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Melville's Book
2016-10-19, 12:59 AM
So, I've noticed both in my gaming world and on the forums that a surprisingly common method by which DMs remove PCs who either died really unexpected/stupid deaths or are somehow determined to be irreparably mechanically broken is to ask the player for the sheet and then tear it or crumple it up and trash it while asking them to make a new character (or leave the group, depending on the nature of the event).

I dunno, maybe that seems normal or acceptable to some people. Maybe it is even received that way in a small number of groups.

But when people do that to me, I'm more than willing to escort myself out regardless of whether they actually want me to leave. Because screw that. I might have a lot of effort and memories invested in that character regardless of how or why they (or possibly I) are now being removed from the game, and those are locked away in the sheet. You don't take that from me because I'm not going to be using that character anymore. Screw you if you expect me to be okay with that.

Anyway, though, what are some table behaviors for you guys that really aggravate or upset you that you can't even believe happen so often? I'm curious to hear what your experiences have been.

Koo Rehtorb
2016-10-19, 01:47 AM
I think that tradition came from the days when people would commonly play the same character in different games. You'd finish Bob's dungeon and then take your character over to Gary's dungeon.

Tearing up the char sheet symbolizes that you can't take it to someone else's house and be alive again.

AnBe
2016-10-19, 01:49 AM
One thing that really irritates me is when the GM is in the middle of explaining something and other people, those who are in the game or those who are not in the game, start interrupting. One thing that a certain individual often says is, "I kill them all." It's like dude you're not even in the game shut your face.
Or I am not even done describing the scene and the player immediately states what their character does. I wish my players would ask more questions about the situation at hand rather than making split decisions which they often regret later or that I have to deal with.
Also, when people at the table just kind of zone out during gameplay and get distracted by other games. This is especially common during long Pathfinder combats.
And last but not least, RULES LAWYERING. Ugh :smallsigh:
There has been so many times when we are just trying to do cool stuff in the game and/or getting on with it because a certain situation is lasting too long, but 1 or 2 people always have to be THAT GUY and point out in the rules why you CAN'T DO THAT. It bunches up the game and stifles the players. It's like, come on guys, we are playing a game to have fun here, right? Not bash each other in the gonads with the big clumsy ruleset.

Jay R
2016-10-19, 08:49 AM
So, I've noticed both in my gaming world and on the forums that a surprisingly common method by which DMs remove PCs who either died really unexpected/stupid deaths or are somehow determined to be irreparably mechanically broken is to ask the player for the sheet and then tear it or crumple it up and trash it while asking them to make a new character (or leave the group, depending on the nature of the event).

...I might have a lot of effort and memories invested in that character regardless of how or why they (or possibly I) are now being removed from the game, and those are locked away in the sheet. You don't take that from me because I'm not going to be using that character anymore. Screw you if you expect me to be okay with that.

You don't back up your data? My character sheet is backed up on my computer at home like any other important document.

[In fact, these days I generally keep it as an Excel spreadsheet.]

If you lose a character once because somebody ripped up the sheet, that's his fault. But if it happens to you a second time, that's your fault.

Âmesang
2016-10-19, 09:11 AM
One thing that really irritates me is when the GM is in the middle of explaining something and other people, those who are in the game or those who are not in the game, start interrupting. One thing that a certain individual often says is, "I kill them all." It's like dude you're not even in the game shut your face.
In a similar vein I find it frustrating when the referee's explaining the situation or describing the encounter and a player asks me questions about what's going on or how his character's supposed to be played or what have you… and I end up missing a crucial detail that'll %&#$ me over in the next, few moments.

I mean I have no problem answering questions… just ask me before or after the session; don't interrupt some plot-critical moment, please. :smallfrown:

And to connect that to rules lawyering, it's just so nice when you explain to a player how his character's abilities or equipment works and it ends up not being what he wants to hear.

Geddy2112
2016-10-19, 09:58 AM
One thing that really irritates me is when the GM is in the middle of explaining something and other people, those who are in the game or those who are not in the game, start interrupting. One thing that a certain individual often says is, "I kill them all." It's like dude you're not even in the game shut your face.
Or I am not even done describing the scene and the player immediately states what their character does. I wish my players would ask more questions about the situation at hand rather than making split decisions which they often regret later or that I have to deal with.


In a similar vein I find it frustrating when the referee's explaining the situation or describing the encounter and a player asks me questions about what's going on or how his character's supposed to be played or what have you… and I end up missing a crucial detail that'll %&#$ me over in the next, few moments.
I mean I have no problem answering questions… just ask me before or after the session; don't interrupt some plot-critical moment, please. :smallfrown:

I second this. Any form of interrupting the game is a major no-no. Even worse if you are not part of the game and interrupting(I don't play in public settings for this very reason).
Another one is when people are obviously not caring or paying attention, then ask "what did I miss?"
My personal least favorite is when somebody forces their character on me-not usually sexually, but their character insists I do this thing with them, eat/drink something they made, needlessly touches/grabs/does things to my character for little to no reason.

Haldir
2016-10-19, 09:59 AM
When a PC declares an action in response to everything the GM describes, even if other players are the ones prompting said description. I just had to clarify this with an (otherwise very good) player last game.

Max_Killjoy
2016-10-19, 10:14 AM
When a PC declares an action in response to everything the GM describes, even if other players are the ones prompting said description. I just had to clarify this with an (otherwise very good) player last game.


That can come from past experiences in other games where the GM considered all descriptions "live", and if you didn't jump, you missed your chance.




Many of the behaviors I find irritating at the gaming table are irritating elsewhere -- talking with a mouth full of food, poor hygiene, lack of respect for personal space, presumption of sharing, touching other people's stuff with filthy hands, etc.


Yes, smelly people bug me... so judgemental.

MadBear
2016-10-19, 10:51 AM
For me it's gotta be when the DM doesn't offer the context of what's happening, and your character makes stupid mistakes taht wouldn't happen in any other circumstance.

DM: A large group of zombies charges your way, behind them is a wizard clad in a black cloak casting a spell

Player: I use my telport ability to jump pass the zombies and attack the wizard

DM: Ok roll it.

Player: Natural 20, I crit him!

DM: You just killed the friendly wizard who helped you out earlier for no reason. He was supposed to help you but now he's dead. I can't believe you attacked an ally like that.

Player: You didn't say we knew him

DM: Well that's your characters fault.

Melville's Book
2016-10-19, 11:09 AM
I think that tradition came from the days when people would commonly play the same character in different games. You'd finish Bob's dungeon and then take your character over to Gary's dungeon.

Tearing up the char sheet symbolizes that you can't take it to someone else's house and be alive again.
... Which makes it worse. I was just talking about a character whose story was done anyway, but if you've got a character you take around to several games (ala Pathfinder Society) then it's even more BS to destroy my main record of them.


You don't back up your data? My character sheet is backed up on my computer at home like any other important document.

[In fact, these days I generally keep it as an Excel spreadsheet.]

If you lose a character once because somebody ripped up the sheet, that's his fault. But if it happens to you a second time, that's your fault.
I play my pen and paper games with a pen and paper, thank you very much. :smalltongue:

MrZJunior
2016-10-19, 11:11 AM
There is a player in a game I am currently playing in who, whenever one of her characters rolls a one on a knowledge check, insists that it means they don't know anything. She refuses to accept any mistaken knowledge on their part. It's odd because this doesn't crop up in any other circumstances.

Pugwampy
2016-10-19, 11:15 AM
I think tearing up a character sheet is very inappropriate and unacceptable behavior that a 12 yr old indulges in .

As far as i am concerned a DM has no right to even touch a players character sheet . DM owns everything else .


That said i have heard of a drama queen who tore his own character sheet up infront of DM . When he felt better he rerecorded his old stats and went back to gaming . He did what he needed to do to feel better again . I can relate .

Anxe
2016-10-19, 11:28 AM
Experienced a few of these in one way or another. Getting food in the battle mat is one that annoys me.

Koo Rehtorb
2016-10-19, 11:28 AM
... Which makes it worse. I was just talking about a character whose story was done anyway, but if you've got a character you take around to several games (ala Pathfinder Society) then it's even more BS to destroy my main record of them.:smalltongue:

No, as in, you play the SAME character in different games. As in literally the same person. Games were assumed to be in the same world. If you level up to 3 in Bob's dungeon then you're level 3 in Gary's dungeon.

If you died in Bob's dungeon then you'd be dead and couldn't go to Gary's dungeon with that character at all.

Knitifine
2016-10-19, 11:34 AM
While I have sometimes entertained the idea of tearing apart a munchkin's character sheet, I don't think I'd ever do it. Much less so to someone who has died before. Typically munchkins and other problem players are simply told after the session that they are not invited back.

As for behaviors that aggravate me personally.

Player 1: "Oh, so you're basically playing fantasy [insert popular character here]."
Player 2, lying: "No, I've never heard of that."

To the Player 2's out there. It's okay if you wanna be Drizzt, or Fantasy Iron Man, we're just trying to make conversation.

More recently a behavior that was endemic to the group.

Player 1: "You can do this."
Player 2, after a few moments of fact checking while they are not in the scene: "No, actually you can't."
Player 1: "Ugh, don't fact check me, that's so rude."

If someone corrects you about a rule, you shouldn't get in a tizzy about it. This is only a problem if they're not letting play continue and/or paying attention to things that are happening to their character. This is especially true if the thing you brought up is something you literally shouldn't be able to do.

Also any and all types of murder-hobo behavior.

Melville's Book
2016-10-19, 11:36 AM
No, as in, you play the SAME character in different games. As in literally the same person. Games were assumed to be in the same world. If you level up to 3 in Bob's dungeon then you're level 3 in Gary's dungeon.

If you died in Bob's dungeon then you'd be dead and couldn't go to Gary's dungeon with that character at all.
Oh. I suppose that's not as bad then... But still, it'd be better just to notify the other GM instead of destroying the player's record of that character.

Knitifine
2016-10-19, 11:37 AM
There is a player in a game I am currently playing in who, whenever one of her characters rolls a one on a knowledge check, insists that it means they don't know anything. She refuses to accept any mistaken knowledge on their part. It's odd because this doesn't crop up in any other circumstances.I'm sure you're not my GM, but this is exactly how I would act. Giving players incorrect knowledge is aggravating and wastes time 90% of the time.

Max_Killjoy
2016-10-19, 11:41 AM
As for behaviors that aggravate me personally.

Player 1: "Oh, so you're basically playing fantasy [insert popular character here]."
Player 2, lying: "No, I've never heard of that."

To the Player 2's out there. It's okay if you wanna be Drizzt, or Fantasy Iron Man, we're just trying to make conversation.



The flip side of that... people who assume every RPG PC is an expy of an existing fictional character, and can't seem to comprehend originality, or that maybe someone has truthfully never looked in detail at some fictional character that said person is deeply familiar with.

Like a guy who used to game in the same circles I did in college who insisted that every fantasy-genre RPG PC with white hair, OR a health issue, OR a drug addiction, OR an intelligent sword, OR from a once-powerful culture in decline, was an Elric expy. :smallfurious:

Melville's Book
2016-10-19, 12:07 PM
Like a guy who used to game in the same circles I did in college who insisted that every fantasy-genre RPG PC with white hair, OR a health issue, OR a drug addiction, OR an intelligent sword, OR from a once-powerful culture in decline, was an Elric expy. :smallfurious:
So aside from the white hair, this logic suggests that my characters have become Elric several times mid-game. How interesting.

Goldiefish
2016-10-19, 12:09 PM
I hate when people take out their real life anger on people in game, like making characters just to mess someone up/kill their character for revenge or something. Or acting out of character and not helping your team because you get pissed at someone

Verbannon
2016-10-19, 12:10 PM
I just want to say, I dm online so *Superior*:smallamused:

2D8HP
2016-10-19, 12:34 PM
Can't say that I've been bothered enough to notice any of the previously listed behaviors.
What has bothered me (when I was 12) was snotty Magic-Users in cohoots with the DM who were "adults" (actually college students which are usually not really adults! :smallyuk:), who continually played in-character practical jokes on my Conan expy PC at DUNDRACON in 1980 (yes I'm still angry :smallfurious:), and the other action that's bothered me is being coerced into playing a PC the party "needs", such as Cleric or "Face" (healer or wheeler-dealer), when I basically just want to play a Scout (Ranger or Rogue) and/or a dumb guy with a big sword (Barbarian or Fighter).
I don't want to "stretch my role-playing"!

hymer
2016-10-19, 12:36 PM
About the tearing of sheets: I've never done that as a DM, nor seen a DM do it. I do, however, remember one player (early-mid teens IIRC) who had a character die. He had been playing the character for months, and in anger and frustration curled the sheet up and threw it in the bin. Then people at the table started talking about how they were ging to resurrect him, and he suddenly felt very foolish, and with shaking voice and hands got the sheet out of the bin.

One peeve I've indulged recently, is about the players who say they'd like to use X skill to do something. No wonder you'd like to use Perception to roll on your success in research at the library, as it's your very highest skill. I can see the way your mind works, but it's mostly working in munchkinry patterns right now. How about you tell me what your character does, and I'll decide what check you need to roll, if any, to accomplish it, eh? A subset of this behaviour is when you ask whether someone in the party has a specific ability, item, or something, and someone pipes up with something else.
DM: "Does anyone have the Light Sleeper trait?"
Annoying player: "No, but I have Keen Hearing!"
That particular thing became a regular occurence. What's s/he sayin 'no' for, anyway? Speak for yourself!

But I'm mostly annoyed at no-shows, late shows, and early shows. And I don't consider ten minutes before or after noteworthy. But much more than that starts to irk me.

PersonMan
2016-10-19, 12:39 PM
Player 1: "Oh, so you're basically playing fantasy [insert popular character here]."
Player 2, lying: "No, I've never heard of that."

To the Player 2's out there. It's okay if you wanna be Drizzt, or Fantasy Iron Man, we're just trying to make conversation.

On the other hand, there are quite a few characters who are popular within a niche that someone may not know of. I've occasionally been asked if my characters are like X or Y character, or if a concept is from Z world, and have had no idea what they're talking about.

MesiDoomstalker
2016-10-19, 12:47 PM
About the tearing of sheets: I've never done that as a DM, nor seen a DM do it. I do, however, remember one player (early-mid teens IIRC) who had a character die. He had been playing the character for months, and in anger and frustration curled the sheet up and threw it in the bin. Then people at the table started talking about how they were ging to resurrect him, and he suddenly felt very foolish, and with shaking voice and hands got the sheet out of the bin.

One peeve I've indulged recently, is about the players who say they'd like to use X skill to do something. No wonder you'd like to use Perception to roll on your success in research at the library, as it's your very highest skill. I can see the way your mind works, but it's mostly working in munchkinry patterns right now. How about you tell me what your character does, and I'll decide what check you need to roll, if any, to accomplish it, eh? A subset of this behaviour is when you ask whether someone in the party has a specific ability, item, or something, and someone pipes up with something else.
DM: "Does anyone have the Light Sleeper trait?"
Annoying player: "No, but I have Keen Hearing!"
That particular thing became a regular occurence. What's s/he sayin 'no' for, anyway? Speak for yourself!

But I'm mostly annoyed at no-shows, late shows, and early shows. And I don't consider ten minutes before or after noteworthy. But much more than that starts to irk me.

Gods I'd love early showers. It be a nice break of routine of no-show's and late showers and cancelled sessions.

A behavior that really gets my goat is when one player seems to refuse to learn the system. It's one thing to be inexperienced, its another to play the same game for nearly 10 years and still can't build their own character or remember 1/3 of their abilities.

nedz
2016-10-19, 01:13 PM
As for behaviors that aggravate me personally.

Player 1: "Oh, so you're basically playing fantasy [insert popular character here]."
Player 2, lying: "No, I've never heard of that."

To the Player 2's out there. It's okay if you wanna be Drizzt, or Fantasy Iron Man, we're just trying to make conversation.

I once ran an entire campaign in which the players were convinced I'd based on a book I'd never read. Coincidence is a thing.

Melville's Book
2016-10-19, 01:17 PM
Also, if I'm gonna make a fantasy Iron Man, it's gonna be Black Sabbath, not Marvel.

malachi
2016-10-19, 01:18 PM
A subset of this behaviour is when you ask whether someone in the party has a specific ability, item, or something, and someone pipes up with something else.
DM: "Does anyone have the Light Sleeper trait?"
Annoying player: "No, but I have Keen Hearing!"
That particular thing became a regular occurence. What's s/he sayin 'no' for, anyway? Speak for yourself!

I'm confused about why that's a bad thing.
It'd be like asking in 5e "Is anyone proficient in History", and the bard responds "No, but I've got Jack of All Trades"; or "It'd take a lot of strength of lift that. Does anyone have 20 STR?" "No, but I've got 20 INT and a Telekinesis spell". Isn't it a good thing for players to try to jury-rig stuff around? Or are players supposed to say "Since I don't have any rule that specifically says I can do X, I guess I can't." That gets silly for X = "wake up from sleeping after 8 hours of rest", "check how deep the water is by sticking a 10 foot pole down it", "cast Eldritch Blast (or is it Firebolt that can't target objects?) at a cup to try to break it".

Knitifine
2016-10-19, 01:47 PM
I once ran an entire campaign in which the players were convinced I'd based on a book I'd never read. Coincidence is a thing.
Okay that's nice and all, and this goes for everyone else who's been snarking this. I specifically put in the quote that player 2 is lying. As in, player 1 has watched player 2 watch the show they're obviously drawing from.

kyoryu
2016-10-19, 01:49 PM
Gods I'd love early showers. It be a nice break of routine of no-show's and late showers and cancelled sessions.

Early, late, whatever. As long as the players are actually taking them.

:smallamused:

MesiDoomstalker
2016-10-19, 02:21 PM
Early, late, whatever. As long as the players are actually taking them.

:smallamused:

I realize now my misstep :smallredface: My other pet peeve is when Player A complains Player B isn't enjoying the game properly. Something like...

Player A: "Player B! Why are you so concerned with your attack bonus?"
Player B: "Were fighting some Orcs. I need to know what my attack bonus is so I know what to add to my roll."
Player A: "God Player B, stop being a munchkin! Just say how you attack and the GM will sort it out."

Bad example it pisses me off. Especially when Player A is being hypocritical.

cobaltstarfire
2016-10-19, 02:26 PM
Probably slightly less common, but "rules lawyers" who are just about always wrong. If you're going to try and be a stickler about the rules or fluff of the game, at least open the book and get to know the setting and rules as applicable?

MrZJunior
2016-10-19, 02:27 PM
I'm sure you're not my GM, but this is exactly how I would act. Giving players incorrect knowledge is aggravating and wastes time 90% of the time.

It's arrogant, why should she be immune to the consequences for bad rolls?

Besides, isn't it more interesting to be wrong than to not know? It can send you haring off on all sorts of misadventures and create other problems that need to be solved.

hymer
2016-10-19, 02:32 PM
I'm confused about why that's a bad thing.

For the specific example, the question whether someone has the Light Sleeper trait could mean no roll was needed, whereas Keen Hearing gives a bonus to the check to wake up. Or the thing that needed to be rolled for was nothing to do with hearing, but rather temperature or smell, e.g.. And the Light Sleeper trait also meant that surprised or not, Light Sleeper means you go from sleeping to fully awake faster than those who don't have it. So no roll may be in the offing anyway, because the group wakes at night automatically, and you just want to take any Light Sleeper trait into account when you describe what's happening.

It's a bad thing because it's blabbering out of turn with something that could be relevant, but isn't. If the GM needs the help, fine. I didn't, and since this happened regularly, the player ought to have known that.

SethoMarkus
2016-10-19, 02:32 PM
I play my pen and paper games with a pen and paper, thank you very much. :smalltongue:

Hey now, for my games that aren't online I regularly keep three pen-and-paper copies of my character sheet, all hand written! My primary sheet that I play with; a DM's copy for them to hold onto or return to me at the end of each session; and a backup copy I keep at home in a folder with other copies, just in cade something happens to one of the other two.

I suppose I keep multiple copies of digital character sheets as well... One on Mythweavers, one on my hardrive, and a pen-and-paper copy... (I usually make my characters on lined paper before exporting it to whatever sheet I'm going to be using, so...)

2D8HP
2016-10-19, 02:37 PM
Also, if I'm gonna make a fantasy Iron Man, it's gonna be Black Sabbath, not Marvel.But...
Nobody wants him
They just turn their heads
Nobody helps him even though
he traveled time
For the future of mankind

(Darn Warpigs, it's enough to make you Paranoid, now where's my Sweet Leaf dagnabbit!
:biggrin:

veti
2016-10-19, 03:18 PM
For the specific example, the question whether someone has the Light Sleeper trait could mean no roll was needed, whereas Keen Hearing gives a bonus to the check to wake up. Or the thing that needed to be rolled for was nothing to do with hearing, but rather temperature or smell, e.g.. And the Light Sleeper trait also meant that surprised or not, Light Sleeper means you go from sleeping to fully awake faster than those who don't have it. So no roll may be in the offing anyway, because the group wakes at night automatically, and you just want to take any Light Sleeper trait into account when you describe what's happening.

It's a bad thing because it's blabbering out of turn with something that could be relevant, but isn't. If the GM needs the help, fine. I didn't, and since this happened regularly, the player ought to have known that.

In my strongly held opinion, offering the DM information that, even though he didn't ask for it right now, is reasonably likely to be relevant in the context is never a bad thing. At the very least, it shows that the player is paying attention, trying to participate, and trying to be helpful.

And she's not demanding anything. Just volunteering information. What you do with it is still up to you.

Tearing up character sheets? I wouldn't do it myself, because I know how invested players can be in those things, but I've seen it happen. It's a dramatic gesture, no more. If you really want to, you can always write up a new one - something I generally do every few sessions anyway, character sheets tend to get pretty dog-eared after 30-50 hours of play.

Lord Torath
2016-10-19, 07:30 PM
It's arrogant, why should she be immune to the consequences for bad rolls?

Besides, isn't it more interesting to be wrong than to not know? It can send you haring off on all sorts of misadventures and create other problems that need to be solved.It has to do with making the player's character look like a fool, without the player's consent. Even if you roll a one on your tracking skill, you are NOT going to mistake bear tracks for moose tracks. It's just not going to happen. If the player suggests it, fine. So let the player correctly identify the tracks, but be unable to follow them.

Be fans of your PCs. Cheer (either openly or secretly) when they pull off an upset, or when they see a solution you hadn't planned for. Give them opportunities to be heroic. You don't need to give them opportunities to make fools of themselves; they'll do that all on their own, without help from you.

RazorChain
2016-10-19, 10:22 PM
It has to do with making the player's character look like a fool, without the player's consent. Even if you roll a one on your tracking skill, you are NOT going to mistake bear tracks for moose tracks. It's just not going to happen. If the player suggests it, fine. So let the player correctly identify the tracks, but be unable to follow them.

Be fans of your PCs. Cheer (either openly or secretly) when they pull off an upset, or when they see a solution you hadn't planned for. Give them opportunities to be heroic. You don't need to give them opportunities to make fools of themselves; they'll do that all on their own, without help from you.


I agree, often I ask them how they critically fail...and the results are often much more spectacular than what I would have thought of :)

hymer
2016-10-20, 03:31 AM
In my strongly held opinion, offering the DM information that, even though he didn't ask for it right now, is reasonably likely to be relevant in the context is never a bad thing. At the very least, it shows that the player is paying attention, trying to participate, and trying to be helpful.

Paying attention by doing the exact thing he's been asked not to do four times already? Participating by dragging out the proceedings rather than trying to get them to run smoothly? Trying to be helpful by annoying everyone else at the table?
I agree entirely that the behaviour you describe is fine in most cases. But the example I was describing has little or nothing to do with what you describe. Some more examples:

Q: What's your AC?
A: I'm wearing plate armour.

Q: You take ten damage, are you still conscious?
A: We'll see, won't we?

Q: Who's wearing the Ring of Frost Resistance?
A: I've got a potion of frost resistance in my pack.

Q: Do you have ranks in Religion?
A: I can cast Bless.

Pauly
2016-10-20, 04:16 AM
The thing I hate is players who take forever to micromanage every encounter. Especially those players who have dozens of different items that might be useful in an encounter one day and spend a good 5 or 6 minutes going through their inventory every time the party hits anything new.

