Vent Thread

What are some things that have been bothering you about your most recent game? Minor nitpicks, personal gripes, and other little things like that.

Here's a thread to vent, and maybe get a solution to your woes.

A few sessions ago, my GM mentioned that elite goblin warriors in his setting undergo a ritual where their skin is burned, flayed and healed by their shamans over and over, and that the process leaves their scarred body pitch black. The goblins call these warriors "Goblin Blackskins," which I thought was a kind of unintentionally unfortunate title at the time but figured it was innocent enough not to say anything about.

However, last week the GM had us face off against "Goblin Blackskin" warriors for the first time, and revealed that they're all spearmen. Specifically, the GM said that they're called "Blackskin Spear-Chuckers," and used this term to refer to them every time they did something, so now I'm thinking the GM is probably kind of racist and as the one black guy at the table it's making me kind of uncomfortable

Holy fuck

I'm actually not sure what to say to that

You should politely inform him this makes you a little uncomfortable, entirely because of the name.

Maybe suggest referring to them as Scar-skinned instead?

I'm bothered, that I couldn't get a game for a few months even though I have 10 willing to play my whfb campaign.
There are never more than 3 free for a weekend and that's fucking annoying.
People working three shifts and students don't go well together with time schedules I guess.

One of our players has become the baron of the area and now he's all busy doing administrative stuff in-game. One of our other players is a merchant who's happy just moping about building and buying shit. Last other player is currently in a coma and would probably just sit and act bored even if he was awake.

I'm playing a swordsman and I have fuck-all to do. I kinda wanna visit this village we passed a long time ago to meet up with this cute sorceress chick that can further a plotline, but since we don't want to split the party, I'm stuck here and I have no clue what to do. We're sort of in an awkward position, because the baron can't just up and leave his domain because of some shit going on, but it's just kind of boring to not have anything to do.

It doesn't help that I have to sit there and listen to these autists confer with their advisors and staff over the most menial shit. I'm told I should get into the whole administrative "fun" as well, but first off that doesn't sound much like fun to me, and it would be grossly out of character for my dude to do so anyway.

I'm at a loss. Only decent alternative for me so far has been bantering with the local NPCs, which thankfully is pretty fun since our DM good at improv. But it's just wasting time waiting for these other guys to get their stuff in order so we can do something together again.

I have asked them if they need my help with anything, but they don't, and would actually prefer to keep certain things secret from me. (For IC reasons probably.)

"This thing's going to explode if you keep ignoring it."

I wouldn't have to ignore it if you didn't insist on being obtuse about any possible solution. Asshole.

i don't get it

Nigger.

While that does sound pretty boring, your feelings seem like a parallel to what your swordsman character would actually be experiencing, having to sit on his haunches and wait for something exciting to happen.

Depending on how you play him, maybe have this lull be a reason for him to cause some trouble. Gambling, underground fighting, or maybe just have him start exploring skills and trades he wouldn't normally have time for.

About the sorceress, tell your GM that your character sent word for her to come to you with some sort of proposition or other enticing information; if you can't leave to get the hook then try bringing it to you.

Lastly, if your GM seems content to let the party stay still long enough to run a barony, then try to rise to a position of power in the region, one that suits your character's preferences.

Ask him to throw in some combat encounters; raids, general discontent in the town, thieves, anything works, and then use these events as leverage to become captain of the guard or something.

Pathfinder. DM insists on using fucking crit fumble rules on a nat 1. Stab allies, dorp weapon, lose attacks kind of shit.

I really want to play a twf rogue but I'm scared to

My group started a Pathfinder game back around February or March, and we ultimately stopped because school was getting in the way of sessions. Since May, we haven't really had to deal with any school obligations except the GM who had to finish his job at the local high school. It's been a couple weeks, at least, and I've been trying to get the party together to either rekindle the Pathfinder game, I've offered to run Only War to help relieve the GM, and people have expressed interest for both games, but nobody feels like putting any commitment towards getting the group back together for RPGs. We hang out every so often and everything, them a lot more than me, but yeah I'm just getting frustrated and tired of trying to put everything together while having nobody put any effort of their own into it.

