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Pex
2015-04-06, 09:21 PM
Just to give the other side of the screen a chance. :smallsmile:

I suppose there are the obligatory mentions of the Killer DM and Monty Haul DM, but this isn't really about what makes a DM bad at being a DM but rather common adventure tropes. Some examples:

1) The party comes across a room filled with lots of coins and gems and jewelry and chests. It's all legit and real. The vast amount is loosely laying around. Oh darn, the party doesn't have the means to carry it all. They can grab a pocketful or fill a sack, but they otherwise have to leave the entire treasure in the room because not only can't they carry it, they haven't cleared the dungeon yet to ensure safety trying to cart it out. The party always say they'll come back for it when they complete the mission. The party never comes back to that room. Either the adventure forces the party to leave the dungeon by some means in another place or after completing the adventure the dungeon is collapsing. The party just has enough time to flee as quickly as possible but cannot take the time to haul the grand treasure. What they did get in a pocket or sack is a nice sum, but it's a mere pittance of what was in that room.

2) Similar to the first, the party finds a large diamond. It's priceless or given a value of 50,000 gp or 100,000 gp. The party never gets to keep it beyond the adventure it's found to sell it. That diamond is a key to a door/portal the party must enter to complete the adventure. The diamond disappears or turns to dirt dust, valueless. Often times this door/portal is the exit the party must go through preventing them from going back to that grand treasure room they found earlier.

3) No statues lined up in a hallway are just statues. They're either golems or a trap.

4) Never drink from the fountain.

5) The most important of all. Never, ever, no not even then, never, ever release anyone or anything you find imprisoned.

Geddy2112
2015-04-06, 09:23 PM
Adventures starting in a tavern.

All wishes are rigged and therefore pointless.

Karl Aegis
2015-04-06, 09:25 PM
Random shopkeepers provide more of a challenge than the Big Bad Evil Guy of the campaign.

sakuuya
2015-04-06, 09:37 PM
DMs who put adamantine doors in their dungeons and expect players to leave that valuable loot just sitting there.

Ok, for real, though. Single points of failure. Odds are that the players' minds don't work exactly like the DM's, and DMs who don't realize that (or are snobby jerks) often have trouble putting adventures together. Riddles are one source of this, but so are mystery plots that have a single string of clues that the players have to find or be screwed.

erikun
2015-04-06, 10:00 PM
4) Never drink from the fountain.
This is a personal annoyance of mine. If there is something interesting in a dungeon - even if it's just a feature with no relevance otherwise - then why make it dangerous to interact with? I had one DM who put a fully functional magical fountain in the middle of some sort of dungeon/crypt, and attached a save for mummy rot to anyone who attempted to touch the water.


As for one from me, a DM who seems annoyed at players for roleplaying anything but stereotypical adventuring murderhobos. Please don't act surprised when my Paladin of a lawful deity doesn't immediately jump into bed with the prostitute hitting on him in hopes of gathering information. Heck, don't be surprised when the party, upon reaching a new town, is primarily interested in food and bedding. After a week's journey on the road, fighting bandits and wolves and whatever else, I think the critical story events can be put on hold for one in-game day and five out-of-game minutes just for everyone to sort themselves out and give their characters some R&R.

draken50
2015-04-06, 10:14 PM
Making the newest, most irrational, confused player the focal point of the plot.

Edit: Really it grinds my gears when any single PC is the focal point of the plot, but that's just the frigging worst.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-06, 10:16 PM
3) No statues lined up in a hallway are just statues. They're either golems or a trap.


Golem statues are such a hackneyed premise that I never have statues that are anything other than plain sculptures. Drives players nuts trying to activate them or destroy them. Of course, I am not above having creatures that sneak up on parties while they are spending so much time trying to determine when the statues are going to come to life.

Mr.Moron
2015-04-06, 10:18 PM
Things I hate when a GM does:


Getting too hung up on keeping things "Realistic" in the historical sense.
Making things "Dark" or "Gritty", at least in excess.
Spending too much time describing NPCs or locations instead of having us interact with them.
Simulating too much "Off Screen" and us having to deal with the fallout
Introducing anything related to secret societies or the "Real" unknown puppet masters of the world.
Uses any of the common eye-rolling bad design tropes you get on image results when you google "Female [Fantasy or Sci-Fi Concept]"
Gives really loose or permissive character creation guidelines, I work better when I have lines to color inside!
Not giving me downtime to explore the more mundane parts of the setting or do community service.
Can't strike a good balance between bending the rules for cool and making sure things feel consistently bounded.
Consistently makes authority figures unreasonable or have shady motives.
Writes adventures in a way that tends to punish giving people the benefit of the doubt, or asking questions first before shooting.
Never gives me a chance use negotiation or comprise as a means of dealing with conflict.
Mandating elaborate back stories before starting the game, I almost never a get a solid feel for who a character "is" before I play them a few sessions.
Can't strike a good balance between letting mental stats/skills reveal useful information, while still leaving enough hidden to want to seek out sources of knowledge & expertise in-game.
Runs games with a large group (3 is ideal, 4 is fine, 5+ is pushing it)


...and lots more I'm sure I'm forgetting. I've got pretty specific tastes as far playing games goes probably why I run games way more than I play them. I find it hard not to get frustrated with a lot of things that go on longer than 1-shots.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-06, 10:33 PM
Ooh, wait, I thought of one!

When a DM plays favorites and spends most of the time with one player. I'm not talking about troublesome prima donna players who monopolize a DM's time. I mean when the DM is clearly just running a game for a single player and everyone else is just the support team.

YossarianLives
2015-04-06, 11:10 PM
Don't stick your arm in the statues mouth. :smalltongue:

jaydubs
2015-04-06, 11:23 PM
-New party member introductions that involve rescuing the new PC, or getting rescued by the new PC. I know it's a classic, but I hate these with a passion, for so, so many different reasons.
-You guys have more gold? Basic expenses skyrocket. Generic inn rooms, mugs of beer, sandwiches, all suddenly cost an arm and a leg.
-Magic advancement works backwards. For some reason, the stuff from ancient civilizations is always way better than the modern stuff.
-Evil magic always has some noticeable downside. Corruption, damages the soul, requires sacrifices. It's never bad just because it's... y'know... immoral.

BayardSPSR
2015-04-06, 11:55 PM
Single points of failure. Odds are that the players' minds don't work exactly like the DM's, and DMs who don't realize that (or are snobby jerks) often have trouble putting adventures together. Riddles are one source of this, but so are mystery plots that have a single string of clues that the players have to find or be screwed.

Related to that, vague descriptions when the GM is trying to get the players to do something. I've done this.

"It's big." How big? Horse, house, hill? Are we supposed to attack its ankles, or spear it in the face?
"There are doorways." With or without doors in them? Are we supposed to look through them or listen at them?
"... and on the ring is the symbol of X!" Is this supposed to mean that X is sponsoring the thief wearing the ring, or are you trying to say we should return it to them for a reward?
"It looks abandoned." ... Oh well, better leave - unless the GM is trying to say that it's safe to search for treasure.

Sometimes, the GM can correct the description and give the players another chance. Often, the result is the players acting differently than the GM expects, and the GM complaining that they're Doing It Wrong.

Obviously, being able to let the players do whatever they want within the circumstances presented is great; it's when the GM is trying to tell them to do something specific that this breaks down.

Pex
2015-04-06, 11:56 PM
"Long ago there was a great empire that spanned the continent/world. It was full of wonder and had powerful magic. It was a Golden Age. Tragedy struck. The gods got angry/there was civil war when the most beloved and greatest emperor or king died/a meteor struck/something happened that caused the empire to fragment into different countries or lack of civilization altogether in just a few city-states and now magic is rare, dangerous, and the population frowns upon it. All who practice magic are suspect/hunted/mistrusted/exiled."

The party needs to sail across the sea. Not having enough money to book passage because it costs thousands of gold pieces or otherwise above their pay grade, the party has to hire themselves out as deckhands for the journey. There will be a storm. The ship will be attacked by pirates or a sea monster or both.

The party needs to travel a long distance across land. It will take a month, two months. In order to speed up travel time, the party has to hire themselves out as bodyguards for a caravan. The caravan will be attacked by bandits, once if the bandits have nothing to do with the main plot, twice if the second attack those bandits are involved with the main plot.

Either after the pirates attack the ship, bandits the caravan, or the party comes across the aftermath of an attack, there will be an NPC barely alive who has important information to tell the party about the plot but it's vague and cryptic. No healing magic in the world will prevent that NPC from dieing after giving the message.

The Random NPC
2015-04-07, 12:11 AM
Making the newest, most irrational, confused player the focal point of the plot.

Edit: Really it grinds my gears when any single PC is the focal point of the plot, but that's just the frigging worst.

I'm in a Vampire game that's kind of like this. My GM's story was that there was a plot to assassinate the Prince, and we were embraced to try to find it out. Only problem was, we were embraced by the Prince's most loyal, and we were being cautious about rooting out the assassins. As it turns out, the player that had showed up for one session was the Prince's childe, and our friendship was supposed to be the driving force behind the assassins recruiting us to their cause. Needless to say, the assassins did not approach us, and we did not uncover them in time to prevent the Prince's death.

EDIT:
-New party member introductions that involve rescuing the new PC, or getting rescued by the new PC. I know it's a classic, but I hate these with a passion, for so, so many different reasons.

My GM also did something like this. The party is one Elven Princess, a Druid raised in the wild, and an ex-miltary swordsman making ends meet the only way he knows how. The new member was introduced in a city that had been overrun with Kobolds, hanging upside down from the ceiling. Now that would have been okay, but we were informed rather quickly that the new member was arrested for theft just before the kobolds ran everyone out of town. Not the best way to gain trust from the mostly lawful party.

Mr Beer
2015-04-07, 12:24 AM
Really haven't had that many bad DMs, things that irritate me have been:

- Deliberately aggravating NPCs that are invulnerable to puny PC attempts to punish them.

- Paranoia-style encounters that seemingly aim for that sweet spot of wiping out half the party. Multiple times per adventure.

- Clumsy railroading - I don't care about having my 'creativity stifled' or whatever, I'll go with the rails, just don't huffily jam me back on them if I accidentally do something that doesn't advance the planned plot.

Darth Ultron
2015-04-07, 12:26 AM
It's a Trap! The DM that makes every single encountered thing....a trap. No cake is ever a cake.....

Now, it's normal to find traps in set places....like dungeons, vaults and high security places. A fountain in a crypt is a dead give away for ''don't touch''. The same way that gold crown in the middle of the cave is most likely a trap or the door to the back has a trap.

But many DM's just go too far. Every little girl is a lich, dragon or god. Every salesman is shady. Every non combat encounter is some sort of alignment changing trap(DM-''You ignore the orphan? Haha! your no longer lawful good!'')

Plot Skips This is where the PC's take an action, and ''suddenly'' the lord high marshal has them arrested for it....even though there is no way for him to know about it. Unless the DM does some crazy handwaving like ''oh, farmer Bob is an undercover spy and he....". All too often DMs have NPC's ''know everything the DM does''.

BayardSPSR
2015-04-07, 12:32 AM
DMPCs.

No more need be said.

Kaun
2015-04-07, 12:40 AM
1) The party comes across a room filled with lots of coins and gems and jewelry and chests. It's all legit and real. The vast amount is loosely laying around. Oh darn, the party doesn't have the means to carry it all. They can grab a pocketful or fill a sack, but they otherwise have to leave the entire treasure in the room because not only can't they carry it, they haven't cleared the dungeon yet to ensure safety trying to cart it out. The party always say they'll come back for it when they complete the mission. The party never comes back to that room. Either the adventure forces the party to leave the dungeon by some means in another place or after completing the adventure the dungeon is collapsing. The party just has enough time to flee as quickly as possible but cannot take the time to haul the grand treasure. What they did get in a pocket or sack is a nice sum, but it's a mere pittance of what was in that room.

That is awesome. Now i have to do it.


2) Similar to the first, the party finds a large diamond. It's priceless or given a value of 50,000 gp or 100,000 gp. The party never gets to keep it beyond the adventure it's found to sell it. That diamond is a key to a door/portal the party must enter to complete the adventure. The diamond disappears or turns to dirt dust, valueless. Often times this door/portal is the exit the party must go through preventing them from going back to that grand treasure room they found earlier.

No no no... whats better then making it crumble to dust is letting them have it and then having them try and find somebody who actually wants to buy a 50k - 100k diamond and has the cash to do it.

as to the list.

DM pre-made characters. All combat wombats. DM: "Why do you guys use combat to solve every problem?"

Silmarillion inspired NPC names.

Mr Beer
2015-04-07, 12:58 AM
- The feeble old man, oh but wait...he's not feeble at all! He's a wizard of surpassing power or perhaps a kung-fu master, who can't wait to astonish the party by dropping his feigned decrepitude.

The_Snark
2015-04-07, 01:52 AM
DM pre-made characters. All combat wombats.

... I know it's not what you meant, but if a DM presented me with a character who was actually a wombat I would be intrigued. Bonus points if the game is inspired by Digger (http://diggercomic.com).

On-topic: quests in which the plot consists of "you are faced with an objective too difficult to accomplish on your own -> here's a powerful NPC you can convince to help you -> the NPC does all the hard work while you tag along". I don't mind diplomacy-oriented games, but if done clumsily this sort of adventure can end up feeling boring/anticlimactic.

(It's happened to me a couple times, to varying degrees: once it was the result of a whole session spent scheming to secure various allies for a revolt - I guess we overachieved in the prep stage and ended up trivializing the actual uprising scene? - but another time the party essentially acted as the couriers who found and informed Powerful NPC Hero of a problem that needed fixing, then tagged along to pick up loot and search for secret passages...)

NichG
2015-04-07, 01:53 AM
This is more of a pet peeve than a serious problem, but I find DM over-dependence on preparation to be a bit annoying. I want a DM to be comfortable with saying 'okay, I haven't prepared something for this, so give me five minutes to come up with something and lets see what happens' rather than 'okay, I haven't prepared something for this, so see you next week'. I don't mind if the improvised stuff is lower quality because the more the DM improvises, the better at it they're going to be. But being afraid or unable to improvise is a problem since improvisation is such a central skill to rolling with natural player unpredictability.

A related thing is 'stick to the script' DMing, where even if the situation obviously is really different from what the DM initially had in mind, they can't adapt their plans to change so you end up spending a lot of time with things that might not be relevant anymore, or things of that nature. This could be insisting on playing out a battle that's already a foregone conclusion, or having an NPC stubbornly continue on some self-destructive path even when it's been proven unnecessary, or whatever.

A lack of willingness to go outside what's written in the system/setting/etc is also a problem - e.g. robotic DMing.

Gritmonger
2015-04-07, 03:29 AM
Overpowered DMPCs. Kings who can't find anything better to do than round up murderhobos and send them on ridiculous errands with overpowered DMPCs, under pain of death.

Elves are pure and light and better than everyone and on and on and on and on.

Storm_Of_Snow
2015-04-07, 03:57 AM
Adventures starting in a tavern.
But why would the PCs sign up to go off into, given the details the patron's leaving out, what is obviously certain death, unless they'd cleared out at least two barrels of the local brew each before hand? :smallwink:

For the fountain and similar things, I think it's effects have to make sense.

So, if you drink from a fountain, you've a chance of contracting mummy rot, why? Is there a mummy's arm lying in the bottom of it, contaminating the water, that the party can notice and take steps to work around (fishing it out, dipping a container in, then casting Purify Food and Water, even simply boiling it)?

Did the original builder want to use it to create an undead army or to spread a plague? If so, and they're not still in charge, why has no one from the current owners tried to destroy it?

Was it cursed by someone? If so, chances are there's rumours about it that the PCs should have heard.

JAL_1138
2015-04-07, 04:54 AM
Just to give the other side of the screen a chance. :smallsmile:

I suppose there are the obligatory mentions of the Killer DM and Monty Haul DM, but this isn't really about what makes a DM bad at being a DM but rather common adventure tropes. Some examples:

1) The party comes across a room filled with lots of coins and gems and jewelry and chests. It's all legit and real. The vast amount is loosely laying around. Oh darn, the party doesn't have the means to carry it all. They can grab a pocketful or fill a sack, but they otherwise have to leave the entire treasure in the room because not only can't they carry it, they haven't cleared the dungeon yet to ensure safety trying to cart it out. The party always say they'll come back for it when they complete the mission. The party never comes back to that room. Either the adventure forces the party to leave the dungeon by some means in another place or after completing the adventure the dungeon is collapsing. The party just has enough time to flee as quickly as possible but cannot take the time to haul the grand treasure. What they did get in a pocket or sack is a nice sum, but it's a mere pittance of what was in that room.

2) Similar to the first, the party finds a large diamond. It's priceless or given a value of 50,000 gp or 100,000 gp. The party never gets to keep it beyond the adventure it's found to sell it. That diamond is a key to a door/portal the party must enter to complete the adventure. The diamond disappears or turns to dirt dust, valueless. Often times this door/portal is the exit the party must go through preventing them from going back to that grand treasure room they found earlier.

3) No statues lined up in a hallway are just statues. They're either golems or a trap.

4) Never drink from the fountain.

5) The most important of all. Never, ever, no not even then, never, ever release anyone or anything you find imprisoned.

1) This is why I always put a reasonable number of bags and sacks in my starting gear (2-4 large, 3-6 small).

2) That's just evil. Even for me, and most of my DMing style is yoinked from old AD&D modules.

3) It's best done once or twice and then never again (at least until they get complacent). Keeps 'em paranoid, but doesn't utterly wear out its welcome. For bonus points, only one of the statues is a trap or golem, and must be interacted with to trigger.

4) If you wouldn't drink water in a cave on earth (and most water in caves on earth is not at all safe unless boiled and filtered), why would you expect water in a cave in D&D--or water in a derelict crypt full of zombies, skeletons, or the corpses of plague victims--to be safe to drink without boiling and/or filtering and/or Purify-Water-ing? Where this gets daffy is in a populated, well-maintained dungeon or stronghold where the inhabitants need to regularly use it too, or in the town square (when the town is not suffering from it). I've seen that done, and it's just silly.

5) This is aggravating. For once, just once, I'd like the imprisoned being not to backstab me or double-cross me. Once. And then the DM wonders why nobody is willing to spring the Plot Hook NPC out of jail.



- The feeble old man, oh but wait...he's not feeble at all! He's a wizard of surpassing power or perhaps a kung-fu master, who can't wait to astonish the party by dropping his feigned decrepitude.

"Rule One--never act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling old men!" --Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

But when it's every single one, or doesn't make a lick of sense given the setup? Aargh.


