Every NPC is a sarcastic piece of shit

Adventurers arrive AFTER those things happen. That's like hating pest control because they mean you have pests

Nearly anything can work so long as you hash it out with the players beforehand. But springing shitty NPCs on the group without any warning is a dick move, even if you are trying to go for grim and gritty.

>He doesn't know about the Dark Lord's minions
>He doesn't know about their one incredibly easy to exploit weakness
>He doesn't know about the mark they wear containing incredibly vital information about the Dark Lord's whereabouts
>He doesn't know that the Dark Lord isn't a lord at all
Are we certain these scrubs are supposed to save the land?
t. Smug McSerfpants, poopscooper extraordinaire

Adventurers profit from misery.
No matter how noble they are, it is obvious that their business requires suffering. Your suffering.

And they wear the profits of their business - at the expense of the suffering masses - all over their bodies.

Sure, Paladin Karl and Bart the Smart are okay, but OTHERS are not. You are still included in the "others" file.

The problem is poor communication, not the way the NPCs react.

Villain curses the village they are tormenting with the Curse of Sarcasm.

No adventurer can stand them enough to stay around and foil their plan.

>every friendly NPC espouses the GM's political and philosophical leanings and are just mouthpieces through which the GM can preach at his players
>every villain is a strawman that personifies the GM's ideological enemies

>it's even worse because he has the same leanings as you but is an obnoxious piece of shit about it

>It makes the players not want to do anything because everyone treats them like garbage no matter what they do. It makes for a shitty game atmosphere that doesn't really accomplish anything besides making your players not want to play.
desu that sounds like a personal problem. Do all of the players feel the same? I suspect most of them don't really care either way.

I've had entire towns refuse to deal with a group until they do something to prove themselves. The last one? The arcanist build a non-magical irrigation system for the town because their magical one had failed (making them grumpy about wizards, naturally).

Did it matter to the arcanist that the locals were all treating her like shit? No. She saw an engineering challenge and dove right in, regardless of the protests of the others.

Before that the rogue had to steal an heirloom back from a treacherous merchant and return it to the headman.

Trust and respect aren't granted simply because someone is an adventurer. The question is always "What have you done for me (lately)?"

>mfw I always have settings with exactly one republic
>mfw that republic always has the most efficient bureaucracy and the most patriotic citizens
>mfw the kingdoms always devolve into petty infighting between nobles after a powerful king dies
>mfw these wars weaken both the kingdom as a whole and make the peasantry suffer
>mfw I'm That Guy

none works for free, but nobles should not dislike adventurers, those freaks would do almost anything for money and guess who has money to pay them?

>not having a triple constitution
Plebeian.

I feel you misunderstood something, because what you're describing is a very different situation.

Your neighbor rival lord?
The merchant guild?
The church?
The dragon that stole your daughter!
They are working for it!

What the fuck are you talking about?
>oh no, we're infested by monsters
>oh no, some people are offering to help us, such villains!
Who the fuck would think like this? Are you actually autistic?

Have you checked the news in the last, dunno, 16 years?

If you paid them to do job they better do it or die trying. Doublecrossing your contractor is very quick way to finish your adventuring life.

Adventurers are scavengers, carrion eaters. First and foremost. Some are also heroes.

Their career does not involve preemptive strikes, or consistent protection. If they did, they would not be adventurers, they would be the government. So what you get is a flip of a coin:

Are these decent people that will help you, accept your reward and kill the monsters? Or they will shrug, wait for the monsters to tire destroying your village, then plounder all your wealth and the monster's from their cave? Or worse of all, camp outside the town, as they are "protecting it" from a vague threat.

All adventurers eat carrion. Sometimes you just luck out and get a raven instead of a vulture.

>I feel you misunderstood something, because what you're describing is a very different situation.
Nope.

The default from most people is cultured indifference to adventurers. The harshest is actively working against their interests. Most reactions fall somewhere in between there.

Most people don't really give a shit about adventurers slaying dozens of monsters. That isn't relevant to their lives.

Their crops not getting water? Someone stealing their cattle? In the scheme of adventurer challenges this is little league shit, but it really, really matters to locals.

Again I think this is damage to the hobby from D&D, but a lot of latter day games actually address this stuff directly.

>Most people don't really give a shit about adventurers slaying dozens of monsters. That isn't relevant to their lives.

It tends to be when said monsters are eating people/raiding them. PCs don't tend to just go hunt random monsters without being asked. They tend to be solving problems.

You really are autistic.

