The Text
I recall a group almost ten years ago where "THAT GUY" was a relatively new player to our group and we'd agreed the game was going to be about mid-high fantasy ND heroics - So he shows up with this drunken old man lout of a fighter. Meanwhile were all playing young kind of weeaboo anime hero types.
We tolerated him and how often he'd talk about how drunk, smelly. and generally obnoxious his character was. He would use metagame knowledge to make fun of our characters in character, laughing at us when we'd get knocked out, calling us cowards when we failed our fear checks, and the OM would take pity on us and just kind of give us "let it slide" looks and let us take rerolls.
We'd bitch about it between sessions and we sort of grew to hate the guy as a player: His character would go onto long diatribes about dungeons and gold and how useless we were and we'd get into hour long arguments where the OM would constantly have to remind us all to "keep it IC " Anyway this campaign goes on for at least a year, and the storyline is kind of climaxing and a OMNPC gets kidnapped, so after another argument session we get convinced by THAT GUY" to take a suicide mission and storm a castle, and he s basically yelling at us IRL we have to do it.
So when we agree, he leaves the room with the OM for a few minutes. and we assume this s all some metaplot how his going to fuck us over and steal our shit. They come back in as if nothing had happened. Session continues but we're all on guard. assuming something is up. We storm the castle or whatever, and have a lot of fun, not really noticing that this guy has stopped being so obnoxious. He hasn't once mentioned how his character reeks of whiskey or onions or whatever, though he wastes a good five minutes explaining how his character shaved his beard. Whatever. we just assume the OM talked to him about how it was annoying us. Epic battles ensue and Fast forward to face off with the BBEG. some Lich thing and the fight isnt going so well.
We're getting spanked. our Cleric is down. and Mr. Fighter has a haste and out of nowhere he goes. "I rush to Cedric (the Cleric) and slap him 'GET UP YOU COWARD'." At this point I groan but the OM is like "Cedric, you're back up with XX HP." Then Mr. "Fighter" goes "I turn to the Lich and I smite him." And suddenly it clicked for all of us.
Fucker had been playing a Paladin the entire time. His insults were his lay-on-hands and calling us out as cowards were his Anti-fear aura. He wasn't That Guy." 'we were "that guy" and we'd just been absolutely out roleplayed for almost a year.
The discussion page on Reddit.
The thread there seems full of people who don't know what roleplaying actually is, so I'll comment here instead if that's cool.
ReplyDeleteI'm on the "Wait, so basically no one but the DM and That Guy were having any fun for a year? That's kind of suck" side of the discussion. I know everyone roles differently, but seriously... were any of them really thinking "Awesome! That totally makes up for 12 months of playing with an asshole!"
That's pretty hip.
ReplyDeleteI'm more on the "the other guys where &#$##$s who couldn't keep IC from OOC and wanted another clone to follow the herd", they didn't like someone being different and couldn't roll with because they had a smug sense of self superiority that only abated when they saw mechanical benefits.
ReplyDeleteSo he shows up with this drunken old man lout of a fighter. Meanwhile were all playing young kind of weeaboo anime hero types.
ReplyDeleteBecause the grouchy, drunken fighter with a curt manner and manky personal habits who happens to be concealing massive prowess appears *absolutely nowhere* in any form of media ever.
A bad case of "did not do the research".
That said, the fighter's player was also 'that guy' for not bothering to explain himself for an entire year.
Fail all round then.
Don't be so quick to jump to conclusion that being/rping "grouchy, drunken fighter with curt manner and manky personal habits" is being/rping an asshole.
ReplyDeleteDifferent/non-optimal does not equal asshole.
Playing "Weeaboo anime hero types" that constantly bitch about other player's rping does sounds more assholish to me. Although, in their case they let him keep playing so they probably weren't.
Point being, it's all heresay and I **and you** really would have to have more to go on than a couple posts to make asshole/not-asshole sort of judge ment calls.
For my part, I didn't call anyone involved and asshole. From the bulk of the party's perspective, the guy was being an asshole (until, as Zzarchov said, they saw the mechanical benefits). That's more important than any outsider's opinion of the guy personally - the pertinent part is that most of the group wasn't having as much fun as they could have, because the GM wanted to pull a clever stunt.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying anyone else in this is blameless. I mean, how dense were they not to get that the DM was giving them extra HP every time the guy insulted them? But regardless, the result is supposedly an uncomfortable and less accessible game. But maybe I'm just used to only playing games with friends who I like.
From the sounds of things, it looks like the OP and other players judged that the ultimate payoff was worth the year-long annoyance of dealing with this character. I have to think that the act couldn’t have been all that grating for them to endure it so long. I personally tend to have less patience with this kind of stuff; I prefer hidden agendas between the PCs, but not so much the players.
ReplyDeleteFunny. I hate people that can't deal with conflict or whatnot in the game and start to take it real-world serious. I think they all grew up two sizes that day.
ReplyDelete