(no subject)
Apr. 28th, 2006 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhienellethAh, blessed relief. Headache gone! Five ibuprofen really do work better than two or three! (No, no, don't worry. I asked my pharmacist cousin how much was safe to take in a single dose, as I really didn't want to mix migraine meds with cold meds. I could have taken up to six.)
Yes! No more pain! No more tightness across my forehead and eyes.
So on to other, funner things.
So, I recently killed a PC in the superhero game I am running. I am famous for emotionally/mentally/sometimes physically traumatizing characters, but I've never actually killed anyone off before, PC-wise. Plenty of NPCs, but somehow everyone has survived the things I've put them through. (It's more fun that way, anyway. Then they get to decide how their character deals with it, etc.) And while I would love to take credit for killing this character, I can't. Because the player did it all to herself. She was bored, see.
Let me preface this by explaining I have two roleplay groups: a more traditional group I play in with Mark, and then an all-girl group. All of us girls started out playing in a more traditional group with guys and girls playing (different from the group Mark and I have), but the group got so large it made things cumbersome. You ended up bringing along a book so you wouldn't be bored during the copious amounts of down time your character ended up with. And most of them were smokers, so it made things kind of uncomfortable for us non-smokers, who were often forced to sit and breath in the toxins, as we were grossly outnumbered. Eventually, the group disintegrated, and us girls started gaming together.
And since we're an all girls group, our games tend to have a little less action and a lot more romance. They're not all about the romance - I have to have good characters and a good story and some action to make the game fun. Well, this one particular player has, in the last year, started gaming only for the romantic aspects. She falls asleep or flips through magazines during parts that aren't romance, aka don't interest her. So what kind of character does she create for my game? One who has been betrayed in the worst possible way, and has had her husband, child, mother and father all killed right before her eyes. That's her background. So her motivation is vengeance, and she tells me her character is in mourning and probably will be for some time. Translation to me = she won't be interested in romance until she's grieved for her husband.
I should have known better.
Almost from the very first game session, she picked a male NPC and went after him. Unfortunately for her, she picked one that would never in a million years be drawn to someone with her character's personality. He insulted her and condescended her at every turn, and not in a flirtatious way. But in her deluded world, this meant he liked her (which he really, really didn't). And yes, before you ask, she can make almost anything seem romantic -- to her, if not to anyone else. And yes, she reads lots and lots of romance novels, not all of them good. So when he ended up sort of hooking up with another PC, she flipped out. When she confronted him and he was honestly bewildered by her supposed feelings for him, she got spiteful and started making decisions based on her dislike for this female PC that had, in her mind, ruined everything. What did she do? Joined my group of villains!
At this point in the game, I called a brief time out and as the GM, explained to her very carefully that my bad guys are really bad guys. I'm not saying there is no chance at redemption, but I could already see her starry-eyed vision of having one of them fall in love with her character and then switching back to the good guys with her...which, chances would be damn slim. Villains are my favorite characters to create/play. I make them really, truly evil. And besides, my Big Bad would kill any of her cohorts most horribly if she discovered them betraying her. She said she understood, and when I started the game up again, she fell for my Big Bad's line of BS hook, line, and sinker. I mean, really believed her over the Good Character she was supposed to be working for. Now, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that evil is probably going to lie, steal, and manipulate a thousand times more than good. Apparently, she didn't figure that was the case.
After this game session, she tells me her plan for her character is to play 'bad' for awhile, and then do some great act of redemption, (she compared her character to Rogue once being evil, in the X-men comics.) I told her this was going to take excellent roleplay on her part, to walk such a line and not be discovered by the 'good' characters. Privately, I figured she wouldn't last two game sessions. I was right. She was dead by the end of one!
The very next session, the Big Bad asked her (the PC - Alexa) to set up her arch-nemesis, ie lure him to a location the Big Bad had all set up to specifically trap him and make him powerless. Alexa does this, except when she puts out her SOS, the good guy contacts his troops, ie the other PCs, to come help as well. By the time they get there, the Big Bad has succeeded in trapping her arch-nemesis and has left, and only Alexa is left. The PCs question her extensively as to their leader's whereabouts. He called them and told them he was on his way to this location and that Alexa was in trouble -so where was he, and why had he thought she needed help when she apparently didn't? She lied, and not very well, so the PCs got suspicious. They called in their resident telepath to question her more thoroughly, and lo, her whole plot unraveled and her evil doings were revealed.
I should perhaps mention here that one of the PCs is the missing leader's daughter. And she has quick temper and vengeful as disadvantages. She's also the one, not coincidentally, who briefly hooked up with the guy Alexa had set her sights on. It took the rest of the team to hold her back and talk her out of killing Alexa right there on the spot when she realized her father could be dead thanks to this selfish harpy.
