Signs you know when a game is going to fail

>What are local/national games

>1.
>2.
>3.
All negated if they are already an established party in their backstory.

>insist that their game is 1000x better than DnD because it's not popular.
Not true. They normally insist it is 1000x better than D&D because it takes very little to be 1000X better than D&D so nearly any system that is not FATAL fits that description.

>The sky isn't blue if you're looking at a field of green grass.

Say what you want about the books being a huge, poorly written pile of shit, but fuck me if that treehouse wasn't the comfiest goddamn tavern.

THis is the best kind of tavern opening. The very first campaign I was ever in basically started in a tavern, and that session ended with everyone outside watching the tavern burn down. Everyone slowly turned their heads to glare at the idiot bard, and he shrugged, gave his best innocent smile, and said, "Oops."

>GM's gf joins game

>they will go out of the way to not try to team up
>I'm going to spend200 sessions trying to make them team up
I have done solo sessions with 2 players at a time to try to make things smoother but if they don't want team up and they want me to spend a ton (weeks) of time trying to make them like the others I rather just not do it. I get it that kind of set up is shit but if your not going to work with me on any level then what's the point?

>1. Nobody knows eachother so there's no reason for the party to actually cooperate other than the meta knowledge that it's a game and they should. Maybe shit's on fire and exploding (which will lead to point 2 in just a moment), but even then, once the crisis has passed they have no reason to stick together.
>2. These openings usually create a situation where the game kicks off with some big event sucking everyone in. This immediately throws out any of the characters personal goals or motivations and forces them to be REACTING rather than being PROACTIVE. Once the big threat to their survival passes, they once again have no reason to stick together and not just go back to their regular lives.

These statements are both wrong if you're doing it correctly.

>3.The introduce a character in a vaccum where they know nothing about eachother and have no ties to the world. They're just fucking there, like a videogame character.

Yeah because why would you fucking do that.

You all meet in a tavern

WHERE FATHER GIOVANNI WHO YOU ALL SEPARATELY KNOW THROUGH OTHER AVENUES HAS ASKED YOU TO SHOW UP.

Done.

>tfw our 8 player game is running for 3 years now, quite successfully
>tfw you all meet in a tavern is my single best 5e experience ever
>tfw I found 3 random dudes on Veeky Forums to play Mage 2e with, and they're all extremely cool guys
I guess the gf part is coming up...

Similar situation here - While 3 players is nice, I think tavern start is a lot of fun - if one of the players is a tavern owner....

>it's a PvP political intrigue campaign

>no restrictions on chargen, make whatever you want

>no session zero or similar

>if one person can't make it we'll just cancel the game and not even meet up to hang out

>we need you to make a sorceror. Our last sorceror left.

Start in a tavern with no backstory. DM says, "You meet old friends and new acquaintances for a pint..."

Starting cold is terrific, especially if you are a player that demands a true sandbox and shits on "railroading."

>no restrictions on chargen, make whatever you want

I did that once and my buddy picked basically every disadvantage he could, just to be able to get unlimited strength
he punched the tavern and the whole village exploded
he died a minute later because he was narcoleptic and got eaten by a bear

Question: how do you manage to remain so fat and smelly when you're too much of a lazy disgusting slob to succesfully feed yourself?

Can confirm. I've been in games with this sort of situation and it never actually works out. Always make sure to give your players a premise and a hook to build their characters around, that way everybody has at least one thing encouraging them to work together.

> We're playing shadowrun
Every time they fail no matter how hard the GM tried i nearly feel sorry for him at time.

>op is at the table
Fuck these pointless threads... you fucking manchildren really need to grow the fuck up

I definitely used a version of it as the opening for my most recent game (though two of the PCs already knew each other).
I admit it was a little video-gamey the way I did it, but three of my group of five said they thought it was cool.

I narrated from a second person point of view "you have just received your pay from the Society and are in the open market when it stars to rain. You duck into a corner tavern to wait out the storm, and see several other Society members (recognizable by their feather-and-shield badges) seated at a table, talking and drinking. You recognize their faces but don't know them personally. You take a seat in an empty chair and introduce yourself."

It gave the players a reason to all be in one place, and have them tell who their characters are. Cheesy but it worked.

I bet you guys love 3.5

>It's going to be a sandbox

I.e. "you're going to run around in circles for a while, accomplish nothing, and we're all going to lose interest five sessions in".

Only if your GM is a shitter.

>We're going to try Dungeon World.
>Dude! You're gonna love my gf, she's so creative!
>I read about how unique and cool this game is on >insert Reddit, /tg, or any other shit tier RPG advice forum

My friends' and my first game was up to 20 people at a time. It lasted for a year and it was fucking chaos, but stupid fun.

