Vnlr: And there have been disputes with the other half of my soul, to quote Virgil (meaning: a very close friend you are thouroughly attached to)
LaPtiteBete: Good to hear you're pretty (and pleasantly) busy :) as usual... times flies when you are, indeed.
And sorry about the disputes with your friend :-( ... I hope things will work themselves out...
**Another big hug with peanut butter** The problem was D&D related. I trained my young brother to take over D&D dungeon mastering. So he's in charge now, I get to be a player in the party for a (welcome) change, and he took very well to it, recalling my blustering first ever DM experience in World of Darkness (Vampire: the masquerade).
My Dungeon mastering was getting bland and uninspired and I made a few atrocious errors during the last campaign, and while my players said they loved the plot, I was grinding to a halt in my head, and after a few modifications to the rules and failed haphazard talk-intrigue sessions I decided to call it quits and let the brother take over while I write a plot for Fading Suns in the meanwhile.
this must somehow quite have dissapointed my best friend who has been been playing with me as long as we have been playing deeply, and he took care to tell me of his regret in a decent polite fashion. After excuses on my behalf, and starting of right with my brother (who did a splendid job) I thought we could continue our leisurly pace while further coaching the DM'ing of the brother.
First trouble occured with the Character Generation; I built a Githyanki Duskblade who focused on a fighting chain and opportunity attack and trips while staying out of harms direct way (with a selection of buffing spells and some attack stuff). As I was a Githyanki and thought of a "Betrayed and exiled army officer who is mercenarying about while plotting revenge against his wrongdoers" background, I went with a toned down neutral evil alignment.
The friend however, went with a Goliath/Satyr offspring chaotic good cleric. And he deems it his "roleplaying" duty to troll my more evilly oriented character whenever I fail at a roll, and he finds it neccesary to rub that annimosity in very deeply with annoying comments and scoffing.
Being me (meaning, silent and withdrawn and not being reasured enough to tell him of it) I went with it. It got worse when during a random encounter with a Gnoll war party where most guys came after me. My entire build was as follows: I hold my ground. When enemies come within reach of the fighting chain, I get an opportunity attack (a houserule). Due to the one feat I get such attacks each round equal to my (high) reflex save modifier (or was it dexterity). When they come to close, I "tumble"out of harms reach, rinse and repeat. This is perfectly within the boundaries of our houserules, and it works really good for drawing enemies of the rest of the party and punishing them with opportunity attacks, next to trips and disarms with the chain.
In human Language this means: I use a weapon with a long reach to hold of enemies. When they come to close, I hit them all and give some ground to keep repeating the process. The friend told me that the build was inappropriate, overpowered and very trolly indeed. No-one could harm me, my Armor class matched a tank's when I cast the right buffs. I should be significantly nerfed. And he thought it was very mean I "stole of his kills" by darting about like that, leaving him to footslog after everyone while he was the big mean tank after all!
then I mentioned that his D&D 4.e assassin character was even more trolly in his zipping about and unharmable way with all the sneaking and invisibility. That guy really harmed my encounters, setups and plots while I was a DM, and he shouldn't act so indignified now he was fighting next such a person who simply had a very different combat style. That can be easily countered by swarming, ranged attacks and a variety of different monsters, and common sense.
The DM allowed us to both take a second Character, since we've been doing that for ages. The friend wanted a twin-axe wielding Gortrex-like Dwarf Barbarian.
I took a Hellbred knight, since the slightly modified agent-of-the-devil-on-earth thing was kind of kinky, the race was good, and I could easily work out the relation between my characters (the Githyanki looking for infernal aid in his bid for vengeance ... in return for some favors in the material world - could be fun). the knight was Lawfull evil, and centered a bit more as a tank build so the goliath could focus and damage while having a good AC.
Only hours ago I notified the friend of my choice of character over skype (he lives a few blocks away, but moslty has spare time in the evening only). He went from annoying, to annoyed, to scathing, to hatefull and berserking very quickly, telling me the party wasn't centered arround me, that I couldn't bend our doing all the way arround my characters; The peasants and clerics would hunt us (rather, the knight). I was really being a prick the last few weeks, with that DM'ing block, and now, those evilly aligned people, and we wouldn't be seeing him again anytime soon.
Of course, my characters are somewhat unorthodox. But mixed alignment parties have always worked for us in the past (actually, when the friend was running the "bad guys"), and all of a sudden he brings the hate down in ways that made me feel very uncomfortable. And now he appears to be rather angry.
Being me (aka, incapable in this field), I have great trouble understanding the reasons for his anger. Some part of me thinks that the parties of the last years have always had him as big spokesman and center figure, drawing all the badassdnes to himself, and his crudely mannered characters; And he's merely having withdrawal symptoms with an experienced DM who knows all the knacks at his side as a playerwith wholly different priorities in-game.
And the other part of me is that socially incapable person who wants to give some leeway and change character or give in to him somehow. truth be told, as a DM I"ve given in to his boasty whiles a lot with quests and plots and encounters that suited him just fine (as well as the rest obviously).
Right now I think I'll sit it out and keep playing with the rest while he is away for a bit. I'm quite sure he'll be over to talk it out sometime soon; And I'm not exactly intent upon just dancing to his piping yet again. Especially since he mostly tries to center all in-game activities upon himself, which is something I frankly find rather distastefull but never mentioned.
And to finish of this raging while the other players are coming in; This is my sketch of the situation, and he's one of my few really close friends, and I've known him and his whiles for over a decade in my 18-year life. I wouldn't want to do anything that would compromise that even slightly, but he's had these bouts before, and while I'm a withdrawn persons who doesn't have a way with words, I would very much like not to just budge in the hot wind he's breathing over me.
Sorry for the very long post, but I needed to get rid of that and I'm certain that it wouldn't fall out of tone here in this post with you people.
