Things that you realised are true on the hard way as a GM

Women are terrible roleplayers
D&D has become such a meme that nobody takes it seriously anymore

Especially if said made-on-the-fly NPC has a nice rack

proper speling is lame

The race that attracts the worse players isn't Tieflings or Dragonborn or Drow, it's Minotaurs.

I'm still not 100% WHY, but every minotaur player I've seen in my 12 years of tabletop gaming has been the worst kind of That Guy and actively made the game less fun for everyone else involved.

Weak bait. Just because women don't like you doesn't mean they're terrible roleplayers. Stop projecting, faggot.

It's because they're probably furries

>do not save the PCs from certain death
>do not have PCs come back to life through shenanigans
>horror campaigns should start with a disclaimer saying "horror is unfair as a genre and if you no sell the horror, you'll get maimed"

I've had this thought before, but the ways in which they ruin the game usually have nothing to do with fur-faggotry. To give some examples:

First example
>Party is trying to get allies so they can form an army and liberate one of the players' countries from a tyrant.
>New player joins in and decides to be a student wizard from the setting's big magical city.
>Minotaur player suddenly decides he hates the new player, hates mages, and hates the queen of this city we've never even met yet
>As soon as the party gets to the city, Minotaur basically threatens the queen to help us "or else"
>Gets his ass proptly handed to him by the queens guards, thrown in jail, and proceeds to bitch about it for the entire rest of the campaign (even though we managed to convince her to let him out of jail after a single day, saying his outburst was due to PTSD and the stresses of our adventure)

Second Example
>Playing a small warband/mercenary group
>Minotaur player joins as a generic fightyman, should be easy enough to justify or make up a backstory for, right?
>Minotaur players backstory changes EVERY FUCKING SESSION
>Used to be a soldier, used to be a bandit, used to be a pirate, used to be a slave, used to be a gladiator
>Every fucking session we have to sit here and spend the first 30 minutes of playtime while this player makes sure we all understand his new backstory

Third Example
>Be students at a magic academy
>Literally all of us are wizards or sorcerers
>New player wants to join in halfway into the campaign
>Despite knowing it's a campaign about magic school, wants to play a minotaur barbarian
>DM squeezes him in as our group's "bodyguard"
>Player proceeds to bitch constantly about how he "can't do anything" any time we use magic for anything, despite literally being the most powerful character in combat and refusing to change classes multiple times even when the DM offered to let his character change
>Campaign is literally about MAGIC SCHOOL

...

It doesn't help that horror as a genre can be solved 90% of the time by getting drunk, setting fire to things, and swinging around an axe.

So many horror things fail to make the monster actually more physically threatening than a fat drunk man with an axe.

"Sandbox" RPs are one of those things everyone says they want, but don't actually understand what they're asking for. A game without any sort of direction at all leads to a bunch of murderhobos with no real reason to be working together or even be adventuring in the first place. Giving the plot some direction isn't a bad thing, and I'd even argue it's necessary for a good game.

Never start your players off as a bunch of strangers meeting in an inn. Come up with a premise for the RP and make all the players create characters who fit the premise. Create a group or organization that all the players are part of, such as a guild, bounty hunting group, knightly order, retainers to the same lord, ect. This instantly gives all the players a reason to trust eachother in-character and work together. Furthermore it makes early-game plothooks easy because the needs of the organization provide an excuse to ask the players to do things until they come up with personal goals of their own they want to work for.

I can't help but imagine you as a single overweight neckbeard wearing a fedora with a My Little Pony pin on it.

My best characters has been
>The shifty looking guy that is actually great at his job as the vizier.
>The 15 story background I wrote up to be as a main antagonist for part 2 out of 3 for myh long campaign. But the players ended up marrying and swearing loyalty too instead. Me rolling with that is what made him from a "big scary warord with a plan" to a "successful lord for a political powerhouse."
>The goddess of lies and freedom that has pretended to be a devil with varied worshippers to kill of all other gods but make sure she survives.

Players love them all.

Long backstories are good. But should not be a crutch. Don't focus on the backstory. It's there, in the background. But NO player wants to hear the backstory told from the NPCs perspective. At most they want to know "why do people pay him respect" or "how did he earn that name?". And then they will ask. No one in the real world automatically knows things, they search and they learn. If they want to know, they will ask.

Sandbox RPGs require A LOT more investment from the players and the GM working together.
Who are these people+ What are their goals? WHat makes them tick? How will they get there? What tools will they use? What are the cost and consequences of those tools use? What kind of other tools will they aquire during the campaign.
etc etc etc.

