Midly infuriating stuff

>"I roll Stealth"
EVERY FUCKING TIME.

It is even worse in conversations. Whenever someone says "Can I roll persuasion to convince him?" I die a little inside.

>psyduck

>Player tries to do something potentially dangerous
>Other player: "I stop him!" and looks at me expectantly

>Players nickeling and diming over literally every quest reward and item.
>Dude offers them 400gp? Nah give us 410
>Merchant offers 50gp for their sword? Nah give me 100gp for it
Just once I wish they'd stop being so cheap and greedy

I'm in a group right now where the rest of the party ignores my ideas 100% of the time. It's not even a rejection per se, just that a couple of the players having a voting bloc and will do the first thing that comes to their minds, ignoring my input no matter what I offer. My character is essentially an NPC at this point.

>More to the point, why the fuck are you morons in a party if you can't stand each other that fucking much?
I fucking hate this shit, and will actively call people out on this shit when I gm. We all built characters together for a reason, and yet literally nobody gets along with this one guy, he keeps doing things that absolutely do not gel with the party. WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU PUTTING UP WITH HIS SHIT?

Leave. If you're not having fun and you've said this to them,you did talk to them, right? then leave and find another group. People that think 3.5/PF is the end all of all roleplaying games
>Say I'm going to an AD&D game
>Still get kitsune mindslaving loli whizzards when I say no
Someone fucking kill me.

>not knowing what Mind Eaters are
Oh wow, I think someone is about to get their mind eaten

"You are in the fourth round of the tournament, Herman, your buddy just won his round and quit. The combat is mortal, you have a chance to drop out''
>No I go to the next round
''you are slightly wounded and next opponent might be even stronger
>yeah I take the risk
He then fights with a dude with a giant polearm, his arm gets cut right to the bone, he bleeds.
''You are bleeding hard, you are on the ground. You block his polearm with your sabers, he is trying to pierce your neck. You feel weak''
>I try to punch him in the balls
''the dude is armored but ok. you hit him in the balls, he just hits you with his polearm, misses''
My NPC throws 50 gold (That's a lot) and shouts ''I will throw 100 more if you spare him''.
The polearm guy says yes but if he surrenders.
>I try to punch him in the balls again
>gets stabbed to death
>can you revive my character please?
>you killed me intentionally
>your game is shit (been praising it all this time)
>I kick him from the game
>He approaches us few days after and tells us he decided to quit our game
???

You sound like a massive killjoy. If you think this is childish, why don't you find another group? everyone else seems into it.

What's wrong with this exactly, is this bait? There's literally no other use for persuasion.

>being this new

Oh, it's pasta? Fuck.

Maybe your friends are Jews

I'm frustrated in a game I'm in now because the other players are assholes to every NPC they meet for no reason and the GM never gives them consequences for this. Also they're psychopaths who want to torture everyone who survives combat with us.

How does this even happen? Is the DM oblivious or just too spineless to say anything?

This, recently I was in a game where the party was in a fight and one guy was like "you boys have this covered, I'm gonna see what else is around here" and started opening doors and going into other rooms.

Don't worry, user - it happens

>Let's substitute playing for rolling a dice

It should only be rolled if there is a question of if the npc would be persuaded or not. This is something that would be called for by the gm if necessary. Stopping a conversation mid way to tell the gm that you'd like to hold down a skip button like a cutscene in a video game is a sign of player of game related issues. It is one step below telling the gm that you don't give a fuck get this over with. Even if the game itself is the issue and the gm really should get on with it, this is one of the more tactless approaches to bringing up the issue, though we both know it's just because you're a rollplayer that is in a game not suited to your tastes and unable to admit it due to some social failing.

I get more annoyed when they fail then put on a pouty face until they're back in the fight or something. Nothing bugs me more than someone getting their ass kicked then getting all upset over it, would you rather enemies never be able to hit you ever? Would you rather not ever take damage? Hate it.

Or, now hear me out, or...it's because I'm playing a character who is great at persuading people and I want to utilize my character's strengths?

