Questions that don't deserve their own thread

Did anyone GM'd for a party with ForeverGM as one of the players?
What kind of a players are they? Any different from normal ones?

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I've ran a couple games with perma DMs. Both of them had characters that were unique but not so special snowflake that they stick out. They also tried vary hard to fit into the setting and party, and to make sure their roleplaying helped advance the plot, or at least make everything interesting.

It definitely seemed like they were working with me to tell the story, as opposed to other players who might just try to play their character.

Nothing's wrong with the latter, of course. It was just a notable difference.

I've noticed the same thing, but it was a little offputting to be honest. The DM was admittedly a little rail-roady in his style, and I think he assumed all DMs did it to the same degree as he did. So when I ran the game and allowed for a bit more freedom, he seemed to try and railroad the other players into following what he assumed I was trying to railroad them into.

>foreverRailRoad

As a foreverGM, I can assess to these. I am not used to thinking about characters in terms of roleplaying, so my characters tend to push the story forward rather than trying to push their own agenda.

Another thing that might differ is that I talk very little while playing (I'm used to let others say things before me), and actually check up on rules constantly. I try not to ruleslawyer though, just offer advice/help if the GM needs any.

In other cases I might talk too much, being too used to being the person who speaks for the vast majority of the game. Kind of depends on the game and the situation.

I also have some problems getting into character in a very engaged manner, have you noticed anything like that? There's always a little distance between me and my characters, and I can't really fix it.

There's nothing wrong with distance from your characters. High level play is perfectly healthy. But maybe I'm just a grumpy grognard.

>tend to push the story forward
Your characters create the story, there's nothing to push. But maybe I'm just a grumpy grognard.

Had our former DM as a player and he immediately started helping with taking notes through a journal his character kept, not bad as a player but surprisingly enough he had trouble with RP at start, but that may be because he switched from classic fantasy stuff to military sci fi, he got over it pretty well with time.

Why in D&D you have 18 STR but it is actualy +3?
What is the point in using 18 if it does nothing?

He went full that guy because for the first time in years, he could just do stuff, so he did do stuff.
Which edition are you talking about?

I don't know, I just got it from watching live plays.
Tell me more then, how each edition are different in this matter.

Each edition of D&D, arguably from Chainmail to 5e, some 8 in total, has had different rules, assumptions, tone and playstyle.
What you are talking about in particular is Basic/AD&D's method of strength modifiers. If you rolled an 18, you rolled percentile, and a 100 on a percentile dice got you +3 to hit and +6 to damage. Further, a 19-20 in strength got you the same, as AD&D/Basic did not work in 3.PF and forward's math of every 2 over equaled another +1.

Why not just write STR:3?
Is the number 18 used for anything a all?

Because 3/6 is ONLY your attack to hit and damage, not your:
Ability score save
Carry weight
Lift weight
Difficulty of the doors you can force open.
Percentage that you can force locks, break bonds and other obstacles.

I see, thank you.

No prob, my man, asking questions gets you answers on this board, sometimes.
I miss AD&D, it was janky, but had it's own charm.

How do I make investigation campaigns work? I tried one, about a year ago, and it ran into a hiccup near the end: I assumed that the climax would be uncovering the Big Plot, gathering the evidence, and then forwarding it to the authorities, who would then just arrest the Big Bads and that would be that.

The players did all this, except they wanted to be in on the kill. In a system where none of them were built mechanically for that kind of open combat and arrest with guns in a mesa on an alien planet. So they held off informing the local fuzz until the last minute, and came there with a few NPC soldier friends, and had a big showdown, where the NPC soldiers could, (surprise!) actually fight with rifles a hell of a lot better than a bunch of detectives could, which got them pissed off that they were 'upstaged' by the hired help.


Now, a different group wants another sci-fi investigation campaign. How do I avoid the same pitfall?

Alright, I have a legitimate one that evidently makes me the bad gm at my table, despite giving someone every incentive to back out of the idea and/or take workarounds that would leave them not super fucked up.

>Shadowrun 4e.
>Standard gamut
>Standard runners
>One player approaches me about getting a sex change. It's 207X, it really is not a problem.
>Ask them if they want to use a street doc.
>"Yeah, that's generally cheaper, what are the risks?"
>Well, you could pretty much die on the table. It's a street doc, what the hell do you want.
>They instead ask if they can go into a clinic for it.
>Ask them to pick a corporation - they choose, of course, Horizon - they're super tolerant, etc.
>Ask if they are absolutely sure they want to go into a corporate clinic and get the procedure done.
>Ask them a third time - all yesses.
>They get the procedure done. I don't use the operating charts from the books.
>Instead I slap them with a SIN, Records on File (Horizon), and Mysterious Implant (5BP)
>The player flips out, saying I'm a bigot.

What the hell did I do wrong, Veeky Forums? They wanted to go to a corporate office, get their medical history read, and Horizon wanted to stack the deck against them.

