How to Deal with Problem Players in D&D, Part 1 

Hey Dm Lair, i belive your video helped me. I belive gave me a lot to reflect with, i started dming 2 years ago, i had a main group of 3 players, one of wich had played a game with a more experienced DM along with me, wich is our friend in mutual. Since i was a new dm, extroverted but also shy and with a little of anxiety i would just try to make a funny game for everyone, but this one player would constantly argu in his favor, try to in most ocasion's give a turn of event´s as he like (for ex: You see this queen who is asking our help? Lets kill her and take her kingdom) wich, since i was a new dm didnt handle as well as i should. For some time just ignoring this ideas and main plans since the rest of the group didnt agreed with him. With time i would try to talk to him but he would justify that he could do that since his caracter would and that, in a case like that, our mutual first dm, who wasnt playing, wouldnt do like that (a matt mercer kind of effect), and that would sting on me, i was trying to be a good dm and that, as I see, was a bully move to get what he wanted, even if wishing no harm. Since the othe players wouldnt intervin in his behavior or have my back when something like this would apperar, i wouldstart even more get annoyed with his behavior (he would metagame, forget about the game day making us wait for him for 40 min, be a murderhobo and even cheat on a "sneaky app" where he would keep rollin his virtual dice till a lot of bad rolls would follow so he could cheat the app to have more chances for a good number.). I started to present the problem of givin consequences in game for out of game things, wich i see now a day that was a toxic behavior generated for toxic behavior. A few days ago i had a conversation after session with some new dnd friends, compared to my fist group, and i once gain complained about this problem player, wich has become a bad habit, and one of the players, that has played since my first dm game, said that i would stay behind to punish him and for that he couldnt agree that much about the problem player behavior, wich nowadays i agree that wasnt the best. My point of this story is that in a game of dnd is up to improvement, but need's to have a chance of improvement, i belive i have improved, as i wich the problem player have, as well as the other players, who would not take notes, stay on their fones, and basicly complain about the problem player when they where the ones affected insted of saying something when it was against anyone. The harmony of the table is up to evryone and the dm is not the babysitter and not the only one responsible for the quality of the game.

I want to be a murderhobo where my character wants to be a good person but I force him into bad things. I accept all consequences.

Need to put this on a Thor "because that's what heroes do" meme

Luke needs to add that to his DM Lair shirt line. I would totally buy that one.

Same lol

Used the line against one of my problem players, never have i seen someone FLY into a rage so fast about dnd.

me too

I know not if this man needs an award or not

Jail

I don't know if I should laugh or cry

@@Veran42 Why not both?

IC actions, IC consequences.

Man you gotta give a seminar on that philosophy :)

Yeah problem players everywhere AR trying to hide this video from there dungeon Master's.

I liked this video the moment I heard that one. _You should too_ _I paused & scrolled right down here looking for this. Am I the only one_ ?

Hmmm, yes lady luck is hiding as Luke

Yeah, a lot of us do. Even me sometimes... I try to keep Madill to middle base distance for measuring unless the rules say otherwise

Me, a guy: *nervous sweating*

Shad of Shadiversity.

No joke, the last edition of warhammer had to be errata’d because people practically DEMANDED a definition for the terms ‘within an inch’ and ‘wholly within’

I mean there is a field of study called "metrology" which is literally the study of measuring things. Granted the goal is to ensure that we have standardized methods of measure for some rather insane accuracy and precision. Im sure they have "heated debates" on stuff but not for the purposes of what that player tried. DnD distance can be measured either as every tile border crossed = 5ft (basically the same as center to center) which isn't quite perfect for diagonal distances. Or you have a grid that is properly scaled to say 1in real world = 5ft game world and you can use a ruler to measure center to center if its perfectly in range. So the common 30ft range becomes 6in of gameboard in my example scale, probably most needed for flying enemies or otherwise targeting in 3 dimensions at once. The tile counting is usually the easiest for movement where as spells tend to get the true value with a ruler/tape measure.

That's The way to do it 🤣

Barbarian was on point "cos that's what the dungeon master would do"

There may be times when there is an in story explanation for why a character would do pvp e.g. to stop a character being controlled by another entity.

I'm going to tell you I removed PVP for my games years ago and it is awesome. There has never been a time where we were like oh we miss PVP. But when PVP was allowed there were many times when we were like this sucks why is X person screwing over y person.

@@theDMLair I had a pvp incident at the beginning of a campaign I played in and honestly it ruined the entire campaign. Without that moment (a player tried to kill me after two unlucky wild magic rolls) there would have never been tension at the table.

@@phoenixknight8837 I think that would be a clear exception that you could make very clear doesn't count as pvp.

In the game I've just started I've told the players no PVP unless it's preplanned and important to the story, sometimes it can be dramatic but all parties need to be down with it.

ThePikel I have a player who just REALLY hates taking notes in general. This is to their benefit sometimes, but also not. Says he just memorizes them because he has good memory, at one point I the GM volunteered to track his stuff for him instead but eventually gave up as I was already juggling enough as is. An example of forgetting something to his benefit is forgetting the amount of HP he has or the debuffs afflicting him. An example that is to his disbenefit is forgetting that he is already back to full health, that he should have had advantage or other because of a buff, the enemy had a debuff, etc. And don't get me started on his abilities and spells!

