Bad players

[Michebugio]

I'm very much interested in how you (loremasters) handle "bad players", which is a broad term to indicate someone who is not playing well their character from one of the following points of view:

1) Rules: the player is constantly forgetting the rules, or forgetting to use his Traits, Virtues and/or Rewards with a detrimental effect on the whole Fellowship. He thinks he has no other options than just the ones he can remember, or he simply plays too straightforward for the actual skills of his character. Either way, do you give advice to these players at the cost of making the adventure too easy (you constantly help them), or do you play no matter the consequences of their (often foolish) actions, at the cost of letting them even die?

2) Roleplaying: the player doesn't play as his character should be. He has the Traits Bold or Reckless, but he always acts very cautiously. He has a high score of Hope, but he often acts desperately. He should be a clever, quick thinker with a high Wits score, but he often lacks initiative and planning. How do you handle this kind of player? Do you make him revise his traits, or the choices he made during character creation later in the game?

3) Meta-gaming: the player doesn't acts as if he was his character, but constantly makes considerations regarding game mechanics. He doesn't think of the consequence on the story, he thinks of the consequences on the numbers: how many experience points he'll take, how many shadow points that would cost, and so on. He thinks that the enemies will make that choice because "the story requires them to", or that he can only do something that is covered by rules (kind of opposite to the player that always wants to bend or break the rules to make something too weird).

And, of course, the power-players. But we kinda all know how to handle them

Thanks!

[Angelalex242]

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.

On 2: Traits and Specialties should match how the character is actually played, yes, and switching them around is just a matter of writing different stuff down on the sheet. As for a witty character in the hands of a dumb player, or a persuasive character in the hands of a shy player, just have them roll dice when you think they're OOC. "Actually, instead of acting like a moron, you suddenly think it'd be tactically advisable to take a defensive stance and wait your enemies out..." You can be even more indicative when they roll an Eye of Sauron...and you simply don't correct their behavior at all, instead letting the chips fall where they may.

On 3: Keeping track of game mechanics is actually a good thing. It ends hubris, as this player will know exactly how strong his character is in relation to the world and what he can be expected to do and not do. It's actually a bigger problem if he metagames the story, knowing Saruman's going to turn evil, for example, is a bigger problem then precision use of dice. And actively thinking about how much Shadow he'd get for doing bad deeds is intentional within the system. Kinda like a jedi worried about falling to the Dark Side, it's natural to want to avoid it like the plague.

On 4: TOR does not lend itself to powergaming, really. There's some nifty tricks you can pull, but they come at the expense of other things, so whatever trick they've pulled is probably what the character ends up famous for. And that's okay.

[Majestic]

Fortunately I don't have any of these types of players right now, but I have dealt with some of them in the past. As to advice for your specific issues:

1) It can be tough to have patience, but I'd encourage the other players to help remind said player of their various Traits, Virtues, and Rewards. I don't think advice is a bad thing, if it's done right. Try to remind the player of what their ability or skill could do. To help my players I printed out their various Traits (along with simple descriptions) on 3x5 cards for them, to make it a bit easier for them (most of my players don't have rulebooks, and their character sheets simply have the names of the Traits, so this provides a bit of guidance and help).

2) This one is much more difficult. I'd pull the player aside and talk with them (outside the group) of trying to play the character the way the character has been created. The Wits one is more tough, and what I've generally done is throw a few ideas out for the high Wits character (speaking more of other games here, over the years), or allow others to add their input. "Your character is really smart, so perhaps he would have considered X" seems to work.

3) An old player of mine was quite the power gamer. Our in-joke about him was that he saw the world sort of like we saw code in the Matrix - just a stream of numbers. When the rest of us meet a person, we see an actual human being in front of us. We would joke that this guy simply saw a new person as a stream of numbers. Trivial things like name, gender, occuptation, etc. were annoying facts that didn't really matter to him. It's tough to play with someone like this, and my only advice is to be patient and hopefully everyone in the group encourages that person to join in and try to not to metagame. At times as GM I simply wouldn't allow that player to get away with stuff, saying (for instance) "Your character doesn't have that knowledge, so he can't do that."

[zedturtle]

On the issue of metagaming, I think TOR is very resilient. Metagaming in TOR creates things like "protect my best friend", "try to Intimidate the leader instead of killing him", "make sure the archer can stay back and shoot", and "we want our twice-baked honey cakes". Very different from some other games...

[Michebugio]

Thanks everybody, your advices are great!

The only issue that still bothers me is number 1. I'll make an example: in our last session, we played the final assault of The Crossings of Celduin. At one point, every character was paralyzed by the Gibbet King, and nobody could spend Hope to free himself since they all failed their Fear checks (thus were not allowed to spend Hope). Except one of them: the "bad player".

He knew that everybody would have been dead in the next turn, since orc soldiers were swarming around the paralyzed characters and the Gibbet King was almost at full life. He also knew that the Gibbet King would have tried to paralyze him in the next round, not to mention the orcs attacking him. But he had his Elven Lamp lit, and he studied with Ormal the Lampmaker to obtain all the related effects (for those who don't know, one of them reduces the Hate score by 1 point of every creature with the Hate sunlight quality able to see it. They were surrounded just by orc soldiers: Hate 1, Cowardly. And he knew the Cowardly thing.).

