DM Feels

>attempt DMing
>tell people I only want consistent people who will show up to every session once a week and do not have anything planned in the future that will disrupt the game
>players all agree, make another assurance during screening that they'll show up to sessions, they all say yes
>12 AM, 10 hours before first session, guy says "Hey man something came up can't play sorry" and ends contact there
>around the second session with one player down
>"Uhhh... I kind of have a date with a girl can we cancel this session and meet next time?"

Nothing is more frustrating. If you can't commit, that's fucking fine. Just don't say you will and make me regret not choosing the other applicants.

it took me way longer than it should to notice the tentacles. Those eyes, man.

Sorry, I don't have a good feel at the moment.

>Set the players through this undead filled tomb.
>It's a four level necropolis, built into the side of a hill.
>Players entered in near the base of the hill and climbed their way up, so the last and most lethal level is the highest.
>One of the players pulls me aside after they finish fighting their way through it telling me that it was fun and all, but that next time, I should do things "properly". That they'd enter in at the top and descend, because the lower levels of a dungeon are ALWAYS the harder ones.

I don't know what to say about my games except the party has more fun chatting and laughing about other stuff outside the game. And they almost always go off chit chatting when something meme-worthy pops up.

Hasn't happened once without us rescheduling within 24 hours these last two years

>not playing with good friends

What's up with the art style it looks like anime mixed in with 90's Archie comics. Did Dobson draw that?

>having good friends

>be player
>gm kills off the game

>be gm
>players flake out

>mfw can't avoid the natural conclusion that I'm the problem

Jesus christ, does he have actual autism?

>love making custom monster stat blocks for my campaigns
>give players ample warning before they encounter a very challenging monster
>one, then two players are in critical danger of dying very quickly
>they start to question my balancing skills
>tell them to have confidence in me
>continue rolling everything in front of them for the entire encounter
>don't ignore a single rule in their favor (or the monster's)
>use every ability exactly as I had written it prior to the session
>they rally and pull out a decisive win, feeling like badass heroes
>everyone gets loot customized to their character

good end

>DM
>Do one campaign as a test run to see if I can pull it off, goes well
>Spend a month creating a good world, with multiple different biomes and areas that could host different stories and tie it all up with multiple narratives, including an overarching, thousands-year long top level story, multiple mid-level, country conflicts and low level, city struggles
>Even throw in the other place I did my test campaign in as a different continent
>When I show the campaign details to the group their unanimous decision was to say they only cared about the setting the test run was in, and wanted me to scrap it for the old world

A coop between Samasan and Sparrow based upon the information in the bottom right of the image.

>Improvise a bunch of shops and NPCs in a game
>Actually had a table with random NPC traits and stuff for once
>Had also read some good fantasy on the bus ride over so could improvise a festive night at the inn when the PCs started ordering a bunch of food and drinks
>They love it
>Spend over an hour just buying new clothes, paying for blacksmith apprentices to clean and buff their armor just because they feel like the town is "alive"
>Have a blast chatting it up with serving girls and other patrons in the inn later on

>Get a bunch of compliments afterwards about how amazed they are of how much I had "Prepared"
>Tell 'em it was like 90% improvised
>"Holy shit, user. I could never DM like that on the spot!"

Good Feels

Had a player tell me that last nights session was his favorite since we started, about 8 months in
It was mostly combat and they completely subverted the plan I thought they'd take, so they did it the hard way but still came out on top
>lots of clever ideas from all the players and a really successful interrogation at the end with 40 minutes of in character intimidation, persuasion, and discussion with a group of wizard-minions
Only downside was one player being unable to talk and just typed up his minor rolls and treated his character as being near silent for that area (was playing on his phone while on vacation with family) but otherwise it was DM heaven

