How do we deal with friends who are just HORRIBLE roleplayers?

>>51794183
Sit down and talk to them. It's pretty much the only way. Be blunt, but not a dick about it.

"I get that rogues are cool, but this is a game about working together in a group. By acting in this manner, you're working against everybody else in the group."

Try to build empathy. Try to get them to understand if somebody treated them like that constantly, they would hate working with that person. Try to explain that playing with the same character every game isn't fun for anybody else, and this is a group experience.

>>51794183
First, address tenants of good role-playing with the group, reaffirm what you expect from good players as a whole. Do NOT address anything that would target him to the entire group. Then off to the side, discuss with each player, not just him, what you expect from them personally, talking to him last or second to last.

Finally, run some Trail or Call of Cthulhu, or some other high-mortality game, and have a good player kill session or two, killing indiscriminately.

If you're playing in person, maybe make an effort to go completely offline, and ban electronics at the table, if you haven't already. Electronics ruin engagement and roleplay.

>>51794183
>How do we deal with friends who are just HORRIBLE roleplayers?

You can't. I've tried. I've tried everything, from subtle in-game carrot&stick to frank OOC discussion. Still the same special snowflakes, still the same edgemeisters, still the same lolsorandum, still the same morons who try to kill everything. If they don't get it naturally then they never will. At most you'll get a couple of minimal, trivial concessions before That Guy reverts to type.


>Bitches when he takes any damage, regardless of game

This isn't really a RP thing, more a sore loser thing. Generally, just telling them to suck it up will shut them up.

>>51794183
That guy doesn't have nearly enough buckles. One of these days he's gonna find himself in a situation where he needs more buckles and he's gonna kick himself for only wearing 52.

>>51794183
Reminder that Adept Rogues are meant to have shit stats but Haseo's the protagonist so he doesn't

>>51795332
What kind of situation are you going to be in where you need 53 or more buckles?

>>51795687
Tetsuya Nomura takes hostages and you're trying to meet his demands.

>>51794183

>5e
>Playing in a game with a bunch of special snowflake murderhobos
>Not one standard race, and 2 variant/homebrewed classes amongst the 4 other players
>In protest, roll up a human male fighter
>End up driving the entire plot, everyone else is a bag of random dickheads with no qualms about murdering civilians
>Fire genasi barbarian with some kind of homebrewed fire ability keeps setting shit on fire, in mostly wood and thatch housed towns
>Not even in combat, just doing it for kicks
>Roll every time to see if I catch him
>Finally do
>Next camp, ask DM if I can catch a live rabbit or similar
>Bring it over the fire, pull it out, tell the Genasi to pay attention
>Hold it over the fire, alive, as it burns
"You see the pain this animal is experiencing right now? You did that to people. Living breathing people with lives. Possibly even children. If I catch you lighting another home on fire, I swear by everything holy that I will make you feel this pain tenfold for every person that died in that fire."
>Look player in the eye the whole time
>Table is silent for a few minutes
>A few sessions later notice the other players are treating the world a little bit more like its a real place instead of their personal PC themepark

Its still not perfect, but it worked a bit. I'm loathe to attack another PC, no matter the reason, so I just really hoped this worked.

>>51794183
Fucks sake I'm playing a game today, the rogue is being a complete dick to my character and the npc's. My asshole lawful neutral stop breaking the law and acting like a dick character... tells him to shut his mouth or he'll get punched.

Player flips out because I go 'My characters punches at him' and he goes 'I take it' and then takes a whopping 3 fucking piddly little damage.

Goes' Oh wow dm, automatic damage? Is my AC 0 now?' it's like 'wtf nigga, you said you took it'.

>>51795983
It doesn't excuse his behavior but if the part struck were covered by some kind of armor than it might have made sense to contest against whatever his flatfooted AC would be I think. Otherwise automatic damage makes perfect sense.

What about people who are bad role-players because they just aren't very creative? Like I feel I'm just going whichever way the wind blows in my game and kind of just ruining things when I have to talk "in character"

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>>51795953
At this point did the party rogue (Tiefling) named Throat Slitter kill your character in the middle of the night?

>>51795953
>In protest, roll a human male fighter

Rolled my eyes expecting the usual story there, but I honestly think you're a pretty cool, anon.

