[RPG] What do I do about a selfish and controlling player (the DM’s best friend)

dungeons-and-dragonsproblem-players

I'm currently in my second campaign and have come across something specific to a person in my group. Ill call them the selfish individual.

The selfish individual is prone to things like:

  • Butting in and shouting "I LOOT THE CORPSE" when on the other side of the room, and not the PC who opened the chest, or walked up to the corpse to rummage and search for items. Also prone to completely taking charge of a situation where my character is currently in conversation with a NPC. Generally with the self entitlement coming from playing longer. In which has resulted in him getting items good for others (or just as good) instead of the proper process of whoever was actually looting.

    ME:"I walk into the room and look around"

    DM: You see……. and a corpse clutching a wrapped bundle

    ME: "I walk to the corpse, and investigate"….

    DM: You see no sign of traps etc.

    ME "I grab the bundle an……"

    Selfish individual: "I LOOT THE CORPSE!!!!!"

  • Maintaining the persistence to be as"unique" as possible with his mode of actions, so ALWAYS digging a hole to run away, everything is about digging a hole, where all those encounters would have been a lot smoother if no hole had been dug, it saved us once, and only once, because our brilliant DM was not going to let something silly always save us from everything.

  • Telling the DM what to do after something makes him feel mistreated or unfairly treated (even though its ALWAYS a part of the game), regardless of what it may be. For example, i obtained a bird early on in the campaign, and have put so much effort into looking after this injured bird long after recovery, that the DM made the decision to give it to me as a companion(basically as useless as the most useless bird in the monster lists, and one i would never use for combat). His annoyance at that because he apparently put so much effort into his class featured companion. Now i must roll animal handling on EVERYTHING to do with this bird, even though it now apparently loves me.

So a decent bit of my issue is that he stops our DM from having any discretion about anything in the game. And in end he is a PC and controlling the DM.

I find it hard to sit there with a group and make a statement about that because it will definitely upset him and he will go all angry about everything, and when that player is the DMs best friend…

As a new player, am I not understanding some stuff about D&D that is making me get annoyed with this? or is this something many people come across, and its just the person in the group?

I do let everything go, and just move on… but its actually pissing me off really badly now.

Best Answer

Your problem here isn't primarily the selfish individual, but the GM who is letting his out-of-game best friend run roughshod over the game. You need to talk to the GM, first, about how the game is starting to not be fun, then (likely) talk to the GM and the problem player about why.

Be prepared, though; this is probably a lead-up to quitting the group and finding another group to play with. You should assess whether it's worth the conflict to try to stay with this group, or if it's easier to just find another group.