Silmarillion inspired NPC names.

Oh, come on. Someof the ones in the appendices and genealogy tables don't sound odd out of context. Some. Not a lot, though. Maybe one in twenty. Maybe. Main text, though, generally not a good source. They work in the book, where everything else is derived from the same conlangs, but sound strange (or sound blatantly stolen) elsewhere.


All wishes are rigged and therefore pointless.

Back in AD&D, that's what the spell description in the book said, pretty much. There were no "safe" uses like 3.PF and 5e. [Old Man Voice] Dagnabbed whippersnapper. [/Old Man Voice]

Karl Aegis
2015-04-07, 05:08 AM
Everything is an aggressive phallus surrounded by traps which are also aggressive phallus.

JCAll
2015-04-07, 05:29 AM
Everything is an aggressive phallus surrounded by traps which are also aggressive phallus.

No no, not bad anime trends, that's a different topic.

JAL_1138
2015-04-07, 05:58 AM
No no, not bad anime trends, that's a different topic.

Never ran across a dungeon full of mushroom-based enemies and traps (e.g., myconids and shriekers), I see.

Studoku
2015-04-07, 06:38 AM
The party comes across a room filled with lots of coins and gems and jewelry and chests. It's all legit and real. The vast amount is loosely laying around. Oh darn, the party doesn't have the means to carry it all. They can grab a pocketful or fill a sack, but they otherwise have to leave the entire treasure in the room because not only can't they carry it, they haven't cleared the dungeon yet to ensure safety trying to cart it out. The party always say they'll come back for it when they complete the mission. The party never comes back to that room. Either the adventure forces the party to leave the dungeon by some means in another place or after completing the adventure the dungeon is collapsing. The party just has enough time to flee as quickly as possible but cannot take the time to haul the grand treasure. What they did get in a pocket or sack is a nice sum, but it's a mere pittance of what was in that room.
This happened to me once. We killed the drake guarding the treasure in one round, then spent half the session trying to leave with the treasure.

Our first plan was to have the druid wildshape and stack strength and size buffs so she could hold it and be teleported. The problem was finding a form that could physically hold the treasure- dire bears don't have hands.

We ended up cutting the drake open, removing the insides and filling it with treasure. Good times.

JAL_1138
2015-04-07, 07:07 AM
We ended up cutting the drake open, removing the insides and filling it with treasure. Good times.

This is genius. Horrible but pragmatic genius, in the fashion of the very best old-school Neutral Greedy murderhobos. I salute you.

DigoDragon
2015-04-07, 07:31 AM
One trend I really dislike in a GM is when they ask me to give them a short background of my character and then they never use it in the campaign. Backgrounds are little gold mines for plot hooks to get PCs invested. If they just want to know the character's personality I can write that in two sentences. :smalltongue:


Making the newest, most irrational, confused player the focal point of the plot.
Edit: Really it grinds my gears when any single PC is the focal point of the plot, but that's just the frigging worst.

I personally don't mind if one PC gets the spotlight, on the caveat that it's a short plot and everyone gets their 15 minutes in turn.



No no no... whats better then making it crumble to dust is letting them have it and then having them try and find somebody who actually wants to buy a 50k - 100k diamond and has the cash to do it.

I did that once to a party. They were a little frustrated, but they understood the problem so were good sports about it. They used it later legitimately for a Resurrection spell.



Never ran across a dungeon full of mushroom-based enemies and traps (e.g., myconids and shriekers), I see.

I remember I was in a party that encountered a room like that. Swampy cave with a bunch of fungi to hang around. The wizard and rogue decided to just burn that part of the dungeon down. Destroyed all the monsters, but also destroyed all the treasure so... derp.



Related to that, vague descriptions when the GM is trying to get the players to do something. I've done this.

I once gamed under this GM that had a very annoying habit of answering "Kinda-Sorta" to nearly every Yes/No question I asked. For example:

Digo: "I cast Charm Person. Did he fail his save?"
GM: "Kinda-Sorta."

Digo: "I put the key in the ignition. Can I start the engine?"
GM: "Kinda-Sorta."

Digo: "After the smoke clears, I check the target. Is he dead?"
GM: "Kinda-Sorta."



Adventures starting in a tavern.

I once started a campaign with the players on an Airbus A300. As it was crashing. :smallbiggrin:

sakuuya
2015-04-07, 07:54 AM
Everything is an aggressive phallus surrounded by traps which are also aggressive phallus.

I do not want to enter his magical realm (http://gunshowcomic.com/471). (Warning: No agressive phalli, but lots of cartoon pee)

JAL_1138
2015-04-07, 07:56 AM
Digo: "After the smoke clears, I check the target. Is he dead?"
GM: "Kinda-Sorta."



This could be saved with additional description. Such as:

DM: "Kinda-sorta. Technically speaking, some of his organs might be functional if you put them on ice and transplant them quickly enough."

DM: "Kinda-sorta. He's still breathing, but he's unconscious, in a persistent vegetative state, and will never recover higher brain functions."

DM: "Kinda-sorta. His body is obliterated, but his evil spirit fled his crumbling mortal shell."

DM: "Kinda-sorta. The top half of him is weakly twitching, five feet from his lower half."

obryn
2015-04-07, 08:25 AM
Ok, for real, though. Single points of failure. Odds are that the players' minds don't work exactly like the DM's, and DMs who don't realize that (or are snobby jerks) often have trouble putting adventures together. Riddles are one source of this, but so are mystery plots that have a single string of clues that the players have to find or be screwed.
Related to this, "Roll to see if we get to have an adventure today." Or - lock everything interesting behind random chance.

If it's critical the players find certain pieces of information for the adventure to function ... well, make sure that happens.

IIRC, there was a D&D Next podcast where Mearls literally had the players keep rolling until someone succeeded at their Perception check to find the dungeon.

The WFRP2 adventure Ashes of Middenheim had a similar one - where the players needed to roll the right checks to even find tracks to follow from a murder scene.

(I give a pass to full sandboxes; those follow different rules. But in a typical campaign, this is just bad.)

Gracht Grabmaw
2015-04-07, 08:47 AM
If I hear the words "I'm sorry but another player already picked that class, why don't you play something else" one more time I'm gonna backhand the fool that utters them.
This is not World of ****ing Warcraft, your campaign notes are not suddenly gonna catch on fire if we don't play a bog-standard fighter-wizard-healer-thief group.

Saladman
2015-04-07, 08:51 AM
Allied or friendly npcs who, in a twist everyone saw coming, betray the party. And people wonder where murderhobos come from, when really they're just playing the numbers on bad campaigns.

Adventures where you're literally saving the world. Way to signal we're not going off the rails, and we're not allowed to fail.

Surly, disrespectful tavern- and shop-keepers. Your average D&D party is dangerous, heavily armed, and has gold to burn. Putting on your gruff voice and throwing insults is not "roleplaying," it's a profound failure to understand the nature of tavern- and shop-keepers.


DMPCs.

This, always. No, there are no exceptions. "But this one time it was really cool because..." No, it wasn't, your players just put up with it because they had no other options.

Mr.Moron
2015-04-07, 09:03 AM
Related to this, "Roll to see if we get to have an adventure today." Or - lock everything interesting behind random chance.

If it's critical the players find certain pieces of information for the adventure to function ... well, make sure that happens.

IIRC, there was a D&D Next podcast where Mearls literally had the players keep rolling until someone succeeded at their Perception check to find the dungeon.


That seems like such an odd way to handle it. I mean they can still have the check if they'd like, but have the result determine how long it takes to find it, or if they run into complications or not while trying to find it.

JAL_1138
2015-04-07, 09:08 AM
That seems like such an odd way to handle it. I mean they can still have the check if they'd like, but have the result determine how long it takes to find it, or if they run into complications or not while trying to find it.

At least Tomb of Horrors gave two (trapped) fake entrances and the explicit option to poke the hillside with 10ft poles or pikes until you found one if nothing else worked.

Jay R
2015-04-07, 09:24 AM
Deciding without warning, in the middle of a player discussion, that the next thing a player says is really the character saying it in front of an NPC. I have no problem with a DM telling you you cannot have player discussions, but changing the interpretation of what we're doing without warning is just dishonest.

sakuuya
2015-04-07, 09:30 AM
At least Tomb of Horrors gave two (trapped) fake entrances and the explicit option to poke the hillside with 10ft poles or pikes until you found one if nothing else worked.

I also think ToH and its ilk are sort of a separate category, since they're meant to test player skill (in ways that are often brutal and/or unfair). I don't think "Can you perform the right arbitrary action to make the door appear?" is a particularly interesting skill to test, but it's at least consistent with the design goals for that sort of module. Plus, as you point out, they often expect players to have a hard time completing tasks and are thus more able to plan contingencies.

Normal, non-metagamey games (where you ask "what would my character do?" rather than "what is the optimal thing to do?") should never grind to a halt because the players don't know where the DM hid the adventure.

Boci
2015-04-07, 09:34 AM
Bad guys showing up to say "Hello, I'll be the bad guy for this story. Aren't I just so wonderfully evil and cocky? Uh uh uh, you can't touch this. Oh time to go, leave you get back to the current quest. I'll see you guys later"

What was worse was that:

1. They had apparently been eavesdropping on a conversation we had had earlier in front of the tribe elders, so apparently whatever sneakery they had trumped any detection ability of theirs, and the elders had recieved no word of them coming.

2. When I responded to it organically ("hey, they ran away, need to track them whilst one of us goes back to warn the elders that wyrm tainted are in the area"), it turned out we weren't suppose to do that, and were instead meant to continue on our relatively mundane and unimportant quest, given that we now knew a servant of our oldest enemy was in the area. (World of Darkness: Werewolves for those wondering what the system/lore was).

This time it happened wasn't actually that much of a problem (or rather I overlooked it), because it was a new DM. But this crap gets pulled by more experienced GMs regularly who should really know better.

Kurald Galain
2015-04-07, 09:42 AM
A really annoying trend is minigames.

The party encounters a special kind of scene where none of their character abilities, items, or spells actually work; but instead they get a short list of options to pick from that only tangentially make sense in the situation and that require an arbitrary roll to work. Of course, the GM first has to spend ten minutes explaining the rules for this particular minigame, and original ideas are vetoed on grounds that you're in a minigame. Bonus points if either the game system already has mechanics for the issue at hand (that arbitrarily aren't used now because the GM wants a minigame), or if the minigame is about something that the GM happens to know very little about (e.g. how sailboats work) and the players do.

For example, "You come to a set of stairs! You must either make an acrobatics check to avoid tripping over the stairs, or a fortitude save to run faster!" or "While you are sailing, suddenly the wind changes direction! You must either make a knowledge (nature) check to adjust the sails, or you take 10 hp damage from rope burns!"

Kurald Galain
2015-04-07, 09:53 AM
Mandatory reading material for a thread like this is the webcomic DM Of The Rings (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612).


"Long ago there was a great empire that spanned the continent/world. It was full of wonder and had powerful magic. It was a Golden Age. Tragedy struck. The gods got angry/there was civil war when the most beloved and greatest emperor or king died/a meteor struck/something happened that caused the empire to fragment into different countries or lack of civilization altogether in just a few city-states
What is hilarious is that in at least one game's default setting, about half of the races have had a Great World-Spanning Empire somewhere in their past history :smallbiggrin:


DMPCs.

No more need be said.
Indeed.

JAL_1138
2015-04-07, 09:55 AM
I also think ToH and its ilk are sort of a separate category, since they're meant to test player skill (in ways that are often brutal and/or unfair). I don't think "Can you perform the right arbitrary action to make the door appear?" is a particularly interesting skill to test, but it's at least consistent with the design goals for that sort of module. Plus, as you point out, they often expect players to have a hard time completing tasks and are thus more able to plan contingencies.

Normal, non-metagamey games (where you ask "what would my character do?" rather than "what is the optimal thing to do?") should never grind to a halt because the players don't know where the DM hid the adventure.

I guess that was my point, though--even the most legendarily brutal tournament module had extra things listed to try so it didn't stall if the players couldn't find the entrance on one roll, so it's especially bad when normal adventures can stall that way. (Granted it has several of these "only one way ahead" moments later on, notably the hidden door in a particular trap, and the Gem of True Seeing puzzle, and the whole thing with the Demilich's immunities, and more...but still.)

DigoDragon
2015-04-07, 09:58 AM
This could be saved with additional description.

It really could! Too bad he never actually tried that. Had he, I wouldn't be complaining about him. :smallbiggrin:



A really annoying trend is minigames.

The party encounters a special kind of scene where none of their character abilities, items, or spells actually work; but instead they get a short list of options to pick from that only tangentially make sense in the situation and that require an arbitrary roll to work. Of course, the GM first has to spend ten minutes explaining the rules for this particular minigame, and original ideas are vetoed on grounds that you're in a minigame. Bonus points if either the game system already has mechanics for the issue at hand (that arbitrarily aren't used now because the GM wants a minigame), or if the minigame is about something that the GM happens to know very little about (e.g. how sailboats work) and the players do.

Yeah, I can totally see how that would be annoying. While I have put minigames in my campaigns before, I make them all optional strictly for bonus points/loot/fun.

Also, if the minigame takes a whole session to get through, that's not really mini, is it? ;)

Mr.Moron
2015-04-07, 10:04 AM
I
Yeah, I can totally see how that would be annoying. While I have put minigames in my campaigns before, I make them all optional strictly for bonus points/loot/fun.

Also, if the minigame takes a whole session to get through, that's not really mini, is it? ;)

It's also a matter of taste. I run for two groups. One I think would reflect that poster's feelings and hates them. The other really kind of likes them as they're a change of pace that busts up the usual routine.

Bad Wolf
2015-04-07, 10:09 AM
What's wrong with 5? How else is the cunning devil supposed to convince the PCs to let him go?

goto124
2015-04-07, 10:17 AM
Oh okay. Anyway, I was the horrible DM. Argh.


How does a DM make up stuff on the fly when players accidentally go off the rails, and their actions actually make perfect sense (which you didn't notice because you had metagame blinkers on), but will send the campaign in a direction so different you have no content whatsoever for it?

Example: The PCs are on an investigation to find out who the culprits are. My plan was for the PCs to gather the looted items (evidence), figure out the identities of the culprits, give the evidence to the Lord, and tell said Lord who the culprits are.

When the PCs figured out one of the culprits, they decided to interrogate him.

I freaked out, and the campaign went egg-shaped because I couldn't come up with anything on the fly.


Is this worthy of a new thread?

sakuuya
2015-04-07, 10:20 AM
How does a DM make up stuff on the fly when players accidentally go off the rails, and their actions actually make perfect sense (which you didn't notice because you had metagame blinkers on), but will send the campaign in a direction so different you have no content whatsoever for it?

Is this worthy of a new thread?

Yeah, probably, since it's about how to be a good DM, rather than complaining about the bad ones.

Atanvarno
2015-04-07, 11:53 AM
5) The most important of all. Never, ever, no not even then, never, ever release anyone or anything you find imprisoned.

I actually ran a campaign recently in which the party stumbled across a (very slow charging) wish granting machine powered by an imprisoned being of unknown origin.

They wound up spending considerable resources figuring out that it was an imprisoned archdevil who had been missing for several hundred years.

Rather than using the wishes and going on their merry way, they decided that he'd been imprisoned unjustly, so they drew up a pact (I let the binder make a binding roll :smalltongue:) under which he would be compelled to avoid meddling with the prime material and compelling him not to go after anyone still alive in revenge for his imprisonment. After that, they just let him out without any further conditions.

I decided to play it with him feeling indebted to them, and for the rest of the campaign they each had an archdevil owing them a solid. For the most part, they were terrified to actually call in the favour, and also terrified that someone else would find out what they'd done, but when things eventually got bad enough that they asked him for help, he paid up without any backstabbing whatsoever. It was pretty great. :smallbiggrin:


As for bad DM habits, this is one I'm guilty of, as are some of the people who I've played with:

Planning a combat encounter, but neglecting to come up with any solid reason why the situation can't be resolved withing a few minutes when the PC's inevitably decide to talk things out rather than murderhobo. :smallredface:

Ralanr
2015-04-07, 12:46 PM
Something a DM has done that I hate: Forgets I have darkvision and then tries to explain it probably still requires some light to actually work...

Troppertific things: Having a god mode Mary Sue fight a cutscene battle against a boss the whole party was fighting and the DM going into detail of why this is awesome (He's got four arms now! But the ghost is undeterred!). :smallannoyed:

Yeah...if I wanted to watch cuts cenes of fights I'm not fighting, I'd go play Final fantasy...or watch them on youtube.

zeek0
2015-04-07, 04:25 PM
Long ago there was a great empire that spanned the continent/world. It was full of wonder and had powerful magic. It was a Golden Age. Tragedy struck. The gods got angry/there was civil war when the most beloved and greatest emperor or king died/a meteor struck/something happened that caused the empire to fragment into different countries or lack of civilization altogether in just a few city-states

Actually, this is a time-honored fantasy tradition. The fantasy genre effectively started out of the dark ages - a time when the people were looking back to larger, greater civilizations (Greeks - academia, art, Romans - empire, military) as much more wonderful and powerful than they are.

As such, this feeling and history permeates through most fantasy fiction (i.e. LoTR). This 'looking to the past' as opposed to 'looking to the future' is a marker that separates fantasy from science fiction.

Gritmonger
2015-04-07, 04:42 PM
Actually, this is a time-honored fantasy tradition. The fantasy genre effectively started out of the dark ages - a time when the people were looking back to larger, greater civilizations (Greeks - academia, art, Romans - empire, military) as much more wonderful and powerful than they are.

As such, this feeling and history permeates through most fantasy fiction (i.e. LoTR). This 'looking to the past' as opposed to 'looking to the future' is a marker that separates fantasy from science fiction.
And consider the one remaining wonder of the ancient world is still standing after millenia, and was already millenia old when it was included in the original seven wonders of the ancient world... Egyptian society was one of the originals of this trope...

BayardSPSR
2015-04-07, 04:52 PM
GM: "Kinda-Sorta."

I can imagine no worse answer - it says nothing, and implies that it's an answer. At least "you can't tell" or something suggests it's possible to check more closely.


IIRC, there was a D&D Next podcast where Mearls literally had the players keep rolling until someone succeeded at their Perception check to find the dungeon.

On that note: perception checks. Also knowledge checks.


How does a DM make up stuff on the fly when players accidentally go off the rails, and their actions actually make perfect sense (which you didn't notice because you had metagame blinkers on), but will send the campaign in a direction so different you have no content whatsoever for it?
...
Is this worthy of a new thread?

