The Nazis get associated with the Norse stuff because some of their higher ups liked appropriating Norse imagery, even if it’s not as prominent as pop culture believes. Similar to their supposed obsession with the occult, which was again, mostly just a hobbyhorse of a few relatively important members of the party. However, since that story explicitly mentioned the BPRD and Hellboy, in that universe, the Nazis were full on occultist super scientists that hired Rasputin to summon a demon from hell. So then trying to call a Norse god at least fits their deal
Actually one idea used by the Nazis used to be known as Nordicism. Before the Aryans it was believed that Nordics were a race of "superior" people who scattered across the world and did things like teach Egyptians to build the pyramids, or found the new sunken city of Atlantis
Nazis were really weird when it came to religion (considering that their only unifying quality was hating jews, it leads to a lot of the party having contradictory positions from person to person). Openly, they were all pro-Christian, since being against Christianity in a country that was 99% christian would be shooting themselves in the foot (not that they didn't do that plenty on other issues). Behind closed doors, they had all sorts of positions, from Christian true believers to those who believe that Christianity is little better than Judaism, from atheists to neo-pagans that wanted to return Germans to their pre-christian roots.
Ngl, I popped into the comments to see if someone else has already noted this, as someone who has a number of heathen friends, and so is very familiar with the way they get vilified because of that appropriation, but also do sincerely have to dig through a lot of BS because so many of the records passed through nazi hands during that time.
Last Story After the 2nd story, I would put him on a watch list. The instant he complained about “No Loli’s”, he would have been GONE. Also why the fuck would you have a misogynist play with a TEENAGE GIRL. This is a story where the OP is a horror story.
I agree. While you aren't really responsible for how people behave and act, you are responsible for keeping them as company. If any person was talking like that near me, gone. Out of my space. Out of the game. For the misogynist, why the fuck would you be friends with a dude who literally fews women as lesser? Out of the game. Out of my space. Like, these guys are being so freaking obvious about their either bigoted beliefs or disgusting attractions. Being neutral or friendly with them is literally enabling their behavior.
That last story reminds me of a German saying that I recently heard. "If there are 9 people and 1 Nazi at a table and no one gets up to leave, then there are actually 10 Nazis". Its a heavy handed way of saying to watch the company you keep. If your best friend is a raging misogynist and you just put up with it and even claim to not be a misogynist, I'm going to have a hard time believing you.
I was exactly in such situation. I had my suspicions for a while that one of the seemed nazi leaning, but then he nonchalantly proclaimed himself as a nazi and called GM his "Fuhrer". I got out as soon as I could.
Seems like the last OP is the character in another person's horror story where as a youngster you wanted to play DnD and instead had to endure two adult man roleplaying looking for a sexworker, with DM not bothering to stop a bad behaviour at their table and welcoming a person with harmful views into their games.
I guess the BG3 villain twist can feel quick to you, if you skip through the dialogue, do zero exploring and forget everything about the game every 45 minutes.
It felt decent, but looking back, it feels rush now. Act 1 is just EA, including the cliffs, Underdark, and Shadowlands. Ending Act 1 is the first of the three. Act 2 is fighting him, then closing Act 2 is a small map on the way to Lower City. Act 3 is the same. Act 4 is the lady and fixing Karlach's engine, letting her stay on Faerun, and the Upper City. Act 5 is the rushed half of Act 3.
Heya, OP for the AITA here. Thank you for the input, I always find your takes enlightening in some capacity. I do wanna say it has been a bit since I submitted my story and a bit's happened since then. I did voice my grievances to the DM about feeling left out of roleplay and having my character arcs rushed and he did sort of apologize in his own way. It turned out since the Sorcadin's PC had amnesia, it opened up a bit more narrative potential than he was expecting and got a bit carried away, but he did promise to try to be better about giving everyone their moment, so small victories, I guess 😅He still kinda plays favorites with Sorcadin and Ranger, but I've just about accepted that's gonna be a thing until it's over. I enjoy getting to pop off in combat, as is expected from a Barbarian, but I'm not just playing D&D for the combat, y'know? Extra edit: these skits 🤣🤣🤣 Another edit for clarification: I LOVE KETHERIC, I WAS TALKING ABOUT THE BRAIN 😭
@@kul2130 I pretty much put my foot down and said my characters need SOME kind of stakes in the matter because outside of combat where I actually got turns, it basically felt like watching a movie, only nowhere near as entertaining 👀
"Women should not get any shares of the reward, they should be PART OF THE REWARD...." Now this is how you can tell when someone should be on an FBI watchlist.
The last story is an example of “if you got ten friends at a table and one of them is racist, you got ten racists.” (Don’t get wound up; it’s a hyperbole about enabling and neutrality.) Being hands-off over stuff like this in a friend group usually, if not always, does not end well.
More specifically, you have ten racists if none of the nine other members at the table speak up against it, or take any attitude about it but just let it slide.
Whether it's "best to leave it" depends on your point of view about what "best" means. If all you care about is to avoid any discomfort or unpleasantness in your own relationships, then I guess you'd better leave it. Because yes, speaking up will often cause discomfort and unpleasantness. But if you actually give a damn about the issues and the real people whose lives are damaged and threatened by racism, then you have to weigh that against the result of NOT speaking up. Because the result of no one speaking up is that people with racist attitudes become more and more comfortable with being openly racist and thinking that it's okay, that it's normal. If they are never personally confronted about it by people they know, they start to assume that the majority of "real people" actually agree with their racist beliefs, that it's really only a few attention-seeking "special snowflakes" who publicly object. And those who don't agree but don't want to be considered "snowflakes" themselves get quieter and quieter - or learn to go along with the crowd. It's always a choice whether or not to speak up, sometimes a difficult one. Sometimes it's even unsafe, depending on the situation. And if you do speak up, you have to do it with the expectation that you won't change the racist's mind, and that you might upset others who only want to avoid discomfort. But it can be worth some discomfort to raise your voice anyway. And you don't have to make it a huge argument and try to get everyone to agree with you... you just have to speak up and say some version of, "That's not cool, dude." Because you never know who else is listening - and because if you and I won't raise our voices, who will?
OP of the 4th story be like, yes my years long friend is a misoginist and the biggest problem with that is how he embarassed me in public that one time. still friends tho
It’s hard to break from bad people if you knew them all your life and they have been good to you. Not saying it’s okay at all but saying that it makes sense
We all tolerate shit from friends that we shouldn't tolerate. Rose tinted glasses hide the red flags and all that. That's a near universal human failing.
@@gdttdeggegdh5471 yes. On the one hand I get not wanting to break from your friends or rock the boat, most people don't tend to like confrontations. On the other the company you keep inevitably colors how people see you (and not without good reason), and ultimately you do need to make a judgment call
Second story, the *second* the DM twisted the use of Wish, the smell of bs was already in the air. OP definitely needs to talk with the DM about how they're feeling because yeah. It's hard not to think this was targeted at them with the rest of the party as collateral
Intro story: My advice? Split the group. Find a second person to DM, and split into two tables. Two smaller tables will be easier to manage than one big one. First story: NTA. Sometimes unwinnable encounters are part of the plot, yes, but this one sounded more like the DM was just on a power trip. The way your characters have been ignored and pushed to the sidelines is also, shall we say, not great. I think you need to have a serious talk with the DM about these problems, and if things don’t get better, it may be time to leave this game. Second story: I feel for the GM here. Anxiety is the WORST. I’m glad the players were so nice and reassuring! Third story: I feel like this could have been solved by a session zero. Everyone could have shared what they wanted from the game and come to a compromise. The DM could have agreed to tone down or remove the fetish elements, or if they were meant to be an important part of the game, the players who weren’t into it could have backed out. Session zero is important, people! Fourth story: OP, what the actual fuck? Why did you let this guy stay in your games? Or the misogynist? These guys suck, and I get wanting to give your friends second chances, but at this point, you’re just enabling their behavior.
The third story was the poster joining midway, so no S0 and I get the feeling that the DM would have ignored any calls for "No SA" (at least until there were no players left).
OP from the 3rd Story here, the reply is correct. Plus I doubt dumb young me would have passed up any chance to play a ttrpg, seeing how rare it is for me. I was definitely caught up in a web of BS where I was most definitely missing the forest for the trees.
I wanna say: You're not the asshole if you don't find a way of running a campaign fun. If the other players are cool with the no-win scenario and you're not, then it's just that you don't like that. Of course, the DM passing by your backstory in favor for another person's is dickish too. It's not like you made your characters as just "mercs for hire" and are there to play the combat.
I think the no-win situation is one thing, but it's WAY that it was done that irks me, personally. The DM disrespected the OP's character in the worst way possible, treating his hard work like window dressing in favor of the DM's own plot. But they kind of did this to the Sorcadin as well--making him/her look incompetent because of the way the Wish was worded. This entire scene was something that was putting the DM's wants for their story over how the player's experience. And honestly? It wouldn't have even been that hard, I feel, to get around the long rest and wish. Either make the strange bullshit magic buff the baddies equally as much (or more if we're feeling dickish), or simply have someone try to force athletics or something like that to knock the deck out before it could be properly invoked. Maybe make a little struggle around this last beacon of hope, then lose. Half the time as a DM you're already coercing the plot to go a certain way, but it always has to player driven. This isn't.
