Times your party played themselves

It was done in a single session, yeah. And for what it's worth, I gave the wizard a chance to break himself out (which he did), so he wasn't doing nothing the whole time.

t. shit DM

did you at least let them roll for Animal Handling before fucking them up?

Best DM I saw in a while

and this is why humans are garbage

How come DM who love using the fey are always garbage, without an exception? Demons, undead, constructs, oozes, no type of enemy draws such faggots - it's always fey.

>Gives players an easy way to unfuck themselves
>Players respond by being murderhobos and getting themselves turned into hounds by pissing off the queen of faeries herself.
They deserved it.

That's fair and I can respect this.

I don't generally use fae, which is why I gave them an easy out as soon as they planeshifted into the feylands by accident.

They chose to pretty much fuck themselves over, even after I told them OoC that the portal was safe.

Yea, the one trying to tame, he didn't have the skill and didn't roll well. Plus I didn't want them to have a pet dire wolf.

They had Characters, Characters who don't trust no fey like folk. They stuck to their guns.

Good players.

>When "keeping it real" goes wrong

>Resident sperg makes a Barbarian who is afraid of mimics.
>Randomly smashes every inanimate object he comes across if he finds it in the wilderness.
>Refuses to enter any building, limiting the group to outdoors-y missions since the Barbarian is the only one who can deal damage.
>Party stumbles upon an old tomb with a busted roof.
>end up finding an orb floating in place that gives off an ethereal glow and sparks of electricity.
>Before anyone can do anything, Barbarian says "I smash it!"
>Ask him if he's sure
>He is sure
>Rolls for attack
>NAT 20 (of course)
>Ends up freeing a powerful lightning elemental who proceeds to blast the party with chain lightning.
>Barbarian

Not really the party, but a single character
>main setting is a massive city state controlled by various rival noble families that basically act like mobsters
>each player is free to do their own thing
>repeatedly emphasize that stealth, smarts, and diplomacy are a main focus
>new player comes in playing a fighter (already had a Barbarian player he had no issues fitting in, so I let him)
>explain the situation and the in-universe rules to him
>goes straight to the Drow prince's mansion with a great-axe and tries to enter through the front entrance. Alone.
>Guards tell him to fuck off.
>He attacks
>Tells him it is a bad idea and that he might get away with it if he runs away before they call re-enforcement
>He refuses, and continues charging at the mansions.
>Through a bunch of extremely lucky rolls he manages to get in but with barely any HP left
>is immediately surrounded by the prince's elite bodyguards
>Decide to give him one last chance to get out of it alive
>The Prince offers to spare him is he'll work for him
>Guy just charges the prince, not even close enough to hit him with his melee weapon, not even trying to use a ranged attack
>guards turn him into a needle-cushion with poisoned arrows
>Guy rage quits.

>Barbarian is the only one who survives the slaughter
>Has no means of damaging it, so it eventually flies away to wreak havoc upon the world.
>New PC's immediately curbstomp Barbarian into the dirt using psychic damage.
>Then nominate that he gets kicked from the group.
>mfw THAT GUY gave me a Big Bad to use in my campaign.

>They had Characters, Characters who don't trust no fey like folk.
>Characters repeatedly defeat fey challenges, demand answer, then willfully ignore answer they fought to receive.
If they didn't trust fey to give them an answer, they wouldn't have demanded one from the flower knight.
That's not roleplaying, that's ignoring the "plothook" like a contrarian faggot.

>They stuck to their guns.
>Good players.
>They chose to pretty much fuck themselves over, even after I told them OoC that the portal was safe.
Ignoring what the GM is telling you is factual about the universe because "fuck x" is close to the opposite of being a good player.

>he didn't have the skill and didn't roll well
then it was at least fair

>Playing a game of Magical Burst
>(Yes it's a game about Magical Girls and I am a weeb, shut up)
>Midway through the game, it turns out the greatest threat isn't the eldritch abominations, but a government "Men-in-Black" style organization that's figured out how to extract magic from subjects and create weapons capable of harming magical girls and other youma.
>This agency sends a capture team after the players
>The players severely under-estimate them, because LOL HUMANS have never been a threat to them before
>Get sent packing with their tails between their legs, their fluffy magic companion creature gets captured.
>Decide I wana challenge the players with something they can't just beat with brute force, but I do drop tons of hints that these guys are getting their weapons charged up with the aid of a rival magical girl, so going after her is an option to pursue (she's a well-know idol and NOT hiding out in a military base all day).
>The party also has a grimoire from past magical girls that gives them spells to turn invisible, disguise themselves as other people, phase through non-magical barriers, ect. Literally tons of options for infiltration.
>Also hint that if they just wait for another Youma attack, most of the base's armed men and weapons will probably be dealing with THAT threat instead.
>ALSO hint that negotiations with the organization itself might be possible, as they seem to be new at the whole magic thing. That it'd be risky but a trade might be possible.
>Instead the players decide to walk up to the base in the middle of the day, power up, and basically start screaming threats.
>Of course they all got steamrolled and taken captive.

