ForeverGMs/DMs/Referess if you have something to get off your chest, do it here.
I'll start.
I ran a Dark Heresy campaign last year during which I named most of my NPCs after Fonts in Microsoft Word and no one ever noticed.
The closest I think my players got to spotting the pattern was when they were enlisted to hunt down a Heretekal Tech Priest named Magus Calibri. I got some funny looks, but no one said anything.
Please tell me you had a wacky comic relief deep hive ganger named Wingding.
I run games because I want to see other perspectives or surprise people with scenarios. I am constantly bored or disappointed in the players I recruit because they are so damn dull and I don't know how to screen them out properly during the recruitment process.
I wish my players would take initiative more and have goals for their characters.
When I'm a player my characters always have stuff they want to do. I mean i'll follow the story that the GM is setting up, but you can be damn sure that I'm going to the market and look for a dragon tooth and ask people if they know the location of a dragon's nest because my character wants to gain the essence of a dragon. Likewise he will go to the library and inquire about dragon-related books.
Or maybe he will have something else he wants to do. Maybe he wants to arrange a festival in the city going to the mayor to ask permission and get all the shops to arrange something.
But not my players. They are fully content with just dungeon crawling and going in whatever direction i point them in. It's like all their characters are good for is stats on a paper and game mechanics.
We used to have another GM and when i was a player i could get the other players to join in by leading by example, but now that i GM it's like they just can't be bothered.
I have a DM confession to make.
Every single one of my BBEGs is a complete rip-off of Ozymandias
What I mean is, they are Well Intentioned Extremists and more importantly, they're RIGHT. Their master plan will have a positive outcome in the long run, but its near term costs are horrifying.
This is seriously getting to be a problem. I keep writing this same archetype over and over, even when I make a conscious effort not to because I just don't fin d other villain types compelling.
Eh, I don't think it's that bad. Nobody is really evil for the sake of being evil. Most people have actual goals and motivations behind what they do.
The only other real BBEG archetypes I use are an overarching fundamental force that's gone unchecked (Nature / Magic is retaliating against man, and Avatars are the only real 'human' face behind it) or a person or collection of people who simply want to get out of whatever horrible situation they're in.
Try working with other motivations.
I get the whole "no one believes they are the villain" thing, i usually do that as well but that doesn't mean they have to want to help the world.
Off the top of my head:
He has been horribly mistreated. He doesn't see himself as the villain, but he does see humans/the kingdom as the true villains. All he's really doing is removing the real bad guys.
He wants to be praised. Maybe he wants to be seen as a god, or maybe something less grandiose but he wants to be the sole ruler. He honestly believes that in the end he will be a great ruler that will be loved by the people, there's just the iffy problem that he needs to become the ruler first. Shedding some blood over that is worth it in the end. Needless to say he would be a terrible ruler.
Or hey maybe do a spin on the Ozymandias thing: He think people will join together against a common enemy, so to make the world better he will become that enemy. To that end he needs to be as horrible as possible, like ultrahitler on steroids. He will slaughter babies, force the mothers to eat their flesh and then let them free to tell the tale. Only thing is he planned to slip away once people truly had united, so when the players crashes in he will complain that they are ruining everything. Possibly his dying words will be that they don't understand anything. Or maybe he will hang unto his illusion to the end and the players will be none the wiser unless they do some digging into the characters background and learn he used to be the most caring person in the world.
Thanks, I'm going to jot these down.
My campaigns are little more than illusion-of-choice railroads where characters travel from one character I came up with, get shown him/her for a while, then move on to the next one.
That's literally it. Any deviation is met with Telltale Games tier smoothing back on target.
And my players have no fucking idea, they think they're making decisions and executing agency.
It's shit like this that makes me feel like democracy is a waste of effort.
I ran a CoC campaign where I heavily ripped off Twin Peaks. I never told my players as I didn't want them looking things up and having it spoiled and because I never told them now they think I came up with it and are some kind of writing genius.
If any of them ever watch it I don't know what they'll think.
I know the feeling man. But if you're setting up a big story there can be this pressure on the players to not ruin the story.
That may not be the case in your situation, but i've seen it many times.
Maybe try to set them free? Like tell them "there is no grand story now. What does your characters want to do? Go create your own adventure now".
That's definitely challenging, and maybe your players just don't want that, but sometimes learning they have that autonomy can be just the thing they need.