These comedic re-enactments are SENDING MEE 😂 my two faves: DM: Turn around Player: oh sure **turns** DM: **loads gun** and, DM: and finally that's dylan, he's a misogynist Player: **blinking gif moment** he's a what
Two little """fun""" facts about the book Lolita (which is essentially the story of the abuse of a young girl from the perspective of her abuser), not only did the book got censored for a few years because everyone thought that because Vladimir Nobokov was writing about that kind of abuse it meant that he was an abuser (even if he often said the book was a tragedy, and that the narrator could not be trusted since he gaslit the reader by saying that she was 'asking for it'), but when Stanley Kubrick bought the rights of the book just to adapt it in a movie, not only did he rearranged the script that the author had wrote for the movie but he also thought it was a good idea to sexualize the little girl in the movie.
@@lolitacalveras1815 it’s a movie that came out on Netflix awhile back that heavily sexualized kids. Turned into a controversy where the hyper liberals were trying to applaud it as stunning and brave but most people were disgusted.
@@goober69er Oh that movie ? Wasn't that movie's point to criticize how overly sexualized minors were nowadays ? Because if I remember well, the point of the movie was to disgust people with how much the children were sexualized, or at least that's what the movie director intended Because you know, how can you criticize the sexualization of children, without showing how those children can be seuxalized
The boss at the end of BG3 Act 2 is only a surprise if you don't listen to a single plot conversation, or read any of the codexes, or pay attention at all to anything you're doing throughout all of Act 2 and half of Act 1. >.> I don't understand this at all.
I dunno, I just think the plot twist about 🧠would have been better as the opening to act 3, not the closing to act 2. Ketheric was based though, and I liked skipping the first phase with that Selunite rizz
First story: split your group in half and play two campaigns with 5 players in each. Seems like two campaigns will be a lot more work, but you will absolutely save yourself time and energy by not having to corral 10 players every session.
i have a player who plays two characters, initially it came from the party SORELY needing a healer at the time but nobody wanted to step up, and everyone was struggling to find a way to cross class or get potions. and i had a lot on my plate and couldn't run an npc to heal for them while also doing enemies and other npcs. so, one of the players made a bare bones background for a 'hired help' kind of npc that the party agreed to pay in order to have helping them, and the player would only occasionally say how this character would react or talk in certain situations if needed, but overall was originally just meant to be the paid healbot. eventually, the party ended up actually getting invested in the little healbot, and the player asked if they could actually develop them more and maybe play them. i agreed as long as we found a way to make it natural and balance the attention tha this player got with having two characters, and asked the party if they were cool with it. now, said healbot has crossclassed into a warlock after getting themself possessed in a haunted house by a demon lord, and then being manipualted by said demon into unleashing it in the world and causing the demonic apocalypse, all because the party had treated them as nothing more than a heal dispensary (something the players all agreed would be a very fascinating and fun angle to take with it and could lead to development and conflict) and not a person. only the demon had seemed to treat them as if they actually mattered, and in the end they were still used. now the party is trying to make up for that, and to help hunt down the demon lord and end the demonic invasion before it's too late. the players OTHER character also doesnt even get along with the new healer character, which is fun to have the player actually figure out how to roleplay without having to just talk to themself. it also gives for a good reason to NOT have their characters interact to avoid that same issue. imo in some ways i can see it being hard to do, and also hard to manage, but if the players and dm think they can make it work, it's worth giving a go. it especially helps if a certain character's arc is in a lull for the time being, but nobody wants to be bored and not have a lot of involvement.
General rule is if some one is telling you something crappy about themselves, believe them. It might be the only time they are being absolutely honest.
"NOT LOLITA...?!" I ... can't even. I've definitely had plenty of my own That Guy moments (I've done criminal amounts of sulking but I've been and still am working on it and it's much rarer) but NEVER gross ones. YIKES. And there was a KID AT THE TABLE AND KIDS ONE TABLE OVER!!! ::has six glitches and an asthma attack:: I can remember being a kid and having gross moments happen to and/or around me, and being just old enough to understand that it was gross and shouldn't be happening ... yet not old enough to understand WHY it was happening. I STILL sometimes have those moments where someone says or does something GROSS to me, and I either go mini-shutdown or full-barbarian rage (thank you, AuDHD brain), and I still don't understand and that makes it WORSE. I do believe I'd catch a case if I saw an adult doing something like this to or around ... well, anyone, but especially a kid. Misogynist Lawyer has ISSUES, and probably shouldn't be around anyone of any age who isn't a licensed psychiatrist. Creepiest of all, he's a freaking lawyer and he likely knows how to game the system so that if and when he steps out of line, it's never far enough for legal action to be taken. He'll never be held to any kind of accountability by the law nor, apparently, his friends. ICK.
I have been watching Crispy's videos for a while now, and they are often very enlightening and entertaining. A few weeks ago he read a story about a DM who was apparently extremely horny and kept trying to work sexual scenarios into his adventures, despite the player's (the OP of the story) objections. I've tried to find that video again to write a comment directly in its comment section, but I forgot what the video title and thumbnail were. So I'm going to mention my thoughts here. At one point in the story, the DM had the PCs fighting a minotaur. During the fight OP cut the minotaur's horn off, and accidentally inhaled some powdered minotaur horn, which the DM declared was a powerful aphrodisiac (a term Crispy was unfamiliar with and had to Google the definition of, which I found hilarious). I just wanted to point out that, in real life, powdered animal horns of certain animals (such as the white rhino) are considered in some cultures to be powerful aphrodisiacs, prompting poachers to hunt said animals just for their horns (the aforementioned white rhino has been hunted nearly into extinction for this very reason. Of course, science has proven that the claims of powdered white rhino horn is a powerful aphrodisiac is only a myth. This doesn't stop people from paying $1000 to $5000 an ounce to purchase it for this very purpose. My point being that if in the real world people believe that consuming the powdered horn of a white rhino is going to make them an exceptional lover, enough to pay thousands of dollars to purchase this "aphrodisiac", then it makes sense that in a fantasy world, the powdered horn of a fantasy creature (like a minotaur) would ACTUALLY be an aphrodisiac. Personally, I would have made powdered minotaur horn be a complete hoax, like the powdered white rhino horn is in real life. A better idea for an ACTUAL aphrodisiac would be the powdered horn of a succubus or incubus, since the demon's whole thing is seducing mortals. Just to be clear, I'm firmly against forcing your players into sexual storylines when you're the DM. I personally don't mind playing in NSFW games, but I'm also very aware that such games aren't everyone's cup of tea and the DM needs to read the room and make sure that his adventures are appropriate for the players at his table. This DM didn't do that.
Dammit, not Lolita :P I do appreciate that you also share some of the more wholesome stories, too, like the DM who got in her own head and was reassured by the players. It's nice to know that not all D&D horror makes a game irredeemable or even mars the experience.
Hearing these stories makes me glad I've only one, very mild encounter with the deck of many things. Any DM that introduces that when I restart playing is going to get some very strong objections from me. I might even leave.
"The deck of ruining/ending the game." This nickname has been around since the 90's. It was actually worse in 2nd edition, and no, I'm seriously not joking.
It reversed f**ed one of my campaigns. I had allowed some really obnoxious PCs to run rampant, and the Deck wound up writing them out of the campaign by causing them to ascend to divinity.
I remember one story where the DM starts the campaign at a traveling show where a booth had The Deck of Many Things, the PCs would draw and if it ruined their character or they wanted a do-over then that was the NPC in front of them, not their PC. It added a random element to their start instead of ruining the story halfway through.
"Rushed Reveal of act 2" ..... we spent 20-30 hours learning about illithids. What else could it be than an Elder Brain? Plus, Karlach sets up Gortash and Grymforge, Thorm. Didn't feel rushed.
As a womanI am going to disagree that the last dm isn’t a bad person. If you’re cool being friends with a known misogynist and just overlooking that “character flaw,” you do, in fact, suck.
Right. The second a woman complains about anything one man does or the bad shit that happens to women, she’s a misandrist and needs to stfu. A dude full on saying women are property? Just Jim. He’s got a character flaw. No biggy. Sure it’s men like him that abuse women but he’s so much fun to be around!
This. You just can't allow this. If you don't care about misogyny, you are enabling it by not doing anything which kind of makes you misogynist, too. Protect your friends from such people if you can by not inviting someone like this to your game.
I understand the viewpoint, and I agree with Crispy that the guy *really* should have taken action way sooner. But I want to stress something that I feel a lot of people are conveniently overlooking--this guy is friggin' old, with largely the same play group over the years. Why does that matter? Well... It wasn't that long ago that casual misogyny was not only a problem but a societal norm--early 90s, and certainly before that. Based on what we know of this guy's group, there's a really good chance that not only were these guys friends longer than some of us have been alive, but this took place during a time when the proud misogynist's..."perspectives" were considered "socially acceptable". I think it's easier to say you'd burn a bridge for something like that, but I think it's a lot harder to actually do it until an unambiguous line is crossed. We tolerate a lot of shit from our friends that we shouldn't, and we tend to unfairly judge a lot of people just because we mildly dislike them.