Guess I have to work on an escape plot now... sigh...

>Going out of the way to try and tame a dire wolf pet
Great
>Doing so while badly wounded
Dumb
>Doing so while badly wounded and the GM implies its dangerous
Really dumb
>Players get "shit on" by wolf
Perfectly valid, depending on the meaning of "shit on". Dumb players happen, no worries.
>Players say the GM should have thrown in a DMPC or should have given them out of level gear
Set them on fire and walk away.

A little bit of advice
Acting like a 40K character in most setting outside of 40K will get you killed

What's up with so many players having the survival instincts of a headless chicken on fire?

Masochists, probably.

Dare you enter my magical realm, ect. ect.

Some people just cannot grasp that their actions have consequences and that the GM is not always out to fuck with you.

It's the glorious combination of those two together that get me.

>"The GM is clearly trying to kill us with this safely cleared path, let's jump into the bottomless chasm instead!" "Of course!" "It's so obvious!"

I mean, I can *almost* understand being suspicious of safety. But if the peaceful meadow is a "plot by a GM out to kill the PCs", why the hell would such a GM make the Evil Forest of Death the safe path?

>DM: Here's some forks in the road
>DM: Here's a map that shows you how each one of those will get you to your destination
>Party: "WHICH ONE DO WE CHOOSE??!?" *runs face-first into the signpost and gets a concussion*

This happens so often with my players it isn't even funny. I love how the party is very quick to come to a consensus on other super complicated matters, but seems to have a mental breakdown over choosing to go left or right even when there will be literally no consequence other than having to backtrack if they don't like the way they went.

My personal conundrum is a player of mine who, despite all odds, is cautious and paranoid except when they should be.

It's like they know where all the traps, foes, pitfalls and possible means of fucking up are at any given time, and then actively choose to run into them. They'll hesitate outside a room for five minutes inspecting a door because it might be suspicious, but then they'll run in the middle of battle through a room they haven't explored and pick up a chest that's just sitting in the middle of a room only to get hit by a trap. They haven't done a single thing right in the few months our game has been running. Literally not once.

After reading this thread and your posting and some thinking, Ive come to wonder if the idea of Player Vs. DM is somehow put into the common players mindset meaning anything the DM says is a trick so the players re-act the opposite of how they should??

Or dose playing DnD bring out a "I'm going against the norm" mentality that makes bad decisions "acceptable"???

I'm halfway wondering if the reason so many parties make bad decisions in these stories is some kind of groupthink where everyone ends up going with the most straightforward answer because "Hey! Everyone else is OK with it!"

Shared blame is blame that's not YOUR blame.

>"If the idea were THAT bad, surely someone else would say something, right?"

I'd say it's a little of both.

People played with shit DM's who would constantly drink the "DM vs. Player" kool aid, so they develop shitty habits that boil down to never trusting anything the DM says, lest they use that as a means of fucking them over later on.

I feel like it's a bit of both.

On one hand, one of the larger reasons many people (including myself) play tabletop RPGs is because you can do stuff that's a bit more creative than, say, a video game would allow. Where a video game might just make an NPC invincible instead of giving you a reason not to mess with them, or might place invisible walls instead of letting you explore down that path, you can go as you please until your GM runs out of patience. This might translate into intentionally trying to do ridiculous stuff that wouldn't make sense in reality and you wouldn't be able to do in a video game.

On the other hand (and bringing it back to video games), lots of games have a tendency to reward players thinking 'outside the box' (i.e., doing the opposite of what it looks like they should do, such as going down the 'wrong' path, or dropping into a dangerous-looking area), while punishing players doing what seems the obvious choice (a chest sitting at the end of a small corridor is probably trapped, a weak creature sitting there by itself might be bait to distract you from the larger creature around the corner).

