Fun fact: Seth became a horror writer as cover for why his search history looked the way it did after he dealt with the pit trap guy.

How to deal with worldbreaker: never answer these questions in terms of what you know, answer them in terms of what the character knows.

Jeff would have known how that pit trap worked.

I have another one: the living corpse. They seem to be at the table only physically but do not pay attention, do not take notes, do not interact with their fellow players and (in recent times) stay on their phones AL THE TIME...

Who else comes to these videos with a bundle of anxieties worrying if "Am I like that?"

Tester: “You passed the test!” DM: “…You didn’t.” Tester: “What do you mean? What test?” DM: “Whether or not it’s fun for ME to DM for YOU.”

Me: Haha these are such absurd examples. Seth: It's all real. Me: *takes stress damage*

Six: The Coward. The players that see every challenge as an insurmountable obstacle. These players will abandon whole quest lines and derail entire campaigns by saying they want to go elsewhere because their characters are in over their heads. This forces the dungeon master to either create a game with intentional minimal resistance, or constantly write new adventures because the players don't want to face the challenges the DM has created, leading to the DM burning out and resenting his group. I'm not salty.

I feel like this could be retitled "Five People Who Sabotage Their Own Fun" in life in general.

My favorite parts are when you just call the player out, "This player is a dick."

man alive this hits home. My in-game "code" for "I haven't figured this out yet" is to name the inn the players want to stay at "The Bouncing Buffalo". They have learned that every time they stay at the Bouncing Buffalo it's a generic tavern that I threw in for them. Yeah the World Breaker still objects to it, but the other players now laugh at him because they know and love the place. Sometimes they tell him, "It's obviously a franchise!" stuff like that.

When it come to the world breakers, I would always say "Who are you talking too? Is your character talking to himself? He would need to find someone in town to ask. If you want to spend your time talking to the local elders to see if someone knows, that's great. But no one in this location would know the answers to these questions." If all else fails, double the wandering monsters.

I remember Seth calculating the blood needed to be collected for the Mithril Valves puzzle in Tomb of Horrors. 😂

Literally me last D&D session: - I use my stone cunning ability, tell me what I can learn about this random tavern in this random village! - it's just a random tavern dude... - okay, sorry, my bad :D

The pit trap part reminds of when my group spent 40 minutes doing the math on pushing over a pot. Our gm was a physics major and it was pretty funny

The world breaker is a common figure on Internet forums as well. Especially RPG forums. I can't tell you how many times I've see discussions derailed because people want to start arguing about the inner workings of things that don't exist in the first place like FTL drives.

The real world breaker watching this video: "That's not even how my hair looks! That's fine I guess. I just hoped you'd made it realistic."

I become a Pouter when I go too long without an RPG Philosophy video.

I knew a guy…cuoisidently he is/was the Dweebles of the group…that was the pouter keg. Depended on the night, but he was either pouting or slamming thing around when it didn’t go towards his plan…

I had a world breaker in one of my games constantly looking into all the details of everything I put in front of him. We kind of turned it into a joke when I started saying things like, "Dammit Jim! I'm a Dungeon Master, Not and engineer!" or something to that affect every time he began world breaking. I'm sorry your world breaker threw off your rhythm. v_v!

The tester and similar types of players who waste time are probably the worst. Not that I don't enjoy a slowly moving game but then for someone to do everything to derail or poke holes into it is just so disrespectful. It's already really, REALLY difficult to organize a gaming session among 4-5 people who have jobs and other things in their lives, that it's infuriating when you eventually get to have a game session and then it devolves into these types of shenanigans. By the way, your RPG social contract video is top notch and more people really should see it.

Man, the bit about world breakers just kills me every time. "Oh how exactly does this spell work?" idk dude it's magic, we're using abstract rules for a reason

Tester: "I was testing you. Congratulations, you past." Me: "That's funny, so was I. Don't let the door hit ya on the way out."

Why you gotta call me out like this Seth? Not once but five times in one video!

"How does the trap work?" * Saxophone begins to play. "A wizard did it!"

