Just wondering what everyone else finds annoying in an RPG group.

What bugs the hell out of me? Easy - electronic distractions. Put down the goddamn Ipad, Your farm will not die if you aren't constantly tending to it. Interact with the other humans at the table instead.

Or go away - if you'd rather play video games, then play video games and quit wasting my time.

I had tons of problems with this in a prior live group that met about 30 minutes away from where I lived. Having electronic character sheets and all books as PDFs for easier reference was great but also basically an excuse to always have a laptop open. But when you get to meet once a week and play, and people can't be bothered to not check Facebook every 5 minutes, not find gifs to share or, god forbid, log out of Wow...it jus stopped being worth the drive.

I had tons of problems with this in a prior live group that met about 30 minutes away from where I lived. Having electronic character sheets and all books as PDFs for easier reference was great but also basically an excuse to always have a laptop open. But when you get to meet once a week and play, and people can't be bothered to not check Facebook every 5 minutes, not find gifs to share or, god forbid, log out of Wow...it jus stopped being worth the drive.

My laptop died, so it's academic now, but I only ever had my computer up and running if I was GMing. I tend to keep all my notes digitally, so I have an excuse - but as a player? No reason whatsoever for me to be digging about.

I'm understanding when you're playing a game like Exalted and have Charms from three sourcebooks and artifacts from half a dozen more, needing to check references occasionally if you forget your capabilities. I think it's eminently abusable though and that's when it got to me. When a player couldn't be bothered to finish building her own character instead of playing WoW, I was done.

In my current Shadowrun group, I think 3 of us have the core book on our iPad and reference it during games as needed. It actually works well for our group to be able to spot-check rules mid-game when not everyone has a dead tree book (this is a ting our GM encourages, as an aside). But that's basically the only time someone has such a device open, so it doesn't detract from the gaming.

. They aren't meaning to be disrespectful, but avoiding some embrassment and clean-up on aisle 3.

Eww...

Actually at our table it is the twenty something ladies that do this!

I'm 15 and I'd do it, too! Well.. Maybe not mid-description but we usually start the sessions with pizza and soda or something. Iced tea and lemonade flows freely... Not to mention water!

Do they do it together at the same time? If so, its a fairly common social defense (or control) mechanism.

Oh noes!!! He's onto us and he's sharing our secrets!!!

1.) I hate players that are present but don't pay attention

2.) people that look for ways to break the game system

3.) Unreliable players ( show up every fourth game or so)

and probably one that for me as a GM running a game are the people that have no background silly names and only live to ruin the story by not doing missions pushing random buttons and don't remember anything that happened from the last session.

Dinking around with your bloody smartphone hwen the game is going on. Oh, you missed that it was your turn because you were on Facebook? You character was also distracted and was unable to act. Darn, sucks to be you.

I'm the only one at our table allowed electronics because I use an ipad to roll dice. In general, my dad has that rule at the game table. In fact he has it about the dinner table, the breakfast table... Hmmm! I see a trend. What is it about him and tables!?!?

Swiftdraw I am you father!!! Or at least I have the same rules.

When my guys were small I also had the "if the dice roll off the table it is a 1 rule" to control my pet peeve. I hate when the overly excited dice roll takes down a dozen minis and goes flying everywhere.

When I was in college we had "if you could not explain and roll your results in 10 seconds you missed your combat turn rule." I would DM 10+ players and we made combat really fast because you had to speed perform you move in 10 seconds. Everyone had the spell or move ready to go and just roll hit and damage die at once. It was 2e so it didn't have the complex 3 to 5 minute player turns of 4e dnd and moved quite well. If you got distracted (which could not happen at this pace) you missed your chance.

I've only ever seen this happen once, so hopefully it's extremely rare because it was the most offensive thing (in an rpg) I've ever witnessed: a player trying to make another player feel foolish/embarrassed for roleplaying (laughing or rolling their eyes when that player speaks in character, uses a fun accent, gets emotionally involved in the moment, whatever).

Again, hopefully that rarely happens, 'cause that's the sort of thing that'll make good (but sensitive) players hang up rpgs forever...

Hypocritically, I find people that are too hung up on stats and numbers annoying. Min-maxers, tweakers, roll players... bleh.