If you're going to guilt trip me for using persuasion, why not just say "hey, persuasion's fucking useless" so I could've invested in something else that I can actually use?

You know, this brings up a good point.
Some people roleplay their conversations word for word, some don't. In the case where you're just telling the DM the gist of what you're saying, a social check of some sort would make sense. But when the players have way more direct control over their characters, does it make sense to do that?

>"Aha! I have the points for that!"
>"No, you don't. You didn't assign skill points at character creation, so you have none. Stop fucking around, stop being a piece of shit. Shape up, or leave."

The better solution is to not play WOTC D&D

The REAL better solution is not to play games at all.

>I want to roleplay a persuasive character
>So I'm gonna ask for ways to not roleplay him

Yeah, instead of just growing some balls and telling a cheater to knock it off people should stop playing games they enjoy.

>I'm going to let you invest in a skill
>Then make you feel guilty whenever you use it.
Seriously, just say persuasion is worthless so I could've picked something else to invest my points into.

>B-but you said I could earlier? Remember, during character creation? I asked and you said, "sure"

This isn't what if the DAM gives the green light.

I always used a persuasion/charm/etc roll to determine how pre-disposed the NPC is to you. If you roll really well, they'll probably agree with what you want more quickly, give more benefit of the doubt, etc. If you roll poorly, they might be more suspicious, actively look for holes in your story.
So you're still gonna have to role-play, but if your character isn't good at persuasion you're going to need some damn convincing arguments.

>games they enjoy
I though we were talking about 3.5 though.

The party arguing over splitting loot.

"Okay, there's 5 of us so we split it 5 ways"
'Sure but I want to put some into the savings pot'
"I'm the crafter, I need more"
'She wasn't here last session she doesn't deserve as much'
"Well we're going to need to divide this a little better..."

Motherfuckers you're only going to borrow money off each other when you need it, stop with the dick/clit-measuring contest and quit with the minutia, just have a single "party" fund.

It's usually not really telling them what to do, it's mostly about oversights or forgetting bits of a plan. Like, if you all agree that one character should stay with a fragile NPC, but then they start making attacks in combat or preparing items based on what going on with the rest of the party.

Rolling is the whole game. It's role-playing with the addition of unexpected results to actions, forcing you to adjust and figure out what happens. Its not much of an RPG without rolls, it's just RP.

>Success
>"The guard walks right past, completely unaware of your presence. His pace was brisk, you're lucky he was walking with a purpose."
>Failure
>"The guard rounds the corner an immediately notices you. He draws his sword."

Literally what is wrong with this?

>B-but you said I could earlier?
No I didn't. I said, "assign your points you fucking retard".

"roleplayers" are so inept at the game that they associate anyone and anything that references the rules as being a shitty "rollplayer."

For reference, these are the same people who will swear that their controller was broken if you beat them at a video game.

This is how it is done in TFT. You just make a disposition check for everyone.

In that case he didn't try to keep points and your little revenge roleplay didn't happen.

>write a five page setting document.
> you dont even need to read anything more tha what is relevant to your class, culture and character
> they still dont manage to read it

When the cleric dont know the name of god i despair a little

Okay.

>Rolls are a part of the game so you should be rolling constantly for everything non-stop, because if you ever stop rolling then you aren't even playing a game anymore.

Well, you might want to say what the fuck your character is trying to do, instead of starting to roll dice for no reason. I'll tell you when you have to roll something.
For example, you may want to hide in the nearby closet. The guard has no reason to check inside of it, so there's no need to roll.

Nice projecting, have you considered killing yourself?
I'd be seriously worried about the present/future state of RPGs, but I know you guys don't actually play games.

It's a lot more tolerable if they're using callers.

There are dumber things in the Ethereal.

Also that's a Thought Eater

>Mind Eaters
Looks like somebody already got their thoughts eaten..

An RPG without rolling dice is freeform, and nobody wants to deal with freeform.

...

"I move 5 feet.", "Then I check for traps"

I have one player in my group who is such a fucking autist about this, every room with something strange halts him in his tracks, our spellcaster will intentionally move ahead of him out of frustration.

