Friends ask me to DM a game for them

>friends ask me to DM a game for them
>complete newbies
>arrive at friend's house for character building session
>two people don't have anything in mind, two do
>one planned to be a charismatic bard as the party face
>other planned to be a dashing, swashbuckling rogue
>one hour later...
>these concepts have taken a turn for the weird
>escaped concubine / prostitute bard
>a kobold rogue with 4 CHA (player got one low roll, 5 good ones, decided to run with it)
>he's already been nicknamed the autizard

I may need to drastically change my plans.

"Autizard"?

Autistic lizard. They decided his savant skill is traps, and he's going to turn the town's Absurdly Spacious Sewer into a deathtrap.

>Autizard

>Autistic lizard. They decided his savant skill is traps, and he's going to turn the town's Absurdly Spacious Sewer into a deathtrap.

oh the wonders of trpgs

you have some potential winners there. players who are able to accept flaws or poor turns of fate and "run with it" open some really great doors in the realm of roleplaying. i'd be excited if i were you. don't ruin this opportunity.

>Players accepting and going along with their rolled stats
Good.
>Rolling stats
Still shit.

did the other two players pick anything interesting?

You didn't let them do point buy and you're called the kobold an autist?

How is your Variant Human build coming along? Still not sure how many classes you want to dip into?

>the autizard
Kek, these players are awesome.

Had a game where I rolled absurdly high along with my racial mods so I ended up with beef mclargehuge the barbarian who is smarter than the wizard. To give him some downsides the dm made him ugly as shit to most races, I play him like a retard so as to not overshadow and ruin the fun of other players, I didn't give him any real useful talents, he knows how to hunt and he knows how to kill people, he speaks one language (barely) and doesn't know how to write, read, cook, has no etiquette, barely bathes, can't ride a horse, and lastly is extremely superstitious.
I know it's a Mary sue but unless they need me to fight or help I stay at the back of the bus to counteract his sue-ness.

>he knows how to hunt and he knows how to kill people, he speaks one language (barely) and doesn't know how to write, read, cook, has no etiquette, barely bathes, can't ride a horse, and lastly is extremely superstitious.
>I know it's a Mary sue

I don't think you understand what that term means, user.

"Mary Sue" doesn't mean "Powerful character." It means, "Character with virtually no flaws or one completely irrelevant flaw that basically never, ever loses, and everybody in the setting mysteriously likes this character."

That character is completely acceptable.

>point buy
minmaxer go home

People who can't roll with the vagaries of fate shouldn't be playing dice games.

>Rolled Stats, as in stats that are randomly generated that force players to adapt and create characters off the cuff with them are mmore autistic then point buy, the entire purpose of which is to maximize your points and you can decide your characters natural abilities

user, you don't actually know what 'autism' means, do you?

I usually pre empt things by saying a character I don't think is Mary sue is because if I say I'm playing an 8ft tall cannibalistic berzerker people call me a sue.

8ft tall cannibalistic berzerker, who warships a dark god that is into human sacrifice and cannibalism.

People having fun angers person on internet because they are apparently having fun wrong.

More news at 9.

That's not being a Sue, that's being edgy as fuck. Both are frowned on, but for different reasons.

I didn't want him to be edgy DESU, it was resurrection or eternal soul slavery, and I'm willing to eat a few people to prevent demon butt plundering.

Fucking auto-correct made me say DESU Wtf.

Thing is, if you're DMing 3.5 (or most any DnD) and you aren't at least offering array or point buy as an option, you really are having fun wrong because it's at the expense of your players having potentially game ruining power imbalance.

>but my players never said anything

Yeah well its not always clear to the player the reason they feel neutered is because their retard DM made them roll for stats in a game that has you pinching pennies for bonuses as many classes.

Yeah, I'm really excited to see how things turn out. I was prepared for shenanigans, but I didn't expect shit of this calibre. I need to adjust my plans so that they don't turn into fugitives immediately.

Not yet. They worked out mechanically what they're doing (sword-and-board Warblade and thrown-weapons Ranger), but they're working on their concepts and backstories now. I think at least one of them wants to be the Straight Man to counteract the rest of the party's insanity.

I actually offered them array, point buy, and rolled stats. They decided rolling would be most fun, because shit like this can happen. The rule I made is that you must reroll if your net modifier is +2 or less, and his mod was +4. The full list of modifiers was +4 (Autizard), +6 (concubine), +8 (warblade), and +14 (ranger). We had one reroll due to too-low net modifier, and the party all said that they were okay with letting the ranger have his huge modifier and not nerf him a little, since he rolled it fair and square, and they weren't too fussed over stats.