I love the tester. "I go to the movies, what's playing?" Like dude, you chose to play an RPG. It's like being in a horror movie you gotta run up the stairs! hahaha

I deal with world breakers by asking them the details they ask for and letting them world build if that's the details they want. Sometimes it even turns into an adventure.

The silky smooth voice of Seth Skorkowsky telling us like it is! Love these videos.

I missed these.

The trapdoor guy was real?! Holy Molly! I thought it was an exaggeration to show the traits of that kind of player! So sorry you had to deal with that level of bs. Uff.

I've been watching these for years and I still have a hard time remembering that all these skit characters are the same actor. The voices alone are perfect.

its shocking how fast negativity can infect people

I’d be honestly concerned for what might be going on in Dweebles life outside the game that might be stressing him out. That behavior was way out of character for him.

I've definitely been a pouter in the past. But I cut that shit out when I wasn't having fun. Mostly due to watching the RPG social contract

I feel very fortunate for having only experienced a few of these at the table. Some, like the Agitator, are just universal and it sucks when that kind of person also brings it to a game.

Sadly, all of these tropes have darkened the seats of my gaming table. There is one more: the Jokester. The fellow who deliberately assassinates the game atmosphere by non-stop non-sequiturs or toilet humor or out of character inanities. "The collapse has settled and ahead of you your flashlights claw through the settling dust to reveal statues of antediluvian antiquity. A passage leads on, the choking dust in the air now mingling with the faint stench of rotting fish..." Player: "Man I hate it when monsters forget to take out the compost. We should call the city and complain, let them clean this place out and get back to the public house for some beer and darts." or "I'm angling for some clues. There's some thing fishy here. Is there music here - because I'd hate it if it was out of tuna. Cod I hate that. Hey! I just kidding, no reason to trout about it!". OI!

The Raiders of the Lost Ark light trap? There's a light sensitive mushroom patch growing on the wall. When the light is interrupted it shrivels (or coils) in response, triggering the trap. At least, that's what I did when I ran The Raiders opening sequence as a dungeon.

My experience with a worldbreaker was that they where actually motivated by trying to find 'loopholes' to exploit in the world. They often had a plan in mind already of some spell or ability they wanted to use for some non-standard way and rather than just saying up front what they want to do, instead ask leading and specific questions inorder to try to trap the GM in advance. It's when the GM unintentionally blocks their idea that they claim something is 'not realistic' and pout. It's a playstyle of someone that thinks they need to outsmart the DM rather than play together.

Watching this makes me grateful for the two players I have with cyberpunk 2020.

One that I had some bad experiences with is the Flexer, the player with something to prove. I've played with someone who just NEEDED others to see that he knew the rules (so a lot of rules lawyering), that he had the best stats (which resulted in a lot of metagaming), that he was the best roleplayer (attention hog), that he had the coolest backstory, etc., and it got genuinely grating. This even extended to his GMing, which felt incredibly like he was trying to "beat" the players more than anything, just to show that he could.

My brother-in-law was a bit of a worldbreaker. His wife created a whole homebrew game from the ground up, including an enormous detailed map full of continents. He told all his friends how amazing this game was gonna be, bragging about his wife's skills, all the hours' worth of adventures we'll have, etc. First game session, he announces that he wants to commission a ship and sail off into the unexplored ocean.

I like how the agitator is in a Cyberpunk Red game

The micro-world breaker reminds me of a time a player got me to go into the details of how a door worked, how it was attached, how big it was, what it was made out of, etc. I made up answers on the fly to try to keep it real, and then he used my made up answers plus some dice rolls to develop a way to defeat a significant trap/problem solving challenge. Caught me off guard. Played me like a fiddle.

I actually know how that Raiders of the Lost Ark trap worked. It's advanced alien photo-optics tech. Don't forget that that scene took place in Peru, where Indy would later find the Crystal Skull tech too.

I'm guilty of being the tester. I'm going to ring up my old GM and apologize to him for that. Thanks for resurfacing those memories.

The problem with the worldbreaker isn't the excited digging into details, it's the scale and the purpose. I wish I had a lightweight worldbreaker or two in my games, one who is willing to accept "this is a fiction constructed by one human" but still likes digging to see how detailed the fiction is. Having the worldbreaker DM a session or two also seems like a pretty easy cure.