@@basteala525 And yet my seventy year old father would have just not been friends with someone being misogynistic. Times sure do change, but that distorts the fact that you either grow and change with them or you don’t. If you don’t change or ignore your friends behavior regardless of the length of the relationship, then you are still kind of being an ass by association and most women won’t view you as an ally. This thinking also ignores the very real fact that plenty of men, women, and those in between weren’t okay with blatant misogyny even when they were growing up. I know plenty of my parents’ “old” friends who are appalled by the views expressed here. And strangely enough, they aren’t friends with anyone who wouldn’t be appalled by these views.
@@basteala525that was going on 40 years ago. They definitely could have grown up by then. I would make new friends before I settled that hard. I certainly know my 54 year old mother and my 78 year old grandmother would've. And all my uncles.
@@lyudmilapavlichenko7551Yeah, but in 3.5 to 5E turns and rounds as separate things were dropped. Albeit, a holdover is 3.5 and 5E having several spells with durations listed in minutes.
@lyudmilapavlichenko7551 no a turn was 10 minutes. It was only 10 rounds in 1e cause it had 1 minute rounds but Original D&D and the various B/X and BECMI versions had different round lengths
Note regarding story 2: 3 TURNS not 3 ROUNDS. going down in 3 rounds, oh well. But 3 TURNS? Depending on initiative, that barb might not even have gotten an attack off.
Weirdest, yet funniest "playing two characters as player" case I had, was me playing spooky dead little girl (NOT Lolita! If anything she rather was Pippi Longstoking) haunting the guy who (believed he) killed her. So I played both of them, including scenes with mainly two of them in play
A note on multiple characters... Back in the antediluvian days of 2e, D&D had a concept, developed in the Dark Sun setting, where Players could have up to 4 characters. Only 1 would be active at a time, and the others would earn 25% of the XP that the active character earned each session.
BG3 act 2 BBEG felt a bit rushed the first time we played it. But it was because we went one way, dodging the main path for super long. Only realised on a second playthrough that going there earlier builds it up way better. Tho I also liked getting all the info through 2nd-3rd hand, building that image of him, until we finally got to see him for ourselves.
Now i highkey want to play a halfling girl with a name derived from Dolores who dreams of dressing in frills and bows (expensive clothing) but she's a thief. Lolita fashion is a love of mine and I'm so tired of people assuming it's connected to the book. (And the book isn't what people think it is either. Nobokov was very open about the fact that it's an examination of the mind of a child predator. He is convinced that his behaviour is good and normal, but if you pay attention to how the other characters, ESPECIALLY Dolores herself, behave you can tell how horrible he is to them)
As far as campaigns where everyone plays two characters, I played one campaign where our DM could only get me and one other player for it, so he had us both make two characters. Still one of the most fun campaigns I've ever been a part of and I loved the dynamics that formed around them
My party has a habit of adopting and recruiting npcs, so I gave those to different players to run as secondary characters. The idea is then if a player can't make a session I can run a side quest for the secondary characters without interrupting the main storyline. In between adventures they roleplay both characters, but usually only one at a time is present in any one scene. The secondary PCs level more slowly as they're not played as often, but (it hasn't happened yet) if a main PC dies the secondary character gets leveled up to the main party level and becomes the main PC, already an established part of the story. I love seeing how the players take former mpcs and develop the character and personality further in ways I'd not originally have thought of.
I've been in games where everyone has 2-3 PCs (3 ppl including DM, so this let us run more difficult encounters). We loved having multiple characters in fights, but in contrast to OP's scenario, we struggled in RP. It's hard to have a touching scene or dramatic moment that doesn't involve your other PC(s) getting into the conversation, and consequently RPing with yourself for possibly minutes at a time. So it constantly was a struggle for ppl to excuse their other PCs from the conversation, or very briefly summarize the exchange. So yeah, it *can* work. You just need to make sure everyone knows what the game is (combat or RP), and find a way to make the awkward situation(s) take as little time as possible.
My most recent trash mob scenario was in my Strixhaven game where the party had to go fight the "garbage disposal" -- an otyugh. To spice it up, I had it cough up a host of stirges. They deal some nasty damage but have a pittance of health. Added some variety to a potentially bland encounter. Of course, then one of my players said "Oh, bet they HEAL the otyugh if they fly back to it." WELL, THEY DO NOW.
We learned 5th ed D&D specifically because my friend's 12yo stepson wanted to try it. He played 2 characters in all 3 campaigns. But we only had 3 other PCs in the party. So it was just lessening the adjustments to the campaigns, maybe? We started before the pandemic. Now he's not so interested, but I think his young brain had plenty of power to make this system work for 2 characters. It's not that complex of a system. I think even I could manage 2. It might help my skills even. I've been role playing since I was around 15, because that was the only thing my friends from school would ever do. Almost literally. But I think it will follow me throughout my life. I mean, it's just life as I've always lived it, pretending to be a normal human when I'm pretty sure I'm actually an undiagnosed high functioning person with autism. I have been faking being human my entire life. Pretending to be a different human is not my idea of a great time. I just show up and protect the other characters. But all of my other friends love it, and this way I get to see them. It's not the worst thing. :)
8:44 You cast Wish as an action, and an action takes 6 seconds. This means you only have 6 seconds to state your Wish. This means there isn’t much time to get specific…
I can see the use of norse myths and magic in 1930's germany, given that certain high officials were known to be obsessed with aryan occultism and were known to favor wagnarian operas (which drew from those myths as inspiration). the "SS" symbols on the collars are meant to be RUNES for crying out loud!!!
Hey, just started watching recently and like your stuff to listen to in the background while working on my own DnD shit on the side. To answer the question, both of my players in my main campaign ran two characters at the same time. One of which is a brother-sister duo, the other being a Warlock and his imp summon who grew stronger and became a full demon after being blessed by the god over-seeing hell in my world. The brother-sister duo player really enjoyed it and felt they were able to bounce roleplay off of their own characters to better play them! The other player ended up not really knowing what to do with the demon much, he tried to make it work however eventually just got to a point where the demon was just kinda there. We did a weird thing where I would roleplay him, but he would control him in combat, and moreso recently we just decided to have the demon part ways and be demoted to NPC status
I've seen DMs give players a researcher character and an investigator character for mystery games, particularly those set in the past. This was so players could have characters do things like library research and social networking without slowing down the plot too much.
GURPS stands for Generic Universal Role Playing System, an RPG designed to play anything and make any character. BPRD stands for Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, fictional organization Hellboy is working for. I'm sure someone already explained it, but I thought it won't hurt to be sure.
GURPS, also known as "the system Fallout was going to use until Steve Jackson Games pulled out of the deal and the Interplay team needed to come up with the SPECIAL system to replace it"
I have RP’d two characters simultaneously. My game shop runs a DCC campaign and it’s drop in so we can’t always get four players so we usually wind up playing multiple characters (usually a level 0 backup and our main) though we also let our backup do combat as well (which can lead to funny moments when our untrained backups are doing better than our battle hardened team). We also did an X-crawl one off which was REALLY fun as the game kind of encourages players to fight like it’s professional wrestling so we were doing tag team moves with our second character. Good times
First story: Split the party into two groups. Alternate weeks. You'll make more progress with both groups than you are right now with one mass team. Once you get the two groups split, also put some rules to each group--no phones out at the table, no non-game discussion once the game is on, etc. Second story Part One: There are some games set up with the idea of playing multiple characters. The old Ars Magica, for instance, you played both a Wizard and a mook. The idea was that players took turns bringing out their big, bad-ass Wizard, who was the de facto party lead for that session, and everyone else brought the team to bear. I've also played in a heist-themed PbP Savage Worlds game where everyone had two characters (all of whom could interact at will in the roleplay thread), but you only could pick one of them for each 'job'. Second Story, Part Two: Not the Asshole. I don't hate 'there is no win here' encounters, but by god, that's why video games invented cut-scenes. If you really are just going to trump every effort of the Players, no matter what they do, to get them to the dungeon, then as the DM, make it clear from the start that this is the case. I like to use the Interlude mechanic from Savage Worlds for this sort of situation. You describe the set-up (everyone is transported to the arena). You then tell the players, "Yeah, so, this is not a fight you win. Maybe you go down like Rocky I against Apollo Creed. Maybe you spend time running around and trying to evade. Maybe you make a failed escape attempt. Maybe you even just took one shot to the chin and went down like a chump. Point is, YOU get to describe it. Feel free to incorporate some aspect of your character that hasn't gotten proper time to shine, if you want. You'll go in initiative order; the only rule is that you can't undermine what someone else has already put forward." (Savage Worlds also has a system for giving players prompts by flipping cards from a deck.) If you really have to railroad the result, let the players determine the journey. Third Story: GM Anxiety--the Struggle is Real. Never be afraid to check in with your players, and take any compliments they give you at face value. Fourth Story: Yeah, just get out of that table as fast as you can. Final Story: Oh, Hell No. Tolerating intolerable people just because they are in the hobby is how RPGs became almost as bad as comic book stores on the issue of Cat-Piss Man. Good stuff as always, sir.
