Dm/gm feels/vent thread

>stealth based character is always using stealth inappropriately, randomly declaring how he's hiding in markets, taverns, council chambers etc. when the party is gathering information on the spooky dungeon. It is never helpful, and often detrimental to party's goals.
>get to the spooky dungeon and the stealth character never hides or scouts ahead EVER and happily blunders along in the second or third rank of the marching order and can't understand why he never gets to backstab anyone

> players go full chaotic evil

I actually don't mind this because it was in one of the characters back stories from day one, and the other is a chaotic randumb who is actually played well as a psychopath douchebag with eight luck feats to back up his retarded plans, but now they are literally wanted and will probably end up dead.

They also said hey don't want the campaign to end until there is anTPK so clearly they think death is inevitable....

>they like the part that wasn't a railroad
>they didn't like the part that was a railroad

Huh.

A variation that I've grown to hate
>ask players to come up with backstories that will help drive the story of the campaign
>the players that give you nothing get all pissy that the events revolve around the other players that actually provided you with information.
>when told "give me something and I'll include it" they produce outrageous shit like "He's a prince with a closet full of holy swords and red dragon mount"

>Have guest player
>Ask for end of session feedback from group
>"There want really a plot this session. I didn't know why we were doing any of the stuff we did besides railroading."
>The party decided to do this. The setup was all last session, and this was execution.
>You showed up mid-plot and complained about lack of context you little shit. I was being generous when I let you in on such short notice.

Of course I was more polite in person.

>be forever DM
>friends want to play but don't own any of the books
>provide them with .pdfs and online resources
>they don't read them...ever...in the 2 years we played
>always roll characters together while they pass the PHB around
>always show up late or not at all
>games never last more than a few sessions
>blame me for not remembering what skills/spells/abilities their characters have because "lol you're DM you should know", while still refusing to read the material
>finally put an end to it and call them on their bullshit
>"Fuck you user. You should be thankful we even wanted to play. Without us, you'd never been able to DM!"
>mfw

I'm just kind of numb...

>from now on there's always a hidden pit trap between them and the bad guy
>no exceptions
It's the only way they learn, user. Also, don't craft big stories but just run with whatever comes to your mind in 5 mins, that's what they want.

First time GM here. My play group is legitimately my best friends, regardless of how shitty they are at roleplaying, finding what they enjoy and building off of it or taking their ideas into consideration for quests and everything has made the whole campaign so much fun. I thought that meticulously crafting things would be super fun, but it was more fun to just flush out NPCs, giving them depth and feeling like real people. Not building the perfect dungeon or puzzle for them to solve.

But have a question, how do you suggest your players to go a certain direction and not just say, "Fuck it, let's go the other way", making certain things you made feel obsolete because they required to be in certain geographical locations?

The obvious follow-up question is "why they don't have these nice things anymore, and what are they going to do to regain them?"

While I'm not familiar too much with that extreme of a feel, I guess I can relate somewhat.

Just NEVER go too in-depth about any of your quests. You'll be tempted the rail-road the more complex and strung-out it is, and it'll feel too artificial and not immergent enough like-wise.

I always go in with a skeletal lay-out of what happens and where, but beyond that, it's pretty much all improv.

I've only heard good things from my players as of yet.

>play GURPS
>new player complains he wants more points because he based his character on Lina Inverse and someone else on the internet built a version that cost 1000 points (a fucking absurd amount, for those unfamiliar)
>try explaining that there are different ways to do things and just because you CAN build a character with ALL THE POINTS, they can be faithfully simulated with fewer points
>No this character is too weak you don't understand, I NEED +5 in all my stats or I just can't be cool
>dude didn't even read the rulebooks and is taking this random online version of a character as gospel truth

I should have just told him to fuck off and play with the creator of that character sheet instead of wasting 2 hours trying to explain that a 300 point character is perfectly capable of being badass and is not, in his words, 'a level one gutter-hobo'

I had a group pull this on me sorta.
>The PLAYERS THEMSELVES tell me they want to play 5th Edition instead of Pathfinder (3.5 basically).
>Aquire PDF of 5E for all of them
>Give them 5E PDF
>Spend a couple of hours reading it myself, pretty easy stuff, not too hard to learn.
>Craft my campaign encounters around 5E stats and combat balance
>Game night happens
>"Lets just play Pathfinder, we already know how to play that game."