The GM needs to have a fucking plan for how the players will defeat the dark lord, join the dark lord, ally the dark lord, marry the dark lord, redeem the dark lord and/or make a political intrigue to make his leuitenant ascend to the throne of the dark lord and then do all of that with the New Dark Lord.

And so on and so fourth. A GM saying a sandbox campaign is easier has shit players. Or he's like really good at making shit up on the fly. Like. Really fucking good.

A thing I notice in sandbox RPGs is the other players are always fucking navelgazing, leading to my not-a-leader-at-all character being forced to be the leader.

I think they work fine, but you need at least one person in your group who isn't a hopeless automata with no self motivation.

why not just make it so the minotaur's backstory was that he actually was all those things or he's a chronic liar?

Do not put your group in a white box. If you just send enemies at them and have both sides duke it out until one side gets killed, the group is going to be bored.

Also going to share an NPC story.

>Players end up in service to a lord who rules a city and is hiring people to deal with various problems
>Players get all excited... except the lord is far too important to deal with every random adventurer who's working for him, no instead they get to get missions from his spymaster, Cheria.
>Make Cheria kind of a bitch, basically treats the players like disposable muscle (which, to be fair, they are), she often talks to them in a really dismissive way and almost seems to be messing with them for fun
>Players call her out, saying there's no way she can fight the kind of baddies they're fighting... to which she just laughs and says she doesn't need to fight when she's this clever and charismatic, and that the brains of an operation never fights anyway
>Players HATE her

Now this sounds like a shit character so far. But I turn it around with one simple trick that quickly makes her one of the favorites my players have ever interacted with.

>Players end up getting a job to take back a military fort that some defector soldiers have taken over and used to harass travellers with kidnappings and banditry and other thuggish things
>Players set up camp nearby to scope things out
>In the morning the players find a small satchel of potions left outside their tent, with a note from Cheria (teasing them about how their watch never saw her leave it)
In that moment this NPC that they used to HATE stopped being "the bitch" and became "Hey, I know I give you guys alot of shit, but I really DO want you to succeed." Suddenly the players saw her as sort of a friendly rival and didn't actually mind working for her anymore, later telling me that she had lots of personality and was an "interesting character".

I think players go in expecting this power fantasy where everyone fellates their egos right away, but sometimes it's OK to make them work for it a bit, to throw in NPCs who have egos of their own. If nothing else, it's relateable.

Sandbox games only work if the players have a motivation to play in the sandbox. If it's just "here's a sandbox!" then it's inevitable that everything is going to completely fall apart.

Yes, no matter how good your plot hooks are, or how well you scatter them.

Some players will never be good no matter how hard you try to teach them.

You just need to know your audience. My players love characters who are, for lack of a better term, moe. The list of character's they've fallen in love with is as follows:
>A giant who's house was burned down. He insists he's a troll (because apparently trolls live in houses and giants dont) and sets up shop selling junk he's collected whenever they get into town. Due to communication difficulties he's done a lot of things the party'd rather he didnt (once at a guard, built an A-frame cabin in their wagon so he'd have somewhere to sleep, once killed a horse because he was hungry) but they love him anyway. For reference he's not a giant-giant, more like a 8ft tall rhino-man.
>A child they recruited as a deck-hand during their brief foray into airship piracy. Dubbed half-squat because he's child. They've tried to train him to be various things (an assassin, a better deck hand, a watchman) and every time he gets carried away with his new role, or uses what they tried to teach him in ways that suit him.
and that's just this game
Here are some NPC's that same group has opted not to keep around...to various degrees.
>A half(possibly quarter)-giant named jojor. Technically heir to a duke from the north, but due to the way succession is handled, about 17 other dudes would have to die before that. He's a powerhouse in combat, and always inadvertently collects women and other hangers-on due to his raucous exploits in town. He was gravely wounded after holding off 20 men at a mountain pass and taking four arrows to the chest, so when the opportunity presented itself the party sacrificed him (and his noble blood) to a demon called the Kingeater.
>Nasir, a desert mercenary who gave up his honor and family name at the party's behest to help them kill a bunch of death cultists. They just sorta told him to fuck off.

I could go on, but yeah, players be players.

>OP can't greentext OR spell

That's an amazing character. I like such. Thanks for sharing.

>if players are lazy, it means they're not invested in your campaign
>if players aren't invested in your campaign, most of the time it's because your campaign isn't compelling
>git gud scrub

>if players are pieces of shit, it means you're not keeping your table under control
>git gud scrub
I got so much better at DMing once I stopped believing every thing that went wrong was my players' fault.

