So, let me get this straight: a goodish portion of you imagine that DM/GM should be some sort of improv genius?

You can tell what kind of player Veeky Forums is by looking at that guy threads and paying attention to what kinds of problem player are constantly featured there and which ones never, ever show up. Teej is that guy who thinks RPGs are a competition and he wins by taking the game more seriously than you do, even though every character he plays is a token variation on the same three 20-something white guys, who impressively still sound like 20-something white guys even when they're a 6 year old thri kreen. Yes, no shit Veeky Forums isn't one person, but in the aggregate? I stand by this assessment.

Exactly. The key to good GMing is incentivization. The players in that story were fucking terrible, don't get me wrong. The GM was extremely clear about what was going on, and they ignored him to go off and do trying-too-hard, not even remotely clever lolrandom nonsense. The players should have had some faith that if they went along with the plot, the GM would lead them somewhere fun. If they knew there was no possible way they'd enjoy the campaign, they should have brought it up with him instead of being passive aggressive little shits.

THAT SAID, that guy failed horribly at his job. The idea that it's the GM's job to simply create a world for everything to happen in is wrong. If that's all you do the party is just going to wander around doing nothing and going nowhere. A good GM knows how to make the players want to do what he wants them to. There was a great story here awhile back where the GM didn't really introduce the main villain as the main villain until like halfway through the campaign. He was just some smarmy asshole who was constantly ruining their fun adventures, over and over and over again. By the time any kind of master plan came into it, the players already would have crawled naked through broken glass just to spit in his food. That is how you GM properly.

If this were another Spoony or elf slave thread I'd agree but I haven't seen this one yet. You know that goes both ways, right? If you can remember threads with pinpoint accuracy no matter the passage of time it's not a good sign.

It wouldn't be railroading unless the party got coup de graced by the undead army.

Accepting, for the sake of argument, that the greentext there actually happened, you have to read between the lines to really have an opinion on it, because there's much it doesn't explicitly tell you about the way things unfolded, how the interpersonal dynamic of the group affected expectations, the demeanor of the people involved and so forth. I tend to take a negative stance on the GM's behavior, because it seems like he gets off on "teaching those SJWs a lesson" to the point of reveling in their unhappiness, which is terrible GMing, even if your players are fucktards.

Furthermore, the players might have had a reasonable expectation that the reality of the world would be shaped around what they were looking for from the game. Without knowing their history, it's impossible to say, but a lot of GMs do this, and it's actually a good thing, as long as it doesn't go to far (pandering to every fleeting desire of the players is a surefire way to remove any integrity from your campaign and ultimately ruin everybody's fun, even the ones who think they want you to do the pandering).

Every campaign, story genre, etc. takes certain aspects of reality more seriously than others. If you're running a lighthearted campaign, for instance, you probably aren't going to be giving the ravaging effects of diseases when two long isolated cultures come into contact, for instance. In this light, the idea that the ongoing, behind-the-scenes plot with the liches was sacrosanct is rubbish. The GM could've stressed other aspects of reality or come up with any number of ways to defuse the threat in order to focus on things that the players wanted to focus on. Not, mind you, that he was obligated to toss aside the kind of campaign he wanted to run, but he could've had a discussion with the players about it, or at least explicitly spelled out the dangers to them...

no. DM was right.

Ignore big issues in world, get ravaged

I'm going to latch onto this bait because I'm bored. If you actually take a look at that guy threads, you'll find three main problems that are complained about.

1.ROLLplaying instead of roleplaying
2.People being clueless/socially inept.
3.Women

>Not, mind you, that he was obligated to toss aside the kind of campaign he wanted to run, but he could've had a discussion with the players about it, or at least explicitly spelled out the dangers to them...
...there's no indication in the text that the liches were played up to be a greater of threat than any of dozens of other bad guys the party no doubt faced. I get the feeling that this same sort of thing would've happened with whatever the current BBEG was, if the players ever decided to do their own thing. And at that point, it really does start to look like a railroad. Granted, it can be a tricky needle to thread, as you want the plots you set up to have some integrity, and the players' actions to have repercussions (and not just have everything turn out absolutely smashing regardless of what they do), but the "gotcha!" feel of the end of this greentext makes me feel like the GM didn't consider his players' feelings and interests at all, and he just punished them for not riding his train.

