Venting Thread

Fuck, Veeky Forums. I might need to give up DMing at least for a few years. I've always been a "forever DM" (except for a couple times I actually played), but I do enjoy it. However, I really need to put more work into my studies to get the marks I should be getting.

DMing not only takes a fair amount of time, it also takes a big amount of focus. I'm always thinking about what's going to happen next in the next session, when I really should be more focused on studying.

I guess that could be okay if I could prep completely on the go, like with my phone on the bus, or when I have a great idea while I'm walking across the street. But sometimes I NEED to sit down and grab the rulebooks, because there's a fair amount of crunch I need to prepare. You see, weaving plots and creating interesting situations is not too complicated. But then you have to stat NPCs, create traps, think of saving throws and skill checks, create magic items...

We're playing 5th edition D&D (HEAVILY houseruled), and I like it, it's fun. But it's far too crunchy (although not as much as 3.5/PF, thank fucking god) for me right now. It wouldn't be a problem if I had more free time, but now... And it really bugs me that I could still keep on DMing if we played a more rules-light system, whose crunch I could make up almost on the fly [Spoiler]like Savage Worlds, one of the OpenD6 games, or even fucking Risus[/Spoiler], but we've played 5th ed. for quite a bit and created a significant amount of stuff for our game (which is a West Marches-ish thing where the players handle a company of adventurers, they upgrade the organization's facilities and go on adventures with a roster of characters. We've even got our own lore and all)

So, yeah, venting thread.

bump

My players are fucking DUMB. As in, I pretty much tell them, out of character, what is going on and who is attacking them and how they're doing it, and they still fucking mill around pointlessly. My last game,, and I had to take a break from GMing because of it, involved them not figuring out the connection between a magic item that sent out a traceable signal to parties unknown, and assassins showing up all the time, no matter where and how they tried to hide.

I want to hit them sometimes.

kill yourself

It's not that hard, you're being dramatic. Unless you DM five games at once, it's not that time consuming. Make an Evernote account, work on it in your downtime at lunch, on the bus, whatever. Actual crunch shouldn't be that big of a fucking deal, and even then, just do your best guess and fix it when you get home. If you spend one hour on crunch and just kick the notes can down the campaign road every now and then, you can run a weekly game. It's not affecting your studies, you are affecting your studies.

>Show up on fucking time
>Write your fucking character before the game
>Write a background and a fucking description
>Don't use the exact same character you did in another game
>Interact with fuckers in chat

Do all these things and we will all be happy.

Why would I use a different character? You fucking faggots always bail before the game goes far enough to enjoy it.

Please see the list, in order of importance.

My group is near impossible to get together for a game. Doesn't matter who runs it or what game it is, everyone's availability syncs up about once a month. It frustrates the shit out of me.

Read the fucking book.
If you don't read the book and I call you out on it, don't fucking lie.
If I custom make your character so you can be the weeabo special snowflake you want to be, then at least read the God damn page numbers I give you for your powers.
Stop fucking arguing when I tell you no, you cant play this type of character, it doesn't fit.

Do what I do, play and draw from modules, adventures, and supplemental material. There's enough published stuff from classic to 5e to enjoy. It lowers the amount of prep needed. Not every adventure the party goes on has to be an original adventure.

This is my group holy shit
Except I'm the one who's never available... Uni is a lot of work man... I feel bad about it... sorry guys

Yeah, must be super hard maintaining the integrity of those Safe Spaces and cooking up new oppression narratives to denounce the mean campus cafeteria workers.

....Except when you're doing a Masters Degree in Global Affairs and International Economics and Diplomacy?

Did you ever finish your undergrad degree user?

not him but I'm doing a PhD in math and find the time for my autistic hobbies just fine. I mean yea, classes, teaching, and research take up a lot of time but it's not 24/7. A gaming session can be as short as 2 hours.

My group is my high school buddies, they all went to school locally. I didn't, so I gotta set aside a whole weekend if i want to play. I play with my old group cause the D&D clubs at my uni are filled with the people that was so anal pained about

Dude. I'd recommend switching systems. I'm in my Senior year and I will only GM Blades in the Dark because I just can't be bothered with crunching numbers right now. Not to sound like I'm Shilling for the game, but it's done wonders and its just as fun. I've had players tell me that they're itching to play again.

Hey, is that vent.