A thing many people fail to realize is that in any given situation, EVERYONE involved is failing, and even one participant gitting gud can salvage a sinking ship.

>I think they work fine, but you need at least one person in your group who isn't a hopeless automata with no self motivation.
I'm in this at the moment. But I'm playing a withdrawn character mage type.
Mostly because the group challenged me to play something that is not the party face. Newsflash, I'm playing the party face because none of the lot can talk their way out of a shopping queue.
But even so, I've trained them to became adept at talking. Started with feeding them lines, to giving them outlines of what they should communicate, to telling them what they should convince them to do and at the moment telling them what we want from them.
They're still shit. But less shit. And the GM has been a great help not punishing them for saying the wrong thing, accidently making things sounds like a sexual invite (they accidently sold my character into sexual slavery a while back. That was weird.) or other rude things, like forgetting titles or being to casual.

When I Gm they have cried and begged for more. It's a bunch of weird people.

My only problem with it is the health potions. I never give players something that meta as a reward and NPC's dont give it to them either. Id probably give them a hand drawn map of the area or something that she scouted out.

Id agree that this is true a lot of the time, but you can still have bad players who dont understand IC roleplay. I have this one player who always runs from danger, no matter what character he's playing, or what the stakes are, because he doesnt want his character to die. Its not because his character doesnt want to die, its just because he doesnt want to take any damage. You cant fix that kind of player, and they DO take away from the game.

10/10 would work for qt3.14 bitch quest-giver.

But for serious, I wish more DMs would do this. Far too often when I'm a player I only seem to get DMs who only ever throw helpless peasant villagers at our party, or "damsel in distress" nobles like princesses who can't seem to do anything by themselves.

>Pathetic.
>Will say they were doing both "ironically."

What does it matter if they get items from a dragons hoard or because they've done good work for an NPC? I hardly consider 2d4 HP to be "meta" anyway, when most classes in 5e get some form of health recovery power anyway. It's like a nice little one-time convenience item, not a legendary artifact weapon.

You're not nearly as clever as you think you are.

I honestly havnt played DnD in so long I forgot how commonplace health potions are.

>Giving players a common-available item they could probably buy in any city large enough to have a healer is meta.
>Having an NPC do an entire step of the mission for the players isn't meta.

U WOT MATE?

See Ive been playing systems where health potions are super fucking rare for so long now I forgot that DnD hands them out like candy.

Also, having a spymaster scout something out isnt meta.

Planning is over-rated.

You should have a world map, and about four sentences of culture for each region, as well as maybe a paragraph on recent history.

Make everything up from there, that way you can tailor things to your party's expectations (either by confirming those expectations or flipping them on their head).

This prevents you from writing 50 pages of lore that players never get to learn about.

god i need to work on this. any tips for good fights?

Make your maps where you expect your players to get into a fight before the game.

If you can't do that, just learn to be good at drawing something up on the fly as it happens

Failing that, literally just randomly drop and throw a bunch of random shit onto the map (poker chips, tissues, real rocks, pencils, etc). Make up what each thing is.

Some easy things to keep things interesting.
Flammable things and open flames. Early on there's loads of fire and then people are trying to kill themselves while also avoiding burning.

Difficult terrain, mud, caverns and gravel slows people down and changes tactics.

visibility. This is trickier, but having a monster that darts out of the walls like a ghost or earth gliding is hella interesting.

Shit DMs plan fights. OK DMs plan obstacles where fighting is a solution, maybe even the most obvious solution, but only rarely make it the only solution. Great DMs plan encounters that may become obstacles, and where it's almost inevitable that they will be an obstacle, but only rarely force them to become obstacles.

>Just improvise
is incredibly stupid advice. The best way to improvise is to prepare a large segment of the world, not plots, bot loci of locations and important NPCs and their interests and resources. Then, if something comes up that you don't expect, you can fill in the gaps quickly.

A player who is aiming at a different tone than the rest of the table is enormous trouble. Learn to spot them quickly, and either take them aside or boot them. Whether it's a funny/random guy in a serious campaign, someone who is playing as a gritty survivalist in a big damn heroes campaign, or the ultralawful paladin type in a greasy wrong side of the alley campaign, they can and will wreck it, fast, even if they don't mean to.

If a group wants to change systems every 5 sessions, it's a sign of a problem. It usually means they're dissatisfied with the way things are running currently. However, it's an extremely rare case that the change if system will solve whatever the problem actually is, which is usually let inarticulate.

Never mistake what the players ask for with what they want. Especially if that conclusion requires them to think about consequences of what they asked for.