What does 3 do?

I know the pasta you'e talking about. It's a great story!.

That is not beatboxing. I know that loli. I have the DVD.

3 doesn't have sex with the user, so they get pissy.

Mind you, I'm not saying that the players come off as having behaved intelligently, but A) they're being characterized by the guy on the other side of this argument, so we can expect them to be portrayed negatively as a result, B) the GM has a greater responsibility to be considerate and act responsibly precisely because he has more authority within the game, and C) just because your players are fucktards doesn't mean that you're not also one. If this thing were written from the players' perspective and giving a similar account of the story, and prevailing opinion were on their side, I'd be taking them down a few pegs too.

Anyone who disagrees with the greentext DM's actions is naive.

DM even told PCs to stop the lich but they decided to go do their own thing in the DM's world. The world continues to move, regardless of what any one person in the world wants. They succeeded in their own personal goals but ultimately chose, as a group, not to pursue in to a world event.

Lich went uncontested.

could DM have "sent other PCs or and army", yeah. He could have. But where would be the fun in that? Actions have consequences. This was their consequence of ignoring a looming threat.

GOOD END.

The thing about the op's pic is that the campaign was over. The players won, they got their political revolution game. But instead of a happy epilouge, they got world ending darkness. They didn't take the GM's world seriously and that was what they agreed to play in the beginning. You have to respect the GM for tolerating and supporting their off the rails campaign, since most GMs would just through a fit and start railroading, and you have to respect his conviction to maintain the world as a believable setting.

I really don't see that in That Guy threads. If it's a girl it's usually just them being shit players like the guys and the closest it gets to stuff outside of one's ability to play is if it involves someone like the GM's girlfriend rather than a girl they want to fug.

Yes, because it's so much better to gloat about how you taught your players a lesson and made them unhappy than it is to put the game on hold and come to some kind of understanding about the type of game that's being played.

>Thinking vagina's matter that much
Maybe in high school D&D, but grown men
usually don't give a shit about a cunt. These
whore's just assume "He's being mean to me
He mus be mad I won't sleep with him," even
when the male has given no indication he actually wants to fuck the slag.
3 is the worst.

ForeverDM here

As long as I'm dealing with a world I'm intimately familiar with in a well-mapped area (of which there are about three for me) I can improv All damn day and have it be organic AND make sense in the world with consequences.
Protip, even if you're not familiar or experienced enough to do this, keep a timeline that tracks days and what the players did each day. Nothing too detailed, just a synopsis. This helps you to remember what players pissed off who and allows you to realistically keep deadlines.

I tried to do that, and they photo shopped a train conductors hat onto one of my facebook pictures.
Let them roam around like idiots if they want, and suffer the consequences.

>they photo shopped a train conductors hat onto one of my facebook pictures

>Be a female half elf bard
>Make living as an actress for the party
>Try to imagine MLP Rarity about 3 years before FiM ever existed
>between quests, with barbarian, wizard, rogue acting as circus troupe and stage hands
>As the only one with appraisal, I start scalping loot and keeping a tidy profit from the rest of the team
>Eventually the rogue figures this out
>Group goes to the north to kill a necromancer
>Need to borrow a longship off of a thane
>Offers to swap the longship for the hand of my bard in marriage
>she declines, but the group explains they need the boat, and they'll rescue her that evening
>marriage happens
>feast happens
>group sails off in boat
>thane takes wife to bed
>rescue any minute now....
>any minute now...
>any.... "you guys aren't coming, are you?"
>"Nope"
>three years late we play another game, set a few years in the future. Go to the same village. Irate half elf wife of thane with 5 kids keeps trying to bore us with tales of how she was a famous actress. Dumb thane thinks she's happy and brags she'll be having a 6th child before the winter hits. Praise the god of fertility.
>Pretend to be frustrated but secretly enjoyed being whored off for a longboat

boner, stop.

>secretly enjoyed being whored off for a longboat
hot

Care to provide a source? Google is useless.

The Story of Little Monica

Thank you based senpai.

