Forbidden banished exiles. Especially in MMORPGs, I've found that the most common overall in-setting guild theme is "we don't belong in the society that this setting established." It's not just in MMORPGs, of course. It's often a crutch (or training wheels, if I'm being generous) for some roleplayers to participate by not participating. I'm not saying that a character (or a player for that matter) has to bend the knee to Lord So-And-So, but it's kind of hard to find plot excuses for the the forbidden banished exile to even be in the same picture, let alone get the quest to do the thing.

Plot armor dependents. Yes, it's quite likely that if I'm running the game and telling the story that I won't have the guards kill a player character on sight even if they do something exceptionally stupid just to see what happens, like stabbing a random citizen. Those kind of players don't tend to last long if their only contribution is "try to knock down the props just to see what happens on set."

People that directly lift an established character in well known fiction, often just changing the spelling, and often not even trying to resemble or act like that character. In an older MUD, I recall a "Frrodoh Bhaginz" that was a Half-Ogre hunter. Again, it didn't ruin the game, but it was annoying. I admit it can sometimes be a red flag warning, and a helpful one, if the lifted name is from chud fiction, like if they have "Rahl" in their name. It can show me what to expect, either in a tabletop group or in a MMORPG guild.

  • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I mean, the other side of the coin is a character who is totally sub-optimized and can't hit the broad side of a barn with a nat-20 / blows through all their resources in the first encounter / doesn't understand any of the mechanics of the game so they just kinda sit there doing nothing.

    I tend to find entry level players do better at low-levels of the game, where the mechanics are simpler and there's less room to go ham. But I also find that Dave 2-rounding the Final Boss clears time to do things other than attack rolls and saving throws. When you inject puzzles and social encounters and other story-based events into the game, min-maxing matters less and player cohesion matters more.

    I also like to crib from the JRPG trope of "This Isn't Even My Final Form" when I'm at a truly dramatic encounter, as it gives interludes for PC/NPC banter and other non-murder based story interactions.