So Veeky Forums, I have an issue, an issue I've had for years and I'm not sure what I can do about it

So Veeky Forums, I have an issue, an issue I've had for years and I'm not sure what I can do about it.
I have a bit of a problem player/dm (we all take turns DMing). He's not a problem in the sense that he's disruptive or that much of a That Guy, it's more complicated than that.

Every game he plays in he wants to be a special snowflake type character. In a typical DnD setting that isn't a huge deal, but I've played with this dude for years now, it's tiresome. Where it becomes a bigger issue is any other setting. He will try to be the specialist snowflake he can be. A good example is once we tried a Vampire The Masquerade game and he made the DM bend over backwards to give him a character from some weird ancient group of vampires. When he's not allowed to be something special he tends to just shut down. Another is once I ran a game and everyone had to have sorta mundane characters to start with, so he essential built a character who could effectively sit on the sidelines and do nothing while he just twiddled about on his phone.
Pretty much any setting that isn't some high magic setting where he can be the specialist wizard ever is a huge issue for him.

The other issue is when he DMs. He drowns us in loot and instead of XP he gives out levels. The current game we're playing is a 4e DnD game, in two sessions we went from level 1 to level 21 and we all have 30th level gear and effectively have infinite money. It sounds fun but every game is like this, and when you've been playing games where characters are over leveled and over geared for years on end it's gets extremely boring. The stories he tells are good, if not a bit samey, but given how OP our character end up getting so fast, it kinda ruins everything.

I've tried talking to him about this but he just doesn't give a shit. I can't just go find a new group because I really like the other two players, and we've all been playing together since highschool, so I can't kick the dude out. What the fuck do I do guys? I'm stuck

You need to have that conversation with him again, and you need to keep having that conversation until he gets it. If the other players feel that way, get them to back you, and I mean make sure they're not going to bitch out and shut their mouths if you bring it up at the table.

Basically after that, just don't try to come off as attacking him or the way he plays. Speak softly, make eye contact, and explain that the things he's been doing for years has become tiresome to the rest of you, and maybe he might end up having fun trying a different play styles, or to take a break from GMing until he can come up with a game following the proper mechanics that he feels comfortable running.

>If the other players feel that way, get them to back you
And there's why my problems have gone unsolved. The other two players either don't care or don't want to be involved in that discussion.
I'll call the other two players Twig and Girl.

Girl frankly doesn't care. She's just there to hang out with us and chill. She could give a shit what we're playing. Don't get me wrong she still participates and is a good player, but as far of what we're playing and the quality of it, she just doesn't care.

Twig is different though. He's a very old school guy, He folks played DnD and other table top games back in the 70s and 80s, and they got him into it when he was a little ass kid. He's got some more hardcore oldschool sensibilities. Point is, I've talked with him and I know he shares my issues. He really wants a more serious game with some actual challenge like I do. He doesn't HATE the problem player's games, and I don't either to be frank, but it's getting very old. Sadly, Twig doesn't want any type of conflict. If I ever bring this typa stuff up he just looks away and refuses to get involved.

I've had multiple civil discussions with the problem player. I make sure we don't end up in a fight over it, but he just brushes off what I say every time.
He does this especially with his special snowflake characters. Every time he says something to the extent of "we're playing pretend, why should I not want to have the best and coolest character I can" and when I tell him that sometimes he ends up fucking over the game or DM because of that logic he just blames the DM for not being flexible enough.
Yeah okay hang on let me just shoehorn in your royal elven sword mage into my gritty realistic thievery game. Oh wait, I did that once, it fucking sucked for everyone but you.

Replying to my own post to add
I know it sounds like I'm just throwing up roadblocks or something, but I don't plan to let up on him. I'm gonna keep having this discussion with him until I'm blue in the face.
I know he can do this and still have a great ass time, I just need to find a way to make him see that.

At a certain point you kind of have to ask yourself if you're even playing the right kind of game.

Pen and Paper role-playing is an incredible amount of "hassle" compared to a lot of other Veeky Forums hobbies, and if 2/3 of your players are either disruptive/bothersome, or don't really give a shit except about hanging out and chilling with you guys, why aren't you just playing boardgames or having movie nights?

