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THAT GUY Anonymous 2013/03/14(Thu)22:08 No. 10066 ID: 669b63

I've got to vent about my table's THAT GUY, and I didn't see another good place for this.

I have an oddball for a that guy. Emphasis on the odd. Or at least he'd like that to be the case. My table's that guy never claims to have never really gotten out of his 'LOL SO RANDUM' phase, but if you sat in at a game you'd never know it. He's not disruptive, but he never contributes to the game. Not in the slightest bit.

A campaign back we put a whole evening into carefully building the each character as a group, but when we got to T.G. he had no idea who or what he wanted to be. He likes the Cthulhu mythos (but I'll get into that in a bit) so we suggested some ways we could incorporate that, and it was getting pretty cool. But he waffled on everything, to the point that he would ask us for suggestions, we'd offer two mutually exclusive options, and he'd literally just mumble and brush off the point. His character ended up getting a custom built race, class archetype, plot and provided a good reason for him to be socially weird in game. Three sessions later and he has said, MAYBE, three sentences in character. The only action I can remember him taking (and this is indicative of how he likes to be LOL SO RANDUM) was to start eating a corpse in an alley way. When people freaked the fuck out at the sight, he clammed up and couldn't decide what to do, and ended up hiding on a spell and a good stealth roll.

In our current game, he's flaked on our last few games. When I spoke with him about it, he said he still wants to game, but isn't comfortable with his character (a cleric) because he's not religious. We've had sixteen sessions of this game, in my sixteen pages or so of notes, he's character is mentioned twice. Once when he botched some negotiations by refusing to talk to a spirit, and once when he had to accompany another character (this second one the table, including T.G., worked together to craft to give him a chance to develop his character.) He didn't say one sentence in the entire scenario. Not one.

Now, I get the introversion thing. And I get that roleplaying can be weird if you're not comfortable with it. And I do have some other player's that can be very boisterous personalities in and out of game. But he's been a member of our table for years, this is not like some poor newbie walking into a six year old game of Mage with no RPG experience whatsoever. His entire contribution to the average game is "I move and channel positive energy." Every week, when he doesn't flake.

Last, and this is wholly unfair, but in for a penny in for a pound, the guy just doesn't fit the bill of our gaming group. We have a high-level computer security guy, an ecologist, a guy in pre-med, a phd student, and I'm working on my MFA. That Guy flunked out of college after eight weeks and is a part time lead at Taco Bell. Despite our purchasing The Complete Works of HP Lovecraft, The Hobbit, and Neuromancer for him has never read a book for enjoyment. He's not unintelligent, in High School, he made significantly better grades (and got a better scholarship) than I did. But he's become a person who just sits at the gaming table. And when he's at home he sits and plays Minecraft and, maybe twice a month, makes the odd LP of Minecraft, which I have to believe are only for his Minecraft friends, because his commentary is almost entirely about the server he's on, and delays in upcoming events and other inside stuff that makes watching it unbearable. He doesn't drink or smoke (half the table smokes pipes), which is fine, but he'll never come out to our pub with us to hang out.

And at the end of the day, I don't want him to leave. He's not a bad player, but he's such a missed opportunity that keeping him involved with the game represents resources poured away and missed opportunities. And I certainly don't want to cease being friends with him (I've had that guy's before I've had to not invite back,) if that was the case, I wouldn't be so frustrated. I'm just fed up and would really like to just have it out with him.