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“It’s not me, it’s you” and other conversations with problem players

Sometimes your group doesn’t work out. Maybe there’s a player in there who just isn’t having fun. Maybe the game you’re running isn’t the one they want to play. Maybe they’ve broken up with their partner and are taking out their anger in the game or perhaps their personality just doesn’t mesh at all with another member of the group. Or perhaps your game is planned for the end of their week and they’re sleep-deprived and cranky.

Whatever the reason, a situation like this means it’s time to have one of the the hardest conversations you can have as a GM. And while this shouldn’t only be the GM’s responsibility, often the task falls to the GM. And that’s what i’ll be discussing here today.

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Getting on with it!

I’ll admit, I was working on another post when the idea for this one hit me. And I’ll even admit that part of the seed for this one comes from frustration in my own games. That said, there’s some interesting things to discuss with regards to this topic, so let’s dive in!

For next year’s Christmas, I want another hour in my day.

As you may have guessed from the title and the above picture, this post is about those sessions where a lot happens and nothing ever gets done. It’s about sessions where you spend hours chasing down a clue that leads absolutely no-where and sessions where you spend your hard-earned resources to open a door that leads, you guessed it, no-where.

So without wasting any more of your precious time, let’s dig in and talk about how to avoid wasting everyone’s precious RPG time.

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So you’ve given the predator stats

Aka, If it bleeds, we can kill it!

(i recommend putting this clip on in the background.)

Imagine the following.
Your party is being stalked by some unseen foe that has just managed to decimate an entire village and its fighting force with some fiery form of magic missile. This ‘wizard’ is an absolute beast in hand to hand combat and it has managed to stay invisible throughout the entire ordeal. Having a seemingly impossible acrobatics skill and perhaps even multi classing a few levels in monk for having such an impeccable physique. Earlier when you tried to find this person, they manged to trick you using a form of ghost sound to mimic the parties cleric. A master of multi attack, fist weapons, staves, glaives…..throwing weapons like stars, chakrams, nets, daggers and traps that not even your base 14 perception and survival combined would pick up. Seemingly leaving no trace in the wild, so perhaps also having a class in druid or ranger, though the sheer amount of strength and knowledge of weaponry would suggest a fighter or a barbarian.

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