Pet peeve thread

>Everything in this fantasy setting has to be grounded in reality and make sense and satisfy my autism or else I will throw a shitfit for an hour about how you're an awful GM.

I mean, it doesn't even make me angry anymore. It's just depressing. It's fantasy, wacky shit can happen for no reason.

>>53651448
Ur a fukboi

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>>53651448
When there's one option that the developer(s) clearly favored over all the other options. It has the most fluff, the most detailed descriptions and the most background material of anything else, and is either much more powerful than the others or much more versatile, often to the point that just having one will invalidate characters who chose other options.

>>53651497
Some of us want a setting that we can immerse ourselves in and not deal with your ADHD slapstick antics. It's a shame you can't go an hour without having to insert something lolrandum into the setting's canon and forcing real consequences upon your players for not being familiar with the bizarre physics of your world.

>>53651767
>Did you mean: 3.5/pf?

>>53651979
See, this is the shit I'm talking about. Nothing even remotely weird or strange can happen without some grognard calling it random bullshit or whining about "muh immersion."

Protip: immersion is your own responsibility. No one else's.

>>53652020
Yes, I did

>>53652071
Let me give you an example of the "wacky shit" I have to deal with from DMs like you and why it's bullshit.

I enter the Ruins of The Ugly King in order to find the answer to a riddle from a sphinx. I enter with my party and we go down into the deeper areas where the king is buried. We find the antechamber to the crypt after fighting some Grimlocks, solving a puzzle to avoid a trap, and fending off an Intellect Devourer.

Up until now, everything that has occurred is GREAT. This dungeon kept us involved and we have kept our wits about us, wondering if the Ugly King was some sort of Mind Flayer, or perhaps a hideous sage who values intelligence above looks. Are we about to fight the king? Are we about to enter another trap? Up until this point, we are in suspense and don't know what's in store.

What if the boss was a gold dragon disguised as a cow who flew around the room breathing fire?

It's fine to subvert expectations, it can even be rewarding. But there's a host of problems with what I described.

1) By definition, wacky things are irrational. How am I supposed to prepare for the irrational? How am I supposed to have tools afforded to me to deal with something I didn't even think was possible?

2) Okay, your physics and tone are abhorrent, but you have mechanics to deal with it. Why choose wacky at all? For your amusement? For your players amusement? How do I respond to your joke that has the potential to kill my fucking character?

3) Fantasy does not mean wacky. Players go in with assumptions like "My sword will cut through things and wont go AOOGA when I strike something" or "Since this is medieval I doubt I will fight a robo mech." You aren't subverting expectations, you're attacking assumptions. I now need to reevaluate the metaphysics of this universe and what your wormy little brain will concoct as reasonable.

4) where does the line get drawn? What is too wacky? your players don't know. Only you know.

>>53651497
>It's fantasy, wacky shit can happen for no reason
You had me until this point. Random bullshit happening for no reason is the hallmark of a shit DM who thinks they're being funny.

>About a dozen distinct human nations with enough lore to give them flavor
>Three extensively detailed elven societies divided along high/wood/dark elf lines
>Exactly one dwarven nation with all the flavor/detail of "they're dwarves"
>Every other race has exactly one country with even less flavor than that

>>53651497
>It's fantasy, wacky shit can happen for no reason.
Get out, Matt Mercer. This shit attitude is why RPGs are going to shit nowadays. This whole "LMAO nat20" attitude, fueled by tumblr screenshots of /tg/ posts where some faggot rolls a nat20 to seduce the orc guardsman into sucking his cock. Don't even waste my time, you aren't playing a roleplaying game and I expect to be paid for my time when you invite me to this bullshit then it turns out to be a poor man's Cards Against Humanity game, except in D&D. All this "rule of cool" and "be a fan of the players characters" shit, I used to be on board with it. But now it has been reduced to this utter autism where the fat roasties who join the game will shriek autistically whenever a 1 in 20 event happens, which is inevitably once or twice a session, and they act like they are having a fucking orgasm over it, I literally can no longer play D&D anymore because whenever I roll a 20 I feel this slight surge of hatred.

Fuck you faggot. Stop playing games, you are infecting the hobby with your "lolzrandom" idiocy. You probably play Dark Souls, too.

>>53652959
Holy shit man, who hurt you

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>>53652959

>>53652071
immersion is a shared responsibility. You 'wacky things habben!' faggots just compensate for your inability to create interesting believable stories with randomness.
protip: needing to include lolrandom shit means you've failed as a GM.

>>53653151
>>53653263
idk what the fuck are you talking about faggots, that looks like a man stating a reasonable thought out opinion.

>>53652959
I'm going to keep running my games this way

>>53653447
They're most likely trying to deflect that the wacky idea of "LMAO nat20/1" is shitty by making that anon look ass blasted. The words he uses does make it look like he's salty, for good reason, but I've seen far worse and at least he's saying as to why he hates it.

>>53652749
As far as D&D goes I have no issue with a single dwarf nation. Considering dwarves are inherently lawful it makes sense they'd all stick together in one organized nation, as long as it's suitably big enough to justify that.

>>53653495
nobody gives a fuck, post your diary entries in your tumblr instead

>>53652486
You might be on the spectrum chap. But allow me to point out the glaring issues with your argument:
1. How am I supposed to prepare for the irrational? You aren't! You can't! That's what makes it horrifying and exciting. Have you ever read Lovecraft? Jojo maybe? If you say you dislike that, I'll understand. I get that you want stability and being able to prepare, but that's not life is it, life ain't predictable. Do you want your games LESS lifelike? Are you the proverbial 3.pf wizard who prepares for every occassion way in advance and cannot be surprised? Tough luck!
2. Why choose wacky at all? My character might die! Yeah, that's the exciting part isn't it! Do you dislike adrenaline? Your hands sweating and your body shaking as you're depending on a critical hit or a DM bad roll to survive are not unlike what you get while climbing boulders or jumping into the water from high up. Do you hate exhilaration anon? Besides, your character is just some writting on a piece of paper. You've made others and you'll make others. But you can't make fun with just a character, need a DM and a group, usually.
3. I assume in presenting the setting, the DM will tell you what is reasonable and not to happen. Maybe not. Maybe not EVERYTHING you've been led to believe is true, kind of like real life. Are there giant robo mechs in real life? How about aliens? Dinosaurs? No, there aren't. But there could be! That's why it's fantasy. A staple fantasy which at no point makes you rethink what is true and what isn't (as pertaining to that world) is no fantasy at all, it's just real life. It's WORSE than real life. Do you think characters in fantasy novels, when meeting something fantasic they never heard of never rethought reality? And I know what you're gonna say "yeah but I have the meta knowledge of what can happen or is likely to happen in this world". Sure, but does your character? All those fantasy novel characters also thought they had their world figured out.

>>53653263
Why are you calling Dog?

>>53652486
>>53653784

That third point is basically what got me thinking you're on the spectrum, since you value stability and routine so much, or at least it appears to be so.
4. Where does the line get drawn? Well, you have to discuss it with your DM, and if you're good friends, as you probably should be, you trust him not to be lolrandumb xd and make sensible explanations for "wacky" stuff that happens. Or maybe not, if he's going for a "you can't comprehend/weren't meant to know" jib. However, you are always free to walk away, and you should be able to discuss this with the players and find those of like mind, and protest against such antics. I'm sure the DM won't mind losing a player, but 3-5 out of 6? Unlikely.

>>53652959
Calm down dude, you don't have to play with those kinds of players if you don't want to. Just discuss it beforehand. And if it's a one time beer and pretzels thing just loosen up and have fun. You don't hate fun, right?

>>53653784
Lovecraft is not whacky at all. Jojo is somewhat whacky in a over-the-top way but it's also internally consistent. Either you don't understand what people are talking about here or you seriously think that your wacky dm antics somehow invoke Lovecraft and Jojo.

>>53654098
Not at all, I don't do such things, nor do I DM (I had like two solo sessions with my DM as the player and that's it). What would be wacky for you then, since we seem to assign different definitions to it.

>>53654098
Also JoJo is far from internally consistent, but that's not what constitutes wackiness at all.

>>53651448
This might be a failing of me as a GM but I get a little annoyed when everyone has their own personal objective in a "long quest" type of campaign and the interest for said long quest is clearly low. Makes it hard to create any real cohesive game out of it.

I pray for a day when all my players actually converge on one single objective rather than three different stupid things. All these stories about shit GMs getting derailed? I fucking relish them. Just please, derail it in ONE DIRECTION.

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>>53651448
>ITT: Post things that aren't necessarily wrong, but just rub you the wrong way when gaming
Exalted

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>Games where once combat has initiated both PCs and their opponents will relentlessly fight to the death, to the last man, before ever considering breaking and running at any point, and retreat is never treated as an option by any side involved.

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>>53654396
I fucking hate this

>>53654153
it was actually pretty well described in >>53652486

If your 'Ugly King' is not a Mind Flayer but something from the void beyond the stars that seeps into our reality and just happened to take a shape of the unlucky vessel who opened the door into a wrong kind of nothingness (and he was a Mind Flayer) -- that's Lovecraft. When you cast a spell at this 'Mind Flayer' and your fireball gets sucked into *something* dark and horrible behind it's flesh-mask instead of exploding -- that's unpredictable and horrifying and defies all your preparations -- but it's not lolrandom.

The 'gold dragon disguised as a cow who flew around the room breathing fire'? that shit is.

>>53651448
my party has a habit of dismembering any villain above clear mook-grade fodder to prevent anyone from raising or animating the corpses (in the setting with no functional raise magic at that). They have some contrived explanations for this activity and I don't want to deny them their fun so I don't call them on it but it grates.

(didnt prevent me from docking a couple sanity points from them for this shit though)

>The player who is wrong about literally almost everything and misinterprets corrections that then have to be corrected that are misunderstood and then have to be corrected and on and on and on and on and fifteen minutes later I'm trying to make him understand something that has nothing to do with the original point he was wrong on.
It's not just in games, it's in almost every interaction I have with him. The pure fucking autism of some people drives me insane. We had a massive argument yesterday that could have been ended in ten seconds if I had ignored him when he said he'd looked in the book and checked it.

