Why are normies so bad at tabletop?

>Plantfolk that owns a potion store (the player nearly cried when I told her she couldn't have it)
>a cat-lady prostitute.
When I saw the God of War bullshit before I opened the thread, I was ready for some cringe-wothy normie power fantasies, but there's literally nothing wrong with either of these two concepts as described.

I think the issue is that there's nothing really tying the party together

Because they said they would step up to the plate, and some of them had RPed before, so I thought I could trust them. Instead I got 'let's just walk in through the front and kill everything.'

No, the cringe comes from stuff I didn't say. Dwarf guy wanted to be a slave for 200 years that just up and escaped one day. Plantfolk Lady apparrntly made thr best potions in town with her sap blood. And the problem with the catfolk prostitute was that all she was was a catfolk prostitute. I asked what she did before, and the player shrugged. Dreams? Hopes? Goals? None, she's just a cat prostitute.

Assuming this isnt bait, everyone is going to call you a dick. but you're right, normies do suck at tabletop. its not just lack of experience, confidence and context either. its the same reason normies are bad at video games, even given ample opportunity to learn: their brains are just wired differently, better at playing IRL social games with shifting rules than the literally autistically defined worlds of tabletop gaming. they will try to interact with a game world the way they interact with the normal one, which usually fails because the game world was designed for neckbeards. some normies persist anyway, with 'beer and pretzel games', but i think most fa/tg/uys would agree that is a small segment of the fanbase.

Why didn't you explain to her what being a starting character meant prior to the "tons of effort"?

You're the gm. You're gming for norms. Any failure of communication lies on your shoulders.

>Fictive Hack.
>I wouldn't let her start off with it
>they were all starting at level 1.
And I can only assume that in Fictive Hack (having never played myself) everyone starts as adolescents or something at lvl 1, not like in DnD or most level-based systems, where characters are assumed to be established and having class levels is already noteworthy?

Genuine question, I know fuckall about Fictive Hack, it just sounds fucking odd that being a merchant and/or proprietor would be a problem, it beats like 90% of even established roleplayer's backgrounds (if any at all) that usually revolves around being as speshul as possible.

Honestly the only one that stands out as shitty is the duelist mary sue, and the subtlety-hating dwarf may just be inappropriate for this campaign, not a bad character. Similarly, a cat-lady prostitute sets of a red flag, but there's nothing wrong with the concept, or automatically a bad character - especially in a game about thieves, the streets, rogues and shit.

Have you considered that you might be a shit GM?

Nigga, I did do that, the group just doesn't listen for shit. I remember explaining rules, one of which was about how you can't spend points to do certain things. At one point in the game, one of them tried to spend points to do a certain thing, and when I told them they couldn't do it, they started bitching that I was making things up on the fly and I never told them that until another piped up saying that I did.

>Genuine question, I know fuckall about Fictive Hack, it just sounds fucking odd that being a merchant and/or proprietor would be a problem, it beats like 90% of even established roleplayer's backgrounds (if any at all) that usually revolves around being as speshul as possible.

Here here. Let her have the shop, the things just hemorrhaging money. If it was wildly successful, involved no shady debts, and was entirely above board, what reason would she have for being a thief?

See

It was the best potion shop in town, and she also had an enough money to hire an apprentice to run the shop for her.

If he's used to D&D, it makes sense that he'd make mistakes when changing to a rules-light system (why the fuck change systems if 4 out of 5 have experience?) desu. Also, he obviously wants to help his gf get into it. If he explains something wrong at the table, set it straight for everyone and continue, understanding that he remembers it from a similar system or got it wrong, instead of locking your fee-fees up and then bitch about it to strangers as your game inevitably descends intochaos because you're past the point where you can non-disruptively set the rules straight. Are you, by any chance, autistic?