Really any roll before it's called for...

"I walk into the bar, I just rolled a 27 for Gather Information, what do I get?"

"I'm going to sneak through the dungeon, I rolled a 37 on Stealth."

"I search the room, I got a 7 on my Investigation, so I'm going to ask Bob to do it too."

Fuck you all. It works like this, I set the scene, ask you what you're doing, and if what you're doing requires a roll, I'll ask you to roll something. It might or might not be the directly applicable skill, and 9/10 you won't need to roll for stuff unless there's interesting consequences for failure. This isn't a fucking board game.

ugh, yeah, we've got that guy in our group too. he's constantly offering to "respec" people's characters for them, because obviously they did it wrong, and they'd be way more effective if they had just taken 1 level of ninjadeathmage or whatever.

Games having ”plot”

People who start campaigns without a session zero

My God, the most satisfying thing

I run a game, get a guy, he rolls in with this blood demon warlock thing. Straight up edge evil tribal shamanism. He knows it in and out of character that he's a huge edgelord. Fits the setting, but he's literally pulled out the extreme example

He gets introduced? The party are suspicious
He tags along for plot? They still don't trust him
They get into a big fight with the baddies, he pulls a guys soul out his body and interrogates it, everyone is on edge
Next fight with a big bad? He summons a blood demon/elemental and sics it on the baddies. Baddies break and flee and get hunted down and mutilated. Party is choked.

Player? Realizes he's made something edgy and actually owns up to it! The PC owna up to it too! HE BOWS OUT AND ROLLS UP SOMETHING MORE CONGRUENT NEXT GAME

Holy shit so satisfying

The DM calls for skill checks, not the player, you troglodyte.

>i'm going to let you invest in a skill
>then never let you use it
point still stands

”Sure. You take 10 minutes to examine this section of the hallway.” And then you start rolling for wandering monsters. Even if there were none before.

>You may only use your skills if I deem them necessary.
>I'm not going to tell you which skills are necessary, you're just going to have to guess.
Wow, no wonder people think skills are worthless if they had to deal with morons like you as their GM.

>assuming hostility from the GM with no basis to do so
You are the shitter, user, and make any group you join shittier for your presence.

Also, the character doesn’t know he rolled a 7, so no, he does not ask Bob.

Oh, I’m going to let you use it. When your character does something that calls for it.

Maybe the shopkeep wants to be rid of the ogre so he was gonna give you a sword for free even without you rolling, ever think of that?

Not him but why are YOU assuming that he's assuming hostility from the GM?

If you're only letting people make skill checks when you specifically call for them, you are pretty much determining what skills they'll actually be able to use. It's not meant to be a hostile thing, but realize that some skills (such as perception) are going to be called way more often than others (such as Sleight of Hand), so if the situation comes up, players should be able to say "hey, can I use X since this situation feels appropriate?"

>Maybe the shopkeep wants to be rid of the ogre so he was gonna give you a sword for free even without you rolling, ever think of that?
What are you on about?

Are you saying that if I didn't roll a persuasion roll, you would've just given me free loot or are you saying that I get a free sword, in addition to whatever I could get if I rolled a good persuasion?

Autists who don't like something you do and then get mad that you're not a mindreader.

One of my players is about 10 years older than me and always talks about how much he enjoyed the older editions of D&D. The difficulty (characters dying, etc), the random tables, making players map out the dungeon themselves. But every time I try to incorporate elements like this he always seems like he's not happy or impressed.

He has said on a number of occasions that he really enjoys the games I run. But it's annoying that I've added elements that he's specifically mentioned and I haven't gotten that "Wow, this is what I'm looking for" reaction. I dunno, maybe I'm fighting against rose tinted glasses.

Yes, they can ask if a skill is applicable to the situation. The DM may then say yes, or say that it’s an automatic success and there’s no need to roll, or explain why it’s impossible (”he’s on the other side of a window so you can’t pick his pocket from here”). Or even ask ”but what is your character DOING?”. But the player does not just start rolling skill checks without prompt.

