Sick and tired of these "non-binary" types
Just finished a game night featuring a player who stirred up so much self-serving drama that the DM threw him out mid-session. Maybe when I calm down I'll re-evaluate and say it was probably too harsh, but right now I'm fully on the DM's side.
Everything was fine when we were just chatting before everyone arrived. It went off the rails immediately when he handed the DM his character sheet. DM's eyebrow shot up immediately, then furrowed their brow and tilted their head not even halfway down. They stared at it a bit longer, trying to make sense of it, and then challenged the new player: "What is this?"
New guy played dumb & innocent. "What do you mean?"
I was sitting next to DM, so I asked to see it. Buckle up for this one, folks.
"Gender: M" - Not terribly imaginative when this is the same as the player's, and unusually mundane for our group, but fine, whatever.
"Strength: 10" - Alright, I guess he won't be on the front lines.
"Dexterity: 11" - Wow, really going for a min-maxed build here I guess.
"Constitution: 10" - Okay, this is really getting suspicious...
"Intelligence: 18"
That's not a typo. That's a "1" and then some kind of sideways infinity symbol.
The rest of the sheet was littered with a combination of absurdly low values and more of these deranged runes. He had "S" torches, but like a weird blocky S. Number of waterskins was just a cursive Z.
DM: "What's your character's Int?"
New Guy: "Ate teen" (?? something like that)
DM: "Do you mean 10010?"
New guy acted like he was stunlocked.
New Guy: "Oh! You guys use base-two? Sorry, I was using base-10."
"NO," DM snarled, "WE use base-10. What the fuck is 'two'?"
Turns out this guy had his own special non-binary snowflake numbers system that he felt more "comfortable" using. But he at least seemed amenable to working with us as best he could, and he was cool otherwise, so we decided to play on. The only experience we had like this before was one who used base-1, but he never finished making his character.
Very first thing he does, right after we agree to work together, is take out his coinbag and dump out the wildest, wokest coins I've ever seen in my life. They were all kinds of lumpy rock shapes with his special squiggles all over them. None of them could lay flat. I swear, one of them had like 10000-10100 sides; it was practically a ball.
Apart from a few skill checks here and there, the game was sailing smoothly enough. But when we inevitably ventured out to do some adventuring, it was pure drudgery. Every single time his turn came up, every time he took damage, every time he had to roll a save, the flow of the game froze dead in its tracks as he and DM tried to translate to and from his non-binary gobbledygook.
The last straw came in the middle of what was supposed to be a cinematic fight. The big bad boss hit the new guy with a fireball, and the DM was trying to quickly convert 1111 damage: "flef... flefty...?" And new guy fucking had the audacity to GIGGLE.
DM stood up, slapped his palms on the table, and told him, "I'm done. I tried, but I'm done. Just get the fuck out."
New guy sheepishly gathered his things and all his stupid little rocks, and fumbled on his phone to call an Uber. But when he stepped out into the rain, he suddenly turned around. "Oh, can I actually wait inside for my ride? It says he's twenty min--" and the DM slammed the door in his face.
And, like... Look. I get that it takes all colors to make a rainbow, and diversity is our strength, and all that. But you've gotta draw the line somewhere. We live in a society, for Christ's sake. Do they actually understand how much additional, unwelcome cognitive load they're imposing on everyone around them? Or do they know perfectly well, and thrive on it? I'm genuinely torn between the ten.