Even better is when that one guy is the DM
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.
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.
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.
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 have a friend who doesnt try to “win” per we, but does everything he can to be “different” than the rest of party. Its usually only mildly annoying.
Usually. We’re starting a Marvel Multiverse campaign, and everyone wants to be spiders for spider verse stuff, but not my friend. My friend wants to be a portal guy. I was like “what about phase spider?” Nah. Just mildly annoying.
Mildly annoying? That’s downright frustrating.
For me, D&D is a collaborative game. Players who go against group can leave.
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.
