Roleplay Group Advice?

[Keilin Alyr]

I'm in a fairly good mood right now, but I am a bit thoughtful as well.

The good news: our Shadowrun game tonight was a ton of fun, and we finally accepted and completed a run within the span of a single real world night, even with all of the dark twists and bizarre turns (ghoul child... on fire... happily riding a motorcycle. The heck?). It was some of the most fun I've had in a tabletop game in recent memory, even if my character did start the game in a justifiably foul mood and ended it in the middle of an epic nervous breakdown. At least it was hilarious to roleplay.

The bad news: I'm beginning to wonder if this was the result of not having one of our usual members present. He tends to derail the game with tangential stories about completely unrelated roleplay games and bogs the real game down with hours of inane planning and nitpicking. He took what was intended to be a fun mini-arc a few weeks back and helped drag it out into four weeks of aggressive planning for every single contingency and very little action. I actually fell asleep during one of those nights. The GM firmly put his foot down after that.

Not to mention he's been acting weirdly passive-aggressive with our GM and we have no clue why, and I think that might be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back. Sad thing is, I don't think anyone would miss his character if he were booted from the game, and one member has even jokingly said as much, but... that just seems wrong in some respects. He's a great guy and a ton of fun to hang out with outside of the roleplay.

Any opinions or previous experience to help me out? I've already discussed it at length with the GM, and unless this guy comes back to him with less dodgy hints that something may be wrong and more real words that something is wrong regarding his experience with the game, we can't proceed comfortably. I'm just worried it'll spill over before then, or even worse, during next week's game, and I really do not want to deal with the drama right now. =\

[jojo]

I dunno, it sort of sounds like he needs to stop being passive-aggressive and voice what's bothering him. Maybe if you guys all sat down (or maybe just the GM, him, and one other member?) to ask him if anything is wrong and agreed on some rules together (no tangential stories, etc). I've never had to deal with this kind of situation before, but that's what my gut tells me (though if it were me I'd be terrified to have such a frank conversation because I'm a social pansy. XD)

What sort of nitpicking does he do? I'm kind of curious because I feel like my group has the OPPOSITE problem -- we're all originally video gamers, so we tend to play our games like video game RPGs (trying every single thing in situations even if it's kind of weird if you consider being in-character) and I'm always stuck with the nagging feeling that things should be more flexible though I'm not sure how. haha.