Examples of bad DM practices that everyone thinks are good

I've done stuff like that a few times to get characters to overlook certain aspects of NPC's. I'll describe them fully and then stick to the first meme they blurt out keeping in mind what they actually are all the while my players get to live in their meme dream.

>"The more options you have the better the game is, so an infinite sandbox is a perfect game."

>if someone says one thing is bad, they MUST support the absolute opposite

I really hate this retarded attitude. Because no, nigger, not using pictures isn't the same as not preparing. Personally, I think it's lazy to use pictures. Unless you're working with a beamer, a huge-ass TV, or over the internet, you have to stop the flow of the game to show pictures. In fact, even with those tools you probably will stop the flow of the game.

And it's all for something that doesn't really add anything to what you're doing. My narrative experience doesn't get better when instead of describing the character you show me a picture. In fact, use of language can be crucial in setting a scene. I could show you a picture of an Elven girl with red hair, or I could describe her, tell you what she's doing. And with that description she might be a tavern wench or the princess of the kingdom. Or I might, in fact, drop a hint that she's the princess pretending to be a tavern wench. If I stop the flow of the game to show you a picture, and then pick back up again, that momentum is lost.

I'd use pictures more as a background thing. And I'd much rather roll out a good map than a picture of some NPC.

Rolling out in the open.

There's a reason why most games either have a screen or recommend that you keep rolls hidden, not only does it help to stifle metagaming (oh, the DM rolled a 7 but the Fighter's AC is 16, that means it has a +9 to its attack roll) but it also helps you to dial back on the encounter if you notice that things are becoming either too hard or too easy for your party to deal with.

Nothing takes the wind out of the party's sails than gearing up for an epic adventure of swords and sorcery, only to get shat on during the first encounter of the first session just because nobody rolled high enough while the monsters couldn't roll anything lower than a 15 at most.

>inb4 fucking casual scrub plz go and stay go!
If you want to roll craps for four hours, go to a casino where there's at least a chance for you to earn dosh in the process, not in a tabletop game where the game-feel is just as important as the game-play.

What the fuck are you talking about? I never said anything about using pictures or not. I'm bringing up my own notion of " Examples of bad DM practices that everyone thinks are good" ; and I'm talking about the no prep, no notes, no nothing sort of "improv masters" that inevitably make the same bland generic crap game.

This.

Besides, it can be a good tool to mess with your players heads. If they're getting a little too chatty or distracted just start rolling a few dice behind the screen and everyone shuts up, thinking they're about to get smacked by something.

Ignoring/Adding/Altering the rules in any capacity

Yeah, yeah, muh Rule 0, but the reality is that even if you CAN change the rules of the game, it's not the same as you SHOULD change the rules of the game. Even if the rules are some of the worst shit imaginable, they're still rules that were written, edited, and playtested by individuals who are game designers by trade and (should) know how the game works way more than you do, especially if you're someone who doesn't even read the books that you're using.

Anything that you do in the process of altering the rules has a butterfly effect on how the rest of the game works. Sometimes it's negligible enough to where you can get away with it but most times, you'll inadvertently fuck up the balance because the game was designed with certain things in mind and now certain options weaker/stronger due to how the changes interact with other aspects of the game.

If you must alter the rules, at least playtest it a few weeks prior.

>fudging rolls
>ever

lol enjoy your cuck game

This. Players who don't prepare a quick emergency exit strategy in advance in case things go bad deserve to have their characters die.

>b-b-b-b-but muh fun

I happen to find games without coddling and pandering to be more fun than playing something from the "lol looks like u win agen guys XDDD" school of GMing.

This has to be b8.

I pretty much only use pictures for scenery. But this is pretty dumb. Might as well say:
>Using miniatures from other games in your adventure.
>It was created with a different purpose in mind, so you'll end up with a bunch of extremely incohesive pictures that kill the immersion.

Some people are genuinely this stupid though.

I see his point even if I don't fully agree. 95% of homerules are shittier than any system could ever hope to be. The other 5% are community fixes introduced by common sense.