Depending on how many black friends he has had, and my assumption is that number is very low, it's possible that he's being insensitive purely by accident.
Don't rule out the chance that this person, by pure lack of exposure to specific social groups, is being an asshat without even realizing what he's doing.
A conversation is the best way forward.

Savage Worlds - GM insists on using RAW in the setting book; thereby making every NPC openly hostile to everyone except the priest.

My players get pissy if I don't remind them that the game is happening. It's been happening at the same time every day for the last few months. On the few times the schedule was different, i made sure that everyone was made aware, but I still got people bitching that it was my fault they couldn't be bothered to listen and remember and pay attention.

>/pol/ gms and forgets to hide his powerlevel
In all honesty, it does sound inadverdently fucky, though.

Our GM's encounters are horribly unbalanced. They are either trivial smackdowns or death given form. Nothing in between

Strive towards creating your own band of brigands to raid and pillage the baron's area.

One of my players, being possessed by the 'tism, spends minutes detailing a single action.
On a more personal note, another player has tried to pass themselves off as weeb to me, and their powerlevel was sorely lacking. I just want someone to discuss my shitty mongolian cave paintings with.

My gm is adamant about nat 1s and nat 20s on skill checks having disastrous/amazing results.

So, even though my military-trained scout with a +12 in lockpicking and expertise in the skill has loads of experience picking locks, he has a 1 in 20 chance of fucking it up nightmarishly.

That's not an issue if you're allowed to take 10, because then you can only critically fail on rolls that are actually fairly difficulty.

The kind of GMs that make up and enforce fumble rules usually balk at 'take 10' and look for reasons to invalidate it

Every player in my group has a speech impediment of some sort. Stuttering, stammering, Elmer Fudd speech, annoying laughter (Woody Woodpecker-tier), etc. There's also fascinated by lolsorandom and sexual humor, so naturally they stick boobs and adamantine boxes of rape everywhere. But since they're the only group in my small town, I have no real choice.

Yeah, my DM won't let me take 10 generally.

Also, they talk out of turn too much. Commentary and advice is fine, but they metagame and interfere with each other like fuck.

I keep wanting to like Exalted, but it keeps being written by retarded faggots.

Stand-in GM threw a hissy fit because half the group (myself included) tried to follow up on a plot point stand-in GM introduced, because we followed up on it 'too soon'. The stand-in GM's response to us getting off the rails was to have the goddess of time manifest herself in front of us, tell us off for following up on the plot point too early saying it 'destroyed the future', and rewriting the universe to a week in game time prior so we could all get back on the GM's plot rails and continue the 'natural course of events'.

I wouldn't even mind so much, if there was an actual story being told. Aside from the plot hook we're not supposed to touch yet, there is nothing else to do. Trying to get out into the city to find a plot hook only gets us a blank look from our whiny railroad conductor.

My IT office job could be a hell of a lot worse, but it leaves me so drained that I can't enjoy anything anymore.

I used to love tabletop games but it has fallen to the wayside. I just want to sit at home, pour a TALL glass of wine and fuck around on the internet.

I was designing my own system and setting and fortunately I still get a little bit done every couple weekends. But I'm just too tired to GM or even play anymore. Being an introvert in an open office sucks.

Lucky you.
I work ten to twelve hour shifts lifting fifty pound boxes all day.

Wow dude lucky you, I work 24 hours a day being chained to a fucking rock while birds peck out my internal organs.

Fuck off Prometheus, no one cares about your faggy little flame, we have the internet now.

My current group started out playing 4e, and now half of them have somehow developed this idea that each system that isn't 4e is "bad" because their idea of what an average TTRPG is like is completely warped. I've tried running one-offs in 5e, FATE, Dark Heresy, Only War, and even freeform, and they've called all of it "shit".

That, however, isn't even the worst part of it. The worst part is that they do dislike one thing about 4e. FUCKING COMBAT. They dislike the combat in a system that has practically nothing but combat rules, yet they still somehow shit on every other system I've tried. I just don't understand.

