Jeremy the Dragon, Part 2/2
There was actually a middle chapter in the brief adventures of Jeremy the Dragon, but we wound up deciding to make this thing a two-parter. On the off chance that you’re morbidly curious though:
Title: Jeremy the Dragon, Part 1.5/2
Text: What separates a hero from the monsters he fights? About 8d8 points of cold damage in a 40 ft. cone, that’s what!
Pic: Jeremy the dragon just caught a batch of evil undead skeletons in his cold breath, single handedly winning the combat. The monsters are frozen corpse-cycles. The dragon looks abashedly proud as the others cheer him. Fighter stands in the foreground, enraged with jealousy. Mr. Stabby pulses with anger.
Dialogue:
Cleric: Three cheers for the dragon! Hup hup…
All: Huzzah!
Scrollover:
Jeremy: “I’m sorry guys. I didn’t mean to hog all the skeletons. What if I give you my share of the treasure to make up for it?”
Thief: *single tear*
Ultimately, we realized that Fighter didn’t need any additional motivation to be a jerk to his kid brother. Some players just don’t belong in the same group, and stabbings are a swift and efficient solution.
How about you guys though? Have you ever had to kick somebody out of the party? Or (horror of horrors!) have you ever been kicked yourself? If so, what happened?
ADD SOME NSFW TO YOUR FANTASY! If you’ve ever been curious about that Handbook of Erotic Fantasy banner down at the bottom of the page, then you should check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Twice a month you’ll get to see what the Handbook cast get up to when the lights go out. Adults only, 18+ years of age, etc. etc.
I think i’ve told the better two stories on this subject already, but I do have a third, smaller story.
We invited a coworker to play with us a while back. I was kinda iffy on inviting him; he’s a great guy, I like him, but he’s a definite chatterbox and our sessions get way off track as it is.
When he joined, we were already level 12, and he’s coming from a much older edition (2e I believe.) It ended up becoming frustrating for him to try to learn a level 12 Cleric from scratch.
Eventually between the long gameplay interruptions and his very understandable frustration at having a character he didn’t know how to play, all parties decided it would be best if he stepped back.
Like the story about the couple we removed from the group, I felt rather guilty, even though it was indeed best for all parties. After all, we invited him, knowing he was a chatterbox, knowing he didn’t know the edition, knowing that we were already level 12.
I just hope we haven’t put him off it for good.
You know what the important bit is in all that? “All parties decided.” It sounds to me like this was a mutual thing. No guilt required.
You know the DM is playing with the kiddy gloves on when an ice breath kills cold-immune skeletons.
They’re 5e skeletons. I mean…Savage Worlds skeletons. They go to school in Canada. They’re totally real. I MET THEM IN SUMMER CAMP!
*smoke bomb*
I’ve seen a couple people booted out. One was for cheating (reading ahead in the adventure path) and just being a general pain and little shit. The other was for arguing with the GM and other players about every. Little. Thing. And refusing to listen to, or perhaps genuinely unable to grasp, any response that didn’t match what he wanted to hear.
What happened to their characters?
Well I got kicked out of a pbp game a while back because another player just wouldn’t stop picking fights with me and the GM decided this was somehow my fault and booted me from the game. I asked two other people to look things over and neither of them really understood the decision either.
Semi-awkwardly I’m now playing in a game with said GM as fellow players. I mean, it was only awkward at the start when it had to be discussed we weren’t going to have a problem playing with each other. But still, it lingers in the back of my mind as both an injustice and a mystery.
I propose that “other player” was code for “girlfriend.” No way you’re not the one getting booted in that scenario.
The only similar story I have is one of a player who SHOULD have been kicked. It was during a living world campaign, and the guy was the worst kind of ignorant about everything. He insisted he knew everything there was to know about the game, but constantly slowed everything down needing things clarified. Then in the first combat encounter I was in with him, his character ignored all the careful planning we had done before hand, and shot a ray at the monster before we were in position. The monster charged his wimpy little sorc, and I, playing a Castellan, intercepted the charge to stop the monster from murdering him with its first attack. It knocked me out, and we barely won the fight. Afterwards, the Barbarian started giving him hell in character about it, and my Castellan, who was nice to a fault, tried to defend him. His response was to insult me (in AND out of character) at which point, the group’s Ninja conked him in the head, and we dragged his dumb ass home. The player eventually caused a whole bunch of us to leave, as he kept doing stupid things, and anyone who called him on it would get shit from the GM. Goodbye and good riddance to that whole mess of a campaign.