>>51796541
A pretty cool guy*

5 am phoneposting, ladies and gentlemen.

>>51796367

Fortunately we're pretty good friends IRL, so he got the picture. My friends don't quite "get" serious roleplaying yet. But I'm guiding them in that direction.

>>51796541

Did you think I was going to PVP?
I just went with the most generic combination of class and race I could think of to demonstrate that you can have an interesting character without a "unique" class or race.

These guys only started playing DnD in the last year, so I find it kind of ridiculous that they could possibly be bored of the standard races and classes already.

>>51795687
When the time comes, you'll know.

>>51794611
As a phone puller, you got it 100% backwards. A player who pulls their phone isn't engaged, therefore bored, therefore wants a different form of entertainment. When I pull the phone out in a dnd game, it's because I'm getting bored of the story and I'm not engaged in the gameplay. That's really on the DM to fix, especially if multiple people are doing it at once.

>>51799604
Not always the case. I played with someone who would regularly play Magic or read comics on his phone no matter who was GMing. Some people are just rude.

>>51799604
How can you get engaged in anything if you're not paying attention?

>>51799604
>>51799717
>>51799728

Just wanted an opinion on this, i've been playing in a DnD game recently, we're only about 4 sessions deep, but im having a blast.

A few times per session (sessions usually go 2 - 3 hours) i'll bring out my phone, reply to a text, then chuck it back in my pocket. I try to only do this in segments that dont concern me, such as when the party wizard is choosing what spell to cast in combat, etc.

Would you consider this rude? No one has brought it up with me, but I just want to gauge if it's acceptable behavior or not.

>>51799604
Pulling a phone in general will do little more than discourage the GM. Perhaps, instead of pulling out your phone, you voice complaints in a constructive way so people can learn from the experience.

>>51799826
I'd say what you do is pretty much a non-issue, because you only momentarily shift your attention, as opposed to just focusing purely on the phone and not on the game at hand.

>>51794183
The only terrible roleplayer I've ever been able to fix was "the lump", and that mostly just got better over time.
I've tried with others. Sometimes I've even gotten them to get better for a session or two, but they always revert. Unless something big happens in the outside world to make them change who they are fundamentally, it won't happen for a game.

>>51799826
I'm on the other side to >>51799840. I'd still consider it rude. Your sessions sound pretty short, do you really need to be texting during that time?

>>51799899
nah, but if I receive a text, i'd consider it being rude to whoever sent it if i waited 2 and a half hours to reply.
Whole point of texting is to get a near instant response.
Also, completely irrelevant, but im curious, how long are your sessions? I would have thought 2 - 3 hours to be the norm.

How do you manage to organise a bunch of people that happen to have 4+ hours free on the same day?

>>51799918
Friday nights/Saturdays. Lots of people don't work around those times, so it's easier to get a group for those.

Generally, I try not to get bothered if a phone comes out for a minute or two. I assume they have people to reply to, and that it is reasonably important, even if I expect otherwise.
I typically only get on someone if they need to do something, and are too balls-deep in their phone to realize they just got hit.
I have been known to consider a player unaware, flat-footed, or whatever the equivalent is for not paying attention irl.

>>51799918
If they wanted an immediate response (i.e. it's an emergency) then they'd call and it's fine to excuse yourself. Otherwise you're saying that talking to them is more important than your group. Just save it for when you go for bathroom breaks or something.

>>51799950
>I assume they have people to reply to
They also have people to play games with. The immediate gathering is much more important than any text will be.

>>51799717
fair, he just sounds like a cunt.
>>51799728
How can you be engaged if you're bored to the point where looking at facebook memes is more entertaining than the session?

Yes, you have assholes like the guy described in >>51799717 who will pull phones or something else cause they're faggots, but you also have crap DM's who fail to meet the party's needs as a whole.
>>51799830
I mean, it's honestly an attempt to show I'm not interested. Call it passive aggressive if you want, cause that's what it is.

>>51799993
Yes, it is definitely passive aggressive.
It's also useless for communicating your displeasure to the GM, talking would achieve much more, like your GM actually knowing what's wrong.

