Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Azual 04-20-05, 04:21 PM	Any one have someone like this. They make their new favorite character, no history, no real DEVELOPMENT ( i mean i even take stereotypes, people!) except for what he happens to have on his character sheet. He comes to the meeting, plays with his favorite for a session, then decides its too boring and wants another character. I have one such player. First, he had a raptoran Ranger called Daveak Falconsflight. no real development, but you could pin the blame on me, since i wasn't prepared to handle a whole new race being added to my setting. I told him so, but he insisted that it would work. One session later, he wants to play a Ninja. Now i have Ninja prepared (not oriental, they have tribes that live int he jungle and use animal arts like snake strike to attack) and so he makes a papragraph long history, pretty bland, and a blatant copy of Shishio (Rurouni Kenshin). Now, two sessions later, he wants to change AGAIN! After the ninja thing, i made a rule saying you couldn't change characters more then once. However, this kids my brother, and its a pain in the arse the make him stay a ninja since i KNOW hes going to be pouty about it. oh yeah, to top it off, he says i only listen tot he other players, and not him. he told my mother so and i got in trouble. This is a really delicate situation, anything you guys can think will help would be great. ;)
Draco Strang 04-20-05, 08:20 PM	At the beginning of your campaigns, in no uncertain terms, state that you won't allow any wanton swapping out of characters unless there is a really good reason, or someone dies. Stick to your guns, bub.
Lord Nat 04-20-05, 09:13 PM	The group I am in runs into that a lot too. A lot of times as people just get sick of whatever is going on so they want to change to something new... The only thing to stop people from changing right now is that you only get your starting money to buy goods when you change (like you can buy all the stuff you want with your money when making your char but after he is done you start with no cash what so ever).
Hengwrt Ellesmere 04-20-05, 09:15 PM	At first I thought you were talking about Advance Dungeons and Dragons players and had just left out the &. That reminds me of once back in the early 90s when I first heard of ADD on a talk show and they were saying how it was so bad for kids. I thought, "Come on, the 80s are over! I thought people were done bashing D&D." Anyway on topic, I'm kind of an ADD DM. I have such a hard time keeping myself interested in a campaign over a long term. I'm fine if we keep playing regularly, but if we skip a week or two, I start thinking of all the cool things I could do in a new setting. Fortunately I just have two players right now (my wife and our friend), and they're kind of new to D&D so they're eager to try out new types of of characters.
Thorak 04-20-05, 09:20 PM	You have two options; Cave, and let him swap as much as he wants or Put your foot down. Now, it won't just be that easy. Because you said he's complaining to Mom. If he pulls that, tell Mom that you're playing a game with rules, and he's complaining because you're making him follow them. Use an example she'll understand, a board game. Tell her it's like if you're playing Monopoly, and all of a sudden he wants North Carolina instead of Pacific. He doesn't just get it, because there are rules. Same deal here. I also strongly suggest not letting people play weird crap. They can be great, but more often than not, the weird crap gets in the way of character building; instead of being Daveak Falconsflight, the tortured soul who saw his entire tribe decimated because he was not there to protect them, and who carries that guilt with him everywhere, you've got Daveak, the Raptoran ranger. Tell me which one sounds more interesting. Not that the first Daveak can't be a Raptoran ranger, but only if it fits, and not as the primary defining characteristic of the character.
Azual 04-20-05, 10:02 PM	thanks Thorak, youve given me some ammunnition and made me a better DM. :) Thanks so very much
TrothgardtheMad 04-21-05, 10:27 AM	I have a few comments here, as I have had the same situation happen to me, well, as I am that "kid brother" who made a charater every other day when I was bored. I think this helped me a bit later on down the line as a shoot-from-the-hip style DM, as I can whip up NPC's relatively quickly. But I digress... I know how exciting it is to get a shiny new book, back in the days of 2e, I probably made a character for each kit I could find and had about 9 characters I'd bring to the DM for consideration for playing, each gaming session. All because I really wanted to play that flavor of the week, the new book convinced me to play Wizad kit X, or Multiclass Y, or take spell Z. It's the having the advantage of info, no one is going to "outcool" you unless they were camped out at the gaming store too. It wasn't 'til I was older where I realized that all those characters while cool (to me) on paper were nothing more than that, 2 dimensional characters that stood exactly 11 inches tall and were 8 and a hallf inches wide. I remember it, because it was a superhero campaign (GURPS I think) and the DM told us to come up with a 1 page backstory. I then cared, I took a week to create a character concept, fit the stats to that concept, and spent the rest of the campaign playing a good guy named "Prof McSnoozer" or something. It was a 2-way street, though. My GM for that game made sure that I felt like the star at times, you know when one of my students went rogue, and I felt vested in the time I spent coming up with the boring mathematics