So I think one of my favorite PCs pulled a That Guy last night

So I think one of my favorite PCs pulled a That Guy last night.

I hope it's not true, but I think he did, help me out Veeky Forums.

Also, That Guy general.

>Current campaign plot devices are rings of power
>When a PC finds one and wears it they will not find out what it does until they do the action it augments
>Paladin PCs ring gives bonus to STR skill checks, found out when he asked to do a Climb.
>Wizard PC can't figure out what his is
>Ring augments mental magic effects
>Give him a trippy dream to help him understand what his ring does
>In the dream the previous wearer used it to render an entire army asleep
>Told player "you see him raise his hands, and the barbarian horde falls to the ground"
>Wakes up next morning in town
>Without waking rest of party, deliberately causes trouble in town
>Assaults guards
>Demolishes a church
>Waits for 30+ city guards and battle mages to arrive
>Raises his hand
>"I activate the ring!"
>Roll to hit
>...
>Ok one guy in the front falls asleep
>Party surprisingly killed all the guards and got away with slivers of health
>Entire session was wasted on micromanaging a 30 vs 3 fight

Was he That Guy? I honestly don't know.

how does this make him that guy?

Going by your rules of not knowing what the magic ring does until you use it, wouldn't he become aware of its use as soon as he used any old spell?

Also, how is it being That Guy if he is literally acting out the dream YOU described to him to try to activate his ring. If anything, you're being That DM right now. The player was just a goof, not malevolent, unless this isn't the whole picture.

No, you're just an idiot who cannot into effective description.

...no? You gave him an idea of the the Ring's purpose without explicitly stating "this is what it does." He tried it out, and it didn't work as you showed him it would. That's your fault, if anything.

Still kinda douchey to blow up an entire church though.

It's not the full picture.

His ring wouldn't activate unless he used a spell that requires a Will save. He mostly uses combat spells that require reflex.

The entire dream showed other instances where the ring was used on smaller scales and did different things like sleep and confusion.

How am I That DM? I told the party dozens of times that the rings are a mere fraction of what they used to be; he detected magic on it and I told him it's very weak compared to the legends.

Upon waking up he went straight into being a terrorist, without explaining, all because he assumed the ring just killed people cause he wanted to. He never tried to cast a spell, he never asked questions, he just asked "where is a church, muwhahahah!"

If I had a dream that revealed to me a ring could kill tons of people I still wouldn't have just went into a rage and assaulted an entire city.

Gotta be honest OP, it sounds like your player got frustrated with not knowing what his ring did.
That doesn't exactly make him That Guy, although it does reflect poorly on him.

The main question here is how you're going to handle the fallout from this, and whether it will make you That GM.

Here's my question: was it in-character for him to cause trouble? Was it in-character for him to presume the ring was more powerful than it was?

/v/ plz leave

Yeah he decided to be a huge toolbag for no reason so that's pretty That Guy.

>/v/ plz leave

>I wave my hand and dudes fall down
>"Okay, I'll do that"
>It doesn't work that way you fucking fuck REEEE

Okay.

How do people ignore that the PC decided to be a complete toolbag for no reason?

That might be part of it. We're good friends I know he wasn't deliberately trying to be a butt and afterwards he admitted he kinda jumped the gun.

His character is a bit power hungry and likes to be a prankster; he froze a monument in another town but it was just to be a butthole to the townsfolk.

So no, his character has a history of causing trouble, but it went from summoning monkeys to pants people to murdering an entire city and blowing up a church.

>implying I'm talking about your opinion on the subject

You gotta calm your tits homie, that's what I'm sayin.

because it's Veeky Forums and everyone always assumes the GM is wrong?

The player may have been operating on an faulty understanding borne from incomplete information, which is partially the GM's fault, but the player is still the one who fucked everything up.
He's not That Guy unless he makes a habit of fucking things up, however. He's just a shitter.

Yeah sounds like his character got turned up to 11 for no reason, you might wanna consider offering everyone a retcon.