Thank you for illustrating the point so thoroughly.

They complain about three because interacting with the opposite sex is difficult.

Fap in peace, kouhai.

Either they're bleeding cunts who convert thirsty virgins into white knights who believe that violently defended muh lady's honor will get them closer to cashing in their V-Card or you end up with relationship drama where she dates one guy and ends up dating some different guy later on and the two end up with some bad blood between them because of it.

These guys are either trolls or people who have never had to deal with that shit but I've seen situations where two blokes who were the best of pals turned on one another because one guy took shit personally and the other guy just didn't care to salvage the relationship due to the other guy turning completely mental.

It sucks even more because the girl wasn't even trying to start anything. I dunno, it was just a shit situation for everyone involved.

Reminds me a bit of this gem (on account of ships and women being taken advantage of).

Why didn't you drop them?

I don't know about you, but I'd be buggered if I were to spend time and energy coming up with content to fill 2-4 hours of game time just to have disrespectful little shits tell me that I'm being railroad-y by trying to solve it diplomatically.

You're objectively wrong /pol/itcal/k/omrade. Most women are in the game to, you know, play the game. It's men being the typical brutish dolts only thinking with their dicks that causes problems. Most of the time.

That's true, but said men tend to be reasonable when women aren't involved. It's sort of like 3 people vs one person with a magical aura of stupidity that turns your friends into retards. It's not really their fault, with the aura being stuck on them, but if they left you have 3 reasonable people again.

Protip for improv: you do not have to invent deep characters on the fly. It's 100% okay to present players with 1-dimensional cardboard cutouts, especially if the character is unlikely to appear again, because that's how most people interact IRL. When we meet a new person, we don't immediately understand everything about their personality and values. Instead, we just get a shallow first impression, which gets filled in the more we interact with them.

So if your players walk up to a random villager or watchman, there's nothing wrong with giving them a very broad, simple personality. In fact, it can actually be useful to do that, as it then gives you a base upon which to expand their personality, should the players end up interacting with them later. If a villager is happy and amiable, for instance, you could go further and say that, even though their wife died a few years ago, they still remain resolutely optimistic and cheerful. Or you could go in the opposite direction, and say that they're just a con artist with a winning smile. Either way could work, depending on what your campaign needed, but you need to get some raw material in play first.

The same goes for any part of worldbuilding, really. Rather than spending ages building up a city, detailing the ins and outs of its politics, economy and culture, you could just start with a very broad overview and fill in the blanks as needed. You know how worldbuilders idolize realism, and learning how to get their worlds "right"? This is actually where all that knowledge comes in handy - not for creating an elaborate backdrop beforehand, but rather for knowing how to fill in the blanks of your backdrop in the moment, in a way that feels real and natural.

>>Pretend to be frustrated but secretly enjoyed being whored off for a longboat
So thane is kind of right.

Ah, this discussion again. Once again,

>The thing about the op's pic is that the campaign was over. The players won, they got their political revolution game.
This.

Although, I find it interesting that when I first saw these, the specific nature of sidetracking issue was barely discussed.
Whereas in the current Veeky Forums climate, some anons always insist that the storyteller was “clearly commenting on sjw” instead of players that ignore the game world in favor of their contrived BS.

On to OP’s nonsense:
>a lot of you shouted the king would have sent an army or another group of adventurers to stop it.
>Going this route, the DM can do nothing else but know the setting and try to build interesting characters and cities on the spot?
Going that route is fine if the players are consistently on the same level.
They can’t have their coup and in the same breath claim that the fate of the kingdom isn’t their responsibility.

More to follow as I am a wordy bitch…

I smell magical realm bullshit here. WHy would the crew carry around a collar that shuts down mage's spells? The chances of catching one is slim to none on the open seas and the amount of money one can get for something that powerful, as it would be a local anit-magic field, would set them all for life.

Honesty it sounds like the DM had a bone to pick with the player and wanted to mess with his/her character. Capturing the player is one thing but going over the details of being raped for a month is a bit much.

God damn it let me post.

>But where would be the fun in that?

Where's the fun in the DM equivalent of a table flip? He killed the game dead and made the whole thing an irrelevant waste of time for everyone involved.