>player tells me he really enjoyed a random fight against 2 zombie ogres that was literally a spankfest in a 30×30 open room
>tells me he hated accompanying a knightly order in a manticore hunt while mounted on a giant vulture

I would be mad if it wasn't a pre-made adventure, I'm just kinda annoyed

He also kept complaining that another party member (my girlfriend) "stole" the last hit on the manticore even though she asked nicely and he agreed

Is he being that guy?

FUCKING THIS
FUCK.
WHERES YOUR GOD DAMN MOTIVATION.

>"Fuck you user. You should be thankful we even wanted to play. Without us, you'd never been able to DM!"

i don't even

did this seriously happen or are you exaggerating for the sake of a better story

Flexibility and improvisation, mostly. Remember that you can (and should) recycle your prepped material, no point in letting that go to waste.

As a D&D guy I feel your pain somewhat. One of my players in one of my early campaigns tried to convince me he should be allowed to point buy two ability scores to 18 and the rest should not be lower than 10 because he is supposed to be an epic hero
At level 1

That fucking blows user

It was the last thing a "friend" said to me after spending the day tracking them down for a session (yeah yeah I was a dolt) only to have them show up, half ass it and then leave to grab dinner, 1 hour after showing up.
I lost it...that was their retort.

Oh, yeah they've done this before and a town I created was moved and the plot just existed there as though it was always there. But right now they are going to the desert to stop some evil shit from going down pretty much, and they aren't entirely aware of the scope of the amount of evil there or what I have planned, talk about how they want to fight a bunch of evil shit. Don't want to ruin what I have but it feasibly only works in the desert because of it's geographical location on the map to another kingdom. I want to give them what they want, but I don't want to say they can't turn back. But they can sometimes be erratic. For fucks sake one of them almost Poltergeist themselves into a magical well when they threw in the body of their fallen friend, came out as a hallow who turned into ethereal ash.

The problem is that the players that come up with these power fantasy backstories are equally bad at explaining how they got from world-straddling positions of power to 1st level adventurers.

I tend to take the "all roads lead to rome" approach

If players ignore a hook or go a different direction they will definitely find themselves facing the hook anyway, like if they decided to not go into the dungeon to kill the lich, but tqke over the kingdom instead they will still go through the dungeon, refluffed as a castle and kill the king, who was a lich all along!

Have them discover that the evil is bigger than they expected, and flee for their lives to fight it on another day? That's just as legit story as heroes conquering the evil on the first try.

>Be forever GM
>Run fun games
>Players give me input on what they want
>Generally things are engaging
>Players take over as GM when my games finish

I will never know the feels of you cucks, and it's great. All you had to do was you know, communicate with your players.

>Be player
>Come up with a motivation for every one of my characters that ties into a person goal that they can't accomplish alone.
>Other players in the party always end up being murderhobos or actually getting annoyed that my character wants something that would require their help (even if it's something as simple as "Hey, since you're going to this dangerous place anyway, can I come along with you because there might be clues to my origins there. In exchange I'll offer you my services as a healer!")

Welp, you know what they say. "Trying is the first step to failure."

I've had the opposite problem where we're playing a high-powered system where a starting character can just destroy ordinary people but the players pussyfoot around and get all nervous when they're not at 100% health

These GMs know what they're talking about

This and this.

It's not about being unique. It's about how unique you can make the same material sound.
I have two dungeon maps. That's it. Most of the time I just turn or invert them and descibe the atmosphere differently. If my players actually mapped out their paths (like I've suggested) I'd be forced to change.

Escalate and keep piling on the challenge, making them realize what badasses their characters are? Make sure to off-handedly mention waves two and three of enemies arriving next when they're already neck-deep in enemies.

>animeposter complains that other people find him obnoxious

well gee

Yes, clearly a reaction-image says everything about me.

