Suicidal Players

[Killer Cyborg]

Have the other players play characters who are pretty cold-blooded and practical, and who will gun down anybody who they see as a threat to the mission.
That way the other PCs will be able to kill the guy before he causes too much trouble.

If that doesn't work, have him only play characters that cannot actually interfere with the real world, or just boot him out of the group.

[Spinachcat]

Do the other players enjoy the player whose characters seem to cause so much chaos? Or are they bored of his antics?

How does the trouble player respond to his characters getting blow away? Is his fun trying to find new ways to get blasted?

Are you punishing him with character death for every mistake he makes? Why are some of his mistakes (liking trying to activate the SAMAS) not non-lethal in their failures? Especially since I am unsure if a dwarf's physique (short and wide) would even fit into a human sized SAMAS suit.

I suggest that if you want him in your group, then try to punish his foolish actions in non-lethal ways. Let's take the SAMAS situation. Have him get stuck halfway in the suit. Let's see what he does with that. When he tries to trigger the guns, the security override codes set off an alarm. The CS guards show up and taser his ass into submission. Now he's captured. What does he do? Do the CS just execute him? Nope, they send him to a slave labor camp. If he fails to escape the camp, they don't kill him either. They put a pain harness on his neck.

Make death hard to achieve for that player...for there are things worse than death!!

[csbioborg]

deux machina saves of the nonidiot pcs Make sure everyone else is advacing with exp and good eqipment and he starts over per level one occ basics He'll either get feed up and play well or quit as he is being left behind in advancement

[drewkitty ~..~]

Got nothing to say but that I like LN's penalty additions tot he exp. table.
-5000 APM to the next three chars....*shivers*

-->Munchkin reaction *Makes a juicier mutant octopus with ambidextrous, ex spd, lighting reflexes......*"gona burn through those negative APMs in a few sessions"

[Spinachcat]

I do not agree with any XP punishment. This is not school and the GM is not Table Mommy. People play games for fun and not to be punished. Your game is not an intelligence test, it's just a spot of fun.

I run very vicious games, but too much character death will tell everyone characters are meaningless pieces of paper. Consider this: zero HP can equal unconscious and dying, not death. Maybe if he plays the same character over several sessions and develops a backstory and personality, he may become less likely to lose him so easily.

Few people will play or even try Palladium games (or any RPG) and this kind of player abuse will never earn converts. Why play an RPG where the GM slaps you around like a little kid when you can play WoW or meet up with another group who plays D&D or something more friendly?

Zuari, you describe this guy as a great roleplayer, nice guy and good gamer. That's gold and you need to find a way to balance his sense of fun with the group. Or you are going to lose him. It sounds like you are running a hyper-realistic game and he thinks he's in an action movie. Obviously there is a disconnect.

Try this. If he has a bad idea, tell him his character thinks that's a bad idea because of A, B and C and tell him to try something else. Give him a flash of the future based on his action. Then reward him strongly if he does something that makes more sense.

Or send him to somebody running an Exalted game. They would probably love to have him. And then he can buy lots of White Wolf books instead.

[jedi078]

In this situation get rid of the guy.

[Marcethus]

I think you need to talk to the guy and let him know that your game may not be the one for him. With you running a hyper realistic game I think what he's looking for is a more anime/comic book based game. He needs to find a HU group or a group that plays Ninja's and Superspies.

But if he seems to be roleplaying more and doing well then go for it and keep him around.

[Marcethus]

We had a similar problem in our group..one of the players had a character which had extremely high attributes and the player loved him. The character died in the campaign and the player rolled up another character but did not get the high attributes so he intentionally committed suicide so he could roll up a better character. When he still did not get what he wanted he started to try to kamikaze the character. We as the group with the GM came up with new Experience Point Awards (and Demerits, notice the negatives).

Experience Points Table

A guide to awarding Experience Points.

Experience Point Action
Reward
Combat
-300 Unnecessary violence that gets the rest of the group in trouble.
-100-300 Unnecessary violence
0 (ZERO) Fighting to just show off, too proud to stand down, gets the rest of the group in trouble, or any stupid or selfish acts.
25-50 Killing or subduing a minor menace.
75-100 Killing or subduing a major menace
150-300 Killing or subduing a great menace
Other Actions, Reasoning & Role-Playing
-5000 Actions which get other player’s killed or seriously harmed, per character penalty. (Applies to next three characters)
-2000 Actions which get party NPC’s members killed or seriously. (Applies to next character also)
-1000 Committing Suicide (Applies to next character)
-200 Actions which endanger another character’s life and or a few comrades.
-100 Stupid or shellfish act which endangers characters own life.
-10-25 Not thinking before acting
-25 Bad judgment
10-25 Performing a skill (successful or not)
25 Clever, but futile idea
100 Clever, useful idea or action.
100 Quick thinking idea or action
200 A critical plan or action that saves the character’s life and or a few comrades.
400-1000 Critical plan or action that saves the entire group or many people.
50-100 small act of self-sacrifice (not putting the character’s life in any real danger), or an act of kindness, mercy or compassion.
100-300 Endangering the character’s own life to help others.
500-700 Self-sacrifice (or potential self- sacrifice) in a life and death situation (like leaping in front of a laser blast meant for someone else to save that person, even though he/she is likely to die, or offering his/her own life to save the group or another). Odds are the character really will die.
50-100 Avoiding unnecessary violence
100-200 Deductive reasoning and/or insight.
50 Good judgment
50 Good role-playing
50-100 Playing in character when it would have been easier not too.
75-150 Playing in alignment when circumstances or powerful temptation begged otherwise.
50-100 Daring or heroic (whether clever or not)
Character creation and other stuff
-100 Cheating on die rolls. (per roll) Only GM can change the die!