Professor Chimp
2016-10-20, 04:46 AM
Guess I'll throw in my 2 cents. Some of these have been mentioned in some form already, but these really grind my gears as a DM.

Players who don't do the effort of reading up on their class features, feats, skills and other abilities. Knowing what your character can do and how to it goes a long way to making your character more effective. I understand a tabletop rpg can be pretty overwhelming for a beginner and I'll happily coach them, but there are limits. For example, a player in the group I've DM'd for 3 years now was new to the game when we started and while he has improved a lot since then, he still needs to ask questions about some pretty basic mechanics. Questions which could've easily been avoided by a good read of the appropriate section in the PHB, something I've pointed out to him quite a few times.
Players who arrive at the table unprepared. I'm all set up as DM, the players are all there, we get seated, ready to go, when suddenly "Wait, I still need to update my character sheet" or something or such. Everything grinds to a halt. I don't think I'm unreasonable in asking players to be ready before sitting down at the table, so they don't needlessly waste my time and that of players who did do the 15min homework.
Players are busy on their phones when it is not their turn or are otherwise not paying attention. Common during larger, more complicated battles or longer talky bits their characters are not directly participating in (through their own choice or not). It's rude towards me who spent a fair bit of time preparing that session, rude towards other players who are paying attention and likely also a timewaster if the unattentive player needs to be brought up to speed with what's been going on.

Jormengand
2016-10-20, 04:48 AM
I think tearing up a character sheet is very inappropriate and unacceptable behavior that a 12 yr old indulges in .

Which, honestly, is more of an insult to the twelve-year-olds than anyone else.

Katrina
2016-10-20, 04:53 AM
Didn't even know this was a thing that would be a peeve for me until recently, but players falling asleep at games. I realize I might be running an Adventure Path, but that doesn't mean I didn't spend a lot of effort getting ready for the game. You can at least bow out if you are too sleepy to play. Don't sit in my chair and fall asleep and then expect it to be fine because you toss a few d6 of Positive energy on your party after the fight when someone wakes you up.

Players who interrupt the Gm's description of the scene only to have to stop and ask questions about what they missed while they were talking over you.

I've also decided that never again will I run an Adventure Path for a person who has played through it before. Even if they request it. In fact, especially if they request it. Made even more annoying by the fact that since I've run the Adventure Path, I will be unable to properly play it due to my very detail oriented and accurate memory.

Knitifine
2016-10-20, 05:59 AM
It's arrogant, why should she be immune to the consequences for bad rolls?Because skill fumbles are a houserule at best, and getting misinformation is unfun.

Jormengand
2016-10-20, 06:21 AM
Because skill fumbles are a houserule at best, and getting misinformation is unfun.

In specific systems, yes. This isn't always the case. (Also, at least in 3.5, that particular critical failure - of getting misinformation - is written into the rules (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/senseMotive.htm), twice (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/appraise.htm), and at least once more (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/decipherScript.htm), and again (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/disableDevice.htm), and once again (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/intimidate.htm), and a sixth time (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/spot.htm). Also, there is an entire skill (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/bluff.htm) which is used to spread misinformation, and another one (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/forgery.htm). Other critical skill failures involve falling (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/balance.htm), falling (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/climb.htm), making people dislike you (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/diplomacy.htm), blowing yourself up (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/disableDevice.htm), falling (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/jump.htm), drowning (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/swim.htm), blowing yourself up (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/useMagicDevice.htm), blowing yourself up (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/skills/usePsionicDevice.htm), and falling (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/useRope.htm). There are feats such as personal truename backlash which also allow you to add critical failures to truespeak, of all skills.)

And getting misinformation doesn't have to be unfun. Hell, in FATE, half the premise of the game is the DM and players finding creative ways to screw each other over using the traits written on the character sheet, and it's amazingly fun.

Cluedrew
2016-10-20, 07:27 AM
On Destroying Sheets: Don't do that.

On Using your Best Skill: I get it, play to your strengths. Don't argue for different interpretations of stats in skills though and don't recon your actions to try and get a different skill off.

My final group is anything that is not acceptable in real life suddenly "becoming" acceptable once the game starts. I don't care that we are playing an role-playing game, lying to me out of character is still not OK.

Earthwalker
2016-10-20, 08:13 AM
I have always had an issue with a certain type of player, or a certain style. I don’t want to say this is even bad play it’s just something that annoys me when I am playing.
I call it a chess master player.

A player who sees all the other characters at the table as his pieces to move to “win” the game / encounter. Its not like I aren’t a team player but if I have abilities that will help let me choose to use them, don’t start ordering up what you need.

Standard Chess Master Talk (Chess Master is Fighty Mcfighterson)

“Ok before we go into the room, Earthwalker you cast spell bulls strength on me and Thiefy McStabb. Then cast Hast on the group. Once we are in the room I will engage the big guy, Thiefy McStabb you get flanking. Earthwalker don’t waste your spells we might need buffs after. Cleric McHealsalot you stay back and burst heal if needed”
Me – “You know we can work out what to do ourselves”
Fighter McFighterson – “I am only doing what’s more effective”.

Cernor
2016-10-20, 09:27 AM
I have always had an issue with a certain type of player, or a certain style. I don’t want to say this is even bad play it’s just something that annoys me when I am playing.
I call it a chess master player.

I'm guilty of this on a fair number of occasions... And let me tell you, as a chess master player, the worst thing is when someone doesn't do what I say and the encounter then becomes 10x more difficult. :smallwink:

More on topic, players who treat the game as one big joke irritate me, since I tend to be a more serious player. Not to say that casual players are bad, nor that super-seriousness is a better way to play. But, well... This guy takes the cake:
When we agreed that someone needed to cause a ruckus to draw attention away from the rest of the party's stealth mission, the Paladin got drafted in to cause said ruckus. We were expecting trampled tents, a wild chase, and insults to our enemies' parentage. What we got was 15 minutes of him standing around and occasionally shouting Dark Souls references.
His character was like that the whole campaign, by the way. I don't recall a single word of his IC that wasn't a Dark Souls reference.

Quertus
2016-10-20, 05:28 PM
Hmmm... so many to pick from.

The no call no show.

The "**** initiative, whoever screams out first goes first, right?" (IMO, the GM deserves at least as much blame as the player in this scenario).

The metagamer.

The "I'ma bookmark this page by bending the corner of your book, 'K?" Related to the "I'ma use your book as a writing desk" and "I'ma use your book as a plate".

Alignment.

People who don't understand that "alignment" and "personality" are not synonyms.

DMs who feel the need to change your alignment (esp over a single incident).

The people who would rather have to retcon an entire session than look up a rules question when it first appears.

The veteran noob.

The rules lawyer who knows he's wrong, and is just hoping for a favorable ruling from an ignorant GM. Happily, whenever I've noticed this happening, it was under GMs who took the time to look up the rules.

The nerf bat.

GMs who believe in nerfing the strong, but have no interest in empowering the weak.

Intolerant people.

The PvP player, especially when coupled with the player who can't differentiate IC & OOC.

Alignment.

I'm sure I could come up with lots more...


More recently a behavior that was endemic to the group.

Player 1: "You can do this."
Player 2, after a few moments of fact checking while they are not in the scene: "No, actually you can't."
Player 1: "Ugh, don't fact check me, that's so rude."

If someone corrects you about a rule, you shouldn't get in a tizzy about it. This is only a problem if they're not letting play continue and/or paying attention to things that are happening to their character. This is especially true if the thing you brought up is something you literally shouldn't be able to do.

I don't think I could play with people like that. At least, not and take them seriously. Not without totally abusing the lack of rules.


I call it a chess master player.

A player who sees all the other characters at the table as his pieces to move to “win” the game / encounter. Its not like I aren’t a team player but if I have abilities that will help let me choose to use them, don’t start ordering up what you need.

Standard Chess Master Talk (Chess Master is Fighty Mcfighterson)

“Ok before we go into the room, Earthwalker you cast spell bulls strength on me and Thiefy McStabb. Then cast Hast on the group. Once we are in the room I will engage the big guy, Thiefy McStabb you get flanking. Earthwalker don’t waste your spells we might need buffs after. Cleric McHealsalot you stay back and burst heal if needed”
Me – “You know we can work out what to do ourselves”
Fighter McFighterson – “I am only doing what’s more effective”.

My signature character, for whom this account is named, is a tactically inept god wizard. His lack of tactical mindset prevents him from overshadowing the party. Happily, I believe I have never played Quertus with a Chess Master in the party - at least, not one who viewed Quertus as one of his pieces. I often play as... odd man out... in group tactics; the Chess Masters I remember playing with Quertus encouraged him to be the unpredictable portion of the party's plan. Although I have had tactically inept players try to order Quertus around, in ways that would make the encounter noticably harder - which is quite a feat, given that Quertus' signature actions are to read from a book or make a sketch.

So, yeah, I'm not sure how having a real Chess Master making Quertus live up to his potential would turn out, but I doubt it would be fun for the party. :smalltongue:

Vitruviansquid
2016-10-20, 06:33 PM
The behavior I most dislike is the passive aggressive negativity of someone who has for some reason not actually declined to play, but acts miserable and tries to make everyone else miserable the whole time. This might be a new player who constantly complains or ridicules the game like, "oh my god, I can't believe I'm doing something this nerdy" or a player who prefers a different game constantly saying, "this would be so much better in DnD 3.5."

Another behavior I can't stand is the type of player who is there just to lord how much smarter he is over the other players. This type can be especially bad if it's the GM.

Verbannon
2016-10-20, 10:50 PM
One thing that annoys me though this isnt table behaviour, is when a player says something like

Player:"Hey DM, you are wrong, Beholders dont travel in groups, they are exclusively solitary creatures."

Me: "I know. "

Player: "So why are they?"

Me: "Why dont you ask that in character?"

Player: "Because its stupid they dont do that. You are wrong"

Me: "No Im not wrong, they are illusions you imbecile! You dont think I read the paragragh on Beholder evology!"

Player: "Oh so they are illusions now. Bet they werent until I said they were."

Me: *Wishes this was an in person game so I could put a bullet between this A-hole's eyes"

Velaryon
2016-10-21, 12:34 AM
That said i have heard of a drama queen who tore his own character sheet up infront of DM . When he felt better he rerecorded his old stats and went back to gaming . He did what he needed to do to feel better again . I can relate .

I had one of these once as well. He had an argument with one of the other players (not even during the game, we were doing something else that day), so in dramatic fashion he announced he was quitting, went home, tore up his character sheet and burned the pieces. Then he calmed down a couple days later and still wanted to play, so he made a new character.


A behavior that really gets my goat is when one player seems to refuse to learn the system. It's one thing to be inexperienced, its another to play the same game for nearly 10 years and still can't build their own character or remember 1/3 of their abilities.

I have one of these too (not the same player, though the two of them are close friends). This guy has nearly 14 years of gaming experience and still can't even level up his character by himself, let alone build one from scratch. He has to be regularly told how his abilities work, what the things on his sheet mean, and whether a certain ability he has will work in this situation (if he remembers the ability at all). Lately he hasn't been showing up, so we've just been gaming without him, and not much of value has been lost. But he's our friend so we'd feel bad kicking him out (well, most of us anyway).


Another one that I really hate is the "oh, (player's cousin, SO's friend, etc.) is coming over. He doesn't play but can he watch?" I'm by no means antisocial, but when it's game time the only people around should be the people involved in the game. If the SO of the person hosting the game comes in for a minute or two to say hi when they first get home or something, that's fine (it's still disruptive but we're in their place after all, so it's fine as long as it doesn't completely grind the game to an extended halt). But other random people dropping in, or worse yet wanting to "watch" is annoying as hell. "Watching" inevitably leads to one of two things: either they want to participate (in which case you have to give them an NPC or a monster or something and then waste time trying to teach them how to play it), or they become a big distraction by talking about unrelated stuff or asking a million questions or something.

Blue Duke
2016-10-21, 01:20 AM
i don't like to play anything with massive penalties - i threw out a set that contained a 6, 3 and 4 and ya know an 18, 16 and 10 purely because I don't find it fun. i say that because something that irks me endlessly about my particular group is that two of them roll their eyes and tell me to man up and play the massive penalties and then pointing to the six one of their characters has with pride. Sure guys its fun for -you- but it isn't for me okay ?

the same kind of eye rolling crap i get for playing Marines/soldiers/special forces types......i don't like playing other stuff, i have tried playing other stuff and any time I've done it the game has crashed and burned because I've ended up trying to lead and one person in the group always has problems with my character leading or the characters where just not fun for me to role play.

let's see i don't want to play a particular adventure, I've told them at least three times i don't think its fun and its not my bag.....i get told by the person that DM's that particular adventure to 'man up' and 'stop being a wuss' and 'suck it up'. also i pulled a character because i couldn't figure out why they'd stay with the group after crap they did, get told the exact same things despite trying to avoid the inevitable PVP that would result if the character stayed with the group.

PersonMan
2016-10-21, 03:00 AM
DMs who feel the need to change your alignment (esp over a single incident).

Intensified by being paired with "if you become [X alignment] you become an NPC and have to make a new character", because it basically puts you one or two wrong moves from losing your character for no good reason.

Katrina
2016-10-21, 03:38 AM
On the Alignment issue, there are also many Classes, Prestige Classes, Archetypes, Feats and things you can lose for having your alignment shifted, rendering your character very difficult to play or impossible to play as well as compromising your concept.


I choose to interpret alignment as a "behavior pattern." Your first offense will never cause your alignment to shift (barring completely insane actions like "I cast Fireball into the town square for the lolz." ) Even a good character can slip into committing an evil act every now and then. Perhaps he lost his temper or something. His World View won't change because of that one action. Only after he commits several such actions will he look back and go "Man, I haven't been very good recently." Three Major Violations in a particular direction is usually what is required, with three minor violations counting as one major one.

Of course, classes and features with a "one Evil Act and you lose it" rule or what have you, the rules are meant to be a little more strict on. Example: Paladin violating their Code of Conduct.

And I've seen acts where the violation was only in appearance. For example, in Kingmaker, I had a Paladin shout "Surrender!" and the bandits, being low hp and having had their leader slain while the ranger had made it clear they couldn't escape, surrendered.
Paladin: "Alright. I hang the prisoners until dead."
Whole table: "Wait, what?"
Paladin: "It's very clear in our charter. The Lawful penalty for banditry is to be hanged until dead."
Me: *blink* "Wow. Okay, for future reference, your paladin feels he has to tell people that surrendering to him will not get them any mercy from the law."

Paladin in next fight: "Surrender and be hanged!"

harlokin
2016-10-21, 08:12 AM
Players using my dice.

It sounds dumb, but I find it really irritating.

If somebody forgets theirs, I'll gladly lend them some, but I don't like sharing the dice in front of me. :smallfrown:

Quertus
2016-10-21, 08:39 AM
One thing that annoys me though this isnt table behaviour, is when a player says something like

Player:"Hey DM, you are wrong, Beholders dont travel in groups, they are exclusively solitary creatures."

Me: "I know. "

Player: "So why are they?"

Me: "Why dont you ask that in character?"

Player: "Because its stupid they dont do that. You are wrong"

Me: "No Im not wrong, they are illusions you imbecile! You dont think I read the paragragh on Beholder evology!"

Player: "Oh so they are illusions now. Bet they werent until I said they were."

Me: *Wishes this was an in person game so I could put a bullet between this A-hole's eyes"

I view this as the trust minigame. To keep this situation from happening, I intentionally make a small "mistake", and reveal the secret, ideally IC*, as to why it follows the rules. Repeat until the players have been trained to simply ask, "you know X, right?", where they expect that I do, and it's therefore mystery solving time.

Because, yeah, horrible DMs are horrible, so it's important to demonstrate the difference.

* and, if they ask, I try to read them, and either suggest their character look into it (if their character had the appropriate skills to notice that something is amiss), or I tell them the secret, and ask if they wouldn't have had more fun finding out in character, and suggest that they do so next time (hint, hint).


the same kind of eye rolling crap i get for playing Marines/soldiers/special forces types......i don't like playing other stuff, i have tried playing other stuff and any time I've done it the game has crashed and burned because I've ended up trying to lead and one person in the group always has problems with my character leading or the characters where just not fun for me to role play.

That's your good for trying other things. You should do so occasionally, say in one shots, just to test other ideas. I, for one, play mages, almost exclusively.

So... Why does every character you create who is not a soldier have to lead? :smallconfused:


let's see i don't want to play a particular adventure, I've told them at least three times i don't think its fun and its not my bag.....i get told by the person that DM's that particular adventure to 'man up' and 'stop being a wuss' and 'suck it up'. also i pulled a character because i couldn't figure out why they'd stay with the group after crap they did, get told the exact same things despite trying to avoid the inevitable PVP that would result if the character stayed with the group.

Why they'd want your character to stick around in that kind of scenario is baffling.

Melville's Book
2016-10-21, 09:32 AM
Oooh, that's another one, thanks for bringing it up! I absolutely detest switch-shamers.

I'm here, playing a tabletop game (ostensibly with my friends), in order to have fun. Now, I'm fine with having that fun in multiple ways. Heavy-RP politics games, light-RP dungeon crawling, survival horror, lots of options. If you're gonna ask me to try and stick it out in a campaign whose premise/genre I'm not sold on, I'm gonna do that for you. You're (ostensibly) my friend, and I'm willing to give a new experience a few tries. I'd prefer if you asked politely, but there comes a friendship level in some people's brains where "please do this for me" and "don't be a wimp bro" stop having distinct meanings, and I can respect that too.

However. My character? That's my gateway into whatever game we're playing. There's no way to anticipate which of my characters I'll enjoy playing until it starts to happen, and it can change based on circumstance. And maybe this is a personal fault (though I doubt it), but I doubt I could enjoy even the most perfect game, DM'd by the goddess of tabletop games Herself, if I don't like the character I'm playing in that world through.

Don't tell me to stick it out with a character I don't want to play any more. Trust me, I respect your story and the difficulty switching characters may cause you in reframing your plot. I've already agonized over if it was worth the ripple effect that would happen, and I probably only came to this decision because I'd rather leave the game than keep playing this guy in it. Just let me switch without getting crap for it and I will bend over backwards however you need me to to accommodate your plot reconstruction.

Edit: @alignment: lol, I think that Paladin should just stop suggesting surrender. Although I'm pretty sure Paladins as written are meant to be "Good before Lawful." Then again, why further restrict such a restricted class?

cobaltstarfire
2016-10-21, 12:29 PM
If somebody forgets theirs, I'll gladly lend them some, but I don't like sharing the dice in front of me. :smallfrown:

It's never happened to me, but I've seen it happen to others at adventurers league, it really strikes me as highly disrespectful when people try to grab up and use dice that don't belong to them.


In a similar veins with respect to property, I also feel like a GM taking someones sheet and ripping it up as an aggressive act and definitely a no-no. I don't care if the person has multiple copies or not, it's a crappy move on the GM's part.

Blue Duke
2016-10-21, 04:04 PM
That's your good for trying other things. You should do so occasionally, say in one shots, just to test other ideas. I, for one, play mages, almost exclusively.

So... Why does every character you create who is not a soldier have to lead? :smallconfused:



Why they'd want your character to stick around in that kind of scenario is baffling.

on the first point: because I've got two settings in my brain - follower tends to be the soldiers and such, and leader who is just about any one who is not a soldier. I've tried playing solo stealth types and been told constantly to 'stay with the group stay with the group, do what i say' by the leader (paraphrased of course).

On the second point: it was the group that did stuff my character didn't agree with, i pulled them to avoid my character eventually saying 'no you know what screw you all i'm reporting your behinds to the freaking government and screw the 'accessory to' charge i'm going to get'. they started going murder hobo in a sci-fi game and used the 'well we aren't in BIG GALACTIC Government's territory so these agents aren't in their jurisdiction - so we can shoot them with out a problem !' excuse to attack government agents. it baffles me that they think my character would have been okay with that having been a soldier for the big galactic government.

Anderlith
2016-10-22, 05:02 PM
#1 aggravation, players who cannot work with a party, whether it's always sneaking around, but not helping in fights, or acting like an *ss & trying to fight everything alone, or trying to make yourself the leader/face never letting other party members socialize with NPCs. (This is hard to describe but basically people who will only roleplay when solo, & actively seeks to exclude other party members) or trying to start drama between the party, stealing from the party, or murdering the party.

Dms who do any of the above as well

People who leave the game early Worse than late comers

Random, inconsistent dm fiat ruining play

Playing in a game where the dm is heavily inspired by another media & is focibly shoehorning it in. I played in a star wars game that had us suddenly fighting the creatures from Shadow of the Colossus. Not fun.

The Fury
2016-10-22, 07:05 PM
I have always had an issue with a certain type of player, or a certain style. I don’t want to say this is even bad play it’s just something that annoys me when I am playing.
I call it a chess master player.

A player who sees all the other characters at the table as his pieces to move to “win” the game / encounter. Its not like I aren’t a team player but if I have abilities that will help let me choose to use them, don’t start ordering up what you need.

Standard Chess Master Talk (Chess Master is Fighty Mcfighterson)

“Ok before we go into the room, Earthwalker you cast spell bulls strength on me and Thiefy McStabb. Then cast Hast on the group. Once we are in the room I will engage the big guy, Thiefy McStabb you get flanking. Earthwalker don’t waste your spells we might need buffs after. Cleric McHealsalot you stay back and burst heal if needed”
Me – “You know we can work out what to do ourselves”
Fighter McFighterson – “I am only doing what’s more effective”.

I confess I've been a variant of this type of player. Though I generally save it for groups that don't have much direction on their own or have trouble working together. That's the story I'm going with anyway.

There's an even more annoying variant of The Chessmaster that I've been unfortunate enough to encounter: The Would-be Chessmaster. Generally, this is a player that takes charge and fancies him or herself some kind of tactical genius but is never quite as clever as they like to think. Have the fighter and the cleric guard the cave entrance while the rogue and the wizard scout ahead? Brilliant! The heavily armored folks would give away our position to anything down there, and besides we're avoiding a straight up fight! After the plan goes awry, is it the fault of The Chessmaster for not coming up with a more sound battle plan? No! Don't be ridiculous! It's obviously the fault of those bozos left guarding the cave entrance. If they would have healed us and covered our retreat it would've been no prob!

TL,DR: The Would-be Chessmaster comes up with plans that deliberately dis-include PCs that are "weak links" and complains when they don't show up when they would actually be useful.


#1 aggravation, players who cannot work with a party, whether it's always sneaking around, but not helping in fights, or acting like an *ss & trying to fight everything alone, or trying to make yourself the leader/face never letting other party members socialize with NPCs. (This is hard to describe but basically people who will only roleplay when solo, & actively seeks to exclude other party members) or trying to start drama between the party, stealing from the party, or murdering the party.


Funnily enough, in the moment when I'm actually at the table with these types of players, they're pretty annoying. After the fact though, I'm glad that I did play with people like those because they usually make for the best RPG stories. Trying to be a good player in a group that has a player like this is always a challenge-- you're always having to cover for this insane character, do damage control or even organize the rest of the party to move against them if the character is just too dangerous to have around. Our group had a couple players that acted this way, with varying levels of success. Then we had nothing but players that generally worked well together. It was a lot less exciting, and I truly and genuinely missed the crazy. Funnily enough, there does seem to be a lot of overlap with this player type and The Would-be Chessmaster.

cobaltstarfire
2016-10-22, 07:20 PM
Then we had nothing but players that generally worked well together. It was a lot less exciting, and I truly and genuinely missed the crazy. Funnily enough, there does seem to be a lot of overlap with this player type and The Would-be Chessmaster.

It is possible to have "good players/gm's" and still have some kind of insanity to the game, though it just takes the right mix of silly/serious play. (not as much silly as some might expect actually).


Or just having characters that are a bit crazy in character, but with players who are otherwise fine to be around. Like this narcissistic daredevil gnome pirate and highly curious dragonborn druid slowly turning evil warlock that I once played with. The players were both quite pleasant, their characters were....good at finding trouble excitement.

The Fury
2016-10-22, 07:44 PM
It is possible to have "good players/gm's" and still have some kind of insanity to the game, though it just takes the right mix of silly/serious play. (not as much silly as some might expect actually).


Oh, no doubt. There's a definite adjustment period though.

Cluedrew
2016-10-22, 08:20 PM
Personally I think the best games are when everyone around the table is some kind of crazy but manages to restrain their insanity level to a functional level.