Have you tried talking to them about it OOC?
in my experience, to many players things you don't point out to them as GM simply don't exist and if you want them to start having their own little plots and stuff going on you'll have to nudge onto the path. Try having a talk with them about their characters OOC. When you find out more about what they want from their character you can start puting minor plot hooks around for them to latch onto. Once you got them going they might be more willing to find out stuff on their own.
If you want people to challenge you, you have to invite people with different points of view. You have to prove that you're ideas are actionable, that they are the best alternative from among all the options presented.
No problem. Also keep in mind that the bad guy could just be straight up crazy or delusional.
A religious fanatic believing he will make the world better by completing a prophecy that may or may not be real? Or hell maybe he doesn't really have anything to go on, but just a hunch that if he sacrifice enough women/children/goats his god will be pleased and bless him.
Or maybe it's an elf with a grudge so old no one really understand what it's really about other than the fact that he is really pissed about it, and he keep mumbling about the realms of man spoiling our precious fluids or something.
Or hell maybe it's an outsider that is more like a force of nature than a being with free will. "ask not why the scorpion stings you, know only that it is in his nature to do so".
It's not the points of view, it's the execution. I think they're just shy but it gets old.
John telly Ozzy his plan was stupid because he'll die one day making the sacrifice pretty moot.
It's hard to say he was right.
You could just make them tremendous jackasses who don't know fuck all. Most powerful people skirt by on their luck.
>"ask not why the scorpion stings you, know only that it is in his nature to do so".
thats badass, man. get that tatoo in arabic next to a scorpian.
wait, no, you might get stabbed by mexican cartel members.
haha, I'm not nearly badass enough to get a tattoo like that.
But if i should one day transform into a cool yakuza assassin i promise i will have it done.
I don't have a group. It's my fault that I don't.
Also as a GM in the past, I've always been far too picky and irritable about my players characters. I should just chill out some more.
I can only stand other people when I'm stoned, and I can't get stoned at my LGS
Yeah, but that's a conversation starter.
D&D is a group effort. Don't go into it if you aren't okay with it not being as you envisioned.
GM or not, the game does not belong to you.
But yeah, definitely chill out more. Sometimes it can be cool just to go along with what one of the other players are suggesting and see where it goes. Some of the funniest things i have experienced was when a player wanted to do something silly or a little over the top, and i just go all in and make it even crazier than he could imagine.
I can't stop making settings.
I haven't had a group in a decade, yet I can't stop.
Without going into much detail, I have had several awful moments GMing my first full campaign where I just choke and make terrible decisions despite even having plans laid out that are much better options. What makes it a real shame is that the prologue sessions that lead into the full campaign actually went significantly better.
I often do things based on player input that actually make things a lot worse than better. But it still makes me frustrated that the players of my campaigns blamed the system MnM3e rather than what are ultimately my fuck ups. But, it does get rather stressful hearing criticisms about a campaign if it's on a constant basis, and that too does not help as it leads into more "choking moments".
This is why I am taking a much needed break, and running one shots at the very most.
Maybe you can look into online groups. I've had a pretty good experience with skype and roll20, though roll20 is definitely a learning experience.
fekken saved
I have come to realization that I default to putting people's family at risk as my go-to for character drama
In my first campaign I had one of the player's parents kidnapped and turned into golems
In my second campaign I had one of my player's mom kidnapped by the BBEG in order to draw them out
In my first Dread game I had one of the player's child kidnapped by Baba Yaga to get them to run into the woods
I am in the process of writing my next Dread campaign and just realized my go-to plan was to have all players be connected to the monster by having it have murdered on of their siblings in the past.
Are you me?
I've basically spoiled every single villain of my current campaign to my players over the course of the past few months.
I mean, I left them completely out of order and I doubt they actually remember most of them, but its taking agonizing effort not to spoil the main villain and big reveals I have set up. I know it'll be better if I just hide it until then, but it's really hard to keep it all secret.
Family members are easy. The reason you use them is because to get their attention you need to threaten something they care about, and you can be reasonably sure they care about family.
Try looking at something else they care about.
Do they love fame? Something has happened that has made everyone forget about them and they have trouble keeping peoples attention for very long.
Do they love fighting? Somehow something has happened and now there hasn't been a war in 10.000 years, there are no bandits and all "monsters" are kept in reservations for their own safety. Oh and weapons have been outlawed but the city officials (no guards) will only politely tell the players that they should hand them over, and have no idea what to do when the players refuse.
