Bad DMs

>new players enter the group
>always ask if they can perform a certain action rather than just saying, "I do this thing"
>DM points out they don't need permission to use their skills
>whenever they use their skills, DM interjects and says, "You can't do that!"

I mean, he could have explained some of the basic mechanics to the players first, like how initiative works, range of spells and weapons, etc. so they wouldn't be calling out all kinds of actions that they can't necessarily perform in a given situation. Instead, he practices alienating new players who end up losing interest in roleplaying altogether.

>inconsistent application of rules in similar situations
>fudging rolls
>ever uttering the words, "I want to tell a story" in reference to the campaign
>thinking it is clever or original to kill PCs' families
>not letting player characters die unless it's "dramatically appropriate"
>vague house rules
>refusal to let characters do anything that isn't on their sheet

>>48774824
Honestly, I think extensive skill lists lend themselves to this problem, where players look to their sheet for what they can do instead of thinking, "what could a person like my character do in this situation?"

>fudges rolls, ever
>has entire notebooks of shitty lore he wrote for the campaign, which of course he's going to force on his players whether or not they care
>won't allow players to deviate from some linear path of progression he's set out

What is this, theater? Essentially all you're doing is forcing players to act out a script.

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So, a DM I play with had this insane mary sue that we met at lv.3 Here are some of the most memorable feats:
>When we first meet him we saw him shrunk an elder white dragon to the size of a sprite.
>Killed and reanimated as his pet an hecatoncheires we encountered casually scrolling in a forest. With a single spell. We were lv.6 at this point.
>Fought some sort of god under our own eyes (during the effect of some sort of global time stopping spell).
Other hilarious occurences:
At level 8 in an unprotected dungeon we find the sword and mantle of Corellon, a few sessions later we randomly encountered the egg of a prismatic dragon while walking through a plain, we are level 8 at this point.

I have a ton more stories but these are the highlights i think.

>>48774758
>Instructs players to create Intentionally Broken and/or overpowered characters.
>Asks for extensive detailed explanations of exactly *how* said character is overpowered and what it does.
>Creates encounters that are custom-tailored to fuck over those exact breaking points.
>Gets MEGA pissed off when those custom tailored encounters are flipped on their heads and the party stomps them because they are capable of more than just one gimmick.

And, all of the following after the phrase "So this campaign will begin..."
>"... in a gladiatorial slave arena, where player A must fight player B"
>"... with you shipwrecked on an island with no equipment."
>"... at a ritual sacrifice, where Player A) is strapped to a rock ..."
>"... in the severe rainy season, where all your horses have gotten stuck in the mud and you have to kill them."

and this one deserves it's own subsection:
>"... at the end of my last campaign, which Player A was the only one there for, so he's keeping his existing PC, with all his treasure. Wanna tell them what happened?"
"eh. Stuff. There was a guy with a face. Nothing new."
>"Great! Oh, did you finish drawing from the deck of many things?"
"Yeah, I got real estate, some warriors, a bunch of gold, and something called 'the void?" what does that do?"
>"Oh, just ignore that card. It's too complicated. Anyhow: On with the game."

>>48775080
>"... with you shipwrecked on an island with no equipment."
One of the best campaigns I ever played in, my grandfather created everything for, and it starts with that exact situation. You were aboard a slave ship and got let loose to help try to keep the boat from sinking, but broke loose with a life boat and ended up washing ashore. The tide is rising and you basically have to climb up this hill and enter a cave, into the setting of the campaign, which is basically entirely underground.

>>48774857
Agreed. It's almost always the players' fault, not the DM's.

>>48774758
TOO SOON

>>48775162
I was saying that certain systems are ones where the player and DM both need to look out for that kind of thinking. I think in the case I was responding to before, it's largely the DM's fault because evidently they were new players.

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>>48774758
Just want to remind you shitlords of a few things.

If you don't care about the "shitty lore" of a campaign setting, why aren't you playing some action platform Vidya Gaem? Or go play a tactical miniatures game for the love of Gawd. Stop inflicting your short attention span and shitty need for instant gratification on the other players.

>>48775078
If the DM wants to run a crazy High-Magic campaign full of fantastical shit, and you want to mercenary around in the mud as a murderhobo, go find another game.

>>48774829
without judgement, positive or negative - do you play 4e?

>>48775204
OP here. I didn't say anything about "shitty lore." Hell, I explicitly said my problem was a bait-and-switch.

I like intricate worldbuilding and interesting cultures and architecture and such, but I like encountering it organically, not having it shoved down my throat.

Also, emergent stories that arise from the adventures of a group of characters are almost always more engaging than whatever story where I'm just paraphrasing lines that are fed to me the DM comes up with.

I'm also REALLY not sure where short attention spans and instant gratification come in. I like games where I have to improvise and decide what to do in difficult situations, working as a team with other people, becoming immersed in the story that arises from the difficult situation in which our characters find themselves. All of that takes time and attention.
>>48775241
No. I play OSR (especially B/X D&D and Swords and Wizardry).

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Wasn't part of, but witnessed.

>party steals a religious artifact from a dragon
>demon shows up, saying each evil god is going to send demons after them to reclaim the artifact
>demon fucks up the party before being subdued.
>party decide to just baleful polymorph themselves and fly back instead of walking through the moria mines-esque route they'd taken to get there
>DM throws his shit
>party don't understand why
>DM says it's not the heroic or 'interesting' way
>party feels his excuse wasn't good enough in-character or out

this is what happens when you try to have a narrative game, but were stupid to do it in 3.0

>GM puts any sexual content or situations in the game, or worse, actually forces those situations on players

Really? It didn't occur to you that some people are going to be uncomfortable having this shit forced on them? A person certainly shouldn't be singled out and have to explain why something like that would even make them uncomfortable in the first place.

>>48775072
>has entire notebooks of shitty lore he wrote for the campaign, which of course he's going to force on his players whether or not they care

Oh no, the setting is well defined so the player can interact with the world and draw inspiration fromit! Why would someone do that?!

>>48775319
You realize that no one is going to be able to run a Perfect Sandbox World for you, right?
That no DM is going to have this immersive MMO style world designed where you can just fuck off through Forest X and have this great and immersive storyline that you've initiated with your improvised adventuring choices?

Even MMO's have driving plots, and those things are the result of thousands upon thousands of man-hours of development.

But you keep looking for that Special Unicorn campaign, or thinking that you've run it yourself.

>>48775204
Sometimes the lore really is shitty. I like good lore, like any person would. I do not like shitty lore, and most people wouldn't.

If the lore is so bad it detracts from the joy of playing a game with your friends, then it's time to play a different game.

>>48775346
>Oh no, the setting is well defined so the player can interact with the world and draw inspiration fromit!

You'd complain too if your DM forced the entire table to sit through 2+ hours of him reading fanfic-tier garbage from his lore notebooks to "preface" the campaign setting.

>>48775327
No, this is what happens when you try to run a game and can't be bothered to learn what the PCs can do.

>>48775383
>where you can just fuck off through Forest X and have this great and immersive storyline that you've initiated with your improvised adventuring choices?
This is literally what a hexcrawl campaign is, and I'm playing in one now.

>>48775072
>has entire notebooks of shitty lore he wrote for the campaign

See, I do this, but it's because I run multiple groups through the same setting and I like to be prepared in case they ask questions.

Plus worldbuilding is sorta fun.

>>48775420
Okay, you have a point.

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>>48775415
>then it's time to play a different game.

Yes, if a DM just isn't doing it for you, it's time to pick up and bow out gracefully. You aren't everyone's idea of a great Player, either.

"Player's Complain Thread #3456" is just an excuse for lazy autists to bitch about less-lazy autists.

>>48775204
>le contrarian who selectively read what they wanted to in the post they replied to, and failed to intuit the tone meme

Every time.

I've reported your post as it does not meet the qualifications required to maintain a high level of discussion on /tg/.

>>48774758
My DM did that once for a game. We all died, and went to hell and at then the game really started. I'm referring to the pic, not whatever you actually typed.

>>48775490
I failed my roll to care.
But have a reply anyway.

>>48775383
>You realize that no one is going to be able to run a Perfect Sandbox World for you, right?

This is exclusively the type of campaign I run. It's admittedly a small world, but every corner of it has quests and hashed-out NPCs. There's a bigger plot, but the players would have to stumble upon it incidentally.

I plan for as many contingencies as I reasonably can. For instance, if the party decided to go the chaotic evil route, the plot and world have a kind of modular design that permits this. None of that material may actually get used, but it's there.

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>>48775423
2 of them are known spectrum warriors who powergame, another is just an idiot and the final one doesn't do anything but roll dice when told to.

The GM had played with them before, and knew what they were like.

>>48775449
>This is literally what a hexcrawl campaign is

Then stick with hexcrawl campaigns, and realize they are a very specific niche of TTRPGs, and generally DMs don't run them.

>>48775420
Well, two hours IS a lot, but I do like a nice prologue part or something before the campaign begins. Isn't that what every DM does in some form?

>>48775509
Nice sparta meme by the way, Aunt Sally. I think they'd like it a lot more on Facebook though.

>>48775533
That's fine. But if you look at OP, I explicitly say that the DM claims that's what he's doing, then suddenly isn't. The problem isn't the game with a specific adventure planned for the party and a villain and all that, but the lie.

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>>48774758
>it's going to take fucking forever to get somewhere on foot and we'll run into a random encounter most likely
"weeeeell, you can always take a boat road across the lake"
>mfw

I know that shit always leads to either fighting some goddamn lizardmen or the kraken. It pisses me off because it's become completely predictable at this point, Steve.

>>48774758
My DM is decent, but there's one strange thing that somehow happens in all his games (which have all been fantasy games, so far). No matter how hard we try, it is neigh-impossible for us to stock up food past two weeks ahead.

I think he's somehow gotten the idea that throughout the entirety of the middle ages food was scarce all the time, or something. He always comes up with some new excuse to limit our food supply, even in large cities. First of all, there's the house rule that all non-preserved food spoils after two days, meaning we have to purchase rarer preserved food. Then, when we get to a merchant he always claims there's little food to sell, even after a description of walking past wheat fields for hours. When we point that out, it's suddenly xenophobia, or some disease making the food inedible, or the village just had a large festival, or whatever.

We've tried raiding storehouses, and they always turn out to be half-empty. We've tried rolling <insert relevant skill> checks, which always turn out to be so time-consuming we can't outproduce what we consume. We've tried investing in merchants to produce more rations, which they always flat-out refuse. We've tried buying a bakery, then suddenly wheat prices skyrocketed, meaning our investment only got us enough to raise our food stockpile to -guess what?- two weeks.

We've complained about it several times now, asking him to make food sources more plentiful, to which he always replies 'sure, I will in the future'. So far, we've still never gotten a stockpile larger than sixteen days each.

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>>48775514
Yes, my Nehwon 5e Campaign is run fairly freeform, but with a little more emphasis on several main plotlines. There are "quests" or "threats" that resolve themselves over time if the PCs ignore them to pursue other challenges.

But that's the sort of thing that only very experienced and practiced DMs run, and it's a lot of work for them. You can't complain about not being in one of those, they are the exception, not the rule.