Many decades ago, in one of our Traveller games, we all had multiple characters in order to fill the crew positions on the ship (yeah, we could'a' _hired_ crew but where's the fun in that?) and because we just loved coming up with new character concepts. Quite often, this split nicely between ship crew and away team - though some of us would be running more than one character on the ground as well, which did make fights a lot more "interesting"... so not quite the "only one in any given combat" rule that the DM in the _AITA For Wanting More_ story had. It generally was fun. In our current MGT2e game, we've had a couple of players with two characters each and two of us run a couple of NPCs attached to the crew (one being the security robot I bought) and we generally just have them acting in turn in any combat situation as dictated by the initiative rolls. Mind you, we only had at a maximum 5 players (down to 4, now, due to scheduling conflicts), only a couple of whom had more than 1 character in play at any one time, so it's not like we've got 10 players all running 2-3 characters each, turning the combats into a slog. Having multiple characters is very useful to ensure you're not sitting out parts of the adventure because your character lacks the appropriate skills (or is just so poor at those skills that using them is frustrating) for what's going on at the time. This is quite noticeable in a game like Traveller where you might reasonably expect that your crew/band will have space battles *_and_* planetary (or space station) encounters/adventures/fights, but could conceivably apply to D&D if you run some form of nautical adventure (or fantasy starjammer setting) where you're sailing/flying from place to place and may encounter pirates (or even *_be_* pirates) as well as doing "dungeon crawls", so require specialised characters for each setting.
the BBEG reveal being quick in BG3 is so stupid omfg, like the fct that it's the second half of Act 2 already means it comes more than halfway through the game... Coldest take I heard yet
Our game last weekend was definitely in the "running away is a win" category. We got into some serious shit and were in a situation that was one combat round away from a decisive TPK - so we made like shepherds and got the flock outta there! Even then, it was some tense rolls required to turn tail and get out of there without getting our arses shot off - we barely made it.
in a pirate campaign i was in, i had two characters. the general idea we had was if i chose to be one, the other would "stay behind to help the crew with the ship" so that it would never seem out of place for one to be missing. worked really well, as i scratched both my druid itch and my swashbuckler, enby pirate life.
More coop mechanics and multi stage parts (Three max) and realistic intervention to bolster the party when they reduce a boss enemies health to a certain threshold works wonders for single entity bosses, keeps the immersion, makes it feel epic, players will be on the edge of their seats the whole fight. I once did a single entity boss where a npc entity could rewind time to a certain extent up to three times but it meant the part rewinds, the boss still uses his attack however the party member or members it is targeting have advantage on their action.
About the multiple player characters at the same time. I am a part of a small group with 3 of us counting the DM. So to make things work we tend to use multiple player characters at the same time so we are not limited to 2 PCs. The DM of the given sessions (we take turns so none of us become a forever DM) usually plays a character too, but doesn't have their character take center stage. The other characters get to shine more then the character the DM is playing.
I hear "Big Strong guy taking care of small innocent thing" and i think of Berserker and Illya. ..., F, please tell me the character the GM was using in the game wasn't based on Illya
To be fair, lolita by itself is an innocuous word outside of the context of the book (and certain groups of people, naturally). And lolita as a fashion isn't even a fetish, at least not for most people. iirc, some of the appeal for the people (largely women and girls) who dress that way is that it's a heavily non-sexual aesthetic. Delicate and cute and pretty, without being overexposed or made to accentuate the figure. There's a lot of permutations, too, and all of them are interesting in their own right. That being said, if some 60+ year old dude is complaining about a lack of lolis (and indeed is using the term "loli" at all, and particularly in reference to underage girls), then that's a fucking "lolicon" (the proper term for the little girl fetish specifically; hebephilia is technically more broad but still Pretty Fucking Nasty- and also RAMPANT in anime/manga fan circles, unfortunately, even canonically what with all the fanservice and whatever have you), and they should've been kicked so hard they launched all the way into the fucking Kuiper Belt. That's not somebody you want within the same zipcode as you, let alone being around actual teenage girls.
I just want to add for other people who might accidently stumble upon it - Yes there is one lolita fashion style that is called ero lolita and it has more adult elements (corsets and chokers to name some) - This is fashion that adult women are wearing. Just to make sure because I saw comments in true crime video pilling on a person who had sweet lolita as their username.
@@monikasernek1177Oh, I hadn't known about that one... that's a bit... idk, tacky, if you ask me, given what it was based on. Kind of inevitable these days, though; everybody's gotta make an oversexed version of everything... But yeah, as a fashion movement, beyond it also sometimes being worn by young girls and women (and aside from the apparent subfashion), lolita is pretty far removed from anything fetishistic. Sweet lolita in particular is... idk I would've thought that more people knew about that one, lol. Ig it could be bc of a demographic divide of some sort on a true crime video...
@@Neganium Ero lolitas aren't that overly sexulated, but I saw some who do go a little too overboard with showing skin. Also there are nurse and nun lolitas. It think the biggest problem with lolita fashion is the name, because the other related fashion movement don't get that much scrutiny (beside gyaru), but then again almost all aesthetic get criticism.
@@monikasernek1177 Yea it's kind of annoying to think about, when there's nothing inherently wrong with the word itself; it exists outside of the context of the book. Literally just a word that translates into "girl" or "little girl", ain't it? Also, showing skin isn't necessarily the only way to be heavily sexualized. Again, it comes from presentation, sometimes. I've never seen ero, nurse, or nun lolitas, tho (well, maybe nurse? there's a lot of crossover with creepy cute aesthetics and medical imagery, so some of that could fall into the same category), so I can't really say for sure. And it also probably largely depends on the person.
@@Neganium Sadly thanks to the book - it mean something like to seductive girl. Which is sad consider Lolita is a female name. Interestingly is originated from the name Dolores which means pain or sorrow (its also linked together with Lola). Also with too much skin I wanted to say that there are women who don't wore their bloomers and those are a vital for the ero lolita style.
...the intro story is totally my party. And our group is a manageable size! Four PCs and one DMPC that doesn't steal the spotlight. We're all just excitable nerds that can't shut up and focus. We love each other. Our pacing is crap, tho. 😂😂😂
I do one-on-one campaigns with my partner and I play with multiple characters to make it work. Two is comfortable, four is my limit. For role-play between my characters I either sum up what they talked about or my partner, the GM, takes them over for convos. Some systems are easier than others to make this work, the Basic Role Playing Game system, for example, has rules for running a sidekick. There’s a lot to keep organized for my characters but it’s definitely doable.
In regards to second story, I do sometimes throw "Meant to lose" encounters at my players. But if my players do something I didn't expect and win anyway, I let them win and change my plans. One of my games (my own setting) I threw a spider-monster at the players that was pretty much unbeatable, to teach them that monsters in this world aren't beaten by strength, but by figuring out their psychology and what they want and manipulating them. This spider for example didn't want to eat them, she wanted to *hunt* them. Like a fisherman who does it for fun and then throws the fish back. She was talking mad game about "Welcome to my parlour, said the spider to the fly" etc etc. But it was about figuring out she was just playing. They did not figure it out but they didn't have time to go "Rigged encounter" before the twist was revealed. Anyway, they ended up having a pleasant chat with her while wrapped up in a silk cocoon and leaving after some tea. They also got to meet her beloved pet, a teenage girl she had rescued from a cult that tried to sacrifice her to them (she ate the cultists instead). Fun was had and a valuable lesson was learned about how monsters in this setting behave.
Re: two characters.... a couple of situations. First when my brother ran Shadowrun, we only had 2 players and we wanted to make sure we could cover all roles, so we each got two characters....and somehow made an all magic party: I had a human burned spy was an adept whose powers enhanced her pistol and social skills and an oni (orc metavariant) mage who wanted to be idol singer but found herself sucked into shadowrunning. The other player had a troll adept focused on melee combat and berzerking and a dryad technomancer who communed with machine sprites. Second, also my brother, when we started a D&D campaign with the same two players we decided we'd have a system of hiring NPCs on a per adventure basis and each of us play 3 characters (ours and 2 NPCs) this changed to each playing three when our nephew joined the game. Gave us a chance to try out a lot of different builds. Third - A lot of Powered by the Apocalypse games have the level up option of "create a second character to play" including Monster of the Week. I'm sort of a forever GM on this game, but so far two of my campaigns have had this happen, my first game (my brother and the same other player from my brother's campaigns) we had The Chosen (later changed to The Initiate) and The Flake (conspiracy theorist) on one player... and The Professional (later changed to The Expert) and the Exile on the other player. On my current playtest campaign we have three players and two of them took second characters: The Celebrity (now Pararomantic) is also playing The Spooky (now Hex), The Changeling (now Spellslinger) is also playing The Mundane (hasn't changed playbook yet), and the third character was playing The Monstrous but has now become The Host. (not if you go looking for three of those playbooks... I did say playtest) Also, look at the podcast The Monster's Playbook, they only started recording at what they call "Season 2" so one of them starts with two characters The Professional and The Spellslinger. The other two players start with The Chosen and The Monstrous (and each had changed their playbook before the podcast started). One of the other two characters also ends up taking a second character.
