ITT: John Wick DM Tips

So who is this guy, and what did he do to piss off so many fa/tg/uys?

He's the mastermind behind 7th Sea and a few other rpgs. He's a shitty dm who's done all of the things people have said in this thread to his players.

He made Legend of the Five Rings and 7th Sea.
He's also publicized GM advice that is extremely GM vs players, and there are a lot of stories of him doing these things to players. He's also crashed 7th Sea LARPs by playing as his self-insert metaplot character with bloated stats and killing random PCs for not playing correctly.

Holy fuck, what sort of masochist 'friends' does Wick play with? I would have demanded to roll up a temporary character by the second session and given him the middle finger by the third.
His name is John Wick. He designs roleplaying systems, which would normally put him on passable terms with Veeky Forums.
He's also a titanic douche who goes out of his way to fuck with players and create arbitrary drama for no conceivable reason.

Who is John Wick and why does Veeky Forums hate him?

So why are people still playing with him, and how much does his games reflect his being an asshole?

>He's a shitty dm who's done all of the things people have said
Come on, if we're going to spread misinformation let's at least be honest about it.

Well, his games reflect his strange priorities, with heavy cultural inaccuracies that he claims are historically realistic (They really aren't), and lines such as "Ronin aren't important to samurai stories" and a heavy focus on landbound politics in a pirate game.
Later editions of L5R dropped his claims and took up the mantle of a fantasy setting, but 7th Sea has only gotten worse without anyone to reign Wick in.

See, I actually like L5R and 7th Sea and so does my entire group, so I won't hold that against him.

I'm guessing it's the second half that clinches it though. Go on, fill us all in, guys. On a scale of one to "Why hasn't someone jammed a pen in his eye yet?" how bad is he?

>If one of the party members has a pet or uses an animal companion, make them develop am OOC bond with it. That way, it's much more dramatic and traumatising when you take it away from the PC.

These are all from firsthand accounts from his players and/or from GMing advice that Wick himself wrote.
There's an article he wrote called "Play Dirty" which really shows you how The Wick operates.

Oh, I like L5R and 7th Sea as well. I was just listing what he's done to get our attention (Be a mostly competent game designer) and then an example of what he does to get our contempt (Be a douche and encourage others to be douches).

Even the one with nails on the chair?

Why would praying ever change anything?
If god has a plan for everything, why doesn't he just act according to that regardless?
Is praying supposed to draw god's attention to something, so that he can fix it? If so, wouldn't an all-knowing god know about it regardless? Is it supposed to show devotion? Again, wouldn't any show of such be according to god's plan, and he'd already know how devout you were anyway?

Maybe not that one. Anything written about in-game stuff is accurate though.

Would it really surprise you?

You fell into the trap.

suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/graveyard/26912082/images/1377858602708.pdf
Play Dirty, by John Wick.

If god ever payed attention to us... well, lets just say Trent Reznor drew up the exact situation if 's pic related turns out to be accurate. The end result we were fucked.

Don't sweat the unwashed neckbeards from Veeky Forums who hate you. They're just jealous and their shared hatred comes out in these circle jerk threads they'll keep posting about you. But BFD. These ducks would pirate your books, anyway so having g them hate you is a great thing! Wear it as a badge of honor.

He also made Houses of the Blooded, which includes a lot of his weirdness, but weirdly little space to do this sort of gm dickery.

It has possible the greatest amount of player agency outside of pure freeform.

Then again, it's supposed to be about stories of epic tragedy. It's just the players take an active part in their own falls.
Which probably explains why he still gets players, they actually are into that sort of game and are having a good time.

OP here. The whole point of this thread is that it can become difficult to separate reality from fiction.
Made up.
Made up.
Made up.
Real.
Real.
Real.
Probably real.
I laughed.

Does anyone have the word for word of the supers one? I will never be able to get over that insanity.

I believe it's the first one in Also, anybody else find it weird that in the introduction he seems like such a kind person, with this very deep emotional connection to people, and how on YouTube he seems so friendly (even when he's giving terrible advice)?

It's like he IRL took "shitty DM" as a flaw with max ranks so he could put more points in "decent dude" or something.