>Using miniatures from other games in your adventure.
>It was created with a different purpose in mind, so you'll end up with a bunch of extremely incohesive pictures that kill the immersion.
But this is true though. Leave miniatures to wargames.

Going on about "muh hardcore strats" in a tabletop game is like bragging about your high score in a single-player console game with no online leaderboard.

It literally doesn't matter, especially when that's not the focus on the game in most cases.

>Leave miniatures to wargames
No pls.

I want to play a game. If you want to use abstracted freeform role play with "zones" be my guest.

There's a reason why 3.PF still gets played in spite of its flaws while most houserules are made to the detriment to the table as a whole.

One is a set of rules made by professionals with years of experience under their belt while the other is usually a hodgepodge of random rules that may or may not even work as intended, usually to the detriment of the table as a whole.

If you think I'm stupid for trusting game designers over mark amateurs with more courage than restraint, I don't know what to tell you but I hope you never have to deal with a DM who thinks it's their duty to treat the rules as a suggestion rather than a guideline.

Most game designers are mark amateurs with more courage than restraint. Even grognards like Gygax are notorious for their shitty game design.

The fact of the matter is very few game systems have anything like a concept of balance. And since they're not meant to be competitive no more than an handful get actual system breaking game testing.

>but I hope you never have to deal with a DM who thinks it's their duty to treat the rules as a suggestion rather than a guideline.
Pretty much perma GM. As long as the houserules were laid out ahead of time, I don't see a real problem.

>There's a reason why most games either have a screen
So you can read notes that your players can't read.

>I can't into systems analysis and neither should you

Miniatures are functional, but they sometimes give you a too perfect overview of the situation, that a character wouldn't have if he was there looking in first person, so just describing can have a benefit there.
Figures behind a dm screen to keep track of things could work tho

If you're using a heavily armoured knight with a sword to represent a fighter in leather armour with a mace, you might as well use an acorn. There's a reason why wargamers fap to WYSIWYG.

I improv mostly when i give my players some open exploration sessions and i have no idea what they want to do. Like they just got i to a new city. How am i supposed to guess that one of the players wants to steal a peice of steak?

If you ended up in this situation it means that you fucked up

>So you can read notes that your players can't read.
and to prevent the players from gaining meta-info based off of what the DM rolled vs. a target number. That and even Gygax realized that making a game fundamentally dependent on RNG was not the way to go when the focus was more on looting dungeons without dying.

You think it's a coincidence that once 3.PF made the game more numbers heavy, the focus shifted towards squeezing out as many modifiers as you could rather than on the narrative that's happening in front of you?

Quite the contrary, I understand how game design works but I also understand that any work that I put towards house rules would be better spent on designing my own game, rather than trying to piggyback off of an established system that already has rules that work for its purposes.

I fucked up? I dont like railroaded games. Is that wrong? Probably, but ill have you know im a terrible DM.

>it's popular so it must be good
No, fuck no. Stop this shit. It's not true for anything.
3.PF does not still gets played because of good game design.

>and
no

The thing is, those game designers were also paid to produce a product and usually have QA/QC on the helm, as well as months/years of playtesting, to make sure that shit doesn't get too shitty as far as spelling/grammer/balance is concerned.

With random no-name fa/tg/uy with more courage than restraint, he can shit out a poorly written houserule that breaks five rules in the process of "fixing" one and there's nothing from stopping him from using that in his campaigns so long as he has no competition and nobody in the party thinks to leave.

This just seems like a broader complaint in the realm of 'my character pretty much looks like this.'

For people who want to fiddle around with the rules and bang out an optimized character, I'd argue that it's the best in the market, even if you'd need system mastery to figure out which options are good and which ones are garbage.

Hell, most of the issues with 3.PF come about because most of the people at the table aren't on the same page, not necessarily because the system itself. Of course, this doesn't make the system flawless but I don't see why 3.PF is necessarily a bad game just because most of the fanbase doesn't actually understand how the game is supposed to be played.