Fine new people not a part of the Uni club then? That's also what I did. Grab people from your department that you know are not spergs. It doesn't matter if they're acquainted with tabletops or not, as long as they have a mild interest in games and better than average attention span.

my uni RPG soc is an almost 50/50 split of SJW tumblrites and reddit autists but I've lucked out with a relatively normal group
worst thing about us at the minute is one guy is a club promoter so having him on facebook is grating

My barbarian keeps cracking jokes about "my character does *ridiculous thing*. Just kidding." And the *ridiculous thing* keeps getting more longwinded and the entire bit got old session 2. My paladin takes his oath super seriously to the point where he rejects money and continuously asks NPCS for free shit. Then he'll just fuck up the parties plans because he has to kill anything evil without thinking except when it benefits him.

DMing for 3/4 newbies and putting a lot of effort into homebrewing a cool campaign for them and trying to be as helpful as possible to make them understand. Tell them I'm available all week to ask questions JUST NOT THE DAY OF.

Two sessions ago I learn that two of them have not been levelling up and one of them didn't even realize half their paladin abilities which would have saved them from dying.

Also the other one constantly asks what to add to their spell attack even though I've answered them 1000 times...considering just not answering and making them figure it out

I can see where you're coming from, but it's really not that hard. Just know about what the PCs can do and about how tough you want things. Hell, I used to eyeball numbers for Pathfinder half the time and it was fine.

I'm half a year into a campaign and one players still asks what to add to initiative
Every time I say "dexterity mod plus half proficiency, the total is written on your sheet"
Every session they ask again

Get better players. Problem solved

I swear CR and TAZ have ruined new players. I had a barbarian who was being played by an actor friend of mine. I even let him use the homebrew Shardmind race, he had a dark interesting back story that looked pretty good.

Come play time, he treats it like it's some sort of improv exercise. Trying to steal from NPC's and getting frustrated when there's consequences. Making constant unfunny jokes. Generic barbarian running into shit without preparing and then getting mad when there's no light source so he gets disadvantage.

the worst part is they've told me it's hard for them to concentrate on just one thing so they're working on cosplay or something at the same time...and then they constantly don't know what's going on. Like fuck, don't play if you can't don't waste my time

>forever DM
I swear to Christ some people are just too stupid to play this game.

>group is DOA because 3/5 players are busy even though they were all hyped
>two of them had legit reasons
>one in particular didn't want to play on Saturdays because he'll miss normalfag parties
>find another group with remaining players
>hear he was ranting on twitter about irresponsible players and people that can't schedule

The guy is my friend but sometimes I just want to punch him in his faggot face.

>playing with normies

your fault user

I remember having this same issue years ago, and then I learned a little secret that allowed every one to have fun and gave me double to triple the amount of time to prepare actual crunch. The secret is winging side quests. If you think you're spending too much time on prep literally throw a hook in the middle of an adventure and just win a side quest. It a great time killer or a session or two and the best part is that the side quest doesn't need to factor into the overall adventure.

My suggestion user?

Quantum ogre. Quantum ogre like there's no tomorrow. One thing some DM's never understand is the an adventuring party is something like a stage-play, and the actors only need to know their character settings to advance the story.

They don't need to know all the background information, and in all honesty, they shouldn't know all this. Take advantage of it. If you do it right, you can wing encounters on the fly by simply making up simple stats, AC, what weapon are they using, saving throws. These 4 things will get you through most encounters without them having noticed a fucking thing. If its a specific monster, keep in mind its special abilities. For example, a rust monsters ability to destroy equipment.

If they do indeed hit on something you didn't plan, approximate. Come up with that shit on the fly. All of a sudden your paladin remembered he can detect evil? someone has a weapon that hits something thats lawful? make shit up. my DM wasn't even aware that in 3.5, wear-rats are always chaotic evil, so our fighters axe of lawful head-melting worked on it. I still haven't said anything.

In summation, keep it simple, stupid.

>LG dwarf paladin kills a goblin prisoner the party just rescued, even though the goblin was giving the party intel for rescuing it from it's captors
>Party gives him a fuckton of shit both IC and OOC for this, and then decides to go on a quest, to bring a spellbook to local cleric so he can res the gobbo
>Paladin refuses to go, turns to me to bitch about that, I just shrug and tell him to stop being a fuckwit
>After the quest player complains he didn't get any experience, loot or favors with the cleric

I think that's less to do with either of those things and more to do with the fact they're an """actor""" who does improv

I should have never decided to run Pokemon Tabletop United. Never even should have brought up my fanfiction to my group. They were just legitimately interested in what I wrote, so when they asked me to run a game in my version of the Pokemon universe, I agreed. And I'm not upset that they're, "ruining my story," because this part of the story hasn't been written yet (and some of the stuff they've done is way better than what I could have come up with).

