Stuff Players Do That Make You Cringe

>So I know you run without one player all the time...
>But I've never missed session, so I was hoping you'd cancel it for me.
>I even got the other players to agree with me about it.
>And they're all passive-aggressively not telling you about things they'd rather do than come to your shitty game, so that's another good reason to cancel session.
>But we all really want to play too! Don't worry about it, user, we're all invested and interested still!

Fucking kill them all. Tempted to just drop it and leave, this scheduling bullshit is really detracting from my enjoyment of the game. We agreed to play on a weeknight so that we could play 3 weeks a month, but we instead do maybe 2 weeks a month and I have only had a full party like 2-3 times. We've been playing since February. God dammit players are monsters.

hehe weeknight sounds like a scot mocking a jumped-up manlet

Honestly just explain to your players that you put a lot of effort into the game you make for their enjoyment and all you expect is that they turn up at the agreed time. A lot of players don't realise the effort it takes to GM and just see the game as something casual.

You're happy to change the schedule to be less demanding but you need a consistent game. If they aren't bothered you can do something more casual like board games. If they want to play they need to turn up and that they have the month to choose.

Ride out the month and if it's more of the same shit cancel the game and switch to random boardgame nights or whatever.

People react to clear consequences.

>I DO (INSERT WACKY RANDOM THING)
>no I seriously do it
>what? it has consequences?
>I KEEP DOING (INSERT WACKY RANDOM THING)
>oh man, I'm almost dead, how did this happen?
>maybe I should have played a different build

also
>gets hit once
>"THIS SYSTEM IS BULLSHIT! WE SHOULD GO BACK TO (INSERT SYSTEM WITH EASILY ABUSED RULES HERE)!"

>get ambushed by gang with pistols
>"I'll attack them with my melee weapon!"
>gets killed
>"You're not a good GM."
You know who you are.

Always run.

Always

Have one shots prepared for weeks where only a couple of players are there and run those.

You'll quickly realize who your valuable players are cause they'll turn up every week, keep recruiting until you have enough sometimes players that the game always has a full party even if only a couple of pcs are the "main characters" and the rest are supporting characters.

I fucking hate people who cannot stop playing with their dice. The constant sound of dice being rolled makes me MAD

Three of the four are DMs themselves. The fourth is the one guy who has been honest about being flaky, so I honestly am not too chuffed about that dude. One of the others is being a dick about it this week. Gonna just ride out this month and see if we can't tighten things up a bit here soon.

Not an option. I'd be running for one, basically, and the missing characters would bitch at me about it. Not worth the drama.

The big problem is that these dudes are all good friends and they're good players once the scheduling thing is set aside. This is just a rough month and I'm bitter about it since they don't really realize how much consistency in scheduling matters to me. Thanks for the advice, anons, but I'll get over it.

Bonus points if they also do the following:
>player keeps messing with and rolling their dice all the time
>suddenly demand you attention and point to said dice
>"so I was doing a test for X and I got this result do I succeed?!" while knowing damn well it is a great/passing roll
>they get upset if/when you don't count it

I've made it very clear to my players I do not like them rolling randomly. Rolling of dice = an action is being made.

I thought this was standard practice among GM's

>get ambushed by gang with pistols
>"I'll attack them with my melee weapon!"

No. Why would it be? It's not a standard issue.

>That's what my character would do!!!
And then I decided to always kill people playing gnome characters

>I was a farmer before a hobgoblin pack invaded my homestead, killed my flock, slaughtered my wife, child and parents. As they made me watch the deed something broke within me, and I was consumed by a rage I never knew existed. Before I regained my senses the hobgoblins lay dead around me with the corpses of my family. With nothing left to lose, I decided to pick some of their weapons and hunt down every last hobgoblin to quench my vengeance and anger.

And thus a lvl 1 barbarian is born.

As someone who psychologically needs to fiddle with something near-constantly (don't ask why, I don't know, all I know is that I do), dice are really convenient and useful tools for this. If someone's rolling to cherry pick results, that's some bullshit obviously (this is a good example of bullshit: ), but if someone is fiddling because they need to fiddle, maybe cut them a little slack.

That user was referring to the widely-hated-by-Veeky Forums idea of giving your lvl 1 character a backstory of epic proportions, focused on all the totally rad shit you did before a GM was involved.

Prob ADHD.

