Tfw I've been GMing for years and have only ever pretended to roll the die

I have been depressed for fourteen years and dont actually like DMming because I never feel happy with my work, but ive been doing it anyway because it makes my players happy.

Now that theyre all moving on with their lives and starting families and shit while i have nothing going on in my life Im starting to consider leaving everything behind and just sailing until I run out of supplies and die somewhere in the pacific.

This format is honestly the best for rpgs

If I wanted to go through a preplanned plot I would play a fucking video game

I'm planning to kill off my pathfinder party soon using an overpowered monster and having the BBEG (who is currently their employer) trick them into leaving the city they are in so that he can move his armies into position. They've been ignoring major hints so I am planning to use that to "justify" everything being fucked up. Also I will get to do a fun session-long battle with 200 orcs and zombies attacking and wiping out the rest of the city guard with the help of golems and shit, assuming they don't find their way into the BBEG's deathtrap dungeon where I put as cruel and "fuck you" encounters as I possibly could without going too much above their CR. Then the campaign will be over and I will be free of having to run fucking Pathfinder ever again. The worst part is I love playing 3.5 but that was only because I'd never played with powergamers up until now.

Anything awful you could do as a GM short of magical realm shit I'm sure I did at one time. My group had zero experience and we had just left a really bad first GM's game. I stepped up figuring I could handle it, but really I had no business even trying. I used to fudge rolls in favor of whatever I wanted to happen. This included being petty and killing players who annoyed me with a "lol random crit i can't believe it tough luck!" I railroaded. A lot. Like, I would straight up tell them what they were doing next or make any other route look so shitty that they'd just give in. I told them when they were playing their characters wrong. I made this pretentious as fuck printout telling them how to roleplay properly and took an hour before a session to scold them for not meeting my standards. I made up abilities for my "epic bosses" on the spot. I'd flat out say no to certain abilities working if it made any of my own characters (and I had a ton) look weak. I was that GM that would make the bad guy teleport away at the last second, but swear that they were so close every time. I must have told them "Wow, that's crazy he only had 1 HP left!" at least once every other session. I had no plot to speak of and made shit up as I went on when it came to their enemies goals. Sometimes I would straight up steal dialogue/plots from a movie or show and just haphazardly throw it in to this big dumb mess I called a game. You know that GM that gets annoyed when you interject in a dialogue or respond in a way he didn't have a reaction prepared for? Yeah, I loved doing that cutscene bullshit too. I have no idea how or why I still have a group or how any of them look back on that shitheap of a campaign fondly, but at least I changed as I got more experience. Eleven years running games now.

Worst GM sin I've ever committed was giving up on keeping one of my players happy. He's too hard to please, and while I'm sure he could have a solid time if I worked harder, I have other players to work with that don't make GMing a chore. I've stopped throwing him character-specific hooks or writing scenarios that play to his strengths.

I know it's shitty, and I will start working with him some more, but goddamn the last half-dozen sessions have been so freaking nice since I've stopped worrying about him. It's like I've started juggling with only three balls instead of three balls and a greased-up bowling pin.

eat shit and die, frog posters

I fucking HATE DnD. I hate the HP bloat, I hate how trivial death is, I hate how 90% of a characters options and roleplaying agency comes from magic and how an entire third of the PHB is spells.

Despite hating this system's guts, I continue to run it because it's the only game my friends ever want to play, and soon as I suggest we try anything else they play for one session and go "that was fun, but next time lets just play DnD" or come up with excuses to miss sessions or drop out of the campaign.

The worst part is, I've started to think I may actually enjoy playing with randos on the internet more than my IRL friends because of this, and I've even done a few freeform text-games I've unironically enjoyed more than DnD. Fucking end me.

>enjoy playing with randos on the internet more than my IRL friends
I find this to be the case 100% of the time.

>saturday morning cartoon episodes
>villains of the week
>maybe a slow build-up of a sub-plot in the background that never really amounts to much more than just a bigger villain of the week
>"I'LL GET YOU NEXT TIME, ADVENTURERS!"

I kinda like it.

I never actually have full dungeons planned out in DnD. I just have a series of rooms that I want the party to go through, and no matter which door they choose to open, the room I wanted them to go into will be on the other side.

>my nigga

These aren't really GM sins so much as stylistic differences. I absolve you - you didn't do anything that bad.

