Problem Players

In my game if you come late you come late if your char dies you don't get to make another one eqaul to the one you lost in his games you do and it driives me crazy whats the point in caring about my chars new chars should not come into play equal to old ones it isn't fair
 
well coming in as a full stater in a experinced game is grossly unfair, or having a experinced char in a starting game, insted i go with a rule of almost the same xp, so if you lost a char or your joining up you get almost the same XP as everyone ealse, so if they have 100, your getting 80, it means those who worked hard to get their chars were thay are get to keep that little bit of spiffyness without killing the poor new guy
 
In my game if you come late you come late if your char dies you don't get to make another one eqaul to the one you lost in his games you do and it driives me crazy whats the point in caring about my chars new chars should not come into play equal to old ones it isn't fair
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no that is fair, you know why? try playing a game where you've got people who have higher experience than you, you've got NONE and no weapons or items that can do any magic like the experienced players, and you're facing enemies at thier level, not a starting level. THATS not fair. and the point is, a good ST should not just care about one character, he should make the game for more than one person, not just about you, or either, one other person. exalted isnt a game where the ST favors one character and lets you get all the items, and no one else gets a fair game. no, that is not exalted, unless the ST is stupid.


and seriously. just b ecause something isn't fair, doesnt mean you can go and throw a hissy fit. life isn't fair, beleive me, i know, and im sure there are alot of people who can tell you the same thing.
 
EM, as a mature adult I'm sure you already know this, but Exalted is not a competition.  I'm not quite sure how to describe it in only a few sentences, but you KNOW it isn't about how you're character is doing with respect to the other PCs.  


Let me give you an example.  I had a PC General guy in my friends campaign, along with three other players.  There was a climactic battle with an army of undead nasties (which we won!).  I lost ALL my background dots (Command--my army was destroyed, Resources-- Completely spent on weapons, Backing-- My country probably isn't too pleased with me..., Artifact-- My ancestral hammer was sent back home as a sign of supplication.)  Furthermore, some crazy Abyssal guy crawled up on the ceiling (we were in a cave) and took out my eye with an Archery form of Artful Maiming Technique.  This imposed a initial -4 dice on all pools that require sight (including my Melee).  This penalty has gone down...slowly.  One adventure to get down to -3,  another four adventures to get down to -2, then eight adventures to go down to -1.  


None of the other characters lost anything (that I know of, at least).  One gained a spiffy new artifact.  Now, was I upset?  Sure.  But I knew that it was dramatically appropriate for the battle to be so catastrophic for me, who risked it all.  Losing an eye and gaining all these emotional scars sucked from a mechanical viewpoint, but was fucking awesome for my character.  After the fact, I managed to recoup some of my money, and I parleyed my victory in that battle (We were part of a larger force that saved Nexus) into plenty of good drinking stories and speeches.


I guess what I'm saying is 1) Look for the good in with the bad and 2)It's about everyone having fun.  Ask yourself who is preventing you from enjoying yourself, and I think you'll find yourself to blame.  It's just a game, after all, and not a competitive one at that.
 
In my game if you come late you come late if your char dies you don't get to make another one eqaul to the one you lost in his games you do and it driives me crazy whats the point in caring about my chars new chars should not come into play equal to old ones it isn't fair
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I could see this point of view making sense to people who think you can somehow "win" role-playing games.


Here's a hint though: you cannot win role-playing games. If everyone in the group sees to it that everyone has fun, then the group can "win". If not, everyone loses, especially the twit who screwed up the group.


Another hint: if you are serving the story, you are probably helping the group have fun. If you are trying to make the story serve you, you are most definately not.
 
In my game if you come late you come late[...]
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That's pretty silly.  How the hell is someone supposed to control their life to the point of knowing exactly when they'll be able to start playing?  You're being an ass if you do that: people have lives, work, families, and friends.  Just because your game's not number one in their priorities list when you suggest it, they get penalized?  And what if they didn't even know about the game before hand, and joined late because of that?  Oh yeah, they should be weaker than everyone else, so they can die quicker. -_-
 
To be fair, my experience is that many gamers are just lazy bastards, and show up late for no better reason than because they lack the consideration to be on time. Those types might need a little carrot-and-stick to teach them some punctuality.


