Post your gaming confessions

I am immensely, immensely jealous of this one guy in my wargaming group. He is enormously better than I am at the game, he's open and friendly and tries to explain his systems for playing well, and I cannot follow them, however much he tries to explain.

For instance, he's got this "long term loose calculation system". I understand it in the qualitative sense, it's almost like the fictional psychohistory in the Asimov books, he can't predict how a series of d10 rolls will work out in an individual battle, but he knows that there are enough rolls in the game widely distributed enough for laws of probability to more or less take hold, and he can analyze larger scale patterns like how the battle of the atlantic (but not an individual sub hunt) are likely to go at given levels of production and commitment.

He explains this with this ridiculously complicated set of equations that he's again, more than happy to show off to anyone who is interested. I am, but looking them over just makes me feel dumb.

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I absolutely despise every p&p rpg I've ever ran.

On average, my many players have been an unbearable, almost baffling, combination of annoyingly stupid, self-loathing, and narcissistic.

I only run games for you losers because every couple of months or so, I somehow feel pity.

I only prep about 10% of my games content the rest I make on the fly. The players have yet to catch on, but it's only a matter of time.

I cheated on a CCG once to beat this total asshole who would always win, but was always an asshole about it. I know it's not a good reason, which is why I am ashamed of it.

>I only prep about 10% of my games content the rest I make on the fly. The players have yet to catch on, but it's only a matter of time.

Are you me? The funny thing is I realized my improvisational skills are getting better to the point where some of my biggest ass-pulls have been really well received by players.

I fudge dice behind the GM screen. Like ALL the time. I rarely play what drops. It's mostly for the sake of story and making sure the players have a good time. It's so they get humbled when they need it, and ensuring they don't win major boss fights too quickly without any challenge.

If I think I can get away it, I often cheat to do make sure I lose (removing my hits and successful saves along with fails, etc). It stated when I was teaching people to play, trying to make their first few games fun and the like, but eventually I stated doing this in regular games. I don't play tournaments, though, so it's never come up in an "official" game.

I come to confession threads hoping they turn gay like that one time, they never do

When playing a prepared caster, I never actually prepare spells. I just have whatever I need, when I need it.

I set up an entire RPG campaign to break a player's heart, and it worked. I still feel really bad that I made your girl cuck you, but you sort of deserved it, man.

I plan on writing a fantasy novel one day.

I hang around Veeky Forums and write down ideas and characters I want to steal for it.

If it's successful, I won't ever credit Veeky Forums for its help.

There were times in which I fiercely defended fudging dice on Veeky Forums because I see the merit of doing it in games. In practice, I never actually fudged dice and usually rolled in the open.

Last 5e session my GM gave every player some loot and I got a magic dagger that can turn into a long or greatsword via keyword. It also is +2 and under the constant bless effect, so for each attack I would do with it, I would get a +1d4. I will never use it, since I play a cleric and need to cast spells instead of wasting my action by smacking a bitch.

Uh, why did he deserve it? Story?

My GM is being stupid and saying that if we don't explicitly state that we roll for insight when asking someone a question or listening to an NPC, we cannot pick up on their deceptions.

So from now on, I will roll for insight every single time an NPC says a sentence to my PC, to spite him. And hopefully to make him come to his senses.

There's a special place in hell *prepared* for you sir.

You can do an inspired by or special thanks without actually losing any legal rights. No different than the derivative trash most authors generate after reading books themselves.

Execution is far more important than ideas. Steal ideas ruthlessly. A less talented writer will only waste them.

My confession... I'm sick of the group I've been gaming with every week for 5 years. They're good dudes, and I don't want to cast off friendships, but their only meaningful merit in roleplaying is their ability to show up almost every sunday.

After 5 years they just really haven't improved. They don't really get this whole "role" playing thing. I don't know what it takes to get a player to take their game to the next level. To get them to actually talk to NPCs or have an ambition strong enough to form their own plans and take initiative.

>worst part is there's one of them who's pretty decent, but how to extract him without burning bridges with the rest?

I'm bath with math. I use it indirectly to fudge the numbers unless corrected.

Are you my play group?

N-n-no... ? >_>;

>stutter-writing
>emoticons
kawaii uguu desu nee, faggot

I'm sorta in a similar situation with my group. Most of them just show up to hang out, which is fine, but isn't really the reason we should be playing RPGs as a group. I'd suggest talking to the player you want to keep gaming with about this, and tell the others you either arent going to continue dming for them, or are gonna stop playing in their groups, but will still hang out socially. Maybe dedicate a day or night for the friend group like you may normally set aside a day for DND/RPGs.