>>48775327
On that note
>Playing a Dwarven Druid.
>Prestige into Master of Many Forms
Master of Many Forms: No more druid spellcasting, instead you become an A-rank Wild Shaper, able to change into progressively more and more of the monster manual. eventually, you get the shapechanger subtype.
>Decide to specialize in appropriately Dwarfy animals.
>GM separates my PC and a halfling from the rest of the party by a giant underground chasm.
>Wild Shape into a giant bat, start to carry the halfling across so we can un-split the party.
>GM puts an undetectable anti-magic field in the middle of the chasm, to force me to shapechange back and fall to the bottom for loads and loads of damage.

...

>Party outdoors with oncoming blizzard that is going to spell imminent doom.
>Literally, we have about a minute before conditions start dealing environmental damage to us.
>Nobody has any camping supplies because we have not had to track things like food or water or sleeping arrangements since the damn campaign started, or cared about the weather, or anything like that.
>Oh, and we're about level 8 right now.
>We're on a field of rough packed snow over regular earth.
>Wild Shape into a dire badger.
>Dire Badger has a Burrow speed of 5.
>I can excavate a 5'x5'x5' cube every turn, in 3.5 rules. But I just dug a small tunnel and started opening up a living space about 10' back from the
>Proceed to start digging a survival shelter.
>Make a "First night in minecraft" in-ground living space.
>Whole party can be comfy underground, set up sleeping bags, and have a small fire to keep the place warm.
>GM spends the rest of the evening sulking because i bypassed his big set piece snowstorm.

...

>GM puts us in a big, empty warehouse.
>But all the floor tiles are teleport traps!
>They send you to random other spots in the warehouse.
>Wild Shape into giant Bat.
>Attempt to fly across the floor to turn off the damn teleporters.
>"There's also an invisible wall of force, 5' above the floor."

>>48775586
>You can't complain about not being in one of those
But OP complained about being TOLD he was in one of those when he wasn't. That's entirely different.

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>>48774758
>DM is secretly using yours game sessions to write a novel based on them

>>48775586
please see >>48775559

But also

>Nehwon
10/10 good taste, I want to be friends now.

>>48775613
Sounds like a compliment to me.

>>48775613
That happened to my DM once, I didn't mind. I thought it was kinda cool actually.

>>48775602
I fucking hate this shit when GMs get belligerent or petulant because you sidestepped their MASTER PLAN. Nigga, you're not writing a movie script, nature of the beast guarantees players get input and will more often than not throw a wrench in your plans. Just walk it off and learn to plan in open ended manner.

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>>48775573
Even the troops in Napoleon's age had serious problems not-starving. Their trick with bottles of wine basically saved their asses.

If you want to have a month+ supply of food, roleplay farmers and build a granary, or become nomadic murderhobo herdsmen or something.

>>48775613
I don't mind. Shit, I'll help if he needs more insight into my character. That also explains why he's keeping so many notes and expanding on lore so much.

>>48775655
Food in general shouldn't be hard to come by; it just spoils somewhat easily.

Also, jerky has been around longer than writing.

>>48774758
tbf, that once happened to me because i had a brief moment of that guyishness where i essentially thought "hey you know what would be a good plot point, if my paladin destroyed the arcane artifact that allows for most of the dm's plot in this campaign, because arcane magic would be scary and confusing to him" to be fair, at the time i was 12 drinks into game night and more susceptible to stupidity. though he did allow me to roll an even 50/50 to see whether the spell worked, though it did end up failing. and thus Samyaza the prideful paladin met his end, seared into oblivion by a weird crystal.
back on topic, when my dm once fudged a roll for his gf's character to stay alive specifically because he was erping with her with his dmpc was very fucky.

>>48774758
>multiple, consecutive sessions with nothing but random encounters
>PCs are railroaded into doing the bidding of a patron (probably a metallic dragon) who treats them with nothing but disrespect

>>48775241
I agree with every one of his points. I mostly play Exalted, for what it's worth.

>>48775655
Army logistics vs small group food supply is vastly different, though. Salted food alone can, for all intents and purposes, last you a REALLY long time with proper storage.

>Scripted unwinnable combats

>>48775613
I once had a GM say to us "I'm not here to tell you a story. I'm giving you guys the tools to write a story yourselves."

On the surface, it's a great philosophy to have. I'd go so far as to say that's the sort of mindset that leads to great games, and that I'd encourage GMs to go about things from that perspective.

However, we later found out he was publishing a novelization of our adventure as his own original work, which kind of put a new perspective on how happy he was about us "taking the reigns to create the story" and "doing most of the hard work for him" during the sessions.

>>48775746
I fucking hate that. Why even GIVE the players a chance to fight then? Or did you genuinely underestimate their fighting prowess and they surprised you?

>kill a BBEG
>his boss, usually some kind of malevolent force, revives him saying "you're still useful to me" and he runs away
So what exactly did our hour long combat encounter do exactly? Did we just waste our time?

>>48775796
It's a trick to make your BBEG seem truly badass, and it appears in lots of other media. See: Final Fantasy 7, most action movies, etc.

It's hard to establish a bad guy if you can't show him for fear of assassination, but RPGs just don't work like films do.

>>48775613
I actually had one of my Roll20 players rewrite one of my original adventures and published it on DriveThrugRPG for the exact same game system I was running. Didn't even bother changing names of NPCs or locations. He denies to this day that he knows who I am or what I'm talking about.

>>48775613
that actually has a really sinister potential to go wrong if DM is some sort of a dick, but also really great if you're all aware of it and it a collaborative effort.

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>>48775905
Holy shit, anon.

>>48775796

We had a combat that we labeled "the fight that shall not be talked about" because it was so clearly unwinnable.

>Playing Pathfinder
>Party of 3 level 13
>Druid, Gunslinger, Optimized Dragon Disciple
>Start fight vs CR 15 encounter
>Tear shit up
>Reinforcements arrive
>CR 15 -> 19
>reallynigga.jpg
>Begin fighting through them as well
>Gunslinger drops
>Druids hp ~50%
>D.Disciple ready to fight
>Continue fighting
>More reinforcements
>CR 22 vs 12th level 3 man party
>whut.jpg
>Continue fighting
>BBEG comes in
>DC 40 Hold Person
>Dragon Disciple crit succeeds
>DC 40 Hold Person
>seriously.jpg
>BBEG comes to take macguffin item from D.Disciple
>Polymorph means macguffin is melded into him
>BBEG spams DC 40 Hold Person until polymorph ends
>3 hour fight for a sour taste in our mouths

We told the DM we'd never play with him again if he pulled that shit ever again

>>48775686
Food in the middle ages was
-hard to transport
-hard to keep
-produced in nowhere near post-industrial quantities or reliability.
So, assuming his world doesn't have all the low-level utility spells of d&d that effortlessly prevent any kind of non-heroic drama, he's right in treating it as a valuable commodity. Shit wasn't cheap, and mass starvation in large wealthy cities with strong commercial connections wasn't unheard of. If Florence has a 50000 ton shortfall in grain production one year, probably the whole region had a similar problem, and there's nowhere to buy grain in that quantity, nor the capacity to transport it.

From your description he does seem to jump through hoops to maintain the status quo, which I don't understand.

>>48775573
At this point, i would start metagaming about the ways and means of food preservation *hard*.

Or, I would just write "Three weeks worth of rations for everyone" on my character sheet in pen.

Because that shit don't come off.

>>48775905
Unless you can prove the idea was yours first, he didn't do anything wrong, legally speaking.

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>>48775967
Not necessarily, you're just thinking about it from a modern standpoint. You basically had) quick expiration date food that was consumed in one or two days and B) long expiration date food which was preserved by smoking, salting and drying in various methods. I assume party would get so called "trail food" when they're out in the wilds; hard twice-baked bread, salted meat that has to be soaked to be edible, etc. You're not really packing a picnic lunch as much as a very early MRE.

Most threads about bad DMs seem to boil down to hate for any sort of preparation. Most people seem to use all these little buzzwords like "railroading" to describe the fact that the DM doesnt have anything planned for the PCs when they all insist on exploring the woods described as: "Nothing in that direction except forest for many many miles". Almost every new player wants to do something dumb because of the PHB saying they can do anything. I told my forever DM friend to just let another player be a tree then and just cut back to her once per session for about a minute and describe in detail the various boring things that go on in the life of a tree.

>>48775967
>>48776032
Also, it's not that hard to hunt if you know what you're doing.

>>48775943
did he say why he did it?

>>48776000
>>48775942

I'm not too worried about it. It's up as a free download, so it's not like he's making money off it. And it's a VERY obscure game, so hardly anyone will ever see it. He's since left the game's forums after a few of the other Roll20 players busted him out about it. It's just the nerve to do something like that in a tiny ass game community and then deny it.

>>48776038
>this is a strange, mystical world, teeming with magic, where danger lurks around every corner
>but there's no danger or magic for hundreds of miles in any direction besides north by northeast

Also, when you play in a railroad campaign you might as WELL be playing as a tree, because it's not like these fuckers ever allow you to be proactive in any way.

>monster attacks town
>combat
>town elder tells you to take this letter to the noble north of town
>take letter
>combat on road
>talk to noble
>he sends you on a quest

And if you don't follow that exact trail of breadcrumbs and do exactly as the DM says, literally nothing will happen.

>>48776076
Something about wanting to show how powerful the endgame BBEG was. To make us hate the BBEG even more so it was more satisfying to finally kill him. I understand that a little, but it was just a little ridiculous.

>>48776076
I can only assume the GM really needed the BBEG to get his hands on the mcguffin for the sake of his plot and needed to bullshit into infinity in order to have it trade hands.

>>48776109
are we really equating "GM prepared quests" with "GM is railroading" now?

I see a lot of stuff about DR'S getting upset about players trying to be clever and avoid a problem and I can't help but think "Why?"

When I DM I get really excited to see how my players are going to react to a problem. Will they flee, will they straight up fight, will the make a tactical plan and attack the next day or set up traps. I have no problem with whatever my players due I just want them to have fun.

>>48776150
Of course not. But if you can have four totally different parties do the same quest and the differences in what actually happens are very minor, then the quest is too linear.

>Let's make deathwatch about nothing but combat! All these skills you have are useless!
>Reduces deathwatch to a no story dungeon crawl
>Rogue trader? Rolling for profit factor? Fuck that, we're not following the rules. Also, I determine your skills in deathwatch, and we're going to half them. Fuck you.

By far the shittiest GM i've ever played with. Every skill besides shooting is useless besides the side missions someone else ran.

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>>48774758
>DM confuses you by making you at least understand the BBEG's point of view if not outright sympathize with him

I don't need that shit in up to that point perfectly clear cut story.

>>48775796
You could try, like, running away? You know, the opposite of fighting a losing battle? Maybe even not engage the fight to begin with?

I'm not going to assume anything about that situation, but at least from what I've seen on here a lot of PCs tend to be the headstrong, take what they want, murderhobo types. And really I think its fair to say that when you play a headstrong, rush-into-battle type that you need to accept that youre going to run into fights you can't win.