Edgelord

>that guy killed the monsters eating our kids
>what an asshole!
This is not going to be what the majority think.

I basically never have my players do peewee shit like kill a handful of hobgoblins.

If I did, though, thankfulness from the village they've been predating would be pretty standard. But then, the villagers would ask the adventurers to move on before more trouble arrives.

Adventurers don't always show up in response to trouble, after all. And often, trouble follows them.

>That ducking vulture killed the monsters terrorizing our village, what assholes

Nobody thinks like this in a setting without postmodern philosophical thought you edgy imbecile

You assuming they do that.
>that guy told us the monster would eat our kids!
>he took all our money to kill them
>he did not!
>also the local druid came in and said something about that being a "ugly blink dog"
>OUR HERO!

A less cynic or sarcastic view is to see the adventurers as having a low attention coefficient. Because let's be honest, as they find more and more stuff as the adventure goes on, they will forget about the village.
"The Dark Lord is seeking the Staff of Ra! We have to get it before it does! Quick, let's fly!"

How about "Basic Pattern Recognition?" Like how 5 of the neighboring villages got destroyed by monsters, the 4 others by adventurers.

>Nobody thinks like this in a setting without postmodern philosophical thought
>assuming

If they were gold spending, rich, and economic changing... The town will love them.

I don't get it. I'm talking about one thing and this guy is making up some inane shit.

>I don't even understand Econ 101, but I'm a capitalist!

>playing realistic combat and grimdark reality in a fantasy world
>come across non-magic order of fighting women
>make a comment in character about how he's surprised women can form a militant fighting order
>then inquires to his party how it'd work on a campaign and their biological priorities(periods)
>all the party gasps at my ignorance
>GM immediately screams he never said it works like that in his world and shame on me for assuming their periods debilitate them
>mfw

>Like how 5 of the neighboring villages got destroyed by monsters, the 4 others by adventurers.
Okay but what setting are you playing in where this is factual?

The entire concept of fantasy adventurers causing trouble for local populaces more than they help is the result of people extrapolating stories of poor player behavior and applying postmodernist thinking to a setting of medieval era ethics. No setting that came before the rise of "self aware" fantasy writing actually treats adventurers in the way you posit they behave.

>good luck with your zombie infestation, Mr Nobody
>1080° noscope and walk away while making obscene gestures to the peasant's wife/daugther
You can't help those who don't want it

One GM did that to us once jusy because (dude is full edge specially as a player) after we ignoring every plot related event because everyone in there but the party were sarcastic dicks and cunts for no reason he decided to ragequit. Other option was stopping being good and go full murder hobo

It takes a really stupid NPC to be a dipshit when they are being eaten by monsters. So stupid it is not even worth arguing.

What is more likely and grey is where there is some distance, so that both threat and adventurers are "annoyances." For example, if the adventurers are here to make the caravans flowing and recover the baron's daughter, they are just going to annoy them. They can't afford any import, do not have anything worth selling and they think the baron's daughter is the worst.

Of course, if your GM has them being arrogant dipshits as monsters are literally outside, your GM is as stupid as the NPCs.

What is inflation.

>every NPC speaks in an arrogant and condescending tone to the party
>even peasants and commoners

Because it makes for shitty stories most of the time - and even Tolkien had a lot of people disliking Strider even as they grunted he did something for them. As would 99% of the RPG games.

Of course, the good thing of RPG games is that you can play things that would be awful to read, but you want to experience them anyway. If nobody but the GM wants to explore this, then it is a shitty GM and the group has awful communication.

Dunno if it was my GM or the campaign, but Lost Mine of Phandelper and Rise of Tiamant?

>What is inflation
Something that happens on a large scale, not a local level. It also is something that happens a lot more readily with currency that is backed by a nation's credit (i.e. dolla dolla bills y'all) rather than specie-based currency.

>Every NPC speaks in cockney British but have high intelligence and self awareness

>local lord's daughter kidnapped by dragon
>dragon mentions paying off travelers
>lord throws paranoid shitfit and imprisons or attacks all adventurer types passing through his realm
>dragon retains princess without spending a cent of horde

I'd like to see a town like this in a campaign. Like, an adventurer gives a small trinket to a child and the child says "Oh, look, that'll get my family out of starvation."

Me as a GM

Implying every setting has, or it even makes sense to have the same form of 'medieval era ethics' as earth's history does. Or that there was one universal form of medieval era ethics in any country let alone across the medieval world.

You're right, OP. It is very weird and not normal at all. Did you guys look ingame why they were behaving so strangely or you rushed to post in Veeky Forums with autismal rage?