>>53654895
No npc to react to their barbarous way?

>>53655360
They usually don't fight anywhere where there will be witnesses and the party uses disguise heavily. The town guard in a couple of cities are on alert for the dismembering psychos but there are no clues tying the massacre sites to the traveling party of a jolly monk and his companions.

It's not so much barbarous as it is macabre tbqh.

>>53654007
>turn off your brain LMAO
Kill yourself.

>>53652749
This is the worst about worldbuilding. At what point does a group's lore get too much attention?

>>53654895
>docking sanity points
Are they doing it by hand and taking hacksaws to the corpses or something?

>>53651448
>I tend to get a lot of complaining, even if it was agreed on at session 0.

My pet peeve too

>>53655590
it's a fantasy setting and group does not have a mage so basically yes. Cleavers and mallets more than hacksaws. Burning is also their thing, in addition to, or instead of dismembering.

>>53654566
Hmm, I'd actually be ok with dragon cow as long as there are reasons behind it. They may be pretty stupid (like dragon being a chronic alcoholic) but in the end they should lead to some new development in the game.

Overall internal consistency and median tone of the game should stay more or less the same. You absolutely can have humour even in horror stories but it should not transform the game into a stand up comedy and vice versa.

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>>53652959
This shit right here is obnoxious, and partially why the d20 gives me ass cancer. If it were a minute chance of it actually happening, it would not bother me so much, but there's a FIVE. FUCKING. PERCENT. CHANCE. that shit will happen on either end. That is 10% of all rolls turning into something so WACKY AND FUCKING CRAZY.

It's not enough that it merely causes me to miss the attack or fail the saving throw, no the arrow clearly also has to deflect off of a callous on his ballsack and pierce my ally in the forehead, or I spontaneously start vomiting and ejaculating because the color spray must've overloaded my system.

I fucking hate tables that do this shit. Why can't a miss be a miss, and a failure just simply be a failure?

>>53656089
I agree that dragon cow is acceptable if there are good reasons for it. I don't buy that stupid reasons are ok -- because they only dig you deeper into nonsense if you think about them for a second.

What topicbringer anon (and I to some extent) is ranting about is when we are asked to accept the no-reason or stupid-reason because 'it's fantasy whacky things happen'. When you see a dragon cow you feel that examining all those grimlok corpses for telltale signs of mind flayer feeding was a complete waste of time. It then follows that no action of this kind will ever be worth it because it's the dumbfucking alcoholic gold dragons all the way down. And that leads to why even bother making Int a non-dump stat if you're not playing a wizard -- and voila, might as well be playing miniature skirmishes. That's the harm in the lolrandom and that's why some people are agitated about the issue.

Anyway, /rant. Goes without saying that some groups and DMs are targetting specifically the wacky random nonsense, good for them. It shouldn't be a given though.

>>53656441
Thank you for the post man. My thoughts exactly.

>>53652486
Come on, King Flying Firebreathing Cow is awesome.

>>53656882
if you're 8 years old and this is your first DnD session

>>53651497
Those would be the creative writing program rejects. Or, worse yet, the ones who got accepted....

>>53652071
Agreed. A thousand times agreed. I don't see it as a grognard problem so much as a whiny millennial fag problem.

>>53653402
What creative writing program are you in?

>>53656882
Fuck yeah!

I stopped playing with people who demand muh realism. It's fucking fantasy. You have no problem with a dragon or a mage,but why does that guy have a fucking katana???

Piss off, rejects.

The problem with wacky shit isn't verisimilitude, or consistency. It's tone. Jesus Christ, do you fuckers not understand the concept of tone?

Random wacky shit breaks the tone of games because by definition it has nothing to do with them. It's an abrupt shift from serious or horror or tension or whatever to absurdist comedy. And while that shit can work in small doses, having an "anything goes" approach to fantasy will stomp on any attempt at a tone besides absurdist comedy, because they'll always be waiting for the moment when the clown jumps out with a pie.

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>>53651497
>It's fantasy, wacky shit can happen for no reason.

>>53656932
Funny. When Stranger Things came out, so many people got hyped because that's how they remember d&d being fun.

Maybe those 8 year olds have it right.

>>53653599
Most people are inherently lawful, but we still have a gazillion nations, because they have different ideas of what being lawful entails.

>>53657003
The one where they teach that the need to pigeonhole people who disagree with you into 'groups' so you can dismiss them comes from having no arguments in support of your position.

>>53652071
>>53652486
I think you two are arguing about different things.

>It's acceptable to have things that absolutely wouldn't work in the real world in your fantasy setting, magic can explain a lot of weird stuff and doesn't have to be "justified" like in a hard scifi game
VS.
>It's unacceptable to be a lolrandumb GM, fuck you if you go full gonzo after selling us traditional fantasy

And I'm pretty sure we can all agree with both points

>>53657271
Figured as much. Give me a call when you've actually published something.

t. someone who makes a living off their writing

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>people who get buttblasted over unrealistic or oversized weaponry

I don't care. Strange and crazy weapons are fun.

>>53657220
Funny. When Stranger Things came out, it was widely agreed that although it finally depicted the game as devoid of weirdoes who murder their DM because their character got killed, it still only showcased the mindless dungeon crawling aspect.

See, I can pretend to have a power of a consensus behind me as well.

>>53657349
The Mighty Elephant Hammer of Khzar-Hornblaster! Long have my eyes... uh.... longed to see it!

>>53657379
Says a fag who can't use google apparently.

>>53657327
> I am doing ad copies for the 'bumfuck nowhere daily journal' => am making a living off my writing => I am immediately a god-tier DM and an authority on role-playing.
> Everyone who disagrees with me is a writing program reject

First, thanks for the laugh anon, you're a riot.
Second, DMing and worldbuilding and module building require a different skillset than just writing so fuck off to your tumblr if you want to impress anyone.

>>53657548
Where did the bad editor who rejected your shit and made you cry touch you, anon?

>>53657195
This is a nice point anon, although I think that you undervalue consistency.

>>53651448
>For me, it's "Clear and hold" approaches to large dungeons.
I used to have this problem a lot, and the big revelation was that it was my dungeon design (and campaign design, more broadly) that was to blame. The core issue is one of players having too much control over the environment. Few thoughts:

1) Time pressure is key. Whatever the PC's are going in to the dungeon to accomplish, make sure they feel a sense of urgency. The macguffin won't be there forever, or someone is chasing them, or a hostage will die... whatever works.

2) Have areas where there is no right choice - just a lesser-of-two-evils selection. Make the consequences of their choice long-term persistent.

3) If they stop for too long of a breather, drop something on them. Ninjas, rising floodwaters, a structure fire - just add complications. Dungeons are like a microcosm of a narrative.. you want to keep ramping up the tension to climactic battle / chase / etc


I find it's helpful to think about well executed dungeon-type sequences in movies. Think Moria in LotR, right? It starts slow, building tension. You've got a few weird little scenes with treasure / traps / info. There's some fighting goblins for a bit, followed by a mini-boss fight with the troll. Then the short goblin chase sequence followed by a rugpull, the big bad balrog reveal, and then an adrenalin-pumping chase to the exit. By the end of it, your heart is in your throat. THAT'S what you're going for.

>>53657576
your focus on random people being (or wanting to become) a writer is hilarious, but let me attempt to reason with you.

The best world builder I know is Robert Jordan. Jordan was never in a writing program. He was trained as a nuclear engineer. Although he became famous as a writer, his worldbuilding prowess comes from him being a giant history buff, as well as travelling the world while keeping eyes open.

The best modules I've ever seen are written by Konstantin Asmolov (russianfag here, sorry). Asmolov was never (to my knowledge) in a writing program. He is an orientalist, if you google his name you find a bunch of articles in places like 'New Eastern Outlook'. No, his modules are not oriental in nature at all, just normal high fantasy stuff.

The best GM I've ever played with was a software developer by education, although he shifted his focus to education in later years. He also had zero writing training.

So yeah, when you bring up the writing programs or being a writer or editors or other shit -- my reaction is 'huh?'. it's like you boast about winning retard olympics here -- whatever, take that unrelated shit to your tumblr.

inb4 'I was just trolling'

>>53657589
There's definitely some value in the occasional throwaway comedic moment or moment where all the tension gets broken by something harmless. Even good horror movies have their cat scares. On the other side, horror works quite well when it's unexpected.

The key is that you have to consciously use those moments to either break up the tone while still keeping it in mind, or intentionally change the tone of your story. Random wacky shit doesn't work for either of those points, unless you want to switch your campaign into absurdist comedy for some ungodly reason.

>>53657834
I bring up writing programs because they kill creativity and contribute to the muh realism autism.

Enjoy saying "you want fries with that?'

>>53657810
Not OP but very nice points, thanks. I was having the same problem, and what you are saying here makes sense.

>>53657979
Is the McDonalds cashier is also a writing program reject or did you do a reclassification?

>>53657856
I like the underlying idea but I am not sure how to include it in the game.

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>magic users have normal personalities

Warlocks who's patron is known, benevolent or unaware of the player
Reeeeeeeeeeeeeee that's not a warlock at all reeeeeeeeeeeeee

>>53652959
I can't help but both agree with you and be disgusted by you

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>>53658592
magic users should all be nutjobs or whackos?

>>53657810
This, a thousand times. You can't clear a bunch of rooms, rest until you're in pristine condition, and then delve deeper. Even if all you're fighting is (insert generic, level-appropriate monster i.e. goblins at level 1) you'll be low on resources and still in danger by the end.
Because your enemies either won't let you afford a break (random encounters will fuck you up), or they jump on the opportunity to fortify, call reinforcements, and set more traps. Especially if you rest every 15 minutes.
Of course ticking clocks are pretty useful too, but you can't exactly afford to put rising lava in all your dungeons.

>>53658755
In a lighthearted setting, magic users should at least be a bit odd or distant. If the setting is meant to be dark or gritty, then they should have a limited or distorted attachment to reality or be outright psychotic. Magic shouldn't be trivialized or commodified. Getting involved in it should be an investment with permanent consequences to the user's worldview and mind.