Do they love partying? A religious order has emerged and destroyed all distilleries, burned all crops used for brewing and convinced the king to outlaw taverns and casinos.
Figure out what they like and take it away. Now i promise your players will want to do something about it, and interestingly now they may have to figure out just what the hell happened before they can do anything.
Find people to talk to about it other than your players. Personally i happen to have two groups, so i talk about my plans for one group with the other and vice versa.
Alternatively you can do it online like here or Reddit
Honestly I wish I could, but my group of friends who would be interested in it are all in the game, so it makes finding people difficult.
Also its a JoJo game, so I can't talk about it freely on Veeky Forums due to the nonsense it brings
I know this feeling, goddamn.
It's so hard to not talk about the cool new ideas you have, and to not bounce ideas off someone.
It's grueling.
Jojo bullshit, my favorite
Kind of related I'm cooking some primal creature from earth's core that's extremely disturbed by any noise, and he's willing and capable to exterminate all lifeforms on the planet just so they stop making noise and causing tremors, so he can return to his peaceful slumber
Jeez, what are the players expected to be able to do about that?
Prepare one of the loudest sound surge after the first tremors happen and the players are aware of the primal creature's ascension to the planet's cortex
So they're gonna make the world's biggest heavy metal concert, then trigger a magic device set on the field to create subsonic fuckery to confuse and disorient the creature.
Depending on the party's behavior, I'll just have them fight it head on if they just wall the device, let them try to dare the fight by letting them fight right next to the device for enhanced effects, or have someone play as the bait and carry the device while the creature rushes at him, while the rest of the party tries to shut the creature down
Are you me?
quantum ogre?
I currently have two settings. In one, the fundamental force of nature tore down the ancient magical utopian society of man, as they had surpassed the need for survival and had effectively left the ecosystem entirely, massively draining the planet's resources and mana to do so. The closest thing to a BBEG is a sealed away avatar of nature who was trying to protect the planet, and enemies mostly consist of powerful warped animals who just want a meal / feel threatened and magic automatons just carrying on their tasks.
The other setting has a bunch of spirits who are trapped between life and the afterlife and can only pass over by hijacking a body and dying through a method other than suicide. Unfortunately, this pushes the person whose body was hijacked into the spirit realm, perpetuating the cycle.
I haven't written stats for enemies in months. I just let the players hit them until I think they should be dead, and I have them hit the players when I think it would be good. To keep things interesting I give them gimmicks, like different damage types or unique vulnerabilities, or put the encounter in a weird environment. I don't think the players have caught on yet.
many of my players are part of the "pro" RPG community (writers, designers, podcasters). they say i'm one of the best GM's they've played with. i keep self-sabotaging any attempt of mine to actually channel that skill anywhere, even with tons of opportunity and encouragement. i'm worried about losing my happiness with my one art.
I like being a GM but I hate being a player. The only reason I'm still playing in a friend's campaign, despite me secretly not enjoying myself, is because They wouldn't have enough people without me, and I don't want to be a dick.
I keep trying to get my characters killed but then I pussy out when it's actually about to happen a lot of the time. Even though I've had three characters die so far in this campaign. Today I reduced a characters to 7 hp and then didn't blast him with another fireball when I had the chance. I basically ass-pulled to save his life later on when he did try the other fireball because he had evasion but missed his reflex save by 1 so I made up some shit about how he had cover when technically he didn't. Partly because he wasn't the one I wanted to die. I also didn't have another character fall out of a mount when knocked unconscious because I wanted to the combat to end in time for people who had to leave so it wouldn't be dragged into a 3rd session of one huge straight battle.
I was planning for WEEKS how to "achieve" at least a partial party kill, yet did not play nearly ruthlessly enough to make it happen.
The upcoming adventure will have a lot more opportunities for this. I feel like wiping the party so I can start a new campaign because I fucked up the worldbuilding, also.
OH and I think I am the greatest DM in the world when in reality I am just the best out of my group which doesn't really say much when I have more DMing experience than the rest of them put together multiplied by 10.
Also watching The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones has put me in the retarded "more characters dying = better story" mindset. So now I try to railroad certain characters into dying when it seems "right" for the story so that by the end of the campaign only 1 to 3 of the original characters are left. I also love the idea of characters having permanent wounds / conditions that leave them fucked up in some way because in my mind the only "good" character development is negative character development.
