So what's your problem with your players, user?

I connect to well with this poor soul.

They don't exist. any more

He ditches us without warning to go out with his THOT girlfriend who he constantly bitches about and claims he can't leave or she will kill herself. All the while complaining to me I don't give him time to shine in our games despite him regularly leaving after half the session.

They stopped playing with me when my girlfriend dumped me.

They are utterly incapable of taking initiative of any kind and get mad when they fail or face any kind of setback.

Sounds like they might be too used to vidya. To get them out of that mindset you could try doing some sort of an escape-the-dungeon puzzle thing with no NPCs and little to no combat. Give them characters with different complementary abilities. They would have to talk to each other and cooperate to succeed.

will play evil characters and then not lean into them.

Like, this dude played a chaotic evil monk who took our squire, a child, and used him to cushion his fall when a floor collapsed. we are sitting in this deep pit, the kid says "ooof, uh, anyway, I'm fine" and then the monk snaps his neck. a child. snaps his neck and says "we must purge the weak and infirm"

He then gets mad when the lawful stupid paladin seems slightly upset and my chaotic good tiefling decides to execute him. then we get surprise attacked by flesh golems. CE monk still tries to attack me, completely ignoring the enemies. so, i now have to fight both.

i have a -3 to con, i'm a fucking ranger. and I STILL manage to support the team with flanking bonus and some buffs and I still kill the fucking monk.

and then they're all wondering why he had to get killed. Gee, I don't know, maybe lawful evil as "i kill this guy" probably doesn't fly too well?

Plus we've got a conquest paladin who insists he's lawful good. no he doesn't give any reason to how his plan to massacre people and conquor the world works with lawful good.

Either boot him or learn how to deliver better blowjobs than her.

I honestly don't see any other alternatives.

>I don't give him time to shine in our games despite him regularly leaving after half the session
Did you actually tell him that she should stop leaving and won't get to shine until he is actually there to shine?

It's just one player
>Make edgy tiefling paladin
>Whines that NPCs don't like him
>Constantly cheats and doesn't record his hit points properly
>Still doesn't know how spell slots and rules work despite playing for several sessions
>Doesn't know how to be effective in combat
>Wielding two handed sword, gets hit for half health and blurts out "I'M TANKING" to rest of the party
>On his phone during other players' turns or during NPC conversation and then asks what's going on
>Has missed half the sessions
>Whines that his character's backstory isn't getting attention despite missing every second session

I'd boot him if he weren't friends with everyone there and they all felt sorry for him

*he should stop leaving

We as a group shit on him for it regularly, but then he tries to devolve into a pity party of hurrr she gon kill herself. He is a pussy and he did the same shit with a girl when we were all in highschool. We are more or less content treating him like a second rate prop until he gets his shit together and he knows it. I have good players so having one shit one feels like par for the course. Wouldn't want to be greedy an all.

Get her to play with you. :^)

Eh, I only let people bring their friends if they introduce me to them and I like them. And his girlfriend is a disgusting perma triggered whore. The fact I can openly tell him his girlfriend is a vile cunt and he doesn't bat an eye should tell ya a lot about how passive the guy is. I have recently entertained the idea of paying off a guy I know to seduce her so she leaves him just to salvage my bro.

>I have good players so having one shit one feels like par for the course. Wouldn't want to be greedy an all.
>I have recently entertained the idea of paying off a guy I know to seduce her so she leaves him just to salvage my bro.

I was thinking about advice to give, but these two posts paint a pretty clear picture of what a passive, cowardly, and conniving person you are. You don't deserve these 'good players' you speak of.

Good luck with whatever happens.

>I have recently entertained the idea of paying off a guy I know to seduce her so she leaves him just to salvage my bro.
Think about how that can backfire. If he is sufficiently passive, on top of all that is already wrong in his life he just might make peace with being a cuck. It would be an outright cruel outcome. What you should do -- and we're getting pretty /adv/ here -- is teach him how to deal with suicide threats. Link him to bpdcentral.com/help-for-families/bpd-articles/?What-to-do-when-feeling-manipulated-by-suicide-threats-10. If he refuses to read it, print it out and hand him the printout.

>and we're getting pretty /adv/ here
We aren't actually, since reasonable advice is being provided. /adv/ usually just resorts to telling you that you deserve it and are worthless if you can't bootstrap your way out of your problems.

