"You start in a tavern"

I started with a chase once. Worked well.

Starting with action is fine, but not all action has to be combat.

Let me guess, you shout railroading whenever NPCs refuse to cooperate with your cartoonishly violent PCs?

Looks like I'm not going in, then. Sora'd whup my ass.

Dumb anime poster

Nobody likes to play as cowards

>we’re playing as lolis
>but we’re trying to get into a tavern

Are we playing as loli sluts or something?

No indeed. I used a cargo accident on a boat, a halfling chase, and a wild building fire too.

Yeah, sounds like a good way to start a campaign, and i would much prefer this to a simple combat encounter.

"I fire the bouncer - clearly, he's dipped into the whiskey reserve again. What can i get the rest of you gits?"

>needing id

That's what the super-ego is for, kids

Hmmm!!

Fighter?? Pull up the sword >:) its time to get Gnasteh >:3

*sworeds trading* 9999 *UGHAAA*
Ok bouncer, u can stay here but u gotta let us pass u_u

>GM threatens every action that doesn't follow his railroad with vague and undefined """"consequences""""
I fucking love shitting all over people that do this. It's so funny to watch them scramble to asspull something to my detriment.

"You all meet in a tavern brawl. Roll initiative."

>those short arms

A child knocking out a bouncer seems unlikely to cause legal issues for the party.

But you don't actually have friends or an RPG group.

>i love being a shitter who doesnt want to make any progress in the game and instead is just acting like a cunt out of spite
I got one for you then: fuck off. You're not welcome at my table. I put hours into hand crafting a world full of meaning and deep experiences so that the players have something to do besides just rolling to attack monsters. judging by your attitude you seem like the kind of friendless faggot who joins groups to try to get over being such an insufferable cunt but can't help but being fucking retarded to hide the fact that you just want to be violated and abused because you think so little of yourself. although, that should be blatantly obvious given your use of a fucking anime as your reaction image. faggot.

You sound awfully upset, user. Who hurt you?

I think that user is just trying to be ornery. You should probably just ignore him.

>he's trying to be a bird
what did he mean by this.

You can’t stop me

I understand why he does this, why are you so butthurt about it.
It's just not fun when GM won't allow you to strive off of his path, do dumb and/or weird shite.

>tavern
>ID
>bouncer
But why, though? Taverns aren't pubs or night clubs. Some might be a little seedy or rowdy, especially late at night, but most are perfectly family friendly establishments.

When you make pointless replies to keep an "argument" going, it makes you look like a dullard.

Not the user you responded to, but leaving the path is fine in games I run. I take offense when players do dumb shit for the sake of doing dumb shit, though, since I'm putting effort into creating a good game and I want to get to enjoy the story they play out too.

rev up those Bluff checks

>Assuming that a tavern = tavern brawl with no other options
Wow user you must've had some shitty DM's over the years.

You mean a dumb one.

>giving ribbonfag attention

Gotta settle for milk bar then.

What kind of civilization has advanced to the point where asking for IDs and having bouncers is a thing but people still go to taverns instead of bars, pubs, etc?

One in which taverns are trendy.

>moder civilization where everyone went full hipster and filled everything with medieval aesthetics and shit like taverns, garrisons and knights

>assuming a tavern brawl isn't the best option

I bet you've never been in an actual bar fight.

>character 1 has a nice plothook in his backstory
>has to convince other characters in the tavern to follow him on his quest/journey to whatever
>player is forced to present his character in a meaninful way, exposing his character's flaws and traits, while also exploring the other character's motivations in an attempt to win them over
Did anyone try this?

>"You start in a tavern"
>"The tavern is on fire, what do you do?"

Deny any and all suspicions.

...

I've seen that movie a ton of times but for some reason never noticed before how weird that bar is. Is that a real place in London?

Probably not. Though it's not that weird a concept - basically the furnishing is just recycling discarded fashion dolls.

No, I recall hearing that the bright intensity of the bulbs was warming up the milk to a dangerous degree.

>dare you enter my magical realm shit
don't do this.

Provide id.

>2017
>Not drinking your Moloko Vellocet boiling hot from a scalding hot titty.

It's like you don't even ultraviolence.