Keep trying systems, but ask them to pick them out or even buy them. Tell them you're tired of 4E if you have to.

...

....so it is true. The 4rries are developing the brain damage they claimed PF players have.

I'll take "Things I made up because I'm having a bad day" for $500, Alex.

>>You see a row of shoddy wooden doors lining the halls. Testing them you find that rust has sealed the locks shut.
>I want to kick the closest door open.
>>Sure. Roll a strength check.
>15
>>You kick down the door with such a force it's thrown off the hinges and (investigation of room).
>Nothing here. Kicking down the next door.
>20
>>The door stays firm and does not budge an inch.
>Okay. I'll take 20 which ends in a 26.
>>The door creeks in protest but after a few more kicks you finally knock it off its hinges.
>Why was this one so hard? I'll take a look at it while the others investigate the room.
>>The door is the same as the other door in every way, except there's about 10% more rust on one hinge.
Yeah, bullshit like this. Arbitrarily raising DCs if Someone is "too skilled" in that certain task.

One of the players hasn't done jack and shit, and has always been on her phone. I fucking hate that, and she sits and bitches to me how it's boring.

Holy fuck, your playing a DRUID! Sure, we might be in a urban setting, but come on!
Or, the fucking fact that I SAID WE WERE PLAYING a viking campaign, but NO ONE FUCKING PUT THAT IN THEIR BACKSTORY NOW DID THEY?!
God damn, or the fucking half-dragon with over 30 AC, at level fucking 3, or the fact that even though I planned out this campaign, half of them say it's "worse then the last one" which was literally just me making shit up. What's fucking worse, is that half of them never even fucking show up, and the ones that do cite that they "don't have anything to do." WELL THAT'S YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM! Why? Because you dipshits didn't make a backstory, which I specifically told you. Or the fucking fact that they want the old DM back, because "I'm making it too hard." Holy fuck, I sent you cunts against a MILITARY CARGO SHIP and you dipshits decided to set it on fire, try to fucking waterboard the captain, WHILE IT'S ON FIRE, and fight two spellcasters.
Shit. And everyone knows if I wasn't DM, then we'd either have "everything is CR+6 and above for the group", StatsyMcMinmaxer, who'll make everything impossible to hit, or the faggot that always comes high.

If anyone can tell me how the fuck I can prove myself to my group, tell me. I'm a DM with a year's and a half experience so far.

I'm so sorry

>nothing ever happens hurr durr dedurr

>hang out with some friends in a cabin over a week
>ask them if they want to play a one-shot of D&D, they say yes
>plan it out for two days
>5 players are in the game
>one player goes to sleep within 30 minutes of play
>another two get tired within 2-3 hours
>the two remaining want to keep playing but can't because everyone is tired
>they didn't get anywhere in the adventure because they had trouble making decisions and since it was so short
>they still enjoyed it and thanked me for GMing

I just feel weird about it.

>If anyone can tell me how the fuck I can prove myself to my group, tell me

Do something fun. But in all honesty that just sounds like a shitty group.

Did he inform the party that they should never relax around them?

To be fair the tendency to portray goblins as a tribal species might come off insensitive towards natives on itself, mainly because they always make strong correlations between their tribalism and their savagery

And yes, I know there's a lot of real world tribes that have been and still are as bad as goblins but I just find it weird that they still dare to make that correlation to this day in which PC culture is stronger than ever

Does he have any subraces that seem particularly jew-y?

>pry hinge free and put in backpack. speak of it in hushed tones as if it is a powerful magic item.

Doesn't 4e or 5e have that problem that skill challenge difficulty scales with level? I just remember someone complaining about Xe that the same wall that is DC 10 to climb to a level 1 commoner is DC 30 to a level 20 legendary ranger.

>Have 18(+4) strenght and proficiency in athletics with a +3 bonus
>DM still won´t let me lift anything heavier than a sack of potatoes or overpower anything stronger than a dwarf commoner unless I roll a natural 20

This is why martials are fucked, it´ts not the system, GM´s just don´t like them being useful

I joined a game thinking it was a magical realm game, and it turned out to be an average if anime-inspired pathfinder game. I'm still a lady barbarian with 20 str, so I'm having fun, I just wish I could also be fucking that sentient wolf I befriended.