My DM made some good use of music in the last campaign we ran.

It was a detective noir style game in a cyberpunk setting. We had a Laserhawk album playing in the background for the game. High enough where it was audible, but kept low enough where it wouldn't be anything more than background noise to help the mood.

Ended up being a pretty great game regardless.

yes

>For people who want to fiddle around with the rules and bang out an optimized character, I'd argue that it's the best in the market
Yes, the rules bloat is very high, so you can fiddle a lot with the rules. It doesn't mean it's a good thing. You can fiddle with the rules and try to build a character with other games too, and I often have more fun with them than I did with 3.PF, because I'm not very limited in my options because most of the thing are good. Or, if you don't have levels, if you take some thing just for the fluff it's not a big deal, you will catch up at one point.

>Hell, most of the issues with 3.PF come about because most of the people at the table aren't on the same page
I heavily disagree. The tier system isn't a game design feature. It's a failure of game design.

I'll stop now, because this argument is way too old, and most of the people who argue good thing about 3.PF won't change their minds anyway.

I've never claimed that 3.PF wasn't a flawed game, I'm just saying that a lot of nuances that makes it playable by a sizable portion of the community tend to get ignored because they don't understand how the game is meant to be played.

Like your statement here
>The tier system isn't a game design feature. It's a failure of game design.
3.PF was designed in a way where experienced players knew which options were good and which options were bad. It's no different than having to look up frame data for a fighting game or looking up errata for a specific card in something like MtG.

3.PF was built with this notion in mind and in the current age where all the guesswork is removed, there's really no reason why 3.PF isn't an enjoyable game to those who enjoy building optimized characters.

I understand if you don't want to continue this discussion though, because it's clear that you're unwilling to even consider an opposed view point as being even partially correct.

Shame too.

ITT bad player practices
How about develop an imagination? Maybe you should stick to /v/

>because it's clear that you're unwilling to even consider an opposed view point as being even partially correct.
Stop your bullshit. It will be the same old shit like every fucking time it's brought up. Every argument you will make have been made, and I read them already. The games have been out for years.

And like clockwork, I already read your shit about the game being designed for system mastery and errata.
And it doesn't change a thing. The tier system is still bad, the book doesn't say it exist, it fucks with new players, and it fucks with old one too, because you are very limited in your options, even with an enormous amount of books.

And even if it was true, saying that it was "designed for it" doesn't means it's good game design.

>The tier system is still bad, the book doesn't say it exist, it fucks with new players, and it fucks with old one too, because you are very limited in your options, even with an enormous amount of books.
Okay, not every option is designed to be useful and even in games where optimization isn't the main focus, certain options will always be better than others.

This wraps around to what I said about everyone not being on the same page, because in a party where optimization doesn't matter, there's nothing wrong with playing a trip fighter or a grapple monk.

1/2

>not every option is designed to be useful and even in games where optimization isn't the main focus, certain options will always be better than others.
An option you offer should always be good in a certain context.
A grapple option shouldn't be that good when you fight a big slime, but should be useful when you want to grapple. If using that option is strictly worse than attacking in any case, or is worse than a ton of option, it's badly designed.

This is not about optimization, it's about balance. It's not the same thing at all. Even in a party where no one care about optimization, if the fighter guy is worse at fighting than everyone else, it's badly designed. The game say something, but doesn't deliver.

And in a party where the only thing that matters is roleplay, then 3.PF is simply not the game for that. You can do it well, but you can do it well with ANY game as long as you have good roleplayers.

And as I said, the SAME OLD SHIT. It's nothing new under the sun, it doesn't bring mind blowing argument to the table that will change everyone's mind, and anything I say won't change yours too. It's already boring.

2/2
>And even if it was true, saying that it was "designed for it" doesn't means it's good game design.
I don't think you understand how game design is supposed to work.

Let's look at Castlevania on the NES for example, a lot of the challenge comes from the fact that there's a delay in your whip and you're committed to a jump arc since you're supposed to use sub-items like the ax or the cross to hit certain enemies over your whip since it was so clunky to use against difficult enemies.