>Actions have consequences.

Character actions should have character consequences. The DM dropping rocks on all the characters and ending the game is just punishing the players for not playing how he wanted.

Ideally, the players and GM should establish before playing whether the PCs are pivotal characters in the story of the world.
If the players *want* to play negligible mooks that the world can get along fine without, then the GM should run that game or find other players.
There is nothing wrong with that game.
I think running a game of beleaguered henchmen, struggling merchants, or fantasyland peasants coping with life in the background of Big Damn Heroes fighting epic battles would be an awesome and fun campaign.
(Pretty sure this is an established trope, but I’ll be damned if I’ll learn the names)

And if the players want to be epic world changers, then having the King call in another team to get it done because they took too long getting equipment is kind of a dick move.
(Only if this is done to negate or invalidate their efforts, not if it is just introducing rivals.)

In either event, the GM can prepare as much as they choose.
If the PCs are important and involved with events at that level, then them ignoring events, whether the GM planned them or if they were improvised as the Players sandboxed, then ignoring those events should have consequences, in any setting with a semblance of consistency.
When I run a game, ignored looming dangers don’t get resolved by other npc good guys, they get resolved by other npc bad guys, giving the next evil menace even more power.

At any rate, the PCs in the game in question overthrew a kingdom.
They were clearly on the level of being involved with national threats.
But they didn’t deal with the threat, they waged war on the army that those you pointed out theorized could have handled it without them.
They didn’t just ignore the threat to the kingdom, they paved the way for it with a civil war.

Also, if OP's DM had any kind of integrity or competence and wasn't just looking for a chance to fuck over his players, he'd have built up the threat of the impending undead invasion throughout the campaign instead of mentioning it once in the first session and then announcing zombies come out of nowhere and kill everyone in the last session.

Good DMing isn't about proving to your players what a smartass you are.

>being so skull-fucked stupid that you can't both hand-craft a world as well as improv things on the spot

Pulling them back on course is really not that fucking hard, dude.

Off the top of my head;

Some evil anti-democracy noble turns out to also be working for the evil Lich.

Boom, done.

>Actions have consequences

And on the meta-level, the GM was facing consequences for the action of coming up with a cliche and boring plot of "kill the evil lich". When the consequence of that (players go find something interesting to do) reared its head, he responded immaturely.

If he had his heart set on a lich villain, and the players had their hearts set on a social revolution game, it's not at all hard to think of ways to make the penises kiss there. The lich is aristocracy elevated to immortality, the staunch order they seek to fight against. Or perhaps the lich is a counter-revolutionary who uses his vast sums of lich-money to run a Tea Party esque movement against them.

The players shouldnt have ignored a looming threat, sure, but the DM shouldn't have acted like a petulant child because everyone was playing the game THEY wanted instead of the game HE wanted. Maybe he should have been happy his friends were having fun with the game and found ways to also enjoy it?

Assuming any of this is real, which it definitely isn't.

Op, you're baiting on a 4 year old thread.

>If he had his heart set on a lich villain, and the players had their hearts set on a social revolution game, the players shouldn't have signed up for a traditional fantasy game

FTFY.

You must be 18 or older to post here

Why is no one pointing out that the whole idea of "let's quickly convert feudal fantasy society into modern, pro-gay democracy" is beyond retarded?

>suspension of disbelief?
>nope.png

>anti-democratic lich henchman
>facepalm

"Dear Mr. Lich-King, could I have an interview regarding your stance towards gay marriage and civil rights?"

Because it isn't worth mentioning.

It's the premise of the campaign. But, yeah, as a campaign idea, it's not worth mentioning. Too bad for the GM that the players did.

Mmm, nah.
Players decided to do something else, plot didn't pause for their enjoyment.

Meh, here's my 2 cents.
First off - how could the king or army deal with it? Kinda preoccupied with rebels.
Second off - as leader of the nation why was it not a priority threat as soon as she was inaugurated?
I feel like a lot of info is missing.

People can have campaigns about whatever the fuck they want, don't you believe in truth freedom and the American way you filthy commie?

It isn't worth mentioning that it is a retarded campaign idea because the campaign idea itself wasn't even framed as the subject of discussion. Please read the OP again, specifically the final two sentences. That is what everyone has been talking about in this thread.