My problem is the system itself. See, I believe that in a tabletop, as many classes or archetypes should be as equal as possible. Of course there will be some variation, but shouldn't be a clear tier system or huge power gaps between classes.

In PTU, in my five months working with it, Annoyer/Stall builds are superior and there is almost no viable way to make a classic Sweeper build. I think it's bullshit. I mean, when I think of pokemon, I think of quick skirmishes between two powerful fighting monsters using strong, flashy abilities; not two Annoyers with so much defense they barely take damage and so much HP they can fight for days, grinding each other slowly over the course of 20 combat rounds because each of them can fully heal their hp. It's turning into such a slogfest where combat is taking 3 hours just for a 1v1 gym match.

Pokemon combat should be decided (or ended) around round 4, but because Sweepers can't work as intended (by ending a fight in 2 or 3 powerful hits), this shitshow is lasting forever and I don't know what to do about it. For the first time in 13 years of playing games, I'm at a complete loss.

I don't want to force myself to have to choose between my Boyfriend and the rest of the group. I'm running a Pathfinder game for 3 other players and so far I have been able to get decent arcs and character development for each of them except my fuckbuddy. He wants to make his character infallable, his idea for an arc that he wants to go through is to get mad at the PC for not appreciating his special snowflake character. I am trying my hardest to tell him that his lack of interaction and communication with the other PCs is making his character suuuuuuuck, but the fucker is not taking any hints. If he wants to sit there and roll fistfulls of d6s at imaginary monsters, thats fine, but don't get shitty when the other PCs want to stay in town to celebrate their Victory and fuck eachother. It doesn't help that because of his shitty RP, the other PCs in character think his character is an actual psychopath.

>But Loserfag, If he isn't a good RPer, then why let him play in your group

Because I love that fuck head, despite this shit, I wouldn't want to let him down or make him upset. He wanted to play pathfinder and I couldn't say no...

Forever GM, but don't mind it. I put a fair amount of effort into my games, a little but more especially in the lore bit cuz most of them like a good narrative with supporting lore.

Problem is that one player spends most of his time on his phone, not really paying attention and basically only playing to get into combat and min/max his character. He always somehow ends up taking over as leader of the party to and that ends about as well as you'd expect.

The other has to be constantly reminded of the rules and how to play his character. I'm sure he's never actually read the book outside of what he needs for his character which is always either a fighter or barbarian. I've told him to read the books and refresh before each session so we'll see how that goes. He's sometimes harassed by player above for this as well and it takes away from the game all together

My last players isn't that bad. She's still newish to the hobby so there's some hesitation when it comes to taking the initiative on stuff and that kinda sucks.

They're not terrible people but when it comes to being players, it always seems like no one actually has any interest in playing games at all, even tho they seem excited enough to start. I always end up losing interest because of this and the game will die out in a month or two. I'll take a break from gming and they'll always ask why we never play games anymore. And then the cycle repeats itself. I've considering just flat out quitting to run games but I love gming too much. Finding new players is a bit of a hassle tho since I live I a small gay ass farm town.

Be more blunt about it. I play with my girlfriend and I absolutely will, and have told her when she's being a shit player. The opposite is true as well.

I really wish PTU weren't such a pain in the ass. A friend of mine, a new guy, and our DM had a great time being shitty Unovan imperialists on some tropical island. Antics included:

>Throwing Trapinch at the enemy, which is as terrifying as it sounds

>Bullying the locals and winning their tournament

>Pulling the leaves from a herd of Oddishes so they'd fuck off and leave us alone

>Fighting an Onix for a prehistoric Bulbasaur fossil

What the fuck, I'm so sad it stopped. But I don't blame the DM either, shit's hard to prepare for, especially when you're running multiple games already

I've had players bring the same character, down to personality and motivation to 4 complete campaigns. Even a game I was not running, same dick ass thief with kukris and average.

This shit used to be all over the place with 2e and now has infected the rest of the community.

It's such a great idea, combining two of the things I love most, but ptu is just difficult in all the wrong spots. Combat is clunky where it should be quick, there are way too many numbers, abilities, extra abilities, capabilities which should have been abilities, so much bookkeeping. The classes are all over the place, several key rules are vague or half- explained, and the book desperately needs an editor.

Like the Base Relation rule? It took me loke, twenty minutes just to find where it is in the book and another twenty just understand how it was intended to be.

I swear, if my players didn't push this on me, I would never have touched this damn thing.