>Dwarf guy wanted to be a slave for 200 years that just up and escaped one day
Well escaped slaves have to have "just escaped one day" other wise they'd still be slaves
>Plantfolk Lady apparrntly made thr best options in town with her sap blood
Makes sense to me
>she's just a cat prostitute
This sounds like she doesn't really have the best idea of what RPing is or how to start. You said they had done this before, but doing something once or twice doesn't make you an expert on it. Just talk to them next session, air your greivences, and try and improve them and yourself. And build a campaign they would be more suited in

Ummm, I'm a normie and you're just mad? Because I play tabletop games and lost my virginity to a hot girl when I was 16?

Switching from one system to another isn't as difficult as you autists make it out to be. I've never accidentally rolled a d20 in Shadowrun, or rolled 12 six-sided dice to climb something in D&D, or counted how many blast icons came up on my dice in a game of L5R. Maybe you fucks need to actually read the rules of the games you play.

The dwarf is shit, but the rest does not seem like problems at all. I'm not sure you're actually an experienced GM and not just another normie that is also an autist, because because "I'm a catfolk prostitute" is still more of a backstory than a lot of experienced roleplayers come up with on the fly for new characters.

And when you do get a detailed background, you apparently shit on it anyway because being a successful shop-owner is apparently a problem. Fuck, me and my GM's would've rewarded her with a feat or something that allows her to use her sap to make better potions, to incentivize backgrounds and play up the relevance of them.

You're shit, and you deserve your frustrations.

>normie that is also an autist

Does not compute

>Dwarf guy wanted to be a slave for 200 years that just up and escaped one day.
Given the lifespan of dwarfs, why would this be a problem? 200 years is a long time, in relative terms, but not much to some dwarfs. The blades of the god of war was cringy (but could be played off as his slavery-induced delusions, so salvageable) but this thing that you actually describe as cringe-worthy actually makes the character better, not worse.

>After a fight at the table lead to the dwarf player getting choked in real life, I called it quits
Why were you choking the guy?

Autistic normies are everywhere, user.

Plant lady was.

What does it matter as long as the character has a motivation for adventuring? It's entirely possible to play a level 1 noble who has an endless supply of money and still give them something to work towards.

Because in the game setting, dwarves lived for 150 max.

Because if you wanted to run a campaign about downtrodden gutter rats crawling their way to the top of a criminal underworld, the well-off noble with unlimited dosh no longer fits.

Wait, are you fucking retarded? Nobody said it was hard, just that issues arise. Try switching between Shadowrun, Eclipse Phase, WH40kRP, WFRP2, and Call of Cthtulhu instead, or between 2ed, 3.5ed, Pathfinder and 5e D&D. Some games are more similar than others, and if you can't recognize that, you're legitimately autistic.

Ah yes, let's imbalance the party dynamic by not only making one character vastly more successful than the rest, with resources at their disposal that are both outside the theme and scope of the proposed campaign, let's also throw some additional mechanical benefits on top for good measure.

Finally getting yourself out of the business of thievery clean enough to live out your dreams is a great end goal, its something that has to be earned, and again as something outside of the scope of the game is best left as part of an epilog or a backdrop set in an in progress state ala .

If you just plot that kind of reward down on someone for taking the time to jot down a few words (that again don't even fit in with the campaign they joined) then you're draining it of all of its meaning. They didn't have to work for that shop. They'll have no attachment to that shop. All you've given them is the knowledge that you'll handle all of the hard work for them in the form of petty meaningless handouts. You never. NEVER. Cave into demands. You can compromise. But never give away something for nothing. Defeats the entire purpose.

Could also be played as some sort of demon or trickster entity taking advantage of lingering hatred to gain power over him in the guise of a god.

>and she also had an enough money to hire an apprentice to run the shop for her.
Sounds like she even created an 'out' for you to use as an excuse for her having the shop but also being away from it a lot, but you failed to see it. Really, the more you write, the less competent you seem and the better plantlady sounds.

Except for the fact fictive hack uses 2d10s for everything and has no skills, making it very dissimilar to D&D.

Are you really so retarded you confuse settlers of catan with monopoly?

>Ah yes, let's imbalance the party dynamic by not only making one character vastly more successful than the rest
Not a problem and not at all uncommon. They'd all still be mechanically comparable. Does all your campaigns start with people of the same social standing and career tiers? That sounds ridiculous.

