What's the worst player and the best player you ever had at your table?

[Silveressa]

Like the title says, whether you're a gm or a player what the worst and the best player you've seen at your table in all your time gaming? What made them the worse/best you've seen?

(On a side note, to keep things anonymous it would be best not to give real life names just for the sake of politeness)

The Worst:

Once I had this new player at the table who was the boyfriend of one of my non gaming friends and wanted to join us at the table for a few sessions. The thing is he was well... Unhinged I guess you could say. He played his characters in a manner  better fitting a selfish serial killer. He was willing to kill npc's (and even tried to with player characters) over really no reason at all other than they tried to exert authority over his character. (such as a doctor asking his character to leave the operating room while they worked to save his friends life, or the bystanders trying to restrain him after trying to kill said nurse who "dared" ask his character to leave.

This went on multiple times with various npc's for similar frivolous reasons, complete with him insulting other members of the group, (in character) leaving them during difficult fights to go loot bodies or just wander  off, leaving them to do the climatic fight (and of course demanding a share of the treasure after they nearly get killed defeating the main villain that he ran away from) Generally he became the party member the rest would love to see get his just desserts more than the villains. 

I tried taking him off to the side and asking him why he was playing like this and his only response was "My character's not going out like some biatch followin somebody else's orders n stuff, an if I wanna go somewhere or do somethin ta someone I jus do it; like on the streets back home." (he was originally from a gang infested neighborhood before moving away)

I then tried to talk to him about playing a character that was compatible with the rest of the group, and not act like one of the main bad guys; and he then started telling me I should do a villain game where the characters get to go rape and pillage townsfolk and slaughter kingdoms "because it'd be more fun that way." After that I politely declined to game with him and truthfully told him I wasn't "in the mood" when he asked if I was going to game master a game with him again sometime. (I prefer to gm with players that want to play heroes and have a genuine respect for life and know how to play a hero)

The Best

The best player I ever had is my significant other who I introduced to role playing when we were around 15, (we're 28 now) one rainy afternoon. She approached the game with a bit of wide eyed wonder and eager excitement that inspired me (it was my first time GMing although I'd been a player for a couple years before that with a group at school.) and helped me get over the new GM quivers and turn a one shot adventure into a one on one campaign that ran off and on for close to 5 years.

I'd say the best thing about her was her eagerness to try anything and everything that sounded plausible to her character without bothering to ask me if it was "allowed" or "in the rules" which prompted me to improvise and think on my feet a lot. The other part I liked was her interest in  role playing over hack and slash gaming, which helped develop my style and develop npcs into more than a string of faceless villains and endless dungeons.

[Strolen]

The Worst.

It was a while ago and I don't remember if it was a soon to be exgirlfriend or soon to be exwife, but we finally convinced a couple of our players girlfriends to give it a try. So there were two new people that have never played and maybe weren't that excited to but would give it the effort. The game sessions weren't horribly memorable but I remember the issue about an imbalance of "random" treasure going to one of the new girls. No big deal, anything to keep them happy, but she was a level above greedy and got seriously pissed when others got any treasure at all. And it was awkward and stressful whenever we defeated anybody and the general looting began. People, IC, had to hide what they found otherwise she would try and take the best stuff...but she would see this OOC and would use that to threaten the IC. She couldn't get it through her head that she can't use OOC info.

Just continued to get worse. I think the DM finally gave her a magic item that had the possibility of destroying all magical items she possessed if she used it while still holding them. She wouldn't give any of her stuff to anybody else and ended up blowing up in a magical mess. She had fair warning of what might happen but she flipped out hardcore. After some heated argument with the DM about her dying (and everyone else) she took her sheet in a no kidding rage and went to the bathroom and burned it in the sink.

She was the couple that got separated. The other couple ended up getting married. 50/50 I guess.

The Best.

One guy could do any language impersonation you could think of and did it awesome. He would sometimes do NPCs or his characters in a different dialect and/or accent and it was so good it was funny. He couldn't speak any other languages but he knew enough of the words and how they sounded to just go on and on in it. Might have been a little disruptive but nobody cared because it was so much fun.

[Silveressa]

142 views and one reply?

Are me and Strolen the only people graced with exceptionally bad (and good) players at our tables?

If so I weep for your mediocrity.

[Scrasamax]

One thing to keep in mind Sil is that the threads do get hit by spiders and bots so I think it is safe to assume that 75% to 90% of the hits to the thread are generated by said automatons.

