Tell me about the game you're currently playing in. What's the world like? Are you enjoying it? How are the other players? If you're the DM, how do you feel about your players?
Also just tell stories here that don't fit in other threads and aren't cool enough to make your own thread for.
>DM
It's going alright, I suppose.
I've got three players, two of which are new to the hobby.
One of them is actually doing quite well, he's inquisitive and searches for solutions past killing things.
The other one, however, isn't really doing anything. For the most part, the game has been for two people while this guy sleeps or pisses around at an inn. My mission in regards to him is to get the fucker out of his shell, but I'm finding it difficult to appropriately balance that and the other two players.
To be clear, I'm putting more effort to the people that are actually doing things, but in-between sections I'll encourage him to do something.
I haven't given up on him yet, but my patience is certainly being worn down.
>DMing
picked a fight with a vampire many levels higher than them. our rouge got close to the sexy female vampire leader and got picked up be he's throat. He's most likely gonna die but as she's sucking he's HP out he's rolling to hit on her by making purposefully cringe one liners. and vampire related puns. He's a joy to play with one of the best players I've had the pleasure of DMing.
>pick related. i used it as the vampire bitches token.
Running one game, playing in two others.
The game I run is a complex sandbox with lots of roleplaying and relatively little combat, and the players have almost complete freedom. The PCs are rather low power and aren't treated special at all. Game has been going on consistently for most of the year and the sessions tend to go six to eight hours.
The world is very human oriented and down to earth and somewhat reflects an 8th/9th century germany aesthetic with some dark fantasy elements. Magic is somewhat rare and superstitions abound. Occasionally terrifying abominations erupt and escape from beneath the earth.
My players (for the most part) love exploring every nook and cranny and talking to every npc and collecting all the plot hooks, but they never seem to have time to follow through on them all.
Thus far they've only explored a tiny fraction of the overall regional map I cobbled together for them and there's far more material that I've made that I'm unsure whether it will ever be used.
Some of the combats have been walk in the parks, and a few of them have been 'oh shit we're all gonna die' where they've pulled off amazing escapes and survivals.
Overall I'm enjoying it quite a bit, mostly because I'm running the sort of game I want to play in and my players are pretty fun.
Currently playing in a high level D&D game. It's with a group of friends, which is really the only reason I still go: story is very linear point A/point B and everything that will happen is already preplanned, almost all important npcs are condisending, unpersuadable, unbeatable beings so as not to derail his story (he almost never uses charisma skill checks during RP with npcs, and when I ask for them, a roll of 30+ does nothing), and every dungeon or puzzle has ~1 solution, and makes sure we only reach that solution by nerfing/nullifying our abilities. We're level 18 but not once have we been made to feel powerful.
It's not all bad I guess, cause it's D&D I get to play and I get to play with my friends. I want to quit but no one else seems bothered by any of these things and I feel like a That Guy. Oh well, maybe the DM isn't necessarily bad, and I just want a more serious experience rather than his casual games.
running a SWN game that is basically (hey fuckers, you got yourself a ship, lets do merchant stuff) oh, and they might be infected with a nanovirus that lets them read an ancient language.
The players have been doing awesome and enjoying it. I had a great moment where they earned a shit ton of cash for solving the mission (the same one where they got their first ship) I stacked up real poker chips on the table' counting them up, then...started mentioning fees and taxes, whittling away 2 thirds of the pile of chips. (that shit will happen alot in their adventures. There are always costs and fees)
Started GMing a campaign based on One Piece on Monday. Went okay. Fortunately, three of the four players are experienced and really familiar with the setting.
Starts with two of the players adrift at sea after losing their ship in battle. Land on shore of Franklin Island and meet player 3, and they agree to team up to acquire a steam ship being auctioned called the Yankee Twain.
They meet and recruit two NPCs: a chef who loves firing guns while cooking, and a doctor who wants more exotic injuries to treat.
To score some cash, they get three leads and decide to follow the one that leads to the Head Editor's haunted castle. They break in and start looting the place, and it's completely filled with manuscripts. Eventually the manuscripts form whirlwinds and humanoid figures and attack the party. They encounter a glowing, moaning ghost who blasts then with fear effects, until player 3 remembers he bought the Immune to Fear perk and beats up the ghost with his Kettle Human powers.
The captain got separated and used his perfect vision to find a pair of golden glasses and some info about the castle. He returns the glasses to the ghost, who is just the Head Editor who everyone thought was dead. The glowing was a trick of the light, and the hostile paper was caused by wind. The players leave with a rare and valuable Lost Work, as well as some treasures they swiped when no one was looking.
