DM Gripes Thread

What's some shit players do that drives you up the fucking wall?

People who think they're super clever trying to invent gunpowder using OOC knowledge.

When someone argues with the GM if his character should die from a pillar falling on him.

Turning up late

>roll up character with 8 int
>play them like a drooling obstructing retard
>refuse to raise it at all
>"BUT MY CHARACTER IS DUMB, IT"S NOT HIS FAULT HE DIDN'T KNOW HE CANT SHIT IN THE STREET"

Take power gaming to a whole new level. One guy says "you can't kill my character" like really dude? Yes I can and I can so it legally.

Not roleplaying.
Same guy, I asked the group to come up with 20th level characters for a one shot and I asked for backstories.
"I took back my families empire, I have dragon wings now that's about it"
Also he will sit on his laptop and ignore all world building and dialog unless I specifically call on him. Then he wants a recap

Calling out the dm (me) for changing a creatures statistics for a 20th level game. I raised a lich's spell save DC because 20th level characters. Someone rolled the actual and I said they failed "hurr no they didn't his spell save is this"
To be fair I warned them that I was altering stats for the game a week before we played

Players who type

so

fucking

slow

Me: "OK, so what's are you character's goals and motivations? What is your character trying to get out of adventuring."

Dumbshit whom I was told was a "really good Roleplayer": "Umm... I dunno. Just make something up, you're the DM, right?"

Not thinking or exploring options.

But that's wisdom...

100x this. Tell me what you're actually looking for or do something else, for fucks sake

>Year 2000 + 17
>Almost 2000 + 18
>Still using alignments

You have only yourselves to blame.

Missing games entirely.

>Also he will sit on his laptop
NOPE.

If you get a laptop out, you're not in the game. That's it.

I agree with you for the most part. The exception being two people from my group (not this guy).
They use the forged anvil character sheet and laptops to track inventory rather than a pencil and paper. I never have a problem with them.

>Makes a Smith character who wants to create the best weapons in the world.
>After a call to arms, the group assemble to March out and take down a clan of Goblin that settled nearby.
>Smith player looks at me confused
>"wait, why am I supposed to go?"
>because you want to?
>"But he doesn't. He just wants to perfect his smithing. You need to give me a reason to go on an adventure"
Come on faggot, your village lost 5 people to a hoblin attack, and a small group are mobilizing to go on an adventure to stop them. If that isnt enough, might I suggest you reroll a character who isnt 1 dimensional and boring, and just wants to sit at home and jerk off over his craftsmanship?

You should have had everyone shit on his weapons. Maybe even have a rival who smiths as well who is always slightly better than him.

Basically what was complaining about, lol.

While I do think you're in the right you could have had one of the goblins steal some of his weapons or something.

Hey Crabman

Explain

Hey that's pretty good. Everyone shits on his weapons so he's forced to adventure to test them out himself as proof of their quality.

Not exist. That really gets me mad at myself

Also bitching about games they haven't played when I try to get them to try something new.
>oh, the internet told me this game can be broken if you do this one specific thing
>then don't do it
>nah, how about we go back to [game I already know]
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

>smith has a dwarf mentor who always tells him his weapons are no good
>on his deathbed he tells the smith to get close to him as he needs to tell him something important
>smith gets close and hears his mentors last words

Stop smithing.

>OK, that makes sense, you can stay in the village and come up with a new character that would participate in the game on his own accord while the rest of the party deals with the goblins.

When they run races not in the book and say just they stat it as human then proceeds to later in game say since my race is X I can do this

In your opinion, perhaps. It's pretty excellent if you have players who aren't hunt-n-peckers and who actually like roleplaying. Saves me from having to smell other peoples' terrible unwashed odor, too.

Players who give their character some stupid meme trait and then get mad when they face reasonable consequences for that trait

>Player makes retarded gnome who's intentionally annoying to people around him
>Can't understand why NPC's start telling him to fuck off once news of his antics gets around

>Player makes tuff guy ex soldier orphan tiefling donut steel OC with edge factor driven up to 100
>Fancies himself a lone wolf type and interacts with the party and NPCs with incredibly vague and edgy sentences when they try to pry information from him or ask question about him
>Whines that players are barely interacting with his shitty character and aren't interested in his 2000 word backstory he'd written up

oh fuck. This thread is just too real. I think I've suffered every single one of these and have no sign of anything ever changing.

This hobby is just better in my imagination than it is in practice, isn't it. I 'm not sure why I even have hope any more.

I'm almost the exact same, except in my case I manage to have a good game out of every 10 or so that I attempt, and the good ones are good enough I continually torment myself with the bad ones like I'm in an abusive relationship or something.

>This hobby is just better in my imagination than it is in practice, isn't it.
I know that feel way too close. I don't thing i had a game that i actually liked for years after starting with RPGs.
You have to plow through large amount of shit to piece together a group you can tolerate. Don't expert anyone to learn or change in a significant way, look for greener pastures instead. Trying different games helps too, have you tried not playing d&d meme is not a meme at all.