Not all the party, but only one player who was sort of new- btu there is no "new" enoguh for this.
>due to missing a session, the cleric and druid begin on their own en route to meet the rest of the party
>end up in the same village the others passed through two days earlier, mention being friends with the rest of the group, villagers are pretty freindly since the party goliath helped them out with farm work when he passed there
>druid decides to investigate the large tree that's rumored to be magical or something, which is in the middle of the village
>fuckhuge tree mind you, with half the village built on the lower branches
>on top of the tree there is a sanctuary to the local hero with a wooden replica of his sword on a wooden altar
>No one guarding the place since there is literally nothing of value to steal.
>the druid (good aligned and of celestial heritage with plenty of wisdom) decides that he shall take the sword.
>"are you sure about that?
>sure
>"it is not a powerful artifact, you don't sense any magic coming from it"
>still wants to take it.
>"why would you do that?"
>answers it is clearly something important, then proceed to grab it, half hassedly stick it into his backpack- hardly counting as concealment- and go back to the cleric.
>obviously whole village comes to question him on what he is exactly doing
>druid gets defensive, cleric tells me he readies Hold Person
>two villagers make to walk up to the druid
>the (good aligned, of celestial heritage!) druid decides to cast fucking Moonbeam on them
>luckily gets interrupted by the cleric and fails his saving throw, handing up paralized.
>villagers seize him, grab the sword and tie him up, then tie the other end of the rope to a donkey
>give druid the chance to explain himself
>"I thought it was some sort of Quest Item!"
>and that is why when the duo finally manages to reunite with the rest of the party, the druid is covered head to toe in mud and bruises
Seriously, think before you act.

There is if you've been conditioned by vidya all your life, and you're thinking with 'gamer brain' and not 'use your fucking common sense, idiot'.

you're goddamn right!

>If they didn't trust fey to give them an answer, they wouldn't have demanded one from the flower knight.
>That's not roleplaying, that's ignoring the "plothook" like a contrarian faggot

Good pointing that out.

>video games have a tendency to reward players thinking 'outside the box', while punishing players doing what seems the obvious choice
>"I thought it was some sort of Quest Item!"
It may be just the players treating everything in the setting like part of a game instead of part of a world.
As GMs, we can discourage this by treating the setting like a world and the npcs and pcs as independent individuals unconnected to a larger plot.
Also, by speaking plainly when the players get confused.
Or, eventually, by smacking them repeatedly.

It was clearly that. But you see, the idea that the sword was a WOODEN REPLICA had been explained very slowly and carefully.

Now you need to get to the smacking them repeatedly part.

We had just been kidnapped by a mid level boss, and we had managed to escape...

We found our way through some tunnels that exited into a large cave with sunlight visible at the far end, and gold pieces scattered all about.

As we ventured further, we noticed a sleeping dragon.

And... one of our party had a pretty good strength score, so he decided to break off a stalactite and use it to attack the SLEEPING dragon.

needless to say, it woke up.

Preferably with a wooden replica of a sword

Turns out good gamers are not necessarily good roleplayers

This is really shitty bait man

He gave them multiple easy opportunities to get off free, but they just shat on it every single time, and got punished accordingly. He's a good DM.

>Implying fey are ever honest
>Implying GMs don't lie

Darkness is my fetish.

>Players defeat gnolls
>Notice head peeking at them in water, maybe an alligator
>Decide to throw gnoll corpses into swamp
>NOT AN ALLIGATOR, NOT AN ALLIGATOR
>Player dies instantly as six Lizardmen roll up on him and skewer him like a kabob
>Scooby Doo chase scene ensues.

>Ignoring what the GM is telling you is factual about the universe because "fuck x" is close to the opposite of being a good player.
I actually gotta disagree here. If the DM is telling the players something, but not the characters, a good player will sometimes stick to their guns in defiance of what they now know. DM-assisted metagaming is still metagaming.

>DM-assisted metagaming is still metagaming.
A GM will often metagame because the players are not in the world and might miss something that their characters never would.
>"Oh, that's right, I'm not wearing shoes! I won't walk on the broken glass!"
>"Guys, you're not getting it, the dragon is pants-shittingly more powerful than your characters and they can feel it."
>"Wait, I forgot he was in my backstory, maybe I shouldn't accuse him and everyone he knows of witchcraft."

A little metagaming is unavoidable.

Are you fucking stupid? A good player wouldn't need to be told outright "hey, dumbass, you're about to kill yourself, don't fucking do it" in the first place, they'd have enough common sense to know that flipping off the queen of faeries in her own court probably wouldn't have been a good idea, especially after wasting a Wish from her just to learn the same shit you learned beforehand.

The players were morons and the GM was well within his right to fuck them up after giving them multiple chances to take the easy way out.

Certainly, the specific case was retarded, but the general assertion that "Ignoring the DM's out-of-character information about the universe is the opposite of being a good player" doesn't hold true, either.

