Veeky Forums...

Veeky Forums, I've recently been experiencing a decent bit of trouble with my players doing completely stupid shit or averting problems that need solving in favor of dicking around, and then blaming it on me as GM when said stupid shit comes back to bite them in the ass. Advice/storytime thread is a go.

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Have you had a conversation with them about expectations for the game and what everyone hopes to get out of it? It sounds like you want a serious game where decisions have consequences and they want a goofy game where they get to run around doing silly stuff.

Sounds like your plot is shitty and the players would rather not have anything to do with it and are attempting to pursue other things they find fun and interesting, and now you're butthurt and fucking them over at every chance you get because they're ignoring your shitty plot hooks.

Stop posting this. It's an example of extremely bad GMing (and to a lesser extent, an example of shitty players too). Also, it never happened.

What this guy said.

Why would you blame the GM for this? He gave the situation, the players did their thing, and in the end the GM made them face the consequences for their actions and inactions.

Instead of just telling the players he wanted to run a game about fighting Liches, he behaved extremely passive aggressively and decided to let them do their thing simply so he could shit on them and act so smug and intelligent. He basically wasted an entire campaign's worth of time.

At the same time, the players are dicks for completely ignoring the premise of the game and deciding to focus entirely on something else. The problem lies in the fact that the GM didn't bother to communicate with the players to resolve the issue in a way that makes everyone happy and takes the passive aggressive route instead. He could easily have just had some NPCs deal with the lich instead since nobody cared about that plot hook. It's really a case of That Group, the shitty players deserve the shitty GM and vice versa.

Of course, we're ultimately talking about shit that never happened. But this story in particular still annoys me because it encourages such bad behavior and people unironically think it's a good idea for some reason.

That's making a lot of assumptions about a small story.

All we know is that the GM put together a plot and gave the party a situation, and they ran with another. I doubt that a story like this took any more than a session or maybe two.

Even if it's not a true story, it's a fun story about applying consequences and getting back at the Internet's favorite boogeyman. And it has a good message - Pay attention to what your GM says. it's not always about what you care about.

there may be several different reasons why this is happening
#1, whatever you're giving them isn't fun enough, like giving them a math test and then being surprised when they would rather doodle on the sheet, and then everyones getting pissy - you when your story falls apart and they when they get the consequences because they didn't want to do something boring

#2, they are simply shit players who would rather dick around lolsorandumb/murderhobo style

#3, a single really shitty player is instigating #2 and causing it to spread to the entire party, i.e. the kender that fucks over the entire party, and the party just rolls with it "i guess this is what were doing now"

the solution to #1 is to openly talk about what they want and what you want, try finding a workaround, if not possible, leave the dm position or even leave the group. #2 is to either try to indulge them in this behaviour, within limits. just drop them off in a rural backwater with little organised law enforcement and let them get to work. if you are unable to do this, see #1s "if not possible". #3, locate the player, talk to him, give him but a single fucking chance (he will most likely fail, but everyone deserves a chance) if he fails, kick him. if impossible, see #1s "if not possible" again.

You could talk to them.

Then adapt your plans so that them dicking around becomes the main plot. They clearly aren't interested in doing anything serious or solving problems.

Make it fun for everyone when that blows up in their face. Emphasis on "Make it fun for everyone." People play RPGs to have fun. That includes you.

I find that the threat of terrible consequences followed by stupid funny shit going down is the best way to deal with my players acting like idiots. Improvising on the fly also helps.

Picture probably unrelated. Probably.

But what ticks me off personally about this is the lack of forewarning about it (in the story at least). If the GM let the players loose and then in the end just suddenly buttfucks them about a thing they decided to not do in the beginning without ever reminding about it, he's a shit shit GM.

My main gripe is the fact that the STORY doesn't have it, so many people think that this sort of thing is OK.

I had a bunch of kids like that. It's not always about talking It out. Sometimes they are saying one thing and then in game become completely retarded.

So I prepared a huge sheet of paper called Karma Sheet, in which I had a list of Telltale Games sntences such as
>you said A to this guy
>you overheard a thing
>you killed this person and put the bloodied knife in the sink
>your reputation is "cruel"
>your most prominent feature is: your black iron weapons

It was always there. Sometimes I would underline some things.

They learned. Sometimes I still make the sheet for various groups but just for fun, really

>And it has a good message - Pay attention to what your GM says. it's not always about what you care about.
It's a tabletop game for funsies so it is literally always about what the players (GM inclusive) care about. The GM doesn't get any more ability than your tech priest to arbitrarily dictate what game you should be playing.

