TRPG memes that you're starting to get sick of

>>People who shirk their responsibilities to the NPCs they've met, their quests, and all background motivation, just to live in a saturday morning cartoon job.

maybe those quests and npcs are dogshit and boring and they want to be pirates.
you fucking party pooper.

>Also as I recall Nazi is also a saturday morning cartoon job

>his party has never attempted to conquer an entire continent
>never wore matching black and red outfits with skull ornamentation
>to escape debts accrued in their previous shenanigans
>his party never defaulted to genocide when plans when sideways

>his party never defaulted to genocide when plans when sideways

This is the natural PC state.

It's a shame, isn't it

>players run the game, you curate.

I hate this mindset just as much as the GM-as-God one.

No user, you're the cancer.

Spoken as a GM whose players indeed decided to be pirates even though that was not planned.

>TRPG memes that you're sick of

This one

I would do the same thing, except not because they are going off-rails, but because that is what happens to pirates.
I mean what did they expect, they probably just completed a quest slaughtering some brigands or cultists, no one survives long being a bad guy in a fantasy world. Especially when there is magic like being able to speak to the dead or detecting the truth. Steal from a shop and expect a fighter, wizard, cleric and rogue at your door by midday. And if they are anything like a normal adventuring party, they won't even ask questions or take you alive.

storytime

Seconded, I want to hear this story.

>The DM shouldn't have fun unless it's MY fun.

>TRPG memes that you're starting to get sick of

>Hey guys I'm in trouble. We came across a brothel in our last session and there were girls who wanted to have sex with me! What do you do when the GM forces you into your Magical Realm without you knowing?

My fetish is girls wanting to have sex with me.

This. So hard. I'm not surprised, considering a majority of players are autistic nerds who are afraid of anything sexual, but come the fuck on.

Also, on topic

>Teehee, I made a small or tiny character that's actually a martial class like barbarian or fighter! Nobody was eeeever expecting this twist!

Wow, you mean YOU read David and Goliath too? Gee wilickers, you're so smart and clever to make something small and "unsuspecting" into a physical powerhouse!

>keep your magical realm out of games, faggot

I loved that gunshow comic but the liberal use of the term is getting really damn grating.

I don't have the time to tell the story in detail, but it goes like this: we have started playing the Serpent's Skull adventure path for Pathfinder, the first part of which is about PCs being stranded on a tropical island inhabited only by cannibals and usual deadly DnD fauna. During their stay there they learned of pirate treasure and even encountered a stranded pirate NPC (who wasn't in the original adventure). They refused to follow the original quest trail after the cannibal village because, perhaps because a somewhat different plot setup made them believe that the big bad may be way too much for them. Instead by the time they finally obtained the means of getting off the island they decided that taking up the life of piracy is a natural continuation of their adventure. Couldn't argue with them, given that the first adventure in SS is indeed disconnected from the rest. Thankfully PF provides enough modules for pirate adventures or adaptable for them, even a separate adventure path, so I did not lack material to continue the campaign.

Meh. 3/10 story. Glad you didn't go into detail.

>childrens cartoons

I made the mistake of having their first attack be by vikings. They took the longboat and went off east across the ocean, away from the campaign, the story and the world I'd written all my notes for.

So adapt the story to the landmass they end up on? Your plans should always be flexible, that's GMing 101.

I got a double-whammy the last campaign I ran.

>Players agree on a heist-type game. The first session will be them stealing a diamond from a local baron.
>Character creation, they find out that there is a race of people who live on the sea and are mostly pirates. One guy wants to be one.
>Me: "Well, you're in an entirely land-locked country, but not *all* of them are pirates, and there's no reason you couldn't have just bucked the trend set off for adventure. Sure."
>Other players: "Wait, there's pirate-people? Can I be one too? How about me?"
>Within minutes, the entire party is pirates, starting with no boat, about as far away from the ocean as you can be in-setting.
>Me: "...Do you guys just want this to be a pirate campaign?"
>Vigorous head-nodding
>"Well, you're on a boat. The sun beats down on the deck of the, er, what's your boat's name again? Good, the sun beats down on the deck and the salt sea spray is in your faces. There's a merchant vessel you've been trailing since morning, you're just about to overtake her. What do you do?"