>>53656436
At least your GM uses a fucking table.
Every d20=1 in my AD&D2e game has my GM telling me LOL YOU FALL DOWN AGAIN, LOL BOWSTRING SNAPPED GL, U DROPPED UR SWORD BRO.
It's not fun playing a character that goes adventuring wearing oven mitts.

>>53657979
Go grind your axe somewhere else.

>>53652071
>immersion is your own responsibility
It literally is not though. It's never the job of the audience to be entertained, it's the job of the entertainer to give them that feeling. It's the storyteller's job to get people involved in the story, and if you can't do that that's fine but putting the onus of responsibility on what is essentially your audience just makes you seem like even more of a sub-par performer.
Imagine going to a concert where the band sounds like shit, so nobody dances, nobody gets into it, and this awful, amateurish band with no stage presence says "Well, immersion in our music is your own responsibility. No one else's." You fucking moron lol.

>>53658755
Pretty much, yeah. People who learn to use magic while being well adjusted and untouched negatively by it is boring. There becomes no risk to seeking the power of magic, therefore there is no reason not to seek the power of magic.

>>53652959
The fuck's Dark Souls have anything to do with this?

>>53659284
Another reject?

>>53657834
>the best world builder I know is Robert Jordan

Opinion discarded. Wheel of Time is one of the most badly thought out settings with the most Mary Sue characters I have ever read not to mention being almost as derivative as fucking Inheritance, the series of books aptly named "A Frankenstein's monster of other fantasy works" by some anon.

>>53651448
When you play MTG or any other card game and you take flawless turns quickly, but your opponent thinks through each of their options for 5 minutes and shuffles the cards in their hand and they don't do anything and you kick their ass anyway.

>>53659440
>>53658887
I guess that makes sense in the pet peeve thread.
In my setting magic per se does not affect its user, this way if you go psychotic you don't have 'the magic made me do it' defense. You have to choose to indulge in the high-risk areas of Arts, or seek power beyond what is freely given to the mortalkind or to transgress your humanity in thousand little ways that Arts offer you at every step. Then things may (or may not) happen *to* you.

>>53660603
what do the characters have to do with worldbuilding? as for badly thought out settings, gief examples or gtfo.

>>53660860
No need. Your taste is proven shit.

>>53652749
I worldbuilt multiple orc and human kingdoms, and so far my players have interacted with a grand spaking 1 of them. Creating multiple nations is a waste of time for the most part, unless you're doing some sort of years long campaign.

>>53661175
have a (you)

>>53654396
Holy fuck, I play a soldier in a Star Wars game and even considering tactics & the use of cover (as a sniper no less) has gotten me called a coward at least twice a session. I play along with it, and the DM defends my choices, but when the jedi run into their deaths against zombie plague monsters I feel pretty justified standing 100+ meters back.

>>53659327
Not this guy, but the author and the audience both participate in immersion. There is an implicit contract between them: the author must work to immerse the audience, and the audience agrees to accept the premise and suspend disbelief. That's why it's acceptable quit a table where nothing makes sense, but also acceptable to boot a player who refuses to believe dragons can fly or Science Fantasy plotonium can work/exist in the setting.

People playing on their phone and then having the balls to ask what they missed.

>>53657294
It's okay Anon, I read your rational post and appreciate the levelheadedness.

>>53661405
Well you can establish there are several nations of everything without developing unless it became relevant. Just don't have "the dwarf kingdom", but "that dwarf kingdom". Will we see another one? Probably not, but they exist somewhere because your world isn't incredibly small.
Well unless your world is supposed to be small, of course.

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>PC searches for danger/traps/hazards.
>As the DM, I announce that they conduct a thorough search but find nothing out of the ordinary, and that their character believes that it is safe.
>"Uhhh I check again."
>Everyone in the party decides to check too.

Usually there's nothing there. Why do I feel like I'm doing something wrong here?

>>53651448
So, my group just finished a campaign, with them foiling the Bad Guy's scheme and saving the day. Huzzah! And then one of the players pointed out how Anthalon (important NPC) was a more powerful wizard than anyone in the party, and probably by extension singularly more powerful than any individual party member, maybe even on par with the 5 of them together. This in turn led to him complaining that said guy wasn't in on the kill like the players were, because apparently having the biggest statblock is how you discover problems and solve them on the fly before they grow into major concerns.

Like, I don't even get what the problem is, other than some bizarre insecurity issue. The guy was listed as the head of a mage's college and generally busy running it.

>>53651767
An example?

>>53662168
> that roll was for all your checks, it's an abstract representation of how well you would search this room in general.

> You guys sure? You already stood around watching &%% search, and that (constant impending source of pressure) is getting closer every second

>>53662168
You are doing something wrong. Don't roll unless there's something there, and if there is, failure means they walked into the trap or hazard. If there isn't, don't roll the dice, just tell them that after a long and exhaustive search they don't find anything.

Rolling for stuff for no reason. I know that there's no hard and fast rule here and that different games recommend different rolls for different things, but there's never a god damn reason to have someone roll a billion times to get over the wall. If you're going to let him try an infinite number of times without consequence, why not just let him over the damn wall?

Or things like rolling to do inconsequential things like start camp fires or cook dinner, or to do purely fluff-related things that are within the scope of your character's abilities, e.g.

>"I want to tie off the boat"
>"Roll to tie the knot"
>"I know how to tie knots, I'm a sailor and I have two ranks in "'Sailor'"
>"Okay, roll to see how WELL you tie the knot"

How about we just fucking don't?

My peeve is that is has somehow become uncool to take things seriously or to become invested in a campaign (or anything, really). Putting in the effort, learning the rules well enough to not depend on the GM, reading the material and preparing your own material, becoming invested in the characters or the world, getting upset about in-game stuff or similarly becoming invested is somehow looked down upon. Whenever you voice your complaints on the matter, you'll be met with cries of "It's just a game", "we're having fun" , "it's fantasy/magic, anything can happen" or other similar such dismissals.

Don't get me wrong, I can understand playing a lighthearted or wacky campaign to have some random fun, but I also want to have fun by getting invested and putting in the effort and to play with other people who want to put in the effort. Nowadays, I've been seriously dissatisfied in that aspect, people seem to keep their investment and effort levels down on purpose. It's down right expected that players will be incompetent and it's looked down upon when you ask people to read the rulebook or know shit about the setting.

Even on /tg/, which is better than most online communities for this sort of thing, you'll be met with accusations of "autism", "grognard" or whatever is the flavor word of the day when you try to argue in favor of having a serious, consistent campaign.

I don't want lighthearted, easy games to disappear, but I do want some variety.

>>53652486
>Why would magical things ever not make sense!!!!11!???

>>53651497
>wacky shit can happen
This is generally true. It can.
>for no reason
This is absolutely false. It can't.

Nothing can happen "for no reason"; if you were bit quick in your DMing and something wacky seemingly HAS happened for no reason, your first priority is to make sure it DID happen for a reason that's consistent with the world and whatever else the players have been figuring out about it.

>>53654396
This is just as often a consequence of the system and the DM's approach to it.
If running away means you're just giving the enemy many rounds of free shots, then running away is simply suicide, and the only sane thing to do is to keep fighting and hope for a miracle; at least then you can crit.

>>53662724
Alright, I'll be sure to keep that in mind for the future.

>>53662817
I'll see what I can do about that, but usually it's the players who say "I roll for x" as opposed to me prompting them to check.

>>53662168
I had this problem and I did several things to solve it.

What I did was make sure that each attempt to roll took time and also put them on a time limit most of the time. So it's fine if each character wants to check the room throughly, but now they've wasted 4 hours on this and now they're running late to stopping that ritual, or the guards found them, or whatever.

Then, the system I use has a mechanic that gives penalties for each successive attempt at the same thing, so it gets harder to succeed.

Finally, I never tell them the room "looks clear", "You think it's clear" or "You don't find anything wrong with him," I outright tell them "The room is clear", "You're confident that the room is clear" or "You look him over and see that he is in perfect health" or whatever is appropriate for the current roll. Basically, whatever the result of the roll is, even if it's false, the character thinks that it's true so I state it as fact.

They'll get bitten in the ass a couple of times but they'll learn eventually.

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>>53663416
This also seems like good advice. Thanks, all.

>>53663402
>I'll see what I can do about that, but usually it's the players who say "I roll for x" as opposed to me prompting them to check.
Don't let the fuckers do that. They declare an action, you say they succeed, fail, or call for a roll. They ask a question, you tell them the answer, say they don't know it, or call for a roll.

>>53659495
You can't explain it. Just hope the shitters from /v/ go away

>>53651448
Not trying to be even remotely creative and then whining when something isn't a straightforward "I roll diplomacy and get passed" or "I stand perfectly still and just keep attacking until it dies"

Sorry, but that shit isn't going to happen. I already told your whiny asses this, stop being thick

>>53653784
1. Lovecraft lore is not a good setting for fucking fantasy games where I want agency and internal consistency. I won't even respond to your point on comparing Lovecraft to JoJo. It's not about stability, it's about me feeling like I can have meaningful interactions with the world. if this shit just happens for no reason, why the hell would i become invested in ANYTHING?
2. It's not being protective about a character, it's that you make a fucking awful joke that makes me roll my eyes about goblins with machine guns and now I have to figure out a way to not die at the hands of your stupid ass sense of humor. and i cringed at your stupid "do you dislike adrenaline" bit. i can see why you struggle to retain players.
3. for Christ's sake, this is YOUR world that YOU have complete control over. don't get all epistemological "we can never be certain if robo mech T-Rex's shooting anus lasers exist" because it's your world and you get to decide how ridiculous shit is. there is an objective and finite reality in your world that you get to decide. when you include shit like this, it's clearly a joke. it's a joke at the expense of any sort of credibility or respect your players afforded to you.
it's NOT META KNOWLEDGE TO EXPECT INTERNAL CONSISTENCY and to not have my fucking DM treat the game and my character like it's a bunch of bullshit. we invest time into this, please pretend it matters and that you care.
4. Not once have I ever met a player who likes this bullshit. Usually only the DM gets off on this. I once had a roll20 game where we met a dwarf who wanted us to craft beard weapons from our beard hair. The other players laughed and laughed. I left because I thought that was a waste of my time. It's lazy, to be honest. It's easy. I've had far better games with players who want to be there and invest time and creativity into a game. Your lolsowacky antics shit all over that.

