We all love to game, but we all love it differently. Here are some pet peeves of mine when it comes to annoyances at the table. Now I want you to understand I don’t mean these to apply to newbies. I have all the patience in the world when it comes to new players. I also understand that we all do some of these things occasionally. It is not the occasional slip I am referring to here. What I am referring to is those players who make these their defining traits. Everyone will know a player or two that have at least one of these not so endearing habits. Some of them compound each other, such as the distracted becomes the unready.
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The chronically late. This gamer almost always shows up late for the session. They often have great reasons. Some of them might even be true. In the end it matters not. Being late is disrespectful.
- The side conversationalist. This player is cool, they engage in the game,
their role play is often top notch. However, they go off on tangents with
someone else at the table at exactly the moment your turn comes up.
You’ve been waiting 10-15 minutes, and then when the spotlight swings to you
- no - it bounces back to them. Again.
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The sponger. Now I have to admit - this was me. I never had enough pocket money, or as a young adult, funds top buy enough snacks for marathon game sessions. I was more than happy to chow through other people’s snacks if they so much as offered a bite out of politeness.
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The rules lawyer. I’m more OK with this one than many of the others - but - they can go overboard and take up way to much table time. Perhaps I am OK because I too am a bit of a rules lawyer.
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The blithely ignorant. This player comes to the table with a character they think will be cool, but they really have no idea how the mechanics for their character works. Now to be clear, I am not talking about a beginner here, no. This is someone who has gamed for years, and may even have played this same class many times. But you keep having to call them on “convenient” forgetting or lack of understanding of the mechanics.
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The Unready. This player waits their turn, and when it finally arrives, they then, and only then, start poring over their character sheet for options and things to do. They measure stuff all over the battle map. I am not talking about the time the previous player just disrupted all your carefully laid plans. I am talking about each and every turn, even in a static battle.
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The attention hog. This gamer jumps into every interaction. even if they are the Cha 6 Dex 6 cleric, they will try to open the lock, or pursuade the guard. Their logic is that they have as much chance as anyone else to roll a 20. Sure they do. Sure the game is broken. But for the love of the game, can you not let the people who chose a specific character class that may not be the best combatant at least have first dibs at doing what their character was designed for?
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The distracted. This player might be a workaholic, or simply not present. They get on the phone between turns. They might leave the table, or make a phone call. They are simply not present, don’t contribute, and when their turn arrives, as often as not they simply roll a dice and then go back to whatever it was they were really doing.
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The cheater. Really, in RPGs, people cheat. They roll their awkwardly coloured, impossible to read dice, and then swiftly scoop them up after announcing an improbably number of hits. You ask them to leave their dice on the table, they conveniently forget.
- The Jerk. This gamer is the one who does jerky things because “that’s what their character would do”. They create a character with questionable alignment, or incompatible backstory and then procede to ride roughshod over other characters and the GM using their character design as an excuse.