I'll fast-forward a bit. The short of it is that there was a lot of me scrambling to put together a pirate campaign out of the remnants of an entirely landbound heist campaign, them meeting and pissing off a couple of different sea-centered factions, finding treasure, getting in a fist fight with another captain over a game of cards, fighting a shadow wizard on the deck of a ship, and eventually sailing across the ocean to sell a hold full of valuable goods. Then I'm hit with this:

>Players: "We want to sell the boat."
>Me: "What? Sell your boat? You're pirates! Are you going to steal another one or something?"
>"You mentioned there's a land bridge connecting the two continents--
>"--we'll just walk back."

That sounded awesome, wonder why they got bored with it

Is this one of those threads where someone pretends to be a really shit DM in order to harvest (You)s?

yes I cant believe anyone is falling for this ancient lost bait of Atlantis

Way to completely ignore the argument and just nitpick one point, you retard.

>TRPG memes that you're starting to get sick of

>Op posts to complain about something
>Veeky Forums replies NO UR BAD

Every fucking time

David was a ranger or maybe a rogue, you dipshit
He literally used a sling stone
Apply yourself

Did you bother asking your players what they actually wanted from a TTRPG?

Had you done that, you might have known that your players didn't care about playing a deep and involved plot, and just wanted high-flying adventure.

Seriously. 90% of all these "the players didn't do what I had planned/the GM is forcing me into a narrative that I don't care for" problems could be resolved instantly if the players just fucking TALKED to each other, and made it clear what they wanted from the game before they sat down to play.

He was bad though.

Players play RPG's to have fun. Fantasy pirates are fun.
Political Intrigue games are only fun for the GM, and even then not really because of all the legwork.
Basically he wanted us to enable him for punishing the players for not participating in this vaguely interactive novel he'd written. Which even if he HAD been in the right, we wouldn't have done.

BECAUSE WERE FUCKING Veeky Forums AND CAN BARELY AGREE ON WHAT COLOR AN ORANGE IS.

Oranges are redyellow

Like some sort of tangerine color you shits

You fukbois have clearly never seen a real orange. They're RED. See?

>Hey, no, I didn't spend 5 hours planning and balancing potential encounters and articulating NPC movement in the background for you guys to just go "lolsopirateXD".
You're a shit GM for needing to plan more than 10 minutes to handle the PC's and also for refusing them from doing something they should be able to do if they have reason.

The classic mistake of planning for things nobody cares about

>I didn't spend 5 hours planning and balancing potential encounters and articulating NPC movement in the background for you guys to just go "lolsopirateXD".

You probably should've spent those five hours coming up with something good instead.

This is the color of an orange, while not being an orange.

Yes? If the DM isn't making the game fun for his party, why the fuck should people play his game?

>Piracy
>Saturday morning cartoon job

Yeah I'm sure the British Empire felt that way.

>All these shit people ( probably foreverPlayers ) acting like the DM isn't there to have fun, but to make sure the players have fun
Why are 90% of players selfish fucks. DMs put the most work into the game, they are entitled to have the most fun and for you fucks to at least try to bite the plot hooks and not fuck off and do lolrandom bullshit that makes the DM throw all their notes away

>t. Forever DM

>DMs put the most work into the game
So? Is the GM is doing it just for the sake of getting to have fun at the determent of the party's enjoyment, why should they care? "Look at all this effort I put into this game I refuse to let you enjoy, because I want my railroad!"

>It is the GMs job to be beholden to the whims of the players 100%; he is their servant and is there to crunch numbers for them and tell them how many gold pieces they get after a fight.

God I would hate to GM for you faggots.

>DM puts in most work
>PC's not biting plot hooks

Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you've not really thought about what kind of players you have? If they're bot biting the plot hooks it's because they're not the kind of players interested in those hooks.

It's like going to catch a shark with worms instead of chum and then bitching that the shark won't bite.

>"The players want to have fun being creative? Fuck them."
That's good because I would never let you be my GM.

Well thankfully seeing as we're where we are, there's a 90% chance they don't even play RPGs in any form and are simple (you) farmers

>replying to yourself

God forbid the gm not be perfect and have 10 campaigns worth of content ready at all times to predict the players every move.

I mean I know your just baiting but god it's just stupid enough that you deserve it.

Photoshop.jpeg

Or how about the GM be flexible and not an idiot who misread his audience and designed a campaign his players don't have interest in?

Again, glad I have cool GMs who are actually competent in this regard and not stupid manchildren who want to railroad like you.

>Spend time/effort thinking about/discussing the mechanical/crunch side of a character
>Automatically means you don't also care about roleplaying and only want to minmax

Just fucking prepare an encounter table you lazy bastard.