It's tricky.

Ruslan
2016-10-22, 08:26 PM
So, I've noticed both in my gaming world and on the forums that a surprisingly common method by which DMs remove PCs who either died really unexpected/stupid deaths or are somehow determined to be irreparably mechanically broken is to ask the player for the sheet and then tear it or crumple it up and trash it while asking them to make a new character (or leave the group, depending on the nature of the event).
I have been playing D&D for 25+ years, and I have never seen this. I have seen it used as a metaphor, heck, I even used it as a metaphor/exaggeration myself ("if you go into that dungeon unprepared, I might as well tear your character sheet", or "dude, if you touch the DM's nachos, he'll trash your charsheet"), but never actually done this or seen it done.

Anderlith
2016-10-23, 12:17 AM
Funnily enough, in the moment when I'm actually at the table with these types of players, they're pretty annoying. After the fact though, I'm glad that I did play with people like those because they usually make for the best RPG stories. Trying to be a good player in a group that has a player like this is always a challenge-- you're always having to cover for this insane character, do damage control or even organize the rest of the party to move against them if the character is just too dangerous to have around. Our group had a couple players that acted this way, with varying levels of success. Then we had nothing but players that generally worked well together. It was a lot less exciting, and I truly and genuinely missed the crazy. Funnily enough, there does seem to be a lot of overlap with this player type and The Would-be Chessmaster.

I feel you misunderstand, while some of my most cherished memories of gaming are from terribly coordinated fights & lots of out of combat craziness, i am talking about someone wants to actively remove players from playing. Say the group are people in an urban fantasy game & they are finding lots of people attacked by a werewolf. Every party member is following leads, some go to the library to research, some interview witnesses, etc. Then this guy finds a lead. He tells maybe one or two other members of the party, but purposefully "forgets" to call another player. Or outright lies to others for "RP" reasons, so that they cannot join in say tracking the werewolf to its lair etc. People who just refuse to allow new players join the party because they are outsiders not to be trusted. I understand that yeah you just met this random guy & now he wants to kill orcs with you but still, it apalls me that people can act so exclusitory with other people who just want to have fun with everyone else.

Im not talking about stealing your clerics gold to buy prostitutes & ale. Im talking about active exclusion or worse predation of other party members.

Verbannon
2016-10-23, 02:41 AM
I have always had an issue with a certain type of player, or a certain style. I don’t want to say this is even bad play it’s just something that annoys me when I am playing.
I call it a chess master player.

A player who sees all the other characters at the table as his pieces to move to “win” the game / encounter. Its not like I aren’t a team player but if I have abilities that will help let me choose to use them, don’t start ordering up what you need.

Standard Chess Master Talk (Chess Master is Fighty Mcfighterson)

“Ok before we go into the room, Earthwalker you cast spell bulls strength on me and Thiefy McStabb. Then cast Hast on the group. Once we are in the room I will engage the big guy, Thiefy McStabb you get flanking. Earthwalker don’t waste your spells we might need buffs after. Cleric McHealsalot you stay back and burst heal if needed”
Me – “You know we can work out what to do ourselves”
Fighter McFighterson – “I am only doing what’s more effective”.

I am the chessmaster. But thats why I tend to DM d&d 4e games where that is appreciated. Also chessmasters are great in a controller role.

Tiri
2016-10-23, 07:35 AM
It may not be common, but I have a player who sometimes falls asleep while playing. It is very aggravating.

Quertus
2016-10-23, 10:35 AM
Funnily enough, there does seem to be a lot of overlap with this player type and The Would-be Chessmaster.

The person who doesn't normally work with the group doesn't really get group tactics & group activities? Yeah, that's surprising. :smalltongue:


I feel you misunderstand, while some of my most cherished memories of gaming are from terribly coordinated fights & lots of out of combat craziness, i am talking about someone wants to actively remove players from playing. Say the group are people in an urban fantasy game & they are finding lots of people attacked by a werewolf. Every party member is following leads, some go to the library to research, some interview witnesses, etc. Then this guy finds a lead. He tells maybe one or two other members of the party, but purposefully "forgets" to call another player. Or outright lies to others for "RP" reasons, so that they cannot join in say tracking the werewolf to its lair etc. People who just refuse to allow new players join the party because they are outsiders not to be trusted. I understand that yeah you just met this random guy & now he wants to kill orcs with you but still, it apalls me that people can act so exclusitory with other people who just want to have fun with everyone else.

Im not talking about stealing your clerics gold to buy prostitutes & ale. Im talking about active exclusion or worse predation of other party members.

I've gamed with that guy. He definitely belongs in this thread.


I am the chessmaster. But thats why I tend to DM d&d 4e games where that is appreciated. Also chessmasters are great in a controller role.

Hmmm... I like playing multiple characters, I enjoy war games, several of my favorite characters are leader/tacticians or control/tacticians... OK, I might be a closet chess master. :smalltongue:

Slipperychicken
2016-10-23, 12:54 PM
You don't back up your data? My character sheet is backed up on my computer at home like any other important document.

[In fact, these days I generally keep it as an Excel spreadsheet.]

If you lose a character once because somebody ripped up the sheet, that's his fault. But if it happens to you a second time, that's your fault.

Personally, I prefer to have those form-fillable PDFs as backup character sheets. I love excel, but it's not always easy on the eyes. I'd also rather have my backup sheet displayed in the same way as my paper one, so I can easily copy one to the other.


There is a player in a game I am currently playing in who, whenever one of her characters rolls a one on a knowledge check, insists that it means they don't know anything. She refuses to accept any mistaken knowledge on their part. It's odd because this doesn't crop up in any other circumstances.

That's why you keep your own copy of their knowledge and perception-related skills and roll this stuff in secret, so they can't argue with you or metagame about it. I actually keep an excel sheet with all their modifiers (columns for each character, rows for which skill, and the relevant numbers are in there with any necessary notes), though you could do something similar on paper. Any roll their characters wouldn't be aware of, I just roll it in secret and tell them what their characters perceive or recall.

If they're really not sure about their PC's first thought being accurate, then they can have their PCs get a second opinion like real people do, and in that case I might give a player a lead like "you're not 100% sure yourself, but you figure the head priestess would tell you this if you asked her". That's one of the big things smart people do IRL: they don't know everything off the tops of their heads, but they recognize that fact, know where to find it, and are willing to take that extra step. For something perception-related, then it's as simple as asking an ally "hey, can you come check this out? I'd like a fresh pair of eyes on this."

Roughishguy86
2016-10-23, 04:16 PM
on the topic of ripping up character sheets, I have a wall of shame in my apartment where me and my friends pin all of our dead characters from our games. This started a few years ago and we have just kind of continued doing it. It's a lot of fun because it's our way of remembering the dead in our own little way.

So if I were playing under a DM and he tore up my character sheet I'd probably overreact and light his notebook on fire or something crazy like that.

The most annoying thing that happens at tables is when you have a player who always has to make a character with some odd schtick that has absolutely no benefit but it tends to make them the center of attention. This drives me nuts every single time.

Talakeal
2016-10-23, 04:25 PM
I once tore up my own character sheet.

When I asked the group what character I should make I was told by both the DM and the other players "Don't worry about anyone else. Just make what you want to play!"

Then when I finished my character the DM told me that he was vetoeing several key aspects of the character because it was "impinging on one of the other player character's role".

I told him that they were vital parts of my character's core concept, the DM said it didn't matter, so I got frustrated, tore up my sheet and started over from scratch.

The DM did not respond well, what followed was a bunch of shouting, slamming books on the table, calling me a munchkin and a power gamer, and then vowing that he would be making pregens from now on and never trusting another player to make their own character.

Verbannon
2016-10-23, 05:02 PM
I once tore up my own character sheet.

When I asked the group what character I should make I was told by both the DM and the other players "Don't worry about anyone else. Just make what you want to play!"

Then when I finished my character the DM told me that he was vetoeing several key aspects of the character because it was "impinging on one of the other player character's role".

I told him that they were vital parts of my character's core concept, the DM said it didn't matter, so I got frustrated, tore up my sheet and started over from scratch.

The DM did not respond well, what followed was a bunch of shouting, slamming books on the table, calling me a munchkin and a power gamer, and then vowing that he would be making pregens from now on and never trusting another player to make their own character.

I would say it sounded like the DM wanted people to build their characters based on rp not mechanics. Except I can't comprehend how Infringing on another player's role, falls into roleplay.

Talakeal
2016-10-23, 05:12 PM
I would say it sounded like the DM wanted people to build their characters based on rp not mechanics. Except I can't comprehend how Infringing on another player's role, falls into roleplay.

That is certainly what the DM thought as well.

I was playing a non-casting ranger who wielded a bastard sword two handed, had skill focus heal and survival, had levels of paladin despite not being LG, and whose highest scores were in Wis and Cha.

IMO that is almost as far away from making a character based on mechanics as you can get, but the DM sure thought differently.

JAL_1138
2016-10-23, 08:27 PM
For me it's gotta be when the DM doesn't offer the context of what's happening, and your character makes stupid mistakes taht wouldn't happen in any other circumstance.

DM: A large group of zombies charges your way, behind them is a wizard clad in a black cloak casting a spell

Player: I use my telport ability to jump pass the zombies and attack the wizard

DM: Ok roll it.

Player: Natural 20, I crit him!

DM: You just killed the friendly wizard who helped you out earlier for no reason. He was supposed to help you but now he's dead. I can't believe you attacked an ally like that.

Player: You didn't say we knew him

DM: Well that's your characters fault.

Ye gods, I hate this. I slip up and do it sometimes, because nobody's perfect and I forget to give details I should have given, and whenever I do it I call a mulligan and let the player redo the round with the knowledge they would have plausibly had by virtue of having functional senses.

Now, granted, there are times this situation could happen where the character wouldn't know the wizard was their former ally or would attack anyway (maybe the wizard had their hood up, and looked like they were controlling hostile zombies rather than fighting them, or was controlling nonhostile zombies and the player just jumps the gun and leaps to the wrong conclusion). In that case, it should play out and they should have to deal with the consequences. But if the error is because I've omitted information, then I rewind, retcon, redo.

MesiDoomstalker
2016-10-23, 09:38 PM
Ye gods, I hate this. I slip up and do it sometimes, because nobody's perfect and I forget to give details I should have given, and whenever I do it I call a mulligan and let the player redo the round with the knowledge they would have plausibly had by virtue of having functional senses.

Now, granted, there are times this situation could happen where the character wouldn't know the wizard was their former ally or would attack anyway (maybe the wizard had their hood up, and looked like they were controlling hostile zombies rather than fighting them, or was controlling nonhostile zombies and the player just jumps the gun and leaps to the wrong conclusion). In that case, it should play out and they should have to deal with the consequences. But if the error is because I've omitted information, then I rewind, retcon, redo.

I had a similar situation. We got attacked by a lone Orc. We curbstomped him and when he fell, the polymorph that was on him immediately ended. Turns out, it was our benefactor. Why was he fighting us? Well he was Dominated (we found out later via villain posturing). Of course, none of us thought to question the random Orc attacking us, nor used any magic to try and pierce the polymorph (not that we had any indication the Orc wasn't an Orc). Admittedly, it was a low-blow on the DM's part but it wasn't such a stupid move as purposefully withholding info and letting players hurt themselves because of it.

Thrudd
2016-10-23, 10:00 PM
There is a player in a game I am currently playing in who, whenever one of her characters rolls a one on a knowledge check, insists that it means they don't know anything. She refuses to accept any mistaken knowledge on their part. It's odd because this doesn't crop up in any other circumstances.

That's why all those rolls are done by the DM behind the screen. You tell the player what their character knows, or thinks they know. The player can't metagame like that if they don't see the die results. Same with perception, searching, sense motive, any time the character would not be aware of whether or not they succeed at something or miss something.

Thrudd
2016-10-23, 10:11 PM
on the topic of ripping up character sheets, I have a wall of shame in my apartment where me and my friends pin all of our dead characters from our games. This started a few years ago and we have just kind of continued doing it. It's a lot of fun because it's our way of remembering the dead in our own little way.

So if I were playing under a DM and he tore up my character sheet I'd probably overreact and light his notebook on fire or something crazy like that.

The most annoying thing that happens at tables is when you have a player who always has to make a character with some odd schtick that has absolutely no benefit but it tends to make them the center of attention. This drives me nuts every single time.

Yes, that is definitely annoying. Related to that is the person who always needs to make a joke character that acts like a goofball or has elements completely inappropriate for the setting (and which usually make the game harder for everyone else because they will never attempt to use smart tactics or strategy or will even purposefully disrupt plans). Dude, not every D&D game is a send up of Monty Python's Holy Grail. And you can't be Minsk from Baldur's Gate. Stop it.

Talakeal
2016-10-23, 10:23 PM
And you can't be Minsk from Baldur's Gate. Stop it.

If Minsk is off the table, can I at least be Boo?

quinron
2016-10-23, 10:27 PM
I've recently started getting increasingly frustrated with one of my players for rules-lawyering me about rules that don't exist in my (5e) game. If I say (for example) that you can stow then draw one weapon without using an action, he counters with, "Weeeeellllll, the book says you have to use an action to do the second one, and I don't want to do anything that the book says isn't allowed..." despite the fact that almost every time something like this comes up, I tell him I've looked at the book and decided to do something different.

Last session, after A SOLID HOUR of arguing between players over what horses they were going to buy, he kept telling me his cart couldn't carry the weight of the group's injured dragonborn. And since I was desperately trying to get the actual gameplay running instead of suffering more argument, I didn't bother to look up the table he kept referring to that he was misreading - he was reading the cart's weight, 200 pounds, as its carrying capacity. He recognized the mistake later and we didn't have any trouble with it, but I spent a net sum of about 20 minutes that night just trying to tell him that I don't care what the book says, a man, even a fairly big man, can safely ride in an empty cart without it breaking.

Fortunately he's improving quickly, even in that session, but I learned that the one thing I can't stand as a DM is people correcting me with written rules about things that I've explicitly made function differently than written.

Thrudd
2016-10-23, 10:39 PM
If Minsk is off the table, can I at least be Boo?

This is why we can't have nice things.

Kelb_Panthera
2016-10-24, 04:28 AM
How did we get 3 pages in without anybody mentioning players who don't pay any attention unless their character is the one currently in the spotlight?

They're elsewhere in town while someone's talking to an NPC; they're on their phone/tablet.

It's not their turn in combat; they're talking about a sporting event with the guy that goes after them in initiative.

Unless someone is addressing them directly about the game, it's like they're not even playing. It's grinds me like a beach towel made of sandpaper. :smallfurious::smallfurious::smallfurious:

Professor Chimp
2016-10-24, 06:33 AM
How did we get 3 pages in without anybody mentioning players who don't pay any attention unless their character is the one currently in the spotlight?

They're elsewhere in town while someone's talking to an NPC; they're on their phone/tablet.

It's not their turn in combat; they're talking about a sporting event with the guy that goes after them in initiative.

Unless someone is addressing them directly about the game, it's like they're not even playing. It's grinds me like a beach towel made of sandpaper. :smallfurious::smallfurious::smallfurious:I mentioned it on page 2. And yes, It's really annoying and rude. Easily one of my top 3 pet peeves.

While I'm at it, I don't have much love for players who use their characters as an excuse to be an *******. They'll behave in obnoxious ways, steal from fellow party members and generally make other players lives miserable. "But that's just what my character is like". No, that's just you wanting to live out your puerile little fantasies in a way that won't get you punched in the face like in reality.

hymer
2016-10-24, 07:07 AM
he was reading the cart's weight, 200 pounds, as its carrying capacity.

Abandon all hope. Misreading a table is one thing, but having no inkling that a cart's carrying capacity must be well above 200 lbs is a clear indication that any light at the end of the tunnel will turn out to be an oncoming train.


Unless someone is addressing them directly about the game, it's like they're not even playing.

May I suggest you stop addressing them, then? Just as an experiment? That way, the game won't get in their way while they're doing other stuff. :smallyuk:

Another bothersome form of behaviour: Drinking a sticky drink and not using a coaster.

Quertus
2016-10-24, 07:42 AM
I've recently started getting increasingly frustrated with one of my players for rules-lawyering me about rules that don't exist in my (5e) game. If I say (for example) that you can stow then draw one weapon without using an action, he counters with, "Weeeeellllll, the book says you have to use an action to do the second one, and I don't want to do anything that the book says isn't allowed..." despite the fact that almost every time something like this comes up, I tell him I've looked at the book and decided to do something different.

Last session, after A SOLID HOUR of arguing between players over what horses they were going to buy, he kept telling me his cart couldn't carry the weight of the group's injured dragonborn. And since I was desperately trying to get the actual gameplay running instead of suffering more argument, I didn't bother to look up the table he kept referring to that he was misreading - he was reading the cart's weight, 200 pounds, as its carrying capacity. He recognized the mistake later and we didn't have any trouble with it, but I spent a net sum of about 20 minutes that night just trying to tell him that I don't care what the book says, a man, even a fairly big man, can safely ride in an empty cart without it breaking.

Fortunately he's improving quickly, even in that session, but I learned that the one thing I can't stand as a DM is people correcting me with written rules about things that I've explicitly made function differently than written.

Silly question: why not run the game by the book? Why make (apparently) a while bunch of house rules which, from your example, don't seem to add much to the game?


How did we get 3 pages in without anybody mentioning players who don't pay any attention unless their character is the one currently in the spotlight?

They're elsewhere in town while someone's talking to an NPC; they're on their phone/tablet.

It's not their turn in combat; they're talking about a sporting event with the guy that goes after them in initiative.

Unless someone is addressing them directly about the game, it's like they're not even playing. It's grinds me like a beach towel made of sandpaper. :smallfurious::smallfurious::smallfurious:

Hmmm... I find it easier to roleplay ignorance if I'm, you know, actually ignorant. I'm a firm believer in actively ignoring parts of the session my character is not present / conscious for.

This is, of course, a reason why I like running multiple characters, and not splitting the party, so that I get to actually be involved in the game, instead of reading a book / writing forum posts / whatever. :smalltongue:

Tiri
2016-10-24, 07:43 AM
How did we get 3 pages in without anybody mentioning players who don't pay any attention unless their character is the one currently in the spotlight?

They're elsewhere in town while someone's talking to an NPC; they're on their phone/tablet.

It's not their turn in combat; they're talking about a sporting event with the guy that goes after them in initiative.

Unless someone is addressing them directly about the game, it's like they're not even playing. It's grinds me like a beach towel made of sandpaper. :smallfurious::smallfurious::smallfurious:

The sleeping guy in my group does that too. Even when his character is in the spotlight.

caden_varn
2016-10-24, 10:17 AM
If Minsk is off the table, can I at least be Boo?

NO. But you can be Woolly Rupert...

Max_Killjoy
2016-10-24, 10:27 AM
Giant aggravation -- player who commits to a game on a certain schedule, and then misses a lot of sessions because other things keep taking priority.

Talakeal
2016-10-24, 12:25 PM
How did we get 3 pages in without anybody mentioning players who don't pay any attention unless their character is the one currently in the spotlight?

They're elsewhere in town while someone's talking to an NPC; they're on their phone/tablet.

It's not their turn in combat; they're talking about a sporting event with the guy that goes after them in initiative.

Unless someone is addressing them directly about the game, it's like they're not even playing. It's grinds me like a beach towel made of sandpaper. :smallfurious::smallfurious::smallfurious:

Whats worse is you try and talk to them about it and they insist that they cant see anything rude about their behavior at all or try and turn it around on you saying if your game was less boring it wouldnt be an issue.

Also have one guy who says he is just there for the mechanics and doesnt give to shakes about the dialogue or plot and so he needs his phone with him to keep himself from getting up and keaving the table when it isnt his turn.

Cernor
2016-10-24, 12:44 PM
Giant aggravation -- player who commits to a game on a certain schedule, and then misses a lot of sessions because other things keep taking priority.

Related: The player who gives no warning that they won't show up to a session. The combination of these two players in one horrendous package is the reason I don't run an IC game anymore.

quinron
2016-10-24, 04:15 PM
Silly question: why not run the game by the book? Why make (apparently) a while bunch of house rules which, from your example, don't seem to add much to the game?

There really aren't that many house rules, just one or two things that I said up front were different from the book. The big annoyances were things that I hadn't expected to come up and didn't have memorized (stuff like a cart's carrying capacity, for example), that I just tried to give a logical ruling on and kept being argued with. The cart thing was an honest mistake on his part, but it was endemic of the bigger problem.

I was running a 3-player Lost Mine of Phandelver, and without an arcane caster for crowd control, one of the fights that should've been tough but only inconvenient turned into a TPK (the orcs at Wyvern Tor, if you're curious). Long story short, PCs got overextended and the orcs ganged up and tore them apart one at a time. The adventure was only meant to serve as a buffer for me to put together a new campaign anyway, and the fight was pretty entertaining even if they lost, so nobody seemed too upset. But the next day, when I was talking with one of the players online about some rules clarifications for a new character, he started haranguing me about how I should've run the fight differently to make it more fair. Mind, this is maybe session 5 total for this guy; I gave him the benefit of the doubt and tried to explain to him that I run things the way I do because I've learned, over time, that it's the best for keeping the game running while still being engaging, but he kept at it.

So I guess my big pet peeve is backseat DMing. I'm far from inflexible - I ask for feedback frequently, and if I make an inaccurate ruling I'll cop to it and try to fix it. I'm even open to "I wouldn't run the game the way you did; have you considered this?" But the point you start telling me I'm running the game "wrong" is the point where I stop considering your feedback, especially if you're giving it at the table instead of after the session.

Smitemeister
2016-10-24, 05:40 PM
I get really annoyed when players have their characters do things in-game just to annoy other players.

JAL_1138
2016-10-24, 06:10 PM
I get really annoyed when players have their characters do things in-game just to annoy other players.

And how, exactly, can one play a bard if one isn't annoying? I mean, like, seriously...bards. It's what they do.

Kelb_Panthera
2016-10-24, 07:16 PM
Hmmm... I find it easier to roleplay ignorance if I'm, you know, actually ignorant. I'm a firm believer in actively ignoring parts of the session my character is not present / conscious for.

This is, of course, a reason why I like running multiple characters, and not splitting the party, so that I get to actually be involved in the game, instead of reading a book / writing forum posts / whatever. :smalltongue:

I -could- see that but I run the game with the standing assumption that, unless there's some apparent PVP developing, the party members run down the important details of anything that happens when they're appart whenever they get back together. I don't see any point in making them rehash these things in character.

Quertus
2016-10-25, 09:55 AM
There really aren't that many house rules, just one or two things that I said up front were different from the book. The big annoyances were things that I hadn't expected to come up and didn't have memorized (stuff like a cart's carrying capacity, for example), that I just tried to give a logical ruling on and kept being argued with. The cart thing was an honest mistake on his part, but it was endemic of the bigger problem.

I was running a 3-player Lost Mine of Phandelver, and without an arcane caster for crowd control, one of the fights that should've been tough but only inconvenient turned into a TPK (the orcs at Wyvern Tor, if you're curious). Long story short, PCs got overextended and the orcs ganged up and tore them apart one at a time. The adventure was only meant to serve as a buffer for me to put together a new campaign anyway, and the fight was pretty entertaining even if they lost, so nobody seemed too upset. But the next day, when I was talking with one of the players online about some rules clarifications for a new character, he started haranguing me about how I should've run the fight differently to make it more fair. Mind, this is maybe session 5 total for this guy; I gave him the benefit of the doubt and tried to explain to him that I run things the way I do because I've learned, over time, that it's the best for keeping the game running while still being engaging, but he kept at it.

So I guess my big pet peeve is backseat DMing. I'm far from inflexible - I ask for feedback frequently, and if I make an inaccurate ruling I'll cop to it and try to fix it. I'm even open to "I wouldn't run the game the way you did; have you considered this?" But the point you start telling me I'm running the game "wrong" is the point where I stop considering your feedback, especially if you're giving it at the table instead of after the session.

I'm sorry for being so slow on the uptake here, but I don't see how your descriptions match up. I mean, if the player was giving recommendations for better (or "better") ways to have run the wyvern fight after the fact, then this isn't a timing issue, and so it's only a matter of delivery. Isn't having a pet peeve against a lack of social skills in a hobby known to attract less social individuals kinda self-defeating? :smallconfused:


I -could- see that but I run the game with the standing assumption that, unless there's some apparent PVP developing, the party members run down the important details of anything that happens when they're appart whenever they get back together. I don't see any point in making them rehash these things in character.