@@remixtheidiot5771 which is why i love d&d beyond and roll20 character sheets since they have an option of tracking all of that by simply clicking things up and down. No more "i will remember that, my paper is already ruined from being errased too many times"

I ask my players to try to know where to find the details of their abilities. Also, you can tell if someone is honestly forgetful or is conveniently leaving things out

If that is an issue I suggest you do what Yugioh does and announce what your spells/abilities do as you use them "I activate Pot of Greed which allows me to draw 2 new cards from my deck!"

@@remixtheidiot5771 player doesnt sant to put effort in to the game then speak to thrm about if. If they dont change then they seem like theyd be a hinderance to the campaign. You put in lots of time to DM and that person seems to be wasting peoples time by not even putting in a reasonable amt of effort

Love your work!

His character, or the player himself?

@@nickdahl203 duh, both.

@@nickdahl203 that's what I was going to ask lol

Hey it worked, the player can’t show up to any more session l!

There are tiny percentage of players who are bad players on purpose. Those few are usually doing so out of a personal conflict with one or more others at the table. Way back in the 1990's I had one of those. He got a few months off from being included in gaming, came back a better player.

Best line

Trademark that line.

LOL. I've never played Warhammer but I'm imagining this is a thing huh?

@@theDMLair There was a huge argument at my FLGS about what about the phrase "more than 9 inches away" that lasted for weeks. Some people bought an entire army because they wanted to abuse this rule. Then they sold that army when the FAQ came out and they couldn't be asshats about it anymore.

The first FAQ for 8th edition had to define the terms ‘within and inch’ and ‘wholly within’...

I would definitely show it off as part of the world before using it on said problem player. Make a cutscene where they see a theif steal from an NPC and a town guard catches them with it as a sort of super handcuffs / pokeball with no save. This way they have fair warning that such a thing exists and maybe they should stop committing murder-robberies or they will definitely be captured accordingly. This helps avoid the problem of punishment ingame instead of talking to them as a mature adult because it refocuses it as "actions have consequences and you know the town guard can easily capture you". As a bonus the party may even aquire one of the time-out crystals as a reward for prolonged good behavior.

I am a former worst thing \o/

Try adding in drunken player on top of all the other things . Not fun .

We've got one of those in our current star wars game and the worst part is that he's our normal DM 😒

Had that in my Dresden Files game, I chose to leave.

There seems to always be at least one in every group.

But the sneak attack is the rogue's means of keeping up with the likes of the fighter, barbarian, and paladin's damage output. It'd be like denying the paladin his divine smites. You could try asking them to try it for a combat-filled session or two to see if it's really as unfair as they fear. Do they let the rogue sneak attack in other situations that feature describes?

@@DetectiveBarricade Haven’t had a session with combat that would have those opportunities. And I agree, hence the padded weapons to highlight why his reasoning is flawed. That being that just having two opponents opposite you isn’t enough to distract your attention and allow a “sneak attack”.

It depends on if you are talking about 3rd ed. flanking or 5th ed. flanking and if facing is being used.

The shortest pencil is better than the longest memory. I encourage players to make index cards with their spells or feats on them or at least to make a pg. reference for them on their character sheets so we can have quick access to the descriptions if needed. Of course as the DM the rules are what you say they are, as long as they're consistent.

Thank you! :-)

I didn't previously worry about the min-max on stats, but with 5e have come to realize that allowing players to roll instead of forcing point-buy/standard array leaves a large power-gap sometimes if one player rolls average and another rolls incredible...you end up with a character that often overshadows others even in their elements because all of their stats are high enough to make them as good or better than a character who was built to do certain tasks...Makes the game more level for the group as a whole.

@@assanilightbringer4244 Honestly, to me, sometimes if the players roll generally bad overall, I just let them reroll all of their stats once and will have to pick the new rolls.

@@assanilightbringer4244 when rolling just set the minimum to be 70 point total and let them reroll if they come under that. Even if they roll a few really dump stats with a 6 or a 7 they'll still come out if it with 16s, 17s, and 18s to put in their main stats.

That's supposed to be a snarky joke on Tasha's part.

Man number 6 that one is a is a real problem. Very bad

@@theDMLair Number 6 as DM is player 5 above.

Thanks and you are very welcome. :-)

Geez, that seems like his character had issues from the get-go. If you make a character who is an adventurer (which, basically every character you make is an adventurer), then dont you think your character wants to go and make money solving the murder mystery for the town? Or gain fame by bringing a criminal to justice? Like, why become an adventurer if you dont want to solve problems? I suppose characters, like a monk or cleric, could take a journey for personal enlightenment. With that logic, the PLAYER could argue that the character wanted to do the adventure as a part of fate or as part of their trials of enlightenment. I just feel that some plot hooks need the players to argue the reason with their own characters and find a reason to follow through with the adventure.

@@ADudeWhoExperiences1393 exactly, a "meet me halfway" kind of thing. To me, that's part of roleplaying your character - finding what motivates your character to go on adventures. I'm getting paid. I want to protect the people in this town. I might learn something important. This quest is crucial to one of my friends. I'm eager to show my skills. I don't want to let my party deal with danger on their own. I'm itching for a fight. I'm curious! All of these are reasons to go on an adventure that may forward a character's development without being explicitly tied to their backstory.

@@PugsleyThePear Exactly! I'm lucky enough that my group usually does what we described and even if what is happening doesn't directly correlate to them, they will find a reason to try to do the adventure.

Yeah I feel like it depends on how they do it.

Dang that really stinks. Sorry to hear it came to that.

Thank you!