>with resources at their disposal that are both outside the theme and scope of the proposed campaign
Based on how it's described so far, not at all. It sounds pretty much perfect for a street-level game as described, honestly.

>let's also throw some additional mechanical benefits on top for good measure.
Uuh.. sure, I guess, I mean, if that's what you want? Not that uncommon to tailor minor traits and bonuses for characters based on their backstories, user. It's usually one of those staple suggestions for new GMs.

>Hey GM, I know we're playing shitty criminals just starting out in 1920's New York City, but I want to own and operate the best surgical clinic in town that makes enough money that I don't even have to run it, I just have to have someone else do it. It was my amazing surgery skills that got it there, after all.

This is completely fair and in no way disrupts balance at all. Only shitty GMs wouldn't allow a player to do this. :^)

>2d10 vs. 1d20
>Monopoly vs. Catan
Yup, confirmed autistic, we've got a winner.

So? Change his slavery period to 50 years and done. Or shit on your players about how terrible they are.

>comparing a successful potion shop in a fantasy setting in a game about street-level thievery to a top-surgery clinic in a 1920's gangster game
Wow, now this is autism!

>Yeah so gm, fuck the rules everyone else had to use for their start, I want to be super great with no usable downside.
If you have a shop that is being built up, you have a reason to be thiefing, you might still be living hand to mouth, like everyone else. But the main thing. The mainest thing. Is that if you're on hard times, if you have something to strive for. You're not going to throw a bitch fit if your shit is threatened.

If you're thieving to build up your shop, then you know the risks. If you have the best shop ever without having to work for it as a starting character. I have the distinct feeling you're not understanding the consequences of the profession you have no reason to be a part of.

Also you only make 1 player the main character if that's the sort of game and party dynamic agreed upon by the group. Not on the unilateral whims of someone whom wants everything handed to them out of the gate.

So fucking say so, instead of being an autismal sperglord that goes on to come up with excuses to bitch to strangers on the internet.

>playing as shitty criminals

Why should anyone want to play as someone 'shitty'? Basic competence at something would be expected.

Secondly, she has the best potion shop in town. If you're playing in a city, then perhaps this isn't the town from her backstory? If it is that town, then who says there's much competition?

Furthermore, there's no reason to say that her potion shop automatically has all the best potions ever. If she's making them from her magical sap blood, they'd probably be about as useful as herbal remedies or otherwise do plant-related things.

Add onto that, just because she can run a business and have an assistant, doesn't mean that everything is peachy-keen, or that she can simply throw around potions and money willy-nilly without putting her livelihood at risk.

And of course, there's also the possibility of having her motivation starting out be a robbery while she was a way from the shop, meaning that they've got to make a lot of money back and fast before taxes are due, and she doesn't have much to go on.

But of course, the idea of a player doing anything remotely successful at level 1 is apparently against the law, because they have to be 'shitty'. A dwarf can't escape prison, that'd be slightly impressive. A plantgirl can't have a potion shop that makes a profit, that'd be logical.

Oddly enough, the character that actually fits what you want from the PCs is the catgirl prostitute, but apparently that wasn't good because they didn't have any sort of motive or backstory. Except odds are if they had said they were a successful prostitute or they'd done something that didn't end in failure, you would have moaned about that too.

>you have no reason to be a part of.
Nobody said there was no reason. Stop pretending that owning a fucking potion shop implies that you're the Rockafellers. The character as described sounds like a plant-based Rosalee from Grimm, nothing else. You being a shit GM unable to handle basic fucking characters is the issue here. From the sounds of it, there was plenty to work with in a reasonable way, but you were too retarded to do it, and too autistic to work it out.

You're a bad GM and you should *feel* bad.

>Also you only make 1 player the main character
Horseshit. Absolute horseshit from an unimaginative and unengaged mind. Being of different social standing or having different obligations or ideals or aims does in no way make anyone more of a 'main character' than anyone else. Hitler was no less of a main character than Churchill, just because one was overprivilieged and the other underprivilieged, or the former good and the latter evil.

