Is the "my character is reserved and just minds his own business" the worse fucking archetype ever for tabletop gaming...

Complaining about anime on Veeky Forums is literally retarded. Anime discussion and artwork remains some of the biggest things on this site, and it permeates basically all discussion on the board in one way or another. That is the way things are and the way things have always been. It is not going to change just because you're grumpy about it.

>Just because it was made for fans of japanese culture (not just anime) 15 years ago, it doesn't mean that that's the site's current aim

No, but when you whine about weeb shit where the culture was originally dedicated to weeb shit which is why all boards have some degree of weeb shit, you're an idiot.

>muh grandfather clause

No. Times change. You're no longer welcome outside of containment boards.

Too bad the mods will never ban for posting a simple anime reaction pic honey.

>>other characters: "eh, well we got nothing better to do, might as well."
My greatest fucking annoyance as well. I literally just start leaving said characters behind, or cut them out of dividing up loot when possible. In game I never hesitate to ask if I can drop them off at the nearest city (space port)

It is in fact the absolute fucking worst, for the reasons you have pointed out. It's absolutely a red flag if anyone describes their character that way, although it's not impossible to do right. Playing a coward or a disaffected loner is definitely possible, and could lead to a fun character arc of them finding their nerve or learning/re-learning how to care about the rest of the party.

The modern state of the site disagrees with you. Just skimming the board there are at least ten threads with anime OP's, many of them apparently doing very well and none of them being deleted or banned. It would strongly imply that you're just wrong.

if you want to complain about Veeky Forums do it on where it belongs

I didn't complain about anime. I fucking love anime. Yu-Gi-Oh was actually what got me into traditional games.

I just think that Veeky Forums isn't a 100% anime site anymore, and it irks me when people act like it is

Stop being retarded

This

The post which started this whole thing was . If you're not complaining about anime, then what the fuck are you arguing against?

And sure, Veeky Forums isn't a 100% anime site, it hasn't been for a long time. That doesn't mean there isn't anime shit literally everywhere on this site. Because there is. And there probably always will be.

>character is in a bar
>character behaves like 99% of bar patrons instead of a sperg
>OP posts anime but not like normal anime, some really gay looking bad attitude anime
>OP generally seems like an asshole

Well the problem is most people aren't wanting to play some special snowflake who just has to have the world cater to them, and wants to run around in a public setting getting in everyone's face with their personal hangups. That's why for the laid back "minds his own business" types there are always callouts in adventure guides for DMs on how to make the adventure part of their business. That ranges from hooking families or towns to hooking business interests, properties, etc. The only time its a problem is if someone wants to play a literal hermit in which case they are advocating a non-character. If the character is already at the bar with other people, they aren't doing that.

>Are you the sergal guy?

What would give you such an idea, good sir?

I'm not that guy. I love anime and I agree with you

I just hate the
>it's an anime site so I can spam my waifu wherever I want
argument

Whenever one of my players tries this crap I just tell them to either get involved or make a new character who will. It's a group based game, we all know this going in - if you make a character who refuses to work with the party towards a goal you're a fucking retard. You can have your own goals and reservations, but the other people around the table shouldn't have to waste time trying to get you to play the game you showed up for.

>Well the problem is most people aren't wanting to play some special snowflake who just has to have the world cater to them
Except that's the exact problem with the people mentioned in OP, you fucking retard.

The rule of thumb is that you as a player need to WANT to be an adventurer and WANT to do shit out of a normal citizen. The opening start of a session must always have characters willing to band together and seek out their goals, or you will never start off the adventure in the first place. When the DM has to throw shit at you constantly for you to be interested and take some initiate, the DM is catering to your ass and you are not cooperating with him.

Horny retards have been making fetish threads with anime posts constantly. That's where the hostility is likely coming from, because that sure is the case with me.