I've canceled games before because I wanted to stay home and sleep or jerk off.

I've handed out so much power to my group now that I'm not really throwing threats at them anymore, just filler. They get attacked, yeah, but thanks to their profoundly large tool base, not much of it can really touch them

God forbid I ever built an intelligent enemy who has researched their incredibly obvious abilities. They could be shut down in a round or two of combat.

But that wouldn't be fun for them

Maybe next week I'll have a challenge. But not yet.

>I was that GM that would make the bad guy teleport away at the last second, but swear that they were so close every time. I must have told them "Wow, that's crazy he only had 1 HP left!" at least once every other session
I have to admit to doing this once, because I wanted to set up a recurring villain rather than one that just died in one or two rounds. It didn't work out since I never got to introduce him again, but boy, the party sure hated that guy.
I'll never do this again.

>I shoehorned in my political views so hard I converted players IRL
I hate GMs like me.

Are you me?
I introduced taxes on my party after they brought in a large haul of treasure and they shat their pants in anger.
>"10% of my income!?!? This is robbery!"
>oh my sweet summer child.

that has to be the faggiest method of commiting scuicied that I have ever had the displesure of reading in my life

how to make shit players 101
would rather have the paranoid fucks that do nothing than have the whiner fucks that scream every time they take damage

>Allow players to pause the game and take a loan of experience to spend on buying skills to help them in their current situation.
>Every time they stop the bad thing from happening it just happens in a different way so that my plot isn't changed (railroading?)
>If the players state they like an NPC I contrive a way to kill them
>NPC names are always foreshadowing

>none of my players made an effort at all to learn any rules (I can actually make them open the book now, so I made progress there)
>exploited this so much that when someone wanted to invite someone who actually knew what they were doing I was vehemently against it
>my reason given was "nah they'd probably have standards way too high for our games"
>real reason was I just wanted to keep putting minimum effort into keeping these minimum efforts players happy

>himst that guy
>himstd'v making post on Veeky Forums dot comm fourward slash tuh guh
>that guy KYLE him make a post
>a post about user
>hMMMM kyle say, him read blatand shitpost
>KYLE: i will hate him
>tthat guy (kyle) him big post think long time ?? lol user shitpost im fucking hate you
>then kyle call him a faget
>KYLE DOESNT KNOW THOUGH
>HIM'ST'D'VE SHOULDNT HAVE POSTED HERE
>HIMST THAT GUY KYLE BIG WORD FUCK UP MANGLE KEYBOARD FUCK
>HIMST LOOK MONGO BAD SHITPOST

FUCK YOU KYLE YOU GOD DAMN PIECE OF SHIT NOBODY IS ASKING YOU FOR YOUR THOUGHTS OR OPINIONS ON THE GOD DAMN GAME JUST FUCKING GET THE HELL OUT OF THIS GOD DAMN THREAD YOU ARE NOTHING MORE THAN A PRETENTIOUS TOOL AND A FUCKING JACKASS WHO STARTS SHIT ON THE INTERNET BUT WOULD NEVER DARE FUCKING SAY THAT JEW SHIT TO ANYONE'S FACE BECAUSE YOU KNOW, YOU KNOW YOU WOULD GET YOUR SHIT KICKED IN SO FUCKING FAST FUCKING MONGOLOID BITCH GO PLAY 3.5E AGAIN YOU ONE TRICK PONY PIECE OF CASUALIZED AUTISTIC SCUM FUCK YOU

No wonder you want to kill yourself.

you sound like a cunt, and I can tell you the group knows exactly what you were doing

>I have to go save my Aunt and Uncle!
>Wait, what did you say their names were?
>Aunt Soondead and Uncle Gonnabite it?
>[Beat]
>Oh no!

I make all my plot-relevant NPCs female because my players will keep their murder-hobo tendancies in check when they're around cute waifu-bait, but the moment a male character asks for help or tells them what to do it's all "Fuck this asshole, if he keeps bothering us we're gonna smack him around like a little bitch."

>mfw never can find a game of traveler and I read this

Yeah what a fag, should totally kill himself

>imblying im him
shut up kyle

Sometimes I intentionally single out certain players for a lot of bad things in combat if they piss me off. I roll behind the screen when making decisions on who the monsters attack, but sometimes fuck you, you just have this one coming.