2/10 got me to reply.

There is that but you know, baby steps. No one was a good roleplayer the day they were born, it takes practice.

I gave up preparing anything beyond a dozen bullet points before a session, because players will almost always think of something you didn't.

Specifically, I thought my players would either join the rebels or the nobles - instead, they pretended to work for the nobles, got themselves captured on purpose, and managed to convince the rebels that the nobles had built a super weapon, and that the best plan was to let their army into the castle, then blow it up with them inside.

You just need to trust your players.

>have a player obsessed with being a special snowflake. He has his character learn an obscure language in addition to the one everybody in the universe speaks.
>player is constantly announcing that he's going to talk to people in this obscure language, wastes time babbling at NPCs with no chance of them understanding him, including enemies, animals, etc.
>insistent that his friend in the group should also learn this obscure language "so they can talk".
>Friend finally gives in and spends the points to learn the language
>Obsessed player constantly announcing that he's talking in the obscure language to his friend even when what he's saying is important info that the whole party needs to know.
>Friend keeps telling the player that it is stupid and a waste of time (especially in the middle of combat) to have the player speaking his obscure language when the group really needs to know what he's saying.

Actually it was the "services as a healer" bit along with the anime.

I feel you user. I ran a game of rage trader for some people. During the first session I sent them copies of the books. After six months I still had to tell them how to roll basic attacks. One of the party members never spent any of the experience and spent most of the game whining about not being as strong as everyone else who spent their experience.
Almost every session was spent dragging the party through a sea of plot hooks and listening to them whine about not having anything to do.
If all the above wasn't bad enough two of the players were unable to make a schedule to save their lives. We'd schedule a day, I'd send out multiple reminders only to have them tell me two hours before that they were busy. The justification was almost always "I didn't know we were playing today". Now they keep bugging me to run the game again.

The fact that you see everything as an anime trope really says more about you than the person you're criticizing, user.

>players encounter NPC
>said NPC is not immediately hostile
>hear from some source that NPC is tough for some reason or another
>players pick fight
>SURPRISE! The NPC is actually tough and either beats them or kills a character going down or something
>players bitch at me for making things too hard

I've had this across 4 groups and 3 systems, and I still don't get it.

Hahaha fuck
Their fault for picking the fight
Your fault for not de-escalating immediately in character

Stop planning so much. Just stop it. It never leads to good things no matter how much work you put in. Moments you think you've constructed well and built up to a good payoff become artificial at best. Great moments come naturally from the players actions as well as the players inactions. Sometimes this means they get their ass kicked by bandits. Sometimes this means they kick an evil necromancer in the teeth and curbstomb his minions.

Spend your time building your world. Build your locations. Make a few NPCs, know them well, know how they'd react. Create a few conflicts. Know what monsters are where, make a few tables. Let your players go where they want and do what they want. At the same time, keep track of who is doing what on your side of the screen. KEEP TRACK OF TIME! Make a calendar for your world and mark deadlines and events. If the players don't come across something or someone, don't just hold off on the encounter, let it advance without them. I handwrite on every single page of notes I make "Let it happen." to remind me that it's not about what I want or plan, it's about what happens. The players have agency and the world breathes. If you just spend your time fleshing out the world instead of forcing encounters or plot points, you won't have to plan anything for your sessions. You'll also have a lot more fun just seeing what your players come up with and what happens to your world as a result.

> you will never run a sandbox vanilla zombie apocalypse campaign with resource tracking and high lethality in GURPS or some other highly lethal system where the characters have to look for food organically and make friends withd if fervent NPCs and slowly try to rebuild society, with the two hundred glow in the dark zombies you purchased for giant tactical combats.
> they want to play pathfinder instead

Why even live....

Not OP, but all that worldbuilding stuff usually falls under the header of planning.

Running a Monsters and Other Childish things game set in a weird town with weird mysteries happening in it as well as high school drama.

I keep on throwing mysteries at them with obvious hooks, and like wise people they just walk away. It makes total sense to not act like horror movie protaganists but god its so hard to make things happen if no one goes down the rabbit hole.