TLDR - Fucking talk to them and find new people to play with. You can be friends with people and not game with them every week

None of my monsters have hp. They just die when I feel like it.

There's this guy who is enthusiastic about everything, but his tone makes it sound he is being sarcastic... but he isn't... or is he? When he says "great game!" I don1t know if he actually means it or is on so many levels of irony I can't even comprehend it, and it's driving me nuts.

PS.: I fudge everything, especially if I'm unprepared. I don1t even bother writing HP down for enemy encounters.

Yeah, see- the day is sunday because that's the day everyone has off consistently. There is no "other day" we can all hang out, so either I keep showing up, forever losing my sundays in something I no longer enjoy doing... or I hang with them individually, but like once a month when my other day off aligns with one of theirs? Just logistically flimsy, you know?

I have resting bitch face too.

Would you rather spend your consistent day off playing bad games, just hanging out, or finding new people to game with, for a hopefully better game, and seeing your old friends less frequently. It is possible to maintain friendships and not see them every week.

or train them.
As a player take the lead. Ask questions to the NPC. Not even quest NPC

"What is good on the menu?"
>Theres stew, bread, pork roast.
I turn to the bartender and ask
"What do you like?"
>"Errr... The stews goof"
"oh whats in it?"
>"Beef, pototaes, carrots"
"hmmm.... Im not too sure. Do you have any eggs that you could boil up and sever with it"
>"Sure"

and so on. If your The Gm you can do the same, fill the world with pointless convos.
The Shop keeper has hurt his back so asks the PC to get his new rope/ box of healing potions/ sunrod off the top shelf as hes a bit too sore to use the ladder
A child is standing in the middle of the narrow city path. singing and using a skipping rope.
its not an ambush, just a kid in the way.

I make intentionally flawed MTG decks to play against my friends, because they're bad and would probably quit if I stomped them 90% of the time.
I also never focus one enemy in matches with more than two players, instead dividing damage and control in a way to keep the players having fun.

He killed my dog. We stayed friends, but from that day on I hated that motherfucker with a passion. I ran an 8-month long campaign entirely out of spite.

I like to GM high-lethality games where the players give their characters very minimal backstory and appearance descriptions. This is to make the characters all sorta expendable and make them all blank canvases for the each individual player to think of their own thing. As the characters survive, I have them add a snippet to the backstory or another little detail to the character to make their player get attached. This is normally effective and makes the players cautious to the dangerous world.

But it fucking backfired on me, Father, it backfired so hard. It's a new-ish campaign and two of the players on their second character and one is still on their first, but I can't bring myself to kill him. I've actually fudged rolls for the first time in years to turn a crit into a normal hit or even a hit into a miss. Their characters aren't even well described, but I've been in a writing mood and have been writing a backstory for the one who has survived and thinking about the other two a lot. I've tried really hard and have been able to convince myself to kill two of them, but the one character who has survived the whole time? Fuck, I can't do it. And it's not even for a nice reason really. I want to keep the character alive so he can live a really shitty life and barely scrounge by and when he's finally given up, I'll kill him.

None of the other player suspect a thing because he will still commonly go unconscious or read the line of death, but there is always a way out. Always some way for him to survive, but they haven't picked up on that yet. What should I do, Father?

Story time mate, lets hear the details.

Keep going, when they think they've caught on to you, kill them.

Sure, when I get back from work.

You're going to need to give us a full greentext rundown.

My GM likes to play a shitty rpg system that we've tried to patch the countless flaws of, which has a cool (but imbalanced) magic system, but is shitty half-baked ideas for almost everything else.
Every campaign we play, one or two characters end up so much more powerful than the rest of the group that fair opposition is impossible. An enemy that can one-shot the medium armored rogue/fighterish character will be literally unable to harm the armored knight with any roll.
So far, 4 of the 6 group members (not including him) have mentioned that we'd like to try another system (Pathfinder seems the most likely, as we have the books and mostly know how to play), but he doesn't want to try anything else.
It sucks to switch, because we'd lose the guy who's willing and delighted to be perma-GM, but I've been thinking about running the sessions myself. I'd have to kiss being a player goodbye, though.

Okay, to give a very brief summary. When I was away on National Service, he poured a beer for my dog to drink. Beer is basically poison to an old dog, and it died choking on vomit.