I'm actually making my own homebrew game system. It's a d100 roll low system based around skill checks being the main interaction, taking place in a flat disc shaped world a bit smaller than Europe that is mainly inhabited by peoples based on late bronze age and early iron age Celts. Everything about it is homebrew and I'm building it from the ground up. However, I have no delusions of grandeur about it becoming really popular or something lol
Heeey, nice to see another d100 roll-under enjoyer in the wild! I got into it via Mythras/RuneQuest, and made my own "hack" to use in any setting, instead of just Glorantha...primarily because my group prefers high-fantasy/magitek over Bronze Age shenanigans lol
Two characters (playing at once rather than in rotation so you bring out the character who most fits the adventure/isn't currently nursing a broken foot) - There are some systems with this as a baked in assumption. Most notably everything I've seen in the 'kids and monsters' genre - Think Digimon - has players control a kid and their monster best friend (often with some suggestion that if you're in conversation with your other character it might be better for the GM to voice the character so you aren't having to talk to yourself to play out the scene). Alongside Digimon and Pokemon fangames, you've got Animon Story (which is a full on celebration of the genre) and Monsters & Other Childish Things (which at least reading the quickstart felt more like a deconstruction of it) Since you seemed thrown by both halves of the GURPS BPRD acronym and the story only really explained the BPRD part: GURPS - Generic Universal Role Playing System - is a point buy game designed to handle... Well... It attempts to handle anything and while it can handle a lot it starts struggling as soon as you leave the realms of heroic fiction that it assumes all TTRPGs are going to be. It's good at what it does, was bigger in the 90s and 00s than it is now, but takes a _ton_ of work to set up campaigns. (I think the tide turned against it in two chief aspects - A move in the market away from generic systems, and away from crunchy systems, and... Well... GURPS is pretty much the antithesis of the current trends in the market)
To answer Crispy's question about playing more than one character, I have done that before. Whether it's controlling an absent player's character in combat or playing a second PC when we were short on players, it's something I can do quite comfortably. Right now one of my groups is playing a Marvel Multiverse game, and I've started playing a second character to fill out the numbers (we're currently on 3 active players, including the GM), but we're doing it the other way round to the OP in the first story: I control both my characters in combat, but for roleplay I'll pick one character and stick with them for the rest of the scene (though I have roleplayed two characters at once before).
I've had an issue with group size in one of my campaigns. We had about half a dozen players at one point (I don't remember exact numbers), with one player even running two characters. It was clearly more than the DM could reasonably handle (he wasn't very experienced, which didn't help either). As such, I convinced him to make a second plot thread and split the group in two. The idea was that smaller groups would be easier to handle, easier to organize and get everyone together, etc. So the second group was formed, with some characters staying on the old plotline, some jumping to the new one. And all was good right? Well... no. See, once the plotline split in two, everyone wanted to make a second character to go on whichever plotline their main wasn't on. One player even made a THIRD character to JOIN their main on the second plotline! That meant that the party hadn't gotten any smaller or easier to manage, the scheduling issues weren't in any way reduced, and the DM had to alternate between TWO campaigns that were BOTH too large to handle. I don't have a problem with splitting the party. But if you're going to do so, at least make sure the two branches end up SMALLER THAN THE ONE THEY BRANCHED OFF OF.
A couple of people at my table, including myself, are allowed by GM to run two characters, he also has a two character per player limit, but with the caveat that the player have some experience so that they don't trip over themselves.
i'm currently RPing two player characters technically! i'm running a dragonrider ranger homebrew with a twist, that rather than the dragon being hatched and raised, the player character was actually raised with the dragon's family and they're the same age-they're sort of like non-blood twins, platonic soulmates type of deal as close knit brothers. the fact that they were raised together makes the collaboration together IC a lot easier, but it does come with a few challenges when they have disagreements. it's very interesting to play, though, and i find it very fun seeing them interact in different ways with the party around them and the NPCs given their personalities are quite a bit different (the elf is much more withdrawn and pessimistic, very cautious and gets overloaded easily, while the copper dragon is a lot friendlier and more curious being sheltered for most of his life, and much louder and outspoken.) they're only about a hundred and haven't left the wyrm's den until about a year ago when one went missing--i wouldn't advise taking it on with people you don't know, but my DM and party have been friends for quite a while and we're very good with communication OOC, and i was very glad the DM lets me be creative with it. There are limitations on what I can do technically, to keep me on par with others-but the boys rarely stray too far from each other-and when they do, there's often a member of the party who breaks away to accompany the other so we have really good collaboration together. i'd recommend giving it a try with a DM and party you know can let you be creative and have fun with it, while working together with them!
Addendum to the characters from the Home brew story: there's a cute series of videos called Doomkemon which is mostly about the female protagonist of Pokemon Sword/Shield rooming with the Doom Slayer.
My first time playing a TTRPG I played multiple characters. My friend had some character sheets of his old highschool friends' characters. He let me erase one so I could make MY character, but then let me then have the other sheets so I could control an entire party instead of just a single character.
With the first story yea I’m currently playing 2 players characters rn. Basically me and my party were On a mission to retrieve an ancient weapon from this underground goblin burial ground for one of our members. Inside of the tomb there was this ancient statue where once you touch it you instantly have a random effect happening to you along with a permanent buff. So when my character touched the statue a clone appeared and I ended up having to play 2 versions of myself. At first I made the both of them extremely suspicious and hostile towards one another giving them a Mauler Twins relationship with one another but once they found out from an extremely powerful devil said that neither of them is a fake and that they are both there own persons. they asked if they could have their soul split and al become individuals. After the devil did so their relationship immediately evolved into something similar like Fred and George from Harry Potter. So far I’m enjoying it and seeing how their relationship develops also did I mention this is my first time ever playing DnD
3:24 i’m in the middle of my first campaign and i have 4 playable characters that i use i know it sounds INSANE but its actually working out super well! i use them all in combat and roleplaying, our dm can also roleplay as some of my characters when she wants to since she knows them really well i wasn’t planning on playing four characters at the same time, but my four characters just worked so well into the story that we decided to use all of them definitely not for everyone since it’s a lot to keep track of and you need to be fast in roleplaying and combat so you don’t hog all the time but it’s a super fun challenge!!
This made me realize the insane situations my dm puts us in combat wise 😂 we always get help with long/crazy combats, but 11 rounds is still a lot when fighting a god 😅.
I've role played up to 3 different charecter in one campaign. My group (6 players 1 DM)played as a mercenary guild and we would each have 3 characters we would use for different missions. We would each pick one of our PCs for those missions. It wad a lot of fun. I'd recommend the guild idea. It helps of you get bord of characters easily or like to play more of your ideas.
Is it ever going to be possible to watch these videos without BG3 spoilers? My wife and I are trying to play through that game but with our newborn son we only get like half an hour a day, so it's going to take us a few months...
having two characters really cuts down on being bored with the same character. in both campaigns i've played where this was allowed, it was a roaring success, and once in pathfinder i played 5 characters at once (rules-legal). summon, twinned eidolon, waxwork human, black skeleton (lowest HD sentient undead, and not specifically evil. a well-hidden feat allows you to resummon the same one over and over again). and a wood golem. all styled to look exactly like my true character with important differences, like how the waxwork human was styled after a rogue, with an abrasive immature personality but is secret sweet on the inside. i gave the "sisters" slightly different voices to help the other players tell them apart. i was the only experienced player other than the DM, so between my 5 fast turns i still took less time than any one of the 4 beginner players. the DM asked me to join as a co-DM, rule expert, and support in case they players get in over their head. the backstory for my character is that with her twinned eidolon, she always treated it like a twin sister, but no one believed she was real because she was rarely around. once she figured out how to summon her, they really began to develop the sibling bond, then she made the waxwork human to be their triplet. her father was a lord (and a good man) and he was murdered for political reasons. they tried to murder my character, but ended up killing the eidolon instead, who was promptly re-summoned and revealed the murderers. where it goes from there changes depending on the tie-in to the DM's campaign.
So the only campaign I completed start to finish had a rule where each player could have 2 characters but only bring one to a session (downtime was handled via play by post on discord) and both had to be maintained (an occasional hunt roll to top up on blood at a minimum. We were plsying VtM) so when a character wasn't being played it basically became a glorified tamagotchi. It worked out pretty well. The only horror story was a problem player who ended up staking himself out of spite.
For the first story split up the group make a persistent world where when the characters aren't off on adventures they do some day to day tasks to earn little bits of money. This way you can also have events happening in the world during the off sessions which makes the world feel more alive and there are actual consequences to the things your groups do. It's not as complicated as you think and travelling can be done during the week. Also in my current campaign we have a cleric who uses the chaotic rules from 0e to become basically a necromancer and it's hilarious to think that during the week he basically moonlights as a fortune teller speaking with the dead.
The whole thing with the Pagan gods... I'm pretty sure that I heard somewhere that the Jew/Christian God was originally a Pagan god that the Jews chose to worship as a single divine entity, with Christians doing the same thing later on as well. I don't know if it's true or not, just sharing what I heard somewhere. Anyway, amazing video as always, Crispy!