For example :
>Weird ghost bus shows up at exact same place every day
>They know there was some sort of crash that killed some kids but nobody talks about
>After about two months of play, they finally decide to go look at it.
>One player gets on, looks around. A pile of ghost kids are there chatting, and the bus driver tells them to get on because there's a schedule to keep
>They get off, everyone leaves.

It's so fucking annoying, I keep having weird and bad things happen to them but once they deal with the immediate ramifications they don't investigate why things happened or how to stop future things.

At the end of the day you don't know what is going to happen or, rather, what you want to happen though. Of course there's planning when it comes to worldbuilding, but it's not the same type of planning as "The players will go here and meet X, then Y will happen and they'll have to do Z." Maybe I should've written it as "Stop having expectations" or something. Yeah, that probably works better.

I won't lie, asking any group I've ever gm'd for while they're in the same room produces this. That said getting them all separately gives them a chance to say what without worrying about what the others will say.
I mean shit, I'd have never found out they all wanted more combat in the game if I had asked while they were all together.

>gives players an open world or interact with
>small plots here and there as they travel
>they enjoy it, but ask for something substantial with more social aspects
>spend three weeks crafting a serendipitous conspiracy between three factions in an effort to destabilize the region
>each faction has their set of motives and reasons behind starting this conspiracy, the rabbit hole goes pretty deep
>players follow this plot up to the minor “boss” npc
>they defeat the npc, but things get really melancholic in-character
>they decide to fuck off and do something else

>half of the party are heirs in hiding following a coup by their younger brother
>the other half are just random bumpkins in it for the cash
>the royal brothers made a big show of hiring mercenaries to launch an adventure for the throne
>the royal sister, technically the true heir, just wants to do wizard stuff and is helping them out of familial bond
>royal brothers finally get their big army but then fuck off ot a different city IRL
>goodbye plot

>people too lazy to read the fucking book
>people so goddamn lazy they even ask you to roll up a character for them, tailor-made to their expectations
God fucking damn it you fucking fags
If I have the time to do all this shit, so do you.

I ask for an up to date description of their characters a week ago for a commission I'm putting in with a drawfag I like.

No response. Nothing. 2 emails, request for a timely answer, nada. Zilch.

It's disappointing.

So don't pay him, find another drawfag.

Don't tell me you paid before it was actually finished...

>find new group
>get hired as mercenaries by royal heirs
>continue and achieve
>intrigue happens, female heir gets shoved into throne, male heirs start trying to assassinate her
>she becomes jaded and starts fighting back
>the people suffer
>time to choose sides and put a new stable king on the throne or just take it for themselves

I'd be into it

>be forever dm
>Gone away for school, but all my players stayed local
>While at school they all say they cant wait for when I come home so we can play again
>feelappreciated.jpeg
>When Im not doing school work or extra curicular stuff Im crafting a whole world, and writing an age of exploration game.
>Have so much time I can plan huge encounters
>Have time to plan so many that the game would actually work sandbox
>Fuckit add kingdom building
>This is my masterpiece
>Its a glorious narrative but I have so much stuff I'll be able to improve around everything
>dynamic as fuck
>Summer rolls around
>play the first session
>players rave about the game
>how they cant wait for the next session
>Literally no one makes time for another session
>games dies after two weeks

I have no image for the feels I have. I really wanted to play test the whole thing and try to self publish it.

>making homebrew system
>asking some players to help me playtest things on a few simple, one to two shot adventures
>find problems in system, most especially spells and abilities that are too strong or too weak in combination
>tweak things in between adventures, ironing it towards what I want
> in particular, there was one three trick combo that would give someone a 95% chance of surviving anything, no matter how hard they got hit.
>expunge the flaw
>player who discovered it throws a tantrum that I take away all the cool things.

Which part of playtesting wasn't clear?

Solid.

What I would consider when building NPCs - which a single most important element to a fun world and a successful campaign imo - is make a note of a likely reaction they can have to a specific action. Something along the line of:
>How would he/she react to a betrayal?
>How would he/she act under a lot of pressure
>How would he/she react to flattery
And extrapolate the rest of reactions from half-a-dozen of those you actually wrote down.

