red-headed android

no, not people who play Vampire. love you guys, but this one is about problem players.

in balkan folklore–slovenian, if we’re talking about where i first heard it myself–there’s the story of the vampire Sava Savanovic. most people have heard of the Cool Vampires who live in castles and turn into bats and go to high school and sparkle in the sunlight or whatever else it is vampires do in the Cool Vampire Media.

sava savanovic is not a cool vampire. man, fuck this guy. he’s basically an undead incel. he got turned into a vampire because he misread social cues so badly that he developed a crush on a girl way younger than him, kept acting creepy around her, and misread social cues again, this time so badly that he murdered her father. this cursed him to a life of wandering around in the shadows eating unsuspecting real estate speculators. he was later one-shot by some twink who was the first person to have the foresight to pack silver bullets.

let me say the important part again: sava savanovic became a vampire because he had a chronic problem of misreading social cues and making people very upset because of it.

those are the vampires i want to talk about today. they’re vampires because they stumble into a situation and drain the enjoyment from it. specifically, your tabletop games. i want to help you spot these vampires–and i also want to help you avoid becoming these vampires. fortunately, all you need to transfer the first skill into the second is a little self-awareness.

the first type of Vampire Player is the fomo vampire. the fomo vampire does not actually want to play the game. they might attend sessions–they might even have fun at sessions–but they’re not there for the game. they’re there because either their friends are there, or they don’t want to miss out on the experience, and crucially they have zero interest in the actual content of game night. it could be Mario Kart. it could be board games. it could be watching paint dry. they just want to be there.

if this is something you do, there’s nothing wrong with that. wanting to hang out with your friends is natural and good, and most interests are highly conducive to this style of social engagement. but you turn into a vampire when you apply that ‘i need to be there, no matter what they’re doing’ feeling to a game or activity that requires real investment.

and tabletop RPGs require a special degree of investment from the players, in the vast majority of cases. because the fun depends on people riffing off each other and taking turns in the spotlight actively engaging with a shared, collaborative story, people who are just there to be there and have no investment in that collaboration are letting everyone else down. it’s the same as if you went on a mountaineering or kayaking trip with your friends without any experience, and then refused to learn basic techniques. or volunteered to start a garden with them and then didn’t garden when it was your turn to take care of the plants.

one problem here that leads to this kind of vampire is that some people do play TTRPGs as just a casual hangout thing like Mario Kart, not really getting invested in the rules or even the story. but most people don’t, and the difference isn’t difficult to spot. and so to become this kind of vampire, you have to misread social cues.

to avoid this happening as a GM, make sure that the people you invite to your game are interested in the game itself. if a friend hears about it and asks to join but doesn’t seem to be interested in the actual game, or if a player’s friend (or worse, romantic partner) turns up uninvited just to be there and spends all their time on their phone, talk to them and explain that they aren’t welcome at this kind of event just as a plus-one. if you like the person who’s being a vampire, plan something else more casual with them. but don’t let them suck all the fun out of a game that you and everyone else are truly invested in making great. tabletop groups are the product of all of their players, not the sum. if one person is only contributing a fraction of the effort, you’ll all only get a fraction of the fun.

to avoid this happening as a player, don’t take a casual, hangout approach to social events that require deeper investment. learn the rules, ask questions, engage, turn your brain on–and if you can’t, which is okay, schedule something else more casual with your friends.

the second type of vampire is the main character vampire. the main character vampire has a fundamentally different idea of what the experience of your game is going to be, compared to everybody else. they insist that they are playing the same game as you, but they are not.

picture this. you are running a TTRPG about raising and rehabilitating endangered animals threatened by climate change and exploitation. your players all pull up with marine biologists and veterinarians and knowledgeable members of the local nomadic herding culture. except one person. one person pulls up with Lord Reginald Huntsley III, a glorified poacher who says things like ‘tally-ho’ and whose favourite accessories are a monocle and an elephant gun, and in the first session Reginald shoots one of the animals they’re trying to rescue.

slam on the brakes! that’s a vampire!

do not let a player stay in your game if they insist on making their entire character and gameplay experience contrary to what everyone else signed up for! i repeat, do not let a player stay in your game if they deliberately undermine what you all signed up for!

this is a dangerous kind of vampire because they’ll insist that actually, they ARE playing the same game as everyone else, but they’re not.

when the druid in your D&D game tries to tame the vicious hellhounds in the middle of fighting them and gets mad when the party kills them, that druid can say “i’m just playing my character”, but what’s being missed is that that character does not belong in D&D, a game about fighting monsters and overcoming supernatural evil.

when the emotional teen superhero in your Masks game ignores all of their social connections, burns every bridge they have, resorts to indiscriminate violence like the Punisher, and refuses to connect with any of the other characters, their player can say “but the game lets me do this, you should accommodate it”, but what’s being missed is that that behaviour does not belong in Masks, a game about finding your place in a world defined by your social connections and responsibilities.

