My sister-in-law is that guy. That’s why we don’t like playing board games or doing escape rooms with her. Oh, and also because she’s a bitch and is divorcing my brother.
Wife of a friend as well. She’ll bend and “interpret loosely” every rule in her favor, but if someone else is doing the same, she gets mad and thinks it’s cheating.
Oof, I have a friend like this. Wins 80% of all board games he’s in but never asks himself why. Buddy it’s because were just trying to have a good time and it would seriously fuck with the mood to actually try to stop you from interpreting things in your favour every single time
For me (though this depends on the game and the people) everyone trying their hardest to win is part of the fun of board games. That said, trying to manipulate the rules to essentially chest is not in the spirit of the game. Everyone should be playing in the spirit of the rules and trying to win fairly. If some people just aren’t trying then it’s not very fun.
This is all of course assuming that it’s a board game made to try to win on, not the typical American board games that are 90% random chance. Those just suck anyway, so you might as well just fuck around and have fun with it.
I think about this, or a related problem, a lot.
You have a group of players
- the first player wants tactics and strategy. They’re like “I’ll run into the room and dodge to draw their attention. Then you can drop a wall of fire or something while I have their attention”. Combat is a problem to be solved using the fewest resources and lowest risk.
- second player wants to cast fireball. He wants to do cool flashy things. He’s not here for resource management or long term strategy.
- third player wants to pet the giant spiders, open a lemonade stand in the dungeon, and have some beach episodes
- fourth player’s just here to hang out with friends
Each person in that list probably thinks the one above him is “playing to win”.
Second guy thinks the first is trying too hard about tactics and strategy. Third thinks the second is trying too hard about combat and damage. The fourth thinks the third is spending too much time roleplaying.
It’s fine if your group is all the same type. But when it’s mixed, it’s bad.
In my opinion and experience, when it’s mixed it’s better. As long as you have a good group where you don’t have any players that complain whenever someone plays in a way they don’t like.
Maybe sometimes. But as player type 1 in that set I was routinely really annoyed at player 2 and 3. We didn’t have a type 4, but I can imagine they might’ve gotten on my nerves too.
They also weren’t happy with me. One player would often create exchanges like
- them: “I move around the corner and shoot the monster. The one that’s 100’ away, yep.”
- them: “ok i’m done”
- me: “…aren’t you going to move back?”
- them: “what?”
- me: “Move back around the corner”
- them: “what? I already moved”
- me: (You’ve been playing this game for like a year now…) “You get 30’ of movement. You used 10’. You can move back around the corner.”
- them: “Oh. But why?”
- me: “…so they don’t shoot you back.”
- them: “I don’t understand.”
- me: “Where you are standing now, you can see them and they can see you. So you can shoot each other. If you move back where you were, you can’t see each other, and they can’t shoot you on their turn.”
- them: “I don’t see what the big deal is”
The wizard would also just blow spell slots for any excuse, adventuring day be damned. I was kind of peeved the DM gave him a full recharge during the boss fight for “plot reasons”.
In retrospect, the problem was me and it was good I left the group. They’re probably having a lot of fun with their playstyle. Maybe one day I’ll find a good group where everyone understands advanced concepts like “cover”.
Make it roleplay. See, this is why I loved Fourth Edition’s Warlord class.
“Haragrimm, you’ve exposed yourself! Scurry back before they return fire!”
Power gaming is fun if it’s also roleplay.
Mixed can be better. Rolling With Difficulty has a mixed group of players and it’s awesome. Red is an expert on tropes and always knows exactly what the DM is trying to do. Sophia has dice blessed by the gods and always pushes the big red button. Noir has a habit of dropping impassioned monologues that completely change the trajectory of the story. And Wally has absolutely wild builds that let them go up against incredibly powerful enemies.
If the party were all like Red, there wouldn’t be much momentum coming from the players. All Sophias, and nobody would actually understand what’s going on. All Noirs, and you get the Star Wars prequels. All Wallys, and the party would always play it safe and be boring. But with a mix, everyone shines.
Even better is when that one guy is the DM
I agree with you, but there have absolutely been games (specifically in Pathfinder 1E) that I had to approach from a mindset of trying to win. PCs can get so ridiculously overpowered in that game that it can be difficult to balance combat properly and sometimes requires you to pull out all the stops to make combat encounters engaging.
I’ve been playing in a game with my 11 year old nephew as the dm for the last few months and he’s like this. He’s great at the storytelling aspects of it but he gets pissed when we try to strategize before a fight and I somehow get critted at the beginning of every encounter… I ignore it because he’s a kid and I want to support him but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t getting old.
Talk to him till he is still young and malleable. People sometimes transform into the worst and if that happens only thing I can do is walk away with regret I didn’t nudge them before
I talk to my brother about it and he’s working with him but I don’t feel comfortable being too hard on him myself. He doesn’t have a lot of interests and I don’t want to be the one that screws this one up for him.
I try to win as the DM.
“Winning” in this case being that everyone had a good time.
And as a player who wants to do that too, I keep in mind that the DM is also playing the game and wants to have a good time.
Thank you! This is something that many people forget, both players and DMs.
Ugh, I’ve played with DMs who think it’s a game between them and the players, where their objective is to kill all the players without making it obvious that they’re doing that. Look, man. You’re literally God of this world, you don’t need to try to prove that you’re tougher. Frickin weirdos.
I have a player like this. He always specs out all the options on spreadsheets and tries to find the optimum builds for any RPG we play. Which is fine, but I got really tired of him telling everyone else how to play their characters in D&D that we’ve only been playing other RPGs for the past few years where build optimization is less of a thing.