Next session they plan to hijack the Yankee Twain during an open house, then pursue the enemy captain that stole their first ship, and apparently wipes their memories somehow.
There is also a sub plot of the local Marines evacuating suddenly, but none of the players have noticed.
>player
only had one session back in October, am not confident it will last
I hope you dont start getting the "itch" like i do after not playing any PnP games after 3 months.
>player
Starfinder AP is going well though we've had to take a break for a week until part 3 comes out. Only one perma death so far though I was a single point of damage away from it at the end of our last combat.
>GM
Ran 4 of the above AP group through one of the scenarios included in the book and they had a great time. Loved the lonely shrine guardian, loved the comfy and made good use of their powers
>Starfinder
How is Starfinder? I never really could get with Pathfinder. But scifi melodramatic space drama shit makes my dick hard.
>one session two months
>if it will last
lolwut
Well, it is L5R in the 1200's... and our Scorpion is taking up a lot of time trying to waifu my Character's sister and cover his tracks in all the dishonorable things he did in the past.
The whole situation reeks of intrigue if you look at it from the outside: when you are inside, however, it's just a scorpion being selfish and players that don't know what the heck they're doing.
>scifi melodramatic space drama shit makes my dick hard.
user, Stars Without Number is the shit you need.
Pretty bad. But it's mostly my fault, the game shouldn't even be happening in the first place.
I'm running an extensively home brewed version of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5.. So home brewed its basically unrecognizable as DnD mechanically. But it's really messing with 2 of the players who are very offended by the impurity.
Like i said, this game shouldn't even be happening. I only personally enjoy GMing games with stuff like Hero System, Gurps and 100% home brewed systems, because I like making everything myself. I'm probably just going to end the game.
Starfinder makes a good number of improvements. It's still very much 'Larger than life adventurers' but it's well...actually competently done on the math front (Especially after they errata'd an issue with the space DCs)
Sounds horrifying. Terrible, Terrible DM who doesn't understand that roleplaying is what D&D is all about.
Its fine to have a goal for a campaign, but the players should at least *feel* like they have some control over the events.
The best DMs railroad without you even noticing, or manage to somehow make your derailment lead back to the campaign goal/s
Yeah if you're playing in a system that other people are already familiar with your should keep the homebrewing purely for fluff (like new races, classes, setting stuff) and only do minor mechanical fixes if absolutely necessary.
You really shouldn't need to extensively rework the core mechanics of a game and I can see why some of the players are put off
Both are stalled out right now. One due to people just being super busy with the holidays and work and such, and the other because the GM is sort of a huge flake. It's his first time running anything so I can understand the trepidation but he's pushed back starting week after week for over a month. It's really disappointing since this is my first opportunity to actually play (rather than GM) in fucking years
Currently doing a rotating game with 3 other players in a starwars d20 campaign and its actually going very well. We're all rping a lot with enough action to keep us busy between negotiations, espionage, and other shenanigans. For context we have an HKesque battle droid, a besalisk, and a squib who owned the battle droid. Only complaint is that we went from nobodies on narr shada to mercs for the republic waaaaaayyy too fast.
Player.
Dead. The DM cancelled all further meetings last Saturday. I'm bummed, because I really liked it.
>playing Dark Crusade
>I'm a Sorcerer and we also have a Noise Marine and a Warpsmith
>Warpsmith player is great at creating almost game breaking builds for characters and items >Noise marine is here for crowd control
>I'm here for psychic power and general evilness and RPing
>I decide I'm gonna be teh evul mastermind, and so Telepathy is a natural choice so I can influence people from afar and cause all kinds of craziness
>we arrive on a Mechanicus planet and cyborgs are immune to telepathy
>wellshit.jpeg
>Still decide to go for it
>hijack trains
>things don't go too well
>have to send the train too fast down the tracks and jump out of it
>hijack two other trains to collide into each other
>kidnap and torture train worker guy
Dark Crusade : train terrorism simulator 2017 edition. Most fun I've had RPing in a while.
>DM
Going well. We're 18 months in, we try to play two times a month but it's more like once every 4 weeks because we're adults with jobs and shit.
All 5 players seem really interested in where the story is going (I think they feel like it'll culminate soon) and they've all gotten to know their characters really well thanks to personal quests.
I do worry that they're getting overpowered though. Recently slain an adult green dragon even though they're only level 8. And now they got a dragon's horde of shit so they're rich af.