>>53663230
I'm not asking for your fucking metaphysical explanation for why magic exists or what its limitations are, but here is the thing. When magic does something, I know it is YOU who did it. So when my character's gender is reversed or his dick shrivels up and falls off due to a wild magic surge, I know it's because YOU made a conscious decision to make that canon. There needs to be a good reason in universe for something to happen, if there isn't, if it is random, then be aware that everyone knows what is "random" is something that YOU concocted, implemented, and thought was appropriate. You are not at the mercy of a rolling table or the Wacky Weave TM bullshit that you like to pretend exists. I didn't ask for your sloppy and lazy writing to be internalized into the fabric of the game's universe.

>>53663223
I agree with this 100%. What it all comes down to is that some people don't want to have to work for their fun. Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing if the rest of the group feels the same way but role playing games are specifically made with the intention of allowing for this sort of depth and investment. There's nothing more shitty than playing with a group who are invested in the game and then there's one fuckstick who plays the lolsorandumb route and tosses out the 'It's just a game' excuse when you call them out on it. Yes it's just a game but we're playing this game a certain way and if you're not prepared to integrate with the group then you ought to fuck off.

I'm in a love-hate relationship with DMing. It's like my abusive girlfriend. My sexy, abusive girlfriend that sucks up all my time and takes my money before I realize it's gone.

>>53663230
> Having magic in my settings means I can ignore the internal consistency! Anything can happen! Plot holes? Shitty writing? Magic them away with magic!

>>53663416
>Then, the system I use has a mechanic that gives penalties for each successive attempt at the same thing, so it gets harder to succeed.
That's my pet peeve. Penalties for failure should arise naturally from the nature of the check, not some arbitrary increase in difficulty. That's what the time limit and wasted time are for.

>>53651448
You know, that raises a good point: what happens to a dungeon once it has been cleared? Who owns the property? How you prevent monsters from moving in again? That's something that doesn't get addressed often.

>>53669885
Then don't re-roll on a check when you're told all's clear but you know you rolled low on

Roguelikes being far too luck based.

>>53651497
>enter thread about airing pet peeves
>gets triggered when OP airs his pet peeve
Have you considerd the autist just might be you alone, anon?

>make encounter the party will have to retreat from because the things that are basically like ork grots won't stop flooding the room
>They dont fall back, think they're supposed to win
>Literally spend 2 hours real time of them just sitting in a hallway going waist-deep in basically ork bodies
>If they just fell back like 30 we could fucking continue

>>53669947
Then give me a reason not to besides "I don't want you to!"

>>53670016
This is terrible DMing. How the hell are they supposed to know there's an unlimited army of these things, and how the hell are they supposed to know falling back is the right solution?

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>>53658592
>>53658755
>>53658887
>>53659440
>>53660837

This is only in a setting where magic is either super powerful that it *needs* to be crazy. If everyone has a little bit of magic, or magic is just like useful hearth crafts and charms until you get to high levels, there is no reason that magic users can't be 'normal'.

I do prefer eccentric magic users, but the opposite of your 'cold and distant' edgy ones.

>>53662383
I can only imagine he means Cooke's boner for fullcasters.

>>53670050
Not that anon but while I know what you mean, at the same time I reckon video games have ruined tabletop rgp's. Now players are simply used to 'scripted' events for want of a better word instead of using their heads and thinking tactically I've noticed a trend in many players simply charging forward and figuring everything will work itself out. You don't really get anyone stopping and even considering the possibility of running.

>>53670016
I could see not retreating if they thought pulling back just mean being followed by a surge of whatever they were fighting, but then I don't know the details so maybe the enemy was slow or restricted to the area or something.

>>53670116
They also have this notion of necessarily being the main characters and/or having 'tanks' in a party - not frontliners, just people whose jobs are to get whacked and somehow magically compel people to attack them as if per Dominate Person.

>>53670016
This isn't always a poor choice, especially if it's in a hallway - the hallway is a chokepoint, if they retreat to the audiotorium they can be swamped by the damn things.

>>53670028
>>53669885
It's realistic, though. Re-checking when you find nothing is the same as going over things 'just to be sure'. You don't usually check as throughly the second time - when you dress up the first time you check to make sure there's no fluff on your shoulders, the necktie is on just so, and there's no wrinkles anywhere.
When you check again it's mainly just confirming nothing's changed since then.
It also makes sense to not allow a second roll in certain circumstances because it's metagaming. Concievably a rogue will check three times to make sure this cast iron door really doesn't have a Dart Trap of Death fixed to it. It's more or less inconcievable that a person uses Sense Motive three times in a row or that you roll Perception four times to see something wrong with a person you have no real reason to suspect.

>>53670116
So on one hand, I have no idea why people think that could possibly be a video game thing, given that most video games will kill your ass if you just stand and hit the attack button. But this is the reverse situation. This isn't a group of PCs getting TPKed because they thought it was a scripted fight. This is a group wading through grot corpses while the DM keeps throwing more at them until they catch on that this is a scripted fight and they can't win no matter how well they're doing. There's no reason for them to make a tactical retreat until they run out of spells and their limbs start aching from all the grots they're chopping.

>>53670207
Most video games expect you to win though.

>>53651497
Even in the really old myths that Fantasy draws inspiration from, things don't happen for no reason - things happen because of fate. Insane things that science couldn't explain, but they happen for reasons such as the gods being displeased with defiant mortals or the protagonist going against the morals the story was trying to push on its audience.

Take Icarus and Daedalus for example:

Daedalus' flying bullshit contraptions worked because he was an awesome engineer that had been unjustly imprisoned. So fate smiled upon this cool dude being in a pinch. His achievements earned his bullshit moment.
Icarus also got away with it at first because he was unjustly imprisoned, but once he so arrogantly defied his father, the fates punished his hubris and lack of filial piety by having the wax melt as Daedalus warned him it would.

Wacky shit worked for Daedalus because he was an awesome engineer, and wacky shit didn't work for Icarus because he didn't listen to his dad as good boys ought to do in the traditional hierarchy. Magic is just a catalyst to create a more striking mental image for the preachy boring moral of "sons, if you don't heed the advice of your experienced dads, you'll get rekt by life"

>>53670174
Except in all of those cases they do have a reason to keep checking, because they were suspicious in the first place. If you're worried about a trap, or suspect someone's lying to you, most of the time you won't go "I must have just been imagining it" when you don't see any obvious signs. You'll keep trying to figure out what you're missing.

Your suit example is a terrible one because there are no stakes. You think you got all the fluff, but if there is, who cares? But let's take it up a step. Imagine you're eating something a little messy, and a drop of it falls. You don't know if it hit your tie or your shirt or your jacket or the floor or what. If you look and can't find it, are you going to give up? Because I've been there, and I search for that fucking drop until I can confirm I didn't ruin my clothes or that I need a glass of club soda and a prayer.

>>53670219
Yeah, but not necessarily the first go. That's why you have lives and saves.

>>53670295
>or suspect someone's lying to you
That's not how Sense Motive works, Sense Motive is called when someone is making a bluff check already and is made to notice something is off and that he sounds like he's lying, it does not tell you that he IS lying or what he's lying about. Sense Motive is to actually suspect someone is lying in the first place.

>But let's take it up a step. Imagine you're eating something a little messy, and a drop of it falls. You don't know if it hit your tie or your shirt or your jacket or the floor or what. If you look and can't find it, are you going to give up?
If you make your check and find nothing then yes, you would give up, since that's what the check means (you've gone through and checked and haven't seen anything wrong so it must've gotten somewhere else) unless you take twenty, but taking twenty isn't always possible.

>>53670207
Tabletop RPG grognards blame every change on video games. Just look at how they call 4e "a tabletop MMO". Never mind that it's not massively-multiplayer nor usually online. You do things but can't do them all you want, even without the cure-all explanation of "it's magic", so it's totally ripped off from a medium, let alone genre, it could not possibly want to bother trying to compete with.

>>53651448
When someone thinks losing a character IS THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD. It bugs me, losing a character just means you get to play a new one.

>>53665288
>Stop being thicc
Anon, thicc is the best. I love thicc grills.

>>53657294
I don't mind Gonzo as long as it's an add-on
Having a Comrade Paladin as an option is fine, having them as literally a core class is not.

Don't ask me if you can "make an insight check". Tell me what you want to do. Usually this means you're trying to tell if someone is lying, but explain what you're looking for. Holes in her story? A forced tone of voice? Suppressed emotion? I'd even settle for "I'd like to try to tell if she is lying" for now, if it means you don't try to dictate the check I call for.

>>53670321
So if someone tells me the sky is green I have to roll a check to suspect they might not be on the level? That's silly, anon. A character doesn't need to pass a sense motive check to be suspicious of someone else, especially if it contradicts known information or existing beliefs, or if they have other reasons to be suspicious.

And no, "you don't find it, it must have just magically disappeared" isn't a reasonable result on a search check to find goddamn anything. If it's not on my body then it's on the floor, and if it's not on either then I clearly missed it. If there's no time constraints I'm going to do a more thorough check until I'm satisfied or decide it's not worth the effort, and if someone is going to shoot me in the testicles with an arrow if I've got a messy shirt then I just might be there until doomsday.

>you only get xp if you kill the monster
My GM does that. There was this time when I threw one monster to an endless pit and I didn't get XP because "technically he's not dead".

I stopped giving a fuck about XP and I still resolve conflicts bargaining/fleeing/intimidating.

>>53670416
>So if someone tells me the sky is green I have to roll a check to suspect they might not be on the level?
No, because that's 'common knowledge' and therefore falls under the 'you literally don't even need to roll' section. Rolling sense motive is for when the girl tries to sell you a sob story about her abusive husband and she was only looking to her brother for help but the husband says the girl was just a cheating incesteous whore to see if either of them was flinching or something when telling the story. You don't get to reroll Sense Motive for this reason, but you can, for example, take knowledge(law) rolls or check history books to see if there really is a law that lets a girl ask her old family for help at any time, or if the husband isn't bullshitting and there really is a rule that says she needs permission from the man of the house.

