Online D&D, lessons in desperation

Roll20 is a great website.
But I don't look for players on it. I just run games for my friends using it.

Fucking this.
It took 6 months to get one of my players to stop trying to make CE rouges that will break into peoples houses and sell them into slavery or outright murder them.

I must of killed his character in the first session 5-6 times to get him to play anything else

>I must of killed his character in the first session 5-6 times

In order to defeat the CE rogue, you have become the CE rogue.

what's a spergvoice?

People trying to make a funny voice but end up sounding like they miss a chromosome. Often think they're funny but are actually just annoying.

This is how you do it. Don't join public pick up games to play them, join them to make contacts and get to know people. Most groups recruiting publicly are going to be terrible, they'll be GM's and players who can't keep a consistent group going for one reason or another in the first place. But they don't matter, it's the other decent players and the occasional decent GM without players you need to look out for, and communicating politely and being friendly is the best way to achieve this.

It's a long process but I did a somewhat similar thing to the former poster. I'm further down the line though, and now have multiple consistent online groups with great players who all share my playstyle. It's very possible to achieve, you just need to put in the work and accept that it's not going to happen overnight.

Don't play D&D.
Never seen anyone under 18 play non-DnD games.

>get accepted into campaign in roll20
>gotta make characters
>DM is a grill who will be assisted by her friend, also a grill
>finally gonna play with girls, shit won't be a fucking autismofest
>make character - a sailor type of guy
>game will be with 2 other guys
>the 2 guys somehow managed to beta orbit themselves so hard, that the girls are making their characters
>their characters are to be married soon
>into a dynasty that is also an olygarchic democracy - they pick their heir and leader
>the marriage is to bind 2 houses into one
>both their characters are male
>endless snickering about how cute they are
>3 sessions we dont even start because always someone doesnt show up
>thank god it was all disbanded

>shadman

>get in game
>DM is new, players are new
>game is 30% DM rants (literally the same, every session, about how he cant tell anyone what to do or what they feel)
>30% silence because everyone is scared shitless and wont go exploring the dungeon, but they are also new so they dont know how to interact with the other characters, they dont even know their own characters
>30% is me pulling the party somewhere and trying to get them either in conversation with NPCs or into the dungeon they are so scared of
>feel like dick for being the only one speaking and pushing the party
>shut up, game turns into 50% rants 50% silence
>oh well
>after a while we get to the dungeon and start killing things, its ok, though it is so fucking slow. literal silence or rants.
>last session everyone opens up and starts speaking
>DM talks about how before DMing this he had such cool campaigns
>characters were "literal pedos and no one cared, we like diddled little girls all the time it was so cool"
>everyone joins in on how cool it was
>kthxbye

Find Veeky Forums groups.

This thread is making me grateful my GMs are just regular bad. Like, the worst I've seen in years is one that thinks a good D&D game consists of one level-appropriate encounter per day in between some pre-planned story scenes.

high school taught me that girls can be just as spergy as dudes

>someone was stupid on the internet
>I must warn Veeky Forums

>be user
>be into freeform Yahoo! chat RP in the early 2000s
>literally two dozen people in a room
>some of whom are the same character from Trigun or Inuyasha, all having separate RP sessions
>including things like explosions and dramatically altering the setting into day/night/a blizzard/blood rain/whatever
>learn how to RP with a combination of spergy 13 year olds, pedophiles, anime sluts and autistic goths who couldnt find an irl group to play WoD with

Its just what you have to put up with man. Eventually you'll find a group that is alright and it will go from there.

The medium doesn't matter. Your problem is the method. It doesn't matter if you play online, irl, or even by post. What you fucked up doing is joining a group with an open call for people.

The easiest (but still not east) approach to getting a game started is to start your own and invite your friends (virtual ot not). Ideally they all have experience. You probably know some even if you don't realize it. All us losers have the same dumb interests and congregate around certain sites/chats.

If you're responding to a group that is just looking for ANY players you're jumping right into a group that's scraping the barrel already and is destined for failure.

That's a problem with open player calls EVERYWHERE. It's not a roll20 issue. By joining a group with an open call for players means that between them they couldn't scrounge up enough friends or friends of friends that wanted to play with them. In most cases that just means they're assholes and/or terrible players.

my problem with finding games is that the most proactive person in a group is almost always forever DM. it requires a lot of work to learn how to be a good DM, not to mention how much work goes on to making a good session week after week, and once a group gets used to being players no one willingly wants to go and learn to be DM. it's incredibly frustrating.