Since you threw down the gauntlet though I will answer.

My best player is named Heather, and after three years of gaming, she became my wife. She comes around the site once in a blue moon under the name Appaloosa.

My worst player becomes excessively involved in any game they play, and while this is good for a while, it becomes both an annoyance and a problem when IC events start influencing OOC events. Anything bad that happens to the character is taken as a personal slight, and anything good that happens is seen as the only logical and reasonable course of action. When the tables are turned and said player takes over behind the proverbial screen, fighters are divorced of their weapons, illness provides the dues ex machina to noggin-whack everyone into taking the DM bait.

Your too weak from vomiting and dizzyness to resist, you are taken prisoner and the Fillintheblankians have taken your sword and armor and have marked you as a slave.

[Silveressa]

Ugh, nasty, time to either roll up a paladin (which have immunity to disease in some settings) or carry around a few potions of curse disease/sickness.

[Scrasamax]

That is true enough, my charrie was a sohei, a heavily armored and armed monk (religious monk, not the monk class). Put the bigger part of my character points into his armor, which he made himself and his sword, a relic passed down from master to apprentice, had a whole backstory for it. The tea ceremony and the whole nine yards.

Next thing I am told, my character is incredibly sick...because he was poisoned, robbed, and kidnapped. Railroaded into the adventure he would have gone on anyway.

[Silveressa]

It sounds almost like your gm is a fan of those old D&D 1st and 2nd edition boxed modules. I remember a fair amount of them (especially Darksun ones) revolved around he pc's getting captured, blackmailed or otherwise railroaded into the adventure.

Very neat stuff about your chars sword, any chance iof seeing it up on the site as a submission? (Either the sword or the character?)

[Ancient Gamer]

Worst:
I dunno. I've played with so many bad players, they all seem like a blur. There is always a certain percentage of bad players I guess. But, well, here are a couple of bad 'uns:

A) This one used to be good, but he hated the fact that I included my SO in the group. He hated it so much, he began to hate her. This influenced every IC and OOC thing he did and in the end the atmosphere was so cold I stopped inviting him to my sessions. Too bad, cause back in the day he was great. (Yadda-yadda, I know what you are thinking but NO ONE else had any problems with her, NO ONE else acknowledged his complaints, and I got a pretty strong headed and blunt crew).

B) This one was a two timer: First time he was okay, the second he was not. In the end he found his way into our hosts' bed, with a girl he picked up somewhere, and together they rolled in the hay, causing a mess. Guess it is kind of a way to pass time until your character awakens, but you just don't do THAT in someone elses bed. Especially if you have never met them before.

BEST:
There are so many. I have been blessed with many a great player. My current crew is magnificent. It has some really, really strong roleplayers, and some okay. The great thing about my current crew is the chemistry between us. We really, really go along and so I have to say my entire crew as of the moment are the best roleplayers I've ever met.

[Kinslayer]

I've had my fair share of odd characters & odder players, but overall I'd say I have been very lucky to mostly get players more toward the 'awesome' side of the chart. 

If I had to pick one overall best, it would probably be B.  He could create and play an amazing array of characters, from the kender bard, Doin the Annoying, to demon lords, to noble swordsmen, or anything else he set his sights upon.  It was a complete personality change, with voice, mannerisms, stance, word choice, all changing, always fitting character & setting completely.  Yet B never actually disrupted the group, no matter how great the potential was for that character.  He knew the rules completely, allowing him to focus on just the character. He was always entertaining, even just to watch. 

Bad players don't last long at my table.  I wouldn't want to game with someone I do not get along with, and don't expect anyone else to do so, either.  I've had players who just weren't any good at roleplaying, and those who never could seem to grasp any ruleset.  Then there are the players who are just stupid, like the guy who broke his own nose trying to describe (thankfully not demonstrate) what his character was doing.  He waved his arms around wildly, his arm hit the plant, the plant fell & hit his nose.  He wasn't necessarily bad, just an idiot.  The one who stands out from the crowd in badness, I don't even know her name.  She didn't even really have a character, just grabbed a couple of NPC sheets.  She didn't even do anything in game, just caused disruptions.  Some disruptions are normal & expected from a new player, but this was a bit much: eating dice, disrobing, rolling around on the floor, & trying to dig into my pockets thinking I might have hidden dice there (which she probably would have also eaten). She didn't last long at that session, and was never asked back, needless to say.

