>move and try to find a local gaming group >meet and everyone

>>55234626
Are you going to post an exemple?

>>55234734
>cant do that

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>>55234626
I can't even picture what your talking about.

>>55234626
The DM wrote a plot out. Made characters and encounters and other sorts of set pieces for you to see. They made something for you to enjoy. When you see that, and you decide 'lol, I steal a boat and sail 1000 miles to the north pole', you are literally taking the time and effort they put into the story they made for you and throwing it in the garbage. If you can't appreciate the work that the DM does this hobby probably isn't for you at all.

>>55236475
>not implementing a lore-friendly barrier to prevent this from happening
>"you notice a sign at the docks that says 'caution: you will be kill by gryphon!"
>"As you begin I sail out, the boat is attacked by a pack of ocean gyphons"
>"they effortlessly shred your flesh and sink your boat, reroll a new character"
Done

>>55236475
Counterpoint:
If the GM wants someone to write a book he should just do that, no reason to make players sit through the process.

>>55236475
If you want people to read your D&D fanfic, post it in a forum, don't drag players in under false pretext.

>>55236475
Go write a book.

>>55236475
>They made something for you to enjoy.
>Run game in a way so as not to be enjoyable for anyone involved.

The thing to remember as a DM is that all the prep-work you do is still useful even if it doesn't get used in a session. That cool little encounter you've got planned out can be used later. That NPC you've been working on can show up in another session.

If your players are in a shitty mood because you've used your DM authority to repeatedly and flagrantly block player actions, they're unlikely to be all that impressed by your awesome encounter. It doesn't matter how many hours you've sunk into preparing for a game if you fuck up the actual running of the game.

>>55236475
He just farmed out NPC craeation.

>>55236475
If you want 4 ghost writers for your D&D novel, have the good grace to pay them.

>>55236551
Well, there is two sides to be had. Its collab story telling. On one side the players should be able to go about things the way they want. But on the other they should go along with the plot the best the can.

We are playing a military campain you are all highly trained soldiers
session 1 start
Well Im going to sell my guns and open up a dairy farm

>>55236997
>you hear rumors, something is going down at the old marble quarry
-I go investigate the quarry
>NO, you have to investigate around town first.
-alright, I'll go talk to the town watch
>NO, you should ask about the rumors at the bar
-fine, I'll talk to the bartender
>NO, YOU WERE SUPPOSE TO TALK TO THE SHADOWY FIGURE IN THE CORNER.

It's hard to be on script when he forgot to print you one out.

>>55236997
>We are playing a military campain you are all highly trained soldiers
>session 1 start
>Well Im going to sell my guns and open up a dairy farm

Then you adapt and show that the world is not so peaceful and that an invading army breaks the peace of his dairy farm. This should spur his military training and if the player wills it, makes a resistance and turns his humble dairy farm into one of the most important battle in the war.

>>55236540
Why gryphons? Why not something that makes sense with the ocean, like seabears or deepwater geese?

>>55236997
>We are playing a campain you are all destined to slay a lich before his darkness consumes the world
>session 1 start
>Well Im going to fight for gay rights

>>55237133
No, you admonish the player for trolling, not fuck over the players who wanted to stick with the theme.

And if the rest of them go along with the trolling player, you stop running the game and have a chat with them about it.

>>55236475
Being a gm means being flexible with your plot and accepting that the path you planed out will have quite a few bumps and jumps, however, if your a player and deside to do something that retarded youre the problem in that situation

>>55237133
a /tg/ story comes to mind when reading that,
>>55237201
Yeah that one

>>55237186
It's nautical griffons, 50% gull 50% sea lion, 100% freaky sounds, dive attacks and five pound liquid fish shits from the sky.

>>55237186
Dude seagull griffins that are houscats mixed with gulls would be awful to deal with. They breed super fast, have a tendency to flock and they're obnoxious and invasive. I'm probably gonna use those.

>>55236475
This is a solid post.
I agree with it completely and wholeheartedly.

I do wonder what thread the poster intended to reply to though, because it clearly makes no sense in response to OP.

