Pulling your own weight….

Josh,

This is a well crafted and insightful post. I struggle with these problems at the table from both sides just as you explained.

To everyone else struggling with these issues,

I have a suggestion for that works well for a couple of my friends who attend the larger cons. Create yourself a distribution list of about 12 players who you see regularly at the cons you attend or one distro per con. Send out a spreadsheet with what slots you want to play when and what character you want to play. Coordinate your table ahead of time, and discuss tactics and characters in online chats or on the thread itself. The coordination is kinda like a teaser for the con in and of itself.

Cody, if the system had corrected itself I wouldn’t have felt the need to post.

When you sit down at a table to play a mod it’s probably worth a quick out of character discussion on characters’ strengths and weaknesses. Weaknesses can be flaws (Bloodthirsty), characteristics (low defenses/stamina) or limited contribution (I’m fine in/out of combat but not the other). Talk about play styles and see what can be done to make sure everyone has fun. If I didn’t design a character to play dedicated healer and I’d rather blast, then make sure the party knows it. Tactics in combat may change because of it, but at least they’re aware. If the charging 1 trick pony dark-kin needs to have healing available, then they need to make sure they find a table that has it, buy some potions to address it or limit how often they charge so that they’re still effective, but not as much as they’d prefer to be.

If a character is a heavy RP character who entertains everyone there but isn’t useful in combat or outside of it, then as long as people understand that that’s the player’s contribution and are ok with it, it can work.

Personalities and expectations are going to clash. Polite suggestions to the one-trick dark-kin’s player about “if you think you’ll end up in a lot of pick up games, you might want to consider X to be more self-sufficient” might really help. It won’t fix what just happened, but it can help avoid more in the future. Try and be respectful, realize that if they’re already unhappy they’re likely to be defensive so who and how you approach them will go through that filter. We’re all in this to have fun. Concepts evolve and with a few well placed suggestions, hopefully everyone ends up with more of a win-win.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

so the responses im seeing range from suck it up and deal with it, to avoid playing with those people.

Ignoring problems wont make them go away

I removed this post because it made some potentially insulting false equivalence arguments. I know Josh didn’t mean to offer any insult, but not everybody knows him personally.

The crux of the point is that if you see somebody being an issue at the table, don’t feel constrained from letting them know. Just be nice about it.

I would like to remind people of the 2 cardinal rules for the Legends of Arcanis campaingn:

1. Have fun
2. Don’t be a jerk.

Eric

You are correct that silence is complicity, but as I suggested: If you don’t like how a person plays a game, you don’t have to play with them. Feel free to mention “I don’t like the way you are playing” and explaining to them why this is, but also remember that stating that they are wrong simply because they do not ascribe to your own personal views of what ‘right’ is doesn’t mean that they should be punished for this.

And no, this is not directed at anyone in particular. I’ve played with people in different games who absolutely hate ‘suboptimal characters’ and the way people play them all the time. A good example of this was a D&D player who basically thinks Bards are the most useless things in the game, and therefore anyone playing a Bard is therefore useless. This person could go out and say “You shouldn’t play a Bard because they suck!” and in their minds be right, but to another person a Bard is a perfectly acceptable choice. Similarly, you can make a character build which sucks at one aspect of the game, but still be good in another one. Arcanis (like most Fantasy RPG games) is fairly heavy on the combat so if you intentionally make someone not-keyed to this area you come off as useless and could infuriate others. However, that same character may be able to save another character from making a faux pas in a social situation which could LEAD to a Combat, making them not-useless.

As to the personality who just wants to see the world burn, I do agree that these people can poison games. That said, they don’t ALWAYS have to do so to every player they came across. I have played with an individual who intentionally played his character as chaotic as he could, which often lead to the rest of the party missing out on parts of the adventure or XP. That said, about 60-70% of all the players who played with him LOVED the character because he was fun to roleplay with, adding a level of silliness that they appreciated in a fantasy adventure. That also says that 30-40% hated what he was doing and rather he did NOT do it, but does this make him wrong?

As stated above, remember Wheaton’s Laws whenever you play–“Don’t be a dick!”–and you will be able to make everyone’s games better. If you do not like how someone is playing their character–especially if others do not share your opinions–you can always not play with that person. If multiple people do this, than the other person cannot find a table and as I said it SHOULD be a self-correcting problem. However, some people are as thick as lead sometimes (I am one of them) and do need to be talked to about it. Just remember that, when you talk to them, to treat them with the respect you would expect directed at yourself and try to be as positive as possible instead of raging against how horrible they are, as people do not respond well to straight criticism, especially when they do not think they are doing anything wrong.

I do really like the “Prior Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance” method of table optimization, but I’m not sure if it is the best idea overall. I know that I have come to Cons where I am either by myself or with only a single other person sitting at the table that I actually know. This becomes a MAJOR concern if you are a new player to the game, which is ultimately what we want to see at more tables.

I am always of the character-generation paradigm that every character should be able to do at least one thing well, and that doesn’t necessarily have to be combat. Of course, this can be something of a trap because you can always get a path where you all made rogues who are experts at picking locks and you are stuck with a fight against a hoard of giants out in the open. The same is true with D&D but with the classless system of Arcanis it is harder to advertise yourself as a specific gaming-archetype. As such, you really still need to advertise yourself based on what you are when you form a table, and hopes of finding a balanced party. “I’m the Battle Cleric” or “I’m a talker” are all viable options.

I agree with this. Once previously, and currently I am running a rogue-like character, and have found this exact problem in the past when got assigned to a table that proceeded to have 4 thieves and no fighters at it. I knew we were screwed before we started. At that time I often tried to arrange tables before hand with a balanced team of characters and players that I liked, but the problem with that is that while it increases the success rate of missions, and at least temporarily increases the fun; it also reduces a lot of the social aspects of the conventions/campaign and can cause some tensions. By always arranging your tables beforehand with people you know, you limit your exposure to other players and other gaming styles. This limits the building of a larger community as fewer people know each other, and it leads to more stratification in the campaign as some tables max out everything, always go high tier, and cause modules to be written to be challenging to them, not the average table. Meanwhile, joe newbie comes in, joins an imperfect table, gets less than maximum X.P., doesn’t play with some of the most experienced gamers in the campaign, and doesn’t meet any of the people active on the board/in the community (except maybe as a judge) because they’re all at the pre-arranged tables. Over time this effects his attachment to the game as he sees others doing better than himself and never gets to know the most active people in the campaign.

I will note right now, that as a new player, I have not had this problem at the conventions. I have played with some of the people on this board now (though I wouldn’t say I know them) and my experience of meeting players from other regions is what I go to the convention for. I generally like to play with 1-2 people I know at a table, and 3-4 that I don’t that contribute well to a table. I have wondered about some tables that seem to be a set group of characters. They sound interesting, and make for a great story, but from what I’ve hear it does seem to cause some (limited) friction in the campaign.

I also agree that every character should be good at something. And ideally you should spread out what you are good at. When I run a rogue I actively try to find a table without a rogue. After all, if what I am best at is larceny, and I sit down with another character whose best skill is larceny, most of the time one of us is useless. This is not true, of course, if your best skill is combat. In deference to this, I try to always have only one character who needs help being carried in combats at a time, so I can fall back to a more combat oriented character if needed.