I mean, I know we're supposed to hate him, and I'm sure if I were subjected to one of his games, I would, but I don't.

...

>A PC's flaws are perfect ways to make situations to build character!
>Breaking their unmasked superhero's spine in front of family and press also builds character!
>Make sure to have the villain pack their specific weakness and render them helpless first!
>Character!

He probably is a nice guy and plays with people who enjoy the sort of shit he pulls.

I think the assumption that his players are caught off guard by his style is false. He's open about it, and probably makes sure his players know what they are getting into.

Jesus. I felt dirty reading that. All that rope. All that fucking rope, and none of them even saw it coming.

tell the fucking story, anonpai

googlebordello.crushhumanity.org/internettreasures/hitem.html

Tell the story, Dammit!

>Holy fuck, what sort of masochist 'friends' does Wick play with? I would have demanded to roll up a temporary character by the second session and given him the middle finger by the third.

I think that Wick and his friends, at least as he was telling the story, were actually playing a meta game in that Wick was betting he could make them all quit without actually GM fiat'ing their characters to death. So and both happened in the same game that he also had someone voluntarily retire, then get killed in a random convienence store robbery, and convinced another character to kill themselves.

Even with that explanation, Wick is still a special, grade-A fucko.

>Reads last story about his d&d campaign.
Fuck it that sounds awesome. I'd play in that game in given the chance.

>The Luck talent actually makes things worse!

Does he think he's clever for breaking the rules like this?

Jeez, I've only just started reading and this guy seems like a colossal asshat.

>See, I actually like L5R and 7th Sea and so does my entire group, so I won't hold that against him.

No, you like L5R and 7th Sea as sane folks, or at least relatively ordinary Veeky Forums people play the game. There are mountains of tools in those systems that allow the GM to fuck the players eight ways from Sunday without breaking a sweat or even any rules. Look at how crap your starting characters are in 7th Sea. Look at the mountains of meta-plot about aliens and the end of the world that are deliberately hidden from players. Look at how even if you've managed to dodge all his other shit, he can still throw a Super Pirate who simply wins any fight at you.

Wick's games are well designed, but half the systems and lore in them go unused or underutilized because they're GM tools to bend players over the table and fuck them in the ass. Sane GM's don't use these special Wickian parts of the rules because they're all total bullshit that make for unfun games.

>The Berserk Story.
Am I reading this correctly? the PC has a disadvantage that makes him go into blind rampage when he sees a red trolley.
The GM says he was seeing red trolley's "wherever he looked "and has him roll to not berserk.
Did he say why he was seeing red trolley's?
Because so far it sounds like a total ass pull, and not clever at all.

He was fighting a villain named 'Mindbender.' I think you can connect the dots.

The reason why was because illusionist mook.

The real reason, though, is because the BBEG's power is 'reads your character sheet and also is the DM'.

The more I read of John Wick, the more I see pieces of myself, and my GMing philosophy. I don't know how to feel about that.

Illusions. Also, the player took a "Flaw" that would never come into play in the game setting. Thats more of an ass pull.

The thing that gets me is that it's clearly a villain's doing, and one known for mind control powers at that. Anyone who looks at that situation would know he did whatever berserking he did against his will. He shouldn't be fully accountable for that kind of shit.

>and also is the DM'.
Seriously, read that first part. The villain is totally an idealized Mary Sue, self-insert.

well im dumb.

Yeah, but instead of Wick going 'no, you don't fucking do that shit', he purposely dragged the character's involvement in the game out until no one was having fun before removing it from the game.

Ah, I apologize. I was not trying to say that Wick was right, I was trying to point out that they were both wrong, with the player being the worse offender.

And I'm not disagreeing that they were both in the wrong, but I believe Wick was - instead of just saying no to something he felt was unbalanced and munchkin-y, he let it into his game, let it cause problems, *let it ruin everyone else's fun*, and THEN pulled the 'yeah give me your sheet' part.

*I believe Wick was more so

>I've actually played in a game where this happened.
The game was pitched as a mix of golden/silver age and that ship sailed at the top of the first session. GM straight lied to us, the smug prick.

I feel great about it. My best gaming sessions involved fucking with the players emotions hard.
They still talk about it, in an excited fashion.