(Also lololol Veeky Forums is for anime in all boards I suck cocks)

Ah, you must be Explain Expectations Guy from the rain thread. It's generally assumed that players choose characters that will want to play the game, but you're right. The GM should have taken a few minutes to clear up that misunderstanding.

fuck off sergalfag

I mean why not? It's an image like any other. Can it be mildly annoying? Sure, but faggots come into threads just to shit in them over games they don't even play while fans of the games are trying to have discussion. That's a fuckload more distracting and against the nature of THIS board than
>TG related thread with waifu OP.thread
It's not like anime death squads are coming in and enforcing an eastern art only and BESM only ruleset. They just wanted to post a reaction image and some faggot had to go fully autistic about it for no fucking reason.

Shit at least wait until someone is avatar fagging, at least that's kinda annoying.

Nailed it, there's only one poster on this board who hates "WHAT IF SETTING WAS ALL THING I JERK OFF TO" and it's some disgruntled furry

Have you seen all of the terrible "what do???" threads barely pretending to be Veeky Forums related?

It's not like Veeky Forums moves fast enough for those to push out active discussions, hide them and move on instead of choosing to be mad and expecting other people to sympathize when ignoring shitty discussions is a click away.

And if you REALLY think it's only because they can post anime art that those posts come up then you're fucking stupid. There's tons of shitty cheesecake that's western related. If the mods came down like the 87th Veeky Forums holy Reich tomorrow, you'd see the same low effort threads within a month with art that circumvents the new "no anime" ban.

Plus, even if you could convince me people only post those threads because they can post waifus, I'd still say fuckoff. I really enjoy anime-style art (just not super lazy shitty stuff) for character/setting inspiration. I also enjoy western art for the same purpose of course. Because I'm not a contrarian faggot.

But he *also* wants the setting to be all "thing he jerks off to" - the difference is he jerks off to animals instead of cute girls, and gets mightily offended that everyone else doesn't share his fetishy preference.

Just ignore sergalfag

He's got issues

I can kind of understand what he's saying. Some of the OP plot hooks are not very good. Only the worst kind of asshole busybody steps into some strangers' argument and tries to calm it down. Being an adventurer doesn't require being nosy or presumptive.

Honestly if you're going to start all the players in a bar, you should give each of them an individual reason for being there other than just hanging out waiting for the game to start.

Where does sergalfag hang out nowadays?

Players could also ask, or try to come halfway. I don't know this game, but neither do you. If everyone agreed to come with characters the GM has never seen they really should be meeting him halfway. If they demand personalized reasons to be involved, they should be vetting characters with the gm.

It could be gm fault, but I've seen most players with this attitude are just kinda being annoying. People who do this sorta thing forget the well written spooky corner ranger archetype, arguably created by Aragorn in early chapters of LOTR, also tends to be quick to get involved when they smell something interesting. Case in point, Aragorn does now know the Hobbits, but senses something amiss and gets involved very quickly to help them out. Later it's revealed he has some reasons. But here's the thing, you can ad hoc some character reasons on as you go, reveal them later.

>playing a campaign where we take turns DMing
>we arrive on some planet
>bumble around trying to find the plot
>we get an offer to come help assassinate the ruler of the planet
>we have no fucking reason to do this and refuse, we don't want no traburu just to make easy money and leave the system
>session goes to shit
>dm says it's hard to give us a reason to do something
>2 sessions ago I got everyone heavily involved into petty shit, it's just that people would rather not actively make an enemy out of a multi-planet empire
Honestly the solution is just to talk to the players and ask what makes their characters tick

These sounded like DM errors to me. A rational person doesn't get involved in a fight between two gangs. A murderhobo does, but not all players are murderhobos.

If you change it to a single gang attacking the bar, then the players have a reason to get involved. The soft sell is them attacking the bar. If nobody bites, you go with the hard sell where the players are attacked. This basically sets up a rational motivation for the players.

You don't have to be a murderhobo to try and not have violence happen in a bar you're trying to stay at. It actually strikes me as really psycho to sit there and casually watch a gangfight unfold. You want the "normal" thing you do if two gangs are starting a turf war? You get the fuck out.

But the thing is, PCs aren't normal. So getting involved isn't murderhobo. Fuck, dunno why you jump to murder, you can get involved trying to deescalate, or trying to get them to shiv eachother somewhere where it won't ruin your enjoyment of the evening.

