Players who Have Played Before

I have to be careful with this last post on the subject of bringing in new players — and here I'm speaking of players who are not new to the game, but are new to my campaign.  Having discussed the subject on numerous occasions in the past, I see little value in rehashing old wounds and mistakes made.  People make a mess of relationships for all kinds of reasons ... and more often than not, they don't get resolved because one or both parties feels a crushing load of shame, and not because there are irreconcialable differences.

Recently, I met a former player who left my campaign in and around 2012, largely because he was in a difficult place in his life and chose to abandon other activities in the pursuit of recreational drugs.  His leaving the campaign was equitable, but of course not well-respected.  He's been clean for years and years now ... and in this post-covid time, I asked if he would be interested in rejoining my campaign.  His face lit up and he expressed a strong desire to do so; and later I heard through a third party that he'd wanted to rejoin the campaign for five or six years, but simply couldn't face me to ask.  I saved his face by asking him.

This is how it goes with people.  Harsh words get spoken, the argument gets forgotten but the feelings do not.  It's one of the reasons I'm trying to change my ways and put an end to my ranting nature.  It's not that I've changed my mind on the fallacies of other DMs or that I suddenly respect or choose to tolerate what I consider wrongness in managing players or the game itself ... only that people tend to remember the hurt and not the argument I've made.  This has taken a long time for me to accept; and most people, I know, would feel too ashamed to admit it.

Anyway.  I really should stress that for the most part, I do very well with new players who have plenty of experience with D&D.  Most are tired of cookie-cutter games and want something on a deeper level, as several of my online players will attest.  There's little to be said about people like this because they are so easy to run and get along with that I look forward to their involvement.  I don't have to overly explain the character generation process, I can make a few quick points about rule changes, negotiation of said rule changes go swimmingly and overall it's less work to initiate a good experienced player from another campaign than it is one who has never played before.

The trick is, of course, recognising one of these good-and-experienced players from those who are intrinsically toxic.  A toxic player is also very good at playing; they are also very good at adopting and understanding new rules, and very often are very good at negotiating those rules to understand their stance.  Toxic and non-toxic players alike make good role-players; and they are often both pleasant and cheerful to associate with.  It's the samenesses that make it difficult to deal with toxic players ... because in the beginning, we're never sure that's what we have.

Fundamentally, the toxicity derives from two positions on the game that underlie the player's intentions: (a) winning and (b) self-aggrandisement.  In all fairness, these are the same problems that affect persons in business, in sports, in politics and in relationships.  The characteristics need not be overly pronounced like a made-for-netflix movie.  The need to "win" a situation, or "serve myself," need not manifest as a slavering workaholic fuck-you-I-got-mine perspective that is coldly evident on first glance.  It is most likely very subtle.

The need to win is more often a need not-to-lose, and more specifically a need not to fail.  Failing is the criminality that produces many toxic players ... not just the need not to make mistakes or approach the game with a "failure-is-not-an-option" attitude, but the need not to look like I've failed, or admit that I've failed.  These last two, and the inherent shame that saturates both, gets into the blood of a campaign and begins to taint everything.  Especially when "winning" becomes the equivalent of not putting one's self into a position where losing is possible.

This explains players who won't invest, who won't take risks, who won't calculate the odds, roll the dice and accept a negative result, on principle.  It's not that a negative result, in principle, is something that can't be sustained, but that there's a shame in having to accept that "I made the decision that put me in a place where a negative result was possible."  This belief in self-imposed shame is taught at a young age by fathers, mothers and coaches the world over.  I quote,

"The bizarre thing is, I did it for my old man.  I tortured this poor kid, because I wanted him to think that I was cool.  He's always going off about, you know when he was in school, and the wild things he used to do.  And I got the feeling that he was disappointed that I never cut loose on anyone, right?   So, I'm sitting in a locker room, and I'm taping up my knee ... and Larry's undressing a couple lockers down from me; and ... and he's kind of skinny.  Weak.  And I started thinking about my father, and his attitude about weakness.  And the next thing I knew, I jumped on top of him and I started wailing on him.  And my friends, they just laughed and cheered me on.  And afterwards, when I was sitting in Vern's office, all I could think about was Larry's father.  And Larry having to go home, and ... and explain what happened to him.  And ... the humiliation ... the fucking humiliation he must have felt.  It must have been unreal.  Huh, how do you apologise for something like that?  There's no way.  It's all because of me and my old man.  God I fucking hate him.  He's like ... he's like this mindless machine that I can't even relate to anymore.  'ANDREW!  YOU'VE GOT TO BE NUMBER ONE!  I won't tolerate any losers in this family!  Your intensity is for shit.  WIN!  WIN!  WIN!'  You son-of-a-bitch."