The times I was nice, or at least straightforward, totally forgotten.

As Jim Butcher says, it's about manipulating people's emotions and making them like it.

So what is the secret in the beginning of this thing?

I really don't feel like reading in between the lines of some masturbatory GM advice book.

Use meta knowledge to fuck your players over.

Also hershey's kisses make great tokens because you can eat them!

There you go, literally everything else is Wick beating Wick's wick to Wick.

I guess I've never lied to my players about how much of an asshole I am, but they've never believed me. They just laugh and go "Oh user, we know deep down you like us, and thats why you don't kill our characters."

No, you condescending bitch, I don't kill your characters because that would be setting the plan in motion too early. Also, if I kill your character, the pain stops.

I'm looking forward to my last sessions with these players.

Oh, I do like my players. Sometimes we game for harmless silly fun. That's just not when I gm.

I gm when they want to feel shit.

Like, there are times when you watch Out an Host Club, and there are times when you watch Gunslinger Girls.
I provide the latter experience.

For John Wick's bachelor party his fiancee, best friend, and another (hot) friend got together and creepily recreated the scene where Kachiko seduces Bayushi Yojiro, with her in full costume. He didn't say they fucked but heavily implied they did

His fiancee is an amazingly chill woman or they are low end swingers or something for that to happen

Why would anyone play with a GM like this?

Or he lied.

My players are decent people, and I'm friends with most of them. But they're still missing the point of why I'm not turning my Mage game into Berserk/ASOIAF.

Personally, when deciding whether to take the hurt to a player character or not, I ask the following questions:
>Is it consistent with the game's desired tone (for example, in a meatgrinder a guy fails one save and pulls out another of his Fighter's twelve identical siblings)?
>Is it compelling to the character and helps them develop in a way the player is interested in?
>Is the player vicariously experiencing the emotion through the character in a way they enjoy?
>Does it make sense within the setting?
>How much heads-up/chance of prevention does the player get?
>Did their character set this one up for themselves in a way that's obvious (you raped a mobster's daughter and shot the girl's fiance before he found out what was going on, come on, seriously, That Guy?)?

Because it would be wild ride.

I forced my players to become murders, then rewarded them by having them find an orphanage run by child molesters. They loved that campaign and want me to run another with the new Delta Green book.

I think there was a really big debate about this in the 1600s, something to do with predeterminism. Don't really remember how it ended, presumably with some poor sod getting burned alive or being driven off to America.

The hundred years war happened around then.

That would also be in character. Either way either he's telling a weird goddamned story that if it didn't happen casts aspersions on his friends, or it did happen and he bragged about it later. Though the fact the Kachiko's entrance was in the bachelor party and thus would be seen, I doubt that was a lie. His friends existed online too and could read his livejournal.

Either way you cut it though, why on earth would he post the story no matter which interpretation is true?

I thought it was his fiancée that played Kachiko?

Wait.

Wait HE wasn't the fucking O'Bannen, was he?!

No, he was Reis iirc.

When I saw this I thought it was John Wick the movie with the guy who's dog was killed so he murdered the entire local mafia. So I posted

given that people thought this was the sort of thing John Wick would pull as GM, and that doing this in the film was very effective and made you enjoy Keanu going on his killing spree; it is perhaps the best illustration for why people would want to play in a game run by this guy.

No, his fiancee approved and helped, but Kachiko was a friend of theirs who probably was the initial inspiration for the character.

>I forced my players to become murders
>players
Where do you live so I can call the cops on you?

well, the players had to choose for their characters to do it.
If I said I forced the characters, people would assume I took control of the characters from the players. I didn't, murdering someone was just the only way they had to stop the evil house.

It was a pre-written adventure, Music From a Darkened Room, it's really good and free online.
Unlike when I was a player, I didn't give them access to elder sign. I did decide to be really 'nice', and after they failed the first time, basically dropped a hint into their laps that lead them to the spell they needed to finish the house.

Man Reis isn't as bad as fucking O'Bannen.

Huh. Achievement in ignorance, figuring out why people tolerate games with this guy.

Two reasons, I would assume.

1) He's "famous"
2) He seems like he's probably not that bad of a person to get along with.