However, I do think in such situations positive reinforcement is better than negative. Don't penalize the guys who are late; reward the guys who are on time. It sends the same message, but it's less prickish.


-S
 
Stillborn said:
To be fair, my experience is that many gamers are just lazy bastards, and show up late for no better reason than because they lack the consideration to be on time. Those types might need a little carrot-and-stick to teach them some punctuality.
However, I do think in such situations positive reinforcement is better than negative. Don't penalize the guys who are late; reward the guys who are on time. It sends the same message, but it's less prickish.
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Still, by "late" I think we meant like, several weeks, or months late in starting in with the group.  It's happened to me that I really want to paly a game, but have no time, so I wait till later when I do and jump in the middle.  Not 'cause I'm lazy, but because that's the way it is.


Being late to a session, though... yeah, that's being lazy.
 
Ah. My bad. I guess I should have followed the thread a bit more closely.


-S
 
The new player:


1) Only got half of the XP that EM had.  EM had 50, he got 25.  (I just gave him 5 extra freebies in an attempt to equalize the discrepancy.  EM obviously wasn't paying attention to how game was being run (which is actually normal, as all he hears is what will hurt his chances of being the baddest player on the field).


2) And the New player payed at character creation for his Level 5 node, it's just that in my game, nodes and manses both exist, and he got a manse instead of a node, since EM had a manse.


EM payed for a node at character creation and got one in his house.  Later, he got a manse, but had to fight for it, as it wasn't a creation purchased place of power.  Lizzerd (the new player), having purchased his at creation, didn't have to fight for it.  This, oddly, offended EM ( I think it was that EM's manse was only level 3, but Lizzerd's manse, as he purchased a level 5, was in fact, level 5.


I may have missed something...


If so, I'll ammend the post again.
 
In my area, there isn't that many gamers, and so I tend to have to scrape around for a good circle, with a lot of none comitted players leaving because it wasn't what they enjoyed and then me having to pick up new players to fill in the gap.  The way I work it is the new players get full XP equal to the baseline of XP the characters have got from playing thus far, without any bonuses I may have given out.  I mean, tbh, just being new to the game is often a handycap enough for me (I mean, the people I recruit are generally people who have never played a table top RP before, and so we have to start EVERYTHING from scratch with them.  This ends up meaning that even with the full XP, they still lag behind our original players, as they don't know their character or their charms).  I also don't give the new players any items.


My players have done the Invisible Fortress campaign recently, and managed to pick up a level 4-5 item each and a couple of level 2-3s from it.  It was a good campaign, so I was generous.


With the new players, I just let them buy their gear normally at char creation but they don't get items to make up for the discrepency between the players.


I can see certain groups being okay with new guys getting an XP penalty to new players, but still I wouldn't go lower than 3/4 of total XP for the new guy, otherwise he's gonna be playing catch up for ages, with the old players taking centre stage, which will most likely make him feel like he's unimportant, and thus make him want to leave.  Not something I wanna do with a new player.  Sure, they should probably feel less powerful than the other characters, but that doesn't mean they should be backstage players.  Just that they look a bit newbish when compared to your hard-bitten, scarred and battleworn adventurers.  They're good, but they've just not been through it all... well at least not yet, if you take my game as an example!   :P
 
The new player:
1) Only got half of the XP that EM had.  EM had 50, he got 25.  (I just gave him 5 extra freebies in an attempt to equalize the discrepancy.  EM obviously wasn't paying attention to how game was being run (which is actually normal, as all he hears is what will hurt his chances of being the baddest player on the field).


2) And the New player payed at character creation for his Level 5 node, it's just that in my game, nodes and manses both exist, and he got a manse instead of a node, since EM had a manse.


EM payed for a node at character creation and got one in his house.  Later, he got a manse, but had to fight for it, as it wasn't a creation purchased place of power.  Lizzerd (the new player), having purchased his at creation, didn't have to fight for it.  This, oddly, offended EM ( I think it was that EM's manse was only level 3, but Lizzerd's manse, as he purchased a level 5, was in fact, level 5.


I may have missed something...