Fair enough. That's certainly an easier way to run the games. There were several reasons we didn't run things that way:

We played with the misinformation / miscommunication from the telephone game being a fun thing.

You had to be careful when and where you said what. They are not all accounted for - the lost seeing stones - we do not know who else may be watching.

We'd also have the party split up, and question several different people about the same thing. But, often, later groups would use things learned from earlier conversations, even when they hadn't had a chance to catch up with the other group.

Or multiple groups would eventually question the same individual, and would use information / leverage / whatever that they shouldn't have.

So, to make sure I wasn't the pot calling the kettle black, I would studiously ignore anything my character wasn't actively involved in.

But, if your group doesn't enjoy the telephone game, and the party didn't have to worry about the GM using the auto-update against them, and you don't need to worry about metagame concerns, then your way sounds more fun.

Hawkstar
2016-10-25, 11:54 AM
I'm sorry for being so slow on the uptake here, but I don't see how your descriptions match up. I mean, if the player was giving recommendations for better (or "better") ways to have run the wyvern fight after the fact, then this isn't a timing issue, and so it's only a matter of delivery. Isn't having a pet peeve against a lack of social skills in a hobby known to attract less social individuals kinda self-defeating? :smallconfused:In case you missed it, he did listen - the problem was the player refusing to tolerate the answer. And while the 'houserules' may not add much to the game, they sound like they remove a lot of fiddly frustration and irritation (Only added back when someone contests the clear houserule).

Pex
2016-10-25, 12:20 PM
The metagaming DM.

My 5E paladin is immune to charm. The party faces DM-converted Neogi who can Dominate at will which only goes away when the Neogi dies or 24 hours, and then you're stunned 2-6 rounds depending on what class you are.

The Neogi never target my character. They know all paladins are immune to charm. (Not true of course.) We had just walked into their domain. They just happened to know I'm a paladin. Even if they knew that they just happened to know what Oath I took. The DM just did not want the monster waste a turn trying to dominate me.

It's bad enough he keeps describing NPCs we meet by their class and sometimes alignment too.

So far the game is still more fun than not but like nails on chalkboard it can be.

quinron
2016-10-25, 03:31 PM
I'm sorry for being so slow on the uptake here, but I don't see how your descriptions match up. I mean, if the player was giving recommendations for better (or "better") ways to have run the wyvern fight after the fact, then this isn't a timing issue, and so it's only a matter of delivery. Isn't having a pet peeve against a lack of social skills in a hobby known to attract less social individuals kinda self-defeating? :smallconfused:

The timing problem was the guy who kept correcting me about the ruling I gave at the table with the cart. The pet peeve isn't about lack of social skills - it's about someone continuing to try to "correct" my decisions after I gave a ruling, explained my reasoning for having made the ruling, and explained my reasoning for having made a ruling opposite to the one they're proposing.

The players and I aren't on bad terms - yes, I got a little irritable a couple times, but I remained patient with him and we're all still good friends. That's why it's a pet peeve - I'm aware that it's not a big deal, but it still irks me.

That said, as far as genuinely problematic backseat DMing goes, I've played in games where one player who knows the rules better than the DM constantly corrects them and tries to counteract their rulings. When it's someone helping a less experienced DM learn the rules, that's okay by me, but this was session-to-session wheedling. That got very old very quickly.


The metagaming DM.

My 5E paladin is immune to charm. The party faces DM-converted Neogi who can Dominate at will which only goes away when the Neogi dies or 24 hours, and then you're stunned 2-6 rounds depending on what class you are.

The Neogi never target my character. They know all paladins are immune to charm. (Not true of course.) We had just walked into their domain. They just happened to know I'm a paladin. Even if they knew that they just happened to know what Oath I took. The DM just did not want the monster waste a turn trying to dominate me.

This is why I like having my players say certain things in a certain order. My big one is counterspell - when a PC casts it, they don't know if it'll work right away, but I'll see DMs choosing not to use an evil mage's counterspell because they know if won't affect the PC's spell without a roll. If a player says, "I cast a spell," it retains that same level of unpredictability.

MintyNinja
2016-10-25, 04:39 PM
The metagaming DM.

My 5E paladin is immune to charm. The party faces DM-converted Neogi who can Dominate at will which only goes away when the Neogi dies or 24 hours, and then you're stunned 2-6 rounds depending on what class you are.

The Neogi never target my character. They know all paladins are immune to charm. (Not true of course.) We had just walked into their domain. They just happened to know I'm a paladin. Even if they knew that they just happened to know what Oath I took. The DM just did not want the monster waste a turn trying to dominate me.


I had this problem when I first played a wizard using Sleep. All of a sudden every low level grunt is an elf that's immune to sleep :smallannoyed:
Same DM has the perspective that if there's no combat the players aren't having fun. So even in our Super Stealthy Thievy game, after everything goes according to plan, he feels disheartened that we didn't trip any traps or have to fight our way out of a situation.

Verbannon
2016-10-25, 09:49 PM
I had this problem when I first played a wizard using Sleep. All of a sudden every low level grunt is an elf that's immune to sleep :smallannoyed:
Same DM has the perspective that if there's no combat the players aren't having fun. So even in our Super Stealthy Thievy game, after everything goes according to plan, he feels disheartened that we didn't trip any traps or have to fight our way out of a situation.


Its possible he is just disappointed he didnt get to use his preperation. Ive found as a DM the best way to avoid that disapointment, is whenever my players bypass something (usually by getting beaten and retreating before they reach it. Is to describe what I had planned in detail. That way at least my work gets a secondhand audience. Alas I dont do anything generic enough for the old recycling bin.

Blue Duke
2016-10-25, 10:22 PM
the GM who thinks that if theres no combat it isn't fun......and the player that thinks that ONLY combat is fun. I am getting tired of HAVING to fight in traveller.
the GM who decides that two guards or two security stations CONSTANTLY manned is standard procedure....he wants to make it more challenging but its just freaking annoying.

Melville's Book
2016-10-25, 10:35 PM
the GM who thinks that if theres no combat it isn't fun......and the player that thinks that ONLY combat is fun. I am getting tired of HAVING to fight in traveller.
the GM who decides that two guards or two security stations CONSTANTLY manned is standard procedure....he wants to make it more challenging but its just freaking annoying.
In the GM's defense, it does sound like he's fulfilling the wishes of at least one of the players. Granted, that's not a good track record, but some sacrifices have to be made if you've got such a thoroughly divided group where some only enjoy combat and some want literally everything else.

As long as you respect the other people at the table and their need to also have fun, I don't think having a preference on what you find fun is ever bad. Unless you like FATAL. Then you don't deserve fun.

azaph
2016-10-26, 09:33 AM
They're elsewhere in town while someone's talking to an NPC; they're on their phone/tablet.


I spend a lot of time in games on my laptop and/or tablet, and I don't think that's unreasonable. It's where I keep my rulebooks. And my character sheet. And any notes on the campaign. And it's a good way to talk to other players and the DM without it being obvious I'm doing so (I've been in a lot of games where that kind of thing is an expected part). There are plenty of legitimate reasons to be using a tablet while the game's focus is elsewhere. Obviously, it's a problem if someone's missing important information when their attention is elsewhere, but there are people who are genuinely able to split their attention.
(You might not be talking about that kind of thing, but there's a kind of knee-jerk reaction to using technology in games, and it's annoying as hell.)

Phoenixguard09
2016-10-26, 10:43 AM
Azaph, while I know there are plenty who are capable of splitting their attention, many can't and I prefer to remove the temptation entirely. Unfortunately, I have at least three players who would certainly be trawling Facebook or playing games on Steam instead of participating in group discussion or giving thought to their next action.

No tech at the table, unless you're waiting for an email from work or something like that. The benefits of a blanket ban far outweigh the benefits of allowing people to retain their tech at the table in my experience.

As for a pet peeve, I don't like when Player A decides that Player B may be inexperienced or a bit stupid, and so decides to gainsay or dispute any ideas Player B may come up with, regardless of the merit of the idea itself.

Lord Torath
2016-10-26, 12:25 PM
I have actually confiscated a player's Character Sheet when the character died, to prevent them tearing up their sheet. Later in the adventure, the powerful mage they would rescue would use a Ring of Wishes to bring back to life up to three of his rescuers who might have perished in the attempt, and I didn't want the player to discover that the hard way. (The poor character failed a poison save, failed the Hero-Point re-roll, and then failed the re-roll granted by the cleric's successful herbalism check).

Âmesang
2016-10-26, 01:01 PM
No tech might hinder a pair of D&D 3rd Edition and Pathfinder characters of mine since I put their stats up on my message board, carefully formatted with descriptions for their abilities and with a bit of backstory and some images… it was just easier than writing-erasing-writing-erasing over and over again; it was also easy 'cause then anyone could see my character's stats at leisure and know what it could or could not do.

As such I use a dime-store notebook to keep track of hit points, acquired treasure, consumables, &c., before updating the online stats later; if I can find a form-fillable character sheet for those games that I like, though, that'd be different.


Same DM has the perspective that if there's no combat the players aren't having fun. So even in our Super Stealthy Thievy game, after everything goes according to plan, he feels disheartened that we didn't trip any traps or have to fight our way out of a situation.
Sort of reminds me of the power plant level from Strife: Quest for the Sigil; you can get to the power crystal you need to destroy with perfect stealth, making use of secret passages, poisoned crossbow bolts, and your katar/punch dagger…

…but you still need the mini missile launcher (or a lot of bullets) to destroy said crystal, which sets off the alarms, thus alerting the bad guys and requiring you to fight your way out again. :smallconfused: Well, I suppose they'd notice an exploded crystal either way.

2D8HP
2016-10-26, 07:31 PM
Unless you like FATAL. Then you don't deserve fun.
Sigworthy!

azaph
2016-10-26, 11:42 PM
Azaph, while I know there are plenty who are capable of splitting their attention, many can't and I prefer to remove the temptation entirely. Unfortunately, I have at least three players who would certainly be trawling Facebook or playing games on Steam instead of participating in group discussion or giving thought to their next action.

No tech at the table, unless you're waiting for an email from work or something like that. The benefits of a blanket ban far outweigh the benefits of allowing people to retain their tech at the table in my experience.

As for a pet peeve, I don't like when Player A decides that Player B may be inexperienced or a bit stupid, and so decides to gainsay or dispute any ideas Player B may come up with, regardless of the merit of the idea itself.

I understand the reasoning for a rule like that, I just think it's a table-by-table thing, rather than 'being on a tablet' being an inherently aggravating thing to do at a table. I would honestly avoid a game with that kind of blanket ban, because my experience is really the opposite.

Also, I'm fine with people not turning up for a game, honestly. Or even just dropping out of a campaign with no notice. I'm less fine if they asked me to make their character for them, because that character probably got worked into the plan for the campaign, and now I have to rewrite the whole thing while GMing.

Kelb_Panthera
2016-10-27, 12:02 AM
I spend a lot of time in games on my laptop and/or tablet, and I don't think that's unreasonable. It's where I keep my rulebooks. And my character sheet. And any notes on the campaign. And it's a good way to talk to other players and the DM without it being obvious I'm doing so (I've been in a lot of games where that kind of thing is an expected part). There are plenty of legitimate reasons to be using a tablet while the game's focus is elsewhere. Obviously, it's a problem if someone's missing important information when their attention is elsewhere, but there are people who are genuinely able to split their attention.
(You might not be talking about that kind of thing, but there's a kind of knee-jerk reaction to using technology in games, and it's annoying as hell.)

I'm not talking about that. I know, for absolute certain, that my players -don't- have any of those resources on their devices and I can actually -hear- the damned youtube videos. Completely tuning out the game. They say they want to play, then tune out unless you beat them over the head with the game like it's a baseball bat and you're in a homerun derby.

Verbannon
2016-10-27, 12:48 AM
I understand the reasoning for a rule like that, I just think it's a table-by-table thing, rather than 'being on a tablet' being an inherently aggravating thing to do at a table. I would honestly avoid a game with that kind of blanket ban, because my experience is really the opposite.

Also, I'm fine with people not turning up for a game, honestly. Or even just dropping out of a campaign with no notice. I'm less fine if they asked me to make their character for them, because that character probably got worked into the plan for the campaign, and now I have to rewrite the whole thing while GMing.
I tell my players if their character becomes plot important and they miss a game. I will NPCfy their character during that game. And if they dislike it, the leave campaign button is in the upper right hand of the page.

azaph
2016-10-27, 01:00 AM
I'm not talking about that. I know, for absolute certain, that my players -don't- have any of those resources on their devices and I can actually -hear- the damned youtube videos. Completely tuning out the game. They say they want to play, then tune out unless you beat them over the head with the game like it's a baseball bat and you're in a homerun derby.

Fair. Like I saythere are GMs who just blanket ban, I have kind of a knee-jerk reaction to that :smallsmile:.

Also, remind me not to play baseball with you... :smalleek:

Verbannon, I do do that, but there are things you can do with a PC that just don't work as well with an NPC. So it's still extra work to deal with.
Also, I'm mostly taking about the first session with a character, where an npcified PC is essentially just an NPC.

Verbannon
2016-10-27, 01:18 AM
Fair. Like I saythere are GMs who just blanket ban, I have kind of a knee-jerk reaction to that :smallsmile:.

Also, remind me not to play baseball with you... :smalleek:

Verbannon, I do do that, but there are things you can do with a PC that just don't work as well with an NPC. So it's still extra work to deal with.
Also, I'm mostly taking about the first session with a character, where an npcified PC is essentially just an NPC.

Its the threat thats most important. Players hate the thought of having the DM mess with their character. RP their character. So theyll start putting in effort to avoid that situation.

Kurald Galain
2016-10-27, 04:38 AM
In specific systems, yes. This isn't always the case. (Also, at least in 3.5, that particular critical failure - of getting misinformation - is written into the rules (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/senseMotive.htm), twice (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/appraise.htm), and at least once more (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/decipherScript.htm), and again (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/disableDevice.htm), and once again (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/intimidate.htm), and a sixth time (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/spot.htm). Also, there is an entire skill (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/bluff.htm) which is used to spread misinformation, and another one (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/forgery.htm). Other critical skill failures involve falling (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/balance.htm), falling (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/climb.htm), making people dislike you (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/diplomacy.htm), blowing yourself up (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/disableDevice.htm), falling (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/jump.htm), drowning (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/swim.htm), blowing yourself up (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/useMagicDevice.htm), blowing yourself up (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/skills/usePsionicDevice.htm), and falling (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/useRope.htm). There are feats such as personal truename backlash which also allow you to add critical failures to truespeak, of all skills.)

And getting misinformation doesn't have to be unfun. Hell, in FATE, half the premise of the game is the DM and players finding creative ways to screw each other over using the traits written on the character sheet, and it's amazingly fun.

Great post, thank you! And yes, interesting failures are a great addition to gameplay.

Kurald Galain
2016-10-27, 06:43 AM
My final group is anything that is not acceptable in real life suddenly "becoming" acceptable once the game starts. I don't care that we are playing an role-playing game, lying to me out of character is still not OK.
Absolutely. Don't go excusing jerkish behavior by claiming "that's what my character would do".



There's an even more annoying variant of The Chessmaster that I've been unfortunate enough to encounter: The Would-be Chessmaster. Generally, this is a player that takes charge and fancies him or herself some kind of tactical genius but is never quite as clever as they like to think.
I find it pretty funny to meet people who think they're a brilliant tactician when they're clearly not. For instance, a while ago there was this guy who claimed the best tactic in combat is for all characters except one to use Aid Another all the time, to maximize the chance to hit for the final character. Of course, he proudly explained that he'd taught his entire group to do this. If anyone disagreed, he dismissed them as clueless noobs for not figuring this out, and said that their DMs must have been softballing everything if this kind of tactic wasn't needed. Yeaaah, how about running some math on that scenario? :smallbiggrin:

Quertus
2016-10-27, 07:36 AM
Its the threat thats most important. Players hate the thought of having the DM mess with their character. RP their character. So theyll start putting in effort to avoid that situation.

I once wrote a detailed heuristic on "how to play my character if I'm not there". Honestly, I think the DM was intimidated by the mechanical complexity of the character, because we never had a session when I couldn't attend.


For instance, a while ago there was this guy who claimed the best tactic in combat is for all characters except one to use Aid Another all the time, to maximize the chance to hit for the final character. Of course, he proudly explained that he'd taught his entire group to do this. If anyone disagreed, he dismissed them as clueless noobs for not figuring this out, and said that their DMs must have been softballing everything if this kind of tactic wasn't needed. Yeaaah, how about running some math on that scenario? :smallbiggrin:

Of course that's suboptimal. Optimal play involves purchasing cheap minions (CR 1/10 Awakened Bat slaves for 1 gp each, for example) to perform the Aid Another for the PCs actions.

Max_Killjoy
2016-10-27, 08:22 AM
I tell my players if their character becomes plot important and they miss a game. I will NPCfy their character during that game. And if they dislike it, the leave campaign button is in the upper right hand of the page.

One of the reasons I gave up running games a while back is that I run games that aren't at all episodic, and more and more of the players would have sessions that they "couldn't" make it to randomly. Makes it hard to have an ongoing thing when characters are just randomly "out of touch".

Jay R
2016-10-27, 04:05 PM
You know, I've had my share of annoyances at the table. But every time I read a thread like this I wonder how I have been so lucky to avoid all the worst behaviors in role-paying games. In over 40 years, I've never had a situation as bad as many of the ones I read about.

quinron
2016-10-28, 12:15 AM
You know, I've had my share of annoyances at the table. But every time I read a thread like this I wonder how I have been so lucky to avoid all the worst behaviors in role-paying games. In over 40 years, I've never had a situation as bad as many of the ones I read about.

This makes me consider the name of thread, especially the "Common" part. I've been posting as a kind of commiseration with my fellow frustrated GMs, but I've never actually been all that upset by anything any of my players has done. My complaints don't warrant "you shall never play at my table again" so much as "please stop bugging me about this; just accept my ruling and let's move on, and if it's really wrong, I'll make sure to fix it next time."

How many of you folks posting here have felt the need to kick a player out of a game for the behavior you described? Moreover, how many of you have felt the need to kick multiple players out of a game for such behavior?

Melville's Book
2016-10-28, 01:03 AM
This makes me consider the name of thread, especially the "Common" part. I've been posting as a kind of commiseration with my fellow frustrated GMs, but I've never actually been all that upset by anything any of my players has done. My complaints don't warrant "you shall never play at my table again" so much as "please stop bugging me about this; just accept my ruling and let's move on, and if it's really wrong, I'll make sure to fix it next time."

How many of you folks posting here have felt the need to kick a player out of a game for the behavior you described? Moreover, how many of you have felt the need to kick multiple players out of a game for such behavior?
To be fair, I've walked from far more tables than I've kicked players out of. And I usually GM! And in keeping with that, most of my aggravating behaviors are instigated by GMs, not players.

The Fury
2016-10-28, 06:23 PM
I feel you misunderstand, while some of my most cherished memories of gaming are from terribly coordinated fights & lots of out of combat craziness, i am talking about someone wants to actively remove players from playing. Say the group are people in an urban fantasy game & they are finding lots of people attacked by a werewolf. Every party member is following leads, some go to the library to research, some interview witnesses, etc. Then this guy finds a lead. He tells maybe one or two other members of the party, but purposefully "forgets" to call another player. Or outright lies to others for "RP" reasons, so that they cannot join in say tracking the werewolf to its lair etc. People who just refuse to allow new players join the party because they are outsiders not to be trusted. I understand that yeah you just met this random guy & now he wants to kill orcs with you but still, it apalls me that people can act so exclusitory with other people who just want to have fun with everyone else.

Im not talking about stealing your clerics gold to buy prostitutes & ale. Im talking about active exclusion or worse predation of other party members.

I guess I did, sorry about that. I might just be familiar with the sort of player that has different motives for removing another player's character. Like the Cleric that kicks the Sorcerer out of a second story window. They did it because it was easier than explaining what they were doing with the unconscious Rogue and that weird portal. Still pretty obnoxious behavior, but maybe a bit less malicious?




I find it pretty funny to meet people who think they're a brilliant tactician when they're clearly not. For instance, a while ago there was this guy who claimed the best tactic in combat is for all characters except one to use Aid Another all the time, to maximize the chance to hit for the final character. Of course, he proudly explained that he'd taught his entire group to do this. If anyone disagreed, he dismissed them as clueless noobs for not figuring this out, and said that their DMs must have been softballing everything if this kind of tactic wasn't needed. Yeaaah, how about running some math on that scenario? :smallbiggrin:

If I'm generous I can sort of imagine a party where that might possibly be the best tactic. If there were no casters in the party for one, and if the character you were trying to give all the bonuses to would get Sneak Attack. Even then, I'm not so sure. The idea falls apart pretty fast though if there's any other available way of buffing someone, like what you'd have if there were a more sane party load out.

big teej
2016-10-28, 07:16 PM
How many of you folks posting here have felt the need to kick a player out of a game for the behavior you described? Moreover, how many of you have felt the need to kick multiple players out of a game for such behavior?

*raise hand*

I have asked several players to "re-evaluate your ability to commit to the game" (i.e. start showing up or be honest and quit)

I've booted a player for allegedly sexually assaulting another player.

I would have booted a player who was convinced he was co-gm, but he caught Mono before I could swing the ban-hammer, never saw him again.

I've told GMs and players flat out "I will no longer sit at your table/you will no longer sit at mine" over what I've come to refer as "Irreconcilable differences in gaming philosophy".

I have, with what I'm told was surprising restraint, put my foot down on people interjecting into games run in a public space ("if you don't have a stake in the game, you can't make suggestions.")

I might have to dredge up some of my other horror stories if I've got some time to myself next week.

*ahem* :smallsigh:
goes back to lurking.

quinron
2016-10-29, 12:19 AM
*snip*

Those all sound like understandable reasons to kick/leave. I'm more curious about how common it is for people to do things like - to use one of your examples - be sexually inappropriate with another player. I'd think that after the first time that happened, that player would be kicked and not welcomed back. That's a serious problem, to be sure, but I don't really think it constitutes a "common" problem unless you keep getting perverts coming to the table and having to kick them; in that case I'd think you should probably institute a new player vetting process.

Melville's Book
2016-10-29, 01:17 AM
Of the small handful of players I've ever kicked, all but one of them were due to sexism or racism towards other people at the table. (For the record, the latter is also a reason for me to walk from other GMs' tables, but thankfully it hasn't been common.) It's slightly easier to screen for problematic sexism (it's a good tipoff if the first thing they whisper to one of the other male players is "what, did the GM invite his girlfriend?") but most people aren't exactly forthright in admitting that they've got prejudiced views that they'll display later. So it's often difficult to catch before it becomes a problem.

Quertus
2016-10-29, 11:04 AM
To be fair, I've walked from far more tables than I've kicked players out of. And I usually GM! And in keeping with that, most of my aggravating behaviors are instigated by GMs, not players.

Agreed, most of the worst players are the ones in the GMs chair, IME.


Those all sound like understandable reasons to kick/leave. I'm more curious about how common it is for people to do things like - to use one of your examples - be sexually inappropriate with another player. I'd think that after the first time that happened, that player would be kicked and not welcomed back. That's a serious problem, to be sure, but I don't really think it constitutes a "common" problem unless you keep getting perverts coming to the table and having to kick them; in that case I'd think you should probably institute a new player vetting process.

I've seen lots of these behaviors in games IRL. The sexual assault one... I can't say that kicking someone for it is common IME.

WarKitty
2016-10-29, 11:23 AM
The closest I've come is a sharp rebuke and "next person to do that loses a big chunk of XP". That was for in-game targeting of other pc's that was clearly the result of out-of-game problems with the character.

HidesHisEyes
2016-10-29, 02:34 PM
In-character references to real world pop culture. Out-of-character conversations about pop culture (or anything else, but it's usually pop culture) that go on too long. Jokes that go on too long. Pretty much any form of self-distraction that slows the game down.

quinron
2016-10-29, 03:39 PM
Of the small handful of players I've ever kicked, all but one of them were due to sexism or racism towards other people at the table. (For the record, the latter is also a reason for me to walk from other GMs' tables, but thankfully it hasn't been common.) It's slightly easier to screen for problematic sexism (it's a good tipoff if the first thing they whisper to one of the other male players is "what, did the GM invite his girlfriend?") but most people aren't exactly forthright in admitting that they've got prejudiced views that they'll display later. So it's often difficult to catch before it becomes a problem.