Absolute horseshit.

>Starting at Level 1
You haven't told me your excuse yet.

>But of course, the idea of a player doing anything remotely successful at level 1 is apparently against the law, because they have to be 'shitty'. A dwarf can't escape prison, that'd be slightly impressive. A plantgirl can't have a potion shop that makes a profit, that'd be logical.
Gee, I wonder why his players weren't engaged in the game, and weren't paying attention.

Fuck anyone in this thread being an apologist.

Nobody likes dealing with idiots that can't conduct themselves decently.
It isn't the GMs fault.
Be a better player, fuck you.

>Why did game go poorly?
>Bad player?
>Ah ah! Bad GM!

>Also you only make 1 player the main character
>Horseshit. Absolute horseshit from an unimaginative and unengaged mind.

Oh yes, bending the games very premise and potentially awarding additional benefits upon a single character whose resources the game will inevitably revolve around means they're the same as everyone else.

Look if you want to play sally's potion shop adventures that's all well and good. Sally demanding the lowlife's game you joined become sally's potion shop adventures, and the gm obliging without your input is most assuredly not.

So they were not normies after all? In my experience normies have been far better players than self-professed grognards or gamers, who tend to be shitters and thatguys.

>the dm is too stupid to take obvious plothooks in PC's backstories
>hurr must be the player's fault for having creative characters!

>Give me one million dollars
>creative character
Yeah ok.

Well, make the game not revolve around that player and the character's resources. How hard it can be?

>character isn't a murderhobo
>therefore they must be filthy rich

how's life at the homeless shelter?

You can have a party in song of swords where on guy is a retarded strong-ass mercenary and the other is a mastermind rich noble.
That's not balanced, but it's fun. Fun doesn't come from enforcing some retarded notion about equality, it comes from telling good stories.
GMing 101: this is a game, have fun and make it so others also have fun, don't screw it up with autism.

I'll take things that never happened for $1500

More like
>gimme two thousand dollar's worth of property and stock that I need to maintain and look after and that is not easily turned into cash money on a moment's notice

Ah yes, relenting and giving in to the players demands followed by denying them the ability to use the things you greenlit them having.

If you give your players stuff, they're going to be pissed if you don't let them use that stuff.

>Balance my 1 million dollars by demanding the game focus on it.
Yeah that's the fucking problem.

Some people have skills, some people have brains, some people have cash, some people have a silver tongue.
I know thar you lack three of these for sure, so how's your salary?

>doesn't understand money sunk into stock and facilities isn't liquid

So I'm guessing it's not going well at the homeless shelter then?

Better than your spelling.

>Demanding the game focus on it
But that's not what she did at all. In fact she gave you a specific background reason as to why she wouldn't need to tend to thar business.
Her using resources to help the party is no different than the dwarf helping them escape from a prison with his experience.
You're just an autist who can't work with some very simple pieces or information and need everyone to bow down to your very specific vision of a story where everyone is an unskilled destitute.
Go write a crappy novel about hobos, faggot.

So don't give the player a big bag with a million dollars in cash money in it, you doofus. How is this a difficult concept to get? Am I typing too fast for you?

>Hardy harr you made a typo
It's 4am and I'm shitposting on my phone, and God makes me deal with this shit?
Go learn how to GM then come back in a few years with stories about actual succesful and fun campaigns, rather than making shitty ass threads pinning your failures on others.
Alternatively kill yourself.

Well shit I better back off, I didn't know I was dealing with the playground's resident badass over here.

>>Duelist gifted blades by the god of war
>>Dwarf that hates subtlety in a campaign about thieves
>>Plantfolk that owns a potion store (the player nearly cried when I told her she couldn't have it)
>>a cat-lady prostitute.

The plantfolk would be as easy as setting up a Headquarters via Equipment points in MnM character creation with a couple of minor features to benefit from selling or even making goods, and even have some Complications with managing the business.

Duelist's God of War blades could easily be an Device Power.

