Things your DM does that irk you as a Player

[Pex]

Turn about is fair play.

Doesn't target you with effects your character is immune/resistance to because he doesn't want to waste the bad guy's turn.

Never lets you rest when your party really needs it.

Never gives the party magic weapons but you constantly have to face non-magic weapon resistant creatures.

[Arcangel4774]

Never having a beast or enemy move when hit by booming blade despite, in many cases, them having no knowledge of said ability.

[gfishfunk]

Countering strategies by granting immunities to future events. Grapple? Everyone is proficient with athletics. Burst damage? Everyone is spread out by exactly 15'. Darkness? Events all have blindsight!?!?

[Spellbreaker26]

"Cutscenes", spotlight hogging NPCs, and badly homebrewed creatures.

[pwykersotz]

Not knowing how to play the game or why playing the game is fun in the first place.

Every bad game I've ever had has been a result of a lack of care or interest in the actual gameplay. Not little things like how Stealth works or custom crit fumble rules, but major things like adding a d20 roll to a summon spell and getting Lolth who proceeds to wipe the party utterly. Things like going down a rabbit trail in a single player's backstory that leads to multiple hours of everyone but one person just sitting around, and then that one person doesn't even get anything out of the personal quest. Things like the DM telling your caster that suddenly you can't use magic on the same turn you move anymore, because in his words, "you weren't being the right kind of creative with your powers, this will make you think more outside the box".

Narrative focus and custom rules and rulings are fine by me, but I didn't come to the table to not do things or to play in a chaos sandbox. The DM is supposed to craft the experience. Sometimes, due to negligence or stupidity, it's a bad one. Fortunately for me, these extreme DM's/games are very rare.

[IShouldntBehere]

When they have NPCs pull out their genitals and describe slamming them on the table as a way of retaliating against perceived slights.

[Grey Watcher]

Relatively minor, compared to some of these others, but I have a DM who generally doesn't bother with rolling for things when there's literally no risk of failure. For things like climbing or swimming, this is fine, but it completely breaks my immersion when I ask to roll for Insight (or Sense Motive, if we're in 3.P) and he says "Oh, you don't have to, she's definitely telling the truth." I know and trust him well enough to know that this isn't railroading, but it breaks my immersion every damn time.

(Actually, one time he specifically averted this irk was a good use of it: the NPCs weren't lying, but my roll gave me a better clue about their own behind-the-scenes personal dynamics, which we could then exploit in negotiations.)

[Naanomi]

When they don't provide descriptions of obvious stuff that is important later... 'he opens the secret door behind the tapestry' 'umm... you never mentioned a tapestry we've been searching this room for a half hour'

When they don't have a good system for letting every player have a 'turn' when players are shouting over each other or stealing the spotlight

[Sabeta]

I'm DMing right now, but in the past.

1) Metagaming against our players to make sure our class abilities never have a chance to shine properly. Do you have Sentinel? Well now every enemy will never wander within your range unless they can't avoid it. Does everyone have Darkvision? It's only a matter of time before Darkness Devil Sight toting Warlock. Do you have high AC? Well I guess consider yourself ignored until all of your allies are dead, then they'll focus you down when it's easy. Oh, and of course every enemy has Expertise in Stealth because screw Passive Perception.

2) Murder DMs. This one was in 4th edition, but basically we played a rather short lived campaign where the DM gave someone a blank sheet of paper. Every now and again the sheet of paper would force A) Someone to covet the paper enough to try and murder its holder, and B) For the holder to decide the paper was worth their life. There was no limit on this ability, it didn't have any connection to the main story (it was random loot from when the rogue stole from a random house), and one night the DM decided he was bored and used the Paper to hold an impromptu deathmatch between all of the PCs. We walked out of that goblin cave with less than half of the people who went in, and nobody wanted to be around the Warforged who now held the paper.

3) Homebrewing items on a whim with absolutely no understanding of balance. This one really irks me. The Ranger has a bow which A) wraps every arrow in vines which enables it do deal 1d6 extra damage and restrains the target when hit. B) Can push foes up to 20 feet, through walls. C) Some unknown water-based effect. D) Some unknown fire based effect which probably allowed for more damage. Oh, and the Sorcerer was allowed a cloak that grants resistance to all slash and pierce damage, a ring which lets him twin any spell once per day, and a ring of spell storing. I was able to get a +1 Greatsword which had improved critical, and +1 armor. The monk was allowed a boomerang.

1 & 2 were the same DM by the way.

[IShouldntBehere]

Relatively minor, compared to some of these others, but I have a DM who generally doesn't bother with rolling for things when there's literally no risk of failure. For things like climbing or swimming, this is fine, but it completely breaks my immersion when I ask to roll for Insight (or Sense Motive, if we're in 3.P) and he says "Oh, you don't have to, she's definitely telling the truth." I know and trust him well enough to know that this isn't railroading, but it breaks my immersion every damn time.

(Actually, one time he specifically averted this irk was a good use of it: the NPCs weren't lying, but my roll gave me a better clue about their own behind-the-scenes personal dynamics, which we could then exploit in negotiations.)

You should point out there is a failure condition here. If she's teling the truth but you have some basis to think the NPC might be suspect a failure on insight just might lead you to believe an otherwise honest person is not trustworthy. This may not be strictly RAW or whatever but I find it works very well.

It's particular interesting when multiple people roll against the same person and the person who gets a 2 gets "This person is obviously being shady about something, no way they can be trusted. You're confident if you turn your back for a second it'll have a knife in it"

while the person who gets an 18 gets "The poor girl is damn nervous and clearly afraid of something. She's defiantly afraid of someone and waiting for more private circumstances before sharing more".

So on a meta level the group knows the 18 is the correct (or more correct-ish) answer, since higher results on checks are better. However the characters aren't aware of the dice. The character who has failed is just as confident in their results as the one who succeed, which can lead to some interest RP when it comes to the debate on who to trust.

[Âmesang]

When they don't provide descriptions of obvious stuff that is important later... 'he opens the secret door behind the tapestry' 'umm... you never mentioned a tapestry we've been searching this room for a half hour'
At least your referee describes something. I mean I'm not expecting every single square inch of a creature to be detailed, but I would like to hear more than just, "You see a bugbear." "You see a chaos beast." "You see a chain devil."

If it's something "common" or "obvious," like a kobold or an animated skeleton, I'd let it pass… but when it's something fairly rare and otherworldly I would like some semblance of suspense; that's why I made my hordling generator since their appearance is generated using 18 different appearance tables and the page does the work for me instead of me having to sit there and roll, thus instantly creating something like:

"A slimy and dripping, muscular, blue-purple visage appears before you, wrinkled and seamed, its spined back standing upon two short, bowed legs with webbed feet, waving a forked tail. From a wedge-shaped head adorned with a mane, resting upon no apparent neck, it sees you with two large, round blank white eyes, hears you without ears, smells you with a wide, protruding nose, and hungers for you with many small fangs. The beast reaches out with its multi-jointed arms, seeking to tear you apart with cruel, pincered hands."

I believe the Monster Manual V updated 3rd Edition monster identifying Knowledge checks as being CR+10 instead of HD+10, and since a lot of typically recognizable monsters have CRs of less than 1, rounding down produces a base Knowledge DC of 10 which would be "common knowledge." Thus, even the fighter with no ranks in Knowledge [religion] could recognize an animated human skeleton (and may recognized animated monstrous skeletons as being animated skeletons, but not necessarily recognizing the originating creature).

……well that was a bit of a tangent. :smalltongue:

[Telok]

The DM changes what skills do based on your class. Not on backstory, not on character, nor race or proficency. Class. Specifically his concept of the character's class.

You picked the barbarian class to represent a gladiator with an anger management problem who has never been out of the city before? Your history check gets you stuff about viking legends that your "tribal elders" told you, not the history of the grand arena that you fought in.

[Foxhound438]

one DM ran a campaign in which every NPC was "that guy" (you know, the rogue who steals from the party). I freed one NPC after they promised to pay me back, I rolled something like a 22 on insight and the guy wasn't lying, but then when it came time for the bill to come to, he changes his mind and immortal-town-guards-on-his-side-ex-machina later I was effectively screwed.

[JAL_1138]

When they don't provide descriptions of obvious stuff that is important later... 'he opens the secret door behind the tapestry' 'umm... you never mentioned a tapestry we've been searching this room for a half hour'


Argh, yeah. I do this from time to time by accident, because my short-term memory is slightly rubbish, and while I normally don't much like retconning, I will retcon and/or rewind whenever I do this. It's not fair to the players to spring something on them because I derped and forgot to give a detail that would have definitely changed their course of action, especially if it's something that any character with functioning eyeballs would have noticed.

The players can meta this to heck and back, and can figure out there had been an illusion they hadn't made the DC of or that something else weird is going on if I don't retcon, but meh. I'd rather have that happen than penalize them for something I screwed up.

[The1exile]

I love my GM, and she creates fascinating worlds with intriguing plots, but there is one thing that irks me: her inability to enforce pace on combat sessions.

When we started, the game was a pickup because we didn't have a reliable player for a pathfinder campaign so we'd play it on our off days. But without that player, we absolutely tore through encounters. Rare was the time when a players turn took more than a minute and the action was exciting and fast-paced. But now - and this is partly a function of being higher level, with more options - we've picked up two more players, it's become our regular game, and it feels like instead of deciding whether and what to attack or cast in the space between turns, peopl have to be brought up to date on what happened in the previous round and then have a party discussion about what the best course of action is.

[Dr. Cliché]

This is something of a minor gripe, but one DM does have a tendency to use a few too many NPCs in his fights (not helped by our party being quite large to begin with).

It just gets a little hard to stay invested when I take my turn and can then go make a sandwich before it comes round again. :smalltongue:

[xanderh]

Mine aren't as bad as some of the others here, but this guy was bad enough as both player and DM that we no longer play with him at all. I got a bad feeling about playing in his games pretty early on.

First thing was when I was downed with my Fighter, and rolled a 1 on my first death save. His response was asking "did you die?!". The problem wasn't the question, but that he asked it gleefully. It felt like he wanted my character to die.

Secondly, he modified creatures with no regard for what it said to the challenge. He tripled the HP of an animated armor, and didn't even bother to check what the new challenge rating was, and thought it would be the same.

Thirdly, when a player had to leave early, he dealt with that by having the above mentioned animated armor throw his animated sword at the player's character, instantly dropping him to 0 HP. Not even stable, which meant we had to deal with an encounter that was way too difficult, with one character less (the wizard), and had to make sure he didn't fail all of his death saves.

Fourthly, denying valid tactics by the rules, just because they are highly effective. I grappled the animated armor in question, and shoved it prone, which meant that it had to either be unable to hit me, or waste a round on getting me off it, which meant I would do the same on my next turn. He made it immune to being prone on a whim.

Oh, and all of this happened in the same session, during the same encounter. My character ended up dying, for the above reasons and because he thought that crits also doubled the non-dice damage.

He also put an amtimagic field in the back room of a tavern where illegal gambling took place. Apparently, these guys could afford to have 8th level spells cast to prevent cheating.

The only gripe I have about a different DM is how he sometimes pauses between two descriptions to look something up. It's a moment if completely dead air, because we're waiting on him and he's not even making stalling sounds like "uhh" or "uhm".

[Knaight]

Completely ignores all modifiers, and bases the entire game on what is showing on the dice with no consideration for anything else.
Runs all dungeon crawls, all the time.

[Inchoroi]

"Cutscenes", spotlight hogging NPCs, and badly homebrewed creatures.


When they don't provide descriptions of obvious stuff that is important later... 'he opens the secret door behind the tapestry' 'umm... you never mentioned a tapestry we've been searching this room for a half hour'

When they don't have a good system for letting every player have a 'turn' when players are shouting over each other or stealing the spotlight

Oh, god, the flashbacks. This is my current DM, and its all I can do not to yell at him about prep!



First thing was when I was downed with my Fighter, and rolled a 1 on my first death save. His response was asking "did you die?!". The problem wasn't the question, but that he asked it gleefully. It felt like he wanted my character to die.

The rest of these are bad, but this one isn't that bad; as a DM, I like to display a bit of bloodthirstiness when it comes to my players. In reality, it's only a farce on my part, because I want them to succeed and they know that, thankfully, but they also know that they're never safe, because I will play monsters and NPCs exactly as their stats and personality dictate--if this means they attack a downed foe, so be it.

Just ask my party's cleric and fighter about piranha swarms in flooded tunnels.

[Toofey]

1) fudge movement and swarm my character. He gets frustraited that I use spirit guardians so he has creatures cover ground and get to me in a round which clearly could not (last session a creature with a 40 move made it through 10' of evards black tentacles, cross 15 feet of clear ground, then made it to me behind my 15' of spirit guardians)

2) force people to 'confirm' critical hits, gaining nothing for doing so but losing the critical if they don't.

[mephnick]

2) force people to 'confirm' critical hits, gaining nothing for doing so but losing the critical if they don't.

It's a shame when DM's keep things out of tradition instead of recognizing horrible mechanics for what they are.

Crit confirms are the lamest anti-fun rule.

[Cozzer]

Wants to create/use complex enemies with lots of spells or powers, but has very little free time, so he doesn't plan how to use them which results in enemy turns taking forever while chooses which of the spells or powers they use and then has to check how they actually work. His battles are definitely a "perfect is the enemy of good" situation. :smalltongue:

Sometimes goes too far with setting a gloomy/dark atmosphere for the story, pushing us from "we need to do everything we can to deal with this menace" to "well, everything we can would still not enough, so I guess we'll half-heartedly do it while waiting for a deus-ex-machina". And then we don't actually need a deus-ex-machina, since it turns out things weren't as bad as they seemed.

(He's a pretty good DM, so this is more of a "even competent DMs have bad quirks" post than a "oh god he's so terrible" post.)

[Lonely Tylenol]

Suggesting the players do things they didn't think of. Like, talk to an NPC about some pretty helpful thing we didn't think of the first time before we leave town (as we were leaving). Yeah, knowing there's a topographical map of the area we're going to in the back of the book she gave us is useful, but we didn't think to ask in-character, we only know to do so now because of DM meta-knowledge, and now we have to backtrack and break the pace of the game right off the bat.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Botches/fumbles/whatever you want to call "you rolled as badly as is possible, so I shall now narrate something humiliating happening to you." I mean, really any narration that's "you failed in a humiliating fashion" is bad, but fumbles bring out the worst in even good GMs. Nothing shatters my mood or my image of my character as a competent, bad*** hero like being told I accidentally smack myself in the face. (When I GM I make an active effort to narrate failure as due to external circumstances-- "you try to swing across to the other ship but the rope breaks, and you land with a roll and a muttered curse" instead of "you lose your grip and fall flat on your face.")


It's a shame when DM's keep things out of tradition instead of recognizing horrible mechanics for what they are.

Crit confirms are the lamest anti-fun rule.
And it's not even like 5e crits are useful, outside a few specific classes/builds.

[Pex]

Your party comes across a large treasure hoard that for whatever reason you cannot take with you at that moment. How coincidentally inconvenient. The party intends to go back for it when the current adventure hook is finished and have time to figure out how to take it. The party can never get back to it for whatever reason. Similarly, the party comes across a very valuable item they can take with them, worth at least 10,000 gp. The party is rich. The item will be the necessary key to something, destroyed or otherwise unrecoverable once used.

[mgshamster]

Botches/fumbles/whatever you want to call "you rolled as badly as is possible, so I shall now narrate something humiliating happening to you." I mean, really any narration that's "you failed in a humiliating fashion" is bad, but fumbles bring out the worst in even good GMs. Nothing shatters my mood or my image of my character as a competent, bad*** hero like being told I accidentally smack myself in the face. (When I GM I make an active effort to narrate failure as due to external circumstances-- "you try to swing across to the other ship but the rope breaks, and you land with a roll and a muttered curse" instead of "you lose your grip and fall flat on your face.")

In general I can't stand criticle fumble tables. I had one game that was extremely low magic and we each got one unique magic item that grew in power as our characters leveled. I lost it on a nat 1 and a fumble table, didn't get a new one for several levels (which was several months in real time).

Since we were primarily fighting demons in that campaign (yes, a low magic campaign where you fight demons), and in 2e demons were completely immune to non-magical weapons, it made my character nearly useless in combat for a long time.

[Mith]

Your party comes across a large treasure hoard that for whatever reason you cannot take with you at that moment. How coincidentally inconvenient. The party intends to go back for it when the current adventure hook is finished and have time to figure out how to take it. The party can never get back to it for whatever reason. Similarly, the party comes across a very valuable item they can take with them, worth at least 10,000 gp. The party is rich. The item will be the necessary key to something, destroyed or otherwise unrecoverable once used.

Depending on the context, I am OK with the destruction of the item. As for the others, that's why one shouldn't give out such large hoards.

[Dr. Cliché]

Botches/fumbles/whatever you want to call "you rolled as badly as is possible, so I shall now narrate something humiliating happening to you." I mean, really any narration that's "you failed in a humiliating fashion" is bad, but fumbles bring out the worst in even good GMs. Nothing shatters my mood or my image of my character as a competent, bad*** hero like being told I accidentally smack myself in the face.

Out of interest, is it the random aspect that annoys you (as in, you didn't do anything wrong, you just happened to roll a 1) or humiliation aspect?


(When I GM I make an active effort to narrate failure as due to external circumstances-- "you try to swing across to the other ship but the rope breaks, and you land with a roll and a muttered curse" instead of "you lose your grip and fall flat on your face.")

Just want to say that I like that idea (assuming the attempted course of action wasn't idiotic :smallwink:), and I think I'll use it in future games.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Out of interest, is it the random aspect that annoys you (as in, you didn't do anything wrong, you just happened to roll a 1) or humiliation aspect?
Mostly it's the humiliation, I think. I'm fine with the failure, I just don't want it treated as an excuse to make my character look like an incompetent idiot.

[gfishfunk]

Mostly it's the humiliation, I think. I'm fine with the failure, I just don't want it treated as an excuse to make my character look like an incompetent idiot.

This is a great reason to ask the player to narrate the failure. And then restate that it is a failure, you cannot narrate it into a success.

[Potato_Priest]

This is a great reason to ask the player to narrate the failure. And then restate that it is a failure, you cannot narrate it into a success.

Seems like a good way to do things. I could enjoy narrating my failures, I think.

Some irksome things that have happened to me:

player hatred:
When DMs hate their players, the results are generally pretty nasty. For example, I broke my paladin oath(devotion) and was trying to win penance so that I could take the oath of the ancients. I was prevented from doing so and made permanently an oath-breaker because a different member of the party stepped on a flower, which the DM interpreted as my failure to protect beauty. In another instance with this same DM, I was trying to resist arrest by 20 or so guards. On my person, clearly visible, I had a sword hilt which could be activated to create a blade made of fire and a regular sword. None of the guards had ever seen me use the fire hilt, and none of them could have learned about it a different way, yet when they went to disarm me, they immediately lept for the hilt rather than the regular sword.

Railroadage: By railroadage I mean an encounter that is meant to be unbeatable. To a certain extent this is acceptable, and often necessary, but not in a ridiculous way. This is a story from a different DM, and, to his credit, he was an emergency appointment. Anyways, the party was told by a local mob boss to meet him under a certain bridge at midnight. We decided to go see where the bridge was, found it, and then some of the players went back into town to get drunk. The rogue and I stayed behind to scope out the area. I walked under the bridge, and all narrative for me ended. The rogue couldn't see me, so he followed me under it, thinking there might be a portal, and narrative ended for him as well. Anyways, when the rest of the party came back, they discovered the same thing about the bridge by having one person go under. The remaining 3 people all hitched together about 400 feet of rope and one of them went under the bridge. There was a giant pit. They all climbed down the rope, to the extent that they could go, and found nothing but more pit. More meta thinking occurred, and they all let go. Later we found out that the fall had knocked us unconscious with no hit point loss, and we woke up bound and gagged by ogres with all our stuff lost. The hilarious thing is this: when people started whining about having lost their stuff, the DM said that it wouldn't have happened if they had played more cautiously! This is stupid because a, there was absolutely no indication that the bridge was a trap, and any normal person might have easily walked under it, and b, Half the party did play it absolutely cautiously, by rappelling into the pit, but the DM gave them no indication of how to proceed with caution, so they were forced to jump.

[JackPhoenix]

It's a shame when DM's keep things out of tradition instead of recognizing horrible mechanics for what they are.

Crit confirms are the lamest anti-fun rule.

I admit, I've asked my player for crit confirmation roll last session. It wasn't intended, I just haven't seen 20 rolled for so long I've forgot how this edition handles crits :smallbiggrin:

Oh, and thing my GM does that irks me as a player: s/he doesn't exist. #eternalGM

[MrStabby]

Some of the things on this list are pretty terrible, some not so bad. The ones that interest me are the ones in between.

For example in the OP the idea of not aiming spells at PCs that can resist them. Sometimes I think this is good, sometimes bad. I think the issue is around whether it is something the enemy can see or not. Not aiming a fire spell at a red dragonborn actually seems pretty reasonable. Likewise not throwing a poison attack at a dwarf. When DMing I don't respond to PCs AC when determining where attacks will be directed but I will respond to armour type. The more soft bits you have showing the more arrows will be aimed at you (to be fair if a player uses an illusion of armour the enemies will treat is as real till they interact with it).

Anyway - things that annoy me:

1) White room encounters. Sometimes you do just fight. You go into a room and each side rolls initiative. I find it more interesting when ne side ambushes another, one side has an aim beyond killing the other, there are circumstances that change priorities or tactics... "You enter a 30ft by 40ft room and see 4 orcs. They reach for their weapons; roll for initiative".

2) Useless skills/abilities. I am going to cite myself here as a problem. Proficient in the use of land vehicles. Medicine skill. Performance skill. Among all of these i think I have only asked for two checks in the whole current campaign. Either I should have warned people up-front they wouldn't be useful (campaign evolves so couldn't guess) or should have found a way to make them useful (one of the checks came from designating a balista as a land vehicle). It's something I need to improve.

3) Not the DMs fault - but still annoying: getting magic items you don't want. Your sorcerer wants to multiclass into ranger and is beginning that RP journey and the DM is very generous - but your character discovers items great for an archetypal sorcerer rather than the concept you are heading towards.

[Shimi43]

Getting bogged down with just numbers and not enough roleplaying

[Grod_The_Giant]

Getting bogged down with just numbers and not enough roleplaying
Getting sucked into roleplaying and not playing enough attention to the numbers (ie, my character having more social/investigative/whatever skills than me)

[mgshamster]

Having a DMPC with the group that is custom designed for the adventure at hand. Has all the right skills, abilities, and even a custom background that just happens to grant advantage against the primary attacks of the main monsters in the adventure.

[mephnick]

2) Useless skills/abilities. I am going to cite myself here as a problem. Proficient in the use of land vehicles. Medicine skill. Performance skill. Among all of these i think I have only asked for two checks in the whole current campaign.

More than I have. I don't sweat it. Those abilities are just bad design because either the majority of games would never use them (land vehicles, performance) or magic/class abilities make them redundant (medicine). Pretty sure performance is only in there for tradition since most bard type stuff has been divorced from music/art in 5e. I had to create a whole injury system just to make medicine relevant.

[furby076]

I love my GM, and she creates fascinating worlds with intriguing plots, but there is one thing that irks me: her inability to enforce pace on combat sessions.

When we started, the game was a pickup because we didn't have a reliable player for a pathfinder campaign so we'd play it on our off days. But without that player, we absolutely tore through encounters. Rare was the time when a players turn took more than a minute and the action was exciting and fast-paced. But now - and this is partly a function of being higher level, with more options - we've picked up two more players, it's become our regular game, and it feels like instead of deciding whether and what to attack or cast in the space between turns, peopl have to be brought up to date on what happened in the previous round and then have a party discussion about what the best course of action is.

My dm counts to 5, then action or lose it. Only exception is if there is misunderstanding of rule that is important and without clarity prevents the action from happening. So tell your dm to ciunt to 10. To be fair, however, high lvl dnd is very slow. I've never been in a group that was able to solve it, and I've been in some great groups.

Pet peeve of dm:
1. All enemies know your teams str and weakness, but no matter what you do, they are a mystery.... oh, and your entire team has persistent mind blank (pathfinder )
2. Dm has all the enemies ready with precasted spells, potions, etc. This is even when surprise teleporting in....or in one case, we transformed to earth elementals and burrowed our way in, then hung out for 1 hour, and then attacked. They were still prepped
3. DM allowing players to screw with other team members. But u cant retaliate

[2D8HP]

Empty Room Worlds and Railroads (sometimes it's both, as when as soon as you leave the tracks the "world" becomes an empty room).

Actually come to think about it, almost any time spent too long in a nobles or a royals court becomes "empty room" or "railroad", keep the adventures out of the palace, and in the dungeon, wilderness, cult temples, "mean" streets, or assassins and thieves guildhalls please!

Recent "locked into lameness" "adventures" have involved being invited to some mucky-muck mansion with mostly mute NPC's (lame!), and being forced to fight in an arena for an audience of bigwigs with magical healing provided to drive home how pointless the combat is (double lame!!).

Awesome! adventures on the other hand involve stuff like an escape from the bad guys with lots of suspenseful dice rolls to avoid capture (basically the "Warriors" or "Escape from New York" films).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/TheWarriors_1979_Movie_Poster.jpg/220px-TheWarriors_1979_Movie_Poster.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4b/EscapefromNYposter.jpg/220px-EscapefromNYposter.jpg

[Sabeta]

Having a DMPC with the group that is custom designed for the adventure at hand. Has all the right skills, abilities, and even a custom background that just happens to grant advantage against the primary attacks of the main monsters in the adventure.

One of my groups had one of those. I was playing a Chaotic Evil character who rarely meant what I said. When I went and used my rope to tie up a kobold the DMPC asked what I was doing with it. I told him I intended to keep it as a pet. My real intention was to force it ahead of us and trigger traps (none of us were particularly stealthy nor good at finding them). The DM decided he didn't want me to have a screaming monster in his dungeon, so the DMPC Killed it. I promptly shoved the DMPC into a nearby hallway (where I was just about to send the kobold), and wouldn't you know it he triggers a monster trap and ends up eating 3 surprise attacks and dies.

None of the other PCs saw it happen, so when questioned about it I said he wanted to check for traps and walked in on his own. We never had a DMPC again after that.

[2D8HP]

....We never had a DMPC again after that.I know I should be appalled by the evilness, but I'm too enchanted by the AWESOME!

[tsotate]

DMs that enforce six second real-time rounds, while playing Theatre of the Mind and counting clarifying questions about where things are against your six seconds.

[RakiReborn]

After making up extra restrictions and sub-optimal choices because of high rills for stats, so the other players wouldnt feel outshined, my build finally came off the ground when the other party members got better. That was the moment the DM decided to do 4 sessions (once every 2-3 weeks) where my build was useless (elemental damage focused against Friends). Had about two months where I was completely useless the moment I started to do what i wanted to.
When trying to roleplay class/feat choices for my character (researching how to ignore resistance after encountering someone with elemental adept) giving me no chance to actually do do. Took me about three months real time.
Giving NO downtime whatsoever, while giving us a mansion with Rooms to practice our tool proficiencies. We got the mansion about half a year ago.
Doing nothing with out backstories, but require to write them all out.
Accepting no suggestions or requests for what encounter in the sessions, but punishing/railroading when we try to go somewhere interesting for our characters rp-wise that wasn't the plan.
Doing about 80% of the session about talking and other non-combat stuff, and then ruin everything by sending in dragons (didnt mind the dragons, but the non-combat stuff i tried so hard to do well was instantly useless...)
Though this is all with the same DM, het is a good friend of mine and still learning, so I endure. It gets better and he had other good qualities, but sometimes it ennoyes the hell out of me...