And that also ignores seeing another person get scooped up and watching them get killed too. Are PCs planning to be heroes at all?

Yeah, not going to say I'm 100% positive GM couldn't have done it better, but fuck players who won't meet halfway even a little, esp in session 1. (But other people are right in that Sess 0 is ideal)

If you see a gang fight break out you get the fuck out unless you're police. Why would you want to get involved in a gang war? Are you insane?

>Are you insane?
Yeah, I'm a PC, odds are I'm not quite right in the head. Sane people also don't pick fights with dragons, make enemies of a lich or do half the shit the average party does.

Doesn't have to be murder hobo insane though. Here let me fucking example.

>Play rough and tumble rogue type.
>Sitting in my local bar
>Boys out sorting loot from last job
>Ready to GTFO off planet soon though
>Some faggots starting shit.
>Going to mess up our favorite bar.
And that's when a relatively normal low level rogue character gets involved, because fuck you, this is my bar.

It's not fucking hard.

No it's not. It's the

"Piss her off or her friends and she'll kick your ass"

And that's all that the character has in his/her personality section.

Well, you sort of have to ask yourself, if your character isn't motivated to get involved in the things that go on around him, then what the fuck is he doing out on an adventure, and why did you think it would be a good idea to bring such a character to a social event that in large part is based on the players' characters bouncing off of each other. I suspect most of the people who make these characters have watched some movie with a silent and brooding protagonist, like Clint Eastwood's western movies, and decided that they wanted to be like that without thinking about the differences between a movie and a ttrpg. Or maybe they expect the character to develop out of it as the stories goes and he comes to trust the other party members without realizing that much of that character development would have to come from them actually interacting with the other party members.

Of course it's easy to give people a reason to stop a gang fight, but it's not the default response, especially since people tend to make characters that don't even know the bar they're in because their characters haven't lived a day in their life before the session started

Sure, but OP listed several things going on to play in. There's nothing wrong with a semi-blank character, but you should be looking for reasons to get involved not sitting back and saying pass until practically forced.

The GM hardly ran a life-changing fantastic first session, but sitting it all on the GMs shoulders to get fucking involved is an asshole player thing to do. GMs already run the whole fucking game for people, making them jump through hoops to get your character involved is being a bad player, at least in one field.

>Of course it's easy...
Thus my problem. I shit out that stupid thing off the top of my head, and I didn't have a character when I started typing. If I had a character it would have been that much easier to get involved. Though my characters would probably comically bumble into it while being fucking weirdos instead of my example.

Sometimes when you play with strangers the first session is going to be awkward starts instead of a master class on running a game. But at the end of the day the guy running it isn't the only one responsible for game quality, everyone at the table has a hand in that.

Sounds like the real problem is that there wasn't any communication between players and DM in the creative process. Your character has a primary motivation, which is good, but did the other player characters just not have any goals or interests, or did they have goals and interests and the DM just dumped you in a bar with random hooks that their characters wouldn't be interested in and then railroaded them into his plot?

PCs being abnormal doesn't necessitate them being retarded busybodies. The only reason a PC just casually visiting a bar would stop a fight in progress would be if they have a personal stake or they're Batman. Han Solo would just nope out of there.

Starting the game off with the players observing a confrontation between two neutral parties isn't how you get them invested. You go after them, not the ideals you personally believe Player Characters should have.

You go on about "meeting halfway" but that doesn't mean just biting onto any plothook the DM throws at you. Especially when they're uninteresting.

They were given fucking several though. And they chose to sit in the corner passively. You know, if the story was they tried to nope out, or started betting on sides, or... anything. Getting in the middle of a confrontations wasn't the only option with the situation presented. The story OP tells is of players refusing to even TRY to engage until they were railroaded into being involved, then finally acquiesced to adventure "I guess".

I can't stress enough why a session zero would have been better because of shit like this. But if you don't have one and you still want to try playing you're going to have to fucking work together.