Actually three

3) "Killer DM" was an acceptable gaming style back in the day, back in the day where it wasn't uncommon to have dungeon crawl modules whose meta goal was simply "survive to the end of the module."

>7th Sea LARP
Holy fuck I need this.

Pretty much. Play Dirty was a "how fast can Wick remove PCs from the game in a system that prevents killing PCs" iron man competition.

Did we ever discover why he's so antagonistic to players? Did his wife leave him or something? I remember back in L5R 1E he wrote at the end of the book he was going to ask her to marry him or something.

Too much time fantasizing over the ToH? Or too much time fantasizing over Gygax's con plots that he would run.

GM vs players mentality was a hell of a lot more prevalent back then because meat grinders were not as nearly as uncommon aka most adventures at the time were still "your party meets in front of a dungeon and do your thing". Wick merely bothered to codify that attitude into some dickish rules. L5R was in many ways saved by its focus on strong social aspects of the setting.

Apparently his divorce was spectacular, and play dirty came about after that.

>Being so mad you write an entire book about the most efficient method of being a dick
Damn, given it was a divorce, I can't even really begrudge him that, unless he had it coming.
That's the sort of thing a that drives a man to write like fifty pages of power fantasy he proceeds to burn and disown as soon as he gets out of his system.
Except he decided to publish it as a DMing handbook.

Play Dirty was just a compilation.

I had a friend who loved all those "tips" from John. He also believed it's the only way to have fun. He strongly insisted it's the only way. You can guess why it's all in a past tense.

Pls tell me you're joking

>how did he know?
>oh that's because the chief supporter of the justice league is a super villain mastermind, too smart and wily for anybody to catch

Every time a player loses hit points, stab them with a needle. It will really increase the immersion!

He explicitly and repeatedly says on his YouTube channel that he doesn't see RPGs as players vs. DM, except insofar as the DM is playing characters who want to fuck the characters over and thus has to play those characters accurately. He just thinks wrecking the PCs is good storytelling.
Yeah, except in the intro he says he and his ex wife are friends again and he still feels sad about things sometimes but they're better now. He published it completely independently of the divorce.

>He also believed it's the only way to have fun. He strongly insisted it's the only way.
This is doubly bizarre since even the Great and Terrible Wick says on his channel something like "this is just how I like to GM and if you like to play differently, that's fine. There's no one right or wrong way as long as everyone is up for the way you play."

Tried reading this and it was like reading the edgy, autistic teenagers blog. I couldn't get past the bit about demasking a superhero in front of her grandmother to induce a heart attack. It doesn't help that hes writing it like you KNOW he's jerked off to some self-written domination fanfic about her.

I would have a beer with Wick and maybe play with him if he was a player. I would not let him DM for me.

You ever hear the phrase, "Do not pray for a lighter burden, pray for stronger shoulders"?

Your prayers are not like a debate, where you win God over to your point of view (there are stories of prophet's talking with God and convincing him to spare certain people in the Old Testament, but that's another kettle of fish). Prayer is a means of coming to acceptance of God's plan, especially when things happen that you don't understand, with the knowledge that you are surrendering yourself to a loving God who is not acting out of malice but out of love in ways you cannot yet understand. With confidence you can draw near the throne of God, and ask him for the grace to accept the hardships that will better you, and to thank God for the grace he has already bestowed on you.

>Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine
>Luke 22:42

If you want a good example of John Wick's style, read through his books and count how many times the phrase "a clever GM will" comes up, or a sentence ends with a vague yet ominous ellipsis.

It gets toned down when he works with a team (1e 7th Sea vs. 2e [which he had much more control over] being a prime example), but basically Wick's style is antagonistic. His games are littered with dares for the GM in the form of super-powerful NPCs and secret societies that will fuck over the PCs, qualities that may or may not actually do anything (like Faith), or setting up no win scenarios. So many of his stories involve, "powerful patron of the PCs who is not only evil, but specifically only helping the PCs for the moment so that they are perfectly positioned to obliterate all the PCs down the line."

He may be OK sometimes during running the game, but going off his books he wants the DM to constantly be holding the means to the PCs destruction, not only through fiat but baked into their character sheets.

Then what about the times he crashed other games to tell them they were literally having badwrongfun?