Did I say secretly? He has said multiple times he would love if we would do it to get him out. The guy is incapable of breaking up we have seen it before.

Fair point. I quit giving advice on /adv/ because there was too much noise there.

Further, the reason it has not been done yet is because I think he needs to learn how to end a fucking relationship on his own.

>The guy is incapable of breaking up we have seen it before.
You should seriously teach him how to deal with the suicide threats. It may change his mind about breaking up.

They haven't abandoned me and/or my game yet. I'm not a good GM or person and others in the group are capable of GMing so I'm not sure why they persist.

Sounds like you're too hard on yourself.

Did you kill your players user

I've had talks with him. But he tried to play off like the only thing holding him back was he was living with her. So I literally got an apartment and he became my roommate. He just makes excuses and eventually it started annoying the hell out of me how would talk so much smack about her and the situation but then post cancer inducing. At this point we are still close friends and do shit together but I don't don't listen to his pity rants anymore and sometimes he disappears into the night to do her dishes or some menial chore. Other than being a turbocuck the guy is great.

If anything I believe the opposite to be true.

You are a good friend to stick with him despite it. Good luck with your deprogramming, user.

My main group on Skype:
All much older than me. Mostly because the group was formed by my brother, who is 15+ years older than me. Normally not a problem, but I find that they're not interested in a lot of the same settings/themes as I am. They like to make a lot of older pop culture references I just don't get. Just like me making newer ones they don't. Other than that, decent group. (except maybe for the fact one of the players is a crochety old douche who I constantly butt heads with, mostly cause he's a pedant)

My irl group, the group I joined recently:
Too much "hurry up and wait". I go there on Tuesdays and sometimes Wednesdays as well, from 6PM to midnight or even later. Usually takes an hour or two to actually start anything. And that's when we're actually playing a damn game. Recently the DM keeps making us characterbuild/worldbuild for two new campaigns he's thought up, so we just sit around, waiting for him to tell us the next part to work on. Something I could probably get done with players in a couple hours, he somehow manages to stretch out to weeks. Mostly because they love to fuck around and get distracted by telling rl stories/youtube/video games whatever. I mean, it's fun to hang out with an irl group for once but I was getting really into the one campaign he was running, and now we haven't even touched it in over a month because of this shit.
Also I keep asking to DM, but the main guy who runs it just kinda blows me off and says "maybe one day" or something like that. Doesn't want to give up the mantle, and the other players are D&D babbies who are scared of other systems.

Appreciate it, sometimes I feel like a dick when I straight up tell him I don't wanna hear it.
But after a year of him saying the same shit over and over he just needs to move on from it all and me humoring it isn't helping

Car accident on their way home from a session. No survivors.

Have you tried discord? For me its way easier to post documents or links for session related stuff and keep it sorted. We used to use skype as well but I like how discord just has so many more features and chat rooms.

>They like to make a lot of older pop culture references I just don't get
Examples? If I get them, will it mean I'm old?

Damn.

My "group" hasn't played in roughly six months, but still insist we're a group and tags me in D&D memes and whatever. Every time someone tries to schedule a session, someone, no matter, calls out and it's been going this way straight.

>tfw miss my comfy game night of having some brews with the boys

Run it with who you can. If someone misses they miss.

Sorry to hear that user.

You are me, and I am you. We are brothers user, for we have seen each others souls

I use Discord, but again, the group is all older people. Some of whom are not very technologically inclined (like the crochety old douche). It's a wonder even getting him (and sometimes the others) to understand Skype and Roll20. I don't think I could convince them to switch over. Besides, that's really not the problem I have with the games/group. It works fine for what it is.

Mostly references to old 70s/80s songs, movies and tv shows. Like for instance, 3/4 of the other guys in the group all met eachother through a Transformers fan group online many years ago, so they love making jokes about that series (I love robots and mecha, but TF was never my thing).

I've tried explaining this to the GM, but the guy refuses. He's a bit of a pushover.

run west march style. You can't make it then group carries on.

Oh I thought you were GM here, that sucks user.
Its fairly important a GM have an iron foot with scheduling or nothing ever happens.

Too much table talk and they argue like children.

We all drifted apart.

>I am thou, thou art I

PERSONA!

They're constantly sabotaging one anofher

Tee hee hee, macaroni, macaroni...