>Then adapt your plans so that them dicking around becomes the main plot. They clearly aren't interested in doing anything serious or solving problems.
>Make it fun for everyone when that blows up in their face. Emphasis on "Make it fun for everyone." People play RPGs to have fun. That includes you.
Basically, this.

I don't understand the point of what you're doing.

Are you telling your players what the NPCs in game think about their characters and how they react to them?

>Telltale Games sentences
It's like when you pick a dialogue option and 'Fuckface will remember that' pops up in the corner of the screen. It's a way to reinforce that actions have consequences.

>The GM doesn't get any more ability than your tech priest to arbitrarily dictate what game you should be playing.

pic related?

>Pay attention to what your GM says. it's not always about what you care about.

I'm not going to play a game about something I don't care about. Stop being a bad GM.

>t. someone who can't stand to share the spotlight with other players.

Basically, pull a Konosuba.

>Goal is to kill the demon king and save the realm
>Team sucks
>Nobody has direction beyond getting money and being comfortable
>Story is situated around the beginning town
>Boss monsters wander into their lives anyway


Sounds fun.

>passive aggressively

It's not passive aggressive when you make the players face the fucking consequences of their actions.

You tell them Sauron will invade in six months if they don't do shit. They don't do shit. Instead of being a railroading moron like you, the GM is perfectly fine with his players making their own bit of fun in the setting. He plays along, masterfully, and then, six months later, Sauron invade.

It's very good GMing. The very best there is. I have the utmost respect for the GM who will allow his player freedom, but make them face the consequence of said freedom.

People actually blame the GM for their own shortcomings? I feel like i live in a different world sometimes.

Bad GMs would have:

Railroaded to hell and back.
Been petulant and whine 'no you can't do this'.
Forgotten the plot/setting entirely for boring hijacks.

A GM who does neither of all three is the best there is, a true gem.

It would've honestly been better if the GM put his foot down and done that shit rather than waste everyone's time just to pull off a shitty "sike nigga, you thought!" on the players who were actually having fun going off the rails.

Going off the rails doesn't mean dick when the GM is just going to railroad you to a predetermined ending anyways.

>A meteor is going to strike the Earth unless you stop it
>That's stupid, I want to go fishing!
>The meteor crashed into the Earth
>WTF RAILROADING BAD DM

They were in default of their destiny.
Fate chose them and they denied. This is the price of their hubris.

Also, you're a cunt.

Assuming that the world contains more than just the party, why the fuck wasn't anyone else dealing with the lich situation?

Also, how the fuck did such a large group of undead appear at their doorstep without anyone noticing beforehand?

Not to mention, if the GM was just going to kill them off for not following his plotline, why even bother playing through the campaign just to sabotage it at the last moment?

It's petty and unnecessary to play through a campaign that you hate just to drop rocks on your players anyways. I'd honestly have more respect for the GM if he just called them faggots and forced them on the rails just so the players wouldn't be under the notion that their choices actually mattered.

All very good points, but you need to remember that the players are just as much at fault for KNOWING that the world was threatened by a lich and not asking the DM if they could have a different setting or do something else.

They willfully ignored the plot in favor of the side quests. -- The DM was showing consistency, and to an extent reality.


Granted, he should've gave them more warning about the incoming army of zambies.
Although when you think about it, they probably would've bitched about railroading.

Would it have been better if the DM from time to time let them overhear stuff like how an evil lich seems to have appeared and undead are wrecking distant places and moving to where they are?

My players watch my face as they're descibing their actions, and start to second-guess themselves if they see me smile. Get more creative in fucking them over, make it fun.

I'm not saying that the players weren't being cunts but the appropriate response isn't to sink to their level and act like a smug cunt who pulled a "gotcha" moment. Like I said, if the GM had put his foot down, called the players faggots, and said "listen, if you don't want to follow my quest line, there's the door" then I would've had more respect for him because he was upfront in none of the player's input matters.
Definitely, because now you're integrating the two story lines together and you're giving the players ample time and motivation to stop it beyond "but thou must!" Nobody gives a fuck about some random peasant being killed by goblins but the moment it's someone they care about, suddenly they'll move heaven and earth to make that particular goblin pay.

It's the same principle.

I don't think the players are in the wrong at all. As long as they're having fun, all's good.

No you see it's what's called reality. If you have the choice between stopping something or not stopping something, then guess what? If you choose not to stop it, then it will fucking happen.

From the player's perspective, the GM allowed them to pursue an alternate plotline that had meaning to them only to ruin it at the last moment out of spite.