I also can't stand non-core races nor can I stand characters with magic powers that aren't very limited (i.e. 3.5 wizards) because I'm a pussy.
Nope, I am glad to see i'm not the only one with this problem.
Creative writing is hard.
Make variants:
>incompetent but lucky; see
>misinformed
>delusional
And from here you can expand your comfort zone into different archetypes.
Everyone's a "writer designer shitcaster" these days m8
Take advantage of the opportunities provided to you? Why even post this here, Jfc..
Same, for my latest campaign. It's a different approach to my usual campaigns, but I've been bouncing a lot off of my players, often to the point of who they'll encounter and what turns the plot may take. No one has seemed to mind, and it has lead to better criticism over choices I've made during said campaign, which is like gold from players. It helps that the campaign has been using some very experimental rules, so mechanics discussions are common as well.
Overall I think it's been working well.
I press the random button on manga and comic readers and take arcs from them for my players. One guy realized I copied the Judge Death story from Dredd and gave me a whole bunch of notes to improve the game.
I am a forever DM, it has been this way for what? five years now. don't get be wrong, i love dming, but you know, reaches one point where you are out of ideas.
The sessions I am GMing right now I go with no prep, nothing, and harvest on the players ideas only. Sometimes things go badly, very, very bad. But you know, there is times where i really like doing it, well, until my players started to not writte backgrounds and just think about them.
My only intention as a skype/roll20 GM is to pick up lonely girls, engage in a gentle but vibrantly degenerate relationship with them long-distance, and then move on. I just really like lonely girls. Truthfully, they usually get tired of me or their deep insecurity prevents us from getting serious. Anyway, back to fishing.
I am a Forever GM for a group of my friends and it took me years to find our comfort zone.
It's beer, chips and dungeon crawling. As a guy who does speedruns and theorycrafts cool stuff in vidya, I found a love for just making up cool monsters and their environment. I don't actually roleplay much, and before you ask something like "try a different system", believe me, I juggled systems a fuckton, from Savage Worlds to WFRP, various forms of D&D and Dungeon World.
Like I have this player. He's my best friend. He's also a spaz. Every single one of his characters is designed in such a way as to not mesh with any given party. In real life, he likes to pretend he's super random, mysterious and not to be trusted. Also he's the only person who gets invested into roleplaying. He does it his way, though.
>You enter a vast, wide tunnel--
>AH YES, I DEFINITELY KNOW THESE KINDS OF TUNNELS
>Well yes, you do and--
>I WANT TO LOOK FOR DWARVEN FEATURES
>Well, yes, actually it is and--
>WAIT BUT HOW DID DWARVES SHOW UP IN THIS REMOTE JUNGLE WORLD THAT IS THE SETTING OF THIS CAMPAIGN
>Actually they migrated here as exiles and managed to strike a truce with the druidic caste by lawfully adhering to the borders they set and forming a nice relationship--
>WITH DRUIDS WHAT IS THIS PUSSY SHIT FAGGOT ELVES AND FAGGOT TREES
>Could you let me just--
>FUCKING ELVES
He also runs away from every combat encounter in spite of picking a fighter.
Of course, whenever I ask him what he wants to play, he says "something fun". This campaign is sort of based on some of our group's favourite media. However, his character runs away from every battle and does insane shit like randomly hitting trees with his hammer in the middle of battle, saying "I'm roleplaying". We're running a high fantasy campaign that has piracy, faction politics and an ancient cult to dismantle, and he deliberately tries to not mesh with the party and to run away from all encounters.
Your players realise you're running a shit show they just don't know any better.le
Learn to GM properly.plz.
Yes, he plays a walking stereotype. That's his roleplay. His Paladin in a one-shot game I ran a while ago was basically non stop talking about converting. He was also completely insane. He walked into 25 people, all explicitly looking for him and aiming bows at him the moment he walked in, and said "Can I get drafted here?" It was not the army. It was a nobleman's private security. That he walked into in the middle of the night. When I said "You can't roll diplomacy in such a situation", he said "Oh, well, I guess I won't be trying to get in the way of your so greatly crafted STORY".
And he interrupts me. A lot.
>You walk into the city. It seemed to have once been bustling with life, but now it seems like nobody is here. The decay has set in. Oddly enough--
>I WANT A TAVERN. I WANT BEER.