Also, the autizard has been getting very into the various things he can do. He's been questioning whether he can carry a Handy Haversack filled with sewer waste to dip his bolts in so he can give people septic wounds. He asked about whether there was a syringe-like item he could use for various purposes (including injecting sewerage). He put max ranks into Craft(Alchemy), Craft(Trapmaking), and Heal, to become some messed up undercity surgeon. He's been considering making his character 100 years old and turning him into a folk tale for the town which parents threaten their kids with ("Do your chores, or the sewer lizard will get you!")

For anybody interested, my original plan for the game was to get them recruited by a criminal gang doing a few odd jobs and being muscle for them, leading into them investigating the murder of some of the girls from his brothels, leading into them discovering it was a (maybe fallen?) paladin who'd gone off the deep end and decided to purge the sinners.
Any suggestions for improvement welcome.

>Autizard coming up with sewage-based enhancements to attack

I love this player! He's so devious and he hasn't even started playing yet. If any sweet adventures come out of this, I wanna hear about it.

I'll make sure to post after each sessions. Should have one, maybe two, in the next week. I'll also screenshot my posts here for context.

>le ebin meme game
>le epik rolz
>le dnd

>le tropin

>le saved

Are you ok? Did someone ruin your favorite general?

That's cool and sounds fair. I'm not one of the guys earlier that was dismissing rolling out of hand you seem like you know what you're doing. Fucking autizards, yo

Not the guy you're replying to, but you really have no place to speak when you're playing Dicks&Dildoes...

>unironically likes playing DnD

Wew lad, that's a whole new level of retardation

>"Hey guys, look at this fucking faggot! He's having fun wrong!"
>"Why aren't all of his opinions exactly the same as the majority on my Chinese cartoon board?"

I don't get the hostility in this thread. OP told a story where everything went better than expected, and the autizard sounds like a fun character. Can't we just enjoy this little storytime?

Wordfilters bro
baka desu senpai

screencaps for posterity? This is a thread to remember, and we've barely gotten started.

don't you get it?! He's having fun WRONG! Wrong I tell you WRONG! He should be playing a proper game like (insert random indie trash of choice here) not the game he likes!

>the hypocrite uses "Stop having fun wrong" when he started doing exactly that in his first post

Sure thing mate

You probably won't believe me but I've never typed that word before, I was trying to say dude.

I'll keep a record of the thread for when the party inevitably does something retarded.
They were discussing undermining buildings and making them fall into sinkholes.

...

>+14 net modifier
Jesus

Y'all have a group of winners right there.

Give them a good time, try not to let the group dissolve, and make sure to post storytimes.

>2016
>People are still rolling their stats
>They consider it superior to any other form of char-building

Rolling stats D&D style is just retarded. If you are rolling from certain base, so you are not starting from 0, rolling can stay. But doing this shit pure D&D style is simply retarded. Even so if D&D is all about min-maxing, so it's counter productive

I do it for funsies. I mostly play one-shots in that system anyway so it feels alright to just roll and see what I get.

It's simple. If you have a character in mind, do point-buy or array. If you are undecided and trust Dice Gods, roll.

>complete newbies
>a kobold rogue
Did you really just inflict Pathfinder on people new to ttrpgs?

DnD 3.5e, actually. May not be particularly beginner friendly, but because it's what I'm most familiar with it's easier for me to help them learn.
The conversation went something like this:
>Me: You may not want to focus too heavily on being a social character, since the bard is going to have a heavier focus on that just because he's a rogue, and you may end up feeling overshadowed
>Him: Hmm. What if I went more Viet Cong style traps and stuff?
>Me: Doable. I actually saw a cool picture a while back which you could draw inspiration from.
>showed him pic related
>Him: Done.
I then went on to explain what a kobold was and directed him to the right pages in Races of the Dragon. He thought it was awesome, and here we are.

Rolling lets you optimize better than point buy.

I can't point-buy an 18 in every stat. (17 in one)

Wait... his town's A.S.S. into a deathtrap?

...

Sounds fun.

You seem to be a verb.

I think it's more like is a verb.

I find the hand of the fates adds more to the game than it subtracts.

>game breaking power imbalances
>it's not fun or interesting seeing a player overcome a numerical inferiority to become a useful character

Christ, dude if anyone is having wrong fun it's you

Not everyone will like or play your preferred system and shutting on someone who likes something you don't is a sign of not only a huge faggot but a shitty role player. You have to be able to get along with others, or at least role-playing as someone else when you hang around them so as to not come off as an autistic control freak.
If you actively shoot down any ideas that aren't your own nobody will game with you.
I'm a racist sexist asshole but none of my group's know that, because I don't bomb into the room and scream "fuck niggers" whilst wearing a shirt that says "go make me a sandwich whore"
I walk in in a Hawaiian shirt wearing either jeans or shorts and I make polite conversation.