#insertcatchphrase

Whoops! Missed this ask, sorry for the long delay in answering!

Class - What class do you absolutely hate to play and why?

I’ve got to say that I most dislike playing classes that mix Tank & DPS, like a Fighter, Barbarian, Battlemind or Shaman. They always seem to have a tendency to become an overpowered killing machine, with little opportunities for actual roleplaying.

I like my characters to have some big flaws and the Tank/DPS mix seems too invulnerable to me. Perhaps I’m just not playing them right!

I don’t mind playing Tank & Support together, like a cleric, as those class types seem to go together well with my playstyle and I enjoy being the over-protective damage soak and healer.

Endurance - What’s your worst tabletop experience?

Hm, well I’ve been very lucky in that the vast majority of my games have been with good friends and things have gone pretty smoothly. I’ve already answered a similar question about my worst experience as a player but, since this is for the GM asks, I’ll talk about the worst GM experience I’ve had.

We were playing a standalone game with the usual roster of players but I knew something was going to happen as soon as we started. A married couple were playing (Let’s call them Tom & Laura) and, strangely, they didn’t arrive together. When Laura came in, she looked exhausted and Tom’s normally cheerful face was drawn.

The trouble truly started when we began rolling characters. Nothing Laura came up with was good enough for Tom. Her choices were cliche, her character was boring, even her character’s name was ridiculous to him. He started picking away at her and she began reacting in increasingly angrily snipes.

You could feel the storm brewing.

Other players sensed it and there were some attempts to diffuse everything, players making a joke out of being the most cliche, the silliest. I tried to hurry everything along, reasoning that the sooner we started playing, the sooner everyone could lose themselves in the fiction.

I was wrong.

Long story short, the game just made everything worse. Tom & Laura co-opted the whole story to play out their argument. I honestly believe they didn’t mean to but suddenly a story about epic adventure turned into a constant stream of party bickering.

It ended up with Laura crying on my shoulder in the garden while Tom paced up and down in a frustrated mess. Needless to say, not much fun roleplaying was done that night.

The group was so collectively upset by the whole experience that we didn’t meet to play for a long time afterwards and, when we did, a list of house-rules for behavior had been drawn up.

I’m happy to say that we’ve never had this problem again. Tom & Laura are both valued and brilliant players in the group and some of my best friends. I think if we all had been just a little more experienced with the emotional hazards of role-playing when stressed, we could have avoided the whole thing.

TLDR: Player conflict never helps a game when it’s brought to the table. House rules for behavior are a must-have!