There’s got to be scads of these genus of gamer posts on the web, but I’m going to add to it because…well, it what struck me to write about this morning and because I was discussing various gamers we’ve had in groups with a friend over drinks the other night. Here we go:

Rules Lawyer: Probably the most annoying to me, this is the guy that memorizes the rulebook so that s/he might use it to batter the GM during the game sessions, either to save their ass during play, or simply to be a nuisance and snag a bit of attention from the group.

There’s a couple of ways to handle this type without a confrontation: I usually have a caveat that the story comes first, and that occasionally the rules get in the way of this. I used to have a 3×5″ card that had “IT’S IN THE SCRIPT” on it for these times when the bad guy has to get away, or they have to fall into the trap of the villain so that we can have our heroes get to the big reveal of the plot or what have you. If you run house rules, this is another way to tamp down on this guy/girl (it nearly always seems to be a guy.)

The Mechanic or Min/Maxer: There’s a couple versins of this player type. The mechanic is the guy/girl that is more interested in the mechanics of the game and the way it simulates the play environment. They love to build characters…lots of them. They never play half of them; they just want to manipulate the rules set to find quirks, holes, and probability issues. The main issue with the Mechanic is getting them to focus on the story and play (in an RPG); a lot of these guys started as wargamers and are more happy doing that (I’ve found.)

The Minmaxer is a pain in the ass for many GMs. This is the variant of the Mechanic that looks for ways to push character creation to the limit so that their character is the best at what they do — be that the indestructible tank, the super-magician, or the irresistible face (girl minmaxers seem to like this last one, particularly.) There’s some use to having sharply specialized characters, and I’m finding people that come out of early RPG and online computer gaems tend to think in terms of “package” character. (It’s one of the reasons that 4e D&D looks to me like an attempt to emulate online computer games…which strangely were emulating tabletop gaming.)

The minmaxer can wreck havoc on the GMs plans, but there are ways to handle them. The easiest: put them in a situation where their strengths are a problem. Say your character is stunningly strong, aggressive, and good in a fight — set a trap that leverages strength against the character. (The force field you’re in draws it’s power from kinetic energy…) Put them in situations where their weakness is exactly what they need — beating the pulp out of the ruler of the duchy that is your patron because he’s not budging on payment for whatever quest you’re being tasked with could be what they called in the military, “non-career enhancing.

The mechanic is a strange problem . The few I’ve gamed with have a tendency not to be so much interested in interaction with the other characters as in the act of throwing the bones. We’ll deal with this under Rollplayer.

The Actor: These are the players that really throw themselves into the part, giving long speeches, engaging with the other players, and really getting into their characters. They are both a blessing and curse. Blessing-wise, they really get the game moving, and often they are central to the action. They’ll be the guys that interact with your NPCs and will make you have to on-the-fly flesh out that dude in the pub you thought was just going to be the guy that in a movie would have the credit “Guy in Pub”. I love having the actor types in the group…so long as they realize they aren’t the only person there, because they can also suck all the air out of the room for the other players and annoy the crap out of them. They also can be a pain in the ass, when their character’s motivations don’t quite dovetail with the adventure you’ve crafted. “I don’t think my character would aid in this sort of thing…”

The actor usually just needs reigned in a bit. The best way I’ve found to do this without stepping on their toes is making certain that the adventure is designed to break the group up for the action. that way the actor and whoever they usually interact with can have their own scenes, and the other players can get “screen time” doing something else more important to the task at hand.

The Table Troll: You’ve had this guy at the table, I’m sure. He’s the guy that has to stomp over the other player’s interaction, plays practical jokes on the other characters, and otherwise tries to monopolize the time, or worse, sabotage things just to cause trouble.

I use a lot of the same techniques for the actor for dealing with these guys, as there’s a similar personality issue: they want attention. They dont care if it’s positive or not. I find they usually don’t last long, before the group ousts them. It’s one of the reasons I try to meet new gamers prior to play; there’s certain personality quirks to the Table Troll that show up in a quick talk over coffee — they usually think they’re funny as hell (and aren’t), they’ll talk over you or argue just to do it, they’re often aggressive in their interaction. I meet them and they don’t get invited to the game.

The Social Player: I’ll admit…I’m one of these guys, and I tend to like having them in my group. These are players that like to play, but never really fully immerse themselves into character. They are often interested in the meta-qualities of the game, enjoying how the game adventure is put together — looking for familiar tropes, cliches of the genre being played. But mostly, they’re there to have fun with friends.

These guys do a lot of out-of-character quips, have a tendency to pull the game into non sequiteur chatting, and the like. I’ve noted on a lot of the GM and player boards that players can really have a problem with this particular type of gamers, but personally…I like it because I game to tell stories and hang out with friends.

How to handle them: set up rules for in and out-of-character interaction. The hand up for OOC observations, or  move from the table with the other player to make plans or talk about something not related to the game. Have the “on air” light or candle on the table to let people know its time to game. (I personally don’t like this tactic — I find it restrictive and not fun…but we’ve established that I’m one of these problem types.)