I just wanna be a PC God damnit.

I'd join some random games for D&D or Rifts to learn how to play Palladium, but after hearing about how people RP rape or make some really cringe shit I can't help but just stick with my own friend group. Rules are no sex and don't be that guy and we all have fun.

>By joining a group with an open call for players means that between them they couldn't scrounge up enough friends or friends of friends that wanted to play with them. In most cases that just means they're assholes and/or terrible players.

That's not necessarily true. I joined a game where the GM normally plays in several games during the weekend at his lgs, and wanted to try his hand GMing a weeknight game in a different system through roll20. He's been gaming for 25 years so he really knows his stuff, but sometimes it's hard to get other people to want to play your game at your time and you have to look elsewhere. I'm lucky he did otherwise I wouldn't have found the game.

% is me pulling the party somewhere and trying to get them either in conversation with NPCs or into the dungeon they are so scared of
>>feel like dick for being the only one speaking and pushing the party
i too do this

ITT: Tumblr

>shadman

Have you tried not playing D&D?

It really helps.

Kinda this unfortunately. I like D&D, but with it being mainstream you can potentially attract the wrong kinds of people because the player pool is now much larger. Therefore you have a higher chance to encounter dipshits.

What is a good course of action for trying to round up players then? I keep bumming around on here, but I have hard time trying to get a decent group for my B/X game.

What other fantasy setting with freedom of creativity is there which is better? Pathfinder is too easy.

>What other fantasy setting with freedom of creativity is there which is better?
Rules-light systems arguably have more freedom of creativity, because there aren't a bunch of rules limiting your options.

Generic systems in general, just grab whatever fantasy sourcebook they have.

Yes?

The system is different? It may not be BETTER, but it sure as fuck is going to be different.

Talk to people. There are enough red flags that you can notice before you start playing. Ask them about the characters they're going to create, what other campaigns they've played. This already prompts people to enthusiastically talk about their autistic/actually good characters and what they've done.

> Is that any different from just going with D&D?
If you want to gather people to have fun? Probably not.
Here, in Mother Russia, nobody knows about D&D, so I actually started playing tabletop with Fallout PnP and later switched to UESRPG (Elder Scrolls). It was a great way to get people interested, because they already know the setting more or less and enjoyed it, so more adventures in it sounded like a lot of fun. The rules were light enough for me to write a small cheat sheet of combat actions and list of skills, this was enough for most of the group. One guy who was performing poorly finally read the whole manual, and I guess it all clicked in his head so well, he became better at roleplaying than most of the group and was the person who enjoyed combat the most at the same time.

So in the end I think it's mostly not about the system, it's about getting people interested and encouraging them to play the characters they want to play. Maybe help them developing these characters, throwing in ideas for them now and then.

Imagine not being American, playing text games ( Since I live in the family home and can't disturb people, which apparently never happens with Americans because they all get kicked out of the house ) and also having to find such a match online, since no local groups anywhere and no tabletop awareness.

>Here, in Mother Russia, nobody knows about D&D
True. Though D&D still works if you sell it as generic fantasy (not that it is). That's how we started at least.

What do you want to DM? I can get reliable players with experience in at least some systems.

There's no 5eg up so I'm just going to ask this here:
How do I GM Strahd if my players are looking forward to me "playing to win" bosses? Character death is not a foreign concept in this group, neither is failing campaigns, so how do I go all out with Strahd?

As an online GM I can state categorically that this (while well meant) is *terrible* advice.

Setting up a game with 4-6 players who anything but fuck-wads is really difficult. As a person on Veeky Forums, I'm pretty sure you understand that anonymity allows people who would otherwise be too painfully awkward to be a problem to be massive cunts.

I've been at it for two months, and I had to kick two motherfuckers this morning.

You *could* keep trying. You can find a good game online, but holy shit does it take a long time.

Alternatively, take whatever circle of friends you can make through school, work, or even just hanging out at the bookstore (it can work), and introduce them to D&D. The first session will be awkward as fuck, but they will generally be nicer to deal with than self-styled online players, who are by and large fetishists and miscreants, or teens so laughably out of touch with immersive gaming they teleport you into a 50x50 battle zone like a goddamn Yugioh summon.

tldr, go outside.

Why did you have to kick them out or why are all these players "fuckwards". I keep hearing about all those "spergs" but no word of what exactly is that supposed to mean.