Having some trouble in making it challenging enough without insta-killing the weakest one (although I feel like it's about time one of them dies, or at least gets maimed).
>dm
>bored of 5th ed
>want to dm literally anything that isn't an edition of D&D past 3 or pf
>after a year and a half of playing my players still ask which one is the d20
>one time this dude introduces himself with a speech that answers a lot of questions about himself and what he is willing/unwilling to do
>players ask questions he's already answered, about 6 times before I decide to just reread the entire speech
>if I wasn't going easy on them almost every situation would devolve into combat
>don't even get me started on that one time they tried to investigate a crime
I want to run something more gritty like AD&D or WFRP yet.. hoo boy with my group the game would die before it began
>as a player in an ad&d2e game
it's pretty simple walking across the countryside kind of stuff, yet it manages to be more fun than my other game
I'm a GM.
Playing simple d6 for a cinematic Grail Wars campaign. I have 2 players, one is a summoner and one is a servant. The roster of servants is something im quite proud of:
>Atlas as bezerker
>Ninja as assassin
>Ned Kelly as archer
>Sun Tzu as rider
>Azazel as saber
And I let my players play as a rogue team that doesn't fall under a category, so my servant player is Johnny Cash.
2 sessions in and its going great. They had a great fight nearly to the death when Azazel attacked with his Noble Phantasm, attacking Cash with his 6 swords of hell. Ninja attempted to kill Cash and Ned Kelly's summoners, Atlas is refusing to obey his master's orders and Sun Tzu is just sitting in the background cooking up a scheme.
WHO WILL WIN THE GRAIL?
DM: just finished a 7-session campaign with mostly new players, which I think went pretty well:
>campaign starts with players kidnapped by goblins
>escape from captivity to find the duchy under siege by orcs
>take on missions to sabotage orcs
>players inexplicably join orcs at last second and sack the city for profit
Player: Part of 3 separate campaigns (5e, 5e, Star Wars Saga). We only play once every two weeks. Divided up between 3 games, we never get anywhere, but the variety is nice.
>Player
A friend is GMing a Dark Heresy game where I am some random hiveworlder who snuck onto an IG ship, affectionately named "Rando". Eventually met up with a Toast obsessed Cog Boy played by another friend who has a disturbing hatred of waffle irons. Found a small cult of Tzeench worshipers, blew them up, and got drafted into the retinue of an Inquisitor who looks a lot like George Clooney.
We're about to infiltrate the webway for some God awful reason. All in all, it's going well. None of us had played it before.
Your game sounds so unusual. Good to see I'm not the only one who likes a good sandbox.
DM: been running a DnD 5e game that's coming to an end soon. Sadly I'm losing my players as they are getting tired of combat but I don't have an easy out for them to do the more RP based stuff we did before.
Game started with random quests each pointing towards something bigger brewing. Introduced the big bad who's been trying to manipulate everyone into fighting each other. Later they find out he has some grand plan to consolidate the number of Gods in existence and become one of them.
With so many people dead and the world close to being remade there isn't as much room for RP fluff. I'm a little scared it'll die before I give it a proper ending as it's my first long campaign I'm DMing but I can see I'm losing the light of Joy in my players eyes. Bleh.
DMing a CoC campaign.
I recently moved and got a group of players who already knew each other, so I started out not really integrated into the group, and the game moved at a fucking snail's pace (I already played that campaign with another group who wasted a lot less time on random talks between the players). But now we got a new player and the rest of the group started slowing down with the inside jokes and focusing a little more on the game, so things are going better, I guess.
There was that one guy I refused to play with, though (other players said he was an asshole, I don't want to bring drama yo the table so I politely tell him that there's a problem between him and a few players and that I can't accept him as a result) and who proceeded to autistically screech for an entire afternoon on my messenger before I blocked him. Sort of proved the other player's point.
My players surprise me, but usually in good ways. Late people make me want to choke them to death though.
DM here, running a campaign of new/inexperienced players, with one experienced player.
Everyone is enjoying it so far, and they're hooked. We've played three sessions so far, and they've just log flumed their river barge into an underground series of rivers.
Some are still building characters in terms of actual personalities, but others have taken to it well, as some have really surprised me. And they're not being total murderhobos, which is great. One of them is even going to try and negotiate peace talks between a Duke and some invading Nomadic tribes.
If anyone's got any tips for how to work more personality-building naturally into a session, that'd be great.