Hypocritically, I find people that are too hung up on stats and numbers annoying. Min-maxers, tweakers, roll players... bleh.

Conversely, I find it annoying when players ignore/disregard stats and then are unprepared for the outcomes when the game portion of RPG says they fail.

I always thought the opposite end to min-maxers were thespians, which I don't mind, since they play their character as a character and not as a stat donkey.

People that are willfully ignorant of even the system they're playing... yeah, those guys are bad too.

I always thought the opposite end to min-maxers were thespians, which I don't mind, since they play their character as a character and not as a stat donkey.

People that are willfully ignorant of even the system they're playing... yeah, those guys are bad too.

No, thespians are not the opposite of rules lawyer. Those are different axis. Ability to really crunch the rules (and to enjoy doing it) and ability to really get into character are totally unconnected. Worst case is somebody that can't deal with the mechanics and sucks at roleplaying a character.

Speaking of thespians, and perhaps this is a pet peeve I guess, I started playing Deadlands with this group that I am now start EotE a few years ago. I only knew one of them when we started playing. One of the guys in the group was always kind of arrogant and eccentric, from the moment I meant him, all the way until that character died over a year later. It wasn't until that character died and he made a new one that I realized he was in character the entire time- from the moment he walked in the door until the moment he left. I really didn't like him because of his attitude, and never knew it was just his character. In the last 6 months I have gotten to know him outside of the game and he is a great guy.

So I guess I would say that a pet peeve is people who can't separate role playing from gathering with friends. When we are in game, fine, rp. When we are eating hamburgers, let the character go for half an hour.

Speaking of thespians, and perhaps this is a pet peeve I guess, I started playing Deadlands with this group that I am now start EotE a few years ago. I only knew one of them when we started playing. One of the guys in the group was always kind of arrogant and eccentric, from the moment I meant him, all the way until that character died over a year later. It wasn't until that character died and he made a new one that I realized he was in character the entire time- from the moment he walked in the door until the moment he left. I really didn't like him because of his attitude, and never knew it was just his character. In the last 6 months I have gotten to know him outside of the game and he is a great guy.

So I guess I would say that a pet peeve is people who can't separate role playing from gathering with friends. When we are in game, fine, rp. When we are eating hamburgers, let the character go for half an hour.

Gunther is never out of game.

I have a couple too:

- making fun of names and changing NPCs names so they're silly

- not paying attention to the plot and major NPCs. I can understand if you don't remember a minor NPCs from a game half a year ago but not a major nps...

I have a couple too:

- making fun of names and changing NPCs names so they're silly

I was referee once running a campaign of 2300AD, a serious non-space opera setting. The players named their newly acquired ship the, "Poop Nut".

Edit - 1,000 posts!

A player who compares everything to their favorite movie or book. As in a player who of course named his Ranger, Strider, always stating stuff like, "In Middle Earth the trolls would have...", or, "This sword should be like the one from Sword of Shannara that...".

After running EotE today, I came up with a two more that are basically the same as each other.

The guy who used to always run our games (differenty system) was playing. First time I ever played with him as a player. He wouldn't bother listening to and learning the NPC's names, just always referring to them as "xyz, that guy".

The second is basically the same, but refers to the dice. He wouldn't learn what the dice mean. He would just say, "I got a splotch and two wings," and then we had to interpret what that meant. Finally one of the other players said, "Learn the f'in dice. It's not that hard."

To me, the refusal to learn the names or even the dice says, "I'm not all that interested."

When GMs start throwing their weight around too much.

Example: In one campaign I was playing an FS Republic Naval Officer/Jedi. I was given command of a task force transporting a Redeemed Sith Lord to a top secret maximum security prison station. On the way the prisoner warns us that something awful is waiting for us. My character reaches out through the force but finds nothing. We arrive at the station and send the shuttle with the prisoner and most of the PCs down while my character stays on the bridge.

After they land two of the PCs contact the ship to tell me that the guards on the station are acting oddly. Shortly after this my ship's sensor officer tells me that she's picked up a massive unidentifiable sensor contact near the station. Now this station is the prison for the most dangerous prisoners the Republic has, no one is supposed to know where it is. Even ships assigned to go there have their jumps in and out plotted by astromechs programmed to self destruct before capture and erased after the jump.plus both reach and depart the station via multiple waypoints,

I ask if my character had been briefed on whatever it was being in the area. The GM says no, My character is CO of a fleet carrier so I order recon fighters launched to check the contact out with escort fighters while all of my fleets squadrons scramble. The station contacts me ordering my forces to stand down. After confirming that I wasn't briefed on any such contacts that were supposed to be in the area, and taking into account the suspicions of the ground team I ordered the fighters to continue.on.