The thing that's needed is a way to introduce the sandbox. Say "you're all from the same village." And then a quest to introduce the main features.
A sandbox is easy to run but hard to get off the ground. Players need investment and understanding of the setting to start making up their own quests.

You don't need to know how the players will defeat the dark lord. Just place a dark lord and let the players surprise you. Sandboxes need a lot of flexibility to work.

Different guy, but fights should always have a point, and now two fights back-to-back should have the same reason for being in the game. Its ok for some fights to come down to being a slugfest, but those should be either to establish what kind of enemies are in the area and their strengths, or to provide some resistance and attrition in a place where there should be resistance.

Other reasons to have an encounter include but are not limited to:
>to demonstrate the hierarchy of a group by showing its leadership and what sort of power they wield.
>introduce a new character or element in an area.
>To further introduce alternate enemy types, such as toughs etc.
>To add a ticking clock element to something else that needs to be done.
>As a consequence for previous action.

From there, the purpose of the encounter can dictate its layout and composition. Have the party race up a small pyramid or other structure to stop a ritual or the escape of a key henchman. Have enemy's break off to get reinforcements. Position archers or heavily armored enemies to force players to establish priorities or show off unique abilities. There should always be some kind of choice to make every round.

The biggest thing is to make every encounter costly. If they're fighting fodder, make sure to have enough that they all take damage or use a limited resource to clear them out.

Remember that RPGs are stories, and that every scene has a purpose.

This is all really good advice thank you guys.

>A thing I notice in sandbox RPGs is the other players are always fucking navelgazing, leading to my not-a-leader-at-all character being forced to be the leader.
This is extremely likely to happen. Sanboxes, pretty much by definition, consist of plots that emerge from the players, not from you. Among other things you should probably pre-arrange, is which character is the leader of their little band. And in general, they work better with smaller groups than with larger ones, less directions things can pull away in.

You can toss players anywhere for the first five sessions but you HAVE to make sure they get around to what they want to RP after that otherwise you risk boring them. The problem is you gotta make sure that the hype they'll have to get to what they want isn't too high or else they'll get disappointing. You also should figure out what they explicitly want from it without asking and make sure there is a twist that they won't see coming.

Since there seem to be some good DMs here, I want to share a puzzle/encounter with you guys and see if you think it needs improving.

The BBEG's temple is guarded by three demons, bound in stone guardians around the gate. The first is Tzotect, a young demon who has been cursed to always tell the truth. The second is Rejagor, who has been touched by the god of madness. Third is Orum'Tsal, the deceiver who tells only lies. The setup is as follows: if the party attempts to pass the guardians the demons will be set upon them, however, any they can name correctly ahead of time will let them pass. The party has no way of knowing which demon is which. They may ask each one question, and guessing one of their names wrong will break their seals, such that one more wrong guess will, for lack of a better term, start the encounter.

Im really happy with the setup because its a puzzle that doesnt require a perfect solution: it just makes the subsequent encounter easier by a known value. Its also worth noting that the demons have an established power level, which will be something that the demonhunter in the party will know from their training: the mad demon is the strongest, followed by the liar, and the cursed truth-telling demon is the weakest.

What does Veeky Forums think? Before you ask, Ive worked this out with a few of my fellow DMs and we're fairly sure there are at least two complete solutions given this configuration, though there is an element of chance.

One other thing. Sandbox or no, if you're dealing with a group that lacks motivation, and spends a lot of time navel-gazing or getting up to 'wacky' nonsense, put the ball in their court. Have enemies attack them, and make it clear the problem isn't' going away until they make it stop. Most players are paradoxically more attached to their gear than to their PCs lives, so if necessary, have them break or steal something valuable (but not so valuable that it cripples the PC in question).

I mean, it's plausible, but it's a bit hackneyed. Almost everyone knows the "one tells only truth, another tells only lies" and this is the same setup with a wildcard thrown in. I'd be rolling my eyes at it myself, whatever the actual terms of combat are when we do try to pass.

Would you be more accepting of something with such cliche components in a pulp-fantasy conan-y game? Because thats what Im running atm.

Personally, I'd add a twist to it. Make all three liars, or two of them truth-tellers. Then have some way to discover that fact ahead of time.

No sane BBEG will give anyone a puzzle they can solve.

I guess, but it's not something I really enjoy myself, so I'm not really familiar with all of its ins and outs.

The other major thing I'd be personally worried/annoyed about is Orum'Tsal; if he's some unfettered demon deceiever, he wouldn't ALWAYS lie, he would preserve his lies for maximum effect, but if you're willing to make him some sort of force of lying, sure, go for it.