Yes! That's the single question I've found hardest to answer in my entire RPG experience. I'd start it myself, now that you've brought it up, but I think the honor of the first post should be yours.

Jerynboe
2015-04-07, 04:57 PM
I once had a DM whose campaign setting seemed to consist entirely of runes of antimagic field any time we were confronted with any kind of trap more elaborate than a spiked pit. I get not wanting everything to be bypassed with a spell, but seriously: where are these things coming from?

Similarly, traps appearing where they have no business. I once played as a Draconic Mafia don who I am convinced was the only morally questionable individual in the campaign setting who did not trap everything he owned. We later joked that there was a halfling trap master working for our enemies who had some kind of item of at will stone shape and tons of giant bladed pendulums and the like kept in his bags of holding.

veti
2015-04-07, 06:06 PM
Digo: "I cast Charm Person. Did he fail his save?"
GM: "Kinda-Sorta."

"Well, he's stopped shouting and is now looking at you quizzically. What do you want to do next?"


Digo: "I put the key in the ignition. Can I start the engine?"
GM: "Kinda-Sorta."

"You turn the key. The starter motor whirrs a bit, but doesn't fire this round. Wanna keep trying?" (Assuming there's some sort of time pressure in this situation, obviously.)


Digo: "After the smoke clears, I check the target. Is he dead?"
GM: "Kinda-Sorta."

"He's lying very still, you can't see if he's breathing. How do you want to check him? Are you touching the body to take a pulse? Cutting off the head?"

(Useful definition: "if the subject can be looted without complaining, they're as dead as they need to be.")

In fact, I'd like to nominate a Bad Player Trend here of "wanting to be told more information than they've earned".

Morrandir
2015-04-07, 06:14 PM
"Roll to see if we get to have an adventure today."

I've dealt with a DM that pretty much used this as his go-to "design". He claimed to allow us able to do whatever we want, but it was like that Henry Ford quote: "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black." He planned one path for us, and by dang we were going to take that path! Even though we had to roll to find it. Four times. There wasn't even anything interesting for failure, it was just wasting our time, both as players and characters.

BayardSPSR
2015-04-07, 06:16 PM
In fact, I'd like to nominate a Bad Player Trend here of "wanting to be told more information than they've earned".

That's not what "kinda-sorta" is. "Kinda-sorta" is the player asking or acting to get information and getting an answer that means nothing. "Kind of dead" is meaningless without explanation, where "you aren't sure yet" means something. The exact words matter.

Personally, I find that "wanting to be told more information than they've earned" is a great motivator for "acting to get more information," which is a wonderful thing for players to do.

As a player, when I ask a question or look for information in character, I expect to get an answer from the GM that at minimum makes sense, even if the answer is "you don't know."

Mr Beer
2015-04-07, 06:17 PM
Surly, disrespectful tavern- and shop-keepers. Your average D&D party is dangerous, heavily armed, and has gold to burn. Putting on your gruff voice and throwing insults is not "roleplaying," it's a profound failure to understand the nature of tavern- and shop-keepers.

I agree but would put it more strongly: many D&D parties are not just 'dangerous' but gangs of ruthless, greedy mass murderers, with at least one incredibly touchy, full-blown sociopath amongst them.

Realistic shop-keepers in a world with murderhobos would behave much like your average corner-store owner would, if confronted by a large, gun-toting group of blood-stained rebels straight out of some grindingly awful African civil war.

Gratuitously insulting the largest one, yes the one with the necklace of ears and human-skull fetish hanging off his AK47, would not be their most likely reaction.

BayardSPSR
2015-04-07, 06:23 PM
Realistic shop-keepers in a world with murderhobos would behave much like your average corner-store owner would, if confronted by a large, gun-toting group of blood-stained rebels straight out of some grindingly awful African civil war.

Gratuitously insulting the largest one, yes the one with the necklace of ears and human-skull fetish hanging off his AK47, would not be their most likely reaction.

"... Thank you for your service...?"

Sith_Happens
2015-04-07, 06:24 PM
At least right now I can remember exactly three fights I've ever been in in D&D in which the immediate environment contained any remotely notable features. With the low bar for "remotely notable" being "trees."

Similarly, it has never rained at any point during any D&D campaign I've ever been witness to.

veti
2015-04-07, 06:36 PM
That's not what "kinda-sorta" is. "Kinda-sorta" is the player asking or acting to get information and getting an answer that means nothing. "Kind of dead" is meaningless without explanation, where "you aren't sure yet" means something. The exact words matter.

Oh yes, I'll stipulate that "kinda-sorta" is not a valid answer, unless it's a holding pattern translating to "wait just a mo', I'll answer that more fully in a tick."

My point was that all three of the questions were not necessarily questions that should get a yes-or-no answer. There are players who expect, nay, demand to know what the opponent rolled on their saving throw. But that's none of their business. Maybe the guy's charmed, or maybe he's puzzled by your attempt to cast a spell, or maybe he recognised the spell and is playing along to see what you'll do next. How would you tell the difference?

The Random NPC
2015-04-07, 06:59 PM
...But that's none of their business. Maybe the guy's charmed, or maybe he's puzzled by your attempt to cast a spell, or maybe he recognised the spell and is playing along to see what you'll do next. How would you tell the difference?

As a targeted spell, the caster automatically knows if the spell has failed. Unless, of course, the target has something like False Pretenses (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/buildingCharacters/spelltouchedFeats.htm#falsePretenses).

BayardSPSR
2015-04-07, 07:08 PM
Oh yes, I'll stipulate that "kinda-sorta" is not a valid answer, unless it's a holding pattern translating to "wait just a mo', I'll answer that more fully in a tick."

My point was that all three of the questions were not necessarily questions that should get a yes-or-no answer.

Ah, yes. I agree completely.

Solaris
2015-04-07, 09:47 PM
This, always. No, there are no exceptions. "But this one time it was really cool because..." No, it wasn't, your players just put up with it because they had no other options.

This is correct.
I am also a figment of the collective imagination, a fragment of the internet given an unholy semblance of life and infesting the GitP servers while I bide my time and plot my takeover of the world. I haven't actually run any D&D games, and only pretend to do so in order to lull you all into a false sense of security.


At least right now I can remember exactly three fights I've ever been in in D&D in which the immediate environment contained any remotely notable features. With the low bar for "remotely notable" being "trees."

Similarly, it has never rained at any point during any D&D campaign I've ever been witness to.

I have to agree with you on this. Bare and featureless rooms are just lazy. There's darn near a whole chapter on environments and terrain in the DMG, and it gives him an excuse to prattle on about his setting. You'd think more DMs would be into it.

NichG
2015-04-07, 09:56 PM
How does a DM make up stuff on the fly when players accidentally go off the rails, and their actions actually make perfect sense (which you didn't notice because you had metagame blinkers on), but will send the campaign in a direction so different you have no content whatsoever for it?

...

Is this worthy of a new thread?


I think this'd be a useful thread to have.

DigoDragon
2015-04-08, 07:26 AM
I can imagine no worse answer - it says nothing, and implies that it's an answer. At least "you can't tell" or something suggests it's possible to check more closely.

Definitely agree here. Another decent answer could be "yes, but..." and then explain the situation or ask me to roll a skill for confirmation. Like in the 3rd example, I'm okay with the GM answering "He looks dead, but you might need to check the body for a pulse to be sure. Roll Perception."




"You turn the key. The starter motor whirrs a bit, but doesn't fire this round. Wanna keep trying?" (Assuming there's some sort of time pressure in this situation, obviously.)

Yeah, this is a nice flavorful answer. It's basically answering my question with "No" and giving me a potentially crucial detail (My character hears the motor whirring, so it's trying to turn over but can't). Now I have something to work with, and I could reply to the GM's question with "I pop the hood and make a Mechanics roll to determine why the engine isn't starting" or "I don't keep trying, I will continue on foot to the location."



That's not what "kinda-sorta" is. "Kinda-sorta" is the player asking or acting to get information and getting an answer that means nothing. "Kind of dead" is meaningless without explanation, where "you aren't sure yet" means something. The exact words matter.

Personally, I find that "wanting to be told more information than they've earned" is a great motivator for "acting to get more information," which is a wonderful thing for players to do.

As a player, when I ask a question or look for information in character, I expect to get an answer from the GM that at minimum makes sense, even if the answer is "you don't know."

Exactly. :smallsmile:



Oh yes, I'll stipulate that "kinda-sorta" is not a valid answer, unless it's a holding pattern translating to "wait just a mo', I'll answer that more fully in a tick."

If the GM needs a moment to put together a proper answer, I'm okay with that. But my examples were not such a case. The GM I'm talking about simply says "Kinda-Sorta" and then waits for the player to react. However, it is difficult to react when you get a non-answer.


My point was that all three of the questions were not necessarily questions that should get a yes-or-no answer. There are players who expect, nay, demand to know what the opponent rolled on their saving throw. But that's none of their business. Maybe the guy's charmed, or maybe he's puzzled by your attempt to cast a spell, or maybe he recognised the spell and is playing along to see what you'll do next. How would you tell the difference?

Some game systems have rules that the caster will know if a targeted spell works or not, such as Charm Person. So it's not unreasonable in that situation to ask if the spell worked, from the caster's IC point of view of course. If a player asks if a body is dead or alive, an answer of "You don't know without checking it directly" is a fine answer, especially if the body appears intact.

I'd argue that the question about starting the engine would really be a Yes or No question. Either the engine starts or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then the GM could ask the player if they'd like to diagnose why or do something else.

Atanvarno
2015-04-08, 11:03 AM
I've encountered people who use "kinda-sorta" as an affirmative response that is supposed to be somehow funny by virtue of understatement. (eg: "You kinda-sorta completely steamrolled that fight")

I can see that being annoying if they never qualify it, but did "kinda-sorta" ever not mean "Yes"? Because if not that seems more of a communication issue than anything else, in that they may not have fully understood that they were communicating poorly. People tend to develop all sorts of weird verbal tics.

Amphetryon
2015-04-08, 11:28 AM
I Had Not Thought of That, Therefore It Does Not Work: The Players devise an off-the-wall strategy for dealing with a situation, which the DM dismisses out of hand because the stratagem had simply never occurred to that DM.

Example: If the party is locked out of the large, walled metropolis, with its tightly-packed, thatched roofs already described to them, the Players' plan to collect large piles of combustibles, readily available from the surrounding farms, that can be lit and then launched into the city via the catapult (which the Characters should have by dint of current skills in engineering and available materials) simply fails, without die rolls or explanation.

This is related to railroading, but seems, to me, to be distinctive enough to warrant special mention.

SowZ
2015-04-08, 11:37 AM
DMs who put adamantine doors in their dungeons and expect players to leave that valuable loot just sitting there.

Ok, for real, though. Single points of failure. Odds are that the players' minds don't work exactly like the DM's, and DMs who don't realize that (or are snobby jerks) often have trouble putting adventures together. Riddles are one source of this, but so are mystery plots that have a single string of clues that the players have to find or be screwed.

Sometimes coming up with three or four possible solutions is even worse, though, because the DM thinks, "Come on, you have several options!"

I usually think of just one way in which I would solve the problem, but this is almost never the solution used by my players. I like being surprised. Any sufficiently clever solution will work.

DigoDragon
2015-04-08, 12:11 PM
I can see that being annoying if they never qualify it, but did "kinda-sorta" ever not mean "Yes"? Because if not that seems more of a communication issue than anything else, in that they may not have fully understood that they were communicating poorly. People tend to develop all sorts of weird verbal tics.

We've pointed it out to the GM that we found the term to be bad communication on his part. It's like a bad habit though; sometimes it'll come back so he needs a reminder to not use it by itself as an answer.

Keltest
2015-04-08, 12:17 PM
Sometimes coming up with three or four possible solutions is even worse, though, because the DM thinks, "Come on, you have several options!"

I usually think of just one way in which I would solve the problem, but this is almost never the solution used by my players. I like being surprised. Any sufficiently clever solution will work.

An inability to progress due to an unpassable barrier is DM failure. An inability to progress due to failure to utilize any of the multiple ways of passing the fully passable barrier is player failure.

SowZ
2015-04-08, 12:19 PM
An inability to progress due to an unpassable barrier is DM failure. An inability to progress due to failure to utilize any of the multiple ways of passing the fully passable barrier is player failure.

My point is that sometimes, coming up with three possibilities makes the DM quick to shut down alternatives that by all rights should work. It doesn't matter if the DM planned for fifty different ways the player could solve the problem, if the players come up with a plan good enough to work, it should work.

Keltest
2015-04-08, 12:25 PM
My point is that sometimes, coming up with three possibilities makes the DM quick to shut down alternatives that by all rights should work. It doesn't matter if the DM planned for fifty different ways the player could solve the problem, if the players come up with a plan good enough to work, it should work.

That was poorly communicated then. In general I agree that a DM that disallows something just because they didn't think of it is not good, however if you've gotten to a specific scenario where there are only a handful of viable ways to get past an obstacle, its quite likely that what the players think is a good plan wouldn't actually work out the way they hoped, because the DM didn't specifically put in the resources needed to guarantee success.

JAL_1138
2015-04-08, 12:26 PM
My point is that sometimes, coming up with three possibilities makes the DM quick to shut down alternatives that by all rights should work. It doesn't matter if the DM planned for fifty different ways the player could solve the problem, if the players come up with a plan good enough to work, it should work.

Put an actual note to that effect in as a fourth option: "Or anything else especially clever that by all rights ought to work."

BayardSPSR
2015-04-08, 12:45 PM
An inability to progress due to an unpassable barrier is DM failure. An inability to progress due to failure to utilize any of the multiple ways of passing the fully passable barrier is player failure.

An inability to read players is THE GM failure.

SowZ
2015-04-08, 03:04 PM
Put an actual note to that effect in as a fourth option: "Or anything else especially clever that by all rights ought to work."

I did say, "I usually think of just one way in which I would solve the problem, but this is almost never the solution used by my players. I like being surprised. Any sufficiently clever solution will work."

Darth Ultron
2015-04-08, 03:10 PM
I Had Not Thought of That, Therefore It Does Not Work: The Players devise an off-the-wall strategy for dealing with a situation, which the DM dismisses out of hand because the stratagem had simply never occurred to that DM.

Example: If the party is locked out of the large, walled metropolis, with its tightly-packed, thatched roofs already described to them, the Players' plan to collect large piles of combustibles, readily available from the surrounding farms, that can be lit and then launched into the city via the catapult (which the Characters should have by dint of current skills in engineering and available materials) simply fails, without die rolls or explanation.

This is related to railroading, but seems, to me, to be distinctive enough to warrant special mention.

This is a bit more The DM ignores the super silly thing.

So the group is locked out of the city. And they take a couple weeks....or more....to make a catapult right in easy shot of the city and no one in the city or world notices. Or, ok, lets say they make it deep in a cave far from the city and then build a road to the city to attack. So, the players finally attack with the catapult! They fire one in the city and...set a house on fire. Wow! Then...maybe..get off three more shots before the city guards counter attack. So, guess the group could fight the city.

The end result is that a single flaming catapult making attacks will not obliterate a city. It's not going to be ''your flaming shot hits the city...and the whole city Michale Bay Explodes! ''

SowZ
2015-04-08, 03:17 PM
This is a bit more The DM ignores the super silly thing.

So the group is locked out of the city. And they take a couple weeks....or more....to make a catapult right in easy shot of the city and no one in the city or world notices. Or, ok, lets say they make it deep in a cave far from the city and then build a road to the city to attack. So, the players finally attack with the catapult! They fire one in the city and...set a house on fire. Wow! Then...maybe..get off three more shots before the city guards counter attack. So, guess the group could fight the city.

The end result is that a single flaming catapult making attacks will not obliterate a city. It's not going to be ''your flaming shot hits the city...and the whole city Michale Bay Explodes! ''

Launch a few hundred pods of some sort filled with a horrible disease, or maybe a few Wights with something to prevent fall damage...

Keltest
2015-04-08, 03:19 PM
Launch a few hundred pods of some sort filled with a horrible disease, or maybe a few Wights with something to prevent fall damage...

And something similar happens. Also, where are they going to get the wights, and immunity to the horrible disease?

Theres a reason it took an army to siege a city.

SowZ
2015-04-08, 03:28 PM
And something similar happens. Also, where are they going to get the wights, and immunity to the horrible disease?

Theres a reason it took an army to siege a city.

They're adventurers. Immunity to a non-magical disease and capturing a couple Wights shouldn't be terribly hard. It took an army to sack a city because there weren't Superheroes in Real Life. Depending on the size of the city and power level of the setting, a group of five mid-level adventurers should have no problem sacking a city if they're clever.

Keltest
2015-04-08, 03:40 PM
They're adventurers. Immunity to a non-magical disease and capturing a couple Wights shouldn't be terribly hard. It took an army to sack a city because there weren't Superheroes in Real Life. Depending on the size of the city and power level of the setting, a group of five mid-level adventurers should have no problem sacking a city if they're clever.

A village maybe, but if nothing else a city is going to have several NPC adventurers or otherwise powerful individuals in residence to counter their actions. I would hate to be the 5-man party that tried to sack Shadowdale or Waterdeep, for example.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-08, 03:40 PM
I Had Not Thought of That, Therefore It Does Not Work: The Players devise an off-the-wall strategy for dealing with a situation, which the DM dismisses out of hand because the stratagem had simply never occurred to that DM.

Example: If the party is locked out of the large, walled metropolis, with its tightly-packed, thatched roofs already described to them, the Players' plan to collect large piles of combustibles, readily available from the surrounding farms, that can be lit and then launched into the city via the catapult (which the Characters should have by dint of current skills in engineering and available materials) simply fails, without die rolls or explanation.


"Them adventurer folk been out to your farm yet, Ezekiel? They been a-riding around all day, from Bartholemew's all the way up to Hezekiah's barn, gathering straw and oil. They've been a-cutting some of my maple and oaks too. Near as I can figure, they're building some kind of siege machine."

"A-yup. They was gathering piles o' straw here too. Gathering combustible material to set the town on fire, I reckon."

"Yep, I reckon. The womenfolk are powerful agitated by all the activity. You figure we oughta send word for Mordecai's nephew, the one who's on the town watch?"

"Lemuel? Aye. He don't have the sense of a post, but I reckon he'll be wanting to know."

Spojaz
2015-04-08, 04:00 PM
"Them adventurer folk been out to your farm yet, Ezekiel? They been a-riding around all day, from Bartholemew's all the way up to Hezekiah's barn, gathering straw and oil. They've been a-cutting some of my maple and oaks too. Near as I can figure, they're building some kind of siege machine."

"A-yup. They was gathering piles o' straw here too. Gathering combustible material to set the town on fire, I reckon."

