How to handle a player who only cares about his own fun in a p&p?

Reddit - role playing games 02/11/19

0

0

Hey, I created this throwaway because the guy I am talking about knows my main. For context, I am in a p&p group with my cousin and a few buddies, my cousin dms. We are six players in total, all in our early 20s. One of the players, let's call him X, is really selfish. He only cares about his own fun, tries to dictate how the p&p goes and is annoyed when he doesn't get his way. For example, in a recent session we had to sneak through a drake's lair at the very beginning. We had little to no equipment at this point. We encountered the dragon at some point, but luckily it was sleeping. Me and four of the other players agreed to not fight it at this point because we didn't have the equipment and wanted to progress with the story quickly. X was the only one who wanted to fight it. When the rest of the group sneaked past the dragon, he picked up a stone and threw it at the dragon to wake it up and force us to fight it. I didn't want to be forced to fight, but I knew I would have been the asshole if my PC just walked away and let the others die (I was the only one who had already purchased a decent weapon), so I did it anyways. The fight cost us 45 minutes and we really didn't get to play much of the story afterwards because X fell asleep at some point. X is also super pissed when the other PC's start to dislike his PC for the things he does. Like, he cuts off his opponents ears and gets angry when the healer who despises unnecessary violence doesn't like it. Or when the other PCs threaten to not help him anymore if he provokes fights when everybody else has agreed not to fight. He also tells the other players how their PCs should feel about what his PC does and why they have no right to feel the way the players think they do. When things don't go his way because he constantly forgets to do perception rolls or engages opponents who are way stronger than him, the game is "unfair" and the DM just tries to annoy him. He also tries to use OOC-knowledge his character doesn't actually have sometimes to get his way (my cousin tries his best to prevent this, but this is his first time dming so he doesn't always notice immediately). And when the group is split for some reason and it's not X's turn, he is always playing on his phone and barely paying attention. In short, X wants to go things his way, and his way only, doesn't care about the other player's fun and is overall unpleasant to be around. His PC isn't better tbh, he always tries to backstab the other characters (e.g. lies about quest rewards to get more for himself, forces fights nobody else wants to fight or outright tries to steal from/kill other characters, although my cousin doesn't allow the latter anymore because it caused too many problems). I am pretty sure I forgot many things, but I think this is enough to illustrate what the problem is. Normally I would try to remove a player like this from the group, however, he is close friends with three of the other players. They don't exactly his behaviour either, but when I tried to voice my disapproval before, they always tried to brush it off like "let's not fight, it's just a game" because X is "sensitive" and can't handle criticism well as it would only hurt his feelings, so talking things out is obviously also not really an option. Not that I haven't tried before. My cousin and I don't want to leave the group either because the other players are cool guys and the p&p we are currently playing is fun. So on behalf of my cousin, one question for the dms: How would you handle this player? How can a DM penalize a player like that without penalizing or inconveniencing the entire group (or himself) too much? (He doesn't seem to learn from his mistakes and the other players responses btw, so I am not really sure this would even help, but it doesn't hurt to try.) And another question for the players: How can I, as a player, defend myself against this behaviour without dragging the rest of the group into this and inconveniencing them too much? I don't mind inconveniencing them a little if he starts it, but I wouldn't go as far as letting a PC die (except X's, maybe...). TL;DR: A player in our group only cares about himself, tries to center the entire p&p around him, forces the other players into situations they don't want to play, tries to dictate how the other PC's are allowed to feel and think about his PC and overall acts like a spoiled child. How can my cousin as the DM and I as a player penalize him (apart from removing him from the group as this isn't possible due to his friendship with most other players)?

View it

Like

Like 0

Comment