>figure out the optimal way for that enemy/group of enemies to fight
>figure out what the optimal way for the PCs to counter it would be
>set up the terrain, positioning and situation such that the optimal choice won't work

basically you just want to remove the obvious solution

Both solves only have 75% chance of success, due to the mad demon wildcard.

Hm, what if they can find a way to cure the madness from one of the demons? Personally, I find that giving players false information in a problem-solving context is poor form and nothing more than a needless irritant. Sure its not realistic, but rewarding players with false information does not encourage inquisitiveness.

Well, can you think of a similar setup that achieves the same effect: a puzzle with varying degrees of solve'd-ness which determines the setup of a difficult encounter.

I want to give them something resembling a puzzle, but I dont want it to be easy, and I dont want it to stop them in their tracks until they solve it.

It's threads like these that make me remember, 99% of people who think they play D&D actually don't know how to play D&D and have never actually experienced the game the way it's supposed to work.

Explain.

For reference, I dont play D&D, but Im pretty sure you're still right.

I've given of plenty advice in this thread.
And I sure as fuck don't play D&D. I play OTHER shitty systems which has flaws that can be solved easier.

Dungeons and Dragons should be played as a boardgame with personalities. Anything else and it stops making sense. Anything else and balance breaks down on level 4 instead of level 10. (or something along those lines).

Exalted has flaws, it's flaws are that things are retarded. But that's solved as soon as you start playing and get in the mood with a good storyteller.

Shadowrun has horrible editing and reads like the posts on this board. But as soon as everyone has agreed WHICH rules are applicable and thrown our houserules at it it's hilarious.

D&D just gets worse and worse until the campaign restarts with next to no redeeming factors.

What I mean is providing them with false information, but rewarding them with true information for exploration.

>randomly created a towngirl on the fly to guide the players who came into town.
>Rapidly thinking of any race than human, chose Tiefling.
>can't think of a name, they ask for hers, look around in panic for any source of inspiration for name
>Pringles Can
>"Prin. My name is Prin."
>have her act cute and kind to party, seduce the horny tiefling sorcerer player, then drugged him and stole all his shit
>all sorts of crazy shenanigans, fucking her for hours, nearly killed her for revenge, etc
>tell them she was named after Pringles after the game, they laugh
>the next week there's a fanart of her drawn by that tiefling player's friend

Should really ask for the file.

Not him but D&D started off where the goal of the game was to raid dungeons, collect treasure, and GTFO before you get caught and/or killed by the wandering monsters. PC's were fragile, to the point where even a Fighter was likely to die after a few rounds of combat, but at the same time, everything else was comparably fragile too. Magic was broken, but it was also balanced in the sense that there were roadblocks to keep you from just casting shit willy-nilly without proper setup and protection.

Then when WotC bought it, D&D basically became a modern day vidya. Everything got double the health, magic is as easy as swinging a sword but the versatility remained the same, how you build became more important than how you play, and combat devolved into FF combat where two sides traded blows until someone died.

Also, DM's nowadays are more focused on the narrative, to the point where they've forgotten that a game that can't be won or lost isn't actually a game at all.

90% of women don't take tabletops as seriously as men, though. I've only met two in my 10 years of gaming. If you seriously believe that "gurl gamerz" only play video games you're retarded.

Hm. Thats an interesting idea.

I think its a lack of confidence. They trivialize it because they're afraid they're not good at it.

DMing isn't about providing limitless possibilities, it's about creating the illusion of limitless possibilities. A skilled DM makes sure his players can't tell the difference.

There is a term for this: quantum ogre. If there's something behind a door, it would have been behind whatever door the party opened. It give the illusion of choice, but in reality the result was predetermined.

>Red pill
>Peaces of shit

Cosmic and pychological horror
Breh

One group wants to capture someone, the other has to keep the person safe.

The baddies stole something from the party and they want to get it back. The baddies might decide to cut their losses and run if the party retakes whatever they came to get.

One group wants to pull a lever that will open the dam that will flood the village, the other wants to save said village and needs to protect the lever from the baddies.

Someone of the enemies wants to capture a member of the party who is missing royalty. Stop the abduction attempt before the party member is shotgun-wedding'd to an obnoxious prince/ss.

>keep combat short and sweet
>do not set up elaborate stealth segments to be played out like combat
>players may not think as open-ended as you want, so give them more flavor text and don't be afraid to give them a 3-4-option "list" otherwise it'll turn into "duh..... i go to bar..."