[Naanomi]

Here is one that has ups and downs to it but annoys me: DMs who want to avoid all social skills for 'roleplaying'... doesn't matter my character has 20 Charisma and expertise in persuasion, I'd better be able personally to convince the DM... and let's leave aside his asking to actually sing to Perform

[Arcangel4774]

2) Useless skills/abilities. I am going to cite myself here as a problem. Proficient in the use of land vehicles. Medicine skill. Performance skill. Among all of these i think I have only asked for two checks in the whole current campaign. Either I should have warned people up-front they wouldn't be useful (campaign evolves so couldn't guess) or should have found a way to make them useful (one of the checks came from designating a balista as a land vehicle). It's something I need to improve.

My DM uses medicine to be able to check hlw much hit points an enemy has, or more accurately just get an idea of how sturdy somebody is.

[Steel Mirror]

In one of my games I played some time ago, I had a GM who insisted that we only had a very limited amount of time to decide our action each turn, and then would just skip a player if they took longer than the mandated 6 seconds (in practice it ended up being more than 6 seconds, because honestly you can't even describe a lot of actions in that time, but it was really short). To add insult to injury, if we tried an action that turned out to be impossible due to some intricacy of the map that was next to impossible to see given the ludicrously short timeframe to make a decision, we'd also lose a turn.

The barbarian at one point declared she was charging into the thick of a group of enemies and attacking, and it turned out that she had 5 feet of movement too little (and that's hard to tell on a battlemat when you have about 3 seconds to count squares). So instead of letting her charge a nearer enemy, the GM told her that she ran right out into the middle of the battlefield and then stood there, so of course the following round she got mobbed by enemies and seriously injured.

In a different fight my archer decided to shoot at the evil boss dude, but I hadn't noticed that there was a tree between me and him that just barely intersected with the flight path of my bow shots. Again, hard to see and measure when we're all making decisions as fast as possible. So instead of being able to retarget, the GM ruled that the tree provided full cover and my guy just pointlessly filled the trunk with arrows to try to hit an enemy that apparently wasn't even in his line of sight.

My brother and I were so frustrated by that experience that it put us off of gaming for months.

[Dr. Cliché]

One of my groups had one of those. I was playing a Chaotic Evil character who rarely meant what I said. When I went and used my rope to tie up a kobold the DMPC asked what I was doing with it. I told him I intended to keep it as a pet. My real intention was to force it ahead of us and trigger traps (none of us were particularly stealthy nor good at finding them). The DM decided he didn't want me to have a screaming monster in his dungeon, so the DMPC Killed it. I promptly shoved the DMPC into a nearby hallway (where I was just about to send the kobold), and wouldn't you know it he triggers a monster trap and ends up eating 3 surprise attacks and dies.

None of the other PCs saw it happen, so when questioned about it I said he wanted to check for traps and walked in on his own. We never had a DMPC again after that.

Evil characters have all the fun. :smallwink:

[Cozzer]

Oh God, that "six real-time seconds" thing really is horrible. Especially since it's the GM's fault for not having been able to effectively convey important informations to the players before their six-seconds turn begin. Or for having chosen a system with rules that are too complex to even think about actually deciding an action in six seconds. That would be an "instantly walk away from the campaign" deal for me too.

[tsotate]

Oh God, that "six real-time seconds" thing really is horrible. Especially since it's the GM's fault for not having been able to effectively convey important informations to the players before their six-seconds turn begin. Or for having chosen a system with rules that are too complex to even think about actually deciding an action in six seconds. That would be an "instantly walk away from the campaign" deal for me too.
What made it even worse was that he was running a 2e game where rounds are actually a full minute. :P

[. Shadowblade .]

- when I am not allowed to play official race or class I want
- when he nerfs me my spell because according his change of rules it would allow me to kill his monster

[pwykersotz]

- when I am not allowed to play official race or class I want

Heh, you reminded me of The Gamers: Dorkness Rising with this guy:

http://img1.izismile.com/img/img6/20130901/1000/sore_loser_01.gif

(GIF not from movie, but hilarious anyway)

[Spellbreaker26]

- when I am not allowed to play official race or class I want
- when he nerfs me my spell because according his change of rules it would allow me to kill his monster

The first one makes sense if it's a particular setting that doesn't have some races.

The second is totally unfair though, especially if he doesn't make it clear at the start of the campaign.

[Quoxis]

- when I am not allowed to play official race or class I want

Official as in "in the phb/ee/scag/volo books" or official as in UA, or official as in "i've read about this totally balanced demigod race that gets +2 on every ability and levels twice as fast on dandwiki"?

[lonewulf]

Here is one that has ups and downs to it but annoys me: DMs who want to avoid all social skills for 'roleplaying'... doesn't matter my character has 20 Charisma and expertise in persuasion, I'd better be able personally to convince the DM... and let's leave aside his asking to actually sing to Perform

This. So much this. I play D&D to (most of the time) make characters that are good at the things im bad at. Im socially inept so I made a high-charisma smooth-talker for a session and boy was that USELESS....because my Charisma and skills were ignored in favor of ME, THE PLAYER, having to do the talking, shmoozing and convincing....which I, The Player, am terrible at and therefore failed almost every challenge. One of the worst experiences ive ever had with D&D. And the main reason I refuse to play a party face ever again.

[Quoxis]

This. So much this. I play D&D to (most of the time) make characters that are good at the things im bad at. Im socially inept so I made a high-charisma smooth-talker for a session and boy was that USELESS....because my Charisma and skills were ignored in favor of ME, THE PLAYER, having to do the talking, shmoozing and convincing....which I, The Player, am terrible at and therefore failed almost every challenge. One of the worst experiences ive ever had with D&D. And the main reason I refuse to play a party face ever again.

I'm split about this.
On one side, you should be able to feel overpowered in what your character is good in. Dex 20 and stealth proficiency makes your character near invisible, whether you can do the same irl or are a tetraplegic, so using your other ingame skills shouldn't be dependant on your actual ones.
On the other side, having a player just say "i charm the guard. I tell him to do whatever i want" is a tiny bit anticlimactic. A bit of a plan and realistic expectations should be expected from a player (Not to say you don't have that, just generally speaking).

[Spellbreaker26]

I'm split about this.
On one side, you should be able to feel overpowered in what your character is good in. Dex 20 and stealth proficiency makes your character near invisible, whether you can do the same irl or are a tetraplegic, so using your other ingame skills shouldn't be dependant on your actual ones.
On the other side, having a player just say "i charm the guard. I tell him to do whatever i want" is a tiny bit anticlimactic. A bit of a plan and realistic expectations should be expected from a player (Not to say you don't have that, just generally speaking).

The player should have to say "something" but the problem with the realism thing is that it requires the DM and the player to have similar expectations of what would be persuasive.
In real life the player would have a lot more information about the mark that the DM just can't give him, so the player actually has to be more persuasive in the game than would be required. One of my most aggravating experiences was in a Star Wars RPG where I made a "face" character (basically a space bureaucrat) but I was never allowed to roll despite having high skills in negotiation because the DM thought that my approach was too smarmy. He said that I should tailor my approach to each person, not realizing that that meant having to try and guess what sort of character the DM was creating and that it was simply introducing a higher level of meta-gaming than simply stating my demands and rolling. What's ironic is that he was totally cool with it in DnD, and I actually have a few good stories of getting myself out of situations with lies.

[lonewulf]

I'm split about this.
On one side, you should be able to feel overpowered in what your character is good in. Dex 20 and stealth proficiency makes your character near invisible, whether you can do the same irl or are a tetraplegic, so using your other ingame skills shouldn't be dependant on your actual ones.
On the other side, having a player just say "i charm the guard. I tell him to do whatever i want" is a tiny bit anticlimactic. A bit of a plan and realistic expectations should be expected from a player (Not to say you don't have that, just generally speaking).

Ive played with DM's that will ask what kind of approach will i use when socializing an NPC and im fine with that. I can say "i'll attempt to charm their pants off using flattery and self-deprecation" and that is good enough. They'll adjust DC's accordingly and rolls happen.

But then ive had DM's say "no, no, no, what EXACTLY are you saying to him/her" and that kills it for me. I cant ACTUALLY leap into the air and land a critical blow with a greataxe so why should i have to be expected to ACTUALLY charm the pants off the guard/DM? I, personally, dislike it but to each their own i suppose.

[pwykersotz]

This. So much this. I play D&D to (most of the time) make characters that are good at the things im bad at. Im socially inept so I made a high-charisma smooth-talker for a session and boy was that USELESS....because my Charisma and skills were ignored in favor of ME, THE PLAYER, having to do the talking, shmoozing and convincing....which I, The Player, am terrible at and therefore failed almost every challenge. One of the worst experiences ive ever had with D&D. And the main reason I refuse to play a party face ever again.

I'm like this, but as a player, I want that opportunity to try to expand without being judged on personal ability. That's why all I ask for as GM is a best effort. You can stutter and stammer and say the wrong thing at the wrong time or have the most golden tongue in the world, but it's all filtered through that die roll. But there are important nuances that everyone can play off of in terms of how you decide to go about things that get ignored when you say "I persuade the guard." *roll* "Does an 18 work?"

And of course, if a player just wants to not do it because they're not comfortable with it (it happened once), then that's fine. I can invent a narrative on the fly that matches the roll. I just find that less fun overall.

[ko_sct]

I've played under a DM that was really stringy when it came to description. You basically had to play 20 questions to learn anything that was happening.

Actual exemple:
I was exploring a dark basement and had casted light to make sure there wasnt anything hiding.
DM: *Roll some dice* you take 12 point of dmg.
Me: *wait a moment for him to continue*... Errr, do I know I took dmg ?
DM: Of course you do, why wouldnt you know ?
Me; I don't know, maybe it was some kind of weird psychic dmg ? Do i know the type ? where it come from ? Is it physical or magical ?
DM: it's physical slashing dmg, it came from behind you on your right.
Me:... ok, well i look behind me, ready curse whoever attacked me.
DM: You see a creature standing behind you who wasn't there a second ago, he's holding a sword.
Me: What does he look like ? Is it humanoid-shaped ? Is it wearing some kind of armor ?
DM: *describe some sort of undead*


Pretty much every fight we had or room we searched we had to ask sooo many questions to get really basic information. That and he hated repeating information no matter what. Once an NPC wouldn't tell us anything about a stone we found even though it was supposedly super important because he said we should already know. It took nearly 20 minute before he could be convinced to repeat what the stone was, then it turned out we couldn't figure it out because he had described it being a different color the first time (2 players had noted it down).

[mephnick]

- when I am not allowed to play official race or class I want


If it's a homebrew setting that's totally fair.

You can't play a tabaxi if they don't exist..

[lonewulf]

If it's a homebrew setting that's totally fair.

You can't play a tabaxi if they don't exist..

Im ok with things like this but when a DM doesnt tell you what is allowed in their homebrewed game so you make up a tiefling warlock and have him ready for game day and THEN the DM looks at your sheet and says "there are no tieflings in my world, you have to change this"....hell naw, if a PHB race or class or whatever isnt allowed then the group should have been told that.

Not that this has ever happened to me. Only DM ive ever had that banned anything official told us all immediately that Forgotten Realms material wasnt allowed (3.5).

[Millface]

I'll admit, I'm incredibly picky when it comes to DMs, which is why I typically AM the DM.

I need my DM to care about the back story and motivations of every character in the party, if it's lacking, nurture that with some one on one time outside the game, don't just let someone play a cardboard cuttout. You can't force it, but it's not that hard to find a way to make it interesting for him/her to add some depth. When they do, acknowledge it by working it into your overarching plot. Make their backstory and personalities specifically useful, and spread that love evenly among your players.

I need a DM who's not afraid to let the PCs change the course of the world. As a player, there's nothing more gratifying when you play for many years than seeing retired PCs in places of power, consistent and interesting NPCs that are always where they should be in the world and appear for separate sets of characters, things like that. If the group starts a settlement in one campaign, it's in the world during the next. Let players themselves see the mark they're making in the world with their heroes, reward them for caring and being creative.

DMPCs are the worst. Sometimes, maybe once or twice a campaign, it's ok to have the party build a report with an NPC, get them invested, and then have that NPC help out just for the awe factor. (Had a fizban type wizard NPC once that, for two entire campaigns, would come in and out of the story and he was always this bumbling yet endearing idiot. In the finale of that second campaign, when things were looking very grim, I finally revealed that Gingy the half-wit wizard was, in fact, Gingaxis the Eternal, chosen of Bahamut. Everyone at the table was in awe when I described it (one player jumped up with the biggest smile shouting "I KNEW IT" The trick is, you give them their moment, and then it's done, and almost never in actual combat. The players should be the heroes of that.

Honestly, any DM who handles the above poorly irks me, I'd rather just do it myself. Yes, I realize how blatantly cocky I sound :P

[Naanomi]

The only time a DMPC has ever worked out well for me was when it happened organically... we rescued this goat-man in a dungeon and he sort of just 'joined the party' on his own after traveling around with us for a while. A DMPC designed to be such has never worked out well that I've seen

[Maxilian]

This Thread made me feel uncomfortable, in the end, what if my players share some of those opinions and for some reason, they don't share it with me :smalleek:

[Millface]

The only time a DMPC has ever worked out well for me was when it happened organically... we rescued this goat-man in a dungeon and he sort of just 'joined the party' on his own after traveling around with us for a while. A DMPC designed to be such has never worked out well that I've seen

I think this is largely because of the tendency DMs have to showboat.

I have NPCs that I showboat with, I'll admit, but never in combat and never to overshadow the party or force them into something. Largely, I get away with this because most of my important NPCs are old PCs that have retired. Every player and their mother wants to see their old friend that they took through hell and back described a few years later in all their glory.

[gfishfunk]

I provide the occasional DMPC.... But it is always more like a combat feature. "You can call on it as a bonus action for healing" or whatever. Otherwise, does nothing but answers questions when the party actually asks.

[Maxilian]

The only time a DMPC has ever worked out well for me was when it happened organically... we rescued this goat-man in a dungeon and he sort of just 'joined the party' on his own after traveling around with us for a while. A DMPC designed to be such has never worked out well that I've seen

I think those types of DMPC are more NPC than a DMPC.

[Flashy]

Mostly it's the humiliation, I think. I'm fine with the failure, I just don't want it treated as an excuse to make my character look like an incompetent idiot.

Yeah, the only good fumble rules I've ever come across are the shadowrun 4e glitch rules. The way they emphasize that a glitch is supposed to be "an interesting complication arises" rather than "the character fails like a dork" actually adds something to the gameplay.

[pwykersotz]

This Thread made me feel uncomfortable, in the end, what if my players share some of those opinions and for some reason, they don't share it with me :smalleek:

I wouldn't worry about it. If you ask for feedback and they don't say these things and they still keep coming to your table, it's most likely fine. In fact, that you're worried at all is probably proof that you do a solid job.

If you're still concerned about it, just ask them point blank for constructive criticism; to focus on the things which could use improvement. I've always had good luck with those methods.

[. Shadowblade .]

The first one makes sense if it's a particular setting that doesn't have some races.

The second is totally unfair though, especially if he doesn't make it clear at the start of the campaign.

no problem here


Official as in "in the phb/ee/scag/volo books" or official as in UA, or official as in "i've read about this totally balanced demigod race that gets +2 on every ability and levels twice as fast on dandwiki"?

Official as "in the official books: phb/dmg/ee/scag/volo books". I understand that UA stuff needs DM's approval as it is not official, yet.
Never tried to get approval for the homebrew races/classes - those can be unbalanced so I dont count with homebrew stuff when creating my character to not waste my & DM's time.


If it's a homebrew setting that's totally fair.

You can't play a tabaxi if they don't exist..

no problem here

[ZX6Rob]

I'll tell you what really grinds my gears. A DM that has no consistent tone or sense of verisimilitude.

I guess I like my games a little more on the serious side, because I enjoy a long-running, multiple-session campaign where the stakes become clearer and clearer for the players, and there is a real sense of progress and urgency. I tell you what, though, I really dislike the "anything goes, it's D&D!!!" philosophy that I see at a lot of tables.

Really, it comes down to the fact that no small number of DMs are really, really bad at understanding why their players are doing certain things, and then feeling like every action, regardless of how improbable its outcome may be, should call for a roll, because "you might get a 20!" I hate playing in games like this. I hate it so much. And it really, really irks me that so many new players get this kind of introduction to the game with inexperienced DMs.

"You are attacked by a bloodthirsty gnoll, ravaged by hunger, as it leaps at you from the bushes! Roll initiative!"
"I'm a bard, so I roll to convince it not to attack me! NATURAL 20!"
"The gnoll drops its weapon and instantly tries to make out with you!"

or,

"I punch the door in frustration. 20!"
"I don't know what you were rolling for, but it's a 20, so the door flies off its hinges, launches into orbit, and lands with the force of an atomic detonation in a small, peaceful village of gnomes! Their dying screams would be tragic, but since they're pitch-shifted an octave higher due to their small size, it is instead hilarious*"

(*"Hilarious" here meaning, "Funny, I suppose, if you're still the kind of person that forwards emails containing some combination of the words 'monkey', 'cheese' and 'weasel'")

or,

"I attack the goblin with my sword. Oh, no, natural 1!"
"You miss so hard that you fall forward on your sword, impaling yourself through the gut! Your sword breaks, and is no longer usable! Also, the creature fighting you gains 10 hit points back due to its morale being boosted by your clumsy mistake! Also, you land on your head and get a concussion and permanently have an Intelligence of 3 from here on. Also, even if you are magically healed of the wound caused by the sharp piece of metal stuck in your torso, because you rolled a 1, from now on, you have to roll a d20 every three steps you take, and if you get less than 19, you rip a totally gross fart and everyone automatically knows it was you."

I don't want every single adventure to be grim, dark heroes in a grim past grimly fighting grim ghouls grimly conjured by a grim, dark necromancer whose dark powers are grimly gained by darkly sacrificing a grim-faced princess, but I do want the world to feel like, well, an actual world, not a Chuck Jones cartoon (mad props to Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, but their version of the American southwest is not someplace I'd set my game of heroic fantasy).

It's okay, I want to tell these DMs, to simply say that a given action doesn't work, or that something works without needing a roll, for that matter. There's nothing wrong with a 1 simply being a failure in itself -- the stakes of the challenge for which you're rolling are themselves an enforcement of the consequences of success or failure, and you don't need to make it worse or better because of a number on the die. It's fine to keep a consistent tone and feeling in your games, and you aren't "denying your players' agency" by doing so. Not every action requires a die roll, and not every 1 or 20 on the die requires something over-the-top to happen. Honestly, if there's a 1-in-10 chance of something CAH-RAY-ZEEEEEE! happening, good or bad, every time you do anything more complicated than putting one foot in front of the other, then the players don't ever get a good grasp of what their heroes are actually capable of, and it becomes impossible to make good decisions in any circumstance. That's how you rob players of agency -- by making their choices arbitrary and meaningless.

I just want DMs that care about tone, is all. I don't mind a bit of slapstick or silliness, but I don't want to try to fast-talk a guard to let my sorcerer by him, end up rolling a 1 on an easy diplomacy check, and "accidentally" end up casting a fireball spell and incinerating him and everyone around him. That's not funny, and it's not fun. It's just random.

[pwykersotz]

I just want DMs that care about tone, is all. I don't mind a bit of slapstick or silliness, but I don't want to try to fast-talk a guard to let my sorcerer by him, end up rolling a 1 on an easy diplomacy check, and "accidentally" end up casting a fireball spell and incinerating him and everyone around him. That's not funny, and it's not fun. It's just random.

Testify!

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m41h294JZ11r3gh8ro1_500.gif

[Sabeta]

snip

I sometimes play humor, but in general the tone of my campaign is quite serious. I have a Wizard who keeps making very threatening gestures as he chill touches people, so any time he crit fails it then instead of missing it caresses them for no damage. I also had a play upset because the normal quest-giving NPC wasn't there when he needed her, and started talking about meta knowledge. (jokingly, of course. He was saying things like "you're an NPC, you should be here when I need you." and things like that.). I had the current quest giver retort, "That sounds like the insane ramblings of that wizard who lives on the coast."

Little do they know there really is a Wizard of the Coast living in a Lighthouse. It'll be a one-time gag encounter. They meet him, he preaches about how there are terrible gods who control our every action with magical dice, and then he'll promptly true polymorph into an Ancient Brass Dragon and fly away. I feel as though some light humor here and there helps to draw players out of seriousness for a moment to give their minds a chance to rest. I'd never take it to the extremes you posted about, but a balanced story is important, in my opinion.

[2D8HP]

While I've probably already posted a rant about it in too many threads already, I hate the "submit a back-story" requirement especially when it soon becomes clear that to play in the adventure I have to ignore the back-story I wrote!
For example:

The girl screamed while the soldiers laughed.
He's forgotten so much, but he could remember that.
He didn't understand.
When the Queens soldiers took Paw away, Ma said Paw "was going to the Queen to be a hero", but they were hurting her! Heroes didn't do that!
Ma said that he was as strong as Paw now, maybe stronger, even though he didn't have a beard yet.
Ma said he needed to do what Paw used to, cut the tree's, dig the wells, and when the time came slaughter the pigs. With axe, hammer and shovel he would swing his arms and do what Ma said.
Ma said "Ossian, you listen now to your cousin Gwen, she's got a good head".
Maw was the only one who called him "Ossian", everyone else called him "Ox".
Gwen was screaming!
Maw said "you need to do what your Paw would do".
Paw was a hero.
So he swung his arms.
The soldiers stopped laughing, but Gwen still screamed.
"You've got to run Ox, they'll kill you"! "Run far, go to the rebels".
So he ran.
He ran far and met the rebels.
They gave him a sword.
And he did what they told him.

He swung his arms.

While life on the farm was hard, life in the forest was worse. For years they snipped at the Queen's men and hid and waited, till enough of the people knew that the time had come. Buried under homes, and hidden in wells and the walls of cottages were long stored weapons.
Out they came, by the thousands, and they marched on the capitol.

To defeat the tyrant.

And by the thousands they were slaughtered.

The brave and the good died.

Ox tore off the crimson flower of the rebels, ran and survived.

The gallow men had much work to do.

The walls of the capitol were decorated with the heads of rebels, as were the crossroads of the country, and every village square, to remind the foolish.

For years the heads rotted.

So much he has forgotten.
But he remembered somethings.
He remembered Maw's, Paw's, and Gwen's faces.
Now when he looked into the water he saw Paw's face, but Paw's beard was never grey was it?
He remembered that they called him "hero" once, now if anyone used that word about him they put "was a" in front of it.
He remembered he used to be strong.
He was still strong, but not like he was.
And he remembered the Queen.
And he remembered her hunters, who were now her son, the King's hunters.

And he would have to swing his arms again.

Uncomfortable amidst such strange opulence, and distrustful of nobility in the city, "Ox" closes his eyes in the hopes it will prove a dream, only to remember how that morning he saw a man who looked how Paw looked when the Queens men took him away, and the young lady that man was with looked like cousin Gwen.
But they couldn't be. Ossian was now older then Paw had been when he last saw him, so "Paw" could not be Paw, and Gwen? She would now have grey hairs as well.
More and more he saw memories walking in the day, which wouldn't do. Best not to remember.

Can I get a drink, sir?


Yeah the DM said he liked it..... and then dropped him into an "adventure" in which we had to fight for the amusement of nobles and royals.
He seemed surprised that I role-played the PC escaping out of the first open window he found, ending the campaign.
:confused:


Here is one that has ups and downs to it but annoys me: DMs who want to avoid all social skills for 'roleplaying'... doesn't matter my character has 20 Charisma and expertise in persuasion, I'd better be able personally to convince the DM... and let's leave aside his asking to actually sing to PerformExcept for "Wisdom" because in 5e "Perception" is so useful, I usually "dump" mental "stats", as I just don't know how to roleplay someone smart and charismatic.


I'll tell you what really grinds my gears.....
......I don't want every single adventure to be grim, dark heroes in a grim past grimly fighting grim ghouls grimly conjured by a grim, dark necromancer whose dark powers are grimly gained by darkly sacrificing a grim-faced princess....

I really have no comment on your post beyond, that's some damn good writing!

[Asha Leu]

At the moment, the main thing that irks me about my RL group's DM is that it's almost always me. Oh, and that the other guy who had a go at DMing ran two sessions, did a really good job, and then had to stop DMing due to real life commitment. Thank god for Roll20 - it's pretty much the only way I can scratch my PC itch at the moment.

But back when I actually got to be a PC more than once in a blue moon, a DM failing to control the pace and keep the game moving really got on my nerves. Especially being unable to keep track of initiative and taking ages to act when it's the enemies' turn.

I remember one game where the DM not only made the players track initiative, but refused to even prompt players when it was their turn or take any steps to make make combat move faster. It resulted in long, tedious battles (this was 4E too, which just compounded the problem) that typically went like this:

Player A: "I do three damage."
DM: "Okay. You don't kill it."
(Long awkward silence)
Player B: (checks initiative order) "Player C, it's your go."
(Player C has their turn)
(Another long silence)
DM: "Whose go is it?"
Player B: (checks initiative order) "Yours."
(DM very slowly makes each enemy have their turn, poring over the Monster Manual like he's just seeing each entry for the first time, which big pauses in between each individual monster and individual attack. This is followed by another long silence)
DM: "What are you guys doing? Whose turn is it?"
Player A: "Is your turn over?"
DM: "Well, obviously."

And so on. After badgering him for a while - explaining that we as players don't actually know how many attacks each of his monsters get, nor if there's any hidden enemies we don't know of - the DM finally agreed on a rule that he and everyone else must say when their turn is over. But the game remained pretty torturously slow and dull.

[Professor Beard]

Okay, there are two, and they seem sort of basic. Now, I love to DM, and I am reasonably sure I have done each and every one of this mistakes above in my younger years (With the exception of genitalia. I am reasonably sure that genitalia have never featured in my games) and for that I am sorry. I work hard to be a good DM, but I screw up. That is why I'm here! :smallbiggrin:

One:
A DM that cares more about his/her story than his/her characters. Kind of the cardinal rule, imo, that the Players and PCs are more important than the NPCs, but I am surprised at how often it happens. The DM has a story to tell, or interesting NPCs, or whatever else, and the PCs be darned all to heck if they don't follow that path. I had a DM where we went FOUR SESSIONS before anyone made an attack roll -- and we made it clear when she started that we LIKE combat, all built COMBAT focused characters, and basically sat and listened to the DM's Story Time for literally hours at a time.

I get it -- as a DM you have a world you want to explore, characters of your own that you like, and many DMs are "showboaters," as said above. But, really, if you want to tell your story, write an ever-lovin' book. Don't pretend that this is a multi-players game while we listen to you.