Sitting around and making the GM play "Guess my motivation" is just as bad as when the GM plays similar one-sided guessing games with the players.

I just can't help but wonder what your PCs must be like on average to be honest. You're painting me a picture that says they're boring pieces of shit who spend their time worrying about how random thugs will give them ouchies and try to finish their drink so they can get a good 8 hours before getting back to work tomorrow.
>Our village needs help, there's a dragon
"Dragons are dangerous man, that's your problem."
>Undead attack
"I should move somewhere there aren't undead."
>Secret treasure map
"If it's a secret treasure finding it would be hard."

>I just can't help but wonder what your PCs must be like on average to be honest. You're painting me a picture that says they're boring pieces of shit who spend their time worrying about how random thugs will give them ouchies and try to finish their drink so they can get a good 8 hours before getting back to work tomorrow.
>fucking implying

My characters always have extreme personalities, which gets me killed more often than not. I just as a rule don't play characters who barge their way into random strangers' issues unless there's something going on which actually affects me or something I care about.

The problem with the "hooks" the OP gives is none of them really actually try to invest the players. They're just things that are happening around them, with the expectation the PCs will just butt in on them. The lady selling drugs isn't necessarily something the players should care about unless they're cops or junkies. The guy eyeballing them is weird but unless you're thin-skinned or paranoid there's no real reason to confront someone just for giving you the stinkeye. I don't know if you're the one who brought up Aragorn, but if you were then you forget 1) Aragorn is an NPC, not a Player, and 2) he didn't get involved until the Hobbits did something which really stood out to him as something he needed to follow up on. I can't imagine he'd give a shit if Merry took a swing at Pippin.

Shit like this is why all my games begin with "prologues" for individual players to get into the nitty gritty of who they are and why they're where they're at. To use another Star Wars example, Luke was in the bar because he needed a ship. Han was there because he needed to troll for clients. They weren't just "there" waiting for the plot to happen.

I mean we can at least agree on prologues are a good idea. But at this point I don't see this going further. I feel like if you want to come to some rando game you should be prepared to stretch out to help it get going, you disagree.

I was the Aragorn guy, thing is people WANT to play Aragorn and the sort of "I hang in the corner spooky drinking ale" characters are often channeling that sort of character, forgetting that he DID jump in the second things looked funny. Honestly though, you thinking he works better as an NPC only reinforces the idea it's not good PC behavior to try to act so forcibly "cool"

But either way, sorry for the pissy greentext, running with my impression and assuming shit is shitty of me. The edgy *Sits in a corner* shit just gets my fucking goat.

This is a fucking tabletop game, with a plot created by a human, who likely isn't a proffessional writer and probably has things going on in his life.
When he gives you a hook that isn't super perfectly tailored to your character's motivations, fucking bite it anyway, because you came here to have adventures, not to roleplay sitting in a dark corner sipping ale.

>Sitting around and making the GM play "Guess my motivation"

We used to have a guy in our group that hated the concept of session zero, and demanded that every game basically began like this - he wouldn't discuss anything about his character with anyone whatsoever, and would throw a tantrum if anyone else did. He really seemed to expect that every campaign should begin with the GM having not only to guess his motivation, but the motivations of every character, all of which are created in secret. With no guarantee whatsoever that they were in any way compatible, so the motivation of Character B might very well be opposed to the motivation of Character A and C.

Then again, he really enjoyed LARPs where nothing happens in the game because everyone sits on their own and refuses to interact with anyone else.

This is basically what I am trying to get across, you don't have to decide to jump in screaming no fighting or declaring that gangs are your trigger or something, but... interact, at least be willing to protect your future party member, come up with petty IC reasons or something if you need to. Interact with the other PCs or something, start building chemistry.

It's not quite as bad as the "brooding loner badass", but it's pretty close.

No you fucking retard who can't greentext for shit.
Snake pliskin from escape from new york was that but his business was saving the president so he can live another day.

>muh containment boards
I hate to break it to you, but Veeky Forums is a containment website,, you are looking at people in a cell thinking they they are the ones imprisoned, but you're still stuck in the prison