Ouch, got me good user

>DM creates a fully-fleshed out open world
>players are too shitty to come up with anything creative without being led by the nose like literal sheep
>wahhhhh I'm bored!!

>someone else has offered to GM so I can have a turn in the player's chair

>mfw I specifically make all my games start in a bar no matter the setting due to this meme

The number one thing that gives the "meet cold in a tavern" opening a bad rep is edgy manchildren being edgy.

Dwarf: I approach the elf drinking at the bar and try to strike up a conversation.

Elf: I give the dwarf a dirty look and go back to brooding in my ale.

COME THE FUCK ON PEOPLE WORK WITH ME HERE.

My gf is a better roleplayer than 95% of you paint drinkers.

GM has a PC
alternatively in another game i've played 2 GMs both with PCs

In my group the dm's gf is the only player I dont loathe from the bottom of my heart, so i guess that counts.

NPCs spout exposition at each other and don't react when PCs chime in.

Fuck....

I think it's mostly good for new players who might not know that much about character creation and just want to get into the game

>player is 14 years old or younger

One of my best game had 9 players plus 2 GM..
Divided in two teams in different rooms with indirect communications when justified by the game.
Was a one shot session.

>tfw new DM with a group of 7
>First session is today.
Should I be concerned? I was thinking of fluffing the enemy stats after we do the first dungeon crawl, since the Death House in CoS is pretty difficult.

>a better roleplayer than 95% of Veeky Forums
Ooh, I bet she's taller than a midget and stronger than a housefly, too.
Congratu-fucking-lations.

What the fuck are you talking about?

>"Be sure to bring some food over. A bag of chips or cookies is fine."
>Half the players bring nothing.
>The half that didn't bring anything surprisingly also need me to explain the rules because they either just skimmed them or didn't read at all.
I've noticed a pretty strong correlation with poor game nights and people not sharing snacks.

>"Yeah stats don't really matter, but you want to make them higher than average"

7 players isn't that bad, there will usually be someone who can't make it to a session and some players are virtually guaranteed to flake out of the campaign.

Wow it's like some people can go three or four hours without stuffing their fat fucking faces, weird right?

>These openings usually create a situation where the game kicks off with some big event sucking everyone in. This immediately throws out any of the characters personal goals or motivations and forces them to be REACTING rather than being PROACTIVE. Once the big threat to their survival passes, they once again have no reason to stick together and not just go back to their regular

Yeah fuck the Fellowship of the Ring man

>We haven't decided a time yet. We will play when everyone is online.

Any situation where the party doesn't already know and trust one another and can reasonably expect to act the way the players will want to without jumping through hoops or breaking immersion.

It isn't fun to metagame a bunch of strangers working together with full trust but it's even less fun to have to do several sessions of bullshit where the characters find reasons to work together and it is SUPREMELY UNFUN to have the party split up and not work together at level 1 because there is absolutely no reason why the CN orc barbarian and LG elf paladin should be working together at this point.

"You all have known one another and been working together for a few years now, and your latest job as INSERT_ADVENTURER_JUSTIFICATION HERE has led you to INSERT_FIRST_PLOT_HOOK_HERE

A good party should function like the crew of a heist movie, you can have interpersonal drama and backstory but at the end of the day they should work together well from the get-go.

What is your group, hungry hungry hippos?

Lord of the rings is a fantasy novel series and would be a terrible fucking campaign full of the DM's shitty religious views, monopolizing DMPCs and hundreds of pages of ultimately irrelevant backstory.

Good books do not make good campaigns by default.

>No caster classes are allowed

This is fine depending on the setting. If it's a Dragon Age mage vs Templar civil war and magic will be a major plot point I can see why.

Asking people not to play psykers in dark heresy/RT is also totally fine especially if some people are new

>Nope, not taking on new players.

This came up a few weeks ago in the game I DM. Literally all you have to do is say "no."

>Joe offers to DM
you're utterly incapable of showing up when you say you will and it'd honestly be easier to herd cats.

Holy shit I can't believe people still stan for d&d in real life today in 2018

Incredible

Man you must be fun to play with

Criminally underrated holy kek

Open world still requires calls to action.
Real world is fucking sand box as it gets and no one does much beyond the daily grind because there is no cause for action.