>Yes, well, I...
>BEER
>Could you please let me... Okay, thank you. A building that looks like a tavern is here, and there seems to be a lone person sitting on the terrace
>I GET INSIDE
>Uh, well, the bartender--
>I ASK HIM FOR BEER
>--the place is bustling with--
>DOES HE HAVE BEER
and so on, and so forth, and that's how I ended up finally revealing that the Aztec-like deserted ghost town they went into has been suspended in time forever by the benevolent goddess of partying that married an invading Demon Lord just for a single day more for her people, and then used clever wording to trick him in such a way so as to suspend the town into a state of prosperity, where the inhabitants are constantly blissful and they spend centuries drinking ghost beer and enjoying good old ghost hedonism, instead of being drafted into the Demon Lord's legions of hell. And they're very friendly people, they just kinda don't understand they're not material or alive anymore. Except for the High Priest who managed to stay lucid and knows the whole story and he is suspended in time for 200 years completely aware of what happened and constantly living in a Groundhog Day.
I gave up trying to GM because most of my players act too goofy for my taste and/or can't "In Character" without being an unintentional monty python cartoon.
I realised that I'd rather write stories, dramas and premade villages/npcs/quests but not adventures.
Not much of a confession but sometimes it's not JUST the players who are causing the problems, no matter how much we like to say so.
Don't invite him to the game and pick a new best friend, he sounds like an ass.
Just say
You now have beer.
And keep doing what you were doing.
I just haven't quite come to terms with my players yet. Where other groups do cool roleplay and get immersed, I do a lot of fratty dickwaving. I made up an archipelago that's supposed to sound Mesoamerican in its naming? Players make fun of the names and we pass on the lager. Everything is there to murder. I get interrupted in the middle of descriptions. A hunter was chasing them down, believing them to be cultists based on some bad misinformation. He constantly keeps up with them and knows the jungle better, so they're constantly being fucked up by him. When they finally meet, the hunter on a tree with a bow, the hunter starts off by giving a short speech, I'm describing his appearance... and instead two people at the same time get involved.
>Here I am, your reflection in a hall of mirrors. You've been fine game, but now it's over. You have one chance to--
>I THROW A KNIFE AT HIM - yells another player
>I ATTACK THE TREE WITH MY HAMMER - yells the aforementioned person.
>Uh, well, hold on--
>WHICH ONE GOES FIRST
>We have to roll for-
>DID MY KNIFE HIT HIM OR NOT
>No, wait, hold on
>FUCKING ELF, I WILL BASH THAT TREE DOWN
>He is not an elf, I have described him twice already
>HE IS NOT AN ELF?
>No, not an elf, he is a muscular man of the jungle clad in furs, like I said before
>weird clusterfuck happens when three people are talking to me at the same time
>when I'm trying to answer all of their questions patiently, the aforementioned man gets impatient
>I HIT THE TREE WITH A HAMMER DID I HIT IT I ROLL TO HIT THE TREE
>You automatically hit the tree. It's a fucking tree.
>OH OKAY BECAUSE I WAS TRYING TO PUSH THE GUY OFF OF IT
>Oh. Well, I suppose that's actually kinda fair and creative, let's treat it like a bull rush kinda maneuver...
>he rolls 7
>...but he didn't fall off.
>SO WAS HE STANDING OR SITTING
>...standing
>THEN HOW DID HE NOT FALL OFF
>...he's pretty agile if you haven't noticed
>BULLSHIT
The point of this particular instance was that the ghost town only serves ghost beer and it was supposed to be a cool hook to a quest about the real, actual food and drinks to be still within the cellar of the tavern, but protected by the lurking monsters that settled within over the years. A twist on "rats in my basement" quest that would reward the party with "all the alcohol they can carry", because they're the only alive people around. I wanted to set them up with a cool hideout like that.
Not to mention that if I indulge this player, he will keep dragging me on for 3-4 more inquiries like this. He's kind of an attention hog.
The point of my tales was mostly to highlight that I kinda don't know if I'm even doing a good job. I don't know if my players care about my setting or about the actual fluff that I'm sprinkling here and there. I don't know if the nemesis hunter NPC that I designed to be a pain in the ass and enhance the feeling of being chased is an annoying DMPC that is railroading them. I don't know if I do anything well.