I think any negative exp chart is a bunch of BS you can penalize a chara for by giving him less exp than the other players but you don't need a chart to do it. Alot of the things that you have negative exp for I could see being hampering to a good roleplay of some character styles. Said chara would have to mature as play went on (the reason for in game penalties as well as just giving less exp to the player while rewarding the ones that are doing good both in game and with exp). Also applying penalties to multiple characters of one player is extremely poor judgement in my opinion.

[Marcethus]

Exactly as a GM as well I reward players for creative thinking and stuff if they do something stupid the player will suffer the consequences of the actions if that players actions causes harm against the other PC's they are free to act in character to do whatever their character's personality sees fit. without me interfering in it. Alot of those penalties in there especially the not standing down and down right selfish one is wrong in my opinion, after all what is the Anarchist alignment for or Unprincipled but Selfish Characters? So in closing I would say that if a player is being overly suicidal in your games talk to the player tell him you are running a hyper realistic game. Let him know that the Action Movie stunts could get him killed. Then if he continues doing so let him suffer the consequences. Both from NPC's and from the other players. But penalizing EXP is always bad form.

Also I don't use any sort of EXP chart when I give out exp I just give out what I feel that the players have earned for the session. though I do use the chart as a basis for stuff but not overly so.

[Marcethus]

Exactly as a GM as well I reward players for creative thinking and stuff if they do something stupid the player will suffer the consequences of the actions if that players actions causes harm against the other PC's they are free to act in character to do whatever their character's personality sees fit. without me interfering in it. Alot of those penalties in there especially the not standing down and down right selfish one is wrong in my opinion, after all what is the Anarchist alignment for or Unprincipled but Selfish Characters? So in closing I would say that if a player is being overly suicidal in your games talk to the player tell him you are running a hyper realistic game. Let him know that the Action Movie stunts could get him killed. Then if he continues doing so let him suffer the consequences. Both from NPC's and from the other players. But penalizing EXP is always bad form.

Also I don't use any sort of EXP chart when I give out exp I just give out what I feel that the players have earned for the session. though I do use the chart as a basis for stuff but not overly so.

I personally think it's good to give your players a very good idea of what kind of behavior will get them experience. Having GM'd several different groups over the past almost 15 years, it's very easy to get into "lazy GM behavior" and assign "what you feel" they earned. Many times the contributions made 6-10 hours earlier in a session will go forgotten (or at least of dimineshed importance). It's far more fair to players to commit not only to keeping the plot moving, but also the score board up-to-date. Imagine what would happen in a basketball game if they did something similar.

Thats why I keep notes through out the game of who does what and what they earned I just don't use a chart to tell me what to give out.

[Spinachcat]

Make him play instead what he really wants to: that crappy Shadowrun video game that came out recently and kick his **** out of the group.

Absolutely! Maybe he should go play some D&D with GMs who want the game to be about fun and enjoyment instead of punishment or behavior modification via XP scoring. Then he can buy D&D books and forget all about that other company and their games...like the thousands and thousands of other ex-Rifts fans.

[Marcethus]

-300 Unnecessary violence that gets the rest of the group in trouble.
-100-300 Unnecessary violence
0 (ZERO) Fighting to just show off, too proud to stand down, gets the rest of the group in trouble, or any stupid or selfish acts.
-5000 Actions which get other player’s killed or seriously harmed, per character penalty. (Applies to next three characters)
-2000 Actions which get party NPC’s members killed or seriously. (Applies to next character also)
-1000 Committing Suicide (Applies to next character)
-200 Actions which endanger another character’s life and or a few comrades.
-100 Stupid or shellfish act which endangers characters own life.
-10-25 Not thinking before acting
-25 Bad judgment
-100 Cheating on die rolls. (per roll) Only GM can change the die!

Everything I read about this just makes the players only play something you want them to, not what they want to.

I completely agree which is why i think that its a BS table and should never ever be used.

[Mouser13]

Sounds like you making it to easy on them to make new characters.
My first question are you making him restart at level 1?

[Aramanthus]

Nice additions to the experience point table. Thank you for sharing them.

[tmikesecrist3]

reminds me of some ppl I use to play with.... there was one guy, thats battle cry for the hole game was "what, I have magic" and your setting there yea jack (call hem jack not going to use his real name) thats nice... it might have been help full ten min ago.... or "what I have this spell" yes jack that would have helped us kill the moster... but jack what good does it do us now that the monster is dead? he drown with the breath with out air spell.... he was a night bane with a metal morephs, and 2 mechan gun arms. he could swim in hes normal form, but drown traying to save his ammo which at this point had ben emirced in water and would have been in reliable any way