That being said, I am a lazy shit and usually have but a few striking lines for each NPC and imporvise everything else. While it works well, I feel that a little prep > decent prep > no prep > too much prep

>gives players an open world or interact with

This is where you went wrong fampai. Truth it, when players ask for a "sandbox" or free world, unless it's a specific game or they are really experienced and motivated, they mean something else entirely. And in the end, 95% of players don't have the slightest idea about what they want. I've had a few games come to a grinding halt because they asked for a sandbox/political game/whatever, made (despite me warning them) unsuitable characters and ended up asking me to just run a dungeon crawl.

That group actually disbanded pretty quick after that due to other things. This Sunday is the first session of a new campaign set a year after the original party split.

The royal brothers have raised great hosts to take back the throne, the only problem being that Cortez (half-elf bastard, the oldest but illegitimate) has changed his mind and decided that he wants to sit the throne. Lobos, the younger brother doesn't like this, and there is now a three way war between the two of them and King Leopoldo (half brother and original true heir until he was disinherited by the last king). Meanwhile, Catarina (the daughter and technically most legitimate heir after Leopoldo's disinheritance) has fucked off to who knows where to do nectomancy stuff for the Arcane Lodge.

The party is a group of nominally unaligned adventurers on their first dungeon delve who will soon find themselves searching for Catarina in the midst of civil war, religious upheaval, and technological and political renaissance.

Ironically, Leopoldo really is the best candidate to rule:
>Lobos
Is very persuasive and gallant, but is a complete airhead and has more looks than sense. He however has the support of most of the disaffected nobles.
>Cortez
Is a fearless warrior with plenty of ruthless cunning, but is short on people skills, and is viewed by the nobility as a foreigner. More of a warlord than king material.
>Catarina
Prefers the company of her skeletal companions to living contact, and has absolutely no interest in politics or people's feelings. Is also pretty scary and has a sugarskull tattood over her face.
>Leopoldo
Has a lot of public support as he's pulled a Bismark on a collection of warring city states, reviving lots of lost culture and forging a world power. However, a decent chunk of the nobility view him as a usurper.

Since this is a feels thread alongside the venting, I figured I'd brighten the mood a bit:

We've had the same group for about 8 years now. We're generally pretty forthcoming about issues with each others' campaigns, know our boundaries, are cool with expanding our horizons, and don't flake out without notice. We have our differences, but that's smalltime.

...I guess that doesn't really make any of you exasperated DMs out there any happier, but just know that good players are out there. They're out there, and they're looking for a DM like you.

(Though for real don't meticulously plot everything, it'll only end in heartbreak. Allow yourself to be pleasantly surprised)

...

Where is the bait here? I'm just telling you people that all of your problems are self created and easily fixed by acting like adults.

>flush out NPCs

Heh. Into the toilet it goes!

>But have a question, how do you suggest your players to go a certain direction and not just say, "Fuck it, let's go the other way", making certain things you made feel obsolete because they required to be in certain geographical locations?

Generally, don't. If they're not interesting in doing the thing you planned, it's not going to become fun if you try to push them to do it. Just figure out what they'd rather do and run that.

Fortunately, you didn't spend a whole lot of time prepping that thing that flopped, right? 'Cause if you spent a lot of time prepping the wrong thing, until you got attached to it, then either it'll end up being thrown away and you'll feel bad, or you'll get them to do it anyway (maybe via soft railroading, IE "The road forks in three directions, which do you choose? Wait, it doesn't matter, fuck your decisions, they all lead to this ogre encounter! No matter where you go, it's ogre time.") and they'll be bored and not like it, and you'll feel bad. Either way you're gonna have a bad time.

Make your prep wide and shallow, and offer them a variety of hooks, with just enough prep that you're ready to improvise with whatever they find exciting.

Yeah nah.
I applaud your attempt to rage this thread back to life though.