They do look like incandescent bulbs. You could probably do this today without the heat problem if you just used fluorescent light or LEDs.

>Started my campaign in a tavern that immediately erupted into an unwinnable battle

I don't understand what this reply has to do with the OP at all.

>start with the party in a slow-moving deathtrap
>first 95% of the campaign is a flashback to how they got there
>last 6% is escaping and actually defeating the villain

>not starting in medias res
>not starting with "You kick in the door to the Tomb of Gargoyle King. What do you hope to find?"

This kind of behavior is dangerously close to attention seeking. If you have to genuinely convince the other players to play D&D with you then something seriously got lost in translation during chargen.

A proper game starts with the players already having some kind of connection and a reason for being there. This is why as a GM I always require at least two PCs already know each other before the game starts.

Then we don't go in. Simple as that. We go somewhere else and leave the DM assblasted that we didn't take his hamfisted plot hook.

It's not so much as a plot hook as much as it is obvious bait for some dumbshit "encounter". I've had GMs do this to me and it always bugs the crap out of me. They throw in NPCs who do nothing but antagonize the party for no real reason. Yeah, I know "show my your ID" is somewhat of a valid question but why the fuck would you blindside your players with that at the very start of the game? It's too petty to actually contribute to the plot unless you're all playing actual high schoolers, and it sets a bad precedent for the game.

People who pull this shit should be smart enough to know players do a perfectly fine job of picking fights without some nobody waving their dick around.

>implying this actually happened in a game
guys, c'mon

I've always thought it would be cool to have PCs roll on the Fiasco relationship tables for a session 0, but I don't know if it would go over well with the players.

>>moder civilization where everyone went full hipster and filled everything with medieval aesthetics and shit like taverns, garrisons and knights
Well the AI God-Corporations dismantled the military complex since it was more profitable to settle their disputes with business negotiation, what else were we going to do?

>Be me, a couple of years ago
>Just getting in to pen and paper with friends, playing 4E IIRC
>Roll paladin with maxed out diplomacy, something like +14 at level 1
>We start off having just escaped prison where we were apparently political prisoners
>No one's really sure what to do, so since I'm the only one who bothered to give my character a backstory, I set off for my homeland and everyone else tags along
>We decide to go through the forest to avoid running being recaptured
>Two days into our journey, we randomly run into soldiers heading the other way (so not tracking us down, and presumably have no idea who we are
>They move to attack
>I say I want to roll diplo
>DM tells me "No."
>Wait, what? Really?
>"Okay, fine. Make your roll."
>It's a 17(+14)
>Fuckyeah
>"You weren't able to convince them, they're still attacking you."
>DC >31 at level fucking 1

>"Or you would but the bouncer ain't letting you in without id"

What, my superego ain't good enough for this dive? Fuck this, there gotta be better places in this psychoanalytic dump. Ugh. Hope "The Schappenfreude" has better drinks today.

> >DC >31 at level fucking 1
You realize that Diplomacy is an opposed roll, with predisposition modifiers, right?
To turn a hostile NPC to a friendly one, you'd need a DC 35 Diplokacy check, and that's not even counting that Diplomacy takes 10 full-round uninterrupted actions, or a single full-round at a penalty of -10.
tl;dr nigga you dumb

Jeebus Kryst, that's horrible.

It also assumes the other party is willing to be diplomatic with you as well. Rolling a 50 on Diplomacy isn't going to help if the person you're rolling against is unwilling to listen.

>Being this anal about the rules specifically
>The guys are completely opposing you, haven't realized that you're fucking walking murdermachiens that have a 98% chance of killing them and there's no reason for them to be fighting in the first place
>You must clear a literally impossible DC in order to succeed!

>You start in a tavern. The damp, cold floor of its basement which you're resting your head on isn't your ideal night at the inn, but perhaps with how much you drank, you weren't the innkeep's ideal night at the inn, either.
>A wooden door reinforced with metal bits is the obvious entry and exit of the room. Small windows near the ceiling are cracked open so you don't suffocate, the busy midday streets bustling gently through the openings of the panes. A small cubicle in the back corner holds a stool with most of the seat removed, perched over a very wide grate leading to the sewer. A pumpkin slowly rots in the corner.