I do know my players are having fun, because they do show up and they pay attention in combat - and here's where I found my niche, creating cool encounters and making fun monsters in neat, interactive environments.
And whenever I ask for feedback after session or for expectations before, they just go "It was alright" or "Whatever for me, thanks, make it fun."
I mean, I do have fun, I just get a really rough throat from having to talk over 2-3 players trying to get their first word in and I don't know if my GMing, acting, voice acting, etc. is worth shit.
"the Talk" may be what you need.
A man after my own heart
>Adrian
>RIGHT
I am not coming back to run after tonight.
I am not going to tell them and they can fuck right off.
Not going to lie, I feel like more DMs should do this. It'll make your players platinum mad if they find out and probably doesn't work in all systems, but just making fights long enough to be entertaining without going over or under feels like one of the easiest ways to keep players happy without relying on so much goddamn math, guesswork, and pure luck to try and make encounters work.
...
You got dubs that means you have to chase your dreams
do it
My first foray into Pathfinder was that I made a summoner with Throw Anything and a Harrow deck.
His name was Mugi Yuto.
NO ONE fucking realized I was trying to troll by making Yugi-Fucking-Muto and was playing Yugioh inside Pathfinder as a joke.
Oddly enough, I did quite well.
Ashamed to admit how much fun it was.
Eidolon was my Dark Magician Duel Spirit.
Sorry, forgot to mention he was a DMPC I put in to help the party I was DMing for.
I adjust boss enemy hp based on if the fight is too hard/too easy.
>not sure if bait
But if not we might have dated briefly.
I only run games because I consider other people are incompetent.
I'm a surprisingly patient person but if I was in the same group as this person I have a feeling like I'd force feed him his own dice at some point. There's only so much ADD-addled spaz I can handle, and I work with fucking children for a living.
Everyone knew they just didn't want to give you attention
Mugi Yoto fuckin
Who doesn't lmao
In an Exalted game I ran, I would always name local NPCs after some kind of fandom. The players knew this was the case and the first person to identify it would get free experience.
Some of them were really obvious: I named an entire city after thundercats characters, with no changes to them.
Some of them were really abstract: Every single exalted the group met had obscured versions of My Little Pony character names. Example: The main villain was a twilight caste solar named Eventide Radiance (Twilight Sparkle). The players would occasionally catch the reference but they never figured out that ALL the exalted they were meeting were named thus, which was especially fun since they met a lot of characters that they never identified as being exalted.
So glad to know I'm not the only one. DMing can be unnecessarily stressful, especially when players start acting like needy attention whores.
And for fuck's sake people, don't be the autistic twat that bothers the DM about the game seven times a week outside of gaming hours. Yes their character is really pretty and cool, no I don't want to discuss its entire past, progress and potential when I'M AT FUCKING WORK. I REGRET GIVING PLAYERS MY CONTACT INFORMATION.
As long as they're entertained and not asking stupid questions, what you're doing can be called "Amazing Improvisation".
I applaud you, at the very least.
This is an absolute fucking nightmare. You have the patience of a saint. I've got nothing constructive to offer, but I do hope it all works out for you.
I didn't have it in me to kill characters. I thought it was because everyone had put a lot of effort into their character and I didn't want them to die before I could introduce fun plot points I'd made for each of them but then I pulled a save out of my ass for a character falling to his death at the end of the final battle . I guess I'm weak.
how the fuck do you manage enough patience to tolerate that
If I was on your place, I would probably go apeshit
And I am a complete nothing at worldbuilding.
And running combat.
And narrating.
Man, I wish I didn't say "Let's play sum D&D!"
I once got drunk near the end of a homebrew Only War campaign, where the players were ideologically split over a decision, and knew a climactic battle was incoming.
I made them make out with one another for Fate Points.
I kind of hated my college game.
The players paid half attention, they did zany weird shit, and everybody laughed for most of the sessions. But looking back on it I didn't enjoy it at all. I was always stressed and worried about shitty fights. Rhe two powergamers in the group constantly brought up stuff I had to improv about and skipped over a lot of my content entirely. I had to try and make this Teifling Asmodeous's son, when my setting doesn't have Teiflings who are descended from demons, and when there's no fucking way Asmodeous would ever fuck anything in the setting. And, to top it off, it ended with my paladin fucking murdering a bunch of prisoners because he was trying to be like a Red vs. Blue character or some shit, then them wiping the floor with my final boss due to time constraints and me letting them get away with some questionable rules readings.