Although next time just lead with the typical "D&D is cancer and the bane of all things table top" like a normal faggot.

I'm still wondering where the bait is, senpai.

user, I'm afraid you've mixed something up.
If your players didn't like the thing that took you a long time, that's one thing, but they apparently really liked it when you made stuff up.

That means, from their perspective, you're good at making stuff up even if you don't prepare it before hand! That's a strength as a DM, not a reason to be sad! That's a reason to smile!

>'a level one gutter-hobo'
stealing this for my next character

> ask players to come up with backstories for a Naruto campaign
> each one comes up with a relatively in-depth backstory that provides motivation for what they do
> they play to their character, more or less
> the guy who rolled up a character that was basically a breeding experiment plays to his canon clan's character traits, being easygoing and a tad smart-mouthed instead of dark and edgy
It's heaven for a novice GM, lemme tell ya

>Half an hour after the game is supposed to start
>Nobody has shown up at the game store
>Text one of my friends, ask where is everyone
>"We're all playing Overwatch"
>Tonight's game night though
>"Dude Overwatch literally just came out"
>All four of you skipped the game to play Overwatch and none of you bothered to tell me?
>"Come on man did you really expect us to miss the first night after Overwatch's launch to play D&D?"

I want to die

>Want to run an OSR game
>Vaguely lighthearted, some gonzo elements
>Not sure if players would be interested
>Not sure if I can even get time for everyone to play
>Not sure if I even like old-school games or just the idea of them
>Only ever DMed a couple solo sessions of Basic Fantasy RPG before
Fuck, self-doubt is my real enemy here, isn't it?

Jesus christ, what a gaggle of assholes. Time to get some new friends who can act like adults, user.

Baselessly forcing the blame onto the people in the thread is the bait. It's pretty obvious, desu fampai.

>he really expected people to skip Overwatch launch day for D&D

I was.

my players often get an image in their heads of how THEY believe something should play out

so when their retarded plan doesn't work out precisely how they imagined, they bitch

what's even worse is that they often base their shit off of "muh realism". In a game where all three of them have magic and shit

like no, the pack of OWLBEARS aren't afraid of your fucking torch. Why the fuck would the pack of THREE ANGRY OWLBEARS just up and run away because you swung a torch twenty feet away from you?

or shit like the magic character uses illusions then gets butthurt about people seeing through them. Like you're fighting guards and you illusion up a small dragon in front of them, they fucking saw you do that and the thing clearly appeared out of thin air, they know that magic is a thing and the dragon also clearly is fake because one of the guards is fucking standing in it

My games go great for the most part but my players are just kinda dumb.

having players that don't care about the game as much as you do is terrible. Straight up leave them and tell them that if they don't give a shit you're not gonna try to give a shit

Nothing bugs me more than being an online DM doing play by post and not getting a reply from more than one person in the range of 36 hours.
Makes me feel like I've done something horrible but nobody wants to mention it, or they just don't care about the game any more.
It's a little thing, but it makes me paranoid. That and not getting feedback.

I learned not to plan anything out in too much detail as you cannot know what your players would react to a certain situation. I make little notes like a writer and use it for inspiration.

>Like you're fighting guards and you illusion up a small dragon in front of them, they fucking saw you do that and the thing clearly appeared out of thin air, they know that magic is a thing
if you're willing to cite this as an excuse, you might as well not have illusion magic at all.
>and the dragon also clearly is fake because one of the guards is fucking standing in it
this, this makes sense. The rest of it seems a bit much to me

My players generally don't bitch, but if something's skew-whiff, they're not afraid to speak up and ask me about it or state their position.

Case in point, two bad guys were initiative X, one got a player down to low health, and I said 'seeing player is badly hurt, the other bandit closes in', and one of them was like 'If they have the same initiative, they should be moving at the same time, right? The second bandit couldn't know that the player would crit-fail and lose so much health.'

It made sense, so I changed the second bandit's target to be as if he didn't know the player was nearly about to get one-shotted.

...

Why wouldn't you expect people to skip the launch of a shitty game for a good one, user?

