TFW GM thread

In 20 years of gaming ive sat down and played with hundreds of people. About a third bother to learn the rules and setting info relevant to their character.

One in 20 bothers to read the entire book.

To be fair, that's kinda the completely reasonable thing to do for a person in that situation with that kind of power, if I'm hearing it right. They might be hoping for challenges that are not so easy to bypass.

Well, it was a premade AP, and her character was made by her boyfriend and she didn't even know her spells, so I don't think more challenge would have been good. It's just that the easiest solution (usually magic) is seldom the most satisfying. Players feel clever for a bit, but complain that they didn't get to do much.

I have a much smaller sample size but this sounds about right.
Also you'll have to find as decent a balance between tardos and bazingas as you can if you ever want a full party because decent players are really hard to come by. Don't hold onto shit players, they're completely expendable.

>one player is absolute worst player I've ever met. Blatant power gamer, uncreative, doesn't ever shut the fuck up doesn't work as part of a group well
>can't kick them because ill lose more than half the group if they leave

Fuck I'm pissed. Everyone else are really solid players.

i've gmed GURPS for the last 29 years, and, lets say that my local community looks a looks different from this. Even my neighbors grandson read the entire basic set, i don't really know his age but he studies with my younger daughter, so i'd say 13. I can't believe shit is that harsh out there, dude, 1/3, thats fucking ridiculous.

If he's ruining the group and game as a whole then surely whatever happens after he leaves won't be any worse?

>my players usually put no more effort into their characters than "lawful good human fighter"
>ask them to start writing backstories for their characters so I can tie them to the campaign
>they seem to enjoy it and a few even write short stories about their characters
>start incorporating factions, groups, and characters from what they've written
>blank stares as they don't recognize the names of characters and places THEY CAME UP WITH

God damn.

>tfw I wish I had a GM who would do this
>there are people who have one and can't appreciate that

How the fuck can any group of people be this slack jawed and incompetent

>GM asks players for backstory
>I spend a couple of hours fleshing out a neat character
>End up writing 14 pages
>Don't want to be That Guy, so I make a bulleted list of important info
>Mention this to the GM, apologise for the lengthy bio and just walk him through the six-point bulleted list
>He tells me I have autism and should stop making such complex characters
>The other players have backgrounds of about three sentences or less, and they're all just walking memes

Which one of us has autism? I can't tell.

You were excessive, but the others were just retarded.

14 pages would raise one hell of a red flag if I was the DM.

Oh god I know that feel. I try to keep it short and let it grow in game, so by several sessions later it is very fleshed out and the table gets to all hear the story that is mostly made up on the spot.

I am the only person who has any backstory beyond one sentence and it could still only fill one page at most.

You aren't an autist, but you still overdid it.

The other guys are just shit eaters.

>Second Time GMing SR
>Players asks in he can initiate a chargen
>Look at initiation in the book
>Doesn't say anything about not allowing it
>Say yes, it costs a shitton of karma anyway so it's okay.
>Comes up with an initiate grade 8 character.
>Never played with initiation before so i accepted him
>Magic 8 Phys adept proceeds to be stupidly powerful against normal mooks i threw in for a test.
>Decide to up my game
>Throw him two vamps
>Doesn't manage to hit any of them, barely escapes with his life
>Rest of the encounters are a struggle between making it easy cheap or absolutely overkill.
>He's too entrenched in the current plot to kill him off, and i felt kind of a dick about trying to kill him.
>Other players complain.
> Player leaves off eventually due to the game turning into a clusterfuck by my attempts to challenge both him and his not-so-optimized team.
>Later find out initiation is not allowed in chargen.

At least the rest of the group decided to stick with me despite my fuckups.

I know long backstories can be a problem, but it was mostly fluff and snippets of history. I try not to write long stories, but I was just so inspired I couldn't help myself. We've all been there.

>>Don't want to be That Guy, so I make a bulleted list of important info

Good call.

>>Mention this to the GM, apologise for the lengthy bio and just walk him through the six-point bulleted list

Why?

I think your approach was fine, tbqh senpai.

Seriously, you ended up having fun writing a short story with the idea for your character; nothing wrong with that. What *would* have been wrong would be to plop it in front of the GM and chimp out when he didn't include every little thing about your family's legend in the game, but you didn't do that. Instead, you had the insight to look at it and go "yeah I got carried away, this is more than I need for a backstory" and you took the salient, character-defining bits and put them in a short list, and said "okay GM here's my backstory, and the long-form version I ended up writing for fun".