When you take these aspects away, you end up with Castlevania 4, where now, there's no reason to ever grab a sub-item because your whip IS the best weapon in the game.

So getting back to 3.PF again, the game was designed to be a game that focused on optimization. Just because you don't enjoy this aspect of the game doesn't necessarily mean it's bad, just that it's not to your personal tastes, which is fine, just don't shit on people who do find these aspects enjoyable.

I don't mind when people change the rules as long as they're up front about it. What I do mind is when they change the rules, stuff goes to shit, and they try to claim that it's the system's fault.

>Even in a party where no one care about optimization, if the fighter guy is worse at fighting than everyone else, it's badly designed.
From my understanding, the Fighter is only bad when compared against classes like the Wizard, Druid, or Cleric. In a party where nobody is optimized, I don't see what necessarily holds them back in comparison to other non-mage classes, especially in a group where everyone else in the party are around the same tier.

Also, I'm confused by something in your post, you say...
>And in a party where the only thing that matters is roleplay, then 3.PF is simply not the game for that.
but then you follow it up with...
>You can do it well, but you can do it well with ANY game as long as you have good roleplayers.
so what point where you trying to make here?

>I don't think you understand how game design is supposed to work.
Oh fucking please.

And again, "it's designed for optimization, I swear!"
It's badly designed. The imbalance are all over the place, you have option made for a specific situation that are just bad in comparison of others. A fighter can feel completely irrelevant because every spellcaster in the party does a better job at fighting than he does.
"He can always role play, it's not a big deal!" Yeah, like in every fucking rpg in history. It's kinda the point of rpg.

I don't enjoy this aspect of the game because it's BADLY DESIGNED. Not because "it's not my personal tastes", I like optimization a lot, in game where it won't make the entire party irrelevant.

>From my understanding, the Fighter is only bad when compared against classes like the Wizard, Druid, or Cleric
You're joking? He's a tier 4 at best. That means he's worse than at least 30 CLASSES. Yes, 30.

If by "a party where nobody is optimized" you means "a party where everyone pick a classes in the same tier" then you're already playing around the system. The tier list was made by players. It doesn't exist in the books, and nobody tell you it exist.

Saying that the community "fixed it" because of E6 or anything like that is not a credit to your competence in game design, not at all. That's like saying that modders made your game good, so it was good from the very beginning.

>so what point where you trying to make here?
You cannot say "well, even if the fighter is irrelevant, optimization doesn't matter, so nobody cares and he can always roleplay!" because it's true for any game.

>A fighter can feel completely irrelevant because every spellcaster in the party does a better job at fighting than he does.
And that problem stems from not everyone in the party being on the same page. In the current year, there's plenty of literature available to make it so you know that a Fighter and Wizard are clearly not meant to be within the same party.
>Not because "it's not my personal tastes", I like optimization a lot, in game where it won't make the entire party irrelevant.
If the party is such that most of them are irrelavant, that's more the fault of the DM than the system, much like how playing a human in a party of Vampires in WoD is a bad idea in several ways, yet for some reason it's the system's fault because the GM didn't put his foot down and keep everyone on the same amount of leash?

tfw you give your npcs theme songs to help establish their character, and now you're worried the party will just think it's dumb and turn it off.
why must I do this to myself.

>Not having a board full of poorly photoshopped, ridiculous, but accurate illustrations for characters

>The tier list was made by players. It doesn't exist in the books, and nobody tell you it exist.
Okay, there are plenty of games where relevant details are hidden from the player, it doesn't mean that, say, fighting games are bad because frame data isn't always something that's available for the players to see or how a lot of traps in the Souls games are designed to fuck you over the first time you play the game.

Also, there are plenty of communities available to tell you about things like the tier list or E6, hell, I found out about both of those things just by lurking in 3.PF hate threads and seeing them being referenced throughout the thread.
>You cannot say "well, even if the fighter is irrelevant, optimization doesn't matter, so nobody cares and he can always roleplay!" because it's true for any game.
That wasn't what I was saying though, so obviously you're mistaken.

