Roll playing or roleplaying?

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We've been having a problem with a guy in our group because he's a power-gamer. He only plays "super-characters" and he uses every loophole and rule to his advantage. I wouldn't normally have an issue with that, but he uses game knowledge to direct what his char does (one of many examples: My horse has evade, so I'll charge up to that wall lined with archers). Not only that, but the rest of us make it a point to really roleplay and flesh out our chars, and he plays without doing much roleplaying. He's also weirdly competitive, in a game that has no winner. It's always about outdoing everybody else. I'm wondering if I have foundation for my gripes.

My question to you, good people, is how do you play? Is it all about numbers? Or all about the spirit of the story? Roll playing or roleplaying?

 

You might find this link interesting - there's a number of articles about roleplaying vs. powergaming, and a whole lot of other stuff as well. www.ptgptb.org

 

Are you the DM? If so, you might consider a different way of awarding xps. Reduce the amount you give for 'killing orcs' and start awarding bonus xps for good roleplaying. With luck your roll player will start to find out about all the fun he/she has been missing out on.

 

by consequence im a DM myself, and i play for power-gamers im a power gamer myself, i follow the tactic dungeons are simply for raiding and had no prior use. all my firends playing are power gamers as well (i gave em 36 point buy with monster races) so an alternate way to fix the problem is to decrease the difficulty of every monster until hes so bored from fighting off tiny centipedes that hell pay more attention to the story, or you can try the other extreme: make power-monsters, and seriously pick on em. if you kill him a couple times he might stop, however he might find this too exciting continue

 

Note when i tried introducing roleplaying encounters to my party there simple atitude was kill them, i asked em whether they would talk him, they said yes. Im gonna kill him was one of the first words they said. i then pointed out that he was about double their level, and they said whocares?. so introducing an ancient dragon into the game might work, but be prepared for it to end up being completely ignore and instead your party will go offa nd kill something else. id even suggest a session or 2 or 3 or 4 even with absolutely no creatures but themselves. that might work too


[This message has been edited by Inappropriate Synonym (edited December 21, 2001).]

 

I so agree with Erran - this is a situation where the DM needs to assert themself a little, and bring this player back to earth....so to speak If the players try to do too much to curb this person's behaviour, it could easily lead to just a lot of in-fighting and bad feelings - and it ruins the game for everyone. Another option I'd suggest for the DM in addition to Erran's suggestion is to increase the number of encounters where role-playing is required - things like riddles, and conversations, where the rules become less important, and the options for 'power-gaming' are slim at best. And there's always the ever-popular 'humbling' experience - such as meeting up with *very* powerful NPCs, who are generally helpful, or at least non-aggressive, but have little patience. Ancient dragons are usually good ones for that role

 

I'm not the DM, but I agree, he does need to assert himself a little more. He does reward for non-combat experience, and using your head, not your sword to get through things. Moreso than the average DM, I think. We can go entire sessions without picking up combat dice. We try to drop subtle and some not so subtle hints about the joys of roleplaying, but nothing's worked, so far.

Ironbeard, thanks for that link, I read an article there called "Competence is Overrated", and that sums up my feelings about gaming pretty much. Also, the site gave me a word to sum up what I really hate-metagaming! Grrr!

We've gotten to the point of hoping he gets bored with us and just quits the game. I looked to you guys for advice to help, and already this is helping, so I thank you. I welcome any more advice and opinions about this topic.

 

Sounds like a pretty hopelss situation. I'm surprised no one suggested the obvious solution. Get rid of him! I suppose you could do it nicely, and explain to him that your playing styles are simply not compatible, and explain to him the concept of RPing just in casee he's missed it. But failing that, if he flat out refuses to change his ways, tell him to leave. There's simply no reason to let him ruin the enjoyment of the the game for the rest of you. Let him go find another group that prefers his style.

Then again, I *really* liked Baldak's suggestion on how to discourage this sort of behavior.
http://www.sorcerers.net/ubb/Forum8/HTML/000245.html

Good luck!

 

Yes, throw him out, or just 'forget' to invite him and maybe he'll take a hint.
Here's what happened in my group when we did that:

We started a new group some time back, and there was one person, well two actually, of an older group that we didn't want in it, because of their powergaming style. A couple of fridays after that, most of the players didn't have time to play (friday is our gaming day), so I and the DM rented a movie instead. Then we ran into that guy from the old group, and he asked us why we weren't playing, and the DM told him we couldn't get enough players. Then the guy tried to hint about him not being invited, and me never being very patient, told him to take a hint. He got really angry at me and started calling me things, and he's been doing that ever since. He's quite friendly to the DM, but he seems to hate me, which is quite funny. I tried to explain to him that him not being invited was the choice of the group, not me, but he kept on calling me stuff and saying that I was a bad DM etc., which is quite funny, considering I haven't been a DM for quite some time now, and he never played in that group. Last thing I heard, he's been telling people that I've 'come out of the closet' (beware all! heh ), a situation I am currently getting many a good laugh out of, but that is another story.