Two:
This is multi-faceted, but it comes down to this: a poor understanding of, or no respect for, the rules, or inconsistent rules. Like a DM who lets one PC have a super-broken combination of abilities that is house ruled, but doesn't offer the same to other players. A DM who makes a ruling about an ability that is explicitly clear in the rules because s/he doesn't LIKE it, after character creation, even if one of the PCs is BUILT around that rule. Or a DM who says "If you play that class, you will have a very hard time leveling up because of story reasons" but says to another "You can play that class without any concern -- here, a free overpowered magic item so I can hand-wave the discrepancy." Likewise, a DM who homebrews classes, abilities, feats, monsters without a clear understanding of the rules and how they interact. Is it really too much to ask that a game be played according to the rules? Like, nobody looks at Monoploly and says "Look, I'm the shoe, so I should be able to kick other players off their property" or "I'm the little dog, so I should have good instincts -- I want to roll the dice twice and take whichever roll I want." Is it really so hard to learn the rules of a game you have been playing for over a year? By all means, when you play a Module, change the module, change the settings or the items or the plot to make it more fun. Great! But don't change HOW the game works -- don't change how cantrip damage is calculated for a multi-class character; Don't change how a basic feat works (GWM) simply because you don't like it AFTER the fact.

Sorry, rant over. i am an incredibly difficult to please PC. I know that, and I often apologize to my DMs for this. But, really, is this too much to ask?

[Asha Leu]

While I've probably already posted a rant about it in too many threads already, I hate the "submit a back-story" requirement especially when it soon becomes clear that to play in the adventure I have to ignore the back-story I wrote!

I get pretty frustrated with DMs who want you to write a veritable novel for your backstory, particularly when starting at level 1. It's especially frustrating when you're expected to do so as part of an application for a game on Roll20 or a similar online avenue - so not only do you have the write the behemoth, with the added pressure that your acceptance into the game is reliant on its content, but there's a very good chance you won't be invited and all that work will be for nothing.

When I'm DMing, if a player wants something long and elaborate for their backstory, then great - I'll read through it and incorporate it into the game best as I can. But I'm of the opinion that a backstory that just reads "X is an apprentice wizard from (Big City) looking for adventure" or "Y was a member of (Kingdom)'s army before quitting to see the world" is just as valid.

[CaptainSarathai]

Just going off one of my current DMs --

1) Know the Rules
It really helps to have been a PC first, before trying to run a game. This guy played 1-2 games of 4e, apparently, then bought the starter set (not full books) for 5e and didn't ever bother to read them cover-to-cover. This wouldn't be so bad if...

2) Afraid to Hand-waive
If he doesn't know a rule, he'll go to great lengths to find it.
"Hey DM, how many days of rations will we need to get to this town?"
"Well um... You're on horses, and they travel um... Let me look it up... Uh..."
30 minutes later
"It will take you 3 days to get there"
And that particular example wouldn't be so bad if not for...

3) Pointless Encounters
The first encounter of any set is worthless, except to burn resources for subsequent encounters. This is particularly true of Wilderness Encounters, especially when the DM doesn't know proper Rest/Exhaustion rules.
We traveled for 3 days. Every night we had to reiterate the watch schedule. Every watch he rolled a %chance for random encounters. And it must have been LOW. 3 watches per night, 3 nights - we had one encounter, with an Ogre and some Stirges. We spent several minutes playing that encounter, went back to sleep, and nothing ever happened.

4) Command the Table
If the table devolves into Monty Python jokes, you don't always need to stop them, but don't encourage it. Give the players time to be friendly and "above table" and then get them back on task.
This wouldn't be so hard if he'd...

5) Be Interesting
He speaks very quietly. Not for effect, but just because he naturally mumbles and trails off and just.... ... [murmurmurmurmur]
He does this INTO his screen, in the middle of a loud gaming store, to a table with people seated 5' away at the corners.
His NPCs also all have the same disaffected pseudo-intellectual
"Hermmm'yes, I do suppose I remember there being a slight tinge of blue to the sky, most days. Hermmm..."
Doesn't matter, Gnome, Elf, small child, f***ing Orc.
It just puts us all to sleep, or bores us to the point that we go off topic.
Even when he is excited...

6) Paint with Words, Not References
I should preface that he thinks "descriptive combat" is about the gore. So we're playing, and my character is based somewhat on Gambit, the X-man; his Eldritch Blast is him throwing conjured playing cards. I throw one at a goblin and don't even Crit, it just seems that rolling a d10+3 and getting an 11 is 'pretty epic.' So we get the following description of the action:
DM: "The card hits the goblin in the head and... Wait, have you guys seen 'Fury'?"
Most of Party: "Uh, no??"
Rogue (not me): "Yeah, it was alright"
DM turns to Rogue: "So, remember that scene where the guy is outside the hatch during the ambush and the shell goes off and his head just explodes? Yeah, that's what happens to this goblin"
Me: "So, you're really just telling us the goblin's head explodes, from 11 damage, from a playing card?"
DM: "Yeah, but like, you have to have seen the movie"
I'm sorry, dafuq? I didn't know there was a required viewing list before playing in this campaign.
It wouldn't even be so bad if
A. stuff didnt just explode in the goriest way possible all the time to the point of it becoming a joke for the party (the DM doesn't realize we're laughing at, not with)
B. He didn't use references to really obscure animes most of the time. He's 24. We have ages 23, 25, 26, 40s, and 50s at the table. Nobody has really seen much anime - two of them aren't even sure how to pronounce it.

6. Put In the Effort!
Last session, my GF and I drove on the highway, for an hour, in the snow, to get to a game. That we found out was canceled because he was sick.
You know how this could have been avoided?
By setting up the Facebook group he had said he'd make the first week... 4 months ago.
That same session, he also said he would bring in a mat and pen since theater of the mind was a slog. The mat didn't show up for the next 3 sessions, until I brought one I'd made with some poster-paper and a poster-frame. Then he brings his "official" Paizo mat (which honestly works less well, because it's not dry erase like my solution, and needs water to clean. He did not know this, btw)
He will not draw out his dungeons ahead of time, so as we lock down doors he has to add the next room and all objects in it to the mat.
Also, the first time he showed up with the mat, he didn't bring miniatures. I intended to use dice (very easy solution) but he convinced another player to pony-up $40 and buy one of the Pathfinder token sets to use.
He also will not use Monster or Spell cards, either because he cannot afford to purchase them, or he's too lazy to make them from scratch. So in combat he's constantly flipping between pages in the MM to check stats and find monsters for encounters.

7. Maintain the Illusion
So we did a good job getting through a hostile town without many fights, by playing cautiously, avoiding patrols and obvious traps, etc
Riding away from the town, he awards us XP (at some point he switched from milestones to XP, we don't know why)
DM: "Oh crap, that doesn't level you up, does it?"
Us: "Nope*"

Two players did level up, because the DM is so desperate for us to role-play against his monotonous NPCs that he awards XP. I explained that 5e actually has a rule for that now, called 'Inspiration' and its actually a much nicer reward. He ignores this
DM: "Oh, well, you guys were supposed to hit level X in that town, if you had fought everything. There was a dragon, and like, a ton of zombies and stuff. It would have made a full session. Now you're going to be under-level, and I didn't expect you to go to the next area so quickly so I'm not even ready to run that, and I really thought you guys would go for the [obvious] MacGuffin first, but you didn't do that either which sucks because it tied into this really cool quest with these NPCs that the Warlock would probably want to meet and..."
Me (imterrupting his monologue) : Well, I don't know - should we like, rewind for you?
DM: "Nah, it's whatever. I'll deal"
Me: "Well, you know - if we outsmart a dragon and get past it, we still get experience for "beating" the dragon, right?"
DM: "Nah, that seems like cheating"

...Dude, my Warlock was built specifically to have all the social abilities, and has spells designed to literally dominate social encounters.
It's for the better though, because he can't handle me (the player) fast-talking the NPCs (him) into things, let alone rolling for at +5 for social skills and tossing "Charm" at someone.

We don't need meta information, or to hear that we have gone off track or didn't follow your plans. We especially don't need to know that we screwed up - missed a magic item, forewent XP, etc.
This led me to sneakily install the LMoP book onto my tablet to follow along, and now i make sure that we hit every single item, every encounter, every quest, that he points us at. He thinks it's awesome. I think it's cheating at a choose-your-own-adventure-book.

Okay, so we have to fight everything then. Okay, we know where this is going...

8. So, fights suck (because of course they do)
First of all, LMoP is meant for 4-5, mediocre, pre-built characters.
My GF and i were the 1st to RSVP to his campaign, but we spoke to the store manager and not him (thought it was sponsored by the store). I told her that we might run slightly late to the first session, but she assured us that people would just be writing characters, so I told her we would pre-write ours. We showed up with a well-built Paladin, and Warlock.
He didn't get the memo, so we ended up with 7 players, 2 of whom are optimized. He has not modified the encounter composition, despite me telling him to literally just double everything (so easy!)
My GF has been tracking her attacks. We're at Lvl4, do you know how many attacks she's rolled?
3.
Three attacks. In 4 levels. See, she has -1 to Initiative rolls, and usually goes last in the order. By the time she gets to attack, enemies are dead or surrounded.
We've had 1 player go down. We run whole dungeons without so much as a Short Rest, which of course hoses me as a Warlock with 2 spell slots.

He also doesn't track initiative in the open, which with 7 players means that I usually end up writing it down and pointing to the person "on deck" so they can plan their turn ahead of time. New players and lots of them means we take very long to get through a turn, which means people lose interest. The newbies (Wizard included) usually just shrug and make melee attacks, because "why use tactics when you can overwhelm them with numbers?"
Which leads the newbs to believe that the Warlock and Rogue are broken, because we use class abilities and spells to boost our damage like we're supposed to.

9. Too Much World Building, Not Enough PCs
So, we're about to wrap LMoP, and he reveals that in the new year, we'll be switching to a homebrew he's done. Turns out, he's been spending 5 months writing it. He showed us a very tiny map - like, the kind you expect Wizards to publish of the area around a small town. Yes, this is his world map...
Anyway, we asked if we could continue with our characters from level5.
No.
This would ruin his campaign, as it's meant to start at L1 (it took us 5 months to hit L4, playing 8hrs/month). Apparently, he has encounters pre-planned and thus can't [be bothered] to adjust their levels to suit higher level PCs.
The campaign is also taking place in a homebrewed world, with a "dieselpunk" vibe. Alright... allow me to explain dieselpunk to the table, after they didn't get his explaination.

To the young'ins - Steampunk assumes that fuel and power technology stops at the Victorian era, but the tech itself continues to or beyond the modern time, right? Well, dieselpunk assumes that fuel tech stops around WW1 instead. Everything is dirty and fume-y, and runs on gas.
To the old folks - Remember the Rocketeer? Enjoy.
Anyway, my girlfriend has no interest in RL human tech history once you hit the Industrial Revolution. So she's not interested in Diesel. The old guys didn't know what it was. Two others openly expressed that they weren't really fans.
I asked, along with Rogue: "Eberron?"
To which the DM seemed somewhat unsure. Perhaps it hadn't occurred to him that a punk-ish D&D setting already existed (one of the better ones, at that).
But hey! We're gonna play that setting anyway, because he wrote a whole campaign without asking what we were interested in playing.

10. Know When to Quit
You may wonder why I drive over 100 miles bi-weekly to play in this fiasco. Well, I like these people (even the DM). I hate the campaign, hate the DMing quality, but like the group. I would like to give them an actual D&D experience, and even teach the DM a little.
To this end, I've dropped several subtle hints to the DM that perhaps he should hand over the reigns. I mentioned that I have a campaign meant to take these characters from 5-10, 15, or even 20, if they want.
But like so many of my other suggestions on how to make the best of his time behind the screen, these go ignored.

It's also a problem that the other players (except GF, after we started this game) have never seen me DM. Some don't even know there's anything particularly "off" about this DM, and think this is just how D&D is,
"It's fun, but definitely not like on 'Stranger Things" - for example.
So they don't really trust me as a DM.
I think the group is going to dissolve over the long holiday break. People are getting bored and tired of the game. It's not D&D's fault, they just need a good DM. This guy is basically killing 5e for this store, and these people. Even the DM seems a little weary.

I've considered all kinds of ways to simply 'hijack' the group, and get them playing under me instead - even posted here on Giant about it.

Unfortunately, we'll probably just abandon them. We have a local group here, with another friend DMing, and we're considering hitting our local game store and collabing on a West-Marches type game for several players. Two other groups at this store dissolved or lost DMs, so we could easily wrangle about 3-4 "parties" of 5ish players each for a large 'shared world' game. We ran a similar game of L5R at his college one year, which very nearly became a LARP with pen&paper combat, it became so large and involved.

[Cozzer]

Regarding social skills:

Well, I think "I persuade the guard" with no argument should have more or less the same effect of "I hit the guard with my greatsword" when you don't have any weapon. Not becuase you need to be charming or persuasive yourself, but because persuading somebody with no leverage is like impaling someone with a sword you don't have. The player should at least provide one kind of leverage for any persuasion attempt ("I persuade the guard by letting him think we might bribe him", "I persuade the guard by letting him think I'm attracted to him", "I persuade the guard by making him believe we're guards masked as adventurers"...), so that the GM can decide whether the attempt can even work, what the chances are and the consquences of a success or failure.

I think the whole problem is born from black-and-white thinking on the GMs' part. Something like, "my characters are making generic 'I persuade the guard' persuasion attempts and that sucks, clearly the way to solve it is to demand an half-hour pantomime from each of these attempts!".

[Zalabim]

But there are important nuances that everyone can play off of in terms of how you decide to go about things that get ignored when you say "I persuade the guard." *roll* "Does an 18 work?"


Regarding social skills:

Well, I think "I persuade the guard" with no argument should have more or less the same effect of "I hit the guard with my greatsword" when you don't have any weapon. Not becuase you need to be charming or persuasive yourself, but because persuading somebody with no leverage is like impaling someone with a sword you don't have. The player should at least provide one kind of leverage for any persuasion attempt ("I persuade the guard by letting him think we might bribe him", "I persuade the guard by letting him think I'm attracted to him", "I persuade the guard by making him believe we're guards masked as adventurers"...), so that the GM can decide whether the attempt can even work, what the chances are and the consquences of a success or failure.

There's another half of this "persuade the guard" thing that's vital and missing. Persuade the guard to do what? The bare minimum description is what are you doing (bribing the guard, lying to the clerk, threatening the innkeeper), but it's really nice to know what you want (to get by without being reported, to get access to the restricted ledgers, to get the key to your mark's room.)

[MrStabby]

There's another half of this "persuade the guard" thing that's vital and missing. Persuade the guard to do what? The bare minimum description is what are you doing (bribing the guard, lying to the clerk, threatening the innkeeper), but it's really nice to know what you want (to get by without being reported, to get access to the restricted ledgers, to get the key to your mark's room.)

I think both are important. I see it as the DC is determined by a) what you are persuading them to do, b) the argument you use to do it.

If you want to get them to do something they are inclined to do anyway and/or use a good argument that appeals to their character and situation then there is a lower DC.

Bribing someone 50 gold to turn the other way needs a higher DC roll than offering 100 gold for the same roll.

[Dr. Cliché]

There's another half of this "persuade the guard" thing that's vital and missing. Persuade the guard to do what? The bare minimum description is what are you doing (bribing the guard, lying to the clerk, threatening the innkeeper), but it's really nice to know what you want (to get by without being reported, to get access to the restricted ledgers, to get the key to your mark's room.)

I think it's also useful to have a general idea of how you're going to go about persuading the guard. Let's just assume that you want to get into a building and you're trying to persuade a guard to let you in:
- Are you going to try and convince him that you and your party are no threat?
- Are you going to try and convince him that you *are* a threat, and that he really doesn't want to try and stop you?
- Are you going to try and tell him that his bosses are criminals and that, if he doesn't let you through, he'll be just as guilty as them?
- Are you going to try and convince him that you're old friends of his bosses?
- Are you going to get the hot female in your group to 'persuade' him (and hope you didn't pick the one guard who's . . . uh . . . batting for the other team. :smallwink:)
- Are you going to try and bribe him?
- Are you going to try and blackmail him?
etc.

Put simply, there are a multitude of ways you could attempt to persuade a guard, which may not have equal chances of success. What's more, many of these may be dependant on what the party have managed to uncover already. e.g. it may be easier to convince a guard that you're old friends of his boss if you've either done a lot of research into said boss (so that you can answer questions about his past) or if you've secretly killed one of his actual friends and are taking his place.

[Dr. Cliché]

I hate the "submit a back-story" requirement

I actually like characters having a backstory. I find that it gives them more motivation, allows for more conflict and gives many opportunities for plot hooks and such.

[Erfar]

"Oh party of first lever character? I give you something like elder vampire, him EXP-difficult like you "very hard" encounter but he still lvl 11 dude with too high AC, Fort, Ref and will, and him attack fail only on 1 and 2, enjoy"

Hate this!

[MrStabby]

I actually like characters having a backstory. I find that it gives them more motivation, allows for more conflict and gives many opportunities for plot hooks and such.

I like backstory. I don't like (extensive) backstory going to level 1. If we start a campaign at level 7 then I think it is an appropriate addition to a campaign to know how each PC got to level 7 - where they found their gold, their gear etc.. It helps give antagonists they may have crossed in the past, things that only they will know or a later game equivalent of a background feature. The interesting stuff should be in the campaign; if backstory is more interesting than the campaign then there is something wrong with the campaign.

At level 1 you cant really have a history involving fighting enemies or overcoming challenges given how quickly you level. A history where you fought more than a couple of goblins is incompatible with being less than level 2.

[Spellbreaker26]

I like backstory. I don't like (extensive) backstory going to level 1. If we start a campaign at level 7 then I think it is an appropriate addition to a campaign to know how each PC got to level 7 - where they found their gold, their gear etc.. It helps give antagonists they may have crossed in the past, things that only they will know or a later game equivalent of a background feature. The interesting stuff should be in the campaign; if backstory is more interesting than the campaign then there is something wrong with the campaign.

At level 1 you cant really have a history involving fighting enemies or overcoming challenges given how quickly you level. A history where you fought more than a couple of goblins is incompatible with being less than level 2.

You might not be a veteran, but at level 1 you're still stronger than the average commoner or even the average guard. You've picked up quite a few skills as well.

[2D8HP]

I actually like characters having a backstory. I find that it gives them more motivation, allows for more conflict and gives many opportunities for plot hooks and such.That all sounds good in theory, but in my experience for every one DM who weaves elements of the back-story I've written into the adventure there are three who never use it and for the most part my actually role-playing the character suggested by the back-story is disruptive to the campaign.
The back-story submittal requirement really just seems like a way for DM's to see how well potential players can write a piece of short fiction (though I've found that the longer the back-story the more likely I am to be invited to play).
With this awareness I now just keep re-using back-stories that previous DM's have accepted, and then ignore the back-story and role-play a PC that will fit the adventute actually being played, but when the back-stories I wrote were fresh I felt invested in the PC's and actually tried to roleplay the character that the back-story suggests which is usually a mistake.
Once I realized that a back-story's only purpose is usually to provide a writing sample and it's better to ignore them and have my PC "stay on the rails" (if I can perceive them) it just made game play easier.
It was irksome at first but now I just guess which of my previous writing will let me play, change a couple of details and hand it over, and then ignore it because the DM will.

[Asha Leu]

10. Know When to Quit
You may wonder why I drive over 100 miles bi-weekly to play in this fiasco. Well, I like these people (even the DM). I hate the campaign, hate the DMing quality, but like the group. I would like to give them an actual D&D experience, and even teach the DM a little.
To this end, I've dropped several subtle hints to the DM that perhaps he should hand over the reigns. I mentioned that I have a campaign meant to take these characters from 5-10, 15, or even 20, if they want.
But like so many of my other suggestions on how to make the best of his time behind the screen, these go ignored.

It's also a problem that the other players (except GF, after we started this game) have never seen me DM. Some don't even know there's anything particularly "off" about this DM, and think this is just how D&D is,
"It's fun, but definitely not like on 'Stranger Things" - for example.
So they don't really trust me as a DM.
I think the group is going to dissolve over the long holiday break. People are getting bored and tired of the game. It's not D&D's fault, they just need a good DM. This guy is basically killing 5e for this store, and these people. Even the DM seems a little weary.

I've considered all kinds of ways to simply 'hijack' the group, and get them playing under me instead - even posted here on Giant about it.

Is it possible for you to start running your own game without the current DM having to stop running his? Just tell everyone "Hey, I'm planning to start a campaign, you're all invited to play if interested, what times work for everyone?" and take it from there. There's no reason people can't play in two ongoing games at the same time - if the current DM is wants to play, he can, if he's not interested, there's nothing stopping everyone else from doing so.

Obviously location and travel time are big issues for you, and hosting games at your house may not be feasable with this group. If the gaming store is a no go, see if there is, say, a library in the area with meeting rooms you can book out, or if a player who lives close by is willing to host.

[CaptainSarathai]

snip
I'm already playing in another group, and have locals in my area who are LFG. Ending up with this group was a fluke, I RSVP'ed thinking that it was being held at my local store (like both pages on FB, as only the far one plays tabletop wargames). Didn't want to back out, because we didn't want to down him the players initially, and then it rolled into:
"Well, we're here I guess."

Running another session with this group would be hard. Every-other Sat from 6-10pm is the only slot we could find that worked for everyone.

It happens, groups break up sometimes. I won't lose sleep. I just wish that it wasn't so hard to match people with skilled DMs.

[2D8HP]

. I just wish that it wasn't so hard to match people with skilled DMs.

All the shiny PC options and abilities that make it more fun to play 5e, than say 1977 "blue book" D&D, make it more intimidating and difficult to DM, lowering how many DM's they are thus lessening oppurtunities to actually play the game.

I don't know how to square that circle.

Ideas?

[CursedRhubarb]

First game I played was a 3.5 game and the DM was a nightmare for my character. Was my first time playing so they said I should play a human barbarian to learn how it all works and have a resource to spend. We had a big group and of 8 players 2 were drow, 4 were elves, 1 gnome, and I was the only human.
90% of the game wound up being in the same town and we had maybe 10-15 fights in two real life years of playing once a week.
DM also decided that as a barbarian I could only wear hide armor.
The DM had their own PC they played (one of the drow) with their partner being the other and most nights involved their PCs making out pretty much all session while everyone else delt with fun-social-in-town-adventures.
I tried to spend gold in a shop once, which led to the shopkeeper screaming because a gross human savage was attacking her shop, she called for the guard and dumped the table over. Guards arrived and believed her so I wound up spending a game day running around town away from guards.

Current game is sooo much better. Only things that I can complain about are sometimes he doesn't give enough detail for us to figure out what to do, sets the DC for social interactions at 20, 25, or 30 a lot, which sucks when you have Deception prof but not Persuasion so have to try and twist words around a lot. And then there was the day he almost killed us horribly with an honest mistake, he wrote down stats for Violet Fungus and Slaad Tadpoles and mixed up a few things. Wound up with fungus having 18ac and 5hp. Tadpoles had 14ac, 10hp and missread it as having resistance to all magic damage. With a 3 man group at lvl 3 of a Wizard, Warlock, and Barbarian and getting groups of 8-12 of the guys at a time it was a heck of a sewer crawl for a day. Next game he admitted the mistake and corrected the stats and things went so much more smoothly.

[BDRook]

All of these horror stories are doing wonders for my own self confidence as a DM.

[Naanomi]

I think it's also useful to have a general idea of how you're going to go about persuading the guard. Let's just assume that you want to get into a building and you're trying to persuade a guard to let you in:
- Are you going to try and convince him that you and your party are no threat?
- Are you going to try and convince him that you *are* a threat, and that he really doesn't want to try and stop you?
- Are you going to try and tell him that his bosses are criminals and that, if he doesn't let you through, he'll be just as guilty as them?
- Are you going to try and convince him that you're old friends of his bosses?
- Are you going to get the hot female in your group to 'persuade' him (and hope you didn't pick the one guard who's . . . uh . . . batting for the other team. :smallwink:)
- Are you going to try and bribe him?
- Are you going to try and blackmail him?
etc.

Put simply, there are a multitude of ways you could attempt to persuade a guard, which may not have equal chances of success. What's more, many of these may be dependant on what the party have managed to uncover already. e.g. it may be easier to convince a guard that you're old friends of his boss if you've either done a lot of research into said boss (so that you can answer questions about his past) or if you've secretly killed one of his actual friends and are taking his place.
To a degree but... seems like the kind of stuff a Bard with expertise in insight and persuasion would have a better idea about (choosing which option is the most effective) compared to their player.

[2D8HP]

All of these horror stories are doing wonders for my own self confidence as a DM.They make me feel guilty for not better mastering the rules and putting the DM hat back on.

[Dr. Cliché]

To a degree but... seems like the kind of stuff a Bard with expertise in insight and persuasion would have a better idea about (choosing which option is the most effective) compared to their player.

I disagree. The bard will probably be able to phrase it better than you would, but I think the basic method (bribery, blackmail, trickery etc.) should have to come from you.

[Grod_The_Giant]

All the shiny PC options and abilities that make it more fun to play 5e, than say 1977 "blue book" D&D, make it more intimidating and difficult to DM, lowering how many DM's they are thus lessening oppurtunities to actually play the game.

I don't know how to square that circle.

Ideas?
As long as the players know their abilities*, it's not that important for the DM to do so. In fact, in some regards it's better to not think about the specifics when planning adventures and suchlike. Just build the world that makes sense, with nicely varied challenges, and if your players wind up finding parts unexpectedly easy or hard, so be it-- if you did your job right that will make perfect sense in the context of the gameworld. 5e is well enough balanced that you can assume no one ability is going to blow anything else out of the water, and that the encounter building guidelines will generally be pretty accurate. It's probably the easiest-to-DM game I've seen. Don't be afraid of the rules-- just remember the DC guidelines and keep a random encounter table handy and you're good to go.

*And you can trust them to be honest about them, but I try to assume that we're gaming with friends and other nice, trustworthy people

[Millface]

I disagree. The bard will probably be able to phrase it better than you would, but I think the basic method (bribery, blackmail, trickery etc.) should have to come from you.

I have to agree with the Doctor on this one. I do have players who aren't very good with words in real life who play characters that would realistically be much better at that kind of thing, so I understand not forcing them to come up with some perfect argument, the skill in how it's done is implied, but the actual base method should be decided by the player. Number one reason why: How, as a DM, would I possibly know what the consequences of your persuasion might be unless I know the base method you're using to do it?

If you just use pretty words or solid logic then you're pretty safe

If you bribe a guard then A. You need to remove money from your sheet, and B. there's a slight chance that the guard might find his conscience at some point and report it

If you blackmail or threaten him he might decide to go your way right now but work behind your back to foil it somehow

These consequences range from zero to severe, and I'm not going to decide anything for a player that has that much potential for trouble down the line.

[Naanomi]

I see it as a grey area... how open to bribes are guards in this part of the world? If I hint at the idea does this particular guard seem interested, upset, oblivious? Can I backpeddle and play it off as a joke if he gets offended? All questions my social PC would know better than me... heck they know which of these questions (or others) are important to ask

No one asks me questions about fencing technique before setting the DC of an attack; why do social skills require less abstraction?

(mental skills get this treatment worse of course... why should me idiot barbarian's riddle answering ability be tied at all to my own?)

[Millface]

I see it as a grey area... how open to bribes are guards in this part of the world? If I hint at the idea does this particular guard seem interested, upset, oblivious? Can I backpeddle and play it off as a joke if he gets offended? All questions my social PC would know better than me... heck they know which of these questions (or others) are important to ask

No one asks me questions about fencing technique before setting the DC of an attack; why do social skills require less abstraction?

(mental skills get this treatment worse of course... why should me idiot barbarian's riddle answering ability be tied at all to my own?)

