I want to emphasize that so I don't get weird personal messages or the like from someone feeling called out. The things that annoy me, or annoy you, may not be bad for every tabletop group or campaign story, and may even be fun for some groups or there may be exceptions that make them bearable and so on and so on. :zizek-ok:
With that disclaimer aside, I'll list some of my pet peeves, both when I'm running a campaign and when I'm playing in one.
The exile that doesn't actually experience any stigma or negative social consequences for being exiled, but the player insists that the character is exiled somehow because it sounded cool and badass. This gets extra annoying if the exile thing nearly becomes a plot point but that plot point is thwarted because the person playing the exile starts to complain about it.
"The last" whatever they are. Some wonderful stories are about someone being the last of their kind, but when it's used as a cheap and lazy gimmick to try to make a character seem special in a paradoxically basic and commonly-used way, it annoys me.
The walking talking powergaming template. Yes, I can tell that the player knows the rulebook and supplemental materials well, but when asked who the character is, this is the person that talks about the template's superiority and often can't come up with even basic character motivations besides "win and dominate in a game that is supposed to be about cooperation and interactive storytelling."
Direct lifts from any existing well known IP. They aren't just uncreative; I have yet to see a player play such a character convincingly or even design the character well enough to match the intended material. I might actually be impressed if someone pulled it off for a one-off or casual campaign.
Characters that are just the player in real life, but transplanted into the setting with better stats and cool powers. I think it's nearly impossible (and probably not worth the effort) to try to play a character that has absolutely nothing in common with the player's personality, interests, quirks, or the like, but with that said, a direct player-is-the-character player is almost always going to be trouble. In my experience, setbacks, injuries, and especially death can and often will make such players take it very personally, get vindictive, and sometimes have an Epic G*mer moment that can get profane, even violent. Not fun.
I get kind of iffy when someone wants to play the strong, silent type. That usually means they want to focus more on combat, which is the part about tabletop RPGs that I am least interested in. Same with any kind of powergaming really. I'm not pissed at any person for finding joy in looking for ways to maximize their character's combat potential. It can be fun to play around with numbers and try to find ridiculous combinations that do weird stuff, and I don't begrudge anyone that fun. But when it comes to actually playing, this pretty much means that these players are trying to maximize the part of the game I enjoy the least, so it goes in my list of pet peeves.
One time, a "strong silent" character did a lot of body language and was actually quite a likeable concept. He was almost the party's mascot, in that silent but expressive way. :cursed:
Oh, it's not impossible to do well, just a bit of a red flag that this player may be looking for a different kind of game than me. I guess it's when the player wants to be silent I don't like it. Sometimes you will get someone who wants to play a bodyguard kind of character that just stands by and pretty much does nothing until combat starts. I hate that. Someone doing a lot of body language is engaging with the group and participating in a way that I think would be fun.
This is something that I’ve sorely missed since moving to online gaming because of covid/people moving. Hamming it up with body language and overacting doesn’t translate to a tiny window in the corner of a screen