>>51794183
It really sucks that the rogue class is a "that guy" magnet. I always pictured rogues as the type that sucked at actual fighting and if their initial sneak attack didn't work they'd be pretty much fucked if they didn't run away flailing immediately. The "that guy" mentality seems to dictate that the moment they're discovered they somehow turn into to a master bladesman teleport behind the guy etc. etc.

>>51799826
It's on the cusp really and it depends on how chill your group is but keep in mind most games are considered a group activity and some people might consider it rude if you show apathy to their character/story interaction. It can be taken as implying "your interactions mean so little to me that I'm ignoring them for a text". Not saying everyone will take it that way, or that they should, but they might.

>>51799918
>Whole point of texting is to get a near instant response.
I'm sorry but if someone expects near instants responses while texting they're a grade-a douche. If you want immediate answers or responses or to have a conversation you call that mother fucker, not pass notes like grade schoolers. Texting is for non-urgent plan making or maybe the occasional non-urgent conversation, but if one of my friends got mad at me for not replying instantly to a text I'd laugh in their face.

>>51796349
Try some creative writing exercises for your character. Find some character backstory questionnaires, and look up a thing called "bluebooking" (you should find an article about it on gnomestew.)

>>51799918
You have more of an obligation to the group you're gaming in at that moment than you do to someone texting you. If you don't feel that way, leave the group. You'll just keep prioritizing things like texts. You'll pull it out to respond when the wizard chooses his spell. Okay, fine, doesn't bother anyone. You pull it out when the party is doing some diplomacy and you've got low CHA. Fine. You pull it out when the wizard is discussing the magical origins or the BBEG and you miss an important detail. Suddenly not so fine to the group anymore now that they have to repeat it for you.
It's a slippery slope. You'll want to "reply immediately" to texts and you'll find more and more time in game that you aren't "involved" in to text. The people like this continually find excuses to pull it out and not engage in the game. So keep your phone away or leave the group if you really aren't mature enough to go 2-3 hours without looking at your texts.

>>51799993
Extremely passive aggressive. Is saying "This is getting a little dull" that scary for you? Is speaking up so frightening?

>>51795687
When you go into a giant orphanage and you need to use one belt for each child to get their ass whooped.

>>51799826
It's fine, it's not like you're watching stuff on youtube. That'd be fucking offensive.

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>>51794183
>Bitches when he takes any damage, regardless of game

An utter tool, I love my character coughing blood for emphasis, even dodging heal spells.
But then I am the actor.

>or some other high-mortality game
This makes me happy. Happiness is mandatory. Unhappiness is treason. Treason is punishable by death.

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Okay, Storytime:

>DM´ed a lose fantasy "campaign" a few years ago in college with some friends. We just used a basic system and I improvised a lot since it was my first real DMing. There were a lot of laughs and the tone was mostly comedic, since the PCs were chasing a smug sorceress. Fast forward to now:
>Our group of players wants to meet up again and one of my players wants to DM. He texts me and says he wants to use the sorceress and some old unfinished plots. I get exited and give him the info.

Tonight we played:
>Have to track down the sorcress, cuz she will be used by demons
>The whole thing was billed as a oneshot but we just get dragged down and down with bullshit
>The DM uses cards for random encounters
>In the end we end up in a cave and find our old now demon posessed pcs
>The DMs old character is raping the corpse of the sorcress, while our old mage is feasting on her arm
>Our attacks do nothing and the party gets immobilised immediatly, while rape-man walks away
>Thats the end of the adventure.Nothing was accomblished

I kinda feel disgusted with the whole thing desu. I fear my friend may be a 14 year old edgelord(and I normally hate the word) in a 30 years olds body

>>51794183

Link this thread to them under the guise of "haha look at these tools!" And hope they're not too mentally inept to realize that they're like this as well.

>>51795661
Twinblades were in a similar position in the original .hack.

but I think Kite actually paid a price himself.

>>51802963
Okay, no, yeah, that's fucked up.
That Guy never gets to DM again.
Ever.