"Yep, I reckon. The womenfolk are powerful agitated by all the activity. You figure we oughta send word for Mordecai's nephew, the one who's on the town watch?"

"Lemuel? Aye. He don't have the sense of a post, but I reckon he'll be wanting to know."

Then you have an awesome fight with Lemuel and friends while the party has to prioritize the combat with finishing winding and preparing the catapult?
Yes please! In D&D you can do anything. It is the DM's job to make sure you can do anything, with appropriate difficulty.

SowZ
2015-04-08, 04:12 PM
A village maybe, but if nothing else a city is going to have several NPC adventurers or otherwise powerful individuals in residence to counter their actions. I would hate to be the 5-man party that tried to sack Shadowdale or Waterdeep, for example.

It's all going to be level dependent. A village could be taken by a group of level fives. A decent sized city could be taken by smart, reasonably optimized level tens if they have some luck, a lot of planning, and it is a typically leveled setting. A metropolis would require Epic level characters. Now, if we're taking Forgotten Realms, forget about it. There's a level fifteen Cleric or something around every corner.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-08, 04:14 PM
Then you have an awesome fight with Lemuel and friends while the party has to prioritize the combat with finishing winding and preparing the catapult?
Yes please! In D&D you can do anything. It is the DM's job to make sure you can do anything, with appropriate difficulty.

Well, the difficulty might be quite high if Lemuel's "friends" include a platoon of soldiers dispatched to investigate the reported team of saboteurs.

SowZ
2015-04-08, 04:38 PM
Well, the difficulty might be quite high if Lemuel's "friends" include a platoon of soldiers dispatched to investigate the reported team of saboteurs.

Depends on the setting. In most settings, a Platoon of soldiers are a bunch of 1st to 2nd level warriors with maybe a couple 3rd levels and a 4th or 5th level Captain thrown in. A group of level 8 adventurers should be able to handle that just fine.

Amphetryon
2015-04-08, 05:59 PM
"Them adventurer folk been out to your farm yet, Ezekiel? They been a-riding around all day, from Bartholemew's all the way up to Hezekiah's barn, gathering straw and oil. They've been a-cutting some of my maple and oaks too. Near as I can figure, they're building some kind of siege machine."

"A-yup. They was gathering piles o' straw here too. Gathering combustible material to set the town on fire, I reckon."

"Yep, I reckon. The womenfolk are powerful agitated by all the activity. You figure we oughta send word for Mordecai's nephew, the one who's on the town watch?"

"Lemuel? Aye. He don't have the sense of a post, but I reckon he'll be wanting to know."

Farms have other readily available combustible materials to mix with the hay or the straw, I reckon.

JAL_1138
2015-04-08, 06:25 PM
I did say, "I usually think of just one way in which I would solve the problem, but this is almost never the solution used by my players. I like being surprised. Any sufficiently clever solution will work."

I was just agreeing with you on that point; I prefer the Rule of Three in building puzzles personally. Nine times out of ten, they use one of the three. The tenth time they do something insane, which has a 50% chance of being clever and a 50% chance of being suicidally idiotic. But I'm going to be changing my method to the Rule of Four, adding in a "sufficiently clever" clause directly to my notes to make sure I don't narrow in too much and write off clever things as daft.

Kurald Galain
2015-04-08, 06:25 PM
This is a bit more The DM ignores the super silly thing.

So the group is locked out of the city. And they take a couple weeks....or more....to make a catapult right in easy shot of the city and no one in the city or world notices. Or, ok, lets say they make it deep in a cave far from the city and then build a road to the city to attack. So, the players finally attack with the catapult! They fire one in the city and...set a house on fire. Wow! Then...maybe..get off three more shots before the city guards counter attack. So, guess the group could fight the city.

The end result is that a single flaming catapult making attacks will not obliterate a city. It's not going to be ''your flaming shot hits the city...and the whole city Michale Bay Explodes! ''

Indeed. The flip side of "the DM doesn't allow plans that he didn't think of" (which is bad DMing) is that "some players expect any inane plan to work with no downsides" (and allowing that is also bad DMing). A straightforward example is players who expect they can make NPCs do anything by maxxing out their bluff skill.

JAL_1138
2015-04-08, 06:31 PM
Indeed. The flip side of "the DM doesn't allow plans that he didn't think of" (which is bad DMing) is that "some players expect any inane plan to work with no downsides" (and allowing that is also bad DMing). A straightforward example is players who expect they can make NPCs do anything by maxxing out their bluff skill.

Right, you need to max out diplomacy and intimidation too. [/kidding]

SowZ
2015-04-08, 06:38 PM
Indeed. The flip side of "the DM doesn't allow plans that he didn't think of" (which is bad DMing) is that "some players expect any inane plan to work with no downsides" (and allowing that is also bad DMing). A straightforward example is players who expect they can make NPCs do anything by maxxing out their bluff skill.

Absolutely. I like to write my campaign the same way I write stories. Events lead into new events as direct consequences of the choices and agency of the characters.

Amphetryon
2015-04-08, 06:39 PM
This is a bit more The DM ignores the super silly thing.

So the group is locked out of the city. And they take a couple weeks....or more....to make a catapult right in easy shot of the city and no one in the city or world notices. Or, ok, lets say they make it deep in a cave far from the city and then build a road to the city to attack. So, the players finally attack with the catapult! They fire one in the city and...set a house on fire. Wow! Then...maybe..get off three more shots before the city guards counter attack. So, guess the group could fight the city.

The end result is that a single flaming catapult making attacks will not obliterate a city. It's not going to be ''your flaming shot hits the city...and the whole city Michale Bay Explodes! ''

Camouflage is easy to create, particularly by low-level magic, but even via Survival checks or similar. Also, these are tactics with a foundation in the historical record, if you care to check.

Keltest
2015-04-08, 06:41 PM
Camouflage is easy to create, particularly by low-level magic, but even via Survival checks or similar. Also, these are tactics with a foundation in the historical record, if you care to check.

Perhaps, on a larger scale. If the DM is allowing 5 people to take on an entire city and win, the DM is not being nearly creative enough with their NPC tactics.

awa
2015-04-08, 06:48 PM
I run into a somewhat related problem that players think subconsciously they are the only proactive entities in the game and every one will kinda sit back and wait for the pc to arrive or allowing heroes to spend several days slowly burrowing through the dungeon with their swords. Particularly in regards to clever uses of magic. They confuse something i haven't thought of as a good plan guaranteed to work.

As far as bad dm annoyances for me personally the worst i have seen is when dms don't understand the games math worst expressed when fighting giant sacks of hp monsters you need to kill for what ever reason, extremely inaccurate and or low dam, but are incredible hard to actually kill becuase of either a bad match up or just crazy high defense.

I had 2 dms who did this but one was much worse then the other, he sent dozens of dretches at our 10+ level adventures all of whom immediately summoned more.
Some kind of devil swarm that was super fast had sr resistances and immune to physical attacks so only one player could actually fight it.

a swarm of advanced devil bees fighting on terrain that effectively made movement impossible so no skirmish dam, who took hours to kill and I'm not sure if they actually hurt any at all i know my scout took no dam.

i left the game ironical due to a conflict with another player, but apparently at one point the party got so frustrated fighting swarms of devils who summoned more devils they just told the dm were done we won the devils are dead give us our treasure.

Boci
2015-04-08, 10:08 PM
This is a bit more The DM ignores the super silly thing.

So the group is locked out of the city. And they take a couple weeks....or more....to make a catapult right in easy shot of the city and no one in the city or world notices. Or, ok, lets say they make it deep in a cave far from the city and then build a road to the city to attack. So, the players finally attack with the catapult! They fire one in the city and...set a house on fire. Wow! Then...maybe..get off three more shots before the city guards counter attack. So, guess the group could fight the city.

The end result is that a single flaming catapult making attacks will not obliterate a city. It's not going to be ''your flaming shot hits the city...and the whole city Michale Bay Explodes! ''

You might want to check out the great fire of London. Sure, the city probably won't be entirely obliterated, but you are vastly under selling what a flaming catapult can do to a city, and vastly over selling the harm a bunch guards will be able to do the PCs, especial when playing amateur fire fighter in a hope of saving their city takes priority.

Sure D&D has magic, but you have to be pretty high level to help stop a fire once it gets going, and that's if they know the spells. A sorcerer likely won't, and a wizard may not have the spell in their book. Even if they do, or they are a cleric, they likely won't have fire fighting spells prepared, and will need to wait until the next day to have them.

SowZ
2015-04-08, 10:09 PM
I run into a somewhat related problem that players think subconsciously they are the only proactive entities in the game and every one will kinda sit back and wait for the pc to arrive or allowing heroes to spend several days slowly burrowing through the dungeon with their swords. Particularly in regards to clever uses of magic. They confuse something i haven't thought of as a good plan guaranteed to work.

As far as bad dm annoyances for me personally the worst i have seen is when dms don't understand the games math worst expressed when fighting giant sacks of hp monsters you need to kill for what ever reason, extremely inaccurate and or low dam, but are incredible hard to actually kill becuase of either a bad match up or just crazy high defense.

I had 2 dms who did this but one was much worse then the other, he sent dozens of dretches at our 10+ level adventures all of whom immediately summoned more.
Some kind of devil swarm that was super fast had sr resistances and immune to physical attacks so only one player could actually fight it.

a swarm of advanced devil bees fighting on terrain that effectively made movement impossible so no skirmish dam, who took hours to kill and I'm not sure if they actually hurt any at all i know my scout took no dam.

i left the game ironical due to a conflict with another player, but apparently at one point the party got so frustrated fighting swarms of devils who summoned more devils they just told the dm were done we won the devils are dead give us our treasure.

I have the same problem with poorly designed boss fights in video games that amount to a low offense/easily dodgeable monster with thirty minutes worth of HP you have to use some repetitive tactic to defeat. That isn't difficult, it is annoying. Increase the monsters offense and decrease the defense, please.

Solaris
2015-04-08, 10:26 PM
Perhaps, on a larger scale. If the DM is allowing 5 people to take on an entire city and win, the DM is not being nearly creative enough with their NPC tactics.

Unless we're using the definition of "Cause a distraction so we could do what we wanted to" for "win", then you're right.
I could see starting a big fire as being a good way to get the city watch concerned with things other than maintaining a good watch on the walls, though.

***

There are a few annoying things I've noticed with a DM I had in the past. I've been fortunate in that I've only had one bad DM; the other two have been either my father or my brother, both of whom are pretty decent at running games.

Fanwanking to Yourself
First is the fact that his campaign was packed with so many references and callbacks to his previous campaign, with so many cameos of his and another person's old characters, that it was practically a fanfiction of his own material. It was pandering to the half the group who had been there for the other campaign, and never mind that the rest of us had no idea what was going on. This was in a Forgotten Realms campaign, too. There are so many other NPCs to inflict on the party that we've actually heard of.
We couldn't have that, though. It wouldn't be 'special'. It wouldn't give the opportunity to derail for half an hour as he recounts a story that was only kind of meh if you were there, and hearing it secondhand only marginally more entertaining than watching reality television or watching paint dry.

Closely related to that is
Fanwanking in General
I get it, I really do. You just read this book/saw this movie/played this game and now you really, really, really wanna do something similar... but if you life characters and plot points from them without so much as changing names, you get no credit, you win no points, you lose. Everyone is dumber for having listened to you gushing about your 'brilliant' ideas for having us watch as you run through your newest favorite story with NPCs (who are, again, identical in name and appearance to the ones you stole) as they run through the story with absolutely minimal PC intervention.

The Tin-Pot Dictator School of Dungeon Mastering
The third is the notion that the DM is always right, and that "My way or the highway" works for the DM any better than it does at any other point in real life. There are situations where it's useful to lay down an ultimatum because the other person's behavior is unacceptable.
Those situations are not when a player has been mocked by another player and is requesting that certain things be banned (playing a character as violently racist against elves for no reason and solo quests with no more point to them than a bowling ball, yet take up half the gaming session while the rest of the group is twiddling their thumbs). I don't care how pathetic and powerless you feel in real life, the gaming table is not the time or place to be acting like you're a tin-pot dictator. You're not infallible, DM, so don't pretend to be and don't be upset when the player responds honestly when you ask him what went wrong.

"I didn't do enough prep work, so we're roleplaying today."
The fourth is, in a non-sandbox game, setting aside a couple of hours for 'roleplaying'. Never mind if you actually want to accomplish something else, the only thing we're allowed to do is sit and chat in-character. Not out-of-character, that's verboten. In-character. He has no plans, no ideas, nothing on what to do - so we're going to dither about and waste time for the first half of the session until he finishes up with working out the day's encounters.
In a sandbox game, that'd be grounds for a carpe DM ("seize the DM!") and/or a dice of March (ever stepped on a d4? How about a lot of d4s?).


I wasn't in that game for very long. He got worse after I left, apparently, because nobody was advising him in the after-game review on how to not act like a terrible human being.

goto124
2015-04-08, 11:19 PM
I Had Not Thought of That, Therefore It Does Not Work: The Players devise an off-the-wall strategy for dealing with a situation, which the DM dismisses out of hand because the stratagem had simply never occurred to that DM.

Example: If the party is locked out of the large, walled metropolis, with its tightly-packed, thatched roofs already described to them, the Players' plan to collect large piles of combustibles, readily available from the surrounding farms, that can be lit and then launched into the city via the catapult (which the Characters should have by dint of current skills in engineering and available materials) simply fails, without die rolls or explanation.

This is related to railroading, but seems, to me, to be distinctive enough to warrant special mention.

I'm going to make the new thread I should have made.

The Grue
2015-04-09, 12:05 AM
A really annoying trend is minigames.

The party encounters a special kind of scene where none of their character abilities, items, or spells actually work; but instead they get a short list of options to pick from that only tangentially make sense in the situation and that require an arbitrary roll to work. Of course, the GM first has to spend ten minutes explaining the rules for this particular minigame, and original ideas are vetoed on grounds that you're in a minigame. Bonus points if either the game system already has mechanics for the issue at hand (that arbitrarily aren't used now because the GM wants a minigame), or if the minigame is about something that the GM happens to know very little about (e.g. how sailboats work) and the players do.

For example, "You come to a set of stairs! You must either make an acrobatics check to avoid tripping over the stairs, or a fortitude save to run faster!" or "While you are sailing, suddenly the wind changes direction! You must either make a knowledge (nature) check to adjust the sails, or you take 10 hp damage from rope burns!"

This is one of the things about Pathfinder adventure modules that really annoys me. Mummy's Mask has a chariot race that is exactly this. Can I cast haste on my horse to make it move faster? Uh, no because the writer didn't think you'd want to do that. Also, roll a reflex save to dodge a crossbow bolt even though that's what AC is for.

I did do this in an Eclipse Phase game I ran once; the mission briefing was accessed through a backdoor hidden in a future-Pokemon MMO. For fun I drew up rules in case any of them wanted to actually try "playing" the game. The difference here is, success at the minigame was not necessary to advance the story, it was just a funny joke.

Pex
2015-04-09, 11:01 PM
Recently reminded of another one.

The DM who plans for and boasts of his PC death count or otherwise tricking them into humiliation.

Might be just a version of Killer DM of the worst kind, but they irk me as much as the "lone wolf" player in Bad Player Trends thread who never tells the party important information they learn but they need to know. Being the DM doesn't excuse being a Richard.

Mr Beer
2015-04-09, 11:04 PM
Recently reminded of another one.

The DM who plans for and boasts of his PC death count or otherwise tricking them into humiliation.

Might be just a version of Killer DM of the worst kind, but they irk me as much as the "lone wolf" player in Bad Player Trends thread who never tells the party important information they learn but they need to know. Being the DM doesn't excuse being a Richard.

This one is particularly awful, since it's trivially easy to for a DM to 'win', if they mistake their position for an adversarial role.

Mr.Moron
2015-04-09, 11:30 PM
This is one of the things about Pathfinder adventure modules that really annoys me. Mummy's Mask has a chariot race that is exactly this. Can I cast haste on my horse to make it move faster? Uh, no because the writer didn't think you'd want to do that. Also, roll a reflex save to dodge a crossbow bolt even though that's what AC is for.
.

Well that and including rules for using haste on a horse in the race would be pointless, haste makes the outcome obvious: You win.

If you've magic to make your horse twice as fast and they don't there isn't any reason to have rules for a race under those conditions, or race at all. There is nothing about the outcome that's up in the air so don't waste time on it and just move on to the next thing.

Kurald Galain
2015-04-09, 11:40 PM
Well that and including rules for using haste on a horse in the race would be pointless, haste makes the outcome obvious: You win.

If you've magic to make your horse twice as fast and they don't there isn't any reason to have rules for a race under those conditions, or race at all. There is nothing about the outcome that's up in the air so don't waste time on it and just move on to the next thing.

Of course. The point is that the adventure as written doesn't allow that (because you can't cast Haste if you're in a minigame), which makes running the adventure as written a bad DM trend.

The Grue
2015-04-09, 11:52 PM
Well that and including rules for using haste on a horse in the race would be pointless, haste makes the outcome obvious: You win.

If you've magic to make your horse twice as fast and they don't there isn't any reason to have rules for a race under those conditions, or race at all. There is nothing about the outcome that's up in the air so don't waste time on it and just move on to the next thing.

Seems to me like the optimal way to resolve that minigame, especially seeing as the next plot hook basically requires someone in the party to win it.

Mr.Moron
2015-04-09, 11:54 PM
Of course. The point is that the adventure as written doesn't allow that (because you can't cast Haste if you're in a minigame), which makes running the adventure as written a bad DM trend.

Why?

Just because the rules for the race don't include rules for resolving haste doesn't mean you can't do it. Finding fault in a a minigame for not including a stipulation that "If you cast haste, you win" is like faulting the rules for not including a stipulation that "If you tie a bomb to a rogue, he doesn't get a reflex save and evasion doesn't apply".

Haste is outside the scope of the rules because it removes the entire need to resolve the race (the only purpose the mini game has). Just like it doesn't include rules for having the race when you've broken the leg of one of the other teams horses ahead of time, or if you've rigged the entire area with explosives to go sky-high as soon as the race starts, or if you've just straight up murdered the race host.

The minigame rules in this case are saying "Given that everybody is roughly playing with standard horses and weapons, here's a set of rules for resolving a self-contained straight-up race". If you're doing something outside that the rules obviously don't apply I don't see why there needs to be a little call-out box, or paragraph with list of exceptions. If it's obvious you automatically win the race you automatically win the race.

Kurald Galain
2015-04-10, 12:00 AM
If you're doing something outside that the rules obviously don't apply I don't see why there needs to be a little call-out box, or paragraph with list of exceptions. If it's obvious you automatically win the race you automatically win the race.