Canceling at the last minute.

>have you tried not playing d&
Yeah no fucking shit I've tried. I've tried and tried and tried. Absofuckinglutely nobody plays anything else. This only worsens my despair.

Players who can't keep their mouths shut for more than 10 seconds without spouting out some meme or shitty joke. It's so frustrating when you're trying to set the mood or have an NPC explain something and some dickhead can't keep his trap shut long enough and just has to fucking say something.

>mfw it's my fucking DM who can't shut up with fucking memes and references

Stay strong, user and quit rollplaying d&d. I stood up to my players and said "no more campaigns until one of you GMs for a while" because I wanted to play instead of being a decade-long permaGM

It's been 4 years already

Yeah, I did that. And to be honest?
The game is so boring I'd rather be doing something else with my time.

I thought the same. Now I would even play 3.5, 4th or whatever... I haven't played since I was 15, and that was 14 years ago

No, you misunderstand. I mean one of my players did run a game and it takes extreme force of will not to just get on my phone. I'd quit but I don't want to lose the group.

Yes, I misunderstood. Thought you were so burned out of GMing from the last post. Well, you can always resell all the books and move on as I did

>I wanted to play instead of being a decade-long permaGM
>offer to run the game, because our groups perma GM seemed to be getting a game-induced burnout
>it's such a shitty and boring slogfest, that he suddenly gets a lot of motivation to run games again

>That feel when I play almost exclusively shitty "less than 10 pages of reading" rulesets people made for roleplaying forum text games.

>That feel when these games are honestly more fun, mechanically sound, and allow for more actual roleplaying than DnD, and are super easy to get other people into, even when not playing over text.

>That feel when people shit on you for being a "rules-lite faggot" while they continue to flood 4chins with topics bitching about DnD day after day after day.

Meta gaming as fuck... A guy litteraly checked on his phone to see if he could find something on the monster i was talking about without naming it.

That and doing jokes all the time. You try to put everyone in a mood, instill tension, and you cant start shit because everyone just wanna joke.

>that feel when you stop playing any game made by WotC and your quality of life quadruples

Too bad nobody plays any of those games, and good luck getting people to learn any of them if they have to read more than 20-25 pages, because players are lazy as shit.

Not really. There is a difference between
>I don't know what my motivation is
And
>I have a motivation that prevents me from actively engaging in the story.
The first is lazy on the players side, and can be due to a wealth of reasons. The second is inexcusable.

I assumed the players had made characters who wanted to adventure, considering I constantly called their characters "adventurers", and urged them to have some larger goals than just staying around doing their daily tasks in a small unimportant village.

Pretty much what I said, which made him reluctantly go along, and constantly pester the party about week long stops in every single town to get to some smithing.

I managed to work it into the campaign well enough that the player stopped being a bitch about it, but I was very close to kicking him on multiple occasions.

Gave him a magical hammer which could grant weapons forged using it, additional power. It required killing certain powerful creatures, which incentivised him to help go for the bigger threats, rather than sit at home and craft.

It also became their source of 90% of their magical items, which felt better than giving them random loot.

Why don't you guys ever want to share your good experiences ?
Do you really hate yourselves that much ?

Fucking hate it when they try to invent something with OOC knowledge.
>We're going to make penicillin
>Does your character know how to make penicilin
>No, but I do. Huehuehuehue
Faggots, all of them.

KA are you paid for repeating exact same posts and same pictures

>spend 8 sessions building up bad guy
>motives mysterious, tends to only show up to disrupt the players
>steals McGuffins for "totally not some magic ritual" without revealing what his end goal is
>finally get through the dungeon and into the final chamber with him
>"Ahahah! I was wondering when you fools would finally make your way here, I..."
>player 1: I shoot an arrow at him!

Every fucking time.

That's why you give a premise before the game

Let me guess, your game has plate armour but not gunpowder

"I ask him for information we require to defeat Zaxorth"

You assume I didn't.

Giving a premise won't fix a bad player though. You could give them something as straightforward as "You're one of the prophesized chosen ones" and it still won't make for good motivation if the player wants to play a videogame instead of a character.

Sharing bad experiences is cathartic and a way to release negative emotions pertaining to them

Then it's terminal indeed.

>"He answers you thoroughly"
>What did he say?
>What did you ask?

An example from my games

"I ask around town for info."

Cry more, faggots.

Just saying "I attack" but then when my description of what they just did doesn't line up with their mental image they start bitching about it.

Hell, just them saying "i attack" without doing anything else in a turn pisses me off, you've got this planned out battle map to explore and you just stand in a corner shooting your fucking arrows, use those fucking magical trinkets i made for you.

Did he just say that about no particular topic whatsoever? Like in "i hang out around the town and gather the rumors" way? Or there was some particular information in sight? Either way it seems like "i do a thing, hit me up with a scene about it, GM" prompt, if only a bit clumsy.