>have dnd Group
>have one guy that's so unimaginable and his character so boring
>and nothing interesting about his character backstory wise was all done by the GM who helps him
>every time he decides to do something he always asks the GM for advice every fucking time
>Is Lawful Good but kills people on a whim like when 2 npcs are having a conversation and he asks what there talking about ( he's a complete strangers to them) they tell him to go away so he decides to slaughter them
>refuses to change alignment

>>51803746
The thing is: I don´t have a problem with extreme subject matter! But when it comes this much out of left field it comes off as a personal FUCK YOU

>>51803841
Then the DM is being awful, because that's blatant Chaotic Evil territory and he should disregard any of the player's input about his alignment.

>>51803874
If he hasn't done that sort of shit before of since, then it probably was.

>Play DnD with friends
>Have one friend that wants to play
> not because he's interested but because he wants to be included
>His character is based on another player playing with us and its giant insult
>Try to start off serious
>he goes in a bar and starts shouting about Pie, mood is ruined
>first fight of the campaign he gets a Nat 20 and wants to "pull down his pants and have his huge ogre cock behead him"

After that no one took the campaign seriously and it became a cluster fuck of silly shit

>>51803906
He always hated the sorceress, since she wouldn´t fuck him. He says he improvised it in the last minute since he didn´t finish preparations ( I kinda believe that last part) but dayum, thats how you improvise ??

>>51803906

Well it was the DnD session for us (the players) and the DM was a newbie as well, he didn't really want to throw people off the game by not letting them do what they want, months after we started and had become accustomed he was more adamant about not letting that shit happen

>>51803942
No, saying "She's dead when you get there" is improvising.
Having an extended corpse-raping cannibalism scene that players are forced to witness and unable to prevent is NOT improvising.

>>51803953
Fair enough. As far as first-time mistakes go, handling character alignments can be tricky at the best of times.

>>51803990
ahh forgot to tell: They took her head and the DM said: See now they can´t use her in any world ending ritual! Success!

Help them become better.

>>51804239
That's... impressive.
There's really no other word for it.
I mean, it's not good, but it takes a certain audacity to do that to an npc and game that everyone else enjoyed.

I'd have called him the fuck out on it, then and there.

>>51803927
>After that no one took the campaign seriously and it became a cluster fuck of silly shit
He sounds like the worst kind of that guy to me. The GM had to show him the door. If he didn't, he's worthless as a GM.

>>51804292
I did but I also was to dead tired for any long discussions (I did a long session of CoC the same day and the game went over seven hours!) and wanted to get out of there. It also came out of left field since I´m still not sure if it was actually any malice or just SPECTACULAR tone deafness, I mean usually he is an alright if slightly immature guy.

>>51794183
>>First question upon learning about a new system is "Is there a rogue class?"
We all have THAT friend.

>>51801708
If Anon's GM is anything like ours, then yes.

>>51801708
Scary? No. Pointless? Yes. I come from a hardcore vidya background, and while fun, tabletop gaming does not have anywhere close to the same amount of stimulation as a game of masters tier overwatch or a hard mythic raid boss in WoW. If the plot is slow, the players bog down the turns with bullshit that isn't relevant to the game, or if there's too many players for the turns to go by in a reasonable amount of time, I'm gonna be pulling out my phone.

It's not like you can rationally say to a DM 'This is incredibly slow and I'm finding myself bored and unengaged', when everyone else is having a good time, it doesn't work like that. Especially in the more casual/social focused playgroups.

>>51794183
Wait...wait...wait...What if the belts are just a cleverly disguised haver's handysack?

>>51795953
Only an edgier edge can dull an edge...

>>51795661
Haseo is also carrying a fragment of a Godlike AI in his character data, and also had his stats directly altered by other powerful AI on several occasions. He was never following the regular games rules.

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>>51795332
This isn't even his final form. Though by this point his personality is basically "I-it's not as if I care about you people or anything!" so him looking like the edgiest motherfucker to ever live gets to be silly.

>>51806647
It's literally some dude's MMO character.

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>>51809628
He gets another form after that one

>>51809704
BUTT PLATES
U
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T

P
L
A
T
E
S

>>51794183

Remember the four questions:
+ +
- -
+ -
- +

or

"Is the game rewarding positive choices?"
"Is the game punishing negative choices?"
"Is the game rewarding negative choices?"
"Is the game punishing positive choices?"

What you reward, you get more of. What you punish, you get less of. If someone is doing something you wish they wouldn't, look first to what they're getting out of it.

