(no subject)
Hi, new poster and recent lurker, so on and so forth. I was directed here by a friend after dealing with a GM suck, which is still incredibly frustrating for me to think about. So, I'm going to do what I do best and vent like crazy.
Warning. This is ridiculously long. I'm sorry.
I met the guy via a post on a random forum I made about a year or so ago. I was curious about roleplaying, and he offered to let me join his group, a small set of about ten people in IRC. Now, the guy seemed smart and when I talked to him, he appeared to know his stuff, so I figured I'd give it a shot. No harm, no foul.
I eventually spoke with and then joined his group a couple of weeks later, after he okayed my character. My first impression of the group overall was that it was a bit disorganised and slow. I finally got to actually roleplay for about ten minutes after three hours of mucking around trying to finish a previous storyline. Why only ten minutes? Because the GM proceeded to pretty suddenly lose his cool and start cussing his players out for not playing properly.
That really should have been my first warning.
Now, I'll say this. I don't think he was unjustified in being annoyed with the laziness of his players. But he overreacted quite a bit when he said the game was over and ragequit. I got no indication of what was going on with the rp, and just decided that it must be dead and moved on.
After a while, about a month or so later, he pops up and apologises for what happened. Well, when I say apologise, I mean blames everything that happened on his players. Once again, to be fair, I don't know if he was in the right here or not, but given his tendency to overreact over ridiculous things, I'm inclined to think he deserves some of the blame.
But that was all water under the bridge! He had a new roleplay ready to go, and I could join from the start! He had culled the group down to just me, himself, and his girlfriend. Sounds foreboding, but it worked out quite well. Yes, I decided to give it another shot. (I really wanted to roleplay, and he was my best bet at the time.)
For a while, the roleplay was a lot of fun. Hell, overall it was quite enjoyable. Both him and the other player said I was good at what I did and seemed to be having fun too. There were four main characters - two were handled by the GM, one by his girlfriend, one by me.
All was perfectly well for a while, until one night. I popped on at the right time, happy as a lark, and asked him when we were getting started.
And that's when I was hit with what I like to call "THE ANGST WALL OF SADNESS AND DEPRESSION."
Suddenly, I get a large dose of things I did not need to know. His life was so hard. He couldn't get a job. He was all alone because his girlfriend lived in a different country. His grandparents were mean and kept waking him up. Everything that he didn't like still existed, and that was terrible.
And I'm just sitting there with this 'O-O' look on my face.
I tried to console him, cheer him up. I tried this many times I was hit with "THE ANGST WALL". It always failed, because every time he was in a 'mood', as his girlfriend called it, nothing was good enough. Of course, we couldn't possibly roleplay while he was 'oh so depressed', so we'd just have to call it quits.
We kept roleplaying, but "THE ANGST WALL" started appearing more and more often. I learned more about his life than I needed to know. I kept trying to help, because he was a sort of friend and I didn't want him to be upset. Nothing ever helped. I just got to the stage where if the warning signs appeared, I would push for the roleplay to start so that we could focus on that, or I'd make my excuses and just quit for that session.
Things got better after a couple of months; GM manned up and seemed to be getting better after a big fight with Girlfriend, and things seemed to settle back to the beginning of the game. Girlfriend gave me the advice to 'just not antagonise him'. I was really enjoying the roleplay, and he was friendly while in a good mood, so I kept at it. (This was stupid.)
Around the same time, I had some family problems crop up. I was very stressed about these, so I vented to him a few times, and once or twice made the mistake of misdirecting my anger at him. I always, always apologised after that. He never seemed to take it to heart, and was always a good listener, even if his 'advice' was iffy. (e.g. 'You can't trust any of your family').
Things got better for me. More people joined the rp. There was an occasional appearance of "THE ANGST WALL", but it didn't impact too badly. All seemed well.
Then, GM had a 'breakdown'. Girlfriend and him got into a huge, ridiculous fight. I got caught in the crossfire. It was three days of near constant whining and complaining from him via IM before I realised that holy crap this guy was a loser. Every problem he complained about was his own creation. No job? He wouldn't apply for anything 'less than worthy'. No education? He wouldn't go because he was 'self taught'. His girlfriend was pissed? You refused to say happy birthday to her because 'she didn't pay enough attention to you'! Oh, and it's not a great idea to try and get my sympathy by saying 'I listened to you so you have to listen to me". Especially considering that you offered to listen to me when I had no intention of bothering you, and we had done this before and it never worked.