It's the same shit that ruined the Mass Effect trilogy, you had a story full of mystery, excitement, and each choice you made affected the story in potentially dire ways...only to end up being railroaded into a choice between red, green, and blue, with ending cinematics that were practically copy-pasted from one another, and nothing you've done before hand mattered in the slightest.

I've rcently run into an issue where my arcs end with a decent satisfying feeling but then I try to push a session of aftermath that makes everything look super hamfisted. Basically it ends and I make sure there are some loose enough threads to add relevant intrigue on the way back to base. Ideally, the players deal with the conflict and reach the base by the end of the session where they can do some downtime stuff and I can present a new list of scenarios for the next campaign. What ends up happening is they focus on silly things and prolong the session or do things too efficiently and make the next one awful. (We have 3-4 hour sessions every two weeks so I try to make sure things end on a good note.) This is the meat of the issue: the arc ends, players have situations due to the previous events, they either deal with them so fast that it doesn't seem interesting or they go through it so slowly that they'll be stuck doing things for multiple nights that don't really make for an adventure and isn't what they signed up for.What I've been doing is fast forwarding after the important stuff is resolved so that they can end at their base and they can start deciding on what to do on their downtime and what what to do for the next adventure. This feels dissatisfying to me and immersion breaking especially since there are survival elements in the system where the players have to ration food and water. Any idea what I should do to avoid this in the future?

What was the rest of the fucking world doing while the party was busy trying to sign gay marriage into law? Are you telling me that literally nobody else, within the entire setting, couldn't be arsed to get off their arse and stop the army of undead gnawing at their doorstep?

If it was something more intimate like a bad guy kidnapping a PC's wife and their apathy caused the bad guy to murder-fuck her then maybe you'd have a point, but this was a threat that went well beyond the PC's scope and I'm hesitant to believe that there wasn't anyone else in the whole wide world who was willing to step up to the plate.

You cite reality but this situation only came about because the GM sacrificed it just for the sake of being a cunt.

>No you see it's what's called reality

It's a fantasy game, dummy.

Sounds like you needed to have a talk about the kind of game you were running vs. the kind they wanted to play.

As it is, they obviously want a game to fuck around in and don't care about the novel you're trying to write.

If your GM doesn't want to play the game your players want to play you pick someone else as GM, you don't go "Well I'll GM it but I'll be a cunt about it".

I guess you didn't read the thread and see Yes. Pic was related and already posted you spaz.

Are you me? That was my first thought while reading that

OP, here. The thing is that in my case that one stupid player actually ended up being kicked out for being a duplicitous bastard and causing away-from-table drama with the person who was giving him a ride to game nights.

The problem now isn't so much that there's an inconsistency of tone. My players aren't just trying to be randumb just to be randumb and they're actually interested in the plot setup that I have going, the problem at this point is that one of my players is incredibly impulsive and prone to making plans on the fly, but he's really fucking terrible at making plans, and the others are just sort of passively going along with it because he's already got a plan and they haven't thought of one themselves yet.

Pic Related is about his idea of a good plan, but nobody else is really contributing any ideas or willing to speak up no matter how much I goad them not to let him overshadow them.

Continued, because I realized I left some critical shit out.
Duplicitous Bastard ended up doing some fairly stupid shit that ended up immediately exposing the party in Dark Heresy on the corrupt Shrine World they're on, in the middle of a gala, and his character promptly died to a power sword in the face for his dumbassery, and his backup was never really relevant as he spent more time talking shit to the host's family about how terrible of friends we were for giving him a ride to the location of play even though he was like 3 hours late. Little to be said, he isn't welcome at the table anymore, but that one character's rippling dumbassery resulted in them all being wanted on this world and with their Inquisitrix across the planet furiously trying to cover her own ass and not break cover.

As for the Man with the Plan, he's actively engaged all of the time and roleplays well, and even provides us with a place to play 1/3rd of the time (we rotate between houses for hosts). I couldn't imagine having the game without him, but at the same time his dumbassery is costing the party dearly, and the rest of the party's complacency is causing him to accidentally fuck them that much harder.

#1, while i doubt this is it, is there a chance that they aren't seeing the full picture. for example, you explain that they enter a storage full of cobwebs, they might interpret it as it being very old and dusty, but you mean it as in giant fucking spiders lives inside, and while they make a plan based on their own assumptions, you whip out the warp spiders or whatever you 40k fans got

#2 have you talked to them about it? like, talked with the guy about how full of holes his plots have been and what he thought was going to happen, aswell as the party about them just letting it happen

i personally think this might be a case of "the player who shouldn't be the leader has taken on the role"

That's a nice strawman.