I guess it's probably just my experience that colors my perception here - I've only ever played with friends or friends of friends, so even if someone did act like that IRL and someone else didn't know, they'd probably be too concerned about damaging a friendship to act that way at the table. In my experience with this in other parts of life, telling someone that they've made someone else uncomfortable with their actions is more likely to stop those behaviors if the person you're telling is a friend rather than just a fellow player.

Speaking of friends, though, I've got another common aggravating behavior in my group that actually happens away from the table - players grousing to each other and to me that someone else in the group is lagging behind the others, whether it's in terms of understanding the rules, keeping up with the pace of the game, or just character effectiveness. It's the reverse side of player-to-player coaching at the table, and I find it just as annoying.

Vrock_Summoner
2016-10-29, 05:08 PM
In-character references to real world pop culture. Jokes that go on too long.
Wow, you would hate my group. My game takes place in the modern world (plus lots of psychic people and weekly reality-threatening extradimensional abominations) and OOC conversation for non-mechanical reasons is technically banned at the table (though I make sure to have a couple of breaks spaced throughout the session specifically so they can OOC chat about stuff along with all the other uses of breaks), but the characters are extremely self-aware and involved in modern culture, so there are a lot of pop culture jokes and long-lasting funnies happening entirely in-character. I've found it makes the characters feel more like part of the world, and helps the players get more immersed because all the friendly banter is also character banter.

Of course, that probably works better for me because my games don't have tightly planned plots and are very focused on the characters and their interactions with each other and those around them. Bantering with NPCs also increases their attachment to said NPCs, and allowed us to have some of the best RP interactions I've ever had once people got used to disabling their weird filter for the varying ways other characters would respond to very earth-centric references.

Especially since all of the player characters are huge Steven Universe fans. (And not always to the same degree as the people playing them.) My nephews have taken to calling my table the "SU meme corner." That too has had effects on the setting as a whole (one of the player characters is a step up from a god on the cosmic hierarchy, so her growing love for Steven Universe actually made fusion (as in two people temporarily combining into one) possible).

But I digress. The point is, it definitely depends on the group whether this counts as disruptive behavior.

PersonMan
2016-10-29, 05:20 PM
The point is, it definitely depends on the group whether this counts as disruptive behavior.

One could argue that "real-world pop culture" doesn't apply in a situation like that, where the real world is the game world, as far as pop culture is concerned.

Playing normal people in a modern world doesn't create dissonance and such like having fantasy characters make jokes based solely on modern pop culture does.

HidesHisEyes
2016-10-29, 06:48 PM
Wow, you would hate my group. My game takes place in the modern world ...

Ah well that would irritate me less. I sometimes forget not everyone is playing D&D 😜

Still, jokey banter can really get in the way of the game if players don't know when to stop, I find. It's a fine line because it's simultaneously a social gathering and a rather involved and complex game that requires everyone's attention.

Another thing that annoys me: people getting their knickers in a twist about metagaming. We all know trolls are vulnerable to fire, there is no fun to be gained in forcing ourselves to act as if we don't.

azaph
2016-10-30, 04:08 AM
Its the threat thats most important. Players hate the thought of having the DM mess with their character. RP their character. So theyll start putting in effort to avoid that situation.

Your players appear to give more of a damn than mine. May I borrow them?

Velaryon
2016-10-30, 01:00 PM
A couple pages back, someone mentioned players that don't pay attention to the game when it's not their character's turn to do something. I'd like to bring up the other side of that coin: players who hog the spotlight (and DM's who let them).

It's great to have a stealthy character who can get into ambush position to start a combat or occasionally bypass combat entirely with stealth. But when the rogue goes on a 40-minute sneaking mission while everyone else at the table sits and waits, it gets annoying. When it happens every other session, it's a problem.

Yes, it's disrespectful for a player to not pay attention when their character isn't involved. But it's also disrespectful to leave them out of the game for extended periods of time while someone else does all the work. There's a balance that has to be struck.

Quertus
2016-10-30, 06:25 PM
A couple pages back, someone mentioned players that don't pay attention to the game when it's not their character's turn to do something. I'd like to bring up the other side of that coin: players who hog the spotlight (and DM's who let them).

It's great to have a stealthy character who can get into ambush position to start a combat or occasionally bypass combat entirely with stealth. But when the rogue goes on a 40-minute sneaking mission while everyone else at the table sits and waits, it gets annoying. When it happens every other session, it's a problem.

Yes, it's disrespectful for a player to not pay attention when their character isn't involved. But it's also disrespectful to leave them out of the game for extended periods of time while someone else does all the work. There's a balance that has to be struck.

And how would you propose solving this problem? Because none of the ideas I've come up with are particularly good.

You could force the party to hold the idiot ball, and just rush in blindly.

You could make the GM and the scout run these solo sessions between the group sessions, and hope the scout is good with not using OOC information until you get to that part.

Or, IMO the worst, give everyone an equal amount of spotlight time, so that the game is 70-80% uninvolvement.

Or, as long as you're custom tailoring the encounters, you could always do one worse, and take a page from one of my old GMs: give everyone solo encounters that play to their weaknesses, rather than their strengths. And it's important to focus on what the player is weak at / doesn't care for, not just their character.

So, how do you propose one should solve that problem?

Koo Rehtorb
2016-10-30, 06:34 PM
And how would you propose solving this problem? Because none of the ideas I've come up with are particularly good.


Summarize the scouting mission with 1-2 rolls and an info dump.

quinron
2016-10-30, 06:45 PM
A couple pages back, someone mentioned players that don't pay attention to the game when it's not their character's turn to do something. I'd like to bring up the other side of that coin: players who hog the spotlight (and DM's who let them).

It's great to have a stealthy character who can get into ambush position to start a combat or occasionally bypass combat entirely with stealth. But when the rogue goes on a 40-minute sneaking mission while everyone else at the table sits and waits, it gets annoying. When it happens every other session, it's a problem.

Yes, it's disrespectful for a player to not pay attention when their character isn't involved. But it's also disrespectful to leave them out of the game for extended periods of time while someone else does all the work. There's a balance that has to be struck.

The minute a lone wolf character slips up, the entirety of the dungeon/castle/city turns against them. You get spotted by one guard? Now the entire guard's on high alert looking for someone of your description. You make it to the goblin chief's cave and kill the chief? You made too much noise fighting the chief and guards, and now the guards outside have sounded an alarm that's bringing every goblin in this cave to your position. Plan your sites so that sneaking is a useful option, but going in alone always causes more trouble than it saves.

Also, siding with Koo here: bare-bones rolls and info dumping both speed up the process and make it less exciting for the soloist, meaning they won't be encouraged to leave their group in the future.

Max_Killjoy
2016-10-30, 07:27 PM
Sounds rather vindictive.

Blue Duke
2016-10-30, 08:56 PM
what's the point of playing the stealth scout type if they get punished for separating from the group though ?

Solaris
2016-10-30, 09:02 PM
Also, I'm fine with people not turning up for a game, honestly. Or even just dropping out of a campaign with no notice. I'm less fine if they asked me to make their character for them, because that character probably got worked into the plan for the campaign, and now I have to rewrite the whole thing while GMing.

I once had a player who did both - she asked me to help her make a character (and by that, she meant 'make her character for her'), and then she dropped from the game without so much as a hey-howdy-do. That forced some awkward re-writes to the plot, because I'd written it in to help her get connected with the rest of the group (she was a latecomer to a group that was already pretty much organized and ready to go), which contributed to the game dying young.
I've learned my lesson; I am no longer nearly so kind towards new players that I don't know outside of the game.
... Not that I'm bitter or anything.


Summarize the scouting mission with 1-2 rolls and an info dump.

It's what I'd want if I were scouting. I'm not nearly enough of a sociopath to want to steal everyone's game time like that when we could be doing anything else and have more than just me involved.


what's the point of playing the stealth scout type if they get punished for separating from the group though ?

What's the point of playing with a group if your main objective is to spend time away from them?


As for common behaviors... Monty Python quotes. I don't like Monty Python to begin with, especially the lines everyone has been quoting ad nauseum as if it were still remotely clever the hundred thousandth time thirty years later.
Seriously, guys, just stop it. You've done it so much that I could quote entire scenes from Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail despite the fact that I have never watched that movie. Other movies exist! Quote them! Please! For the love of Arrenji, please quote something different!

Koo Rehtorb
2016-10-30, 09:03 PM
To be clear, I don't think there's anything wrong with solo stuff in RPGs. They just shouldn't be allowed to eat up a significant amount of time. Summarize them quickly, instead of playing them out second by second, and get on with the rest of the game.

Pex
2016-10-30, 11:57 PM
what's the point of playing the stealth scout type if they get punished for separating from the group though ?

There's nothing wrong with the scout who travels ahead of the party for 5-10 in game minutes and comes back to give a report which allows what the DM told him while scouting to be in character knowledge for everyone and takes up 1-2 minutes real world playing time. That's good team play. The problem is the player who goes off to do his own thing just because he wants to and to heck with the party. Often it's just to find treasure to keep for himself. He wants to know where the bad guys are and what environmental dangers exist so he can avoid them which of course he'll never tell the party because they weren't smart enough like him to do the scouting. He Knows Something they don't, so he gets to feel superior. When the rest of the party stumbles onto the bad guys or environmental danger and take damage or suffer some affliction because they weren't warned, he gets to laugh at their stupidity while he himself is smugly unharmed and safe. If he does get involved he self-righteously exclaims he needs to save the party, again. To make it extra special he keeps trading secret notes with the DM during his solo adventure and even during combat with the party so that the other players don't know what he's doing.

I hate these types of players.

fatbaby
2016-10-31, 12:30 AM
I have to say I have a few.

No Shows: Nothing kills me more than planning out 3 months of sessions just to have no one show up for the game. Recently had to end a campaign because of my 8 party members, 3 showed up for the last 3 sessions, and one of them was my wife. Thats a deep hurt man.

Belligerent "Rules Lawyer": This guy refuses to be wrong. Also a DM, and cannot talk him down for anything, even if he is wrong, and even if rules are being bent for balancing purposes. Also is wrong on the rules 50% of the time.

Belligerent PC: Completely breaks the immersion of the game by doing things like shouting insults at the BBEG who is here to destroy the world. I spend 2 hours leading up the to Boss Battle, setting the tone and getting everyone in the "mood", and he screams "YOUR MOM WEARS COMBAT BOOTS, etc." at the BBEG and ruins the atmosphere I have been setting up all night..... please don't be that guy.

Wrong character build: Builds a moon druid, because that is the class that they like the most, but when it comes to combat, only uses melee weapon attacks. The main perks of your class are spells and Wild Shape, are you sure you wouldn't rather play a fighter??

Sorry to rant, but man it sucks when you can't vent to anyone lol.

Max_Killjoy
2016-10-31, 08:45 AM
There's nothing wrong with the scout who travels ahead of the party for 5-10 in game minutes and comes back to give a report which allows what the DM told him while scouting to be in character knowledge for everyone and takes up 1-2 minutes real world playing time. That's good team play. The problem is the player who goes off to do his own thing just because he wants to and to heck with the party. Often it's just to find treasure to keep for himself. He wants to know where the bad guys are and what environmental dangers exist so he can avoid them which of course he'll never tell the party because they weren't smart enough like him to do the scouting. He Knows Something they don't, so he gets to feel superior. When the rest of the party stumbles onto the bad guys or environmental danger and take damage or suffer some affliction because they weren't warned, he gets to laugh at their stupidity while he himself is smugly unharmed and safe. If he does get involved he self-righteously exclaims he needs to save the party, again. To make it extra special he keeps trading secret notes with the DM during his solo adventure and even during combat with the party so that the other players don't know what he's doing.

I hate these types of players.


Which is very much a specific thing, and not just "character who goes off alone sometimes".

quinron
2016-10-31, 02:13 PM
Which is very much a specific thing, and not just "character who goes off alone sometimes".

To clarify: When I mention "lone wolf" types, I mean players who make a habit of taking significant table time away from the group with their impromptu solo missions. Sorry, I did a bad job of making that clear. By all means, let your scouts and sneaks do what they're meant to do, but like Pex says, most of the time that's a player deciding they want their character to have an advantage that the others don't get - even if that advantage is just more screen time.

Enforcing harsh penalties for habitual separation from the group both showcases the fact that overextension is a bad, bad idea - especially for rogues, who can't hold up alone in a fight once they're spotted - and gives a logical, verisimilitudinous penalty for that kind of behavior to the player. It's a character punishment for a player decision, which I'm usually against, but it doesn't feel petty or pointed; it would happen exactly the same if you weren't trying to overextend yourself, but a group wading in one fight at a time can survive this better.

Erit
2016-10-31, 02:27 PM
Since it doesn't seem to have been brought up yet (though whether that's because it's an issue unique to my tables or because it's so universal as to seem obvious is unknown), how about players who are contemptuous of the DM? The type who make you question why they chose to sign on if they were going to actively decide ahead of time that nothing the DM did would be to their liking.

How about those who obstinately refuse to acknowledge a given rule "because it's unrealistic"? One of my best friends does this and every time I need to remind him that he's lucky to be outside my smacking-upside-the-head range.

Better yet, and this is one that I've actually been guilty of before, how about those who suffer from Protagonist Syndrome? People who, through some confluence of events or another, end up being the driving force behind the party's actions and who has the majority of the limelight? It's happened to me twice, once because I was being stupid and a second time because I just happened to have the best mental stats.

Pex
2016-10-31, 06:49 PM
To clarify: When I mention "lone wolf" types, I mean players who make a habit of taking significant table time away from the group with their impromptu solo missions. Sorry, I did a bad job of making that clear. By all means, let your scouts and sneaks do what they're meant to do, but like Pex says, most of the time that's a player deciding they want their character to have an advantage that the others don't get - even if that advantage is just more screen time.

Enforcing harsh penalties for habitual separation from the group both showcases the fact that overextension is a bad, bad idea - especially for rogues, who can't hold up alone in a fight once they're spotted - and gives a logical, verisimilitudinous penalty for that kind of behavior to the player. It's a character punishment for a player decision, which I'm usually against, but it doesn't feel petty or pointed; it would happen exactly the same if you weren't trying to overextend yourself, but a group wading in one fight at a time can survive this better.

It's not just rogues. I've seen it done in 5E with a moon druid who constantly wildshaped into a panther and running off to do his own thing effectively playing his own separate game with the DM at the table hunting for treasure. He'd come back to save the day a few rounds into a combat to heal someone with goodberries or attack any enemy when a PC or two had already dropped.

Velaryon
2016-10-31, 07:00 PM
And how would you propose solving this problem? Because none of the ideas I've come up with are particularly good.


Handle the solo missions quickly so that the rest of the group can get involved again. Probably the most straightforward method of doing it, either by abstracting things down to just a few rolls, or just simply being considerate and trying to get it over quickly without dragging things out and making everybody wait.

Alternatively, give the rest of the group another task or encounter while the solo mission is going on, and bounce between them.

Or heck, sometimes I've split the group in half and had separate sessions for them. This was generally done for scheduling purposes when we really wanted to play but players had work schedules that couldn't be reconciled, but you could do it for dramatic purposes too.

If none of those work, you can just set an out-of-game time limit and say "if you haven't finished your sneaking after X minutes, your character realizes he can't proceed on his own, and turns back to rejoin the group." Not my preferred way of doing it, but for another table that might be a workable solution.

The problem here is not "doing stuff away from the group." I am absolutely not one of those DMs that thinks the party should never ever split up under any circumstances, and will punish players for daring to step outside the tavern while the rest of the party is still inside. The problem is having one player monopolize the game for an extended period of time.

Rerem115
2016-10-31, 07:00 PM
Excessively bad puns. To be fair, everyone at our table does this, so at least we're all equal offenders :smalltongue:.

Our DM does have a way to deal with this, though. He has these big, green, foam dice. If your pun is bad enough to catch his ire, he throws the die equal to your character's hit die at you, and your character takes "smiting" damage equal to the roll. We've been lucky enough that it hasn't done any significant damage yet, but there's always the first time...

Darth Ultron
2016-10-31, 07:40 PM
I hate these types of players.

I hate solo players so much I often use the house rule of ''leave the group and your character dies''. My gaming group will remember Timmy, who just did not get it. He kept ''scouting ahead'' and having his character die over and over and over and over again. I think he made it up to ''Sorg X'' in one night.


I'll add the player that crazily thinks that illusions are all powerful super wish do anything and break the game spells. They are always trying to do things like ''making a cloud of fog to blind foes'' or ''making a bobble of water to drown foes''. And then they just get all bent out of shape when they are told that ''silent image can't do that''.

Velaryon
2016-11-01, 04:09 PM
I hate solo players so much I often use the house rule of ''leave the group and your character dies''. My gaming group will remember Timmy, who just did not get it. He kept ''scouting ahead'' and having his character die over and over and over and over again. I think he made it up to ''Sorg X'' in one night.

To each their own, but taking the "don't monopolize game time" thing this far would ruin the fun for me.

It reminds me of a time when I was playing the Star Wars RPG, where my character was a Jawa. We were in the Mos Eisley cantina doing I forget what, something that was interesting to some of the other players but not me. I looked around the cantina and the GM told me that a group of Jawas got out of their seats and left the cantina.

I figured that I'd see what they were up to, so my character left to follow them. I wasn't trying to go on a side quest or anything, just have my character off doing local Jawa things or whatever while the others were drinking at the bar and gathering information from the locals. The GM had my character get mugged and beaten, and then concluded with "and this is why you never leave the party."

And this is supposed to make the game more fun how?

Talakeal
2016-11-01, 04:14 PM
To each their own, but taking the "don't monopolize game time" thing this far would ruin the fun for me.

It reminds me of a time when I was playing the Star Wars RPG, where my character was a Jawa. We were in the Mos Eisley cantina doing I forget what, something that was interesting to some of the other players but not me. I looked around the cantina and the GM told me that a group of Jawas got out of their seats and left the cantina.

I figured that I'd see what they were up to, so my character left to follow them. I wasn't trying to go on a side quest or anything, just have my character off doing local Jawa things or whatever while the others were drinking at the bar and gathering information from the locals. The GM had my character get mugged and beaten, and then concluded with "and this is why you never leave the party."

And this is supposed to make the game more fun how?

Something similar happened to me last year.

We had our wild-shaped druid go off and scout, and then had us both attacked and ran two separate encounters. Then he had us basically play blind man's bluff trying to regroup with the druid after the fights, making each group secretly state our actions as we looked for one another. And he kept rolling minor annoying random encounters for both groups the whole time. It took us the entire session to get back together.

Than the DM bitched at US for wasting HIS evening by splitting the party.

Erit
2016-11-01, 04:22 PM
It reminds me of a time when I was playing the Star Wars RPG, where my character was a Jawa. We were in the Mos Eisley cantina doing I forget what, something that was interesting to some of the other players but not me. I looked around the cantina and the GM told me that a group of Jawas got out of their seats and left the cantina.

I figured that I'd see what they were up to, so my character left to follow them. I wasn't trying to go on a side quest or anything, just have my character off doing local Jawa things or whatever while the others were drinking at the bar and gathering information from the locals. The GM had my character get mugged and beaten, and then concluded with "and this is why you never leave the party."

And this is supposed to make the game more fun how?


Something similar happened to me last year.

We had our druid go off and scout, and then had us both attacked and ran two separate encounters. Then he had us basically play blind man's bluff trying to regroup with the druid after the fights, making each group secretly state our actions as we looked for one another. And he kept rolling minor annoying random encounters for both groups the whole time. It took us the entire session to get back together.

Than the DM bitched at US for wasting his evening by splitting the party.

I will never understand when people get pissed at others for doing a thing they were supposed to do. That's, like, "cutting off your nose to spite your cousin's face" levels of insane troll logic.

Pex
2016-11-02, 12:14 AM
To each their own, but taking the "don't monopolize game time" thing this far would ruin the fun for me.

It reminds me of a time when I was playing the Star Wars RPG, where my character was a Jawa. We were in the Mos Eisley cantina doing I forget what, something that was interesting to some of the other players but not me. I looked around the cantina and the GM told me that a group of Jawas got out of their seats and left the cantina.

I figured that I'd see what they were up to, so my character left to follow them. I wasn't trying to go on a side quest or anything, just have my character off doing local Jawa things or whatever while the others were drinking at the bar and gathering information from the locals. The GM had my character get mugged and beaten, and then concluded with "and this is why you never leave the party."

And this is supposed to make the game more fun how?

I'm with you on this regardless of my earlier point. Going to see what the Jawas were up to was a logical thing to do. You were responding to a DM instigated flavor text that could have been a plot hook. Instead, the donkey cavity DM punished you for no legitimate reason.

Darth Ultron
2016-11-02, 01:47 AM
I figured that I'd see what they were up to, so my character left to follow them. I wasn't trying to go on a side quest or anything, just have my character off doing local Jawa things or whatever while the others were drinking at the bar and gathering information from the locals. The GM had my character get mugged and beaten, and then concluded with "and this is why you never leave the party."

And this is supposed to make the game more fun how?

It keeps the game fun by keeping it a group game. The group was doing something ''that you forgot'' and you decided to ignore that and go off on your own solo game. Sure you say you were not doing that, but when the group is doing something and you have your character leave to do something else...well your actions don't match your words. Sure you just wanted to waste five or ten minutes of game time forcing the DM to pay attention to only you, but you somehow don't see it that way.

Disrupting the game is wrong. And if your a player that thinks in the middle of the events of a game plot that the DM might be dangling a super special plot hook just for your super special character to find....then your a problem player.

Talakeal
2016-11-02, 03:48 AM
It keeps the game fun by keeping it a group game. The group was doing something ''that you forgot'' and you decided to ignore that and go off on your own solo game. Sure you say you were not doing that, but when the group is doing something and you have your character leave to do something else...well your actions don't match your words. Sure you just wanted to waste five or ten minutes of game time forcing the DM to pay attention to only you, but you somehow don't see it that way.

Disrupting the game is wrong. And if your a player that thinks in the middle of the events of a game plot that the DM might be dangling a super special plot hook just for your super special character to find....then your a problem player.

Are you still a problem player if the DM actually is introducing a plot hook just for you?

Delusion
2016-11-02, 05:44 AM
Meanwhile with my group the "don't split the party" amounts to "please try to stay within 100km radius of the other PCs" and it works fine. The GM just switches spotlight every few minutes with "meanwhile in place x" etc.

Blue Duke
2016-11-02, 01:13 PM
the character going off solo doesn't need to be focused on 100% of the time.....I'm wondering if that's something some DM's don't realize it's as simple as 'okay you succeded your stealth check, you see this and this. Consider your response to both while we shift focus to the main group'. there is no reason to mug or murder the character or characters splitting off just because it means a focus shift.


and there's another aggravating thing: the DM that decides disproportional punishment is the only way to 'teach people how to play'. same with the DM that feels like if people arent at -9 HP at the end of a fight and having to expend masses of gold or credits to heal then the game is clearly not fun.

Stealth Marmot
2016-11-02, 01:27 PM
The party members should not be joined at the damn hip, especially when they are inside a civilized town. If you are in the middle of a city, you should not have to worry about random encounters unless you go into the bad areas of town specifically. The towns have guards for crying out loud, and if everyone had to worry about a random encounter then no person would live to adulthood in the city!

Forcing all players to be around for everything limits character development and growth. Certain objectives SHOULD only have 1 player if it is something personal.

Now, it should not dominate a full session, or even most of one, and solo content should be spread between players evenly, but not every section has to have every player there at all times.