Or if the game is already a bit goofy/dark humor just have that one town you can never go to.

>buzzwords
>implications

Okay.

Let me fix it
>I wave my hands and dudes fall down
>"Okay, I'll do that"
>Blows up church
>Assaults townfolk
>I wave my hands !

>because it's Veeky Forums and everyone always assumes the GM is wrong?


Oh Veeky Forums...I remember you being better than this...

It didn't end bad, they all said fuck it and helped the wizard and then fled, they're wanted criminals now but we all had a laugh. Didn't disrupt anything it was just a stressful battle that they barely won.

So this is the power they call troll...

I'm going to stop feeding it...

I don't know about a full retcon, but hauling back and minimizing events would be a start.
It was not a church he destroyed, but the small cottage of the village priest. It was not the 30+ city guards who were slain, but a dozen members of the local militia who arrived. They also may have been knocked unconscious rather than killed, non-lethal damage ho!

This should be a black spot on the party rather than washing it all away, but a small spot rather than a disfiguring mark.

Oh cool cool good to know.

Nah, we play for keeps.

>inb4 hur dur roll20 I use REEL dice

>those notes
I like your style.

Don't leave me hanging senpai.

Let me hear those That Guy stories.

OP, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're new to tabletop?

I shall share a tale of the last time I got to play with a group. That which has sent me to look for a new one:
>Get invited to an online group that I'd never met before
>Had always been forever GM, so it will be a nice change for once
>GM describes a Medieval Zombie Apocalypse. Not the most original, but could be interesting.
>Every NPC we meet is just a sort of roadblock that gives us a quest to meet some other roadblock.
>Whole first session is literally us walking between zombie infested towns, basically being told to deliver supplies or make sure some nobody is okay
>Session ends with us passing a bunch of bandits on the road
>Instead of killing them, we let them go, "With all the zombies around, we can't blame you for turning to crime"
>Next session opens with us "Getting arrested for talking about the zombies and starting a panic"
>We have to do a quest for the king to pay for our crime
>I see every "twist" in this quest a mile away, but I say nothing
>in the last session I refer to their village's blacksmith as "A humble tradesman", and everyone else acts like I've somehow insulted him
>"Oh, he's just some lowly peasant scum to you, HUH?"
>Uhm... No... I was just saying that he seemed to know his place as-
>"OH MY GOD! KNOW HIS PLACE?!?!"

On top of that, a bunch of stuff had come up in my personal life, and I figured I don't have time to play in a session I don't even fully enjoy. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, so more power to them.

I would have dropped out the second they said zombie apocalypse.

Were their characters getting triggered or them? Were they mad at you or your character?. Sounds like a weird group to me.

And no, I'm not new to tabletop.

yes, he is that guy, unless the party was evil
puts the rest of the group in an awkward position, especially the paladin

>I'm not new to tabletop
Oh, my bad. Maybe it just sounds that way I your post.

It was definitely the players themselves, getting butthurt. They acted like I'd called the blacksmith a nigger or something.

I've heard of a lot of campaigns using the "medieval zombie apocalypse" trope, but they usually only use that as a base, and then the adventure breaks away from that and becomes a journey through hell or the shadowrealm or some shit. It might not be so bad in this case.

But it seemed obvious at the time that my GM wasn't completely certain of what he was doing. For example, he thought I was "cheating" because I wrote notes on my character sheets margins, and also thought a total +5 to a skill at level 2 was too high...

>a total +5 to a skill at level 2
Wait a second. If this was D&D, your skill maximum is 3 plus character level. That's within the rules itself.

Moral of the story is don't play with strangers.

The total would be 3 ranks, Plus level, plus ability modifiers, plus miscellaneous modifiers (Such as feats or class abilities.)

So, if you had 18 Strength, for instance. You could have three ranks of climb, plus 2 levels, plus a +4 modifier to strength, plus a feat that lets you focus in climbing, plus any class features that might give you a bonus in climb checks.