Whereas the magical skeleton wizard is definitely realistic and requires zero suspension of disbelief.

Plot in an RPG in a collaboration between the GM and the players, not a one-sided relationship. A GM mandating plot and disregarding player input, player wishes etc is just as bad as a player who, say, sabotages another player for the sake of lulz, or decides to stab the king to be so random, or who decides "my character wouldnt do that" etc etc.

I feel a good compromise is to start off with a module, the GM and the players get a feel for each other and their characters, which the GM can then start bringing in their own story.

Then again, my groups tend to be undisruptive and fairly happy to go along with the plot as it were. We've never gone "fuck you, i kill vital NPC"

Great. Now I'm aroused: take responsibility user.

>A GM mandating plot and disregarding player input, player wishes etc is just as bad as a player who, say, sabotages another player for the sake of lulz, or decides to stab the king to be so random, or who decides "my character wouldnt do that" etc etc.
But that's effectively what the party collectively decided to do. And the GM in question did not, in fact, disregard the player input or mandate the plot - he let the players do exactly what they wanted, even if they didn't get desired results in the end.

>join my MTG group's game
>was already warned that they can be fucking annoying with unnecessary and lengthy rules discussions
>can't ever decide on a plan of action in under 15 minutes
>group takes so long with deciding on a plan that the DM gets pissed and triggers a Kill-encounter
>get thrown in as aliterally naked necromancer that just joined into a challenge rating 7 encounter with 6 players
>get knocked unconscious twice and fail 2 saving throws each time

That fight took well over 2 hours and they took another 15 minutes on the next relevant decision, even though half the group already agreed on a plan, requiring the DM to bait the group into doing ANYTHING by having the orc boss walk past the window we were hiding behind. This group has a single "that guy" causing all of that shit, that they wanted me to replace, but they have yet to find a way to get him out of the group.

>Whereas the magical skeleton wizard is definitely realistic and requires zero suspension of disbelief.
Internal consistency of the setting pal, look it up.

Forgot to add: the DM is absolutely great at having to deal with that shit and has my utmost respect. Even some of the players in the group said that he should just stop giving open scenarios with options since that shit takes way too long with the group.

No, he mandated skeleton man. The entire point of the story is that the lich was "the real story" and the GM is punishing his players for not following "the real story".

Not American, but why sure, sir! I also believe in the liberty of the GM, replying "Not in my game, punks. I have offered to run a fantasy game and not your SJW bullshit. If that's what you want, more power to you but I am not going to sit here and bore myself with this BS just to please you."

And you can't seperate the campign premise from the discussion. The campaign end only happened like this because the GM rolled with the players retarded idea instead of saying: "Guys, really? Com'on, let's be serious about it. This is BS."

GM should have manned up to begin with instead of backstabbing his retarded players in the end.

>what is the classical fantasy genre?

>may may I want gm to let me power fantasy everyhing I want

A single element of the setting is not "plot." Especially when it was pre-established before the players decided they'd rather do something else.

You really are desperate to have this conversation aren't you.

> You're objectively wrong /pol/itcal/k/omrade. Most women are in the game to, you know, play the game. It's men being the typical brutish dolts only thinking with their dicks that causes problems. Most of the time.

I have seen the case develop over the last few months and shatter one of my two groups. A group that was running fine with a girl already in it.

>Guy A and Guy B share a 1 1/2 apartment. Total bromance.
> Guy A has a crush on Girl.
> Guy A gets friendzoned by Girl.
> Girl is a bit of a bitch but Guy A is beta.
> Guy B has a fling with Girl. Mostly to show Girl not worthy of pedestal.
> Guy B and Girl start cold war.
> Girl get kicked out of wherever she lived.
> Guy A invite Girl into Apartment.
> Girl invites her new boyfriend (call him Guy C) into apartment.
> Girl dumped by C.
> Girl finally accepts to "date down". Curiously around the time Guy A gets a nice contract.
> Guy A officially sided with Girl in Cold War.
> Guy A decide to move to be closer to short-duration contract.