GOD DAMMIT I KNEW IT WAS KYLE

I JUST WANT TO HIT THE MONSTER REAAAALL GOOD BUT KYLE RUINED IT

>tfw kyle come to your table
>tfw kyle deliberately op tim ize
>tfw kyle -33 -75 -29 -31 -44 !!KILLS!! your boss mob in 1 turn because him stacking bonus op gitp combat gish marshal mix melee grand spec
>tfw kyle 2-spec dds and magic shortbow hims partymate
>tfw kyle says "ITS WHAT MY CHARACTER WOULD DO" as hims excuse for it
>tfw kyle gets up and goes to play street fighter instead of dealing with the repreapercushons of when the paladin starts crying

fuck u kyle

Remember that time Kyle was DM? I didn't know they had k-marts in D&D.

>k-marts
>kyle
fuck you that's good, im fucking using this.

I’m sucking at improvisation, and hate to make much prep work, so I mostly throw dice on how poor will go and goes with a rolls.

Stop complaining about frogposting on an egyptian toad racing board.

You know. I actually don't have a problem with this.

There's already the random elements of the players' rolls. Is a second tier of randomized bullshit really necessary?

So, you are a piece of shit that can't talk with his players.
Stop GMing.
Your games might be shit.

Criticism is the most important thing when GMing. I agree.

Don't worry about those over-privileged, ignorant, misogynistic neo nazis, you're safe here. This is a safe space for people with diverse ideas and backgrounds, and everybody is special in their own way. Their words and images can't hurt you, because you're unique.

If you can't fucking handle a certain type of image, how about you go to a hugbox like Tumblr or Reddit; or just stop using the Internet altogether until you get some thicker skin, you goddamn fuccboi faggot.

You want to pretend you're something you're not, which is easier with text and people who don't know you, not unlike a disgusting LARPer, and your players want to play a game. I'll bet you are a furry or some other deviant like a vampirefag or similar. You deserve the torture you are going through.

Die you fucking ancap moron.

Actually I'm the kind of boring faggot who prefers human-only setting and actively dislikes DnD for including shit like Tabaxi and Dragonborn.

I continuously violate the concept of Chekhov's gun. About a quarter of the things I mention in character have no bearing on the plot or anything useful. About eight out of every ten things I say OOC are just red herrings. This happens because I end up dumping ideas out on the table to see what people think and then I don't use most of them. Players don't ever know what I'm just spitballing and what I'm warning them about so they keep on their toes, but I feel like I'm ruining their ability to plan ahead and make intelligent plays.

Sometimes I skew the difficulty at random as well. When things get too easy and I realize that I've been too lenient, I pull out the rug and make things much harder than they reasonably should be.

Events that happen in the game often are related to things that are happening or did happen in the real world. I claim that this is never the case, but it's true.

>GMing to a group
>Party consists ex gf, her best friend(joined at level 16), two best friends from kindergarden, one autistic friend
Sin#1
>I picked on one of my best friends, just drawing all the agro but all in good fun (he's very masochistic he loves it. Going out of his way to do stupid shit)
>He's a rogue would always look for trouble (most of the time I encouraged it) party looked unfavorably on it and we talked about it, he said he would stop.
>He didn't. I was ok with it. For a while.
>Until 20lvl D&D 3.5 he went back to pick on a place that he didn't manage to rob on level 3, 8, and 11 (due to bad rolls)
>Now that shop owner gotten smarter. Storm of magic missiles, powerword kill trap. DC HARD
>He dies.
>All laugh.

Sin#2
>Enjoy Crowd pleasing (apart from that one rogue friend. Fuck that guy.)
>Autistic wants to play a drow chick (I even draw her. Pic Related)
>He builds a shit fighter/dervish/swashbuckler or someshit
>Hits 9dmg avg on 18th lvl, although he has 12 attacks
>He wants to be a vampire (This was a process of me learning to say no.)
>Make's himself a vampire when he seduces a vampire with the help of the guilds they were a part of.
>He's totally even more useless. Increases party CR to 26
>Party sufferes
>I don't let up, I torture him for his shit decisions and FEEL GREAT
>Until he got staked and his head chopped off. For being a drow vampire.
>Cleric (exgf's bestfriend) comes in, minmax build level 15 cleric
>Ressurection (Not true res, but makes him lose a level)
>Being a vampire for 5 levels or so he's really behind on levels
>Party 23 or so he's 18th
>Cleric cleans out rooms with a look
>He's even more useless
>Me not caring.