So your total could be higher than 5.

Oh! Scratch that! Yeah, I see what you're saying.

PLOT TWIST

YOU'RE THE ONE WHO'S NEW TO TABLETOP

Actually, I'll share another story of a shitty stranger GM.

>Long time ago, like 2002 or so.
>Playing some obscure system where you are awarded points based on how well you stayed in-character, and if you did anything cool.
>It was pretty fun, and kind of silly.
>You could pretty much pass any check, as long as you had some of these points in reserve.
>Playing with some guys I barely knew from my LGS. We all got together and made characters we liked
>Setting was interdimensional space/time travel so we had a party of crazy misfits and freaks
>A professional boxer, an alien thug, an eccentric scientist swordsman, and I played an Irish construction worker/demo man.
>There was also this girl that played a self-inserted actress from the 60s... The players herself was a stinky obese girl that had to take a smoke break every ten minutes.
>The GM was constantly pandering to her, for some reason.
>The rest of us would be pouring our heart an soul into acting out and role playing these brutal fight scenes, and he's maybe throw us a point or two.
>She would say something like, "I fold my arms and get back in the space ship, 'cause I'm not foolin' with this shit!" And he'd give her tons of points and laugh hysterically.
>Other characters would literally be eaten to death by space dinosaurs, and she'd get up to take a smoke break.
I hope that GM got him a piece of that fat cow's pussy, for all the imaginary bloodshed he caused us...

Never played that game again, either.

I have a shit-ton more. I've been playing SOMETHING every weekend for just about 20 years.

I can keep going if you'd like.

pls

It was dumb of him to try an use the ring at the powerful levels he saw in the dream.
Also dumb for demolishing a church.

If he honestly expected to not do any more harm then put some guardsmen to sleep, then it wasn't really a that guy move.

The party as a whole is sort of dicks for murdering dozens of people, instead of trying to flee or surrender.

I expect the character was chaotic evil, right? I mean they're mass murderes now having killed thirty people in a blood bath for no other reason than he wanted to try his magic ring out.

I shall start with my earliest tale of tabletop cringe. (Or, at least the earliest that my memory will let me recall.)

>Back in the 90s. Playing some D&D.
>One of my buddies had a big basement where we'd always play.
>We'd order some pizzas, drink some beers, and usually get a little loud.
>Every weekend it was the same. We'd start off quiet, playing casually. Then by the end of the night we'd have music blaring and we'd all be screaming and laughing our asses off
>The night would always end with my buddy's girlfriend coming to the top of the stairs and asking him to come up
>He'd come back down, mad and tell is we had to leave.
>One night, he was drinking pretty heavily. By the time we started he was already drunk
>at about midnight, he was being WAY TOO loud and slamming shit around
>She storms downstairs and starts screaming
>"You don't even have a job, and you're down here playing your damn fairy games!"
>The rest of us had to split up a physical confrontation between them
>He angrily tells us to go home
>We realize that all of us have been drinking, so we wandered the streets that night in a pack, holding a box of cold pizza.

That wasn't so much cringey as sad, yet still I crave MOAR

That's a sad tale. Only sort of tangentially related to table top.

"Huh, puts armies to sleep I guess, need to find myself an army."

I wanna keep this thread alive so I'll give a confession and talk about when I was that guy.

>Playing a smart ass duelist
>Cocky, big ego, but a good character
>I saved a baby that campaign
>DM tells us we're in the privileged neighborhood
>Some pompous wigs are taunting me for my clothes
>I draw my characters, and I designed my guy with a red leather jacket straight out of a fucking anime or something
>DM knew my character liked to be fashionable
>When I asked the wigs to fuck off they dumped their alcohol on us
>I slugged him
>Guards show up
>I try to explain to the guards what happened
>Fail a diplomacy
>Instead of submitting, albeit while being a bastard about it, I decided to draw weapons and fight
>Refuse to surrender even though I know this is fucking up the campaign
>Was actually mad
>Other party members were mad too
>Druid just spammed 'become tree' every time the warden tried to talk to us

I've grown since...