Wow. Was he some kind of founding member or something? Why did your GM put up with that malarkey?
I have no idea. The GMs weren’t very active, or good at being GMs for that matter. Another player in that campaign was playing a Cleric of Hastur, but playing it as the stupidest kind of Chaotic Evil, trying to force random people in the tavern to drink blood. It took six different people messaging the GM about it to have the character face any sort of consequences. As I said, good riddance to that game. So I guess its more of anti-kicking story, where some players kicked a game.
Well good job getting out then. No gaming is better than bad gaming, ya know?
Yup. There was this guy who played a Proud Irish in one of my Pendragon games, but was really a min-maxer. I tried to let him live up to his Proud Irish character concept, but he either deliberately ignored everything that I threw at him to rile up his Irish, or did not even register the insults. Two of my other players did notice that I became a tad miffed, and more or less tried to move out of my way. And after an exceptionally gamy combat manoeuvre, which also could be described as dishonourable, I not so quietly asked the player to leave my table as he was in no way playing his character the way he himself described him during character creation. I do think the guy was genuinely surprised by my request, as he did not seem to understand what the problem was.
Is the honorable / dishonorable thing an ongoing argument in Pendragon? I’m imaging the equivalent of the age-old good / evil D&D debates.
No more of a character trait thing. In Pendragon there is a game mechanic that lets you play the emotional agonies and different character traits of a person. So you have these traits like Energetic-Lazy, Chaste-Lustful, Modest-Proud, Prudent-Reckless. Your combined score in them is always 20, but your character is defined, more or less, by the traits that are more then 10. And you are at least supposed to try and play those traits. It’s not a straitjacket, and you can always do things against your traits, but there will be consequences. So this guy had 16 or more in proud (if you have a score of 16 or more in a trait, it’s called your defining trait, and you’re know for it), so I, as the GM, try and belittle him to make sure he plays his character (as I am more of a RP player and GM then a Rollplayer myself). Well he was more the Min-Max kind of player, so his world view, and mine, clashed rather violently.
My mental image of your world views clashing rather violently:
https://thumbs.gfycat.com/CrazyHarmfulChameleon-size_restricted.gif
According to two of my friends who played in that game too, that is not far from the truth. Just with more shouting on my part.
I was staying with family, deciding to move back to my home town or go back out into the world – I was in town for several months and a friend suggested me to an acquantaince’s game. I was allowed to “Guest Star” / “Interview” for a place in a game that had been going for some time. I joined it on a whim, they sounded fun.
When I arrived I hit it off with most of the group, charmed the hostess, and made a splash in the game with some lucky rolls and solid RP. I was playing a bard so I was flashy, quip-heavy, and even sang a few lines of songs I knew as best as I could fantasy-world them up. I found the hostess to be funny, pretty, and I was smitten instantly – over the course of the evening I was pleasantly surprised to have her reciprocate with lots of flirty pawing and some subtle innuendo.
The Barbarian player was not amused. His character – along with my own and another PC – had ended up in jail as part of the DM’s plot progression, and this is when the Barbarian player decided to take me out. He raged and proceeded to attempt to murder my character. Bard in a small cell with raging barbarian – I managed to escape with the help of the other PC and even attempted to Calm Emotions (it worked – he failed his Will save and I rolled a crit success on my attempt at Persuasion to get him to calm down.) but the Barbarian player just insisted that he Rage again and attempted to kill me some more. He knocked me out of Calm Emotions Concentration, raged again, and I barely made it away from him with minimal damage on his AoOs and something that assisted my escape attempts (a good acrobatics roll or expeditious retreat, I don’t remember anymore). The other PC, a monk or cleric type, is desperately trying to keep me alive when the lord of the city rolls up in fabulous armor and a shining steed with many guards to stop the jailbreak/fight and ask for our help.
The barbarian attacked this NPC for no discernible reason. He cleaved this man, surrounded by guards, in half. Aristocrat level 2? Yeah, that armor was apparently ornamental. Instant death.