Worse, autists who don't like something you do and rather than talk to you or quietly excuse themselves from the game, they do everything in their power to sabotage your campaign out of spite.

Everyone is always for some epic get without realizing that a) We just retcon any stupid shit they did that would throw off the storyline and b) not only do we kick them out the group but we also warn other groups in the area not to invite them in due to their behavior.

Yet they will complain to us about how they can't find a game anymore, go figure.

So like if a dude rolls a d20 and then says "hey, I got a [higher than average number] on my [skill] check!" or some shit like that?

>split the party

Oh man, my players learned this the hard way.

>be me, DM
>plan a simple necromancy cult temple (unbeknownst the party)
>player consists of ranger, druid, bard, and rogue. AKA, probably going to get their shit rekt by undead, because no cleric or paladin
>start fight in the "courtyard", which has two towers flanking on either side, a "cathedral" in front of them, and a carriage house to the right built into the wall
>each of those places has their own encounters planned
>rogue runs up in the middle of the fight, hides behind some stacks of hey, and picks a lock into the tower wall, and proceeds to go deeper into the building and enters the "dorm" of the necromancy cult (which thankfully the party chose to raid while most of the cult was busy pillaging a local tomb)
>has now aggro'd a zombie beholder that was chilling there as a guardian
>the druid, by circumstance of combat placement, gets separated and retreats into the stable house... and promptly angers a wraith
>Ranger decides to break into the cathedral, where a prized artifact is kept, and is genuinely surprised to find a necromancer caretaker and a few undead skeletons in plate armor.
>Did i mention they hadn't even killed the vampire spawn in the middle of the courtyard?

The party essentially wound up aggroing 4 different CR 5-6 encounters at level 5, while split up, and they got super salty they had to fall back when the Rogue tried to sneak and ate shit and died and the Ranger got swarmed with skeletons, and the bard almost got drinked like a Caprisun. Like, bitches don't split the fucking party. I have to explain to them that "even though you are level 5, it really means that you are basically equal to a CR2 monster in terms of HP and damage output while on your own. Don't be alone."

This too. I've had 1 game end due to in-character irreconcilable differences, because one day the characters went "you know what, this isn't working out for any of us".

To be fair it's sometimes kind of required. There are times when you don't have full information either because something was mentioned in passing while you were doing something else or because you forgot some small detail. Shit like "I drop my disguise self while covered in blood just as a party member lies to another that I found a peaceful solution to a problem for comedic effect" should rightfully be granted a double take if I think my party is talking in their room at the inn when they're actually in the middle of the tavern and I'm playing a kill on sight race.

>barbarian with 5 int who doesn't actually play as his character at all spends 45 minutes asking each and every NPC fifty questions that they usually can't answer
>has to investigate every square inch of whatever area we are in to make sure we're not missing anything (and despite that we usually do miss things anyway)

Also
>get to a shop
>I have the most money because I don't blow it all on potions
>"so user can buy this, this, and this for me"
>"no"
>"BUT I NEED IT"
>"Ok I will give you the money but you must beat me in a duel"
>Wind up beating him incredibly easily
>"REEE THAT'S NOT FAIR user"
>Two sessions later, he purposely fucks off and gets the group wiped in a boss battle because he hides in the back while I am the only member still alive

I hate this game

Sounds like he’s playing 5 int as literal autism

I really need to start doing that more, I learned it wrong in the sense of "everyone roll those things independently and tell the DM". now it's so far along idk what the hell I'm supposed to do.

I like this.

a lot of players are 100% in for "fantasy power trip" and expect everything to go their way from the gate, with all things tailored to their level on a steady difficulty treadmill. Just like Oblivion or Skyrim, where at low level you pretty much only run into random "Bandits", but if you go to max difficulty at high level suddenly they are "Bandit Marauders" with magic weapons and armor that costs a peasants lifetime salary.

Unfortunately, for some people the local player base sucks so hard they can pretty much ONLY play 3.5/pf/rarely 4, maybe 5. Some people would rather have a shit game then fun game.

