RPG Players

The only good players are former GMs/DMs. Debate me

But user, burnouts make terrible players.

Nah, you can find other good players. But it's true that GMs can make some of the best ones simply because they understand the game that much more, and can use their experience and skills to make the game overall more interesting for everyone.

>be forever DM
>player offers to DM, finally have chance to play
>get into dungeon and ten traps in the others are still skipping through hallways without a care
> they get annoyed I'm being "overly cautious" and am meta gaming
>me - "do you have a 6 INT?"
>one player - "no"
>me - " then stop acting like it. Someone has already died to a trap and you've triggered three traps since then, are you suicidal? Do you not care about your hearts continual beat?"
>player- "if it happens it happens, it's part of the game dude."
>DMd for this idiot in the past as well and has always been an absolute moron
>combat comes, lose my hand
>impose save rolls on myself to gather my senses and fight through the pain
>some other players get pissed since I made the combat harder
>me - "now who's meta gaming faggots?"
>no reply

I no longer play with people who've never DMd in the past. Not like it matters since I haven't been a player in years.

I had our former GM play as a PC while I was the GM and he was like a whole different person altogether. While he put a lot of thought and work into both roles, his roleplaying was much better when he was a GM. As a PC he often found himself at a loss for words.

Time helped him get over it but the first sessions really suprised me.

False. I'm a GM and I'm a horrible player.
Though, I'm also a horrible GM.

Empirically and categorically denied:
There are no good players.

Checkmate Atheists.

>A party of backseat GMs

Thanks but no thanks. I don't want to spend all the time arguing with the party.
BTW I'm ForeverGM and I'm pretty sure I would be a terrible player nowadays.

How do I get players to be more invested in game? They just want to be a gang of murder hobos. Right now I'm making a Cthulhu campaign, and I really don't know what's gonna happen.

I feel neutral about this point. Most of the good players I met have also GM'd.

I've met a couple GMs who were bad players.

My general experience is that the best motivation for players who normally aren't interested in the setting is hate/revenge.

Give them a Friendly seeming NPC with a sob story. Have the NPC stab them in the back, and mock them for having ever trusted him/her, and get away.

Players will go to ridiculous lengths to try and hunt the NPC down and will investigate any rumor, however vague, if it means getting revenge.

Yeah, this is a good idea.

I've GMed games for almost 10 years now.
Yes and no.
I'm better at playing in that I understand that the game needs to fucking move, if you stand around with your fingers in your asses nothing will get done. I'm used to always being active as a GM, so as a player I am always proactive, and I "go with the flow" when the GM is trying to do something because I know what he's going for, instead of being a rules lawyering twat.
Problem is, I know all the tricks (well, not all of them, you never learn all of them) so I constantly feel like a backseat driver. Also I have a huge superiority complex, given that I've only known 2 people better at GMing than me out of the dozens of games I've played in. And I'm not even that good at GMing, honestly. Most people just don't stick with it long enough to git gud. All the magic is gone. The magical feeling of my first time playing, the fear, the idiocy of rolling up a 16 intelligence ranger, the time I hid from bugbears because I thought the pictures were scary as a sheltered 15 year old... all that will never come back.Oh and now that I've worked "under the hood" of the whole operation, I have a whole new level of metagaming available to me. Which sounds nice, but it honestly just makes the whole experience suck. So I cling to forever GMing, and occasionally go to play adventurer's league or my friend's 3.5 campaign with pregen adventures so I can enjoy muh builds. But for serious story-based campaigns, I cannot be a player and enjoy myself as much anymore.

I dunno. I've been a fairly-decent player, so far, and I'm about as burnt-out on GMing as it's possible to get.

Yeah, what said. I should have read before posting.

>The only good players are former GMs/DMs. Debate me

...what's to debate? It's true.

I agree. just looking at the group's I have played with and being a DM myself.

all the former or current DMs at my table like to make off the wall fun characters. while our non-DM characters constantly try to make game breaking cardboard cut outs.

perfect example. the campaign I currently DM one former DM player is playing an undead Lord necro cleric and his sole goal has been how far down can I drive my skill bonuses? I think his best (worst.) climb. at a -12. I gave the option for 1 trait or 2 and a drawback. he went ah fuck it went 1 trait 2 drawback with the argument that drawbacks are more fun. this cleric has brought a lot to the table and is still alive despite my best efforts.

on the other hand one of my non-DMs needs to write up a new character and his current idea. "I'm a mage who uses magic as easy as breathing. his favorite spell? fireball." so min/ maxed cookie cutter sorcerer. yay.

now I disagree a bit because I have a non-DM also in need of a character build up a goblin barbarian. his current favorite tactic is being having someone shot putt him into the enemies and he eats silver coins.

You don't even need to put in that Mich work. Just have someone steal something from them. Even if it's not actually theirs and they were just planning on stealing it themselves.

Pretty much. In addition to the above, every time I've ever gotten real problems over rulings of things not covered by the book, it's been from someone who has never GMed. And I'm not talking about complaining when the GM screws you over, I'm talking about things like this.

>Players get invitation to watch some colosseum duels.
>They're very pro-wrestling inspired, a lot of showboating instead of actual technique.
>Party fighter wants to watch the champ, see if he can detect signs of real technique under the exaggerated moves and leaping around.
>All right, roll a sense motive, and add half your BaB to it, one fighter should be good at recognizing another.
>Other player starts objecting, y-y-you can't DO that! It doesn't say that you can modify sense motive with an attack bonus.

Good advice, i prefer the method of "here have nice sword!" followed by "baddie took your nice sword!".
Greed will carry a man across mountains.

The only good players are who got interested in the genre from fantasy books rather than video games.

that is the M.O. of any and every PC anyways.

I had a situation in my campaign where in the middle of the night a few goblins disguised as shrubbery stole some food out of one of my player's backpack and accidentally grabbed the compass too.
in my campaign not all goblins are brainless mini murder machines and in the area they were in they are rather peaceful and non combative.

entire party except the undead lord (I love this pc to death) went into full combat rampage and chased a single, poor, crying goblin down for 200 feet or so, caught him,and threatened to murder him and everyone he ever loved in all manner of slow and horrible ways. even going as far as to hunt down the goblins camp. all over food they didn't pay for and a 10gp compass.

and there are tens of thousands of stories all equally as petty and appalling in just about every campaign ever run.

I'm no exception. campaign I am a PC in we stopped being murder hobos and we're promoted to murder homeowners, hired a staff to watch our sweet ass mansion we inherited, then left on a story arc, came back to find that the home owners association conned our steward into joining then fined us until our safe was empty. all together we lost 2000 gold which comes to 400 per PC. our natural response was to go to war with the HOA and dismantle it completely.

unsure about a few of my party's motivations for going off the handle like that, but me and our charlatan (played by my favorite UL) are fully justified, him being responsible for the mess and using his talents to fix it.

I play a magus who through an ifriti's way of screwing my dickhead father made me immortal and set in motion his demise at my hand. I then spent the next millennia going a bit batshit. which translates to a barely existent moral code, over inflated ego, "slight" temper problems, and exceedingly stubborn. also to stave off the boredom of living forever I like stirring up chaos just for giggles yet somehow constantly do good

this

Former DMs tend to be best players who try to make the new ones job easier. But my current best player is just my best friend because he knows how to play to the rhythm.

I had a really good gm who was a /that guy/ gamer

Is this gm/player dichotomy some murican thing? Where I'm from, everyone runs a campaign now and then. We often have two or three games running at the same time.