Admit it, we all have them. As Game Masters there is usually something that, no matter how innocuous, just gets under our skin. They aren’t major issues and certainly nothing worth sweating over, but they niggle just the same. They are pet peeves, and recently I was reminded of two of mine as they appeared at my table.
The first is the Puppet Master. This is the player that “encourages” other players to use particular things on their character sheets, even if the Puppet Master’s character would have no reason to know them. It gets worse if the Puppet Master insinuates that, by not following his suggestion, the victimized player is not being a team player. I can usually minimize the damage, but it doesn’t stop the Puppet Master from doing so again at the next opportunity.
The second is the Early Arriving Player. I have a family and many obligations. If I say we’re playing at 7 it’s because I can’t start at 6. Yet to the Early Arriving Player that means he can show up at 6:10. No matter how many times I try to institute a policy (e.g. “please don’t arrive more than 20 minutes before game time”), the Early Arriving Player ignores it, usually with excuse at hand.
What makes this particularly difficult for me is that I look forward to that hour before the game where I can unwind a bit and mentally prepare for the session. Having a player show up early robs me of that. While he has offered to bring a book and sit in the corner it doesn’t really help.
Again, neither of these are big issues, but they tend to irk me every time. How about you? Do you have any pet peeves that frequently occur during your game sessions? How do you handle them?
One of my pet peeves is players cracking the same jokes around the table session after session, often the jokes are just childish. Sadly, I don’t really have a way to handle this issue yet.
Another pet peeve is how the entire group tends to backtrack on their words when they feel their impulsive action has won them triggering a trap. Granted, I am partly at fault at not considerably describing the traps and rooms well enough for them to exercise common sense and ingenuity. This I was able to get past with better room descriptions and being more prepared for these things.
One of my pet peeves is players cracking the same jokes around the table session after session
Oh, yes. This is what I have come here to say.
I have been running a D&D 4e campaign for my friends for over two years now. I’ve also been running a different D&D 4e campaign as a one-on-one game for one of those friends for a little over a year. This complaint is about that one friend in both games.
She almost always plays divine characters (clerics, paladins, etc.), which is fine. Everyone has favourite classes/themes/whatever they like playing with. That isn’t the problem.
The problem is that whenever ANY of her characters (there are three of them in these two games, and ALL THREE do this ALL THE TIME) either heals someone from unconsciousness during battle (happens a LOT) or casts Raise Dead on a fallen comrade after battle (three times now, I think), ALL of her characters ALWAYS quip, “You don’t get out of it that easy!”
And it sometimes doesn’t even make sense to say that. One of the people they raised was a bloodthirsty battle cleric who PROVOKES more combat than anything else, and saying “you don’t get out of it that easy” to them just MAKES NO SENSE. And the characters in question are all fairly disparate kinds of people — one is a gentle, sensitive priest, one is a big, shiny heroic paladin, and one is a scarred and cynical dark anti-hero-type paladin.
AND ALL THREE SAY THIS STUPID PHRASE. EVERY SINGLE TIME.
It’s both driving me crazy and is probably THE most petty complaint anyone has ever had about gaming in the history of ever.
Mine isn’t as adverse as yours, but I’ve got 2 jokers fueling eachother in my local group. Another player is a wood elf mage and the jokers _constantly_ quip about the otherwise plain race name in obvious regards. It wasn’t funny the first time and it isn’t getting funnier.
Granted, it appears to be when the jokers are around at the same time. I ran a single session without one of them and the remaining one wasn’t self-fueling well. The joking on the matter died down after a single time.
I’ve had to boot a player, not because of anything bad he did, but because he and another player would constantly riff off of each other during the game. The other player had seniority, and was fine without his accomplice. Group dynamics are a strange thing…
Without a doubt; the Ipad Addict(s). Even after being told several times to put it away, the addict keeps on fiddling with it with excuses as: “it’s not my turn, I am aiming, I have to move two more turns.” Etc… I wish I had a jammer device for Ipads.
We’ve made it a rule that all electronic devices get placed on a table outside the gaming room. One player is a business man, so we’ve allowed him to have his cellphone, just in case he’s got an issue with work. With that exception only, nobody is allowed the opportunity to play with apps, digital games, text friends or any non-gaming activity, altogether. We don’t have this problem at all.
We don’t use VT apps, online source material, or other digital initiatives in our game – books, dice (we’re hands on with everything)
1. Players who just won’t learn the rules, or at least learn the rules that apply to their own character. This really slows the game down. And it’s not like we play really complicated systems, either.