Establishing rules and actually getting players to follow rules are two very different things

I don't really have many of the other signs of ADHD, but maybe. Fuck, I don't even care, I just need to fiddle with stuff. I twirl pencils, play with dice, flip coins, play with buttons/dials/switches, gotta have something going on. I always try to not annoy people with it though (pencils are legit the best thing ever for this). People who are shittily behaved and blame it on "oh, I need to fidget" are the worst.

I would be disappointed if my players never made a Monty Python joke in Bretonnia.

as a TCG player the biggest ones for me:
>Talking to someone about card/combo that is fun
>random dude burst in "LAWL THIS CARD NOONE PLAYS COUNTERS THAT"
>just stare at the dude or say okay
>"I would have won IF..."
>"Yeah I didn't see any of my sideboard..."
>"High Roll?"

I did this once with a grizzled 40something mercenary. He was cut back down to level 3 for a combination of a bad injury and getting old, despite having been the equivalent of level 10 in the past.

>I cast magic missile
>I just follow the party
>I cast magic missile
>I just follow the party
>I cast magic missile
>wait, dm, do you have my spell sheet
>I cast magic missile
>I just follow the party
>I cast magic missile
>DM, what spells do I know
>I cast magic missile
>I just follow the party
>I cast magic missile

this player's boyfriend jumped on her bronze overwatch account, got it up to platinum, then she dropped it back down to either silver or gold. unrelated, but worth noting.

That, uh, definitely sounds like ADHD. desu though they literally define these things based on whether it's impacting your life or not, so.

>I thought this was standard practice among GM's
Yeah and I also ask my players to remain seated and calm, to keep their hands on the table at all times.
There is only one pen on the table that is used only when necessary.
Food and drinks are not allowed. You may go to the toilet once every hour.
Everyone has to maintain perfect focus while one of the characters is busy buying gauntlets of slightly less faggotry.
Phones are to be switched off and I keep them in a basket.
You have to read and understand the 200 pages long chargen rules from your first session onward.
You have to buy the books and all splatbooks, official battlemat and figures.
You may not speak about memes or simply utter them.
Bad jokes about [X] means an instaban.
You may not make any proposition or friendly advice to the GM.
Any people later than 5 minutes to the game will not be accepted back without a written apology.
You have to write a 2 pages backstory, Times New Romans, font size 12, for a character that may very well die in the first session.
You have to roleplay your own gender.
Girls/Boys are not allowed at the table.
If you want to make a character that does not fall in a typical party role you must first discuss it with the GM.
"You're not here to have fun".
Going out of the story finely crafted by your precious GM results in falling rocks.

...

>Level 1 character
>No Backstory
This is way worse

I sincerely doubt anyone is so thirsty they would push their SO to Master, and that's the lowest tier you can be demoted from.

It was less so much him being thirsty, as more so he's horribly obsessed with OW. People overuse the word too much, but he's the definition of toxic.

He's managed to push all his friends away from him because of it, and now both his only friend and his girlfriend are on their way of just ditching him.

>If you have any rules to keep players from being distracting retards you're nofunallowed
I sleep soundly with the knowledge that people like you are universally secretly hated by the people you game with.

I have no idea how hard that is, but it's most likely true. I know of a guy in his 20s who spent a shitload of time hunting the normal and shiny versions of some rare pokemon for a girl, so I think anything is possible.

It doesn't really impact my life and I can refrain for awhile if necessary. Just, when left to my own devices, I fiddle with stuff.

...because he plays OW a tonne?
Anyone who likes LARPing as a school teacher deserves the kind of group who'd need it.

Sure.
But maybe I think 100% focus is not needed for the players at all times. And is actually detrimental to the game in the long run.

It's literally to the point where it's his life now. Every conversation is Overwatch, every joke is Overwatch, every minute of every day is Overwatch. Which wouldn't be too bad, except he's the type of person who screams at his team, even if his girlfriend's on his team.

>Complaining about realism in a high magic game
Magic doesn't give you a free license to write in whatever the fuck you feel like at the time, magic will explain big bullshit but it won't explain more mundane bullshit, which is what breaks a setting. That's why even in a game with efreets, elementals and dragons encumbrance is still a thing and everyone has trail rations.

>Character is basically indistinguishable from Guts or Brienne or Drizzt or Hermione
That's more a factor of there being so many characters in the nerd fiction library now that any character is indistinguishable from a fantasy character in some moderately popular book.