And the bad DM trend is not allowing that. That's the point.

We're not talking about how you personally would be running such scenes. We're talking about scenes where the party encounters a special kind of scene where none of their character abilities, items, or spells actually work; but instead they get a short list of options to pick from that only tangentially make sense in the situation and that require an arbitrary roll to work. Of course, the GM first has to spend ten minutes explaining the rules for this particular minigame, and original ideas are vetoed on grounds that you're in a minigame. Bonus points if either the game system already has mechanics for the issue at hand (that arbitrarily aren't used now because the GM wants a minigame), or if the minigame is about something that the GM happens to know very little about (e.g. how sailboats work) and the players do.

For example, "You come to a set of stairs! You must either make an acrobatics check to avoid tripping over the stairs, or a fortitude save to run faster!" or "While you are sailing, suddenly the wind changes direction! You must either make a knowledge (nature) check to adjust the sails, or you take 10 hp damage from rope burns!"

And unfortunately, that is a trend.

LadyFoxfire
2015-04-10, 12:53 AM
I actually have played with DMPCs who weren't bad. The campaign I'm in right now started as just me and my sister playing, with our dad as the DM, so we could teach my sister how to play. Since neither of us chose to play a healer, my dad rolled up a paladin to be our beatstick/healing battery. He basically just follows us around unobtrusively until we get into combat or we get stuck figuring out the plot, in which case he gives us vague hints like "Maybe we should talk to the guards?"

Of course we do have a ridiculously overpowered DM controlled character who once one-shotted an ancient white dragon, but he's more of an npc than anything, since he's only appeared "on screen" twice, and has yet to actually speak to the party. (He's a Red Wyrm who's taken an interest in our party for complicated, backstory related reasons, in case anyone was wondering)

Sith_Happens
2015-04-10, 01:34 AM
is like faulting the rules for not including a stipulation that "If you tie a bomb to a rogue, he doesn't get a reflex save and evasion doesn't apply".

If you're implying the part in quotes is true, I'll have you know that I disagree.:smalltongue:

VoxRationis
2015-04-10, 01:46 AM
I'm with LadyFoxFire—a DMPC can help beef up a party roster with holes in it, and if you play the DMPC as a follower, rather than a leader, and don't care if they die, they're not going to object to having an extra suite of hit points between them and a TPK. In fact, when I'm a player, I'll usually suggest that NPCs in town help fight the foe with us, if it makes sense for them to do so (because it totally makes sense for that cleric who can heal conditions we won't be able to for 5 levels to hang back in town while we struggle against an infestation of undead).

Kriton
2015-04-10, 01:49 AM
This, always. No, there are no exceptions. "But this one time it was really cool because..." No, it wasn't, your players just put up with it because they had no other options.

I am currently running a game(homebrew system and campaign setting) for
two players, and I had a lot of trouble with keeping the setting feeling as dangerous as i wanted it, without risking killing one or the other on every encounter. So I ended up giving them a third character, who's character sheet they keep and update and who they control in combat; I only speak what his opinion would be on a matter, if asked, and I don't give plot relevant information through him, if his skill rolls(that the players get to make) wouldn't allow it.

I feel that the presence of this character is not obtrusive, and my players seem to like having control of a third combatant on the grid.

Also I have given them the option to send him off(or fight him and kill him to take his things) at any point they feel like.

Mr.Moron
2015-04-10, 01:53 AM
If you're implying the part in quotes is true, I'll have you know that I disagree.:smalltongue:

Call me a Tyrant but I probably wouldn't allow reflex saves & evasion against a bomb implanted in their brain either. Not that I'd probably ever run a with the kind of tone where PCs have bombs tied to them or implanted in their brains mind you. I'm just saying hypothetically if that happens, yeah you done blowed up. The damage/save abstraction just wasn't build to handle having 2lbs of C4 shoved in your mouth going off.

Sith_Happens
2015-04-10, 02:02 AM
Call me a Tyrant but I probably wouldn't allow reflex saves & evasion against a bomb implanted in their brain either.

Neither would I... because at that point it's ceased to be an area effect.:smalltongue::smalltongue:

DigoDragon
2015-04-10, 09:52 AM
If you're implying the part in quotes is true, I'll have you know that I disagree.:smalltongue:

And there lies the trouble I have with Evasion. :3



I'm with LadyFoxFire—a DMPC can help beef up a party roster with holes in it, and if you play the DMPC as a follower, rather than a leader, and don't care if they die, they're not going to object to having an extra suite of hit points between them and a TPK.

My most successful DMPCs have been bards:
1. It's a perfect party buffing class. A buff'd party is a happier party.
2. Can play secondary healer so that the cleric can concentrate on bigger actions.
3. Writes about the party's adventures, thus spreading their reputation.
4. Can do a bit of everything without overshadowing any PC.

SowZ
2015-04-10, 10:36 AM
Allied or friendly npcs who, in a twist everyone saw coming, betray the party. And people wonder where murderhobos come from, when really they're just playing the numbers on bad campaigns.

Adventures where you're literally saving the world. Way to signal we're not going off the rails, and we're not allowed to fail.

Surly, disrespectful tavern- and shop-keepers. Your average D&D party is dangerous, heavily armed, and has gold to burn. Putting on your gruff voice and throwing insults is not "roleplaying," it's a profound failure to understand the nature of tavern- and shop-keepers.



This, always. No, there are no exceptions. "But this one time it was really cool because..." No, it wasn't, your players just put up with it because they had no other options.

I never run DMPCs and try and run reasonable shopkeepers, but, "I do not like campaigns where the world is at stake," and, "Allied NPCs should always work in line with the party," seem very much like personal preference and not at all a sign of poor DMing.

draken50
2015-04-10, 11:25 AM
Being the DM doesn't excuse being a Richard.

I read Dodger so now I know what that means.

Thanks for making me laugh at work for that particular use of slang.

DontEatRawHagis
2015-04-10, 11:31 AM
DM - Created the Dungeon years ago for a very specific group. Repurposed it for a new one, but never updated it. 3.5e this guy ran a dungeon and he was hoping for a party of Cleric, fighter, Mage, Rogue. What he got was Paladin, Rogue, Cleric and Monk. And then proceeded to kill the Monk character to force him to play a mage. Also he got pissed that we never searched rooms completely, but also got pissed when we ran around a maze room(only one entrance and loot in the middle) actually searching it.

Apparently he didn't realize that we don't know which rooms he made that have secrets versus just useless rooms.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-10, 11:59 AM
Also he got pissed that we never searched rooms completely, but also got pissed when we ran around a maze room(only one entrance and loot in the middle) actually searching it.

Apparently he didn't realize that we don't know which rooms he made that have secrets versus just useless rooms.

This made me lol, because I did something similar a long time ago in AD&D. For some reason the characters wanted to search every single square inch of the dungeon. I actually did have secret doors, but at the rate they were going it was going to take quite a while before they got to any areas that had them.

So...behind my GM screen, I drew a new secret door on the map in the room they were in. It led to a tunnel which connected to a room that contained one of the critical secret doors, just so they had something to find.

Looking back on it I think it was a good decision.

BayardSPSR
2015-04-10, 01:53 PM
"I didn't do enough prep work, so we're roleplaying today."
The fourth is, in a non-sandbox game, setting aside a couple of hours for 'roleplaying'. Never mind if you actually want to accomplish something else, the only thing we're allowed to do is sit and chat in-character.

GMs who treat roleplaying as filler to waste time - or as something that's getting in the way of their Plot (or dice-rolling).


Apparently he didn't realize that we don't know which rooms he made that have secrets versus just useless rooms.

Would it work to have a list of secrets, and roll a random chance of them being in the room every time the players search?


It sounds like DMPCs can work in combat-focused games with a small number of players, as a means of dispersing risk. That's interesting.

The only time I've ever used a DMPC was with two players who, within minutes of meeting each other, decided to part ways and gave the DMPC an ultimatum to choose one to travel with. The game promptly fell apart. I have never run a game in which these two players had characters who were able to tolerate each other, despite the fact that they're happily married OOC.

Solaris
2015-04-10, 06:41 PM
GMs who treat roleplaying as filler to waste time - or as something that's getting in the way of their Plot (or dice-rolling).

Both are obnoxious, though I haven't had the second sort. I've seen other people's DMs complaining about not enough RP happening when all they're doing is throwing monsters at the party. That one's kinda funny. It's like they don't know what cause and effect are.


It sounds like DMPCs can work in combat-focused games with a small number of players, as a means of dispersing risk. That's interesting.

I'd say so. Most of the time when I have a DMPC, it's a game involving a lot of combat and I don't optimize the character to exceed the players. When we get to the talky bits, the DMPCs tend to sit back and let the PCs do the talking unless they're really screwing the pooch. I can't claim any cunning on that; I simply can't RP with myself very well.
Of course, I'm merely a figment of the electronic imagination, so take that with a grain of salt.

themaque
2015-04-13, 06:33 PM
I had a GM who LOVED to introduce new players or characters as as imprisoned and have the group rescue them. It happened EVERY time. Even when it made no sense whatsoever he would just lay on level after level of BS till we where in the position he wanted us in.


GM Okay Maque, You where walking down the road, when you are taken by surprise and nocked unconcious!

Me: uhm... how? I have this diviniation power on, I shouldn't be surprised.

GM: Well... you where overwhelmed. You are now tied up in the corner.

Me: I wait till they are distracted and make a run for it. I have freedome of Movement from the freedom domain

GM: You are also in a cell.

Me: Can I pick the lock?

GM: Your items where stolen

Me: even my secret stash of lock picks?

GM: You are naked

-other players come into room-

Me: Can I roll initiative? I want to help

GM: You don't have your holy symbol

Me: I have a spell with no material components.

GM: There is also silence on the cage. you can hear but can't talk.

Me: oookay. whatever, just tell me when I can play.

Keltest
2015-04-13, 06:42 PM
I had a GM who LOVED to introduce new players or characters as as imprisoned and have the group rescue them. It happened EVERY time. Even when it made no sense whatsoever he would just lay on level after level of BS till we where in the position he wanted us in.


GM Okay Maque, You where walking down the road, when you are taken by surprise and nocked unconcious!

Me: uhm... how? I have this diviniation power on, I shouldn't be surprised.

GM: Well... you where overwhelmed. You are now tied up in the corner.

Me: I wait till they are distracted and make a run for it. I have freedome of Movement from the freedom domain

GM: You are also in a cell.

Me: Can I pick the lock?

GM: Your items where stolen

Me: even my secret stash of lock picks?

GM: You are naked

-other players come into room-

Me: Can I roll initiative? I want to help

GM: You don't have your holy symbol

Me: I have a spell with no material components.

GM: There is also silence on the cage. you can hear but can't talk.

Me: oookay. whatever, just tell me when I can play.


My party uses a magic bag of inactive-character-storing, for when players cant make it. It also has a habit of spontaneously generating new characters who were actually there all along.

Sometimes I will try to integrate a new character into the party, but unless the character is especially cool (for example, a stone giant seeking help), theyre just as likely to pop out of the magic bag.

JCAll
2015-04-13, 11:35 PM
I had a GM who LOVED to introduce new players or characters as as imprisoned and have the group rescue them. It happened EVERY time. Even when it made no sense whatsoever he would just lay on level after level of BS till we where in the position he wanted us in.


GM Okay Maque, You where walking down the road, when you are taken by surprise and nocked unconcious!

Me: uhm... how? I have this diviniation power on, I shouldn't be surprised.

GM: Well... you where overwhelmed. You are now tied up in the corner.

Me: I wait till they are distracted and make a run for it. I have freedome of Movement from the freedom domain

GM: You are also in a cell.

Me: Can I pick the lock?

GM: Your items where stolen

Me: even my secret stash of lock picks?

GM: You are naked

-other players come into room-

Me: Can I roll initiative? I want to help

GM: You don't have your holy symbol

Me: I have a spell with no material components.

GM: There is also silence on the cage. you can hear but can't talk.

Me: oookay. whatever, just tell me when I can play.


That cage was probably worth a fair few gold. I hope you remembered loot it.

Sith_Happens
2015-04-13, 11:40 PM
GM Okay Maque, You where walking down the road, when you are taken by surprise and nocked unconcious!

Me: uhm... how? I have this diviniation power on, I shouldn't be surprised.

GM: Well... you where overwhelmed. You are now tied up in the corner.

This is the weird part. Usually when you're going to start a character off in a cell, you start them off in the cell. How they got there is to be exposited later.


GM: Your items where stolen

Me: even my secret stash of lock picks?

GM: You are naked

Proper response: "But did they find my secret stash of lock picks?" :smallamused:


My party uses a magic bag of inactive-character-storing, for when players cant make it. It also has a habit of spontaneously generating new characters who were actually there all along.

Sometimes I will try to integrate a new character into the party, but unless the character is especially cool (for example, a stone giant seeking help), theyre just as likely to pop out of the magic bag.

This idea, I like it.

JAL_1138
2015-04-14, 05:53 AM
My party uses a magic bag of inactive-character-storing, for when players cant make it. It also has a habit of spontaneously generating new characters who were actually there all along.

Sometimes I will try to integrate a new character into the party, but unless the character is especially cool (for example, a stone giant seeking help), theyre just as likely to pop out of the magic bag.

Back in AD&D, the DM was running a Gygax-level-of-deadly homebrew campaign, and naturally we died like flies, so we used a version of the Dark Sun "character tree" idea of having backup characters who kept pace with level and who could be swapped in and out. We'd swap them or replace dead characters at a hub town that amounted to a D&D version of Mos Eisley or Tortuga; basically just a place to go to carouse or hire a crew. Worked out pretty well.

Hypername
2015-04-14, 06:23 AM
Suddenly the face skills and RP of the 20 Cha face of the party are not working against anyone and the 7 Cha damage dealer who RPs him like a Cha based character, can convince anyone without any skill check. AKA favouritism.

Amphetryon
2015-04-14, 06:36 AM
Suddenly the face skills and RP of the 20 Cha face of the party are not working against anyone and the 7 Cha damage dealer who RPs him like a Cha based character, can convince anyone without any skill check. AKA favouritism.

This could be favoritism, or it could be a DM who requires that you 'accurately roleplay your mental stats,' AKA "the quiet guy with the lisp isn't allowed to pretend to be charismatic."

Keltest
2015-04-14, 06:44 AM
This could be favoritism, or it could be a DM who requires that you 'accurately roleplay your mental stats,' AKA "the quiet guy with the lisp isn't allowed to pretend to be charismatic."

Indeed. Both bad, but different trends altogether.

daemonaetea
2015-04-14, 07:11 AM
For those with examples of positive DMPCs in this thread, to my mind what you've been posting haven't actually been positive DMPCs, but rather helpful NPCs. Not all characters that follow around and help the PCs are DMPCs. The dividing line is whether the person following you is the Dungeon Masters Player Character - that is, if the DM is actually using that character to interact with his own game world. An NPC exists to bounce off of the characters to make things happen. A PC exists to interact with the world and make things happen. The danger of the DMPC is that he's now interacting directly with his own world. That means that instead of the PC talking to the king, the DMPC does so. Instead of the PC discovering and revealing information about the world, the DMPC now does so. The characters you've been talking about are closer to hirelings, people you bring along for specialist skills but are otherwise not really active.

In general, I think most people don't have a problem with what you described, but they also wouldn't think of those as a DMPC. (I'll admit there's a slight twinge here of "it wasn't awful, so it wasn't really a DMPC". Your mileage, of course, may vary.)

Hypername
2015-04-14, 07:24 AM
This could be favoritism, or it could be a DM who requires that you 'accurately roleplay your mental stats,' AKA "the quiet guy with the lisp isn't allowed to pretend to be charismatic."

Well when 2 out of 3 players had the same complain, I'd name it favouritism.

Padoodle
2015-04-14, 12:56 PM
-Every NPC, from the lowliest peasant to the highest king, always has a biting wit and insults the PCs at every opportunity. Be they friend or foe, they will always make a fool of the PCs, and can never be made a fool of, because if you do manage they'll just shrug it off and walk away laughing at your feeble attempts, because they're too cool to be insulted by lowly PCs.

-Every NPC, from the lowliest peasant to the highest king, is a master of negotiating in their favor, and immune to coercion, haggling, attempts to reason, friendly gestures, etc...

-"Your illusion didn't really work, I only pretended and let you pass because I felt bad for you. I knew what you were trying, but let's keep it between us because man I'm just so cool. *wink*" - 7 intelligence muscle guy that rolls a 3 against your illusion, which you cast from maximum range, at night, with cover, while invisible.

-Clairvoyant NPCs that always know what the PCs are thinking and foil them or plan ahead for it.

-Related to the above, when PCs take every precaution, every defense to make something like a scheme work, or protect a location or a hidden item. And then that one teeny weeny thing you forgot is what the NPC with no way of knowing used to foil it. Or if you really covered every base, well turns out some random dude on the other side of the world was scrying on the PCs at the right time, and knows exactly what he needs to do to foil them.

-PCs can never own anything, and nothing ever works out in their favor. Bought a house? Expect it to be struck by lightning while you're out adventuring. Better save all your gold for potions and magic items, because all investments and mundane possessions are doomed to failure.

-Every noble is a snooty jerk that would rather insult the PCs than actually cooperate.

-PCs are the center of the universe and the rest of the world is lifeless when they're not around. Although, on the other extreme, PCs are worthless, and no matter how powerful they get, the random town guards, elderly farmers, or DM's pet NPCs will always be powerful enough to slap them aside like jokes.

-Adventures are always back to back and there's never time to mingle with the world.


Things I hate when a GM does:


Getting too hung up on keeping things "Realistic" in the historical sense.
Making things "Dark" or "Gritty", at least in excess.
Not giving me downtime to explore the more mundane parts of the setting or do community service.
Consistently makes authority figures unreasonable or have shady motives.
Writes adventures in a way that tends to punish giving people the benefit of the doubt, or asking questions first before shooting.
Never gives me a chance use negotiation or comprise as a means of dealing with conflict.
Mandating elaborate back stories before starting the game, I almost never a get a solid feel for who a character "is" before I play them a few sessions.



Agree with these, but the first one really verbs my nouns. It's a fantasy game played to have fun with friends. I think we'll live if we don't get every single detail of medieval Europe down perfectly.


This could be favoritism, or it could be a DM who requires that you 'accurately roleplay your mental stats,' AKA "the quiet guy with the lisp isn't allowed to pretend to be charismatic."

As someone terribly shy, opposite of charismatic, I really hate this.