>If there's no time constraints I'm going to do a more thorough check until I'm satisfied
That's what we call taking twenty.

>every monster dissapears after being killed so you can't loot him
Videogame approach is a disgrace

>>53670295
>>53670321

As far as I've ever been concerned, you get one roll. Anything more is just wasting everyone's time by slowing the game down. A rogue can check a door for traps as many times as he pleases, but the player rolls once and that determines whether or not he'll find anything at all.

>>53670463
I'll let them take twenty and sometimes ten if they want but they don't get to roll once then take twenty after they see they've rolled a nat 1, that's metagaming. Also, having time constraints is legitimately a good idea.

>>53652959
The fuck are you on about dude, Mercer's never had that attitude with Nat 20's, he still asks for their total score and has on more than one occasion told players they still don't accomplish what they want, because they were trying something impossible. The only time even close to this was a Concentration Save on Hex he had Percy make.
If your players say "hurr durr I wanna jump to the moon" and they roll Athletics, it doesn't matter if they roll fifteen 20's they're not going to get more than a few feet of the ground.

>>53670485
Greater Teleport

>>53652959
>>53670485
Hell, by RAW, 5e at least 1's and 20's are only automatic miss/hits on attack rolls, not ability checks.

>>53670492
I don't follow.

>>53670533
Jumping to the moon can be accomplished with G. Teleport

>>53670538
Ah I gotcha. That's magic though, if you tried to jump to the moon with nothing but an Athletics check and a really high STR stat you ain't going to do shit.

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>all encounters start at point blank three squares between the two sides making bows useless
>faggots trying to bring realism into the picture, and being WRONG about reality in the first place
>gunfags trying to argue for fucking CoD:BO weapons in med fantasy because GUNS EXISTED BEFORE PLATE THAT MUST MEAN LMGS DID TOO!!!111!11!one

>>53670533
That's always been how nat 1s/20s work in d20 systems - well, saves are sometimes like that depending on the system, but I don't know any that have auto success/fail for skills.

>>53670485
That anon wasn't saying that there's a trend that nat20 lets you do anything but instead was referring to the grating attitude a lot of people have towards nat20's as if rolling one means that your character has to be successful in the most obnoxious, over the top way possible. So instead of rolling a 20 and convincing some guard to let you pass instead you roll a 20 and convince the guard to both let you pass as well as give you all the clothes off his back, suck you off and flee naked through the city proclaiming your greatness.

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>>53658854
>Of course ticking clocks are pretty useful too, but you can't exactly afford to put rising lava in all your dungeons.
Well, right. Using the same mechanisms over and over will get stale fast. The main point I was trying to make is that good dungeons are as much about pacing as about structure.

Take a look at the piccy here. I'm sure everyone who ever took a creative writing course has seen this little guy, right? Now that's a classic three act structure for a myth or play, but I find that same thought process works pretty well for planning a session as well.

Think of the scenes in the narrative as rooms in your dungeon. Now there are a few points in there where your players SHOULD get a chance to breath and regroup. One is the initial preparations before "crossing the threshold". Two more should happen shortly before the middle of Act 2 and toward the end of Act 2 (separated by a bit of a rollercoaster of action in the middle of Act 2). Once they're into Act 3, it's chips-in, no more breaks.

Now, none of that means "railroad your players". They need to feel a sense of agency, and if you try to control their decisions, you will end up fighting them. What you DO control is the environment and the baddies. You want to create situations where the players' right choice is also your right choice. Keep the really heavy-handed forcing mechanisms (like rising lava) in your back pocket until things go sideways.

>>53659495
>The fuck's Dark Souls have anything to do with this?
Not to give the screaming /v guy any ammunition, but videogames can actually be a great place to look to for inspiration. The better videogames often have very finely tuned and paced dungeons that follow the three-act formula, more or less.

Think about zelda as a for-instance. Primitive game, sure, but often exemplary dungeon design. You'd have a "crossing the threshold" phase where you have to actually FIND the dungeon and how to get inside. You'd get some early rooms that were tough-but-not-impossible, reminding you to take a minute and stock up on supplies. Then typically a series of puzzles / challenges working up to a mini-boss (aka mid-point), and usually getting a critical item somewhere in there. Then there would be a few more small challenges, another chance to breath, and then finally Act 3: the leadup to the climax, big boss fight, and then a little catharsis and prize.

Interesting to point out that usually the "time-pressure" in those dungeons was organic. You only have so much health / potions / arrows, and going back is often even harder than pushing forward. If you can manage to run a dungeon session that captures that feeling, you're likely to get a standing ovation.

>>53652959
I agree with you, though you put it rather autistically. My last party consists of crazy sociopathic murderhobos trying to do wacky shit, cracking jokes and laughing in the NPCs faces. And even though I prefer more 'verisimilitude', I'm always up for some light-hearted stuff from time to time. However, when it's a constant thing, and characters become caricatures who do nothing but disrespect the world and people I've tried to put a bit of thought into, it's kind of irritating.

But there's going to be consequences, if they keep on that path.

>>53670956
>My last party consists of crazy sociopathic murderhobos trying to do wacky shit, cracking jokes and laughing in the NPCs faces
My group doesn't do that anymore, since I've made it clear that even if they're heroes they're far from the only ones around.

>>53653784
>Lovecraft
Oh, yeah, you know, that guy who wrote a story in which a college professor read about the eldritch abomination and killed it by being prepared for the job.

The problem lies not in strange elements in the setting. It's when they do not adhere to any known rule and there's no way that you could ever understand them or overcome them when it feels stupid.
There's a difference between mistery and wackiness. One is intriguing and exciting, the other feels like a diceroll to see what happens next.

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Man, we game every week, the same time
Half of those weeks? You're dead to the world because of your fucked up schedule
The other half? You're trying to catch up (in a TEXT game on Roll20! Just read the logs!)
Could you just DROP or get your shit together man?!

>>53671002
>The party arrives at the town, and they ask about the job they came for.
>'Wait, you? No, no, I'll pass. Someone else will eventually come through.'

Oh my god, thank you so much for this idea, anon. It will make them so mad.

>>53671234
I've done that too. I also had a point where there was a group called the Crimson Azures who viciously undercut their prices every single time in that one town. If the PCs offered to clear out the bandits for half their stash, the Crimsons would offer to only take one item each. Guess who got the job.
More to the point I've had times where murderhoboing ends badly because while bumfuck town has no people able to stop them, the big city eventually starts sending knights, crack troops, and contacting the top assassin guilds for hits on the idiots who keep raiding their wine-producing towns, and if even that doesn't work the kingdom will send in their court wizard and retired heroes to get rid of these dumbasses
You're important and strong but you're not fucking gods

Remember - there's no such thing as a bad GM, just shitty snowflake players. Don't like how someone GMs? Grow the fuck up, learn how to run the game yourself, then put in lots of time and effort so your players can bitch incessantly, not show up, and generally disregard your attempts to provide their miserable asses some entertainment.

>>53658755
You're dealing with powers that warp reality on a daily basis, it should leave its mark. Maybe not Unknown Armies grade looney, but at least a little off.

>>53671309
>there's no such thing as a bad GM
I'm a GM and you're full of shit.

>>53671277
They don't really do the 'random murder for fun' thing, though, so I can't really send the cops after them. Mostly they do irritating stuff like interrupting a noble NPC with a lame joke about what he's saying, being absolutely callous and not giving a flying fuck about people's lives or feelings if there's no coin involved, that kind of shit. Things you wouldn't really get arrested for (especially in the middle ages, where arrest means execute), but they would get you labeled a massive asshole.

>>53671451
So treat them like massive assholes...

>>53671352
Nope. Don't like the gm, find another or learn to run it yourself. End of story. "Bad GMs" will eventually have no players and end up living in their mummies basement.

Git gud or get out.

>>53654396
Goddamn this. I recently played a game where mercenaries had a chance at escaping with crates filled to the brim with incredible weaponry, but instead fought with butterknives to the death. Next Saturday, character's going out an hero and I'm not coming back.

>>53671483
>"Bad GMs" will eventually have no players and end up living in their mummies basement.
That's exactly what happens to them, but doesn't mean they won't have three or four games before everyone knows they're a shitter.

>>53671451
>interrupting a noble NPC with a lame joke about what he's saying
That's a massive slap in the face for any noble, especially publicly, and could certainly warrant the Archduke sending his Wizard 14 daughter after the offender's ass if it happens more than once.

>>53671472
That's a possibility, but how to do it is the problem. The most logical way of doing it would end up derailing the adventures by virtue of nobody wanting to associate with the asshole wackos.

>>53671566
>derailing the adventures
Once. You detail once, try learn a valuable lesson, maybe some humility, and if not and they're horrible players about it? You use the whole incident to point out how they caused shit and KICK them and get better folks

No game is better than a shit game

>>53671451
>being absolutely callous and not giving a flying fuck about people's lives or feelings if there's no coin involved
This isn't entirely problematic unless they're playing LG paladins or something. Most mercenaries have it hard enough and are in it, in the end, for coin. They're not going to save a town getting sacked by orcs unless there's something in it for them because who cares.

>>53671483
If no one likes your GMing then it's pretty safe to say that you're bad at it.

>>53671841
Always player fault. ALWAYS.

>>53671862
That seems an unrealistic stance to take.

>>53671451
Okay, have you asked them not to play massive assholes because it makes the game unfun for you?

>>53671309
I hope this is sarcasm. This would be like a manager in a work setting blaming his team members for failing to deliver a project. Making sure your "team" of players stays focused and productive is your entire job. Not all players are perfect, and very (very) occasionally you will find a player that's completely irredeemable and needs to be "fired" from the group. But generally speaking, it's on you to assess your players' personal strengths and weaknesses and use them to make the best sessions possible.

In my experience, with most games that go wrong, the GM carries the lion's share of the blame.