>running Rogue Trader
>players have to go to the Pit of Voices on Footfall since they need an Astropath
>have them roll willpower cause of all the spooky warp shit happening in the room
>describe the effects of them witnessing psychic phenomena while creepy arabesque music plays
>party freak out at the spook in character
>tell me after session it's their first time ever actually getting scared/creeped-out by warp stuff in a 40kRPG

Felt great after that

Had this experience as a player a couple days ago, except only one person got some really dope loot

>be group of 2-3rd level retards
>ambushed by a group of gobbos, couple bugbears, and a hobgob warlord because we were trying to rush through some area and didn't notice them in time
>during ensuing battle three fourths of the party go down
>hobgob and bugbear left, both very badly wounded
>cleric clutches it at the end, everyone lives

It was wild and great. Got a 20 on my first death save, then two fails, then another 20.

Nat 20 on a death save wakes you up with 1hp

My last session with my players ended with no combat. They have been murder hobos since session 1 over two years ago. It was the very first time in our game when they were not responsible for some sort of bar fire or large scale destruction.

They actually enjoyed it doing a whole session of investigation.

Feels weird but I wish I could just get more sessions in at all with them.

Well constructed tables, charts, and graphs are the real way to prep. Maps and encounters are far less important than improvisation tools.

>called the guy who plays Fighter in our campaign
>he left for the big city a while ago, won't show up for a while
>he probably won't come back any time soon, there's no vacant jobs here
>but he's doing alright there, which is good
>and he's not even the issue
>Rogue drives a cargo truck all over Europe, the pay is good and all, but he's completely off the grid
>Wizard is a plumber who works 12 hours a day 6 days a week to support his entire extended family, disabled father and a retarded NEET brother
>our campaign lasted two sessions before it went on this hiatus
>I have a huge stack of notes
>first time I wrote my own setting
>it's sorta Mesoamerican, lotsa Old Gods and mystery and dungeons
>we will never, ever play it again, drinking beer at my place
>and once again in my long DMing life, I will not finish a campaign
>and the campaign that ran for 2 sessions was actually one of the longest ones

Feelgood not feelbad you fucking ignoramus.

find reliable people at your job/school/local gamestore

>first time GM dark heresy and in general
>come up with the barebones of a plot, try to go with the flow on what my players do and build stuff from there
>players all have good fun one in particular is very responsive and full of ideas
>come up with places and characters mainly on the fly, but everyone seems to like it
>campaign ended because i suffered burnout
>despite being almost a year, everyone still remember how ruthless the hive gang leader was, how terifying my interpretation of a slaaneshi cultist is, and how i traumatised a character so much that he had a180 degrees shift in personality with a single encounter
Haven't GMd since. Don't think i can top that

Sometimes, simplicity is what works best

this is why playing with friends is best

at least you can call your friends flaky assholes to their faces :+)

>have the players go into a goblin cave and fight some gobs
>at the end, they find gob shamans are summoning a skeleton warrior king thing
>get nervous because i feel as if i could have prepared more
>they enjoy the last encounter and find it to be just challenging enough
>mfw

Why not make it the other way around? Huh?!

i thought nat 20s only give you 2 saves?

>Start up with fresh group
>People getting emotionally attached to characters
>Everyone says I'm doing great
>Want to play every weak and are actually sad when they can't

This after a 5-year drought with a failed attempt in between. This feels good.

>local gamestore
No such thing here.
>job
I don't think they'd be interested.
>school
Those are the players that fell apart.

I've been doing this for years, man, I just never actually got any closure on any campaign ever.

I had this problem for a while

Then I found the right group, we've been playing for nearly 3 years now and it is awesome

prob means your game is shit bruv

The main reason I set things up as I did was that there were a number of pit traps, which would then send the PCs backwards instead of forwards, since lower down means further away from the goal.

I'm going to bring back a recurring NPC.

He's related to another PC (specifically he's her brother) and has met some of the other PCs previously under a pseudonym. He also doesn't know they're in the same general area as him, and basically is serving as a plot device to allow them to go somewhere else. Because he's sort of a dick, he's going to joke that his sister has taken a liking to one of the party members, whether it's true or not.

Anyone else have ways of handling NPCs that are related to PCs?

>Cheerwine
my niggas

Next time you see them user. Let them know you understand where they are coming from and your thoughts about why you did it bottom-up rather than top-down.

If you're playing 5e then it wakes you up with 1hp.

Oh yeah, the best feel is when they start asking "when are you ready for the next sesh, DM??" just after finishing the current one

This is pretty much is. You have to find a group that you "click" with. Try asking friends and people who otherwise wouldn't seem to be interested.

I've gotten some very good groups out of people you'd never guess would be interested in D&D.

>Bandit reaches into a barrel containing flour and throws some at the Paladin's face, blinding him
>After the fight, Bard pockets a bunch of flour
>Soon after, party fights a one-eyed monster
>Bard uses flour to blind it; Paladin gets a crit thanks to Advantage

We're all newbies; I'm really glad I could pull off the whole "teach through example" trick. Just last session, the Bard threw ink into a hobgoblin's face, leading to another crit (from the Fighter). I gave him Inspiration, the guy deserves it for being creative and quick to learn.

Also I noticed the Paladin's player keeps track of individual item weight in his inventory. I had no idea he was this invested. I love my players.

>Flour
Use powdered spices instead; salt and chili pepper are vastly better at blinding for only slightly more money.

Now all that is left is to abandon D&D and play GURPS

>go to house party with some buds
>home owners actually run a DnD game that I play in
>buds who came with me are players I DM for
>get drunk and both groups talk about their sessions
>my players are bragging about how they had this awesome adventure and how they overcame obstacles or funny situations they ran into

Felt good man

>Running a horror game, with a group that rotates between games with each of us DMing (so I only run once or twice a month)
>each game has its own strengths and we enjoy the variety
>everyone is scared when it's coming up to my game because of how threatening the world feels and the knowledge that they could easily mess up and fail the whole thing
>every session ends with them having had fun, both feeling excited about what they've achieved and anxious about whether or not they're doomed!

>Session 0
>The awkward, cringe-inducing player wants to be the party face
>again

One of the most well-received sessions I ran in a while was almost completely improvised on the spot. Usually I get praised for my "plot twists" and other specific instances during sessions, but out of all the four-hour stretches of roleplaying I've ran, my players reacted best to a session spent largely just trying to sneak on to a ship they were banned from. I don't even think there was any real combat that session aside from coldcocking random sailors and then shoving them into barrels. It was fun, but an interesting phenomenon nonetheless.

user could you share your charts I could really use something like that for my campaigns

try asking those peeps at work user, you never know who might be interested

Not that guy, but if you're looking for names, Xanathar's guide to everything has a bunch random name tables for every core race, and for real world cultures. Only war has a pretty good personality table on page 108. A lot of rpgs have those sorts of tables in them, usually GM books or near character creation. There are plenty of random tables for other things on the internet, google is your friend.

>google
*Bing
FTFY

>players spend two hours after the session talking about it

>Campaign runs a bit slow, I like to plan for the long-term
>Anticipate story beats multiple sessions ahead, unless the players change something
>Finally get to events I've been stewing over for months, hope the players give even a fraction of the shit that I do
>They like it! One person says they got chills
>Everything is worth it

Alternatively:

>Same group
>Have bi-weekly sessions the same day each
>Last three sessions something messes with the schedule, ALWAYS brought up one day in advance out of two available weeks
>Players get butthurt when I say it's a problem

GMing is a rollercoaster of emotion.

>DM few one-shots or short campaigns that usually die out of lack of players (they drop like flies due to real-life issues)
>don't prepare for anything, because fuck it, I have better things to do
>players are genuinely enjoying all the bullshit I make up on the spot, especially my NPCs
>they create inside-jokes that include stuff I presented during the session
>one player, after several years, still surprises me about things he remembers from these times, that I have absolutetly no recollection of.

Some of my players were a blessing.

>find out i'm dming literally the day before
>grab the 2e AD&D starter set I got on ebay
>old man what are you doing in this temple of evil

>i haven't played it since i was twelve
>didn't read a word beforehand
>didn't bring dice
>didn't even bring a fucking pencil

>we just get high and fuck around
>three hours to get to the first fight
>everybody has fun
>everybody wants to play again
>busting out my DCC hexcrawl next time

feels good man

>Dats hot
>Check the source
>Google brings up that it's an erotic CYOA book
amazon.com/Escape-Eldritch-Princess-Pleasure-Adventure-ebook/dp/B075889FNB
Score.

Other works by Amanda Clover:
>Princess to Pleasure Slave Collection: The Forbidden Book of Monstrous Pleasures
>The Easily Defeated Hero's Monster Girl Adventure: Book 2: The Slime Girl
>The Lesbian Daughter Swapping Fantasy Club

brb, I'm taking a break to write my first novel: "Pounded in the Butt by My Inability to Determine if a Book Isn't Actually Being Written by Chuck Tingle"

That reminds me. I need to write an erotic adventure path once I get some dedicated free time.

>Normally the worse DM in our friend group for pathfinder

> Decide to run a FATE one shot about the group being Space Pirates

mfw two of the players ask me about bringing it back as a full campaign

>Have to do mini sessions with the group split.
>Been losing time and had nothing planned.
>Session (which I thought would be an hour) had gone on for two hours.
>They were begging for it to continue when I cut them off.
>Now I have to think of enough content to last a similar amount of time for the other group in three days.
It's strange to feel motivation from something like that.

>Current campaign is wrapping up
>Ask players whether they'd prefer a Sci-Fi or Fantasy setting in their next game
>Some give a preference, but all stress that they'll only play if I'm the one GMing

Feels good, man.

No dumbass, a Nat 20 let's you cast a free wish spell. And then you get to become a god.

Dipshit.

> DMing that one-shot in Barbarians of Lemuria where the party has to bring back the stolen Cerulean eidolon.
> In the end, the tribe leader of Ceruleans (local blue-skinned giants) offers the party (a cowardly merchant and a nordic barbarian/farmer) the reward.
> The reward consists of some gold and a wife for each party member.
> "But GM, do these blue giants even breed with humans?"
> "Yes, barbarian, you even have seen offsprings of mixed race."
> "Then I pick the largest giantess. I'm a farmer, so I'll need a strong wife to help me with the farm."
I gave him extra XP for role-playing the patriarchal farmer. I wanted to post the picture I made in one editor to illustrate that event, but I've deleted it unfortunately.

>Hunter: The Vigil campaign
>after having the group fuck around with a powerful corporation for a while now, decide it's time to make it bite them in the ass
>a ressurected quasi-reverant of their first kill with stupid powerful regeneration bursts into their office
>through the power of rolls, they dispatch him in a single turn
>No, fuck it, it's supposed to be dramatic. They didn't look outside, right?
>Window shot out by the sniper
>Incidentary grenades flying in
>guys with assault rifles outside
>mfw they power through this and come up with creative ways to get help and counter-attack
>mfw they still talk about it months later despite me pretty much ad-libbing the entire game

Kill yourself you fun-hating grognard.

My current 5e campaign is gonna make me kill myself

>bust my ass all summer trying to get game together
> West Marches, bad idea #1
> have good idea for a setting, no real work yet
> get Co-DM because West Marches, bad idea #2
> I won’t say that the other guy is bad, but he’s much more of a D&D 3.5e philosophy whereas I have a much more D&D 2e philosophy
> didn’t know that at time
> we make setting, it goes well, no playing yet
> invite a shit-ton of people because West Marches
> have a really assertive veteran player, everyone else new or inexperienced
> except for one other guy who INSISTS everything goes in the NG direction, which wouldn’t be a problem if he and everyone else wouldn’t bitch incessantly about it
> we play 5 hour sessions, 3-4 of those hours are bitching
> I wish that was hyperbole
> meanwhile other DM fucks up setting incessantly through improv and I don’t want to make him look retarded so I try to work with it
> and we only play at my house, so when other DM DMs, I have to loiter around my own house

This is literally the worst D&D I’ve ever played, Veeky Forums

> get to be permaGM of the group
> thoroughly plan out the story and blocks of events
> party slowly gets used to TTRPG world, which is not Skyrim-esque 'punch enough people to progress'
> lots of semi-important rules are overlooked and ignored
That includes stuff like spending money every day, because that's what your character would do. So I just made tavern hosts feed PCs for free or include all stuff in room fee.
> give way too much XP, not enough gold, characters are overpowered and I'm bad at giving them a good challenge during combat
> the whole campaign is abandoned, PCs are in the middle of forest, nobody knows if they want to play their characters
>fuck me

> people still want to play
> start with individual session for one guy, he can change his character however he wants so he's sure this is what he wants
> make zero plans, fully improvising, heavy focus on roleplaying, since the player also wants a good background for PC. We're having lots of fun
> other player joins in, others are busy with RL stuff
> five sessions later, I have a nice town full of gangs, fucked up aristocrats and some NPCs that follow PCs, all created on the fly, because PCs know the setting fairly well and ask questions
> never would have done it by myself
What was supposed to be a tutorial turned into the actual campaign. I kinda miss having 4 people, but this is really nice, too.

this happened across three sessions

>Dark Heresy 1.0 campaign, been going for almost 5 years, characters are established and evolving
>party Techpriest has befriended a girl navigator which he has feels for
>some time ago they met a Thousand Sons sorcerer who managed to slip away from them
>after an unfortunate emergency warp jump, the lady is rendered unconscious for a while
>in order to wish her a speedy recovery, the Techpriest leaves her a small cogwheel as a token of friendship and thanks for getting them out of dodge
>shenanigans happen, Dark Eldar board the ship alongside a captured astartes psyker that turns out to be the above-mentioned sorcerer
>he's interrogated, the only information extracted from him is that he's able to read the characters' minds
>after a couple of days and in a very topical moment, news reach the party that the navigator is awake
>long story short, her memories of the Techpriest disappeared.
>techpriest player is visibly invested in the story so far.
>ffw to next session, things happen, lots of dead DE
>Techpriest is called by the sorcerer through telepathy, he wants to converse alone
>the conversation is kind of one-sided and ends on the sorcerer telling him "I know everything and I can give her back to you... for a price."
>session ends on this note
>player stares at me in the eye
>"user, you are too good at playing that bastard. Also, I hate you."
>ffw another session, the techpriest agrees to the bargain and the sorcerer escapes, the navigator's memories are returned.
>later learn that the player spent the whole week thinking of what to do
>the party was so invested in this arc that they told me they were some of the best sessions in months

It's all handwritten unfortunately, but most of it's straight from the DMG "Creating NPC" tables, with a few extra or modified to suit the type of NPCs I enjoy.

I also have some tables made for different regions so that the NPCs make environmental sense, so to speak.

I would advise anyone wanting to use tables in this way to modify them to your own liking and just let it flow. Way more fun imo

>My players are legit getting scared after every plot twist in my games
>I am in such high demand that I have three groups of three players each and a new group of seven fucking players
however
>the 7 people group is full of murderhobos, amateurs and borderline retards who have problems even understanding D&D 5e so I can punish them for their stupid shit when they go full retard
so all in all i'm good

>Plan a horror session in a decently goofy campaign
>"This will never work"
> It works, they love it
> Changed the entire feel of the campaign from silly light-hearted to the serious feel I was hoping for the whole time.
Feels fantastic

ITT: Things that never happened