That one special touch that you spent a week planning and thought everyone at the table would love but nobody...

>not wanting to have an epic dragon sky battle against Lance while chasing Rayquaza through the grand canyon

>No one eats the food you made for them.
Now that's just rude. Someone took the time to prepare food which is basically edible love, and people actually refuse to eat it? I'd kick that fucker out the door. Unless they have allergies, but really, most people should at least try to eat some.

It's part of GMing- as is the stuff where a random improvised detail like a bored gardener NPC becomes the player's favorite thing ever and develops into a critical plot element or something.

What's been rough to me is cases where I thought they WERE loving a thing until their dissatisfaction hit a boiling point. Hazard of running a text game over skype- I thought an NPC had them hooked, when it was more like agitated silence. =/

> Playing a game on roll20
> Trying to come up with interesting ways for players to interact with roll20 other than rolling dice
> Get the idea to integrate the Traffic Jam game into roll20
> "Oh that'll be great, it'll challenge them in a different manner than they are used to. should be fun"
> Spend the day finding all the right pieces, resizing, copying puzzles, making it setting appropriate, permissions are set etc
> It took longer than expected but finished it on time for game night
> During the session when the players get to this puzzle I carefully explain the rules
> In my mind players would engage the puzzle and have fun solving it within the rules
> Players ignore the rules and move pieces willy nilly and "complete" the puzzle before I could stop them
> "Okay user, we're done what's next."
> Pause
> Have an internal crisis as I realize my players are not only firmly, but willingly, entrenched in power fantasy

What is the Traffic Jam game?

I have been where you are before

My Brother

Its got a ton of names, I guess I grew up knowing it as Traffic Jam

Ah, that. So you mean the players just moved the cars with no regard for what's actually allowed? That sounds shitty.

My GM once wrote like 2 dozen homebrew spells.

I ignored them because they weren't very strong.

I felt like I just threw my girlfriend's home-baked cookies in the garbage and started munching on a bag of oreos instead.

Yeah I made 3 puzzles, one for each of them. They moved their pieces diagonally and over each other so they literally finished before I could say anything. As a DM I'm trying to find alternate ways of presenting puzzles outside of "I roll dice, do I win?" So I'm trying to add in stuff like Tangrams, logical riddles, tracing puzzles - stuff players can either use logic to solve or easily guess and test their way through. It may be a failing endeavor but if I was a player and a DM gave me something like this I'd at least be earnest about having a go at it.

A little off-topic but...

I dunno if it's a good idea to halt the gameflow like that to make the players solve puzzle games. At least not as a means to progress. Maybe for a side area, but I find that stuff like that tends to just stop the game dead in its tracks.

Puzzles I found did work okay were cryptographs (Even a simple Caesar cypher can be fun. Maybe hide a key somewhere?) and logical exclusion puzzles incoporated into a dungeon ("Bob lives in the house with a red roof and has no male neighbours" etc.)

But, of course, in the end, everything depends on your group.

>running a game for other college students

you have never known greater suffering

Honestly he should have made them more useful

>>players leave because it's 'too occult'

>not putting on your Capotain.
>not telling them that the game is designed to help you fight the demons.
>not having your players come to a deeper understanding of their faith by showing them the forces of the Adversary and their defeat.

You gotta know your audience, user.

Move to the North or just get less religious friends.

You're right it might not be a good idea but I'll keep at it until I'm convinced it is or isn't a good idea. I still hold out hope that a group more eager to engage the game would appreciate these puzzles. And in all honesty these aren't hard puzzles I'm presenting, I crib from a K-3rd grade level.

The issue with it is thus: once it happens you aren't playing as your character for the duration, you are playing as yourself.
At least in regard to this kind of puzzle, your 3rd+ level wizard can do this kind of thing in his head, whereas your players may get stuck with it. The reason it breaks game flow more than say, a riddle, is that the players will approach the riddle in character, and will discuss the answers. You can even have them make checks to give hints as to the answer of the riddle. A puzzle like this is literally saying to the players themselves "hey do this puzzle and you can get thing".

No amount of secularism will make people interested in a game if there is a disconnect between expectation and reality

Good communication with your playerbase (particularly during the player selection phase is the key to happiness).

Good post

I see what your saying but I still think I can make this work. It may take a lot more crafting and formulating as opposed to saying 'here, puzzle, solve, reward'. You present me a problem but its not an unpleasant one to think about.

Yeah alot of these sound like basic pitfall of not sounding the waters beforehand. You gotta talk premises out with players and see what they get hype for, ask them what ideas get them excited.