>And that problem stems from not everyone in the party being on the same page
That problems sterns from bad game design. For fuck sake, they use levels! The game even show you that level is a quantifier of power by saying that if you play X monstrous races then you start at Y level because you have extra features.

And then it doesn't respect that at all. Two classes with the same level can be in another league entirely. That's not good game design. They could have used another system than level, but they did not.

Yes, in the current year, players have find way to work around the flaw of the game. Congrats players. That doesn't mean the game designers did a good job.

>If the party is such that most of them are irrelavant, that's more the fault of the DM than the system
No. If the GM has to fix the game and to warn new players or old players that X is bad or that they shouldn't do that, the game is the problem.
If this was on purpose, then it should be specified in the game book. You should have a paragraph with "Beware, this option doesn't work with this other option! Beware, this class represent a mortal, and this class represent a demigod!"

It's not the case.

>Okay, there are plenty of games where relevant details are hidden from the player
And it doesn't mean that it's good to do it in roleplay game. Hidden data in videogame that use it are put in the game because it's supposed to enhance the experience.

It does not enhance the experience in roleplay game. Quite the opposite. I saw a lot of newbies wanting to quit the game after they learned the hard way that the game needed a lot of game mastery.

>That wasn't what I was saying though, so obviously you're mistaken.
I was getting ahead of you, because it's as I said, the same old argument.

>Also, there are plenty of communities available to tell you about things like the tier list or E6
Having a great community does not mean you are a great game designer.

> I saw a lot of newbies wanting to quit the game after they learned the hard way that the game needed a lot of game mastery.
And I'm gonna get ahead of you there too.
Hidden data does not enhance the experience in roleplay game, at all. It does in videogames, even if newbies quit because of it. It's a different situation, and you can't use principles of videogame design in tabletop game design.

Don't worry about it user; either they click on it, like it, and enjoy themselves or they don't and just click away. No harm done and you might have shown someone a song they thought was cool.

>He thinks there is a difference

>Yes, in the current year, players have find way to work around the flaw of the game. Congrats players. That doesn't mean the game designers did a good job.
If the rules were as horrible as you claim, something like a tier list or E6 wouldn't work as well as it does.
>If the GM has to fix the game and to warn new players or old players that X is bad or that they shouldn't do that, the game is the problem.
What is GURPS?
>Quite the opposite. I saw a lot of newbies wanting to quit the game after they learned the hard way that the game needed a lot of game mastery.
And that's no different than any other game where enjoyment is achieved through effort.
>Having a great community does not mean you are a great game designer.
If I wasn't a great game designer then I wouldn't have a community.

>If the rules were as horrible as you claim
I never claimed they were the most horrible thing to have come to life. I merely said they were badly designed and the game wasn't popular because of it's rules.

>What is GURPS?
A good game with occasional flaws, but where my newbies can make a functional character without me worrying. Bad example.
>And that's no different than any other game where enjoyment is achieved through effort.
And I knew you will go with that. It is, because it's a roleplaying game. It's not a strategy game, or a wargame, or a videogame. You can like that you made a shitty character at first and you have to make a new one because you learn the system, but the game design shouldn't be based around it. It's not a videogame. You can't use the same mindest.
>If I wasn't a great game designer then I wouldn't have a community.
Oh yes, and McDonalds make great good, Marvel movies are stellar, and Rihanna make the greatest music of all.
Popularity doesn't mean quality.

>A good game with occasional flaws, but where my newbies can make a functional character without me worrying. Bad example.
Without a GM there to tell the party what's available to use, you can end up in the same situation that you're using as a mark against 3.PF. Yet somehow, GURPS gets a pass because you personally enjoy it?
>Popularity doesn't mean quality.
At the same time, the thing wouldn't be popular at all if it didn't have an audience who didn't enjoy it. It doesn't mean that they're flawless but it also doesn't mean that they're incredibly flawed either.