Just show him that you can bench press an obese 295 pound merchant by RAW without any rolls required and I'm pretty sure he'll back down.

That's funny, my DM(Council of Thieves) does the same exact thing. We have a monk in our party that has so far "pulled his groin" 3 times now. He even has a little chant that he says every time it happens, something about the Wheel of Fate.

You wouldn't happen to be playing a Qui-gon monk, would you?

Your GM is just a dumb asshole.

Just be cute with it, treat it like a pupper.

Mtg opponent got way too salty about losing against my aggro werewolf deck because he has too many high cmc cards so he could almost never cast two spells a turn to flip mine back. Add in getting bitchy whenever I slammed one of his heavy hitters with a moonlight hunt or eot boosted everything with a Howlpack resurgence or drew my only copy of collected company and castes it eot with a transformed vildlin pack alpha in play.

Also, one dude just does not understand a think about playing in-character in a horror ttrpg we are playing and makes just too many jokes whil we are running from horrors.

>makes just too many jokes whil we are running from horrors.
Tough crowd, tough crowd.
Speaking of horrors, wanna take a look at my wedding photo?

HEYOOOOOO!

It's more annoying as he IC is making these jokes at the detriment of the rest of the party since he does not assist (Assisting other players is VITAL to group survival in this system) at all in crucial moments that ended up nearly getting one character killed, but wasn't since we blew every karma point we collectively gathered to save his ass.

>DM draws map out on whiteboard
>Asks us all where we're standing
>I state I'm standing near the NPC that is in the area with us, as he was about to show me a box
>"Here abouts user?"
>Points in-between 2 lines drawn on the map
>sure that works
>"Ok test Dex"
>whut
>I test Dex, roll pretty shit
>"Ok you take 2 damage from tripping on the cart rails
>I start to object, but he says that I should ask what things are before interacting with them

Felt like a pretty dick move, even if I got back the HP relatively soon.

If my character has the int it does, it would have known that they were rails, and would have not fallen in them/would have not walked on them.

Hey new to Veeky Forums what do you mean by take a ten?

In some editions of D&D you are allowed to "take 10" on a skill check during a non-stressful downtime (for example: picking the lock to a bedroom in a empty house). This means you treat your check as if you rolled a 10 and then add all applicable modifiers.

Similar shit, absolutely hate this.
> Party walks into a room
> Room is described as a walkway surrounding a pool of liquid gold
> I think to myself, "Okay, well I don't want to touch liquid gold, that's like touching lava."
> DM anounces that the wizard(me) jumps in there out of greed, because she's Lawful Evil
> Whole party has to save the wizard

I don't even fucking care anymore. Why the hell would the smartest character in the whole party, with an intelligence of 22, who can literally just say, "Oh, I take 25 on a knowledge engineering check, I know that the melting point of gold is 2000 degrees fahrenheit.. The melting point of a human is 200 degrees.." She's literally the party's voice of reason and most trusted party member, despite being the only evil character.

Sounds like half the group thought they were signing up for a game of monopoly instead of a role playing game.

I mean, the dwarves don't even need to be changed really.

Having to play with people who insist that doors on plastic building for 40k count as a firepoint then shooting every damn thing out of it. If I have to put up with this shit, then as a firepoint it should only allow 1 model to fire, not all of them. Or just leave it as a solid bit of plastic that obscures LoS since that is what it is anyway.

My players only want Forgotten Realms. No matter the system or the setting, they just want everything to be Forgotten Realms because that's somehow the only sort of fantasy they can conceptualize. I pretty much live for worldbuilding, so this is slowly killing me.