>Not realizing DND is the devil
Nobody is going to get fooled into joining the cult of Minerva. Everyone knows what happened to Blackleaf.

>GM keeps cooking his meme food

ugh, can you not?

What you need to to is make it so that in order to move a piece, the characters have to complete some task.

Bumping right now, I have a neat idea of how to implement it, drawing it now

>Print out the custom-commissioned worldmap on a 22x14 poster board
>Hang it on the wall in our game room
>Layer over it a clear glass dry erase board
>"Okay guys this map is going to be up all year, you can use it for keeping track of things that interest you in locations like monsters or rumors, keeping notes, or planning journeys!"
>3/4ths of the year later
>Nobody ever touched the thing
>People keep asking me to remind them what the name of everything is

I feel so empty whenever I look at it

I-i-i would use your world map senpai

>One year anniversary of the campaign
>I commissioned my group a picture of their party together
>Fill it with little details and references to some of my favorite moments in the game
>Reveal the print at the end of last night's session
>"Oh hey user that's cool but I never really pictured my character with X"
>"Yeah that's really nice of you, but now that he mentions it my weapon looks more like Y"

I was going to hang it up somewhere but now I don't even want to look at it

That stuff pisses me off to no end. We have a legit artist (and middle school art teacher) in our group and she loves to gift is with character art all the time. In my opinion, she pegs characters perfectly from their hairstyle to their shoes and everything in between. So when half of the other players correct her, she does redraft comissions, working really hard to give them what they want, only for it to still not be right for whatever reason.

Not only do they snub one-of-a-kind artwork made specifically for them, but they have no concept of character design.

You should hang that shit and be proud of it.

You guys didn't deserve it :(

This would make for a really neat dungeon.

this thread has made me feel sad

good thread

Is the grey lever a trap lever or something?

> tfw wanna gm but never have
> tfw all this shit seems cool as fuck
Maybe gms and players just value different things

I feel like I'm alone in hating riddles, most of the puzzles I've come across and stuff.
To me it feels like it falls back really heavily on the out of character, and just interrupts the flow.

>send the party to a run-down slum in a modern fantasy game
>they encounter a gang that's taken over the slum and their gimmick is they always tell lies
>their leader is a martial artist named Dadaluma who says that he's weak and doesn't want to fight, but nearly kicks their asses
>tfw only one player gets the reference

Unless all of your players are into Final Fantasy I wouldn't be angry at them for not getting the reference. I had to Google that shit to know what you were talking about. I'm sure if I played FF I'd catch the blatant reference, but otherwise? No chance.

Holy fuck, this is the worst

Last year I drew character portraits for all my friends as a way of trying to reward them for being such great players but all I got was a constant stream of "subtle" suggestions to fix this and that and then every other week someone would go "so user when are you going to have the revised portraits done"

It made me want to strangle them all and it really soured me on a campaign I was really loving up until that point

Look, just, let me be mad about this

please

>Dadaluma
I played through ff6 5 times and the only reasons I even remember that shitty town were the rust remover, the love letters, and the music

Next time pick a more memorable bad guy to reference

Are you even good at drawing?

You're too good for this sinful world, user.

Ooh, that's a great idea actually. Originally I was going to have them turn it to open the door after completing the puzzle, but then I realized it was pretty unnecessary.
If you were really evil you could play on the players assumptions and make the puzzle completely irrelevant. The gray crank just opens the door. No tricks.

>make players fight a pyromaniac goblin village worshipping a three-headed fire-breathing hydra
>nobody comments
I even had them chanting gee-do-ra you fuckers

Imagine a dungeon designer that's really bad at making traps and puzzles, and gets really sad when he finds out the party just walked through his dungeon because they easily solved his puzzles in ways he overlooked. I'm stealing this.

The key is to make riddles and puzzles be manipulated in game or with in-game knowledge, and not just on paper or in the players heads. Stuff like this , or like this:
youtu.be/Mn6B56Z59fo?t=2977

After reading this thread I'm terrified to see just how far a group, any group of players really, would go before realizing the world I would have put them in.

A world where the king requests that you find and save his daughter. The very same king who keeps getting turned into an animal by 7 rogue nobles of his kingdom.

A world where said nobles have allied with a tarrasque for power at the expense of their physical apperances.

A tarrasque with no real interest in fighting you directly, and so employs an endless army of myceloids and mutant bipedal turtles to stymie your progress.

probably because Ghidorah shoots lightning.