tabletop games let you do anything. that’s what they’re for. but, social engagements don’t let you do anything. they let you do the things everyone has agreed upon as acceptable. the main character vampire either thinks that the game isn’t about what you’ve said it’s about, which is wrong but could happen because of a miscommunication on your part or a simple mistake on theirs, or they think that tabletop games aren’t social engagements and therefore they’re allowed to treat other people as toys in the context of one, which is wrong and also suggestive of major unresolved issues with basic socialization.

to avoid a main character vampire as the GM, clearly explain the premise and tone of your game before it starts. make sure everyone reads the system’s rules. make sure you explain concisely what you expect will be in the game. if you do this, and you’re sure everyone understood your message, and someone STILL turns up and totally ignores the tone, or deliberately does not engage with the game’s key elements, you have to tell them they can’t play.

to avoid becoming a main character vampire, learn what the game is about and match that tone and subject matter. take cues from how others play and follow their patterns. if someone is breaking the agreed-upon tone, talk to them and ask why. maybe you’ve misinterpreted the tone or subject matter, or maybe they have. maybe you have different ideas of what the same game should look like. these problems can all be overcome by simply talking. however, if everyone is playing the game in wildly different ways, or a person refuses to change when nobody agrees with the way they play, there’s at least one vampire at the table. make sure it isn’t you.

really, the fomo vampire and the main character vampire are just two sides of the same coin. most conflicts boil down to “I have misread social cues and don’t understand what is expected of me”, and when this problem can’t be solved because a player is unwilling to change, they become a vampire. fomo vampires misread out-of-game cues about investment and collaboration. main character vampires misread in-game cues about tone and purpose.

there are a few more vampires i want to cover, but most people will never become one and they’re easier to understand. lightning round.

the serious vampire is the reverse of the fomo one. this player takes the rules too seriously and forces that strong interpretation of how things should be done onto the other players. this person is (usually) only a vampire in casual groups, and is (usually) an asset to more invested groups who care deeply about the game itself. i have been this vampire many times and i’m not proud of it. this vampire must find a group that matches their ethos, and can’t continue in one that doesn’t; tell them so.

the predatory vampire is only there to make people uncomfortable and play out fantasies in an environment where nobody will stop them. this ranges from murderhobo-ism (killing everything that moves for fun, to make the GM uncomfortable or as a power fantasy) all the way to sexual harassment. this person must be eliminated posthaste. they target groups of people who are unwilling to confront them on their bad behaviour. do not tolerate this behaviour. confront it. do not play with this person.

the vampire GM is not there to play the game; they’re there to exercise power over other people, either as a captive audience or just because they like fucking with others with no repercussions. they’re the GM version of the predatory vampire and should be treated the exact same. spotting this kind of GM is outside the scope of this article, sadly, but one warning sign i can tell you right now is to watch out for people who won’t let you read the rules, or won’t let you control your character; they are almost always vampires.

the quarterback vampire tries to control others’ actions, either because they think they’re smarter than other players, or because they think they’re more creative than other players. this isn’t the same as openly, casually discussing what the group or a character should do next–it’s giving specific, pointed opinions on what an individual person should do in the moment, when they’re actively deciding. i have also been this vampire, and so i especially hate them. to shut down the quarterback vampire, reinforce the targeted players’ own agency, call out the quarterback-ism whenever you see it, and directly tell the quarterback vampire that they’re being too pushy.

you might be thinking, surely this can’t be it, right? there are lots of other types of bad player that aren’t here!

that’s true, yeah. i wasn’t going to write an essay about it, after all. but the truth is that almost all bad players are either predatory (kick these people on sight), or they’re fomo vampires, or they’re main character vampires. min/maxer who doesn’t care about roleplay like everyone else does? main character. the GM’s controlling partner? fomo. rogue who steals from the party? main character. guy who can’t remember what die to roll to attack? fomo.

and that makes things really easy, actually. because as a GM, you can eliminate both kinds of vampire by requiring a certain degree of investment from your players (read the rules, be there on time, contribute positively with a reasonable level of consistency to the shared experience we’re having), and curating the kind of experience the table is having and wants to have (make sure to ask your table what that is–it can evolve over time, even if you all agreed on something else initially). if you do those two things, and you’re willing to refuse to play with someone if they aren’t invested or won’t follow the tone, then you will never be forced to play with the two broadest and most common types of TTRPG vampire.

you don’t have to demand these things–easy things, mind you–from your players. it’s understandable not to want to. demanding things of people as a prerequisite for a social engagement feels… weird. mean, even. but this is a special hobby with special possibilities, and those need a particular environment with particular kinds of people in a particular headspace to function at all.

so, you can just let anyone play without vetting them or asking things of them. you’ll be popular and you won’t hurt anyone’s feelings. not directly. but one day, maybe one day soon, you’ll develop a vampire problem. and that will hurt people’s feelings. the paradox of fun is that to have fun, you have to do something that’s not fun: excluding people who hurt the fun. and i think it’s better to ask for that investment, to ask people to respect your own time and effort and that of your more invested players, than to avoid confrontation.