It just sounds like you don't enjoy that aspect of 3.PF and rather than understanding why it's designed the way that it is, you'd rather claim that it's badly designed and feigning acceptance when someone gives you a dissenting opinion.

>Without a GM there to tell the party what's available to use
What? It's a wildly different issue. GURPS is a generic system. Of course you need to tell the group what book to use. D&D is NOT a generic system. It doesn't get a pass because nobody in the books even hint that you have to use tiers or special rules that the community made to play it "correctly".

>At the same time, the thing wouldn't be popular at all if it didn't have an audience who didn't enjoy it.
Yeah, that's why I never said that people didn't enjoy it. I said it wasn't popular because it was a good game.

It just sounds like you want to twist what I say to paint me like a big hater of 3.PF that shit all over the playerbase when I never said something even approaching it.
I rather claim it's badly designed because it's what I see, and you have made no compelling argument for it. I can too claim you don't want to listen and hear that the game is badly designed.

So, in the end, same old argument. A big waste of time. You end by saying that "it's popular so it's good" that "I don't get it" and "I don't want to get it"

I surely wasted a fucking hour discussing about this shit because "I don't want to understand" or some shit.

You didn't care at all about what I said, and you won't remember it the next day. What a great and constructive discussion. You even accused me of not understanding game design, saying the game is horrible, and that I was unwilling to even hear your arguments!

> Tfw taki is one of your strongest characters but she's always wearing dumb leotards and shit.

No, THIS feel!

>Examples of bad DM practices that everyone thinks are good

Here's one that Veeky Forums actively encourages:

Total and complete player agency is ALWAYS a good thing. A good DM ALWAYS allows a player the complete freedom to act however their character would, and explore the results of their actions in the gaming world universe.

So yeah, the player's character wants to literally fuck a dog in public? Totally worth the DM and other player's time to explain in detail the complete results of that character's actions. But do remember to allow the player the freedom to describe to everyone exactly HOW he's fucking the dog - it's very important to the player. And always allow the player to react to his ill-fated choices - which means we will now spend the next several hours of that player actively fighting off the consequences of his dog-fuckery.

If you ever tell the player "No, your character doesn't do that. It doesn't happen at all. Do something else or leave my table, dumb ass," then you have failed as a DM

I have a habit of testing players with stupidly dumb questions. I love it, because it helps me root out casuals, but I've gotten a lot of flak for it at my local store. Here's the primary example:

>Pitch a new campaign, five people are interested
>have a session zero, go over setting specifics and campaign expectations
>work with people to understand the rules we'll be using, and general character premises they want
>at the end of session zero, send everyone home with a three page packet (4 if you count the cover page I made) about the setting, ask them to at least skim over the packet
>after the cover page in large, bright red text is the following:
>"Next session, at the beginning I will ask you to write down on a slip of paper the name of the city the campaign starts in. The answer is Accipiter. You can come with a pre-written slip, if you wish. If you are unable to do this, you will not be able to play in my campaign."
>next week, the 1st session starts
>Ask group "What is the name of the campaign the city starts in? Write down your answer on a slip of paper, and hand it to me."
>Two guys hands me a slip already written, another tears off a sheet from his notebook and writes down the answer real quick
>The last two are staring at me like idiots
>How are we supposed to know that user
>tell them that it was in the packet I gave them
>We read that thing front to back user we didn't spot that at all
>you said we could just skim it and we'd be fine
>pull out packet, flip cover sheet, point to bright red text
>They suddenly have excuses out the ass like "it was a busy week" or but I have two jobs user"
>Tell them that they're out

Boy, the flak from that was ridiculous. It turned out to be a good game though, with the three I had. What do you think, Veeky Forums?

What you did was rather harsh...

...but fine for the long term health of a game.

How Machiavellian of you, but effective. I do not have the stones to execute something like that.