Grod_The_Giant
2016-11-02, 02:28 PM
I try to be tolerant, but can't stop myself from getting consistently annoyed at people who refuse to learn the system. I get it, RPGs are complicated and not everyone is interested in the mechanics, but c'mon, man. I understand if you don't remember how hit dice work, but you can write down your attack bonus so you don't need to ask every round. You can remember that it's a d20 for everything but damage. :smallmad:

As a very personal pet peeve, characters with inappropriate names. We're playing in Fantasyland #294b; your character is not named George. I specifically told you how (race's) names work, and real-world English names are not one of them. :smallfurious:

Another common behavior I've seen several times is excessively paranoid players. I know metagaming is bad, and that good GMs make sure not every challenge is perfectly scaled to your level, and that sometimes things are supposed to be tense in-setting, but... I hate when players spend the entire time terrified that one little mistake will ruin everything, convinced that the entire world is a deathtrap out to get them personally, that every plot hook is a trap to run from, that it's better to spend twenty minutes debating the safety of an action. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like the most boring thing a GM can do is kill you, and that the basic covenant of gaming is "whatever happens, I'll make sure it's interesting and that there's a path for success somewhere." I'd rather go get into trouble than sit around arguing.

2D8HP
2016-11-02, 02:45 PM
It keeps the game fun by keeping it a group game. The group was doing something ''that you forgot'' and you decided to ignore that and go off on your own solo game. Sure you say you were not doing that, but when the group is doing something and you have your character leave to do something else....Handling solo and split party scenarios is something that I actually think is better with the PbP games I've experienced on this Forum than the table-top I've known.

Another common behavior I've seen several times is excessively paranoid players. I know metagaming is bad, and that good GMs make sure not every challenge is perfectly scaled to your level, and that sometimes things are supposed to be tense in-setting, but... I hate when players spend the entire time terrified that one little mistake will ruin everything, convinced that the entire world is a deathtrap out to get them personally.....It's not?
Since when?

:confused:

hymer
2016-11-02, 03:39 PM
Since when?

Well, it's one of them newfangled developments. I think the year most folks would point to would be '89 when 2nd ed. AD&D came out, and the DMG included advice among other things that 'rocks falls everyone dies' isn't the only mentality for DMs. Yeah, weird, I know. :smallwink:

Stealth Marmot
2016-11-02, 04:04 PM
Since when?


https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4eiQ-t5SrPo/hqdefault.jpg

Cluedrew
2016-11-02, 07:03 PM
To Stealth Marmot: It literally says 2D8HP's name beside the post. Although that may not of been what you meant.

Darth Ultron
2016-11-02, 08:18 PM
Are you still a problem player if the DM actually is introducing a plot hook just for you?

Well, no, but then this comes down to more the type of game being played. If the other players are fine with just sitting around and watching just one player and the DM play the game, then everything is fine.


Handling solo and split party scenarios is something that I actually think is better with the PbP games I've experienced on this Forum than the table-top I've known.It's not?
Since when?


I love solo ''one player/one DM'' games. And it is really amazing how the vast majority of ''solo gamers'' will out right refuse to play a solo game unless they have an audience of people.

Traab
2016-11-02, 11:03 PM
As for common behaviors... Monty Python quotes. I don't like Monty Python to begin with, especially the lines everyone has been quoting ad nauseum as if it were still remotely clever the hundred thousandth time thirty years later.
Seriously, guys, just stop it. You've done it so much that I could quote entire scenes from Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail despite the fact that I have never watched that movie. Other movies exist! Quote them! Please! For the love of Arrenji, please quote something different!

"I just spent 4 hours burying the cat!"
"4 hours to bury a cat?!"
"Yes! It wouldnt keep still!"


There, I quoted something other than quest for the holy grail. :smallbiggrin: I even made sure it was nice and random to make you wonder wtf that was all about!

ComradeBear
2016-11-02, 11:09 PM
Well, no, but then this comes down to more the type of game being played. If the other players are fine with just sitting around and watching just one player and the DM play the game, then everything is fine.
"Mk. So that's what you see when you walk out the door. MEANWHILE, with the rest of the group, you all just saw the rogue leave. What is the plan?"

Just swap focus between the two groups. It's not even hard. It's as easy as saying "We'll come back to you in a moment, I want to see what's happening with X." No one can force the GM to follow their individual adventure. And the GM can always say "you do indeed wander off your own. Nothing interesting happens. We'll catch up with you momentarily."

And these are equally lazy as "You die for no reason" and are less likely to cause someone to pitch a fit.

Solaris
2016-11-02, 11:21 PM
"I just spent 4 hours burying the cat!"
"4 hours to bury a cat?!"
"Yes! It wouldnt keep still!"


There, I quoted something other than quest for the holy grail. :smallbiggrin: I even made sure it was nice and random to make you wonder wtf that was all about!

Bless your cold, black heart.

Traab
2016-11-02, 11:44 PM
Bless your cold, black heart.

Heh, seriously though, I dont understand the people who profess to be such huge fans of holy grail and yet aside from maybe life of brian, they dont bother to look at the rather vast library of monty python back when they were basically british snl doing multiple seasons worth of comedy sketches, many of which have excellent quotable lines. Heck, even OotS did a play on one of the monty python sketches. Remember the comic where roy had to find a replacement weapon and was being given the runaround on polearms? That was a monty python and the flying circus sketch with nothing more than types of cheese substituted for types of polearm. With that I will leave you with this simple motto for life.

"Oh INTERCOURSE the penguin!"

quinron
2016-11-03, 02:14 AM
Heh, seriously though, I dont understand the people who profess to be such huge fans of holy grail and yet aside from maybe life of brian, they dont bother to look at the rather vast library of monty python back when they were basically british snl doing multiple seasons worth of comedy sketches, many of which have excellent quotable lines. Heck, even OotS did a play on one of the monty python sketches. Remember the comic where roy had to find a replacement weapon and was being given the runaround on polearms? That was a monty python and the flying circus sketch with nothing more than types of cheese substituted for types of polearm. With that I will leave you with this simple motto for life.

"Oh INTERCOURSE the penguin!"

It's odd, too, how well some of the sketches would translate to compelling adventures - for example, the town's elderly women have made a deal with a hag coven, turning them into a roving gang of grannies harassing old men.

Cluedrew
2016-11-03, 06:50 AM
My favourite: "This is your captain speaking. There is absolutely no cause for alarm." And there really wasn't.

Stealth Marmot
2016-11-03, 09:17 AM
To Stealth Marmot: It literally says 2D8HP's name beside the post. Although that may not of been what you meant.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4eiQ-t5SrPo/hqdefault.jpg

Thrudd
2016-11-03, 10:06 AM
It's odd, too, how well some of the sketches would translate to compelling adventures - for example, the town's elderly women have made a deal with a hag coven, turning them into a roving gang of grannies harassing old men.

I thought the blancmange was the inspiration for ochre jelly.

Also, a group of Orcish immigrants with inaccurate Common phrasebooks could result in some interesting times.

Khi'Khi
2016-11-03, 11:03 AM
Similar to the phone thing described earlier. As one who's only every played on online sites like roll20, I hate when players are off playing other games while the session is running.

"Oh, it's not my turn? Cool, I'm gonna go play Fallout and not pay attention to what's going on." And then you have to waste several minutes bringing them back up to speed once they decide to grace the game with their attention once more.

kyoryu
2016-11-03, 11:27 AM
Just swap focus between the two groups. It's not even hard. It's as easy as saying "We'll come back to you in a moment, I want to see what's happening with X." No one can force the GM to follow their individual adventure. And the GM can always say "you do indeed wander off your own. Nothing interesting happens. We'll catch up with you momentarily."

This is easier to pull off with systems where:

1) it's fairly fast to resolve things
2) resolving things results in more interesting dialog between the players and GM rather than a bunch of numeric twiddling

IOW, yes, that's a solution, but it works best if it doesn't get the other players too bored for too long.

ComradeBear
2016-11-03, 12:08 PM
This is easier to pull off with systems where:

1) it's fairly fast to resolve things
2) resolving things results in more interesting dialog between the players and GM rather than a bunch of numeric twiddling

IOW, yes, that's a solution, but it works best if it doesn't get the other players too bored for too long.

I never had a problem with it in D&D 3.5, likely because I would swap pretty often and sometimes leave people with cliffhangers for their failed rolls. Ie, "So that's an 11? Not enough to succeed. We'll see how that goes wrong when we get back from checking in on X."

If your system takes more than a few seconds to resolve basic things, then yeah. It's a problem. (Frankly that's a problem with the system itself and would be one to avoid in my book, but that's neither here nor there.)

Traab
2016-11-03, 01:34 PM
It's odd, too, how well some of the sketches would translate to compelling adventures - for example, the town's elderly women have made a deal with a hag coven, turning them into a roving gang of grannies harassing old men.

Or at least have the 4 yorkshiremen in the background at the local tavern.

"Oh we had it rough! Bandit attacks in the morning, dragon attacks at noon, with ogres pillaging the farm every evening, its a wonder we even had time to be sacrificed at midnight by roving necromancers!"

"They happened to you at different times? Luxury! We used to wake up every morning being carved out of the belly of the neighborhood tarrasque that kept inhaling too hard when it snored only to be put to work forging the sacrificial knives the local seers used to use to perform auguries with our giblets! I dont know why they bothered, it always said the same thing. "You will be inhaled by the local neighborhood tarrasque during the night."

"You got warnings of your nightly suffering? Our only warning was when the great gnashing of huge pointy teeth from the local coven of vampires would begin to drain us! Oh it was rough! Our father decided one day the best way to avoid getting drained would be to turn the lot of us into warforged! Have you ever seen an infant warforged? Its like a can of soup with legs!"

Stealth Marmot
2016-11-03, 01:46 PM
Similar to the phone thing described earlier. As one who's only every played on online sites like roll20, I hate when players are off playing other games while the session is running.

"Oh, it's not my turn? Cool, I'm gonna go play Fallout and not pay attention to what's going on." And then you have to waste several minutes bringing them back up to speed once they decide to grace the game with their attention once more.

On the one hand Fallout addiction is something I can understand. Damn you Bethesda Softworks...

On the other hand, yeah that is INCREDIBLY disrespectful.

I'll go one step further. I was in a group with a player who was playing an online D&D game WHILE he was also in another LIVE D&D game.

The DM was understandably upset.

2D8HP
2016-11-03, 05:22 PM
Oh it was rough! Our father decided one day the best way to avoid getting drained would be to turn the lot of us into warforged! Have you ever seen an infant warforged? Its like a can of soup with legs!"
:biggrin:

Another fine example of why I love this Forum!



I'll go one step further. I was in a group with a player who was playing an online D&D game WHILE he was also in another LIVE D&D game.

:confused:

I don't know whether to be appalled or in awe!

Velaryon
2016-11-03, 11:01 PM
It keeps the game fun by keeping it a group game. The group was doing something ''that you forgot'' and you decided to ignore that and go off on your own solo game. Sure you say you were not doing that, but when the group is doing something and you have your character leave to do something else...well your actions don't match your words. Sure you just wanted to waste five or ten minutes of game time forcing the DM to pay attention to only you, but you somehow don't see it that way.

Disrupting the game is wrong. And if your a player that thinks in the middle of the events of a game plot that the DM might be dangling a super special plot hook just for your super special character to find....then your a problem player.

I don't remember the specifics of what they were doing when my character left because the game happened eleven years ago. But please continue twisting my words to fit your preconceived conclusion, it's not at all annoying.


"Mk. So that's what you see when you walk out the door. MEANWHILE, with the rest of the group, you all just saw the rogue leave. What is the plan?"

Just swap focus between the two groups. It's not even hard. It's as easy as saying "We'll come back to you in a moment, I want to see what's happening with X." No one can force the GM to follow their individual adventure. And the GM can always say "you do indeed wander off your own. Nothing interesting happens. We'll catch up with you momentarily."

And these are equally lazy as "You die for no reason" and are less likely to cause someone to pitch a fit.

This right here is what I was looking for. Heck, a simple "you go off and have a fun afternoon hanging out with the Jawas. Meanwhile, back to the rest of the group..." would have been perfectly acceptable.

Instead, I more or less got "you've broken direct line of sight with your party members. Now you're at -8 and bleeding, and let that be a lesson to you." That's way over the top.

It's also worth mentioning that later in the same campaign, we had a Trandoshan Jedi character who would routinely go on stealth missions ahead of the party that would eat up huge amounts of time while the rest of us sat back and twiddled our thumbs. But apparently it's okay to split from the party if you're just running ahead on the rails of the plot.

Darth Ultron
2016-11-04, 04:26 AM
"Mk. So that's what you see when you walk out the door. MEANWHILE, with the rest of the group, you all just saw the rogue leave. What is the plan?"

Just swap focus between the two groups. It's not even hard. It's as easy as saying "We'll come back to you in a moment, I want to see what's happening with X." No one can force the GM to follow their individual adventure. And the GM can always say "you do indeed wander off your own. Nothing interesting happens. We'll catch up with you momentarily."

And these are equally lazy as "You die for no reason" and are less likely to cause someone to pitch a fit.

Sure you could cut back and forth from the group of good players and the jerk solo player....but why reward the jerk?

And it's just as ''lazy'' and a waste of time to say ''sigh, like a jerk you wander away from the group and you see nothing of interest, ok.''

Another good thing to do to the solo jerk player is have the group have a combat encounter with good loot after they wander away.



This right here is what I was looking for. Heck, a simple "you go off and have a fun afternoon hanging out with the Jawas. Meanwhile, back to the rest of the group..." would have been perfectly acceptable.


That your just the type of player that likes to waste game time with fluff does not change anything. Sure you say it would have been fine if the Dm just ''said something'' and you'd stop disrupting the game. And, ok, fine...that is you. So how about all the other 99% of players that won't do that? They are going to be disruptive and whine and be like ''what did I do with the Jawas'' and ask all sorts of questions and even spiral into a solo game.



Instead, I more or less got "you've broken direct line of sight with your party members. Now you're at -8 and bleeding, and let that be a lesson to you." That's way over the top.

For me it's all about saving game time and encouraging good player behavior.

Cluedrew
2016-11-04, 07:31 AM
Sure you could cut back and forth from the group of good players and the jerk solo player....but why reward the jerk?Well remember Darth Ultron, you are that solo player. You are the odd one out who we spend time and energy connecting with the "good players", which is the other posters who have more standard play-styles. Yes the analogy is not perfect, but both are cases where (if handled properly) including someone who is a little off-beat of the others can benefit the situation.

You can spend 30 seconds establishing the connection to the local Jawa's which can become a plot point or "resource" for later in the campaign. Maybe they can get something fixed, or get something smuggled in that they need.

Grod_The_Giant
2016-11-04, 07:52 AM
Sure you could cut back and forth from the group of good players and the jerk solo player....but why reward the jerk?
I think a few minutes of spotlight is a fine reward for paying attention and actively trying to engage with the game world. Not every second of table time has to apply to every player, and I I want them to react to things in-character. As long as you're not consistently favoring one player with solo time, or running them for a prolonged time without jumping back to the main group, it's better to allow PCs to not be chained together.


That your just the type of player that likes to waste game time with fluff does not change anything. Sure you say it would have been fine if the Dm just ''said something'' and you'd stop disrupting the game. And, ok, fine...that is you. So how about all the other 99% of players that won't do that? They are going to be disruptive and whine and be like ''what did I do with the Jawas'' and ask all sorts of questions and even spiral into a solo game.
I think 99% of players will modify their behaviors if the DM asks them politely, rather than the reverse. And again, it takes so, so little time to just say "you meet with the Jawas; it turns out that one of them is your sixth-cousin, so you all go out to drink and scavenge for a while."

Stealth Marmot
2016-11-04, 08:31 AM
Should we just make another thread JUST about switching focus between different characters? I figure since it seems to be dominating this thread.

Blue Duke
2016-11-04, 03:54 PM
the Fluff lets your mind drag you off into the fun rather then just throwing dice and cheering or cursing when you get numbers with no real context other then 'low is bad, high is good' or vis versa. The fluff is how you aren't sitting around a table tossing dice but instead your group/team/party/crew are sitting around a table in an inn/cantina/seedy space port bar/stuffer shack waiting for the mission/quest/cargo/what have you.

the fluff is literally 50% of the damn game rather then '1% that no one cares about'


Sorry i'll move on now.

The Fury
2016-11-04, 04:02 PM
In-character references to real world pop culture.

I'm guilty of an odd variation of that-- having conversations at the table, (in character or out,) that sound like they could be pop culture references but aren't.



Belligerent PC: Completely breaks the immersion of the game by doing things like shouting insults at the BBEG who is here to destroy the world. I spend 2 hours leading up the to Boss Battle, setting the tone and getting everyone in the "mood", and he screams "YOUR MOM WEARS COMBAT BOOTS, etc." at the BBEG and ruins the atmosphere I have been setting up all night.....


I'm not even a weird variation of that. This is me. Full stop. Campaign villains have a habit of appearing on the scene, and dropping some kind of spell that makes it impossible for the currently under-leveled player party to cause them any harm. Usually this involves the bad guy delivering some kind of bombshell about what they're up to and how hopelessly outclassed we are. Yet I gotta get my hits in where I can, and if I can't hurt them physically, I can at least try to hurt their feelings. I do this in fights when I'm losing as well. "My sister hits harder than you! She's eight!" was one of my favorite zingers.



please don't be that guy.


Yeah, sorry about that. At least I'm not in your group, right?

Vrock_Summoner
2016-11-04, 04:55 PM
If it makes you feel any better, The Fury, you'd fit right in in my group. Well, except that I don't have "untouchable boss appearance" scenes. But the insults and peppy humor-laden dialogue would fit right in. This despite being an overall serious game, because I like mood-whiplashing my players. (Is that an aggravating/bad behavior on my part? Man...)

Quertus
2016-11-04, 05:33 PM
I'm not even a weird variation of that. This is me. Full stop. Campaign villains have a habit of appearing on the scene, and dropping some kind of spell that makes it impossible for the currently under-leveled player party to cause them any harm. Usually this involves the bad guy delivering some kind of bombshell about what they're up to and how hopelessly outclassed we are. Yet I gotta get my hits in where I can, and if I can't hurt them physically, I can at least try to hurt their feelings. I do this in fights when I'm losing as well. "My sister hits harder than you! She's eight!" was one of my favorite zingers.

Fighting a foe whose power was "total lockdown, no actions, no roll", my response as I was being run through was, "c'mon, I've had piercings that hurt worse than this".

The Fury
2016-11-05, 01:02 PM
If it makes you feel any better, The Fury, you'd fit right in in my group. Well, except that I don't have "untouchable boss appearance" scenes. But the insults and peppy humor-laden dialogue would fit right in. This despite being an overall serious game, because I like mood-whiplashing my players. (Is that an aggravating/bad behavior on my part? Man...)

Ha! What I've been learning is that there are groups out there that would boot me during the first session, and that's OK. After all, my style of playing isn't for everyone. At least there are groups that have kept me around.


Fighting a foe whose power was "total lockdown, no actions, no roll", my response as I was being run through was, "c'mon, I've had piercings that hurt worse than this".

That's pretty good. Maybe we can compare notes on insults delivered to NPCs that had it coming?

Darth Ultron
2016-11-05, 01:35 PM
I think 99% of players will modify their behaviors if the DM asks them politely, rather than the reverse. And again, it takes so, so little time to just say "you meet with the Jawas; it turns out that one of them is your sixth-cousin, so you all go out to drink and scavenge for a while."

A agree the small, rare 1% of players are great. They can take the 30 seconds and the game goes on. The problem is the other 99% of players...the jerks that just don't know when to stop. The DM makes the slight remark of ''you drink and scavenge for a while'', and wants to get back to the game. The player, however, goes into full jerk mode and they want to know ''what did I drink?'' and ''what did I scavenge?" and want to spiral off into a solo adventure.

Vrock_Summoner
2016-11-05, 01:43 PM
A agree the small, rare 1% of players are great. They can take the 30 seconds and the game goes on. The problem is the other 99% of players...the jerks that just don't know when to stop. The DM makes the slight remark of ''you drink and scavenge for a while'', and wants to get back to the game. The player, however, goes into full jerk mode and they want to know ''what did I drink?'' and ''what did I scavenge?" and want to spiral off into a solo adventure.
I'm pretty sure the disagreement here is that you each have a different idea which kind of player is in the 1% and which is in the 99%. Which, more likely than not, means the real numbers fall somewhere in between.

I'm just thankful to have a group who doesn't mind solo or split segments and who all have equal opportunities to engage in such. I sometimes forget that a lot of the groups I hear about online are people who only hang out to game rather than being friends in general, so there isn't the air of mutual respect and generosity I'm used to at my tables.

Blue Duke
2016-11-05, 04:18 PM
Do people often have kleptomaniacs in their groups ? ones who go around stealing stuff from NPC's and party members and do so ALL THE FREAKING TIME, do so gleefully and often get away with it (ocassionally with out a roll because the DM thinks its funny)?

Erit
2016-11-05, 04:21 PM
Do people often have kleptomaniacs in their groups ? ones who go around stealing stuff from NPC's and party members and do so ALL THE FREAKING TIME, do so gleefully and often get away with it (ocassionally with out a roll because the DM thinks its funny)?

You mean Kender? Speaking for my groups, anyone who did that would find themselves lynched in-game quite rapidly. Speaking for others... probably the same considering "Promoting Table Discord" is one of the Deadly Sins of TTG.

Blue Duke
2016-11-05, 05:02 PM
No i mean some one who does that no matter what character/race/game they are playing......and deliberately does s%$& to get us in trouble with the police/guard/security. and before you ask: they cant be kicked they are dateing/engaged to one of the DM's in the group.

Cluedrew
2016-11-05, 06:26 PM
I'm just thankful to have a group who doesn't mind solo or split segments and who all have equal opportunities to engage in such. I sometimes forget that a lot of the groups I hear about online are people who only hang out to game rather than being friends in general, so there isn't the air of mutual respect and generosity I'm used to at my tables.On Split Parties: One of my favourite campaigns had this weird feature where there was only one scene in the entire campaign that had the entire party in it. Every other scene was just one or two members. You can make it work, just make ample use of scene transitions and don't ask too much of people who aren't in scene.

On Gaming With Friends: Sit down with strangers and leave with friends. Or at least on friendly terms. I think generally if there are a enough people there setting the right mood others will... open up? That's not quite right, sort of like take the hint, but in a "we want you here" way instead of the usual "we don't want you here" way. The best game I have had have always been completely cooperative out of character, even if we are trying to kill each other in character.

Tips for running a good game or encouraging good table behaviours could be its own thread.

Darth Ultron
2016-11-05, 06:35 PM
Do people often have kleptomaniacs in their groups ? ones who go around stealing stuff from NPC's and party members and do so ALL THE FREAKING TIME, do so gleefully and often get away with it (ocassionally with out a roll because the DM thinks its funny)?

Yes, I'd add this to the list. The worst is when they steal from NPC allies, and do over the top things like ''when sitting at the dinner table with the king they take a gold cup.''

And this runs into Players that think they can act without consequences. Such as when the thief gets caught or even just not be trusted by an npc they stole from.

cobaltstarfire
2016-11-05, 06:36 PM
No i mean some one who does that no matter what character/race/game they are playing......and deliberately does s%$& to get us in trouble with the police/guard/security. and before you ask: they cant be kicked they are dateing/engaged to one of the DM's in the group.


That sounds awfully specific to be common.

Though I have met a player that was always trying to break into houses and steal things. He never tried to pick pocket anyone. I guess he thought that as long as he was stealing from the homes of the people we were trying to protect it was ok, because they had fled for the time being.

The DM wasn't having any of it though: The first house had nothing of worth in it (because peasants), the second house featured a door that was opened very suddenly and knocked him out cold. The rest of us survived the fight without him at least.

NickChaisson
2016-11-05, 10:00 PM
I have a few behaviors that I find to be aggravating, but the most offensive one if not bothering to read the rule books for whatever system we are playing.

I find it to be rude/offensive because I am usually the DM and I have spent my own time reading the rulebooks and so have my other players. But I have one player who usually refuses to read the books and the rest of the party needs to help him make his character and learn the basic rules of the system instead of doing this himself (unless its D&D 3.5).

WarKitty
2016-11-05, 10:10 PM
On Gaming With Friends: Sit down with strangers and leave with friends. Or at least on friendly terms. I think generally if there are a enough people there setting the right mood others will... open up? That's not quite right, sort of like take the hint, but in a "we want you here" way instead of the usual "we don't want you here" way. The best game I have had have always been completely cooperative out of character, even if we are trying to kill each other in character.

Tips for running a good game or encouraging good table behaviours could be its own thread.