>>48776222
1. That's a good thing.
2. That's a bad example because the Operative was outright wrong.

>>48776158
>I can't help but think "Why?"
Because making more content is hard. The newbie DM is very inefficient at prep, and usually writes a story instead of possibilities. The result is that every encounter negated in five minutes leaves a forty minute gap to fill and nothing to fill it with.

>>48776158
I genuinely think that's not even made in malicious intent as much as so many DMs simply get swept in a story they want to tell and forget players are actually the interactive element with wills of their own. That's where a lot of those "well I'll show them for messing up my story" kneejerk reactions come from once you throw a wrench into their carefully arranged sequence.

>>48776249
>the Operative was outright wrong
River having the Alliance brass' dirty laundry in her unregulated head was totally fine and dandy?
The Miranda incident couldn't reignite the war?

>>48776032
> you're just thinking about it from a modern standpoint
About what, exactly?

>>48776046
It is if you want to do anything other than hunt and forage all day every day. 3e's survival checks are absurdly generous.

>>48776109
Adventure Hook would take you East:
>"This is railroading, I'm going West."

20 minutes into that "on-the-fly" adventure:
>"Thought you could lay down tracks over here eh? Time to go South!"

20 minutes into new new adventure:
> "There's no rhyme or reason to any of this game, we're just wandering in a big circle."

>>48776243
I'll fill you in on some details.

The DM created a separate race designed to murder every other humanoid race & gods. We were fighting a crusade against them and it brought us to a castle in their secondary capital. We snuck in via sewers to avoid genociding all of the elves forced to work for them. That fight all happened in the throne room of the castle where the Captain and his right hand man were waiting for the Emperor of the killer race to arrive. Once the fight started, the doors were barred from the outside to stop us from leaving.

>>48776285
The Alliance was, despite what the Operative said, actually an empire, in the most literal sense. It tried to expand to engulf everything, to force the outer planets to its will. It experimented on people while claiming they were free. At the very best, he was fighting for what he saw as the "lesser of two evils," and when it comes down to it, independent planets seem far less evil than a singular entity which sees people as numbers to be rearranged as it sees fit.

>>48776158
>I see a lot of stuff about DR'S getting upset about players trying to be clever and avoid a problem and I can't help but think "Why?"
Because they're not there to share a collaborative story, they're there to have a power trip.

So to try to take things in a constructive direction.

How would you handle telling new players the wide range of things they can do ingame without oberwhelming them with rules ?

How would you convey an interesting world and history that the players can be part of without bombarding or punishing players with fluff?

How would you give players freeform control over the game without things turning into an unstructured mess? Especially new players who have no clue what is going on anyway.

>>48776312
>laying a single adventure hook in anything but a one shot, rather than letting the players take their pick in a world that appears to be teeming with adventure
There was your first mistake.

>thinking players who don't suck your dick and do exactly what you want are literally doing the opposite of what you want to spite you
This is idiotic.

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>>48776341
>How would you handle telling new players the wide range of things they can do ingame without oberwhelming them with rules ?
I wouldn't. We're playing a roleplaying game, not a wargame - you tell me WHAT you want to do and we'll figure out HOW to do it.

>How would you convey an interesting world and history that the players can be part of without bombarding or punishing players with fluff?
Organically, mainly from various NPCs talking, and over time. No need to exposition dumb on them. They'd get the in-universe version, though.

>How would you give players freeform control over the game without things turning into an unstructured mess? Especially new players who have no clue what is going on anyway.
I don't of freeform control and if you're not alright with this is not a game for you. So many problems come from not establishing the ground rules first.

>>48776369
I know what I've seen and heard. I've played with a lot of people and the loud and boisterous players are usually the ones to intentionally do dumb shit because they think it's funny or edgy to be the fly in the soup. It usually starts with a little smirk and you can see it coming if you know what to look for.

>>48775459
This. When I give lore, it's never in big dumps or walls of text or miniature novels. I give Dark Souls item description sized bits and pieces of lore. Smaller chunks are much easier to digest.

>>48776460
I mean, that sucks, and I'm sorry you have had bad experiences with That Guys, but that isn't what I was saying when I criticized railroading.

I hate:

>problems with only one solution
>being fed a single adventure hook in a world where supposedly there's adventure under every rock, then called a shitty player when that particular adventure hook doesn't capture my attention (or I even just miss it)
>games that basically feel like JRPGs because the world is only interactive in a few very specific ways the DM came up with in advance
>when DMs refuse to improvise or get mad when you do too well

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>>48776439
>So many problems come from not establishing the ground rules first.

This is especially true for troublesome players and class choices. Do DMs not read and approve shit before game begins? I mean, if it's anything goes it's anything goes, but if you're running a specific game you need to screen shit.

>>48776341
>>48776439
Can you define "freeform control" in this context for me? Depending on what you mean, I may like it or dislike it.

>>48775342
I mean, I personally enjoy a small amount of lewd in my games, and I know my players do too. If you don't enjoy that sort of thing, just be honest with the GM and tell him up front. If he's not a piece of shit, he'll be understanding.

>>48776312
Literally one of my PCs.

>Campaign starts as a typical "you meet in a set order of circumstances".
>Fast forward 2-3 sessions. The PCs have liberated a castle from some undead.
>Wew lads, seems we're going for an open-ended campaign with fiefdom management?
>4 out of 5 PCs decided that they will take the castle over and start their quest to lordship. >5th accuses me of railroading as I apparently somehow knew the other PCs were going to set up shop in there.
>Ok.jpeg
>Give them tons of stuff to do, plot hooks left, right and center. They pick the one to dispatch local bandits threatening the neighboring villages.
>OMG railroad! Let's just leave the castle guys!
>Throws a bitchfit when confronted by other players.
>"C-cant you see?! He's purposely steering us towards the bandits."

They literally heard about the bandits from a passing bard, whom they questioned for rumors.

>>48776327
>Alliance was, despite what the Operative said, actually an empire
So is America, what's your point?

>>48776109
I fucking love it when railroading conspiracy nuts actually get it their way.

>alright, you win. so what do you want to do?
>uhmmm... uhmmm.... I ask the barkeep for rumors?
>gm proceed to just get his story back on track

most players actually have no idea what to do with freedom once they have it

>>48774824
>Am I allowed to ride a horse?
>Yeah I don't see why not
>alright, I roll athletics to ride the horse

Am I wrong for pointing out the riding skill?

>>48776598
>So is America, what's your point?
That aiding America in its imperialism is not actually a morally good act. But I feel like we're getting off topic at this point.

>>48775420
Well, yeah, that's shitty, but there's a difference between having a detailed world and forcing every ounce of purple prose you can vomit up in everyone else's collective faces. Of we're walking through a mystical forest, I'd like to know if it has a name, and I'd be particularly interested in the history of the ruins we're exploring.

>>48776607
If the player actually wants to do the thing the DM wants them to do, that's fine. The problem is when the players actually want to do something else and the DM doesn't let them or creates some stupid-ass reason it's impossible or goes badly in order to "punish" them for not riding the rails.

Or do you believe "railroading" literally does not exist at all and there is no extent that a DM can take freedom from the players that is too much?

>>48776598
If someone right now had proof that America had killed off an entire planet and created a species of murderrapists then yeah I'd say trying to kill that person and hush it up is outright wrong.

>>48776617
There's a difference between saying "wrong skill" and "you can't do that."

>>48776617
>rolling a skill to just ride a horse along at a regular pace
Jesus Christ.

>>48775449
Just googled hexcrawl, and I would never want to run this sort of campaign. Sounds like a big chore for no payoff.

>>48776653
I actually don't think players can ever take DMs ability to railroad away from him. He can always re-purpose his original plan, even if it's set in the desert because players went south and not in the frozen wasteland DM originally intended it to be. At the end of the day DM is still in charge.

>>48776369
Good players understand that the DM isn't a NEET and doesn't have time to design an adventure for every direction the PCs can go in.

>>48774829
>>ever uttering the words, "I want to tell a story" in reference to the campaign
How dare they. Everyone knows campaigns are just a series of combat encounters for you to grind through. Only the worst DMs would ever bother to mumble two sentences of who you're fighting and why in between disconnected combat encounters.

I guess if you stick to tactical wargames or something, that's a little different.

>>48774758

"Sandbox" campaigns, of the vein of "I'm too lazy to do any actual preparation, and will let random dice rolls decide what everything is, and why aren't you players building the game for me".


Don't get me wrong, I don't categorically hate sandbox campaigns (I do think they're very difficult to construct and require a certain mentality among the players that isn't generally present) but using it as an excuse for laziness really gets me.

>>48776671
Well, on the one hand, yes. On the other hand, if revealing that secret disables the US as a superpower and then Russia, China or I dunno... anarchy becomes the driving force of global politics...

It's a complicated decision.

>>48776731
>go to a game where the DM wants to tell a story
>don't actually play, just listen to the DM tell a story, interspersed with "what do you do?"
>if your answer isn't what the DM wants you to do, the DM explains why you don't do that thing
>what the DM wants you to do may or may not be obvious
>as soon as you figure it out and assent to what the DM wants you to do, you're on your way again
>when combat happens, you can't actually lose unless the DM thinks it would be a dramatic, heroic death
The DM didn't say, "I want a story to happen." He said, "I want to TELL a story."

>>48776702
Just an example. Anything not too strenuous I assume the players can just do it without much effort.

>>48776731
Now you know darn well what he meant. There is a difference between a group telling a story together and one person telling a story with his players being the audience.

>>48775342
In general, all players and the GM should be in agreement as to what is or isn't fun or appealing to them and what is or isn't uncomfortable for them. I mean, there's nothing wrong with an ERP, but only if that's what everyone wants. It's uncomfortable, and /tg/ rails so much about magical realm, when it's just one person pushing it on the others.

So it's not so much that sex is bad as much as it is including elements others find uncomfortable is bad, and sex is common for that.

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>>48776770
>"Sandbox" campaigns, of the vein of "I'm too lazy to do any actual preparation, and will let random dice rolls decide what everything is, and why aren't you players building the game for me".

To be fair that can work, even without the last part, it just requires a GM with godly improvisational skills and thinking on his feet in general. He just has to memorize or keep track of everything he invents on the spot, which can be done with some notes.

>>48776829

I've never seen it done well myself. And I know I see a lot of /tg/ talk about how a lot of players don't notice, but again, my group and I at least do tend to notice, and it's really quite insulting.

>>48776723
>playing in a sandbox game right now
>DM has a job, a girlfriend, and still manages to have both free time and time to prepare every week (obviously with occasional exceptions if something comes up)

>>48776781
>>48776774
So the actual problem has nothing to do with telling a story, unless we're trying to be as pedantic as possible.

The problem is telling a story badly. In any interactive roleplaying game the GM having unilateral control of the events is obviously undesirable, much like a video game where too much "cool" shit is happening in cutscenes to where the player starts to wonder when they can play.

I think the 'problem' of "GM having a story they want to tell" is misidentified and the actual problem is GMs who don't understand how roleplaying games' stories should be structured and conveyed.