>It doesn't get a pass because nobody in the books even hint that you have to use tiers or special rules that the community made to play it "correctly".
Okay, there are plenty of games out there that require meta knowledge that isn't necessarily covered in the base rules of the game, look at Chess or Poker. I just don't see why going outside of the PHB is suddenly bad just because it's in regards to a system you don't like.
>What a great and constructive discussion.
It probably would've actually been a great and constructive discussion if you didn't act so defensive throughout the argument.

>not only does it help to stifle metagaming (oh, the DM rolled a 7 but the Fighter's AC is 16, that means it has a +9 to its attack roll)

I believe this is actually good. Numbers are great descriptors and if you make this extrapolation, you know "Aha, this thing is obviously pretty dangerous!"

If there is dice result noone will like - do not roll. Or play something, where results are acceptable.

I think you're misinterpreting that advice. DM should make (possibly with collaboration with players) and guard the tone of the game. If player's character decides to fuck dog in public in heroic fantasy, you tell him to "No". If he do so in setting, where such thing is appropriate (can't think of any, but let us presume there is one, for purposes of this discussion), it is alright.

I wouldn't feel comfortable with such arrangement, though i can see where that comes from.

I agree, but...
>improvise the first session
>prep small hooks for the next sessions based on the improv and player-input

Prep-all is equally retarded as improv-all.
Just read this.

A bit this.
Altering the rules isn't bad, but for the love of god know what you are altering. Many a time have I seen a hotshot GM throwing some part of the rules overboard without actually considering what that rule meant for the entire game.
their logic is often that it 'doesn't make sense to them' by which they mean that it doesn't resemble the D&D-progression they know from the funny podcasts.

There are certain systems where first-session improvisation is possible, like D&D, and there are other systems where it is not possible at all, like GURPS, which takes large amount of up-front prep work from the GM.

In general, though, the first session should be the least improvised of them all and the amount of improvisation should increase with time as both the GM and the players become comfortable with the game and the world.

Boy this is some hardline shit I would never do... But it's quite smart actually, so congrats.

>In general, though, the first session should be the least improvised
Not really, but I can see where your coming from. I had a discussion about this with three friends and it comes down to your style of world-building: do you create an entire world before the game starts where you drop the characters in, or do you create a world as the campaign progresses based on the characters?

Both are viable options with ups and downs. A lot of improv during the first session might mean discomfort for the players when you have a setting planned, but it might also mean a larger player-involvement and a stronger tie between the characters and the campaign.

Preach it brother

You two can continue to enjoy playing your dumb games.

It's not a bad practice you idiot. Using art is fine, the players know it's just a visual representation.

This is bullshit but I believe it anyway

I can already imagine how all the 'flak' is just sad defense mechanisms as people try to prove they aren't lazy shitheads

I had a GM who ran a investigation campaing. Pretty generic murder mystery, but it was quite fun. After the end, he told us smuggly that he improvised everything and that he had not writen anything down, and I just felt cheated.
Don't you think that at least writing down how the murder went down wouldn't be fair to the players? You know, so they can figure it out of pre-existing clues instead of you deciding that their reasoning makes sense or no on a whim?
I hate this fucking improvisation meme, it's ruing RPGs as we know it.

>I hate this fucking improvisation meme, it's ruing RPGs as we know it.
I understand your sentiment and it's entirely justified in your example, but not every campaign is a mystery.
Improvisation is not a meme, it's a valid play-style that has been around since the dawn of RPG's.

>making everything you need to roll for have fail cases that matters and can kill you
>consider d20 rolls under 5 or 10 to be fails even when things are actually really really fucking easy

we lost 2 hours to a player rolling under 10 two times in a row when crossing an underground "sewer river". it was a 3 meters gap but hey! why not having you roll acrobatics to balance on the 3 meters long plank we had spent 25 minutes in real time assembling?
You know what a small branch of the city sewer system need? to go at 3 m/s, be 2 meters deep and run 1 meter down the border without any obstacle so that it's next to impossible to stop or have your friends help you. let's have you drown within 6 rounds too if you fail the athletic checks too.
After chasing the poor drowning guy for hundred of meters and several turns ( the sewer divided itself into different branches and our heavy armored cleric could not follow us as he coulnd't jump on the other side) We ended up underground on the other side of the city, with the unlucky dude at 1 hp having lost all his items and of course some tentacle sewer monsters showing up.