With the Nazis they weren't all Christian. Himmler was a nutjob even by their standards and believed the Germanic descended from the civilization of Atlantis among other things. And they did venerate Norse mythology and history along making a modern mythology out of past kings.
Fr. Like, I get it, you're horny. But that's what dating apps are for. Also, if you really wanna live your s fantasies in sth like DnD, do it with your SO. By yourselves. You don't need to involve your friends and random strangers who weren't aware of your...ideas.
The Nazis get associated with the Norse stuff because some of their higher ups liked appropriating Norse imagery, even if it’s not as prominent as pop culture believes. Similar to their supposed obsession with the occult, which was again, mostly just a hobbyhorse of a few relatively important members of the party.
However, since that story explicitly mentioned the BPRD and Hellboy, in that universe, the Nazis were full on occultist super scientists that hired Rasputin to summon a demon from hell. So then trying to call a Norse god at least fits their deal
Actually one idea used by the Nazis used to be known as Nordicism. Before the Aryans it was believed that Nordics were a race of "superior" people who scattered across the world and did things like teach Egyptians to build the pyramids, or found the new sunken city of Atlantis
Nazis were really weird when it came to religion (considering that their only unifying quality was hating jews, it leads to a lot of the party having contradictory positions from person to person). Openly, they were all pro-Christian, since being against Christianity in a country that was 99% christian would be shooting themselves in the foot (not that they didn't do that plenty on other issues). Behind closed doors, they had all sorts of positions, from Christian true believers to those who believe that Christianity is little better than Judaism, from atheists to neo-pagans that wanted to return Germans to their pre-christian roots.
You know who else likes nordic magic? The red skull.
Ngl, I popped into the comments to see if someone else has already noted this, as someone who has a number of heathen friends, and so is very familiar with the way they get vilified because of that appropriation, but also do sincerely have to dig through a lot of BS because so many of the records passed through nazi hands during that time.
@@Tytoalba777 Huh...never thought about it before but yeah that makes sense.
Last Story
After the 2nd story, I would put him on a watch list. The instant he complained about “No Loli’s”, he would have been GONE.
Also why the fuck would you have a misogynist play with a TEENAGE GIRL.
This is a story where the OP is a horror story.
True
I agree. While you aren't really responsible for how people behave and act, you are responsible for keeping them as company. If any person was talking like that near me, gone. Out of my space. Out of the game.
For the misogynist, why the fuck would you be friends with a dude who literally fews women as lesser? Out of the game. Out of my space.
Like, these guys are being so freaking obvious about their either bigoted beliefs or disgusting attractions. Being neutral or friendly with them is literally enabling their behavior.
That last story reminds me of a German saying that I recently heard. "If there are 9 people and 1 Nazi at a table and no one gets up to leave, then there are actually 10 Nazis". Its a heavy handed way of saying to watch the company you keep. If your best friend is a raging misogynist and you just put up with it and even claim to not be a misogynist, I'm going to have a hard time believing you.
I was exactly in such situation. I had my suspicions for a while that one of the seemed nazi leaning, but then he nonchalantly proclaimed himself as a nazi and called GM his "Fuhrer". I got out as soon as I could.
@@JackdawLT yikes
ngl my brain immediatly went to the board game Secret Hitler when mentioning the amount of people
@@JackdawLT ew
Believe what you want😂
Seems like the last OP is the character in another person's horror story where as a youngster you wanted to play DnD and instead had to endure two adult man roleplaying looking for a sexworker, with DM not bothering to stop a bad behaviour at their table and welcoming a person with harmful views into their games.
I guess the BG3 villain twist can feel quick to you, if you skip through the dialogue, do zero exploring and forget everything about the game every 45 minutes.
It felt decent, but looking back, it feels rush now.
Act 1 is just EA, including the cliffs, Underdark, and Shadowlands. Ending Act 1 is the first of the three. Act 2 is fighting him, then closing Act 2 is a small map on the way to Lower City. Act 3 is the same. Act 4 is the lady and fixing Karlach's engine, letting her stay on Faerun, and the Upper City. Act 5 is the rushed half of Act 3.
@@fireblade295 What is my blud yapping about?
Heya, OP for the AITA here. Thank you for the input, I always find your takes enlightening in some capacity. I do wanna say it has been a bit since I submitted my story and a bit's happened since then. I did voice my grievances to the DM about feeling left out of roleplay and having my character arcs rushed and he did sort of apologize in his own way. It turned out since the Sorcadin's PC had amnesia, it opened up a bit more narrative potential than he was expecting and got a bit carried away, but he did promise to try to be better about giving everyone their moment, so small victories, I guess 😅He still kinda plays favorites with Sorcadin and Ranger, but I've just about accepted that's gonna be a thing until it's over. I enjoy getting to pop off in combat, as is expected from a Barbarian, but I'm not just playing D&D for the combat, y'know?
Extra edit: these skits 🤣🤣🤣
Another edit for clarification: I LOVE KETHERIC, I WAS TALKING ABOUT THE BRAIN 😭
I wouldve left already in your place. Feels like they dont want you here, if you dont enjoy the process its pointless.
@@kul2130 I pretty much put my foot down and said my characters need SOME kind of stakes in the matter because outside of combat where I actually got turns, it basically felt like watching a movie, only nowhere near as entertaining 👀
@@IronLordEXO*Looks at Ketheric* just watch out where you're putting down the foot
I like lolita fashion, its a shame it shares a name with * that * :(
"Women should not get any shares of the reward, they should be PART OF THE REWARD...."
Now this is how you can tell when someone should be on an FBI watchlist.
No, this is how you can tell someone IS on an FBI watchlist
@@This-is-a-commenttNaw they don't take rapists as serious as they take other crimes unless the suspect is a trafficker.
Don't play with these people. Seriously. Don't. You don't have to, and you shouldn't, put up with these people.
@@This-is-a-commentt True, hahahaha.
@@fugitiveunknown7806 Wiser words were never spoken.
The last story is an example of “if you got ten friends at a table and one of them is racist, you got ten racists.” (Don’t get wound up; it’s a hyperbole about enabling and neutrality.) Being hands-off over stuff like this in a friend group usually, if not always, does not end well.
Fr 😭
I actually delt with something like this long ago. It's always best to leave instead of fighting it.
More specifically, you have ten racists if none of the nine other members at the table speak up against it, or take any attitude about it but just let it slide.
Whether it's "best to leave it" depends on your point of view about what "best" means.
If all you care about is to avoid any discomfort or unpleasantness in your own relationships, then I guess you'd better leave it. Because yes, speaking up will often cause discomfort and unpleasantness.
But if you actually give a damn about the issues and the real people whose lives are damaged and threatened by racism, then you have to weigh that against the result of NOT speaking up. Because the result of no one speaking up is that people with racist attitudes become more and more comfortable with being openly racist and thinking that it's okay, that it's normal. If they are never personally confronted about it by people they know, they start to assume that the majority of "real people" actually agree with their racist beliefs, that it's really only a few attention-seeking "special snowflakes" who publicly object.
And those who don't agree but don't want to be considered "snowflakes" themselves get quieter and quieter - or learn to go along with the crowd.
It's always a choice whether or not to speak up, sometimes a difficult one. Sometimes it's even unsafe, depending on the situation. And if you do speak up, you have to do it with the expectation that you won't change the racist's mind, and that you might upset others who only want to avoid discomfort.
But it can be worth some discomfort to raise your voice anyway. And you don't have to make it a huge argument and try to get everyone to agree with you... you just have to speak up and say some version of, "That's not cool, dude." Because you never know who else is listening - and because if you and I won't raise our voices, who will?
@@mikephoenix1992 Well said, I wish I could give you more than one like here
OP of the 4th story be like, yes my years long friend is a misoginist and the biggest problem with that is how he embarassed me in public that one time. still friends tho
It’s hard to break from bad people if you knew them all your life and they have been good to you. Not saying it’s okay at all but saying that it makes sense
@@Cains_stuff yeah
We all tolerate shit from friends that we shouldn't tolerate. Rose tinted glasses hide the red flags and all that. That's a near universal human failing.
Says a lot about you, not gonna lie.
@@gdttdeggegdh5471 yes. On the one hand I get not wanting to break from your friends or rock the boat, most people don't tend to like confrontations. On the other the company you keep inevitably colors how people see you (and not without good reason), and ultimately you do need to make a judgment call
Second story, the *second* the DM twisted the use of Wish, the smell of bs was already in the air. OP definitely needs to talk with the DM about how they're feeling because yeah. It's hard not to think this was targeted at them with the rest of the party as collateral
Fuck that, I'd just find a different playgroup. There's plenty of fish in the sea.
Intro story: My advice? Split the group. Find a second person to DM, and split into two tables. Two smaller tables will be easier to manage than one big one.
First story: NTA. Sometimes unwinnable encounters are part of the plot, yes, but this one sounded more like the DM was just on a power trip. The way your characters have been ignored and pushed to the sidelines is also, shall we say, not great. I think you need to have a serious talk with the DM about these problems, and if things don’t get better, it may be time to leave this game.
Second story: I feel for the GM here. Anxiety is the WORST. I’m glad the players were so nice and reassuring!
