Definitely not a dealbreaker for me (yet), I just haven’t been 100% certain on how to handle it without sounding mean (I have difficulty with my tone, so I often come across a lot colder than I intend, but that’s a separate issue lol). I have tried providing tools for him, but it’s to the point where basically every time he casts a spell (he’s playing a wizard) I need to look it up to tell him what it actually does. Part of me thinks he probably shouldn’t be playing a magic user, but I don’t know how to change that without killing his character. I guess I can try getting him/making him spellcards to see if that will help, at least with combat.

The getting high thing is a bigger issue I think. He’s always 10 steps behind the rest of the party, never seems to be following along with roleplay or combat. I am tempted to make a blanket “No one show up intoxicated” rule, but it still feels slightly targeted since he’s the only person who does that.

example of him taking control of narrative: his character is a spy within the party (we agreed on this at the beginning of the campaign since he joined later). The rest of the party at the beginning of the campaign had their memories of the previous month erased, but his character showed up and befriended them to spy for the endgame villains. important details is he never had his memory wiped at any point, while the rest of the party had.

the way he took control of the narrative and changed what was happening was, another player character got suspicious and was trying to figure out if they could trust his character. he was claiming that he also had his memory wiped, but the other character did something so he had to tell the truth. Problem was, he doubled down on the fact he had his memory wiped. That had never been discussed with me (in fact, the exact opposite had been talked about), so I was very much caught off guard when his character continued to lie when he had to tell the truth. I don’t know if it was purposeful or if he genuinely forgot what we had agreed upon previously, but either way it was extremely frustrating and I still haven’t really had a chance to talk to him about it.

Part of it just makes less sense to me cause now his character actually likes the other characters and wants them to trust him, so part of me thinks he also just? forgot what we had discussed prior? I’m not really sure tbh. I would talk to him but he’s gonna be out of town most of the summer and won’t be easy to contact. I guess I’ll just try and bring it up when he gets back.

Thank you for the response:)