To RPG players only, GMs need not apply

>Try to run a campaign
>Invite a couple of people I thought were decent roleplayers who were going to be serious about the game
>3 of them show up with various flavors of anime-waifu character
>4th player shows up with a class I specifically mentioned I didn't want in the campaign/setting.
>Me: "What the hell, guys?"
>Players 1-3 bitch at me endlessly about how they're "serious" about their blatantly obvious waifu characters and aren't just playing them for fanservice and how they "really want to explore the concepts" and how there's nothing wrong with playing characters opposite of the IRL genders (I actually agree with that last one, when it's not obvious fanservice, but this was).
>Player 4 bitches at me incessantly about how the class he wanted to play was in a published book and that means I HAVE to allow it (despite it not fitting with the tone of the game I was trying to run at all). He also proceeds to blatantly min-max and get pissed off when I tell him it's not necessary and maybe to not try and overpower the other newer players so much.
>Run one session which turns into a total clusterfuck
>Decide it's just seriously not worth it and keep putting off the second session until everyone stops asking about it and the game dies.
>Decided to never do that ever again because I found out these kinds of games teach me how shitty people I thought were cool and chill actually are and it's not fucking worth it for a game of pretend.

So in short, to be a good DM, you have to be a good player. If you're a good player, it's not worth being a GM and trying to teach others to be good players if they're not already. Good fucking luck finding an IRL group where everyone is, unless someone else in the group has gone through the shit of teaching them already.

My spoken English isn't the best, when people's attention/skill isn't at the level I want it to be I get irritated, being completely in control bores me and one dimensional PCs and PCs who obviously don't fit in with the rest of the party make me want to kill myself even as a player.
I might still do it in another game if my current DM can't deal with the current clown posse any more, short campaigns doing silly shit most likely.

I tried. My forever-GM complained he was burned out and wanted one of us to succeed him. I was pumped. I put my best foot forward, weeks of prep-work and forum-lurking, put down cash for a good module, and I even ran my favorite hipster system. After all, these are my best friends and I'm doing them a favor, what's the worst that could happen? Then the forever-GM sabotaged it because his character repeatedly rolled low and ended up looking like a fool. We were all demoralized because he was the central figure in our friend-group, and kept quitting and sulking the moment something happened that he didn't like. If it wasn't for our deep social ties, I'd have booted his ass like the whiny baby that he had transformed into. He was already burned out at GMing, and took up the mantle again, so at least I can let him continue burning himself out with a clear conscience.

Now I figure, if I'm going to put days if not weeks worth of work into entertaining people, then I'm only going to do that for people I *know* will appreciate it.

But then I think, is it really worth GMing when one of my best friends might try to ruin my hard work because his avatar doesn't automatically win at everything? Wouldn't I just get more enjoyment and fewer headaches simply playing and spending my free time in other ways? If I can't trust my closest friend (himself a former GM! The guy who wanted me to run the damn game!) to not shit on my GMing, then who can I trust?

From my experience, the hardest part of GMing isn't honing your improv abilities and learning how to deal with the players actions rather than knowing what the fuck to do when your players or boring little shits with no drive and no initiative of their own whatsoever.

I'd kill to have a group full of reactive players with an agenda of their own that actually want to work with me and lead the campaign along with me instead of always just waiting for me to prompt them to act like its some kind of shitty video game.

This can also be true, but it's more group-dependent than the need for improv skills and circumstantial awareness. You may not have to deal with this in a given group, but since you cited your own experience, it's certainly not invalid. I was just trying to express blanket concepts that all potential GMs will have to deal with. I suppose a disclaimer with "additional requirements may vary" should get tossed in there.

On a personal note, my players swing between being self-motivated and tepid. It's unpredictable.

Currently I'm second in the "next GM" line, pending me finishing the compilation of rules we'd need for the campaign (rather than having 12 separate PDFs, another setting doc and an Errata doc)

I've done it, I'm not too great at it, next campaign me and current DM are going to co-dm and try for a larger player group.