If I were a shit, I would have detonated the cranial bomb the instant they learned about it.

I'm running a light- hearted Pokémon game, and have no idea what thr next adventure should be.

The over- arching plot is that the elite (gym leaders, elite 4s, other top tournament players) trainers are scrambling to find and catch legendary Pokemon after Flynt proved you could do it. So everyone is trying to get their hands on one before the World Championship next year, because everyone who doesn t have one will just lose.

So the party is a group of seasoned tourney veterans who handed banded together to have a better shot at catching what they want to catch.

The party just wrapped up some small sub- plots: one group participated in a Pokemon Contest, while the others went to Prof. Elm to get more information on legends.

I have no idea where to go next. I've been trying to get the players to drive the plot, but they're so difficult. Like, if I don't lead them through the plot by the nose, nothing gets done.

They have a decent amount of info they've both gathered and deduced on their respective legends. The question is, where do i take them next?

The players, at the end, went full murderhobo when they were not built to be murderhobos, and got mad when npcs designed to murder were better.
The players were exercising that disgusting conceit that players tend to when they forget they are not the only things important in the game.
Befre the game, remind them exactly what their place is, and what their skillset is.
If they again choose to be soldiers rather than investigators, give them what they have sought out: a vicious battle against a savage force with it's back against the wall that the pcs won't actually win without an army on their side. From there, force them to use their smarts and skill sets to find a way to survive, escape, or win the day.
The only thing I would ask is what did this person possess that was so valuable to Horizen that they were prepared to put down the SIN paperwork AND an implanted kill switch on what is a generally small scale operation? This pc better have been a serious contender in the area for the corp to take such measures.
I'd say you were overzealous in putting the boots to the player, not a bigot.

we need to go deeper

They didn't use C-Squared to clean up after an op in a horizon facility, so when the blood test was ran, they got a 2-success hit on matching the DNA. They tagged the person with their name, ID, and other things, released it to the GSN and then kept the 'new records' (as in the records of who she had become) on file, along with a bomb in their head that would detonate if they were found to be in a restricted area within Horizon again.

They were also emailed that fact about twelve days later.

>I've been trying to get the players to drive the plot, but they're so difficult. Like, if I don't lead them through the plot by the nose, nothing gets done.
You have an exploratory game with players who won't take the initiative?
On behalf of GMs everywhere, you have all the sympathy that can be dredged up.
Alright, then!
HO-OH soars overheard!
EVERYONE SEES IT!
THE RACE TO CAPTURE HIM IS ON!
The players need to use the info they have to outwit other teams out to capture this legend for themselves, and further, it must be beaten into submission, a challenge in itself.

So they did a run against Horizon, and they turned to Horizon to get 'ware done?
Oh, omae, the player is DUMB, and richly earned what they received.
I do think the bomb was a little much, tho. You could have just as easily put in a high quality lo-jack with it's own PAN so Horizon could jack his/her shit at will :3

>op in a horizon facility
>go to them for operation
Seems like a bad idea.

>Befre the game, remind them exactly what their place is, and what their skillset is.


I have found that this rarely works. Players tend to forget things brought up in session 0 in the course of a campaign.

>bigot

I'd love to see their reasoning, and resulting tears, over this.

I can't tell if the sympathy is sarcastic or not, but I appreciate it if it's sincere.

I can't believe why i didn't think about a massive legend sighting, though. It seems pretty obvious in retrospect.

An aerial race between the players, other trainers, and Rayquaza would be a blast.

Thanks for the help.

Look, man, if the GM says shit, the players ought to be listening.
There comes a point where the GM should be running shit straight, and part of that is not putting in for the players being dumb.
It is sincere, every GM has had that group and it always sucks.
And you are quite welcome.

I pulled punches. The email is as follows:

"HELLO ;

Welcome to the Horizon™ family! We recently learned that you were in one of our clinics for a , and are happy to inform you that everything went extremely well! Your is a morally right and choice that is beneficial to your well being, and we are glad you had your , as we at Horizon™ pride ourselves on Employee Satisfaction! To help you get started, we've registered you as a specifically for , and have implanted a , as is standard procedure for all Employees who are caught in restricted areas! For the next you are on a restricted access network, and the in your will if you are found in a restricted area again!

In , you will be released from your restricted access, and may have your removed from your with all expenses paid, and will even receive a if you head to for treatment! We at Horizon™ hope you and your family have a great time working on !

Goodbye."

So the implant was put in because they were caught in a restricted area?

I don't play shadowrun, but is that normal? It seems really excessive.

They broke in, likely under the patronage of a rival corp, to their building, made their way to a restricted area, and either took off with personnel, information, or both.
Corps look poorly on any of the above.

Pretty much what that guy said.

Anyway, the player got really pissy and I am unsure of why.