You should strongly consider the possibility that your notes are bad and so are you. If you want players to bite, bait them with something good instead. GMing is on some level a creative endeavor and if you can't handle critique (and that's totally what players not following your railroad is, by the way. If they thought what you wanted was fun, they'd be doing that) then you should try being less of a crybaby.

>Why can't people accommodate me being too autistic to improvise?

Cry more, faggot.

>People in this thread think they can take the city guard.

>spend 5 hours planning and balancing potential encounters and articulating NPC movement in the background

See, that's the real problem. That isn't how GM planning is meant to be done.

First, balancing potential encounters. For some systems this is easy, for some systems this is hard, and for every system in the universe this is completely, 100%, entirely unnecessary. YOU ARE THE GM, THEY CANNOT SEE YOUR STATS. You quickly estimate what will be suitable, and if you are wrong you can adjust the monster on the spot! This is not a difficult concept. Besides, it is okay to have encounters that are easy (makes the players feel awesome) or hard (makes the players know that not all encounters can be beaten by direct combat).

Second, articulating NPC movement. Silly rabbit, you give NPCs a unique trait, a secret, and a motivation, but you do not plan out their every movement. If your players go away from where you planned, you can re-name the NPC and use him elsewhere! The wizard in the tower becomes the wizard on the island in the sea, the tribe of orcs become the barbaric crew of a rival pirate. It isn't that they literally follow the PCs, but you use the material you prepared for one group and apply it to another.

The players only know what is in their immediate reach. You prepared a dungeon and they go somewhere else? Well, put that dungeon in the place where they are going. You prepared local politics and they go on a ship? Now its politics between ships. Nothing you prepare should be usable in only one situation, and if you prepare something and you somehow can't use it now, put it in a folder and use it later. In fact, if you change superficial details, you can even use the same campaign elements again and again, or put minor twists on it.

>it's a "the town guards are absurdly strong" episode
Then why do the locals need to bother the PCs to help them dealing with the troll eating their livestock, or investigate the supposed necromancer cult in the woods? Why don't the swole city guards do it?

>If you want players to bite, bait them with something good instead.
This is entirely subjective. You can have the best plothooks in the universe and if your players are plebs they will ignore them in favor of lolrandumXD and/or wish fulfillment.
See: Top 10 lists of anything ever. Shit like Twilight and Sword Art Online are more popular than classics.

>If your players go away from where you planned, you can re-name the NPC and use him elsewhere! The wizard in the tower becomes the wizard on the island in the sea, the tribe of orcs become the barbaric crew of a rival pirate. It isn't that they literally follow the PCs, but you use the material you prepared for one group and apply it to another.
This is arguably railroading, so the foreverPlayers in this thread will complain about this too.

If they don't take it, then no, by definition, you don't have "the best plothooks in the universe."

Plot hooks are only good in the context of player and GM interest. If one or both parties doesn't take any interest, it's not a good plot hook. Period.

Kind of like how you can't claim to be a good communicator just because you know a lot of fancy words if nobody understands you anyway.

How is it railroading? It's also something the players have no way of nothing, so I can't see why they would take issue with it.

This is a basic technique that anyone competent should use and it doesn't cause issues.

*no way of knowing

its not railroading, it's probably the only way to use anything prepared ahead of time if you have a spastic party.

though i suppose if you have no subtlety the players will notice if they go off the road to a dungeon only to find a dungeon

They got bored with it because OP is 100% right. Players want to be pirates because its a meme, not because they're genuinely interested in pirates. That's why whenever my players mention pirates, I ask them if they think pirates are still around today in real life. If they say no, that means they don't give half a shit about pirating and just want to be memes. I then tell them I'm not interested and if they press the matter to fuck off.

>Players want to be pirates because its a meme, not because they're genuinely interested in pirates.
>I then tell them I'm not interested and if they press the matter to fuck off.
"You don't want what you like. You want what I'll tell you to like!"

I hate it more.

>mages can reshape reality at a whim and control the forces of nature and call down cosmic flame
>warriors are just Joe Average of the City Guard and if you think otherwise, you're a dirty fucking weeb
>who the fuck is Cadmus? Isn't that some capeshit? Beowulf? That movie was trash, fuck off. Bhishma? Sorry, I don't speak towelhead. Fuck off, weeb
And this is why I stopped playing D&D.