Wow. I'm an active gamemaster since 2000, I played with dozens of players, and I never encounterd the Tester. I'm familiar with the other player types (on this list and on Seth's other lists), but this one is completly new to me. Lucky me, I guess. :)

I think the poor reaction to stealth rolls is because video games so often insta-kill the player when they get spotted, or stack the game to an unwinnable degree.

I think all of us have these tendencies in ourselves to varying degrees, but some people just seem to be unable to avoid "going there" to their misery place(s) over and over. It's really hard to deal with someone with serious emotional issues.

Everyone (especially the Pouter) takes it so personally when the dice don't go their way, although sometimes it's because the DM takes that opportunity to stick it to the player and tell them how much they and their character suck. When I DM, I usually try to tell the story as though, instead of the character failing horribly, the situation itself was just surprisingly insurmountable despite their prodigious skills. Maybe that Guard they can't seem to hide from or hit is actually "The Captain".

Worldbreaker is my #1 for sure. Just listening to your skit of the worldbreaker was enough to get under my skin. Personally I found a solution that works pretty well when dealing with this kind of player. I respond in an honest, direct, and terse manner. "I don't personally know how pit traps work, but it's not an important aspect of the game to me. It's just a game mechanic." If a player feels like realistic pit trap mechanics are important to them, they are free to find another group. Usually this method works pretty well since in my experience the worldbreaker never actually wants to find another group and the mechanics of the pit trap don't actually matter to them that much.

The pit trap "You climb down. You hear a click. The trap has locked into place. What's the rest of the party doing?" The town "After several days of research, you begin to run out of money. But you are making good contacts with the village elders. A merchant sees that you are clever and offers you a job as a clerk. What's the rest of the party doing?"

Sometimes you just have to tell a Worldbreaker “It’s magic” Magically treated rope was example

Dweebles should have done a Fight Back instead of Dodge. I can't believe you railroaded him like that! Glad to see you doing these again!

I met a pouter, he was the worst. He got arrested for trying to pickpocket a town guard, got chased fumbled his rolls and ended up seriously injured after a nasty fall and arrested. We spent the whole session brainstorming about busting him out (since our characters were on a tight schedule and needed to get out of town and on with the mission ASAP) All he did was sit back, frown. Occasionally he'd interject to winge and just slowly sap everyone's energy and willingness to rescue him.

Enjoying (for a given value) both the flashbacks to past tabletop groups and how relevant to live-roleplaying fests these examples are.

The best mindset to have is definitely: It's just a game.

Once again, I forgot that all these guys are Seth. He is so good at portraying them all.

the personalised captions are such a huge bonus on skorkowsky videos. one of the many reasons youre my favorite rpg content creator by far. sincerely, me and my friends with hearing issues

5:12 I'm imagining if the map had been a 3d globe he still would have pointed away from it. 🤣 _Let's go to space!! 🙃_

I had a experience once where the GM slowly turned the whole table into a group of complainers. Sometimes we just felt things were unfair like at one point we were fighting a buffed up vampire, we got it down pretty low and managed to get it into a beam of sunlight, where it promptly restored all of its health and got a bonus to AC and damage and we had to kill it all over again apparently the only way to kill this vampire was to throw salt on its coffin which we only found out because an NPC did it. Then another time we saved up a ridiculous amount of money because we wanted to buy a castle and just randomly we get teleported to 'The Thieves' Realm' which was never mentioned before or after and the only way to escape was to give all of our money up. So after a level 3-10 campaign of this everytime the GM did anything we were all being extremely picky about it and complaining the whole way through. Luckily we all got out over time but they were a friend so I was one of the last to go.

I don't like how The critic awoken repressed memories, I was born in 1990 and I just remembered that show existed

I think a way to sum up a lot of DND complaints is that it's less a game and more a collaborative story-telling experience. The dice rolls are just there to add some honesty to what boils down to "Well my dude has a crossbow and shoots your dude in the head!" and forces some depth of thought into what options your character has available.