>>48776889
I think if you go into it already HAVING a story that you want to tell, you probably aren't going to be favorable to things that make that specific story impossible.

Even "I want to tell a story" is different from "I have a story I want to tell."

Also, emergent stories that arise out of PCs' struggles are far more engaging.

>>48775569
>be near a body of water
>be within 100 feet of any means of crossing said body of water
>L I Z A R D M E N
wouldn't have it any other way honestly

>>48775905
That's flattering. Shitty behavior and execution, but flattering.

>>48775420
>playing with Wil wheaton
Nigga you fucked up

>>48775342
Once played a game like this. Not everyone would have liked how this went but we thought it was hilarious.

>D&D 3.5, DM's homebrew variant
>We're all sticklers for rp and separation of player and character knowledge
>In town, some NPC chick latches onto one of our party, follows him around, can't get enough of him
>DM never does erp or romantic subplots, so we know shenanigans are happening
>Quickly figure out that she's a succubus, but characters don't know, no arcane types who might be inclined to discover this either
>Demon tags along, characters thing she's just our guy's fan club even though she's farming him for sexual energy
>Reach the final encounter, tell her to wait outside
>She insists on coming in. We relent, tell her fine but if things go south we can't protect her
>BBEG is a Lich as usual. In the middle of his speech she points at him and he disintegrates into ash
>Fuck
>TPK in three rounds

After, the DM showed us the tables he was using for the succubus. There was essentially no upper limit to how powerful she could get. As long as she kept sucking dick/energy, she could keep getting stronger, and at the point of our Lich encounter she was more powerful than many of the setting's minor deities.

It was a just for fun campaign and we reset everything for a more serious one. Some people would have been pissed but we thought it was funny as shit.

>>48776617

As a GM I ask people to tell me what they want to do before they touch the dice.

If they want to get on a horse, chances are I won't ask for a roll, if a horse is tied up, and a mounting block is anywhere near by, it's not exactly a hard task. If they want to ride a horse into a battle, I'll ask them to roll riding.

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>>48775613
>DM is secretly selling transcripts of your game sessions to a Japanese businessman who's producing an anime based on them
>they change it into haremshit and your dwarf is now a loli

>>48776032
ah, the fabled "barrel of thirstiness"

>>48776939
>As long as she kept sucking dick/energy, she could keep getting stronger,

I read that as "dick energy"...

>>48774829
>killing a character's family off-screen
>instead of milking that relationship for everything it's worth

I don't understand those DMs

>>48776032
>eat nothing but root crops (potatoes, beets, radishes, onion, garlic, carrots) and shoot any small game creature you happen to see while wandering along
>never have trouble with food
>take the food of whatever it is you wind up killing, especially if they're humanoid

Honestly, if everyone's food was going bad in 2-5 days in a D&D setting, you'd have to spend your whole time fighting fucking kobolds and orcs because there's no way a cult of humans or some bandit group becomes a problem when they have to leave their fucking lair three times a week with a wagon to restock on munchies.

>>48776718
This
Even if you're dictating exactly what happens and where your character goes, the DM can just reshuffle things around so that event X that was meant to happen in adventure location Y actually happens at location Z instead
or if the players have never been to Y, he can just move the temple ruins to a different jungle (one that just happens to be in the players path)

Essentially, there is no way in which a DM can be considered not railroading, the interpretation of railroading can easily be applied to every form of GMing

>>48775506
Sounds like it could make for an interesting campaign

>>48777051
>The Cults only go out to do their thing on the weekend, because it's the only time they can afford to not work. After of few months of getting nowhere with their rituals, they only really keep doing it because it's the only time the nobles and commoners can socialize without a scandal.
>The Bandits are just NEETs who just want to go out and LARP for most of the week because life in a farming village is fucking boring.
>Kobolds have to trap their lairs because their mines and dens are the only places rich enough to afford fresh food on a daily basis, not including the kingdoms nobility.
>Orcs are nomadic traders who deal move from kingdom to kingdom dealing in exotic goods and are expert hunters.

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>DM says Chaotic Evil characters aren't allowed
>Let's one of the players do Chaotic Evil things because he is his drive home

>>48776298
>It is if you want to do anything other than hunt and forage all day every day.

Nah, a single deer or boar will feed the entire 4 man party for more than a few days and if the hunter is skilled will only need to go hunting for a few hours, twice a week.

>>48776992
You soak and/or boil that shit, anon. No one sane would eat straight up salted meat.

>>48777187
Hell, in D&D 5E if you have a character with the Outlanded background in your party, the system just assumes that you're able to forage and hunt while you travel and you don't have to worry about rations.

>>48776038
To be fair, one of the best/cruelest DM tricks I've ever seen was to present a party with a forest. It was a totally ordinary, completely non-magical forest. No enchantments, no fantastical races or magical creatures living in it, nothing.

>"It appears to be an ordinary, non-magical forest."

The party fought three random encounters going around it.

The fact is, many times when a DM says something appears harmless or ordinary, there is a good chance that it's not.

>>48776921
I always have a story I want to tell when I GM. That doesn't mean I have every plot element planned out, as doing so is anathema to player agency. Having a story in mind isn't automatically railroading, so long as you're flexible enough to change it when player actions contradict the original intent, which they always will.

>>48777187
>hoping to keep raw meat fresh for more than a single day in the wilderness

nigga please. fresh kills have to basically be eaten on the spot or processed further in some fashion to have them last longer. and you don't really have that capability in the wild.

>>48776312
>>48776566

These two things are good examples of why I stopped running games for people from /tg/.

>>48777187
Yeah in 5E by RAW a player with 10 Con only needs to eat 1 lb of food once every 4 days minimum to stave off any mechanical penalties , starvation, exhaustion etc and a large animal like a deer provides 32 lbs of meat which feeds a party of four for just over a 30 day month.

>>48777262
Are you fucking joking? You can butcher and cook a deer and eat it all week. My uncle does this pretty regularly during hunting season.

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>>48777144
>Essentially, there is no way in which a DM can be considered not railroading, the interpretation of railroading can easily be applied to every form of GMing

not necessarily because the act of RAILROADING refers to directly the players to where you want them to be. you're not really doing that if you're giving them freedom of movement. they don't whether you're inventing shit right there or whether you're re-purposing your story.

>>48777262
Cooked meat will last 6-12 days without any refrigeration or special prepation depending on the climate and humidity.

>>48776566
>tfw your group insists on turning SOMETHING into a "home base" regardless of campaign
We once overthrew a small monarchy because some duke wouldn't let the party squat in or purchase the rights to a small keep we liberated from fucking bandits who'd held the thing for 50 years. Sat there anyway, duke sends some guys to kick us out, we beat 'em up and stay there, he keeps calling progressively larger forces against us, and soon we're out recruiting people to help us defend our fucking stolen keep from regal aggression and turning into darlings of the peasantry. This culminates in us KILLING THE FUCKING KING and promptly leaving to go back to our keep.

>>48777323
>yes well the entire continent's weather and humidity is such that food spoils at its maximum speed and also there's many species of especially aggressive food-spoiling superbacteria around which make it happen even faster sorry also they're poisonous to everyone including dwarves

>>48777262
>and you don't really have that capability in the wild.
Gee, if only our cavemen ancestors had discovered fucking fire.

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>>48777262
Well, if you mean RAW meat, sure. But why would you lug around raw pieces of meat when you can just cook it all at your camp and just store that for future use?

>>48777323
I'll add that even lightly spoiled meat is perfectly edible. I recall reading about french medieval recipes which involved leaving a hamhock until it has turned green then cooking. The result is surprisingly good and tender meat because the bacteria has broken down some of the longer protein chains.

>Thinking it is original or reasonable to start the party with NO GEAR in a LOCKED FUCKING ROOM along with several Level 2 Orcs.
>Related, requiring a certain class to get past a room, not telling anyone, not having any alternatives, then getting surprised when nobody rolls that class, even though it's one of the least commonly used classes.

>>48777397
As armor.

I once played a dwarf fighter who strapped sausage and cuts of meat to his leather armor and threw platemail on over that. Extra padding and protection. Some fucker thinks they got you, but nope, just a slab of beef, get fucked.
>party gets fucked up
>feign death
>hellhound comes over and starts eating the dwarf
>bad guys paying no attention because this dog is pulling fucking intestines out of his stomach, clearly he's dead
>nope, just sausage
>a few enemies leave
>dwarf hops up and fucks everyone
Bonus: you always have snacks for dealing with peasants or hungry goblinoids.

>>48777486

Enjoy your infection.

>>48777560
>dwarf

>>48777463
>not having any alternatives
Well that's just fucking dumb.

There always needs to be multiple ways to accomplish an objective, even if they're not obvious.

>>48776257
>>48776265
New poster here. I agree, and I'll add that the real dichotomy of the problem is whether or not you can appreciate your DM for trying to accomodate a nearly impossible array of choices, or condemn him for "being too linear" either in his planning or his expectations. We can sit behind our keyboards and imagine the smuggest, snottiest DM we want to, or we can imagine someone who has not yet mastered the art of being creative on the fly and try and give him some slack.

>>48776982
You should be proud, anon.

>>48775967
Seriously though, is it a role playing game or a stock-taking game?

>>48777314
Different poster here. The ART of being a good DM is to give the players that sense of agency ("I can go wherever I want and find adventure, I have freedom") without letting them see the forces guiding them along. Any good player will have the understanding that sometimes adventure BECKONS and they need to answer the call.

>>48778029
I'm the kind of fucker who enjoys inventory management (but not weight / bulk management) and having money sinks for food/supplies/lodging/repairs, but I'd pull out my fucking hair if I were working under that DM.

>>48776774
"I want to play a game, not listen to a story." And then you walk away.

>>48777004
Well, same thing, really.

>>48777239
Anyone with the spell Goodberry can nourish 10 people for a day with each cast of the spell.

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Having the players expend their money for perishable resources, and then have them rely on those resources is part of immersion-- but I've never seen players count down their "trail rations" reliably, and I've never enforced it. It's never really become an issue either, as most campaigns don't enter a desert often enough to really matter.

Honestly, the best system I've seen for that is Dungeon World: you roll your 2d6 and try to get a success. 7-10 "your supplies are running low" and a failure "Elf shot the food!" etc. Now I get to impose penalties for hunger and really immerse them in the wilderness.

But all of this takes experience and knowing your players, and learning to focus on fun without playing a tabletop video game. etc.

>>48777457
That's actually aged meat and you definitely cannot just leave it to hang around and then eat. It does require specific conditions to age properly. Not to mention you obviously cut off the outer layer.

>>48778708
I think part of the problem is that a lot of games are simply not big on simulation aspects so people tend to freak out because "you've run out of food" can mean terrible narrative things if it keeps up. In more simulationist RPGs you consults your charts, see how long each race can go without food and what the drawbacks will be for your character. You break that shit down in rational matter and realize it's just another obstacle to your perfect rolls and staying alive.

>>48775383
I would also like to jump on the bang wagon amd say that exclusively run this kind of game and my players love it

>>48776182
Well if the quest somehow goes the exact same all four times isn't it the party's fault for not reacting to it differently in accordance with the fact that they are different characters?