My players keep not turning up.

I was doing pretty well for a while, but they've all got jobs and girlfriends now.

C'est la vie.

Two of my friends are running campaigns, and I have enough trouble scheduling around that without getting my own running.

If one of them flakes out or implodes, I'm ready..ish.

> being bad a mastery
> players are helpful
> clusterfuck is the players' fault

As someone who has never GMed, if I tried to run a game and people showed up with "anime waifu" characters, I'd blame my reluctance to GM on them too.

If anything, it's the GM's fault for choosing shit players, but fuck oh dear do you learn things about people you don't want to know during roleplaying sometimes.

I wouldn't be allowed to post in threads like this if I ran my own campaign

These are apt. Speaking as someone who is currently in game with a good friend who turns into something so sour it blisters the wallpaper whenever something 'bad' happens to his character or if he feels 'small' when other characters do well. If anything, test the waters first with smaller, one shot throwaway games. If everyone seems to do well, go ahead. If not run and hide. I feel a lot of GMs are eager, understandably so, and throw themselves in headfirst making massive settings and encounters only to lose it all when an unseen drama-mine goes off.

This, run a one shot for any group before committing to anything larger.

I play and GM

My entire group is nothing but GM/players and we all alternate and play in each others campaigns.

>Be a shit player who gets kicked from groups for being a shit player.
>Complain about DMs who don't wana deal with shit players.

I tried running my own campaign, it was a murder mystery in a fantasy-frontier town
The local bar owner and his daughters are secretly vampires
The corrupt mayor of the town (a were-shark) wants some land owned by the local judge
The judge, as it turns out, is also a cult leader for a devil-worshipping group of lawyers that use his lands for their rituals so he refuses to sell even though he is up to his eyes in debt to the barkeep, and he knows the mayor wants him dead so his crew are doing nightly rituals to kill him
Mayor finds out about the barkeep's secret and murders the judge, draining his body of blood and leaving puncture marks on the neck, assuming that plus the debt and the fact that people tend to hate vampires would be enough to make sure things were not looked into too deeply
The cult's rituals, meanwhile, are causing the mayor's were-shark features to show through (his pupils are enlarged, his skin is rough and grayed, his teeth have become sharper and he cannot stand still) his family is suffering very similar effects
The vampire barkeep meanwhile is actually a pretty decent guy by all accounts, except for a tendency toward vigilantism that he uses as an excuse to feed

There were plenty of clues everywhere, like the mayor fucking up and making the "bite marks" horizontal instead of vertical, newspapers detailing cult activity, hearsay of the mayor's behavior, the bar only opening after sunset and the barkeep only being seen then, plus a lot more stuff

But the players spent 5 hours doing jack shit exploring the outskirts of town after taking the investigator job. I threw a few encounters at them and the session ended without them finding out a single investigation path

It was meant to be a one-shot

You're also a mega autist who can't follow the simplest instructions.

I'll just like to clarify my position a little. In all honesty, who is the shit player. If there even is someone to blame.

I make a character that is powerful. Not through reading builds online or anything like that, purely because I'm the only one who has read the books and made a build I want to try.

>I'm relentlessly accused of being a godmoding, metagaming shit. Especially whenever my character does something good.

My character goes out of their way to give advice, help and goods to other characters to win them over and try and get some sort of cohesion.

>DM has told the other players to knock off the assassination plots. The players accuse me of hoarding and being selfish.

My character engages all the npcs. Because I'm the only one who actually talks with them. everyone else is awkward silence and mutters whenever they're encouraged to speak.

>Whenever something goes wrong, either by dice or simple dm fiat for drama, I am instantly blamed for trying to sabotage everything.

I'm an eager, motivated player and the GM loves that, but the only other people he has available are in my opinion folks who just turn up for an egowank and little more. He repeatedly tries to engage them beyond murderhobo but it's not working whatsoever. Every few months they have an IC and OOC witch hunt to try and get me to "behave"

What do you think Veeky Forums?