Magical settings don't have to follow rules, though unless it's something the average person wouldn't encounter like lightning current or magnetism, they should be explained ahead of time.
The types of complaints tend to be complaining about the gm making stuff move faster or generally act in ways it probably wouldn't for narrative purposes, and usually are just a huge screeching crash to the flow of the game to point out.

People totally still make characters that are flat out from some anime or show or whatever, but it's not a big deal honestly. It dates back to the very roots of d&d, and is fine for someone to start getting into rp.

I mean, they have to follow rules, but not rules that are the same as real life. Internal consistency is all you need.

Unrealistic settings don't give you a free license to complain about whatever the fuck you feel like, which breaks the flow of a game.

You can be unfocused without being distracting to everyone else. And if what you're doing is distracting the GM, you need to stop.

Yeah, that's the point where you need an intervention. There's a very good reason I fuck off from the internet at least once a week to just read a book or something.

I agree, internal consistency is king. Sure you might have to houserule or bullshit something you don't recall off the top of your head, but a hot stove should be a hot stove.

>Magical settings don't have to follow rules
It really depends in what. For shit like magical traps, wizards and fantasy tropes you can paint liberally, same with travel distance and honestly I've never met a player that really enjoyed trail rations as a system. Having said that, those things should definitely still follow rules but shouldn't necessarily have to be realistic. If you're going to introduce a massive fantasy element it should behave consistently enough that PCs can kind of start to use it.

However, things like finding treasure in a cave filled with low level monsters about two miles from a town is silly, there's no good reason the residents wouldn't have plundered that a while back. That just feels weird. Same with oddly diverse biomes, multiple sentient races but still having tiny tribes of nasty-ass orcs that would've been hunted down years ago and so on. Basically things that look like either the GM hasn't considered the local economy or make them look like they saw the Monster Manual and just went mental.

If the GM is distracted by me doing dice pyramids/stacks while waiting for the faggot min-maxer to buy his ring of buttfuckery maybe he's the one witht the problem m8o

>actually admitting to building dice stacks during the session
Just save us both the trouble and tell me that you're 12 from the start next time

I know one thing my GM hates me for.

>Don't worry about shooting into close combat with your shotgun, I'll just soak it if you hit me.

>This guy does something I don't like
>better call him underage and a newfag

>I want to roll X skill
Just say what your character is doing, and I'll tell you the skill. That's half of the point of a DM.

Fuck you I'm 28 and I build dice stacks. What else am I supposed to do when bored during session? At least I'm still paying attention and not surfing the web on my phone or playing Pokemon Go or whatever.

>Spouting memes
>Character is basically indistinguishable from Guts

im guilty of a couple of these, big time

My GM has been instituting extra factors when falling because I have a ring of feather fall. Like when we plunged through part of the atmosphere. Fall wasn't going to hurt me a bit. Getting set on fire from the friction? That hurt a lot.

>Oh is it my turn? Hold on, even though I had time to think I gotta figure out what to do.

You're supposed to do something that doesn't distract the people who are currently trying to roleplay, like look over your equipment/spells, talk quietly in character with someone else (usually away from the table when the GM has to focus on someone else for an extended time), or look over the rules to make sure you know what your character can do. If you really have nothing else to do, you sit quietly and listen to what's happening or you think about what your character is doing. If you can't entertain yourself without being distracting for 5 minutes while the spotlight isn't on you then you need to grow up.

To be fair, that can sometimes be justified. More than a few times I had a plan in mind and then something happened that resulted in making a whole new plan.

This.
Dear god this.
That garbage never stops with my group.
I once had a skelleton PC who asked if he could remove his head without dying.
I told him no and he proceeded to try it twice.
He had one more strike before I let him go through with it.

People shouldn't be enabling your autism, user.

As forever GM, I'm guilty of this when I do get the chance to play... It's too hard to turn off desu.

>"High Roll?"
What's wrong with that?
Honestly curious, that's the completely normal way to determine who plays first at my LGS and nobody's bothered.