>>48776770
Oooof you just hit me in the feels

>>48777486

Now you just need to throw hardtack and hard cheese into the mix and you basically have all your food needs taken care of with a little preparation. Not sure about veggies, though, I'm pretty sure they need to be pickled.

>>48775080
>>"... at a ritual sacrifice, where Player A) is strapped to a rock ..."

Well we didn't have a campaign begin like this, but because I missed a session the DM thought to have my PC ambushed in the city by some cult, then bound and brought out into the desert to be ISISed, conveniently where the party was heading. Honestly, I had a good deal of fun disarming and slaughtering cultist kidnappers while naked with the roar of our warlocks firewall behind me.

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>>48777363
Wouldn't that just kill everyone? People are made of meat, and if there's an aggressive form of bacteria that can do that, it might as well be flesh-eating bacteria. And how long has the world had to deal with this? Because if it's for any significant length of time, someone, somewhere would have found a way to deal with it.

>>48775420
Why the hell couldn't he send you that stuff to read beforehand?

>>48776327
You gotta remember that the outer planets were pretty barbaric. Remember when Mal discovered River in the pilot and thought Simon was trafficking her to some border warlord?
That means that warlords with child sex slaves aren't that uncommon a thing in the outer worlds
Even the best outer planets are still ruled by the law of the six-gun

Neither the Alliance nor the Browncoats are perfect, it's just a matter of choosing liberty or security

>>48779641
If the alliance were actually just an alliance with some treaties about slavery and such being bad, I doubt there would have been any Browncoats.

>>48775539
Dude haha calm down

>>48774758
> DMs that demand rerolls because they don't like the outcome of the roll

>>48778055
Thank you man. Finally some sense in a thread about DMs with next to no DMs posting.

Good news everyone, DMs railroad all the time. You probably just didn't notice. I'll give myself as an example. My group has never complained about railroading, yet I "soft railroad" all the time. For example:

We play The One Ring, and before every new Adventure, I always ask my players where would they like to go/explore.

Before the end of the adventure, I usually have another adventure plotted out, so if my players don't decide where to go next and leave it to me, I already have something planned. However, if they pick another adventure or place to explore, some of the plot hooks from the adventure I planned would go to waste. Hell no.

At one point, I had planned an adventure to the Millfort (dwarf fortress in the middle of Mirkwood). I had planned an encounter in an abandoned fortress mid-journey. My players, however, decided that they would travel through the Grey Narrows for other reasons. Guess what they found mid-journey.

"In the distance, you see what appears to be a fort. It looks deserted."

This is a form of "soft railroading" that does not take away player agency. If you are a DM, you probably use it most of the time. If a player bitches about it, then he is probably not very smart. DMs are people, not procedural generators that calculate plot points at light speed.

Guess what my players found mid-journey when they finally decided to explore the Millfort? An abandoned fort, almost completely sunk by the swamp. Nothing of value was there and when the players left the fort, it finally sunk into the marsh. Later, an NPC they didn't find in another adventure showed up the next night, So everything that isn't used is properly recycled.

>Itt:All these GMs going "abloo abloo they called my railroad"

Stop pre-writing adventures for your game.

>"So what am I supposed to do? Improv everything"

No. We can tell. Improv games are shit too.

>"So am I supposed to have a planner adventure hook for every spot of the map?"

Yes.

>But-

Run a fucking hexcrawl.

Players don't know it, and you don't know it, but there's literally no reason for any fantasy game to not be run as a hexcrawl. A properly run hexcrawl will teach you all the the tricks of the trade for not being a shit GM.

Plan your hexes. Plan your points of interest. Make your map. Put shit on the map. Yes; everywhere on the map.

Unlike your stupid pre-written adventures or your chucklefuck improv hour, there is literally and without hyperbole no way for a properly run hexcrawl to be a bad campaign.

Run a fucking hexcrawl already. Your players will thank you forever.

>>48776109
Maybe I've just had very weird players, but the games I've run in the past were all extremely railroady and they loved it. I went in with a story to tell and there was never anything but excitement to hear it. They'd be lost without direction.

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>>48780169
>You should only run games MY way or not at all!
10/10 got me to respond

>>48780169
>Make 99% of the work fall on the GM, and make him fashion an entire world just so the players burn, pillage and loot it with total disregard to the story.
Sound plan, senpai. Try GMing for once in your life and see what it's like,

>>48780259
Seeing players burn down the shit you put up in one sense or another is my joy as a GM. I consider players to be like the disaster toolbar in Sim City. I run my games similarly to that guy, I don't use hexes, specifically, but I populate a map with points of interest, set up brief timeline of events in the near future, give the players a goal to get them running and avoid analysis paralysis, then let my prep drive the rest of the game. It works like a charm.

>>48775613
>secretly
Why secretly? Sounds awesome.

>>48779006
Bang wagon sounds like a medieval porn site.

>>48780326
That's one thing, and I'm okay with it. If I make an orc stronghold supposed to be a fortress of doom to conquer the land, but the players decide to raid it and with extreme bouts of luck destroy it, then sure, I love it!

But if I make an interesting story that is connected with each PCs background, and the party is all "lol naw we just wreck their shit. How much xp and gold?", then I consider it all a total waste of time. And the players a total waste of life.

>>48774758
This happened last session...

>Rescued Player A's family from an Ankheg attack.
>Player A's wife got poisoned by the buggers
>No problem says Player B I crafted a couple Antivenoms just for these situations.
>DM says it works but she is still sickly for about a week.
>We stay to help repair the damage to Player A's farm and to make sure his wife is Ok
>Slavers attack at night
>A tough fight but we have them down to their last man. At this point our cleric has been killed and we are all almost dead.
>Big Bad Railroad Guy shows up, KOs my PC and then opens negotiations.
>I make an OOC remark about me bleeding out while they are talking.
>The DM then remarks "Oh it was all subdual damage. Even the cleric is still alive."
>The table erupts with calls of bullshit on us not being able to tell as we were being attacked by guys with axes and swords.
>DM makes comments along the lines of knowing the difference is "meta-knowledge" and would have ruined the encounter as we would have spent actions reviving the cleric after his apparent "death."

I get that he wanted to do a "We've been taken prisoners" arc, but the whole encounter left a shitty taste in my mouth. Especially when the slave lord Efforty Peehaich showed up.

>my character has recently fulfilled their lifelong goal
>campaign grinds on because DM has THEMES he wants to explore
>nobody is really feeling it anymore at this point, want to move on to a different setting/campaign
>my character bites it unexpectedly in combat
>let party know not to bother trying to resurrect me, my character would be content with the afterlife now
>DM throws a shitfit
>decrees an NPC cleric resurrects my character, I don't get a say in the matter
>I just bow out of the whole group at this point, other players stay on out of apathy or inertia
>campaign falls apart shortly after, but not before DM turns my character into the new BBEG with basically no trace of former personality, goals or skillset
Just write a novel already.

>>48778708

Rules that require tracking individual food rations or ammunition drive me up the fucking wall. Unless you're playing a post-apoc game where that shit actually matters, the players should be worrying more about slaying orcs than making sure to pack enough biscuits. Can't we just assume that adventurers are smart enough to pack the appropriate amount of perishables and not have to put the players in charge of it?

>>48780810
>food rations or ammunition
Food, I agree. Unless there are exceptional circumstances, I don't bother.

Ammunition, no. If an archer wants to fire off arrows without running out, then they best find themselves a bottomless quiver or something, otherwise, better make sure you have enough arrows. I do keep the tally myself though, since it's not that hard, and when a player is running low I make sure to remind them next time they reach for an arrow. At that point, if they run out and become combat ineffective, their own damn fault.

>>48775573
Just buy a living sheep in a village and kill it when hungry. That's how people kept food on long travels, especially on boats during months-long journeys.

>>48774758
>D&D 3.5e
>disallows Martials from doing aimed attacks, i.e. to interrupt spellcasting by aiming for arms to couter somatic components
>spellcasters can ignore researching time, terrain features, meditation/study time to replenish the spellbook after and all spell components unless they are afflicted by a specific counter, such as silence or stun, and don't have ever to provide resources
>brag-complains about how OP spellcasters are in D&D

>>48781298
*counter, *after resting
I'm tired.

>>48776921
The campaign I'm running, which is set aside for system retooling has a very specific story. I spend the time with each player when they build their character to make them not only feel like part of it but also want to be part of it. I also throw in twists for their character's lineage or allies and regularly remotivate characters with new events and hatable villains (the type that makes their characters angry or scared, not boring villains nobody wants to deal with.) I also keep the majority of my plot location nonspecific, as it lets players have freedom to make their choices. I also have my NPCs respond to character actions they have seen or heard about. So far its working oit well with them, and smoothly has mixed the story and player actions together.

>>48780751

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh I'm sorry dude.

>>48780586

yeah that's pretty shitty. It's not meta-knowledge for players to know if they are knocked out or not, that's perfectly reasonable.

>>48781298

That DM needs to go back to /v/ goddamn.

>>48781416
"If it's inconvenient for me it MUST be in the rulebook or else you needn't apply, but when it plays into my hand and isn't in the rulebook, it can stay."
The cancer of D&D alongside rulebook authoritarians.
I believe that D&D wouldn't be considered as shitty as it is currently if the players and DMs would be more creative when it comes to the mechanics. The authors likely didn't create exhaustive lists and intentionally kept things vague for the reader to interpret.

>>48781536
>The authors likely didn't create exhaustive lists and intentionally kept things vague for the reader to interpret.

Fuckin this. My group has played so many different games that we wind up just coming up with a lot of stuff on the spot based on the core stats/skills/systems.

>>48781536

And that shit gets especially annoying when people start coming to conclusions about the system based on what they heard from the players and it's just like FUCK

>>48775143
Your grandpa sounds great

>>48775383
Uh, yeah, lots of people do that. I do that. Those other people do that. The whole fucking DIY and OSR do that.

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>>48781568
>Fighter in full plate armor is confronted with a 2 meter high wall
>shit, not even take 20 will save me
>wield an adamantine scythe as a weapon
>DING! use the scythe as a climbing utenstil by hooking the blade on the top and stepping on the additional grip on the shaft
YOU CAN'T DO THAT IT'S NOT IN THE RULEBOOKS, REEEEEE

Had a DM on Roll20 that, while we were all using voice chat on Skype, would make us type out anything our characters did. We'd be talking about going through a town and then all of a sudden "No, type it" So we'd type out our convo with a NPC and then sit for a good 5 to 10 minutes doing nothing while he typed out a bunch of dialogue and shit.

The whole game just became a ton of going nowhere fast and waiting.

The whole thing was super railroaded too. Anything we wanted to do that was off the DM's set path was made near impossible or, if we managed to succeed we did 'too well', One player legit was trying to calm a horse and rolled a 20. DM didn't like it so he said the player ended up doing too well, feeling up the horse, and making it uncomfortable. Not even joking, totally seriously punishing the player for getting a nat 20 on calming a horse.

Oh and after a 3 hour session of nearly dying in a dungeon we found a weapon that was OP and perfect for his dumb self-insert character,

I got fed up and left and am now DMing my own game.

