ITT: Post about times your players called you out

>Be doing a kind of foundation inspired sci-fi game, although less about psychohistory and more about trying to do something to stave off collapse of a small band of dedicated heroes in a galaxy-wide crisis.
>Copy paste some of Aasimov's numbers. The Galactic empire numbers about 25 million worlds, it has an overall population of roughly a quintillion, it has a hugely overpopulated capital world that needs to be supplied constantly from the outside
>Capital world's population is "somewhere over 40 billion".
>One of my players looks puzzled for a bit, but I go into some legal trouble they've gotten into.
> Pipes up that if those numbers are right, the average population of a planet of the empire should be about 40 billion. Why is the capital so special and ultra-vulnerable in a way that's implied to not be the case for everywhere else.

DAMN IT.

Claim that you're not a mathematician and that the population is precisely as large as it needs to be.

Double it on the spot and dare your player to call you a nigger to your face. Stare him down until he accepts it. Works not just for this but for anything game related, and is reusable.

Better yet, half it

It's Asimov's fault, of course. Man should have known better.

What if the capital world is a smaller than average planet? That could make a slightly above average population a problem.

Addendum: Maybe it also just doesn't have a very high landmass to ocean ratio.

A little thing I do is any time I'm called out on a claim that's out-of-place or weird or whatever, I just say "Boy, you're right! That sure seems weird! Maybe it's worth investigating?" And then figure it out later. A lot of times I end up with extra little bits of neat fluff.

make sure to pull ur dick out if you decide to go this alpha OP

>Be running a Fallout campaign with my own system that I made from the ground up
>Player and her husbando are fighting three raiders
>She turns one into ash with a tesla-pistol
>Her husbando fails at kung fu and raider 2 disarms and equips her tesla pistol
>Raider 1 forces her to suck his cock while raider 2 tortures her husbando with a knife
>Raider 1 jams her tesla pistol into the side of her skull while throat raping her
>Husbando loves her too much to stay quiet, he yells and begs them to stop, because of this raider 2 begins cutting off his fingers every time he screams for them to stop
>Eventually raider 1 shoots his cum down our femanon players throat, he grabs her by her hair and drags her to raider 2 and her husbando(who has now had his right eye ripped out by raider 2)
>Raider 1 sticks the barrel of the tesla-pistol into her characters skull even harder and proceeds to make her choose between her life and her husbands life
>She chooses her life...
>Her husband looks at her in sorrow before tilting his head down and speaking
"I understand and... I... I love you..."
>Raider 1 squeezes the tesla-pistol's trigger, turning her husband into ashes before she's able to say good-bye to him
>Player's character drops down and begins sobbing while trying to scoop up her husbands ashes
>The two raiders beat her within and inch of her life then piss on her and walk away
She wanted to use AP for her shot against raider 1, I fucked up and said she only had 5 AP when she should have had 10 AP. The shot she was taking used 5 AP. She called me out but I was able to bullshit my way through things and not have to re-write the post I made.

This is likewise what I do

Why would you even put the effort into thinking this up and writing it?

>Campaign is about to switch genres like Drakengard
>planned for months in advance
>players are all over the series now that Automata is out

I'm scared

I like suffering.

I literally pull the "lol its magic" card more often than I should, but I guess I do it in a tasteful enough way that the players usually accept it. I let them try to figure it out and if they over-complicate with logic I remind them magic tends to make bullshit happen so dont over-complicate it until we get to the point where it needs explaining.

ex. X exists period, youll have to deal with it and learn how it works later. "BUT HOW WHAT IS THIS WTF" gives you time to work out holes if you have them or leave them blatant, remember a lot of things and systems dont really make sense IRL either so meh

This is why I avoid numbers, because I usually contradict myself because I have shit numerical memory.

>DnD 5e game, setting based pretty close to Hyrule
>PCs are a special forces type team from a multinational knight order
>PCs solve a succession crisis and save the day, though at extreme odds against them and suffering a lot of hurt to get there
>Find out that they SHOULD have gotten support this whole time, but a traitor kept pocketing the letters sent to them asking if they needed assistance
>"But user, Sending spells exist."

Fuck. God FUCKING damnit.

>>"But user, Sending spells exist."

They were trying that. Even got a few replies saying help was on the way. Funny, that.

I eventually gave a reason, but I wish I'd thought of yours, at least the "we got the all-clear" part.

Still, I can console myself with the thought that none of the ALL-SPELLCASTER party thought to try sending for help either.