 — The Breakfast Club

Obviously, it's not as clear as that.  Not usually.  It manifests in the player being so cautious that other players are left in the lurch, unprotected.  Or the player deliberately building the character in a deeply munchkinian way, or thirsting after more and more magical items, or anything that will serve as a bulwark between success and losing ... because they cannot lose.  The feeling they have of leaving a campaign where they've lost is emotionally crippling — and reminds the player that this is NOT why they play D&D.  It's bad enough that this failure and losing are part of real life; the craving to escape that real life shame by rushing into D&D, or any escapist activity that assures success, absolutely, is their fundamental reason for being here.

The story is fun, the characterisation and situations are fun, the loot and the power building is fun, the triumph is fun ... but anything that's a part of the game that the player cannot utterly control on every level is anathema to the dogma.  Math is an excuse; the real reason why encumbrance, tracking food, the number of spells one can cast in a day, having to live with less than ideal hit points and so on is so hateful is because they're all a reminder that the character is limited, and limited equals weak.  Weakness is the precursor to failure; no matter how we cut it, "Sooner or later the place where I am weak will lead to my failing, and I just fucking cannot deal with any more failing, especially in an activity I do for fun."

In my book How to Run, I talked about the accumulated pattern recognition that's gained from running D&D over a period of years.  One of those patterns I've been made to recognise are the tunes and tones that enter the player's diction as the game is played out.  Players learn a semantic and conceptual way of understanding what the game is about, for them, which when obtained is virtually impossible to shift or change.  The desires a player expresses in the first few rolls of creating their character; the way they express what they think the party should do; the hesitation they show when meeting a particular danger; the manner in which they physically have their characters approach that danger; the way they withhold powers they possess, "saving them for later," which they perceive is good play but is often evidence of not wanting to let go of something held too tightly, "in case."  Altogether, it expresses a doubt on the player's part that things will work out, or that they can think their way out of the problem when the need arises.  They don't believe they will; or, in the very least, there's a strong feeling that they might not.  And they are simply not willing to take the risk that they might have used a power now, when they'll so desperately need that power later.

This approach of anti-failure by excessive conservation of power seems like an example of "good play."  It's very often defended that way.  A long-time savvy player will have accumulated many examples of evidence that supports this approach, ingraining it further into the player's consciousness as "the right way to play."  It is, at best, "a" way to play.  Unfortunately, it's a heuristically oriented approach, where the player has learned this habit entirely for themselves, and not within a social context.  Socially, the player's failure is less intrinsically important than the party's failure ... but the player who must win is universally incapable of making this distinction.  "The risked shame isn't the party's shame; it's MY shame.  And as long as it's mine, I'll decide for myself how much of it I want to endure."

Taking us to the place of self-aggrandisement.  Let me stress here.  This isn't about being selfish.  Nor is it necessarily about pounding one's chest and promoting oneself as being powerful or important ... though yes, let's admit it, that's been a core-rhetoric in D&D since it's beginning.  We have many famous quotes from Gygax, Mentzer and others that are boasting, strutting and thoroughly toxic.  The meme of gloating player goes well back before Knights of the Dinner Table and the earlier Fineous Fingers.  Oftentimes, old schoolers achieved a certain glee in depictions of this sort.

Just as "to win" means to not lose, being important is served by not being overlooked.  However popular RPGs and D&D in particular may become, it's still an activity enjoyed by those who are educated and possessed of a heightened imagination.  Such persons nearly always end up spending a lot of time alone, in part because they did the homework they were given, in part because they retreat to imaginative activity as a means of freedom in an environment that's not pretty.  Learning how to manage ourselves and the various details in the world have much to do with an individual's life trajectory — and a long-time situation of diligently doing school work and being occupied with one's own thoughts rarely leads to a path of "being cool" and having popularity.