>>53671483
I do get what you're saying here - this is the irredeemable player above. Sometimes, you do have to kick somebody out. And you do often have to be a hardass and lay down the law (varies with players - some will always take a mile if you give an inch, others can be trusted with a bit of a longer leash).

It's a matter of degrees. If you're cutting one bad player a decade, and running quality games otherwise, probably don't worry about it. If you find yourself booting one player out of every four, it's probably time to take a hard look in the mirror and ask if you can do better.

>>53671925
>This would be like a manager in a work setting blaming his team members for failing to deliver a project
Managers are sometimes legitimately not at fault, but it is in fact their responsibility regardless. Nobody could have predicted that a critical team member would suddenly get his shit fucked in a car crash close to the deadline, but it's still your responsibility.

>>53671881
He's an ivory tower faggot.

>>53654396
I want to do this, but the systems that my groups play make withdraw almost a successful suicice.

>Ah, if you withdraw the opponent has a free crit that can totally either kill you or cripple you making your withdraw impossible
>Ah, diplomacy or persuasion is impossible in combat becasue once combat starts everybody is immune to non magical suggestions or literally takes minutes to convey any meaningless idea making it impossible to do in combat

>>53671451
>>53671472
>>53671804
Want to share an observation from my experience regarding the murderhobo phenomenon - player characters will often display as much morality as you give them reason to have.

In my younger years running standard dungeon crawls / adventures, classic D&D type scenarios, I'd often see players behaving as above. They'd act like amoral mercenary loners who were only out for themselves... because that's EXACTLY what their characters were. They were wizards and warriors and rogues dropped into a world with no connections and no motivations beyond loot. Can't really blame the players for acting the part, right?

The "trick", such as it is, is to make sure all your PC's do have connections, motivations and backstory fleshed out, at creation time. You want them to each have families, allies, enemies, history and some kind of pressing motivation (supporting said family, paying off a debt, fleeing the law) explicit on their sheets. What I've found is that, once you give PC's a reason to be moral (protecting loved ones, respect of their home community), the players will often do it without any additional push needed.

At the end of the day, we're social creatures and we care about what people think of us (even fictional ones). In D&D, everybody was basically playing a Mad Max character. They might occasionally do something noble, but generally they were out for number one. But a bunch of Mad Maxes don't make a Fellowship of the Ring.

>>53671975
>Managers are sometimes legitimately not at fault, but it is in fact their responsibility regardless. Nobody could have predicted that a critical team member would suddenly get his shit fucked in a car crash close to the deadline, but it's still your responsibility.
Kinda the point I was making, yeah. Obviously a lot less at stake in an RPG, of course, and sometimes things go sideways and there's nothing to be done about it.

At the end of the day though, the GM has great power - and with great power comes memorable super hero quotations.

>>53672260
>The "trick", such as it is, is to make sure all your PC's do have connections, motivations and backstory fleshed out, at creation time. You want them to each have families, allies, enemies, history and some kind of pressing motivation (supporting said family, paying off a debt, fleeing the law) explicit on their sheets. What I've found is that, once you give PC's a reason to be moral (protecting loved ones, respect of their home community), the players will often do it without any additional push needed.
Seconded, this is the solution. It's also meaningful to have a reactive society that actually pushes back. If you live in an anarchy then the right thing to do is act like a murderhobo, but if the reaction to you murdering someone isn't to JUST send guards but to have kids run from your screaming for big sis and for townsfolk to tell you to "please leave, we cannot do business with you" and general quiet horror, people tend to calm down.

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>>53672320
>>53672260

>>53672415
What?

>>53672248
This. You've gotta give players the ability to withdraw from a bad combat if you don't want them to fight to the death, and you've gotta give them other ways to resolve encounters than combat if you don't want them to fight everything they come across.

>>53662383
Wh40k rpgs and the adeptus mechanicus

>>53672741
>admech
>not psykers
Seriously I have never had a game of dark heresy/only war occur where the damned psyker wasnt the center of everything happening and the most interesting and memorable part of anything going on just because of the way game mechanics worked that let psykers be incredibly OP from an early stage or just be the source of all sorts of shenanigans from phenomena and perils. The cogboys availability to certain cybernetics is small time compared to all the special talents, advances, traits, psychic trees, skills, and rules you get for being a psyker

>>53652486
Man.

Four legs at birth (morning) two throughout life (afternoon) three with a cane old age (night)

You had to go to a dungeon for that?

>>53662383
Every wh40k product is about SM. I hate them.

>>53657379
mindless dungeon crawling aspect?

You have had shit dms bro.

>>53673001
Obviously that's not the only riddle the entire species knows.

>>53670086
So every caster should become an 'eccentric professor'? Why? What is pulling them into that particular niche? I can see it in a good-hearted Woodhouse-style 'world without sin' campaign where the bad alternatives just don't happen but otherwise...why?

>>53671311
If you confine yourself to low-level spells, the mapped and sanctioned areas of Arts, and especially if you eschew arcane research -- in my setting, you then just follow the already-warped pathways. That's why every mage (in a given Tradition) has the same repertoire of basic spells -- the lowest-hanging and safe fruit. Casting a Light is no different from flipping a switch. So a classic wizard in the boonies is the fat fuck with no ambitions who gets his monthly stipend in return for assisting the local magistrates and barely remembers 3rd level spells. He's not 'off', he's not even weird -- he was just lucky to be born with a spark.

>>53673179
I was poking fun at the person I was replying to. Dungeon crawling can be fun.
In fact, since this is a pet peeve thread, here's a pet peeve:

Not. Enough. Dungeoncrawling.

>>53673204
>riddle of the sphinx

???

>>53673409
>a riddle from a sphinx

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>>53673001
>>53673204

>>53673396
amen. Trying to fix that in my own games. Getting my player's used to it is hard

>>53651497
God, I wish you were one of my players. All those players who want to know about the politics and the realism of mutated plant monsters or how a robot should act according to previous experiences.

Yet, nobody asks about taxes or when their characters need to poop.

>>53672248
>>Ah, diplomacy or persuasion is impossible in combat becasue once combat starts everybody is immune to non magical suggestions or literally takes minutes to convey any meaningless idea making it impossible to do in combat

I had to stop trying to play characters that are actually willing to talk things out and find peaceful solutions in games a friend of mine runs because of this. Now he wonders why my first instinct is to kill everything we meet that isn't in a town.

>>53673524
My dm knows better than to get me to pay taxes.

Talk about derailing

>>53672260
>You want them to each have families, allies, enemies, history and some kind of pressing motivation

Unfortunately, I've had my fair share of DM's who have the attitude of "Ok, first session, literally every friendly NPC in your backstory is getting rounded up and slaughtered" that I can understand why some people don't do this.

Not even enemies are safe always. I had one game where my character was the last surviving member of his troop after his commander betrayed them and led them into an ambush, and my driving character motivation for that game(as I discussed with the DM) was finding said commander.

First words out of his mouth first session.

>"So yeah you find your commander and kill him and go into a cave to get out of the rain where you find everyone else. What do you do?"

>>53673698
>"So yeah you find your commander and kill him and go into a cave to get out of the rain where you find everyone else. What do you do?"
Bad DM

Cutscenes. Used to think the cinematics were nice, but then I was shown just how easily they can be abused.

>>53673740
Cutscenes are perfectly find but too often they take all agency away from the players. Fuck you man, why do I have to Teleport away from the collapsing cave anyway?

>>53653830
To confirm that yes, this is dog.

>>53673740
>>53673762
Never experienced a cutscene well handled, it's always some bullshit to railroad us to death

>>53669964
Roguelike dev here, I feel you.

>>53670016
You must teach the players there are encounters to be fled. Ideally OOC first, during session 0, then at some point early in the game. Say session 1-3. This is a good moment to do it; if they don't learn and get TPK'd, they haven't lost much.
And you have to train them to recognize the telltale signs, and use them consistently.

>>53673783
That's exactly the shit that made me hate them.

>>53673654
>>53673524

paying taxes can be an interesting and rewarding part of the gameplay experience.
To be more precise, deciding which parts of your income to make visible to authorities can be -- even in the Fantasy setting where your income is literally from raiding tombs.

it requires a consistent world though where things happen because there are reasons for them to happen and not because 'muh fantasy ANYTHIGN CAN HABBEN why do you care about realism'.

>>53674184
So... you're saying tax payments are fun?

>>53674038
For me it was usually cutscenes of watching helpless civilians get slaughtered by a group of bandits and orcs.

The problem is our DM likes running high-power games, so typically each of us are strong enough to wipe out these invaders single-handedly, much less all 4 of us. Except he doesn't allow us to interfere in any of his action scenes. Not for any particular reason, we're just not allowed to.

So you have these 4 level 10-14 or so PCs who could probably solo the entire army of bandits that's slaughtering innocent people in front of them and they're only able to stand there with a blank look on their face the entire time as it happens. Which wouldn't be so bad, except then we usually get some smartass in-game going "hurr durr well why didn't you stop those bandits?", also usually followed by the Fighter punching his stupid face into orbit.

Who the fuck actually has players report their income to authorities. You playing IRS: The Rapening????

Damn there's a bunch of non-imaginative asses in this thread. Thank god you aren't playing at my table.

>>53655486
Ehh, I'd be inclined to build up to some consequences, not so much as a punishment, but as a way to give you back the flexibility/plot twists/return of the bad guy that they're taking away.

>Bounty hunters/paladins are sent after the culprits of the beheadings as some good-aligned temple finds it vile/it prevents a certain funeral rite.
>Some formerly "elite mook" wizard, who wasn't that much of a threat previously, had a sinister pact to restore him to life. Due to the mutilated body, the powers responsible for bringing him back had no choice but to transfer his soul into some kind of formidable golem/construct.
>The party accidentally starts an evil cult, who start beheading townsfolk to appease their prophets (the players). If you're smart about it, the players may not even realise that the cult is centred around them until they've been sent to deal with them, and find some kind of "holy text" in the cult lair.
>The head of some supernatural/undead/demonic foe turns out not to be dead, and speaks to the party, may end up as a pet/sentient item with abilities that it lends to the party if they're nice to it, and fulfill its basic demands.