>Pathfinder
>moving from one shitty broken system to another
Pick something actually good. What is the system you're moving from?

Moving from Ars Magica. Do you have a better suggestion for high fantasy?

Depends on what you mean by high fantasy.

Magic, elves, dwarves, dragons.

This post is like looking into a crab bucket

can't gm for shit
head is a hive of ideas that I just don't know how to make into anything

Are you me?

Anima - Beyond Fantasy
AD&D 2e
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy (can be easily extended by bolting other GURPS books on)
Runequest
D&D 5e
RuneQuest
SenZar
Song of Swords
Burning Wheel
Warhammer Fantasy RPG 2e

Depends on desired tone, lethality, mechanical complexity, abundance of [specific element, e.g. magic], etc.

...

>I still feel really bad that I made your girl cuck you
What power do you wield user?

I personally love AD&D 2nd Edition, but everyone seems to be more familiar with 3rd edition and Pathfinder around here.
I don't really like 5th Edition, but I'll check out the rest of those, thanks.

You know that guy that gets really excited for a character concept and then gets bored of it after two games and wants to play something else?

That's me.

I fucking hate it but I can't help it no matter what I do. How do I learn to love my characters, Veeky Forums?

Don't specialize and build a character that's already the concept you're excited about. Make someone who's far from being what you aspire and work toward that goal.

>Runequest
>RuneQuest
One of these was originally Mythras, but then I changed it into Runequest since they're basically the same thing.

WFRP and SoS are high-lethality gritty games. Runequest is BRP D&D, Dungeon Fantasy is GURPS D&D. Burning Wheel is a more narrative game. Anima is apparently a descendant of Rolemaster, and remains reasonably mechanically complex. It was also originally in Spanish, and FFG aren't particularly good at translating, so the wording is funny in some places, and FFG created some errors. SenZar is kind of like AD&D with added heavy metal album cover.

I honestly just wish I had people I could play interesting RPGs I find on Veeky Forums with. I'd love to play some Redwall or Mario RPG or something unique like that.

Think less about the build or 'concept' and think more about what cool shit your character will let you do, think about the cool shit you can do from moment to moment.

A big beefy fighter for example is a great vehicle for hilarious shenanigans. A wizard is good for for thinking up sneaky ways to negate encounters without throwing an attack.

Well typically that's how it works, but it doesn't stop me from getting tired of the character after three games or so. I have this same problem in videogames where I'm always restarting characters and trying out a new concept, even before I actually get to the point where they meaningfully differ from each other mechanically.

I wonder if I have ADD, but I figure the timeline is too long for that to be a factor.

People like you are the reason I can't trust my players. That and I've caught my players fudging rolls and not marking their cast spells.

I've heard good things of Anima - Beyond Fantasy, but never tried them myself, so can't truly vouch for it. But if my high fantasy needs would not be met, I'd go with that.

When I catch a whiff of another Player packing up some superlethal ability, I always try to get something to defend against, negate or circumvent it. Even if my character would not know about it. I just hate people gloating how their character can fuck up everything and everyone.
Maybe I should stop playing White Wolf games.

Alright, go harder, then:
Make a character with a fairly random backstory who is fresh out of their teen years and (if the system has classes) doesn't even have a class yet. Have him develop based on your decisions and if you feel like changing character archetypes, have your character reflect that with a sudden change of passion. If you suddenly feel like playing a wizard, for example, your guy would have to try and seek out a way to learn the basics of magic.
I think playing out a blank slate shaped by the world around him and his own indecisiveness would be a great way to grow attached to that character and your decisions.
I personally love playing these characters, as they end up with nuances and realistic struggles to their backstory that are hard to just write.

I am a chronic powergamer. If I heal, I have to have 20+ heals in 1 day. If I do dps, I go hard in the dps. I got told to make a bard once, and I ended up with around a +30 to trip CMB at level 9. (Pathfinder) I don't know if it's hurting my RP or not, but I feel like my GM's actually beginning to take it personally. It's one of the reasons I've gotten bored with 5e, there's not enough customization to allow for the kind of pure optimization I need to get my fix.

I shill Strike! on Veeky Forums unirnoically

oh shit, I just did it again

>unsuitable troll

captcha is spot on today

I'm 44 years old and have been playing RPGs and tabletop war games since I was 11. I peaked between 30 and 35, but I let my bros down by allowing a woman to take precedence over gaming.

Now I don't have my bros, and I lost her when she went into rehab for meth.