Be careful when tabbed browsing anon.

>>55236475
>not lovingly crafting a huge sandbox with detailed large setpieces but vague smaller places to explore
>not having a setting tailor made for "go explore this and bring back what you find" adventures
>not being a smooth enough GM to have easily expandable ideas in every direction, or just having something happen no matter which way the players go

If you need to tell a story that bad, it's not hard to breadcrumb your players into doing it for you

>>55237186
>he's never watched griffons diving for Dolphins or tuna.
>he's never come to the aid of beach goers surrounds by the winged rats shrieking "mine"

>>55237210
This

>>55237117
I agree with this. The first thing should of been enough
>>55237133
No. If im playing im going to go along with the story thats put out infront of me. if I want to go derail the plot then Ill go and write a book about farming and let everyone get on with the game.
>>55237201
Thats a good story too.

>>55237250
Sorry this was meant for
>>55236582
>>55236635
>>55236650

Players can totally have fun writing your book for you, you just have to be good at staying loose with your idea so they think it's their idea.

>>55237250
>>not lovingly crafting a huge sandbox with detailed large setpieces but vague smaller places to explore
>>not having a setting tailor made for "go explore this and bring back what you find" adventures
>>not being a smooth enough GM to have easily expandable ideas in every direction, or just having something happen no matter which way the players go
Wait, isn't that how you should DM anyway?

>>55237210
Have to agree with this one here. If your group has decided together to play a campaign about professional soldiers then going against the entire concept is just base contrarianism and should not be tolerated, by the GM or other players.

>>55237331
See that's what I thought. It's easy on the GM, and the players love it. Super episodic games with only a vague plot are fun for everyone, it's why action cartoons in the 90s and early 00s were so popular

>>55236997
>Im going to sell my guns and open up a dairy farm
How fucking expensive are these weapons?

>>55237133
>Then you adapt and show that the world is not so peaceful and that an invading army breaks the peace of his dairy farm.
Where'd he get a dairy farm from?


Anyway, this is blatant bait and switch PC change.
The GM okayed a highly trained soldier, not a dairy farmer.
You don't allow a player to switch his barbarian in a low-magic game for a cyborg minotaur necromancer.
You don't let the Call of Cthulhu investigators fuck off and drive to Miami for sex in the sun.
You play the damn game.

OP's GM wasn't playing the game either, just on the other end of the spectrum.

>>55237356
>Super episodic games with only a vague plot are fun for everyone, it's why action cartoons in the 90s and early 00s were so popular
You can also explain your setting to the players then ask them what they'd like to do in that world
Then you create a campaign based on your world + the players expectation

T. GM that fused his setting and his player's wish to explore the world to create a campaign in which they expand the InLore map of the known world

>>55237396
I've done exactly this. The only real description the players have is "the world is floating islands. These islands are part of these countries [insert bullet point description]. Everything else is fantasy wilderness. Have fun!

>>55237356
>Super episodic games with only a vague plot are fun for everyone, it's why action cartoons in the 90s and early 00s were so popular
I like to imagine sessions as episodes.
I try to wrap things up by the end, or at least reach a good stopping point, each episode has a clear goal but also touches on the ongoing plot and longterm goals of the PCs, sometimes there is less action and more focus on character development.
I like it.

>>55237228
>not having literally all birds and mammals in your setting already replaced with griffonesque mammalbirds

>>55237419
This is great! ...for some players.

>>55237433
That would actually be an incredibly interesting ecosystem. Especially with a setting like >>55237419 has, where everything being able to fly makes sense.

>>55237433
Just go all avatar on it.
Beardogs, badgermoles, porcattle.

>>55237419
I want to play in your game.

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>>55237486
Sorry about the mediocre writing but here's the setting if you wanna read it

>>55237537
Not poster but, Cool bro this is going in my reading list.

>>55236475
>If you can't appreciate the work that the DM does this hobby probably isn't for you at all.
If a dm can't give his players the freedom to make their own story and decisions, this hobby isn't for him.

>>55237654
>>55237537
Yes poster, and same, thanks.