Please do not frogpost on Veeky Forums.

More sin

>Time to draw the party
>Autistic Drow friend dislikes scars
>Didn't know this
>He didn't realize that almost every combat where he would get beaten to death he would earn a scar or a lingering injury, which I would describe to great detail.
>Drawy time. Pic related.
>Party all gives me feedback, what they like and not...
>Drow player skreetches for having scars on his face.
>Uses scar removal creme

2 years later
Dark Heresy 2nd ed

>Tell them, going to lead the hardest campaign of my life.
>They are all on board
>ScarDislikingFriend uses meltagun and explodes
>Fate point burn in my campaign lets the thing happen, and the damage applies burning him horrifically. (Next post pic related)
>He ragequits/comes back next week
>Templar Assassin all hard.
>Misstep in combat, mexican standoff
>He decides on melee
>Ends turn in open
>Everyone shoots him
>Roll on crits table 10
>Horrific burns.
>Skreetches again
>Perma kick from the party and life.

Warhammer character

I'm not sure where you got any of that, but it must have come from somewhere. Hrmmm... wonder where...

Did you get rattled too? Poor thing, maybe mum can get you some tendies.

I tell people I like GMing when, in actuality, I don't really like running the game but whenever I play in someone else's game I can't help but nitpick every little decision they make as a GM whether rules, roleplay or story related and end up feeling incredibly dissatisfied at the end of the session.

And why exactly are they paying taxes to a town they don't live in

What a faggot. Those scars are lit.

I wouldn't call those sins, that's just a player getting his just desserts for terrible decision making. Good on you for keeping steadfast.

"Hey guys I really don't enjoy dnd." (or d20 systems, whatever)
"If we can't play another system, I can't continue GMing for you."

He pretty much said nobody shows up for other games, that they lose interest and start ditching.

No game is better than bad game. He also mentioned that he had tried playing online with strangers, which didn't seem all that bad to him. That's a perfect alternative.

>estronaut
Jesus it already catched on huh

My monsters barely have stats. They have an attack, and AC, but usually i undershoot the hp. So if theres a group of enemies i only givd hp to the first one, and i gage how much is acceptable for the others based on how quickly the first one goes down.

how do you manage combat? Do you have combat in your games? Is it like hit, hit, hit, miss just as the PC is about to die or what?

This is honestly how every GM should start. There's nothing wrong with it.

Why don't you like your games? What's missing?

That's actually really clever.

you're too triggered considering what it's about

and you're NOT sorry? You're a fucking psychopath.

I raped all of my players one by one and told them not to tell any of the others because they wouldn't believe them.

Story?

>players
someone call the cops

The question, I feel, is whether they still game with you?

I stick by whatever the dice roll.

It might be federal tax.

I'm a shithead with superiority complex, aversion to being taught by anyone who's not like an actual uni professor, and generally an asshole with a sharp but glib tongue.

A couple of months ago I started DMing my first ever game (VtM20), while having participated as a player in a total of like 8 sessions beforehand. If this is not a shitty resume, I don't know what is.

But, anyhow, some things that I did and totally deserve to be sent to Auschwitz for:

>had a completely useless session 0, which never managed to address the whole social contract thing, but instead was a communal narrative kinda thingy about how my players' characters spent their first few months after being embraced
>this was the last time I allowed them any sane degree of muh player agency
>railroaded the PCs into the first plot "hook" in a rather inelegant way
>cooked up a "metaplot" thingy which had nothing to do with the canon, but I'd still use it to explain all the bullshit happening
>the metaplot is a bunch of absurdly powerful one-line "plot-mover" elder NPCs with their motivations loosely bodged together
>the game is unironically about an alien virus/fungi/whatever with no real weaknesses
>expect my neonates to deal with it

>have an hour-long hectic non-interactive cutscene fight
>have the PCs get groped by a psycho tentacle-Lasombra chick
>NPCs use napalm against the PCs: it's fine
>a PC uses napalm: roll Humanity

>my PCs have over ten points invested in backgrounds
>nuke the shit out of the city
>railroad the PCs to escaping the city on a train
>make railroading jokes all the while

>the PCs fail to save my DMPC, get pissed at them, retroactively infect two of them with the virus
>give them a puzzle with only one obscure and very specific solution
>call them dumbsters during their futile brainstorming