>>48781536
>I believe that D&D wouldn't be considered as shitty as it is currently if the players and DMs would be more creative when it comes to the mechanics. The authors likely didn't create exhaustive lists and intentionally kept things vague for the reader to interpret.
Isn't that literally the whole point of rule zero?

I mean, fuck, a lot of newer systems explicitly say that GMs should be permissive in allowing things that seem like they should work, even if the rules don't explicitly lay it out. It's the same mindset as the chunky salsa rule - the rules of the mechanics shouldn't override creativity or even just common sense in stating how the world actually works.

>>48780443
I hate when players try to be sword and sorcery characters in a system inspired by the genre too.

>>48781766

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

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>>48774758
>presenting a game as sandboxy or even hexcrawl-ish, then two or three sessions in it's ALL ABOARD THE DM'S CRAPPY NOVEL EXPRESS

Anyone else here try their absolute best to avoid railroading players and even allowing them to do most of whatever they want, but end up having to constantly give them things to do because they don't explore as much as you let them?

It sucks cos most of my campaigns in the past have turned into this, and I always fear that I'm railroading them when that's the last thing I wanna do.

>>48775477
Fuck off, steve, you're horrible gm

>>48781962
The trick is to very roughly come up with the broad strokes of your setting, what's where, etc., without a lot of detail.

Then you come up with the local area in detail, then present a number of hooks and let them pick one, as well as reassuring them that you aren't going to make them wander through empty woods save for random encounters for a whole session if they just set off in a random direction.

This way they have lots of options, and at the end of each session where they've finished one of their goals, you ask them where they want to go/what they want to do NEXT time, giving you time to prepare.

>>48777314
They still end up exactly where the DM wants them to, though, with no real choice in the matter

>>48781766
This is the fucking worst.

>GM: "The enemy is behind the corner, waiting for you to come over so he can shank you."
>Player: "I will try to taunt him and goad him into coming towards us! What skill should I roll?"
>GM: "You can't do that, it's not in the rules. This is not an MMO you know."

>>48779824
>DM says "to the north live two great barbarian tribes who have been at war for as long as anybody can remember. To the east is the Forgotten Empire. To the south," etc., etc.
>DM comes up with a few adventures for the players to choose between that happen in the safer local area, encouraging players to do something local for reasons of the wilds being dangerous and them being relatively inexperienced
>if they ignore the advice, the DM lets them travel way out into the wilderness or whatever, only they probably die because that shit is dangerous
>players do those for a while until they feel the itch to travel, something the DM has made sure to know they should make known as soon as they feel it
>DM asks them where they're going to want to go first and they answer
>DM then has time between sessions to fill in a bit more detail and provide adventure hooks and conflicts to which players can respond, creating new adventures, dungeons, etc., to reflect the locale, its politics and history, etc., rather than just porting a dungeon from the desert to the jungle or whatever
>players actually went where they want to, which the DM created to suit the place, not to suit some pre-planned story
I have run campaigns like this. I have played in campaigns like this.

They don't even take all that much time outside of sessions after the initial world building. Maybe 1-2 hours of prep for each session. Sometimes less because players are still in the middle of something.

>>48775072
>>fudges rolls, ever
I think this is one of the best parts of tabletop RPGs. You have a living referee who can fudge the rules to make things more interesting.

>>48781962
People are too paranoid about railroading. Some GMs seem so afraid of being called the R-word that they think all plans, all story concepts, and all ideas longer-term than a single session are evil.

The key is to be flexible, not neutral. Yeah, it means planning sometimes goes to the wayside, but even then, I find planning to be really helpful - I dunno how many times I ended up re-tooling a scrapped encounter I'd had planned because party direction unexpectedly gave a good in for it.

>>48782263
My problem with fudging rolls is that it removes my ability to make decisions based on how good my character knows he or she is at things. It replaces probability with arbitrariness.

In addition, if a DM ever fudges a roll, that means that really the DM is just deciding everything, and using dice for when he or she doesn't feel like deciding. This essentially means that, for instance, if my character dies, it wasn't due to a lack of skill on my part or a poor decision on my character's part, but a conscious decision on the part of the DM to kill my character.

>>48782059
MMO-style taunts really are dumb though. If your enemy is sentient at all, it'll almost definitely be smart enough to not be affected by them.

>>48774758
I have played with a guy who prides himself in making horror games. They aren't scary at all, just running a butchered D20 system with absurd DC's for checks, calls randomly for everyone to roll a D20 when someone tries to do something at times, often totally negating what the player was trying to do. He often enjoyed to have no control or order, so some players who didn't shout loud enough didn't even get to do anything. His current crop of players apparently get frustrated since his constantly telling them to think outside the box and then proceeds to not define what the box is, so any thinking gets them killed off.

He kept trying to dissuade me from running a pathfinder campaign for his group, which I learned later was because he was insecure that they would love what I did, and they did when I ran an easy skulls and shackles campaign.

>>48774758
>ITT: Shit DMs do that pisses you off

Rape me in the asshole after every game ;_;

>>48782418
>Orcs in the setting are known for their short tempers
>But they won't be affected by taunting because reasons

Yeah, no. If trolls can goad people into posting then fantasy characters can goad other fantasy characters into doin stupid shit

>>48782263
>I think this is one of the best parts of tabletop RPGs. You have a living referee who can fudge the rules to make things more interesting.
Fate has a good rule of thumb that I honestly think should apply to a lot of other systems as well.

"Only roll dice when both failure and success are interesting. If you can't make both interesting, just go with the interesting option automatically."

A lot of GMs seem to insist on rolling dice when the outcome shouldn't logically be in doubt just because the rules say to. Like for example, the party thief picking a typical lock without some kind of outside pressure (guards on patrol, time limit, etc). I think that's dumb. Unless an action is facing active contest or the drama and fun hinge on it, don't bother rolling.

Oh, and if a GM consistently finds he can't make failure interesting, learn to fucking creativity. Failure doesn't necessarily mean "The PC can't do that." It could mean "The PC tries, but a guard unexpectedly walks into the room. Roll initiative." Or whatever else.

>>48782436

You should call the cops, yo.

>>48782459
Just because you have a short temper doesn't mean you'll throw your life away because of it.

>>48775080
>>"... in the severe rainy season, where all your horses have gotten stuck in the mud and you have to kill them."
Never laughed so hard in my entire life

>>48782515
Micheal Brown.

>>48775080
>tfw starting my campaign at a gladiatorial arena where player A must fight player B, after they were found on the shore of the island where the arena is, shipwrecked with no equipment, having had to kill their horses who were stuck in the mud, and prior to the battle, player C will be sacrificed as a ritual that happens before every combat
NOW I HAVE TO START ALL OVER

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>- The enemy strikes at you!
>- It's a clean hit, give it to me
>- ...how much health points does your character have?
>- What's the damage?
>- No, tell me how much health you've got left
>mfw

>>48782584
Ignoring politics, even if there is an example of someone doing so, it doesn't mean that everyone who has a bad temper is going to, especially when they're already planning to kill the person who's baiting them in a minute.

>>48782515
Many a dead gangbanger would beg to differ.

>>48782479
I agree with 99% of this. but I do find it good to toss in some random rolls once and awhile.
If the thief can walk through a lock, don't make them always roll. but a roll once in awhile can be fun because their failure can force the party down another path.

>>48781773
>Voice chat
No thanks.
I'd very much rather to type shit out instead, because I don't want to hear anyone's autistic mouthbreathing or nasally voice ruining my immersion. Besides, it's a lot easier to act in-character when typing, rather than speaking. Describing things is also much, MUCH easier.

>>48782701
Sometimes coming up with an explanation for an odd event can itself be inspiration.

"The expert thief has trouble with this ordinary interior lock. Why? What are they REALLY hiding in there?"

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>Any DM who thinks that it's "Me vs Them" with combat rather than detaching themselves from the villains and treating them as something besides their own characters.
>DMs who blatantly railroad by keeping the part from doing absolutely anything other than what they had planned for the session rather than giving an inactive party something to do.
>DMs who don't necessarily turn situations into a "magical realm" but make things more sexual than anyone is really comfortable with.
>DMs who don't truly understand the system their running and think that any form of magic that can do anything is OP when they themselves also have access to counter-magic or magic of equal degree with the BBEG's NPCs.
>DMs who fudge rolls or add artificial difficulty to encounters because they're not "hard enough".

>>48774758
>There's a secret organization controlling the city
>Senator gives you a book with info about them so you can fight them
>Book is locked with lock
>No key
>Try to lockpick
>It's dc is so high a nat 20 couldn't do it
>Eventually have to get public about it and have some locksmith unlock it
>Secret organization is after me now
>Book tells me they're really tanky and that's it
>Doesn't mention they have shapeshifting or spell casting
>Get shit kicked in by one memeber of it
>Ends Campaign as I get tortured to death for my life essence
Thanks Ben, great campaign right there

>>48776107
>it's a VERY obscure game
What is it?

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>Splits group in half
>takes a 5 hour session to regroup and nothing happens

>>48782768

>what are interviews and a screening process?

>>48774758

Not exactly a bad DM story, but one time, I was trying to join a game at a LGS, and I get a little questionnaire about my playing practices, expectations, how to contact me, etc.


One of the questions was "How often do you shower?" I can only imagine he had some gawdawful grease golem in a previous game, but I was a little annoyed/amused by the question.

>>48775143
>The tide is rising
>You have to get into a cave
Yeah, if you want to die...

>>48783850
The entrance to the cave is up high. If the water doesn't reach the mouth of the cave, the water doesn't go into it, barring other entrances that are already underwater or something.

>playing pathfinder
>DM puts is in module dungeon
>Get past 2 traps, find 3rd one
>None of us know how to get past
>GM heavily implies it's magic
>Nobody has detect magic (or whatever the skill was I've never played pathfinder after this mess)
>GM keeps saying to use skill
>None of us have it
>Eventually get past, leave dungeon
(I don't remember much apart from this if that tells you anything about this guy's GMing)
>Session 2
>New player makes an elf character
>Go to a tavern
>See an elf in a corner
>GM urges to interact for no good reason
>Go and have awkward conversation
>Elf slams me to floor (About an hour in at this point)
>We fight Elf
>Elf is level 19 Monk
>Get knocked out
>On ship
>See new guy's character about 1 and a half hours in
>Elf tells us that we're going to quest for king something or other
>Ship gets attacked by Kraken, he's nowhere to be seen.
>Players decide OOC to derail this shitfest
>Campaign ends after 2 sessions

>>48781375
Ronald?

One of the worst situations I was ever in was in a PbP game where the GM allows us to basically decide where we're gonna adventure. We do so *In character* and then as we sail off to our destination, DM throws a bunch of mind flayers at us, which totally nullifies our option of choosing where we go. Gets really snooty about it, too, saying, that it's NOT impossible for our PCs to beat them. The condition that mad it possible being that we'd have to make consecutive 18s on our will saves.