>>55237654
>>55237706

No problem, hope you like it

>>55234734
I've got one.

We roll up 3 lv 1 fighters. Cousins from a family owned logging business. We're going to explore a region and see if it's suitable to move the family to.
Dm liked the concept of 3 lumberjack types setting up a camp, building a homestead, etc. We players really loved it.
First session...we ignore a weird rock pattern that clearly looked magical.
The dm sent a pack of barbarians to wipe us out.
"I mean why didn't you all check out that magic portal? "

He was so focused on his little faggotportal, that he gladly killed us when we ignored it.

>>55236475
Man I wonder how the fuck you'd handle a game of Traveller.

>>55236450
Underrated post

Teehee Maccaroni is the bane of my fucking existence.

Every fucking campaign that my GM runs inevitably at some point involves running into an NPC named "Teehee Maccaroni," who the GM affectionately describes as "an epic level sorcerer who's also a retarded nudist gnome."

Teehee Maccaroni wander the countryside with a unique Rod of Wonders powered by "retard magic" shoved up his anus, and he casts the Rod of Wonders by diddling his penis. He says nothing but his own name in different inflections and the phrase "I like-a the goodberry, gimme gimme the goodberry." The GM thinks it's hilarious to have this character show up during the middle of encounters we're struggling at and start jerking off magic everywhere.

But the worst part is his chant. He wanders around chanting his name, so when he's about to show up the GM will start low;
Tee-hee-hee, Maccaroni Maccaroni
Tee-hee-hee, Maccaroni Maccaroni
And then get louder and louder until he's fucking shouting
TEE HEE HEE, MACCARONI MACCARONI!
TEE HEE HEE, MACCARONI MACCARONI!

And the table loves it! The other guys I play with think this is the best shit! Teehee Maccaroni has been our table's de-facto inside joke, our signature "running gag" for six years now. When that chant starts up, everyone else joins in like a ritual; the whole table is expected to start chanting "TEE HEE HEE, MACCARONI MACCARONI" by the end, and every fucking time I refuse because this is some embarrassing circa-2002 Penguin of Doom shit, it's always the same thing; "There goes user again! No fun allowed around user! Anon's just a big grouch who's getting angry because we're making him touch Teehee Maccaroni's penis again! Why won't you just let us have fun with this character, he's just here for dumb fun, you stick-in-the mud!"

These motherfuckers are all over 25 years old.

Teehee Maccaroni is going to be the death of me.

>>55236450
>>55237819
>Underrated post
Indeed

>>55234626
>actions have consequences
That's not what "railroad" means idiot

>>55237133
>>We are playing a military campain you are all highly trained soldiers
>>session 1 start
>>Well Im going to sell my guns and open up a dairy farm
You can't sell your gun, you are in the dungeon and there are orcs inf ront of you, roll initiative.

>>55238448
Come on anon, you're smarter than that.

>>55237785
That's actually a perfect example of natural and simulationist sandbox consequences.

Maybe some real adventurers will come along later and see three lumberjack NPC corpses as a clue that there is a dangerous portal nearby.

>>55238485
"REEEEE RAILROADING" OP 9/2017

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>>55236997
>wanting to play as an NPC

>>55236475
For fuck's sake
That is not how this fucking works.

Tabletop gaming is a GROUP activity. Compromise is not only recommended, it is a NECESSITY. You NEED to have trust on both sides of the equation, and you NEED to find a point on the spectrum where everybody is comfortable and enjoying themselves. The players are not the GM's props. The GM is not a slave to the players. Everybody is doing this of their own free will with (hopefully) no coercion, so why the fuck are we STILL having trouble with this? It's not hard! The only goal is for everybody to be enjoying themselves! You can post hilariously polarised examples of bad players or bad GMs all fucking day but that doesn't mean that either situation is the ideal, or even particularly good in any way, because in all of these retarded examples, we are assuming that people are being FUCKING IDIOTS who are incapable of understanding each other or communicating at a basic human level, which makes the entire hypothetical utterly, utterly pointless.

The fact that this argument still happens on a near daily basis is definitive proof that God is either absent, or unimaginably negligent.