If so, I'll ammend the post again.
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thats perfectly fair. whats purchased at creation should not really offend anyone at all. there should be something in the characters history about how he got the powerful manse, but thats it.because EM is pissed that some one elses is more powerful than his, cause he bought it at creation, the reason why he is just, eludes me. and its even more complex for me to understand the EM had highest xp than the new characters, in fact double them. so the new guy didnt start weak or as powerful as EM. thats fair. maybe EM's logic is just on another level or totally different than mine, i just think its weird he gets angry and upset over a character legally buying a level five manse, with half of his own xp.
 
He just gave him the blasted Manse in a world that they barly exsist as in less than 20 world wide that function and a few more that don't and nobody knows how to fix them plus he didn't evan inform me that I could take one at Char creation, O and it pissed me off that something so rare and powerful didn't belong to anyone he just turned it over I had to prevent a Setite from sommoning a Bloodape and kill him and then do research to figure out what the hell the thing was not to mention the rock the vampire was holding
 
He just gave him the blasted Manse in a world that they barly exsist as in less than 20 world wide that function and a few more that don't and nobody knows how to fix them plus he didn't evan inform me that I could take one at Char creation' date=' O and it pissed me off that something so rare and powerful didn't belong to anyone he just turned it over I had to prevent a Setite from sommoning a Bloodape and kill him and then do research to figure out what the hell the thing was not to mention the rock the vampire was holding[/quote']
he doesnt have to inform you of anything that you can get one in creation, you can buy it regardless. now if i was ST, there would have to be a damn good reason that the character has level five in most backgrounds, especially artifact and manse. now if the character provided how he got it, the hardships and struggle to get such a powerful item, thats fine. and there doesnt have to be only 20, the st can make more or less, to his whim. the rules set in the book, are just guidelines, it even states that in the core book. it states that in all the books i've read in WW rp games.
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did you ever bother to *ask* if you could take the manse background at character creation?  or do you expect your ST to tell you straight out what backgrounds you can take?  


It's generally much easier for everyone (at least those of us who are intelligent human beings) to just list the ones you *can't* take.  Unless the ST said "manse background is off-limits and you can't start with it* then there's absolutely no reason to assume you can't start with it.  It seems to me that the ST said that manes are rare in creation and you just *assumed* that you couldn't start with it and are now tossing a fit because another player didn't make the same, silly assumption that you did.


It seems like you hate it when you're character doesn't have the best of everything and doesn't have control of the most powerful everything in the group.  No doubt you'd toss a fit if you started in a game late and the ST didn't give you any xp to make sure your character didn't get his ass handed to him in minutes or didn't give you some way of balancing out the gap in xp.  What your ST did is completely fair and can only help the game be more fun for everyone involved (at least everyone who's rational, mature and not obsessed with being the best)


The ST doesn't appear to have given the new-comer any special treatment, he gave him xp to start with (half yours, which still is a significant lead) and nothing else... the character paid for manse during creation... and if he backed it up well-enough in his character story, there's no reason to bitch about it, he paid for manse 5, you didn't, so there's no reason to whine about it... you could have done it as well, but you apparently never bothered to *ask* if you could.  It's not the ST's place to hold your hand and tell you every little thing you can take... like I said, it's much easier to just list the stuff that's off-limits.


Hell, what I'd do for new-comers is roll a d10 for every 10xp the group's gotten (rounded up or down to the nearest 10) and give them however much xp that was.  I'd not give them any special artifacts or toys or manses or anything, even if the characters had gotten lots of them during the games... they'd get what they paid for during creation and the xp from the dice roll.  The only reason I'd ever give them no xp, like you said you'd do, is if they actually asked for that... otherwise that's completely ridiculous and hurts both the game and the players for no good reason.


It looks like you just can't handle any other character having something more powerful or better than yours or, perhaps, can't handle the ST running his game differently than you would.  It's his game, he'll run it how he wants, if you don't like it, too bad, deal with it or just don't play with him.  Throwing a fit and getting angry is the worste way to react, actually talking it out like a sane, rational and mature human being might actually get positive results.  Getting pissed and gnashing your teeth about how unfair it is and how *you'd* do it like <this> only makes you look like an asshat (to take a term from Jakk)


and finally.... it's a game, there's no reason at all to get pissed over anything that happens during a game of pretend... grow up.
 
