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I have a tendency to incidentally murder my metagamers. Not out of active maliciousness... but because they do incredibly stupid, suicidal things, and then act surprised when their characters die because of their suicidal stupidity. Always with the "I didn't think you'd actually kill us" excuses afterwards. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following... Suggested Listening while you read. 1- Using a magical grenade on the enemy... which had currently surrounded them... by dropping it at their own feet. 2- Leaving a wounded and unconscious ally in the car outside while the rest of the team went to explore the Evil Spooky Place. A character that they wounded as part of the Magic Grenade incident mentioned above. Total Player Kill. Though I did show some mercy and let someone else come to rescue the one left in the vehicle- wasn't her fault everyone else blew her up and left her in the truck to die. 3- Trespass on private property. Find presumed owner of property aiming shotgun on his face. Instead of doing as told and leaving, choose to walk toward said farmer while talking. Get shot (and it was a crit, no less- not that a crit was actually necessary- world of darkness game, where guns actually mean something). Act like it's the GM's fault. 4- Start completely unnecessary fight with wild animals (they were basically alien hippos) which had showed no interest in your characters and were, in fact, digging through the dirt for roots to eat. Better yet, engage the large well-armored animals in melee combat. TPK. ... One of the characters who did this was a D&D Ranger. 5- Same campaign, different characters. Trapped in a pit that's been dug into what is essentially limestone. Player starts digging hole into wall. Nobody else thinks to stop him. He gets upset when this causes a wall to collapse on top of them. THEY actually survived (D&D, a cave-in is totally survivable), but the epic bitch-fest (and the fact that the other half of the party killed themselves by starting unnecessary fights) killed the game. 6- Use superpowers to break into a supertech military base. Get discovered because they decided to explode a wall to break into a room, instead of... anything else... they didn't even check the door to see if it was unlocked because "it's probably got an alarm". It was an internal door. 7- Fight their way out- they're doing okay in the corridors, so they decide to go into the wide open area (so, y'know, they can fight all of them at once instead of using a chokepoint). 8- Steal an attack helicopter to escape. ... Did I mention not a single one of them had any skill in flying? As a matter of fact, only one of them knew how to drive. Long story short, their escape was blown out of the sky before it got off the ground. 9- Let's not even count the times when someone tried to god-mod the NPCs to do whatever they wanted, or otherwise assumed that they get to do whatever they want in non-combat scenarios just because they're the PCs. ...... And every last time, at least one player acts like it's *my* fault that they got themselves killed, arrested for crimes ranging from theft to sexual assault, or otherwise blocked off all possibility of advancing their goals because they've earned a reputation as potentially schizophrenic psychopaths. ...... So, yeah, that's been *my* experience with metagamers. Frankly, if I had a player come along whose only crime was to use OOC knowledge to his advantage, I would welcome him. If only because that level of intelligence and planning would be a refreshing change of pace to the type I usually get saddled with. |
Also, I really liked your choice of music!
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I have to agree with TanaNari about the grenade. It's metagaming to think "I have enough hit points. I'll survive this grenade and they won't." But it's a different kind of metagaming than most of us have been thinking of: it's working the rules instead of acting like a real person would act. |
I find that such types tend to self-punish themselves. Just like TanaNari said, yes.
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It would be one thing if the DM meant to be focused on one particular style. But the other players need to be able to enjoy the game how they enjoy playing in general. I am not saying there couldn't be a cause for a disagreement, or an argument. I am just saying the DM should try to host all the players individually. |
In my book, if the players don't enjoy the style of gaming that's on offer, they're free to leave or adapt. Requiring everyone else to accommodate them seems like too much entitlement to me. And I deal with entitled players in two ways only, the second being a polite, but frank conversation.
It's especially bad if it raises the mental strain for the Referee. Because if you make his or her strain too much, there's no game for anyone.
Now, what they totally should be able to expect, is being notified of the kind of game that's on offer, so they could make an informed decision whether to apply.
(Should be able to expect it, however, doesn't mean they can rely on it. For some reason, "notify your players what kind of game you're running" isn't part of many GMing sections, so you tend to learn it with experience).