>>55238645
had a hard day dude?

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>>55236475

first rule of DMing, do not attempt to make barriers, if the party wants to go somewhere else then build a story on the path as they go.

don't build set pieces, it is not a video game, it is a pen and paper RPG.

always be prepared to improv, PC's will always find ways to shit up your session plans so make sure they are flexible.

if someone is deliberately shitting up the session for no reason and acting completely without reason ask him to find another group.

>>55238645
You are ignoring the fact that the DMs responsibility is an order of magnitude greater than each player's and they players should respect that.

>>55238537
>Maybe some real adventurers will come along later and see three lumberjack NPC corpses as a clue that there is a dangerous portal nearby.

Maybe. Then again, maybe the PC's were focused on survival.
Winter coming soon, shelter for us and our animals was needed. A supply of wood for heat. Fishing/hunting/gathering enough food to get us by the "Stormy"season.
But ya...let's all stop work, and spend a few days having our 1lv fighters, study the arcane markings on these stones. Because that seems like a much better use of our time, than eating and not freezing to death.
Clearly the portal (magically made to look like an odd stack of rocks), should have been the focus of our efforts.
As lv 1 fighters, investigation of old obscure magic is right up their alley!

Ffs...

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>>55237186

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>>55238688

>>55238725
Translation: I dm to tell my fanfic story, and since I spent time writing up my fanfic (that sucks so bad no one wants to read it), the PC's should do exactly what I want them to do.

Ftfy

>>55238725
The DM's responsibility means jack shit if he doesn't have players.

>>55238380
I can see the scene, 4 neckbeards spilling their Mountain Dew while chanting 'TEE HEE HEE!' on the cusp of laughter, while Anon sits there, 100 lbs lighter then the slimmest of the others and in a button-up as opposed to the quirky and ironic printed t-shirts of his compatriots, his eyes glazed over like his mind is trying to escape the reality of his situation.
He stares forward into nothingness, as his so called friends spit up chunks of badly chewed Cheetos from laughing to hard...

>>55238817
Translation: I have never GMed before in my life but it can't possibly be hard. You just wander in late with a character sheet and roll dice like me, right?

>>55239052
You describe the 16th layer of hell...

>>55239088
Running a game isn't hard though. Not nearly as difficult as you make it out to be, at least.

>>55239088
Don't you have some twilight saga short stories to write your dmpc into?

>>55238721
>don't build set pieces, it is not a video game, it is a pen and paper RPG.
Alternatively, do.
But move those set pieces to "build a story on the path as they go".

The poster you responded to was 100% right, but seems wrong juxtaposed with OP.

>>55236475
>They made something for you to enjoy.
This is why a player that searches for an excuse to take the plothook is infinitely preferable to the player that says, "LOL, fuck that Imma gonna go the opposite direction because fuck you." or more realistically, says a variation of "Meh, I don't feel like doing that, what else ya got?".
If a GM presents a scenario that you can't possibly roleplay your way into without pathetically obvious metagaming, he has failed and either your roleplaying or his planned adventure must give way.
This is why everyone being on the same page is paramount.

>>55239282
It's really not.

Been doing it as permaDM for a long time.
My prep time is normally about 5-10 minutes as the players are making up their character sheets.
I'll ask a couple questions, and then tailor the open adventure to them.
9/10 times, they will pick a path, and I'll just toss in the details.

>>55239052
>in a button-up as opposed to the quirky and ironic printed t-shirts of his compatriots
I have never GMed for a group of strangers, but if ever did, I have wanted to show up at the LGS in a three piece suit, pressed and tailored, with my notes, books, and dice in a briefcase.
Then, as the game proceeds, loosen then eventually remove my tie, remove my jacket, come back from a break with my dress shirt removed and my most awesome shirt revealed.
For no real raisen.

My dad's prof at university did this worse on his first day to great effect.

>>55239285
>Alternatively, do.
>But move those set pieces to "build a story on the path as they go".