Sounds like your GM is one of the tabletop players who is secretly embarassed to roleplay, even with friends in a basement.

He saw the stack of paper and immediately started lamenting.

The answer is you're autistic and all your friends are retarded.

I'd love to play with you.

Thanks famalam

>Playing Call of Cthulhu derivitive (players may be lurking) on Roll20
>Spend 3+ hours prepping for every 2 hours we play
>Asking for complete input from players to make sure the game is enjoyable
>They say they are really enjoying themselves but I have to tell them not to play vidya during the sessions
>Normally missing at least one player from 6 player group
>New official module, making sure this is polished
>Entire maps cropped from the PDF's and uploaded
>Statblocks set for common enemies
>Message everyone 30m beforehand to remind 'em when it is
>10 minutes to
>One person messages saying he can't make it
>Other 5 don't reply
>Two are sitting in my teamspeak playing vidya seperately
>Instantly remember why I hate GMing with this group

Now I'm stuck in a position with not enough effort to GM.

I just ran my first session of pathfinder and the player said they liked it but...
There's one player who can actually roll play and takes initiative but the rest just sort of don't do anything.
I have to constantly say things like "ok its all you guys you control the scene" and the one guy doesn't want to hog the glory so he waits for someone else to talk creating an awkward silence over the skype call.

How can i get my players to actually you know fucking role play in a roll playing game.

>mfw no one makes a sound for 30 seconds

I'd find this story more interesting if I knew what chargen and initiation were. SR is Shadowrun, right?

Look up improv techniques.

Get everyone to count to 10 (/b/ style) without saying any other words. Any overlap and someone has to start at 1 again.

Little exercises like this help people get into sync with each other.

Daily reminder that a tabletop game only works if both the GM and players actually want to play. If they find video games more entertaining than playing an rpg one night a week with friends then they probably shouldnt be playing at all.

Yep.
Chargen is character generation.
Initiation is basically a way to get stronger magic wise. The street samurai gets better guns and cybernetics, the decker gets a better cyberdeck, programs and 1337 skillz, and the mage/adepts initiates. Basically, it increases your maximum magic rating and gives you some very powerful abilities

Idk man i dont think i have the leadership skill ot lead someone through that. I just want them to participate in the game they said they wanted to play.

Basically it's supposed to be something the players work for, and not something they have right off the bat, which is what broke the game?

Yeah, but the part that talks about initiation did not say anything about being restricted in chargen. But because it is not in the option in the first chapter of the book talking about how you can spend the SR equivalent of starting experience, you can't take it as starters.

>Put all my world's lore on a private forum for my group
>One reads it and prints out stuff for himself, his character comes off as an actual inhabitant of the world because he knows his history/religions/cultures
>Second guy reads it sparingly and knows the big stuff, his character comes across as a fish out of water sometimes, but it's never too bad
>Third guy doesn't read it at all and his character ends up holding stuff up because he doesn't understand the setting

Why does there always have to be that third guy? The first two are fine, but fuck, every game I've ever hosted there's always someone exactly like that third guy.

...I'm going to run a campaign for three people and I think this is going to happen. I know what each person will be.

Don't let it discourage you too much. Getting annoyed at shit like that is par for the course when running a campaign. You learn to enjoy the little moments the first two type of guy'll give you way more than you dread the bullshit the third guy brings.

>back when BigBang was first broadcast in our country, I think it was '09/'10
>friends watch the show
>sooner or later tabletops come up in the show
>XD RPG SO NERDY LETS PLAY SOME
>OH user used to play those back in hs didnt he
>they're usually decent people so I figure why not
>use some ruleslight d6 system and do a one-off dungeon crawl with them
>they like it
>"isnt this a little bit lacking ? We thought we get rules books and have stories and real interactions"
>I jump with joy
>in the end we settle down on PF, it was a newish system back then so I wanted to get into it myself
>they love the crunch
>they love the crawl
>when it comes to rping they stare at me like a deer into headlights
>they all pretty much lack the imagination to rp in any meaningful way
>arent there rules for RPing ? or rp classes ? RP skills ?
>well there's skill checks I guess ?!?!
>they now start rolling skill checks for everything
>I want to seduce the barmaid
>how do you do it
>I dunno I just want to see if I can
>rolls
>oh I could, so she tells me some information about the bandits right ?
>end up playing for over a year with me pretty much just rolling on random encounter tables or thinking up basic clichee plots
>they still all suck at RPing and think that rp = skill check
>they have fun
>I have some fun too
>usually we cook some dinner together or drink a bit

I had fun, but mostly because we were all friends. In the end it was a boring crawl and uninteresting crawl, like as a DM usually you're swamped with preperations but that year the most I made sure, is to bring pens and dices with me.