teacher turned into the superhero version of the Sandman. I was almost about a few steps away from making a cheesily drawn cartoon about the adventures of my character. I think that the lessons I carried away from that were: a) I didn't know GURPS that well, so I decided to come up with the character concept FIRST. The rest falls into place after that. b) Forced to write a long backstory, filled with loads of stuff, I felt that if I put that week into it, it was worth it to see where it might go. c) The GM made sure to include me in the story, especially when he felt that I was feeling I wasn't getting enough of the spotlight. He incorporated a lot of stuff from my back story that it made me feel good that I had a hand in creating interesting villains and friends in his campaign that were tied into my character. Hope this helps, Trothgard the Mad
Sinon 04-21-05, 11:02 AM	This hardly needs to be asked, but how old is this kid? It seems pretty obvious that he is fairly young, what with the run-and-tell-mom bit. How much do you expect of him? He's got a commercial-break-conditioned attention span of about eight minutes. The fact that he can make it through a whole session stuns me. D & D is a game for all ages, but when people of different age groups play together, the older, more mature ones are probably going to have to accept the fact that kids think, act, and play like kids. That doesn't mean that you can't try to bring him up to the next level, but you have to realize that that is not going to be a fast or an easy process. What I suggest is that you try to run a couple of different campaigns simultaneously. (You live at the same house; getting together to play shouldn't be that hard.) In one, play more like a little kid. Don't even call it a campaign; just build characters, pick wild crazy fun stuff, and kill crap. Throw the characters away when you are done for all it matters. In the other, you can have rules such as keeping one character and such. There you can focus more on role playing and less on the kiddie stuff. But even in this, don't expect him to be particularly creative; what is creative in a child is not creative in an adult. There needs an entirely different set of expectations. Also, if you ask him to do too much development too soon, then you risk accelerating the boredom factor. Don't have him create a full back story, but let it evolve by asking questions, e.g. "Why does your guy hate orcs so much?" "They killed my parents." Let him make it up as he goes, encourage that.
Draco Strang 04-21-05, 12:15 PM	Oh, so Thorak gets the thanks....Draco went ahead and offered the same information in a concise, neat little package, to facilitate easy absorption into the conciousness, but noooooooo, all hail Thorak. *Grumbles* :tantrum:
DMDaddy 04-21-05, 02:11 PM	Hence the name DMDaddy, I run a campaign with a mixed group, including my 3 boys (14,13,12). And, 3 adults (32,31,25). The 12 yr and 32 yr are ADD. The 12 can't sit through a whole game. He usually, because of boredom, runs right into the middle of battle, and, because he wasn't paying attention, he doesn't even realize it. Usually he dies or the other players find a way to kill him. My tips: Everything he does, I make something out of it. If he looks on the floor, behold, he finds a large throwing rock, or a skull. If he looks ahead, I describe something to fixate him, Like a lever that does nothing. In between all of this, I put meaningful discoveries such as clues to the big boss or such. He plays a different character every session. I make sure it is of the current level of the others. The 32 yr old, always wants to be in the center of attention. He plays a Rogue. So he gets in the front quite a bit. He always tries to direct others. My tips: I give him big choices filled with adrenaline. The adrenaline he experiences usually acts like a drug that keeps him satisfied for about 30 minutes. Adrenaline choices are: he says, "I pick pocket so and so", I say, "when you go for his (whatever) you also notice a more valued prize but it will be harder. What do you do?" Or, when he goes to attack the giant, I say, "you notice that you can either attack or you see a weekness that will allow you to go under the giants legs and maybe get a sneak attack bonus, but, the difficulty is harder and you may get seriously injured. Do you still attack, or do you take advantage of the weekness?" For him, its like gambling. The risk is an adrenaline rush. I stack the odds against him all the time, but always make an out when he starts to loose due to his taking the harder options. Ramble, ramble, ramble...Maybe I'm ADD.
Azual 04-21-05, 06:07 PM	Oh, so Thorak gets the thanks....Draco went ahead and offered the same information in a concise, neat little package, to facilitate easy absorption into the conciousness, but noooooooo, all hail Thorak. *Grumbles* :tantrum: :) Im sorry Draco, thanks you also for the information
Azual 04-21-05, 06:13 PM	This hardly needs to be asked, but how old is this kid? It seems pretty obvious that he is fairly young, what with the run-and-tell-mom bit. How much do you expect of him? he is 12, and two years younger then the rest of my group. I don't see the huge gap, but it may be that he expects me to favor him, which i wont. I expect him to be able to atleast dictate a half page or whole page character history. This he doesn't do. He does, however, love the books that i get, and reads them, though not as throughly as i do. Also, i tend to favor the people who make detailed backstories and high roleplay, he calls that favoratism, i say you start putting effort into the character, not the character sheet, then we'll talk.