>I actually gotta disagree here. If the DM is telling the players something, but not the characters, a good player will sometimes stick to their guns in defiance of what they now know. DM-assisted metagaming is still metagaming.
If the GM tells you something is stupid and you do the stupid thing anyway, fine, just don't turn around and blame the GM for you doing the stupid thing.

Again, a good player wouldn't need to be reminded of common sense shit in the first place, so it holds true regardless of the situation.

A bad player will do what OP's party did and then wonder how shit could've gone so wrong, even though they were blatantly told the solution on multiple occasions, both in and out of character.

So, it is impossible to be a good player playing a character without much common sense?

"Dude, you realize that door is kind of suspicious?"
"Well, yeah, but I'm probably too retarded to notice."
"...fair enough."

>So, it is impossible to be a good player playing a character without much common sense?
Yes, especially if you're playing in a game where you're fighting dangerous monsters and the party's survival depends on everyone in the group a) contributing to their survival and b) not being a fucktard.

Even animals can tell when something is too dangerous to fuck with and they have an INT of 5 or so. If your character has less self-preservation than a fucking rat, you need to critically rethink your character concept and think of one that isn't a liability to themselves and others.

If not, congrats, you're THAT GUY.

>the GM is not always out to fuck with you

This is usually the cause and people who think that way probably had a shit GM for their first game.

My first tabletop sessions were in high school with a GM who killed a character almost every session, sometimes multiple in a day. I am the only person who ran the same character start to finish, playing a single classed Ranger with good stats. I just played very carefully and started doing everything I could to circumvent the prepared content the GM had brought that session.

Ie

>the orc camp is just up the hill
>good, lets go check out that dungeon we heard a rumor about last week.

The GM was not particularly smart or good at improv. It made his attempts to set up obvious party killer traps really clumsy and eventually we stopped losing party members all together. He quit hosting around this time because we never, ever went for any plot hooks he set up because they were all obviously going to get us killed. It forced him into making really lame 'no you guys didnt know they were there so you didnt get a roll' ambush encounters or otherwise nonsense shit like randomly placed expensive (100gp+ priced) traps in wilderness trails.

When your first encounter with tabletop is "the GM is actively trying to kill you and if you dont metagame accordingly your character is dead" its easy to just see it as a competitive game between the players and GM. In a situation where you are fighting the creator of a realm the best way to 'win' is to go around the mountain instead of following that obvious bait path going up to a village.

I usually lie to my players about the campaign, outside of game
When narrating you should never lie about anything, since your word it's law
Very few have caught on this and have stopped asking questions, the rest try to meta game and end up in trouble

Really, this is mostly the result of people buying into the screwy meme version of Fair Folk, where instead of being an odd bunch with weird rules and a few dangerous specific examples, they're all secretly evil and trying to screw you.

>roleplaying games are meant to be WON, dammit!
This kind of attitude really is the worst part of this hobby.

Tabletop was dominated by nerds by a time, and as any good nerd with social issues it try to CONTROL everything using the only tool they have, their brilliant mind now used as a repository for obscure rules and thousands of danhers to expose their players, and if they die? Too bad. We all know that constant and ruthless challenge it's the best part of roleplaying right?
I too have a lot of players that started long ago and their characters play like stunted soldiers constantly suffering from PTSD
The old man at the pub had to be a spy or something evil otherwise he would never have been interested in the party, it can't be because he is senile and the rogue reminds him of his lost daughter

Why would the party keep your character around if you're so stupid that you become a liability to the party's survival?

This doesn't even have anything to do with winning either, what narrative reasoning could you give that would justify such a dumbass taking resources from the party while being so dumb that their incompetence nearly costs the lives of themselves and the party?

Because the rest of the party is not obligated to make sure you survive, especially when civilization is several miles away, nobody would be able to find your body, and "he fell for a trap and died" will generally be enough alibi to get the party off scot free.

In my opinion true fae are to mo out there for their morals to be good or evil
They might challenge you to a duel for not using the appropriate way of saying "hello" during the 4th day of summer, they might be obligated to take care of a bunch of children because they ate the fruit from a specific tree during full moon
They might twist their words and intentions but they never lie

>you have to accept my character concept, even if it doesn't fit the tone and actively detracts from fun.

not the guy youre replying to but if his character was retarded but extremly strong his strength could be the reason why the party keeps him around- he would basically be a literal living tool.

A nuke that leaks radiation before it's launched is not worth keeping user. Besides, the character he's talking about is literally too dumb to live, like "less survival instinct than most animals" tier ineptitude.

Believe me, characters like this are never worth the trouble.