I don't like any of the popular systems and most people don't want to have to buy the books for and play the systems I like. Also I'm too lazy to get my own RPG off the ground.

Even if that wasn't a problem, I don't have a group anymore, my IRL friends aren't interested in RPGs, and the thought of trying to get another online group going, filtering out the assholes and flakes, makes me feel sick.

Even if I did have a group, I'm terrible at time management and planning and just don't make a very good GM in general.

So that's why I don't GM.

I stutter when I talk and confuse words

WELL PLAYED

>What's your excuse for not running your own campaign?
I'm a full time carer.

I'm so literally autistic I'm inherently incapable of actually roleplaying, or even understanding how personality traits affect the exact words a character says.
It takes me ten minutes to think of a complete sentence to speak in-character. If you expect me to control 20 characters in a single session, most of them would have to be generic and scripted, which doesn't seem like a fun time for anyone.

Sure, the easy reply is "practice and git gud", but I can't practice game mastering without players, and I would never ask someone to suffer through my trial and error week after week after week.

If you don't understand why this is a problem, please write a reply to my post, and then write it again through the filter of the following random personality:
>Courteous: Often
>Risk-Taking: Sometimes
>Ambitious: Typically
>Curious: Sometimes
>Self-Controlled: Occasionally
>Nurturing: Usually
>Trusting: Never
>Honest: Typically
>Loyal: Typically
>Affectionate: Often
>Romantic: Typically
>Flirty: Typically
>Sympathetic: Sometimes
>Altruistic: Occasionally
>Optimistic: Rarely
>Observant: Typically
>Logical: Often
>Social: Very outgoing
>Emotions: Usually unstable
How do you speak like a totally different person? Which words change and why?

>How do you speak like a totally different person? Which words change and why?
Well, the trick, boyo, the trick is, see boyo, is not to overthink things. And give your NPCs, y'see, you give them obvious and distinctive quirks, boyo.

Works every time, boyo, y'see. You only really need to flesh out the ones who are going to, y'see, make a token appearance, boyo.

What the other user said.
You're not an actual trained actor here, you don't need to have talent in becoming another person because you can just write the person from the ground up to be someone you can easily slip into being.

If you need to have someone in the story who isn't one dimensional and you don't feel comfortable acting as, either simply don't have them talk to the party ever or just don't write them in the first place.
Not like the players give a shit about anyone not themselves on any deep level so you'll be good senpai.

A verbal tic is not a personality. If every character in the world said "boyo" or "innit" or "meow" every third word, it would be super annoying, and they wouldn't actually behave like different people.
What do you mean by "not to overthink things"? I find it amazing that you're able to just do things without thinking. It doesn't come naturally to me. If I think any less, I am guaranteed to slip into playing as myself.

I'm exaggerating with a pair of verbal tics.

The trick is not to try to simulate an entire person, it's to overlay a thin veneer of quirk over robot if/else dialog tree.

So for example if the quirks you're using are "old" and "foxy" you might have an older woman whos back creaks as she waddles along but slaps the butt of the healthy young fighter while telling them about the evil vizer conquering the land while the king is ill. The quirks used don't really change what she's saying, and at most will affect what she likes or dislikes when interacted with the party.

Side note: this is the lazy way to do it, but does create easily memorable characters.

user, only a portion of the traits you listed ever comes up at the same time.
Also, this abstract list is a terrible guide to understanding a character! Here, I'll try to make this into a real-looking guy. I'll extrapolate his way of speech and action in a later post.

>Courteous: Often
>Emotions: Usually unstable
>Self-Controlled: Occasionally
Your character is polite on the surface, but very emotional: quick to anger and quick to calm down.
Logically, his self-control does not refer to emotional self-control, but rather to how good he is at e.g. keeping his addictions in check.