Ghidorah also hasn't appeared in a movie for 16 years.

Are you referencing an anime or some dumb shit? I didn't come here to listen to you drone on about your weebshit homebrew, I came here to eat your snacks and to kill your NPCs.

>goblins are stealing from trading convoys for a month
>usually no casualties but on the last raid a goblin is killed and a trader is injured
>local mayor decides to hire adventures to stop the goblin raids because it's a logging village with no true militia
>party comes upon goblins while they are drinking to fallen comrade and are packed up to head home
>they don't observe the goblins enough to garner their state and go into an attack
>goblins try to flee but all but one were killed quickly
>sole survivor is the one I rolled to have a child back at the goblin lair who he whittled a wood figurine for
>party interrogates him and a handful of them comment on how bad they felt about murdering them straight out
I had so many options set up for that encounter. They ended up getting kinda a tough moral dilemma

>play an assassim to the crown
>Not admitting im an assassin
>Official documents cite me as a mailguard
>Noone thinks this is strange, because noone else in the paty built a stealth character from a stealth background in our stealth based game
>I go around murderig people with no remorse, do a handful of high value target kills for the group easily, explicitly never roleplay as if this is unusual
>Everyone just assumes im a shit roleplayer and starts calling me a murderhobo
>Im the only player actively engaged in the world in every session

How do i deal with this?

he's referencing Super Mario Brothers you philistine!

>first boss battle ever run as a GM
>It's a brain/plant thing that controls corpses, like zombies, with its root system that has taken root in a massacred town
>Came up with all sorts of interesting bits to the fight, zombie hordes drawing ever nearer to add an artificial timer to the battle, unique attacks and spells

>It takes the players about five turns to figure out that the bigass brain plant who's roots are in the skulls of every zombie they've downed, that has been hurling psychic blasts at them every turn, and that I have repeatedly describing as important with the subtlty of a sledgehammer, is the thing they need to kill
>Next turn every single player magically rolls a crit on the brain plant every round after this revelation, they refuse my requests confirm their crits, and try to peer pressure me into letting shit go when I ask to see their rolls

Cheating fuckers. Don't play with them anymore.

>Painstakingly create a high speed chase, with my own rules from the ground up
>Make sure that every player can take part. Those with good skills, those with heavy armor, anyone could help in the chase
>When the time comes nobody even attempts to chase the target on the rooftops, they just take it at face value that they ran away, twirling their mustache evilly.
>Tell them that they have plenty of time, the person is still in view
>"Naaaaaah we'll get em eventually."

>NPC challenges a player, who is not optimized for social interaction, to a drinking game. The players were under the effect of a psychic link and could work together to think of one liners and quips, and if they thought of a better one than the NPC, the npc would drink. Otherwise the player would. Whoever gets drunken under the table must complete a request for the other.
>Player panics, refuses to do it on the grounds that they would fail any charisma based roll (though I told him that rolling is irrelevant)
>Party face steps in and does it for him. They ignore the mental link they had so the party face carries the whole plot point
>Player complains that they don't get any limelight in the story.

>come up with demon hunting game based on what some people actually believed
>do a bunch of research to make it accurate
>some players get worried I actually believe it

Explain your gripe to the GM.
Then ask them to have one of the nosier PCs catch you receiving an assignment.

I made and bought some block constructed MTG decks balanced for each other for RTR, actually taking time and effort to incorporate the keywords, no matter how shitty like Orzhov with their fucking overpriced lifedrain mechanic and nobody wanted to play with them ever.

I played a pretty simple system RPG (recommended on here, I remember nothing other than the fact that it used 'cliches' to do most stats). It was most of the groups first time so I tried to make all the puzzles or riddles kind of obvious, and gave copious hints and setups. We eventually got to a part where a choice had to be made between shooting an ally and an alien disguised as an ally. Despite having set up the fact that the aliens had very obvious physical characteristics (yellow eyes, elongated feet, etc.) it took the party a near half hour of debating before someone thought to have both characters take off their sunglasses.

Gave one of the characters an Heirloom locket from his adopted family that was gonna carry a lot of story threads with a decent magic ability. That very same Session asks how much is the locket worth so he can purchase a mithril Breastplate.

I feel bad because my GM made a bunch of prestige classes for various types of practices of focusing a 'twisted light' that permeates the world and is a pure antithesis to the Phantom Lord, the Big Bad Evil Diety who is bringing darkness and chaos to the world.