This shit works in Shadowrun because players, especially new players, often don't start the game with an ID or just a shitty forgery of an ID
And most jobs/quests are given by people who meet at a bar or 'tavern' of some description

It can work very well to introduce them to the legalities of how a SIN works

Relevant, though.

>stop ruining muh precious novel, it's totally gonna get published some day

> >The guys are completely opposing you, haven't realized that you're fucking walking murdermachiens that have a 98% chance of killing them and there's no reason for them to be fighting in the first place
>implying the enemies should know you are more powerful than them with no actual demonstration and/or reputation to back it up
Or are you a proponent of metagaming paradigm where bandits suddenly go "Holy shit, that guy is 5 levels higher than us, we shouldn't fight him"? If yes, then you are one raging faggot.
Stop being retarded and actually think for yourself for once.

Also,
>not being anal about rules
RULES ARE THERE FOR A REASON, YOU MASSIVE RETARD.
If you don't care about the rules, then you might as well roll 5 Nat20s in a row and shout "Just like in my Twitch podcasts! Bazinga!", while your character teleports behind the enemies, gets on the floor, pssh, nothing personnel dinosaur.

>Inb4 being fine

Probably leave, grab people in distress, be hero.

I obviously examine the pumpkin.

What's the point of asking for a diplomacy roll if you're just going to say "you fail" no matter how high they roll?

Just cut the bullshit and move the story along instead of wasting our fucking time.

But the first thing the GM said was, "no".

Also, any character with a +14 to Diplomacy at level 1 was obviously made by a gigantic cunt who needs a swift half-brick to the back of the head.

Or they just wanted to have a CHA based class who was good at diplomacy.

What, do you double monster HP if the Fighter deals too much damage in one round, or throw up AMF's if the mage starts casting too many spells?

At some point, you gotta realize that if the GM is always going to be the party's enemy, it's only going to encourage them to cheese EVEN HARDER until one of you ends up losing a group.

you're a bad GM and no one wants to play with you because of this

I like this idea. Why haven't I done this? Video games do this all the damn time.

>First 95%
>Last 6%

Increasing enemy health to deal with the batshit insane damage that players deal isn't something to be looked down upon. Doubling may be a bit overkill though.

The important thing is to adjust difficulty of encounters in such a way that it doesn't feel like a complete steamroll but not in such a way that it's a chore either.

I turn away, sliding on the heel of my boat shoes.
"My father will hear of this, you poor loser!"
The other guys pat me on my shoulder in acknowledgement, but I flinch at their touch as I am afraid they might dirty my mint-green Ralph Laurent polo shirt.
"Let's go buy some beer with your fake ID, Richie." Oswald says, which really lifts my mood.
I could really go for a bud light right now.
I put my hands down into my salmon colored chino shorts and together with the guys from my frat I make my way towards the local super market.
I fucking hate poor people.

Being a halfling sucks

>I don't understand what this reply has to do with the OP at all.
He's implying that the party is composed entirely of sexualized underage females.

got a solid chuckle out of me
well done

>the monk's eyes glisten as he rolls

*freeze frame*
*record scratch*

Yep, that's us, you're probably wondering how we got ourselves into this mess, to understand that we have to go back to the beginning of that weird day....

>fighting with a bouncer to get into a bar is cartoonish violence

But where did he get that idea? It's a complete non sequitur.

It depends on tone of the story.

>"The entire campaign takes place in the tavern."
How do you pull this off?

Cheating mode: The adventurers tell their stories to other patrons, and the players play through them that way. Bonus points for narrative shenanigans.

Damn, I'd do it, but I'm a GM, too, so it doesn't count.

I'd run OP's premise, too. Seems like a lot of fun, to run underage adventurer wannabes. I wouldn't accept loli art or calling them lolis, though. Sorry, OP. Use less cutesy art and call them girls and I'm go.

That's only one step away from Munchhausen's premise. Totally doable.

This reminds me of the time I played a loli litch who owned the very tavern the party met up in.
Turns out that when the GM can't drop anything else on you, werewolves show up.

Surreal horror campaign where something changes each day?