All you'd have to do is say "I'm going to try to bribe the guard" and the rest is already accounted for. You roll persuasion with intent to convince the guard to do something for money. You could just let all of it be implied, but that seems pretty two dimensional to me, if I decide for you based on what has the highest amount of success that presents issues as well.

It's like a drop down menu

1. Bribe
2. Blackmail
3. Threaten
4. Present an argument
5. Seduce

If the argument you're giving right now is that "my character would know better than I would which of those to do, so I don't want to have to decide which of those to do" then I guess I would have to ask... what exactly do you do? At what point is the DM just rolling dice and you're completely disconnected from your character? Every one of these characters we play is usually better at almost everything than we are personally. Your character would probably know far better than you would which enemies to attack and in what order, what tactics and abilities to use and when, and yet you'll still make those decisions, right? So why would this be any different?

[Naanomi]

Specific situations;

-try to bribe guard. Response: 'As a devout follower of helm he is offensed and tells you to put your hands up'... oh no one told me this was common among the guards in this city; I pay because I don't personally know info my character probably knows under the guise of 'giving me a choice'

-female player with female character seduces everyone, NPCs almost always receptive... male PC shapeshifted into female form has high DC 'Because it you are not convincing'

-(2e NWP era): I try to sing at a tavern to distract patrons from PC shenanigans; GM asks what I sing. I said 'whatever, something popular I guess'; he says I can't roll since I don't know what I'm going to sing

[BDRook]

Specific situations;

-try to bribe guard. Response: 'As a devout follower of helm he is offensed and tells you to put your hands up'... oh no one told me this was common among the guards in this city; I pay because I don't personally know info my character probably knows under the guise of 'giving me a choice'

-female player with female character seduces everyone, NPCs almost always receptive... male PC shapeshifted into female form has high DC 'Because it you are not convincing'

-(2e NWP era): I try to sing at a tavern to distract patrons from PC shenanigans; GM asks what I sing. I said 'whatever, something popular I guess'; he says I can't roll since I don't know what I'm going to sing

Oh I found your problem; your DM is an *******.

[JAL_1138]

All you'd have to do is say "I'm going to try to bribe the guard" and the rest is already accounted for. You roll persuasion with intent to convince the guard to do something for money. You could just let all of it be implied, but that seems pretty two dimensional to me, if I decide for you based on what has the highest amount of success that presents issues as well.

It's like a drop down menu

1. Bribe
2. Blackmail
3. Threaten
4. Present an argument
5. Seduce

If the argument you're giving right now is that "my character would know better than I would which of those to do, so I don't want to have to decide which of those to do" then I guess I would have to ask... what exactly do you do? At what point is the DM just rolling dice and you're completely disconnected from your character? Every one of these characters we play is usually better at almost everything than we are personally. Your character would probably know far better than you would which enemies to attack and in what order, what tactics and abilities to use and when, and yet you'll still make those decisions, right? So why would this be any different?


Quibble--"Threaten" would fall under the Intimidate skill, I think, so wouldn't be assumed under "persuade."

But otherwise, yeah--I don't want to hold anyone's social awkwardness against them; players should be able to play characters more silver-tongued than they are themselves--but while you don't have to give me much, but you've got to give me something. E.g., "I [X] the [person or group] to (do) [Y]."

I like the combat analogy. Saying "I persuade the guard" is like...say your turn rolls around in combat and you say "I take the Attack Action against the Orc." Do you Grapple? Shove? What weapon are you using, if any? What bonus actions are you spending, if any? How many attacks are you making? Are you Action Surging, taking a Second Wind, spending a Maneuver or a Divine Smite? Would you be using nonlethal damage on the last weapon attack if it drops the enemy to zero, or killing it? I don't know that unless you give me a bit more than "I take the Attack Action against the Orc." So give me just a bit more than "I persuade the guard" to tell me how and to do what.

[Naanomi]

Oh I found your problem; your DM is an *******.
Well yeah most of this thread is 'my GM does this which is annoying and if they do it all the time they are an *******. (and for what it is worth he hasn't been my GM since 3.X hit the shelves)

[Millface]

Specific situations;

-try to bribe guard. Response: 'As a devout follower of helm he is offensed and tells you to put your hands up'... oh no one told me this was common among the guards in this city; I pay because I don't personally know info my character probably knows under the guise of 'giving me a choice'

-female player with female character seduces everyone, NPCs almost always receptive... male PC shapeshifted into female form has high DC 'Because it you are not convincing'

-(2e NWP era): I try to sing at a tavern to distract patrons from PC shenanigans; GM asks what I sing. I said 'whatever, something popular I guess'; he says I can't roll since I don't know what I'm going to sing

That's definitely pretty harsh as a DM to meta against you like that. At the very worst things like "the guard is offended" could fall under things that happen on critical failure, but even that is a little sketchy to me. If the guard is a follower of helm, and your character has a way to have known that (has been in the area before, there were temples or holy symbols not specifically described that you would have seen etc...) then at that point it's your DMs job to say "Ok, before you try to bribe the guard it might be pertinent to inform you that you would know he is a follower of Helm."

So, yeah. Way to wrap it back to the topic. That kind of DMing would certainly irk me! :)

[hymer]

One irksome thing done by a DM is to start a campaign, play three sessions, and then let it peter out with no further sessions arranged.

[mephnick]

As long as the players know their abilities*, it's not that important for the DM to do so.

Agreed. I always tell my players I'll trust them until I can't because I don't have time to memorize all their class abilities and do everything else. I never adjust my campaigns to specific parties anyway so it doesnt really affect my prep much.

[Xethik]

Small things.

Like NPCs having Make-Your-Own spells to fit the situation perfectly or being at a power level the players can never hope to reach (or if we did, I think we'd be shamed for powergaming). I know the DM means well, but I just have troubles with PC/NPC disparity. Almost as much as martial/caster disparity. In an older game, there were NPCs who had been consistently scrying on us but we apparently never passed a saving throw to know about it.

[Professor Beard]

I disagree. The bard will probably be able to phrase it better than you would, but I think the basic method (bribery, blackmail, trickery etc.) should have to come from you.

The Doctor is correct, imo, and that is true of all characters -- you have to decide which of their tools to use. Your fighter will probably have a better understanding of tactics than you do, but you still have to decide if you want to attack the Lich or her minions, and there will be consequences depending on how you choose. Your wizard has a better understanding of magic and how to use your spells than you do (obvs), but you still have to decide to prepare Fireball or Fear, and there will be consequences depending on how you choose. Your barbarian probably has a better understanding of weapons and how to bring down the enemy, but you have to decide if you want to use the +1 Greataxe or the +1 shield and a mundane warhammer, and there will be consequences depending on how you decide. Your bard/sorc/warlock may know better of Bribe or Smooth Talk is better in the situation, but you still have to decide, and there will be consequences for how your choose.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not advocating for much decision here within the skill (bribe, seduction, smooth talk, etc.), and I think it is going to be different from table to table, but you can't expect the DM to require you get a free pass.

Anyway, at my table, if the high Cha character is unsure, you can always roll Insight to see if you can get an idea, that is what it is for. "His clothes are more threadbare than his companions and his coin purse is clearly empty -- a bribe could work." or "You realize that he is having a hard time not staring at your bum whenever you walked by before -- a seduction might be the best tactic."

That said, the job of the DM is to make sure everyone is having fun. If you want to play a face, talk with your DM first and see what it will be like, and make your decision given that info or, better, get your DM to understand your desire and hope that s/he will play differently so that everyone can have fun.

[twigg89]

I have a few pet peeves.

1). Don't comment on the attack/damage/affect, just do it to me. Some crazy cultist hits me with a spell and after all the die have been rolled you hear a 'damn' or 'ouch' before being told what actually happened. Dude I heard you rolling a handful of dice, I know it is going to be bad no need to prologue the process. Also don't ask me how much health I have after you have rolled damage. We both know I'm dead, let's not pretend that I somehow made it out with a few health like I am the protagonist in an old Saturday morning cartoon.

2). Roll all the dice you need to roll for an ability at once. Nothing puts me more on edge than being able to count each individual damage die that is coming for me, anything past 3 and I am mentally rolling up a new character.

[Cozzer]

GMs trying to create suspence by rolling lots of dice or by exaggerating their reaction to their own rolls is a pet peeve of mine, too. Or by doing anything that's not creating actual suspence in the actual freaking game.

[Millface]

GMs trying to create suspence by rolling lots of dice or by exaggerating their reaction to their own rolls is a pet peeve of mine, too. Or by doing anything that's not creating actual suspence in the actual freaking game.

I can definitely see how this can be a pet peeve, but I just want to throw out there that sometimes I do that as a DM and my players just laugh it off.

Example, one player has a cloak of displacement, and on the disadvantaged attack roll I rolled double naturals. I said something along the lines of "oh god, no bleeping way." and moved my screen so they wouldn't think I was lying. The whole table did a little cringe and laugh. It probably helps that the party knows death is mostly reversible at this point, but we have fun with the crazy rolls as a group, whether it's them being excited for theirs or their "Oh, ouch man! Let us know how the dirt tastes!" from mine.

Saying things like "I can't believe I just crit twice" or "Wow, that's max damage, ouch!" let's them know that it's just bad luck when they take an unusually brutal beating instead of them thinking that I just enjoy pounding them into the dirt and do it by design.

Having said that, if they asked me not to do it I wouldn't. My players having a good time is my priority numero uno.

[BillyBobShorton]

Had no idea super d&*k DM'ing was such a pandemic. I thought I just had bad luck or quite possibly was a problem player in denial. But this thread, about 80% of it, describes things I've been through at one point or another.

I wonder what it is that makes friends, associates, aquaintances, and seemingly ordinary ppl; otherwise normally functioning members of society turn into power-tripping grade school lunch ladies when they get behind the screen?

It's like they take pleasure in making a game you love into a suckfest that more resembles some irrational, oppressive dictatorship.

My gripe: when a DM states a certain rule incorrectly because it will somehow nerf your character, then when you correct them with RAW, they pull out the, "well, now it's this way. DM word is final."

Like... just &%$* you, man.

[Draconi Redfir]

wanted to read this entire thread, but i'm too tired. so i'll just throw in what i got before passing out.

- When the DM mumbles/mutters the description of the room you're currently in. I get it, they aren't doing it on purpose, but it's still hard to hear, especially when you play in a room with other D&D games going on as i do.

- Was mentioned before, but ignoring / avoiding your speciality. I made a high AC character who's job it was to stand in front of everyone and take the hits. so what did the DM do? every enemy hit him all of twice before deciding he can't be hurt and moving on to make the much less armoured barbarian tank.

- Telling you outright that a long, complicated, and interesting plan won't work even if everything should line up. (As in not a case of you thinking the captain went camping outside the country's borders when really he didn't) If i'm working hard to get something done, at least give me a chance to make it happen.

- Similarly, Telling me much too late that they don't like what I’m doing / what I’ve done. Oh, you /didn't/ want me to run to the prison house and convince as many prisoners as i could to help us out during this war? Then howcome you let me do all of that? Howcome five of them just agreed to help? Why did you let me open their cell doors? It's too late to just say this never happened now!

- Related; Taking those things you've done to be a positive and turning them into a negative. "Yeah those prisoners you released to help you out? Three of them just ambushed your king. and then the other two who really DID want to help ran away when the guards tried to re-capture them all. And also the guards hate you now."

- Paying more attention to one or more players then others. I had my turn where my player started ordering lunch, and then player A proceeds to walk across town, talk to the king, leave the king, take a visit back home to say hi to the family, then make it back to me hours later where my character is apparently still struggling to order that lunch because i haven't gotten a response to it in two weeks.

- Sometimes being a bit too strict with the rules. I mean yeah, the rules as written etc. But sometimes players just need a moment of awesome, let them have their time in the light to grab an orc by the throat and use his body as a shield without needing to make ten CMB checks just to keep him there.

And as a last thing;
- Hearing what they want to hear. I say "My paladin hops off his horse and walks over to the general, shaking his hand." and they say "The general looks up to the mounted paladin for a breif moment before walking away." It might just be simple misunderstanding but... still bothers me when what i'm saying isn't being heard.

[ChildofLuthic]

DMs that enforce six second real-time rounds, while playing Theatre of the Mind and counting clarifying questions about where things are against your six seconds.

I don't think I've been guilty of that yet, but i do try to keep combat pretty fast paced as to avoid wasting time, and I do play TotM.

Of course, I make a quick summary of the options available. (John is in front of you and looking stabbable, but you can see the city guards are about 30ft away. What do you do?) But that's not always enough.

[JNAProductions]

Have annoyingly powerful NPCs who don't help out, claim to be better, and get annoyed with the players for not realizing things that we had no way of knowing.

[RumoCrytuf]

Mine aren't as bad as some of the others here, but this guy was bad enough as both player and DM that we no longer play with him at all. I got a bad feeling about playing in his games pretty early on.

First thing was when I was downed with my Fighter, and rolled a 1 on my first death save. His response was asking "did you die?!". The problem wasn't the question, but that he asked it gleefully. It felt like he wanted my character to die.

Secondly, he modified creatures with no regard for what it said to the challenge. He tripled the HP of an animated armor, and didn't even bother to check what the new challenge rating was, and thought it would be the same.

Thirdly, when a player had to leave early, he dealt with that by having the above mentioned animated armor throw his animated sword at the player's character, instantly dropping him to 0 HP. Not even stable, which meant we had to deal with an encounter that was way too difficult, with one character less (the wizard), and had to make sure he didn't fail all of his death saves.

Fourthly, denying valid tactics by the rules, just because they are highly effective. I grappled the animated armor in question, and shoved it prone, which meant that it had to either be unable to hit me, or waste a round on getting me off it, which meant I would do the same on my next turn. He made it immune to being prone on a whim.

Oh, and all of this happened in the same session, during the same encounter. My character ended up dying, for the above reasons and because he thought that crits also doubled the non-dice damage.

He also put an amtimagic field in the back room of a tavern where illegal gambling took place. Apparently, these guys could afford to have 8th level spells cast to prevent cheating.

The only gripe I have about a different DM is how he sometimes pauses between two descriptions to look something up. It's a moment if completely dead air, because we're waiting on him and he's not even making stalling sounds like "uhh" or "uhm".

So, the things in bold are what I'm touching on.

1. "he asked it gleefully", Child, he's a DM, it's what we do. Our objective in life is to kill you in the most fair way possible (Admittedly, the rest of this DM's actions show a little to much Chaos in their alignment. The ideal DM is Lawful Evil ;) ) . If you go down, and start dying, it brings a flicker of joy to the DM to know that they have conquered one vain hero. We're the "Villain" if you will.

2. " because we're waiting on him and he's not even making stalling sounds like 'uhh' or 'uhm' " I myself am guilty of this. Sometimes we'll be in combat, and I want to throw an additional monster out of the woods, drawn by the noise or some such. I'll pause and consult the Monster Manual to call forth something that wants a snack. This can take a minute, as I want something that won't destroy the party, but add a decent challenge. Put yourself into their shoes for a second

All in all, cut the DM some slack. If he's being this chaotic, consult him after the game and express your concerns. But remember, The DM's job is to end your characters life while making you have fun dying! :P

[tkuremento]

When a single player says "I continue onward toward X" and the DM assumes the party then follows suit. No, I don't want to just rush in, I am a Paladin and I want to defend the townsfolk who are being attacked. This only happened a few times and was sorted out but is still something that irked me greatly. If it were to come to the party needing to split because of my RP and I die, I am 200% fine with that. Please, don't assume I am just a peon to whoever has the gall to speak first!

[TrinculoLives]

Relatively minor, compared to some of these others, but I have a DM who generally doesn't bother with rolling for things when there's literally no risk of failure. For things like climbing or swimming, this is fine, but it completely breaks my immersion when I ask to roll for Insight (or Sense Motive, if we're in 3.P) and he says "Oh, you don't have to, she's definitely telling the truth." I know and trust him well enough to know that this isn't railroading, but it breaks my immersion every damn time.

(Actually, one time he specifically averted this irk was a good use of it: the NPCs weren't lying, but my roll gave me a better clue about their own behind-the-scenes personal dynamics, which we could then exploit in negotiations.)

I'm quite curious about this one because I agree with the school of thought that when a roll is unnecessary, it's a waste of time to roll it!

What do you mean by "breaks your immersion"? I mean, what's the big difference in terms of "immersion" between these two scenarios?

Player: Can I tell if she is telling the truth?

DM: Roll an Wisdom [Insight] check.

Player: 24

DM: Yeah, she's definitely telling the truth.


VS.

Player: Can I tell if she is telling the truth?

DM: Yeah, she is definitely telling the truth.


In your own example of when rolling was used in a "good" way, I don't see why rolling is necessary at all if the DM thinks that your character can see through these people's motivations. The simple act of the player asking for information and the DM giving it is the basis for D&D gameplay and can certainly be sufficient if dice are not needed.

Basically, it sounds to me like the sort of DM that would do this is the sort who doesn't believe in wasting time!

[Draconi Redfir]

... Feel like we should make a "Things players do that irk you as a fellow player" thread to round out the trillogy here...

[Dr. Cliché]

I'm quite curious about this one because I agree with the school of thought that when a roll is unnecessary, it's a waste of time to roll it!

What do you mean by "breaks your immersion"? I mean, what's the big difference in terms of "immersion" between these two scenarios?

Player: Can I tell if she is telling the truth?

DM: Roll an Wisdom [Insight] check.

Player: 24

DM: Yeah, she's definitely telling the truth.


VS.

Player: Can I tell if she is telling the truth?

DM: Yeah, she is definitely telling the truth.

The issue with this is that it basically becomes 'if you have to roll, then the NPC is lying'.

Whereas, if you make players roll every time, then it's a lot harder to easily discern who's lying and who isn't.

Also, there is a potential consequence for failure - your character could misinterpret some cues and think that the NPC is lying even if they're actually telling the truth.

[Socratov]

Voice acting without the talent to support it.

I get it, Matt Mercer is a great DM and more then decent voice actor and we all want to be like him when DMing, but please, for the love of Odin, don't try to voice act when you don't have any talent for it.

[Plaguescarred]

One thing that irk me as a player is when a DM mix up rules with different D&D editions or RPG.

I also dislike those who like christmas tree a little too much and hand out way too many magic items only to later tell players that the group is too strong because of that.

Another thing that irks me is when a DM ask for detailed PC backstory but make no use of it.

Finally, DMs that make powerful DMPC that always save the day and steal spotlight time away from the real heroes, PCs.

[mgshamster]

Have annoyingly powerful NPCs who don't help out, claim to be better, and get annoyed with the players for not realizing things that we had no way of knowing.

I'm fairly certain you mean DMPC.

[TrinculoLives]

The issue with this is that it basically becomes 'if you have to roll, then the NPC is lying'.

Whereas, if you make players roll every time, then it's a lot harder to easily discern who's lying and who isn't.

Also, there is a potential consequence for failure - your character could misinterpret some cues and think that the NPC is lying even if they're actually telling the truth.

Technically if we are avoiding unnecessary rolls, a creature whose Deception you have no chance of seeing through would also not require a roll from the player.

I don't know how much good comes of a PC being convinced that an honest NPC is lying. I see some value in their being uncertain as this calls for caution on their part, but it seems like the rest of the party would brush by an obvious misconception on one single PC's part about the honesty of an NPC.

I like to use player's Passive Insight, and just roll monster's Deception against that DC when necessary.

[Herobizkit]

This is a relatively new development I've seen from more than one DM.

I've recently rejoined with the players from the gaming group I started back in junior high. We're all fairly scattered about, but we've been able to reunite via the Fantasy Grounds VTT.

The DM is someone I 'honed', if you will, on strong storytelling and RP. But now, thanks to FG, it seems he's forgotten or doesn't care about the storytelling aspects and lets the program do all of the work. He doesn't announce who or what's attacking or what's happening every round - he just clicks 'Next' on his combat tracker and waits for the players to notice when they're being attacked.

What's more, he hasn't DM'd since 3.5 was new and isn't familiar with 5e's rules. On top of that, most of our players haven't seen a D&D game since the 90's. They're okay with the casual side of things as they also tend to smoke up/drink while they play.

Now, maybe I'm old and/or set in my ways, but it's a stark difference from the style of games I've becomes used to. I want to have 'fun' but all I can think about is how to keep these guys alive and on track with the adventure and to see what's going to happen next. I guess I 'care' too much about what's happening and forget how to "beer and pretzels".

Anyway, that's my rant. :3

[Dr. Cliché]

Technically if we are avoiding unnecessary rolls, a creature whose Deception you have no chance of seeing through would also not require a roll from the player.

As I said though, I don't consider stuff like that unnecessary.



I don't know how much good comes of a PC being convinced that an honest NPC is lying.

Well, failure isn't meant to be helpful. :smallwink:



I see some value in their being uncertain as this calls for caution on their part, but it seems like the rest of the party would brush by an obvious misconception on one single PC's part about the honesty of an NPC.

So, did they pass their insight checks or are they just assuming that said NPC is honest, in spite of one of their trusted friends thinking otherwise?


I like to use player's Passive Insight, and just roll monster's Deception against that DC when necessary.

I have no problem with that.

[Pex]

So, the things in bold are what I'm touching on.

1. "he asked it gleefully", Child, he's a DM, it's what we do. Our objective in life is to kill you in the most fair way possible (Admittedly, the rest of this DM's actions show a little to much Chaos in their alignment. The ideal DM is Lawful Evil ;) ) . If you go down, and start dying, it brings a flicker of joy to the DM to know that they have conquered one vain hero. We're the "Villain" if you will.

2. " because we're waiting on him and he's not even making stalling sounds like 'uhh' or 'uhm' " I myself am guilty of this. Sometimes we'll be in combat, and I want to throw an additional monster out of the woods, drawn by the noise or some such. I'll pause and consult the Monster Manual to call forth something that wants a snack. This can take a minute, as I want something that won't destroy the party, but add a decent challenge. Put yourself into their shoes for a second

All in all, cut the DM some slack. If he's being this chaotic, consult him after the game and express your concerns. But remember, The DM's job is to end your characters life while making you have fun dying! :P

A DM who wants and tries to kill off the PCs is one of the worst types of DMs. The DM is not the players' opponent.

[Millface]

A DM who wants and tries to kill off the PCs is one of the worst types of DMs. The DM is not the players' opponent.

This times a million. DMs have ONE job:

EVERYBODY HAS FUN

That's literally it.

[Steel Mirror]

A DM who wants and tries to kill off the PCs is one of the worst types of DMs. The DM is not the players' opponent.

This times a million. DMs have ONE job:

EVERYBODY HAS FUN

That's literally it.
That's true, but there is something to be said for the kind of game where the DM creates some really challenging encounters, then sets the players lose and uses every cunning trick, every devious tactic, and every challenging foe she can to end the party's lives. The fun then comes from being paranoid, ruthless, tactical, and yes, lucky enough to get through the dungeon alive. If the DM plays fair but still does her level best to kill the characters, the payoff for 'winning' can be really great, and lead to some awesome moments at the table where it really does feel like everything rides on your next gambit or how exactly that next d20 falls.

And then some people who are in it more for the story or to live vicariously through their character or to experience something more cinematic and adventurous where death only really happens when the dramatic stakes allow for it might hate a DM who plays for keeps like that. That's fine, it's two ways to have fun that happen not to line up, but both types of games can be great.

The bad experiences come when the DM either sees the killer DM style and doesn't play fair with it, which makes the players wonder why they bother trying to be tactical or intelligent if the world can rearrange itself on the DM's whim to thwart their careful planning, or when DMs think the game will be a deadly gauntlet while the players are expecting something much different. But as long as the two sides of the screen are on the same page, I can see the appeal for both killer DMs and DMs who see the game as something more cooperative.

[Naanomi]

Voice acting without the talent to support it.
I find this most obnoxious when *other players* do it... though I suppose 'things other players do that irk me as a player' is another thread entirely

[Telwar]

One thing that irk me as a player is when a DM mix up rules with different D&D editions or RPG.

That irritated me in a game a couple of years ago. 4e, al Qadim, we're in a guy's house and we've been attacked by an assassin, and my fire sorcerer is chasing him. The assassin frantically closes a door behind him (minor action) and I stated I wanted to blow the door to flinders so I could keep chasing the guy, both so I didn't have to interrupt my movement to open the door and because frankly I liked the look of my tiefling sorcerer in his full glory blasting a door down and striding angrily through it after the assassin who has attempted to murder our host, whose salt we have partaken of, with the (tacked-on-to-the-setting for tieflings and other planetouched) infernal script on my skin glowing and frantically writing (and maybe getting an intimidation check out of that, but not really expecting one).

DM: "Well, you won't do enough damage, it takes half energy damage, it's an object."

Me: "That's 3e. 4e doesn't have that, and even if it did, a) my elemental blast does both fire and cold (and frag you Brotherhood of the True Flame for making me Admix Cold instead of Thunder, like a proper blasty mcblasterson sorcerer that loves explosions), so if we're pretending that physics is at play here it's being both superheated and supercooled at once so it should fly apart, and b) regular wooden doors have 10 hp at most per Rules Compendium, and I do 50 damage on average."

DM: "Well, it's too thick."

Me: (sigh) "Seriously? Fine. (use move action to go to door, minor to open, and have to downgrade my standard to move after the assassin).

DM: "And at least you didn't waste your standard action on blowing up a door!"

Me: (eyelids start to twitch)


He's usually a VERY good DM, but damn that was annoying.


The other annoying thing is the enemy knowing EVERYTHING about us. EVERYTHING. "They keep files on you." And yet they don't do a proper scry-and-die...

[Auramis]

A sense of superiority for magic users over mundanes and quitting 1-2 sessions into a new campaign before moving onto the next.

[Âmesang]

The issue with this is that it basically becomes 'if you have to roll, then the NPC is lying'.

Whereas, if you make players roll every time, then it's a lot harder to easily discern who's lying and who isn't.

Also, there is a potential consequence for failure - your character could misinterpret some cues and think that the NPC is lying even if they're actually telling the truth.
This is also why I like "take 10" rules for high-skilled characters since it could make it seem less obvious that something fishy's going on (though I played in groups where players would often make Sense Motive checks of their own volition instead of being asked to).

[ApplePen]

1) fudge movement and swarm my character. He gets frustraited that I use spirit guardians so he has creatures cover ground and get to me in a round which clearly could not (last session a creature with a 40 move made it through 10' of evards black tentacles, cross 15 feet of clear ground, then made it to me behind my 15' of spirit guardians)

2) force people to 'confirm' critical hits, gaining nothing for doing so but losing the critical if they don't.

Spirit guardians still hits them. If they enter the area or begin their turn within the area they take the Damage. Spirit Guardians is a brutally effective spell. I rarely spend spell slots on anything but it and healing. (The rest is cantrips)

[Asha Leu]

Voice acting without the talent to support it.

I get it, Matt Mercer is a great DM and more then decent voice actor and we all want to be like him when DMing, but please, for the love of Odin, don't try to voice act when you don't have any talent for it.

I kind of have the opposite opinion on this. It irks me when every NPC and monster in a game just speaks with the DM's ordinary voice.

It doesn't have to be a great performance, or even a good one, but changing up the voice and inflection from character to character goes a long way towards creating immersion and verisimilitude.

[Socratov]

I kind of have the opposite opinion on this. It irks me when every NPC and monster in a game just speaks with the DM's ordinary voice.

It doesn't have to be a great performance, or even a good one, but changing up the voice and inflection from character to character goes a long way towards creating immersion and verisimilitude.

