Player of Mass Destruction

Playing is often a good experience, with lots of laugher, some thinking and gaining XPs. Having good players around the table usually tends to make the whole session more enjoyable, while bad players tend to make things turn to the worse. I am going to talk about that second category of players : the bad players. To ease the understanding of everyone, let's name the bad player "Alexander". Alexanders who read this article should not take this personally as this name was chosen completely at random.

Alexander is a role player, or at least he considers himself like that because he plays RPGs with other people he considers as friends (friendship might not be mutual). We will observe Alexander and determine what makes him a bad player :

• stupidity in role-play: from whatever angle you analyze Alexander's actions in role-play, they are inevitably STUPID. For example canceling his huge concert to go to the invitation he had by an anonymous letter, taking a cig during an infiltration mission in a place where dozens of snipers can see him, believing every NPC and distrusting PCs everytime...
• stupidity outside role-play: Alexander, as well as playing stupidly, acts like a total idiot. Attitudes such as saying "lol" aloud or going to light a cig while the group of characters (including his) is being chased by a group of zombies is quite... idiotic.
  
• out of character : These interruptions, while acceptable to say a little gag or other stuff, are not enjoyable during a role-play moment (discussing with an important NPC) or when it's simply uninteresting. Alexander often makes out-of-character unneeded comments, and that affects drastically the opinion of other players about him.
• cheating: need I say more ? Alexander is a cheater. I saw him cheat repeatedly at some tables, and if he cheats on a table that I'm mastering, I'll be sure to tear his character sheet, and ask him to not play at my table ever again. Nobody likes cheaters, and losing someone like Alexander is not a major loss.
• Playing characters he is unable to play : Alexander is a stupid person. This would normally limit him to making stupid characters, and then, once he has grasped how to play correctly, try some different characters. However, this is Alexander, so his characters tend to be sexy intelligent women with tragic pasts (parents killed) who are powerful. Somehow, he didn't understand that powerful on the sheet doesn't mean powerful in the mind. Therefore, Alexander had countless characters who were raped, duped then killed by other players because of all of his character's attitude. Oh yeah, making all of his characters having the same attitude is a big letdown too. Try to do something different when you see that the 15th copy of that character dies also.
• Thinking that it's a video-game : sorry Alexander, but we are not in that type of game, where you can simply go back to your previous checkpoint when you did something stupid like insulting the big vampire or selling your powerful NPC friends to bad guys (or players). Asking for this to happen is like asking to get your face punched.

So why is Alexander still playing ? Why is he still around a table playing his stupid DOA characters and ruining some fun ? I don't really know. Maybe it's a mix of pity and sadism ? Having Alexander in the team is like having a monkey : he isn't useful, but his incredible actions sure can be funny ! at the end of the session, 95% of the game funny quotes are from Alexander, which is not negligible.

Be sure to check next week's article for Alexander as a game master !