum. You are probably looking for the general or dungeon masters only forums. This is for the website dungeon masters guild, were people sell homebrew.)
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A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
I would say that you should just talk them through the game. Maybe do a one shot with just them, just an hour or two. Have them make a new character, and so they can learn the rules on a different way. Maybe still be a sorcerer, so they learn how to do it.
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'The Cleverness of mushrooms always surprises me!' - Ivern Bramblefoot.
My game group has just (the last 2 sessions) switched over to Foundry VTT, and in these first 2 sessions, we have all had instances of "how do you do that?" One of them is new but the rest of us are not... yet sometimes it still takes some time to figure out how to use the interface to get what you want. I also give them the option of rolling physical dice if they want, so fortunately what happens is, if someone can't quickly find where on the Foundry interface to make a roll, they can just pick up a die and roll it physically, and just tell me the result. But I suspect some online DMs would not be comfortable with that.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
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Hi all,
I'm running a series of one-shots where people on our discord server sign up on a week by week basis. Some people are there every week, others join in once in a while. Each week's encounter is unrelated to the previous one. Players can use the same character every time, or a different character every time. It's a venue for people to try stuff.
One player has joined in two or three sessions (out of about 10 so far). We had a game yesterday on Roll20, with voice chat on discord. This player – “Q” – was difficult. When he arrived he said he'd be using a character he'd used before. I soon found out that his character sheet was badly underprepared. All characters are level 7 and get to choose gear before we start the session. His sheet showed his HP max was 10, and his inventory was empty. I found these out at different times, and had to take a moment to resolve each of these. He also stopped us once or twice more to check and re-check his HP. I tried to make a DM call, giving a fair value, but he was fairly insistent on doing it properly mid-session. He also missed interrupted to ask if he could swap his ability score increase for a feat, because he meant to do that earlier. I told him no, he had to do that between sessions.
What became apparent as the session progressed was that he knew a lot of lore: “We have a kenku in the party? How can she be talking to us?” “Does anyone know Dimension Door” (could have been a very useful spell here) “I think we're fighting a Ullitharid.” He clearly knows some stuff, but he had a few metagame moments where he was trying to reconcile the scenario with the lore. At one point he was looking up monster stats during a fight, and we all told him to stop. (It didn't matter much, since it was a partly homebrewed monster, but we were all annoyed.)
He didn't seem willing to accept that his character didn't know something in particular. There was strange writing in the dungeon. I checked with everyone in the party, asking what languages they knew. It was deep speech, but nobody could read it. Q asked if it resembled any other languages he knew. It didn't. He asked again a little later if he could interpret the language at all. I said no again.
He did something similar when fighting the monster. “Do I know what this is?” “Roll this or that.” “I roll this.” 4. “You don't know.” He tried the other skill a little later, and rolled low again. After defeating the monster, he asked if he could examine the body. He rolled low on a third skill. None of these are bad in and of themselves. However, I think they are indicative of his desire to KNOW what's going on. He struggles to accept the limitations of his character.
By contrast, his grasp of gameplay was weak. These happened over a few turns: He wanted to attack the monster with his quarterstaff. I pointed out that he couldn't reach because his friends were in the way. He wanted to cast lightning bolt. I warned him that his friends would get hit. He wanted to throw a dagger. Ok, roll an attack. “How do I do that?” This became a problem with his other weapon attacks as well. I said the dagger was a d20 plus dexterity modifier plus proficiency. He rolled a d20, then rolled a dexterity check (roll20 auto-rolls a lot of checks) then I interrupted, saying the d20 was too low (4) to possibly hit the monster.
If you know roll20, you'll know that players can have their attacks prepared on their character sheet. You can just click “quarterstaff“ to make an attack. He hadn't prepared his sheet with these attacks, and he also didn't know what to add to a d20 roll. It was very annoying.
Other issues were around talking over people unnecessarily, asking questions we've had answers to already, rolling the saving throw I'd asked a different player for (thinking he had to do it), and interrupting the game to ask “What did I miss?”
It was bad enough that, within the first hour, another player in the session messaged me privately to say she was having a hard time playing with Q. During the monster fight, she told me she'd had enough of this guy and was going to duck out when combat ended. (She made it clear that her problem was with Q, not with me or anyone else, in case you were wondering).
Q seems like a nice guy - he's never said anything unkind to anyone, seems eager to help out when he can (or thinks he can) and genuinely wants to have fun in a group. I think he really likes the lore of the game – he's playing as a tiefling sorcerer. He seems unwilling to accept the limitations that the rules present, though. It's a meta-game issue, partly. He wants his character to have all his knowledge AND be a skilled spellcaster and combatant. I want to give the guy a chance, but don't quite know how to do it.
Any suggestions?
Thanks for reading this book, by the way :)
I think that the best thing to do is just have an out-of-game talk with the player. Explain to them what metagaming is, and character knowledge vs. player knowledge. In addition, you could talk to them about how to play and help them build a character.
(Side note, this is the wrong forum. You are probably looking for the general or dungeon masters only forums. This is for the website dungeon masters guild, were people sell homebrew.)
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
I would say that you should just talk them through the game. Maybe do a one shot with just them, just an hour or two. Have them make a new character, and so they can learn the rules on a different way. Maybe still be a sorcerer, so they learn how to do it.
'The Cleverness of mushrooms always surprises me!' - Ivern Bramblefoot.
I'll worldbuild for your DnD games!
Just a D&D enjoyer, check out my fiverr page if you need any worldbuilding done for ya!
Is he maybe just unfamiliar with Roll 20?
My game group has just (the last 2 sessions) switched over to Foundry VTT, and in these first 2 sessions, we have all had instances of "how do you do that?" One of them is new but the rest of us are not... yet sometimes it still takes some time to figure out how to use the interface to get what you want. I also give them the option of rolling physical dice if they want, so fortunately what happens is, if someone can't quickly find where on the Foundry interface to make a roll, they can just pick up a die and roll it physically, and just tell me the result. But I suspect some online DMs would not be comfortable with that.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.