2. Arguing with the GM or complaining about rulings. I have one guy who whines a bit when things don’t go his way. It’s subtle, but annoying. I work hard to GM and don’t need that crap.
Oh god number 1.
My brother knows basically nothing about the games we play, and he only reads his class features once and if he likes them he takes them. It’s so frustrating when we’re playing Pathfinder, (a kind of rules Mid-Heavy game) and he knows nothing of combat tactics or what his character can do.
I’m a rules lawyer, and like to play my RPGs with “a full feature set”. To me the limitations this brings are what make the immersion more “real” (or “immediate” if reality in fantasy RPGs is your hot-button hate). This is not always welcome when I’m a player, but I feel that to turn off the requirement for a 100 GP pearl for such-and-such an oft-cast spell is to trivialize and cartoonize what I want to be an immersive experience. Games that hand the players everything on a plate have a “why bother?” aspect for me.
I also get upset with players who won’t learn what their characters can do, and as a GM have largely switched over to Savage Worlds so that I can with much justification shrug and say “sorry; it’s not my job to play your character to the best of its ability”. The rules for Savage Worlds are so easy, and the cost of entry so low (I provide copies of the old Explorer Edition for general use and you can buy a PDF of the new edition for a song) I honestly believe players have no excuse for not knowing how their characters work. I’m over 55 now and too long-in-the-tooth to do the math for other people.
I also openly laugh at people who cannot do the 3.5/Pathfinder grid math, which is just a fairly good pythagorean range estimate. Surprisingly accurate for what it is too, and elegant. For Savage Worlds I often use a hex-grid tactical display which obviates the problem, but to be honest the 3.5 grid has to be one of the simplest movement point schemes I’ve come across for a square grid.
The one rule that seems to be designed for maximum annoyance is the grapple rule, which in most game systems is quite involved and is always left off the bloody GM screen (often in favor of stupid stuff like definitions of characteristics). I guess that is another hot-button issue for me then :o)
I think the real problem with “rules lawyering” is that when wedded to munchkin-build characters it becomes just a reason to demand everything the owning player wants, and we are back in “why bother?” territory again.
Persistently whiny characters are a pain, but I’ve lucked out in that my current groups, all recruited from the customers of my LFGS and most of whom were complete strangers to me and each other when the games convened for the first time, have cohered into self-supporting and self-mediating units in which I hardly ever trigger whining. Everyone, me included, is trying hard to be reasonable and play to the best of our abilities and no-one is there just to “coast”.
My last home-hosted group included someone who whined all the time, mostly because he was playing in a classic Gothic Horror setting and wanted to play in an action-adventure style, which triggered much failure and pain. We parted company under a very large cloud, and that group died shortly afterward. A shame but I don’t miss The Whiner.
Regarding iPads… we’re using them a bit for viewing PDFs of electronically purchased manuals (DriveTHRU, etc..) so we’re stuck with them on the table. It has led to a bit of wandering if someone decides to check their email or head to Facebook.
I’d like to second the peeve about the player (usually it’s just one) who never seems to know the basic rules of their own abilities. You explain it to them a dozen times, but they are never quite sure. As GMs, we put HOURS into developing the world, prepping each session, etc – so I just wish they would reciprocate by learning their important spells/feats/maneuvers/rules.
I can’t agree more. Especially about the part about putting hours into a game. I’ve had to cancel a homebrew because the players wouldn’t give me the time of day. (we were playing Pathfinder) and I typed out every condition, every combat maneuver, every combat action they could take. And I’d even gotten into making players print out their spells, features, feats. so we dont have to go back and look them up. I mean seriously, why play if you’re not actually going to play.
Being late (this is just a general peeve), or regularly calling out at the last minute without warning me it could be happening.
Oh, I’ve had that second one happen this last weekend. We waited several _hours_ for a player who was very late and despite saying he’s ready suddenly flaked out. His reprimand was to be excluded from a session without closing the gap until the next session.
I second the Player Who Just Won’t Learn the Rules. I’ve had that player a couple of times, and it really just bugs the heck out of me – these games (with a couple exceptions) really aren’t that hard.
Long recaps from the last session. Now if you play only twice a month or even less frequently, this may be needed. But in a weekly game, and everyone was there last time, the recap can be short. I just recently joined a group and the current GM will recap for what feels like 20 minutes every week. No one pays attention, because we were there! There is no way to get him to speed this up either.