>Trusting: Never
>Honest: Typically
>Optimistic: Rarely
>Social: Very outgoing
Your character tells the truth, most of the time. We know he's emotionally unstable, so he's very prone to being inappropriately blunt.
We also know he's very outgoing, so how does this interact with his complete lack of trust in others?
Well, maybe he's always looking for a "honest" friend. He's very outgoing, so that's why he befriends people.
But his standards are too high, and everyone always reveal themselves to be imperfect at some point.
At this point, he throws a very dramatic shitfit, gives up on them and writes them off as bad people, cementing his pessimistic worldview.

>Affectionate: Often
>Sympathetic: Sometimes
>Altruistic: Occasionally
>Nurturing: Usually
>Loyal: Typically
Your character isn't nasty towards strangers, but he mostly tends to ignore them. He can't always put himself in their shoes.
His only friends are people he's still convinced are perfect angels who can do no wrong, or people whose failings he finds excuses for (e.g. a crush).
With them, he is affectionate, generous, loyal and nurturing.

>Romantic: Typically
>Flirty: Typically
Your character tends to hit on the few people he considers both perfect and attractive.

You can train them into it, though. Worst case, offer them a "common sense" attribute they can roll to get some creative advice.
>we´re trapped in this shitty room and there´s a fuckload of orcs coming! What do we do? Common sense!
>use the big table to barricade the door you fucking dimwits

Or simply get them in the opposite situation and have the orcs be the ones who barricade. Eventually they´ll start interacting with their environment too.

Regarding personal drive, it seems to work better if you make them get goals and stuff. I remember when I GM´d for some first timers, a round of Vampire where they´d be hunting some other supernatural creatures who entered New York.

Players came up with pretty much >I´m pretty much myself but I´m there and a vampire

So I started asking how they got what they have in their list, both items and skills, and soon we came up with something decent that provided some hooks for me to use.

The fucking players were still like rocks rolling downstream, but at least I could push one and usually that one would push the others into action.

That was just a quick example to illustrate my point. I already know it's a wrong way to understand a character, and I don't use that generator in games. You have not addressed my problem, which is coming up with dialogue on the spot.
If you know of a better character personality trait random generator, please use it now, and say the exact words the resulting character would say.

Because every time I get an idea, someone else starts a campaign before I can.

I'm lazy
I'd be too self-conscious about my setting and story so that if my players, who would likely be two friends of mine who have played and ran their own campaigns for years, were to criticize it I'd probably be a butthurt baby and never try it again

>to be a good DM, you have to be a good player
Many good DM's I've met have been awful players.

Me included

>GM here, by the way. You guys really should give GMing a shot. It's not as hard as you think if you have improv skills, which you should have if you're a decent player. Just think of it as a reversal of players reacting to shit happening in the game; you just react to what the players do by throwing circumstances at them.
Three-hundred times this.

Obviously. But you didn't give me a personality, so I'm coming up with one using your randomly generated list. I can't come up with dialogue with just random traits.
>exact words
This is roleplaying, dude. It's an art, not a science.

Actually you know what? I don't know what your problem is exactly. You can get into a fictional character's mindset, and you just can't give them a voice, right?
Well, a character's voice is influenced by their personality but that's not the only factor. Upbringing and simple habits matter a lot.
I'll just give you some traits you can build your character's "voice" after, you can pick those as appropriate.
Just use your best judgement and pick the ones that fit your character's upbringing and personality.

>Uses "I feel", "I think", "In my opinion" a lot
>Uses logical connectors often
>Swears, or uses slang, or very creative swears
>Short sentences or long run-on sentences
>Adds "I guess" or "probably" at the end of sentences
>Corrects people often: "Well, actually", "that's just not true"
>Uses more or less long or lyrical metaphors
>Repeats what people have said previously, just to make sure they're on the same page

It's not a shitty quick/verbal tic as long as you're subtle about it and only bring up those traits when appropriate.

Long-time forever-DM who mostly just plays now here.

I stopped DMing because after my last campaign, I can't seem to come up with anything better. I DMed the metaplot/built-in campaign/plot-point campaign whatever you want to call it for Dark Heresy 1st edition.