Those who have a supportive family are comfortable with their level of importance.  Those who receive accolades for their schoolwork, or who have even minor athletic gifts or an ability to participate as a team member gain early recognition for their existential importance in a group.  If they're among others and an hour goes by without their gaining any special attention, they're fine with it.  They've learned, either subconsciously or through the point being highlighted by some personal event, that everyone gets their kick at the cat, eventually ... and that ultimately everyone deserves that kick.

For some, however, cat-kicking possesses something of a dearth in their existence.  They're fairly convinced — AGAIN, either subconsciously or through the point being highlighted — that they haven't had their share of attention.  And it's very, very hard for them to sit among a group of people and not be recognised a requisite number of times ... that requisite being decided in their minds, and not according to some other, more socially agreed-upon measure.

In it's worst form, this manifests as the grabbing character who must have the best object at the table, for being the strongest and having the best is surely a way of getting attention.  Toxically, it also manifests as a need to push others down, since the importance of others is a challenge to the player's importance.  Much of this stems from a certainty that there's only so much attention to go around, that it's in short supply or that it must at least be cornered to the greatest degree possible.  Time, after all, is a limited commodity; therefore it follows that attention must be also.  "And anyone else getting attention robs me of mine."

But ... these monsters are so obviously horrific that types like this never get invited to my house, much less be given an opportunity to play in my world.  I've had a few of them turn up online; but they're easy to identify and dispense.  The more obscure variant of the species is the player who seems perfectly normal in nearly every aspect, except that — often to a very slight degree — they have trouble keeping themselves occupied.

The rest of this sentiment can be immediately recognised by any DM out there.  These are players who need a lot of handling.  Less needful of gaining importance from the rest of the party, they zero in on what the DM can give.  Being imaginative, they're full of ideas of things they want to do; but they usually lack some skill in getting anyone else interested.  Usually, it's because the "things" are impractical, too personal or ultimately not very lucrative.  Sometimes, the player will urge the DM to step in and ensure their idea becomes the game's direction — through wheedling or merely by never dropping the subject, ever.

It's an Amphipolean problem, which can only resound with those studying Greek history.  The party get tired of hearing it, the DM gets tired, the issue never gets dropped ... and increasingly the attention-seeking player chooses it as the hill to die on, the evidence that "No one ever wants to do the thing I want to do."  Sooner or later the thing will come to a head; and the worst of it is that in not giving the player their kick at the cat, denying the player further participation in the campaign feels like kicking a dog.

[Sorry.  From the moment I wrote about kicking the cat I knew the other metaphor had to find a place]

There's something undeniably hateful about pushing a fairly benign, often quiet, often socially paralysed individual out of a game ... so hateful that a DM — certainly me — will endure the situation for years if it means not having to address the matter.  In reality, the party begins to ignore the player, I begin to ignore the player, all because the player can only see the game from their personal, self-identified point of view.  And being ignored is the thing that player least wants to experience.  The situation is awful.  No question about it.

Unfortunately, social situations have their rules.  Participating in a social situation requires that the individual be conscious of their personal need to be socialised.  They must gain a comprehension of other people's needs, they must learn to view themselves as a part of a group and not an individual within a group; they must reflect upon how their language and their choice of subject-matter affects other people.  They must learn to give life to their words so that the words deserve attention, not the speaker.

These are skills we all must learn.  No one learns them perfectly.  Many reach a certain point and quit learning.  I personally wish to keep working on my socialisation for the rest of my life.

Concluding this series of posts, I'll end by saying that the goal of introducing a new character is to ensure the machine, the game, keeps running fluidly.  Whether the new player is wholly new to the game, or any RPG, or comes from other games to play yours, the DM should strive to keep the cogs and rods lubricated and smooth-running.  Any bit of grit, that occurs for any reason, is contrary to the manifest importance of a well-run, humming and exciting game.

Understanding that "grit" is defined according to what sort of game you're running.  In most games that others play, I would definitely be a very large bag of sand thrown into the gears.

Best that I don't play, then.