>Implying thats a negative thing

THEY CAN'T APPRECIATE SHIT

>Like, this dude played a chaotic evil monk who took our squire, a child, and used him to cushion his fall when a floor collapsed. we are sitting in this deep pit, the kid says "ooof, uh, anyway, I'm fine" and then the monk snaps his neck. a child. snaps his neck and says "we must purge the weak and infirm"

I think the funniest part of this is that this kid just cushioned the fall of an adult man(?), implying he was pretty damn strong and firm for a kid.

IT WAS A BUG BEAR TOO, LIKE, NO FUCKING JOKE MY GUY, IT WAS A BUG BEAR CHAOTIC EVIL MONK, AND THIS DUDE ACTS LIKE THIS KID IS A CRIPPLED HORSE NOW?

Like, honestly, for having a philosophy of "purge the weak" he sure is a cuck. his fall was broken by a child who was strong enough to survive. and then my character, a 63 year old tiefling ranger with -3 CON and like, 30 health at level 8, managed to wipe the floor with him while still helping the party during our 5 v 7 flesh golem battle. yes, that number turned into 3 party members v 7 flesh golems since I was fighting chongo.

honestly though, I got so lucky and this is the first time I've ever actually had to kill a party member.

>1
Minmaxer who has a bad habit of telling other players how to play their characters.

>2
Good guy, but tries too hard to be funny.

>3
Starts off each session great, but gets drunk mid-session. He ends of being a hindrance to the group.

>4
No real complaints other than he doesn't really jive with the rest of the group.

>Plus we've got a conquest paladin who insists he's lawful good. no he doesn't give any reason to how his plan to massacre people and conquor the world works with lawful good.
Tards like this are the worst. They have the mindset that "Paladins fight on the side of Good, therefore anything they do in the name of Good must be Good!".

This isn't helped by the limp Alignment definitions in 5e either.

I have players who want to start at the end of character progression, but still have progression.

If we play dnd, they want 20th level characters and want to go on from there. If we play Only War or Rogue Trader, they want to be 80,000xp characters with a star cluster of power. If we play shadowrun, they want to be dragons.

Then when they run games, you can not fight tooth and nail for anything. I have played games under two which will call you up at work to see if their characters can get epic level powers or gear. One will strip the gear from your character the second you use it to overcome a problem, even if you use it in a clever way. The other will not award xp for games, all gear found is in ruined or unusable state and you can never move forward without him getting ready.

I guess it is a two part problem and I am just tired of it after 13 years. I stopped going to every game and let them know the shit got tiresome but they fall right back into it each campaign.

One of them has an slightly annoying voice but that's really it so far

Why don't they respond to my messages?

I FUCKING hate this
We are using skype, discord, facebook, whatsapp and they still take centuries to type anything

>Has missed half the sessions
My group has a rule that if you miss too many sessions, we can do a vote kick

They play the same characters. Every time, no matter the setting. But they will maintain, whole god damn heartedly, that they don't.

Traditionalist moralfag that can't even moralfag well

Orphaned gun/sword-for-hire

Disloyal "All according to Keikeku!" evil bitch, ranging from murderhobo to Grand Vizier on the scale of backstabbery. Always some dark secret they allude to VERY OBVIOUSLY but will point blank refuse to talk about. Furfag to boot, constantly looking for excuses to play kitsune.

Either shy mage or bombastically obnoxious weeb mage. Cosplay was an element of 3 of her last 4 characters.

And This Guy. This Guy plays a wide variety of characters. Good on him. Only problem is he can't organise his thoughts well at all and can't speak for shit in or out of character. Not his fault, think he as born that way, but it's still frustrating to watch him take 2 minutes what anyone else can get across in a sentence, even if those feelings aren't fair on him.

Come on guys, variety is the spice of life, shake up your classes and personalities.

Seriously? That sucks.

god thank you. Our DM explained explicitly that he could be evil. see, he WAS a fighter but changed to conquest paladin when xanathars came out. for some reason. even though we already had a paladin. He wanted to have magic apparently, despite the fact that he doesn't use it. I don't enjoy playing with evil characters, sure, and the bugbear I killed was explicitly because I knew he was going to be evil and I wasn't having it, but if you're going to be a fucking conquest paladin, be a conquest paladin.

