Yesterday, a former player asked me on Facebook: “Hey, what did you think of me, when I was a player in your game? How obnoxious was I on a scale from zero to unbearable? What did you like about my game, what didn’t you like?”
A tricky question. I don’t like to tell people about my judgmental opinions, and I don’t like the tense follow-up discussion. But at the same time, an answer must exist out there, somewhere.
||Your Obnoxiousness| ||:--:| |1|Have we met before? I didn’t even notice you were there.| |2|You must have been a casual player, always going along with whatever other people proposed.| |3|I remember you. Good times!| |4|I loved those crazy ideas you injected into that campaign. Always full of surprises, pushing us all.| |5|You pushed us out of our comfort zone, and I think I learned a lot.| |6|I still remember those long emails you sent between games. You were *really* into it, right?| |7|Oh man, D&D 3.5 and all those splat books. I remember your long emails with questions about prestige classes and feats. These days I play classic D&D, phew!| |8|Haha, I still remember when you said something was gay and I called you out on that. Or other casual, careless instances of homophobia, misogyny, racism, islamophobia.| |9|You were really into the rules as written. I remember long discussions about the rules at the table.| |10|That awkward silence after some of the things you said. You said it was all in-character but I think some of us at the table felt really uncomfortable.| |11|Oh wow, that *éclat* at the table, shouting and announcing that you were done and you were no longer playing? We still don’t understand how we all ended up there.|
Don’t turn it up to eleven. I think I’ve had all kinds of players from 2 to 11.
☯
There’s a special thing about people that are socially awkward in subtle ways. Their jokes aren’t funny. The references they make are too nerdy. They don’t have a feel for the ebb and flow of conversation and attention, so they’ll butt in when somebody else is talking, or continue talking when the referee is wanting to push the story on, or argue for a detail nobody cares about. I always feel a bit guilty about these situations. Is it me? Are my friends and I a clique imposing our unspoken standards on strangers, effectively ostracizing some people out of a careless, unconscious cruelty?
☯
I don’t feel comfortable posting this, because of the implied negativity. Then again, I’m trying to turn this around into something that might help me talk about it.
#RPG