>player rolls under a 10 for something like "try to tell if this shady guy is lying about X"
>UGH OH MY GOD THESE DICE ARE SO BAD I NEVER GET A GOOD ROLL OH MY GOD I AUTO-FAIL WHATEVER I WAS JUST DOING THE DC MUST BE 40 EASY I NEEDED THAT 20 FUCK THESE DICE OH MY GOD I HAVEN'T GOTTEN A GOOD ROLL SINCE WE STARTED IT'S BEEN EXACTLY SEVENTEEN ROLLS I'VE MADE AND ONLY TWO HAVE BEEN ABOVE 15

>player takes 5 damage
>WHAT THE FUCK HOW IS THIS EVEN FAIR THIS SYSTEM SUCKS I MIGHT AS WELL BE DEAD IT'S NOT LIKE I CAN DO ANYTHING NOT THAT YOU WOULD LET ME EVEN IF I COULD

>Interprets rules to suit their ends when GM
>Interprets same rules differently to suit their ends when they're player
>Goes full autist when GM makes a rational call on dispute over rules

>Going full retard and then being on the verge of tears when everyone else at the table turns on them for being lolrandom

>Playing as opposite gender because they like playing "sexy" characters

Shit man I wish I wouldn't mind a smurf account that resets itself
Pubstomping is a blast

>Character gains one point of shadowlands taint (you need to get 10 before any mechanical effect occurs, but it is permanent)
>WELL TIME TO MAKE A NEW CHARACTER BECAUSE THIS ONE IS UNPLAYABLE NOW
>try to explain that It's not a huge deal and most Crab characters end up with 4 to seven points
>Derails the rest of the session. Luckily it was near the end, but had to move stuff to next session.
I'm now actively messing with the character in small ways.

>Make an attack roll
>"What do I roll again??"
>d20
>No, the one on the far left
>"I got a 3!"
>What about your attack roll modifiers?
>"..?????"
>Add your.. ok, so you got a 11 total. That's a hit.
>"Hell yeah!"
>Now roll damage
>"...???"

This person is a fully functioning adult and has been playing every single week for eight god damn months. How they even hold a job is beyond me.

I'm so fucking glad none of my current players are like this. I used to run into them once in a while and god damn were they ever frustrating to deal with. What kind of upbringing produces a wretch like this? How fragile are they, that any resistance or setback no matter how small completely destroys their will to continue? Fucking christ.

>eight sessions and twelve battles deep into a game
>"Roll attack"
>"What do I add to that again?"
>mfw

That's nothing. I once had a game end because after the party got robbed by bandits by blithely walking into an ambush, they decided my game was "rigged from the start" and 3 of the 4 characters committed IC suicide.

>Thinking a natural 20 means that instead of doing a thing really well you solve all problems for the next half minute
>Thinking a natural 1 means that instead of doing a thing really poorly you bring a plague upon the party
>Making a roll and after the result comes up they say what they want to do
>Taking offense to others pointing out that your characters are, contrary to what you think, completely unoriginal/blatant power fantasy self-insert to the point of spiraling into depression
It's one thing if it's the martial going "I'll take five minutes to figure out which guy should I hit", it's another if it's the caster going "People moved around, so what I thought I was going to cast won't be as effective now" and it's yet another if it's the caster going "Hold on, let me check my spell list for five minutes... I use my cantrip for the sixth round in a row"
Story of my life, except it's rolls under a 7 for combat while crit-build gets five 20s each session even without his reroll bullshit.

>What kind of upbringing produces a wretch like this?
I actually can answer that, since I was one for a long time and still struggle with it to an extent. Imagine an upbringing where you are the target and the enemy of your parents and family. All that happens that is bad is your fault, you are always the villain, nothing good ever happens that is associated with you. Add to that an atmosphere of extreme anger and hate towards your person and experience being told that you are scum, you are worthless, and nothing you do will ever succeed, and you get someone who shuts down when they encounter a setback. It's a defense mechanism to prevent a disastrous outcome and further damage to their person. Someone like this shuts down so they can't be hurt. They also tend to not get their hopes up, tend to avoid being close to anyone, and are often very standoffish. They're broken people, user. Don't hate them, pity them, and if you can bear to, try and understand where they're coming from. Yeah, they make your experience worse, but understand that they hurt inside and are having even less fun than you are.

I know, but the raging autism and strawmanning that happens in these types of threads is annoying. Better to point out which cases the annoyance is understandable. Otherwise it devolves into "waaaaa! YOU'RE JUST BITCHING ABOUT PEOPLE HAVING BAD WRONG FUN YOU FUCKING AUTIST!!!! REEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!"

t. GM who "hates fun" because he doesn't like players playing the opposite sex.

Huh. I guess I can see how that would produce that kind of player, but I was more expecting the type of person who got handed everything in life and never had to work for any of it.