We havent played in years, some are kinda interested about 5e as they somehow heard about it.

Not sure if I want to start hosting crawls again.

My 12 years tends to agree with your twenty.

>Has someone that actually roleplays

My players make bags of stats to roll dice against bags of loot. I'm not entirely sure why they tabletop sometimes.

>Players walk into a cave entrance that is brightly lit from the sun outside.
>Rogue wants to hide and sneak in
>In full sunlight
>In front of two guards they know are hidden and watching from somewhere
>"Not gonna happen"
>"I don't even get to roll for it?"

This shit needs to stop.

Jesus Christ, has it been 13 years? And yeah, that's dead on.

Basically, I've crafted a huge world for these three to dick around in. There will be enough quest hooks/long term goals that they won't get bored unless they try. I've told them enough about the world that they should be able to do pretty well as they learn the little things. But that third guy has played things like 'loli summoner' and 'sticks-to-snakes skeleton' and now wants to play a really ugly fat guy in armor who wants to be famous.

>please don't fuck this up man

Yeah, and now I've stopped they're whining all the time for me to start again. I don't know what their deal is.

I'm the difficult player in the game I'm in right now.

Ask me anything!

Roy?

How did it came about ?

Like I had one game where I was the "problem" guy, because the rest of the party decided to be retarded, everyone had so week and unoptimized chars, that unless I was just jerking off during combat, I was stealing the show, which made everyone hate me.

An acquaintance of mine was starting up a campaign for a couple of friends. I asked if I could join, as I haven't had a table since high school.

Which is part of the issue. I feel like I'm stuck in the game - since if I left, the game would likely collapse, and since these people are a lot of my social group, I worry about the repercussions.

>group wants me to run a JoJo game
>none of them have read the manga
>all their character concepts are OC DONUT STEEL versions of the cast of part 3 and the characters from 4 that have appeared in the anime so far
>I just know they're going to want to change characters to whoever was in the latest episode that week whenever someone new is introduced

Good DMs don't run memes.

And generally running anything in an established IP is dangerous, because the characters will either get it, or they'll get it to a fault. Usually both at once.

>playing game where the players sit in a single base and go attack stuff when they want to
>want to remind players that a certain villain still exists
>"aha, he can ambush the supply lines that get food into their base, fantastic!"
>villain is built to be hard to fight but should be manage-able for four people to fight, so I decide to not have the party fight him until the new player gets introduced
>week that he starts
>shit comes up so he can't play
>i make up shit to delay, slice of life stuff
>next week
>he drops a hammer on his hand and breaks it
>i make up shit to delay, more slice of life stuff
>next week
>he tears a muscle in his leg, but can still come
>i'm relieved that he's alright as well as because he can still make it
>another player takes the week off for family business
>and next week the party is venturing off into the wilderness to go find something

I'm not the kind of GM that *needs* things to go a specific way but god fucking damn if luck hasn't fucked me over for a month straight now

>"I don't care enough to read the book, I just want to play the game"
>"Sorry, you'll have to find a different group to play with then."

And another That Guy problem solved by growing a fucking spine.

I don't read the whole book, but after awhile of tinkering and what-ifing I tend to know the rules better than most. It shouldn't be that hard to learn basic shit that's actually relevant to your current character.

>Bard wants to try diplomacy
>Against the people that don't like him
>"Not gonna happen"
>"I don't even get to roll for it?"
This shit needs to stop

>this literally happens in my game
>BUT I LITERALLY HAVE HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT AS A CLASS SKILL YOU FUCK
>THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT IT ALLOWS ME TO DO ARGH

Let them roll with huge penalties or against high DCs.

>Tell the player it doesn't work
>"Why not let me roll?!"
>Let the player roll, the DC is literally impossible to hit
>If they roll well they still complain
>If they roll a 20 they get super salty that they can't do it anyways for the 5% auto jump to the moon may-may

>I have the hiding in plain sight feat that I worked my entire character concept and build around.
>Nope, doesn't work since now all the guards have +50 to spot checks and find you.
Wow you're a shit GM.

