Paul uses Firefox… and windows.

IE is a work thing. Don’t ask me why we use it.

Ps:
HTML?

I’ll have no truck with your demon tongue. Be gone foul pestilent pustule on the bottom of a camels scrotum.

This of course is no bad thing, except when the player has created a character totally incompatible with the the game and the other players. Examples include the D&D pacifist.

Most often heard saying ‘but this is what my charcater would do’ as he generally screws the party over.

The Capacitor argument I’ve head a dozen times, usually when the GM is a physicist. We normals have little clue what a capacitor is (no, really) and we don’t care. Likewise I don’t expect any of you guys to know anything about cell biology or tramission vectors of viruses inside living hosts. Hence these do not become subplots. Likewise if I’m playing Star Trek and I come up with a pseudoscience explanation for something in the fashion of the show, the wrong thing to do is for the Gm to just say “No.” This happened once because the GM wanted us to find HIS solution to the problem which would then set us up for later attack, yadda yadda. He didn’t think of letting us run with my idea, letting me feel all clever but NPCs warning us that the “field could collapse at any minute, Cap’n” and, when the attack comes…whataya know….the field collapses. We just flailed around and felt stupid before being attacked rather than feeling accomplished and useful before being attacked…

The Bone cry is something important too. No clue is too easy. That should be enough. But there are other weapons at your disposal and I have noted that one of the first things the guys in WT do is turn to the psychic and ask her where the baddies are. So, last night it turned out she was the only person who could find him. This will change. You do, of course, know fine rightly wher the baddies are. You’re working for them….

[PS. It's called HTML, Paul]

British Rail provides the train not the plots. I cry when I realise the plot is being railroaded. I’d sooner no plot than one which is planned to the nth degree in a single direction

My favourite player – I honestly don’t care if you’re sleeping with the Elf Rogue, you still can’t be all fluffy GM for them and nasty GM to everyone else…. unless there is a sensible story reason for it

Throw a dog a bone – We all love a puzzle, but there comes a point where me playing a bacteriologist isn’t the same as me being one. If its something the character should know, but the player doesn’t you have to help them out. (I once spent 2 hours playing a Cyberpunk game where a defence sheild resisted every attempt we made to knock it out. Only to see the light of joy in the GM’s eyes as he told us it was a capacitor and all we needed to do was…. I still think my decision to blow the building up and sod the hostages was more efficient)

Its not a frikkin compeititon – there is no winner in roleplaying. There can’t be. Oh lord how I wish people would remember that. It doesn’t matter what your character can do and what mine can’t, it doesn’t matter if the bad guys win or if they are defeated in the nick of time. you only win if you leave with a smile on your face,

OOC knowledge leak – This is bad in so many ways. I like giving vignettes of what’s happening behind the scenes. This is to assist players in building the story, enhancing drama. It’s not an opportunity for you to dodge like a bastard to avoid an attack.

Showing up the GM – just because you’re a PhD, doesn’t mean your character is. So leave the molecular biology at home. Or the quantum physics. And worse still – if you use it to show up the GM, then you’re a dead man. She may not have had time to get five degrees in varying subjects (one for each player who claims to be an expert) so cut her a bit of slack. Be helpful, help the GM retcon if it’s really that important to you.

Lack of Teamwork – there’s a reason that games are best played with 3+ players in my opinion. You get a team. It sucks to be the #2 in a party. Where you have the fighter, the cleric, the thief, the ranger, the magic user and…the not quite as good fighter. Teamwork is also the place of the GM. Force the players into situations where they have to encourage each other to co-operate. Reward ingenuity and also give props where appropriate when someone has managed to eke out a little in-character coercion for the good of the story.

References to Roll-playing – I’m a story gamer. I like an entertaining story. But I don’t think that people who play to win or people who want a realistic game experience are necessarily bad roleplayers, just that their aims in the game may be different to mine. That may mean we have to find different groups but that’s just the way things are. Sure, I’d like everyone to want to play games the way I play them, but it’s not necessary. End of the day, we’re all grown ups and these are all games: it’s kinda odd of us to point at someone equally geeky and call them names.

Four is all I can manage….