Sometimes I'll draw up an encounter ahead of time.
Like a kobold cleric guarded by a giant spider and 4 kobold guards.
Now, if I say "hey guys the Farmers Union wants you to kill the kobold cleric...." They may frown and not want to.
If I say the Farmers want you to find missing cow....and said cow happens to be in a cave with above mentioned kobolds...well, who's to know other than me?
Or maybe the PC's say "fuck this village, we're out"...that night when they camp, there may be a kobold attack...
Or maybe they flee to a city...next time they enter the sewer..guess what they find.

>>55239370
That might actually work for Shadowrun, add a pair of mirror shades and you are good to go...

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>>55239384
I'm still not sure if I'm okay with how rampant quantum ogres have become in this hobby...

>>55237201
>We are playing a campain you are all destined to slay a lich before his darkness consumes the world
If the OP of that (probably fake) story had actually said this, he wouldn't be derided as a That GM.

>>55237226
Welp I'm stealing that

>>55239829
The beauty of it is that you can't actually prove an encounter is a quantum ogre.

>>55238537
No, that's fucking stupid.
Give them clues before killing them.

>>55238645
God is That GM.
Everything is scripted
Your actions don't matter
GMPCs everywhere
It's an impossibly detailed sandbox
There is no direction
No one has a clue on what to do next

>>55237133
No, you tell him to roll up a new character so the other players can have the military campaign they signed up for instead of watching a solo campaign about farming.

>>55237226
>>55240213
Me too.

>>55237785
You did ignore the portal. Maybe some more evil portents would have been nice, along with a rising threat rather than a Germanic WAUGH, but his idea was sound in theory.

>>55236475
The true patrician DM's reaction:
>sure
>*reskins characters and encounters to fit an epic adventure to the north pole*
Although really Session Zero is the patrician solution.

>>55238380
I hope Teehee Macaroni is, uh, pasta

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>>55241469
AS OLD AS F'N TIME NIMROB

>>55238769
>Clearly the portal should have been the focus of our efforts.
>As lv 1 fighters, investigation of old obscure magic is right up their alley!
It's impossible to have posted something containing more irony, well done.

>>55240299
>Give them clues before killing them.
>>First session...we ignore a weird rock pattern that clearly looked magical.

Again, it's 100% valid simulationist sandbox DMing.

>>55237331
No, not at all. It's only one style. One I happen to hate, personally.

>>55241582
Yeah but it's not simulating the right thing, is it? They went in for realistic wilderness shenanigans, and got...barbarian portals.

i've had DMs go out of their way to punish the party for not solving problems the right way. i understand consequences for actions or whatever but no amount of logic or pointing out rules text would dissuade him from basically knocking the pieces off the table. he would then blame us for everywhere our party went being a smoldering ruin where everyone hated us.

i have limited tabletop experience so correct me if i'm wrong but as a dm isn't it basically guaranteed your players are going to come up with a solution to the problem you present to them that you didn't foresee? shouldn't you at least come to terms with that instead of inventing ridiculous and nonsensical consequences for the party's behavior just because you think they deserve punishment?

idk i'd rather have an uncreative dm that made invisible walls than one that threw temper tantrums

Am I the only one who cringes at this

>roll nat 20 or nat 1 on skill check in pathfinder/3.5

>Le auto succeed/auto fail.

Fuck off newfags

>>55241671
wrong thread huh

>>55239829
I make the encounters on the fly as the players are making choices, it's no even quantum ogres that move from place to place. Not even I know what the players will do or fight.

>>55241661
thinking outside the box is usually rewarded

>>55241617
How do you handle player agency?

>>55241671
If the player cannot succeed on a 20 or fail on a 1 why is he rolling exactly?

>>55242438
Because he threw his die and yelled what he was doing without asking first.

>>55242492
If the GM doesn't ask for a die roll it doesn't count, because the GM controls the pacing and between you saying "my character does a backflip jumping the empire state build" and your character trying it a thousand things can happen.

>>55237133
The subsequent court martial is brief. You're found guilty of desertion as well as theft and distribution of military property. You'll be put to the firing squad in the morning.

Now if you'd like to make a character with reason to be in the campaign you signed up for that'd be great, otherwise you're welcome to leave.