She infiltrated the group and sabotaged it from the inside. The problem is it's typical female behavior in society, but fringe behavior inside our hobby. Most girls that play with us are the exceptions.

And we're aware of that.

>He killed the game dead and made the whole thing an irrelevant waste of time for everyone involved.

So...The game that turned into a liberal politics simulator played out like liberal politics?

Sounds right to me.

I dunno, it seems like Guy A is the one causing problems in this case.

You think? Nice bit of psychologizing but I am just the analytical type.

Are you retarded?

Er, because some stupid mage chick decided to hand them a fat pile of gold to take her off alone someplace? Presumably they picked up a cursed item from an appropriately sinister magic item shop. It wouldn't need to be something spectacularly powerful like an AMF; there are lots of curses that could shut down a caster (large penalty to INT, increased arcane spell failure, disrupted sleep or magically-imposed illiteracy to prevent spell preparation, etc...)

That said, I personally would've gone with something a little easier and just had them bind and gag her. Very few casters take both Still and Silent spell, so any mage that can't talk or gesture is a non-threat.

> So, let me get this straight: a goodish portion of you imagine that DM/GM should be some sort of improv genius?
Or striving to become such. Yes.

> Sure. You could let murderhobos run around if they're so inclined, but to maintain an organic world with any tension or verisimilitude you'd need to have the BBEG still continue with his plot, routinelly interrupting they players actions with it's developments (i.e. crop rotation doesn't help because the warlock cast some spell of withering)
Heh, usually, PCs open opportunities for the BBEG. They find rare NPCs they have spent weeks looking for and only have to follow the trail, for example.

> This sounds nice, but a lot of you shouted 'railroading' while discussing the lich/gay rights pasta and how the undead apocalypse shouldn't have happened because the king would have sent an army or another group of adventurers to stop it.
Veeky Forums is not One Person. Vocal people are not necessarily right. Infinite resources (e.g. Adventurers) is a retarded concept only the /r people will believe in. The same people that are SJW. The same people that disrupts instead of contribute. The same kind of people that argued against pic.

> Going this route, the DM can do nothing else but know the setting and try to build interesting characters and cities on the spot?
Retarded slippery slope. If the DM has to plan for and send adventurers at ignored plothooks, it can't only be doing that.

Maybe the picture didn't mention rumors of adventurers dying to the lich, or that came back "changed". Those could have very well been ignored by the PCs.

Either way, look at "The end of the World" game series by FFG. Pick any scenario, with a timeline. Then imagine the players go "Fuck the president being assassinate and turning into a giant lizard, we bring Democracy to China".

You have this retarded / yet awesome campaign in the OP's pic.

It amazes me how much of an argument a 14 line greentext story starts. Especially given that it barely goes into detail about any one thing it mentions.

We don't know anything about a lot of important context for this story. Especially as it's presented humorously by the GM.

Personally I don't see how it's railroading. To me railroading is when a group is constantly pushed back onto the rails over and over. GM didn't kidnap the players and teleport them over with a map to liches. We don't see any indication of that. Instead we see consequences when the NPC plot succeeds.

We also don't know how the GM warned the party. Where there reports of an undead army? Fleeing peasants? Odd losses of communication to the frontier?

I also want to outright say that Veeky Forums is way too fucking sensitive about railroading. Sometimes you guys call railroading super easily and get so upset about the merest hint that players special snowflake bubble is under threat. If railroading is a major GM crime shouldn't the standards for what constitutes it be a little higher?

Also just to remark on the SJW thing. Holy shit did we really? Did we really make the gay marriage angle the important part of judging this story? Not the whole "usurping a rightful throne that you have no claim on" bit? I mean we can have an entirely _separate_ debate on whether it's good to adjust fantasy worlds that are based on historical time periods for modern day sensibilities. But even if we did that I hope we can accept that it's super weird to have a party arbitrarily decide they are going to totally dick over a friendly kingdom because of one players out of character axe to grind.

What about introducing modern elements into a classical fantasy setting don't you get?

What the fuck has that got to do with a nobleman who serves a Lich opposing a democratic uprising?