He was over twenty five, living rent free with his grandparents, and spent all his days on his computer. In comparison, I had a broken family due to various criminal problems, I was struggling at a difficult university course, and searching hard for any job that would take me so I could pay rent.
I realised that I could really not care less about his whining. So I stepped up to the plate that his girlfriend wouldn't touch for fear of 'upsetting him', and told him to man up and grow some balls.
Oh, that went well.
He vanished for a week after trying to budge me from this new stance I adopted. I told him, in no uncertain terms, that if he wasn't going to get the hell over his weepy little problems or get mental help, I was out of the roleplay. He then had the audacity to attempt to bribe me with one of my characters! (The brother of my first character had recently died in a sacrifice to save them from a big bad.) He told me that if I left the roleplay, his sacrifice would be 'in vain'.
I told him to piss off. He did.
A week later, Girlfriend approached me and said he wanted to apologise. To his credit, he did, and it felt sincere. He said that he would deal with his problems more maturely from now on, and he didn't want to lose me as a friend. Despite the fact that it was needlessly melodramatic (Oh, I guess I won't trouble you again) and it felt like Girlfriend was tugging on his ear to make him say it, I accepted the apology and gave it one last chance. (This was even more stupid.)
So, the roleplay finally got back on track. It lasted a whole month or so. Everything was going great... ish. I was on my guard.
Now, I need to explain about his favourite/main character, who I will call Foxbrat.
Foxbrat was a completely unlikeable character, at least to me. OOC, I didn't find him sympathetic. At all. And apparently this was completely unacceptable. The entire year I roleplayed with this guy, he continuously tried to convince me to 'love' him. He had an oh so tragic past, he was a prostitute, his dad was cruel and mean and made him grow up so fast, and look here's a picture of him WHY DON'T YOU LOVE HIM?
Why? Because all of his 'excuses' were complete bullshit. He was a prostitute by choice, and loved every second of it. He ran his own gang at the age of something ridiculous. His parents both loved and adored him, gave him hugs and kisses, the whole shebang. Oh, and he had an infinitely powerful sword and was apparently the avatar of the universe we was in. His one 'weakness' (a deathly fear of blood and gore, which reduced him to hysterics) conveniently never cropped up when the GM wanted him to do something dramatic.
And this kid still treated everyone like they were shit, and got away with anything he wanted. Because he was the GM's baby.
This became more and more apparent as it went along, and I started to refer to him as 'god mode sue' in my head. One day, I accidentally called him that mid game.
This was apparently the starting point for the final unravelling. GM was soooo offended by my cruelty! Foxbrat wasn't a sue! Look, his father smacked him and told him to behave! No? Well, well, whatever!
After I made that comment, the entire roleplay was very tense, but finished up well enough. The next session, though? You guessed it, "THE ANGST WALL" was back!
He was 'feeling down about his writing' lately (hint HINT), and his grandparents were trying to make him get up on time or something! Aren't they terrible? Aren't they mean?
I completely ignored his baiting and asked to get started with the roleplay.
He pops up in the PMs and start raging that I'm not 'being sympathetic'. I told him that his problems were petty compared to that whole shebang of issues that were my life, and that every time I tried to help I got shit for it. So no, I wasn't sympathetic.
He gets 'upset' that I'm being so 'cruel' and calls the roleplay off.
Of course, a week later he's fine again.
Now, the final straw that snapped me was actually not roleplay related, but thanks to his display picture on MSN. He constantly had pictures of giant breasted woman in various 'sexy' poses. I had asked him multiple times to take it down - my younger brother used my computer occasionally and they also made me rather uncomfortable. I was polite, I was snappy. He didn't care.
Well, today, I was tired of it. I had had a bad day, and we were supposed to be roleplaying, as arranged the night before. Roleplay wasn't on, and I'm a meany liarpants for claiming it was. Well, you know what, whatever, I'll keep being polite. It's not that big a deal. But while we're talking, please take down your avatar. I've tried to accommodating, but it offends me and makes me uncomfortable.