>Druid just spammed 'become tree' every time the warden tried to talk to us
Getting Arboreal up in here

i mean why would he go out and try to attack everyone

So this just happened

>Players on semi-bodyguard duty to this ambassador
>Visiting a city in another empire, seeing the sights, go to an arena match
>There's a lot of clowning around over the fighting, they're putting on a show, not fighting for their lives.
>One of the players wants to observe the local champ, try to determine if he has real technique under the showmanship.
>All right, might be interesting. I hadn't thought of something like this, so I snap rule that he has to make a sense motive check, modified by his attack bonus, on the basis that one skilled fighter can pick out another.
>One of the other players starts launching into how I, the DM, "can't do that", because Sense Motive "doesn't work that way".


I don't even get it, I was giving them a free and pretty hefty bonus, admittedly to a rather minor roll.

I don't know if he qualifies as a "That Guy," but I'll tell the story anyway.

>Playing GURPS with 2 friends from school
>Both have never played TTRPGs
>One character, I'll call him the thief, has sneak, knife, pick-pocket, lock-picking, and filch (steal shit out in the open without being caught) skills, along with some other shit.
>Good player, the leader of the group and roleplays his character well.
>Second character, we'll call him the problem child, is all over the place.
>looks like he was going for a thief character, but he didn't invest in sneak. He chose camouflage, climbing, karate (in GURPS, it refers "any advanced training in unarmed striking," not the Asian style), and crossbow.
>He's not at fleshed out as the thief, but it's okay for his first character.

(cont)

>I railroad the players a bit into a caravan escort mission
>They could have denied it, but I dangled the promise of some coin
>Mainly to introduce core concepts of the system, and the scale of the game.
>They are a part of a proper caravan. Multiple carts, a good chunk of guards, the whole deal, and they are put on one of the smaller carts.
>The have to travel 5-days worth of distance to a checkpoint, going through a dangerous stretch of road.
>They walk in the day, but they have complete freedom at night.
>On the first night of travel, the problem child starts getting the idea that the caravan might be carrying some extremely valuable loot based on what I paid (which was between $100-300).
>"Well surely if they are paying us this much, they must be carrying something really good!"
>Problem child wants to look at the cart that they are supposed to be watching.
>Thief plays along, admitting later out of character that he did it because it seemed fun.
>They find what you expect in a real-world caravan cart: grain, butter, couple animals in a cage, etc.
>Problem child is skeptical and suspects that there's some more loot somewhere else.
>On the 3rd day or so, the caravan stops to let two carts go off to a side village deep in the nearby forest. They plan to camp there for 2 days.
>Problem child talks thief into following this party
>Night falls and they try to get close to the caravan all sneaky like
>Get caught and they bullshit their way into getting let free
>Try again, manage to steal a small wheel of cheese.
>Head back to the main caravan and sleep for the night.
>Day comes. Caravans that broke off have not came back yet, and problem child is getting antsy.
>He suspects that one of the other guards might know of loot.
>Hatches a plan to have the thief challenge one of the guards to a footrace into the forest, and then he will ambush him.

...

(cont)
>Problem child climbs up a tree and camouflages himself, while the thief starts the race with the guard.
>The guard and the thief run under the tree and problem child jumps down and onto the guards back
>Beats him down to the ground with his fists.
>Knocks him unconscious by accident
>Thief decides to make it look like bandits did it by taking the guy's boots and his money.
>They return to camp.
>Thief gets questioned by some friends of the guard about who won, and ask where the guard is.
>"The loser of the race has to get the winner a flask of fresh water from a stream!"
>Screams from the forest.
>Thief and the guard's friends go to investigate, problem child stays behind.
>The guard is being eaten by starving wolves, and is dead.
>The guard's friends blame the thief.
>Get the thief tied up by the caravan master
>Problem child feelin' guilty.
>convinces the caravan master to release the thief, by saying that there is no proof that the thief did this.
>Escape scott free, and they finish the caravan mission without further incident.