This particular example is stupid and does not equate to the situation the other guy presented. A more appropriate one would be "I try diplomacy against people whose family I just killed". Unless you have some specific power that allows you to do it (), yeah, you're not even getting a roll.

On a related note, fuck uncalled checks in general
>I roll to persuade the kind to make us nobles and give us estates lol xD
>rolls 19
>smug grin
>that should do it, right?
>looks at me with a mixture of smug superiority and tentative expectation

Fuck you

So you're saying skill checks are idiotic and should never be used at all and it's better for player characters to have no non-combat utility whatsoever?

Being a good dm is hard. Unless you have really understanding and layed back friends, it takes immense effort to provide an enjoyable experience. The biggest key to being a dm, is knowing what the players want without asking them, because they don't know.

It's hard to find a dm that cares. Because once good players realize who they are dealing with, they never let go.

14 pages is overdone, but, i personally prefer overdone than underdone

If real people could have been represented by numerical skills, your "Reading Comprehension" would've been in negatives.

I am not saying skill checks are idiotic. I am saying that people should not rush ahead and roll them without a prompt from a GM unless the need for the check is unquestionable (e.g. rolling attack in combat).

Opposed checks and checks in general are a valuable instrument with a fail state - they should only be used where there are actually meaningful, real possibilities of success and failure. Literally throwing dice at everything you see with or without need or prompt is idiotic.

Grow a backbone.

Congratulations you just made one of the biggest strawmen I've seen in Veeky Forums

If you were joking I would probably chuckle

I think he was. No one is that stupid

Best way to solve this, from my experience, is by being specific in advance.

I loathe reading through a 20 page "OC do not steal" drivel and even if someone presents something enjoyable over 2-3 pages, frankly, I doubt I will be able to make a lot of use of it in a short run.

I always ask my players to give me:
- Three sentences that describe their character in general
- Three beliefs that they hold
- Three goals that they have OR three things that they would enjoy doing
The rest is built as we go along; I have a separate file for recording backstory stuff they come up with during game.

I also use a similar structure for a player selection questionnaire - except I ask to write all of the above without referring to the character's race or class

No, you're a shit player who thinks he's playing a videogame.

I find that half the time, you can DM the kind of game you want, and if you understand the system well enough, they'll enjoy that thoroughly.

I ran a dystopian intrigue magocracy DnD game and all of my friends were super skeptic. At the end of the campaign they told me how awesome it was and how they felt their decisions really impacted the world and how one of them even had trouble sleeping for awhile because the weight of the decision got to them so deeply. They got really really involved and it was a great campaign.

They all were really concerned it'd be crap when I said "This is what I'm running."

>>he drops a hammer on his hand and breaks it
>>he tears a muscle in his leg, but can still come
dude, what does he do for life? security on a maniac carpentry?

Next time something like that happens, pick a player at random (except the guy who's actually been doing shit) and say ", what are you doing?" Chances are they'll make something up if you put them on the spot like that.

i use this for my players.

I am not trying to start shit here, not at all.

But don't you think this is a little bit excessive?

And by a little bit I mean a fucking lot.

If you gave me that, I'd politely thank you for your time, then leave. I'm writing a first level character that I don't know precisely how I'm going to play or how it fits into the world, not filling out a dating profile. A *lot* of that is marginal at best.

Has the right of it. Aside from a light physical description, I'd probably also workshop with them on a few accomplishments and setbacks in their near past or something.

>I'd probably also workshop with them on a few accomplishments and setbacks in their near past or something
That's actually sounds interesting. I really like the 3x3 structure I outline above but asking them about actual achievements/failures might be nice twist.

The only problem I can see is that some players will, as usual, skewer the power curve and have their level 3 characters be retired generals, dragon slayers etc. But I guess they would've done it anyway.

...

This.

That's why you workshop with them, to keep things in check.

If they're low-level characters, there's a good chance they've never actually, say, killed a man. But they might have gotten a bit lucky in a minor heist, or killed a Rodent of Unusual Size that had cornered their sister in the barn.

