#(this feels a bit more disk horsey to me so just to be safe)

[wizard-hubris]

I think the issue with Orym is less that he’s an actual killjoy in game (because as you’ve pointed out that basically isn’t true) and more that early on in eXu he was one of the PCs pushing against pursuing the plot hooks that were offered to the party. From an audience perspective that can look like being a killjoy. Saying, “this obviously bad idea is a bad idea,” is a totally reasonable thing to say, but it a little bit violates the D&D social contract of “DM give scenario, PCs react to scenario” that a lot of people expect.

Now obviously that’s not a hard rule and I honestly don’t even think that’s what Liam was doing by playing Orym as more cautious, but I can see how it looked like that early on when eXu was having a much harder time finding its footing.

So you have the vague appearance of being a bootlicker/killjoy at the beginning, mixed with a frustrating eXu start, plus the people who just hate Liam, and you’ve got a recipe for people to be bizarrely furious at a chill little dude.

This is a really interesting point. For one thing, because I'd never thought of his input as "pushing against pursuing the plot hooks" because they'd still have interacted with them. Idk if I'm taking this too much from a (amateur) DM's perspective, but if the party had decided to go to the guard instead, then the guard ropes them in to assist with catching the criminals, sends them as a party to investigate the place that Poska name drops during an interrogation and *bam* the party has the vestige and instead of Poska wanting it, it's actually a mysterious higher-up of the Nameless - basically Poska's boss, let's say, that's after the item and, thus, the group. Maybe there's an insider in the guard so they have to skip town because they get hunted by them too to bring the item in. The thing with this storytelling is that you don't keep the building bricks at static places, you're ready to move them along into the direction your players run.

Saying "This is a bad idea" also shouldn't be enough to immediately get on anybody's bad side, I think. He went along with it, after all. But maybe I'm a bit biased because one of my current D&D characters started out as a bit of a pessimistic worrywart who was saying "This is a bad idea" regularly while going along with what our party was doing anyway because that's how this game works. Idk if people just don't think about that while watching, but when I'm playing I'm keenly aware that nothing can happen when I just stomp my foot, going "I don't wanna", so obviously I'm not going to actually do that.

But I also can understand a bit that people might see Orym's reaction at being a bit of a killjoy - I don't share that view, but I can understand it somewhat. But that bootlicker thing has always thrown me foor a loop. Maybe it's a cultural thing that I just don't get as a European person? Idk. Then again, I also didn't really understand what many people found so frustrating about the ExU start, but I wasn't that active in fandom during ExU because real life stuff, so I can only contribute so much to that matter without starting to pull things out of thin air.

But yeah, the more negative views of Orym got really out of hand, I feel, probably especially because Liam is playing him, so here we are. But hey, now there'll be plenty of time for people to get to know this funky little halfling better and see for themselves that he's really just that: a chill little dude.