Kip, Gordo, Jay, Pete, Seb, even Aiden- sorry I fucked up, bros. I wish we could have all died together and gone to some fucking gaming Valhalla where we play 40k, Mordheim and Necromunda all day then get smashed on home brew all night.

I miss our two nights a week. No women, no politics, no bullshit, just toy soldiers, good beer and the clatter of dice.

My best campaings are solo or highly unbalanced games:
One of my best friends is an amazing roleplayer and one hell of a tryhard munchkin. It's so much fun watching he break whatever system we're playing with retarded builds. My latest campaing I created an "dragon pc race" that basicly gives him free sorcerer levels/attributes/breath weapon and perks as he consumes gold and Damage reduction/extra damage/racial perks/resistance bonus/size as he build his hoard. Also, he's a barbarian/bard gestalt.
Problem is, this is pushing me away from our regular game with my other friends.

I threw a net once without rolling

Are you me? Keep doing what you are doing if one day they call you on it Kill him without mercy next session make it gruesome and hard, make him bleed and sweat let him see the hope to live...then take it away.

I literally inserted a Magical Realm in my camping.
And by Magical Realm I intend a brothel literally named "Magical Realm" filled with all sort of monstrous races female, male and miscellaneous.
One of the players spent a night of wild fun with the hermaphrodite Minotaur, another one with the Female Gnoll. At least we had fun.
Also I inserted picture related as a "ultimate life form" created by an alchemist inside a lab.
Sorry, not sorry.

I'd imagine it has to do with bell curves and the fact that depending on the number of dice rolled you have different probabilities of what is shown. A very basic example being that 2d6 most commonly comes up 7, but there is a decent chance of less favorable or more favorable probabilities occurring, thusly we assume he blocking numbers that are considered "good" would allow him to predict favorable trends.

I GM in the secret hope of one day training one of my players to be confident enough and familiar enough with a system to actually GM.

I make sure that I help them internalized rules, and occasionally encourage one of them try a one shot session just to see how they're grasping it.

I changed systems every few months based on what it seems like they might be interested in and passionate about in hopes of finding a rule set that they connect with.

But they're bad Veeky Forums. They're so goddamn bad. And even the ones that do all right say that GMing is so stressful they never want to try it again. Hold me Veeky Forums. Tell me I'll be a player for more than one session in a row someday.

If it's a tongue in cheek reference and joke ostensibly to mock those who actually insert their fetishes straight faced and eager into a game, is it really Magical Realm anymore?

>I shill Strike! on Veeky Forums unirnoically

Tell me more.

A roleplayer mixed with a power gamer isn't a bad thing. A power gamer who murder hobos everything is a bad thing.

Don't do it. You will regret playing in your friends table and will get a bad case of GM envy.

People who'll ever be regular GMs will generally know they want to pretty early in my experience. If nobody in the group seems excited about worldbuilding or running sessions, then that's that. You don't have a future GM on your hands.

Run with it, user. No one can know this.

Read this:
You will end up making everyone miserable.

What do you get bored about? Is it the personality or the mechanics? Both?

My basic rule is: as long as everybody is having fun, it's all right.

Both I guess? It doesn't seem to discriminate on either account. I sell myself on the idea and then my interest switches to something else after a few games.

I think that part of it is I just get tired of waiting to progress. I've only ever had a single campaign that went to double digit levels so it's kind of rare that I get to fully execute a character concept and slogging through levels 1-5 with nothing to do but attack something in the face gets old.

Try gming

Bro....

What about me though?

I have been playing since 2010- started with freeform... I drifted away from playing with *teleports behind you* "nothin personell kid" people wanking over their OCs online and started getting into TTRPGs around 2013...

Yet the only things I've GMd are Exalted, MAID RPG and Mutants and Masterminds 3e, and only my MAID game ended, because I decided to make it a short game, while the others I just got tired of four-five sessions in.

I want to do it Veeky Forums... I want to be a good GM and make long, good sessions: but when I start to GM, I just lose this will. I fail as a human being, Veeky Forums: whenever I start something, I lose interest so fast. How do you do it, elegan/tg/entlemen? Please, share your wisdom so I can learn!

Friend...

I tricked my friend into killing his cat.

As horrible as that sounds bear with me.