>Gave him a magical hammer which could grant weapons forged using it, additional power. It required killing certain powerful creatures, which incentivised him to help go for the bigger threats, rather than sit at home and craft.
>It also became their source of 90% of their magical items, which felt better than giving them random loot.
Good GM

Trying to make an investigation roll to find out "info" about something he was tangentially aware of.

All my players know they need to be more specific than vague as hell, but they insist on doing it every time.

Ehehehe

Yes. Gunpowder is gay and erased everything beautiful that was there about warfare.

Cringe

Ok

I guarantee you don't know shit about warfare, be it modern or pre-modern.

What's the point in playing 20th level if all the monsters have been raised to 20th too.

True
Those uniforms look too fucking lame compared to metal armor regardless

Build wank and high levels spells/powers you don't usually get to use.

>All monsters must be exactly as described in the monster manual, REEEEEEEEEE
You are the kind of player that makes me change all kinds of stupid shit, for all of my monsters, just to trigger you as hard as possible.

Those goblins at actually CR12 each. I knoe you thought they should be easy at around level 13, but thats the fun surprise! Enjoy!

players who build solely around combat and then complain or attempt to sabotage non combat encounters because how dare anyone explore facets of their own characters that he isn't number one at

>*Bad Guy* raises his hand and the arrow stops midair, hanging for a second before dropping to the ground
>or he just fucking grabs that shit out of the air if martial
>"Rude. Now, as I was saying..."

I always use a laptop that I place to the side of my seat for 5etools and quick note- and bookkeeping, and I never browse the internet or idly leaf through rules during play. The "no phones, no laptops" rule is for fidgety facebook-addicts with no self-control and no interest in the game.

>That bullshit, he didn't roll, there is no such power, you are cheating, it was clearly a surprise round, i have a unstoppable projectiles feat, i shoot him again, we play d&d here not some faggy roleplaying game.

>Same guy, I asked the group to come up with 20th level characters for a one shot and I asked for backstories.
>come up with 20th level characters for a one shot
> I asked for backstories.
>one shot
>backstories

Wut?

This is why I keep a ball gag in plain view at the table.

>Ignoring tone to crack jokes
Fucking this.
The NPC currently assisting the party is too polite to bring it up, so I can't think of a way to get them to stop it. They're a pretty fragile person, so if I bring it up OOC I'm sure they'll think I hate them.

Holy fuck, this. I once had a player in my group who was an amazing guy out of the game, but literally every character he rolled did their best not to work with the party and always went off on their own / followed the party with ridiculous stealth.

>Not always rolling as a GM, and then ignoring the result.

When my players refuse to read the fucking rulebook. I posted a PDF link so you could read it between sessions, but you don't. Don't get angry at me when we're halfway through the campaign and you still barely know the rules.

Which is d&d's fault to begin with. It has the marketing, so to the average person it is the hobby. People start with it because it is the hobby after all, and trundle their way through its fucking mess of a ruleset.
Naturally this paints their image of the hobby as a whole because after all d&d is the hobby.
So why bother trying to decipher a brand new game when that took so long with d&d, sunk cost now rears it's ugly head. Combined with the poor showing from their first book in general they're actively discouraged from trying other things.

Like spoiled children unwilling to try a new food because their parents are horrible cooks and have ruined their pallet, you have to either force them to learn that not all meat has been boiled for 20 years and that it can have flavor and variety. If they continue to refuse (and you're actually trying to get them into an actually good system and not one of the many also bad ones), then sometimes you just have to chuck it up to a loss.

You don't have to stop being friends with them, but if you know one of your friends is a fussy eater. Maybe don't feel obligated to continue inviting them to diner.

Being passive-aggressive whenever another player/character gets even a modest amount of time in the spotlight.

Only one player, the GM, really needs to know the rules in any given RPG system and can guide the players through character creation and into the game fairly easily without them needing to know the rules.

.t Entitled, lazy player

Same reason why I don't let player rest in a dungeon with out a strong chance of a random encounter. Also not all monsters were changed some were treated as mobs with a collective hp pool.

See? These guys get it. Thanks for the back up guys.

jesus.

>What dice do i roll to attack the guy again? d12 right?
>What's the noise penalty rates by distance again?
>How do i increase my reflexes? WTF why are you reading 10 years old forum posts? What's skill exponent?
>What's a proficiency bonus? add it to what?
>How does this power works again...
>I don't want to accept this compel. What do you mean i have to? Not my fault i'm all out of points, FATE sucks.
>Why Mike's character do twice my damage?
>I want to play cybered street sam adept! Sniper-Hacker here, Astral specialist, Emergent AI possessing wandering machine, we have like 2 whole hours for character creating, ask as questions, let go!

>mfw I know pretty much most of the rules of our current system and our GM constantly has me back up certain rules claims