Beyond the rant marker, i really am just venting out my unedited responce to a an issue. I don't really hold most of the views i express, but the events of today have left me needing to let it out.

I accept some of it will come out as condiscending to certain styles of play, i in no way think they are inferer, i just don't enjoy them.

[Rant]
So... my week night gaming group is weird. i joined it about a year ago and am friends with four of the members. Their are two others who i only really speak to because they are part of the group.

Before i joined, the group had been dominated by 'dungeon crawling and randomness', the words of the games host, and he, his girl friend and one of the other players had been trying unsuccessfully for a long time to get something more than a tactical skirmish game out of the experience of playing in the group, however the two other members had effectively derailed any attempt to deal with the game on a deeper level.

Things started to change with my inclusion in the group, and later with the inclusion of one of our other friends, around the new year. The game is slowly pulling itself up by the boot straps and one of the two players 'troublesome' players is really comming on, he has developed greatly beyond his traditional range and seems to be enjoying things. The remaining player however is becoming increasingly disruptive.

Now i get that he might well be unhappy that the character of the gaming group has changed, fair enough, but insulting either both myself and the other new player, because the rest of the group are bored of walking into a room and killing what ever monster is 'next in the alpherbet'(again, not my discription, but rather original members of the groups) just seems really messed up.

I discovered today that myself and the other new player where described as doing 'amiture dramatics' and that he wanted to 'get back to roleplaying.'

It leaves me wondering when 'i hit him with my sword', became a more accurate representation of roleplaying than making sure that when you make a character it has a personality and motivations beyond 'kill things and take their stuff.'

Seriously, how does a guy, who when asked for some details about a freshly made character answers, 'He's a ninja.' to pretty much every question put to him on the subject get to promote themselves as 'a good roleplayer', and some how turn having a character with strengths, weaknesses and quirks; physical mental and social, into an insult.

[/Rant]

Meh...anyway, to sleep with me...

Actually there is a pretty simple answer to this....one that I have run into before actually. See, he is ROLLplaying while you are ROLEplaying. But, it sounds like you have a pretty crappy situation there, and I wish you the best of luck in dealing with it!

Nobody can even agree on what "roleplaying" actually means. It's a pretty nebulous term.

You can backengineer a definition to be whatever you do when you play a Roleplaying Game. This person has determined that means you engage in using the most fleshed out bits of the D&D rules - combat. I mean, most RPGs involve lots of combat, right? That must be roleplaying. He might not even be wrong.

You, and most of the group, clearly disagree with him. The point is that this bad blood arises because you have people who are expecting dramatically different things from the game. The best thing you can possibly do is to call him out as a gaming group and tell him that you all want one thing and he wants another.

Whatever you do, do not let this situation linger on - it's toxic to all involved. A frank, egoless statement of the disagreement on tone should engender less bad blood in the long run. It'd suck if this was his only game, but everything is moving away from what he wants, but he may feel obligated to continue on due to peer pressure, which is going to suck for everyone in the group.

This is just a parallel to the kind of stuff that goes down in typical workplaces. Someone is there who is afraid of change and feels comfortable with the status quo. All of a sudden qualified smart people show up and make things better. So the aforementioned person gets controlling, demeaning, and threatening.

I think the key is to find ways to subtly humiliate the problem player and highlight his weaknesses until he no longer feels like playing and stops RPGing.

Have you considered Thunderdome as a solution to this issue? Two men enter, one man leaves.

Or, possibly, a dance-off. A dance-off always works in the movies. There isn't any dispute that cannot be solved by competitive street dancing.

Or you could put aside your roleplaying differences to start a band.

Or you could crank up the Awesomeness Factor of your game until you create a synergy in which great roleplaying and great rollplaying exist side-by-side as one.
This is difficult to accomplish, because of the sheer level of awesome required to do so, but it is possible.
Having Jack Black in your game helps. And you might consider getting Quentin Tarantino to guest-GM.



But other than those things, have the dude come on here and lets all have a friendly constructive chat. It's better to get these things out in the open than it is to let them fester, and a one sided vent won't do much in terms of finding a solution.

But I'm really going to strongly recommend amending the game to include hardcore Rock and Roll.

Thanks you all.


Especially those who took the piss a little. Pomposity levels have fallen considerably since last night

While i would like to get things out in the open and dealt with, i am afraid it just isn't possible for me to do that. I am not the host or the current GM, and the guy is an old friend of the host/GM. As chris has already said he wants to deal with it, but has no idea how too, i feel honour dictates I let him atleast try to sort it out.

Heath:
Actually i am not sure that is true. Oddly, it was games workshop that provided the terminology that lets you discuss the difference between his style of play and roleplay.
A while back GW released a game called Inquisitor. Inquisitor is is pretty much all respects a roleplaying game system, save that it lacks system for dealing with anything but combat. It was designed as a model based stratergy game with strong story elements, which they refered to as a narrative stratergy game. I really like it as a style of game and have a couple of characters for it, but the paralles between narrative stratergy gaming and games like fourth edition D&D are strong enough that i personally consider narrative stratergy gaming to be a much better term for what these games are.

I also happen to think that is what the player in question is interested in doing with his game time. Nothing wrong with that, it can be enjoyable as all sin, but i personally feel that his choice of saying 'i don't wanna do that Am-dram shit yeah, i wanna get back to roleplaying' is a little bit groan worthy.