"THE ANGST WALL" appears! GM exploded into rage at the possible idea that his softcore porn was offensive! I must be stupid and crazy! I'm a mean mean person! I'm never there for him! I'm unnatural and conformist because I hate teh boobies!
I snap and tell him to respect my opinion instead of showing his down my throat. He keeps going and going with 'OMG YOU'RE MEAN JUST BECAUSE OF TITTIES YOU CAN'T EVEN LOOK AT YOURSELF IN THE MIRROR BECAUSE YOU HAVE TITTIES!! YOU HATE EVERYTHING AND YOU'RE CRAZY AND STUPID AND MEEEEEAN!"
And this, ladies and gentlemen, was when I finally realised that no half decent roleplay was worth this amount of arrogant, selfish, stuck up crap. I told him to fuck off and get out of my life.
He emailed me a few times. I replied only to say that he wasn't allowed to use my characters, and to not contact me again. I then rerouted all his emails to the bin.
... So I just read over this, and it probably sounds a little (by which I mean a lot) crazy. Many parts of this were written at different times and in various stages of upset. Looking back, I'm fairly certain that some of these events are a bit out of order, and I'm very aware that there were times when I was the bad/crazy one. But I needed to get it out, and it feels good to have it all down on the screen in front of me.
The most depressing part for me was probably that the roleplay itself, while it had problems, was actually pretty decent most of the time. But all the drama and hoops that we had to jump through to keep it going just wasn't worth it any more. Last I heard, GM is still convinced that he has never done a single thing wrong, and that I'm a sad lonely pathetic loser without him.
When in actual fact, I've never been so relieved and drama free.
tl;dr I join a game with a GM who dumps his personal problems (which are mostly of his own creation) on me whenever he feels like it. Cancels roleplay sessions repeatedly without warning because he's 'upset'. I only hang around as long as I do because he and his girlfriend beg me back in. Finally, he shoves one too many self absorbed opinions down my throat because he's mad that I insulted his sue, and I decide to call it quits.
If you happen to have actually read through that wreck of an epic, you are incredible and I salute you. Also, I'd be delighted if anyone could point me towards a fun steampunk or fantasy roleplay. I need happier roleplay memories.
Warning. This is ridiculously long. I'm sorry.
I met the guy via a post on a random forum I made about a year or so ago. I was curious about roleplaying, and he offered to let me join his group, a small set of about ten people in IRC. Now, the guy seemed smart and when I talked to him, he appeared to know his stuff, so I figured I'd give it a shot. No harm, no foul.
I eventually spoke with and then joined his group a couple of weeks later, after he okayed my character. My first impression of the group overall was that it was a bit disorganised and slow. I finally got to actually roleplay for about ten minutes after three hours of mucking around trying to finish a previous storyline. Why only ten minutes? Because the GM proceeded to pretty suddenly lose his cool and start cussing his players out for not playing properly.
That really should have been my first warning.
Now, I'll say this. I don't think he was unjustified in being annoyed with the laziness of his players. But he overreacted quite a bit when he said the game was over and ragequit. I got no indication of what was going on with the rp, and just decided that it must be dead and moved on.
After a while, about a month or so later, he pops up and apologises for what happened. Well, when I say apologise, I mean blames everything that happened on his players. Once again, to be fair, I don't know if he was in the right here or not, but given his tendency to overreact over ridiculous things, I'm inclined to think he deserves some of the blame.
But that was all water under the bridge! He had a new roleplay ready to go, and I could join from the start! He had culled the group down to just me, himself, and his girlfriend. Sounds foreboding, but it worked out quite well. Yes, I decided to give it another shot. (I really wanted to roleplay, and he was my best bet at the time.)
For a while, the roleplay was a lot of fun. Hell, overall it was quite enjoyable. Both him and the other player said I was good at what I did and seemed to be having fun too. There were four main characters - two were handled by the GM, one by his girlfriend, one by me.
All was perfectly well for a while, until one night. I popped on at the right time, happy as a lark, and asked him when we were getting started.
And that's when I was hit with what I like to call "THE ANGST WALL OF SADNESS AND DEPRESSION."