Sometimes he’ll recap what we did that night too. We cut gaming short and I need to hear what I just did? No thanks, I’ll talk to the other players about cool stuff we can do or the upcoming new campaign.
I feel like these waste everyone’s time. For the same reason I greatly dislike being forced to roll my attacks one at a time. I have different dice grouped, and a paper noting how they are grouped so there is no cheating, and I still can’t roll them ahead of time. It drives me nuts. High level Pathfinder takes a long time, let me speed up the tedious stuff.
My biggest pet peeve are the gamers that show up to session after session without bringing any food to share or money to chip in on pizza/take out, but are perfectly willing to partake of the larder continuously at everyone else’s expense. Don’t be THAT guy.
I can also become very annoyed with a gamer that cancels at the last minute for non-emergency situations or even worse doesn’t call or e-mail at all and just prefers to leave everyone in the dark about their absence. It is a social hobby and I do worry about my fellow gamers when they aren’t on time or completely absent without any explanation.
If someone wants to ditch the game group at the last minute to go out on a hot date, more power to them…. but let the group know they are bailing out for a just cause. 😀
“My biggest pet peeve are the gamers that show up to session after session without bringing any food to share or money to chip in on pizza/take out, but are perfectly willing to partake of the larder continuously at everyone else’s expense. Don’t be THAT guy.”
I’ve rarely seen groups order food together because of this. This may be beyond a pet peeve because it effects people in a financial way. But if it still qualifies, this is certainly a top one. I don’t understand why this is so common to hear about with gamers. Do sports guys, bowling teams, and other hobby/leisure groups have this problem too?
Yes. We used to call it ‘sticky wallet syndrome’. The pitcher of beer/whatever arrives, and everyone goes for his wallet, except THAT GUY, who sloooowly reaches for his wallet, or stalls by tying his shoe, or anything, until someone else says “I’ve got this one, guys.”
The difference is that other groups will mercilessly tease and verbally abuse THAT GUY until he mends his ways. We gamers might have a slight tendency to be a bit passive-aggressive, or at least to avoid any kind of confrontation. Nobody here, of course, but I’ve heard that some gamers are… 😉
Okay, before I walk all over Walt’s hot button (oops, already done that; sorry Walt!), here’s mine:
Loners. Don’t join my gaming group if you can’t come up with a character who can play well with others. Yes, the lone stranger is an iconic character in literature, blah, etc. But not in a gaming group.
Non-Listeners. Don’t join my gaming group if you can’t understand what it is we’re playing. When I say “It’s a dungeon crawl”, don’t bring a mounted knight who needs his horse to be effective, even if you did just read a book on mounted combat.
Yes to both. It’s cool that you’re motivated, but do I really have to generate a unique hook for you every game? It’s cool that you really like mer-people, but this is Al-Quadim…
My pet peeve is that player whose character sheet is always jacked up. He/she always seems to have a bonus to a some aspect of the character (AC, hit, damage, saves)that just can’t be explained. The group goes over the sheet together to fix it, yet it mysteriously appears somewhere else. In the same vain, is the player whose character sheet is never updated. The group leveled, players adjusted stats during downtime, and this guy always shows up and has to level at the table DURING play. Uncool. Is it any wonder that these two pet peeves often come from the same player?!
Pet peeves are just that–little things that annoy. Often they are innocent enough to let slide. They only become an issue at the table when everyone starts to get peeved.
Bait and switch GMing.
Starting a campaign in one game “world” and gradually, silently turning off all the special rules and features that make that world unique.
I signed up for Conan, not D&D. You know who you are.
Announcing a deep-immersion political campaign of intrigue and plotting, then making us ride everywhere through bandit-infested country in which only The Dread Pirate Roberts partnered with Inigo Montoya could survive. You know who you are too.
Grr!
I was recently told I was joining a horror d&d campaign. Several sessions in, and I haven’t seen any horror elements yet. He seems to think horror consists of setting enemies against that we can’t possibly defeat and then having us be rescued by NPCs or coincidence after one of us has been killed.
I hate it when people make poor math results on purpose. Some people do it with hit points, where they subtract an inaccurate amount of damage, or fail to subtract damage from a particular attack altogether.
Similarly character creation and progression also suffers. A famous case was when a friend made a character in GURPS, which uses a point-based creation and progression process. Since this player has had a history of “poor math” (which is ironic as he loves to otherwise prove his math skills) the GM requested to see the character, the famous response was “Oh, then I need to re-check it first”, followed by erasin things.