The reason I feel guilty is that none of the prestige classes let me keep my manifester level or are in any way advance my psionics so I'm not taking any of them. Especially since I'm planning on going hybrid the psion/incarnate Soul Manifester.

Well for the first part you have to make it clear they have a chance to catch up. Since unless they have a clear edge to catch up whoever got a head start is gonna get away especially if the pcs are not built for chasing. And will just assume they will fail so they'd rather just not bother.

And as for the second ive had this problem as well odds are the player wants to be in spotlight. But what you presented was nothing he felt comfortable with or wanted to interact with. Honestly simply having a cute barmaid flirt with him or have him trigger whatever plot thing you have in mind would probably be a safer option.

That lich-king I made. I really liked him. Fucking players, man.

>muh comfy zone
ZZZZZZzzzz..zz.z

It took an hour for one user on Veeky Forums, so i think that equates to half a for a full group

So this was as a player not a GM but it still counts:

>playing Qin, it's a Wuxia Romance of the Three Kingdoms game
>playing a charming thief type who uses a staff
>spend ages trying to think up a name
>come up with the idea of calling him "Tea Leaf" and translating it to chinese. I thought this was a pretty neat name since tea leaf is cockney rhyming slang for thief and the whole chinese tea culture thing
>looking forward to playing the game and seeing what everyone else has come up with and sharing my pretty cool name.
>no one but the GM cares
>hey ho different strokes for different folks I guess, what are your characters called?
>literally no one has thought of a name for their characters citing not knowing anything about chinese names as an excuse
>try to point out that I don't know anything about chinese names and my character name is a pun and that they could have at least tried
>game descends into everyone just being referred to as "*players name* character"
>I am 200% mad

First off, that's a clever name, well done user

Secondly, I hate it when players or GMs say "Okay so user what do you do" instead of "okay so what does Character do?"

>run a Star Wars game starting with the EotE campaign
>players make their own characters
>rocky start as I have to adapt the story to fit them in
>between this and players just being players, they go off on a tangent
>manage to lead them into the junk shop
>player gets all story info through successful conversation, then "do you have a ship?"
>"I uh, have a Skyhopper out the back..."
>player convinces him to let them take it for a test drive, but junk shop trader comes with
>they take it for a flight and in the middle of the desert kick the trader out and stun bolt him in the back of the head

>I then proceed to maneuver narrative progress to allow him enough time for shenanigans
>the next they meet him he's running an arena show in a sandpeople village
>he's so horribly burned and covered in rags none of the party recognise him
>and none of the players thought he was still alive
>he manages to lead them into an ambush with a salvaged droideka and bunch of "roger" bots
>whilst he escapes

>game continues on, work gets busy as I plan to involve the dude again
>session he was to make a comeback I have to hand off to one of the players
>tell him my plans for a salvaged assassin droid team whilst witholding some info as to how/why
>nevertheless he just doesn't include it in the session
>"villain" I spent a lot of time planning for and all proceeds to get completely forgotten about by the party

>Realize my party needs help figuring out where the villains lair is in the dense jungle they're in.
>Party loves Dark Souls, talk about it all the time.
>Decide to place an old overgrown temple in their path, with a kindled bonfire and not!Solaire sitting crosslegged at the center
>Introduce him as Astor, a knight out to find his very own Dawn.
>Even gives them a bloody soapstone that they can use to summon him one-time only.
>Nobody bats a fucking eye.

I'm done.

>implying

>literally says Rush Hour in the pic

In which third world country was it called "Traffic Jam" instead of Rush Hour?

nigga...

Maybe a little too straight forward on that one?

>Dagda !hTbo821v7U
I thought you died.

I got it, but only because Zozo is my favorite location in the only FF game I've ever finished.

I fucking hated the gigas in Zozo.
Fucking magnitude 8, and of course I had no casters with float.

This is why you half-ass everything and don't plan anything more than a vague outline for your session.

It's a gravity beam, you pissants.

>GM not enforcing names before session 1

What the actual fuck. Our group at least makes people whip out the namegens and get something, anything specifically to avoid stuff like "[players name] character".

I just load Edgar up with Haste relics and have him one-shot Gigas with the Drill before the big fucker can break out the magic or the superpunch.

>literally no one has thought of a name for their characters
I'm dying inside.

That's such a horrendous copy+paste job it's not funny, no wonder anyone was amused. If they were I'd be worried since that's just blatant pandering.

Jesus christ Sunfaggots were a mistake.

