Paolo Greco​ it depends! Come on man, this is RPGs, zillions of different styles out there.

In my personal experience, I’ve run into players and play styles where the first and highest priority is to mitigate risk. Well, so, if I give that player the mandate “to really chew up the scenery, show us how terrible you can be!”, it would not be surprising at all to have that sort of player minimize the threat: instead of flying into a wild ranting rage, he slips off in the darkness, never to be seen again. Or whatever.

This player has, in fact, on occasion tried to lawyer his way through scenes: I can’t make that target, what if I go for something smaller? I don’t want to face that consequence, so I’ll change my goal. Which, you know, kind of depends on the game you’re playing. Some games are built for that negotiation, and some are not.

Lots of ways to play, lots of different tastes and needs. For a player who needs to mitigate risk, giving them the directive to be a bad guy is just going to stress them out and disappoint everyone with different expectations. And I’m totally not judging them! Although I find risk-mitigation difficult, personally, for me to GM toward and to play alongside.