I had a psychotic midget scared of clowns and his own mirror in a game once, who had sexual sadism as a personality trait. I have no idea why I allowed it in retrospect, other than I was younger. His character promtply died when other people got sick of his predilections of torture.

I allow this for the first session or two, if only so their character can adjust to what they feel the campaign will be like and figure out how they want to play. After that, your character sheet may as well be etched in bronze.

For sci fi my 4 member group always split it 5 ways- 20% for each member, then 20% for the "ship/misc", which was mainly used for upgrades and the occasional bribe. Worked well. We also have an understood "equal share" thing, where no matter what everyone gets an equal share of quest loot. Period. It resolves all arguments over money, though Rogues are apt to steal just a little on the side.

This is always infuriating. 2 pages of homework to make smooth the next 40-50 sessions of gaming, that's all I'm asking. Hell, I only ask 1 page for their background.

I'm guilty of doing this.
>"I spend the next 10 minutes combing this room for traps"
>look at map I had, nothing

Guess theres a wandering patrol of skeletons/troll thralls/giants/cultists/vampire thralls/golems/wraiths/elementals now...

You probably are. a lot of those elements, though fondly remembered, often made the games much slower, and often felt a lot more arbitrary. RPGs have evolved a lot more since then, and I think people are a lot more invested in their individual characters rather than ones who were about as fragile as tissue paper and lived in a world of frequent "save-or-die". >inb4 soap opera pasta

Yes. this is annoying from a DM perspective
>"Hey I'm driving to the grocery, I got a 17 on my drive!"
I didn't ask for the check. you can tell me you are driving to the grocery, I determine if the drive is SOOOO hazardous today it merits a check.

>"I rolled a 13 on my gather information on the lamp, is it the murder weapon?"
No, that's not how it works. 1, you should use Investigate. 2, I roll for you. 3, you know the murder weapons is much more likely to be the bloody dagger, and you know the cleric's medicine check discounted any other manner of violence other than stabbing and throat slitting.

both of those examples have been experienced by yours truly.

People meme it to death but I'm a fan of session zeros and I think we should have had one. We had an intro session where the DM actually created good reasons for us to be a team, but we're still not cohesive or agreeable.

Ah ok, I can understand where you're coming from now.

This is a gem a friend of mine told me.
>Party is fighting a group of enemies inside a ruined building.
>Bear Barbarian is outside
>GM says that he hears combat nearby
>Barbarian rolls a shove roll to break through the wall, while proclaiming "I have advantage on that wall!"
Long story short, he charged through the wall, causing the building to collapse on top of him, killing him almost immediately.

We still make fun of him for that every so often.

In a way, I wish there was a way to go back to old school gaming. Yes, I know about the OSR and yeah, everything's on PDFs so you can read the player's handbook at any time, etc etc. But the attitude seems like it was super different back in the 80s. Like characters were told "yeah, the Baron wants you to do this" and that was enough, even at higher levels. Like Queen of the Demonweb Pits, where you fight the goddess Lloth in her own domain, literally starts with you talking with the Council of Geoff, a small town, through a portal and they're like "Hey, please go kill a god."

I'd love to be able to go back in time and experience that kind of pre-(good) video game RPG. If only just to see if it would still be interesting or viable to my modern sensibilities.

Anyways, I'm excited about running TOA since we've arrived at a huuuuge hexcrawl portion. I've never done anything quite like it and it seems as if it's something that's very retro. Hopefully my older player will enjoy it (and hopefully I'll do it justice!).

>We had an intro session where the DM actually created good reasons for us to be a team, but we're still not cohesive or agreeable.
That's because cohesion can only be achieved during play, not during some arbitrary le session 0 shit.

I cannot tell you how many times we had an intro campaign to get our characters to like one another, only for us to be at odds during actual play because half the group are are willing to do stupid shit to move the plot along while everyone else is content with being snarky, back-stabby cunts who would leave their party members to die at the first sign of trouble.

It's frustrating.