In my experience, players get pissy when things don't go the way they imagined they would go.

Players in general are content to react to the world, but once in a while they get an idea for their character and then fantasize about how it will go and form a really clear image in their minds of what should happen, and then the GM or the dice or the rules dare to refuse to cooperate with their fantasy. That dissonance between what happened and what they think should have happened frustrates them (imagine you were 100% sure you were going to get an A on an easy test, but you got an F because you got the answers wrong).

Being frustrated makes the players pissy, puts them on the defensive and makes them lash out. Since in this case it was also about a sex-change, calling you a bigot was the natural course of action.

If instead you had frustrated their super awesome plan to, say, murder everyone with a katana during a bloody dance, then they'd call you a no-fun-allowed GM or something like that.

Well, you DID plant a bomb I their head. I'd be kinda mad too.

At the same time you hit them with a natural (seemingly) consequence of their actions.

In my experience, players get mad when they have to accept the consequences of their actions.

I would probably compromise here: calmly explain that actions have consequences, but also reduce the time from 12 months to something like 9, and give them an adventure to remove the implant safely (But jumping through hoops to get it done).

...So should I tell them if they say it to me again, I'm going to kindly ask them to leave?

I mean, I don't need those kind of histrionics at the table. We're here to game and do like, shadowrun shit.

I've already had to remove one player who attempted to be a consistent fuckwit and got shot by the team for their bullshit.

They could easily just go to a street doc and have it removed.

They just didn't wanna deal with the augmentation tables.

What's a good play by post site? Is there any?

I miss playing characters but my schedule is too wildly inconsistent for tabletop or a Skype group. Also my internet blows hard.

That's up to you. Usually players calm down by the next session, and eventually they learn that not everything will go their way and that their actions have consequences.

But I have stopped playing with people who consistently had the problem of imagining cool shit their character was going to do and getting angry and throwing a tantrum when the dice or the rules didn't cooperate.

As a player, what information do you expect from the GM at the start of a session? I used to give brief summaries of what happened last time until I realized I was letting small things slip due to differences in perception.

Do you feel like the story should always be on the players and their surroundings or is it okay to do the occasional "meanwhile" segway? I've personally never strayed from the group as it feels to me like that would detract immersion but I'm curious if perhaps it gets monotonous to only focus on them.

>is it okay to do the occasional "meanwhile" segway?
Only if they players get to play, maybe as one-shot characters to rest a bit from the main campaign. Not often, though.

If it's just narration, the players don't care.

>is it okay to do the occasional "meanwhile" segway?
What does a two-wheeled, self-balancing, battery-powered electric vehicle have to do with the story of an RPG?

Segway means roughly derailed topic.
youtube.com/watch?v=NuorwTWclOQ

I have to do this a lot. I have 5 players, and they love to split up. I try to keep no more than 2 groups, though. More just divides my attention to much.

I also try to keep scenes short. Longer scenes where half the party isn't involved just make people bored. Short and to the point.

I also find ways to keep everyone interested, even when their character isn't there. For example, when one of my players () wanted to participate in a contest, the other four acted as judges. They rated the players performance on a scale of 1- 10, and it kept them engaged in the story, even though three of the four weren't on site.

If you can keep scenes short and everyone active in thr game in some way, it shouldn't be an issue.

No, "segway" means a two-wheeled, self-balancing, battery-powered electric vehicle.
"Segue" means an uninterrupted transition from one scene to another.

Never actually seen that written. Boy, do I look dumb.

How can anyone actually be tasteless enough to defend anything GW has done from a fluff or rules standpoint for any of their systems in the past 8 years?

What does Veeky Forums think of this idea for an eldar scheme?

Blue seems unnecessary to me. I would rather leave only 3 base colours. Plus I would mix red and white parts rather than doing one half white and one half red. But overall seems nice.
P.S. I think WiP-thread would be more optimal for colour scheme question. You can get more feedback there.

2nd edition will always be my favorite.

Is it considered unreasonable to leave a game for the sole reason the GM is kind of slow to do things and you prefer things to be faster-paced?

If you have not talked to the GM about it, yes.

I kept telling him I was bored with his current setup and sick of him telling me week after week that things would be happening "soon".

If the GM does not make good on his repeated promises, you're perfectly justified in bowing out.

I'm considering making her into a PC if my current character dies.
Is the whole spear+short sword thing doable or should I just stick with spear+buckler? I never used a spear as an weapon before so that should be fun.
We're doing 3.5 so I'm thinking Paladin is probably my best bet.
The GM likes to stick to vanilla mostly.

dice1d100

A friend of mine is shilling Legacy of the Duelist and wants to play it with me. I kinda want it 'cause of the campaign, too. Do I buy it, or do I just tell him to get YGOPRO?

Opinions.
Yours is just as shit if you are a 3/4e fan.
t. a RT OG.
Only if ToB is explicitly allowed.