In your shoes, I would just not invite special snowflake guy for pen and paper roleplay night, and invite him when we're playing Arcadia Quest or MageKnight etc, where it's just a boardgame and he plays by the same rules as everyone else.

Don't keep doing it to yourself user, don't be a battered wife DM who keeps telling himself that you can change him! Play other games, find other people, start running games online, anything, but don't waste another year where you could have had twice as much fun on trying to change someone who has different priorities than you.

>specialist
-est, you dumb nigger. The suffix you are looking for is -est. SpecialEST.

One possibility is that you run a separate campaign on alternate weeks with you twig and girl which caters to your other needs however the problem player should be made aware and told the reason why.

iirc OP should technically be saying "most special" so you're both dumb niggers.

From the player front, I typically don't have issues with players trying to make "special snowflakes" unless there's no real feasible why I can work them into the story without stealing the spotlight from the other players or it just wouldn't work for the type of campaign (A Paladin in a campaign based around the party being Pirates, for instance). Hell, I make "special snowflakes" all the time, I just don't like the standard slew of available tolkien-based races if I decide I don't wanna be a human. If the other players are actually interested in the character's origins, all the better. Once I made a native-islander type of character from way off in the ocean whose culture was introduced to the world at large thanks in part to a large naval war, and the rest of the party was super interested in her beliefs, the idol she carries around, and her culture, it was actually quite shocking and endearing and the GM was a good sport about it (even though the character was basically Illaoi from League of Legends).

Making and working with a character requires a lot of back and forth between players and GM, discussion, and realistic consequences. If your Vamp character is from some ancient group of non-canon vampires, then make it so no one's fucking heard of them and no one takes him seriously unless he's got the strength to back the fucking claims up, or alternatively make it so the option is available to the rest of the party as well. As far as more mundane games go, if the player can't or simply isn't allowed to make oddball, super strong, magic flinging weezards, then the game you're running simply ain't to his tastes, and he shouldn't play. It's that easy.

Now from the GM side. If he wants to run high-power games, but you all start at level 1 or whatever. Fucking just start the game at a high level to begin with. Make sure he makes it clear what kinda game he wants to run and don't have him bait-and-switch you with absurd high-level boosts from level 1. (cont'd)

Tabletop Games are a social get together. Everyone needs to be on the same page or someone isn't gonna be having fun.

Barring any of that, and if he's still being passive-aggressive about it. Then put your damn foot down. If you aren't enjoying any of his shit, tell him. Straight up. "Dude, you ain't fun anymore, if you don't switch your shit up, I'm going to stop playing with you."

Sometime people don't change, yo. And if you get tired of it, move on. Don't be a dick about it, of course, you can still be friends and shit, just find a different hobby you'll enjoy together.

user, I feel you, I really do.
But I'm trapped here. See the problem player is usualy our DM. When I write a game I put a fuck ton of time in it. It takes me months to get a game to where I'm happy. So when we wanna play he'll just whip something up in a week. The worst part is, DMing DnD is his favorite thing in the world to do. We just can't have board game night, he wouldn't be satisfied, it has to be fucking DnD 4e and pretty much nothing else. I have all these 3.5 books and Twig has some 5e books and we wanna try them but nooo can't do that shit because we have a pirated version of some official 4e character builder that's made Girl and Problem Player lazy as hell. Granted it's fuckin nice to roll up a character in minutes, but holy shit they've become way too reliant on it.

I can't get a new group even though I got a fair few friends down at the local comic shop who I know would love to have me as a player because our group has these homerules that are a blessing and a curse. They're the typa homerules that I guarantee will get me laughed out of this board. I'm so used to them it'd be so hard for me to get into an actual game. I'd feel like an asshole asking "what do I do here again?" all the time.

No. Problem Player will throw a fucking bitch fit if we did that, and Girl would never ever agree to it. She's like his best friend.