I am not saying that it wasn't well done or wasn't cool. it kind of was.But a 3 meters jump could have just covered in feces and forced to lose of some items, instead of almost killing, one of us.It was unnecesarily over-dangerous and long.Reaching the first room of the first of the 4 dungeons of our second mission wouldn't have been a bad thing to do either, so i think that whole contraption of lethal skill checks just isn't worth including in your campaign.

>Natural 20 -> epic fail
>Natural 1 -> crit fail

It's just dumb.

I generally agree, but will add that the point of having a really well thought out setting is to make improvisation easy, and that some games absolutely depend on improvisation.

Shadowrun is a good example of a game where you need to understand the world because players will throw shit at you that you could never prepare for.

Well, I can't draw for shit, and a well placed picture can carry the environment and atmosphere in a way yet more descriptive rambling from me just won't. Don't overdo it, but sometimes a picture sums up what you would say beautifully and quickly.

Plus, on average, 2 of your players are using art from another source for their character illustration, so who's really the one out of touch with the atmosphere, eh?

Kind of this. I very rarely use music because you either have to use shitty "medieval" music, which nobody likes, or anachronistic music, or even worse, vidya music that is going to fuck with immersion, give you one more thing to fiddle with, and not match the original tone of the music well.

I do occasionally let each player pick their character's theme and doom music if they like, and play it if I think one of the two will come up, so long as it isn't overly obnoxious.
I've had mixed results with that.

That is actually ballsy and great. I love it!

>You know, so they can figure it out of pre-existing clues
Haha... HahahaHahaHA- HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Oh wow user, you slay me.

A lot of examples that come up in these situations seem so far fetched to me, but maybe I just never gm'ed for truly terrible people.

I encourage player agency, I hate running campaigns where I feel like I have to railroad or the plot stops moving, but the players and I work together to ensure that pc's act in character. The more room to move the players get the more they'll get a feel for who their characters are and come up with creative solutions to problems.

Again, if your player actually wants to fuck dogs, then I suggest your problem is with having a weirdo in your gaming group rather than your style of dm'ing

It's entertaining when you stop players from using their irl knowledge on game without them knowing. It's better than saying "but your character doesn't know that" every now and then.

>Which means using it sparingly.
Yeah, a simple example would be Dark Souls, with a soundtrack so loved out there, but 90% of the time you're only listening to sound effects, so when the music hits, it actually hits.

Yeah but Dark Souls actually has sound effects with really good sound design. The clank of the armour the weapons smacking against stone, the wisp of fire all that cool shit. D&D doesn't have that unless you've got a very widely sourced ambient soundboard.

The problem with player agency is that it's fine and dandy when everyone plays along, but even good players can start acting like asses when they feel like it.

I've had two players I normally consider good roleplayers, who were playing good, religious characters (this was PF, and they were a Cleric and a Paladin) just torture some random guy because they lost their direction for a bit.

And as I'm sitting there, rolling rolls for how they "question" this random bar patron by forcefeeding him a barrel of ale, I'm wondering "why am I allowing this?" I mean, I made them Fall as a result of that, and I think I'm well within my right for doing so. I gave them feverish dreams sent by the Gods directly to punish them for their faggotry, but in the end I think I knew more about their character backgrounds than they did.

In short, I should have just spoken up and saved us all a load of time and effort.

If your game of choice is so shitty you need to cheat and lie to your players to make it fun, find another fucking game to play.

The art of description is.lost nowadays and the blame lies on the fact children are brought up with visual, not written media.

Dude you're complaining but that sounds like it's fertile grounds for some great character moments. The exact mechanics of paladins falling is shite, but his choice to do something morally suspect for a bit of convenience is golden, imo.

I Will never understand why some people insist on using images in their games at all.