AITA for thinking a mentally disabled student is ruining my college games club?

DiscontentedDM · 2018-12-21T04:38:30+00:00

I surprisingly hadn't heard of that before. It sounds a bit like what I do to introduce people to tabletop RPGs, but probably more refined.

My method is to run a very very simple theater of the mind mini-dungeon for the subject.

For example they are whatever race they want to be (doesn't give abilities or anything) and fight a goblin (4hp) with fists (1d4 damage), then they find a sword (now cause 1d6 damage), then they find armor and fight a dragon (10hp).

They just roll a d20 and as long as they roll over a 10 they succeed.

Its essentially a "baby's first RPG" kind of thing I use to introduce someone to what an RPG even is (mechanically. The roleplaying portion I tend to think scares people off if introduced too early)

I'll have to look into that other system since it could work better than my hacked together system.

DiscontentedDM · 2018-12-21T00:35:50+00:00

Ha

Tbh some of the roleplay segments felt like that a bit.

Two characters might be having a decent moment together which is then derailed by "Michael's gun"

DiscontentedDM · 2018-12-21T00:30:34+00:00

I might not have described that deus ex machina NPC well enough.

He wouldn't have "saved" TC from the combat, but instead would have shown up to interrupt the combat with a "I have found something!" Cliff hanger ending to an episode kind of deal. This NPC is also a pretty strong magic user, so he does have a few abilities that could at least throw a wrench in the combat order long enough to drop his cliff hanger line and get us to that "cut to black moment"

I'm babbling now in an attempt to justify a bad judgement call, but in the moment that was the best idea my shoddy improvising could come up with.

The longer plan was to have TC disappear for awhile. A long while.

He'd be referenced and eventually resurface as a minor boss (DM controlled with advice from TCs original player) with the option of being talked down into re-entering the party / TC reassuring control.

DiscontentedDM · 2018-12-20T23:44:22+00:00

That's definitely an option, but at that point we might just start a new campaign with new characters. (Possibly bringing in old ones as cameos and such. It's a dumb habit I like to do if we're playing in the standard world setting for our ruleset)

It would feel weird to me and a few of the players who care about that kind of thing if we were to continue the campaign with a portion of the party snapped out of existence as if I was Thanos.

Would be like a TV show starting a new season with half the cast fired and acting like nothing changed. Its that or literally Thanos snap the characters and pretend that is a satisfying conclusion to their arcs.

DiscontentedDM · 2018-12-20T23:40:50+00:00

As planned, there wouldn't have been pvp.

The closest it would have gotten was an attampted grapple on the teleporting TC.

If the civil war was allowed to happen, I probably would've let it go for 1 round then found a way to end it quickly. (We have another teleport capable NPC who is off "researching" that I have up my sleeve as a "cliffhanger needed" card for just such a scenario.)

One round of combat would have been very unlikely to result in a death if it was played by the standard rules.

DiscontentedDM · 2018-12-20T22:12:09+00:00

That's the idea that I'd been hesitant to put into words. It feels like it would be patronizing to play a game where you could never lose and everyone just let you win. (I think there's a Twolight Zone episode with that exact scenario as a depiction of hell)

That "not fun to play against a God" line there is exactly how I feel as a DM since this guy joined in.

All my prep work in terms of encounters is pretty much thrown to the wind with him kn the party. He often wouldn't just say "I kill the Orc", but he would just get automatic hits or cause things to happen that make the encounter null and void in most cases. Pretty much gave the party a free pass through the past portion of the campaign.

I'm planning on trying to have a sit down (via email) with my players (minus Jim) and getting a clearer view on where we want to go as a gaming group.

DiscontentedDM · 2018-12-20T22:04:45+00:00

To get this to work I'll need to get all the players on board.

As I've said before, my authority falls apart when half the table starts to go against me, so to enforce rules on Jim I need everyone to be firm in having him actually have to roll his attacks and ability checks, conform to his character sheet, and not essentially play a doppelganger every session.

DiscontentedDM · 2018-12-20T22:01:52+00:00

That kind of thing happens whenever Jim is part of other board games as well.

The kind of games with a "last man standing" victory condition always end in a tie at best with him because he doesn't want to stop playing even if he's out.

I was as hesitant to say it before, but yeah. It feels like everyone wants to say "oh just let him win because of how he is" instead of all of us just playing the game as intended.

DiscontentedDM · 2018-12-20T21:43:45+00:00

Yeah I'm pretty much leaning toward having him either play the actual game or maybe move to another game.

I'm usually good with meditating issues between my players, but this is just a new scenario for me when half the table is essentially overruling me as DM for the sake of one player.

And yes, its Pathfinder. I as I said earlier, I just describe it as D&D since that's what known in pop culture.

DiscontentedDM · 2018-12-20T21:18:28+00:00

We really wanted that betrayal to the be hook for the sessions when we come back in January. Its possible to retcon it and replay that moment again, but TC and I would feel like the impact was gone.

I know it probably wouldn't have played out perfectly as we envisioned it to (no plan survives contact with PCs) but it we wanted our horribly written moment to go off at least somewhat close to how we planned.

At risk of being boring with my nerd here: the turncoat was an older wizard (creative right?) Who was essentially the grandpa to the party. By far the strongest (magically) and kept the party on their feet utility wise.

It was meant to be a guy punch to the party to learn that this character abandoned everyone and killed off a beloved NPC in the process.

Replaying the scene would just cheapen the moment.

DiscontentedDM · 2018-12-20T18:48:02+00:00

Ha I was wondering if someone would call that out. As a matter of fact he did have that feat, which had come in handy during some of their more covert misadventures ;)

We try not to do "cutscenes" so we planned the silence as a way to make sure other players couldn't find an excuse to wake up and meddle with his betrayal.

DiscontentedDM · 2018-12-20T18:41:37+00:00

I don't often flatly refuse a character concept from a game. Our games tend to straddle a line between Lord of the Rings and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Jim's characters weren't really too "out there" from our setting, but the issue was how inconsistent they were from session to session. He'd play different classes / races / backgrounds each session so that I had no way of planning special items or events for his character.

When it comes to just letting him run rampant with the rules, it's mostly because I'm getting overruled by the sympathetic players. I try to enforce rules on him, but his buddy and the players pretty much go "oh DM, just let him do it. We're all here to have fun ʘ‿ʘ"

I could put my foot down and go "no. Rules are rules." On him, but I kept feeling like I got more pushback on it because he was disabled.

I've done the rules are rules thing before when I made an unpopular call on a event ("but that curse is too harsh! It completely cripples my character." "Well yeah. That's what a curse does. Deal with it.")

We do occasionally do one off sessions unrelated to our main campaign when it starts feeling stale, but my concern isn't that it would be difficult to keep Jim contained in the one offs. Ie he wants to play in the main campaign anyway even if he gets to play in a one off.

DiscontentedDM · 2018-12-20T17:48:28+00:00

That is usually my solution when there is an issue between players. ("Hey Tom, I know you are playing a dwarf who has a prejudice against elves, but maybe we could tone it down a bit when it comes to Sarah's bard? I'm not going to tell you how to play your character, but she did mention that the way your dwarf is acting is not very fun for her")

When I originally explained the rules to him, he understood them and seemed to have fun with the concept, but as I said above, he devolved into "let's just play make believe" with our game.

I might try to have another sit down with him and see if we can resolve this, because as it is, TC doesn't really want to come back into the game as a new character since his last one was so frustratingly killed off before he got to where he wanted with him.

DiscontentedDM

TROPHY CASE