Like, despite my character being explicitly out to punish the wicked, she'd be more than willing to work with his conquest goals if he'd just be smart about it. like, if they did things smart, we could build up our noble party members claim to high kingship, use our artificier and his wealth to help build infrastructure, and then have our dumbass barbarian and the conquest paladin lead raids and skirmishes. because clearly what he wants is to fight, so let him fight.

But get this, the conquest paladin, who isn't even the noble, has a magic sword that causes him to kill people. he fails a wis save? he has to kill people. still claims to be lawful good even though he's killed multiple families and children. the reason we had that squire? he had a murder rage, and tried to use his recent marriage into the noble family to ask for a peasant families son as a squire. to then kill him in the woods.

the dm played the squire as looking up to him so much, and being his biggest fan. obviously, he couldn't kill him and then went and found a drunk.

But yeah, this chuckle fuck has not only killed women and kids rather than kill himself, he also hired 500,000 gold worth of giant mercenaries. literal giants. and then he got a murder craving. and instead of murdering a random peasant, he murders one of his giant mercenaries. yes they all left us. yes the kingdom now has war declared upon it by giants.

None. They're all engaged in the game and enjoy playing. Us as a group are playing in two different groups: one where I'm the GM and one where another player is the GM.

bless you. any advice?

We can barely meet up anymore and when we do, no one seems to be into it.

Half the players don't know the rules and consistently get themselves into horrible situations. Because long rests theoretically fix such situations, they ask for long rests. In the middle of dungeons.
I used to DM for them but I let my buddy have a turn because he wanted to and because I wanted to actually play a character. Mistake. I know the rules better than him, and so does exactly 1 other player, and we have to correct him constantly.

One is terrible at thinking farther than 'hit monster real good,' one enjoys making backstory a little too much for my taste and tends to dominate RP, one is incredibly slow on the uptake and has yet to remember how to roll normally on Roll20 after three years of playing together, one treats memes as the highest form of entertainment, one is a gigantic dweeb and has terrible taste, and one is utterly unmemorable.

I love every single one of them.

I don't have any.

Find people actually interested in playing, first off. But for me, I got lucky. Found the right people on roll20 who actually WANT to play. My good chances of finding real players are probably because I play GURPS (you don't play GURPS unless you really want to play a TTRPG).

Second, be straight forward. Announce clearly that you want to take the game seriously. If they do not want to, give 'em the boot. No players is better than bad players.

This is the experience I have in my group are you my DM?

It's because they feel trapped by technology and the social norms that say they have to respond and they're contemplating just not playing anymore because they'd rather just sleep.

Jesus, where were you when people became druids...i expect them to fuck a tree soonish

>weeb that insists on either playing a loli and/or trap
>if he can't play that, he plays a Chaotic Stupid edgy evil mage
>ignores my messages reminding him when the next session is
>has never showed up two sessions in a row
>has no idea what he wants to do on his turn because he's either playing Skyrim or looking at vape juices
>characters almost speak exclusively through grunts

Ones a closet murder hobo who lives for combat and doesn't partake in any roleplaying / npc interactions
Ones a lazy ass moral fag who i have to force to stay organized and do tard notes for
One is a decent player who knows all the rules and keeps me in check sometimes but cant take a hint when i dont want him to do something
One is a funny person irl but i still need to lull into roleplaying a bit more
One is a shit stain who the moralfag really hates who is always is distracted and starts talking mid game so he got kicked
One doesnt know when to stop roleplaying and start doing teamwork to get stuff done.
One loves chaos and fucking with npcs and is a min maxer and ends up dealing insane amounts of dmg compared to the other players but is pretty fun to cooperate with

my group just started playing and we need a lot of ironing out before we get things moving smoothly. thankfully the decent player helps everyone else who have questions with rules which makes my life so much easier

They need to keep a fucking Journal. The potential of any campaign goes through the roof as soon as players start keeping journals.

1 doesn't give a fuck about any shred of story I make, or the world, or other characters, or his own character. He just wants to roll dice, argue me on every rule, and "help" other players make 'more efficient' characters. How haven't I booted this guy yet. Everyone else just can't seem to come to sessions on time or at all some days.

... Is this group in Kanauckistan?

"You were not to retur-"
"I shoot him!! No monologue for you DM!"
I can never finish a goddamn sentence acting as an enemy. Fine, here's the statblock with absolutely no personally. Go hog wild.

It sounds like you fucks have very few good players. Any good player stories? Whos your most valuable player?