And of course how cooperative you're expected to be varies by system. In the various iterations of D&D, party cohesion is generally seen as a good and expected thing. That's not true for all systems - in some systems screwing over your fellow party member is expected.

quinron
2016-11-06, 01:29 AM
I have a few behaviors that I find to be aggravating, but the most offensive one if not bothering to read the rule books for whatever system we are playing.

I find it to be rude/offensive because I am usually the DM and I have spent my own time reading the rulebooks and so have my other players. But I have one player who usually refuses to read the books and the rest of the party needs to help him make his character and learn the basic rules of the system instead of doing this himself (unless its D&D 3.5).

Honestly, this is what drove my decision to switch away from 3.5/Pathfinder - I get upset when my players don't read the rules (especially on the several occasions that I've told them, for example, "read the Combat chapter for next session), but if I can't even persuade myself to read through the whole rulebook over a few weeks, I can't really feel justified in getting upset with my players for not reading it. Fortunately, since I cut my teeth on 3.5, I'm now able to tell more or less at a glance which parts of the book are going to be important and which parts I can put off reading until something comes up in the game.

Delicious Taffy
2016-11-06, 05:23 AM
Similar to the phone thing described earlier. As one who's only every played on online sites like roll20, I hate when players are off playing other games while the session is running.

"Oh, it's not my turn? Cool, I'm gonna go play Fallout and not pay attention to what's going on." And then you have to waste several minutes bringing them back up to speed once they decide to grace the game with their attention once more.

I don't know if you brought up the Fallout thing just as an example, but one of my players did exactly that during our last session.

Cluedrew
2016-11-06, 08:28 AM
And this runs into Players that think they can act without consequences.I have had one particularly bad experience with this, I still call this issue: The Problem with Vincent. Actually that was really the only time, so not common for me.

Zalabim
2016-11-06, 09:27 AM
First, a confession: I have, in the past, completed some WoW raids while simultaneously in a particularly slow patch of an online D&D game.


snotty Magic-Users in cohoots with the DM


Do people often have kleptomaniacs in their groups ? ones who go around stealing stuff from NPC's and party members and do so ALL THE FREAKING TIME, do so gleefully and often get away with it (ocassionally with out a roll because the DM thinks its funny)?

I'll try to tell this story quickly to get to the peeves part. A long time ago, when Neverwinter Nights was new, my cousin invited me to his RP multiplayer server. So I made a sorcerer and logged on, but he wasn't online. So I played a quest with the people I did meet there, then hung out by the campfire afterwards. This is where the disaster starts.

A halfling strolls up to me out of stealth. We have a short conversation, and I notice my brand new magic staff is missing from my inventory. So I request that the thief return it, and he starts running away. I tell him to stop or I'll kill him. He goes through a zone transition just ahead of me and vanishes. Apparently he loaded the next map faster, because he really did vanish. I was just beat by a halfling in a footrace.

A short while later, I see the halfling again back at the campfire and follow through on my threat. A magic missile and an acid arrow later and the thief is down. While looting the body, the thief messages me and calls me a metagamer, the GM for the server intervenes and resurrects him. Thief claims there's no way I recognized him because it was dark and he was wearing a hood. I counter with it was not dark as my belt has a light enchantment, and you stopped and had a chat with me. The GM says there's one way I could recognize the halfling, but I have to guess it or let him be. Since I was unable to read the GMs mind through the internet after several guesses, I left and never went back.

So, metagamers who use the "but I'm a PC, you can't do that to me" attitude while doing just that to the other players, DMs who enable this kind of ****ty player, and DM scenarios where you're supposed to be a mind reader in order to solve it.

TL;DR: Playing NWN multiplayer and I killed a bandit and he went "Nuh, uh, I'm like Zorro", and the GM agreed, "Yeah, he's like Zorro." If I had been at a table, someone would have been punched.

Segev
2016-11-06, 11:46 AM
If you're concerned about being fair to all players when the party is split, give each group N minutes per player represented in that group. So the solo guy gets 1/4 the time that the other three players, grouped together, get.

Roughishguy86
2016-11-06, 12:49 PM
That's pretty good. Maybe we can compare notes on insults delivered to NPCs that had it coming?[/QUOTE]



Just last night my character told an evil warlord that his castle was tacky and that he should fire his interior decorator. In this same campaign I informed another NPC that he was just a walking cliché and that he didn't interest me enough to kill.

This is basically just my default setting when dealing with NPC's that can kill me.

The Fury
2016-11-06, 01:30 PM
Do people often have kleptomaniacs in their groups ? ones who go around stealing stuff from NPC's and party members and do so ALL THE FREAKING TIME, do so gleefully and often get away with it (ocassionally with out a roll because the DM thinks its funny)?

Sort of like when I'm going on about formulating a plan to deal with our current predicament, meanwhile there's a player that rolled dice randomly and started snickering and passed a note to the GM, who then also started snickering. Then the GM says to the rest of the party, "You all notice that The Fury isn't wearing any pants. The Fury, you're yammering on about your plan and suddenly you feel a draft!"

Then I'm shown the note that the GM got, it says: "I rolled a 45 on a natural 20 for my Slight of Hand, I steal The Fury's pants."

Yeah, I think I might know that player. It was once explained to me that the reason why I'm usually the target of stuff like this is because I never really get mad over it.



Just last night my character told an evil warlord that his castle was tacky and that he should fire his interior decorator.

So tacky, right? Honestly, it's skulls of his enemies as light fixtures, wall embellishments, banister finials everything! I'll bet that if I went into the bathroom he'd have skulls of his enemies in there too, and I cringe to think what his kitchen looks like. Would it honestly kill him to change up the decor even slightly? Then again, I imagine he would have plenty of skulls of his enemies to go around-- I guess there is an advantage to nobody liking you.



In this same campaign I informed another NPC that he was just a walking cliché and that he didn't interest me enough to kill.

Heh. Yeah, look it this guy-- dressed all in black, bunch of knives, billowing cloak, tastfully "battle scarred..." I get it. "Oooh look at me! I'm so dangerous!"



This is basically just my default setting when dealing with NPC's that can kill me.

Yeah, I'm a little like this too, I like to think I'm decent at picking my targets-- punching up, not punching down if you get me.

Vrock_Summoner
2016-11-06, 01:33 PM
TL;DR: Playing NWN multiplayer and I killed a bandit and he went "Nuh, uh, I'm like Zorro", and the GM agreed, "Yeah, he's like Zorro." If I had been at a table, someone would have been punched.
To be fair, if you had been at a table, that probably would've been resolved by a skill check to make out his facial features or something, rather than just coming down to a slightly more advanced version of the usual dispute between children over who, in fact, shot the other first.

Max_Killjoy
2016-11-06, 01:42 PM
Sort of like when I'm going on about formulating a plan to deal with our current predicament, meanwhile there's a player that rolled dice randomly and started snickering and passed a note to the GM, who then also started snickering. Then the GM says to the rest of the party, "You all notice that The Fury isn't wearing any pants. The Fury, you're yammering on about your plan and suddenly you feel a draft!"

Then I'm shown the note that the GM got, it says: "I rolled a 45 on a natural 20 for my Slight of Hand, I steal The Fury's pants."

Yeah, I think I might know that player. It was once explained to me that the reason why I'm usually the target of stuff like this is because I never really get mad over it.


1. If I were the GM, I'd make sure the player was looking, set the note down in something fireproof, and light it on fire.

2. If I were the player targeted, I'd get up and leave.


I have no patience for clowns, and even less for pathetic little turds who try to make other people the butt of a stupid stunt.

Blue Duke
2016-11-06, 01:43 PM
Sort of like when I'm going on about formulating a plan to deal with our current predicament, meanwhile there's a player that rolled dice randomly and started snickering and passed a note to the GM, who then also started snickering. Then the GM says to the rest of the party, "You all notice that The Fury isn't wearing any pants. The Fury, you're yammering on about your plan and suddenly you feel a draft!"

Then I'm shown the note that the GM got, it says: "I rolled a 45 on a natural 20 for my Slight of Hand, I steal The Fury's pants."

Yeah, I think I might know that player. It was once explained to me that the reason why I'm usually the target of stuff like this is because I never really get mad over it.

I'm the opposite, it annoys the crap out of me and i have a horrible poker face and show it, so i continue to get targeted. I think the one that does it is insulated because shes engaged to one of the DM's but just once i'd really like to go and shoot one of their characters when they do it one time too many. i am just not a fan of player induced shenanigans especially when i'm expected to help keep the other character out of trouble and there is no way mine would do that.......but to preserve the party i have to toss out character behavior and help them dodge the guard.

Vrock_Summoner
2016-11-06, 02:00 PM
1. If I were the GM, I'd make sure the player was looking, set the note down in something fireproof, and light it on fire.

2. If I were the player targeted, I'd get up and leave.


I have no patience for clowns, and even less for pathetic little turds who try to make other people the butt of a stupid stunt.
I see how you earned your name. :smalltongue:

On my end... I wouldn't be bothered unless those pants had one of my buffs... Though whether I would react in-character or not depends on the intended tone of the game. And not always in the way you might expect - in a more comedic game, I might well just go into my next combat pantsless and not even notice. (Which, really, if the GM is tolerating the player doing that, it better not be a game I'm supposed to take at all seriously.)

The Fury
2016-11-06, 02:07 PM
1. If I were the GM, I'd make sure the player was looking, set the note down in something fireproof, and light it on fire.

2. If I were the player targeted, I'd get up and leave.


I have no patience for clowns, and even less for pathetic little turds who try to make other people the butt of a stupid stunt.

You haven't even heard the final zinger. When the player asks, "I have The Fury's pants, which have The Fury's pockets... Does that mean I have The Fury's money?"

Mercifully, the answer is generally "No," and I guess it's lucky for the sake of cohesion that I have a thick skin about stuff like this.



On my end... I wouldn't be bothered unless those pants had one of my buffs...

Enchanted pants... what would they do?

Traab
2016-11-06, 02:25 PM
The pants thing is something that bothers me a bit on a rule setting. I dont care how deft you are at sleight of hand, if I am standing, there is no way you can remove my pants entirely without me noticing. MAYBE you could pants me (yank em down) without me noticing till I go to take a step and fall over, but get them off over my feet? Not happening. Thats right up there with, "I rolled a natural 20 on my bluff check and convinced the king I was the rightful ruler of his kingdom" type of stupid. I mean, I get it in a silly scenario to be willing to play along but I just think most skills should have a cap on what they are capable of doing.

Like, lets say you want to bluff the prison guard into letting you go. A 20 means he lets you go cheerfully, anything less means he coshes you with a blackjack. If you roll a 35 after including all your bonuses, your bluff doesnt magnify from letting you go into, "He lets me go and even offers me a replacement uniform and gear since I so obviously lost my own that I had to wear prison garb. Oh, and he gives me his sisters address because he thinks I would be good for her." Your high skill level just means its highly unlikely to fail, not that it will let you pull off utterly absurd acts with it.

Cluedrew
2016-11-06, 02:26 PM
Enchanted pants... what would they do?I'm not sure. In the last very comedic campaign I did I, playing an artificer, was asked to enchant the pants of several members of the party. I could never figure out what to put on them and I gave them back (the next day in game) unenchanted.

Max_Killjoy
2016-11-06, 03:16 PM
The pants thing is something that bothers me a bit on a rule setting. I dont care how deft you are at sleight of hand, if I am standing, there is no way you can remove my pants entirely without me noticing. MAYBE you could pants me (yank em down) without me noticing till I go to take a step and fall over, but get them off over my feet? Not happening. Thats right up there with, "I rolled a natural 20 on my bluff check and convinced the king I was the rightful ruler of his kingdom" type of stupid. I mean, I get it in a silly scenario to be willing to play along but I just think most skills should have a cap on what they are capable of doing.


Exactly.

In anything outside of a game like TOON, that sort of "but I rolled really well" nonsense has no place.

Pex
2016-11-06, 03:23 PM
1. If I were the GM, I'd make sure the player was looking, set the note down in something fireproof, and light it on fire.

2. If I were the player targeted, I'd get up and leave.


I have no patience for clowns, and even less for pathetic little turds who try to make other people the butt of a stupid stunt.

And the DMs who enable them.

ross
2016-11-06, 09:34 PM
I think that tradition came from the days when people would commonly play the same character in different games. You'd finish Bob's dungeon and then take your character over to Gary's dungeon.

Tearing up the char sheet symbolizes that you can't take it to someone else's house and be alive again.

Like there's anything stopping the player from printing out another dozen copies of that same character with zero effort. Sounds more like a narcissistic DM wants to feel important.


... Which makes it worse. I was just talking about a character whose story was done anyway, but if you've got a character you take around to several games (ala Pathfinder Society) then it's even more BS to destroy my main record of them.


I play my pen and paper games with a pen and paper, thank you very much. :smalltongue:

Which doesn't preclude you from keeping backups in any way.


No, as in, you play the SAME character in different games. As in literally the same person. Games were assumed to be in the same world. If you level up to 3 in Bob's dungeon then you're level 3 in Gary's dungeon.

If you died in Bob's dungeon then you'd be dead and couldn't go to Gary's dungeon with that character at all.

Well that's retarded and also completely unenforceable. Are all the DMs in the town on the same emailing list or something? What about roll20?

ComradeBear
2016-11-06, 09:44 PM
Well that's retarded and also completely unenforceable. Are all the DMs in the town on the same emailing list or something? What about roll20?

This was in the very early days of D&D. The guys who invented Roll20 probably either weren't born yet, or were wee babies.

This is literally from the days when you'd have like 6 total people who played D&D in your town, and so the two DMs probably DID communicate, verbally, face-to-face. After playing in one anothers adventures.

This is about Ye Olden Days, not something that is super necessary now.

ross
2016-11-06, 09:44 PM
About the tearing of sheets: I've never done that as a DM, nor seen a DM do it. I do, however, remember one player (early-mid teens IIRC) who had a character die. He had been playing the character for months, and in anger and frustration curled the sheet up and threw it in the bin. Then people at the table started talking about how they were ging to resurrect him, and he suddenly felt very foolish, and with shaking voice and hands got the sheet out of the bin.

One peeve I've indulged recently, is about the players who say they'd like to use X skill to do something. No wonder you'd like to use Perception to roll on your success in research at the library, as it's your very highest skill. I can see the way your mind works, but it's mostly working in munchkinry patterns right now. How about you tell me what your character does, and I'll decide what check you need to roll, if any, to accomplish it, eh? A subset of this behaviour is when you ask whether someone in the party has a specific ability, item, or something, and someone pipes up with something else.
DM: "Does anyone have the Light Sleeper trait?"
Annoying player: "No, but I have Keen Hearing!"
That particular thing became a regular occurence. What's s/he sayin 'no' for, anyway? Speak for yourself!

But I'm mostly annoyed at no-shows, late shows, and early shows. And I don't consider ten minutes before or after noteworthy. But much more than that starts to irk me.

Better idea, I'll tell you what skills I'm going to use, and the rolls I get, and you tell me if I succeeded, since that's your only purpose for existing.

Koo Rehtorb
2016-11-06, 09:46 PM
Well that's retarded and also completely unenforceable. Are all the DMs in the town on the same emailing list or something? What about roll20?

Well this would be back in the 70s so...

ross
2016-11-06, 11:14 PM
It's arrogant, why should she be immune to the consequences for bad rolls?

Besides, isn't it more interesting to be wrong than to not know? It can send you haring off on all sorts of misadventures and create other problems that need to be solved.

Nobody wants to go on that boring sidequest with your ****ty DMPC.


It has to do with making the player's character look like a fool, without the player's consent. Even if you roll a one on your tracking skill, you are NOT going to mistake bear tracks for moose tracks. It's just not going to happen. If the player suggests it, fine. So let the player correctly identify the tracks, but be unable to follow them.

Be fans of your PCs. Cheer (either openly or secretly) when they pull off an upset, or when they see a solution you hadn't planned for. Give them opportunities to be heroic. You don't need to give them opportunities to make fools of themselves; they'll do that all on their own, without help from you.

**** that. The DM is the physical incarnation of the uncaring, openly hostile universe the PCs inhabit. Their lives are meaningless and their actions are pointless. Success or failure make no difference.


I'm guilty of this on a fair number of occasions... And let me tell you, as a chess master player, the worst thing is when someone doesn't do what I say and the encounter then becomes 10x more difficult. :smallwink:

More on topic, players who treat the game as one big joke irritate me, since I tend to be a more serious player. Not to say that casual players are bad, nor that super-seriousness is a better way to play. But, well... This guy takes the cake:
When we agreed that someone needed to cause a ruckus to draw attention away from the rest of the party's stealth mission, the Paladin got drafted in to cause said ruckus. We were expecting trampled tents, a wild chase, and insults to our enemies' parentage. What we got was 15 minutes of him standing around and occasionally shouting Dark Souls references.
His character was like that the whole campaign, by the way. I don't recall a single word of his IC that wasn't a Dark Souls reference.

That player's a genius. There's nothing more obnoxious than a nerd trying to be funny by repeating things other people said, so that was guaranteed to piss people off and distract them.


How did we get 3 pages in without anybody mentioning players who don't pay any attention unless their character is the one currently in the spotlight?

They're elsewhere in town while someone's talking to an NPC; they're on their phone/tablet.

It's not their turn in combat; they're talking about a sporting event with the guy that goes after them in initiative.

Unless someone is addressing them directly about the game, it's like they're not even playing. It's grinds me like a beach towel made of sandpaper. :smallfurious::smallfurious::smallfurious:


No one mentioned it because that's every player.


The sleeping guy in my group does that too. Even when his character is in the spotlight.

Have you discussed his depression with him?


I had this problem when I first played a wizard using Sleep. All of a sudden every low level grunt is an elf that's immune to sleep :smallannoyed:

The alternative is every encounter is trivialized by the sleep spell, everyone loses interest in the game, and stops showing up.


the GM who thinks that if theres no combat it isn't fun......and the player that thinks that ONLY combat is fun. I am getting tired of HAVING to fight in traveller.
the GM who decides that two guards or two security stations CONSTANTLY manned is standard procedure....he wants to make it more challenging but its just freaking annoying.

If your job was ensuring the security of some object or location, would you be okay with leaving the guard stations unmanned?


what's the point of playing the stealth scout type if they get punished for separating from the group though ?

There isn't one. Play something else.


I once had a player who did both - she asked me to help her make a character (and by that, she meant 'make her character for her'), and then she dropped from the game without so much as a hey-howdy-do. That forced some awkward re-writes to the plot, because I'd written it in to help her get connected with the rest of the group (she was a latecomer to a group that was already pretty much organized and ready to go), which contributed to the game dying young.
I've learned my lesson; I am no longer nearly so kind towards new players that I don't know outside of the game.
... Not that I'm bitter or anything.



It's what I'd want if I were scouting. I'm not nearly enough of a sociopath to want to steal everyone's game time like that when we could be doing anything else and have more than just me involved.



What's the point of playing with a group if your main objective is to spend time away from them?


As for common behaviors... Monty Python quotes. I don't like Monty Python to begin with, especially the lines everyone has been quoting ad nauseum as if it were still remotely clever the hundred thousandth time thirty years later.
Seriously, guys, just stop it. You've done it so much that I could quote entire scenes from Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail despite the fact that I have never watched that movie. Other movies exist! Quote them! Please! For the love of Arrenji, please quote something different!

No. Don't quote anything at all. Get a real personality or get out of my house.


To each their own, but taking the "don't monopolize game time" thing this far would ruin the fun for me.

It reminds me of a time when I was playing the Star Wars RPG, where my character was a Jawa. We were in the Mos Eisley cantina doing I forget what, something that was interesting to some of the other players but not me. I looked around the cantina and the GM told me that a group of Jawas got out of their seats and left the cantina.

I figured that I'd see what they were up to, so my character left to follow them. I wasn't trying to go on a side quest or anything, just have my character off doing local Jawa things or whatever while the others were drinking at the bar and gathering information from the locals. The GM had my character get mugged and beaten, and then concluded with "and this is why you never leave the party."

And this is supposed to make the game more fun how?

It's not supposed to make the game fun. It's supposed to make you not leave the party.


I try to be tolerant, but can't stop myself from getting consistently annoyed at people who refuse to learn the system. I get it, RPGs are complicated and not everyone is interested in the mechanics, but c'mon, man. I understand if you don't remember how hit dice work, but you can write down your attack bonus so you don't need to ask every round. You can remember that it's a d20 for everything but damage. :smallmad:

As a very personal pet peeve, characters with inappropriate names. We're playing in Fantasyland #294b; your character is not named George. I specifically told you how (race's) names work, and real-world English names are not one of them. :smallfurious:

Another common behavior I've seen several times is excessively paranoid players. I know metagaming is bad, and that good GMs make sure not every challenge is perfectly scaled to your level, and that sometimes things are supposed to be tense in-setting, but... I hate when players spend the entire time terrified that one little mistake will ruin everything, convinced that the entire world is a deathtrap out to get them personally, that every plot hook is a trap to run from, that it's better to spend twenty minutes debating the safety of an action. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like the most boring thing a GM can do is kill you, and that the basic covenant of gaming is "whatever happens, I'll make sure it's interesting and that there's a path for success somewhere." I'd rather go get into trouble than sit around arguing.

Enjoy your wipe.


No i mean some one who does that no matter what character/race/game they are playing......and deliberately does s%$& to get us in trouble with the police/guard/security. and before you ask: they cant be kicked they are dateing/engaged to one of the DM's in the group.

Leave the group, and recommend to the other players that they do so as well.

Your only power over a DM as a player is your feet. Use them.


First, a confession: I have, in the past, completed some WoW raids while simultaneously in a particularly slow patch of an online D&D game.





I'll try to tell this story quickly to get to the peeves part. A long time ago, when Neverwinter Nights was new, my cousin invited me to his RP multiplayer server. So I made a sorcerer and logged on, but he wasn't online. So I played a quest with the people I did meet there, then hung out by the campfire afterwards. This is where the disaster starts.

A halfling strolls up to me out of stealth. We have a short conversation, and I notice my brand new magic staff is missing from my inventory. So I request that the thief return it, and he starts running away. I tell him to stop or I'll kill him. He goes through a zone transition just ahead of me and vanishes. Apparently he loaded the next map faster, because he really did vanish. I was just beat by a halfling in a footrace.

A short while later, I see the halfling again back at the campfire and follow through on my threat. A magic missile and an acid arrow later and the thief is down. While looting the body, the thief messages me and calls me a metagamer, the GM for the server intervenes and resurrects him. Thief claims there's no way I recognized him because it was dark and he was wearing a hood. I counter with it was not dark as my belt has a light enchantment, and you stopped and had a chat with me. The GM says there's one way I could recognize the halfling, but I have to guess it or let him be. Since I was unable to read the GMs mind through the internet after several guesses, I left and never went back.

So, metagamers who use the "but I'm a PC, you can't do that to me" attitude while doing just that to the other players, DMs who enable this kind of ****ty player, and DM scenarios where you're supposed to be a mind reader in order to solve it.

TL;DR: Playing NWN multiplayer and I killed a bandit and he went "Nuh, uh, I'm like Zorro", and the GM agreed, "Yeah, he's like Zorro." If I had been at a table, someone would have been punched.

You wouldn't have punched anyone.


I'm the opposite, it annoys the crap out of me and i have a horrible poker face and show it, so i continue to get targeted. I think the one that does it is insulated because shes engaged to one of the DM's but just once i'd really like to go and shoot one of their characters when they do it one time too many. i am just not a fan of player induced shenanigans especially when i'm expected to help keep the other character out of trouble and there is no way mine would do that.......but to preserve the party i have to toss out character behavior and help them dodge the guard.

Why would you bother trying to preserve a party that clearly doesn't give a **** about you? You're a joke to them.

Solaris
2016-11-06, 11:18 PM
No. Don't quote anything at all. Get a real personality or get out of my house.

Let's be fair, if I only associated with people who had a real personality it'd just be me and the voices.
Not even all of the voices, either.

ross
2016-11-06, 11:19 PM
This is literally from the days when you'd have like 6 total people who played D&D in your town

Yikes, must suck to live in flyover country


Hehe look at me you guys I'm so wacky and weird! I'm totally not forcing this!

Nah, you wouldn't be hanging out with anyone.