Another example by the same player was in Vampire the Masquerade. We had the same amount of points to make our characters, but he could do everything mine could, even my niche areas, and more. At one point I could not help it, I just started laughing out loud and muttered “Of COURSE you can do that!”.
If you need to cheat, go play Candyland. That game never stops unless you DO cheat.
Munchkins, rules lawyers, and people who have to argue everything.
I really don’t care how doing it “this” way is the only way to design a character. I really don’t care how uber class of the week is clearly the best class and I’m making a gimp character because I don’t want to run my character that way. If you’re going to create some bizarre build that makes you just short of invincible then the recurring enemies are going to adapt. Invisibility at will? Expect more mages and dogs on patrol. Tailoring events that’ll challenge munchkins and won’t murder the rest of the party is not fun for me.
I really don’t want to stop in the middle to dispute a rule. If I don’t know a rule off the top of my head then I’m going to arbitrate something and keep moving.
People that have to argue with everything drive me nuts, especially when I know they’re wrong. Hide does not give you the ability to disappear in plain sight, whether or not someone was looking at you when you hid. You need cover. Don’t believe me? Look it up after the game.
The one player who always rolls high!
He throws the dice and then grabs it right away. No one can say if he is cheating or not. It bugs me a lot but anyone else is looking mildly at it so i let it slip usually.
Im the gamemaster so i have the tools at hand to handle it but it drives me mad that he has the nerve to do this in front of me.
On the other side… he’s a good friend. It wont getting an issue, it stays a pet peeve. ^^
I play with a whole group of those. It seems like I’m the only person who ever rolls a one.
You can use the same process that you use to check your own dice to check his. Just make yourself a little sheet with spaces for each roll and make a tic mark in the right place whenever he rolls. Then use this procedure: http://www.gnomestew.com/tools-for-gms/is-your-lucky-die-fair/
Once you have a test statistic, if you toss it into a chi-square p-value calculator (degrees of freedom will be 19), that p-value is the probability of him getting the rolls he did in that session IF he’s using a fair die and not cheating. Thus if you find a p-value of .0005, (5 hundreths of a percent) you can safely say he’s either the luckiest gamer around, his die is bogus or he’s a cheater. Enjoy!
I play in a group were I’m the only one that is bothered by phones and IPads. I don’t mind if people are using it for the game, but when it takes away from the game, it is time to put it away!!
Owlbears.
No, not the creature, the stupid, out-of-proportion bias against this monster – which I happen to think is an ok member of the zoo that has been around since White Box edition – all because the Explanation of Infinite Stupidity as to their origin.
How much simpler would things be if when asked “Why Owlbear?” the answer was “because it’s roughly the same size and shape as a bear and if you squint it’s face looks like an owl and, well, people are sometimes lazy and unimaginative when it comes to naming things (especially if the need to name comes at the same time as the need to run very quickly). Aside from that, there’s no accounting for evolution (See: Tree Kangaroo), especially in a place of high latent magical ambiance”.
I present the Explanation of Infinite Stupidity for the real world “snapdragon”.
“Oh that? Some wizard crossed a dragon with a lupin and Hey Presto! Snapdragons”.
The same kind of thinking made those idiots at Paramount come up with the “it abrades the space-time continuum” explanation when asked why Jean-Luc Picard didn’t simply go everywhere at Warp 9.7 or whatever the maximum speed was for The Enterprise, instead of the better, simpler and all-round less f-tarded answer “it wears the warp engines out prematurely, they cost a small fortune to make and repair and a captain is expected to get good value for money out of the equipment he/she is in charge of”.
Which also has the advantage of explaining why real world ships don’t go everywhere at maximum revs and so is inherently more believable than the “Dings Up Reality” reason.
Cutesy Crap & “Animal Friends”
I have a couple of players who default to their characters behaving like they’re on Sesame Street. This includes them taking advantages and options that allow them to have pets and animal companions. We currently have 4 “animal friends” following our group along. And it’s “not OK” to kill them, because while killing enemies is OK, killing animals is wrong…
In addition to some of the things others have posted my absolute biggest pet peeve as a GM is being interrupted while describing a scene because one player wants to make a quip or recite some anecdote based on something I’ve just described. I wouldn’t care so much if they waited until I was finished setting the scene, but when they begin talking over me before I’ve finished speaking makes me absolutely livid.
The last time this happened was almost two years ago and it almost resulted in a TPK because the group missed some important details during my description and I refused to repeat myself after being so rudely interrupted. I think they got the message because I didn’t have any more trouble with anyone in the group interrupting me after that last incident.