BayardSPSR
2015-04-14, 04:28 PM
-Every NPC, from the lowliest peasant to the highest king, always has a biting wit and insults the PCs at every opportunity. Be they friend or foe, they will always make a fool of the PCs, and can never be made a fool of, because if you do manage they'll just shrug it off and walk away laughing at your feeble attempts, because they're too cool to be insulted by lowly PCs.

-Every NPC, from the lowliest peasant to the highest king, is a master of negotiating in their favor, and immune to coercion, haggling, attempts to reason, friendly gestures, etc...

-"Your illusion didn't really work, I only pretended and let you pass because I felt bad for you. I knew what you were trying, but let's keep it between us because man I'm just so cool. *wink*" - 7 intelligence muscle guy that rolls a 3 against your illusion, which you cast from maximum range, at night, with cover, while invisible.

-Clairvoyant NPCs that always know what the PCs are thinking and foil them or plan ahead for it.

-Related to the above, when PCs take every precaution, every defense to make something like a scheme work, or protect a location or a hidden item. And then that one teeny weeny thing you forgot is what the NPC with no way of knowing used to foil it. Or if you really covered every base, well turns out some random dude on the other side of the world was scrying on the PCs at the right time, and knows exactly what he needs to do to foil them.

-Every noble is a snooty jerk that would rather insult the PCs than actually cooperate.

It's like a world where all the NPCs are Mary Sues... What on earth do they do to each other when the PCs aren't present?

Also, it sounds like all of these came from the same person, which must have been a terrible game to be in except for having stories of The Terrible Game.


As someone terribly shy, opposite of charismatic, I really hate this.

It's like asking the person playing the fighter to accurately roleplay their attacks, and making them miss every time because they aren't an experienced martial artist. Never mind the wizard...

YossarianLives
2015-04-14, 04:47 PM
While this isn't to bad, I hate it when every, single npc is completely devoid of personality and always speaks in a completely monotone voice.

VoxRationis
2015-04-14, 06:59 PM
Speaking of NPC difficulties, one of my pet peeves is when the government and setting are clearly medieval, but everyone talks, both in their manner of speech and in the content of their speech, like it's modern day America. The first is somewhat inevitable, since it's tough speaking like Gandalf or Hamlet for 6 hours spontaneously, but the second clashes with the fantasy feel.

Nerjin
2015-04-14, 07:09 PM
"Sup man, me an' the bae were gonna go over to the forest for like things man... But then this gnarly troll came up and was all like 'Nah brah, I got this' and then he stole my doritos. He's a jerk. Can y'all go ice him or som'in for me brah? I'll give ya sixty smackeroos."

Keltest
2015-04-14, 07:47 PM
"Sup man, me an' the bae were gonna go over to the forest for like things man... But then this gnarly troll came up and was all like 'Nah brah, I got this' and then he stole my doritos. He's a jerk. Can y'all go ice him or som'in for me brah? I'll give ya sixty smackeroos."

I think anyone capable of understanding that without giving it a hard think deserves to be spoken to like that.

CombatBunny
2015-04-15, 10:50 AM
1) Each time you encounter on the road an old man, a naive children or some other curious and apparently inoffensive character on your way to the nearest village or city, you can bet all of your treasure that this NPC is a super-powerful epic character or has an extremely important role on the adventure (The chosen one, the heir of the ancients, the one who has a special gift etc.).


2) Following the same line of the first trend, if the GM has a PC (mainly because the GM is rotated each certain time), be sure that his PC will be kidnapped or somehow will be the key to the GM’s adventure or campaign, even when as PC he never played any relevant role.


3) The villains of the GM will always work as a perfectly coordinated unity; they all will act like one single mind. Example, if the PC’s try to penetrate a fortress, all of the guards will be alert at all times, no one will be prone to be corrupted, they all are highly engaged with the goal of their master, no one will show signs of discomfort for the pay or how does his master treats him, none of them will be lazy, sick or have any negative trait that could work in favour of the PCs.

JAL_1138
2015-04-15, 11:06 AM
1) Each time you encounter on the road an old man, a naive children or some other curious and apparently inoffensive character on your way to the nearest village or city, you can bet all of your treasure that this NPC is a super-powerful epic character or has an extremely important role on the adventure (The chosen one, the heir of the ancients, the one who has a special gift etc.).

Aaaarrrrrrggghhh I hate that one. Can't the random old dude just be a random old dude just once? Can't he just be "Farmer Whatshisname, from up the road a ways" instead of #%$&ing Eleminster or Fizban every single time?

Necroticplague
2015-04-15, 12:20 PM
Aaaarrrrrrggghhh I hate that one. Can't the random old dude just be a random old dude just once? Can't he just be "Farmer Whatshisname, from up the road a ways" instead of #%$&ing Eleminster or Fizban every single time?

Especially annoying subset I've enountered: Every single NPC met on the road is some manner of disguised demon, thief, bait for bandits, or a demonic thief being used as bait for the bandits. This goes double if he complains when the PCs notice the pattern and simply start killing anyone who approaches them while they're traveling.

CombatBunny
2015-04-15, 12:30 PM
Aaaarrrrrrggghhh I hate that one. Can't the random old dude just be a random old dude just once? Can't he just be "Farmer Whatshisname, from up the road a ways" instead of #%$&ing Eleminster or Fizban every single time?

Thank you very much n.n I feel flattered.

BTW I remember another one that gets me on my nerves, let's see if you feel identified.

4) If your character has a secret identity, is a vampire, has a curse, made a pact with a demon, lost his soul or has any other trait that he wants to keep concealed; no matter how hard he tries to keep a low profile and go unnoticed, wherever he goes there will always be at least one NPC that can see through his deception and know his true nature with a mere sight. It’s very common as well that this NPC doesn’t has to make any roll to see through the deception “for reasons that de GM will reveal later as the story progresses”.

Amphetryon
2015-04-15, 12:45 PM
Thank you very much n.n I feel flattered.

BTW I remember another one that gets me on my nerves, let's see if you feel identified.

4) If your character has a secret identity, is a vampire, has a curse, made a pact with a demon, lost his soul or has any other trait that he wants to keep concealed; no matter how hard he tries to keep a low profile and go unnoticed, wherever he goes there will always be at least one NPC that can see through his deception and know his true nature with a mere sight. It’s very common as well that this NPC doesn’t has to make any roll to see through the deception “for reasons that de GM will reveal later as the story progresses”.

To be fair, a secret which never, under any circumstances, comes out is frankly boring. This sounds more like adherence to the Trope that 'a gun that appears in Act 1 must be fired in Act 3' than any egregious DM sin.

CombatBunny
2015-04-15, 12:53 PM
To be fair, a secret which never, under any circumstances, comes out is frankly boring. This sounds more like adherence to the Trope that 'a gun that appears in Act 1 must be fired in Act 3' than any egregious DM sin.

Oh no no, I don't mind that my PC's secret gets revealed.

My inconvenience comes when each single town, village or place that I arrive, there is at least one special NPC that can spot it on sight. Every single place that I arrive without failing.

Keltest
2015-04-15, 01:07 PM
Oh no no, I don't mind that my PC's secret gets revealed.

My inconvenience comes when each single town, village or place that I arrive, there is at least one special NPC that can spot it on sight. Every single place that I arrive without failing.

I think the obvious solution is to curse the party sneak in an identical manner and send them in first, then have them assassinate whoever spots them.

Hypername
2015-04-15, 01:37 PM
Yeah omniscient NPCs and almost robot-like enemies are pretty annoying as well.

Another one that annoyed me greatly while I was playing Kingmaker:
We had Garress as our warden and because our GM liked him, each and every soldier in our army was absolutely loyal to him and didn't give a damn about the General's or the Marshall's orders.
Also apparently the Ruler has no power in the kingdom and is just a pretty face sitting on the throne, the other NPC leaders (even the High Priest) have more power than him, and can freely disrespect the PC leaders (even the Ruler) without consequences. Also the GM suddenly deciding that our kingdom is an oligarchy without asking if we want to do it this way.

I also hate that every NPC are always ironic towards the PCs and insult them all the time.

JAL_1138
2015-04-15, 01:39 PM
Especially annoying subset I've enountered: Every single NPC met on the road is some manner of disguised demon, thief, bait for bandits, or a demonic thief being used as bait for the bandits. This goes double if he complains when the PCs notice the pattern and simply start killing anyone who approaches them while they're traveling.

This happens far too often. There's even a Counter Monkey episode about the "every woman interested in one of the PCs is a succubus, assassin, or thief" version of this.

BayardSPSR
2015-04-15, 03:39 PM
Speaking of NPC difficulties, one of my pet peeves is when the government and setting are clearly medieval, but everyone talks, both in their manner of speech and in the content of their speech, like it's modern day America. The first is somewhat inevitable, since it's tough speaking like Gandalf or Hamlet for 6 hours spontaneously, but the second clashes with the fantasy feel.

My frustration is the opposite: when everything looks and sounds like antiquated feudalism, but underneath the formal speech and peasant garb everyone acts like a 21st century middle-class American in a capitalist economy, down to having the things you want to buy available in the shop where they can be stolen (as opposed to almost everything being made to order), everyone living in nuclear families, everyone having cash on-hand like they just hit an ATM, people keeping military-grade weapons in their workplace to Defend Their Small Business and Family, police forces...

On the other hand, I like translating colloquial speech to colloquial speech. It makes it clearer when NPCs are comfortable in their surroundings, being overly formal or overly friendly, and so on. I'm not sure what you'd do otherwise.

Which of these makes more sense?

" 'Good e'en, milord,' and in-character you would recognize that he's being familiar and is happy to see you" or
" 'Hey! I haven't seen you around in ages, man! What have you been up to?' " which requires no explanation and makes it easy for the player to decide how to respond appropriately.

VoxRationis
2015-04-15, 03:46 PM
That's why I added "the content of their speech." I have that pet peeve too. As I said, talking like Americans is a little inevitable. Acting like them breaks immersion.

Metahuman1
2015-04-15, 05:06 PM
Allied or friendly npcs who, in a twist everyone saw coming, betray the party. And people wonder where murderhobos come from, when really they're just playing the numbers on bad campaigns.

Adventures where you're literally saving the world. Way to signal we're not going off the rails, and we're not allowed to fail.

Surly, disrespectful tavern- and shop-keepers. Your average D&D party is dangerous, heavily armed, and has gold to burn. Putting on your gruff voice and throwing insults is not "roleplaying," it's a profound failure to understand the nature of tavern- and shop-keepers.



This, always. No, there are no exceptions. "But this one time it was really cool because..." No, it wasn't, your players just put up with it because they had no other options.

In defense of DMPC's. They can work under 2 conditions.

1: The DMPC is a crafter. He just stands at the back and turtles or gives Aid Another Actions. When not spewing the occasionally useful tidbit of plot info, and let's the PC's make all the decisions and do all the actual work, and during down time, he crafts nice and steeply discounted magic items for them/upgrades there items. Works best if the party has system mastery and this is being done to help balance the Fighter and Rogue with the Wizard and Cleric type situations by giving them awesomesauce gear.

2: The DMPC is a heal bot. It has 3 things it does in combat. It Turtles. It gives an Aid Another Action. Or it drops healing spells. Out of combat, it does chain persisting of Lesser Vigor on the party, it has a reserve feat or something so it can not use up daily resources to further expedite out of combat healing and get the party up to full after every fight, and it drops status effect fixers like the restoration line, cure disease, neutralize poison, things of that nature.




There very passive, and they free the party up to have and do all the really cool stuff with greater confidence.

BayardSPSR
2015-04-15, 05:12 PM
That's why I added "the content of their speech." I have that pet peeve too. As I said, talking like Americans is a little inevitable. Acting like them breaks immersion.

Sorry, I didn't see that the first time. Makes sense now.

I'm now imagining a DM from elsewhere making every NPC in their world act like an American.

TheIronGolem
2015-04-16, 08:27 PM
In defense of DMPC's. They can work under 2 conditions.

1: The DMPC is a crafter. He just stands at the back and turtles or gives Aid Another Actions. When not spewing the occasionally useful tidbit of plot info, and let's the PC's make all the decisions and do all the actual work, and during down time, he crafts nice and steeply discounted magic items for them/upgrades there items. Works best if the party has system mastery and this is being done to help balance the Fighter and Rogue with the Wizard and Cleric type situations by giving them awesomesauce gear.

2: The DMPC is a heal bot. It has 3 things it does in combat. It Turtles. It gives an Aid Another Action. Or it drops healing spells. Out of combat, it does chain persisting of Lesser Vigor on the party, it has a reserve feat or something so it can not use up daily resources to further expedite out of combat healing and get the party up to full after every fight, and it drops status effect fixers like the restoration line, cure disease, neutralize poison, things of that nature.




There very passive, and they free the party up to have and do all the really cool stuff with greater confidence.

DMPC's can participate meaningfully in combat without being the bad kind of DMPC. They just have to follow the same rules that the other PC's do, act in combat without the benefit of the GM's knowledge, and be built in accordance with the party's level (both character level and level of optimization).

It helps to hand off control of the DMPC to a player during combats; that will alleviate suspicions that you're favoring them in any way and ensure you don't use OOC knowledge to their advantage even unconsciously.


No, there are no exceptions. "But this one time it was really cool because..." No, it wasn't, your players just put up with it because they had no other options.

In my last campaign, I introduced a couple of DMPC's early on. They had a lot of good interactions with the party, to the point where I worried that they were getting too much face-time. I tried to gently phase them out. My players were having none of that; the party kept roping them back in no matter what excuses I came up with to keep them offstage. I even tried killing off one of them, and they responded by spending a significant chunk of their own resources getting him resurrected, with zero prompting from me or any in-game character or circumstance. When I mulled aloud about the possibility that the resurrection might not work, that went over like a lead balloon. They wanted him back, and they were damn well going to get him back.

So either my players - most of whom I have been friends with for decades and one of whom is my spouse - are all a bunch of very dedicated liars, or you are completely, utterly, breathtakingly wrong.

I think I know which is more likely.

Pex
2015-04-17, 12:20 AM
When a player wants to do something that's not straight attacking or casting a spell the DM looks for a reason why it can't be done. If he can't think of a reason he asks the player to justify the action.

goto124
2015-04-17, 12:24 AM
And if that doesn't work, he places traps everywhere Tomb of Horrors style. Even the doors and drawers want your brains.

And all NPCs are either dumb or have unusually large egos. So your diplomancy will not help.

BayardSPSR
2015-04-17, 12:52 AM
Any negative response motivated by "but I didn't expect/want you to do that."

JAL_1138
2015-04-17, 07:49 AM
And if that doesn't work, he places traps everywhere Tomb of Horrors style. Even the doors and drawers want your brains.

Hey now, some people like that kind of game.

A 10-ft pole is an adventurer's best friend.

Storm_Of_Snow
2015-04-17, 08:25 AM
Hey now, some people like that kind of game.

A 10-ft pole is an adventurer's best friend.
At least until it triggers a trap and suddenly becomes a 3 1/2 foot pole... :smallamused:

Or the guy that built it knew people use such things, and all the traps are actually 8 feet in front of their triggers. :smallbiggrin:

Keltest
2015-04-17, 11:21 AM
At least until it triggers a trap and suddenly becomes a 3 1/2 foot pole... :smallamused:

Or the guy that built it knew people use such things, and all the traps are actually 8 feet in front of their triggers. :smallbiggrin:

In which case the appropriate action is to just ignore them. Somewhat less useful.

Kalmageddon
2015-04-17, 11:34 AM
Every NPC is an ******* that treats the PCs like dirt regardless of how famous, charismatic or fearsome they are.
This is surprisingly common around here, so much so that I almost expect it nowdays...

Any negative response motivated by "but I didn't expect/want you to do that."
Yeah, the GM isn't allowed to have limitations, right? :smallsigh:

JAL_1138
2015-04-17, 12:31 PM
At least until it triggers a trap and suddenly becomes a 3 1/2 foot pole... :smallamused:

Or the guy that built it knew people use such things, and all the traps are actually 8 feet in front of their triggers. :smallbiggrin:

I've done both of those, and had both of those used against me.

I've also broken a 10ft pole into four 2 1/2 ft sticks to use as truncheons when nobody brought bludgeoning damage.

Solaris
2015-04-17, 01:43 PM
It helps to hand off control of the DMPC to a player during combats; that will alleviate suspicions that you're favoring them in any way and ensure you don't use OOC knowledge to their advantage even unconsciously.

I've found that if you're playing with the sort of people who get suspicious about favoritism at the drop of a hat, you're better off finding a different group to play with. I've neither the patience nor inclination to help someone with their paranoid neuroses, and if they want to hold things their previous DMs have done against me then they can see themselves right on out until they work out their issues.

Fortunately, I've not run into that sort of player in real life. Most of them have done a pretty good job of comprehending that not all DMs are secretly the same person.

Alikat
2015-04-17, 02:33 PM
I don't like when I build a certain strength or tactic into a character then suddenly every enemy happens to be built to deal with said strength. For example in a 3.5 game I had a dex based kobold fighter I managed to pump up to around 42ac at lvl 12. Suddenly every enemy had a 30+ attack rating.

Keltest
2015-04-17, 02:41 PM
I don't like when I build a certain strength or tactic into a character then suddenly every enemy happens to be built to deal with said strength. For example in a 3.5 game I had a dex based kobold fighter I managed to pump up to around 42ac at lvl 12. Suddenly every enemy had a 30+ attack rating.

Well to a certain extent, the DM is required to give you encounters that can actually challenge you. Theres no game if the result of every combat can be perfectly predicted before it starts.

VoxRationis
2015-04-17, 02:42 PM
Yeah, if you hyper-optimize a character to be untouchable by standard play, you'd better expect that to happen. Otherwise, the story of the campaign will be somewhat bland, since every fight will consist of people trying and failing to even scratch your considerable HP pool.
Of course, your DM could have done that a different way, like making you fight magic-users with touch attacks, but one way or another, there's going to be a sudden shift in enemy makeup and ability.
edit: Ninja'd. I mean, if you had made your character's AC high but within normal ranges, that's one thing. Pumping it up to match those of CR 20+ dragons? That's not going to fly without some sort of change.

Kurald Galain
2015-04-17, 02:57 PM
Well to a certain extent, the DM is required to give you encounters that can actually challenge you. Theres no game if the result of every combat can be perfectly predicted before it starts.

The key here is "every enemy".

It's fine if some enemies you meet are resistant to your strength, or specifically attack your weakness. It's not fine if all of them do. For example, I once had a wizard character who was fond of the spell Flaming Sphere (which, I should note, is nowhere near overpowered in the first place). The DM decided at some point that a large enemy could use his club to hit the sphere and make it fly far away like a golf ball. Now it's fine and funny if that happens once... but from that point forward, every single time I used the spell, some enemy would kick or punch it out of the combat area, making the spell completely worthless for the rest of the campaign.