Next thing I know I'm being re-leaved of duty by the NPC captain of one of the frigates in my task force who apparently had been pulled aside by an Admiral before the mission so he could be given orders to take command of the mission in the event my PC began behaving oddly..

Now I've never been in the military, and neither had the GM in question but it seems to me that if you are sending a task force into a top security restricted zone and something like whatever the unidentified contact was is supposed to be there the CO of that task force would be warned about it. Told exactly what it is probably not but they should IMO definitely be told that it should be there before they arrive so he or she doesn't do something like open fire on it with every gun their command has on sight.

Than after the scene has wrapped the GM insists that I relied too much on the Force when the Force had absolutely nothing to do with my decisions. I was acting on the suspicions that the ground team had warned me about and the fact that I had no reason to believe that contact was supposed to be there.

A running theme through this thread seems to be players/GMs that lack communication or passively communicate disinterest or hostility towards the game. I wonder at how many here are willing to take others aside one-on-one to discuss communication. It should be considered a mark of intelligence that one is willing to entertain notions they don't agree with, especially those related to one's demeanor, even if one doesn't change one's mind. I understand that people can be huffy and closed-minded when it comes to recieving feedback on their behavior, but tolerating such behavior only allows the bad feelings on both sides to grow. Maturity, and its moral aspects, are grown from confrontation.

The thread didn't ask what we do about it. It asked for our pet peeves. That is what is being described. I wouldn't assume that because people posted a list of things that annoy them, that they have done nothing about it other than post about it passive-aggressively on a star wars forum.

What Enjolras said. When my players named their ship the, "Poop Nut", I thought it was completely stupid but I still have the stats of the SS Poop Nut including deckplans somewhere in a folder in my basement.

While I did not explicitly say so in the initial post, people are welcome and I even encourage them to post solutions and even stories where solutions didn't work. I did not mean to imply in any way that the people don't try to solve their problems, but I can see how you interpreted my post as such. It is the tendency of the human mind to avoid negatives, even over seeking positives, and that is what I believe contributes to the absence of communication. I appreciate your feedback and have amended the initial post accordingly.

Lol I hadn't even realized that you were the OP of this thread. What I do to deal with annoying people at the table is take them outside and hit them in the head with a brick.

Seriously, though, I have more experience as a player than a GM. So many of the things that have annoyed me over the years didn't seem like my place to solve. Historically, I have run the concerns by the GM and tried to see if the problem was that I needed to be more open-minded/less sensitive, or if they also perceived the issues I was bringing up.

As a GM now, I am still working out how to address some of the issues, but figure I will give us multiple sessions to see how things go before I try to tweak anything in the group. I try to be easy going about what the group is doing, but want to be more sensitive to how the members of the group are responding to each other.

I played in a con group and discovered one of my pet peeves for EOTE--players being too precious about Destiny Points!

Several players in this group treated the game as if the Destiny Points were going to determine the fate of their own very lives in REAL LIFE, trying to calculate and judge every single use of them and acting as though turning over a light side point to reveal a dark side point meant something absolutely horrible was going to happen to us that we were going to HATE.

I couldn't understand it--we trusted the gamemaster, it was a standalone con adventure, and personally I had complete faith that even if he had ALL dark side points, he'd use them reasonably, and that EVEN IF we failed a roll, even if we rolled a Despair, even if something went badly for our characters, we'd have a great time as players.

They were just taking it way too seriously every single we considered flipping one of those points.

My two biggest peeves are...

1: Rules Lawyers.

It's great if player's take that rules knowledge and use it to help those who need it,but when someone uses that knowledge to belittle the other player's,that won't work in my groups.

2: Player's who DO NOT pay attention. Repeating some details is fine,but when player's keep their faces glued to the rulebook so they can decide what they want to eventually purchase for their characters when they should be paying attention,won't work either.

I have remedied these two things for the most part,but they are my biggest peeves,for any game.