>Plot hooks are only good in the context of player and GM interest. If one or both parties doesn't take any interest, it's not a good plot hook.
Okay then.
That Guy players objectively don't exist, it's just the DM is terrible and isn't serving the players whims like a good little slave DM is supposed to do.

That's literally what you're implying.
In your view, why even DM if the only reason to DM is to please players? Apparently according to this thread the DM having fun is completely irrelevant.

God damn players are fucking parasites.

This. So hard.

>OP you're gay you should just let ALL of the players become Bronies because they literally want to and their fun is more important than yours!

>OP is clearly just mad that his players think his plot is BOOORING, and he CLEARLY didn't ask them at the start of the game what type of campaign they wanted to go down and then follow THEIR instructions!

>No OP, people shouldn't metagame to keep on going on the quest hooks or talk to the DM about where the campaign is headed in, they should literally just change directions and the DM should respond to them like they're children as opposed to grown ass adults. Clearly OP is wrong.

I mean, look at this fucking shit here >Which even if he HAD been in the right, we wouldn't have done.

So even if all of the players said "Let's all play kender chaotic neutral rogues in the My Little Pony universe instead", you would never admit that OP was right?

Veeky Forums has become shit for discussion. People can't even start discussion threads anymore without people like this idiot trying to start a witch hunt for "That Guy", all so most of them can stand on their soapbox and preach about how to have fun in the "right way".

It's no wonder I'm slowly starting to see threads on other boards shit talk us. We have a fucking problem, Veeky Forums.

>God damn players are fucking parasites.
Stop DM'ing and go write a novel if you think as much, then. Nobody will miss you.

You haven't proved me wrong at all.
This entire thread is literally "DMs exist to make players have fun!" completely ignoring that DMs put exponentially more effort into the game than a player ever will yet it's still the DMs job to make sure the players have fun at his own expense.

Fuck off, communist scum.

>So even if all of the players said "Let's all play kender chaotic neutral rogues in the My Little Pony universe instead", you would never admit that OP was right?

That's right. I say this as ForeverDM: If this is the case, he should either compromise and find something everyone enjoys, or find another group.
A DM is a kind of player, too, and sometimes he's not the right fit for the group. You can't fix that by abusing the DM's power to punish them for not liking what you like, any more than it's okay for the dickass thief to get mad that the rest of the party doesn't want to do his backstory sidequest thing he's come up with, and retaliate by knifing them in their sleep.
You work with your group, or you find another group. DM, player, it makes no difference.

Also,

>implying badwrongfun

>at his own expense.

>IMPLYING

>movie producers and writers shouldn't focus on making sure their audience are having fun, because they put a lot of effort into their craft! they should focus on having fun over their audience
Fuck off, you self-indulgent manbaby.

If it isn't at the GMs own expense, why is it overwhelmingly "the GM should make sure the players are having fun" in this thread and no "the players should make sure the GM is having fun"?
You're confusing something that is done for profit and something done for entertainment.
>He thinks producers are comparable to GMs
Then why are paid GMs so exceedingly scarce?

The GM's purpose is to create an entertaining experience for their players, not to indulge in their own wankfest. Nobody wants a GM who does the latter, just like nobody will read your masturbatory self-insert fanfiction.

>what is Art House

>The GM's purpose is to create an entertaining experience for their players,
Then why do you or why would anybody GM if the purpose isn't to have fun just like everyone else?
Oh right, you fucking don't.

>what is pretentious faggotry

More like
>Look, I know you're not serious about this. You're doing this because "Pirates" are one of those childish buzzwords that people respond to with automatic like because it's a thing. Like "Ninja" or "Robot" or "Dinosaur". If you've done enough research on pirates to know Blackbeards' Actual name was Edward Teach, or that pirates still exist in modern times, especially around African/Chinese waters, then sure. But you don't know this, because all of your pirate information you have is from Pirates of the Caribbean. You're going to get bored 2 sessions in and then head right back towards this.
>You also probably want that meme D&D story that EVERY player has in explaining why TRPGs are great. The one that goes "Oh man one time we faffed about and became pirates. It was great!".

I'm not against pirating, but I'm against children being at my table. It's considered polite table manners to metagame slightly to keep the party together so you don't wind up with the lone-wolf player, right? Isn't it also the responsibility of players to come up with character that are interested in the motivations of the world the DM presents to them, and to also be adults and talk to the DM about what they ACTUALLY want out of a campaign instead of just randomly in the middle of a campaign going "lolololol lets grab a spork and a peg leg and set sail for one-piece!"?