There is a definite difference between minor voice changes in tempo, inflection or accent, but go past that and by Odin, I hope you have some modicum of talent for it instead of trying to pass yourself off as a female human by trying to emulate the accent of a neighbouring country with a falsetto voice, without the actual real ability to use falsetto. It grates the ears, and really ha the opposite effect.

[2D8HP]

A DM who wants and tries to kill off the PCs is one of the worst types of DMs. The DM is not the players' opponent.


This times a million. DMs have ONE job:

EVERYBODY HAS FUN

That's literally it.


That's true, but there is something to be said for the kind of game where the DM creates some really challenging encounters, then sets the players lose and uses every cunning trick, every devious tactic, and every challenging foe she can to end the party's lives. The fun then comes from being paranoid, ruthless, tactical, and yes, lucky enough to get through the dungeon alive....


Congratulations! You have passed the biggest hurdle to becoming a great AD&D DM. Too many people believe the hype that characters always died. And with average DMs, it was true. But in the ideal game of AD&D, the players feel threatened by death nearly always, but somehow, they virtually always manage to survive it.

I've run over a dozen characters from original D&D or AD&D, all of whom started at first level. Only one died at first level (due to my own stupidity), and only one died at higher levels.

Combined with a reputation for high lethality, two deaths out of years of play is all it takes for every encounter to be a suspenseful moment.

One of the most delightful feelings that can come from playing the game is the feeling of having out-witted the DM. Your job is to provide enough background and props and other complications that it's possible to do so. Describe the walls, stairs, furnishings, trees, rocks, streams, etc. Give them terrain and props to do things with. Nobody can swing from the chandeliers, or pull a rug out from under the bad guys' feet, or turn over a table, unless there's a chandelier, rug, and table.

When somebody comes up with an idea, don't ask what skills they have. Picture the scene in your mind and decide how likely it is to occur.

One consequence is that you shouldn't invent the way out of the situation. If you do that, then they aren't outwitting the DM; they are just following his path. And if they don't find his path, then they fail.

Create a situation with no obvious way out, and then any idea the players have can be the clever way to win, and they have just outwitted you.

What people think they want today is a safe encounter they can defeat easily. But what they will want tomorrow is to have been in a deadly encounter which they barely escaped, due to their own ideas and cleverness.Some deception is involved.
If the player's think their PC's narrowly escaped death, it's more fun for them than a "cakewalk".
The tricky part is delivering that perception without actually having TPK's be common.
:mitd:


.

[Oramac]

In one of my games I played some time ago, I had a GM who insisted that we only had a very limited amount of time to decide our action each turn, and then would just skip a player if they took longer than the mandated 6 seconds (in practice it ended up being more than 6 seconds, because honestly you can't even describe a lot of actions in that time, but it was really short). To add insult to injury, if we tried an action that turned out to be impossible due to some intricacy of the map that was next to impossible to see given the ludicrously short timeframe to make a decision, we'd also lose a turn.

snip

Ugh. I feel your pain. I had a DM like that, except that mine used Theatre of the Mind and loved killing PCs.

My story; same DM as above:

I told him I wanted to move out of the tavern we were resting in, and hold my turn until....

"Can't do that. Next!"

Seriously. Now, I know in 5e it's technically "ready an action", but any idiot could figure out that's what I meant. Either he didn't know the rules (bad), or he intentionally ignored the rules (worse).

But the worst part is, this was the regional coordinator for Adventure League.

[Oramac]

Voice acting without the talent to support it.

I'm of the opposite opinion. I'd rather hear bad voice acting than the same voice for every single NPC in a game.

[mgshamster]

Ugh. I feel your pain. I had a DM like that, except that mine used Theatre of the Mind and loved killing PCs.

My story; same DM as above:

I told him I wanted to move out of the tavern we were resting in, and hold my turn until....

"Can't do that. Next!"

Seriously. Now, I know in 5e it's technically "ready an action", but any idiot could figure out that's what I meant. Either he didn't know the rules (bad), or he intentionally ignored the rules (worse).

But the worst part is, this was the regional coordinator for Adventure League.

The only time I've seen that implemented was when we had a player unable to make a decision and didn't pay attention when it wasn't his turn. As soon as it was his turn, he'd pour over potential spells, grabbing multiple books to figure what which one did what - his turns could take up to 20 minutes by himself.

All the rest of us figured out what we were going to do when it wasn't our turn, so it would only take a few second when our turn came up. And we were playing with 8 players.

We got so tired of it that we implemented a one-minute rule, and if you couldn't decide what to do, your character did nothing. He was the only one affected by the rule, but it eventually worked and he started preparing ahead of time.

(This was back in 2e days).

[Oramac]

The only time I've seen that implemented was when we had a player unable to make a decision and didn't pay attention when it wasn't his turn. As soon as it was his turn, he'd pour over potential spells, grabbing multiple books to figure what which one did what - his turns could take up to 20 minutes by himself.

All the rest of us figured out what we were going to do when it wasn't our turn, so it would only take a few second when our turn came up. And we were playing with 8 players.

We got so tired of it that we implemented a one-minute rule, and if you couldn't decide what to do, your character did nothing. He was the only one affected by the rule, but it eventually worked and he started preparing ahead of time.

(This was back in 2e days).

I hate when players do that. Sadly, that was not the case here. I was completely prepared and spoke up as soon as it was my turn. Then I lost my turn because of a crappy DM. The DM literally interrupted me talking to skip my turn.

[ImSAMazing]

One of my groups had one of those. I was playing a Chaotic Evil character who rarely meant what I said. When I went and used my rope to tie up a kobold the DMPC asked what I was doing with it. I told him I intended to keep it as a pet. My real intention was to force it ahead of us and trigger traps (none of us were particularly stealthy nor good at finding them). The DM decided he didn't want me to have a screaming monster in his dungeon, so the DMPC Killed it. I promptly shoved the DMPC into a nearby hallway (where I was just about to send the kobold), and wouldn't you know it he triggers a monster trap and ends up eating 3 surprise attacks and dies.

None of the other PCs saw it happen, so when questioned about it I said he wanted to check for traps and walked in on his own. We never had a DMPC again after that.
You know, that was a great way to stop a meta-gaming DM, without stepping to his level. Great job.

[Sabeta]

This is also why I like "take 10" rules for high-skilled characters since it could make it seem less obvious that something fishy's going on (though I played in groups where players would often make Sense Motive checks of their own volition instead of being asked to).

I do quite the opposite. My players don't roll Insight unless they tell me they do. I assume they take NPCs at face value unless they specifically mention mistrusting them, or something to similar affect. Thankfully, the world is very honest with them right now. I gave them a trap social encounter to teach them that lesson (essentially: an NPC convinced the players to do something bad by framing it as good), but it doesn't seem to have worked. Oh well, the next region they're heading towards is much more secretive and people are more than willing to lie to them. They'll either learn much quicker or start walking into several traps.


There is a definite difference between minor voice changes in tempo, inflection or accent, but go past that and by Odin, I hope you have some modicum of talent for it instead of trying to pass yourself off as a female human by trying to emulate the accent of a neighbouring country with a falsetto voice, without the actual real ability to use falsetto. It grates the ears, and really ha the opposite effect.

That's rude. Talent is a myth, skills come through hard work, practice, and determination. If your DM isn't good now, they could be in the future. Consider offering constructive criticism instead of saying it grates the ears.

[Vaz]

Well, failure isn't meant to be helpful. :smallwink:

That is a DM telling a player how they react. It os a binary question, 'Can I tell if they are lying', One/Zero, on/off, yes/no.

Failure is non commital, and that itself is as much a penalty as anything else. A DM compounding a situation by telling a player that the individual set in front of them, and serves nothing, even on games where it is all done in the open, a DM going "Yes Barbarian, you are convinced he is lying, those who passed know he is telling the truth" means the party gets a laugh out of the Barbarian for failing so badly, or watch the Barbarian roleplay trying to convince them that they're wrong but add the issue of increasing metagaming; the players know they are correct, but would the party members really listen to random person or the barbarian they have adventured together with for 5 years at least (in game)?

[Asha Leu]

There is a definite difference between minor voice changes in tempo, inflection or accent, but go past that and by Odin, I hope you have some modicum of talent for it instead of trying to pass yourself off as a female human by trying to emulate the accent of a neighbouring country with a falsetto voice, without the actual real ability to use falsetto. It grates the ears, and really ha the opposite effect.

That might be going a bit far, yes. When I play female NPCs, I don't really pitch my voice any higher (mostly because I, well, can't), but do try to adopt a softer, more "feminine" way of speaking, where appropriate.

On balance, though, I think I'd still prefer a DM to use a ridiculous falsetto than not try modulating his/her voice at all. Maybe the DMs I play with are just better voice actors than you are used to.

[Dr. Cliché]

That is a DM telling a player how they react. It os a binary question, 'Can I tell if they are lying', One/Zero, on/off, yes/no.

It's only a binary question because you've chosen to make it one.

For most rational people it's not 'can I tell if they're lying?' it's 'do I think they're lying?'. Notice the difference? The latter also has the benefit of staying in character, as opposed to God whispering in their ear.



Failure is non commital, and that itself is as much a penalty as anything else. A DM compounding a situation by telling a player that the individual set in front of them, and serves nothing, even on games where it is all done in the open, a DM going "Yes Barbarian, you are convinced he is lying, those who passed know he is telling the truth" means the party gets a laugh out of the Barbarian for failing so badly, or watch the Barbarian roleplay trying to convince them that they're wrong but add the issue of increasing metagaming; the players know they are correct, but would the party members really listen to random person or the barbarian they have adventured together with for 5 years at least (in game)?

Does your entire group insist on all rolling Insight for every single conversation with an NPC? As opposed to, you know, having the members most skilled at insight making the roll and the others believing them?

And, even if they do, you know that this sort of thing happens in real life, right? I don't want to blow your mind here, but you can have two people listen to the same person speak and have one convinced that he's telling the truth whilst the other thinks he's lying.

It's almost as if telling whether someone is lying is very difficult and easy to get wrong. Not only that, but it can be easily influenced by your own opinions on the person (if you already dislike them, you're likely to see otherwise innocuous things as signs that they're lying, whilst previously trustworthy people can often get away with lies on trust, as it were).

[Millface]

That's true, but there is something to be said for the kind of game where the DM creates some really challenging encounters, then sets the players lose and uses every cunning trick, every devious tactic, and every challenging foe she can to end the party's lives. The fun then comes from being paranoid, ruthless, tactical, and yes, lucky enough to get through the dungeon alive. If the DM plays fair but still does her level best to kill the characters, the payoff for 'winning' can be really great, and lead to some awesome moments at the table where it really does feel like everything rides on your next gambit or how exactly that next d20 falls.

And then some people who are in it more for the story or to live vicariously through their character or to experience something more cinematic and adventurous where death only really happens when the dramatic stakes allow for it might hate a DM who plays for keeps like that. That's fine, it's two ways to have fun that happen not to line up, but both types of games can be great.

The bad experiences come when the DM either sees the killer DM style and doesn't play fair with it, which makes the players wonder why they bother trying to be tactical or intelligent if the world can rearrange itself on the DM's whim to thwart their careful planning, or when DMs think the game will be a deadly gauntlet while the players are expecting something much different. But as long as the two sides of the screen are on the same page, I can see the appeal for both killer DMs and DMs who see the game as something more cooperative.

I suppose I should have clarified that sometimes "fun" does require a challenge and real stakes. I didn't mean to imply that a DM should never, ever kill a PC, just that that shouldn't be their main focus all the time. Some encounters should tease death and failure because success feels better, but some should just be light or funny or just clever. A DM who sees his or her main goal as killing players will inevitably kill the players because, you know, god mode, and that's where it stops being fun.

[Larpus]

That is a DM telling a player how they react. It os a binary question, 'Can I tell if they are lying', One/Zero, on/off, yes/no.

Failure is non commital, and that itself is as much a penalty as anything else. A DM compounding a situation by telling a player that the individual set in front of them, and serves nothing, even on games where it is all done in the open, a DM going "Yes Barbarian, you are convinced he is lying, those who passed know he is telling the truth" means the party gets a laugh out of the Barbarian for failing so badly, or watch the Barbarian roleplay trying to convince them that they're wrong but add the issue of increasing metagaming; the players know they are correct, but would the party members really listen to random person or the barbarian they have adventured together with for 5 years at least (in game)?

One way my DM alleviates the issue is to simply add a "not the whole truth" situation, a character that passes the check doesn't mind it, as the information is not being withheld with malice, it's merely because it is inconsequential, but a character who fails the check perceives it as malice and has reason to pursue more info.

So in the proposed scenario, the Barbarian is told "you can tell that he is not quite lying, but is not telling the full story" or something to that effect, so the Barbarian would have reasons to mistrust the NPC and either pursue that line of thought or drop it, after all the party is unlikely to follow social advice from the Barbarian.

But it can lead to very interesting places when the one to fail is the go-to person for good social decisions, like this one time where the Cleric's mistrust of an NPC (where the compulsive liar Rogue made the check and was promptly ignored) lead the party to truly talk to the NPC and learn his personal quest and all that, to the point that later on when the NPC died as collateral damage, we actually made it our duty to ensure that the NPC's wishes were fulfilled and then tracked his family back to tell about how much of a hero he had been, gave them some money so they could live comfortably with the NPC's absence and vowed to resurrect him once we had the means to do so.

The last bit didn't happen, as his spirit was at peace and neither he or his family wanted to burden the "town's heroes" with such a quest, but everyone was onboard for doing it (even the Rogue).

[Knaight]

That's rude. Talent is a myth, skills come through hard work, practice, and determination. If your DM isn't good now, they could be in the future. Consider offering constructive criticism instead of saying it grates the ears.

They come a lot faster and with a lot less hard work and practice for some people than others. I'm not saying that only talented people should even try, but claiming that talent doesn't even exist and is just a myth is ludicrous.

[Grey Watcher]

...

That's rude. Talent is a myth, skills come through hard work, practice, and determination. If your DM isn't good now, they could be in the future. Consider offering constructive criticism instead of saying it grates the ears.

I'll agree with you on the "talent is a myth" part, (I can't tell you how many times, in my singing days, people told me my voice was a gift and, in my head I said "yeah, that whole 'decade of training' doesn't have a thing to do with it.) but depending on the person, broaching the subject might be difficult to do. Especially since tabletop gaming is as much a passtime-that's-supposed-to-be-fun for the DM as it is for the players, so without knowing any of the people involved personally, I don't know what would be the best way to communicate the critique in a way that wouldn't just result in the DM just feeling angry and defensive (even they're mature enough not to show it).

Plus, this thread is a place to vent to an unconnected third party, so maybe coming off as unduly angry and abrupt is to be expected. (As an analogue, imagine coming home from work or school and ranting about That Horrible Boss/Teacher to your significant other(s) or sibling(s) or parent(s).

EDIT:


They come a lot faster and with a lot less hard work and practice for some people than others. I'm not saying that only talented people should even try, but claiming that talent doesn't even exist and is just a myth is ludicrous.

Problem is, the word gets used two ways; an aptitude for learning the skill faster is one way, but far more common is the other: people attributing a display of extant skill as "talent". (See my above sideswipe at nearly every little old lady or gentleman who's ever given me a compliment about my singing. :smalltongue: )

[Vaz]

It's only a binary question because you've chosen to make it one. because it is. I'm not asking a DM to tell me what I'm thinking, I'm asking my DM to tell me what my characters ability to read peoples body language and nuances (determined by that roll).


For most rational people it's not 'can I tell if they're lying?' it's 'do I think they're lying?'. Notice the difference? The latter also has the benefit of staying in character, as opposed to God whispering in their ear.
Can i tell of they're lying?
- roll insight
*4*
- NO, you cannot.


Does your entire group insist on all rolling Insight for every single conversation with an NPC? As opposed to, you know, having the members most skilled at insight making the roll and the others believing them?
Essentially yes. Because that is how bounded accuracy works as a mechanic, rather than simply it being dependent on meeting an opposed figure. There is a random d20 added on to that check for exac player, sometimes just mitigated to a 'take 10' for ease.

If people want to roll, they can roll. There aren't crit successes, and it often plays out that way. 2 party members are unable to identify one way or the other, 3 recognise a lie. There are no 'false positives', simply a 'yes you recognise a lie' or 'no, you cannot percieve them lying". They may still be lying, but you're not able to work it out.


And, even if they do, you know that this sort of thing happens in real life, right? I don't want to blow your mind here, but you can have two people listen to the same person speak and have one convinced that he's telling the truth whilst the other thinks he's lying.
Sure you can. The person who is making that call over the individual in question. Both rolled an insight check, and got a result. They now need to influence a 3rd party based on that. One rolled high, and one rolled low.

The difference comes whether the guy who rolled Insight poorly was able to recognise a lie (if the guy was lying) or telling the truth.

Situation 1; Person A says a lie. Char B and C roll Insight. B rolls badly, C rolls well. DM tells player B he cannot discern a lie. Char C he tells does recognise the lie. In character, neither know the others roll, and cannot use that to influence decisions, and I tell my players off for saying 'Ste rolled a 17, john rolled a 9' to make a decision, when John has a +7 and usually correct, but Ste a -1 to check, and has historocally been wrong.

Situation B; Person A was telling truth. Same rolls for B and C. Neither player can tell if they were telling the truth. B on a 4 cannot make that call, but C has a pretty good idea, but cannot call upon it. Do they convince themselves it was a lie (possible due to a high bluff check?) and tell the party to stay clear?

Situation C; same as B, except person B is penalised and told the person is lying. The group have to formulate a decision, and it adds to the metagaming potential.when they know that the guy rolling low is convinced it was a lie.

Leads to an 'Aww cute, Alan, but I think.we'll go with Erics opinion'.


It's almost as if telling whether someone is lying is very difficult and easy to get wrong. Not only that, but it can be easily influenced by your own opinions on the person (if you already dislike them, you're likely to see otherwise innocuous things as signs that they're lying, whilst previously trustworthy people can often get away with lies on trust, as it were).
Sure. Your opinions aren't affected by a dice roll, unless you fluff them as that.

Your opinions and your characters opinions are yours to formulate on their own. Not some God whispering in your ear telling you they are lying, in your own words. I've bolded the bit you've stated yourself.

There is a guy I have decided I don't trust; through either past actions, or just my characters general outlook and demeanour. I am told something by him. I have a choice to make; one of 3. Trust, Don't Trust, or roll insight.

As you don't trust him, you are unlikely to just let it go, leaving you one of the other two. So, either call it a lie, or roll insight. Roll insight, and you get a 9. Adding your Insight to that, you have a check of 18 with a Druid character, say. Decent Wis, and Proficient. This should give you a good idea. But the DM says that you are unable to tell if he lying. Is that because the DC set to recognise the lie is set too high (or the DM rolled a hidden opposed roll, which may or may not have been to put you off metagaming, or a legit opposed check) or because he is telling the truth? That is on you, bearing in mind your +9 to Insight, which in character means the party, if you have proven yourself in 'Insighting' before, are likely to take your word on that fact.

Now, imagine it was a Barbarian. They roll a 9, but because of being a Barbarian, it is actually a 6, because Dump Wisdom and hit things more. You don't have a clue. No god is whispering, only your conscience saying you don't trust him, and you cannot read his actions one way or the other. QED, player is in control, not someone telling him he acts in a particular way.

No DM is telling my character what actually he actually does unless I'm mind controlled, or otherwise incapable of looking after my own actions.

[Socratov]

I'll agree with you on the "talent is a myth" part, (I can't tell you how many times, in my singing days, people told me my voice was a gift and, in my head I said "yeah, that whole 'decade of training' doesn't have a thing to do with it.) but depending on the person, broaching the subject might be difficult to do. Especially since tabletop gaming is as much a passtime-that's-supposed-to-be-fun for the DM as it is for the players, so without knowing any of the people involved personally, I don't know what would be the best way to communicate the critique in a way that wouldn't just result in the DM just feeling angry and defensive (even they're mature enough not to show it).

Plus, this thread is a place to vent to an unconnected third party, so maybe coming off as unduly angry and abrupt is to be expected. (As an analogue, imagine coming home from work or school and ranting about That Horrible Boss/Teacher to your significant other(s) or sibling(s) or parent(s).

Would it be better to call it aptitude? I mean, not everyone can reach the same level with the same amount of work put in, some people will take to it better then others.

[Millface]

Would it be better to call it aptitude? I mean, not everyone can reach the same level with the same amount of work put in, some people will take to it better then others.

I agree. In the world of roleplaying games there's definitely varying levels of aptitude. Imagination and creativity is such a huge part of it, and those things are more natural than they are learned. Other things, like social skills, speaking clearly and articulately, and perceiving the ebb and flow of the game and your players... these things can be learned, for sure.

[Potato_Priest]

[/B][/size]Some deception is involved.
If the player's think their PC's narrowly escaped death, it's more fun for them than a "cakewalk".
The tricky part is delivering that perception without actually having TPK's be common.
:mitd:
.

We have had one DM who did this constantly, but he was new, so I'm pretty sure it was just luck. There was one fight in particular that I'm pretty sure we were just lucky in: 9-12 hellhounds 40 feet away vs a level 9 party. Had I not rolled high initiative and had Wall of Stone prepared, we would have died just from the succeeded saving throws.

[Pex]

I suppose I should have clarified that sometimes "fun" does require a challenge and real stakes. I didn't mean to imply that a DM should never, ever kill a PC, just that that shouldn't be their main focus all the time. Some encounters should tease death and failure because success feels better, but some should just be light or funny or just clever. A DM who sees his or her main goal as killing players will inevitably kill the players because, you know, god mode, and that's where it stops being fun.

Yes.

PC death can happen. It's sad when it does. It's not the DM's job to want it to happen.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Yes.

PC death can happen. It's sad when it does. It's not the DM's job to want it to happen.
Honestly, I hate it when characters die. It leads to this weird situation where you need to integrate a new, probably totally-unconnected character into the group ASAP and get on with the plot you were previously engaged in. "Hello, I'm Jim, how are you?" "I'm great, Jim, now come on, we're got to stop an army of orcs and run off to Abyss to stop Lord Evul. I totally trust you to have my back in mortal danger." It's even worse than the start of a new game, because there's just one person fumbling their way into an existing dynamic and it's a lot harder to drop everyone into a forced bonding experience.

I mean, you're still going to die if that's where events fall, I'll just be irritated.

[Dr. Cliché]

Honestly, I hate it when characters die. It leads to this weird situation where you need to integrate a new, probably totally-unconnected character into the group ASAP and get on with the plot you were previously engaged in. "Hello, I'm Jim, how are you?" "I'm great, Jim, now come on, we're got to stop an army of orcs and run off to Abyss to stop Lord Evul. I totally trust you to have my back in mortal danger." It's even worse than the start of a new game, because there's just one person fumbling their way into an existing dynamic and it's a lot harder to drop everyone into a forced bonding experience.

I mean, you're still going to die if that's where events fall, I'll just be irritated.

It also means that any connections that character had with villains, NPCs and such are lost.

[Millface]

Honestly, I hate it when characters die. It leads to this weird situation where you need to integrate a new, probably totally-unconnected character into the group ASAP and get on with the plot you were previously engaged in. "Hello, I'm Jim, how are you?" "I'm great, Jim, now come on, we're got to stop an army of orcs and run off to Abyss to stop Lord Evul. I totally trust you to have my back in mortal danger." It's even worse than the start of a new game, because there's just one person fumbling their way into an existing dynamic and it's a lot harder to drop everyone into a forced bonding experience.

I mean, you're still going to die if that's where events fall, I'll just be irritated.

If you're running off to the abyss I'm pretty sure a revivify or raise dead is not really out of reach.

Sometimes things happen that are irreversible, but that's usually not coded into my encounters, the players would have to go way outside the prepped material to make something like that happen.

[gfishfunk]

Honestly, I hate it when characters die. It leads to this weird situation where you need to integrate a new, probably totally-unconnected character into the group ASAP and get on with the plot you were previously engaged in. "Hello, I'm Jim, how are you?" "I'm great, Jim, now come on, we're got to stop an army of orcs and run off to Abyss to stop Lord Evul. I totally trust you to have my back in mortal danger." It's even worse than the start of a new game, because there's just one person fumbling their way into an existing dynamic and it's a lot harder to drop everyone into a forced bonding experience.

I mean, you're still going to die if that's where events fall, I'll just be irritated.

I was thinking of writing my current campaign into a publish-ish adventure and adding a pool of nebulous people that work as a 'base-camp' and trusted organization. When someone dies, you fill out the ranks from the base-camp with a persona that everyone already knew previously - but they just never came up in actual game play.

I was also thinking of a quick relationship mechanic. Instead of bond / etc on the character sheet, have them come up with something memorable they did in the base-camp that all the PCs would remember.

[othaero]

I'll add to the DMs with made up negative impacting rules that he forgot to mention and oh by the way we are doing critical fumbles.

So we are still low level and im playing a wizard so not much Hp right. We get in a fight and I cast a spell that does necrotic damage and roll a 1 oh well i think to myself. Nope. Then DM tells me he does critical fumbles *sigh ok* what do i need to do.
(dm)Go ahead and roll damage. I roll close somewhere around 12 damage. (Dm)Ok that hits you (bringing me to 2 or 3 hp) and I play necrotic damage reduces your max HP permanently. Umm wtf? I proceeded to die later on (unsurprisingly) Left soon afterwards and turns out his group has a very low retention rate

[Sabeta]

I play necrotic damage reduces your max HP permanently.

Can you overheal then to raise your max HP? If Negative energy permanently drains life it's only fair that Positive permanently adds it.

[othaero]

Can you overheal then to raise your max HP? If Negative energy permanently drains life it's only fair that Positive permanently adds it.

Nope the only way was to level up and get that hp bump

[Grey Watcher]

Nope the only way was to level up and get that hp bump

You could go borrow from 3rd Edition and say that raising your max HP beyond what you could have if you had rolled maximum HP at every level up introduces a risk of the subject exploding in a burst of raw healing energy. "Like a balloon and something bad happens!"

[mgshamster]

You could go borrow from 3rd Edition and say that raising your max HP beyond what you could have if you had rolled maximum HP at every level up introduces a risk of the subject exploding in a burst of raw healing energy. "Like a balloon and something bad happens!"

Or borrow from 2e and have too much positive energy turn you into a mummy.

[Knaight]

Or you could not have necrotic damage permanently reduce maximum HP because the system isn't made for it and it will utterly wreck combat balance for everything that has it.

[JAL_1138]

Or you could not have necrotic damage permanently reduce maximum HP because the system isn't made for it and it will utterly wreck combat balance for everything that has it.

Nah, that would be too sensible.

[ApplePen]

Bards, Clerics and Wizards can add temp HP.

[Hakon]

Says your meta gaming for using a cleric aoe heal to only give 1 hp to dying allies and giving the rest to the tanks
says your metagaming for any reason (if a gm says your meta gaming it is their fault)

doesn't let you do something because he thinks its impossible instead of letting you try it but regardless of what you roll saying you fail.
(gm's should never say no, its preventing you roleplaying properly)

[Hakon]

not reading the campaign properly and then changing the way events unfolded the following week

[Hakon]

deliberately trying to kill a player

[Dr. Cliché]

because it is.

No it isn't.

There are, at the very least, 3 possible outcomes:
- Think they're lying.
- Think they're telling the truth.
- Unsure/can't tell.