>Every villain is a one-note overconfident asshole.
>They all have the same speech patterns
>Villains are basically walking cliche boxes
>Oh, and they're all super edgy too

I honestly can't distinguish the new big bad of this campaign from the previous character our GM built up to be "the big hurdle"

The worst part is he had a character that was already in conflict with the party as a villain as well as hints of a plot for that villain. That character had a backstory, an actual personality and everything, but he was discarded.

Anyone else know this?

So the gm has entered my magical realm then?

Every game I have ever played has featured a group of faceless magic cultists who do generic bad things because they are evil as the main antagonists. Usually they are trying to summon the apocalypse demon. There's never even a BBEG to apply their actions to. It happens no matter who seems to be GMing and I can't get away from it.

Just have us start in a tavern and send us goblin slaying, fuck.

I have a GM who has the strangest way of railroading the group. You can always tell whether he has decided you are supposed to win or lose before the fight has begun.

Anyone else have a GM like this?

>forever GM says, "release me from my curse"
Take a hint.

Even in one shots, I cannot escape goblin slaying. I almost long for the chaos demon cult at this point.

No, fuck you. If you have a problem, talk about it, don't pull passive-aggressive shit. That's not how social circles work.

He probably did talk about it,
>hurr durr
>what we've got now works fine for us

so now he's trying to get them to request it.

>Every NPC is a complete asshole
>Every NPC hates the players for no reason
>The players can change nothing in the setting
>Every nice thing they do comes back to bite them

This is a sign that your DM hates you, and is also a masochist.

That's not how menstruation works and Berserk is not a realistic portrayal of it, user.

>the most patriotic citizens
I would butcher them all.

Rolled 6 (1d100)

Fucking spec ops never want to fix my car or mow my lawn. What fucking god are they?

Would play until my anus bled, and beyond.

>mfw operators keep trampling my FUCKING garden

>NPCs don't immediately adore the PCs upon meeting them
>Players: "Why does everyone hate us? Fuck you, That GM!"

>NPCs express reluctance to go along with the PCs' suicidal plans
>Players: "Why is everyone so unhelpful? Fuck you, That GM!"

>NPCs see through the PCs' pitifully simplistic attempts to deceive them
>Players: "So everyone is suddenly psychic now? Fuck you, That GM!"

>An NPC suggests a course of action to the PCs
>Players: "Obvious railroad. Fuck you, That GM!"

So tired of stupid overentitled players who think being cynical makes them smart.

Literally never happens. You're just not as good as you think, GM-kun.

Literally happens all the time. You're just not as smart as you think, That Guy-chan.

You know who most people don't like?

Spec ops.

>these 4-6 people are just too stupid to understand my deep and intricate characters!
Nope, you are the problem.

>main enemy is unkillable
>every.
>fucking.
>time.
at first, we were all doing fine, having fun, completing missions. I don't know what happened, but for the last month, we haven't been able to beat a single enemy because
A. they are made of adamantium and absorb all other damage
B. They are just Exponentially stronger than us or
C. They just teleport away when it shouldn't be possible to.
Also the gm has been rubbing our faces in the fact that we couldn't beat the bullshit enemies that he has been making. gotta love that part.

In our campaign where the party is level 20, I can understand needing to think outside of the box when trying to come up with enemies that could challenge us, but we have yet to kill a single enemy let alone win an encounter since we got to level 20.

I'm not an expert on the series, but the way witchers are treated in The Witcher 3 seems like a good example.

They're mercenaries at best, freaks at worst. I can understand the niche they fill but I wouldn't want them hanging around my neighborhood.

Yep. This is an accurate portrayal.

If you're stationed overseas in a combat zone in the military this is generally the local reaction to you.

Sure, the local girls love taking you for a test ride, but you're not Mr. Right.

I have a variant of this
>New villain is introduced
>Every time it's by the villain taking us as a captive audience
>Oh, and all th villains have the same personality

I get it, man. You want to tell your story, but you've gotta let your players play the game more often. The sequences he introduces the villains with have gone on, in some cases, for 2+ hours

It's like I'm really playing a Witcher game!

Witcher is a fantasy prejudice simulator where most people are stupid and inbred, and as a wandering mutant vagrant you really stand out. There are also plenty of other in universe reasons why people distrust witchers.

I wouldn't say it's typical of the most common d&d high fantasy adventure.

>I wouldn't say it's typical of the most common d&d high fantasy adventure.
I'd allow it's slightly more Slavic in its pessimism, but it isn't far off.