>then he dumps all the points he can into that skill. Same with his feats. Sometimes makes me want to beat my head into the play mat.
I can see this being an interesting way to begin a campaign if players aren't sure of a backstory to make. Like, as events arise the players can fill their details out but those feats/backgrounds have to be permanent. Makes their improptu decisions permanent.

I think it really depends on how you approach it with your players. Old D&D was a lot more... Episodic, in a way, where the "why" didn't matter so much as the "what". It literally didn't matter why the King said he wants that Witch dead, he's paying you to do it, she's evil, go fuck off with your questions.

But we also don't D&D that way anymore. We don't do megadungeons that are 10 stories deep, with 10 chambers of random shit per story. players don't really experience hex crawls (though I use them sometimes) or random encounters so much. They need a lot more direction, I think, than early RPGs simply because a lot of DMs (myself included, as I've learned over 10 years) have realized that players often get super confused if you give them a massive map and say "go anywhere amigo". The fact is, a lot of people's imaginations struggle beyond a small geographic area. The possibilities of a new magical realm are so vast, they can't act because they can't be sure what's going to happen. Is that swamp in the corner following irl swamp rules? or is it "I can't believe its not Jurassic Park"? are the mountains filled with dragons? Wtf is that grey space, necromancer mecca? The options are so vast they lock up, so now we just give them more direction.

Now, I don't blame vidya as much as some. Vidya is waaay more restrictive than TRPGs, simply because a game has a lot of firm "you can't do this because the programming isn't there" walls. I'm honestly more apt to blame 3.pf, which over the years grew so bloated and fat that it lowkey encouraged players to mix and match absurd rules and things. You go from "party of humans, dwarves, and elves" to a party of "half vampire, asimaar, half dragon, orc, and slaad", and now everyone in the land wants to murder them on sight and the players struggle to understand that A- it's unlikely these misfits would all WANT to work together, and B- pretty much any society will fear them due to their races.

Well I suppose we have made some progress. My character would consider at least one of them as a friend and we have learned about each other, our motives and the way we operate. Relationships are forming but it takes time. I guess I'm just impatient. I've also always wanted to have two characters who were already connected somehow before the game starts. It sounds like a nice change of pace.

if you are the DM, you can simply tell the players they HAVE to have some past connection. Let them figure it out, maybe spitball some ideas, but you can always mandate that. That's the advantage of being GM, you can arbitrarily decide what does and doesn't work for your setting and the campaign, and so long as you are upfront and consistent with rule changes or something you should be golden. it could be "you are all siblings" to "you went to the same university/temp agency/tribe meeting/Burning Man/temple/ran into each other on a pilgrimage to a monastery/were in a pub when a brawl started and X helped Y". it takes very little effort to actually integrate a tangential connection

Nah I'm the player. One of the other players and I made it to where our characters had met several years in the past, but that didn't help anything. It wasn't an important encounter and his character gets along the worst with everyone because he barely talks and when he does he's usually a dick.

My main point with mentioning video games is that video games put the player AND player character in direct connection with the story being told. The game gives you a reason to care about doing the quest/mission/whatever. So from the beginning, people are trained to ask "what's my motivation?" without even realizing it.

It blew my new DM mind when I realized that character motivation was something I needed to pay more mind to last year while running SKT. The players got to the open-world exploration portion of the game and... just didn't have anything to do. And when the players were asked to defeat a bunch of evil giants and save the good giants... they didn't really have any motivation for it (other than a kind of "but thou must").

Fuck off, Blake.

Single party fund is a terrible idea, just divide it evenly.

Have you tried talking to him? Maybe he had an experience with a bad GM who punishes players for not doing that shit.

To be fair that seems rather in-character for some barbarians.

Man, sounds like a horrible group to play in. What kind of proper party even leaves survivors ?

That's a good idea, I might use that.

People trying to start an economic or technological revolution in medieval games.

I didn't run a game about Arthurian Knights so you could try and found a industry town goddamn it.

>Really any roll before it's called for...

FUck yes.

"I rolled 27 diplomacy does that change his mind" nigger you don't have time to diplomacy anything after that insult you just threw the only reason we're not in combat YET is because I'm looking up his initiative score.