This is probably the best RPG campaign I have ever seen. It's a pitch perfect Gothic Horror Mystery story, and the fact that it was written by Dan Abnett definitely helps.

I haven't been able to come up with anything that can match that perfectly crafted story arc. I'm really starting to feel like I've peaked as a DM, or that I was never that good to begin with.

>But you didn't give me a personality
Then pick a set of personality traits at random, and explain to me how you get into character.
You keep fixating on the one example personality in my post but it could be anything.

> What do you think Veeky Forums?
They're a pretty literal depiction of "being passive-aggressive". It reminds me of myself in school, with similar results, which is why I believe you.

You seem confident enough, you should stop filling the holes, let the situation become so awkward that the faulty players will either step in or step out. Either way, this looks like a win.

Just make sure you're DM is aware so he doesn't begin to have a grudge against you as well.

Used to GM before school and work ate my time. I'll get back into it when I'm done with school.

I'm afraid I'll project too much of what I think is fun onto the game.
I have lots of neat ideas all the time but I'm afraid they're actually shitty.

Because I'm not "casual" enough for them.

I want to play RPGs, but I know no one will want to GM. Have any GMs ever started in that position? Seems like a lot of work for a newbie...

How would a character who is [materialistic, violent, naive] respond?
How would a character who is [considerate, manipulative, kindly] respond?
How would a character who is [fun-loving, charming, imaginative] respond?
How would a character who is [depressed, dishonest, optimistic] respond?
How would a character who is [restless, brilliant, mysterious] respond?

>Enough adventure fronts for a small campaign
>one-shot

>I don't have neither system mastery nor a good grasp of the english language.

Good enough to make a decent joke about it, I had a chuckle.

> I haven't been able to come up with anything that can match that perfectly crafted story arc. I'm really starting to feel like I've peaked as a DM, or that I was never that good to begin with.
Question is: Assume you make a game that is 80% as entertaining as your masterpiece, is it still entertaining enough to be worth playing?

> If the answer is Yes, I don't see a problem.

> If the answer is No, then you were never really that good of a DM to begin with. And you're probably delusional about how good that game was anyway.

Besides, who knows, maybe one of your players will bring an idea to the table that'll spark another stroke of genius. This is a cooperative game after all.

Because it's not fun.

>Common sense attribute
You know, I tried that once already funnily enough. Except it called it "Insight".

The only thing it resulted in was the shit players spamming it constantly without prompt to the point of meaninglessness. Back to square one basically.

Maybe it'd work better as a currency?
Spend one insight and get a hint, get 1 insight per player per session

On hiatus currently after my first attempt ended with me barely controlling an urge to violently bludgeon 2 of the schmucks at the table.

On a side note, our group is doing a rolling/rotating DM set up. Meaning, one world, multiple campaigns each handled by on person. The first one is nearing its conclusion and I am on the schedule for the second. Mainly focusing my time to figuring out creative ingame punishments for douche canoes, and avoiding letting my temper get the better of me.

It sorta comes naturally to me, in textual RP at least. I can't improvise in person.
I usually take a pre-existing archetype, sometimes a specific character that's both memorable to me and as close as possible to my own character. If necessary I look up their character page and some quotes online.
I start with "How would they act in response to X?" then I make small alterations (what if he was Y? what if he was Z too?) until it's close enough to my own character.
In fact, playing pre-existing characters against pre-existing characters from works where they'd interacted is what got me started with roleplaying. Maybe that would help? Besides theatre I don't have anything else to suggest.

Have you tried not running D&D?

I stopped reading at the second line, because by that point it was already: "Novice GM tries to run a hard genre, and makes all NPC special snowflakes"

>If you don't understand why this is a problem, please write a reply to my post, and then write it again through the filter of the following random personality

Well, dear, you're not really trying very hard here. It is rather endearing to see you try, though, so if you keep going I might just make it worth your while.