And this is before we get into the fact that there are many, many ways to lie or mislead people. e.g.:
- Outright lies.
- Omission of key information.
- Telling the truth, but phrasing it to mislead people.
- Twisting the facts or spin doctoring


I'm not asking a DM to tell me what I'm thinking, I'm asking my DM to tell me what my characters ability to read peoples body language and nuances (determined by that roll).

Except that you don't actually want that. Because you don't want the possibility of failure - what you want is for God to whisper in your ear and tell you that the NPC in front of you is lying.



Can i tell of they're lying?
- roll insight
*4*
- NO, you cannot.

If you want to play it like that, fine. Although, it's worth noting that (as above) an NPC can mislead you without actually lying. But I guess you don't care about that, because all you want to know is whether they're lying, right?

But the DM could just as easily use a system like:
(For lying NPC)
Success: You are sure that the NPC is lying.
Failure: You're not sure
Low roll*/critical failure: You're sure the NPC is telling the truth.
High roll*/critical success: You gain some additional insight into the nature of the NPC's lies

*High/low rolls could be the DC+/-10 or something to that effect.



Essentially yes. Because that is how bounded accuracy works as a mechanic, rather than simply it being dependent on meeting an opposed figure.

So, your players want the benefits of bonded accuracy . . . with none of the consequences. Got you.



If people want to roll, they can roll.

Sure, but rolls have low numbers as well as high. You are making the decision to ignore those numbers.


There aren't crit successes

That is up to the DM. That you choose to ignore critical successes does not mean that every DM must. Given how complicated lying/misleading can be, I think you could easily give the players some extra insight on a critical success. e.g. they might think that the NPC is hiding something or perhaps that they're choosing their words a bit too carefully.


2 party members are unable to identify one way or the other, 3 recognise a lie. There are no 'false positives', simply a 'yes you recognise a lie' or 'no, you cannot percieve them lying". They may still be lying, but you're not able to work it out.

Again, you are confusing your opinion with fact.

False positives do occur in real life. If you want to ignore them, fine, but saying that there is no such thing demonstrably fallacious.



Sure you can. The person who is making that call over the individual in question. Both rolled an insight check, and got a result. They now need to influence a 3rd party based on that. One rolled high, and one rolled low.

Wait, what? You literally just said that there were no false positives. Have you changed your mind now?



The difference comes whether the guy who rolled Insight poorly was able to recognise a lie (if the guy was lying) or telling the truth.

I can't even work out what you're trying to say here.



Situation 1; Person A says a lie. Char B and C roll Insight. B rolls badly, C rolls well. DM tells player B he cannot discern a lie. Char C he tells does recognise the lie. In character, neither know the others roll, and cannot use that to influence decisions, and I tell my players off for saying 'Ste rolled a 17, john rolled a 9' to make a decision, when John has a +7 and usually correct, but Ste a -1 to check, and has historocally been wrong.

Situation B; Person A was telling truth. Same rolls for B and C. Neither player can tell if they were telling the truth. B on a 4 cannot make that call, but C has a pretty good idea, but cannot call upon it. Do they convince themselves it was a lie (possible due to a high bluff check?) and tell the party to stay clear?

Situation C; same as B, except person B is penalised and told the person is lying. The group have to formulate a decision, and it adds to the metagaming potential.when they know that the guy rolling low is convinced it was a lie.

Leads to an 'Aww cute, Alan, but I think.we'll go with Erics opinion'.
[/QUOTE]

Uh . . . what?

I'm going to ignore the first two scenarios, because they're completely irrelevant to what's being discussed (not to mention Suffering from Circular Reasoning).

So, scenario C is:
- An NPC is telling the truth.
- One player can't tell whether or not they're lying.
- Another player thinks they're lying.
- The group decides to believe that the NPC is telling the truth because they know that a low roll will make a person believe the opposite of the truth.

So, your problem is actually metagaming on your players' part. In which case, how about rolling for them or having them roll in secret?

Also, I'm assuming that your players will have at least some reason to suspect this NPC of lying. Unless your players go round interrogating innkeepers over the validity of their breakfast menus. :smallwink:

Furthermore, you do remember my initial point, right? Which was that having players only roll insight against lying NPCs makes things much more metagame-y, as they know that roll insight = lying NPC. That point seems to have been missed.



Sure. Your opinions aren't affected by a dice roll, unless you fluff them as that.


My point was just that discerning lies is far from an exact science and that supposed cues can easily be misread (hence, false positives are far from unreasonable).

Hell, D&D not only has different cultures but different species of creature conversing with one another.



Your opinions and your characters opinions are yours to formulate on their own. Not some God whispering in your ear telling you they are lying, in your own words. I've bolded the bit you've stated yourself.

So why are you so desperate for the DM to play it like that?



There is a guy I have decided I don't trust; through either past actions, or just my characters general outlook and demeanour. I am told something by him. I have a choice to make; one of 3. Trust, Don't Trust, or roll insight.


Eh? Don't the second two go hand in hand?

Surely the whole point is that you're rolling insight *because* you don't trust them. You are, at the very least, dubious of them and so are trying to study them more closely than you would otherwise do, in an attempt to discern whether they're being honest or dishonest with you.



As you don't trust him, you are unlikely to just let it go, leaving you one of the other two. So, either call it a lie, or roll insight. Roll insight, and you get a 9. Adding your Insight to that, you have a check of 18 with a Druid character, say. Decent Wis, and Proficient. This should give you a good idea. But the DM says that you are unable to tell if he lying. Is that because the DC set to recognise the lie is set too high (or the DM rolled a hidden opposed roll, which may or may not have been to put you off metagaming, or a legit opposed check) or because he is telling the truth? That is on you, bearing in mind your +9 to Insight, which in character means the party, if you have proven yourself in 'Insighting' before, are likely to take your word on that fact.


Not sure what you're trying to prove here. God didn't whisper in his ear on this occasion, so that makes it alright when he does?



Now, imagine it was a Barbarian. They roll a 9, but because of being a Barbarian, it is actually a 6, because Dump Wisdom and hit things more. You don't have a clue. No god is whispering, only your conscience saying you don't trust him, and you cannot read his actions one way or the other. QED, player is in control, not someone telling him he acts in a particular way.

No, it's okay. You just finish burning that strawman and then we can talk.

Let's revisit that scenario with one key difference - the result of the barbarian's roll is that he thinks the NPC is being dishonest. Because, bizarrely, his attempt to do something for which he is completely unsuited hasn't gone well.

Where, exactly, is the loss of control for the player? No one has told him to act in a particular way - just the result of his (failed) attempt to read the conversation.

The player is free to use this information any way they want. They are not forced to act a certain way, nor has there been any loss of control. Unless you think that a fighter missing in combat is also a loss of control? Or that a spell failing to affect a target is a loss of control?



No DM is telling my character what actually he actually does unless I'm mind controlled, or otherwise incapable of looking after my own actions.

Again, when did the DM tell you what your character does? All he's done is tell you the result of an Insight check *you* chose to make.

Also, I never said that you have to play insight such that a low roll = character believes the reverse of the truth (so, if the NPC is lying, the PC thinks he's honest or vice versa). Merely that *could* play it like that, which wouldn't be unreasonable.

[xanderh]

So, the things in bold are what I'm touching on.

1. "he asked it gleefully", Child, he's a DM, it's what we do. Our objective in life is to kill you in the most fair way possible (Admittedly, the rest of this DM's actions show a little to much Chaos in their alignment. The ideal DM is Lawful Evil ;) ) . If you go down, and start dying, it brings a flicker of joy to the DM to know that they have conquered one vain hero. We're the "Villain" if you will.

2. " because we're waiting on him and he's not even making stalling sounds like 'uhh' or 'uhm' " I myself am guilty of this. Sometimes we'll be in combat, and I want to throw an additional monster out of the woods, drawn by the noise or some such. I'll pause and consult the Monster Manual to call forth something that wants a snack. This can take a minute, as I want something that won't destroy the party, but add a decent challenge. Put yourself into their shoes for a second

All in all, cut the DM some slack. If he's being this chaotic, consult him after the game and express your concerns. But remember, The DM's job is to end your characters life while making you have fun dying! :P

I completely and utterly disagree with your assessment of 1, and haven't had fun with a single DM who played it that way. Your job is not to kill players fairly. Your job is to facilitate a story in which the players are the heroes. You're supposed to push the characters as close to the edge as possible, without throwing them off the cliff. Having your character die isn't fun, especially if you're attached to it. But if the DM is respectful, it's not as bad. However, if the DM seems really happy that he killed your character, it sucks to be attached to it.

My best moments in terms of game balance has been where nobody died, but one or two more rounds would have resulted in a TPK. My players are pretty savvy in terms of judging their durability, so they can usually tell if they're in trouble and about to die. I create tension and fear for their characters without ever having them drop to 0. They know that if they drop to 0 and lose their death saves, their character is dead. But I don't have to remind them by killing them every now and then.

[Fishyninja]

My best moments in terms of game balance has been where nobody died, but one or two more rounds would have resulted in a TPK. My players are pretty savvy in terms of judging their durability, so they can usually tell if they're in trouble and about to die. I create tension and fear for their characters without ever having them drop to 0. They know that if they drop to 0 and lose their death saves, their character is dead. But I don't have to remind them by killing them every now and then.

This I agree with so much.
We were placed in a situation recently where the town we were in was being set upon by a giant with a large magical gem. Think Vision's Infinity Stone. It was basically a GET THE HECK out of their scenario and he gave us multiple opportunities to escape, nearly all of us did. One of our party a money obsessed Halfling who had secretly earned 300gp for an assassination job went to collect her gold before leaving but found out it had been stolen and was chasing the thief around this town being levelled, she died but damn that was tense!

[mgshamster]

OK, I got a new one. GM tells one player that a minor change is unacceptable but tells another player that a major change is OK.

Real example that actually happened in the middle of session 1:

Player 1: "Hey, how come player 2 has that starting equipment? I thought we were supposed to start with the gear straight from the class."

DM: "Nope. Everyone started with an extra 50 GP."

Player 1: "Oh. Then can I get a different weapon and armor based off the starting gold?"

GM: "No, it'll break versilimitude if your character suddenly changes gear."

Player 3: "Hey GM, can my character be born from a copper dragon and have dragon relatives active in the campaign?"

GM: "Sure! That sounds awesome!"

[DracoKnight]

OK, I got a new one. GM tells one player that a minor change is unacceptable but tells another player that a major change is OK.

Real example that actually happened in the middle of session 1:

Player 1: "Hey, how come player 2 has that starting equipment? I thought we were supposed to start with the gear straight from the class."

DM: "Nope. Everyone started with an extra 50 GP."

Player 1: "Oh. Then can I get a different weapon and armor based off the starting gold?"

GM: "No, it'll break versilimitude if your character suddenly changes gear."

Player 3: "Hey GM, can my character be born from a copper dragon and have dragon relatives active in the campaign?"

GM: "Sure! That sounds awesome!"

That...is just bad. I like the idea of #2, even though it's VERY special snowflake-y...but seriously?! If you didn't tell your players that they had 50gp to spend on top of starting equipment, don't punish them for your mistake :smalltongue:

[ChildofLuthic]

OK, I got a new one. GM tells one player that a minor change is unacceptable but tells another player that a major change is OK.

Real example that actually happened in the middle of session 1:

Player 1: "Hey, how come player 2 has that starting equipment? I thought we were supposed to start with the gear straight from the class."

DM: "Nope. Everyone started with an extra 50 GP."

Player 1: "Oh. Then can I get a different weapon and armor based off the starting gold?"

GM: "No, it'll break versilimitude if your character suddenly changes gear."

Player 3: "Hey GM, can my character be born from a copper dragon and have dragon relatives active in the campaign?"

GM: "Sure! That sounds awesome!"

Yeah, GMs really have to work on being consistent. You either have to say that once a character is made, nothing changes, OR you have to say that any changes are acceptable.

Because at the end of the day, you don't know how major or minor it's going to look to the people playing the game. Also, not letting someone change their gear because they didn't know they could seems like a situation where metagame concerns (ie fairness) trumps verisimilitude.

[Vaz]

No it isn't.

There are, at the very least, 3 possible outcomes:
- Think they're lying.
- Think they're telling the truth.
- Unsure/can't tell.

And this is before we get into the fact that there are many, many ways to lie or mislead people. e.g.:
- Outright lies.
- Omission of key information.
- Telling the truth, but phrasing it to mislead people.
- Twisting the facts or spin doctoring



Except that you don't actually want that. Because you don't want the possibility of failure - what you want is for God to whisper in your ear and tell you that the NPC in front of you is lying.



If you want to play it like that, fine. Although, it's worth noting that (as above) an NPC can mislead you without actually lying. But I guess you don't care about that, because all you want to know is whether they're lying, right?

But the DM could just as easily use a system like:
(For lying NPC)
Success: You are sure that the NPC is lying.
Failure: You're not sure
Low roll*/critical failure: You're sure the NPC is telling the truth.
High roll*/critical success: You gain some additional insight into the nature of the NPC's lies

*High/low rolls could be the DC+/-10 or something to that effect.



So, your players want the benefits of bonded accuracy . . . with none of the consequences. Got you.



Sure, but rolls have low numberso as well as high. You are making the decision to ignore those numbers.



That is up to the DM. That you choose to ignore critical successes does not mean that every DM must. Given how complicated lying/misleading can be, I think you could easily give the players some extra insight on a critical success. e.g. they might think that the NPC is hiding something or perhaps that they're choosing their words a bit too carefully.



Again, you are confusing your opinion with fact.

False positives do occur in real life. If you want to ignore them, fine, but saying that there is no such thing demonstrably fallacious.



Wait, what? You literally just said that there were no false positives. Have you changed your mind now?



I can't even work out what you're trying to say here.



Situation B; Person A was telling truth. Same rolls for B and C. Neither player can tell if they were telling the truth. B on a 4 cannot make that call, but C has a pretty good idea, but cannot call upon it. Do they convince themselves it was a lie (possible due to a high bluff check?) and tell the party to stay clear?

Situation C; same as B, except person B is penalised and told the person is lying. The group have to formulate a decision, and it adds to the metagaming potential.when they know that the guy rolling low is convinced it was a lie.

Leads to an 'Aww cute, Alan, but I think.we'll go with Erics opinion'.


Uh . . . what?

I'm going to ignore the first two scenarios, because they're completely irrelevant to what's being discussed (not to mention Suffering from Circular Reasoning).

So, scenario C is:
- An NPC is telling the truth.
- One player can't tell whether or not they're lying.
- Another player thinks they're lying.
- The group decides to believe that the NPC is telling the truth because they know that a low roll will make a person believe the opposite of the truth.

So, your problem is actually metagaming on your players' part. In which case, how about rolling for them or having them roll in secret?

Also, I'm assuming that your players will have at least some reason to suspect this NPC of lying. Unless your players go round interrogating innkeepers over the validity of their breakfast menus. :smallwink:

Furthermore, you do remember my initial point, right? Which was that having players only roll insight against lying NPCs makes things much more metagame-y, as they know that roll insight = lying NPC. That point seems to have been missed.



My point was just that discerning lies is far from an exact science and that supposed cues can easily be misread (hence, false positives are far from unreasonable).

Hell, D&D not only has different cultures but different species of creature conversing with one another.



So why are you so desperate for the DM to play it like that?



Eh? Don't the second two go hand in hand?

Surely the whole point is that you're rolling insight *because* you don't trust them. You are, at the very least, dubious of them and so are trying to study them more closely than you would otherwise do, in an attempt to discern whether they're being honest or dishonest with you.



Not sure what you're trying to prove here. God didn't whisper in his ear on this occasion, so that makes it alright when he does?



No, it's okay. You just finish burning that strawman and then we can talk.

Let's revisit that scenario with one key difference - the result of the barbarian's roll is that he thinks the NPC is being dishonest. Because, bizarrely, his attempt to do something for which he is completely unsuited hasn't gone well.

Where, exactly, is the loss of control for the player? No one has told him to act in a particular way - just the result of his (failed) attempt to read the conversation.

The player is free to use this information any way they want. They are not forced to act a certain way, nor has there been any loss of control. Unless you think that a fighter missing in combat is also a loss of control? Or that a spell failing to affect a target is a loss of control?



Again, when did the DM tell you what your character does? All he's done is tell you the result of an Insight check *you* chose to make.

Also, I never said that you have to play insight such that a low roll = character believes the reverse of the truth (so, if the NPC is lying, the PC thinks he's honest or vice versa). Merely that *could* play it like that, which wouldn't be unreasonable.[/QUOTE]
All those words and only this bolded bit at the bottom comes anywhere close to you being accurate. You have ignored other comments and dismissed them as circular, which displays how incapable you are at grasping the concept.

From here on out, there isn't much point in you responding. It is clear you are fine with a DM telling you what your character thinks, rather than what they percieve.

I am not ignoring Critical Successes. Or Failures. There are none. DM's may houserule there are. But then they are houseruling and it is up to a DM in which case I refer you back to the rules.

The problem is with the bolded bit is that what you deem unreasonable is a DM telling you how you would react, not what you are able to see.

If I rolled an Intelligence check to recognise the Dragon and my DM said you register it as a chicken (outside of a joke), that would be a case of your DM telling you what you think, not what your percieve. A failed 'Knowledge' check to ID a creature or its abilities is just that, a failed roll. You do not get false insights just because you rolled low.

As a PLAYER and as a CHARACTER you can have fun and bull**** the other players, but that is your choice. You're playing a Charlatan type and a Green Dragon drops down. "Ur, yeah this er, Chicken, can er breathe fire, cast Protection from fire". As a DM (although obviously, this is dependent on your group) you shouldn't be penalising rolls.

Lets put it another way, People who roll badly on jump checks may take falling damage, but that is integral to gravity, and falling damage rules, not to that of Jump Rules.

What you are doing is houseruling that someone who is a party face suddenly becomes a liability to the party based on a bad roll.

Repeat after me; Fumbles are Bad. It doesn't matter if it is an attack roll which sees you disarm yourself. The more rolls you make, the more statistically likely it is that a fumble will come up. You don't become WORSE at doing something the better you are at it.

Edit, eh, quoting is messed up, cba fixing it. You know the drill.b

[xanderh]

That's true, but there is something to be said for the kind of game where the DM creates some really challenging encounters, then sets the players lose and uses every cunning trick, every devious tactic, and every challenging foe she can to end the party's lives. The fun then comes from being paranoid, ruthless, tactical, and yes, lucky enough to get through the dungeon alive. If the DM plays fair but still does her level best to kill the characters, the payoff for 'winning' can be really great, and lead to some awesome moments at the table where it really does feel like everything rides on your next gambit or how exactly that next d20 falls.

And then some people who are in it more for the story or to live vicariously through their character or to experience something more cinematic and adventurous where death only really happens when the dramatic stakes allow for it might hate a DM who plays for keeps like that. That's fine, it's two ways to have fun that happen not to line up, but both types of games can be great.

The bad experiences come when the DM either sees the killer DM style and doesn't play fair with it, which makes the players wonder why they bother trying to be tactical or intelligent if the world can rearrange itself on the DM's whim to thwart their careful planning, or when DMs think the game will be a deadly gauntlet while the players are expecting something much different. But as long as the two sides of the screen are on the same page, I can see the appeal for both killer DMs and DMs who see the game as something more cooperative.

Missed this post originally, but I want to reply to it. While those campaigns can be fun, they really require buy-in from the players. You have to discuss it with them before you run it, just so they're prepared for that. The DM I was talking about would not have done so. He didn't discuss things like that with us at all.
I wanted to buy a hammer of some kind, so I went to a blacksmith. Said blacksmith wanted 10 % above asking price, so I obviously thought he was trying to rip me off (we were in the capital city at the time). Turns out, I had walked into one of the fancier shops, even though I just wanted an ordinary hammer, and the DM had neglected to tell me.

[Squiddish]

My DM is mostly excellent, but he believes that campaigns should be deadly just by their very nature. After our current campaign, I will be taking over as DM. The following is an actual quote:
"If your campaign ends with noone dying I'd be [irritated]."
Except instead of irritated he said... a less polite word.

However, in our current campaign (Curse of Strahd, which is supposed to be deadly), we've only ever had one PC death, and he got better.

[Steel Mirror]

Missed this post originally, but I want to reply to it. While those campaigns can be fun, they really require buy-in from the players. You have to discuss it with them before you run it, just so they're prepared for that. The DM I was talking about would not have done so. He didn't discuss things like that with us at all.
Which is what I meant when I said that both sides of the screen have to be on the same page (that's the ideal for any campaign style, really), but yes, I agree. :smallbiggrin:

[Fishyninja]

My DM is mostly excellent, but he believes that campaigns should be deadly just by their very nature. After our current campaign, I will be taking over as DM. The following is an actual quote:
"If your campaign ends with noone dying I'd be [irritated]."
Except instead of irritated he said... a less polite word.

However, in our current campaign (Curse of Strahd, which is supposed to be deadly), we've only ever had one PC death, and he got better.

He died an got better? That's one hell of a heal!

[Dr.Samurai]

As I'm using my warlock's telepathy from GOO in-game, the DM "clarified" that it only works one way. The other players can't respond. I reminded the DM privately that we had already discussed that before the game started and he had ruled then that it was two-way. He admitted that he had forgotten, but kept his new ruling.

Doesn't seem to be a habit or anything, just a single example of something that irked me. Otherwise, he's a fine DM.

[Socratov]

He died an got better? That's one hell of a heal!

In curse of Strahd death stops working and as long as the body keeps existing the person will come back from the dead. However, the Joker's words in Dark Knight are very true here: "What doesn't kill you, can only make you stranger". This is done as once you die (and return) you gain levels of insanity resulting in bad juju.

[Fishyninja]

In curse of Strahd death stops working and as long as the body keeps existing the person will come back from the dead. However, the Joker's words in Dark Knight are very true here: "What doesn't kill you, can only make you stranger". This is done as once you die (and return) you gain levels of insanity resulting in bad juju.

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooh!

[MasterMercury]

As I'm using my warlock's telepathy from GOO in-game, the DM "clarified" that it only works one way. The other players can't respond. I reminded the DM privately that we had already discussed that before the game started and he had ruled then that it was two-way. He admitted that he had forgotten, but kept his new ruling.

Doesn't seem to be a habit or anything, just a single example of something that irked me. Otherwise, he's a fine DM.

RAW, it's only one way. Did he say why he changed his mind?

[Dr.Samurai]

RAW, it's only one way. Did he say why he changed his mind?
He had brought it up during character creation, and we read the rules on Telepathy and saw that telepathy allows people to respond. So two-way.

Then as we played the game, he forgot about the conversation. The same question came up in his mind, so he looked up online and saw that Crawford had clarified in a tweet it is one way. So he clarified to the party OOC that no one can respond to the telepathy.

I don't think it was malicious or anything. Just forgetfulness.

[MasterMercury]

He had brought it up during character creation, and we read the rules on Telepathy and saw that telepathy allows people to respond. So two-way.

Then as we played the game, he forgot about the conversation. The same question came up in his mind, so he looked up online and saw that Crawford had clarified in a tweet it is one way. So he clarified to the party OOC that no one can respond to the telepathy.

I don't think it was malicious or anything. Just forgetfulness.

It sounds like he saw it one way, but then realized that RAW it was different. He's probably just trying to follow the rules.
Though, it is a bit off that he made a ruling before he understood the position. I'm a new DM, I tend to make similar mistakes.

[Jamgretter]

My DM is mostly excellent, but he believes that campaigns should be deadly just by their very nature. After our current campaign, I will be taking over as DM. The following is an actual quote:
"If your campaign ends with noone dying I'd be [irritated]."
Except instead of irritated he said... a less polite word.

However, in our current campaign (Curse of Strahd, which is supposed to be deadly), we've only ever had one PC death, and he got better.

And I will stick to that philosophy until the day I die (hopefully multiple times). In all seriousness most of that was in jest and was a roundabout way of me saying "I'm worried your campaign will be too easy".

[Sicarius Victis]

In curse of Strahd death stops working and as long as the body keeps existing the person will come back from the dead. However, the Joker's words in Dark Knight are very true here: "What doesn't kill you, can only make you stranger". This is done as once you die (and return) you gain levels of insanity resulting in bad juju.

Well, sign me up!

No, seriously, I'm actually starting to want to do that now. Don't ask why because I don't know either, but I now legitimately want to try that.

[Ninja-Radish]

One thing I hate is when GMs are competitive with players. I was playing in a superheroes game a while back, and I played a character whose main power is he flies really fast. That GM happened to not include any NPC speedsters in his universe, just cause he forgot I guess, so by default, my character was the fastest person on the planet.

I thought that was awesome, but he couldn't stand having a PC do something better than his NPCs, so he nerfed the crap out of my guy. I went from being fast enough to achieve escape velocity, to barely keeping up with a news helicopter. Even worse, this was after 6 months of playing the game, and I was given no way to explain the sudden gimping of my character. So, I quit the game.

[Fishyninja]

One thing I hate is when GMs are competitive with players. I was playing in a superheroes game a while back, and I played a character whose main power is he flies really fast. That GM happened to not include any NPC speedsters in his universe, just cause he forgot I guess, so by default, my character was the fastest person on the planet.

I thought that was awesome, but he couldn't stand having a PC do something better than his NPCs, so he nerfed the crap out of my guy. I went from being fast enough to achieve escape velocity, to barely keeping up with a news helicopter. Even worse, this was after 6 months of playing the game, and I was given no way to explain the sudden gimping of my character. So, I quit the game.

That is just bad DM'ing, if he is going to nerf you (which IMO he shouldn't) he should at least come up with a good explanation like somehow the foci of your powers were altered whether that is by an item or your genetics or magic or whatever.

[Spellbreaker26]

That is just bad DM'ing, if he is going to nerf you (which IMO he shouldn't) he should at least come up with a good explanation like somehow the foci of your powers were altered whether that is by an item or your genetics or magic or whatever.

Or, even better, he should introduce people with powers comparable to the character. Loads of comic book supervillains have powers identical to that of their hero, some are even explicitly trying to copy the hero. Perhaps the villain sees a path to power and tries to replicate the ability.

[Fishyninja]

Taskmaster from the Marvel Comics springs to mind.

[Ninja-Radish]

Or, even better, he should introduce people with powers comparable to the character. Loads of comic book supervillains have powers identical to that of their hero, some are even explicitly trying to copy the hero. Perhaps the villain sees a path to power and tries to replicate the ability.

I completely agree. To be honest, I would've enjoyed having rival speedsters to compete with, but I wasn't given that opportunity.

[BillyBobShorton]

DM poorly describes and poorly illustrates room/setting/encounter area as if he's never seen a place with things in it before, then doesn't correct you when you have obviously misunderstood his 4 year old-level of detail, allowing you todo something really dumb or dangerous that a person in that room would never do, wrapping it all up by blaming you for not paying attention...

[Pex]

Keeps fiddling with house rules because he's just never satisfied with the actual rules eventually ending the campaign because he just has to create his own system to get everything exactly right, which will never be and he keeps having to change things.

[Demonslayer666]

I'm very surprised no one mentioned this that or I missed it. Yes I read the whole thread, well, most of it - I skipped a lot of the persuasion debate. :smallcool:

DMs that play favorites. One guy in our group is walking around with a legendary and several very rare items. I have two uncommon items, one is a scroll. I would have three uncommons, but I had to sacrifice it to a dragon. :smalleek:

DMs that randomly hit you with the ban hammer. "Nope, doesn't work like that." This was mentioned by others but I have a strong dislike of rule changes on a whim. "Guess what, I picked that ability/spell/whatever because that's the way the book says it works!"