Third story: I feel like this could have been solved by a session zero. Everyone could have shared what they wanted from the game and come to a compromise. The DM could have agreed to tone down or remove the fetish elements, or if they were meant to be an important part of the game, the players who weren’t into it could have backed out. Session zero is important, people!
Fourth story: OP, what the actual fuck? Why did you let this guy stay in your games? Or the misogynist? These guys suck, and I get wanting to give your friends second chances, but at this point, you’re just enabling their behavior.
The third story was the poster joining midway, so no S0 and I get the feeling that the DM would have ignored any calls for "No SA" (at least until there were no players left).
OP from the 3rd Story here, the reply is correct. Plus I doubt dumb young me would have passed up any chance to play a ttrpg, seeing how rare it is for me. I was definitely caught up in a web of BS where I was most definitely missing the forest for the trees.
I wanna say: You're not the asshole if you don't find a way of running a campaign fun. If the other players are cool with the no-win scenario and you're not, then it's just that you don't like that.
Of course, the DM passing by your backstory in favor for another person's is dickish too. It's not like you made your characters as just "mercs for hire" and are there to play the combat.
I think the no-win situation is one thing, but it's WAY that it was done that irks me, personally.
The DM disrespected the OP's character in the worst way possible, treating his hard work like window dressing in favor of the DM's own plot. But they kind of did this to the Sorcadin as well--making him/her look incompetent because of the way the Wish was worded. This entire scene was something that was putting the DM's wants for their story over how the player's experience.
And honestly? It wouldn't have even been that hard, I feel, to get around the long rest and wish. Either make the strange bullshit magic buff the baddies equally as much (or more if we're feeling dickish), or simply have someone try to force athletics or something like that to knock the deck out before it could be properly invoked. Maybe make a little struggle around this last beacon of hope, then lose.
Half the time as a DM you're already coercing the plot to go a certain way, but it always has to player driven. This isn't.
These comedic re-enactments are SENDING MEE 😂 my two faves:
DM: Turn around
Player: oh sure **turns**
DM: **loads gun**
and, DM: and finally that's dylan, he's a misogynist
Player: **blinking gif moment** he's a what
Two little """fun""" facts about the book Lolita (which is essentially the story of the abuse of a young girl from the perspective of her abuser), not only did the book got censored for a few years because everyone thought that because Vladimir Nobokov was writing about that kind of abuse it meant that he was an abuser (even if he often said the book was a tragedy, and that the narrator could not be trusted since he gaslit the reader by saying that she was 'asking for it'), but when Stanley Kubrick bought the rights of the book just to adapt it in a movie, not only did he rearranged the script that the author had wrote for the movie but he also thought it was a good idea to sexualize the little girl in the movie.
He must
Sounds like he was also behind cuties.
@@goober69er Hum... English is not my native langage, so I didn't get what you meant with this comment, could you explain me ?
@@lolitacalveras1815 it’s a movie that came out on Netflix awhile back that heavily sexualized kids. Turned into a controversy where the hyper liberals were trying to applaud it as stunning and brave but most people were disgusted.
@@goober69er Oh that movie ? Wasn't that movie's point to criticize how overly sexualized minors were nowadays ? Because if I remember well, the point of the movie was to disgust people with how much the children were sexualized, or at least that's what the movie director intended
Because you know, how can you criticize the sexualization of children, without showing how those children can be seuxalized
The boss at the end of BG3 Act 2 is only a surprise if you don't listen to a single plot conversation, or read any of the codexes, or pay attention at all to anything you're doing throughout all of Act 2 and half of Act 1. >.> I don't understand this at all.
Which makes me question if they even played the game
And if you go there first before solving the problem, you get a great introduction to him.
I dunno, I just think the plot twist about 🧠would have been better as the opening to act 3, not the closing to act 2. Ketheric was based though, and I liked skipping the first phase with that Selunite rizz
@@IronLordEXO Adding a 4th act for the lady.
One act per boss. Act 5 is just the rushed part of vanilla Act 3.
First story: split your group in half and play two campaigns with 5 players in each. Seems like two campaigns will be a lot more work, but you will absolutely save yourself time and energy by not having to corral 10 players every session.
i have a player who plays two characters, initially it came from the party SORELY needing a healer at the time but nobody wanted to step up, and everyone was struggling to find a way to cross class or get potions. and i had a lot on my plate and couldn't run an npc to heal for them while also doing enemies and other npcs.
so, one of the players made a bare bones background for a 'hired help' kind of npc that the party agreed to pay in order to have helping them, and the player would only occasionally say how this character would react or talk in certain situations if needed, but overall was originally just meant to be the paid healbot.
eventually, the party ended up actually getting invested in the little healbot, and the player asked if they could actually develop them more and maybe play them. i agreed as long as we found a way to make it natural and balance the attention tha this player got with having two characters, and asked the party if they were cool with it.
now, said healbot has crossclassed into a warlock after getting themself possessed in a haunted house by a demon lord, and then being manipualted by said demon into unleashing it in the world and causing the demonic apocalypse, all because the party had treated them as nothing more than a heal dispensary (something the players all agreed would be a very fascinating and fun angle to take with it and could lead to development and conflict) and not a person. only the demon had seemed to treat them as if they actually mattered, and in the end they were still used. now the party is trying to make up for that, and to help hunt down the demon lord and end the demonic invasion before it's too late.
the players OTHER character also doesnt even get along with the new healer character, which is fun to have the player actually figure out how to roleplay without having to just talk to themself. it also gives for a good reason to NOT have their characters interact to avoid that same issue.
imo in some ways i can see it being hard to do, and also hard to manage, but if the players and dm think they can make it work, it's worth giving a go. it especially helps if a certain character's arc is in a lull for the time being, but nobody wants to be bored and not have a lot of involvement.
General rule is if some one is telling you something crappy about themselves, believe them. It might be the only time they are being absolutely honest.
That last DM was way too tolerant, honestly
He was, but the longer your friendship is, the harder it is to burn that bridge.
"NOT LOLITA...?!"
I ... can't even. I've definitely had plenty of my own That Guy moments (I've done criminal amounts of sulking but I've been and still am working on it and it's much rarer) but NEVER gross ones. YIKES. And there was a KID AT THE TABLE AND KIDS ONE TABLE OVER!!!
::has six glitches and an asthma attack::
I can remember being a kid and having gross moments happen to and/or around me, and being just old enough to understand that it was gross and shouldn't be happening ... yet not old enough to understand WHY it was happening. I STILL sometimes have those moments where someone says or does something GROSS to me, and I either go mini-shutdown or full-barbarian rage (thank you, AuDHD brain), and I still don't understand and that makes it WORSE. I do believe I'd catch a case if I saw an adult doing something like this to or around ... well, anyone, but especially a kid. Misogynist Lawyer has ISSUES, and probably shouldn't be around anyone of any age who isn't a licensed psychiatrist. Creepiest of all, he's a freaking lawyer and he likely knows how to game the system so that if and when he steps out of line, it's never far enough for legal action to be taken. He'll never be held to any kind of accountability by the law nor, apparently, his friends. ICK.
I have been watching Crispy's videos for a while now, and they are often very enlightening and entertaining.
A few weeks ago he read a story about a DM who was apparently extremely horny and kept trying to work sexual scenarios into his adventures, despite the player's (the OP of the story) objections. I've tried to find that video again to write a comment directly in its comment section, but I forgot what the video title and thumbnail were. So I'm going to mention my thoughts here.
At one point in the story, the DM had the PCs fighting a minotaur. During the fight OP cut the minotaur's horn off, and accidentally inhaled some powdered minotaur horn, which the DM declared was a powerful aphrodisiac (a term Crispy was unfamiliar with and had to Google the definition of, which I found hilarious). I just wanted to point out that, in real life, powdered animal horns of certain animals (such as the white rhino) are considered in some cultures to be powerful aphrodisiacs, prompting poachers to hunt said animals just for their horns (the aforementioned white rhino has been hunted nearly into extinction for this very reason. Of course, science has proven that the claims of powdered white rhino horn is a powerful aphrodisiac is only a myth. This doesn't stop people from paying $1000 to $5000 an ounce to purchase it for this very purpose.
My point being that if in the real world people believe that consuming the powdered horn of a white rhino is going to make them an exceptional lover, enough to pay thousands of dollars to purchase this "aphrodisiac", then it makes sense that in a fantasy world, the powdered horn of a fantasy creature (like a minotaur) would ACTUALLY be an aphrodisiac. Personally, I would have made powdered minotaur horn be a complete hoax, like the powdered white rhino horn is in real life. A better idea for an ACTUAL aphrodisiac would be the powdered horn of a succubus or incubus, since the demon's whole thing is seducing mortals.
Just to be clear, I'm firmly against forcing your players into sexual storylines when you're the DM. I personally don't mind playing in NSFW games, but I'm also very aware that such games aren't everyone's cup of tea and the DM needs to read the room and make sure that his adventures are appropriate for the players at his table. This DM didn't do that.
Dammit, not Lolita :P
I do appreciate that you also share some of the more wholesome stories, too, like the DM who got in her own head and was reassured by the players. It's nice to know that not all D&D horror makes a game irredeemable or even mars the experience.
