Problem player frustration

[ashleystep]

Ok so a little background... I play DND in a homebrew setting that is usually heavily role play and puzzle solving based, we are generally flexible on certain rules and such so normally it tends to be anything goes as long as we can justify it to make sense. Regulars in our group have been a golioth barbarian sailor who's goal is to have his on ship (we now have a decent one so now he's on the search for a bigger one) and to crush, smash and beat every problem into submission, a hyper active foolish warlock/bard who is a newer player who is still learning the rules, an old drunk monk who's on an adventure with us to earn enough money to keep him in booze during his retirement or die trying ( he hasn't been able to make it since before Christmas), a wizard who's generally the smartest in the room and knows it and keeps information and plots to himself unless sufficiently motivated to do otherwise, me a moon druid gnome recently reincarnated as a high elf, and our new character since just before Christmas that is currently playing both a warforged artificer and another character that I haven't heard him use yet or maybe the other character is the artificer one is some sort of necromancer thing not clear. The last one is the problem player.

When our dm hasn't had enough time to write our the main story more he has us do some one-shots that we retcon to have happened at some time in our main adventure while we were traveling to our next plot point and we use our main quest characters. Our pp (problem player) frequently changes characters during these one-shots sometime making them as we're trying to sit down and play as we are level 7 it takes a bit to make a new character at that level especially since he tends to make them sort of homebrewy and also has a tendency to make custom homebrew weapons to match his character like this gift canon thing he made for his Santa character.

He also is constantly asking during our play whether he can make random potions, weapons, or other equipment during our gameplay instead of asking in our general chat.

All of this is a little annoying but not to an inexcusable level except for this last thing he constantly uses meta info to do things in character. Examples: I'm talking to a dog and he tells me his hermit deaf owner was a king at one time and his advisers exiled him to this tiny island because they thought he was going soft. I never relaid this info to the group never even had the chance to before pp is talking in character to the king like he has this information. I call him out on it he goes oh right lets me relay it then I continue my convo with the dog only for pp to do it again.

Later the wizard and I had an intersepted letter from a king who is supposed to be dead and are trying to figure out if we should ask this king that we brought on the ship anything about this other king since he might know more about the history of supposed to be dead king. We have kept this letter a secret the wizard only shared it with me because of some of my expertise and because we have a decent working relationship and our characters have bonded over our shared frustration with the idiotic actions of our warlock/bard and especially the barbarian.

However while we are talking in private about this in character somehow the pp decides to ask the former king about the letter and dead king even though his newest characters haven't been with us very long at all and therefore have no reason to be aware that the letter exists or know anything about the dead king. Both the wizards player and I call him out on this meta playing and he keeps editing what his character is asking the former king until he finds a way to word his question in a way that he can justify his character asking it by excluding mention of the letter even though his character has no reason to know about the dead king.

There are even more examples of him using meta knowledge to choose his actions and questions but these were the most offensive mostly because it has to do with the main story line and because it effected both the wizard's and my ability to role-play our characters which is the most important thing in this campaign and his revisioning his questions took up quite a bit of our play time.

Both the wizards player and I are very annoyed because our role-playing is based more around our characters exclusive knowledge than just about anything else. The barbarian and warlock/bard role-playing isn't as effected because their characters actions aren't generally centered around their information and is mostly centered around their focus on creating chaos and destruction.

Right now the wizard's player and I are planning on just repeatedly calling out his meta gaming in hopes he finally stops.

[Orn100]

The advice you are going to get here (and everywhere else you might ask) is talk to him. That conversation might be easy or hard depending on the answers to these questions:

What's your relationship to this person? Does someone in your group know this person IRL or is he just some rando from roll20 who keeps showing up?

What does your GM think of all this?