I hope my players liked it, and I think they did, but I didn't. I was kind of miserable actually, and I'm probably not DMing for that club again.
Like IRL make out? Holy kek
>hunter starts off by giving a short speech
TO be fair, you can never expect players to standby for a monologue. Interrupting descriptions is dickish, but speeches occur on in-game time, and the players have agency to make choices. Taking their foe by surprise seems reasonable enough.
Oh, I am aware. I was trying to have him say two sentences that were trying to hint at him being really determined to find them and that he believes them to be evil cult worshippers, hinting that they don't need to fight if they didn't want to. They were also slightly exhausted on resources, so this would have either been a grueling fight to use the entire rest of resources (and possibly a few members going critical) or they could have taken the second option of just making up for the injustice. I didn't mind that he was interrupted.
I was interrupted multiple times, however.
Another thing that happened during this fight:
>The hunter has been displaced from his nest and is now running away to better position himself for sniping. He yells out "RAHOR, TO ME".
>other players go like "ohhh shit, we forgot his pet raptor"
>HEY WAIT A MINUTE I DID SAY I'M LOOKING FOR THE RAPTOR
>yes and you rolled for it. And you missed it. Everyone did.
>WHAT THE FUCK GM HOW DID WE MISS A FUCKING DINOSAUR
>it's roughly human sized, you know, a raptor, and obviously tamed and trained by that guy. Uh, anyway, Diana (elf cleric) is being currently mauled by the raptor. *roll 1* Luckily, he missed his sneak attack, but, uh, yeah, now it's your turn, Herbert.
>I HIT THE TREE WITH MY HAMMER
>but... well... uh... what does it--
>I AM ANGRY
>uh, okay then.
>BESIDES I CANNOT MOVE BECAUSE OF THE WIZARD'S ICY TERRAIN SPELL
>he already dispelled it
>HE DID?
>yes, on his turn. You were yelling over him.
>OH
I am desperate for a game, he does show up, and he can get creative sometimes. Besides, we're all friends. Everyone else, myself included, kinda considers it to just being "oh, it's our silly old edgy friend, you just can't figure him out ever, that's part of the charm".
I just deal with it for the sake of a fun game. My other players are cool too, and we all like each other. I just sometimes feel like, objectively, I'm really terrible at being immersive.
Like another user said, if you want this to stop you need to have a talk with them.
The problem with using family is imo that, while it's a good way to get compliance, because the character would naturally care about family, it doesn't actually mean anything to the players (unless said family member was genuinely used as an NPC in the campaign). And ultimately, the goal is to get the players involved in the action. Using family members that were off-screen and essentially non-existent is the equivalence of saying "a wizard asked you for help and used a mind control spell on you, you can't resist".
It's much better to use some motivation that's central to the character rather than just a piece of background information. If you introduce a problem by abducting someones sister, and the first reaction of the player is "did I have siblings?", then something probably went wrong.
Whereas if a character is a greedy rogue who wants to be rich, and the villain took something valuable from him, the player will genuinely wish to hunt that bastard to the ends of the earth.
Nobody is evil for the sake of evil, but a lot of people are evil because they don't care who gets hurt so long as they get what they want, and a lot of people who are willing to make large upfront sacrifices of other people's well-being to get a positive ultimate result are driven more by impatience - they don't want to spend fifty years slowly grinding down an enormous problem, and often believe that anything that can't be solved within 5-10 years is literally impossible to solve at all, which is why they seek out drastic solutions, and those solutions usually cause more problems than they solve and often the problem they were intended to solve in the first place bounces back after a bit anyways. It's definitely weird if every BBEG a certain GM runs is an Ozymandias type because generally speaking people who *think* they're Ozymandias *aren't* and their plans won't actually work.
He is a fucking sperg. Have an honest talk with all of them or you will lose all of your fucking hair in a few months due to stress
How I describe my experiences DMing in D&D:
There is no true way of playing the game 'right', but there sure as hell are a thousand ways to completely do it wrong.
And my players seem to be intend to discover every single one of them.
I want to run a magical realm game for a group of girls and see how wild it gets.
*intent on
Look what they're doing to me. Just look at it.
I name all random NPCS after beers.
Polish craft beer will be perfect for when you want to run a Gundam game.
Gonna start doing this.
Have you considered that your scenarios could be dull and one note?