>try a session 0/workshop session once
>tell it to my players in advance
>3 out of 5 send me character sheets/backstories
>reiterate that we will be having a session 0
>manage to survive until it
>we start
>"huh, user? what do you mean we don't get to go into the dungeon and start our adventure tonight?"
>act slightly bored and borderline offended throughout the entire evening

>11 pages without any of the backstory even written down

Gods forbid that someone with the class skill "Hide in plain sight" attempt to actually hide in plain sight. Next you're going to say you can't do sneak attack damage to a flat-footed opponent because he's already facing you.

>Starting at 10th leveI,you can spend 1 minute creating camouflage for yourself. Voumust have access to fresh mud, dirt. plants. soot. and other naturally occurring materiaIs with which to create your camouflage. Once you are camouflaged in this way,you can try to hide by pressing yourself up against a solid surface, such as a tree or wall, that is at least as tall and wide as you are. Vougain a +10 bonus to Dexterity (Stealth) checks as long as you remain there without moving or taking actions. Once you move or take an action or a reaction, you must camouflage yourself again to gain this benefit.

Read it. READ IT FAGGOT. READ THE ENTIRE THING NOT JUST THE FUCKING NAME YOU MEMEING SHITHEAD. And then compare it to the scenario the original guy described. And kill yourself.

Faggot

Short points
>we are a very old group
>I'm 52 at this point, i've been playing with the same dudes for a long time
>my wife and my grandson play with me and my 3 fucking old friends and one of my younger daugther friends.
>almost nothing i'm doing should be done by small random groups.
-
i not GMing a dungeoncraw right now, i'm We are playing on the same setting for some years, so at this time most characters have literally 100+ (ingame)years of family background. This has been a grand campaing for the last few years, its basicaly about a dinasty at this point, so, dudes, really, after this many years we use a long guideline when writing new pc's, i'm not your random gm forming a random group at college, it's a specific point and what i do should't be used as good example for anyone who isn't in the same circunstances.

Fair enough. Should have mentioned it though - because obviously what is normal for your group is not adequate for any GM who is trying to filter new players.

also i've just felt sharing that pdf no need for this much reactiong

Why don't you calm your fucking tits, kid? I have read what hide in plain sight says. My question is where the fuck did you get that shit you just posted? Because that sounds like Camouflage you just described, not Hide in plain sight.

>Hide in Plain Sight (Su): (Su): At 8th level, an assassin can use the Hide skill even while being observed. As long as he is within 10 feet of some sort of shadow, an assassin can hide himself from view in the open without having anything to actually hide behind.

Even in the lit entrance of a cave, if he is within 10 ft of where that light ends (and the shadow begins), then that would be a perfectly acceptable scenario to attempt it.

or, PF version;
>Benefit: A rogue with this talent can select a single terrain from the ranger’s favored terrain list. She is a master at hiding in that terrain, and while within that terrain, she can use the Stealth skill to hide, even while being observed.

Could easily take caves/caverns as type type of terrain. How about YOU learn to fucking read, you raging mongloid?

I'd let you both roll. With a DC of 40 (5e).

And no, a nat20 does not equal automatic success.

This is 5e Hide in Plain Sight, rogue ability.

>Pathfinder
Oh I see. I am sorry for speaking rough with you, my little retard. Go play in your shitpile in peace.

I gave you both 3.5 and pathfinder, plus the original guy never even specified what edition he was using. But go ahead, keeping raging like an autistic child on a temper tantrum over you're fucking edition wars bullshit and lack of reading comprehension. I just feel sorry for you. You're probably going to die of a heart attack or stroke of a damned game of all things, and everyone will laugh at how pathetic your death is.

Keep crying, bitch-baby.

*your fucking edition wars
*over a damn game

ducking auto correct

>ForeverGM
>Running a long DH campaign
>It's wonderful and everything I could hope for
>Have amazing, thoughtful, cooperative friends to play with
>Part guardsman comes up to me after the game
>Waits until the others leave
>Blurts out he's had feelings for me for a long while
>He knows I won't reciprocate and can't stand it
>States he has to leave and have distance from me
>Feel like shit
>People start texting me saying they don't want to play without their friend or in a small group
>By the end of the day the entire group disbands
>Left with one friend who loved his character and the campaign
>Try to start it up again with new players
>It never works out
>We drift apart
>Lose 5 friends in under 2 weeks
>Just want to set the house on fire, sedate myself and crawl into bed
>One player messages me
>Feelings swell as I hesitantly read it
>"I left my hat on top of your book case. Can you drop it at the FLGS for me to pick up?"
Oh...ok.