>>51799826

Each table is different. I run a very phone-friendly table because we're older adults and I have 1 person in management and 2 who work in emergency services. If we had to be off the grid to play we just couldn't play.

>>51809747
A man's gotta protect his ass.

>>51809968
Considering the amount of stalkers he has that's actually a good idea.

>>51794183
Had a friend tell me the other night that, apparently, all of my characters are exactly the same. This coming from a guy who always HAS to play a snarky asshole who tries to betray the party, and who has gone on record as saying that 'playing nice characters is hard' just struck me as the most ThatGuy thing I've ever heard from anyone in my group.

>>51806581
>harcore vidya background
>overwatch and WoW
Triggered

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I recently had to kick a player from my group for being "that guy". his characters are just him staring as whatever character he made, just being a negative ass, overly metagaming and critical of anything, never adding anything to the game in anyway just being there to complain or act frustrated with whatever he encountered. Not to mention he would harass my GF (yes i know GMs GF trope). Some people cant/wont change so you gotta man up and get that shit out of your games. The very next session we had the best D&D game in a long time.

>>51806581
this is superior cringe

>>51806581
>This is incredibly slow and I'm finding myself bored
>everyone else is having a good time

Sounds like maybe tabletop games just aren't fun for you anon. Maybe you should go back to playing Warcraft

>>51799918
>>51799826
Phones are a problem when somebody is on them constantly. Like playing some flippy birds or nonstop chat or other shit whenever its not their turn in combat (and then wasting triple length of any other player's turn on just asking what's the situation...)

If your wizard takes enough time with the spell for you to get a text in, that's actually a separate minor problem - it's common game-slowing issue, characters with shittons of options should be planning a bit ahead.

But just occasionally pulling it out rather than going full off the grid is ok.

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>me and house play D&D with a friend who DMs
>dont take it too seriously and all characters have joke names
>tell him I want to DM and he says hes keen to do a more serious game
>is a huge fan of Dune so I pick Dark Sun as the setting
>housemate is an escaped gladiator from Gulg
>sorceror queen of gulg (big lvl 30 bitch) confronts him at the end of first session and I build up a bunch of tension about the entcounter
>he rolls to intimidate and says "BEGONE, THOT!"
>it fails so he tries to pick her up and take her to his chambers so he can "cuck the whole forrest"
>gets mad when guards kill him

>retcon it so he doesnt do that
>first inn we get to, he immediately shouts "JACK WANT TO FUCK" and picks up the bearest barmaid
>gets cut down by entire inn

>>51801241
https://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Bluebooking this a thing?

>>51816375
>bearest barmaid
I would expect a barmaid with THAT description to be capable of self-defence.

>>51816375
Oh and to be serious, you told the old-DM you want a serious game, but did you tell the other guy? He may have thought its joke business as usual.

>Be playing with a fairly new party
>One guy decides to play a gnoll alchemist
>Decides after the first session he's going to turn himself into some undead abomination
>DM says no
>Keeps trying to argue for it no matter how many no's he gets
>Eventually just have to ignore him
>Session 2, and coming to a boss in a dungeon
>Gnoll bluffs his way into boss's chambers
>Says a thing he does as a signal despite having never discussed that with the party
>Okay, whatever
>Tries to pull another unestablished signal shortly afterwards to bum rush the boss
>DM decides fuck that, we'll just have the boss challenge us to combat in an open arena rather than the packed room he was in
>Start fight, boss chooses to challenge the gnoll, seeing as he was the one who tried to fool him
>Drops him with nonlethal, tells a mook to finish him after he's been KO'd
>Battle's going horribly for them and they flee anyways while cleric gets the guy up
>Springs up in the guys face and metagames a response to what was said while he was unconscious
>"Are you sure you want to do that?"
>"Yeah, of course."
>"He gets an AoO and hits--"
>"WAIT I ROLLED BACK AND THEN JUMPED UP!"
>For fucks sake
>Meanwhile, the metagamed response is just sassing and taunting the damn near OP orc
>Obviously angered orc goes after the gnoll again
>It's a crit that instakills that gnoll, DM even shows the dice to us
>Player throws a hissy fit about how he died and he was singled out and wah wah