>Party started off good, but has been sliding towards evil, both in their own alignment and in their reputation in the world at large.
>Get offered a job to retrieve this one sword.
>Sword is worth WAY more than the baron who hired them is offering.
>Party leader decides to keep the blade for himself.
>Blade is enchanted by one of the evil gods of the setting (or at least has his mark), and forces the holder to make a seriously tough willpower save or attack every cleric of his most hated enemy in the pantheon on sight.
>Yeah, so we run around murdering a bunch of priests.
>Turns out, Baron von Dickballs didn't even want the sword, he just wanted us to have it and start fighting said priests. The low offer was intentional, enough that we would steal the blade rather than turn it over to him.

Baron von Dickballs is a true genius and I'm so pleased that it turned out that way.

Stop trying to justify your own incompetence as a player

Not sure what they did wrong there

Failed to slaughter filthy amphibians.

>We all know that constant and ruthless challenge it's the best part of roleplaying right?
We had a GM like that ,except he would never screw-us over plot wise.
He loved to throw disproportionally difficult combat encounters at us, and we basically had to minimax to even stand a chance (something he actively encouraged), but ha never tried to railroad us into a deathtrap or put us into a truly unwinnable scenario.

it is theoretically possible that ignoring GM knowledge makes sense both as a player and a PC.
In such rare cases, see:
>Ignoring what the GM is telling you is factual about the universe because "fuck x" is close to the opposite of being a good player.
>close to the opposite
>close

You sound like a damn Kender player

Everyone in this thread is a damn Kender. Especially you.

that is a very serious accusations

Too much reliance on video game mechanics

And this is why we have GM oversight.
>lizardmen
>amphibians
user....

>I told them OoC that the portal was safe.

Yep, this confirms it, OP's players are retarded.

>And this is why we have GM oversight.
See, having a headstrong character doesn't automatically say to the GM "I'm going to run off every cliff because I dislike gravity!!!!"

The GM at that point can try to say "but that doesn't sound like something any sane person would do", similar to saying "no, the fey is telling you the truth, they're not lying" but if a player continues to charge off cliffs saying that's what his character would do, he's stuck between kicking that player out or letting the character die.

the player is probably expecting the DM to bend to his will and let him fly

>Implying GMs don't lie

They certainly should not. NPCs can lie, they can be mistaken, they can believe things that aren't true, they can shade the truth, or they can tell the PCs what they think the big scary guys with knives want to hear, but as the GM, I am a neutral arbiter of the world. Anything I say to you OOC is true, to the best of my knowledge. If I fucked up and told you X when my prep says Y, I will either retcon it to be X, or own up to it as soon as I notice I got something wrong.
The DM cannot go around lying to the players, it's a violation of the trust on which the game space is built.

I don't see any evidence that OP lied to his players, only evidence that some DM has probably lied to them in the past, or else they've been sucking down "evil DM" memes off the internet.

These are the highlights. People don't share their players being smart on tg

5d chessmaster

Fuck, now I want to play in your game.

Just remember if they try shit like that again: Wolves aren't dogs. People who successfully raise wolves are able to do it because they are the alpha. A dire wolf looking at half dead adventurers aren't going to see an alpha, theyre going to see food.

If you have characters who aren't going to believe fey, why ask them questions in the first place.

Yeah, much less torture and kill a knight for answers they're not going to believe. That's some dumbass murderhobo shit.

>Fey ruler can mass polymorph on a whim
>Can't just send the fuckers who don't want to be here home and instead sends them to a portal

Man Op you are an awful fucking GM. Reconsider your actions.

So let the fucker die, and the problem solves itself. A player who tries something like that probably isn't worth asking to roll up a replacement, either, though the group might extend the benefit of doubt and give them a second chance after a talking-to.
It's fucking Titania, man. She's basically a deity, and inflicting bestial forms falls well within her domain.
Sending the asshats to the portal instead of poofing them home was odd, but if the portal's not far off, why bother casting a port?

Would've been a great insult if not for them being too dumb to get it. Our int-challenged orc barb makes do with calling them toad's turds, as you see, the orks and lizs fought for their right to sit in the warm-shit-to-their-brows swamp for millennia.

At that point the portal was several days away from Titania's castle and they wasted their one Wish asking Titania for a way home. I asked them why they didn't just Wish for her to puff them home but they were afraid of being fucked over by the Wish so they decided to "play it safe" and ask her to answer a relatively simple question truthfully instead.

Of course, after they got the answer, they decided that she fucked them over somehow, even though they had been told about the portal by multiple people at that point (including me OoC) and flipped her off out of spite, which is what ultimately caused them to get polymorphed in the end.