>PCs try to lead democratic revolution in medieval fantasy kingdom
>evil nobleman opposes this because fucking obviously, he's an evil nobleman
>evil nobleman also happens to be plotting Lich invasion

Neither the Lich nor the nobleman even need to have a fucking opinion on gay marriage for this to work, retard.

I understand that, as someone who has played and run games with female players in them.

It's just that when you introduce a somewhat attractive female to a group that's comprised of virgins whose thirst could dry out an ocean, you tend to have a situation where everyone involved is acting like morons just to get the attention of the woman in question.

It's even worse when she tells them that she's only there for game and/or already has a significant other, because now everything's awkward and it results in the game falling apart anyways.

Then you have the cunts who know that they're distracting and go out of their way to be distracting just to get the attention of virgins who she knows have less than a 0% chance of scoring with her.

Woman are like booze.

You can trust some people to keep their wits and handle themselves responsibly but once someone takes shit too far, then shit gets fucked and shit's ruined for the rest of people that could conduct themselves reasonably.

IMHO, there are reasons why a setting with hyper-powerful individuals don't turn to democracies, and the way the campaign has been portrayed, causing civil war on the verge of the apocalypse for rights that don't make any sense in the time period is evil.

PCs were the guys who weakened the kingdom which literally faced a greater evil.

>Plot in an RPG is collaborative.
Yeah, Nah, you're *half* right, three-eighths really.
The player's contributions to the plot is their own actions, and interactions. So, 3-6 people in a world.
The GM's contributions are the scenery, background, and every force: antagonistic, beneficial, or benign. They also control the flow of information to the PC's, *but* only relative to what the PC's themselves seek out, within reason.
To paraphrase a rule of great gamemasters, "if the party don't look for or find the note on the body, move it to the chest.". Give players a chance to find plot relevant clues. Don't be rigid in their location or means of delivery. As long as the party was *informed* of the evil skeleton wizard being up to no good, what followed was fair play. The party never followed up on bone spell slinger, they blinded themselves by not looking into it.

This. I used to play with a group that wanted to do nothing but go out into the world and do what they wanted. It was fun as shit but our DM got exhausted pretty quick. Now I'm DMing and my group pretty much WANTS to be railroaded. I won't stand for handholding though, so I craft my world and encounters around vital plot points and well-defined objectives but craft them so that the group can solve them in whatever way they wish. I think its a pretty good compromise but I'm pretty sure I was blessed with the world's most cooperative party. Its all good though. Just gunna be sad when its done.

>Woman are like booze.
As a connoisseur of analogies, I like this,

That's bad DMing because

A: It ignores the players actions and removes their agency

B: It pisses off the people you are playing with

If this was real, it didn't have to be the end of the campaign. It would be pretty cool to play in a fantasy universe where evil has already won and the good guys are just trying to survive. You could take that in any number of directions and make the PCs face the question of whether it was all worth it, because maybe to them it still was.

Basically this Player's actions having no consequences is bad. Rocks fall everyone dies is worst. There's no reason to say more as it should be basic.

>a setting where evil has already one and the good guys are trying to survive.
Midnight is actually pretty good for that.
too bad it's OGL.

I hate it when DMs justify their bullshit with the "consequences" excuse. There should always be consequences, but those consequences should be related with the decisions. Apparently the tiefling got the jewel despite the fact that she was suposed to be too weak. Where are the consequences here? But instead there's a consequence for her coming up with ideas to solve an obstacle (in this case the sea), she gets gangraped by pirates that somehow have magic artifacts. It's all just plain stupid.

Or they could just have roleplayed the war against the lich. It makes sense for the weakened forces of the kingdom/republic to be defeated out of scene by the countless hordes of undead, but we're talking about PCs here. They are probably pretty powerful if they played a whole campaign, they should be able to do something. It wouldn't be the first time that fantasy characters win a war against a more powerful enemy.

I think the primary issue there is the Virgin part, My longest running game had a woman in it, but most of us were married and starting family when this game was happening, so one playing being a "Purdy girl" had zero impact on the game.

Turns out when your not desperately trying to as a group fuck the single female in the group, you tend to have less drama.

Wow okay, no more typing on my phone. TLDR, neck-beards can show a little restraint and not cause drama by trying to fuck every girl who knows what a d20 is.