The whole time this is going on, the DM was visibly upset, the other players were pretty confused. “Why are you doing this??” “Stop!” and so on. The character had no motivation to do this or act that way. The barbarian was usually a pretty chummy and jocular type with occasional gruff mood swings, not “Crogmar, Bringer of Death!” or whatever.
Turns out the barbarian player had been holding a torch for the girl whose house we were playing in for months – maybe years. I came in and in a single session basically charmed her into asking me to spend the night at her place mid-session (“You’ve never seen Firefly? It’s awesome!” “Well you should stay here, you can spend the night at my place and we can watch it together!”) and the guy lost it. I could practically see his heart break when the hostess’ character – she was playing a ranger who hadn’t gotten arrested with us – shouted at the Barbarian to stop, or she’d be forced to shoot him. The first arrow hit made the Barb’s player almost start crying. The game ended with him being incapacitated. We stabilized him and most of us promptly surrendered to the guards. I believe I managed to get off lightly by saying “Look, I was in jail for petty theft and grifting and you put me in a cell with that and I am only out here so he wouldn’t turn me to paste. Can someone stop my bleeding and point your crossbows somewhere else maybe at him please?”
The DM was apologetic, my acquaintance was confused (not a great people-reader) and somewhat dismayed, the hostess was utterly mortified and the barbarian player – he was nearly physically violent with me, he stood up and was angrily calling “bullshit” on every roll, and eventually left in a huff. He kept asking if I needed a ride home – I politely declined but I could see him shaking, he wanted me outside so badly.
I was definitely not asked back to play. The group was never the same, I was told. The DM apologized, but the group had been together a long time – they played together again for several months, with the hostess eventually leaving the game over related issues.
The hostess and I dated briefly but I wasn’t in town long and we parted ways amicably, but I wish I’d been in that game, it was a really fun group besides the dude who lost it. He even seemed decent, if a bit of a munchkin, before his temper tantrum. That’s my story – long but I’m a sucker for accuracy.
Yup. I would 100% watch that version of The Gamers. I suspect it would feel like a Coen Brothers film.
How did you unobservant acquaintance feel when you told them about this mess?
I haven’t kicked him out yet, but my little brother is joining the D&D group I’m DMing, and his character is a gnomish barbarian named… sigh “Danny F*cking Devito.”
Hey, what’s wrong with characters based on Danny DeVito? 😛
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/bickering-gods
For serious though, like I talk about in this one…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/original-character
There’s a world of difference between a ripoff and playing a character “inspired by.”
I once played Joseph Stalin briefly. Or rather a “meme” version of Joseph Stalin. It wasn’t even a character I created, it was one of GM’s several NPCs parodying famous people, and GM pretty much gave me control over him so all those NPCs didn’t sound like a same person. We played a bit and had a lot of fun and laught, we briefly discussed me making a Joseph Stalin character for the next game, but decided against it.
“Casting” a PC as a celebrity is a trick that can work well. It’s somehow easier to get into character if you think of your guys as “played by” Idris Elba or whatever.
There was a group that I had spent some months with online, playing forum RPGs (long story) and getting to know each other and our story-telling techniques. They had decided to start up a chatroom game and were kind enough to bring me along, though I had never played before.
I had never heard of That Guy before, and had no idea that that’s who I was becoming as my female fighter joyfully romped through the marketplace, requesting freebies and flirting with married NPCs. It was all an experiment as I came to grips with what was possible in D&D, and I gave not a thought toward how disruptive my antics had probably become. While I can’t say for sure that the DM decided to slap me down – we never actually discussed this before or after – I suspect he’d had enough. Near the end of our first session, my character was caught alone by a pair of drunks in the streets and fade-to-black after a disastrous three rounds of combat. If anything good came of the experience, it was that I learned that the game wasn’t all about me.
A more experienced player than myself probably would have incorporated the incident into their background (an actual on-screen tragic backstory!), but I lost my grip on her. I was stunned and lost for words. I created a new character the following week and rejoined the campaign the following week, but the damage was done, and after a few sessions I retired from the game.
For a long time I laid the blame for what happened squarely at our DM’s feet; with the benefit of experience, I can see that it need not have been the disaster it turned out to be. Either way, I still hold the opinion that the situation was badly mishandled by both of us.