[Silveressa]

eating dice, disrobing, rolling around on the floor,..

W...T...F?

I have to ask, how old was she? 3?

Also, how the heck did she manage to get invited to the gaming table?

Suddenly my worst player doesn't seem all that bad in comparison to yours.
If someone ever even tried to eat my dice, they'd be out the door before they could swallow.

[Ancient Gamer]

I dunno... She sounds like a free spirit with no inhibitions whatsoever. And, well, unless she was a total maniac she probably didn't swallow the dice. I don't think Kevin Cook would have approved of that!

I would have talked to her in private and asked her to calm down. I'd ask if she was nervous, and tell her to watch the others for a while and learn from them. Then I'd talk to the others and ask them to forget what they just saw and give her a second chance. My boys and gals would have done that.

But, yeah, she qualifies beyond any doubt. I've never experienced anything similar. Weed smokers who said "Cool, duuuuuuudeeee" and tried  to reach Nirvana, sure. The angry veteran who demanded no chicks allowed, sure. The first gen ex-GM who declared himself a demigod and demanded our utter respect and attention, sure.

But yours was so weird she was almost cute.

You could have made her your mascot! :p

[Kinslayer]

A three-year-old would have been more tolerable.  This girl was in college.  She was really cute, in a physical sense, but absolutely irritating to game around.  She was someone another player met in another game, and he's normally a really good judge of potential players--he introduced most of the long-term members of the group to Midian.  We did try to calm her down, ask her to just watch for a bit, try to get her more involved in case boredom was the issue, et cetera.  None of that worked; that's when the shirt came off... 

We think we managed to rescue all of the slobbery dice, but no one was too sure.

[Ria Hawk]

Egh.  Was she at least drunk?  I have a hard time processing a twenty-something doing all of that if there wasn't alcohol involved.

[Kinslayer]

Not for the worst of it, but I admit we did resort to rum as a means of calming her down. 

Didn't work either.

[Silveressa]

Perhaps she misunderstood the kind of "roleplaying" you were trying to do?

Seriously though, she must have been whacked out on something, or just felt like being disruptive. Very weird gal.

[The Phantom Queen]

Best - His name is Mike and unfortunately his work schedule does not allow him to play with us at the moment. His characters are fun and quirky. He always has us rolling on the floor with laughter. He and my boyfriend can play off each other really well. Plus, he creates his character based on the concept not min-max power gaming - I think he is the fist rogue I know that could disarm traps but not find them first...save for with his head.

Worst - I'm a fairly new GM (and player when compared to many of you) and when I first started, I created a group via e-mail to play when my boyfriend and I moved to a new city. I had two brothers, very experience gamers active in RPGA. I had learned to play in a much more lax environment and I was still learning many of the rules (still am!). One of the two brothers was obviously dominant and the other one basically went along with his big brother's opinion on everything. I wanted to run a fun game but all they ever did was complain to me about how I wasn't running the game right, I wasn't giving their characters things to sneak attack or obliterate with critical hits (as if that's all their characters could do). They knew the rules better than me and had no problem being overbearing and condescending. Never mind giving the new GM a little slack! My most vivid memory is that I created a room with hallway off it and a portal at the end of the hall. By the entrance to the hall were 2 crystal cat "statues" well the rogue went in and searched the room for traps...he rolled well and had a very high trap modifier. I told him their weren't any traps he could find. He promptly proceeded to leave the room and go down the hall and got badly slashed by the two crystal cats. Later that night I got an angry e-mail because according to the player's handbook, there was no way he should have missed the trap and if I wasn't going to let his character do what he was built to do then what was the point in his playing? This was very typical of the way they talked to me both in game and via e-mail. They were always assuming they knew exactly how the game should be run and so they believed that they knew everything. I of course politely responded that he did not miss any traps and that the crystal cats standing by the hall were golems under instructions not to do anything unless someone tried to enter the hall. I had flat out told him they were standing in the room and it wasn't my fault that he assumed they were just statues. Well, we took a break from the campaign for a while because I went back to school, and I wasn't sad that they didn't return after, much more fun is being had by all now.

[Silveressa]

They really should  lighten up and be grateful you were doing a game at all with them. I've found the best way to deal with players like that is to tell them flat out: "If you think you can do a better job gming then by all means, gm for me." (either they'll shut up and play or you'll get to play in their game, either way it solves the problem nicely,)