He says: "I attack the GK with my spear."
I said: "Umm, that's it? A normal attack? He's almost unhurt, you know."
Player: "Well, what else could I do? I have no choice."
Me: "At least you could attempt a Called shot, to get a Piercing. A Wound would kill him outright."
Player: "Uh, right. Well, I do it."
Me: "Remember that it's very unlikely you'll succeed, I mean it's not impossible but it's desperate. Are you sure you don't want to try something else?"
Player: "No, I'll try it."
Me: "Ooookay... which stance do you use?"
Player: "Defensive".
Me: "Ok, but you do remember that your Shadow Bane virtue requires Forward stance, right?"
Player: "Oh, right. Well, Forward then."
Me: "Ok, roll".

Player rolls, failure. Next turn, the Gibbet King paralyzes him, just two turns before the paralysis ended for all the other players. Orcs slaughter everybody who can't act, end of the game.

Me: "You know that you could use your Lamp and make every orc flee, granting time to your companions to recover and finish off the GK?"
Player: "Yeah but I couldn't spend any Hope point to activate that."
Me: "You *didn't need* to spend Hope on that. Do you even know how it works?"
Player: "No, not really. I mean, I remembered I had to use Hope."
Me: "Not after you studied with Ormal, remember? Well, no problem: let's play the last turn again."

Player activates lamp. In a flash of sorcerous light, all orcs lose 1 Hate and flee. I state that more will come, but he gained just the time he needed to allow his companions to recover. After they recover, they all attack the GK with a final assault, reducing him to 0 Endurance. Battle won, the army of Dale arrives and saves the day.

The problem is that I had to intervene to make this happen. I practically made them win, without any merit except the one that this guy had the lamp. That felt very un-earned, and even though the characters survived, the players felt almost like they had lost. Which is right, in a sense.

This is how a player who doesn't know the rules, or even his own powers, can ruin the fun to everybody. I had to go as far as making choices for him, rather that having him earn the victory. And this is just one example.

[Stormcrow]

I had to intervene to make this happen.

Don't give all that advice during a game. Afterward, when you're discussing what happened during the game, point out mistakes they made or opportunities they missed. Hard experience is the best way to learn. This is a good reason to start with less dangerous adventures until the players have mastered their characters' abilities.

"Anything from climbing trees to visiting elves—or sailing in ships, sailing to other shores!"

[Angelalex242]

Almost felt like a video game there. "Well, you fail miserably. Let's reload the save file and try this again..."

[Deadmanwalking]

IME, if you want to give players advice that might help or save them without it being a giveaway or do-over, the easiest solution is to have them roll for it. A Lore or Wisdom roll to remember something important to the character but that the player might have forgotten seems very reasonable in the instance mentioned, for example.

It's still helping out, but it's no longer a 'gimme' and the win feels a lot more legitimate, again, IME.

I'd also be inclined to suggest that other players should help out a particular player who's worse at rules than the others. I personally feel that's just common sense, and one of the obligations of a player who is good at the rules.

For problem #2, I'd generally suggest rebuilding the character pretty early on. To something a bit more like what the player is actually playing, that just seems like the simplest solution.

For problem #3...I'm not sure that's actually a problem most of the time. The rules of the game are, in many ways, the way the game world works, and in TOR, as mentioned, they reinforce the genre conventions pretty darn well...so paying attention to them and doing things based on them seems entirely reasonable behavior. Now, if paired with a complete disregard for the IC details of the world it could certainly be problematic, but that seems a pretty niche case.

[doctheweasel]

I don't like these discussions on what "proper" roleplaying is. Everyone wants something different from the game, and I don't think anyone should look at someone that is having fun and tell them they are doing it wrong.

We are niche enough a hobby that we shouldn't start judging our own because they have different views on what is "correct."

What is important is that the group's expectations are discussed in advance. It's just as awkward having someone min/max-ing in a group of immersive roleplayers as it is when you have someone chewing the scenery in a group that is more interested in strategically overcoming challenges.

If your group plays a certain way, you should talk it out with any new players and make sure they are on-board to make sure they will be a good fit.

[zedturtle]

I agree with doctheweasel that a lot of this is due to playstyle/personality. It sounds like to me, if the player has a Lamp and has trained with Ormal, that the player has been in the game for a long time.

So it's not a matter of him needing to learn the rules or his character. It's a matter of the fact that his playstyle is not about those things. As a wild guess, I'd say he's a friend and he wants to hang out with you and do cool things. He might even be the sort of fellow that after the game thinks about the things he could have done but blanks out when confronted with a decision in the game.

Michebugio, I'd suggest that when you get to that sort of point again, just call for a break. Give everyone 15 minutes or so to get out of the tense 'last stand, critical decision' moment and give the other players a chance to confer. Maybe, if you absolutely feel like you need to, suggest that the players do some OOC planning while you go out for some fresh air or whatever.