So OF COURSE we end up in Mind Flayer jail and my PC gets mentally beaten up for verbally accosting our captors. Captors leave us a torch. I try to use some spells (I think it was Mist/Fog form or whatever) and the DM says I can't cast it. No spell components. I tell him back I can *use the goddamn torch* to make the ashes/whatever component the spell needs, and he fires back that no, because suddenly the stupid torch was a heatless magical one. Because, really, mind flayers would waste shit like that on lighting their lunch.

By this point one play quit, we still managed to escape anyway but my plans/use of spells were constantly thwarted by the DM until an NPC showed up who was clubbing the mind flayers like they were watermelons.

I quit at that point, and the DM was the whiniest shit about it.

>>48775342
I think sexual content that makes players uncomfortable is perfectly within reason IF the intent is to make the character uncomfortable too. Particularly if it's someone hitting on said character. Doubly so if it's funny after the moment has passed.

>>48782638
>it doesn't mean that everyone who has a bad temper is going to...
Isn't that why you'd roll for it?

>>48782436
Yea, I remember that campaign Cosby ran.

>>48776492

Agreed. show not tell is best.
why say
"the oppressive government rules with an iron fist"
when you can describe the poverty and downtrodden nature of the towns the players walk through

>>48784739
He made us some nice submarine sandwiches though.

>>48777152
we're straying into elder scrolls territory here

>>48784828
I thought the rohypnol puddin pops were delicious. Never could get through one though.

>>48776702
>character has ridden things like large lizards and massive birds but never a horse before

>hasn't even seen one till now

>not making him roll the skill for attempting to mount a beast he has no idea how it even functions

>>48779527
or outright adapted to the point where it doesn't matter

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>>48774758
>This thread
>Most of the "Events"

After years of RPing experience I've come some of these events mention here in this thread are many of the best moments in Role Playing I've ever had, and many others sound awesome fun to do.
(And a few I'd never touch with a 10' pole).

OP's pic for instance: I've had that happen to TWO characters and both events evolved into two very memorable, different and most importantly fun campaigns.

>After reading this thread fully
Oh yeah...
There are a lot of bad GMs out there that don't know how to handle good plots or interesting events.
There are a lot of players that don't know how to roll with events, getting too caught up with how they envision things...
There are lot of pretty green GMs that think they are experienced, but could really use some more work.

I should count myself lucky the group I roll with now is pretty good.

>>48775782
>publishing

Link or it didn't happen, faggot.

>Runs one-shots that are 6 hours of convoluted riddles, half an hour of "shit the players are getting tired, better wrap this shit up
>Riddles make no fucking sense except in DM's head
>Mystical artefacts with names are always something mundane in their native land
>Writes up a massive backstory/setting, but doesn't let anyone read it and gets shitty if you get something in-universe wrong
>OKs characters that don't fit his setting, backstory and all, then ridicules the player for not keeping to the setting see previous point
>Every magic item has almost/usually fatal draw-backs for using it despite the bonus just being a small amount of extra damage
>Forces unwanted and awkward PCxNPC romances on the player with the highest CHA
>Calls players not playing a character with their IRL gender "cross-players" like it's some kind of weird fetish from Japan
>Tries to nerf characters doing well by punishing them with dismemberment after failing a challenge roll by 2-5

All from one DM. The rest of that group ended up refusing to play his games.

>>48776327
The Operative was not making any moral choices. Right and wrong were concepts for other people. He was all about results and those were weighed against his mission goals... until Mal forced, literally, him to see the truth. I think the fa t that he was a tool was tw only reason Mal left him alive. It was time for the Operative to see the folly of Belief...

>>48785629
>>Calls players not playing a character with their IRL gender "cross-players" like it's some kind of weird fetish from Japan
I thought crossplayers were just the general term for them, not a value judgment.

>>48776880
I'm sorta running one... and I have a wife, three kids, etc.

I say sorta because, if they kick the sand, they'll find tracks. Lots of them leading in many directions with even more intersections.

They tend to take npc suggestions for setting goals then free form their way to achive them.

And, when they're at some point where they cn go anywhere or have lots of decisions, I ask then for their plans at the end of each session so I can get myself prepared.

Finally, I keep a few emergency encounters prepared. A few have evolved, upon contact with the pc's, into important story elements or multi-session adventures.

>>48785629
>>48785789
I think "cross players" refers to cosplayers who play characters of the opposite sex. Might just be borrowing the term.

>>48777346
If he couldn't do anything against the bandits, why did he think he would manage to kill the guys who defeat the bandits?
Why didn't he hire a new more loyal group to kill the old group?

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>>48774829
I find most of these to be things that I could see being completely fine things if done by a Good GM, but rage worthy if done by a Bad GM

>>inconsistent application of rules in similar situations
Good GM: "The situations are similar, but not the same. Also, you don't know about 'X', which changes things."
Bad GM: Any variation of "What I say goes" or "Yeah well, Craig bought the pizza and gives better head than you."

>>fudging rolls
Good GM: "I'm not letting this absurdly bad dice roll end everyone's fun."
Bad GM: "That's not what I think should happen!"

>>ever uttering the words, "I want to tell a story" in reference to the campaign
Good GM: "...about this game to others when it's over and I want it to be awesome!"
Bad GM: "...THIS story."

>>thinking it is clever or original to kill PCs' families
Good GM: [Killing PCs' families might be great, but thinking it's clever or original is never good]
Bad GM: "Bestest idea EVER!"

>>not letting player characters die unless it's "dramatically appropriate"
Good GM: "What? No, you don't die from slipping off the bridge rushing out of town, you just landed in the mud, next to the death moat."
BAD GM: "No, even though you charged naked into a swarm of blood thirsty monsters, they beat to one hit point and leave you lying there."

>>vague house rules
Good GM: "You want to grapple him? Uh, roll that die. Yeah that seems high enough, you got a good hold of him."
Bad GM: "Well, when you do something really good, I give you bonus damage to your attack. And when you do something dumb, I take some hit points away. What's not clear about that?"

>>refusal to let characters do anything that isn't on their sheet
Good GM: [Wait, they're playing an rpg, not a video game, right?]
Bad GM: "You can't pick up that stick, you didn't take the feat."
pic related

>>48776829

I actually run a sandbox campaign. I have a few things laid out, and a general quest for the players to complete, but aside from that, it's up to them to learn things and I build the world around what they learn.

I take MAJOR notes on what I say, though, so I can remain consistent.

A few new plot points have come up as a result, which I was never even considering before they started. I build the environment around luck rolls, where the group rolls together to determine how helpful/harmful the world around them is, then can interact to affect it. I'm still building the world for them, though. For example, "We want to take this transportation to a nearby city, what's within a few days' travel?" They roll, then I lay out a few areas and what surrounds them.

Also, a THAT DM:
-playing Curse of Strahd
-only plays straight from the book, isn't willing to be creative
-even when we try to do creative things working with the information we've been given, DM refuses to let it happen until it's exactly as she wants

My wife and I left the group over it, she was that bad.

>>48786172
Every fucking That DM thread has the same controversies usually over these same topics.

>I had a bad DM who did X, therefore X is evil
>But I had a good DM who did X!
>No, you just don't know any better, because X is evil, because bad DMs use X
>[both sides attack each other]

It's sorta like threads that get into discussing what a "mary sue" is, inevitably full of retards who arbitrarily pick a single symptom and point to it as being an irredeemable flaw, rather than recognizing it as being a symptom of an underlying problem.

>>48778421
Yes. That's kinda the point.

>>48775080
>And, all of the following after the phrase "So this campaign will begin..."
>"... in a gladiatorial slave arena, where player A must fight player B"
>"... with you shipwrecked on an island with no equipment."
>"... at a ritual sacrifice, where Player A) is strapped to a rock ..."
>"... in the severe rainy season, where all your horses have gotten stuck in the mud and you have to kill them."

Honestly, as a player, these all sound perfectly fine. It's the shitty DM/players that makes these situations shitty, not the situations themselves.

for example, the gladiatorial arena: shitty players will just kill each other, get buttmad and ragequit. GOOD players will stall for time, inflicting superficial wounds on each other and strategically positioning themselves to suddenly overpower guards, free rest of slaves, and storm their way to freedom. A bad GM will just lolnope all that and say you die the second you turn on the guards.

>>48787150
this.

There's very few truly bad ideas. Those are in no way over the top or anything. Fuck, I'd take any of those over "You wake up in a tavern." All of those immediately prompt questions, at least. Why are we in the arena, and what's expected of us? Where were we going before our ship wrecked, and is it possible the wreck wasn't an accident? Why are we attending a ritual sacrifice? Who is doing the sacrificing? Even the last one is evocative of tone and mood.

>>48774758
>allowing players resurrections under any circumstance
shit dm for allowing it
shittier for taking it back too late

>>48775204
>If you don't care about the "shitty lore" of a campaign setting, why aren't you playing some action platform Vidya Gaem? Or go play a tactical miniatures game for the love of Gawd. Stop inflicting your short attention span and shitty need for instant gratification on the other players.
this nigga gets it.

Why date a girl if all you want is to cum?
let that girl do something at least...

>>48775782
>Published a DnD campaign novel
>making profit
Ever tried selling sand?

>>48774829
>ever uttering the words, "I want to tell a story" in reference to the campaign

This.

It may or may not be a bad story, but the DM has already made up his mind about what he wants to happen.
Expect railroading at the best.

>>48776341
>How would you convey an interesting world and history that the players can be part of without bombarding or punishing players with fluff?

Personally I use a wiki. I write out as much as I can before game, and link it to the players, give them a list of a few pages that are must-reads, and let them browse to their content. Usually they don't read most of it, but then when something comes up that they should, in character, know, I can just point them to the wiki for it.

>>48776341
Show don't tell. If in your setting Dwarves hate Cyborgs, have some Dwarves harass them on the street. Casually mention there's some anti-cyborg graffiti as players pass a Dwarven slum. I don't know. Go read some books.

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>>48782997
god, this.
All things a DM has said, word for word.
before anyone says anything, this is why I quit

>"oh, you guys are definitely going to die tonight"
>"X gets extra experience for killing (literally only landing the final hit) on X enemy"

>"you grope X's character while trying to take that item", goes into me basically giving him a mage hand handjob for some reason

"Polymporph is OP"
>have literally spent sessions worth of telling him that players are using it wrong, and politely asking him/them to cut that shit out
>"oh, but it helps X learn the system" or "it's more interesting this way"

>"you can't sneak attack, the figure (on the table) is facing you"

>"Everything is brightly lit, as if it was sunlight"
>this is the underdark
>We're in a drow city

>"I don't use initative, it's just another thing to keep track of"

>"It suddenly attacks because it's bloodied"
>every enemy ever proceeds to do this
>"yeah, but it gets a death attack, though"
>both of these things are straight up against the rules
>"what? /you/ don't get bloodied or a final attack before passing out, that would be dumb"

this is all 5e
I now straight up hate 5e

Why those threads tend to change into railroad vs open world argument? And why most of tg is so based towards the second one? Every good campaign needs to be somewhat railroaded at some points, you can have few 'open world' sessions but it serves more as a establishing that world and change of pace. Open world is good only with superb gm and admirable players (all of them), in almost any other instances its just a unprepared, not engaging borefest. I try to imagine how bad 'fanfiction tier gm', you must run into to have Sucha rage for any kind of railroad.