Sandbox is always a terrible sell for any game

>I'm the only girl and none of these guys are dating anyone except my own guy

guess I'm playing a dude and not getting any input into pc plans

and i make fucking cupcakes and dinner, yet nobody else brings anything

and they roll their dice aggressively on my nice table

>guess I’m playing a dude pc and have no input
Why can’t you make your own character like you like? If you’re worried about being sucked into magical realm, the players shouldn’t be there anyways
>making food and no one else makes anything
If you don’t like cooking and are planning on someday marrying you’re gonna have a hard time
>table messed up from dice rolling
Get a coffee table? Get a table cover? Make them roll in the box?

>Get a coffee table? Get a table cover? Make them roll in the box?

They don't listen

>If you don’t like cooking and are planning on someday marrying you’re gonna have a hard time

What? I'm married, I cook for my husband, I don't like making dinner for a bunch of faggots who can't be bothered to bring soda or chips let alone something nice.

>Why can’t you make your own character like you like? If you’re worried about being sucked into magical realm, the players shouldn’t be there anyways

That's fair.

Hypothetically speaking, say a DM were to have a setting where
>Each of the players is invited to the king's castle as they unveil this McGuffin that grants wishes
>Each player, as pm'd to me, has a want and a personal goal they could probably have come true if they made a wish,hence why they accept the public invitation to the castle
>Big bad swoops in and tries nabbing the McGuffin for himself, but the McGuffin ends up broken, it's pieces scattered
>Now the players have to find where all the pieces went.

If we had a scenario like that, how much would you say there's enough of a hook to keep your players together as a group?

How many wishes can it grant? Why did the bad guy have to steal it? Couldn't he just get in line?

Also 'the mcguffin is all over and we gotta collect it' is the plot of dragonball and inuyasha. It's fine, but just be aware that it's a little 'shonen manga' storytelling.

But yea i mean it's the players job to just be a fucking party. If they make the sort of characters who won't stick together to pursue this why are they playing?

Still, it won't hurt to have the wise old priestess inform them that they have to go do this. Then you have the guy who would never do such a thing have a cursed necklace that makes it so he has to serve the more willing pc. Then the other pcs just get reasons to kill bad guy and you combine those two quests and boom, you got a manga buddy.

Just make sure you shout "WIIINDD TUNNEELL" when using special abilities

oh and just to be clear- having to gather the dragonballs to get your wish is a pretty common trope in general, so I'm not by any means saying you shouldn't do it. But you need a reason for people to be preventing these magic wishes or hording them.

Another anime example, in fushigi yuugi there are 2 countries at war and both are trying to summon their god to get 4 wishes. Obviously neither wants the other to succeed because they'd just wish for victory. In dragonball the balls zip off into the corners of the earth when used, so of course if you want them for yourself you would be preventing others from taking them. In inuyasha the shikon jewel shards granted abilities and power to users, so it makes sense for youkai to be holding on to the shards and fighting to keep them.

So in dbz the explanation for your plot hook is 'a guy came in, got HIS wish, and the balls went flying.' But why would your bad guy prevent the good guys from getting their wishes? Why would he break the artefact?

Basically you need this stuff to be pretty solid in order for this to be more than a handwavy mcguffin. But overall I'm down with a magical travelling adventure and wishes at the end.

>Why did the bad guy have to steal it? >Couldn't he just get in line?
To be specific, no, because it's fucking Bowser and everybody knows what kind of wishes he would make with it.
As to the question of how many wishes it can make, that may be a little more difficult to answer.

>the don't listen
Send them It’s your house as well as his
These faggots aren’t very respectful and it sounds like you need a new group
>cook for my husband but I don’t like cooking for these faggots that bring nothing
Maybe have them host a few games, and complain obsessively over the lack of foodstuffs. See how they like it?

>Maybe have them host a few games, and complain obsessively over the lack of foodstuffs. See how they like it?

My husband had a pretty good non-doormat suggestion on that front actually, "just don't fucking cook." We order pizza a lot more often now.

And they can't host, none of them have good gaming areas and I kind of like being at my house anyway so whatever. When we go to any of their places they literally don't have food available so.

Well then why’d you make this post- it sounds like everything but the table problem is solved. Maybe play on the ground? I don’t have furniture either so we just sit on the carpet and use our jackets to keep warm (a heater is too expensive). As for food, we just get a big case of waters and I buy a nice big loaf of bread. Problems solved!

Please go back to facebook.

He's making an analogy that doesn't work

Well she roleplays being attracted to you in real life, so I guess you're right.

The thread is about signs you know when a game is going to fail. Being the only girl amongst a bunch of neckbeards is a good sign that you aren't going to have a good time. That's all, not trying to make a big statement or anything.

butforealsmyfriendssuck

Adventurer's guilds are shit.
>not starting with the characters all being regulars of the tavern, friends that know each other well, so when one of them gets the adventure hook he thinks to go get his friends.
Idiot.