>building dice stacks
>distracting other players
Maybe they should be paying attention to the GM rather than what one of the other players is doing.

Maybe that does it as well, but in my experience, people who shut down at the first sign of trouble tend to be people who have been deeply and fundamentally hurt somehow, usually as kids and usually by someone they trusted implicitly (e.g. a family member or other extremely close individual like a pastor or teacher).

To a certain degree that is correct. Many others, I would even go so far as to say the majority, are simply entitled twats. For example, on of my good friends is much like you describe. Yet another person I played with didn't have any of those issues. But he was an entitled twat because he had been spoiled most of his life.

Some people are just so used to the golden platter that when they get brass instead, they lose their shit.

Those things always fall over and clatter all over the damn table. It's fucking dumb and there's no reason to do it other than "lol I only have a 5 second attention span," in which case you probably shouldn't be playing ttrpgs.

>Monty Python references
What's wrong.

>Spouting memes actually
The English language is a meme, as well as any idea and ideal that you've gained from someone else.

You don't hate fun, you hate gay people, which is worse.

>Those things always fall over and clatter all over the damn table
yeah if you're a novice

To be fair m8 nobody likes getting their stuff stolen. I usually don't even put that on the table as an option even though my players are functioning adults able to deal with it in a mature way. I don't do it because it's not fun getting your shit taken.

How did you hint towards the ambush in a way thats fair without giving it away? How did they fail to notice it?
Not accusing or anything, just trying to learn how to do it for my next session. The only scenario I can really think of is 'oh, you failed your spot check? well surprise here's a bolt roll initiative'

How was there friction if you were falling that slowly?

I have to do the same thing but you need to realize that it can get annoying to those around you and figure out some way that you can cut it out or at least cut it back. Just because there is something wrong with us does not mean the rest of the group needs to suffer for it.

but wouldn't feather fall make you fall slower and thus the friction greatly reduced?

>What's wrong.
Not him or even a DM but Jesus Christ every time someone says a line from that I flinch a little. It's just so overused and most of the time the people quoting it don't understand the humor they're portraying.

>a line from that
Holy Grail specifically, or Flying Circus, Meaning of Life, and Life of Brian too? I've used Lemming of the BDA's civilian persona as a civilian in CP2020 before.

>What kind of upbringing produces a wretch like this?
Videogames. They want to have a correct answer to every problem, and have it presented to them on a silver platter. It should come as no surprise that the player who bitched about a single point of taint is a huge Mass Effect fanboy.

Yeah I meant Holy Grail. Probably because it's the most well-known.

>They want to have a correct answer to every problem, and have it presented to them on a silver platter.
I blame save systems. The ability to retcon every failure out of existence is a powerful drug.

Exactly. To be perfectly specific, we're playing 4e Eberron and it's a Ring of Lesser Featherfall. But like I said, GM has been trying to keep me from leaping off of tall buildings and the like with no consequences. He forgets every now and then (usually after we miss a week for whatever reason) so I get to fall with excellent style with no consequences. Otherwise I'd be able to help the party skip paste entire fights or make them stupidly easier by flanking the enemies. So I don't blame the guy and actually enjoy the challenge more.

Not them but I've only ever seen people quote Holy Grail. Some of my friends were supposedly Monty Python "fans" and my references to the Life of Brian went right over their heads.

I would have to disagree heavily. I play a fuck ton of video games and I do not have this attitude. I've even played Mass Effect and loved the original trilogy. No, this is a deeper issue. It has to do with how they were raised. I be you that those people were either abused or spoiled rotten.

>blaming save systems
That makes absolutely no sense for much the same reason. Just because you have a chance to end some nasty effect or successfully dodge, does not mean that you will lose your shit when you fail. Losing your shit when you fail is a much deeper problem in the persons psyche.

>my group finally gets off of Holy Grail quotes
>new GM comes into the group
>"Alright guys, it's going to be a Roman inspired campaign, so choose appropriate names."
>not one second passes before someone asks "Is there something wrong with the name... BiggusDickus

I've learned to accept it

People don't actually play with you

>I be you that those people were either abused or spoiled rotten.
Well, I'm not sure if he was spoiled, but he definitely wasn't abused.
I'm not trying to say that vidya is a sufficient condition, but in my experience, it is a necessary condition. Every player that I've had like that was super into either Bethesda or Bioware RPGs, though I've had players that were fine that were into those games.