Our usual DM is the same way OP, though not quite as intense. His campaigns kind of scale past way past what we should be doing at our level. Last campaign we each had a mask and weapon from the elemental evil campaign, as well as random weapons he made up, at level 5. I think our frenzy barbarian had a flail that made three attacks per attack he made, each doing 3d8, so he was hitting for either 6x or 9x 3d8 every turn. That was after we had killed several "demon lords". I couldn't even really follow along with what the campaign was, something about demons had destroyed the real world and we were in another realm, working for gods to kill demon lords. Each campaign was essentially going through a new demon lord's mansion, killing them, and taking their ridiculous items for ourselves.

When he's a player, he has a new crazy idea for a character. It usually involves the latest class or race that just came out or that he found out about online. And then the next session of the same campaign, he'll have a new template he wants to add to his character.

It really got out of hand a couple years ago when his own PC ended up destroying the world he had DMed for like a year. Some of us would DM a side campaign in the same setting to give him a break from DMing, and the character he made for that became ridiculously overpowered since he was coming up for things for his character to do in downtime, and not really consulting with us, since he was DM.

Some players are just like that, and it's hard to get them to play anything else since all they're interested in is being ridiculously strong.

>I know would love to have me as a player because our group has these homerules that are a blessing and a curse.
Whoops, that is not what I meant at all. No clue how I fucked that up. I meant that because of the weird homerules, It's hard for me to play with normal groups.

>And if you get tired of it, move on.
I hate to say it, but that's not a bad idea user.
I'm not enjoying DnD as much as I used to and I know that Problem Player is to blame. There's nothing I can do to fix this.

Honestly Twig is the only person in my group who I consider to be a really good friend. Don't get me wrong I like the other two just fine, but me and Twig actually share interests.

Fuck it. I'm gonna have Twig teach me how to play 5e or something so I can play like a normal ass person and not how our weird group does it, me and him are gonna go on Roll20, we're gonna find some randos and have a good ass time maybe if the randoms don't suck
Also Twig and me are learning how to play 40k and we also play MtG on occasion. So if we get sick of DnD or Death Watch or whatever it is we end up playing, we can always zip down to the comic store and find some shit there.

I feel like an asshole, but I'm honestly just not having a great time with this group anymore.

Talk to him about it dipshit, not us.

What the fuck do you think I have been doing for the past 4-5 years

Don't worry about it, man. Me and my D&D Buttbuddy poked around online, tested the waters, invited interested friends over, the whole nine yards. My friends best friends is a mental illness basket-case but still a cool dude who loves D&D. But damn if we can't play with him. He has his style, our group has ours, and it's always ended in disaster whenever we let him play with us.

But we still play video games with him, engage in jolly co-op in Dark Souls 3. Play League of Legends occasionally, come over for dinner, you know, whatever. Just because you can't play D&D together doesn't mean you can't still be cool.

Wish I could do that with Problem Player and Girl. We have pretty much no common interests. Only reason we're friends is because we all were the weird nerdy kids in highschool, so we sorta had to hang out with one another cuz there was nobody else. Twig I dragged to the group in my early days of college. Really this DnD group is all that's holding us together. (well cept me and twig, we play vidya together like every other day and are best friends)

I mean once I managed to get Problem Player into Dark Souls and was so stoked to do some fun co-op with him, and then he went and found cheatengine right away and made his character OP as fuck from the start, ruining the entire point of the game and getting himself banned in 2 and 3. So that went right out the fuckin window.

Man now we're getting past "man this player kinda sucks how do I fix this" and into "man my friendships are a bit broken" which is something I really don't think y'all can help with and is a wildly different topic than what this should be.
What the fuck.

Also I think Twig reads Veeky Forums. If he's read this far he knows who is and he knows who I am.
Please don't tell the guys about all this man, I'm mostly venting probably. Hopefully.

I'd play with you and twig if my internet was working, 5e is balls easy to learn by the way.

Ok, now I gotta ask. What are the homerules, and why would it be so hard to play without them?

Also holy shit tell those two assholes to get off their lazy asses and actually participate or dump them on the curb. Anyone who refuses outright to try a new system because it doesn't have an automatic character builder should have no place in your group. They sure as hell would have no place in mine.

Well I hope you're exaggerating because otherwise I'm stuck wondering why you hang out with him at all.