>>48788153
There's more than two choices. When someone goes "wow I wish I as a player had agency in this campaign" that isn't a desire for full blown sandbox, they just want the rails to be subtle, to be less restrictive, for the GM to not be such a stupid asshole and dictate what their characters do.

Just be a good GM.

>>48788153
Illusory player agency. No matter where they go, the encounters you planned seem to find them. It's basically fatalism.

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>>48788153
You need to read up on what /tg/ actually thinks about railroading and open world play.

>>48787677

I bring good news. You are not actually playing 5e. 5e is still a really good system. You, however, have gotten suckered into a game of Calvinball.

>>48788323
Can you play calvinball if you don't know you are playing calvinball?

>>48788202
I agree but i can not miss the fact that i see so many open world bias players on tg. You want to railroad subtle but its needs to be done in campaigns.
I prepare my adventure myslef, but im curious hows the view of said people on the written material, source books like fex. Masks of Nyarlathotep.

>>48775383
This is the kind of game I run. The entire game is being simulated with fifteen hundred NPC's and sub NPC agents in a spreadsheet, and when the party interacts with them it impacts how they will go back into the calculations.


It's a bear to enter the data (the user interface is shit, nothing is labeled and I am presently the only one who knows which boxes take which input, also it requires charisma rolls more frequently than your typical 2e interactions do, and sometimes intimidation rolls throw shit off the rails, and I'm not sure why yet, so I've just been entering that sort of thing as charisma rolls even though they should be calculated differently)

>>48787315
Dude, selling sand is great! High-quality sand is used in a lot of shit! Obviously you'd need a sand stockpile the size of a smaller European country, but that's obvious for anyone smart enough to sell sand.

>>48788531
I'll take twenty.

>>48788356

*Most* Calvinball players are unaware that it's Calvinball until they wander into the Clusterfuck Zone. Your best bet to spot the Zone coming is to compare what the players *say* is going on versus what is *actually* happening. If they say it's a 5e game but non-5e mechanics start showing up out of nowhere, it's actually Calvinball in its subtle phase.

>>48787315
Dude, sand is one of the most used natural resource because we dump shitloads of it in concrete, and we're going to run out of high quality sand real soon.

>>48782479
Most systems have rules for automatically succeeding in routine checks via take 10 or similar mechanic.

>>48776982
>Lolies with beards
I-I don't know what to think of this...

>>48776982
its what you deserve for playing a faggy midget race.

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>>48775080

>horses are stuck in the mud

;_;

>>48789022
Ausfag here, can confirm
We export sand to dubai, since desert sand is shit for concrete.
Shit in north india there have been murders over control of sand deposits.
Sand is big monies

>>48774758
i want to confess something

whenever a new player joins / party member reunition, i set it up in the manner of "you see a person in the distance/ you hear an x's footsteps"

whenever said player barges with "yeah i guess thats my entry", i just say "now it isnt" and let the party encounter someone else. i dont do this in critical situations tho

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>>48789060
It's Japanese.

>>48776158
Exactly.
I set up my games as a tower of wooden blocks.
Then introduce the players into the situation at high speed and let them work out what is going on and what to do themselves.

>>48777243
>only war
>player scores a melta
>the quartermaster uses tongs to give it to him and say "just dont... yknow what, dont worry. Im sure its ok"
>passing checks for everything from tech use to that psyker detection shit
>you are convinced nothing is wrong with it
They never touch it again kek

>>48780169
>Stop pre-writing adventures for your game.

Literally every single decent GM prepares some sort of map, NPC listing and a few encounter stats before they turn up to a session.

I know you're probably like 14 and you enjoy your "I got to rape the Devil's daughter" bullshit but it's neigh impossible to produce say a puzzle for the PC's if you don't first at least think of one.

This mode of thinking leads down the path of the shitty sandbox world and the murderhobo team.

There are entire fucking boxes written specifically to teach GM's that planning out a scenario is required to play roleplaying games.

There is a difference from forcing PC's down a fixed path and preparing a dungeon.

>>48775342
My DM has recently started doing that more and more to one player. We actually called him out on it last session.

It strikes me as odd, though, because he's gay and the player is female, so I don't think it's interest on his part.

>>48780810
Kidding me?
That shit can drive the game.
Had a player stocking up the party supplies.
Decided to just get 50 or so barrels of pickled fish, since it was much cheaper.
You bet your ass thats gonna come back to bite em

>>48776939
Wait..how come succubusses are not the gods of the setting?
>be succubus
>suck mud farmers dick in mud village in middle of nowhere
>set up cheap ass brothers in mud villages and keep sucking dick the next 40 years
>become new gods, from power of blowjob

>DM sticks to an adventure path religiously
>If the book says to do something, it has to be done
>If a puzzle has multiple solutions, he begins explaining the different ways we could solve it instead of letting us figure it out
>If a character is facing the wrong way when something happens, he can never turn around until it is over, even if that something was an hour long combat where they could've really used some crowd control from the party wizard who was unfortunate enough to be facing the wrong way when we are attacked
>"I can probably clearly hear that there is fighting going on right behind me, can I look and see that it's happening and help?", it's not your turn in the initiative order, in fact you didn't roll initiative when everyone else did, "I did, you said that I didn't need to as I wasn't aware of the enemies yet"
>If the Adventure Path has an "if X" moment, X always happens to be true, even if it's nonsensical. E.g. The Int 16, Wis 14, Wizard forgets that his pin that shows he is part of a secret organization, that he religiously describes as wearing under his robe to keep it hidden but accessible, somehow forgets to do that and instead wears it on the outside, so an NPC can recognize it and tell him off

The Wizard did nothing the entire session, because of stupid shit the DM would pull. I would say he must hate Wizards, but he loves playing as them. He must hate me then.

Also,
>5e random table to generate origins, we all did it together but the DM was not present. We all described our characters, and he got really mad that we made characters. But then everyone else got to keep their randomly generated character, but I had to reroll everything in front of him, the dice did not favor me and I rolled an insufferable cunt of a character.

Things that have actually happened to me …

1. AD&D 2nd Ed.
>DM continues a campaign he’s been running with his friends for several years.
>2 of the 4 players continue using their old characters.
>These PC’s are around the lvl 5 mark but due to randumb previous games are insanely OP.
>They are allowed to run ahead of the group, complete quests and gaining EXP.
>DM refuses to allow any “changes to his world that he doesn’t like” so you either play in a randumb way or get railroaded by the randumb.
>DM was in his fucking 40’s.

2. Werewolf: The Apocalypse
>ST has never run a game before, hasn’t read the rulebook and refuses help.
>One time after I went to piss I found that the party had left my character behind.
>ST got genuinely angry with players for not being able to solve a puzzle that required them to have watched some indie film.
>Constantly showed up late and once didn’t turn up at all with no warning.

3. Double Cross
>Playing a game over Roll20/Skype.
>At first I was going to run it as I have the physical copies of the books and I’m the only one to have played the game before but another player wanted to GM. I agreed and sent him the .pdf’s.
>2 hours later he began the session. My friend asked him if he had read the books. He said he skimmed them.
>GM proceeded to give everyone a sister or sexually active mother and then spent the afternoon roleplaying their parts to us in great detail over the mic.

>>48775586
Nehwon 5e. Nice? Have you introduced any setting specific house-rules at all?

>DM has planned a massive dungeon crawl, we're prepping for an all nighter
>DM wants to start in the afternoon and end in the morning
>Everyone arrives at the DM's place
>He is still in bed
>We try and wake him but he refuses to budge
>We wait for 4-5 hours before he finally joins us
>Is incredibly pissy because he slept through 4:20 and his flat mates smoked without him
>Spends an additional hour just muttering under his breath about his flatmates, all of which are also players

Same DM,
>We rotate MnM 3e
>DMs turn, he has a week to prepare
>Turn up to the session
>He has no plans
>Spends an hour thinking of a good story to pull off
>We suggest ideas, some of which are really good
>He turns them all down
>Each of us, in turn, begin offering to take over and GM this session
>He turns us all down
>Says he has a plan now
>A scientist has been doing off the books lab shenanigans
>We, as heroes, keep tags on him while trying to find petty crime
>We don't find any crime, at all
>Turns out the Scientist has found a pheromone that cures crime or something
>As heroes, we agree that curing crime is the best solution
>Session abruptly ends as all crime and hate in the world is cured

I have no idea what he was trying to do.

>>48775746
Early on in our last campaign my DM introduced some crazy, Lovecraftian looking thing that did massive damage, took a beating and had an AoE silence, with the only weakness being it's speed.

We never figured out how to beat it, we had to run every time, and he's just reintroduced it in the new campaign.
Ugh.

>>48782515
You are so wrong its not funny.

>>48789950
This is what happens when you respond before reading the whole post.

>>48789970
>It strikes me as odd, though, because he's gay and the player is female, so I don't think it's interest on his part.
It may have something to do with a large number of gay men that outright hate all women. Or not.

>>48790329
Just have your party calmly walk into it without fighting. When the dm asks why tell him that making a not-terrasque isnt an interesting plot mechanic or game mechanic. A wiggly unkillable wall of tentacles and flesh is uninspired and the most literal way to railroad ive wver heard of.

>>48776617 Yes and no.

Asking someone to make a Ride check to ride a horse/donkey/dog where there is no drama/pressure is like asking someone to make an Athletics check to walk for 5 minutes down the main street of a non-hostile town

That said, the way you would handle this is "You don't need to roll for that right now, but for future reference, you use the Ride skill to ride a horse"

>>48790119
>>DM refuses to allow any “changes to his world that he doesn’t like” so you either play in a randumb way or get railroaded by the randumb.
>>DM was in his fucking 40’s.

Autistic DMs are the worst, especially if they're of the "I have nothing else but this game in my life" variety. I've had the misfortune of playing with couple of those. They did nothing but think about the game all the time and basically lived vicariously through the game. This of course translated into NO FUN ALLOWED for everyone else at the table.

>>48775650
Thats fine, but if someone puts anti-magic fields in their warehouse don't call bullshit. A person in the setting would reasonably be prepared for faggot mages trying to break in if the enchantments were worth the cost of the merchandise.

>>48790697
not the same guy, but it annoys me when dm is clearly just being reactive to what the players are doing to block them from undermining his plan. he hasn't really though it through, he's just being spiteful about it.

>>48775569
It's funny to me because my group is always sure I will do an encounter as soon as they get on a boat but I usually don't. They are afraid of water because of horror stories

>>48779824
I am okay with this, respect my ability to make desitions and i will gladly follow your plot hooks.

"All roads lead to Rome, take your pick" is the best design for an adventure.

>>48782360
>>It replaces probability with arbitrariness.
WTF?

In a *FICTIONAL SETTING* everything - including the 'probability tables' were 'arbitrarily' setup by the game designer. Chance of encountering a 'real' fire-breathing Dragon or a pack of marauding Gnolls IRL - 0%. The mechanics are simply a means of telling a 'shared story' where all the participants got to help craft the final outcome.