[Tanarii]

DMs that aren't clear in their own mind what style of game they're running. One minute it's heavy tactical battlemat hack n' slash, the next it's narrative railroading, the next it's deep character back-story mining & development.

Worse is DMs that misrepresent a game's style. I've had games described as combat-as-war sandbox (which is what I call my game, accurately or not) which turned out to be combat-as-sport on some serious rails. I've run into "serious RP" games that turned out to mean you better have your puns, racial & class stereotypes, and funny voices "acting", all lined up properly.

[Fishyninja]

DMs that enforce voice acting.

[When certain players are uncomfortable with it]

[GungHo]

DMs that enforce voice acting.

[When certain players are uncomfortable with it]

I totally make these guys' lives hell. I start doing really bad celebrity impersonations. Like Dutch Bob Dylan.

[Fishyninja]

I totally make these guys' lives hell. I start doing really bad celebrity impersonations. Like Dutch Bob Dylan.

I politely request an audio of said impression.

[Decstarr]

Seems I'm on the lucky side here, I'm in several groups but all are DMed by really close friends and the one I am DMing only consists of close friends. Whenever they're annoyed by something, they just flat out tell me. Guess you all should establish a little 'we sit together for a bit after the session and talk about feelings' thing afterwards.

[JackPhoenix]

My DM is mostly excellent, but he believes that campaigns should be deadly just by their very nature. After our current campaign, I will be taking over as DM. The following is an actual quote:
"If your campaign ends with noone dying I'd be [irritated]."
Except instead of irritated he said... a less polite word.

However, in our current campaign (Curse of Strahd, which is supposed to be deadly), we've only ever had one PC death, and he got better.

Obvious solution is, of course, to kill his character. It's what he wants, after all...

[Teonas]

When they have NPCs pull out their genitals and describe slamming them on the table as a way of retaliating against perceived slights.

OK I'm sorry but honestly that's gold

[Dr. Cliché]

When they have NPCs pull out their genitals and describe slamming them on the table as a way of retaliating against perceived slights.

I beg your pardon?

[BillyBobShorton]

GM/DM= Gollum Morphers, or D&%$headus Malignus

DM's who become so addicted to Nerfing that they transform from normal everyday citizens into emotionally hideous Gollums, focused not on table fun, but the rush of their precious, which is some convoluted notion that DM'ing means that their job is to always look for new ways to say "no"... delighted in causing PC's to waste turns and even entire build mechanics by administering bull%&$* calls that usually in no way reflect RAW or RAI.

My guess is their real life issues subconsciously have gotten on a boat and commutted over to the Sword Coast in some clandestine mental pilgrimage, where the PC's become the Indians.

Real life examples:

PC: "I hide behind that barn, crouched by a barrell, ready to pop out and use sneak attack next round"
DM: "Orc leaves melee combat, takes the AoO, walks around the barn and spots you, and attacks. You're prone, so... he has advantage."

PC:"I cast enlarge on myself"
DM:"You can't. It says a target that you can see. You can't see all of yourself."

PC:"my owl flies over to Jim and uses the help action"
DM: "He can't make it this round. Trees are difficult terrain."

PC 1(that's hard to hit): "I shoot a bandit with my bow.
PC's 2, 3 &4: "Fireball! Call Lightning! Booming Blade!"
DM: "8 of the 10 bandits all fire at PC1 and ignore the ones controlling weather, blowing up their horses, and turning his sword into toxic-looking fire"

PC:"as a wood elf, according to WoTC licensed sage advice rules clarification, I should be able to use mask of the wild in situation X, even vanishing right before enemies's eyes, which will enable me to get sneak attack the next round. Here it is, I've pulled up the page."
DM:"hm. Well I'll have to look into it more and get back to you." Comes in week later. "I've seen some threads online and basically you can't hide if they know where you are. Like if I were to run behind that wall, you can't see me, but you know I'm there."
PC:"but hiding is a game mechanic to allow rogues especially to be useful, and deal out some damage. Otherwise why not just play a commoner with no class features? You're confusing a fantasy game mechanic with real world practicality."
DM: "Why is it every week we have to argue rules?"
PC: "because every week you crap on them and it makes playing suck when you can't do what the rules say I can."

PC:"I cast blur on myself"
DM:"That causes disadvantage, right? Ok. Orc walks past you and looks behind the tree where I never let the rogue hide and attacks him. The orc ignored you because he doesn't like blurry things."

Yes, that was what he actually said... it doesn't like blurry things... ok, so kill it, then, right? What he meant to say was, "Because I don't like seeing players use their abilities to their advantage, I metagame to quench my insatiable thirst for dolling out heaping spoonfuls of disappointment to the party. Who says games are supposed to be fun or that rules encourage smart play? HOLLUM!HOLLUM!"

All true stuff, with some paraprhasing, and I just left that table not a week ago, that DM being the 2nd incarnation of a "NERF FIRST" DM I had the misfortune of trying to play with. This last guy was easily the worst DM/D&D'er I've ever met.

Get your hate in check dude. Using "GM rule is law" as an excuse to ignore basic game mechanics is not clever, or good DMing; it's just douchebaggery and defeats the point of playing a game to have fun.

[Dr. Cliché]

GM/DM= Gollum Morphers, or D&%$headus Malignus

DM's who become so addicted to Nerfing that they transform from normal everyday citizens into emotionally hideous Gollums, focused not on table fun, but the rush of their precious, which is some convoluted notion that DM'ing means that their job is to always look for new ways to say "no"... delighted in causing PC's to waste turns and even entire build mechanics by administering bull%&$* calls that usually in no way reflect RAW or RAI.

My guess is their real life issues subconsciously have gotten on a boat and commutted over to the Sword Coast in some clandestine mental pilgrimage, where the PC's become the Indians.

Real life examples:

PC: "I hide behind that barn, crouched by a barrell, ready to pop out and use sneak attack next round"
DM: "Orc leaves melee combat, takes the AoO, walks around the barn and spots you, and attacks. You're prone, so... he has advantage."

PC:"I cast enlarge on myself"
DM:"You can't. It says a target that you can see. You can't see all of yourself."

PC:"my owl flies over to Jim and uses the help action"
DM: "He can't make it this round. Trees are difficult terrain."

PC 1(that's hard to hit): "I shoot a bandit with my bow.
PC's 2, 3 &4: "Fireball! Call Lightning! Booming Blade!"
DM: "8 of the 10 bandits all fire at PC1 and ignore the ones controlling weather, blowing up their horses, and turning his sword into toxic-looking fire"

PC:"as a wood elf, according to WoTC licensed sage advice rules clarification, I should be able to use mask of the wild in situation X, even vanishing right before enemies's eyes, which will enable me to get sneak attack the next round. Here it is, I've pulled up the page."
DM:"hm. Well I'll have to look into it more and get back to you." Comes in week later. "I've seen some threads online and basically you can't hide if they know where you are. Like if I were to run behind that wall, you can't see me, but you know I'm there."
PC:"but hiding is a game mechanic to allow rogues especially to be useful, and deal out some damage. Otherwise why not just play a commoner with no class features? You're confusing a fantasy game mechanic with real world practicality."
DM: "Why is it every week we have to argue rules?"
PC: "because every week you crap on them and it makes playing suck when you can't do what the rules say I can."

PC:"I cast blur on myself"
DM:"That causes disadvantage, right? Ok. Orc walks past you and looks behind the tree where I never let the rogue hide and attacks him. The orc ignored you because he doesn't like blurry things."

Yes, that was what he actually said... it doesn't like blurry things... ok, so kill it, then, right? What he meant to say was, "Because I don't like seeing players use their abilities to their advantage, I metagame to quench my insatiable thirst for dolling out heaping spoonfuls of disappointment to the party. Who says games are supposed to be fun or that rules encourage smart play? HOLLUM!HOLLUM!"

All true stuff, with some paraprhasing, and I just left that table not a week ago, that DM being the 2nd incarnation of a "NERF FIRST" DM I had the misfortune of trying to play with. This last guy was easily the worst DM/D&D'er I've ever met.

Get your hate in check dude. Using "GM rule is law" as an excuse to ignore basic game mechanics is not clever, or good DMing; it's just douchebaggery and defeats the point of playing a game to have fun.

Did your DM lose a stick at some point?

Because I think I know where it went. :smallwink:

[Ninja-Radish]

GM/DM= Gollum Morphers, or D&%$headus Malignus

DM's who become so addicted to Nerfing that they transform from normal everyday citizens into emotionally hideous Gollums, focused not on table fun, but the rush of their precious, which is some convoluted notion that DM'ing means that their job is to always look for new ways to say "no"... delighted in causing PC's to waste turns and even entire build mechanics by administering bull%&$* calls that usually in no way reflect RAW or RAI.

Sorry brother, I know what that's like. My group split from a GM that was exactly what you're describing a few years ago. Playing with that guy was just awful.

[Coffee_Dragon]

PC:"I cast enlarge on myself"
DM:"You can't. It says a target that you can see. You can't see all of yourself."

How on earth did this stand? Does he also think you can't cast Magic Missile on people because you can't see their backs or under their clothes?

Your DM would be far from the only one to disallow pop-up rogues, though. And there seems to be a general vibe of "when players adapt to tactical rules wrinkles it's clever play, when NPCs adapt to tactical rules wrinkles it's metagaming".

[BillyBobShorton]

Did your DM lose a stick at some point?

Because I think I know where it went. :smallwink:
Hhhrrmmmm.... really dude? Ok, I'll bite.

You're free to remove it any time you like. I won't even penalize you for not being able to see your own orifice.

But in reality, A.) this is basically a "bitch about DM's" thread. Unfortunately sometimes complaints have negative overtones, & don't come with roses and candy. For that, I am sorry to disappoint you with my topic-relevance when you obviously had some very useful feedback to offer.... Unless you're the guy I'm referring to, just being creepy, in which case... ah forget it. I've said my piece. Come play at my table sometime if you're in the area. I'll be fair and you'll have fun.

B.) If I come off as if I'm still freshly frustrated for having my weekly nerdy funtime shat upon by an anti-clown for 2 months, it's because I am... or at least I was. It was a release I needed to write down, particularly that last part. Cheers.

[BillyBobShorton]

How on earth did this stand? Does he also think you can't cast Magic Missile on people because you can't see their backs or under their clothes?

Your DM would be far from the only one to disallow pop-up rogues, though. And there seems to be a general vibe of "when players adapt to tactical rules wrinkles it's clever play, when NPCs adapt to tactical rules wrinkles it's metagaming".

Apparently he rescinded his Nerfmancy after staring at a table full of WTF faces and being told that the same descript applies to many, many spells, like cure wounds, which has been ok thus far to self heal, then asked how do different spontaneous garbage rulings for the same wording even make sense? Not only that but to let the EK gnome get all happy to finally have access to the spell he'd been dying for with his fresh level-upn and not state the crap ruling right there is further evidence that his rulings are less about clarifying his rule interpretations and more about a compulsion to nerf and dish out let-downs.

Which, IMO, providing a FUN gaming experience should be every DM's priority A#1.

[Vaz]

Hhhrrmmmm.... really dude? Ok, I'll bite.

You're free to remove it any time you like. I won't even penalize you for not being able to see your own orifice.

But in reality, A.) this is basically a "bitch about DM's" thread. Unfortunately sometimes complaints have negative overtones, & don't come with roses and candy. For that, I am sorry to disappoint you with my topic-relevance when you obviously had some very useful feedback to offer.... Unless you're the guy I'm referring to, just being creepy, in which case... ah forget it. I've said my piece. Come play at my table sometime if you're in the area. I'll be fair and you'll have fun.

B.) If I come off as if I'm still freshly frustrated for having my weekly nerdy funtime shat upon by an anti-clown for 2 months, it's because I am... or at least I was. It was a release I needed to write down, particularly that last part. Cheers.

Find some xanax mate and get crunching. Jesus. You're too sensitive, to the extent you thought that was a criticism.

[Sicarius Victis]

OK I'm sorry but honestly that's gold

You know, it really is.

[Telwar]

Hhhrrmmmm.... really dude? Ok, I'll bite.

You're free to remove it any time you like. I won't even penalize you for not being able to see your own orifice.

...you might want to read what he said again, without assuming a confrontational tone.

That is to say, to me, and at least some of the other posters, he was implying it was the DM's ass that had a stick in it.


B.) If I come off as if I'm still freshly frustrated for having my weekly nerdy funtime shat upon by an anti-clown for 2 months, it's because I am... or at least I was. It was a release I needed to write down, particularly that last part. Cheers.

Some of those are potentially okay in my book (owl not making it in one round might be okay depending on how far away it is and pending description of terrain (i.e. I can see a forest causing difficult terrain to flyers), orc ignoring the target he'd have disadvantage on because he doesn't want to waste his attack), but most of the rest of your examples are kind of bad, yeah.

[thoroughlyS]

That is to say, to me, and at least some of the other posters, he was implying it was the DM's ass that had a stick in it.
Seconded.

On topic, my friend and I are both DMs with drastically different approaches and viewpoints on the game. When they DM, there are several things they do that irk me. Foremost, is that they believe that once something happens in-game, it's happened. Period. If someone should've been stopped by difficult terrain, but everyone forgot until after the damage is dealt, then they made it through the difficult terrain for free. If someone adds an attack roll wrong, and realizes later that their attack shouldn't have hit, it still did. If someone misremebers how a spell works, then that was how it worked that time.

Another annoying thing is that they like to create their own monsters. They're not particularly bad at it, I just don't approve of doing that. So I don't do it. They also like to create scenarios which are more difficult than the party should be able to handle but which has 1-3 "solutions" that they think we should be able to guess, but they also underestimate the strength of the "hints" they drop.

To be completely fair, I do stuff that annoys them too. One thing is that I tend to fudge dice rolls, mostly players and mostly up. I think that sometimes a bad dice roll makes the story worse. They feels exactly the opposite. I also tend to let things go slower than they're comfortable with. My excuse is that I shouldn't be the one advancing the story, the players should (keeping a good pace in combat I can do).

[BillyBobShorton]

Find some xanax mate and get crunching. Jesus. You're too sensitive, to the extent you thought that was a criticism.

I apologize, then, man. I read it as he dropped the stick from his ass and you were inferring my arse inherited it. My bad.


...you might want to read what he said again, without assuming a confrontational tone.

That is to say, to me, and at least some of the other posters, he was implying it was the DM's ass that had a stick in it.



Some of those are potentially okay in my book (owl not making it in one round might be okay depending on how far away it is and pending description of terrain (i.e. I can see a forest causing difficult terrain to flyers), orc ignoring the target he'd have disadvantage on because he doesn't want to waste his attack), but most of the rest of your examples are kind of bad, yeah. we were fighting a giant and 2 trolls, so clearly enough headroom for an owl who LIVES AND HUNTS AMONG TREES to take the clearer, low route without flying himself into an iron maiden of branches like a mindless drone. And it was only 50' away and I said he dashed, just to at leatst arrive for help next turn. So, no, man,.not acceptible. DM just nerfed it. An orc choosing to attack until the DM PLAYER knew the spell mechanicn.instead attacking a hidden wood elf he magically saw necause thE DM PLAYER knew I was there is Metagaming 101, dude. Sorry. Gotta disagree.

[MrStabby]

On topic, my friend and I are both DMs with drastically different approaches and viewpoints on the game. When he DMs, there are several things he does that irk me. Foremost, is that he believes that once something happens in-game, it's happened. Period. If someone should've been stopped by difficult terrain, but everyone forgot until after the damage is dealt, then they made it through the difficult terrain for free. If someone adds an attack roll wrong, and realizes later that their attack shouldn't have hit, it still did. If someone misremebers how a spell works, then that was how it worked that time.

Another annoying thing is that he likes to create his own monsters. He's not particularly bad at it, I just don't approve of doing that. So I don't do it. He also likes to create scenarios which are more difficult than the party should be able to handle but which has 1-3 "solutions" that he thinks we should be able to guess, but he underestimates the strength of the "hints" he drops.

To be completely fair, I do stuff that annoys him too. One thing is that I tend to fudge dice rolls, mostly players and mostly up. I think that sometimes a bad dice roll makes the story worse. He feels exactly the opposite. I also tend to let things go slower than he's comfortable with. My excuse is that I shouldn't be the one advancing the story, the players should (keeping a good pace in combat I can do).

I find this interesting, simply because I think I would very much prefer your friend's style of DMing.

It sounds like he keeps the pace going through combat, time moves forwards not backwards. There are constant new surprises and discoveries in the world and previously undiscovered monsters. It sounds like the world is also a dangerous place and you need to use your wits to survive when encounters are hard. Fate will not intervene to save you.

Of the things you mentioned can you expand on why they annoy you? They generally seem positives not negatives.

[Arkhios]

On the one hand my DM tends to "wing it" most of the time when it comes to unprecedent rules questions, but on the other I find his complete lack of willingess to flexibility to be annoying, when the rules in general don't support some ideas while in practice there wouln't be anything wrong with the ideas.

While I can appreciate adherence to precedency, sometimes his lack of flexibility is just plain ridiculous.

[gfishfunk]

Seconded.

On topic, my friend and I are both DMs with drastically different approaches and viewpoints on the game. When he DMs, there are several things he does that irk me. Foremost, is that he believes that once something happens in-game, it's happened. Period. If someone should've been stopped by difficult terrain, but everyone forgot until after the damage is dealt, then they made it through the difficult terrain for free. If someone adds an attack roll wrong, and realizes later that their attack shouldn't have hit, it still did. If someone misremebers how a spell works, then that was how it worked that time.

Another annoying thing is that he likes to create his own monsters. He's not particularly bad at it, I just don't approve of doing that. So I don't do it. He also likes to create scenarios which are more difficult than the party should be able to handle but which has 1-3 "solutions" that he thinks we should be able to guess, but he underestimates the strength of the "hints" he drops.

To be completely fair, I do stuff that annoys him too. One thing is that I tend to fudge dice rolls, mostly players and mostly up. I think that sometimes a bad dice roll makes the story worse. He feels exactly the opposite. I also tend to let things go slower than he's comfortable with. My excuse is that I shouldn't be the one advancing the story, the players should (keeping a good pace in combat I can do).

That is a funny thing about this thread. This is what your DM does that annoys you. I personally think this is fantastic DMing, but it is interesting to see how people's tastes differ so much.

On the other hand, bad monster design is just bad.

[Coffee_Dragon]

Another annoying thing is that he likes to create his own monsters. He's not particularly bad at it, I just don't approve of doing that. So I don't do it.

To be completely fair, I do stuff that annoys him too. One thing is that I tend to fudge dice rolls, mostly players and mostly up. I think that sometimes a bad dice roll makes the story worse.

I too side with nameless friend on these points.

Generally, a DM making rolls and rejecting the results should re-examine why they roll in the first place. There can be reasons to do this in specific situations, but misleading the players about how the game is played is not a good one.

The ease of fudging new monster stats in 5E is I think one of the major advances from 3E, and reflavouring monsters and reshuffling abilities should help preserve uncertainty and sense of wonder in veteran players with plenty of experience from previous editions. It may depend a bit on the setting.

[BillyBobShorton]

Seconded.

On topic, my friend and I are both DMs with drastically different approaches and viewpoints on the game. When he DMs, there are several things he does that irk me. Foremost, is that he believes that once something happens in-game, it's happened. Period. If someone should've been stopped by difficult terrain, but everyone forgot until after the damage is dealt, then they made it through the difficult terrain for free. If someone adds an attack roll wrong, and realizes later that their attack shouldn't have hit, it still did. If someone misremebers how a spell works, then that was how it worked that time.

I half-agree yet also ponder this aspect of gameplay. While as DM and players, it is a collective responsibility to provide eachother with rules and mechanics of how something should play out-but those potential snags and hiccups ought to be brought up before the sitiation occurs by anyone who catches it happening, or immediately during its erronious play-out.

But then there's the dismissive/rushy jerk DM move that feels more like condescention and some sort of weird, unnecessary strict coaching from the wrong sideline. Like, "too bad, it happens this way. learn the game next time"... If it was a rule lookup and many actions have passed already, yeah, chalk it up as a woops and move along, but if it's an immediate correction and someone has drank too many cups of Power-Trip DM Juice and needs to slam their virtual gavel, that's not helping the game; it's just being an ass because "DM Law" says so...

Sadly, open rules interpretation is used as a license to go God complex all over your friends by a lotta DM's at some point or another, and somd relish in how much control they have over this imaginary reality, and how helpless the others are who do not.

An example of each "fix it/leave it be" scenario.

... someone is a monk and uses stun. DM says monster is out cold. Before anything else occurs, a player quickly says "Sorry guys, i know free shots are awesome, but the monster actually gets a con save."

Slurping from his can of cherry-flavored GOD-orade, DM is like, "Too bad it already happened. We all saw it. Can't change it, unless you have time-travel spell?.No? Ok, then, what's done is done. This isn't a debate. Jim, it's your turn."

THAT'S being a prick just because he can and the more you guys try to offer spontaneous fixes after the fact, the more he will likely deliberately create those kinds of situations to administer himself a nice dose of righteous ego heroin. Maybe he'll even start "rushing" some moves with an unspoken closed door policy on any PHB spot checks, almost inviting someone to go ahead, just try to fix it and see what happens. Am I right? (Ok, Maybe he's not that harsh, just oddly unconcerned with correcting proper game mechanics. I've had 2 really bad DM's back-to-back, so I'm a bit jaded. Please ardon my cynical posture.)

Opposite example. Protective barbarian blocking a doorway/tanking goes down in battle, (later makes his crit saves), & the bad guys storm the door, eventually they all die, but not before finishing off the party wizard for good. Dead Character. Suddenly, Bill, the Rogue, has a lightbulb go off. "Wait, the barbarian was raging, he should have only been taking half damage and not went down. None of this ( technically) should be our situation. The Mage is still alive, right?"

"No. Sorry. Wayyy too late. Not going back to the 3rd combat round and givng Gragnock a bunch of HP's. What if the re-rolls for the enemy go differently as well. Situation could be far worse or way too OP. Sorry, it happens. We f'd up, but the mage is dead. Sucks, but it's over now."

That type of continuity paradox is something I think has to be chalked up to a collective brain fart that has to stick. Lesson learned.





Another annoying thing is that he likes to create his own monsters. He's not particularly bad at it, I just don't approve of doing that. So I don't do it. He also likes to create scenarios which are more difficult than the party should be able to handle but which has 1-3 "solutions" that he thinks we should be able to guess, but he underestimates the strength of the "hints" he drops.

All for creating an occasional monster/boss/variation, but if it's a constant thing, it starts to get annoying. Whether deoiberately or inadvertently, I would think each defeat of his monsters might spark that potentially problematic "DM vs Players" fire in him. Leading you all down a dark road of more & more broken monsters until you stop at the TPK diner for lunch one day, and never get to taste the food...



To be completely fair, I do stuff that annoys him too. One thing is that I tend to fudge dice rolls, mostly players and mostly up. I think that sometimes a bad dice roll makes the story worse. He feels exactly the opposite. I also tend to let things go slower than he's comfortable with. My excuse is that I shouldn't be the one advancing the story, the players should (keeping a good pace in combat I can do).

Story is paramount, yes, but it is also a GAME, not just a novel with statistics. And in games, especially with dice, the nature of its own rules should be a factor in how things play out as much, if not moreso, than anything. Fudging a roll to keep a PC alive is something some DM's do, I've probably been guilty myself back in the day, and I can empathize with the motivation behind the decision. However, I think the "wild card" uncertainty of living and dying by the dice is what makes the game exciting, but more importantly, it puts the DM in a rare seat amongst the players, because we are ALL still at the mercy of the dice. They are a not a "DM Law" rule...

they are TOOLS to make the game still FUNCTION as a game, and should NEVER be disallowed to alter the story.

Otherwise, one could argue it makes every roll meaningless... they all count until you interject human emotion to ONE turn of the die. Once that happens, and the event is changed, yet not recognized for the magnitude of how it REALLY has diminished the overall concept of chance, it breaks down the core foundation of what makes storytelling in a game format such a unique entity.

Dice are the unseen, unspoken, all-knowing engine of D&D.

...not the DM, imho.

[MrStabby]

I half-agree yet also ponder this aspect of gameplay. While as DM and players, it is a collective responsibility to provide eachother with rules and mechanics of how something should play out-but those potential snags and hiccups ought to be brought up before the sitiation occurs by anyone who catches it happening, or immediately during its erronious play-out.

But then there's the dismissive/rushy jerk DM move that feels more like condescention and some sort of weird, unnecessary strict coaching from the wrong sideline. Like, "too bad, it happens this way. learn the game next time"... If it was a rule lookup and many actions have passed already, yeah, chalk it up as a woops and move along, but if it's an immediate correction and someone has drank too many cups of Power-Trip DM Juice and needs to slam their virtual gavel, that's not helping the game; it's just being an ass because "DM Law" says so...

Sadly, open rules interpretation is used as a license to go God complex all over your friends by a lotta DM's at some point or another, and somd relish in how much control they have over this imaginary reality, and how helpless the others are who do not.


All for creating an occasional monster/boss/variation, but if it's a constant thing, it starts to get annoying. Whether deoiberately or inadvertently, I would think each defeat of his monsters might spark that potentially problematic "DM vs Players" fire in him. Leading you all down a dark road of more & more broken monsters until you stop at the TPK diner for lunch one day, and never get to taste the food...



So I am somewhere between "wow" and "WTF" on these comments. Do people seriously play the game like this? I mean you hear anecdotes sure, and maybe one in one hundred DMs might be a bit of a ****, but is this really actually a common problem?

My experience is that being a DM is a job where you try to please everyone but with mixed expectations at the table it is nearly impossible. Sure, you give it a go and you get close enough that everyone has a great time. I think it is true that you will always have some players wanting more of something and some players want the opposite.

For example, fixing events once they have happened - I can see the case that going back and changing things or having long rambling rules discussions breaks immersion and bogs the game down and the DM, for the benefit of their players, wants to avoid that. On the other hand some people play with a more competitive mindset - they want to achieve as much as possible within the rules and changing those rules breaks the game somewhat for them. I think it is a little uncharitable to attribute to an ego trip what could equally be attributed to a genuine, if misplaced, desire to make the game as good for the players as possible.

As for creating custom monsters/NPCs etc. I do this a lot - so it is obviously concerning to me if some of my players have similar views to yourself. Some of this began due to not having the Monster Manual when we began playing, then more of it happened when I found many of the MM entries a little mechanically dull/not fitting the setting well and finally I found it kept things fresh - level 2 characters that had never been to the sea wouldn't find themselves with an in depth knowledge of Sahuagin strengths/weaknesses/HP. I don't think that this has begun any type of arms race - after all the expectation from my side is that I will create monsters that will challenge but ultimately die to the PCs. Sure some (telegraphed) fights might be much tougher or some aggression may be recklessly suicidal but I don't think it is unfair. Why is it that you find it annoying? I am not sure that what is in the DMs notes also appearing in a published book changes the experience at the table - but I could be wrong. Is it that the monsters are created or is it the type of monsters that are created?

[RumoCrytuf]

Seconded.

On topic, my friend and I are both DMs with drastically different approaches and viewpoints on the game. When he DMs, there are several things he does that irk me. Foremost, is that he believes that once something happens in-game, it's happened. Period. If someone should've been stopped by difficult terrain, but everyone forgot until after the damage is dealt, then they made it through the difficult terrain for free. If someone adds an attack roll wrong, and realizes later that their attack shouldn't have hit, it still did. If someone misremebers how a spell works, then that was how it worked that time.