Last player I had to ask to leave our group was a Powder Keg. The sad part is, he was great to play with for years then developed that personality later. After the rest of us spent way too long trying to help him (to no avail), it became too much to deal with. For the last 10 years our group has been A+! In 40 years of gaming I have never ran into a World Breaker or a Tester. I never knew players like this existed. See, this old dog can learn something new!

We are not prepared for Dweebles' RAGE.

Your RPG Philosophy videos are always gold, and not just for understanding how people play at the table. Thanks Seth.

It’s really funny coming back and rewatching this. I just had a session of D&D where I rolled five ones in a row, the worst luck I’ve ever had. And I was annoyed but I was able to laugh it off for the most part and kept the game going

Thanks for this video, Seth! I'm a bit of a newcomer to the channel and TTRPGs in general, and I've found myself coming back to this series often, both as a player and a game master. I appreciate the new installment!

Woof...this is too accurate 😳 I should be able to subtly send this to a few people. Awesome job as always!

Powder Keg pouting: "Figures!" So good

Your list videos are pretty much my favorites- I always find something I can relate to !

I've never dealt with a 'Tester' but I totally understand why you hate that more than the rest.

I'm a simple man: the Gang's back in force, I click like, comment and start sharing the video everywhere :D

I had a player, who also DM'd and worked in construction, who was kinda the world-breaker just because of his expertise. He'd want to take off doors and be hyper specific about how he interacts with traps so they don't go off.

I came across a few of these during my years as a Dm. Only one solution, talk to the player privately, if they dont understand and change their behaviour = Fired.

This is what is so great about D&D. It has the potential to teach you on how to deal with problem people.

This is a great video and really has helped me self reflect, and really helped put things in perspective. Thank you so much Seth, you continue to help me be a better Story Teller and Player

You nailed this one. I have a game ending because of a player like this who has many of these behaviors. I have entire world I made for this group simply because the ONE player didn't want to play in the world I have had for over 20 years with 11 binders full of materials and games, that everyone else seemed to love. Now he is unsatisfied AGAIN and says this will be the last game he plays in. Well this time I accept. I am done. No game, sad as that is, is better than a bad game. Watching this video was therapy for me.

I have to admit. Your videos, the soothing effect of your voice, helps me get through dumb stressful nights. Love what youre doing homie! much love.

I'm gonna add one from my own personal expiriance. The drunk, someone who sees every game as an excuse to get wasted even if they're the only one who's drinking. You can imagine how the game devolves overtime with one person getting more drunk as the game continues until everything breaks down. After a few games just trying to put up with this I tried confronting the guy from my group but it ended with "it's how you have fun" and "this is why I'm the only one having fun" kind of bullcrap from them and ultimately refusing to stop. As you can imagine, I don't play with him anymore.

I always enjoy your videos man! Espically the rpg philosophy ones. They always remind me that I'm going to run into problems at all levels and there are solutions to those problems.

One more thing I'd like to say about the World Breaker section that I routinely need to remind myself of just for regular worldbuilding: You don't need to be an engineer to design a fantasy world. Nor do you need to be a geographer, geologist, astrophysicist, meteorologist, biologist, anthropologist, or historian. ('Astrophysicist' is there because I had to stop myself from looking up orbital mechanics after deciding my world had two moons.)

Seth, as always, this is great

I'm just starting to get worried I'm one or all of these guys.

