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.
That one guy who insists on playing a Chaotic Evil character, no matter how (in)appropriate such a character would be for the campaign or not.
Y'all know at least one.
(I had a friend who kept playing Fish Malkavians, but thankfully he grew out of it and got better about integrating that kind of jokey character into the campaigns appropriately. Mostly by figuring out how to turn it down and not derail a campaign.)
Ugh. Malkavians. Speaking as a mentally ill, it's not fun being mentally ill and most Malk players I've run in to don't really get that.
Yeah, the only time I've seen Malks done well is when they kinda abandon the whole mental illness angle of the bloodline to focus on prophecy and being the Cassandra... things that fit in better with a supernatural horror setting.
I like that. Most Malk concepts I've seen end up being really cringe pop culture versions of dissassociative identity disorder, or just "I'm so random" fish malks.
I think it would have worked better if instead of saying they’re “mentally ill” they said they “embrace chaos” or something like that, they’re not really “insane” so much a s they’ve just embraced a different way of interacting with the world that makes them seem unhinged to everyone else.