>>players inexplicably join orcs at last second and sack the city for profit
Cool, I like last minute plottwists that arise naturally.
Nothing worse than a DM who tries to hamfist their railroad.
>Player
Playing in a game run by my little brother. Its his first time DMing and most of the other players are new or have only played in one game before this one. He's great at improv, but made a mistake playing in his friend's setting, who is also playing with us. Friend pretty frequently stepping on player backstories or plot lines/areas. We're traveling the players out of the setting soon so he has more freedom. Lots of fun!
>Player
In campaign run by Friend, it's okay. All characters described as wearing red/black. Gives players dues ex machina items they ask to get rid of. Railroady. Playing as my brother's Grandmother, and I'm having fun with that. Friend DM doesnt like how lighthearted character is.
>DM
Have played tabletop games for a few years with a few different systems, but never ran one before. Trying my first Christmas one-off soon. Excited but scared.
You, I like you.
If my SWN game was in person I would totally steal the poker chip idea
Run Death Frost Doom. ITS ALWAYS CHALLENGING!
Bestie's fiance advertised it as a ganger Shadowrun campaign. I showed up expecting the Warriors, or something like MJ's Beat It video, or the bike gang fight from Akira, and instead it's all don't tell people who you are, like we're regular shadowrunners but shitty ones who don't get paid well. Kind of not the vibe I wanted.
Other game I am playing is Ars Magica. Super fun, don't understand the magic system but I really enjoy how freewheeling it is. We're in Greece and Satan's Serbian cultists are exsanguinating our sheep or somethiing. I'm playing a Jerbiton with a positive reputation as a folk healer, so she's running around trying to talk to people about stuff and occasionally dropping piles of dirt, the one spell I can cast pretty well.
>rocks fall and everyone dies the adventure
haha what a twist!
>player
>slowly dying world, a metric fuckton of gods
>low magic early medieval fantasy, got your light fey, dark fey, dwarves, hob goblins, various lizardfolk
>6 players, avg 3 a night, 1 DM
>gone on for two years, I’m the only original player left
>people have come and gone, some have varying interest in roleplaying, others had schedule conflicts
>I’m roomates with DM, and occasionally act as assistant if he needs help with scene plans, designing places, DJing, or mass dice rolls
>current cast
>a tall slightly overweight guy with memory problems, only ever plays as himself but with an accent, wants things to happen then never follows through
>a skinny nerdy, likely sociopathic black guy who always plays a fairy princess/Mary Sue x100, good for comic relief, secretly evil AF
>small bearded fedora man, always plays as either a girl or an effiminate male, 50% attendance. Makes overly complicated plans, never shares with DM, complains he can’t hatch his evil plans, corrupted his character’s soul to be a warlock but has decided he’s done with the “being evil” thing
>soyboy, a tallish chubby bisexual with a early 20th century RP fetish, always a parody of his GF. 25% attendance, his character is only useful for being famous.
>the foothill, The Mountain’s happy go lucky black cousin. Just wants to be an ogre and do ogre things, has made character but can’t find time for a full session and phones it in.
>me, only have RP experience in this one game, originally designed a trump parody that slowly turned into a real character. My overambitious plans have resulted in the death .2% of all the planets death, have been coup’d from positions twice, have had 12 near-death experiences ,became a high level death shaman/medic, and am working on building an empire with my employer, a lawful evil summoner snake, which will likely backfire and result in more destruction.
DM has a huge boner on thinking our subpar party is actually strong, while being absolutely inept at anything that goes beyond his prewritten module, to the point that it's actually railroading.
It's just combat after combat with some small, badly fluffed intermissions, while the module itself is meant to be mostly fluff and most combat avoidable.
GMing Nechronica. Final session is going to happen Sunday/Monday, which will be a relief because it's gone on for nearly two years. Premise is the Dolls are sent into S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s Zone to kill it, if the Zone was over-run with undead little girl government projects and was caused by aliens instead of the C-Con. Most of the time has been spent politicing between factions. It's been a rollercoaster of great to terrible, which is to be expected since I've never run such a successful (long-lived) game before. The players seem to be enjoying it, although a couple of them get bogged down in mechanics and argue with each other, which is a total drag on the game. The other two seem to just enjoy being along for the ride, so that's nice.
Overall, I'd say it's been fun most of the time, but I will be super happy to get my Sundays back for a while before I start another game.
Honestly it isn’t. Been about a year now since last session. Everyone really wants to play. I really want o start again. But I feel disconnected from everything.