>>55242399
I don't do sandboxes. The "generic" way I lay out my campaigns is that there's a setting and a grand goal which effectively topples the setting. For example, the setting is the Shotgun Kingdoms and you have to kill the Shotgun King.

The players can kill the Shotgun King however they like, so long as the dice work. But the Shotgun setting will be full of little "plothooks" which the players can take advantage of -- the radicalised soldiers, their new shotgun religion, the old witch faith, the foreigners, the irrigation system, disgruntled tributaries, secrets hidden in mass graves, even the Shotgun King's circle of head honchos.
And these hooks will trundle along with or without the players, while still reacting to their actions. So perhaps the soldiers stage a mutiny, but the players have been ignoring them, so they inevitably martyr themselves just as they always wanted to. Or maybe they'd unwittingly killed their wild prophet long before, so the mutiny never happened and the new faith was fully subsumed into the Shotgun King's civic nationalist utopia. I promise geopolitical wank is only part of the setting.

This is very much not an open sandbox, and is not episodic. But, again, that's just one style. Plenty of others work -- my GM has a style similar to mine, except he'll continually introduce tailored events to complicate our plans (less simulationist, more narrativist).

My Cleric keeps Guiding Bolt'ing everything to death. Motherfucker dedicated 4 spell slots to it no less, seeing as they have multiple sources of healing this hasn't been an issue yet.
But yeah when he's bursting enemies for 16 damage AND giving advantage on them the party tends to plow through encounters with light wounds, if any.

I'm starting to feel like I need to start fudging encounters a bit, but just increasing enemy health and hit chance is lame.

>>55237786
Ahh Traveller, one month saviour of a frontier gardenworld and paid in rare flowers and a maidens smile.

Another month another planet and you are a Drug kingpin trying to bring highly addictive organic compounds planetside.

>>55242685
It seems really sandboxy to me.

>>55242750
I have literally no idea how D&D works and I don't know anything about your campaign but I'd personally tailor the campaign around it. Have some unholy Lord Inquisitor who's twisting everything it means to be a man of faith (go full Reformation-era Catholicism, Jesuits, Richelieu and all). He, too, is leveraging cleric shenanigans for massive damage. You can do some stuff with mirroring the cleric PC, and some stuff which forces him to use his specific power much more cleverly (like, I dunno, abominations which are healed by his attacks).

All while making sure to engage the other players, ofc. Like either making the BBEG more complicated, or making this particular BBEG only one of the BBEGs, each one a ~le dark mirror~ of the PCs.

>>55241469
Of course it's pasta, it's macaroni.

Tee hee hee.

>>55242817
I would say it shares some similarities, but on the whole is very different from a true wide-open sandbox.

It's much more focused. In >>55237250's campaigns, you'd go off somewhere exploring and run into whatever adventures the GM happened to place in your area. The players are very reactive -- they go off somewhere, *then something happens to them*, then they resolve it. Sort of like a Saturday-morning cartoon. Perhaps there are bigger hooks which lead to longer "questlines", but the basic structure is this way.
Whereas in my campaigns, you have a clear goal, and the setting is interconnected, and the campaign is one long story. This is so much more easy to build (for me at least), and more interesting to me too, because I prefer tightly-focused, active games.

Just saying again that this is about there being no "one true GM style", not about mine being better.

>>55242961
That was his joke you berk.

>>55242951
Currently they're fighting cultists who use elemental spells.

>>55241661
>as a dm isn't it basically guaranteed your players are going to come up with a solution to the problem you present to them that you didn't foresee?
Yes, but that solution isn't guaranteed to work.
Creativity is generally to rewarded, but each GM is different.
Each should reward the behavior they want from their players.
That could be creativity, role-playing, tactics, RAW obedience, or raw obedience.
What they should be is clear about their intentions from the beginning.

But it sounds like you had a child for a GM.

>>55242994
You can change it (with tact, obvs). You don't have to, but it's what I'd do.

