A Force for Awesome

Question: How does your gaming group even deal with an antagonist like Jay Ortiz? He seems like someone who could easily drive players up a wall!

Oh, he does. Being driven to fits of frothing, impotent rage is a very important part of the Jay Ortiz experience.

Dealing with him in the game itself really depends on what they're doing at the time - sometimes violence erupts, sometimes political chaos erupts, sometimes they just silently hate on each other from across the room - but outside the game, the players love that guy. One of the most fun ways of making sure a group doesn't get mad about NPCs is to make sure that the NPCs are themselves fun to have around; if they have developed personalities and do interesting things, even if the PCs hate their guts with all their might, the players usually welcome seeing them come into the game. The thing about Jay is that he always makes the game interesting and fun when he shows up, and players love characters that do that, even if they want to see them dismembered and buried in a shallow, unmarked grave.

If you think Jay Ortiz drives players crazy, you should see them try to deal with god-level Colin. I thought Sowiljr's player was going to have a stroke last time he had to try to talk to him for more than a few minutes.