Talk to your players.
A lot (but by no means all) problems in the social dynamics/expectations and playstyle conflicts in a game can be solved by just chatting things out.
Before I run any game I chat things through with my players on what the game is, what my expectations of it are, what they're looking for etc. This can be at the 'What system/genre do people want to do next?' stage, or just at the outset. So with my previous Night's Black Agents campaign we had a lot of talk about style and feel as it was very much a shades of grey campaign with blurred lines on morality, hard decisions to be made etc.
Breaking them down one by one:
1) Does the player have a rules summary easily to hand? Flash cards/index cards etc. on their traits and abilities. The elf in my game has her elf-light effects written down but will often still forget to use it because it's not something used 'all the time', wheras she always has a 'do I spend hope to cause a piercing blow' choice going on whenever she shoots something significant.
While not for every campaign, i'll run a wiki for the game, print maps, write up handouts, do cards with images and information on every npc etc. I do these because I find that the easier it is for the players to have the information their characters have, the more fun the game is. They're playing for 4 hours, one night a week. their characters have spent 5-6 years together while the players have been doing it for 8 months etc.
Likewise, as others have said, you could encourage the other players to give help, have discussions ooc on the game, tactics etc.
In the specific example you cited with the GK, that's a huge amount of pressure at that point, everyone else is out of the fight, the player is stuck not knowing what to do (see his 'Player: "Well, what else could I do? I have no choice." '. At this point i'd encourage the player to talk through his options rather than just use the standard 'what do you do'.
Ultimately this is a playstyle issue which different groups have very different takes on. Some people like the adversarial campaign of players vs GM, others don't. Again that goes back to talking to your players.
2) Talk it through with the player.
3) Talk it through with the player. Not everyone puts themselves into their character, some people approach games as a problem to be solved to 'win' etc. How much the player is enjoying your game , and how much his playstyle is affecting your enjoyment of running the game is the issue.
I really feel that this is terrible advice. A player not remembering the rules or everything their character can do is absolutely no reason to drive the character insane. This is the worst sort of adversarial GMing that completely ignores the whole 'fun' part of gaming and makes it instead about forcing the player to do what the GM wants by punishing their character. I'd immediately leave any game run by someone with this sort of approach to gaming.Angelalex242 wrote:On 1: Detrimental to the party is easily answered with Shadow Points. Drive him insane with a few bouts of madness till he gets it through his head to stop doing that.