I flipped out in response to a particularly unbalanced spell's use (I was really tired at the time and didn't think things through) and took my hatred for the system designers out on the player who was using it. Soon after, I apologized for being an ass, and the player accepted it well enough, understanding my reason for the outlash.
WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T 5E LEARN FROM 3.5'S BULLSHIT?
HOW IS IT THAT FUCKING HARD TO NOT PUT SAVE OR SUCK SPELLS IN THE GAME?
FUCK LEVITATE AND HEAT METAL
THIS IS FUCKING BULLSHIT

Man should have realized that dorks are massively autistic faggots?

All the designers in the world cannot compensate for you being a shit DM.

>levitate + heat metal
Explain? What did they do?

This.
Story time, please.

I know I'm a shit DM, but my autistic rage simmers in the bowels of Veeky Forums, hoping to one day overthrow my apathy and use a good system or just take a hacksaw to 5e and implement a text wall of home rules.
>Levitate
You get one Constitution save or you are effectively immobilized. No additional save, it lasts for ten minutes or until the caster breaks concentration (take a fucking guess how often that happens). It almost shut down two back to back single person encounters, letting the party take potshots at a ninja and then at a traitorous samurai, the second of which didn't have a ranged weapon at the time.
>Heat Metal
Congrats, as long as this is up, you're not only taking constant damage at but have to save or take more damage and drop your weapon. If you don't drop your weapon, you are at disadvantage towards ability checks and attack rolls, IE generally the thing you want to fucking do on your turn. What's that? You're wearing metal armor? Sucks to be you, because you CAN'T take it off. This shit gets my goat in one-enemy encounters where the enemy is using metal.

>one-enemy encounters
>enemies have no ranged attacks
What the actual fuck is wrong with you? No shit those spells wrecked your shit; YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT.

The ninja did, he actually nearly killed the wizard, but lo and behold it turns out a DC 10 concentration check is really fucking easy even if you're getting your ass beat.

A DC 10, or HALF THE DAMAGE DEALT, whichever is higher. I hope you remembered that part.

Yeah, I know.
I had intended it to be a nonlethal encounter, so the ninja didn't do that much damage, but it just turned the combat into a joke.
It just infuriates me that I have to make a special accommodation to deal with the possibility that whoops, the wizard's spell solved the problem in one go, pack it up everyone. I shouldn't have to fucking have a spy be accompanied by six other spies to be a dangerous opponent.
It's like playing a Street Fighter game where one of the dudes is literally Rambo. Yeah, sure he runs out of ammo, but I shouldn't have to have everyone be bulletproof just because.

>Ninja explodes a smoke bomb on self while levitating, forcing either more spell use to remove or attackers now have disdvantage to hit (or full cover?)
>Ninja uses rope dart to grapple at range and/or create a grappling hook effect to move around on own
>Ninja surrenders, begs mercy, killed by other, better prepared ninjas
>Ninja has a scroll of dispell/counterspell prepped for such an occasion
>Allied Ninja attack as soon as shit goes so far sideways on what was supposed to be an easy mission

There're always options.

I did try that, hell, the very first damn thing the ninja did was try to use a water whip to drag the wizard into the running river nearby, because ninjutsu. The ninja actually got away because none of the player characters dealing with him could heal and they wanted to make sure the wizard was alive.
The samurai straight up called out one of the players, saying 'if you're so honorable, fite me 1v1 faget'. It didn't work, but he's got an escape plan lined up from prison.
I know I should account for backup plans, but man, it just grinds my fucking gears.

Wait, both enemies escaped?

Shit user, that's an unqualified success! You've got recurring Villains/Antagonists now!

I guess.
I'll admit that I'm a total dramafag and I have this general idea of what I expect a situation to turn out like, so 'ninja attacks the wizard hoping to break his concentration for four rounds until the wizard hits single digits' seems more like a comedy act than a fight fitting of heroes.

What if the capital world has been populated for longer, and use of older technologies has fucked up the environment, at the same time as the capital lacks nearby terraform-able worlds for agriculture?

I bet the Wizard was sweating a little there. Single digits AND tossed in the river? And then the perpetrator got away?

You might just need to adjust your expectations. Sometimes heroes get a weird or funny adventure. It happens.

But then the Samurai and the Ninja team up against the party...

>But then the Samurai and the Ninja team up against the party...
Well, the ninja's sort of dead as hell because he was captured by a search party and basically committed suicide to prevent being mind-probed.
But his family (like he did) hates humans and now specifically hates the party, so they might not want to go near any rivers in the future. Plus, I have a different recurring villain up to jailbreak the samurai.
My biggest problem is that I overthink everything, as you might expect. Part of the reason I haven't switched from 5E is because I'm forcing myself to suck it up and work within the restraints of the system to figure out how to use it. It's just that sometimes I really don't like doing that, but we all have issues. I just let lose on that particular example because it was one that particularly got to me.

I love 5e to death, but honestly it isn't well designed for a DM who wants to play within the bounds of the system.