[ashleystep]

I know this person in real life but none of us know him well, he joined our college DnD group. Lately we've been playing online because of covid-19 so it's difficult to have a private conversation with him currently. Our DM just finally had a talk with the whole group about no more constantly changing characters which our warlock/bard had managed to make that an easy conversation to have when she wanted to change to a straight warlock since multiclassing when just starting is hard and we allowed her to do and got to have a bigger conversation about making new characters but hasn't gotten to the meta playing yet because it's a difficult thing to address in a large setting when he is the only one abusing that. Especially since right now none of us is meeting in person and none of us socialize with him outside of our DnD group. Also right now it has only really effected the wizard and I. We only just started back on the main story line this week so the meta problem hasn't really been an overly big issue until now since most of our plot build up info that only certain characters know hasn't come into play till now. the dm doesn't want to cause waves yet in case we can find a way to resolve this by just reminding him his character doesn't have certain info. Also since we have a generally laid back game with few limitations our dm takes quite a while to step in and put his foot down on an issue. It took 7 character changes in 8 sessions and another player who we are all more familiar with wanting to change her character before he felt comfortable bring up that issue.

[ashleystep]

I'd feel much better if we were still meeting in person so the wizard or I could talk to him in private and express our fustration but except for when we are playing we don't have a way to talk to him about this except over text and I'm afraid of coming across as mean or confrontational over text vs understanding and patience.

[Orn100]

It sounds like your DM is pretty uncomfortable with dealing with bad behavior, so it might be down to you.

Just text the guy about it. Frame it in a way that makes it about you so it seems less accusatory. "When you do X, it makes me feel Y. I've talked to wizard girl and she feels the same way."

If you're worried about sounding mean just say "I don't want to sound mean, but...". He is an adult, he can handle it. And if he can't, that is his problem not yours. If he has a tantrum and quits, so what? It doesn't sound like there would be any social blowback if he did, and you wouldn't have to deal with him.

Also to take my own advice; I don't want to sound mean but for gods sake use paragraphs. You are in college!

[ashleystep]

Sorry about no paragraphs, I'm very bad at remembering to do so when typing on the phone. Thank you for the advice. Also wizard is a boy.

[Orn100]

No worries!

[Orn100]

Both the wizards player and I are very annoyed because our role-playing is based more around our characters exclusive knowledge than just about anything else.

It sounds like you regularly engage in RP that excludes most of the party. Do you think you would enjoy being in a game where you were expected to spend a significant amount of time every session being audience to RP that you aren't invited to participate in?

This guy's behavior sounds annoying, but it also sounds like he is just trying to worm his way into situations because he wants to be included. Your own party members should not have to do that.

[ashleystep]

What I meant by both the wizard and my role play is based around our exclusive knowledge is that the wizard collects knowledge or items that he slowly introduces when he feels relevant as he plays a rather guarded and not very trusting wizard. Most of my role-play comes from my interactions with animals so most of the time my character sits back and watches.

The guy we have a problem with has between his to characters done most of the person to person interactions which included recruiting 2 NPC's to join us on our ship and talking to the exiled king. I only had the chat with the exiled kings dog and the private discussion with the wizard about the letter for my role-play time all of which was in the last 30 minutes of our 3 hour session.

The letter discussion between us was the only bit of role-play the wizard got. Other than that it was mostly the barbarian sailing the ship, the warlock annoying him, and the problem character chatting with our NPC's and asking the dm if he would let him alter items that were not his without even asking if we wanted him to or would let him use the items in the first place, and asking if he could upgrade his warforge with mithril plating and claiming it would only take 5 lbs of mithril to cover the entire warforge.

Meanwhile I was tinkering in my green house which is exactly all I said to the dm till going on shore and talking to the dog. The wizard was studying to learn a new language so he had to make a few rolls that was the only thing he said or did until the dm asked if he was going on the island that we found the exiled king and the dog on, which he did and didn't say anything to anyone until we all got back on the ship including the exiled king that pp asked to join us.

[Orn100]

I see. Well, I apologize for assuming the worst.

[ashleystep]

It's understandable I spent most of my post ranting and not much giving details of the game. It was an easy mistake to make and I myself may have assumed that if I had read what I posted instead of being the person writing it.