>Not having fun
>In a Witcher game

Yep, checks out.

I get some NPCs being difficult, but when I GM I try to make people actually react to the PARTY. The PC who went to kill the Bugbears right away when it became clear they were attacking people is a lot more popular than the one who missed the fight because he was too busy wheedling for a better reward (because his player wouldn't recognize the plot hook if I jammed it in his goddamn eye) because that is how people would react.

When I'm NOT GMing, however, it seems like every NPC is by default extremely hostile and is reluctant to give any PC anything but snide remarks, even if the PC is a member of a well-known and respected religious organization or a part of a very famous guild. And our patrons have a curious tendency to begrudge the party every bent copper and look for ways to fuck us over after we did the work they hired us for.

I wouldn't mind this so much if the guy that GMs these treacherous, unhelpful, cheapskate NPCs wasn't also the guy who was always trying to browbeat more gold out of NPCs when he was a player.

Are you talking about the anime? Or the manga? Because the manga was a pretty accurate portrayal.

>be a druid
>every horse is stoned

The manga does a good portrayal of it.
In fact, the manga is the only thing you should really look at when it comes to Berserk.

>the PC introduces himself to a powerful noblewomen with an armed retinue of soldiers by saying that she should sit on his face

Tell me, when your car breaks down and the mechanic hands you the bill, are you happy?

>>This is the asshole that makes comic book writers still write stories where the heroes are blamed for the villains appearing

I'm happy that my car is working again, yes.

My last two DMs

>>Every single NPC automatically assumes we know everything about the area and local culture/environment
>>Its all done to establish the local area lore but never tells us the whole thing without a bunch of time and digging
>>Not bad but id like an NPC to believe we arent from around here for once and explain it as if we had no idea what happens locally because we really dont

>>Every NPC that isnt critical to the storyline is fantastically stupid
>>All for comic effect
>>Not a simple ignorant peasant that knows no better
>>Fantastically stupid and often incapable of stringing together memories of the last sentence we said
>>Usually manage to unintentionally get in our way barring an amazing Persusion/intimidate/deception roll to make them stop

>PCs seek every possible opportunity to throw around charm person and other usually low cost mind fucking spell at NPCs to get what they want
>CNs show no remorse or hesitation to put an arrow in a villager's skull when he can't answer a question
>Despite the 2 and a half months it takes a PC to reach cosmic godhood the vast majority of the populace is somehow unable to take a single PC level and have to put up with these rampant gods throwing their weight around every time they walk into town
>Hard labor nets you maybe a couple of silver a day and these fuckwads walk in with literally the wealth of nations in their pockets and the strength to carry it and they can't be bothered to pay their fucking tavern keeper their tab before they leave as they've jumped out the window to avoid it
>Say they're going to slay dragons but they have a nice conversation with a dragon and decide it's cool for him to keep preying on us as long as he helps them move a boulder or some shit
>They keep calling libraries, basements, woods, etc, "dungeons", and using made up words like "ecks pee" and "nickel" to confuse and infuriate us
Best to accept that they can and likely will murderhobo you or otherwise fuck you over no matter what you do so you and there's nothing you can do about it but that kind of acceptance breeds a salty sarcastic streak.

>women's cycles sync when they're on the rag
>an entire platoon of brawny, violent women who are hormonal, crampy, and itching for someone to lash out at

WAKE ME UP

This is because LotR is early medieval fiction, and in early medieval times travellers were objects of curiosity, distrust, and scorn. After all, if they were a decent person, why are they wandering the roads like some thief or leper or deserter?

Then you're one of a rare few who realizes that a skilled trade is SKILLED. Most folks aren't glad to see the 'shit storm cleanup guy,' because his presence is predicated on said shit storm and comes with a hefty price tag.

>those people are trying to save the world from demonic invasion!
>fuck those guy amiright?

I'm in a game like that. It's a pre made adventure path and the NPCS are specifically written to be unhelpful as possible. Doesn't keep us from wanting to give the entire country the finger and leave.

Well based on what I've read upthread I should count myself lucky I just got a scavenger mechanic that wanted to rip me off for a problem he probably caused, rather than one of the ones that would've burned my car down, raped the passengers and looted the wreckage.

Fucking tradesmen are vultures let me tell you.

Just leave. RPGs have the freedom to let you do it. It's what makes them better than a video game.

>implying that the problems didnt exist before hand, and the adventurers are here to fix it, for a fee

> every (hostile) NPC is highly paranoid and suspect it's the PC's doing once they notice a shift in their sourroundings