They are too smart, too sneaky, too cynical, too lucky, and their hero moments don't happen out of morality or sense of righteousness but as result of cynically calculated moves to gain PR points. They are not real heroes at all.

I relate user. And those once in a blue moon times that they do like something, they forget about it by the next session.

MVP gotta be the one I never expected. First time player, his character started out as a Chad meme and turned into the plot progression machine who took a heavy interest in an item I improved into the game.

They're all good guys but one is kind of an ass and partly responsible for one other player not joining our next game

Nope.

Nothing, they're perfect little angels

>one wants to play the lawful good holier-than-thou paladin who "cleanses the world in holy fire". Also takes it upon himself to metagame and demand the other players fill archetypical roles like "healer" and "crowd control" regardless of what said players actually want
>one who has never played a tabletop RPG before and wants to play a chaotic evil murderhobo who has everything maxed out and literally can't lose. Has stated multiple times that he's only going to play if he's allowed to get shitfaced drunk each session.
>one who has also not played RPGs of any kind before, but still wants me to create a "color changing plant lizard who also bites and kicks ass" for her. Knowing her personality, is most assuredly going to be on her phone 90% of the time talking to her fuck buddies (she's a nice person, don't get me wrong, but man is she addicted to Facebook drama) or her children.
>one is my fucking wife, plays the games fine but has zero desire to actually get in character and mostly fucks around outside of combat
I hate DMing for friends, this group hasn't even started yet and I can already tell it's going to be a goddamn disaster. Even worse is that I didn't even want to DM this time, I wanted to be a player, but everyone else hates DMing because it's not "fun" for them.

My group is really a club. Members come and go with the seasons but it usually hovers around 16 or so, sometimes as low as a dozen in lean times.
The main troubles are communication and getting GMs. That is to say, it's usually the same couple who offer to run games (sometimes halfheartedly when no one else steps up) and potential players don't express any opinions on what they'd like to play so it's always a mad dash to organise games even when everyone knows it's coming months in advance. And even then you end up with say two full or oversubscribed games and someone else's whose languishes with two players before dying or getting a late start when someone says they'll move games.
Some are also quite clique-ish, getting together before the new round and organising a game together. Which just seems counter to the point of having a club.
Besides that, the usual problems of nerds, e.g. those who always avoid each other, those who HAVE to play with their friend(s), the over-representation of the varying degrees of autism, the stagnation as personal preferences are honed and stuck to, those who disappear from already critically small groups and so on and so forth.

>One comes from a really heavy vidya background and gets frustrated when people find an alternate solution that circumvents the problem, rather than solving the problem "the way it was intended". Wants to play the face, but is really bad at RPing social stuff, so half the time ends up doing the equivalent of "I roll to convince him."
>One, while he understands baseline mechanics of the system, has virtually no grasp of how to represent what he wants. Ends up with a businessman with garbage social stats, or a big beefy warrior with terrible defenses. Picks pretty simple concepts, but probably the best RPer in the party.
>One won't let himself build anything "sub optimal". Not really a murderhobo; approaches every character concept through a mechanical lens. Also super concerned about his characters' ability to defend themselves against the party. I don't know what pushed him into this way of thinking, but if his non-combat socialite characters can't solo the rest of the party in combat, he think he's done something wrong.
We have a new player too, but I haven't had a session with them yet, so I haven't really formed an opinion about him, other than "cautiously optimistic" since he hasn't displayed any obvious That Guy traits yet.

I fixed this by never having the party the same place as the enemy.

Corpses that fire back to life to mock them, video screens that cover entire areas and have hidden speakers and also dream sequences.

Now, the villain does not go on a monologue but he does attempt to talk to them and also infuriate them. It also important to note that they should eventually run into these types of bad guys, and they should never teleport away at the last minute. Have a hundred henchmen cover their retreat, yes. Teleport mid fight before the killing blow, no.

>mfw had to stop going to my club because it's 8-11 and I have to get up at 6:40

It's huge though, probably about 30 people every week and loads of groups, too many for the premises actually they're planning on moving.

Not one-upping you but I get up at 5am and still go to my club (8pm-11pm). It just seems like a weird and alien concept to me, people saying time close to 7am is 'early'. But I'm usually in bed by half nine so who am I to judge.

My biggest question though is how and why the fuck do you have -3 Con as a ranger?