Don't challenge PCs by negating their strengths. Challenge them by attacking their weak points.

Keltest
2015-04-17, 03:05 PM
The key here is "every enemy".

It's fine if some enemies you meet are resistant to your strength, or specifically attack your weakness. It's not fine if all of them do. For example, I once had a wizard character who was fond of the spell Flaming Sphere (which, I should note, is nowhere near overpowered in the first place). The DM decided at some point that a large enemy could use his club to hit the sphere and make it fly far away like a golf ball. Now it's fine and funny if that happens once... but from that point forward, every single time I used the spell, some enemy would kick or punch it out of the combat area, making the spell completely worthless for the rest of the campaign.

Don't challenge PCs by negating their strengths. Challenge them by attacking their weak points.

When the strength of the PC is "has no obvious weak points" that's rather difficult. Im not sure how "Only faces enemies that cast spells that allow for no saving throws" is any less contrived or annoying than "Only faces enemies actually capable of striking you in combat".

Necroticplague
2015-04-17, 03:08 PM
Treating "huh, my plan didn't account for that ability you have" as "cheating" is also a bad trend I've seen in some. Just because you forgot that a ghost can move through walls doesn't mean I'm cheating when I move through a locked door to look for the key on the other side.

Similar note: treating all the enemies as if they have the same abilities (and thus tactics). All the enemies run up, hit, repeat until one side falls over (much like most MMO enemy AI, come to think of it). Combines with the above when you find away around that one tactic they all share.

Kurald Galain
2015-04-17, 06:02 PM
When the strength of the PC is "has no obvious weak points" that's rather difficult.

But that's an extreme outlier and nobody is actually talking about that.

BayardSPSR
2015-04-17, 06:08 PM
Yeah, the GM isn't allowed to have limitations, right? :smallsigh:

I should clarify. GMs can and should have limitations, for themselves and for players as well. Collectively working out what everyone's expectations are before the start of the first session is a great thing that everyone should do. "Stay on script" is a terrible expectation to have. For experienced GMs, it's arbitrarily controlling and should be unnecessary; for inexperienced GMs, it's an excellent way to not get better at dealing with the unexpected.

It's like house-rules. House-rules are great in principle, because everyone should modify the rules to suit the needs of their group - but that doesn't mean every house-rule is good.

Keltest
2015-04-17, 06:18 PM
But that's an extreme outlier and nobody is actually talking about that.

The given example was ludicrous AC, making more standard encounters unable to hit them at all. Theres nothing stopping that player from just walking up to mages and murdering their face to stop them from spellcasting at them, so that weakness is severely mitigated as well. And even if that didn't work, there are ways for the party members to assist in protecting them from spellcasters.

There are still ways to affect that character, but most of them are going to be just as contrived as everyone having massive attack scores.

Kalmageddon
2015-04-17, 06:54 PM
I should clarify. GMs can and should have limitations, for themselves and for players as well. Collectively working out what everyone's expectations are before the start of the first session is a great thing that everyone should do. "Stay on script" is a terrible expectation to have. For experienced GMs, it's arbitrarily controlling and should be unnecessary; for inexperienced GMs, it's an excellent way to not get better at dealing with the unexpected.

It's like house-rules. House-rules are great in principle, because everyone should modify the rules to suit the needs of their group - but that doesn't mean every house-rule is good.

That's far more reasonable, thank you.

Solaris
2015-04-17, 07:36 PM
The given example was ludicrous AC, making more standard encounters unable to hit them at all. Theres nothing stopping that player from just walking up to mages and murdering their face to stop them from spellcasting at them, so that weakness is severely mitigated as well. And even if that didn't work, there are ways for the party members to assist in protecting them from spellcasters.

There are still ways to affect that character, but most of them are going to be just as contrived as everyone having massive attack scores.

They're at twelfth level. The spellcaster shouldn't be caring about AC anymore, nor should the caster be sitting there waiting for the mundane to murder them in the face.

Keltest
2015-04-17, 07:39 PM
They're at twelfth level. The spellcaster shouldn't be caring about AC anymore, nor should the caster be sitting there waiting for the mundane to murder them in the face.

If the spellcaster is dedicating actions to avoiding getting facemurdered, they aren't dedicating actions to killing the party, so its STILL a win for the tank.

TheIronGolem
2015-04-17, 08:19 PM
The given example was ludicrous AC, making more standard encounters unable to hit them at all. Theres nothing stopping that player from just walking up to mages and murdering their face to stop them from spellcasting at them, so that weakness is severely mitigated as well. And even if that didn't work, there are ways for the party members to assist in protecting them from spellcasters.

There are still ways to affect that character, but most of them are going to be just as contrived as everyone having massive attack scores.

The given example was a very high DEX-based AC. There are plenty of ways to deny a character their DEX to AC - ways that, unlike simply cranking up the baddies' to-hit so that AC is pointless, the player can deal with through resourcefulness and tactical thinking. Feinting. Invisibility. DEX damage. Grappling. That's just off the top of my head. A DM who can't challenge a dodge-monkey without resorting to Big Numbers either isn't trying, or doesn't want to.

The point is, a bad DM just negates the player's advantages, whereas a good DM sets it up so the player has to apply them in different ways.

Keltest
2015-04-17, 08:23 PM
The given example was a very high DEX-based AC. There are plenty of ways to deny a character their DEX to AC - ways that, unlike simply cranking up the baddies' to-hit so that AC is pointless, the player can deal with through resourcefulness and tactical thinking. Feinting. Invisibility. DEX damage. Grappling. That's just off the top of my head. A DM who can't challenge a dodge-monkey without resorting to Big Numbers either isn't trying, or doesn't want to.

The point is, a bad DM just negates the player's advantages, whereas a good DM sets it up so the player has to apply them in different ways.

Your point is somewhat diminished by giving ways of neutralizing a DEX advantage as your examples.

NichG
2015-04-17, 08:30 PM
But that's an extreme outlier and nobody is actually talking about that.

Its not so much an outlier as a class of player behaviors that occurs in a subset of the player population - generally those who have discovered how far you can push optimization in the system, but at the same time haven't learned to consider the long-term consequences of doing so. They're still riding high on 'I can't believe I managed to get the numbers this high!' and haven't gotten bored of steamrolling fights or taken into account the effect of their optimization on other players yet.

Its why experienced players who know how to optimize often learn to focus on party-friendly or DM-friendly forms of optimization such as specialized buffers, making an otherwise lackluster class function competently, or trying to flesh out a strange theme rather than just taking the most powerful options across the board and pumping their numbers as high as they can or going god-wizard or things like that.

(Incidentally, the more the DM reacts by changing the world, tactics, etc and getting into a sustained arms race with them, the more they'll get the message that they're being rewarded with increased attention, even if that is directed at neutralizing their advantage. If you want to get players off of this habit, glossing over entire combats 'okay, the dragon can't hit you and you can't fail to evade its breath, so you go and kill it - what next?' makes the point a lot more obvious and the player can more pick up that large numbers don't necessarily make the game more fun)

JAL_1138
2015-04-17, 09:09 PM
Your point is somewhat diminished by giving ways of neutralizing a DEX advantage as your examples.

Having some enemies have a plausible counter some of the time is different than giving everything an insanely high attack bonus, I'd say. Difference in degree mainly. There's not much point in trying to gain any advantage if it's just going to get nullified every single time by something that heavy-handed--"yeah your AC doesn't do **** anymore, everything hits you anyway." Ok, you're dex optimized. Sometimes that should work. 5e for instance built the entire rogue class around being a dodge-monkey. Let it work sometimes. And then throw a spellcaster at them, and now they've got a tough fight. Then throw mooks that can't hit them without doing something clever at them again later.

If something's a broken combo, shut it down by saying so and houseruling...but if it's manageable, let people get some kind of advantage if they want it so long as it doesn't wreck the game completely.

If you were playing a 2e Fighter and had the option to take weapon specialization, but if you did, the DM was just going to decrease absolutely everything's AC by the same amount you invested in it, you'd be annoyed. Not to say that huge-numbers munchkining isn't a problem, too, but it's a balancing act.

TheIronGolem
2015-04-17, 09:12 PM
Your point is somewhat diminished by giving ways of neutralizing a DEX advantage as your examples.

No, because those things can all be resisted, countered, or otherwise dealt with. They don't just say "screw your AC and all you did to get it".

JAL_1138
2015-04-17, 09:24 PM
No, because those things can all be resisted, countered, or otherwise dealt with. They don't just say "screw your AC and all you did to get it".

This. Much better and more succinct way of putting it than mine.

Mr.Moron
2015-04-17, 10:34 PM
But that's an extreme outlier and nobody is actually talking about that.

Once somebody has gone through the trouble of pumping their AC to 42 at level 12 it's hard to take anything they're doing in good faith. If they're introducing one mechanic that degenerate, it's probably safe to assume that in general their actions are going to be acting against the best interests of the game. Or at minimum it's being done to insure they're top A#1 king dunker of winning D&D than anything else.

SowZ
2015-04-18, 09:23 AM
Once somebody has gone through the trouble of pumping their AC to 42 at level 12 it's hard to take anything they're doing in good faith. If they're introducing one mechanic that degenerate, it's probably safe to assume that in general their actions are going to be acting against the best interests of the game. Or at minimum it's being done to insure they're top A#1 king dunker of winning D&D than anything else.

I don't know about that. Investing in AC defends against a large number of attacks, but it is easy to get around and far, far from the best source of evasion. They could have stacked miss chances or gained immediate action teleports or any number of ways to mitigate ever taking damage that are far more munchkiny that AC optimization. And yet people are less likely to say that someone is playing the game in an anti-social way soley for taking Abrupt Jaunt.

Jay R
2015-04-18, 09:35 PM
One of the best ways to tell a poor DM is his habit of insulting other DM's playing styles. That indicates that he thinks that there is only one good way to play.

BayardSPSR
2015-04-18, 09:39 PM
One of the best ways to tell a poor DM is his habit of insulting other DM's playing styles. That indicates that he thinks that there is only one good way to play.

Even if she insults the other GM for being inflexible and thinking there's only one good way to play?

Jay R
2015-04-18, 09:44 PM
Even if she insults the other GM for being inflexible and thinking there's only one good way to play?

Oh, absolutely. Those are the worst.

Lorsa
2015-04-19, 07:38 AM
I am not sure if it has been mentioned or not, but I think one of the worst DM trends is to gather any random bunch of interested aquintances for a game, without regard for social dynamics and how well these people function together.

Seriously, too many DMs seem to forget that roleplaying is a social game first and foremost.

Amphetryon
2015-04-19, 07:46 AM
I am not sure if it has been mentioned or not, but I think one of the worst DM trends is to gather any random bunch of interested aquintances for a game, without regard for social dynamics and how well these people function together.

Seriously, too many DMs seem to forget that roleplaying is a social game first and foremost.

If you're gathering folks for the first game(s), this is all but inevitable for many DMs, who don't have a surplus of interested gamers readily at hand, asking to play. If the DM hangs out with Pat, Terry, Chris, and Jean, but Terry and Jean haven't hung out together, how is the DM to know ahead of time that they don't get along well? What about if they get along fine, so long as Chris is there as a buffer, but Chris has to drop the game and Robin (who isn't an effective buffer) steps in?

From here, this reads a lot like 'only game with people you've gamed with,' which never introduces anyone new into the hobby, let alone the social circle.

Lorsa
2015-04-19, 08:22 AM
If you're gathering folks for the first game(s), this is all but inevitable for many DMs, who don't have a surplus of interested gamers readily at hand, asking to play. If the DM hangs out with Pat, Terry, Chris, and Jean, but Terry and Jean haven't hung out together, how is the DM to know ahead of time that they don't get along well? What about if they get along fine, so long as Chris is there as a buffer, but Chris has to drop the game and Robin (who isn't an effective buffer) steps in?

From here, this reads a lot like 'only game with people you've gamed with,' which never introduces anyone new into the hobby, let alone the social circle.

There is nothing wrong with introducing new people to a group, but you need to be aware of what sort of people you already have in the group and what type of person you are introducing.

Also, if someone is completely new to roleplaying (or new to the DM), why not play a little solo game with them first to make sure they approach the game in the same way the group does?

What's wrong with meeting together first to just chat if you want to play with people who never hung out before?

I am fully aware that there will always be a level of uncertainty. My problem is with DMs who have a trend of completely ignoring social dynamics, not realising that it could be an issue and then attributing campaign failures to other sources. This often leads them into making the same mistake again. To be a good DM, you need to have a grasp of social matters and not simply ignore that part.

BayardSPSR
2015-04-19, 04:06 PM
The hilarious part is when you bring people who are already good friends to the table, and then they turn out to have radically different play styles. That's the last time I won't talk expectations before play starts...

Solaris
2015-04-19, 04:57 PM
From here, this reads a lot like 'only game with people you've gamed with,' which never introduces anyone new into the hobby, let alone the social circle.

I'm okay with never getting a gaming horror story.
The last time I tried gaming with a friend of a friend, it ended badly and I still regret not throat-punching him when I had the chance to claim provocation.

Keltest
2015-04-19, 05:02 PM
I'm okay with never getting a gaming horror story.
The last time I tried gaming with a friend of a friend, it ended badly and I still regret not throat-punching him when I had the chance to claim provocation.

At this point, about half of my gaming group is made of friends-of-friends who then became regular friends. I generally trust the people in my social circle to know when theyre making their friends do something they don't enjoy.

Frozen_Feet
2015-04-19, 05:41 PM
What's wrong with meeting together first to just chat if you want to play with people who never hung out before?

Because the people didn't sign up to chat, they signed up to play games. That's how it goes in pretty much every other non-solitary hobby as well. Sure, there tends to be some mandatory getting-to-know-each-other, but that's pretty much always the least interesting part and the point is to get to the meat of the hobby as fast as possible.

Also, hanging out is no replacement for actually playing. The social dynamic you're trying to test doesn't exist before you're doing the actual thing. This goes double if you're recruiting new people to a hobby.

JAL_1138
2015-04-19, 05:57 PM
Because the people didn't sign up to chat, they signed up to play games. That's how it goes in pretty much every other non-solitary hobby as well. Sure, there tends to be some mandatory getting-to-know-each-other, but that's pretty much always the least interesting part and the point is to get to the meat of the hobby as fast as possible.

Also, hanging out is no replacement for actually playing. The social dynamic you're trying to test doesn't exist before you're doing the actual thing. This goes double if you're recruiting new people to a hobby.

This is a good point. Plenty of people are great to hang out with and terrible once dice hit the table.

goto124
2015-04-19, 07:49 PM
The hilarious part is when you bring people who are already good friends to the table, and then they turn out to have radically different play styles. That's the last time I won't talk expectations before play starts...

I've been a bad DM before. I tried to talk expectations, but halfway through gameplay I realised I had no idea what my OWN expectations were at that time :smalleek:

Amphetryon
2015-04-19, 07:57 PM
Because the people didn't sign up to chat, they signed up to play games. That's how it goes in pretty much every other non-solitary hobby as well. Sure, there tends to be some mandatory getting-to-know-each-other, but that's pretty much always the least interesting part and the point is to get to the meat of the hobby as fast as possible.

Also, hanging out is no replacement for actually playing. The social dynamic you're trying to test doesn't exist before you're doing the actual thing. This goes double if you're recruiting new people to a hobby.

Yup. 'Awesome Chill Dude becomes Sir Ragealot once the party gets into a combat' is a scenario I've seen more than once; chitchatting with him before the game won't tell you that, and it's probable that he's less aware of the issue and/or less forthcoming regarding its severity than those who have gamed with him before. . . and that assumes he's not new to the hobby.

Solaris
2015-04-20, 08:23 AM
At this point, about half of my gaming group is made of friends-of-friends who then became regular friends. I generally trust the people in my social circle to know when theyre making their friends do something they don't enjoy.

It's not that they're making their friends do something they don't enjoy, it's that friends of friends tend to turn out to be *******s. Some of my gamer friends tend to overlook egregious breaches in social conduct that I have neither the patience nor inclination to tolerate. That loser nerd schtick was cool in high school, but nowadays social skills and a modicum of personal hygiene are something of a must.

As it turns out, the geek social fallacies are a thing for a reason. There are a lot of players out there who presume that friendship is a transitive property, and that because they're a friend of a friend (or even a friend of a friend of a friend) that they can do just about whatever they wish in my house or say whatever they like to me without fear of repercussions.

Silus
2015-04-20, 11:05 AM
DMs that allow or even encourage backstabbing and PvP. :smallannoyed:

awa
2015-04-20, 05:04 PM
as far as pvp it depends on the group and the game. Now in a serious game I'm generally not a fan of it but in say paranoia I've had some great fun there killing allies.

In fact ive got the last session for a game coming up within the next two weeks and after the big bad is dead I strongly suspect there will be a bit of pvp. One character is strongly anti undead and one pc became undead in the final dungeon on top of that the undead hater has been acquiring dark knowledge that will likely result in him being corrupted which will push him even more against the general party.

BayardSPSR
2015-04-20, 05:20 PM
DMs that allow or even encourage backstabbing and PvP. :smallannoyed:

Some people like Paranoia...

Pex
2015-04-20, 06:40 PM
DMs that allow or even encourage backstabbing and PvP. :smallannoyed:


Some people like Paranoia...

Let them play Paranoia. Go for it. Have fun. Enjoy yourselves.

I want to play Pathfinder or D&D.

goto124
2015-04-20, 06:50 PM
PvP is neutral. Backstabbing is evil.

Solaris
2015-04-20, 06:56 PM
Some people like Paranoia...

And they're wrong for liking it.

SowZ
2015-04-20, 07:40 PM
And they're wrong for liking it.

I assume you are being sarcastic?

Silus
2015-04-20, 09:11 PM
as far as pvp it depends on the group and the game. Now in a serious game I'm generally not a fan of it but in say paranoia I've had some great fun there killing allies.

In fact ive got the last session for a game coming up within the next two weeks and after the big bad is dead I strongly suspect there will be a bit of pvp. One character is strongly anti undead and one pc became undead in the final dungeon on top of that the undead hater has been acquiring dark knowledge that will likely result in him being corrupted which will push him even more against the general party.

I've no problem if PVP and backstabbing and such is part of the system or expected in the setting (See: Paranoia or some WoD Vampire stuff), but I don't expect to have to watch my back from my own party members in games like Palladium, Rolemaster (NEVER AGAIN.), D&D or Pathfinder.

