Drokking Meat Puppets

[Jyrdan Fairblade]

No, not the band. Meat Puppet is a new term I’ve come up with for a certain type of character after the last gaming session. These are the characters that have not personality, goals, or adherence to alignment other than for the player to achieve victory. The players that make Meat Puppets are the kind that play every character the same way, no matter whether they’re a bard, barbarian, or psion.

Not every character has to be absurdly theatrical and detailed, but if your character's identity only matters in so much as you get to “win” the game, that makes the campaign’s tapestry that much more boring.

I guess I'm just venting here. After the last session, when all established goals were ignored and directly countermanded to just get treasure has me especially frustrated. Our gaming group is in its fourth campaign and certain players are yet again causing the campaign to turn into murderhoboism. I’m all for player agency, but as a DM it gets old having only one sort of character to come up with adventures for.

[Go0gleplex]

I can relate dude. I tried running Dragon Mountain once and the party killed off everything and everyone they ran into...including ALL of the NPCs with information or clues to the rest of the campaign. It collapsed due to the slaughterfest mentality.

[Penny-Whistle]

The more I play the more I realize the importance of the energy and skill the players bring to the game. Being a GM is much easier than being a good player. Are they willing to learn more skills or are you interested in giving them a slaughter fest? Maybe it is just a poor play fit.

[Go0gleplex]

(The more I play the more I realize the importance of the energy and skill the players bring to the game. Being a GM is much easier than being a good player. Are they willing to learn more skills or are you interested in giving them a slaughter fest? Maybe it is just a poor play fit.

It was the players in this case. Two were trying to be productive, the other four were teenagers and acting out. Two those had issues with other adventures too in my (ex) wife's campaign. We eventually asked those two not to come back.

[Treebore]

Just murder hobo their characters until they figure out how boring it is. It may take years. In the mean time you will get to feel like Conan, hearing the lamentations of the...

[maximus]

The last time I played as a PC, we ran through Ravenloft II. We were "those" guys, hacking/slashing/burning our way through. We must have ignored every single clue in the darn module. I remember the DM being very frustrated with us. Meatheads I would have called us, but Meat puppets works too!

[serleran]

The nice thing about meat puppets is that you can put them to fire and have some really tasty treats.

[Jyrdan Fairblade]

There are only two bad apples in the gaming group, really. But when they manage to get in full swing, they can influence the group in negative ways. Both are power-gamers, but they're also good friends outside of gaming, so there's that.

Still, it's of no small comfort that I'm not the only one that deals with this sort of thing.