Suddenly, I get a large dose of things I did not need to know. His life was so hard. He couldn't get a job. He was all alone because his girlfriend lived in a different country. His grandparents were mean and kept waking him up. Everything that he didn't like still existed, and that was terrible.
And I'm just sitting there with this 'O-O' look on my face.
I tried to console him, cheer him up. I tried this many times I was hit with "THE ANGST WALL". It always failed, because every time he was in a 'mood', as his girlfriend called it, nothing was good enough. Of course, we couldn't possibly roleplay while he was 'oh so depressed', so we'd just have to call it quits.
We kept roleplaying, but "THE ANGST WALL" started appearing more and more often. I learned more about his life than I needed to know. I kept trying to help, because he was a sort of friend and I didn't want him to be upset. Nothing ever helped. I just got to the stage where if the warning signs appeared, I would push for the roleplay to start so that we could focus on that, or I'd make my excuses and just quit for that session.
Things got better after a couple of months; GM manned up and seemed to be getting better after a big fight with Girlfriend, and things seemed to settle back to the beginning of the game. Girlfriend gave me the advice to 'just not antagonise him'. I was really enjoying the roleplay, and he was friendly while in a good mood, so I kept at it. (This was stupid.)
Around the same time, I had some family problems crop up. I was very stressed about these, so I vented to him a few times, and once or twice made the mistake of misdirecting my anger at him. I always, always apologised after that. He never seemed to take it to heart, and was always a good listener, even if his 'advice' was iffy. (e.g. 'You can't trust any of your family').
Things got better for me. More people joined the rp. There was an occasional appearance of "THE ANGST WALL", but it didn't impact too badly. All seemed well.
Then, GM had a 'breakdown'. Girlfriend and him got into a huge, ridiculous fight. I got caught in the crossfire. It was three days of near constant whining and complaining from him via IM before I realised that holy crap this guy was a loser. Every problem he complained about was his own creation. No job? He wouldn't apply for anything 'less than worthy'. No education? He wouldn't go because he was 'self taught'. His girlfriend was pissed? You refused to say happy birthday to her because 'she didn't pay enough attention to you'! Oh, and it's not a great idea to try and get my sympathy by saying 'I listened to you so you have to listen to me". Especially considering that you offered to listen to me when I had no intention of bothering you, and we had done this before and it never worked.
He was over twenty five, living rent free with his grandparents, and spent all his days on his computer. In comparison, I had a broken family due to various criminal problems, I was struggling at a difficult university course, and searching hard for any job that would take me so I could pay rent.
I realised that I could really not care less about his whining. So I stepped up to the plate that his girlfriend wouldn't touch for fear of 'upsetting him', and told him to man up and grow some balls.
Oh, that went well.
He vanished for a week after trying to budge me from this new stance I adopted. I told him, in no uncertain terms, that if he wasn't going to get the hell over his weepy little problems or get mental help, I was out of the roleplay. He then had the audacity to attempt to bribe me with one of my characters! (The brother of my first character had recently died in a sacrifice to save them from a big bad.) He told me that if I left the roleplay, his sacrifice would be 'in vain'.
I told him to piss off. He did.
A week later, Girlfriend approached me and said he wanted to apologise. To his credit, he did, and it felt sincere. He said that he would deal with his problems more maturely from now on, and he didn't want to lose me as a friend. Despite the fact that it was needlessly melodramatic (Oh, I guess I won't trouble you again) and it felt like Girlfriend was tugging on his ear to make him say it, I accepted the apology and gave it one last chance. (This was even more stupid.)
So, the roleplay finally got back on track. It lasted a whole month or so. Everything was going great... ish. I was on my guard.
Now, I need to explain about his favourite/main character, who I will call Foxbrat.
Foxbrat was a completely unlikeable character, at least to me. OOC, I didn't find him sympathetic. At all. And apparently this was completely unacceptable. The entire year I roleplayed with this guy, he continuously tried to convince me to 'love' him. He had an oh so tragic past, he was a prostitute, his dad was cruel and mean and made him grow up so fast, and look here's a picture of him WHY DON'T YOU LOVE HIM?