What's even worse is when you HAVE to be all backstabby (See: WoD Vampire) and the DM/ST roadblocks all your ideas that by all rights should work and are pretty reasonable, but allows another character to run roughshod and play the other characters like puppets.

I have a LOT of pent up aggression and aggravation regarding my last gaming group.

goto124
2015-04-20, 09:17 PM
There's IC backstabbing, and there's OOC backstabbing.

Need not be literal backstabbing, especially if OOC.

BayardSPSR
2015-04-20, 09:22 PM
Let them play Paranoia. Go for it. Have fun. Enjoy yourselves.

I want to play Pathfinder or D&D.

I'm sorry, I thought this was the "Roleplaying Games" forum. I didn't realize I was inadvertently posting in D&D 3e/3.5e/d20, that forum for games that I personally don't want to play!

Here's a bad DM trend I've run into: DMs who assume gaming began and ended with D&D, if not with 3.5, and don't look into other options that might be better suited to the game they're planning. Or who think Pathfinder's edgy because it isn't WotC-branded. I will always respect someone more who pitches a rule system I haven't played than one who doesn't mention rules in their pitch, because they assume I assume they're playing 3.5/3.P, because why would they be playing anything else?

But yeah, outside PvP-themed games, PvP is terrifyingly easy to handle badly.

JAL_1138
2015-04-20, 09:51 PM
Here's a bad DM trend I've run into: DMs who assume gaming began and ended with D&D, if not with 3.5


Began and ended with 3.5? Nonsense. Gaming began with OD&D, split for a while with 1e and Basic, reached its peak with 2e, branched out into WEG D6 Star Wars for a bit, ended entirely in 2000, and resumed in 5e.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-20, 10:05 PM
And they're wrong for liking it.

Paranoia is ▉▉▉▉▉▉ ▉▉▉ ▉▉▉▉!

Reading messages above your security clearance is treason, Citizen!

BootStrapTommy
2015-04-20, 10:15 PM
I'm sorry, I thought this was the "Roleplaying Games" forum. I didn't realize I was inadvertently posting in D&D 3e/3.5e/d20, that forum for games that I personally don't want to play!

Here's a bad DM trend I've run into: DMs who assume gaming began and ended with D&D, if not with 3.5, and don't look into other options that might be better suited to the game they're planning. Or who think Pathfinder's edgy because it isn't WotC-branded. I will always respect someone more who pitches a rule system I haven't played than one who doesn't mention rules in their pitch, because they assume I assume they're playing 3.5/3.P, because why would they be playing anything else? You say as you post on the forum of a website centered around a 3.x-themed comic, on a thread containing the nongeneric term "DM" in the title... :smallsigh:
As understandable as the sentiment is... well...

Annoying DM trend: the inability to properly craft combat encounters which are in the least bit balanced, i.e. providing a challenge without easily overwhelming the party.

BayardSPSR
2015-04-20, 10:48 PM
You say as you post on the forum of a website centered around a 3.x-themed comic, on a thread containing the nongeneric term "DM" in the title... :smallsigh:
As understandable as the sentiment is... well...

What, now I can't like OOTS and not 3.x? I've heard "DM" used generically, and I'm pretty sure the title's a parody of the "Bad Player Trends" thread - unless you're going to tell me "Player" is nongeneric too.

Solaris
2015-04-21, 07:40 PM
I assume you are being sarcastic?

You assume correctly.
I'm sure it's been mentioned before, but "badwrongfun" is a bad DM/player/human idea and needs to die a horrible death.


What, now I can't like OOTS and not 3.x? I've heard "DM" used generically, and I'm pretty sure the title's a parody of the "Bad Player Trends" thread - unless you're going to tell me "Player" is nongeneric too.

No, but you'd have to admit that it's rather unusual. This site is fairly 3.5-centric. It's made more of a shift towards Pathfinder and 5e, but there's still a pretty steady focus in the forums on 3.5e.

SowZ
2015-04-21, 09:32 PM
You assume correctly.
I'm sure it's been mentioned before, but "badwrongfun" is a bad DM/player/human idea and needs to die a horrible death.



No, but you'd have to admit that it's rather unusual. This site is fairly 3.5-centric. It's made more of a shift towards Pathfinder and 5e, but there's still a pretty steady focus in the forums on 3.5e.

Sorry I had to ask, haha. I have encountered people who thought certain play styles were objectively wrong.

Broken Twin
2015-04-21, 09:32 PM
To be fair, when I first joined this site I was big into 3.5. Nowadays I have systems I drastically prefer to play. I just stick with these boards, honestly, because I've yet to find another site where the aesthetics didn't suck the life out of me. As weird as that sounds.

Plus, while DM may technically be D&D specific, for a lot of people in the hobby, it's their default term for the game master, regardless of what system they're currently playing.

------------

Can't say I can really comment on bad GM trends, as I don't play with enough different groups to make a fair judgement on current trends. On bad GM habits in general... I'd have to say the one I most dislike is when the GM gives a single player a lot more leeway than the other members of the group. No matter how inane their plan is, it will somehow work, and the most powerful NPCs in the setting will for some reason show their character far more respect and deference than their character warrants.

BootStrapTommy
2015-04-21, 09:57 PM
What, now I can't like OOTS and not 3.x? Never said that.

But one might expect the forums of a webcomic based on 3.x to be 3.x-centric. All I'm saying. If there is a safe place to make those assumptions, it's on GitP.

awa
2015-04-22, 05:28 PM
if you only want to talk about 3.5 then you should stick to that section this is the general role-playing section so and role-playing game is fair game

malkarnivore
2015-04-23, 05:05 AM
DMs that allow or even encourage backstabbing and PvP. :smallannoyed:

There's always that one guy who's in it to screw over the rest of the group it seems. Then they get mad when they accidentally caught In a whirlwind attack or something.

Honestly I'm of the opinion that if you're playing an evil campaign then absolutely. This should be a thing.

But if you're not then the antics get really old, really quick. The bad GM trend is when he doesn't do anything to address it BEFORE the paladin's righteous outrage gets the best of him, or the druid decides that the offender's face looks better in "shredded."

Solaris
2015-04-23, 08:59 AM
if you only want to talk about 3.5 then you should stick to that section this is the general role-playing section so and role-playing game is fair game

Thank goodness that's not at all what anybody's saying in the slightest.

Knaight
2015-04-23, 09:18 AM
I discovered a new one the other day. Apparently banning all out of character discussion can extend to things like clarification questions about what characters perceive. You get the one initial description, and if it's unclear (and it will never encompass everything and will always be somewhat unclear), sucks to be you.


Yup. 'Awesome Chill Dude becomes Sir Ragealot once the party gets into a combat' is a scenario I've seen more than once; chitchatting with him before the game won't tell you that, and it's probable that he's less aware of the issue and/or less forthcoming regarding its severity than those who have gamed with him before. . . and that assumes he's not new to the hobby.
I've been blindsided by similar things a few times. One of my current players is generally a very quiet, soft spoken, mellow person. Once the dice hit the table though, that's not the case at all, in or out of character.

DigoDragon
2015-04-23, 10:30 AM
I don't like when I build a certain strength or tactic into a character then suddenly every enemy happens to be built to deal with said strength.

I remember once playing in a campaign where magic was very rare. To be a magic user required paying extra "build points" for it. I did so because I had a neat concept for a sorcerer type in a mostly mundane world. And then the GM kept throwing magic users at us like they were dime a dozen.

Kurald Galain
2015-04-23, 04:17 PM
I recently met a DM who took the concept of "railroading" to a new level.

The setting was basically a dungeon, but he was narrating "You all turn to this passage, ok? Then I'm sure you'll want to search those shelves, so everyone make a perception check. Highest is an 8? Well, that's good enough, so you'll spot a chest anyway. The rogue wants to open it, so roll for pick locks..."

Basically the only point where we got to make any decisions was in combat. Even that was heavily scripted, including an NPC who was positioned on a ledge so that she had line of sight to us but we did not have line of sight to her (somehow), and a barrier that the PCs wanted to break that was DC 15 ("oh, you rolled an 11? Well it breaks anyway"). Needless to say, enemies would automatically resist effects that he didn't like ("why yes, zombies have +20 to reflex saves and evasion") and having ridiculously low defenses against what he decided was the only way to defeat them (in this case, have the low-strength low-BAB party wizard grappling the enemy combat leader was an automatic victory for us).

You know how Zelda-like games have enemies that can only be damaged by one particular weapon in your arsenal? You know how Zelda itself is very good at hinting at that and certain third-party zelda-clones are not, so that it becomes a trial-and-error guessing game while dodging enemy fire? Yeah, that's basically what the session was like.

JAL_1138
2015-04-23, 07:51 PM
You know how Zelda-like games have enemies that can only be damaged by one particular weapon in your arsenal? You know how Zelda itself is very good at hinting at that and certain third-party zelda-clones are not, so that it becomes a trial-and-error guessing game while dodging enemy fire? Yeah, that's basically what the session was like.

Speaking of which, lack of basic information your character should perceive, like "your attack seems to be ineffective."

I put this in another thread but it's apt here:

Player: I attack! *roll*
DM: Roll damage.
Player: *rolls* 12!
DM: *neglects to mention anything like: "your attack seems to have no effect as your greatsword bounced harmlessly off the creature's thick hide," or "a magical force repels your blade/arrow/mace"* Ok, who's next in initiative?
Enemy: *completely unharmed*

...three hours later, the enemy has soaked hundreds of HP without a scratch because no one was given any indication whatsoever that weapon attacks weren't working at all rather than just the homebrew critter having a metric s***load of HP.

EDIT: Before anyone asks, we tried magic too, and all had magic weapons. Turned out spells could only damage it if it moved on its turn (other than standing up from prone). Since there was no indication of whether damage affected it or not, we stun-locked it (prone/ dazed/ stunned/ immobilized/ restrained) as best we could because it hit like a freight train.

Solaris
2015-04-23, 10:30 PM
I discovered a new one the other day. Apparently banning all out of character discussion can extend to things like clarification questions about what characters perceive. You get the one initial description, and if it's unclear (and it will never encompass everything and will always be somewhat unclear), sucks to be you.

I've also had some negative experience with a DM who decided he didn't like OOC discussion. It's hair-pulling frustrating when someone else is doing something stupid because you're only allowed to speak on your character's turn and only speak in-character at that.

I get it, it's not like characters have a hive-mind, but dagnabbit your modern American hasn't the faintest notion how to conduct themselves in a fight while their character should. Planning? What's planning? Planning is for players with competent DMs.

Knaight
2015-04-23, 10:47 PM
I've also had some negative experience with a DM who decided he didn't like OOC discussion. It's hair-pulling frustrating when someone else is doing something stupid because you're only allowed to speak on your character's turn and only speak in-character at that.

I get it, it's not like characters have a hive-mind, but dagnabbit your modern American hasn't the faintest notion how to conduct themselves in a fight while their character should. Planning? What's planning? Planning is for players with competent DMs.

In my case, it was secondhand information from a new player. As for only speaking on your character's turn, that's a whole new level of frustration. At least in the case I heard of the in-character obsessed GM was likely aware that turns were out of character in the first place.

Pex
2015-04-23, 11:12 PM
I've also had some negative experience with a DM who decided he didn't like OOC discussion. It's hair-pulling frustrating when someone else is doing something stupid because you're only allowed to speak on your character's turn and only speak in-character at that.

I get it, it's not like characters have a hive-mind, but dagnabbit your modern American hasn't the faintest notion how to conduct themselves in a fight while their character should. Planning? What's planning? Planning is for players with competent DMs.

A Co-DM in my 5E group is like this. He told a player who asked a question of another player he was forbidden to ask it. Some of the players follow the DM's lead. We commandeered a ship and the bard found and used a spy glass. It was a couple of days later when we spotted land I asked the bard to borrow his spyglass because I wanted to look on shore before we made landfall. I was scolded of how I could possibly know he had a spyglass. We were on the ship for a while. I would know he had a spy glass. But I rant again for those who know of my previous ranting.

Also the same DM who does this I mentioned earlier:
When a player wants to do something that's not straight attacking or casting a spell the DM looks for a reason why it can't be done. If he can't think of a reason he asks the player to justify the action.

Why did my DM have to be sick that day? I've had enough. If the DM I like can't make it, suddenly I'll have more important plans that day as well. It's my 2E nightmare DMs all over again, just like in my "Still Say Yes" thread.

:smallfurious:

Solaris
2015-04-24, 11:24 AM
I really don't get DMs who think its their job to stymie all efforts of their players. I don't even get how that's fun, to make everyone at the table frustrated and bored.

Mr.Moron
2015-04-24, 11:43 AM
I really don't get DMs who think its their job to stymie all efforts of their players. I don't even get how that's fun, to make everyone at the table frustrated and bored.

If we're talking "DMs" here the D&D structure especially 3.P is pretty much built for this. There is a feat or rule for every little thing, so for every little thing you should obviously have a feat or rule. Because the game is so hung up on creating so many specific abilities the natural question that pops up when someone says "Hey, I wanna do X" is "Where on your character sheet does it say you can do X?".

The entire game is structured in a way such that by default the engine is expected to provide the procedure for all player actions. From the DMs perspective getting "Creative" with actions stands a strong chance of just looking like trying to get the benefit of abilities you haven't fairly paid for. If you wanted to swing from chandeliers without a big penalty you should have taken Improved Chandelier Swinging, even if no such feat exists. If the feat doesn't exist, that's just evidence that chandeliers are not be swung from as otherwise there'd be a feat for it.

Everything about the game design breeds this expectation into you. It is to the point where I'm not really sure you can call it a DM Trend of any sort, it's natural part of how the game was made. Maybe it's a bug, maybe it's a feature but the mindset is very much built into the game.

Pex
2015-04-24, 06:26 PM
If we're talking "DMs" here the D&D structure especially 3.P is pretty much built for this. There is a feat or rule for every little thing, so for every little thing you should obviously have a feat or rule. Because the game is so hung up on creating so many specific abilities the natural question that pops up when someone says "Hey, I wanna do X" is "Where on your character sheet does it say you can do X?".

The entire game is structured in a way such that by default the engine is expected to provide the procedure for all player actions. From the DMs perspective getting "Creative" with actions stands a strong chance of just looking like trying to get the benefit of abilities you haven't fairly paid for. If you wanted to swing from chandeliers without a big penalty you should have taken Improved Chandelier Swinging, even if no such feat exists. If the feat doesn't exist, that's just evidence that chandeliers are not be swung from as otherwise there'd be a feat for it.

Everything about the game design breeds this expectation into you. It is to the point where I'm not really sure you can call it a DM Trend of any sort, it's natural part of how the game was made. Maybe it's a bug, maybe it's a feature but the mindset is very much built into the game.

Point, but my experience has not been like this. If there's no feat for something then the DM figures out what skills, if any, apply. Could just be a BAB + modifier roll. Players can offer ideas. The whatever may or may not provoke an AoO depending on what it is. Sometimes not having the feat just means whatever you want to do provokes an AoO, and a player will decide to try it anyway. (Granted not the specific maneuvers like tripping, bull rushing, etc. since damage taken from AoO adds to the CMD in Pathfinder or something to that effect if I'm remembering incorrectly.) The DMs of my Pathfinder group and the DM of my previous 3E group all had the attitude of letting the player try something. It's just been this particular Co-DM for my 5E group that has been forbidding things or demanding justification, which the other DM does not. He also allows players to try stuff and even autosuccess just because the character is proficient in a skill, for simple things of course. I haven't had a DM like the Co-DM since my 2E days. 5E isn't encouraging the style. It's the DM.

NichG
2015-04-24, 08:47 PM
Keep in mind that if whatever cool thing you want to do has two independent failure modes (you have to roll a skill check and an attack roll) then its far less likely to succeed than a simple action. So even something like 'add a skill check to the sequence' is a kind of soft-ban on fancy actions because it generally means that such things will systematically be worse options than just doing the simple thing.

Mr.Moron
2015-04-24, 09:06 PM
Keep in mind that if whatever cool thing you want to do has two independent failure modes (you have to roll a skill check and an attack roll) then its far less likely to succeed than a simple action. So even something like 'add a skill check to the sequence' is a kind of soft-ban on fancy actions because it generally means that such things will systematically be worse options than just doing the simple thing.

This depends how likely the skill check is to succeed, and what the payoff in terms of extra utility on the fancy thing is. Taking the Chandelier-Swinging example, if you want to do it to reach balcony on the side of the room opposite yours when the alternative would be walking around (several rounds), you're getting a fair bit of utility out of the action. An 30% failure chance in front of your attack roll might be worth it.

Even ignoring that waiving the skill check entirely can also raise issues. If the "Fancy Thing", in this case the Chandelier swing involves something that would otherwise be a skill check but you don't want to make the attack harder for fluffs sake, you're establishing something the character can do automatically without rolling: Grabbing on to swing chain/rope and riding with precision to a far point. This is fine in itself but may take other classes of challenges off the table outside the combat context.

The problem is that the amount of combat utility for a fancy maneuver and the potential out of combat utility for similar acts don't always align. Being able to balance perfectly on top of a chair while fighting, then doing a back-flip without looking on to the top of nearby pole isn't much but window dressing in most combats. Later in a cave the precarious ledges either won't matter or you'll be having a *very* inconsistent game world if you previous allowed the chair & pole antics to happen without checks.


With some flexibility and some meta resources there are some nice solutions to these problems but for a default D&D approach it can be an annoying problem to try and work around.

Pex
2015-04-24, 11:09 PM
Keep in mind that if whatever cool thing you want to do has two independent failure modes (you have to roll a skill check and an attack roll) then its far less likely to succeed than a simple action. So even something like 'add a skill check to the sequence' is a kind of soft-ban on fancy actions because it generally means that such things will systematically be worse options than just doing the simple thing.

I don't necessarily mind an added skill check. In 3E/Pathfinder you can be just that good it will succeed anyway or still a very good chance. In 5E if the DM makes everything a DC 20 or 25 he's just pretending he's not being a donkey by allowing you to roll, so the DC will be a more reasonable 10 or 15 allowing for the occasional Honest True DC 20 or 25 for bizarre go for broke stuff. The my 5E group DM I like could/would do something like that. The bad trend Co-DM wouldn't even allow the roll, just flat out saying you can't do it or demand you justify it in his "court of law" before you can even attempt it, and even then I'm not trusting a reasonable DC. DC 15 with Disadvantage for a reasonable argument, 20 no disadvantage if lukewarm. You have to really, really convince him to get a DC 10 or 15 with no Disadvantage. Not impossible with him; I'm just frustrated that you have to go through the hooplah.