I ask, if that person is truly unpleasant have you spoken to them about how unpleasant they are?
Not to defend but how is someone to recognise a fault of their own if they're not called upon? Unless its truly terrible and they know they are doing it on purpose.
The issue we live in nowadays we are all scared how to tell each other how we feel towards and that we now safe harbour them by throwing them a label and approving that to a degree.
I'm direct and blunt, if someone is doing something in a group I call them out of it; I expect folk to do the same for me.
I may be offended but you should be offended, there's no harm in that.
Granted it's a double edged sword. You tell them; they preach to their safe haven and breathe the toxic fumes of their peers. Or they actually recognise it.
But I'm a DM, not their therapist or their dad - I'm not obligated to hand-hold someone through a radical restructuring of their personality.
And, it might not surprise you to find out, some people react very badly to being criticized. And I'm not particularly interested in having an argument over my subjective opinion of a person. I just don't want to be around them anymore.
Am I my brothers keeper? Culturally, we've just bought into the notion that I'm not your therapist, so as to absolve myself of the responsibility of fixing broken people. But if I don't do it, who will? so I take care of myself first, so that I'm sable to take care of others, but when I encounter broken people, I still try to fix them (as if people are devices like microwave ovens that need fixing) , because we all have to live in a society and hurt people hurt people, so don't over extend yourself, but also do the work that's staring you in the face.
> Why play with them and not just cut them out completely? By keeping them in group your only enforcing their unpleasantness.
The people who actually ruin the game and make it not fun to play, we do cut them out.
But other people, well - I guess the threshold for playing a cooperative game with someone is different than the threshold for inviting them to a party at my house. Plus, at D&D, they spend a lot of their time inside a character who may be more interesting and pleasant than the person rolling the dice.
Normies don't require feedbacks to be verbally and explicitly delivered most of the time. It's the last resort path. Constantly delivering and being delivered clear and blunt express feedback is not normal. It's "sad"-"agitated" state if you ask them
It might be true that allowing minute variances between normie nonverbal feedback gatherer people to be a factor to their successes has its own problems, but encouraging everyone to drop that BS and just be offensive and blunt to make things simple is at least not a widely supported solution.
So be nice... it sometimes gets complicated to be just a nice and happy person, but you actually don't have to be a fearless warrior at all times.
Not gp, but because they aren't so unpleasant they're intolerable. But i definitely know one person i won't play a game with once my current campaign is over, and another i won't have as a player, ever. For two different reasons. The first might overall be a nice player to have if you manage to canalise him, he play his character well as long as the NPC he interact with isn't a female, then he becomes incredibly weird. I thought he was playing that part too, but since we have a female player at the table it became painfully obvious its not (and it became worse, weirdly). The second one is actually pleasant to be around most of the time, just very tiring. I had a player with the same energy level before and it's exhausting. I'd love having her as a DM however.
I would suggest you check out some of the things on reddit's rpghorrorstories subreddit.
Of course, we're only seeing one side of a narrative, and the stories are obviously written for an audience that expects something - but it can be rather enlightening at just how bad some people can be, and just how much some other people can put up with.
Not to defend but how is someone to recognise a fault of their own if they're not called upon? Unless its truly terrible and they know they are doing it on purpose.
The issue we live in nowadays we are all scared how to tell each other how we feel towards and that we now safe harbour them by throwing them a label and approving that to a degree.
I'm direct and blunt, if someone is doing something in a group I call them out of it; I expect folk to do the same for me.
I may be offended but you should be offended, there's no harm in that.
Granted it's a double edged sword. You tell them; they preach to their safe haven and breathe the toxic fumes of their peers. Or they actually recognise it.