Problem Players and Problem GMs: The Issue Is Really Story Credibility

What really is problem behavior when playing tabletop role-playing games? Most of what we consider problem behavior isn't prohibited by rules, so why does it affect the game in a bad way? Dave discusses why he thinks this is so, in a unifying theory of collaborative storytelling.
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[@bsgnerd]

Dang! Nice presentation. Really liked listening to you.

[@Crusade1982]

I've been a player and GM for about 28 years and I have seen both, problem players and GMs on countless occasions. That being said, after I basically quit playing tabletop RPGs I went to text based roleplaying in Discord for a short time. Which was my best roleplaying experience ever since the people involved made a great fit and we didn’t need any game system to make it work. But also here there are bad players, who try to be the star in every scene and diminish other characters whenever they can. In general the best parties I played with as player and GM were groups that were partially evil. The characters were completely overpowered compared to normal enemies and the general focus of the game was having a great time, doing silly stuff and being funny. While most of the fights were not hard for those characters, they still could have been challenging and even deadly if they underestimated an enemy or situation.

[@Lumpyrox1412]

Yeah I think credibility is the core issue I have with problem players. In my eyes, I hate when players intentionally put their character’s narrative aside to try to ‘win the game’. That’s the essence of the problem with murderhobos I think.

[@TheRPGRundown]

Lol, how did I forget to mention murder hoboing?! :D Good point.

[@5daboz]

Mhm, my campaign ended recently due to that. I did establish rules on how to punish problematic behaviour (use Intrusion system from TTRPG Numenera, but without a reward, probably something related to the problematic behaviour), but in the middle of the game ... I do not really have a brain or will to use it. I want to help my players, collaborate with them. Even if I remember that the rule exists, I do not actually want to "punish" them, it is a totally different mind space, so I usually just do not feel like using it until after the game already ended and figuring it would make sense to use it. To GM is quite a mental load, but now one should also constantly try to figure out if players should be punished? And for the punishment to be creative or make a story-sense? I would rather just not play with such a person or a group.