>tfw you have a group of friends in real life that you have known for 6 years
>tfw your group is willing to compromise about in-game things
>tfw playing dnd is fun as hell because everyone is willing to cooperate
Sure is nice

>Had to kick out two people this morning
What are you GMing? I'm fucking desperate for a group.

Sorry, friendo, we're full up. I had to invite a friend of mine to GM in the discord, because so many decent players joined, and I didn't want to turn away six people.

The hard fact of online gaming is, there will always be a glut of players and a shortage of GMs, because of how straight-up awful it is to run tabletop games online. What there isn't a good supply of is players who
1. actually know how to play D&D and don't need to be spoonfed through character-gen.
2. don't want to break the game or whine because some class/race/optional rule isn't available.
3. don't want to insert fetish-fuel or torture porn into a game not designed for it.

I'm all for people getting what they want, but too many players are willing to force the fantasy they want on your gaming situation, without investing even the minimum effort.

I'll take shit that never happened for $500, Alex.

post up on gamefinder, actually talk with people before agreeing to anything, tell them you're a hard sell and you've been playing tabletops for years (but not D&D so you'll need to learn)

watch as the half-assing teens enjoying their winter breaks suddenly stop trying to reach you.

>I'll take shit that never happened for $500, Alex.
Is Veeky Forums the only place where claiming to be a normal, well adjusted person is the most audacious thing one could do?

DM for some normie friends.

I had a killer group back in the 90s. Tried a few sessions with different groups since, but I always gave up rather quickly (too encounter/mechanic heavy, very little storytelling).

I figured out years ago that it was just never gonna happen.

Just get your friends to try it if you have friends. They don't have to be interested in it already.

Be prepared to DM for the rest of your days though.

>Friends

Of course, I'll be right on it.

you probaly want to use his ability to noclip through the castle walls as best as possible, combined with his lair action(i think it was a lair action) that allows him to shut all doors itshould let you to single out pcs and fuck their shit up, especially if the players aren't being careful

Why do people from the shitpost boards keep spamming their memes here?
Why are they always shit-tier memes at that?
Why do they keep ban-evading when they get removed by the mods?

It's probably the largest, but any community is going to consider itself different from the general population. I know imgur has a hardon for foreveralone, for instance. They don't openly doubt anyone else has a girlfriend, but the concept is in place.

But why the spam?

That's how it's been for me, for the most part. I've been running with the same DM for like, 12 years now. He's an awesome DM that always goes all-out on making fully realized worlds and settings for his games, but we have the hardest fucking time finding players. We only have like, four LGS spread across two cities and each of them specializes in something different, so we're not gonna find D&D players at the card games store or the wargaming store. You can occasionally find a player in the wild at the board games store. There's also nowhere to post fliers or bulletins for trying out players, either. It's pretty shitty.

>Want to run tabletop games but there's no one in my country who even plays them
>Do it online over roll20
>One combat encounter takes over two hours
>We can only play four hours because everyone is from different time zones

My current group on roll20 is awesome. Had people come and go during the years but it is really cool. We changed systems 3 times. Playing Blades in the dark atm.

also the GM is one of the most solid dudes i've ever known.

I'm running Blades for the first time this Sunday.
Any advice?

Some fucking combat, man

I don't like flavorless combat but I definitely I hate huge time consumption on waiting for a turn

it's probably the online part that makes it so slow for you, but I am supremely proud that my usual time of ~3 hours for one combat has decreased to under 30 minutes because I've
1. kicked out shit players
1b. made them stop fucking around so much, kicking the attention whore out improved it, but when we kicked the guy who is "nice outside the game though!" it got waaaaaaay better
2. got the meh players to be half decent
3. convinced everyone to read the fucking book

>1b.

People who use a pretend game to be a fuckass have forgotten that a game is a social encounter, and it's incredibly telling when they act like children.

I hate how this has to conveyed to some people that a pretend game still has other people playing it.

Off the top of my head: Runequest/Mythras, Rolemaster, The One Ring, Conan (Modiphius).

It's so easy to find a good set of players, all you have to do is join one of those fandom hangouts and hunt for sane people.

If you can't do that then you're the sperg, my friend.

>they all get kicked out of the house
If you're not living by yourself by the age of 19, there's something very wrong with you. And just so you know, I'm not American either.

>eurotrash trying to lecture anyone

It's the place where people will take your butting in attention whoring about your great life as exactly what it is: A lie