D&D@40 Blog Hop: Day 19

This isn't my annoying gamer, but this guy represents the annoying attitude.

Day 19: First gamer who just annoyed the hell out of you.

I have to say that I haven't been annoyed with too many of my fellow gamers. At least, the ones I've played with directly. I've been near players at other tables who were annoying as hell. But usually, I'm a pretty good judge of character and I usually seem to settle in with the right roleplayers who won't be, you know, PENISES.

 

Let me just say this: I am a self-deprecating person. To a fault, sometimes. When I joke, I'm the butt of those jokes. Unless I'm with good friends and we bust each other's balls. Otherwise, self-deprecation time.

 

NOW, there's a class of nerd I've been exposed to over the years that uses sarcasm as a weapon in lieu of actual self esteem. You've probably experienced them yourself: they have nothing good to say about anyone else at the table. If there's a girl gaming with you, it's even worse. They ratchet up the nerd-sarcasm to the Nth degree.

 

I know their jibes and jabs are born of self-loathing and self-pity, but I just can't stomach it. Probably because I've always gone out of my way to do the exact opposite of what they do.

 

With all that preamble out of the way, the first gamer to ever annoy me coincidentally came into my teenaged gaming fold about the time we got into 2nd Edition D&D. He was indeed one of the sarcasm-slinging nerds. He also happened to be the one and only gamer who insisted on being an evil character all the time. His favorite type of character? Drow anti-paladins. 'Nuff said.

 

He also took, uh, kendo, I guess. You know, the martial art focused on using swords. So, do you know where this is going? Yes, that's right: every fight became an exercise in extreme tedium, because he absolutely had to CHOREOGRAPH each fight in excruciating detail. When it came time for his turn, he would jump up from his seat, grab his wooden practice sword, and begin to go through the motions of showing what stance he would take, and how his inevitable flurry of blows would progress, one step at a time.

 

This whole thing was made all the more ridiculous due to D&D's famously abstract combat system.

 

We played with this guy for a while, but eventually the rest of us got tired of his verbal abuse as well as his absurd insistence on creating intricate slow-motion "sword-fu" scenarios during sessions. Why did we put up with him? Well, we were a pretty insular group of lower-middle-class kids, with no real interest in branching out to find new players further afield (i.e. in another town). Yes, we were shy and wary of those potential gamers beyond our group of long-time friends.

 

Also...being dirt poor and living in South Jersey, GenCon basically took place on the moon every year. That's how improbable it was that any of us would get there. And living in South Jersey, as I've stated before, is basically living in the FLGS post-apocalypse.

 

But eventually we grew apart, went separate ways, and the nightmare that was that particular phase of my gaming career came to a blessed end! Here's to better days, and better gamers I have discovered since then!