Why do system intended for high fantasy make things like this so much harder than they need to?

I would have said
>>Duelist gifted blades by the god of war
Ok but they aren't magical; merely beautiful gifts
>>Dwarf that hates subtlety in a campaign about thieves
Guess we've got an enforcer
>>Plantfolk that owns a potion store (the player nearly cried when I told her she couldn't have it)
Ok but it's just taking off, so your weekly *profits* will be very low and your partners/employees won't let you use your own stock just yet
>>a cat-lady prostitute.
Ok but sex-scenes will be fade-to-black

Badabing badaboom, you have the investment of the players and may proceed, modifying your campaign to suit your players where necessary

>I remember telling them multiple times 'when you arrive at the tavern, obtain a sheaf of documents from the man in the fancy green cloak' and when they arrived, they looked at each other and asked 'what are we here for again?'
Normal
>After a fight at the table lead to the dwarf player getting choked in real life
Hilarious

I didn't know you had to reply twice to assert your E-penis' dominance, OP. Are you this pissed that you got an overwhelmingly negative response to your whiny piece of crap of a thread?
If you were gonna bitch about inane shit you could've just made up actual sins for your players, dumbfuck.

>But that's not what she did at all
(the player nearly cried when i told her she couldn't have it)

Yeah. That's pretty fucking implied by those sorts of actions bub.

Tell me about it. I'm running a pretty rules-light game with one of the players owning a potion shop, and it literally has not been a problem at all. It gives the party a place to meet, they get to fluff their ranged attacks as alchemical bombs, and they can occasionally pull out a potion to solve a problem.

Hell, how hard would it be to say that potions take a long time to formulate properly, even if they can be sold for a big profit? Thus, the plant girl has a big backlog of orders and all of her potions either aren't ready or already have a buyer lined up. The assistant is there to watch over the basics of the process and watch the store.

There you go, no way to quickly liquidate the store, very steady and predictable profit.

>DM is a prick about someone's backstory
>clearly she wanted it to be ALL ABOUT HER

shouldn't you be on r9k whining about feminazis?

>Can't have something, so you complain about it (however immaturely it was)
>The same as demanding the game revolver around it
I've heard about reaching, but this is plastic man tier.
Asking you allow something doesn't equal asking that you make it the central point of your game, if you as the GM think it is then it's only because your entire premise seems to be "everyone in this party fucking sucks at everything and owns absolutely nothing of value in terms of skill, contacts or resources".
Anyway, good night. Reflecr on your own mistakes before you take a dump on your players.

God no that place lost its luster hard when moot dropped it and as a result ruined /adv/.

You don't tear up over an minor side detail user, and if you do that's even more telling about your literal whining for attention brand of entitlement.

I will grant you that op was probably a dick about it, but that doesn't make the player magically in the right.

you can drop the act dude, we all know you're a shit DM

>entitlement
>all about herself
>blah blah blah attention whores

maybe /pol/ is more your style then shithead

Are you crazy? There are a million inferences one could draw from what he said but a /pol/ gender angle was not strongly communicated

We get it you can drop the act. You pander to single players and trivialize all sense of risk/reward in your games. You don't sound all that super your self, have you considered not relying on petty insults to prove your worth?

The player claimed their character was the most successful alchemist in the village.

In the village, the most successful alchemist in the village.

How many alchemists do villages usually have?

The most successful anything in a village won't be filthy rich.

When the tone of the game was described as "you're all poor thieves struggling to make your way in the world," does that not sound even a little bit out of place?

So the character is a competent craftsman, what's wrong with that? Spend some character creation points to pay for the property and a steady monthly income, bam you're done.

see

And then we cycle back around to bad communication on the part of the GM if you got your players to agree to that premise without them understanding what 'poor' 'thief' 'struggle' or 'subtle' meant.

Where that poor thieves line comes from? OP never described the setting as such.

Let them do what they want with their player characters. The players are the stars, not your setting

Town first of all. And if you're using a word like most, several apparently.