#1 we are playing a game that is a alteration of the old world of darkness I am playing a mage


#2 He took node not manse


#3 I f I join a game late I expect my char to be much weeker than the older char it is only fair making my new char equal to the old ones undermines the xp system so before you go off and start throwing insults like a child you should read all the info sence my room mate said it was a WoD game
 
#1 we are playing a game that is a alteration of the old world of darkness I am playing a mage
#2 He took node not manse


#3 I f I join a game late I expect my char to be much weeker than the older char it is only fair making my new char equal to the old ones undermines the xp system so before you go off and start throwing insults like a child you should read all the info sence my room mate said it was a WoD game
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your ST even said he wasnt as powerful, he gave him HALF xp. he legally bought the node, or whatever, in character creation. you could have had it if you wanted it in the begining, too. so dont get pissed when some one gets something better cause they got it for cheaper at the character creation process. thats acting like a child, EM.[/i]
 
#1 we are playing a game that is a alteration of the old world of darkness I am playing a mage
#2 He took node not manse
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These two points are pretty much irrelevant to the discussion at hand.  It really doesn't matter what the specifics of what he gave you are.  The point is that you feel cheated because you feel that the other character should not have been able to take them.  The question is 'Did Kei'ron specifically deny you the chance to take them or did you just not even consider them as an option.  If the former, then the problem would be a case of bad STing as it's favouritism.  If the latter then it's the players responsibility to request unusual items, it's not the ST's responsibility to tell you what you can take merely what you can't.

#3 I f I join a game late I expect my char to be much weeker than the older char it is only fair making my new char equal to the old ones undermines the xp system so before you go off and start throwing insults like a child you should read all the info sence my room mate said it was a WoD game
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On the whole XP for new characters issue I tend to favour a middle ground of giving them some XP (generally about 50 - 70%) of what the highest character has.  This then allows the older characters to feel that their work has some value without leaving the newer characters completely behind.  I would also factor in how experienced the player was and how lethal the game is.  The newer characters do not get to start with any other backgrounds than those chosen in character gen while the older characters have whatever they've picked up in game.


If you feel that it was unbalancing the game to allow a character to start with this alternate background then you are within your rights to ask the ST if he feels that this is a balanced background and then accept whatever the ST gives as an answer.  The St is the final arbitrator in the game.


If you feel that the other character is stepping on your toes by gaining something at character generation that you had to put a lot of work into then that's obviously aggravating and I personally whether as an ST or as a player try to ensure that most people have some area that they can shine in.  I find it makes for a better game when the characters feel special.  The correct time and place to raise the issue of toe steppage is at character generation not later.


The problem here appears to be twofold: first that EM feels that the new character is being shown favouritism (hard to assess without actually being present) and second; that EM has taken this dissatisfaction and gone too far.  As to the first, I am inclined to say that perhaps Kei’ron needs to consider issues such as toe steppage with new characters especially in a game with lots of house rules, as finding out that you could have done something well after the fact can be very aggravating, but equally EM should have asked if he wanted something along those lines.  As to the second the only thing I can say is to echo the others in saying that it is just a game and not too worry too much about power level especially since it sounds like the other player isn’t truly overpowered.


Meh that was long and rambling but kind of encompassed most of what I wanted to say
 
I'm glad my players aren't whiny bitches. Everyone's happy to play their own character, regardless of what the others are capable of.


-S
 
Im gonna have to agree with shicato on that whole spiel. he pretty much summed up everything for you, EM.
 
Shicato said:
#1 we are playing a game that is a alteration of the old world of darkness I am playing a mage
#2 He took node not manse
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These two points are pretty much irrelevant to the discussion at hand.  


did you work real hard at being dense or is it natural to you


#1 Manses don't exsist in the WoD remeber


#2 When I was looting the body of the fallen Vampire and found a rock with a magical aura was when I became aware of there being a few manses left in the world I had no reason to ask thinking to ask if I can take a manses is like wanting to take Arcane on a solar char
 
being Bitchy? I just go to my room and plat Halo and read my books I spend most of my time duing that anyway
 
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