If you don't have fun entertaining others, then you shouldn't be GM'ing the first place.

>why is it overwhelmingly "the GM should make sure the players are having fun" in this thread and no "the players should make sure the GM is having fun"?

Because the GM has a lot more power over this than everyone else, for one thing, and for another:

>Then why do you or why would anybody GM if the purpose isn't to have fun just like everyone else?

You answered your own question. The idea that the GM should be having fun is taken as a given because why else would he be GMing? The important thing is to ensure that your fun isn't hampering everyone else's, and that you're all on the same page. You don't want to waste your time prepping shit that your players won't like, and end up a bitter salt miner like OP.

>Default assumption of spellcasters and magic in general is that it warps reality and is lulsopowerful

I hate this.

>and that you're all on the same page. You don't want to waste your time prepping shit that your players won't like,
But the thing is that it's not that the players don't like it. It's that the players latch on to meme shit for a brief injection of fun. They prefer to explore the themepark than actually fucking role play.
Holy shit, I just figured out why themepark mmos are so popular. Damn.

I guess it's just a difference in what I think a good game is. I want to run Dwarf Fortress, you want to play World of Warcraft.

Yes, pretentious faggotry exists in multiple mediums, film and ttrpgs being a few.

GM's and Players collaborate in moving a game forward. This guy had it right.
If you don't like Art House, find a new director, but don't get pissed because you didn't get to watch Avengers.

One could hardily be blamed for assuming it though, given 3.X's overwhelming popularity that lingers on even now with Pathfinder.

>modules

I am not fond of it either. It shouldn't be the be-all end-all source of ultimate power that the entire game is built around, it should be just one option among many.

My group used to have this running gag where we would go into a town and immediately ask about the layout of the town and what the people were like. Once the GM had explained the general surroundings and a bit of the local flavor, we would head over to the quest board. We would ask what quests were available for sellswords, and only after the GM had thought up a few land laid them out for us we would pick the one he seemed to put the most emphasis on and visit the person issuing the quest. We would wait for the GM to explain the details of the new quest, and during the conversation, we would ask about local people of import, customs and culture in the village, and generally force the GM to flesh out both the town and the quest to a significant degree.

And after that was done, we would shuffle our feet, go "nah," and then leave that town entirely for the next one.

We did that about four times during the campaign, and it was fucking hillarious to see the GM, get flustered about all the hard work that had gone to waste. He bragged about having this philosophy where he never had to railroad us because the things he wanted to happen could be easily ported to every town, so we intentionally had him lay those chips on the table, explain what the cool quest he had planned was, and then intentionally abandon it. It was all in good fun, but god I wish I could find another GM that would let us get away with that shit because it was honestly the best time I ever had playing an RPG.

>tabletop RPGs are a hobby where a group of people get together and have fun except the one guy who's job it is to suck everyones dick

The player/GM relationship is collaborative. The GM isn't only there to play out the whims of the party and if you think he is you are a bad player. The party should communicate what they want to do to the GM beforehand, the GM should be given time to plan accordingly, and then the party should stay true to their plans and play out what they asked the GM to plan for them. Any player who tells the gm "yeah I want to plunder dungeons" and then skips over the dungeon the GM painstakingly prepared in response to that request in favor of some random ADD bullshit is an asshole.

>You work with your group, or you find another group. DM, player, it makes no difference.

>Says this with no hint of irony, while he condones literally an entire table of players to delve into autism that in any other thread, people would be telling that DM to abandon ship as fast as possible.

So when is it the player's turn to be the responsible ones here? Listening to what you say, you're not fully wrong, but you sound like you've been bullied into being the foreverDM, not because you want to DM. Let me ask you something. Honest question: Do you have fun at your own table? Like, all the time?

Do you really expect your adult players to not be honest about what they want out of your game, and then if they find they don't like it to talk to you about it as an adult?

Do you really play with players who just give the middle finger to your hard work to go play around in a giant puddle? They seriously can't say "Hey, DM, is there any way to guide the campaign towards piracy? I'm kinda interested in it?"

Or, hell, I dunno

Switch systems for a day for a break from the action to play something else, and then come back to the main quest?

You kinda sound like a victim here. I don't even have the heart to call you a faggot.

>making sure the party has fun = sucking their dick and being a beta bitch
Not what I said at all, so not sure why you bothered replying.