I actually had an experience with a "Pouter GM" a year or so ago. A local shop I frequented hosted a weekly D&D 5E game, and a local "gaming group" agreed to run the games for the shop and had began running a published campaign module. The original DM was decent, but their work schedule changed and another in the group stepped in to take their place. That player had been trying to develop their own RPG system because he THOUGHT that 5E was "broken", and that they could do better. (They couldn't.) One week they asked if we would mind doing a "playtest" of their so-called game system that was "better" (it wasn't). It amounted to them having just rearranged some of the 5E rules and changed the names of some terms, and the "playtest" was nothing more than turning the session into a tabletop skirmish game with no actual plot and repetitively doing the same battle over and over again. Then they bring it out again for more "playtesting", and was basically just hijacking our D&D game that the players WANTED to play. Some of us complained to the shop owner because we felt that this DM was pulling a bait and switch with our game and we and wanted to continue and finish the campaign. So this DM (a grown adult, mind you) starts the next session of the campaign we were playing and the very first battle, pretended to be all frazzled/confused and declared that the math/rules were "too hard" and had to leave the table for 20 minutes to work out how to do it, and then just tried to shoehorn some of the rules of their own game into it. Again, some of the players complained about the obvious attempt to pull a bait and switch on us. The next 2 or 3 times, that GM would show up, sit at a table by himself all pouty, and then conveniently "get sick", and have to be taken home (didn't drive) before the night's game even got started. Then they claimed to be sick and didn't show up at all. Then another person in the group took over GMing duties, but they just rushed the rest of the campaign to the "end", because they wanted to start on a different one. They did start the new one but didn't finish it, because at that point everyone with that "gaming group" started acting sketchy and just being no-shows on their commitments to run the games for that shop. This caused a good number of our core players to just quit because they were tired of this group's BS.

Yay, a new list video! Been missing these

I was gaming with a powder keg when I was a teen. They were an adult. When things didn't go their way and I beat their character, they threw their 3-ring binder rules collection across the room. I'm sitting there scared and wondering if he's getting physical with me next. Some groups you just walk away from.

I have been on the edge of my seat in anticipation for a new video of yours Seth. Your videos always excite me for more roleplaying. In fact I have a game tomorrow night.

My first time in a group, I was playing a sorcerer. We come across a room, one side had a pool of fire and the other half had a pool of water. As we near either pool, the fire/water would strike at us. I asked normal questions to determine what was going on...was it an elemental or was the element taking shape on its own...stuff a normal person with above average intelligence would do. The DM said the pool remained filled, instead of displacing the water/fire. This meant that the element was an elemental, since if the water were otherwise magically formed, areas of the pool would dry up to make the water/fire move upward and take form. So, we had a guy with something that controlled elementals. He used it, to no effect. This, as a man of studies, that a sorcerer should be, made my in character conclusion that it was an illusion. So, I determine that with this knowledge, I could ignore the illusion, or at least have a chance to ignore it. After explaining myself, the DM changed his response as to whether the water displaced or not. Instead of adjusting and allowing my deduction, he determined to not invite me back to the next session. It could also be that our next encounter was a beholder, whom I, thinking that the DM wouldn't throw us up against a beholder at our low levels, determined it to also be an illusion...so I lifted my robe and pissed on it to show it was an illusion...it wasn't.

It is always nice to have a Seth Skorkowsky video! Calming and to help everyone be better players at the table, because in the end we all just want to have fun but not take it from someone else's. Hopefully I'll be as cool as you some day.

I didn't realize how much I had missed these list videos.

It's great to see these again! I really enjoyed the call back to the Role Play Terrorist. A couple of those consistently ruined my Conan game to the point where we as a group just didn't want to game together anymore. Granted I know I made mistakes as a GM as well but these folks only seemed to want to gather with the specific purpose of stopping other ppl's fun. I was lucky though bc I found a new group who are great and we've been having a great time with a game of Traveller.

Our group roleplays the bad dice rolls in our game like my middle aged fighter failed a strength check (rolled a nat 1 and even with +8 it still failed) so I made up a war wound from the past that acts up alongside his belief that he can still move like he's twenty again.

Another awesome vid Seth, always look forward to them!

I empathize with the pit trap issue. As a player when I run across someone like this I just say "Can we just move on, this isn't important."

Every video you make is Great. Definitely one of rhe most ingenious and imaginative material on KZfaq.

Thank you very much for the subtitles. Very appreciated.

These example strike a cord with me. I think I have some PTSD from my old gaming group due to these personality types. Seth, have you read Robin’s Laws? Would be interesting to see a video on how to create a game that offers something for everyone (as Robin’s Laws suggests). Thanks for the great content! I always look forward to your videos!

I freakin love these Seth. You give the best rpg insights. Thanks

Oh man this is giving me flashbacks to my first games!