The point of this story: Telling people they're not wanted in a group is really fun.

 

Damona Silvercloud, I think folks have given you a lot of good suggestions here. Unlike, Azardu, I usually like to 'not invite' rather than throw out unwanted players. That is if you still want to be friends with them. If not throw away! A classic move is to schedule gaming when they are not free. "We would have invited you but.."

But by all means you are right. RP is what the game is about. I don't care about numbers only about characters. The relationships between party members and with other NPCs. That's what keeps the game interesting. The very best of role-playing has been about the build-up to action more than action itself.

If your PCs are just attacking everthing in sight know fear just killing them off with a more powerful creature. I would never put it in game terms, if the NPC is stronger than the party I'm not going to say anything about level. The party will learn real fast when he takes 4 attacks in the first round they picked the wrong person to foul with. Give the party warnings but if they are stupid so be it.

Remember the game is Role-playing, don't let folks change that.

 

Voltric, that's what I said we did. But then he asked us why he hadn't been invited, when it was obvious that we were a bit short on people, so I spelled it out for him.

On topic again: As a way to bring the guy over to roleplaying, try the grim 'n gritty hitpoint rules available at http://www.sleepingimperium.rpghost.com/
That should teach him a few lessons.

[This message has been edited by Azardu (edited December 22, 2001).]

 

Being in Inappropriate Synonym's power-gamer only campaign (cept maybe for SG, but she doesn't role play during our sessions ), it's pretty hard to actually "role-play" situations out, but I try. Our last campaign ended in three sessions because Shaun, our local arrogant b*stard, decided we (party of 5 clvl 2's) could take on twenty Orcish 1st level warriors. Now being only level two and having roughly 20-30hp each, we quickly fell to the 1d12 great axes .

Well, see, Shaun is a big power-gaming fool. He complains about not encountering anything after resting for eight hours, and he ALWAYS plays melee character classes (mainly fighter). I mean his character now is a Drow Fighter 4th level with the following stats:

STR: 18, DEX: 20, CON: 11, WIS: 8, INT: 10, CHAR: 6 ... Crazy huh? (Well I'm not much better)

We've started a new campaign (with the same 36pt buy power-gaming style) but this time I've assumed leadership of the group, thus, making most of the important descisions. But, being from power-gaming based background (Diablo 2, Medievia, tons of first person shooters, other "domination" games) I haven't been doing too great a job. But over the last two or so sessions, I realized I should actually listen to what NPCs say instead of just getting the general idea of the quest and moving from there. Oh well, I'm still learning the "more talk, less head smashing" technique. So I guess I'm fading from the power-gamer type to the more role play type now.

Hopefully our DnD group (everyone but Shaun)will realise that too by the time we start my campaign.

Btw ... if you wanted to know how horribly power-tweaked my character was for our Sunday sessions, here goes:

STR: 12, DEX: 10, CON: 14, WIS: 14, INT: 23, CHAR: 6

4th level Dark elven Wizard

Headband of Intellect +2, Natural +21 int for those who were wondering about the insane intelligence of my char


Ah well guess I'm obsessed with dark elves after I read Salvatore's Servant of the Shard. Stupid Jarlaxle just coudln't die, could he? Bahh...

 

The DM does ultimatly have to deal with him, but if the entire group is upset with him you might whisper this to your DM, Pit-traps. Having a character fall in one and then not be pulled out until the rest of the party is ready to can put the point across quite well especally if the rest of the party goes off and earns some points while he's down there.

 

Hehe, and fill it with water. Then have zombies on the bottom of it, grappling him.

 

If you want to want to curb certain player behaviors, you should always b prepared:
http://www.fortunecity.com/rivendell/stonekeep/25/critical.html

This is a useful way of interpreting critical hits :g:

 

That Critical hit chart is wicked evil!

 

Nice chart, but it looks like all those dice you have to roll would slow the critical hits down to a crawl. And having limb damage and such is just strange in a hit point based system anyway, unless one was to have different amounts of hit points for the various limbs.

 

We're playing tomorrow, for the first time in awhile. Tomorrow will also be our first campaign without the metagamer. We did things to make him feel uncomfortable with his playing style (just short of outright attacking it), the DM spoke to him about his issues, and we, as a group, reworked one of his characters to make sense and fit in the game. He was playing an elvish neutral good bard/druid/ranger(!?) who was a ruthless treasure hunter, and had thieving tendancies. We figured that wouldn't do. He, all of a sudden, decided that he needed to focus more on college, so he won't be with us anymore, or at least till May. It's quite a relief.

I post this as a thank you for all the good and useful advice. Thanks a bunch.