>How would a character who is [materialistic, violent, naive] respond?

How about you put some effort into it, fag. No one stopped being autistic by whining on the internet. Get out of your mother's basement, grab a few drinks and talk to people. Might give you a bloody clue on how people act.

>How would a character who is [considerate, manipulative, kindly] respond?

I find that talking to people helps. Just ask people their opinion, and ask why they think that, and usually they give you pretty good clues as to their character. No need to be shy, either -most people are okay talking about themselves! :)

>How would a character who is [fun-loving, charming, imaginative] respond?

You know, just make stuff up. It's not too hard, just pick a thing or two and exaggerate them. Screw up a few times, and laugh at yourself for doing so, and you'll get better.

>How would a character who is [depressed, dishonest, optimistic] respond?

...

user, you're not a *total* faggot.

>How would a character who is [restless, brilliant, mysterious] respond?

I'll reply to this later, gotta fix my pneumatic boulderflinger, since the nargles bit the stabilizer off. Brb, just a sec.

I'd be too much of an "Open World" GM because I don't know how I'd handle players going off the rails or how to put them back on.

That being said I have a shit load of ideas for races and class archetypes and a few for campaigns. I'm currently working on a CoC module, a cavalier archetype centered around motor vehicles, and a race of toy people (think Dressrosa from one piece but somewhat more depressing.)

So I think I'd be a good co-GM if such a thing even exists, but not the one rolling the dice and directing.

It is more fun to shit on DMs that think they can plan ahead by being randumb and making them seethe with rage

So basically you're like the people who think they can work in the videogame industry because they have "good ideas". :^)

Because my first attempt to run a campaign was Call of Cthulhu and found juggling resistance tables with debuffs from sanity and dealing with cover bonuses/exposure debuffs and called shots to be extremely tedious, I loved building the story, I don't like running the mechanics. So as a player I can enjoy building my story within the story while the DM runs the mechanics.

pretty much, and I'll make no attempt at disguising it

Find a system you like better. Maybe Classic Unisystem or GURPS lite if you don't like CoC's crunch but do like the fluff.

My friends won't let me do it regularly even though I've shown I'm not the least competent of the people that have taken a turn GMing.

I mean I'm not the best, I do have a slight problem with rail roading even when I try to avoid it, and I've got some self esteem issues... but I'm also not the guy who tries to make every game he runs fit to some kind of aesthetic and world similar to a game he just played and got way too hyped about. I just want to run something stupid and easy.

>GMs need not apply
Fuck you, you can't tell me what to do

>What's your excuse for not running your own campaign?
I have four consistent players in my group, three of which are complete dogshit at DMing. One is a great DM and we alternate running the games for our group, but holy shit the other three suck.
I've given them plenty of chances, one ran two full campaigns, one ran one full campaign and all of them ran two or three minor things INTO THE FUCKING GROUND, not to mention countless of oneshits.
They all sucked giant baboon balls. They were boring, nonsensical railroads ripe with no possibility for player agency whatsoever. Two of them inserted their own characters from other campaigns on multiple fucking occasions. To make matters worse, all three of them are ware that they are terrible, but also completely resistant to becoming better. Hell, they ASKED me and OtherDM for advise and we both spent several hours each giving advise, not to mention doing it after every single session.
It didn't fucking stick and now it's only me and OtherDM running games. That's their fucking excuse: They are terrible and it's better for all of us.

>nor a good grasp of the english language.
If you speak well enough to play a character, you speak well enough to run a game. People have to listen either way.
>I don't have neither system mastery
Also not a big deal. If you get stuck, ask you players. If they don't know, make something up.
Never ever ever dig through the rule book. That detracts from play.
If you're really concerned about it, run short/one shotgames in rules-lite or OSR systems while you get your bearings.

A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming is a must read. (13 pages)
So is Master of the Game. (pic related, 174 pages)
If you plan on running OSR, you should also read Philotomy's Musings. (48 pages)