5e shines when you break the rules (as a DM). Just keep Action Economy and some rough idea of spell levels and then make shit up.

Fuck you

This, honestly. Especially if you're playing with people who know the rules well or who break out some crazy multiclass options.

I have a player in one of my games who feels entitled to metagame because he bought the Monster Manual. He's new to tabletop, and enjoys throwing homebrew at me to see my thoughts on it. I've been trying to run him through the dos and don'ts of roleplaying, with moderate success.
One of these days, I'm just going to throw a custom hellbeast at him and watch him deal with it, before explaining that a $50 book will not save his character when he plays with other DMs, or in the future with me.

Doesn't levitate specifically mention that it can't be used on the unwilling?

No, in 5e it grants a Constitution save to the unwilling.

That's dumb. I also was under the impression it wa a touch spell.

Majority of the population might not be living permanently on a planet though, spacestations are a thing and all

>custom hellbeast
Release the Dickwolves!!!

Aren't they both concentration spells?

They weren't used at the same time (mostly I was mad about Levitate), but you can follow the reasons for my spoiler spergout in the following conversation.

Damn, that sucks...

Do you get con saves at the end of each turn for levitate? Otherwise it seems like a pretty broken spell to have desu

No. You don't.

The even more dickish way to prove your point is to have a seemingly standard monster with extraordinary stats. The MM provides a baseline, and default versions of creatures, but there is tons of precedent for stronger or weaker individuals.

Suggestion: Save or suck spells forces the caster to spend their action concentrating on the spell.

They can still move on their turn.

The spells would still be strong but it would be a more balanced option.

So, in regards of OP... why are people trying to retroactively justify and explain what clearly was a stupid miscalculation error?

Why does OP and everybody else in the thread addressing the problem not just admit that they miscalculated by one or two orders (population being 10^17 or 10^16, rather than 10^18, which would reduce the average world population to more manageable numbers) and be over it?
Why do people rather make up absolutely stupid stories explaining how the capital world is "really small" or "has a lot of water" (and failing to address the fact that it still makes your entire universe WAY overpopulated in the first place) instead of admitting a simple, honest mistake that happens all the time with numbers so big they are fundamentally impossible to imagine, with names that are very difficult to remember and distinguish because they are not in common daily use?

Just say "yeah, I screwed up the decimal. Average planet population is around 4 billions, not 40 billions. Sorry about that." and be fucking over it.

>ever admitting fault

get a load of this beta

Every once and a while I am reminded that Veeky Forums is just as shit as all the other boards. It's a grounding experience.

>Once and a while
You are the reason it's shit

>It just infuriates me that I have to make a special accommodation to deal with the possibility that whoops, the wizard's spell solved the problem in one go, pack it up everyone. I shouldn't have to fucking have a spy be accompanied by six other spies to be a dangerous opponent.
Then disallow wizards you mong. Holy shit, if you don't want to play DnD, don't play DnD. It's like a DM running a Star Trek Campaign complaining because his players used their phasers to shoot someone.

In a world where fucking wizards exist people would not send single enemies at the party you tremendous fuck-ape.

>I'll admit that I'm a total dramafag and I have this general idea of what I expect a situation to turn out like
Stop trying to railroad or play FATE you fag. DnD actually lets your players act, you're complaining about working-as-intended features.

ITT: shit DMs.

so I get using heat metal on armour

but surely the old spicy keychain only works once or twice before people start looking for minor enchantments to cool the handle of a sword, or make the grip out of something not metal, or wear better gloves

>Once and a while

Sorry user. English is a hard third language.

Heat metal is a cool spell, but if you send enemies immune to magic, enemies that are monsters,or enemies that use wooden weapons, the wizards shit will be pushed in

It was his own fiction and he should have calculated it properly.

Who cares what the population of the capital is? If it has the advantages of technology and comfort, and can project its importance, then it is the capital.

English as easy as fuck and if you take more than a year to become fluent in a language that's spoken literally everywhere that matters you're retarded.

t. a guy who has English as his 3rd language

Yes, because population density is average everywhere and cities and farmlands/bumfuck-nowheres are all equally inhabited.

user, that's the point. He's portraying the capital as massively overpopulated and a special exception that needs special support, but yes, it's actually the average of the populated world.

Maybe there are lots of bumfuck nowheres and hugely overpopulated worlds, but then all of those other hugely populated worlds have similar problems, they also need massive supply efforts.

Obviously the capital is on a small planet(oid); smaller than earth, or with bigger oceans. The other inhabited planets are much much larger, and have smaller oceans, leaving enormous amounts of room for farmlands and living space.

Being less enthusiastic and more coy is my go-to

>Weird.. isn't it? Could it be that I simply made a mistake? Or... ah, but I shouldn't spoil things. What were you up to, again?