Two of my three players are extreme introverts and social outcasts, which means any game we play they have utterly no clue how to operate around people, and will default to Chaotic Neutral fucksticks within a second of having to communicate anything to anyone. The third one is just as bad, but he's an extroverted robot/psychopath. Like, I really think he has no ability to empathize with human beings or other creatures in-game that feel. When asked a hypothetical situation, he is most likely to give pedantic answers that question the premise first, and then choose to do things only a robot would choose. He literally cannot understand why anyone would ever take a mechanically non-Optimized option in-game when you could just go Wizard, regardless of character.

None of them set goals for their characters, so every game turns into Cat-Herding 101 right off the bat. They could not be arsed to come up with anything aside from anti-social shit that just mean the party can't function. And the one time a player made an interesting character with goals and ambitions, he decided afterwards he was "triggered" by accidently rolling an autistic person, and won't ever make interesting characters again.

I'm just so frustrated all the time. Pic related is mfw.

Not exactly a vent, more like a vent/worry.

So I've got a group with two switchoff DMs. They're both quite good, but one in particular is an absolute genius. And we ran this great arc of campaigns, (I hesitate to call it one campaign because most of the time we played different characters, but it was all one setting and often stuff we did in previous campaigns had impacts on later ones). I've told the story previous about how we failed to interrupt a critical demon summoning ritual, it's the same GM.

And we were running along this campaign arc of ours, and about two years ago we played a new campaign, was fun. Then he announced he was a bit "burned out" and wanted to take an extended hiatus, not just the usual break between campaigns he did.

That's cool, we all need rests at times, right? Well, last month, he says he's *finally* ready to resume the arc, and we're going to have the big enchilada. We pull out our old character sheets, we get our stuff ready, and we play one session. Hard to know exactly what's going on, and he always has twists down the line, we spent most of it trying to get our bearings in character.

Then he misses a week
And a second week
And a third
Calls a session for fourth week, is setting up, and then announces that he can't do this anymore, with literal tears in his eyes, and that he's not sure whether or not to hang up his GM hat for good.

I'm not mad, honestly more worried. (Ok, a very little selfishly mad, but I feel bad for feeling that way), and I want to help, but I totally have no idea how.

DMs are players too user. If you're not having fun you don't have to do it. It's not your job.

That's just Bullshit user. Your DM probably doesn't want you to play an evil character, but instead of being a big boy and telling you, he passive aggressively takes control of your character to make it do dumb shit

Do you know if he has depression or some form of mental illness in real life? If you know him IRL just try to be there for him.

I had a friend who started acting the same way with something he loved (music). He just stopped playing alltogether after a short period of time.

Try to get him some help of some sort if you can, he may need it

This is pretty amusing too, because he's the one that approached me and asked me to play an evil character in his campaign. His only request was that I make sure I have a code of conduct(being lawful evil)

I ended up going with something like the Doctor Doom moral code. Don't kill associates(Unless they try to kill me first), Don't kill kids, and never break your word(But only the absolute letter of it. Such as "I will not harm a HAIR on his head").

Again, also apparently the voice of reason in the party.

Naw, he's probably mad at me because I'm too fucking good at playing a wizard. My wizard doesn't have a single damage dealing spell in her entire book, only utility. So I break all his puzzles with MATH, break all of the magic traps with Detect magic + wand of erase, break all of his physical traps with wand of unseen servant, and break all of his encounters by putting haste on the monk.

he only recently discovered that Symbol spells automatically trigger when erased.

A little while ago my friend had me watch Les Miserables and I thought Gavroche was kind of neat, so I made a tiefling thief based on him for an IRC game I app'd for. He spoke for the inhuman underclass that was prevalent in the slums and knew the market of the sprawling city where we began like the back of his hand. Looked mostly like a human kid except for horns.

I asked DM if this was okay, and he said yes.

That was two sessions ago. Since then we've had two combats and every enemy seems to make a bee line for my character. On top of that, when an enemy hits another PC the DM describes it as "[fighter] is struck by the footpad's dagger, leaving a bloody gash" or "the rat takes a grisly divot out of [resident codzilla]." But the few times my tiefling kid has been hit have been really fucking gruesome. I can't remember the exact word-for-word but this is pretty close:

"[Tiefling] is ripped across the chest by the thief's rusty dagger, splitting open his ratty tunic and the flesh beneath, giving him the sudden urge to cry for his mother while his despoiled demonic lifeblood pours out on the ground."