>>53674285
They can be, retard.

>>53674999
>>53674285
long story short, the tomb raiding was a sanctioned affair by an Imperial Family and it was but the 'raiding teams' were sponsored by the Noble Houses and the number of teams was limited. The relics belong to the Emperor and he pays 'retrieval fees', the 'fluff' can be sold after the Assessors confirm that it's not relics (and make a note on the tax). If your team does not bring enough loot in both retrieval and taxes, the House that sponsors you can lose political points (and will dump your sorry asses). Also, the 'teams' have to pay a regular 'license fee' but taxes count towards that.

So the outer-world-game after the dungeon crawl is what you can smuggle through the Searchers and how, what you should stash until you can research whether it's valuable or not, what you can risk into the Assessment and what you absolutely should declare to the tax man to meet the quotas. Also, mad scrambles to sell or barter the rare 'fluff' pieces and other shenanigans.

That's how you make the taxes into a fun part of the game.

>>53673698
Yeah, I don't know what to tell you in that case except maybe run your own group. Your "fair share of GM's" sounds like most people's "horror story of this terrible GM I had a session with one time".
- killing player created NPC's off willy-nilly
- dictating player character actions
- throwing away a perfectly good session setup

That's some first-time-GM grade mistakes right there. Damn.

>>53673740
>>53673762
>>53673783
Curious about this. We're talking about GM-narrated cutscenes? That's definitely a slippery slope, since you can all too easily find yourself dictating what PC's are doing, which should really never happen unless it's a mind control or maybe edge cases failing a psychology roll or something like that.

I'll sometimes do a long setup edging on cutscene to open a scene or maybe as an intro sequence for the big bad. But that's really more a style thing, I think.

>>53674519
>For me it was usually cutscenes of watching helpless civilians get slaughtered by a group of bandits and orcs.
Is this a scenario where you COULD feasibly intervene? Or more, like, at a distance / can't get there in time, that sort of thing? I'm ok with the former.

>>53676545
Yeah, I'm still not sure that taxes are "fun", but at least that's a plausible setup.

IIRC there was a module for the old Warhammer RPG that had a very similar setup. It was a dwarf city, I think.. is that where you got your inspiration?

>>53675509
>>Bounty hunters/paladins are sent after the culprits of the beheadings
that happened and the party evaded them, mostly by chance

>>Some formerly "elite mook" wizard, who wasn't that much of a threat previously, had a sinister pact to restore him to life.

That is actually what ended up to be happening in a way -- because of the burning, the soultransfer malfunctioned and the apprentice of the guy in question (a formidable asshole in his own right) went to the great length to repair the spell, which involved obtaining the blood of the murderers of his master among other unpleasant things (which made him follow the PCs around and eventually brought him into their field of view). I missed the 'formidable golem' angle but the guy had a pact binding him to a swarm of ravens so that was fun.
(Also, he succeeded mostly because PCs failed to parse wtf was going on and had a 'not our problem' attitude to the clues of his involvement. So even more good times were had.)

But yeah, good advice, appreciated.

>>53654396
I must be lucky. My first part was veteran players and we started our second leg of the campaign stuck in a megadungeon. We ran from a Beholder no less than 4 times. We ran from a boneyard after blowing a holy word spell to make it flee.

Later we ran into the beholder and lured it into an ambush and fucking one shot it in a single round.

After that we ran from a fight after we went into the catacombs of the helldungeon and the master of many forms got his arm cut off. We also ran from a fight with a lich after these animated armors possessed by ghosts crit the cleric and knocked him into the negatives.


Then I optimized the fuck out of the clerics rebuke and I got 6th level spells and now we just wreck fucking house. Now we're just plowing through the dungeon.

>>53677119
Nope, never heard of that module. Was an OC when I was figuring out how to make the 'renowned bands of adventurers raiding tombs' concept work or something like that.

>>53677151
I love your group's style. I generally love when PCs choose or change the field of battle to fight on their terms, not the enemies'.

It's also fun when they are used to that to present a situation where that is not a feasible option.

>>53673434
I want to see an edit of this where the sphinx goes on a rant about Lucky Star is, in fact, a more complex, culturally rich and intertextual piece of media compared to NGE

Perhaps I will have to make this edit

>>53677461
please do, it would be most entertaining.

>>53677461
That's complete bullshit and you're absolutely correct

>>53669941
A good rule is if no civilized people take it, different monsters move in

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>>53677205
I think it was this guy. Dwarf castle built over top of an ancient ruins / caverns system. Dwarves sponsor expeditions into the depths to recover treasures, but outsiders (read: the party) have to pay 10% of anything they find when they come out, and certain "dwarf historical" items get confiscated.

>>53669941
>You know, that raises a good point: what happens to a dungeon once it has been cleared?
Assuming the whole place doesn't get completely destroyed in the climactic battle? No idea.

Mine always get completely destroyed.

>>53674519
>Which wouldn't be so bad, except then we usually get some smartass in-game going "hurr durr well why didn't you stop those bandits?", also usually followed by the Fighter punching his stupid face into orbit.
"I don't know. We wanted to stop them. We tried with every bit of our might to hell you. But somehow, our bodies wouldn't move. It's as if the Gods themselves chose to hold us in place so they could relish in this needless tragedy."

>>53678483
You're right, that does sound similar. Likely misses the whole 'sword in the world below, sneak and diplomacy in the world above' angle but experienced GMs would likely add that on their own.

>>53670956
>>53671451
You could consider the mirror approach. It's a bit extreme, but basically everything the players say OOC is mirrored IC. Jokes and banter between players are different, but similar jokes and banter between PCs. And when they shit on a NPC OOC, and the NPC reacts... well, you know it won't be long until they learn to control their impulses.

>>53672248
I understand wishing retread was an option, but talking things out mid-battle sounds pretty stupid unless you're literally shouting about how you surrender or would like to parley.

>>53673698
>>53674519
Christ.
Every time I worry about being a bad DM /tg/ always reminds me there's so much worse. Thank you anon.

>>53674519
>>53678844

Next time that happens just find a doctor (or a priest or even an exorcist) and tell them how you have these weird paralysis incidents for like 30 minutes.

>>53670416
>If there's no time constraints I'm going to do a more thorough check until I'm satisfied
That's the end result of the roll. Your character has no way of knowing they rolled low, and metagaming "I rolled a 2, so I clearly failed" is bullshit, and you're a bad player for doing it

>>53678483
Karak Azgal is also ludicrously dangerous and unpleasant, and chances are the PCs end up alone and dead painfully.

It's a good module.

Are rune and forest the worst classes right now? Every win seems to be an uphill battle and it's taking forever to win 5 games with either.

>>53669941
I'd imagine your goal as the DM is to repopulate and change. Because repeating visits to the same dungeon are the best -- as long as things get tossed up some.

Maybe what was the main entrance is now inaccessible completely -- too heavily guarded -- but the PCs know about the secret entrance to the level 4 so now they clear up instead of down and the game is not clear-and-hold but stealth/punch up to the prayer room on level 2, copy the ornament that no one gave a shit about the first time and gtfo before the heavy-hitters from level 1 show up.
If you don't do this return mission fast enough, you might end up dead. If you don't do it stealthily enough, the enemy will figure out the secret passage trick -- and will either close it or trap it. The reason you care is that the ornament you copied contains the secret for finding the passage to the level 5 so you will have to go back again, now with the different goals etc.

obv you don't want the party to do only this dungeon all the time but maybe while a friendly wizard researcher cross-references the ornament with the history books of the period, they can do some other quest -- while salivating the whole time about the riches they get on the level 5 once they get there.

>>53677145
Sounds like you put enough thought into how to GM based on your players actions to not worry about it too much. Springboarding interesting adventures off of pointless PC actions makes players feel more engaged, and encourages them to think about what they're doing. Have fun bro.

>>53677031
>Is this a scenario where you COULD feasibly intervene? Or more, like, at a distance / can't get there in time, that sort of thing? I'm ok with the former.

Almost always, yes. We were usually right in the town or on the outskirts of it watching it happen. We just weren't allowed to do anything about it because the DM said so.

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>the GM scales encounters so that they are never too easy or hard

As a man that appreciates a challenge, I am disgusted.

>>53657327
No offence my man, but literally anyone can and does publish their shit nowadays. Have you seen your local Waterstones? It ain't exactly high literature. And, given what you're posting about...unless you're Wolfe, I don't think anything you've published is, either.
>>53661425
He's right though.

>>53670016
>Put a cowardly DMPC in the party and have them run when you expect the party to do so.
>Describe the structural intergrity of the location they are fighting in being conprimised. (ie: impending "rocks fall, everyone dies")
>BBEG (whom you uave already established as too powerful for the party) shows up in the midst of the chaos and starts sauntering over to the players.
>Create a momentary lapse in the chaos (enough time to quickly grab shit and go) before tripling the danger level of what's now coming at them.
>Dumbledore's force ghost tells them to "fly you fools"

You need some kinda cue, unless you expect them to meta game and discern the CR of every encounter and just ASSUME you aren't just overestimating things.

>>53670416
Fuck off. You know you rolled low, your character does not. Your character doesn't suspect anything, they know the hallway is perfectly fine and has no traps because they checked. You're just trying to cover up your metagaming faggotry with faulty logic.

>>53653784
Preparation is necessary for conflict (needed for decent story). Irrational does not mean "impossible to prepare for" and so is not bad -- however, impossible to prepare for is always bad. Even your fav pomo masterpiece has preparation for its metafictional wankery.

Wacky does not even remotely necessarily mean your character might die. Worse still, when it does, it means it'll happen in a way which won't have meaning. It'll just happen, without conflict. No, that's not exhilarating.

No, cohesion is 100% good. You're probably pulling together a bunch of "but this mish-mash setting works!" Yes, it works, because the mish-mash is cohesive. We're not talking about that. We're talking about total decapitated whiplash. If you take away cohesion, you 1. kill the dream and 2. take away all meaning. Again.

>>53670567
I refuse to believe the third one has ever happened.