>>55242962
I miss read the original post. I actually prefer your style + quantum ogres with quantum health

>>55242817
It requires the Players make characters whose goal is to kill the Shotgun King, which is a solid step away from Sandbox, but you're not wrong.

>>55236475
>Not having a map of various naval vessels on hand at all times for spontaneous nautical detours
>Not having Ice-Hydra statlines built just in case the party finds itself in the north pole

Shit DM is shit.

>>55237133
>Giving your players enough money to buy a freaking dairy farm in the first session

Deserved it.

>>55243186
What are you talking about?
Everyone knows that an average low-level grunt soldier's guns can be sold for moneys enough to buy any kind of dairy farm!

>>55237133
>If someone is being a little disruptive prick reward as hard as possible
Where'd you come up with that idea?

>>55241365
For fighters that know nothing about magic stuff?

He said "you guys should have moved the stones around and activated the portal"
Wtf?
1)why would we?
2)how would we know how to
3)lv1 fighters aren't really trained to investigate and experiment with magic stones that create a portal to somewhere
4) if he wasn't willing to run a survival homestead game, he should have said so and new concepts could be created
5) there was a huge time vs winter onset, starvation was our big concern

>>55239088
Listen nig, I ran a 4 year long game with a huge number of players. Sometimes your work will be wasted. Sometimes you will have to make shit up on the fly. Sometimes players will do something idiotic or brilliant and bypass a challenge.

If you're a good GM you fucking roll with it. If players are acting their characters out as they created them and doing things within the realm of possibility in the setting THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO FUCKING DO IT. There is literally no reason to say "You can't do that" unless they ask to teleport into heaven and fuck god's ear. If someone wants to talk to some random NPC you at the very least describe what they did and that they didn't really get anything of use from the conversation.

>>55241641
Exactly.
The dm could have nayed our concepts and said "nah fuck a survival/skill heavy game".
We'd have made a more balanced party and tossed in some arcane character.
We agreed on a homestead/building campaign, and we got mystic stones that can be formed into a magical portal.

>>55243081
Any sandbox where the players have no goal before they sit down to make characters is doomed to failure. If you want to run a "true" sandbox game, then you let the players come up with their own goal and build the world around that but that still means they need to come up with a goal they can all agree on and characters who all want to pursue that goal.

>>55243399
The idea's not a bad one at its core. It's "this is clearly what the player would rather do, so let's incorporate it into the story so it has some stakes and actual narrative weight". The problem is what the other players want to do, and what you want to do too.

>>55238721
>always be prepared to improv
I've literally done this for 35 fucking years. I write down a note or two, more of a general concept, and then run with it.
Everyone thinks I'm so super good and frankly I think I'm not all that good. Oh well, the ppl love it so whatever
>t. actual oldfag that's been (forever)DMing shit since the age of 7

>>55243693
>(forever)DMing shit since the age of 7
>not sorting out LARP on the playground
pleb get off my board

>>55243600
He's biggest problem wasn't introducing it organically and instead making it a gotcha' moment.

>>55236475
You're missing a very critical point to OP's story. How can you appreciate the DM's work if the DM is the one who is actively barring you from appreciating his own work?

>>55243973
That's a fair assessment.
And that was our complaint.
Could we have seen something to give our noob fighters some reasonable clue that it was important?
Throwing 8 lv1 barbs at us, then when we die saying " gah, you all should have focused on figuring out how the portal worked", was pretty fucked up.
It was a classic case of the DM agreeing to a campaign concept, and then doing a 180 after character creation.
Why did he?
Because he came up with an idea about a magical portal in the woods, and deemed it above the preagreed upon concept.

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>>55236475
No one will ever love you hear, anon. Come with me. I have such sights to show you.

>>55236475
>When you see that, and you decide 'lol, I steal a boat and sail 1000 miles to the north pole', you are literally taking the time and effort they put into the story they made for you and throwing it in the garbage
Boats are easy to steal?
I'm surprised they haven't already been stolen.

>>55243638
The problem is that player is being dishonest by signing up for a military campaign which they clearly did not want to be a part of. Nothing about the idea isn't bad.

>>55242973
Tee hee hee.