Most recently my character got hit by a mace and my DM vividly described the bruising of intestine and made my fucking roll constitution to not piss myself. When I inevitably failed (hurr thief with constitution) the resultant humiliation description was about a paragraph long.

I kind of feel like he's picking on me for having a young character despite specifically asking if it was alright beforehand, but I don't want to bring it up because, well, I've had a lot of trouble finding a game that's on my schedule and I can't really risk losing this one. What do I do?

>Do you know if he has depression or some form of mental illness in real life?

No, but I'll freely admit I don't know him that well outside of the gaming circle.

I would also like to add that he was a bit weird ever since the last campaign in that arc. He felt it wasn't quite as good as the one before it (might have had a point) and that he wasn't able to recapture what he had. I'll again reiterate that I actually don't know him super well, but the impression I got was always akin to some super-bad performance anxiety rather than a more blanket depression.

I was trying to.

>Tiefling
>cry for his mom

This doesn't happen, Tieflings are frequently orphaned demonspawn that know nothing of a mother's protection and love. Also, you're a rogue, you're probably a self-self-sufficient type who's fended for himself for years. Hell you might resent her as a whore.
Call him on his bullshit next time, he's making you act out of character.

>PC culture
At first I thought you were suggesting the tendency to murderhobo was becoming increasingly common in the real-world

>administrative fun
Jesus christ are you playing with Ben from Parks and Recreation?

I think your extrovert might be a replicant user. Watch him.

The DM keeps using the king's most talented assassin as a helpful force.

If we're struggling with a fight, suddenly he appears and kills a few of the mobs then is gone again. I'm annoyed by it but the rest of the party seem to like it.

I'll be honest, this is flying right over my head.

I have been trying for 5 fucking years to get in a 40k rpg, or a dnd or anything on roll 20 but never get much interest.
Living out fucking nowhere sucks

I feel you.

I want to play 40k RPG or 5e but my friends only like Pathfinder, which I hate.

Go back to /b/ you remtard.

Why do you need more? 2-4 is optimal number of players

Spear-chucker is an old timey racist term for black folk which hearkens back to their African heritage where they would be generalized as uncivilized tribals who still relied on spears in a time of gunpowder.

just started a 5e game. one guys character really fucking annoying.

I feel the both of you, but I managed to get my group to play Dark Heresy. Only to see them lose interest and give up on it.

Is it better to have played and lost or never played at all?

It's very wrong to call them spear-chuckers. They didn't chuck their spears, they wielded them on melee.

The correct term is spear stabber, I say.

Goddamn Jedi and goddamn fucking Sith.

My captcha was milkshakes and I picked motor oil. Still went through.

I have to vent about That Guy at my sessions every once in a while so thank you for the thread.

>Creates special zany characters and gets upset when I veto them. This especially comes into play when he comes up with a new character and tries to kill his old one so he can play his new one
>Goes on "zany" adventures that just end up taking up a lot of time
>Gets upset when he perceives that the homebrew concessions I let him have aren't powerful enough when the alternative is to not have them at all
>Whenever he speaks in his character's voice, no matter which character, all he starts doing is some weird slow whisper that's really hard to understand
>Makes terrible decisions all the time and justifies it as "it's what my character would do" even when it clearly is not
>He interrupts. All the time. When I'm trying to answer somebody's question, he jumps up with his own question and demands it answered immediately. When I'm trying to describe a room he'll interrupt with another question about the room that he would have gotten the answer to if he waited another 5 seconds (this isn't a case of him trying to expand on a detail, this is him asking completely unrelated things about the room, like asking if he can find a trapdoor while I'm still detailing the contents of the room).
>He interrupts with his own actions while I'm still narrating someone else's actions. A particularly egregious example is when I was narrating a touching scene where the party druid was helping the survivors of a destroyed fishing town make rafts so they can do their viking funeral and midway he just yells out "OH I BLESS THE BODIES" and completely ruins the scene