>>53682996
Not to that extent, but they all demand shit like having guns "because they were there at the time" (set in pseudo 1400). Okay, they were; so I give them (in d20 terms) an 8 round reload that can be reduced to 4 if you burn a feat or hit level 8; damage slightly higher than crossbows (2d6); a terrible, shitty range increment (30 ft); and a free Fear effect, possibly stacking into Panick, unless the enemy in question is mindless and/or is used to guns roaring. And then the players without exception start whining saying that's not good enough and I'm just - that's already better than most guns at the time, there's not even a chance of failure.

>>53674285
No, avoiding them is fun. The group gets a kick out of the silly things my Rogue does to avoid taxes.

>>53683124
People shoehorning guns into every fantasy setting won't be happy until they can attack every turn for more damage than the martial.

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>>53653447
>samefaging this hard

>>53683195
And that's why I said CoD:BO faggots, who fail to understand that guns would be shit anyway because they don't scale like melee weapons do, the entire reason they're so strong is because they provide fixed, realiable power greater than what humans can offer. Someone able to lift a small apartment building like high level martials are wont to do is going to be able to split a tank in half with his adamantite greataxe, no gun can do that no matter how high level you are simply because the gun is still the damn gun, same logic that makes crossbows not scale.

>>53683124
>Okay, they were; so I give them (in d20 terms) an 8 round reload that can be reduced to 4 if you burn a feat or hit level 8; damage slightly higher than crossbows (2d6); a terrible, shitty range increment (30 ft); and a free Fear effect, possibly stacking into Panick, unless the enemy in question is mindless and/or is used to guns roaring
Pretty reasonable desu, iirc in China a lot of first line spearmen were armed with guns basically strapped to their spears and the only point of the gun was to fire once, killing and scaring the enemy, and then going close with your spear to actually finish the enemy off.

>>53683124
>8 rounds

Uh, no, they were correct. Not even the very first guns would have taken 48 seconds to reload for someone trained to use them. I mean, only slightly more damage than a crossbow is about right, but that reload time is absurd and pretty unrealistic. A reminder that the earliest guns were being phased out very early in the 1400's, and matchlocks became quite common, so even if you're only setting this in the first half of the 1400's the reload time should be half that at MOST. Hell, in fact, in the late 1400's the wheel-lock caught on very quickly, so there was no longer a need for the flash-pan that would make reloading take even that long.

>>53683279
>trained to use them
That's not for people trained to use them, that's just the reload time. It goes to 6 if you're trained to use them, 4 if you burn a feat. That's perfectly reasonable, 36 seconds for an arquebus? Yeah.

>matchlocks
Became common in 1440 or later at best and then only in Hungary and the Ottoturkish army, not 1400.

>the late
>th early
I said 1400, not 1400s. Full plate armor doesn't -really- exist in this setting either so don't complain about that being there but guns not.

>>53683311
Oh, you meant LITERALLY 1400? Well shit.

In THAT case, the things should explode in their hands if they're not trained to use them, fuck the reload time.

>>53683124
Nah, that's fair. I have a burning hatred for late-medieval fantasy settings without guns, but that's exactly the kind of gun I'd want to see.

>>53683408
It's specifically starting in 1399 so

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I know this is a thread about pet peeves, but I just want to brag and say I stopped dealing with the gun or no gun debate by just saying gunpowder doesn't exist and also setting it further back in time anyway. Fuck plate armor, scale and mail are way more interesting. Anyone else?

>>53683511
In theory gun / no gun can be rendered more or less irrelevant if the disparity between high and low is like 3.PF / Exalted
When wars are really fought between national champions instead of armies, there's no real reason for guns to develop instead of finding ways to get +11 swords or +8 belts.

>>53683534

Or you can just say guns don't work. All the elements that make gun powder work and function just fine, but mixing them together just doesn't make gun powder. Or you can go a step further and just say that your setting doesn't operate on actual real world physics anyway, players can't metagame you about guns if the world was created by the Gods and without a Gun God there wouldn't be any Guns.

>>53683591
What about pink jeweler's rouge?

>>53683124
Give them guns they'd like to have then, and make enemies start using them too because "they were there at the time". Problem solved.

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>>53683683

>>53683988
Wrong.
This just makes the campaign shit for anyone at the table that doesn't use guns.

>>53683988
I have a person trying to play a Barbarian and another trying to play a Druid, so no, it'd just make them leave and I have no interest in having fucking submachineguns that can full attack at BAB every round and have 30 bullet magazines and do 3d8 damage

>>53654396
This behavior, and players who care far less about roleplaying, acting, storytelling, and immersion than they do about pumping stats, using badass rule-of-cool spells/maneuvers/superpowers, and killing endless hordes. I really hate this. And I suspect my generation is so full of both because they grew up with video games, where it's always been "Attack the enemy repeatedly while they do the same to you until one of you is dead" and "Look at all these COOL abilities! Bet you can't wait to grind your way up this skill tree!"

>>53654396
>Party is fighting a group of gnolls, about 10-11
>After killing 4 or so, the rest of the gnolls retreat
>One player stops everything and asks me directly
What the fuck why did they run away

Because they wanted to live you dumb shit

>>53683591
>Or you can just say guns don't work. All the elements that make gun powder work and function just fine, but mixing them together just doesn't make gun powder
You can, but it's a cop out. The kind of cop out that instantly puts me off a setting.

I don't like the medieval period anyway so guns are never a problem for me, I prefer to play bronze age or iron age fantasy.

>>53684099
>not using guns when they exist

Sounds like their problem

>>53684492
Honestly, this is one of the reasons I moved to less popular systems (like GURPS), where advancement is much less apparent and not full of power-level jumps and shiny stuff you get at level X.

Also the player base on less popular systems seems to be more into roleplaying and all that good stuff.

>>53684539
Don't forget how they sometimes start whining about how you're "stealing" their loot and XP by having your enemies do something other than throw themselves on the PCs swords.

>>53684654
Shit, that's another thing that ticks me off.
>awarding loot and XP for creating corpses rather than for solving problems
There's a term for this but I can't seem to remember it, where you incentivize a metric that's close to, but not quite, the thing you want to encourage, and people fixate on the metric instead of the actual thing it's supposed to promote.

>>53684770
Goodhart's law, I think.

>>53684817
That's the one.

>>53684770
>awarding loot and XP for creating corpses rather than for solving problems
Technically, creating corpses is one way to solve a problem

>>53652486
Oh no you and this DM aren't on the same page about what you're interested in! It's certainly not like you could be an adult and talk about it or simply walk away!

While there certainly are DMs that go too far are you retarded enough to think that the argument "Not everything in a fantasy setting needs to be grounded in reality!"="OMG FLYING PIGS SO RANDUM!"

By the fact that you're playing a fantasy setting that has magic you're already defying being grounded in reality, and there are a number of people who get a stick shoved so far up their ass that they refuse to budge beyond this stick of measurement even for the sake of balance. The fact that you jumped to assuming the worst in people and clearly ignored the fact that some people give some players/GMs a hard time when they say might make a 'super-natural' display of physical ability that's not possible in real life and jumped instantly to dragon-cows says a lot about you.

>>53669941
In my recent game the Guild of Dungeoneering revisits the dungeon. They reconstructs traps, lay out some treasure, regrow the mold spores, and release a few monsters.

>>53685355
>The fact that you jumped to assuming the worst in people
And yet here you are doing the same exact thing. Just as he is arguing against a strawman, so are you, just from the other side.

Also, this has already been pointed out earlier in the thread,

>>53685355
We're in a thread dedicated to bitching about things and you're surprised someone finds a way to turn a post into something to bitch about?

>>53684900
But not the only way. Encounters don't need to literally be combat-based, you can literally get experience for outwitting the Duke in a public debate because it is, in fact, an encounter.

File: file.png (232KB, 1006x882px) Image search: [Google]

232KB, 1006x882px

>>53683202
You sure?

>>53682700
>He's right though
any arguments or are you just another (you) fisher?

>>53683683
Nice reference bro

>>53685383
That looks on its face like an activity that both requires alot of manpower and is completely unprofitable.

>>53684492
holy shit this so much

>>53685383
Doesn't the local law wnforcement take any issue to them going around turning completely pacified areas into fresh danger pits?

>>53685943
Arguments are unnecessary. This is one of those "you don't know how little you don't know" situations.

>>53684492
>And I suspect my generation is so full of both
Do you just not know what old tabletop RPGs were like

>>53684654
>>53684770
>>53684817
That's really another "Bad DM" symptom, although it's a much more subtle one that most people (myself included) take a lot longer to recognize and rectify. Players are ALWAYS going to try to game the system a bit - the problem here is the metric. You're rewarding behavior you don't actually want (murderhoboing).

When all is said and done, Positive Reinforcement is probably the most important tool in a DM's bag. You control the availability and rate of rewards, completely. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the PC's are lab mice in your maze. If you don't want PC's fighting to the death every confrontation, don't put a "fight to the death" lever in the maze with a treat attached to it. If you want them to try diplomacy more, reward that when it happens. If you want them to think tactically, reward it. And so on.

>>53683124
You're overthinking it. For guns in the 1400's, you can just use the exact same rules as crossbows. Range, damage and reload times are all close enough that it doesn't make a meaningful difference... they just have to find different ammo.

>>53682236
>We just weren't allowed to do anything about it because the DM said so.
That sounds like a DM dictating player actions, which is a big no-no. It's in his purview to tell you the consequences of your actions (even if they're severe) and he can put constraints on your actions within the framing of the scene, but he doesn't get to say what your actions you actually choose. Might be time to stage a coup.

>>53689312
>Range
>reload times
It isn't the 1400s, it's 1400.

>>53652749
think about it like this

There's a handful of White nations irl, America, Canada, and then the European area cluster

Then there's about as many countries full of black Africans, and almost as many full of less brown but still brown people littering the south and east coast of the Mediterranean sea

There's exactly one nation of Jews, and a few of asians and slavs

>>53661405
>I worldbuilt multiple orc and human kingdoms, and so far my players have interacted with a grand spaking 1 of them

That's your own fault. Why haven't people from other kingdoms played a role in the game? What is stopping you from having a foreigner or two show up at some point?