A Player So Unlikable that a Charismatic Character was Unbelievable
Hello RPGHorrorstories, today I bring a short story and a question. The story is fairly short, and I am being a bit vague here as I don’t want to write out the several pages of lore and backstories that would be needed to contextualize every single character interaction. The story is a bit of an example, because I am curious if anyone else has ever encountered this dissonance of character and player.
My story is fairly simple, a couple friends and I recruited a few unknowns from a forum to play a game with us, with my friends and I having played together for the better part of a decade. One of these previously unknown players proved to be a bit of a problem, and I am going to be calling this person Player X. I will be referring to their character as Character X in this story. We were playing in a superhero setting, where our characters were delinquents on probation at a high school for superheroes. Character X was a preppy, popular rich girl with criminal parents. During session 0 and before the game started, there didn’t seem to be any issues, but those issues started to immediately crop up when we started playing.
Player X did not seem to grasp that even though “popular girls” in high school are often archetypically bitchy and fake, that having their character talk to everyone as if they were a small child and imply other characters were stupid to their face would not make them like her very much. Early in the game, Character X began to almost immediately start speaking in this way to my character, and later escalated the character conflict by attempting to publicly humiliate him in a pretty nasty way in front of the whole school at a party she was throwing. My character, who was intended to be volatile and a bit of a punk, responded by throwing hands, and later confronted character X and demanded what her problem was. Character X was evasive and refused to answer. Player X then complained out of session about the conflict, stating that it was no longer fun for them. This is completely fine, sometimes OOC conflict can get a bit hotter than intended, and things can be worked out OOC. I attempted to explain what my character was feeling, saying that because of a previously established connection where our characters were supposed to be on good terms, he felt betrayed by Character X, and that my character would probably apologize and forget about the whole thing if Character X tried to meet him in the middle, to which Player X refused, as “their character hadn’t done anything nearly comparable.” The GM then stepped in and ruled that they would just minimally interact for a session or two, we’d timeskip, and they’d forget about it and be cool, like a lot of teenagers do. We both seemingly agreed. The next day, I woke up to a full-page message in my DMs, where Player X explained to me, in the most condescending and passive aggressive way possible, that they did not consent to the way my character framed the incident, and demanded that I respect their non-negotiable boundaries that they control their own character, and that I rewrite the portion of my character’s backstory that included our characters being on good terms. I sent the message to my GM and let them handle it. Player X was told to just let the situation go, and they half-complied, albeit still making some pretty nasty remarks about my character and referencing the incident once or twice.
This wasn’t a major red flag, as Character X seemed to behave comparably with a plurality of the other characters in the game. At one point, Character X reported an NPC classmate and rival to school administration for bullying, and essentially got her months of detention. Immediately afterwards, Character X attempted to get the hero team of this NPC character to embark on a mission (without the other PCs) and was surprised when they did not want to comply, despite barely knowing her other than that she got their teammate put in eternal detention. She then called them cowards and losers, and was surprised that this did not motivate them to change their minds. On another occasion, Character X, in a scheme I still fail to understand, got another classmate nearly killed and seriously injured. After said scheme, Character X tried to have a sleepover with the Principal’s ward (another player character, who was also in trouble for unrelated shenanigans), and claimed they needed to stay with them because she did not feel safe at home. The principal demanded a further explanation, and Character X refused to elaborate, both on their scheme that nearly killed a classmate and feeling in danger. They were not allowed a sleepover, and when character X escalated a fight with the principal, calling her an “evil cunt,” among other things, were very surprised when character X was threatened with detainment. On both occasions (and several others) player X complained out of character about these incidents, and seemed to be surprised when the other players did not agree about the injustice of the situation.
The thing about Player X is that they behaved in a way very similar to their character, speaking with the same condescending tone and phrasing that their character did. They also would complain about the GM when the GM was not in call, criticizing that the GM wasn’t “yes and-ing” enough and that the other characters were receiving preferential treatment. When anyone else would try to explain why they were receiving the reaction they got, they were (apparently) shocked and argued why Character X was actually in the right. The game fell apart shortly after for semi-related reasons, but I still wonder if Player X genuinely believed that the character they were playing was likable in any way.
This comes to my question for the sub. I think it’s very possible for someone who doesn’t have a lot of charisma out of character to play a charismatic character, as things that can inform charisma like social confidence, quick thinking and good interpersonal instincts, and even more superficial things like eye contact and body language are less of an issue when roleplaying. However, when the player is someone who genuinely doesn’t see the reason why calling a bunch of people you barely know cowards and bitches wouldn’t motivate them to assist you in a potentially dangerous task, I think it might actually be impossible for that person to play a charismatic or likable character. Has anyone else played with someone (doesn’t have to be as serious as this story) where the player was so devoid of charisma that it carried over to their character?