A rescue mission is mounted and the leader is eventually rescued, though the party suffers serious damage in the process. After all is said and done, they question Alexa again. She shows zero remorse for her actions and even goes so far as to say she would do it again. And yet the player in question is still shocked when the leader she betrayed kills her for her crimes! (He's a God, ok? He doesn't need a trial and sentencing - he just does it all himself.) He kills her in a humane way, and even allows her spirit to go and reside with her dead family, pretty generous of him, given the circumstances.
After all of this, the player is now introducing a new character into the game. Tomorrow. I'm very afraid I'm going to end up having to kill this one, too. Because OMG she is driving me nuts with her bad roleplay and selfish deicisons! I had decided, fine, if she wants romance, I'll just throw an NPC at her and make her happy. Except she has decided she is going to play a male character this time since my game, and I quote "doesn't have romance in it", and so she thinks she'll be happier playing a male character in such circumstances. First of all, I never said my game didn't have any romance, just that romance isn't the end all and be all of the game. Secondly, she does NOT play male characters well. She just doesn't get them. You might have guessed from my previous statements that she doesn't understand the male psyche very well. I HATE RUNNING HER MEN! They are universally annoying and silly! Not to mention, the entire super-hero group has a goth theme. Their costumes, their secret identities, their hang-outs. What is she playing? A cowboy from Texas! Yeah, this is going to go over well.
Yes! No more pain! No more tightness across my forehead and eyes.
So on to other, funner things.
So, I recently killed a PC in the superhero game I am running. I am famous for emotionally/mentally/sometimes physically traumatizing characters, but I've never actually killed anyone off before, PC-wise. Plenty of NPCs, but somehow everyone has survived the things I've put them through. (It's more fun that way, anyway. Then they get to decide how their character deals with it, etc.) And while I would love to take credit for killing this character, I can't. Because the player did it all to herself. She was bored, see.
Let me preface this by explaining I have two roleplay groups: a more traditional group I play in with Mark, and then an all-girl group. All of us girls started out playing in a more traditional group with guys and girls playing (different from the group Mark and I have), but the group got so large it made things cumbersome. You ended up bringing along a book so you wouldn't be bored during the copious amounts of down time your character ended up with. And most of them were smokers, so it made things kind of uncomfortable for us non-smokers, who were often forced to sit and breath in the toxins, as we were grossly outnumbered. Eventually, the group disintegrated, and us girls started gaming together.
And since we're an all girls group, our games tend to have a little less action and a lot more romance. They're not all about the romance - I have to have good characters and a good story and some action to make the game fun. Well, this one particular player has, in the last year, started gaming only for the romantic aspects. She falls asleep or flips through magazines during parts that aren't romance, aka don't interest her. So what kind of character does she create for my game? One who has been betrayed in the worst possible way, and has had her husband, child, mother and father all killed right before her eyes. That's her background. So her motivation is vengeance, and she tells me her character is in mourning and probably will be for some time. Translation to me = she won't be interested in romance until she's grieved for her husband.
I should have known better.
Almost from the very first game session, she picked a male NPC and went after him. Unfortunately for her, she picked one that would never in a million years be drawn to someone with her character's personality. He insulted her and condescended her at every turn, and not in a flirtatious way. But in her deluded world, this meant he liked her (which he really, really didn't). And yes, before you ask, she can make almost anything seem romantic -- to her, if not to anyone else. And yes, she reads lots and lots of romance novels, not all of them good. So when he ended up sort of hooking up with another PC, she flipped out. When she confronted him and he was honestly bewildered by her supposed feelings for him, she got spiteful and started making decisions based on her dislike for this female PC that had, in her mind, ruined everything. What did she do? Joined my group of villains!
At this point in the game, I called a brief time out and as the GM, explained to her very carefully that my bad guys are really bad guys. I'm not saying there is no chance at redemption, but I could already see her starry-eyed vision of having one of them fall in love with her character and then switching back to the good guys with her...which, chances would be damn slim. Villains are my favorite characters to create/play. I make them really, truly evil. And besides, my Big Bad would kill any of her cohorts most horribly if she discovered them betraying her. She said she understood, and when I started the game up again, she fell for my Big Bad's line of BS hook, line, and sinker. I mean, really believed her over the Good Character she was supposed to be working for. Now, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that evil is probably going to lie, steal, and manipulate a thousand times more than good. Apparently, she didn't figure that was the case.