>This is my Grayvis. He's a rogue who doesn't really like nobility because of a thing that happened in his hometown, but is willing to give the king of this capital city a chance when it comes to taking up a gig.
>This is Enith. She's a druid who ran away from home and found her new family among nature, in the forest of Innawoods.
>This is Durand. He's a Fighter, and a friend to Grayvis who mainly earns money for the two of them by putting on a show at the local colosseum. He loves showmanship as much as fighting.
>This is Rudy, a bard noble who was sent away from the house for being too much of a decadent dandy playboy. Now that the weight of his family name isn't on him, he enjoys singing songs and telling jokes for passersby.
>Guys, I wanted to make a paladin! I'm gonna name him Polly, after Apollo, because my paladin is gonna be a Sun worshipper and he's gonna shout "Praise the Sun!" like the guy in Dark Souls, and do wacky sun praising things! It'll be so funny!

>someone rolls a 1
>GM consults a table
Ah.

>Have good group
>Playing weekly for 3 months
>Player decides to bring his gf along to play
>Days she has played before
>Rolls a high Charisma half Ling rogue
>Proceds to make every npc interaction about trying to seduce the npc.
>Story derails
>GM quits

>You absolutely can reflavor your wall of stone to be made out of ice cream, why would I care?

>I'm the GM

Many good stories are based around building trust and relationships. It's no fun if everyones all ready there.

What's wrong with any of this?

It's the last part I'm getting at.
The one guy who wants to play a meme role for the sake of lulz, when everyone else is actually trying to roleplay.
Worse yet if the last dude is disruptive and does Lawful Stupid shit, like charging headfirst towards an orc warcamp while everyone else agrees to circle around it from a distance and avoid being seen.

Shit like that is infuriating. Hasn't happened to me personally, but hearing stories like this make me angry.

>So even tho I know you said I had to pick from this pool of races I thought you'd like this homebrew instead
And its this always the same fucking sparkle dog furrylooking shit with op stats

Big groups can work. Sometimes they can even help salvage a game from death by people missing sessions repeatedly. Depends on how it's handled and if the GM can take it.

Finally someone intelligent in the thread

Ok, having Solaris as a role model, in terms of camaraderie, is fine. But you draw the line when all that matters to you is making a mockery of the sun!

Err...

SOLAIRE!

>throws out any of the characters personal goals or motivations
Thank god. Those personal goals and motivations are exactly the thing that kills most games. When the characters are more concerned for their special snowflake back story than the setting and story layed out by the dm.

Calm down Inuyasha.
I'd bite that hook

I'm currently in a game with seven players (six plus GM) and it's been run consistently and enjoyed for a couple years now.

There are no absolutes user, what works for your group or doesn't work for your group isn't a universal rule.

>1. Nobody knows eachother so there's no reason for the party to actually cooperate other than the meta knowledge that it's a game and they should. Maybe shit's on fire and exploding (which will lead to point 2 in just a moment), but even then, once the crisis has passed they have no reason to stick together.
This is what session zero is for. Why does the tavern opening inherently mean "nobody knows each other"? Why can't they be a group of friends meeting in a tavern, or brought there by some mutual acquaintance?

Have you ever played Shadowrun? Pretty much every Shadowrun game starts with the party meeting, usually in something that either is literally a tavern or might as well be one, called there by the Johnson. It works fine.

It looks like you're making a lot of unsupported assumptions just for an excuse to bitch.

>2. These openings usually create a situation where the game kicks off with some big event sucking everyone in. This immediately throws out any of the characters personal goals or motivations and forces them to be REACTING rather than being PROACTIVE. Once the big threat to their survival passes, they once again have no reason to stick together and not just go back to their regular lives.
No, it doesn't. How creatively bankrupt are you? Why are you assuming the events that happen - and how DARE a campaign start with some, gasp, reason for the party to take part - are unrelated to the characters?

>3.The introduce a character in a vaccum where they know nothing about eachother and have no ties to the world. They're just fucking there, like a videogame character.
...no it doesn't? What even is your reasoning here? Why does a tavern mean characters are introduced in a "vacuum"? Couldn't they be there for some relevant reason?

Taverns are important adventurer locations because there's always an excuse for a character to be there. They could be passing through town and staying there. They could be meeting someone there. They could work there. They could just be fucking hungry. They could be seeking a job, or information, or looking for someone...it's a universal location. What even is your logic to make such a patently retarded proclamation?

This is rather rude, it is a player's duty to make a character that has some reason to actually join with other characters and form a party. When the DM asks someone to make a character, they shouldn't have to specify "make a character for the party everyone will be playing," that should be fucking understood.