Greetings,

I'm looking for some advice as to how to deal with a problem player.

He is currently playing an ascended assassin and for the last 6 or so sessions has taken himself away from the rest of the group and acted on his own, ignoring comments from me and the group prime (also a GM of long experience) about having to workk as a team.

He has now informed me that he is planning on sending his character on a deep cover infiltration that involves multiple thefts of imperial property and cash, as well as trying to steal a navy destroyer to get himself intentionally declared Traitorus so that his cover is sound.

He feels that he can pull all of this off whilst still remaining a Player Character (normally if a character goes too solo I make them into an npc to try and keep the session sensible) and without any negative results from the inquisition.

Any thoughts on how to reign him in without stamping out the creativity (which can be lacking from the group sometimes).

Surak

I can think of two possible answers...

One, the easy one, stomp on him. Say that, ok his character is off on this deep cover scheme and then don't run it . Focus the session on what the main group is doing. Inform the player that the game is about the group and if he wants to seperate his character from the group then he is removing his character from play. Offer him the chance to make a new character who is part of the group.

Two, the hard one, schedule a seperate, solo gaming session with just that player and run him through his going off and doing his own thing. Play out the consequences of his actions, up to and including him being declared Traitorous and hunted down by the appropriate authorities.

First: a solo assasine cannot steal a void ship. Full stop. Even if s/he migt kill the whole crew

At all other regards Lucius is quit right. I would suggest the first option with the twist of offering him a "for-the-while" pc that he can exchange again when his deep cover assasine comes back into play (which is the "reward the creativity part)

Instead of "solo mission session" you can handle this with very very simple eMails: give him a situation, get his description, give him the result. All of this only containing the "absolute highlights".

Things like this (solo mission) are fine, but every player has to understand that the focus of the time all player gather has to be split between all player. A task hard enough for the GM.

Besides: this "solo techniques" Lucius and I mentioned aren´t "stomping". It´s what´s the consequence. Or does the player really believe that it is fun for everyone else watching him play? If so...play video games and only allow him to watch.

Surak said:

Is creativity that produces stupid ideas worth encouraging ?

This play of yours has two:

- First, he wants to steal a 40k starship on his own. Though he might just not understand how large 40k ships are.

- He wants to be declared Tratiorus as a cover. If this goes through, it means that loyalist forces that find out would want him dead. Cults won't want him because they won't want the attention he brings with it, unless he offers them something really good and can prove his loyalty.

Assuming he is doing this without the blessing of the other PCs, here is an idea:

- Let the other players know that if the assassin is declared traitorus, they might also be caught up in it. Especially if they don't kill him when they have the chance.

- Ask him how he plans to fly the ship when all the people in required positions would rather die than betray the Imperium.

- Have him hear about someone who can declare him traitorus without him needing to betray the Imperium. Catch is, he can only contact this person if the other PCs* help him (give them their own reason for the meeting).

Now you have a meeting between the problem assassin, the other PCs and this NPCs minions(I'd suggest a horde of guardsmen). The NPC will ask the assassin if he is sure, then steps into an armoured room to finalise the changes.

His minions then draw their weapons as the NPCs voice comes over a loudspeaker ordering his minions to kill the "the self-confessed traitor" and any who assist him.

*You don't need the other PCs to be involved, but it will give them something to do.

Personally, I'd go with LuciusT's first idea.

Honestly, and this seems to be the opposite of what everyone else thinks, I'd kill him. I don't mean have an 'accidental' meteor fall on his head, but say "Sure, ok, you enter the ship's airspace and are ordered to turn around. You refuse? They blow you up. Roll a... wait, nevermind, you've been de-atomised. You want to use a faith point? Ok, you're officially atoms again. ANOTHER faith point? Ok, you're dust now. Did you want to roll a new character and play the game now?"

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for players creating interesting situations for their characters for story purposes. There are better ways to do this than by declaring yourself god and removing yourself from the party. If you're not going to play nice with the other players, at least play fair. Denying them playtime so you can mess things up and be a glory hound is not fun for the group. Unless you bring back a cookie. Then it's ok.

Surak said:

Admittedly, the things he's doing dont seem rational at all but is there a mechanic for the game that requires it to happen for the assassin to be declared a traitor in the first place, for the game to progress? Just that to be declared traitor, all you need to do is shoot an Adeptus (any flavour) and they're fairly much everywhere. Wander into the administratum looking for obscure bits of information on obscure historical figures of no importance, complain when they take too long, go postal and shoot some clerks when they fail to deliver. Heck, just blow away some Arbites in the street if you need to and the results the same...

Congrats, you're now a traitor to the imperium

(Course, they do have long memories for such things and dont care if you're doing it for a higher purpose!)

Talk to the player and pose an ultimatum. Don't make it an ingame issue, because it clearly isn't. (Well his character is being stupid but thats common.)

"This is a gaming group. Notice group, and the creative agenda is to tell a story, together. If you wanna have a story of your, own write fan fiction FFS, don't bother to show up on gaming meetings. If you want to you can get a new character that is more social and group oriented at the same level of XP, but if you take off again your characters actions will be ignored until he rejoin the group again. Feel free to sit silent during this time and write fanfiction to post online, don't expect us to read it or it to effect the game."

We had a guy like this in my group for a loooong time. Best advice I think the board has covered, but I'll back them up here.

First talk to him and tell him all of this off on his own stuff strains you the GM and splits the group up meaning people aren't having as good of a time anymore. This is key- he may have no idea what he's doing is damaging. But I'm guessing he does, and just is self absorbed like the player in my group. Either way, tell him this isn't the way you're going to run things.

Second, as he may be a friend and outright kicking friends out of a gaming group can be....difficult...if he insists on continuing after talking with you and you let him keep playing, let him go on his solo missions and just kill his guy off. When he keeps bringing in character after character that runs off on their own, alternate between killing him off and ignoring him while you focus on the group, then kill him the week after.

Good luck, there is one in every party...

I have to agree with everyone on the board. We have all had players like this, and if you haven't, you will. There is a time and a placer for players to split up, but in this case it sounds like he just wants to be a Big **** Hero, and that will get him killed and mess up the other players.

It sounds like he needs to be reminded, probably forcibly that this is a GROUP game, as was previously stated its not fun for the other players to sit and watch someone else play. Gregorius is right.

If this was in my game I would have him go off, I might switch back and forth between the 2 groups for only 1 session and try to throw so much at him that he has no choice but to abandon his plan or die, or if he really insists on continuing on this fools errand take over his character, have him write out a new one and play with that. If you decide later that his character lives, great, give it back to him later, otherwise it might make a good enemy for a latter game.

But seriously he needs some jogging on the concept of GROUP gaming.