>NPCs are statted like in CofD and roll using CofD rules too
>literally drop every rule I don't like, which is like 95%
>the game is now PbtA without player agency
>almost every NPC acts as if they're smarter than the PCs

>a PC embraces two childer: have her raise two generations because she's secretly a Lhiannan, not a Gangrel
>she doesn't know about it
>I pulled the generation drop rule out of my ass

>one guy has trouble with understanding women, is pretty sensitive about it
>have a girl NPC, his character's childhood friend, act exactly like the type of demure women that make the player butthurt

>one of the players absolutely loves realistic tactical combat, is a GURPS fag
>my game has no combat, it was a consciously made decision to deny him fun

>hear a complaint that there are too few scene descriptions
>the next session: overload with 20 minute long pixel-perfect descriptions

>have a heated argument with one of the players about whatever, get very annoyed, call the player a Mary Sue and grant their character a literal plot armor: their character won't die no matter what
>the player is sensitive to immersion breaking
>totally intend to trigger the plot armor in the most retarded way possible

The funny thing is, despite all the insufferable crap I do, and all the arguments shitstorm that commences between the sessions (where we'd try to purposefully stomp the opposition into the ground using the dirtiest rhetorical manoeuvres), they still like the run a lot. I have no idea why.

>tfw want to run a Planescape campaign like this with the party operating out of Sigil

I think it could be max comfy.

>falling ceiling trap
>single 5x5ft space in ceiling
>exits sealed
>put a 15 minute timer in the middle of the table
>the party literally kills eachother over the space
>one person left is bleeding to death, while everyone else is KO'D/dead
>the ceiling stops a foot from the floor, and starts to rise again
>they got rused the entire time

Old meme, stale pasta.

Whenever a player thinks he's hot shit I make crits against him.

Evil has a name, and it is (you).

These.
Most GM's are delicate flowers with a severe case of paranoia. Tell them what you didn't like or they won't beleive you when praise them.
Also, nice trips.

>Every space game ever
It's why I like space games

>What's missing?
The part of his brain that creates healthy levels of happiness.

That graph makes no sense

>group decides they want to play a 1930s hardboiled noir/detective game in GURPS
>have no idea how to write such a campaign, I'm mostly a scififag
>download and listen to a ton of old Philip Marlowe radio dramas for inspiration
>end up saying, "fuck it" and just steal an entire episode's plot wholesale, didn't even change the character names
>huge hit with the players
>I am lauded for my excellent story crafting abilities
>"wow it's like a real hardboiled detective story user!"
>tfw I have ~100 more episodes on my hard drive
>tfw they'll probably never catch on because this shit is pretty obscure and the texts of the original stories aren't indexed by google

It does to me. If you'd explain your bafflement, maybe I can try to make that part more clear?

It contradicts itself saying that some of the stuff everyone can do can't be done by martials.

I'm fairly certain that "everyone" refers to real-life people, since a common complaint about the way skills and other mechanics work means that in some ways, martials in 3.pf can't even manage to do things well-trained or even moderately experienced people can do in real life. This is generally used to point out that the problem isn't just that casters are OP, but that martials are UP as well. In Pathfinder, if you believe the devs that post on the forums, this is either deliberate hamstringing or done out of a ridiculously faggoty amount of ignorance. For example: one case had a dev basing what a highly skilled warrior could or could not do by trying it themself, failing once or twice, and deciding that it must be impossible. The task in question isn't really even that hard.

I sorta did this by accident...
>be DM
>Cleric of Pelor sees sick poor people, is an IRL leftist
>decides to use their high charisma and hero status to start up a single payer type system
>mention an upcoming council vote on taxing the rich to pay for universal cleric care
>they go adventuring, not thinking much of it (except thinking its probably a good idea)
>slap them with a 15% tax and estate tax (they had a mansion, and as 9th level characters were literally the wealthiest people in the town)
>party rogue almost murders the tax man on the spot
>druid insists there must be a mistake
>cleric is in disbelief
>the entire healthcare plan wont work without their obscene wealth
>tfw they choose to move to the next town literally the next day and fight taxes at every opportunity

They set upon a course of action they didnt think through the implications and consequences of

Well, this is actually a really good idea. Good job.

Sounds like the usual leftist. The plan is great and perfect until it hurts them in some way. Come to think of it, that pretty much describes Conservatives and Libertarians too.

Samefag harder.