After this game session, she tells me her plan for her character is to play 'bad' for awhile, and then do some great act of redemption, (she compared her character to Rogue once being evil, in the X-men comics.) I told her this was going to take excellent roleplay on her part, to walk such a line and not be discovered by the 'good' characters. Privately, I figured she wouldn't last two game sessions. I was right. She was dead by the end of one!
The very next session, the Big Bad asked her (the PC - Alexa) to set up her arch-nemesis, ie lure him to a location the Big Bad had all set up to specifically trap him and make him powerless. Alexa does this, except when she puts out her SOS, the good guy contacts his troops, ie the other PCs, to come help as well. By the time they get there, the Big Bad has succeeded in trapping her arch-nemesis and has left, and only Alexa is left. The PCs question her extensively as to their leader's whereabouts. He called them and told them he was on his way to this location and that Alexa was in trouble -so where was he, and why had he thought she needed help when she apparently didn't? She lied, and not very well, so the PCs got suspicious. They called in their resident telepath to question her more thoroughly, and lo, her whole plot unraveled and her evil doings were revealed.
I should perhaps mention here that one of the PCs is the missing leader's daughter. And she has quick temper and vengeful as disadvantages. She's also the one, not coincidentally, who briefly hooked up with the guy Alexa had set her sights on. It took the rest of the team to hold her back and talk her out of killing Alexa right there on the spot when she realized her father could be dead thanks to this selfish harpy.
A rescue mission is mounted and the leader is eventually rescued, though the party suffers serious damage in the process. After all is said and done, they question Alexa again. She shows zero remorse for her actions and even goes so far as to say she would do it again. And yet the player in question is still shocked when the leader she betrayed kills her for her crimes! (He's a God, ok? He doesn't need a trial and sentencing - he just does it all himself.) He kills her in a humane way, and even allows her spirit to go and reside with her dead family, pretty generous of him, given the circumstances.
After all of this, the player is now introducing a new character into the game. Tomorrow. I'm very afraid I'm going to end up having to kill this one, too. Because OMG she is driving me nuts with her bad roleplay and selfish deicisons! I had decided, fine, if she wants romance, I'll just throw an NPC at her and make her happy. Except she has decided she is going to play a male character this time since my game, and I quote "doesn't have romance in it", and so she thinks she'll be happier playing a male character in such circumstances. First of all, I never said my game didn't have any romance, just that romance isn't the end all and be all of the game. Secondly, she does NOT play male characters well. She just doesn't get them. You might have guessed from my previous statements that she doesn't understand the male psyche very well. I HATE RUNNING HER MEN! They are universally annoying and silly! Not to mention, the entire super-hero group has a goth theme. Their costumes, their secret identities, their hang-outs. What is she playing? A cowboy from Texas! Yeah, this is going to go over well.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 09:00 pm (UTC)Sheesh.
My worst role players are the ones who've been spoiled by previous GM's and think that any boy they flutter their eyes at should come running, much less pick a character class they are told has some serious drawbacks, and that they can't see those drawbacks until they choose the character class - then surprise the drawback? No sexuality. Neuter. So then they whine about now unfair it is. Argh.
And then pick the NPC that is out to avenge his one true love as their one true love.
Sometimes you just want to slap 'em.
Good luck with your problem child.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 09:15 pm (UTC)My men are complicated creatures. They usually have backgrounds none of the PCs are aware of that people have to really try to delve into to figure out. And no one who doesn't at least try to figure them out is going to succeed in romantically entangling them. This shouldn't come as a surprise to her - she's played in two previous games of mine. (Although I broke her in my Star Wars game. Her character ended up an alcoholic co-dependant married to a Sith Lord bent on galactic domination. Yes, she thought she could 'save' him. And she might have, if she'd roleplayed better. But she didn't.)
Nope, not the same chick who gave the x-mas ornament. That one can actually roleplay better than this one, though they tend to trade off. When one is having a good night, the other is making poor choices, and vice versa. L and I once counted up the number of game sessions in a two year period that ran smoothly because both of them were playing well. We could only come up with three.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 09:20 pm (UTC)I used to be known for my Avatar games, and had strangers ask to play. I haven't been in a game that lasted longer than 2 sessions in.....
Years.
These days I'd love just to play under a decent GM or if I had to run one myself, just to get to PLAY!
Pity you don't live closer.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 09:24 pm (UTC)All of our decent players have moved farther afield, so we're the only ones left locally. :(
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 09:30 pm (UTC)Not to mention the stigma of "you get everything you want becasue your boy/girl/friend/spouse is the GM"
No...it's because they aren't an IDIOT! I swear, sometimes, argh. Although every once in a great while you get the perfect group together, and *Ah!*
At WW we should go and whine together about not getting to roleplay! Perhaps even with alcohol!
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 10:49 pm (UTC)