>what you've handed me is garbage. This makes it harder for you to make more garbage I'd love to. Really, that would just be swell. But the vibe I get from their pages upon pages of loving detailed descriptions and longwinded maximalist prose is that they're super attached to these creations. Some of the worst ones read like wish fulfilment, actually.
I got one that, in Microsoft Word, ran about 19 pages. I politely suggested that he could probably streamline a lot of it and he responded that this WAS the shortened version.
Elijah Sanchez
Oh, Jesus. If anyone needs to be told his writing is crap, it's that little asshole. I don't know anything else about him and already I kinda hate him.
It'll do him good in the long term, really. Especially if he actually wants to be a writer, you're not doing him any favors by coddling him.
I know it's not easy to be the bad guy, but you must. Embrace the darkness.
Ryder Ramirez
>Oh, Jesus. If anyone needs to be told his writing is crap, it's that little asshole. I don't know anything else about him and already I kinda hate him. It was a terrible backstory, to boot. Not even considering the sheer gallish length of it, just the concept was weak and generic. I don't remember the details but it was something along the lines of his parents were killed by bandits when he was a baby so he was raised by his older brother who was a master swordsman and taught him everything he knew. But then he killed too, of course, by some necromancer who animated him as his right hand man and this guy then swore revenge on the necromancer and it was such horseshit.
And those were just the basic tragedies. I didn't even go into the alcoholism or the angst he carried any time he failed to protect someone. Or his fucking girlfriend who was murdered.
Sure enough he was a cunt-awful roleplayer too. In the ad I put out I specifically said this was going to be pretty roleplay intensive and people who didn't do that sort of thing best look elsewhere. He was the only one who didn't get the memo. He would brood and sulk and not say much of anything.
During one pivotal plot moment me and ALL the other players tried desperately to draw him out. But since the plot point didn't pertain to his backstory in particular he just mumbled some cliche lone-wolf shit about ambivalence. Immediately called a time out to take him aside.
I asked him, fairly straight up, "Why is Soandso travelling with this group?" The silence as this guy struggled to conjure a reason for it was agonising. But he didn't get the hint. He kept playing it like that. When his character got into a moral conflict with another character this guy got genuinely offended when no one took his side.
Everyone tried telling him that, no shit, our characters don't even know your character. He's just some grumpy bastard who hangs around with them. Pissed him off enough that he wound up quitting, thank god
Justin Scott
Oh, merciful Minerva. That's worse than my GaiaOnline days.
The people who refuse to meet the two-paragraph rule are usually the ones you can afford to boot anyway.
Benjamin Scott
It's not as though we didn't try to accommodate him. I get it. People are new and have been exposed to too much anime.
But holy moley. We gave him hints. Then we straight up told him he should improve. Then we told him HOW he should improve. Then we begged him to improve. It's his own stupid fault that no one liked playing with him at a certain point.
>The people who refuse to meet the two-paragraph rule are usually the ones you can afford to boot anyway. That's super easy to say on Veeky Forums but I always wind up uncomfortable with disappointing people. I don't like confrontation and I always delude myself with the idea that they COULD improve.
Charles Gutierrez
The edgelord demon vampire has over 145 pages into her story.
I am not fucking joking, the only reason why I do not post the actually link is because I know the group will know exactly who shared it and no offense but I don't trust anyone here not to leave a comment on it.
However, I will give you an excerpt:
>Pain.
The first sensation I remember. Babies usually smile, they laugh, wrap their needy little fingers around smiling parent’s hands. I laugh. It’s cute, really, to think about. Truthfully though, as I lay here counting the patterns in the cement cracks, I’d have no idea what affection, love, or even a smile would look like. Not one that wasn’t tainted with blood, malice, or wicked enjoyment.
My father’s favorite past time -ah dear Lord Fassain Dumort- was showing me images of my childhood. Ones I don’t remember, ones I do, ones that I mistakenly admitted were fuzzy. Vampires, great lords like Father Dumort, love to play mind games. Many have often misconstrued my father for a psionic. He can’t hurt anyone, I’ve never seen him peel anyone’s skin off with his mind, but Lord Fassain does not need to physically hurt someone to leave them helpless. Sometimes a person’s memories, their fears, are the worst holes in armor. And, Great Lord Fassain makes sure none of his servants ever forget."
Hudson Foster
What the fuck!?
I thought I had problems but I have clearly been blessed. What is this shit!?
Adam Sanchez
I completely fucked that up...let me reformat:
>"Pain. The first sensation I remember. Babies usually smile, they laugh, wrap their needy little fingers around smiling parent’s hands. I laugh. It’s cute, really, to think about. Truthfully though, as I lay here counting the patterns in the cement cracks, I’d have no idea what affection, love, or even a smile would look like. Not one that wasn’t tainted with blood, malice, or wicked enjoyment. My father’s favorite past time -ah dear Lord Fassain Dumort- was showing me images of my childhood. Ones I don’t remember, ones I do, ones that I mistakenly admitted were fuzzy. Vampires, great lords like Father Dumort, love to play mind games. Many have often misconstrued my father for a psionic. He can’t hurt anyone, I’ve never seen him peel anyone’s skin off with his mind, but Lord Fassain does not need to physically hurt someone to leave them helpless. Sometimes a person’s memories, their fears, are the worst holes in armor. And, Great Lord Fassain makes sure none of his servants ever forget."
Jace Morris
I personally try to avoid edginess as much as I can. Nearly everything I've written is, at most, two to three paragraphs long. Even the ones where the character is an established figure in the setting, like NPCs for when I GM. Everything in it is either a justification for adventuring or being with the party, or there to provide plot hooks for the GM.
I've had two long-term players, though, and they both have definite edge streaks in them, but for different reasons, and took it in different directions:
One plays it for laughs, tries to be as edgy and creepy as possible, because he finds it funny. He finds playing devil's advocate for morally untenable points of view is funny as well, but knows to cut the crap if people get mad. But. It's mixed in with generally fairly normal characters. One was just a pirate. The edgiest thing about him was the fact that he'd pounded a noble's face into mulch with a fancy paperweight for murdering his mom. Well, and being generally disliked by the crew he worked for for having the power of genre savvy.
The other legitimately thinks it's good storytelling. He once handed me a backstory where his character had gone home for her birthday only to find her family strung up by their entrails and the cult that did it waiting in the shadows. They raped her, "for what felt like days," then nearly gutted her and left her for dead. She then, being a paladin, fell and became a dark knight of the god that the cult that had attacked her served.
Henry Fisher
They won't improve if they don't want to improve. If they utterly refuse to trim their backstory (if you wanna compromise, go one page, college ruled, single-side, double-spaced) then the thousand-to-one odds are that they're just gonna stink up your game.
I can empathize. But remember, you're not shutting them out into the cold to freeze or starve to death. You're informing them they won't be able to play your game unless they come back with a better attitude. They'll live.
I wish I could keep talking, but it is way past my bedtime. I'll implore you once more to be candid. It's a difficult threshold to cross, but it will save you a lot of pain in the long term.