Why? Because all of his 'excuses' were complete bullshit. He was a prostitute by choice, and loved every second of it. He ran his own gang at the age of something ridiculous. His parents both loved and adored him, gave him hugs and kisses, the whole shebang. Oh, and he had an infinitely powerful sword and was apparently the avatar of the universe we was in. His one 'weakness' (a deathly fear of blood and gore, which reduced him to hysterics) conveniently never cropped up when the GM wanted him to do something dramatic.
And this kid still treated everyone like they were shit, and got away with anything he wanted. Because he was the GM's baby.
This became more and more apparent as it went along, and I started to refer to him as 'god mode sue' in my head. One day, I accidentally called him that mid game.
This was apparently the starting point for the final unravelling. GM was soooo offended by my cruelty! Foxbrat wasn't a sue! Look, his father smacked him and told him to behave! No? Well, well, whatever!
After I made that comment, the entire roleplay was very tense, but finished up well enough. The next session, though? You guessed it, "THE ANGST WALL" was back!
He was 'feeling down about his writing' lately (hint HINT), and his grandparents were trying to make him get up on time or something! Aren't they terrible? Aren't they mean?
I completely ignored his baiting and asked to get started with the roleplay.
He pops up in the PMs and start raging that I'm not 'being sympathetic'. I told him that his problems were petty compared to that whole shebang of issues that were my life, and that every time I tried to help I got shit for it. So no, I wasn't sympathetic.
He gets 'upset' that I'm being so 'cruel' and calls the roleplay off.
Of course, a week later he's fine again.
Now, the final straw that snapped me was actually not roleplay related, but thanks to his display picture on MSN. He constantly had pictures of giant breasted woman in various 'sexy' poses. I had asked him multiple times to take it down - my younger brother used my computer occasionally and they also made me rather uncomfortable. I was polite, I was snappy. He didn't care.
Well, today, I was tired of it. I had had a bad day, and we were supposed to be roleplaying, as arranged the night before. Roleplay wasn't on, and I'm a meany liarpants for claiming it was. Well, you know what, whatever, I'll keep being polite. It's not that big a deal. But while we're talking, please take down your avatar. I've tried to accommodating, but it offends me and makes me uncomfortable.
"THE ANGST WALL" appears! GM exploded into rage at the possible idea that his softcore porn was offensive! I must be stupid and crazy! I'm a mean mean person! I'm never there for him! I'm unnatural and conformist because I hate teh boobies!
I snap and tell him to respect my opinion instead of showing his down my throat. He keeps going and going with 'OMG YOU'RE MEAN JUST BECAUSE OF TITTIES YOU CAN'T EVEN LOOK AT YOURSELF IN THE MIRROR BECAUSE YOU HAVE TITTIES!! YOU HATE EVERYTHING AND YOU'RE CRAZY AND STUPID AND MEEEEEAN!"
And this, ladies and gentlemen, was when I finally realised that no half decent roleplay was worth this amount of arrogant, selfish, stuck up crap. I told him to fuck off and get out of my life.
He emailed me a few times. I replied only to say that he wasn't allowed to use my characters, and to not contact me again. I then rerouted all his emails to the bin.
... So I just read over this, and it probably sounds a little (by which I mean a lot) crazy. Many parts of this were written at different times and in various stages of upset. Looking back, I'm fairly certain that some of these events are a bit out of order, and I'm very aware that there were times when I was the bad/crazy one. But I needed to get it out, and it feels good to have it all down on the screen in front of me.
The most depressing part for me was probably that the roleplay itself, while it had problems, was actually pretty decent most of the time. But all the drama and hoops that we had to jump through to keep it going just wasn't worth it any more. Last I heard, GM is still convinced that he has never done a single thing wrong, and that I'm a sad lonely pathetic loser without him.
When in actual fact, I've never been so relieved and drama free.
tl;dr I join a game with a GM who dumps his personal problems (which are mostly of his own creation) on me whenever he feels like it. Cancels roleplay sessions repeatedly without warning because he's 'upset'. I only hang around as long as I do because he and his girlfriend beg me back in. Finally, he shoves one too many self absorbed opinions down my throat because he's mad that I insulted his sue, and I decide to call it quits.
If you happen to have actually read through that wreck of an epic, you are incredible and I salute you. Also, I'd be delighted if anyone could point me towards a fun steampunk or fantasy roleplay. I need happier roleplay memories.