> Playing a mishmash of Traveller mixed with Borderlands setting and weapons
> Player gets a reward in the form of a homebrew gun
> Player can't wait to use his new toy in combat
> Player begins to start fights on purpose
> Uh_oh.jpg
> Player begins to use gun for everything, a la Homer Simpson style
youtube.com/watch?v=ZuG9kUiRC_I
> Several sessions later player's murderhobo-ness has passed tolerable levels for the setting, and the BL setting has a pretty high threshold for murderhobos
> I did try talking to him about his gun toting ways, he waves me off
> I'll_Fix_That.gif
> Players are in a warehouse
> Hear something moving behind a crate
> Player says "I shoot that particular crate, full auto, then say 'Those were just warning shots, come out with your hands up!'"
> Disclaimer: 'Warning Shots' is his character's catchphrase, he uses it all the time from kneecapping homeless people to sniping mercs.
> After nothing player investigates what's behind the crate
> They find a dead white cat
> He doesn't know I looked up his FB profile, found a picture of his cat and put it in the game
> Player gets bummed out, complains and says those were actual real warning shots
> "Were they user? Just like all the other times you used 'warning shots'? Maybe next time don't shoot first and ask questions later."
> While the player was bummed he did stop having an itchy trigger finger so mission accomplished

aside: I'm still butthurt that the scanslators didn't have this as "magic has no sense of right or wrong", even though I wouldn't have had the balls to meme in that situation either.

Are you me?

Not a bad way of doing it. It won't mess him up long term. But it should keep him in check.
A mark of a good gm is to tailor his game to his players

You have to be invested in your own story. That takes dedication, crafting it carefully to be something you and your players will enjoy. Take your time, don't rush or force yourself to GM.

I can't make myself feel anything when it comes to NPCs anymore. The first games i played in i saw them as real people with feelings and goals of their own. Now they are just blobs of matter. I feel no emotions for them and no remorse about feeding them to monsters or using them as subjects for horrible mutation abominations

I almost always play women in games because I identify better to them;

(DnD5)

I fudge dice rolls.

If my players haven't figured out the AC of an enemy I'll sometimes let them hit it, if they are one point below.

>My GM is being stupid and saying that if we don't explicitly state that we roll for insight when asking someone a question or listening to an NPC, we cannot pick up on their deceptions.
This isn't stupid though. If he told you to roll insight every time an NPC lied to you, you'd know that NPC was lying regardless of what you rolled.

>I wish we could have all died together and gone to some fucking gaming Valhalla where we play 40k, Mordheim and Necromunda all day then get smashed on home brew all night.

Hilariously, you're still being selfish and haven't learned anything. You deserve everything that happened to you

Oh man, this. I have monster categories like "minion" with one hp, bruisers who take four hits, and bosses take 10.

I have extensive 'head'canons about the setting I developed for my games, and ruthlessly retcon or reconsider anything I haven't explicitly confirmed in game.
Two NPCs are children of a former player character (mine, from before I became a DM). I don't think anyone's figured it out. Said former player character is also now a major player in the setting, but he's basically unrecognizable - his personality and appearance have changed drastically.
I don't think the DM that came before me was a very good GM, and I've had to work around his pre-established story once I became DM. It was a pain.
Two games I'm running are set in the same setting during different timelines.
I also once put myself in the game as an unnamed NPC who showed up once to conclude a small subquest in a character's personal plot.

M-me too. Sometimes when a player does crit damage and they get all hyped over it and it does straight up kill the monster, I pretend to jot down the damage.

My confession:
I want to murder one of my groups PCs intentionally.

Friend wanted to be a chtulu warlock. Which is whatevet no big deal I can dig the squid motiffs but hes all edgy about it and trys to solve every problem before anyone else gets a chance. Not to mention fudging rolls and trying to play by his own definition of the rules.

Still my friend outside of the game but god damn I need something that can kill his character and no one elses and make it look like its not on purpose.

In that case he could roll for us instead, if he doesn't even trust me to NOT FUCKING METAGAME.

Because I don't metagame. However, I find it REALLY IRRITATING that he thinks it's FUCKING OKAY to have the character AUTOMATICALLY FAIL because I don't roll.

Actually, I will confront him about it now.

Wittle him down. Posion dart here. Goblin stab there. If the party trys to rest to regain their heal spells then wake them up with an night attack.
Attacks miss the other players. Attacks always hit him. Crit early to take a massive chunk of HP rather then kill with it.

I get tired of roleplaying the same character far too fast and thus end up slowly coming back to a common stereotype that's the easier to pull off to me.

Jesus fucking christ! Do you even play the game?
It's like you went from playing a game of pretending, to pretending to play a game.

>STOP HAVING BAD WRONG FUN
>REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE