DM stories thread

I didn't let it slip. I killed them all.

Read lines 4 and 5 of your own OP.
You:
>"let slip" some of the plans i have
>convince each player that to pass an upcoming trial they must kill one another

or like I said " you set up your two evil players to fail"

then you said
>two of the players with evil alignment butcher the kind bard
>he is pissed

or like I said "deliberately let them fail"

then finally
>"you must prove the power of your love and frie- is that your travelling companion dead in the bush? How dare you defile this ground with murder!"
>all 3 players look pissed beyond belief
>mage attacks them
>resulting fight kills both of them
>one of them was using the same character for the past 3 years
and then post here about it, as if you didn't set this all up in the first place.

or like I said "got mad at them for failing."

Not sure where you're coming from or why you decided to tank your game, but it is your fault.

Oh, you meant let my plans slip.

I was angry at them for messing up a story line, and this happened in response. I was angry at them for killing a mage that played a part in my story. I then set up the demise of them and the game in response. I'm not angry at them for failing the trial (I set it up so that they would.) I was angry at them for ruining my story line, so as a result I killed them off.

Your storyline shouldn't take precedence over everything else. It's a roleplaying game. That means it isn't just your story, it's supposed to be about cooperative storytelling.
If they're being dumbass muderhobos, it's fine to make their consequences have actions. But some contrived "rocks fall, everyone dies" bullshit where you convinced them to kill each other out of character and then finish them off with some wizard is pretty lame.

Why not just have someone hunt them for having killed the mage?

Christ OP, what kind of GM are you?

Because they had absolutely no reason to kill him, and I couldn't conceive why they would do it. Killing him would only hurt them at that stage, and when they made it out of all that trouble I was annoyed because I had set it up in a way so that they would go down the route I wanted them to take and pretty much the entire world had been crafted for.

I never said I was a good DM, I don't do it much and I'm trying to improve at it. This was a story from one of the first times I did it when I was angry that I find funny. Hence me sharing it.

>Convince each player that to pass an upcoming trial they must kill one another
>They had no reason to slaughter him

are you baiting or are you seriously this fucking retarded.

>Convince party to do thing
>party does thing
>"Oh no how could this have happened"

consider suicide.

Okay, well some constructive criticism from me would be to make actions have good and bad consequences, but not to force your will or your exact conceptualization of how things should go on your players. Players, especially ones who only have experience with video games seem to do a lot of lolrandumb stuff. Immediately ending the game when they do is a worse approach than making things more difficult when they create problems. I would also suggest not going into any of this with an agenda. It isn't you vs them. And it's not about them experiencing your story. It's about playing a game and having fun together.

>Players find weird cat eye floating in a jar of liquid in an abandoned prison they were raiding.
>Take it with them
>Party face attempts to sell it to crazy hermit in the woods they'd just entered.#
>Hermit tells them that said eye belongs to a powerful demon residing in the woods and that it has been searching for it for years
>Tells them to finish business quickly and leave before it finds them
>Party retreat from forest to main base
>Guy who found it, young rogue, has been staring at the eye for a while
>Decides that he wants to replace his blind left eye with this one
>brings it up to the party, they aren't exactly moral people so they're okay with it if uncomfortable
>Help him out in the operation, Rogue manages to do it with only a couple hp left
>Ranger, absent minded as ever, forget they had a mirror the whole time they'd been huddled in an empty shack
>Laugh it off and continue, reveal eye to be weird as shit, is in a constant state of melting and reconstituting itself
>Rogue goes through with it anyway, eye helps him along by latching itself to his empty socket
>After passing all the checks I laid out, guy now has a functioning demon eye that gives him thermal vision for 30ft
>Rogue plans to multiclass and become a necromancer and attach more shit like this to himself
>I meanwhile am planning to have the demon the eye belongs to corrupt him subtly over the campaign and whisper sweet nothings to him

Think I did pretty good, really enjoying my foray into DM'ing and my group seems to enjoy it too, thoughts?

You seem to be entirely missing the point and not reading anything that I said.
For reference, here is a link to the thread we're currently in: boards.Veeky Forums.org/tg/thread/56733118#top
Yeah, I've grown better as a DM since that and I don't rigidly enforce "my story" and instead nudge them towards doing what I want, but if they butcher a town that may have played a part I don't stop/punish them.

Definitely That DM.

you're a shitty GM, breh.

Yep. Everyone is when they first start.

Kys

I've read this one in a different thread just 15 minutes ago.

Not OP, but I'm planning on starting my first DMing in the near future -- Any kind tips to avoid campaign potholes would be dandy.

prioritise enjoyment factor of your players above all else. This by no means is me saying make it silly and wacky or inject lolrandum moments to make things interesting, get to know your players and what they enjoy and play to that, inject it in where you can.

Cause above all else you're there to have fun, and if everyone's having fun in the group, doesn't matter what it is you're doing.

>have a super awesome kraken battle planned
>players underwater
>kraken confronts them
>maniacally laughing
>player 1 says "I cast polymorph"
>laughter stops
>boss fight is ruined
>realize that if the rabbit dies, the kraken comes back
>sharks appear
>players successfully escort the rabbit to their boat, keeping it from drowning or succumbing to water pressure.
>they still have what is going to turn into a very angry kraken on their boat.
>after about 15 minutes of discussion, they concoct a plan
>player 2 casts fly on the party.
>they fly straight up for the entire duration of the spell.
>work it out, they're five miles up.
>they kill the rabbit in the air
>it turns into a very out of place kraken and begins falling
>players forgot that their ship was below them
>realize afterwards
>air chase scene dodging the kraken tentacles and steering it away from their boat as it falls

Technically the kraken should have survived the fall, but we had so much fun and they had been suitably creative so I ruled the kraken dead.

That's when I learned two things: bosses, if planned, should be able to survive a save or suck. Also, when the campaign goes off the rails, it becomes incredible, sometimes.

Obligatory "dae youtube comment section"

the fuck are you talking about

I guess it's gonna be mostly a learn-as-I-go kinda thing, but how far in advance should I be writing a story out? I don't know a thing about improv, but this seems like it's analogous -- that I need to head where they want to go.

From my pwersonal experience - start with something small, that is not supposed to transition into your epic dream game. Make it short and self-contained for starters, i.e. don't plan out too much. Draft up the immediate setting for the players to start in, metaplot comes later.

plan vaguely, add details when you think your party is likely to reach the thing you've planned for.
This way, if you plan for something the party never gets to, by keeping it vague you can translate it to another situation or area and then add in the details, saves a lot of time and effort trust me. Of course improve is important.
Big mistake i made when I started out though was trying too hard to live up to what I thought was a good GM, if you're overwhelmed or need time to think/prepare feel free to ask the party to pause a minute or two then resume when you've got things straightened out. I guarantee they won't mind.

How not to DM, the post.

>How to oust metagamers the post.

Yes, I posted it in the shitty game thread as well. It was kind of shitty, and on my mind recently.

Remember that you're playing a game, and that games center around your choice of move, what sort of action the players are up to.

Unfortunately, RPG's complicate that somewhat. In a simpler game, something like chess, you have a very clear goal with your moves (achieve checkmate and forestall your opponent from doing the same), and thus have a very objective set of standards to guide your decisionmaking process. RPG's are trickier, because there's an enormous number of different ways to play the game, and most groups will only enjoy one or two of them.

So you should be thinking of what tone of game your group is aiming for. Is this a tactical, kick in the door, fight the good fight and then do it again kind of game? Is this a game that's about picking and choosing the faction that you want to be aligned with? Something else entirely? Depending on the answer, you'll arrive at a different set of answers for the question

>What are the choices I want my players agonizing over?
Let that question guide you.

I count about 5 impossible things in this story as it is written, but I might be off.
Sounds like fun though.

Start with trying to convince the player that Warlock would be a better idea than a wizard for grafting such things on to him. Make the demon his patron, and always have the demon know exactly what the party is doing since it can see them doing it after all.
Eventually have the eye start to lie to him, showing weird heat signatures without any kind of explanation. Unless he appeases the demon, then it gets worse. If he's on the demon's good side then have it give him different visions or vision types.
Maybe force him to take certain invocations of your choice specific to eyesight and such.

>Any kind tips to avoid campaign potholes would be dandy.
Take notes when you make stuff up, otherwise just accept that plotholes happen.
But THIS is the REAL secret to plotholes:
Go with it in the moment and figure it out later.

>"Hey, GM! You said that the Ogre mage could only be killed by magic weapons, but Peter's sword is just a normal one he got off that guard!"
Truth: You forgot the sword wasn't magical.
Bad Idea: Retconning the killing blow.
Good Idea: "How can you be so sure it's a normal sword?" Then they can identify the random sword as having some charm on it.

>"Hey that cave troll escaped out the caves, but it's the afternoon! He should have turned to stone!"
Truth: You forgot what time of day it was.
Bad Idea: Having the Troll of Plot Necessity turning to stone.
Good Idea: "That IS odd, isn't it? What do you do?"

When impossible plotholes happens, treat it as an oddity or minor mystery rather than a mistake.
"Why do you think that happened?"
Make the players think there is something they might have missed and then slap a "wizard did it" explanation on it that makes sense later.

>how far in advance should I be writing a story out?
Like that one user said here , don't plan a campaign out for your first shot.
That said, have a general idea of where you want the campaign to go, a rough idea of where the next couple sessions may lead, and only ever plan for the next session, but plan for longer than you expect to play.
The players can take your plot for a hard turn into the wild and re-plotting all your work from planning two or more sessions out is just doing the work twice.

Now, if you are excited about a dungeon that your PCs are two sessions away from so you flesh it out, that's fine even if they don't use it.
Re-purposing unused plans is a handy tool, but doing it all the time is unnecessary extra work that helps burn you out.

>but if they butcher a town that may have played a part I don't stop/punish them.

But you don't punish them in a way that ends up killing a party member and eventually disbanding the party and group

You break their toys, threaten NPCs that they like, make it obvious that their goals are now harder to achieve because of a thing they did

Tabletop RPGs are basically stories in which the players are the main focus, not whatever NPCs or stories you come up with.

Not him, but I have had that methodology of throwing out a new mystery to cover a consistency error backfire *terribly* upon attempt. It relies rather heavily on your players being willing to accept that there is in fact a larger plan at work.

>it's an OP is the villain of his own story episode

Holy Shit

I don't know about a "larger plan"(most of my answers ended up being super simple, like "dwarven wine is flammable"), but it does rely on your players not halting the game to demand immediate answers and you standing your ground by not explaining things out of character.

If you encounter something irl that doesn't make sense, it becomes a minor mystery that you either figure out or disregard.
Same thing.

Well done.

While his response to the situation was over the top and only served to derail the story far worse than his players ever did, this was the only reasonable part. Whatever he mentioned outside of the game is not something they should have acted on before they needed to. In fact if you knew in advance that you needed a sacrifice why on earth would you go in with one less person?

Honestly what the gm should have done is stuck with the death trial (which is a bit shit to begin with but whatever), and then have the trial giver not accept the pre-kill.
"Trial didn't fucking start yet, that doesn't count. For all I know you stabbed him in his sleep and fucking dragged him here."

I feel you.
>hey GM why doesnt this setting have armor piercing rounds
>hey GM why cant we go to new zealand in this cthulhu adventure thats meant to be on the east coast?
>30 minutes of this
>tpk them
>stop playing for a couple of months
>they eventually get the craving
>come back
>no bitching this time

>>players successfully escort the rabbit to their boat, keeping it from drowning or succumbing to water pressure.
>>they still have what is going to turn into a very angry kraken on their boat.
>>after about 15 minutes of discussion, they concoct a plan
Thats amazing

> Playing rogue trader
> Captain Johannus Maximmus Kirk, who has a wyrdling mutation
> seneschal, straight guy of the party
> void master pelipe peregrino, used lowrider to get by a ship, had a crew of mexican henchmen with sombreros and very mean abuela, who kept phoning him and telling him what to do and whatnot
> 1st time player with a hippie priest who has very high charisma, but is unable to roleplay anything
> 1st time player with arch militant called Twisted freak, who cant roleplay for shit, but he murders things
> ship is a shitty transport, but has a teleportarium (kirk talked me into this)
> after some shenanigans including blowing some asteroids in port wander, making a lynching mob storm a mob den and Kirk losing his legs they acquire a map for the planetary system that was cut from koronus expanse by a warp storm until recently
> they arrive, find a bunch of planets, one is industrial and inhabited by humans
> they teleport themselves into one of their big cities, turns out tech lvl is about 1920 of our age, inhabitans are asian looking and about 160cm in height
> 5 person around 2m in height in carapace armor make quite a ruckus, nobody can understand the language, all communication is in pantomime
> they begin searching for the planetary goverment, seneschal gets himself a taxi, gets in with kirk, looks for the "white house"
> rest gets into second cab, with imperativ; follow that cab!
> pelipe gets displeased with the speed, throws his driver of the cab, gets the wheel
> starts cruising the city, blasting music from portable speakers, this gets even more attention
> gets tailed by police force with battons and whistles
> finally they find the "white house"
> it´s a museum, wander between the exponates explaining the history of the planet, not giving a shit
> police surrounds the museum, uses megaphones, party doesnt understand, gets in front of building
> gets blinded by the flashes of photographers with primitive polaroid machines

Never ever plan out a whole campaign. Instead plan a rough outline of what the players should do and then put prep into locations.

What obstacles do they face there?
What NPCs are there?
Are there any political factions?

Then once your guys made their characters tailor the campaign to their abilities so that its the most fun for everybody including yourself

> crowd has gathered, everybody staring at the party as an attraction
> policeman walks to Kirk and uses whistle
> he cleaves him in half with a power sword
> panic everywhere, police with batons is running, whole party shoots everything that moves
> with everybody dead, seneschal picks up polaroid photo machine
> finally, El Scottyllero (one of Pelipes henchmen) teleports whole party back to ship
> seneschal identifies photo machine as a tech unknown in imperium, makes great pictures
> meanwhile Kirk gets to know, that due to poor rolls, translation of language and putting it into their translators will take 30 days
> Kirk proceeds to bombard every single large city of the planet to show strength
> war between states ensues, followed by a civil war, millions are killed
> (formerly the plot for the planet was 2 continents in a cold war)
> translation completed, Kirk transmits "we come in peace" message to the planet
> they proceed to support most extremist dictator they could find, described as Osama without a turban
> Osama enslaves half of remaining population, makes them fabricate polaroid machines for Kirk, instates totalitarian dictatorship, fabricates famine to kill all his opposers, death toll is in billions now
> party gets thousands of polaroid photo machines
> +1 profit factor
> mfw

...

>El Scottyllero
my fucking sides

> Be me, playing 3.5 in the Arcanis setting post shift from 3.0-3.5. DM let's us rebuild our characters since new rules.
>be a val (psionically active humanoids, with dormant bloodline powers linked to tgeir diety) level 9, 4 level fighter, 5 level p. Warrior
>due to race, can sacrfice base stat points and stat point increases to increase bloodrank and get special abilities
>pick bloodline abilities that give rage but maintain menral composure, and another str buff bloodline ability.
>god is hurrian, god of storms
>I weild a +2 tralian warhammer and belt of giant str +6
>base str 14, with skills/ psionics, csn make str 38
>Iamthor.jpg
>first session back after rebuild
>enter room
>shield guardian
>win init.
>go full rage, psionic lions charge, land one hit.
>84 dmg
>dm doesnt belive me
>we go over my build
>our faces when, I one hit the big baddy of the night

After that the dm upped the apl for encounter by a full 4 levels. Good times.

I don't know who is more retarded, the DM, or the players.

Sounds like they're better off. You really buried the lede there.

You're terrible, is this a shit dm confession thread or something? Did you expect people to say oh yea they deserved that gj

Sounds pretty good. Now the Evil people have to kill each other instead.

>work it out, they're five miles up.
>Technically the kraken should have survived the fall

How, exactly, would the Kraken have survived the fall? The Kraken is a gigantic creature that weights a lot. From 5 miles high it wouldn't just break a bone; it would practically explode into a giant cloud of gore

Falling damage doesn't account for size, and that kraken had more than 20d6 HP.

>Current time of year in our campaign is the beginning of winter.
>Players have been staying in a small farming community at the edge of the untamed wilderness.
>Decide they need a distraction in order to sneak into the mayor's house to uncover some shady political intrigue.
>Their plan is to blow up the town's grain silo which is the largest food reserve in the region.
>Try to urge them to think of the consequences of that plan beyond the initial distraction.
>They ignore and go through with it.
>After all is said and done, players complete their mission and abandon the town to a harsh winter of starvation
>Shift all of their alignments toward chaotic evil
>"Not fair, we're chaotic neutral, bro"

>Party about to do something stupid
>tell them it's stupid
>They think I'm lying and trying to trick them into not doing something stupid.
>They get injured or sometimes killed because of stupid action
>They get mad because they think I'm out to get them.

I guess I'm just a bad DM for having police go after someone who opened fire on a crowd in broad daylight for no real reason.

Ok, there was a reason. An assassination target they wanted dead was in said crowd and our sharpshooter got bored of following him and just decided to kill him right then and there.

These players seem less interested in a world with consequences and more interested in a sandbox. Maybe you should bring it up with them and adjust the game appropriately?

Not him, but your post made my day. I love how you implicitly assume that a sandbox is in fact just a player fellation device.

5 miles, bro.

Not any one specific time, but my group is starting to develop a bad habit where they think if they cut me off when I'm describing something and scream at their top of their lungs, anything they say officially happens.

Like...

"I RUN TO THE CHEST AND OPEN it AND LOOT EVERYTHING IN IT."
>Ok, you sprint for the chest and yank it open. As it opens, you notice a thread tied to the lid of the chest loosen and go up t-
"I RUN BACKWARDS AND DODGE THE TRAP."

>Ok, since none of you wantr to kepe watch tonight, you all just turn in and go to sleep. *some dice rolls behind screen and a few moments to check everyone's Perception scores* Ok, so you wake up in the morning to find your packs have been loote-
"WAIT I WAKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND DIVE OUT OF MY TENT TO KILL WHOEVER ROBBED US."

Thankfully I'm starting to browbeat the group out of it, save one doofus that still thinks it works(despite me never letting that shit slide) and gets pissy whenever I tell him no and keep going.

Yes, but RAW, falling damage caps at 20d6.

...

This is why I've thrown the "RAW" argument out of the window and so should you.

I'd've thrown it out, too, I'm just explaining why the person who wrote the story was right in saying that *technically*, the Kraken would have survived it.

>These players seem less interested in a world with consequences and more interested in a sandbox.
Why do you say this as if they're mutually exclusive things?

The one the creates muderhobo's, makes them leave to another GM, and then that GM becomes jaded. This ball sucking faggot is helping create the destructive cycle of bad players and bad GM's.

In this case, they are.

Some players can't handle a world where they have the freedom to choose and also have to face the consequences for their actions. These are apparently the players that user is dealing with.

terminal velocity is a thing, you know

Then the GM should just get new players instead of throwing pearls before swine.

You mean like the story you're both referencing did? Why are you even trying to start shit with people who all agree with you?

It also ends up being lethal to things our size far more often than it isn't.
There is a point where it shouldn't be a damage roll, but a percentage chance you survive, period, or go splat, no re.

oh, that's quite good.
I'd play in this campaign.

There's no reason to bloat the already bloated game with another sub system that acts like hp but totally different in this one circumstance. It would also further muddy the already abysmally shit hp abstraction, and that's another thing the game doesn't need.

20d6 will almost certainly outright kill "normal people" most if not all of the time. If anything what you do is add an optional rule that subtracts damage per die for smaller creatures, and adds damage per die for larger ones.

or you could just not be a dice sperg and say "we dropped it from a skyscraper's height, it's fucking dead."

Go suck a dick

Reminds me of a situation in my game where my player decided to hold a grenade in his (prosthetic) hand and let it go off and got pissed off at me that I said that it blew his arm off, rather than if just dealing 2d6 damage and lightly tickling his stamina bar.

I figured that if he didn't want his arm to get blown off then he wouldn't have held in in his fist when he pulled the pin.

Basically, if your players dont think that concequences for their actions are fun, then don't have conscequences for their actions. If they're big dumb murder hobos who get fun from killing goblins, getting XP and doing horrible crimes that they can't do IRL, then let them kill goblins, get XP and commit horrible crimes.
If the fun that some players get from being stupid and goofy interferes with the fun other players get from being serious and immersed, then avoid having them play together.

The baseline aim of dnd is to have fun, so you have to properly identify what kind of fun your players want to have and then to supply it.

>Summoner enemy
>His summoned beings explode and do AOE damage based on their max HP if he is attacked
>Players bitch like little children when "Bumrush the summoner" literally blows up in their faces
Fucking tired of these noob casual scum.

Yeah fuck what the gm wants, don't even consult him. Players want him to suck some dick, he shouldn't have any say in the matter and better pucker up.

Terminal velocity is a thing. After a point, you stop accelerating and thus the force you make on impact is capped.

If the players don't want consequences for their actions then they're manchildren and don't deserve to have someone GM for them.

there's no point in GMing if your players aren't having any fun. Then it's just the GM masturbating into a sock for 4 hours while the players sit and wait.

Otherwise just find a different group to play with.

There's no way to play dnd wrong if you're having fun. If they want to play make-believe grand-theft-auto, and if they find that fun, then they should be allowed to play it.

To be fair, it's only the acceleration that is capped. Force = massxacceleration, so the actual damage it would deal would depend on the mass of the object falling.

Max damage should depend on the size class at least, as a general rule. Perhaps 20d6 for a medium (so an epic level human barbarian would survive), then 40d6 for a large, 80d6 for a huge, 10d6 for a small, etc.

>There's no way to play dnd wrong if you're having fun. If they want to play make-believe grand-theft-auto, and if they find that fun, then they should be allowed to play it.
Then one of them can DM, because I'm running the game I want to.

Then find a different group to play with.
Make sure beforehand that everyone wants to get the same kind of fun out of the game.

>Then the GM should just get new players instead of throwing pearls before swine.
Good, then go do that instead of pissing and moaning. It's pretty simple.

Which is an impossible reliance.

If what the GM wants and what the players want differ he shouldn't be GMing for them to begin with. Communicate with your groups, niggers.

> Offer to run Exalted
> Horrible, horrible playerbase drawn by promises of over-the-top action and power fantasies submits horrible, horrible characters
> Try not to cry
> Cry a lot
> Can the game

>try and force players to play a game a specific way even though they seem pretty in unison with how they want to play
>fuck them, do whatever the fuck YOU want to do!
>wait, why are my players getting frustrated with me?
>they're manchildren
Man, you're all sitting around a table playing fucking make-believe. When you point the finger, 3 more point back at you, kiddo.

>Then one of them can DM, because I'm running the game I want to.
Then go do that instead of whining about your fucking players! Why is this so hard for you to understand?
You can control the actions of one person and only one person-- Yourself. If your players don't want to play the game you want to run then that's too fucking bad, you can't force them to change.
Take your own advice and find a new group.
Seriously, what the fuck is your issue? You know what you need to do so do it.

Just read through the thread. Honestly, you sound like a spoiled brat.

>kiddo

>Shadman.jpg

>Evil alignment PCs killing npcs without a good reason