The Writer or Storyteller: These guys/girls are usually your GM, which is a good thing. I fall into this category, as well, so — as always — I might be totally full of $#!t. They are interested, like the social gamer in the construction of the plot, the characters, how the game session comes together. They’re often likely to go along with your story, even if their characters might not normally be tempted to it, because they want to see what’s going to happen. They’ll trigger the trap, they’ll confront the villain, they’ll make the GM’s job super-easy and most likely honk off players who think of themselves as in opposition to the GM (or more likely, vice-versa.)

The other downside to this is the Know It All … the guy that happens to be a subject matter expert and has a tendency to want to bring that information into the play. “In reality, Nazis would be hunting the Ark in Egypt as it was a sovereign nation with strong British military presence…” “That’s not how Enterprise‘s engines work!” “Trebuchet’s actually require…” They are full of information, but sometimes you really don’t have to know the fuel mileage of your Ferrari Daytona during a chase sequence….because it’s in the f@#$ing script.

The know-it-all can be a great GM. No matter what you throw at them, they know what’s going on in the setting and they don’t screw it up. The downside is you get the GMs that think they need to provide you with a 45 page “abridged” synopsis of the politics, history, and geography of their world, plus a treatise on magic, etc. (I just don’t read it. If the GM asks why, my barbarian hasn’t had any schooling.)

How to handle them: “In the last episode, you stated that the FTL drive worked this way…” Response: “Yup, but the writer of this episode wasn’t paying attention in the writing room last week.” “Nukes don’t work that way.” Response: “And neither the audience nor the writer knows that or cares…cut the friggin’ red wire!” I suppose you could also hear them out. Or pelt them with dice. I find they normally respond well to “It’s in the script.”

The Guy That Takes This Way Too Seriously: You’ve definitely had this guy. The one that’s haunted by his character in a dream because the players derided the character for that truly-stupid move that got him killed. The guy that fall to his knees screaming “My dice are f@#king me!” (Yes, I’ve had both in a game.) The one that throws a tantrum or sulks if things don’t go their way.

How to handle: Lose ’em. No, seriously…they need another hobby. Preferably one that doesn’t involve weaponry.

The Planner: You’ll normally get a couple of these in a group. These are the guys that not only overthink everything, but have to have every planned out to the nines before they do anything. “But if we go into the pub, will we order ale or wine?” (Okay…they’re not that bad.) For the GM, they’re a pain in the ass because you waste a night on a simple “knock the guard out, already!” scene. My favorite was a two hour planning session to get past a guard that wound up with one player getting so frustrated he tossed a rock at said guard to get the fight over with.

How to handle: Simple — time limit to the planning. They’ve only got finve minutes until the next roving guard comes by. They don’t have eyes on all the bad guys and once you’ve gotten bored, just have them discovered mid-planning session. Put a timer on the table, if need be. If they’re already in an action sequence, give them quick ideas of what might be possible and give them as little time as their character would have to think about it. “The bomb is close to going off and mook #2 is advancing on you with a knife. What do you do…three, two, one…”

The Rollplayer: This is a strange one. They game. Supposedly they enjoy gaming. Getting them to do anything without a prompt is near impossible. Even when they’re doing things in game, they seem less than enthusiastic. Really, they’re just waiting for you to tell them to roll some dice.

I’ve had a bunch of these over the years. One was also a “Mechanic” type — he gamed to see the games in action. He was either “following the captain” or “working on my invention until the fight.” It was about rolling the bones. Others were simply not engaging personality types. One had fibromyalgia and was not particularly interested in doing much at all, but was along for the ride with her spouse; one did the minimal amount of interaction until it was time to “kill something”; another was simply unhappy about their life and it showed in everything they did…

How to handle: you can give them the leading roles, try to push them up front. Sometimes this works well — the first example really lit up when she could play the conniving, bossy leader. The last had a character made that allowed him to act out — a misogynistic, drunken pilot…he turned into a great, very funny character, but gave me some serious pause about the guy’s stability.

This type tends to hang around only if they’ve nothing else to do.

The Ninja: this is that truly strange dude that you know you shouldn’t have made eye contact with in the game store, but were so desperate to get another player that you said “What the Hell?” then got to experience that hot place first hand. I named this type for a guy in Philadelphia that my roommate and I invited to play, then found out he was into ninjutsu, could make himself invisible and absolutely silent (not a bad trick for a 300 lbs. bespectacled guy that could barely move without running into something or setting off seismometers.) He loved weaponry. I suspect pedophilia was a hobby he’d have gotten into, but the kids couldn’t see him for his clouding of their minds with his mental powers, and they didn’t response to his enticements. He was, in a word, nuts.

How to handle: It’s not worth it. Don’t invite him in the first place. If you do, change you phone number, move to another state, get a new identity. He’ll keep turning up. Our ninja stealthed his way into our building (in other words, he was stuck at the frond door, uninvited that day, trying to get us to buzz him in.) We managed, despite his heightened sense of awareness (perhaps the parallax on his glasses was too high and it obscured his awe-inspiring peripheral vision), we managed to walk out of the building right next to him! He hung around for a few days, trying to contact us before he slipped away into the night, ninja-like, to probably terrorize another lonely person with his awesomeness.

Really, avoid this type even if it means throwing yourself out of a tall building.

This is a simple selection of gamer phylum I’ve dealt with over the years, and sure, there’s more. Feel free to comment with other types and how you’ve handled them.