If he's not even worth a fucking text message saying "oh can't come that day, playing vidjeo games" to these guys, then they're childish assholes who should find themselves a doormat to DM for them instead.
Adults who've made commitments don't break them silently.

As a guy who cancelled all of his plans for the week to play Warhammer Total War this desu famalamadingdong

Illusions should be used for clever shit, not "I bet if I conjure something in front of this guy he'll run away!"

unless you're using some weird setting everyone knows that magic is around and likely have seen some sort of magic in their lifetime, and they're probably not stupid enough to believe that a legit dragon just materialized out of thin air in the middle of town after the man in the wizard robes did a bunch of hand gestures and said some magic shit

imo you were well in the right, even if they have the same initiative it's your choice if they both go at the same time or not. You could also easily say "They decide to gang up on you" because you know, that makes complete sense

your players were just trying to wishy wash you into a better situation for themselves

I hate my group.

>that one fat autistic fag who totally lacks any ability to plan ahead and takes pride in it, I still don't get why, and always fucking acts as stupid as possible and just won't stop memeing.
>that one minmaxing fag who is always late for at least an hour and tries to solve everything with violence and always brags about how things are easy even when they're not and he died four sessions in a row
>that another minmaxing rules-lawying fag why is always spiteful as fuck and rages anytime when things don't go his way
>that one fag who always makes the same character who is either a knight or a lone cowboy that lacks any kind of backstory or personality besides "muh honor" or "muh badassery"
>that one fag who always have a dismissive attitude and who doesn't bother to read anything and always asks one of the minmaxers to make a character for him and it's fucking always some kind of chaotic stupid bard regardless of the system

Guess which one is me.

>>that one fag who always makes the same character who is either a knight or a lone cowboy that lacks any kind of backstory or personality besides "muh honor" or "muh badassery"
Behold my psychic powers.

The first one. More adjectives.

>unless you're using some weird setting everyone knows that magic is around and likely have seen some sort of magic in their lifetime, and they're probably not stupid enough to believe that a legit dragon just materialized out of thin air in the middle of town after the man in the wizard robes did a bunch of hand gestures and said some magic shit
I mean, unless he thought the guy in wizard robes literally summoned a pseudodragon.

is there such thing as a good group?

seriously, i've been in four groups in my life and none of them are what I'd call "good". Either the GM was a cunt or didn't try or one of the players was a cunt or didn't try.

my players are alright when they play but they're just kind of cunts personality wise, like I won't hear anything from one guy for a week and then the night we're supposed to play it's "oh can't make it" or I just don't hear anything at all

am I wrong for believe that fucking adults shouldn't act like that? They just have no respect for my time or the time of anyone but themselves.

>decide to run involved shadowrun/13th age combo campaign thing
>play rules light because party isn't interested enough to give a shit about actual rules in either book
>party never follows any given plot hooks
>every player on their phone between rounds, and during travel or literally anything else
why even show up
I'm DMing a DnD 5e game soon, how fucked am I

> imo you were well in the right
Quite possibly

> even if they have the same initiative it's your choice if they both go at the same time or not
I know. But it made sense the way the guy explained it. He didn't sperg out, he calmly and rationally explained his point of view, and I respect that.

> You could also easily say "They decide to gang up on you" because you know, that makes complete sense
Yeah, but - and this is shitty reasoning, admittedly - it was only the second game and I didn't want one of them to die straight-up. I used a Kishimoto-tier asspull to get him to safety on 1HP and 1 Chakra Point, bleeding out and essentially unable to move, but alive. I did impress upon him that unlike the actual Kishimoto, I won't be handing them out like Halloween candy, and if we consider them as Fate points sort of thing, he burned his for like the next eight missions.

I'm still a REALLY new GM, so I like my players putting in their input and teaching me as we go. They don't try to take advantage of me, which is great.

good groups are hard to find in a hobby that appeals to the socially stunted.

Oddly enough, one of the best experiences I've ever had at the table was as a player (rare) in a random group at the FLGS.

It's a shit show for the most part, but every once in a while you find something that works.

I'm the third one. And I'm the GM.