OP, you, as a more experienced person in the tabletop thing, should be considerate of those who are less experienced with tabletop. You can't expect them to know everything that you know. So, be ready to explain stuff and be ready to meet those people halfway.

>potion shop unacceptable
Then tell her why and how it breaks the theme of the campaign. Then you use your superior tabletop GM skills and come up with an alternative that is as close as possible to her idea while remaining acceptable to you. Then you present her variations of the idea. "We could tweak it like this or like that or thot way. You want to be the best potion seller in town? You can't. However, make the desire to become the best potion seller the goal of the character - helping out a bunch of thugs on their trip and in exchange those thugs will go and fuck up your competitors. How does that sound?"

>god of war blades
"user, our campaign does not take place in the same world as the God of War. Lets do it so - these blades belonged to your character's father or grandfather who passed them onto you. Your father or grandfather was a successful fighter in the arena and was granted these blades after he defeated the previous Grand Champion. Your retired father or grandfather then gave these to you when he heard you are taking part in competetive dueling."

>dwarf with no sneaky-sneaky
well then, he is your party's squarehead, creating scenes, distracting enemies and such

>a cat-lady prostitute
"user, you also need to explain, why does you character want to go adventuring - the motivation. Currently she seems to have a stable life here, being a prostitute and shit."

>one of my normie frieds wants to get into tabletop rpg
>sit down with him and expalin how everything works
>realize how fucking cringeworthy it sounds while I explain it to him
In the end,dropped p'n'p altogether because I could not handle that cringe and he joined the group in my place.

These concepts really don't sound like an issue, even if we include your later bitching.

Sounds more like a communication issue than a player issue. You wanted to run a specific type of game with a specific tone. Your players obviously wanted to do something completely different. You have 3 choices: tell them to change their characters, change your campaign idea, or don't play the game.

OP, you don't sound like a full-on "that GM", so I'm hoping that you're just frustrated after having a bad session, and you don't have much GMing experience. So seriously: here's some tips:

* Host a "session 0".
Get your players together in a room.
Figure out the tone of the campaign and what kind of party dynamic you want.
Help them create characters.
This is essential if you want to have any kind of party cohesion. It's also a good time to explain some basic rules and talk about table etiquette (don't interrupt, don't metagame, don't rules-lawyer, etc.).

* Play D&D.
I know it's a meme. I know your lightweight hipster system-of-choice is supposed to be way better for newbies. I know you hate AC and save-or-die spells.
Suck it up. Your players want to play D&D, even if it's just so that they can say "I've played D&D".
If they really hate the first session, or if they complain a lot about combat/complexity/etc., THEN you can start suggesting "hey, lets switch to FATE for the next session, it's a lot better".

* Give your players what they want.
Obviously this doesn't mean they should never fail or face challenges. But come on, we're adults playing pretend. What's so wrong with wanting to have a cool sword or be a sexy catgirl? If a player comes to you and says "I want to do a cool thing", your response shouldn't be "no, that idea is dumb", it should be "yes, but...".
>Yes, you can have the God of War's swords, but the swords have lost most of their power and now the War God wants you to go on a war quest to restore his glory.

It sounds cringy when you break down the parts of pretty much any hobby, if you think about it.

>The player claimed their character was the most successful alchemist in the village.
And why, exactly, would that be an issue?

>rules-lite
kys

>>god of war blades
but this actually points at why normies can't into Veeky Forums - they lack at having a sufficient variety of sources to draw from and mix things up a little. if all you know is LOTR, GOT and God of War... well, what output does one expect from such players? their forrays into TTRPG then need to show them new facets of fantasy worlds which they can later use to become more variied and nuanced.

>bending the games very premise and potentially awarding additional benefits upon a single character whose resources the game will inevitably revolve around
Literally none of that is remotely true. You really are autistic, aren't you?

i literally don't know anything cringeworthy about RPGing itself. have you tried not playing D&D?

A qucik question, OP, what was the player's base of operations, where did they meet and plan things or take people they kidnapped or whatever?

What caused the plant lady to choke out the Dwarf player?