I mean, seriously, stop inviting him to stuff. It sounds like everything he touches turns to total ass, and it seems motivated by the same general problem in that he just can't seem to handle any kind of actual challenge.

He can't handle challenge, and your primary form of interaction with him is a hobby centered around group participation in dice-based challenges. You do see the issue here, right? I mean, maybe he shits diamonds or something, I don't know, but so far it sounds like you have zero reason to ever interact with him again.

If he doesn't care, and they don't care, you are literally being That Guy.

You are trying to force what YOU want on more people that don't want it.

Learn to deal, or pack up your shit and leave because you are the problem here.

>Problem Player plays Dark Souls.
>Hacks the game to make himself OP.

Yeah. Drop him like a sack of bricks, holy shit.

You're a little late friendo, the decision has been made.

Well the big one is even though we play 4e, we don't use any maps of any kind.
We keep track of all the combat in our heads and draw up a quick diagram or map if we absolutely need to. It's really fuckin hard to explain. But I'm so not used to combat with an actual map and pieces it's intimating as fuck to try and learn it.
Gonna have Twig come over at some point and actually just sit me the fuck down and show me how. It can't be hard.
Maybe that's not bad, but it's certainly weird as fuck.

>I'm stuck wondering why you hang out with him at all.
Because this DnD group is all the friends he's got. I'd feel like an utter piece of shit if I just up and left his life. It would be so wrong.

>pack up your shit and leave because you are the problem here.
lol what do you think I'm doing dude?

What houserules are you referring to? We promise we won't judge too harshly.

Then delete the fucking thread if you don't want anyone to call you on being a jackass.

That isn't me dude calm down holy shit

Not using maps isn't all that weird. It's fine if you just want to blow through some combat without getting bogged down in it, unless you specifically map out a challenge for it distances in D&D combat tend not to amount to much.

As for learning it, it's pretty easy. You can move however many squares a turn, you can punch peoples' faces in when you're standing one square next to them, ranged attacks are usually long enough to not worry too much about.

>this DnD group is all the friends he's got
Don't mean to be dismissive here, but that's honestly more his problem than yours. If you're making yourself unhappy for his benefit and he's not doing much to actively help himself, you might want to consider yourself a bit.

I didn't think this thread would end up me reconsidering a long friendship with someone.

I need to just have a good sit down with him. Work this out.

>Because this DnD group is all the friends he's got. I'd feel like an utter piece of shit if I just up and left his life. It would be so wrong.
Nah, it wouldn't. He sounds like a spoiled brat and that is by all means an adequatereason to have no friends. By staying with him, you're just enabling him.

You said you've been friends with him for years and already talked to him about it many times.

He hasn't changed and won't change.

You're delaying what you really need to do.

If you want to have a real fun game night, don't be friends with an insecure sperg that ruins everyone elses fun. You're empathetic which is good, but you need to detatch from this parasite.

Same here. Find Kel'thurs on roll20 and see if i can make it GMT+8

Have you tried playing Basic D&D?

>Roll stats
>3d6 in order
>Your choices are fighting man, magic-user, cleric, thief, elf, dwarf, halfling
>Player: "But I want to be SPECIAL!!!11"
>Referee: "Okay."
>Bust out the Rules Cyclopedia, adds an eighth class
>Mystic monk
>A fighter with d6 hit dice, no armor, level limit of 16th instead of 36th
>"Knock yourself out, there, kiddo"
>"Or should I say, 'kill yourself,' because in basic, you're not knocked out at 0 hp, you're dead, and that's what's gonna happen if you try and play a mystic snowflake instead of a fighter in plate armor

>If you're the only one not having fun even you're That Guy

This mentality needs to fucking die because it doesn't help anyone and only causes issues like OP is having continue to crop up and be prevalent.

This is like going into a debate and going "This is stupid why is everyone arguing" and then acting smarmy about it.

Leaving is a bullshit fix because it means either he or one of his friends becomes alienated, and sucking it up just means he has the go the way of his other friend who is a **Coward**.

Nothing about this at all has made him sound like That Guy.