How to deal with a disruptive player?

Question

I DM for a group of a group of rather intellectual players. They like to discuss the situations at hand and really try to do the right things. I use that a lot by posing them with moral questions and missions where the "good" solution is not always obvious or even contradicts the mission target.

So far this worked out very well, but last round a new player joined our game. She plays an impatient, man-hating Amazon (her self-chosen description). The man-hating part kinda does work since she frequently gets into arguments with the male players, which is funny, but the impatient part is the real trouble.

Whenever the group stops to discuss something, she interrupts and just wants to fight stuff. Whenever they talk (in character) about anything else than the mission she interrupts saying that it doesn't matter or doesn't help the group.

Also, whenever someone says anything against her, she does get a bit offended.

In the end of the mission I put a moral choice, where they had to retrieve a magical object, but by doing so kill a whole forest and everything within it. While the rest of the group was discussing it, and trying to find a different solution (of which there where some), she just went ahead and cut that object from it's socket, thus killing the whole forest. This in turn will have negative consequences for the group and the world they live in in the sessions to come.

I expected her to be like that so I included a couple of things where only thinking would get them ahead and just charging into fights would hurt them, but she doesn't care about consequences and just barges in.

Since she doesn't fit into the group at all, I'd usually just put her into another of my groups where she'd fit better, but she's the girlfriend of one of the core players of that group, so I can't do that.

I thought about having an NPC, that the rest of the group know, join the group and keep her in check every time she goes overboard again, but I fear that by limiting her I'd take the fun away for her.

My problem here is not that I don't want the players to commit mass murder. I have another group that is quite murderous and that's fine. The problem here is that I have a quite homogenous group and one player that really doesn't fit the group. It's not even so much about her murdering people (which can be quite fun in an otherwise good minded group) but that she is disrupting the kind of play that the other players want to have.

Do you have any ideas what I can do here?

This is not so much a My-Guy-Syndrome, but rather a clash of expectations. I talked to the player in question. It is really not about her "having" to stick to her character, but rather that her character reflects herself. She says of herself that she is impatient and that she rather wants to fight than to discuss. In the end she wanted to get transferred into my other group, which is more combat-oriented and generally more diverse.

Answer 1

What you have is a clash of expectations. Your group likes to plan and strategize, she clearly doesn't (or rather, planning and strategizing is less important to her than playing this impulsive character). It's really important to articulate the expectations of play and you should do talk to her, and the group, directly, rather than create an NPC to try to block her character.

You'll notice if you look at other media or stories, there's a big difference between impulsive characters who TALK about jumping in, but don't actually do so, vs. those who DO and cause a lot of chaos.

If your group expectations are that everyone is mostly working together and only conflicting/at odds for show ("The elf and the dwarf are arguing again." "Oh, let them be, they're actually good friends.") and she is operating on the idea that each character might have very different agendas or less concern for the group, you're going to have clashes.

Being clear about what kind of game this is, helps her decide if this is the game she wants to play or not.

Answer 2

The My Guy Syndrome

This sounds very similar to the My Guy-syndrome, a specific kind of problem-player. People that suffer from the My Guy-syndrome often do things ICly because "my guy would do it", even if it ruins the party's and their own fun. (This is not because of bad RP, rather because they take the RP too seriously.)

There are several articles about these kind of players, and someone else has already asked a question about it: What is "my guy syndrome" and how do I handle it?

I hope this article will help. If this doesn't sound like the problem you're having with this player, don't hesitate to comment and I will remove this answer.