Another annoying thing is that he likes to create his own monsters. He's not particularly bad at it, I just don't approve of doing that. So I don't do it. He also likes to create scenarios which are more difficult than the party should be able to handle but which has 1-3 "solutions" that he thinks we should be able to guess, but he underestimates the strength of the "hints" he drops.

To be completely fair, I do stuff that annoys him too. One thing is that I tend to fudge dice rolls, mostly players and mostly up. I think that sometimes a bad dice roll makes the story worse. He feels exactly the opposite. I also tend to let things go slower than he's comfortable with. My excuse is that I shouldn't be the one advancing the story, the players should (keeping a good pace in combat I can do).

Me and my friend are the same. I like to let players suffer the consequences, he uses the "DM Bull****" as we call it (Basically DM intervening directly in the game world with little to no masking of it being the DM). As a DM, I like inter-party conflict, as long as it stays in the game. I don't think he does. I also throw in some of my own NPCs (No, they're not DMPCs, they have story significance for the next campaign.) When I use a Voice of the DM, I have it as an NPC (In the current campaign, it is a Gold Dragon... because dragons :D) The players know it's the DMs voice, but it (In my eyes) doesn't feel like the DM Bull****. I don't stick to the book completely. I like to use it as a base skeleton. But my friend does stick to it.

On the other side, we both have an agreement that any roll can be fudged (Within reason) as long as it isn't a natural 1 or 20. (Note: I had 3 critical 1s in a row last night, which is a 1 in 6000 chance of happening. Talk about being the less than 1% :P)

[Fishyninja]

...you might want to read what he said again, without assuming a confrontational tone.

That is to say, to me, and at least some of the other posters, he was implying it was the DM's ass that had a stick in it.



Some of those are potentially okay in my book (owl not making it in one round might be okay depending on how far away it is and pending description of terrain (i.e. I can see a forest causing difficult terrain to flyers)

I will admit I do not know the rules of familiars etc (yet to play a caster), however surely owls would excel in a forest? Unless we are talking a forest that is extremely dense with trees.

[BillyBobShorton]

So I am somewhere between "wow" and "WTF" on these comments. Do people seriously play the game like this? I mean you hear anecdotes sure, and maybe one in one hundred DMs might be a bit of a ****, but is this really actually a common problem?

My experience is that being a DM is a job where you try to please everyone but with mixed expectations at the table it is nearly impossible. Sure, you give it a go and you get close enough that everyone has a great time. I think it is true that you will always have some players wanting more of something and some players want the opposite.

For example, fixing events once they have happened - I can see the case that going back and changing things or having long rambling rules discussions breaks immersion and bogs the game down and the DM, for the benefit of their players, wants to avoid that. On the other hand some people play with a more competitive mindset - they want to achieve as much as possible within the rules and changing those rules breaks the game somewhat for them. I think it is a little uncharitable to attribute to an ego trip what could equally be attributed to a genuine, if misplaced, desire to make the game as good for the players as possible.

As for creating custom monsters/NPCs etc. I do this a lot - so it is obviously concerning to me if some of my players have similar views to yourself. Some of this began due to not having the Monster Manual when we began playing, then more of it happened when I found many of the MM entries a little mechanically dull/not fitting the setting well and finally I found it kept things fresh - level 2 characters that had never been to the sea wouldn't find themselves with an in depth knowledge of Sahuagin strengths/weaknesses/HP. I don't think that this has begun any type of arms race - after all the expectation from my side is that I will create monsters that will challenge but ultimately die to the PCs. Sure some (telegraphed) fights might be much tougher or some aggression may be recklessly suicidal but I don't think it is unfair. Why is it that you find it annoying? I am not sure that what is in the DMs notes also appearing in a published book changes the experience at the table - but I could be wrong. Is it that the monsters are created or is it the type of monsters that are created?
I completely agree with you, but conversely offer my reasoning to better clarify where I'm coming from.

I have spent the better part of the last year dealing with 2 very unfair and oppressive DM's. The first was family and close friends, so due tomy love for the game and the ppl, I endured; showed more tolerance/hoping for change than if it was just any other table of fairly unaquainted gamers. Sadly, the person I know and love became an absolutely different monster behind the screen until I bowed out of the table long after I probably should have.

The 2nd and most recent was more of a garbage DM at the local pickup games. After about 2 months of worse and worse calls, and other players also fed up with him, I said screw it, went to another table.

At the new table, I quickly realized I had become stricken with some weird cousin of the term "institutionalized"... as I was playing with the new, awesome, fun group and DM focused on fun and commradry, I kept asking questions about what my character could do. The players looked at me like I was a noob. But that was not the case. Simple abilities and game mechanics, like using mask of the wild, familiars for helping, Thaumaturgy for applicable utility more than just RP fluff, exhaustion applied to Dash... playing under the thumb of nerfomancy became such a "norm" that I almost forgot that most people do not try to step on or shut down what a player can actually do, so for the first hour I was walking on eggshells, trying not to do something that would incur the wrath of the DM shooting me down that I had become so accustomed to.

Once I settled and remembered how fun it was to just use abilities because that's how the game is supposed to work, I had a wonderful time, and the DM and players complimented my play style and ingenuity.

But my rationale and bitter descript you quoted stems greatly from that long run of D&D hard knocks. Yes, most players and DM's like to have fun and never develope that uber-nerfing line of thinking. But those jerks DO exist, I assure you, and I had the misfortune of back-to-back 1%'ers.

I did not presume the friend's DM was the one on an ego trip because of not fixing certain misplays. I believe even stated that my assessment of that mindset did not necessarily infer I was speaking directly about the DM directly. That was what "I" experienced... it was not misinterprated care for game flow or an errant psycho-analysis of my ex-DM's motivation for similar "let it go" rulings. It was a power trip. Plain and simple.

If someone obviously misunderstood a room layout and put themselves in harm's way based on what they THOUGHT was a statue to hide behind, he'd let them stand beside what was supposed to be a small barrell and get clobbered for it. If someone had a new ability and forgot about fir a split second (Oh, wait, I forgot I have Uncanny Dodge. Can I halve the dmg I just took before.the next turn?" HIM: "Nope already happened. You should've said something."

That was the manner of his mistake rulings on a constant basis. I understand (and even pointed to) the difference between avoiding long rules debate sessions and something that would take half a second to fix and do prpperly without disrupting the game, but choosing not to. And I believe that rulings of the latter form come from someone not actimg out of desire to propel game immersion, but simply someone who feels empowered by using the word "No."

If you feel that seems a harsh depiction or unfair assault that was horribly off the mark, indicative of some uncharitable inner flaw in my own social comprehension wiring, sorry, but I don't agree. And if those DM's made rulings from a place of authoritative display rather than care for the game integrity, it is more than a fair statement and perfectly warranted. If someone acts like a d*ck, another person is not the d*ck for calling them out on it.

Regarding Monster creation turning into a perceived DM vs Players competition challenge because of a DM's convoluted appreciation of his monsters' effectiveness, or lack thereof, is also something I've seen. To the point where a DM does not only create specific attacks to target players' weaknessess as way to propel the drama and danger, but with the intent to kill the PC's, mostly because his last 8 homebrew baddies were fails & got owned. In a party of mostly charisma-dump PC's, this winged Troll Genius Mage thing shows up one day who had all these high octane AoE spells like fireball and sleet storm, but his "mind powers" allowed him to make us roll charisma saves instead of dex. And he summoned a variety bag of Mephits, who all also forced charisma saves when they died/exploded. And it only suffered half/no dmg from everything except radiant damage. TPK. Not because we didn't play well, or because "that's just the nature of the game", but because the DM was determined to defeat us, and created an unwinnable encounter, not viewing the collective offensive and defensive potency of our pc's as a well-earned and designed formidable trait, but as the REASON for all his previous boss monsters' defeats; a reason he needed to loophole around so he would "win."

And again, I did not state that's the path every monster-build DM takes. I only forewarned of the possibilty of developements, should he (or anyone else) start to confuse party victories for competitive ones. And what makes it annoying to me is the monsters themselves. I totally love and encourage creativity of all sorts, but when you're playing D&D and every week there's some new 3-legged scorpion deer monsters or flying psionic trolls or 3 headed giant bees... well, sometimes you feel like, "Can we just fight a dragon, or a Vampire or Frost Giants or Beholders something?"

Every session doesn't need to be an episode of Rick&Morty.

I love pizza, but not every night. The novelty and charm, and memorability of it wears off. Like a child who naturally does something funny, sees the adults laugh, then keeps doing it until it's not funny any more. That's all I meant. By all means, create away, tweak those dull monsters, brother! I just don't like the whole "oh, wait till you guys see what I got THIS week," approach... less is more, IMO.

Hope this novella maybe shone a different light on where I'm coming from, maybe even altered your opinion of my own opinions. If not... well, whatever, I guess. I tried. Adventure on. Cheers.

[pwykersotz]

I completely agree with you, but conversely offer my reasoning to better clarify where I'm coming from.

***STORYTIME!!!***

That's a fantastic rundown. I've been lurking on this latest conversation, and this last post was a very helpful perspective shift. As a DM who generally doesn't allow retcons for simplicity reasons and who often refluffs or homebrews monsters, I was disinclined to be sympathetic based on your initial post, since it was basically attacking my preferred playstyle. Your clarification was very informative though, there are whole worlds of difference between refluffing a Bulette and making that Troll, and between not wanting to redo 5 minutes of table time for minimal effect and not letting players correct themselves or others immediately. It's basically the difference between operating in good faith vs bad faith.

So for what it's worth, your followup has put me squarely in your corner. I think that's worth cookies or internets or something? :smallsmile:

[BillyBobShorton]

That's a fantastic rundown. I've been lurking on this latest conversation, and this last post was a very helpful perspective shift. As a DM who generally doesn't allow retcons for simplicity reasons and who often refluffs or homebrews monsters, I was disinclined to be sympathetic based on your initial post, since it was basically attacking my preferred playstyle. Your clarification was very informative though, there are whole worlds of difference between refluffing a Bulette and making that Troll, and between not wanting to redo 5 minutes of table time for minimal effect and not letting players correct themselves or others immediately. It's basically the difference between operating in good faith vs bad faith.

So for what it's worth, your followup has put me squarely in your corner. I think that's worth cookies or internets or something? :smallsmile:

Lol... storytime.. :) glad to have cleared it up. I've been a little high strung on some of my recent posts and sometimes spew out whatever is on my mind without slowing down to make things clear, so thanks for understanding. Cheers.

[Pex]

Being non-committal.

I know this guy who is a great DM. Fair to players. Vivid descriptions. No matter what is happening he makes it entertaining and fun I'm liking the experience more than the game. Trouble is he won't commit to running a campaign. He'll do one-shots, the occasional Adventure's League, demos, etc., but not run a complete campaign. I know it would be a blast.

[Finback]

He died an got better? That's one hell of a heal!

I hear it's much like being turned into a newt.

[DracoKnight]

I hear it's much like being turned into a newt.

It's pretty much just an average Tuesday, actually.

[Arial Black]

On the other side, we both have an agreement that any roll can be fudged (Within reason) as long as it isn't a natural 1 or 20. (Note: I had 3 critical 1s in a row last night, which is a 1 in 6000 chance of happening. Talk about being the less than 1% :P)

One in eight thousand. Sorry, can't help it. :smallsmile:

I feel I should say something while I'm here...

One DM I played with was the very best storyteller I've known. His descriptions were evocative, his NPCs were complex and interesting, his plots were worked out far beyond the reach of where the PCs could ever discover.

So what irked me? His total and utter lack of rules knowledge, and how that created unbelievable situations that took us out of our immersion and caused fractious arguments.

For example (D&D 3.5), in a low-magic world, all of the PCs were human except me with an elf. I was playing a class of elf that we designed together mechanically, but which was the manifestation of an idea for an elven organisation he'd had for a long time. My Dex was 20, and I wore a mithral shirt. The Dex gave me +5 AC and the shirt +4, so my AC was 19. This is a good AC for a low-level character, but it was my 'thing'; I didn't have massive Str or spells or other things I could've chosen. You pays your money, you takes your choice.

I could also fight defensively, and had maxed my Tumble skill, so my AC could increase to 22 if I took -4 to attack. None of this was due to the class we designed; this is from basic rules.

Whenever we meet baddies I ask questions. I want to know their AC. I know full well that my PC cannot know the D&D game mechanics directly, so I don't ask for their AC, I ask, "How are they armed and armoured?" I don't expect the DM to tell me about hidden weapons I cannot see, or tell me about magic plusses or whatnot, just the type of armour and weapons that I can see.

These guys, low-level guard-types, were armed with longswords and bucklers and wore studded leather. That would be +3 for the studded leather, +1 for buckler, plus whatever Dex bonus they had up to the +5 limit for that armour type. So their AC must be between 14 and 19, but even if they each had a Dex of 18 (unlikely for a set of common, low-level guards) their AC would be 18, and that would surprise me.

Turned out they had an AC of 24. WTF? How is that even possible? Was their armour and/or buckler magical? Nope. If that was the case then we might use said magic gear ourselves, and this is a low-magic world. Did they have a Dex of 30 and you forgot about the limit from worn armour? No, Dex 16 (still, wow!). So how did you get from AC 17 to AC 24? Were they fighting defensively? Did they have the Combat Expertise feat? No, they, erm, drank a potion. A potion of +7 AC? Really? We search the bodies again; I got's to get me some of that! Nope, nothing.

The truth is that he just didn't like my high AC and wanted theirs to be higher than mine, even if it didn't make any sense.

Another time, we were exploring an under-mountain complex when we came upon a massive vertical shaft. He described in his usual poetic detail the stairs spiralling around the outside wall, the dragon sleeping at the bottom, lying next to a pool.

Of course, we were attacked while we were half-way down the stairs by gargoyles. They had DR; that wasn't the problem. They could fly; our stairs were rickety. That wasn't the problem.

The argument broke out when our archer shot one of the gargoyles. The DM applied a -4 penalty on the grounds that the archer couldn't see it. At first, my knee-jerk reaction was to point out, yet again, that the penalty for attacking an invisible target was no longer -4 to hit like it was in 1E, but was a 50% miss chance. But then I realised something: what do you mean the archer can't see the gargoyle? We are at the edge of a cylinder, shooting in. Are there gargoyles in the way? No. Are the some infeasible stalagtites or something in the way? No. Is it in fact invisible, like the spell? No. Then why can't the archer see the gargoyle?

Because it's pitch dark in this place.

No it isn't. NO IT ISN'T!

I'm the DM, I decide if it's dark or not!

Yes, and you already decided it was light! When we arrived you told us what we could see, and you told us that we could see the shaft, the stairs, the dragon and pool at the bottom. We could see it! Therefore, it's not too dark to see!

I got quite upset at that point, and had to take a time out. He was just imposing random bull**** penalties with bull**** explanations, just to make it harder for us, without thinking it through. He could have thought things through and gave legit penalties, but the storyteller in him somehow didn't care.

Another thing that astonished me about him was that, despite his complex and interesting NPCs, when he was a player his PC was, without exception, a farm boy called 'Spud' or 'Cabbage' or some can't-be-bothered name, and every single one was Chaotic Neutral on the grounds that he believed that every PC in existence was obviously CN and players were lying to themselves if they weren't. Yet the same guy could create such wonderful NPCs! Baffling.

[Fishyninja]

It's pretty much just an average Tuesday, actually.
I feel I am playing D&D Wrong. :smalltongue:

[Pex]

So I am somewhere between "wow" and "WTF" on these comments. Do people seriously play the game like this? I mean you hear anecdotes sure, and maybe one in one hundred DMs might be a bit of a ****, but is this really actually a common problem?


Unfortunately yes. I quit my first 5E group because the DM was like these, along with jerk players. In one session he spent 10 minutes arguing with a player on her ability to fix the mast of the ship we were on. She had to go into exacting detail of what to do. He finally relented, but it was still a craw with him the following week. He said, I quote, "I'm a DM who believes players should never get what they want."

[Finback]

I will admit I do not know the rules of familiars etc (yet to play a caster), however surely owls would excel in a forest? Unless we are talking a forest that is extremely dense with trees.

I would like to think owls, at least fantasy-world-owls, would be en par with this footage:

https://youtu.be/HYGz32iv1vw?t=42

[Coffee_Dragon]

*link goes to video of owl slamming face first into a trunk and slowly sliding to the ground while waving a small white flag*

[Talderas]

Schrodinger's Tentacles.

I should elaborate.... roper tentacles that are considered creatures or objects based on how the DM wants spells or effects to interact with them.

For a barbarian keeping up rage? Creature
For spells? Counts as a creature target
For flame strike? Counts as a creature for fire damage but object for the purpose of radiant damage.

[Cozzer]

He said, I quote, "I'm a DM who believes players should never get what they want."

"Also, I work as a programmer and I believe that programs should never, ever compile with no errors."

"Oh, and my other hobby is woodcarving, and I believe wood should never be carved."

[Fishyninja]

I would like to think owls, at least fantasy-world-owls, would be en par with this footage:

https://youtu.be/HYGz32iv1vw?t=42
Exactly!


*link goes to video of owl slamming face first into a trunk and slowly sliding to the ground while waving a small white flag*
But this would have been acceptable.

[Flashy]

The only thing that I've ever seen done that bothered me was a DM who just didn't bring up a bunch of tone/progression shifts until three or four sessions into the game.

There's nothing wrong with playing a modified version of E6 (this was back in 3.5), but maaaaaybe you should tell the players about it before they ask you why they're going to be starting the fifth session still at 1st level.

Really solid game otherwise though.

[LastCenturion]

Reading this thread has been very entertaining, very cringe-inducing, and self-esteem boosting as well, so allow me to share my story. Embarrassingly, this is a story from a campaign I ran, which in retrospect I would have absolutely detested as a player.

The DM showboats and power trips all at once, while railroading and empty-rooming. I constructed a world and a story that were probably sub-par on thought but seemed very novel and cool at the time. Then, I made a cool cast of people to exposit all over my players. Then, when my players didn't magically guess the next thing I intended for them to do, I artificially made the NPCs they tried to interact with both boring and overpowered until they finally up and asked me what I wanted them to do, at which point I introduced them to a literal god who wanted their help, wouldn't take no for an answer, and expected them to have information that I had never given them. Even when they got to their first real fight, it was a grueling masterpiece with over 100 enemies for two level 1 un-optimized adventurers (In waves) and stupidly homebrewed monsters with overbalanced abilities. The game died like 8 rounds of combat in.

Now, I am (I hope) a better DM. I hope.

[pwykersotz]

Reading this thread has been very entertaining, very cringe-inducing, and self-esteem boosting as well, so allow me to share my story. Embarrassingly, this is a story from a campaign I ran, which in retrospect I would have absolutely detested as a player.

The DM showboats and power trips all at once, while railroading and empty-rooming. I constructed a world and a story that were probably sub-par on thought but seemed very novel and cool at the time. Then, I made a cool cast of people to exposit all over my players. Then, when my players didn't magically guess the next thing I intended for them to do, I artificially made the NPCs they tried to interact with both boring and overpowered until they finally up and asked me what I wanted them to do, at which point I introduced them to a literal god who wanted their help, wouldn't take no for an answer, and expected them to have information that I had never given them. Even when they got to their first real fight, it was a grueling masterpiece with over 100 enemies for two level 1 un-optimized adventurers (In waves) and stupidly homebrewed monsters with overbalanced abilities. The game died like 8 rounds of combat in.

Now, I am (I hope) a better DM. I hope.

That is well and truly amazing. I applaud this masterpiece of a train wreck. Well done.

[LastCenturion]

That is well and truly amazing. I applaud this masterpiece of a train wreck. Well done.

*takes a bow*

*off a cliff*

[DracoKnight]

*takes a bow*

*off a cliff*

If it's any consolation, that combat sounds devilishly fun to me!

[jate]

As someone who's planning on DMing for the first time soon, this has been a fascinating thread to read through.

My DM complaint:

His story wasn't written for us, it was written for his NPcs. An example: We arrive in a small village and are told the children have been kidnapped and taken into the magic forest. We make our way through the forest and barely manage to kill the shapshifting spellcaster at the end. On a positive note, many of us loved the difficulty of it. He'd accidentally made it overlevelled, but it managed to nearly kill three of us, while everyone ultimately survived. It was quite suspenseful. Anywho, we proceed to the house at the end of the forest, where the children must surely be, to find his group of adventurers leaving.

Example two: We're sent to find a special item in an abandoned castle. We get to the final room just in time to see the NPC adventurers teleporting away with the item.

That was the recurring theme of the campaign. We do all the work, get to the end, to see these other guys triumph. Super unsatisfying. Thankfully the journey itself was enjoyable, we had a lot of laughs on our way to watch the NPCs take our rewards.

[Larpus]

As someone who's planning on DMing for the first time soon, this has been a fascinating thread to read through.

My DM complaint:

His story wasn't written for us, it was written for his NPcs. An example: We arrive in a small village and are told the children have been kidnapped and taken into the magic forest. We make our way through the forest and barely manage to kill the shapshifting spellcaster at the end. On a positive note, many of us loved the difficulty of it. He'd accidentally made it overlevelled, but it managed to nearly kill three of us, while everyone ultimately survived. It was quite suspenseful. Anywho, we proceed to the house at the end of the forest, where the children must surely be, to find his group of adventurers leaving.

Example two: We're sent to find a special item in an abandoned castle. We get to the final room just in time to see the NPC adventurers teleporting away with the item.

That was the recurring theme of the campaign. We do all the work, get to the end, to see these other guys triumph. Super unsatisfying. Thankfully the journey itself was enjoyable, we had a lot of laughs on our way to watch the NPCs take our rewards.

That's a major **** move...how the hell did they even get there before your group??

I mean, I understand mentioning "other groups" and have the PCs team up/coordinate with them or even find their remains in case they were unsuccessful, with the occasional occurrence of the NPCs succeeding where the PCs failed, I've seen it being used to liven up the game quite well, but ultimately that's supposed to be your story, not the NPCs.

It does remind me of a DM I used to have tho, it was 3.P, but his sins (IMHO) were such:

Favor his girlfriend....like, big time.

We'd most often than not find gear that'd work well with her or gear she got had a hidden bonus feature. The rest had to deal with weaker/not quite proper stuff or even cursed items.

Like this one time I had a natural attack based Alchemist with 2 claws and one bite, the perfect item for me was an amulet that makes my natural weapons all magic +1; not only I went a loooooong way without finding said amulet as we never found one as loot, argument being that it's a niche item, despite finding a Wild Armor (allows armor AC while in wildshape) on a corpse (guess who was the Druid) and not even being able to find one for purchase despite semi-commonly going into Druid/Ranger friendly places, the time I managed to custom order the damn thing, out of nowhere our month-long stay in the place was cut short and we had to move....despite me paying in advance and thus setting me back quite an amount in my gear as per the house-rules, that costs 33% more.

Then, while we were elsewhering with me using sub-optimally for many sessions a morningstar + 1, we downed an evil druid and he had the amulet I wanted, had to enter an argument with his girlfriend for the item, with the DM strangely telling her that it should belong to me since it was something I wanted for so long and....it was cursed (despite me rolling 18 on my identify), making whoever made use of the thing without an evil alignment (I was CN) suffer exhaustion after activating its abilities under the pretext that I "needed a lesson for wanting it so much".

The thing also bonded to me (we couldn't find anyone to unbind it for quite some time) and me and his girlfriend got into another argument when I said I was going to sell the amulet I had custom made (she could buy it if she wanted to) instead of just giving it to her.

And no, I didn't just murder his girlfriend's character in her sleep to get the evil alignment and "solve" my in-game issues as that'd bring much more tension to the table, the group Paladin was nice enough to offer to cure me of my exhaustion with his lay on hands once he could.

His worst offense (and the one made everyone just leave the table) was that he'd also make these big epic situations where, even if we were managing to deal with it just fine (even if it were through the good old method of "kill it 'till it's dead"), nope, either the only solution is to find his damned NPC who decided to take a vacation on the other side of the continent so said NPC can solve the problem for us or a random NPC that was with us and was anything but useful up to that point just pulled a power out of his ass and deal with everything while we cheered from the sidelines.

Only to have other situations where an NPC with said ability would be nice for it to never happen, such as when the Paladin (same one who was healing my exhaustion) had to lose his powers due to striking a deal with a devil that was freed because the DM's girlfriend failed a Will save and messed with a sacred seal while the group was separated. The devil specifically asked for the Paladin's divine powers, mind you.

At that point we got fed up due to another PC suffering for something that happened to his girlfriend, not that we were against helping, after all, it wasn't her fault for failing a Will save, what tickled everyone off was a previous rather similar situation where the group Wizard had just gotten a powerful staff and had to give it up because she accidentally disrupted a slumbering greed avatar (again, failed Will save) who demanded her staff as compensation despite the DM's girlfriend having more powerful and valuable loot on her because "it was the wizard's fault".

It might've made sense for the different entities' own agendas to ask what they asked for, with the greed avatar being petty and the devil being more interested in corrupting divine powers, but it was still the last drop due to everything that happened previously.

[BillyBobShorton]

I would like to think owls, at least fantasy-world-owls, would be en par with this footage:

https://youtu.be/HYGz32iv1vw?t=42
Wow. Thanks for posting. wish I had that to show as my "really??" argument example.

[BillyBobShorton]

*Memoirs of sh*t DM and his woman*

I just wanted to say I feel for you, totally. I don't know why ppl can take such a fun game and feel the need to power-trip and admister "lessons"... just because they're the DM.

We're all here to have a good time and when others start ruining that for no good reason other than to feel important, or some sense of authority, or whatever, it's quite infuriating. Saddened it ended badly but also kind of glad to hear the table had enough and basically disabled him. There is no nerfing or misery to dish out without peons.

[mgshamster]

I generally don't like DMPCs, but I've got one DM who has three of them!

He wants to add two more, and will soon have more DMPCs in the party than PCs.

[Arkhios]

I generally don't like DMPCs, but I've got one DM who has three of them!

He wants to add two more, and will soon have more DMPCs in the party than PCs.

Ok, wow. That's pretty hardcore. Soon you can just sit back and watch as your DM roleplays 5 personalities - by and with himself. It might be entertaining. Or it might be frustrating. I wonder if he'd even notice if you guys just left? :D

Anyway, I admit that I made two "DMPC's" for NPC purposes, but I've never considered playing with them as full time members of the party. From time to time I believe I might use one or the other as a DM intervention device to prevent an unwanted TPK - if it's clearly because of my mistake. But never as party members.

[Fishyninja]

Anyway, I admit that I made two "DMPC's" for NPC purposes, but I've never considered playing with them as full time members of the party. From time to time I believe I might use one or the other as a DM intervention device to prevent an unwanted TPK - if it's clearly because of my mistake. But never as party members.

In one campaign we had a 'healer' type NPC, a gnome by the name of Cobble who's catchphrase was "Oh Deary Me". He used a sling with rocks and he would consistently roll either 1's or 20's.

We lost him to a huge acquatic beast *sniff* however it turns out (due to time travel shenanigans) not only did he survive but me married and had 3 children whom he named after the party (by mixing our names) they now act as DMPC's in our party and we have made it out goal to help raise them and make them the best adventurers they can be *wipes away tears of pride*