Melville's Book
2016-11-06, 11:26 PM
Ross. Friend. Multi-quoting is a thing. See that little button right next to the quote button that looks just like the quote button, but with a plus sign? You can click that to add as many quotes as you want to a single post. Please stop clogging the thread with multi-posts. Thank you.

ross
2016-11-06, 11:33 PM
Ross. Friend. Multi-quoting is a thing. See that little button right next to the quote button that looks just like the quote button, but with a plus sign? You can click that to add as many quotes as you want to a single post. Please stop clogging the thread with multi-posts. Thank you.

nah` `

Dr_Dinosaur
2016-11-07, 02:05 AM
nah` `

Oh boy, you're going to be a fun one, aren't you?

Anyway, I can't stand it when friends of players show up and insist on butting in and distracting them in the middle of play.

Zalabim
2016-11-07, 05:18 AM
You wouldn't have punched anyone.
I didn't say I would be doing the punching. You also probably could have cut out most of my post for the quote.

nah` `
Ok then. Plan B.

WarKitty
2016-11-07, 09:21 AM
nah` `

You do realize that "don't post multiple posts in a row" is actually a forum rule here?

Anyways - as far as solo quests go, different people have different ideas. It can be handled well and be fun for everyone. Really, "you all have to stay in the same scene whether or not your character has any logical reason to be here or anything to contribute" has the same effect of one player having to watch while everyone else has fun. At least solo quests give people a reason to be doing something in-game.

Quertus
2016-11-07, 09:27 AM
I have a few behaviors that I find to be aggravating, but the most offensive one if not bothering to read the rule books for whatever system we are playing.

I find it to be rude/offensive because I am usually the DM and I have spent my own time reading the rulebooks and so have my other players. But I have one player who usually refuses to read the books and the rest of the party needs to help him make his character and learn the basic rules of the system instead of doing this himself (unless its D&D 3.5).

There are a few reasons why that's sometimes me.

First off, I learn much better by using rules than by reading them. Even without using them, I'll still learn rules better by having someone tell me the rules than by reading them. Heck, I'll even learn then better by using profession:scribe and copying them than by reading them.

On the rare occasion I'm getting to play a system for the first time, but not playing a character for the first time, I get to enjoy true exploration - someone experiencing an entirely different reality for the first time. I certainly don't want to sully that by reading spoilers ahead of time.


Yikes, must suck to live in flyover country

Imagine trying to find 6 experienced FATAL players, or 6 active 1e D&D players, to join your game. The hobby hasn't always had its current level of popularity.


Ross. Friend. Multi-quoting is a thing. See that little button right next to the quote button that looks just like the quote button, but with a plus sign? You can click that to add as many quotes as you want to a single post. Please stop clogging the thread with multi-posts. Thank you.

To be fair, there are limits to how much text one can quote in a single post, and, in casting my signature "wall of text", I've hit those limits before. But, yeah, this looks more like we should ready torches. but whether our other hands should have pitch forks or acid vials is less certain...

2D8HP
2016-11-07, 09:37 AM
Multi-quoting is a thing. See that little button right next to the quote button that looks just like the quote button, but with a plus sign? You can click that to add as many quotes as you want to a single post.That's awesome! I've been doing "copy and paste" for multiple quotes for over a year now.
Thank you!
I'm going to try it now....
Enjoy your wipe."Wipe"? I have no clue of what you mean.
**** that. The DM is the physical incarnation of the uncaring, openly hostile universe the PCs inhabit. Their lives are meaningless and their actions are pointless. Success or failure make no difference.Sounds like an awful game. Why play it?

I think that tradition came from the days when people would commonly play the same character in different games. You'd finish Bob's dungeon and then take your character over to Gary's dungeon.

Tearing up the char sheet symbolizes that you can't take it to someone else's house and be alive again.
Like there's anything stopping the player from printing out another dozen copies of that same character with zero effort. Sounds more like a narcissistic DM wants to feel important.There was a time before printers, and some of us (me for example) still don't have them.
Well that's retarded and also completely unenforceable. Are all the DMs in the town on the same emailing list or something? What about roll20?I have no experience with "Roll20".
Well this would be back in the 70s so...
This was in the very early days of D&D. The guys who invented Roll20 probably either weren't born yet, or were wee babies.

This is literally from the days when you'd have like 6 total people who played D&D in your town, and so the two DMs probably DID communicate, verbally, face-to-face. After playing in one anothers adventures.

This is about Ye Olden Days, not something that is super necessary now.
Yikes, must suck to live in flyover country@ross, the past was not "flyover country". There was a time before the internet, have you never spoken to anyone over 40 years old ever?
I'm guessing that you've never been in a dorm room that was illuminated only by a blacklight, while "Kashmir" played on a turntable.
Do you imagine that we were all on CB radio?
"Breaker, breaker Blackleaf calling Elfstar, Avatar and Blackwolf are on your trail"

(Extra points if you know which of those names reference the '70's, and which the '80's)
Here is a slice of the 1970's so that you may better understand us:


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VNS03qgTI8k

Max_Killjoy
2016-11-07, 09:51 AM
There was a time before printers, and some of us (me for example) still don't have them.I have no experience with "Roll20".
@ross, the past was not "flyover country". There was a time before the internet, have you never spoken to anyone over 40 years old ever?
I'm guessing that you've never been in a dorm room that was illuminated only by a blacklight, while "Kashmir" played on a turntable.
Do you imagine that we were all on CB radio?
"Breaker, breaker Blackleaf calling Elfstar, Avatar and Blackwolf are on your trail"


There are a ton of people alive today who sadly do not remember the world without the internet, or without cellphones, or... whatever.

I got into computers in the 80s and watched the era of BBSes come and go. I went to college in the 90s and participated in Usenet newsgroups before most people even knew what the internet was. I watched the rise of social media and online tracked / targeted advertising and the slow creeping loss of privacy for kids who didn't care that anyone could find out anything about them with a few clicks.

Music has gone from vinyl and 8-tracks, to cassettes, to CDs, to people who are willing to rent their music for a monthly fee...

Movies have gone from whatever was on TV, to the big laser discs and VHS tapes, to DVDs, to online rentals... with the rise and fall of Blockbuster and every grocery store and whatnot having a rental video section for 2 decades at the peak...

Melville's Book
2016-11-07, 09:52 AM
Imagine trying to find 6 experienced FATAL players
This is purely a thought exercise; never do this.

You can't begin to comprehend the depths of what horrific entities they've become.

(This is hyperbole, of course; FATAL doesn't actually transform you into a monster. If you come back after playing once, you already were one.)

I wonder if I can suggest "playing FATAL" as an actual behavior for the thread, or if that would be too mean.

cobaltstarfire
2016-11-07, 09:57 AM
There are a few reasons why that's sometimes me.

First off, I learn much better by using rules than by reading them. Even without using them, I'll still learn rules better by having someone tell me the rules than by reading them. Heck, I'll even learn then better by using profession:scribe and copying them than by reading them.

On the rare occasion I'm getting to play a system for the first time, but not playing a character for the first time, I get to enjoy true exploration - someone experiencing an entirely different reality for the first time. I certainly don't want to sully that by reading spoilers ahead of time.



There is a difference between being a tactile learner, and not bothering to crack open the book and look at the rules. It sounds like you understand your learning type and are proactive in making sure you do what you can with it before a game starts.

You shouldn't consider yourself to be a problem player at all, and certainly don't let others treat you like one for it.

I'm also a tactile learner, and usually try to make it clear that I tend to forget rules very easily, especially if they rarely come up. I compensate for that by trying to think about what I want to do before it's my turn, and keeping my book handy. I mark relevant sections of the PHB, and make heavy use of the glossary so that I can try to find stuff I've forgotten quickly when I need to. (in real life games the rest of the table usually ends up relying on me to look up and clarify rules we aren't sure of because of this, so I know it's not a problematic behavior :D)

Quertus
2016-11-07, 10:43 AM
I'm going to try it now...."Wipe"? I have no clue of what you mean.Sounds like an awful game. Why play it?

Honestly, going in without a plan is quite likely to cause a TPK in many games.


This is purely a thought exercise; never do this.

You can't begin to comprehend the depths of what horrific entities they've become.

(This is hyperbole, of course; FATAL doesn't actually transform you into a monster. If you come back after playing once, you already were one.)

I wonder if I can suggest "playing FATAL" as an actual behavior for the thread, or if that would be too mean.

No, playing FATAL - or suggesting doing so - isn't "common", and so does not qualify for this thread.


There is a difference between being a tactile learner, and not bothering to crack open the book and look at the rules. It sounds like you understand your learning type and are proactive in making sure you do what you can with it before a game starts.

You shouldn't consider yourself to be a problem player at all, and certainly don't let others treat you like one for it.

I'm also a tactile learner, and usually try to make it clear that I tend to forget rules very easily, especially if they rarely come up. I compensate for that by trying to think about what I want to do before it's my turn, and keeping my book handy. I mark relevant sections of the PHB, and make heavy use of the glossary so that I can try to find stuff I've forgotten quickly when I need to. (in real life games the rest of the table usually ends up relying on me to look up and clarify rules we aren't sure of because of this, so I know it's not a problematic behavior :D)

Thanks. I don't usually get any more flak for it than I dish out when people complain about basic math (add number plus d20, subtract damage from HP, etc). When I do, it's usually a good sign that this isn't the group for me.

Oddly, looking at books during the game is bad form at some tables...

Stealth Marmot
2016-11-07, 11:19 AM
"Breaker, breaker Blackleaf calling Elfstar, Avatar and Blackwolf are on your trail"

(Extra points if you know which of those names reference the '70's, and which the '80's)
Here is a slice of the 1970's so that you may better understand us:


Blackleaf failed to find the trap. I declare her dead. Over.

As for "Wipe", it's an MMO term for when everyone in a raid group dies. He's saying "Enjoy your TPK".

I seem to disagree with the collective here in certain areas. I do think that players by themselves should be an option. It should be a minority of the game obviously, but having game sessions focus on a single player for most of it could be useful, so long as each player gets their time. Just make sure all the players are okay with it. And you don't have to be exact either, just keep in mind the memorable and fun moments with each character, and try to even those out so that everyone has a part of the game that they enjoyed and considered memorable.

To me, games should be fun above all else. That is why I don't mind the idea of a natural 20 or natural 1 playing a little havoc with realism. It is not something that should have mechanics, but if it gets a laugh or a particularly cool or memorable moment, there is no reason to not do it. Now, it's a tool that should not be used EVERY time there is a nat 20 or a nat 1, but if a situation presents itself, make something cool or funny up. It especially is good if in the end it doesn't affect anything mechanically.

The DM should have some room for fun. That said, they also have to keep an eye out for when they go too far or when they turn a character into a joke. I had a real problem with a DM who said that one of my characters was always good for a laugh when I considered him to be a fairly serious character. Yes the character was often sarcastic, and put upon, but after a while it gets old if the universe keeps jerking you around, and I literally told him at the end that my character was so jaded he was traumatized to the point of lethargy.

Even before that my character had long since given up hope in his agency in the world, or even his life.

The players are the stars, and them having fun should be your focus, but if you are smart and careful about it, you can have some of your own fun by playing with them.

cobaltstarfire
2016-11-07, 11:20 AM
Oddly, looking at books during the game is bad form at some tables...

Those are tables I would probably have to avoid (or has a friendly rules lawyer who is willing to fill in when I have gaps), though I've never played at one, every one I've been at all the players may pull out a book to check something without anyone noticing or caring. Though it's not like I constantly have a book out, the times I usually need it, I can reference whatever it is faster than it takes for my turn to arrive.

But that's just me, if I suspect I won't be a good fit at a table I just decline to join the game, or leave if it turns out there is an issue that can't be overcome: People can't change the optimal way they learn or remember information, so there's no point in staying if there is a problem with that.

I also avoid high OP tables, because if I can't remember enough the rules very well, I definitely can't play at a high level of optimization.

Max_Killjoy
2016-11-07, 01:06 PM
On the subject of a single player going off and doing things solo for a bit:

First, there are times when the confluence of events within the game simply demands this, and it wouldn't make any sense for the players to all stay together in one place. The sneakiest character needs to follow a target or sneak in somewhere to get some information, without Robes McStumble scaring a cat or knocking over a rack of spears. The face needs to do some solo gabbing without the bruiser around. Any character could have personal business to attend to.

Second, as a GM I was always willing to schedule time away from the main gaming sessions for 1-on-1 with any player, if it worked for our schedules. Anything that could be put off for those sessions of solo time was well worth the extra effort on my part.

Pex
2016-11-07, 01:56 PM
There are a ton of people alive today who sadly do not remember the world without the internet, or without cellphones, or... whatever.



Sob! The DM of one of my 5E games didn't even know who Ricardo Montalban was!

JAL_1138
2016-11-07, 03:40 PM
Sob! The DM of one of my 5E games didn't even know who Ricardo Montalban was!

...not even as KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN?

2D8HP
2016-11-07, 03:54 PM
(Still having fun with the multi-quote buttons)


Movies have gone from whatever was on TV, to the big laser discs and VHS tapes, to DVDs, to online rentals... with the rise and fall of Blockbuster and every grocery store and whatnot having a rental video section for 2 decades at the peak... For whatever it's worth, when it comes to media influences on most of my FRPG's, Star Trek re-runs, and "The Hobbit" cartoon TV movie, and these films that I saw in the theater when they were released:

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (no I didn't "get it" when I first saw it, maybe my parents did),

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger,

Wizards (in retrospect maybe the most '70's film ever, a certain Mark Hamill played Sean, he would later turn up in a little film called.....),

Star Wars (in the schoolyard we actually would brag and compete about how many times we saw it, you didn't no way see it 20 times, where are the ticket stubs huh Ben!),

The Lord of the Rings (cartoon movie by the same guy who did "Wizards"),

Dragonslayer (I still have net yet seen a better Dragon the Vermithrax),

Excalibur,

Conan the Barbarian,

Raiders of the Lost Ark,

With Raiders we got a VHS machine, and a Tape of it, and modern times begins.


Honestly, going in without a plan is quite likely to cause a TPK in many games.

As for "Wipe", it's an MMO term for when everyone in a raid group dies. He's saying "Enjoy your TPK".Thanks guys, I never played a "MMO" (it actually was from this Forum that I learned of the existence of CRPG's)
Sob! The DM of one of my 5E games didn't even know who Ricardo Montalban was!I'm trying to be tolerant, since I don't get peoples references to "Baldurs Gate", and "Final fantasy', but really I'm just appalled.
How can you even bare to communicate with someone who can't recognize the classics.

:eek:

From Hell's heart I stab at thee!

KHAAAAAAAAN!!!

:furious:

Dr_Dinosaur
2016-11-07, 05:00 PM
Its possible he is just disappointed he didnt get to use his preperation. Ive found as a DM the best way to avoid that disapointment, is whenever my players bypass something (usually by getting beaten and retreating before they reach it. Is to describe what I had planned in detail. That way at least my work gets a secondhand audience. Alas I dont do anything generic enough for the old recycling bin.

This is why I love one of my players the best. He likes hearing about big elaborate plans and set pieces almost as much as playing through them or running them, so if one of us doesn't get to execute one we tell the other about it.

Pex
2016-11-07, 06:59 PM
...not even as KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN?

No.

:smallfrown:

Traab
2016-11-07, 07:58 PM
This is why I love one of my players the best. He likes hearing about big elaborate plans and set pieces almost as much as playing through them or running them, so if one of us doesn't get to execute one we tell the other about it.


No.

:smallfrown:

Too be fair, I wouldnt have recognized his real name myself. I would have gotten the reference though.

Fiery Diamond
2016-11-07, 10:39 PM
(Still having fun with the multi-quote buttons)

For whatever it's worth, when it comes to media influences on most of my FRPG's, Star Trek re-runs, and "The Hobbit" cartoon TV movie, and these films that I saw in the theater when they were released:

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (no I didn't "get it" when I first saw it, maybe my parents did),

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger,

Wizards (in retrospect maybe the most '70's film ever, a certain Mark Hamill played Sean, he would later turn up in a little film called.....),

Star Wars (in the schoolyard we actually would brag and compete about how many times we saw it, you didn't no way see it 20 times, where are the ticket stubs huh Ben!),

The Lord of the Rings (cartoon movie by the same guy who did "Wizards"),

Dragonslayer (I still have net yet seen a better Dragon the Vermithrax),

Excalibur,

Conan the Barbarian,

Raiders of the Lost Ark,

With Raiders we got a VHS machine, and a Tape of it, and modern times begins.


.Thanks guys, I never played a "MMO" (it actually was from this Forum that I learned of the existence of CRPG's)I'm trying to be tolerant, since I don't get peoples references to "Baldurs Gate", and "Final fantasy', but really I'm just appalled.
How can you even bare to communicate with someone who can't recognize the classics.

:eek:

From Hell's heart I stab at thee!

KHAAAAAAAAN!!!

:furious:

You DO realize that some people have never seen so much as a single clip of Star Trek, right? Like me? I'm 27 years old, never seen any Star Trek at all. The only actor's name I know from Star Trek is Nimoy. Why on Earth you'd consider a specific actor who did something in Star Trek to be some sort of iconic thing that everyone should be familiar with is beyond me. Apart from "redshirts get killed", "the holodeck", "live long and prosper", and "Beam me up, Scotty" (which I'm told is never actually said), of which I would assume at least one would be known to any given person, NOTHING in Star Trek should be considered iconic outside of the Star Trek fanbase.

Âmesang
2016-11-07, 11:07 PM
…and here I am the kind of %&#$ who'd be making Babylon 5 references. :smalltongue:

I'll always love Garibaldi for living in the 23rd Century yet having a Daffy Duck poster above his bed.

2D8HP
2016-11-07, 11:38 PM
You DO realize that some people have never seen so much as a single clip of Star Trek, right? Like me? I'm 27 years old, never seen any Star Trek at allYes, when I chance upon a re-run now, my 11 year old mostly just laughs at the "prehistoric" hair (he does the same thing with old episodes of "Mission Impossible"), before he asks if he can put in a "Naruto" DVD. But can you imagine a time when if you wanted to watch something with sci-fi or fantasy elements Star Trek re-runs were pretty much your only option?
We'd get at most two "genre" movies a year, and sometimes if I got lucky (and held the antenna with my hand, while standing in the right place), I could see a bit of (Tom Baker) Doctor Who, Science Fiction books (usually from the 1940's and '50's were from the library (there was very little Fantasy on the shelves), and that really was all there was, so of course we watched Star Trek, "Twight Zone" re-runs while they had genre elements, weren't really "adventures", while the black and white episodes were OK, the color episodes of Lost in Space (most of them) were too silly, .and even as a little kid I could see that Batman was camp.
When "Star Wars" came out it was a very big deal, so no I really can't imagine what it is like to grow up in a time that has such a wealth of genre media, that you can make choices.
For us it was Star Trek or nothing.
Now dagnabbit, get off my lawn!

Pex
2016-11-07, 11:39 PM
You DO realize that some people have never seen so much as a single clip of Star Trek, right? Like me? I'm 27 years old, never seen any Star Trek at all. The only actor's name I know from Star Trek is Nimoy. Why on Earth you'd consider a specific actor who did something in Star Trek to be some sort of iconic thing that everyone should be familiar with is beyond me. Apart from "redshirts get killed", "the holodeck", "live long and prosper", and "Beam me up, Scotty" (which I'm told is never actually said), of which I would assume at least one would be known to any given person, NOTHING in Star Trek should be considered iconic outside of the Star Trek fanbase.

Watching Star Trek is a mandatory requirement of all nerds and geeks. Please return all your roleplaying books to the store and hand in your dice. There are plenty of bars to choose from to drink beer and watch football. Have fun!

2D8HP
2016-11-08, 12:04 AM
Please return all your roleplaying books to the store and hand in your dice. There are plenty of bars to choose from to drink beer and watch football. Have fun!Um... a few times this last year I've actually drank beer, while reading role-playing game books in bars (Brennan's in Berkeley, and Rosamunde in Oakland) when they had football on the TV. Yes it was fun, but I didn't really watch the TV.
I found the "Downtown Brown" Ale delicious. Of the role-playing game books the 5e D&D PHB was the most useful, but the 7th Sea Core Rules were the most fun to read.

Fiery Diamond
2016-11-08, 01:01 AM
Yes, when I chance upon a re-run now, my 11 year old mostly just laughs at the "prehistoric" hair (he does the same thing with old episodes of "Mission Impossible"), before he asks if he can put in a "Naruto" DVD. But can you imagine a time when if you wanted to watch something with sci-fi or fantasy elements Star Trek re-runs were pretty much your only option?
We'd get at most two "genre" movies a year, and sometimes if I got lucky (and held the antenna with my hand, while standing in the right place), I could see a bit of (Tom Baker) Doctor Who, Science Fiction books (usually from the 1940's and '50's were from the library (there was very little Fantasy on the shelves), and that really was all there was, so of course we watched Star Trek, "Twight Zone" re-runs while they had genre elements, weren't really "adventures", while the black and white episodes were OK, the color episodes of Lost in Space (most of them) were too silly, .and even as a little kid I could see that Batman was camp.
When "Star Wars" came out it was a very big deal, so no I really can't imagine what it is like to grow up in a time that has such a wealth of genre media, that you can make choices.
For us it was Star Trek or nothing.
Now dagnabbit, get off my lawn!

I realize I'm not exactly old, having my single-digit years be in the 90s, but as someone older than me I would think you would be aware that some people grow up not watching TV. The only TV I watched as a kid was Jeopardy and very rarely Saturday Morning Cartoons (hooray for a rusty TV antenna). I didn't start watching TV shows until the internet was ubiquitous and fast enough to stream TV shows. I also rarely went to the movies, with the majority of the movies I saw growing up being Disney and the like. I'm young enough that Star Wars was already all out (the original trilogy anyway), so that was my gateway to sci-fi/sci-fantasy movies. For people another decade or so younger than me, it shouldn't be surprising at all that they don't share your background. You really, really shouldn't be acting surprised when people two generations or so younger than you don't have the same idea of what's classic or iconic.

My years of growing up basically straddle the internet age. I didn't have reliable high-speed internet until I went off to college; my access to internet prior to that was very slow and not-so-reliable or, in the case of my very young childhood, non-existent. I suppose something that makes us different is that you just sort of assume that everyone is proactive about seeking out their consumptive entertainment. I... wasn't. If someone else didn't make it available to me, through no effort of my own, I simply didn't find it/engage with it. Rather than TV shows or movies, my focus was on books (and increasingly more on videogames as time went on, something that you are older than, given your comment about being older than Star Wars). There is a ton of sci-fi literature, and you don't predate all of it (though some of the best stuff came out in the years you were alive but I wasn't). I'll admit that a lot of fantasy novels are newer, though.

So... it's not so much about being able to make choices as it is about not-the-same things being available by default depending on when you grew up.

2D8HP
2016-11-08, 02:08 AM
You really, really shouldn't be acting surprised when people two generations or so younger than you don't have the same idea of what's classic or iconic. True, in retrospect it shouldn't, and now the realization that we in many ways lack a common language makes me sad.
Rather than TV shows or movies, my focus was on books (and increasingly more on videogames as time went on, something that you are older than, given your comment about being older than Star Wars). There is a ton of sci-fi literature, and you don't predate all of it (though some of the best stuff came out in the years you were alive but I wasn't). I'll admit that a lot of fantasy novels are newer, though. While there certainly was Fantasy literature published before and during my childhood in the 1970's, I just didn't come across it. What I did come across a lot of was the Science Fiction of the previous 40 years (I can remember reading collections of short stories of the 1930's and '40's that I'd get from the school library). I don't know what school libraries are like now, but bookstores are quite different. Now on the shelves I see lots of contemporary fantasy fiction, a little bit of sci-fi, but very little of older stuff beyond Tolkien.


So... it's not so much about being able to make choices as it is about not-the-same things being available by default depending on when you grew up. Earlier and other people's had a shared folklore that they could make allusions and metaphors of. That we are now so segregated by age and lack a common mythology to communicate with seems like a loss to me.
Oh well at least at this Forum we have OOTS!

Cluedrew
2016-11-08, 07:22 AM
Personally I grew up in a household where TV was considered to rot your brains. I only got to see Star Trek at a friends house. Mind you I got to read a lot of books, I'll probably get any reference you make to say The Chronicles of Narnia.

But don't despair. Despite not having ever seen most of Star Trek I can understand the "common language" aspect of it because it has entered the common language, and so I have picked up on it just as I would any other word or phrase. So we learn to communicate with the people we communicate with by our nature.