The drill wasn't always a sure bet tho.
If it went for damage instead of the ohko, then they would definitely counterattack with Mag 8 since their health was so low, and even 1 of those would put you at 1/3 to 1/2 health.
On top of it all, Zozo was good for grinding xp, but awful for gil, items, so it was a catch 22.

That's why I get to know my players' interests before I make cool things for them.
Gotta identify the shiny-trinkets-fans before giving them fun magic items, the roleplayers before giving them complex NPC friends, the killers before giving them +50 Daggers of Fuck Shit Up, the vanity collectors before giving them deeds to land, the explorers before giving them mysterious maps, etc.
Get an idea of what they like during session 0 and then throw a bunch of everything at them whenever they deserve major loot. Then see who fights over what, and you're set.

>Game session ends in a bad spot.
>My PC is a low level sorcerer, and, while separated from the party in town, I get accosted by the setting's "arcane magic is heresy!" clergy.
>"Repent or die!" They threaten, and then the session ends.
>Get filled in on the "evil" anti-mage church by the GM while cleaning up post-game. They aren't evil, just antagonistic to arcane casters. They seem otherwise fairly chill from a theological standpoint.
>I have a week to come up with a response.
>Decide I'll join them, maybe become a sanctioned sorcerer or something.
>I haven't had any spotlight time yet this campaign, might as well make it memorable.
>Write a short speech where I convert and accept their god as my liege and savior.
>Next session cancelled.
>Rehearse my speech. Punch it up a little, and make it more interesting.
>Next session also cancelled.
>It's the Holliday's. Totally cool.
>Rehearse & re-write speech a couple of times. Now know it like the back of my hand.
>Next session happens, Start reciting my speech.
>Two sentences in: meatbread wants to know who I'm quoting.
>Ignore him, continue speech. It's short and I just want to get to the point.
>He won't shut up. Demands to know who I'm quoting.
"Your character isn't there. Let me finish."
>MB: "Is this from Sword Art? It sounds like Sword Art."
"It's not Sword Art."
>"You can't fool me, Lennie google that. What was the part you were saying about redeeming the soul? Say that again."
>"... Fuck you, GM, I'm repeating and joining the church."
"It was totally sword art online."
>"I've never watched that horrible anime and no, no it wasn't."
>GM didn't have any idea what to do if someone decided to repent.
>Antagonistic church's enforcers just kinda escort me to a home where the rest of the PCs "rescue" me.

I really hate when a GM, or maybe the other players, have no idea what to do with your character.

I encourage players trying to decide their characters goals from the get-go now, to avoid just bumbling around with nothing you actually want to do when a GM thinks setting up a sandbox is fun, but sometimes they refuse to play with interesting ideas like yours, because either they don't care or are afraid to rock the boat, or just have their own ideas for how things should be.

Sorry that your speech wasn't appreciated - not everything is a quote from somewhere, but maybe you should take it as an accidental compliment that they assumed it must have been something official.

I just don't get this at all
I live in the bible belt, and literally this has never happened to me. Heck, I'm the one person in my group who RPs the most, and I'm the only one who regularly goes to church.

Where the hell in the bible belt do you people find these normies? Do you live in the middle of buttfuck nowhere in the forests of Alabama or something? Because I never have any of these stereotypical bible belt problems

Then again, in my experiecne Texas tends to be considered Schrodinger's Bible Belt state, so I guess I could be just not in a place that counts
And no I don't live in Austin. Fuck Austin

Sorry but after hearing about image related and how people will buy sugar free gummy bears just to watch their guests shit their pants I won't touch anything unless it was in a package beforehand or the "chief" himself eat at least twice the amount I'm planning to eat. Such pranks aren't even funny, they are just annoying.

This guy knows what's up.

That's pretty heavy paranoia, user.

Some people are assholes. I will eat stuff made by a group of friends but a random group shouldn't be trusted just because they share the same hobby as me.

>One player will be headed to university at summer's end; bake into their backstory that they stole the precious thing which allows them a good reason for their character to scram when their pursuers draw near again
>Summer's end, they do so
>Have the party hired to track them down so that they should coincide meeting the character with winter break, so the player can show up again
>Party takes way long and gets sidetracked; lines up with spring break instead
>Set up so they can easily turn in the PC, set them up with dubious allies who would give pay and protection for the thing, or warn them and put their heads back down
>Instead of these, regroup with runaway party member and go on the lam

>This was a detective campaign
>All my prep for ideas in the metropolis they live in are toast, player who is out of town is now a key party member
>Have to put the game on hiatus until summer

Ouch.