He wasn't really "that guy" he just thought that it was going to be a lootfest. He also didn't know how much freedom he had within my game. Even though I railroaded them that first job, after that they were free to do whatever they wanted. Though I believe that "too much freedom" was a killer of the game, because there wasn't a clear goal established yet. I was pretty much playing it by ear until I decided how I wanted to push a plot onto them. I had a plot idea, but figuring out how to introduce it was tough. Unfortunately the game broke apart due to disinterest. Perhaps I'll try again someday.

Forgot to mention. But I was also planning to have the guard's friends come back and seek vengeance, by kidnapping the thief and having the problem child try and find him.

>So no, his character has a history of causing trouble, but it went from summoning monkeys to pants people to murdering an entire city and blowing up a church.

...he's playing Anders, from DA2?

The main problem I'd say, is that what exactly were you expecting the party to do during the caravan? Of course thieves are going to get up to mischief if they have idle hands.

Otherwise you handled things well. Consequences without getting a mad punishment-boner going. I'd say the player really wasn't That Guy, just inexperienced and not sure what he was getting into. Proof of this being that he wasn't thinking about how that situation would go. Muggers either leave a witness, or a body, and either of those things are evidence. Attempting to commit crimes that leave evidence within a small group does not end well.
He simply was not used to having freedom and thinking his plans through.

I don't know what I was expecting honestly! I kinda forced them into this caravan mission, however I should have tailored a mission that fit better with their characters.

I call him the problem child, but he only really caused problems in-game, such as making an enemy with a small group of people.

Man I wish I had your "problem" players.

I once had a player steal a Dracolich's phylactery and try to escape with it. He had no idea what it was, he just figured it was valuable. A little bauble that produced a heatless blue flame. When he saw the dragon bearing down on him, you know what he did?

He fucking put it in his mouth like a toddler and ate it.

Have you ever considered what happens to a person when they eat the physical manifestation of a dragon's immortal soul? I sure fucking hadn't, and I was on the spot to figure out what the hell happened next.

This same player in a different campaign brought a power point presentation including charts and graphs to explain how he was using kobold slave labor and a greater teleportation circle to cut production costs on growing coffee beans on a volcanic island low enough to undercut all competition in the empire's capital. He had a 4 year projection.
Do you think when I started planning for that campaign I was thinking about the fucking hot beverage market 4 years out?

Goddamn I'd love it if all that player did was decide to steal shit. I could actually have a chance of predicting that and coming up with a reasonable response on the spot.

>put it in his mouth like a toddler and ate it.

Well, to be fair, the acid damage would probably kill the dragon before the dragon splattered him, depending on what the thing was made of. Besides, do you really expect the dracolich to spare him anyways?
The coffee guy has no fucking excuse.

sounds like you were playing with a future MBA

Guys I need assistance, what are the signs of a "That Guy". I was pre game talking with this new group today and one guy always talks like a pompous noble real slow and condescending like ,calls himself a "top class memer"too as he posts trash from Ifunny. Worst part is he was dead serious.

If he does an equally pompous asshole noble character, he'll be just fine.

If he becomes disruptive, it's a different case. But usually that kind of speech itself isn't enough for a red flag.

Unless there are obvious manbaby-elements in a person, they can actually surprise you in positive ways.

More like, I never even thought anyone would actually speak like that, so it's hard to tell

I was suprsied to, I have never heard someone talk like that not IC but talking as a normal adult.The game is my very first GURPS game and its set in a magical modern setting. I'm playing your stock Rogue style sneaky guy while his character from what I can guess so far is a blood magician who has to use blood from an open wound to bend it sort of thing. He asked straight up told us he will hurt us in emergencies for blood and we all collectively told him to fuck off. Hold me please.