Petition to rename the "Deck of Many Things" to the "Deck of Campaign F**ing".
Hearing these stories makes me glad I've only one, very mild encounter with the deck of many things. Any DM that introduces that when I restart playing is going to get some very strong objections from me.
I might even leave.
"The deck of ruining/ending the game."
This nickname has been around since the 90's. It was actually worse in 2nd edition, and no, I'm seriously not joking.
It reversed f**ed one of my campaigns. I had allowed some really obnoxious PCs to run rampant, and the Deck wound up writing them out of the campaign by causing them to ascend to divinity.
I remember one story where the DM starts the campaign at a traveling show where a booth had The Deck of Many Things, the PCs would draw and if it ruined their character or they wanted a do-over then that was the NPC in front of them, not their PC. It added a random element to their start instead of ruining the story halfway through.
Idk wtf that is
"Rushed Reveal of act 2"
..... we spent 20-30 hours learning about illithids. What else could it be than an Elder Brain?
Plus, Karlach sets up Gortash and Grymforge, Thorm. Didn't feel rushed.
As a womanI am going to disagree that the last dm isn’t a bad person. If you’re cool being friends with a known misogynist and just overlooking that “character flaw,” you do, in fact, suck.
Right. The second a woman complains about anything one man does or the bad shit that happens to women, she’s a misandrist and needs to stfu.
A dude full on saying women are property? Just Jim. He’s got a character flaw. No biggy. Sure it’s men like him that abuse women but he’s so much fun to be around!
This. You just can't allow this. If you don't care about misogyny, you are enabling it by not doing anything which kind of makes you misogynist, too. Protect your friends from such people if you can by not inviting someone like this to your game.
I understand the viewpoint, and I agree with Crispy that the guy *really* should have taken action way sooner.
But I want to stress something that I feel a lot of people are conveniently overlooking--this guy is friggin' old, with largely the same play group over the years.
Why does that matter? Well...
It wasn't that long ago that casual misogyny was not only a problem but a societal norm--early 90s, and certainly before that. Based on what we know of this guy's group, there's a really good chance that not only were these guys friends longer than some of us have been alive, but this took place during a time when the proud misogynist's..."perspectives" were considered "socially acceptable".
I think it's easier to say you'd burn a bridge for something like that, but I think it's a lot harder to actually do it until an unambiguous line is crossed. We tolerate a lot of shit from our friends that we shouldn't, and we tend to unfairly judge a lot of people just because we mildly dislike them.
@@basteala525 And yet my seventy year old father would have just not been friends with someone being misogynistic. Times sure do change, but that distorts the fact that you either grow and change with them or you don’t. If you don’t change or ignore your friends behavior regardless of the length of the relationship, then you are still kind of being an ass by association and most women won’t view you as an ally. This thinking also ignores the very real fact that plenty of men, women, and those in between weren’t okay with blatant misogyny even when they were growing up. I know plenty of my parents’ “old” friends who are appalled by the views expressed here. And strangely enough, they aren’t friends with anyone who wouldn’t be appalled by these views.
@@basteala525that was going on 40 years ago. They definitely could have grown up by then. I would make new friends before I settled that hard. I certainly know my 54 year old mother and my 78 year old grandmother would've. And all my uncles.
Crispy....not rounds. TURNS. Thats a big difference
In older D&D a round was once around the table. A turn was 10 rounds. Turn = 6 seconds. A turn was a minute.
@lyudmilapavlichenko7551 a round is still one around the table and each round= 6 seconds
@@lyudmilapavlichenko7551Yeah, but in 3.5 to 5E turns and rounds as separate things were dropped. Albeit, a holdover is 3.5 and 5E having several spells with durations listed in minutes.
@lyudmilapavlichenko7551 no a turn was 10 minutes. It was only 10 rounds in 1e cause it had 1 minute rounds but Original D&D and the various B/X and BECMI versions had different round lengths
@@greasysmith3150
I'm only familiar with AD&D and after.
I love that third story where the players tell the DM that she did everything perfect
Honestly great to have the odd glory story in these videos
Note regarding story 2: 3 TURNS not 3 ROUNDS.
going down in 3 rounds, oh well. But 3 TURNS? Depending on initiative, that barb might not even have gotten an attack off.
Weirdest, yet funniest "playing two characters as player" case I had, was me playing spooky dead little girl (NOT Lolita! If anything she rather was Pippi Longstoking) haunting the guy who (believed he) killed her. So I played both of them, including scenes with mainly two of them in play
Kinda love how innocent that last OP was that they thought it was spelled "lolly".
"The Wizards Upon the Coast"
lmao!! 😂
15:18 I have never seen anything encapsulate my ace as hell ass so well.
Samee
A note on multiple characters...
Back in the antediluvian days of 2e, D&D had a concept, developed in the Dark Sun setting, where Players could have up to 4 characters. Only 1 would be active at a time, and the others would earn 25% of the XP that the active character earned each session.
BG3 act 2 BBEG felt a bit rushed the first time we played it. But it was because we went one way, dodging the main path for super long. Only realised on a second playthrough that going there earlier builds it up way better. Tho I also liked getting all the info through 2nd-3rd hand, building that image of him, until we finally got to see him for ourselves.
I should clarify, I wasn't talking about Ketheric, I meant the 🧠
Now i highkey want to play a halfling girl with a name derived from Dolores who dreams of dressing in frills and bows (expensive clothing) but she's a thief. Lolita fashion is a love of mine and I'm so tired of people assuming it's connected to the book. (And the book isn't what people think it is either. Nobokov was very open about the fact that it's an examination of the mind of a child predator. He is convinced that his behaviour is good and normal, but if you pay attention to how the other characters, ESPECIALLY Dolores herself, behave you can tell how horrible he is to them)
Maybe 'Dolly' or 'Lori' for the name?
@@pizzalisp5427 Dolly would probably be my choice because I love it
As far as campaigns where everyone plays two characters, I played one campaign where our DM could only get me and one other player for it, so he had us both make two characters. Still one of the most fun campaigns I've ever been a part of and I loved the dynamics that formed around them
My party has a habit of adopting and recruiting npcs, so I gave those to different players to run as secondary characters. The idea is then if a player can't make a session I can run a side quest for the secondary characters without interrupting the main storyline. In between adventures they roleplay both characters, but usually only one at a time is present in any one scene. The secondary PCs level more slowly as they're not played as often, but (it hasn't happened yet) if a main PC dies the secondary character gets leveled up to the main party level and becomes the main PC, already an established part of the story. I love seeing how the players take former mpcs and develop the character and personality further in ways I'd not originally have thought of.
I don’t think the BG3 Act 2 person was paying as much attention as they could have
I've been in games where everyone has 2-3 PCs (3 ppl including DM, so this let us run more difficult encounters). We loved having multiple characters in fights, but in contrast to OP's scenario, we struggled in RP. It's hard to have a touching scene or dramatic moment that doesn't involve your other PC(s) getting into the conversation, and consequently RPing with yourself for possibly minutes at a time. So it constantly was a struggle for ppl to excuse their other PCs from the conversation, or very briefly summarize the exchange. So yeah, it *can* work. You just need to make sure everyone knows what the game is (combat or RP), and find a way to make the awkward situation(s) take as little time as possible.
My most recent trash mob scenario was in my Strixhaven game where the party had to go fight the "garbage disposal" -- an otyugh. To spice it up, I had it cough up a host of stirges. They deal some nasty damage but have a pittance of health. Added some variety to a potentially bland encounter.
Of course, then one of my players said "Oh, bet they HEAL the otyugh if they fly back to it."
WELL, THEY DO NOW.
The Nazis were Christian on the whole, or at least used it for their propaganda. Individual officers however were often into *weird* shit so it fits.
Yeah Himmler ran a crazy cult and I mean crazy even by the Nazi standards. Hitler realized he lost it when he started putting Atlantis into it.
“Group has ten players…”
Oh, sweetie…
We learned 5th ed D&D specifically because my friend's 12yo stepson wanted to try it. He played 2 characters in all 3 campaigns. But we only had 3 other PCs in the party. So it was just lessening the adjustments to the campaigns, maybe? We started before the pandemic. Now he's not so interested, but I think his young brain had plenty of power to make this system work for 2 characters. It's not that complex of a system. I think even I could manage 2. It might help my skills even.
I've been role playing since I was around 15, because that was the only thing my friends from school would ever do. Almost literally. But I think it will follow me throughout my life. I mean, it's just life as I've always lived it, pretending to be a normal human when I'm pretty sure I'm actually an undiagnosed high functioning person with autism. I have been faking being human my entire life. Pretending to be a different human is not my idea of a great time. I just show up and protect the other characters. But all of my other friends love it, and this way I get to see them. It's not the worst thing. :)
1:39 “By the way, what were we doing? Nevermind, it’s not important.” 😂
8:44 You cast Wish as an action, and an action takes 6 seconds. This means you only have 6 seconds to state your Wish. This means there isn’t much time to get specific…
I can see the use of norse myths and magic in 1930's germany, given that certain high officials were known to be obsessed with aryan occultism and were known to favor wagnarian operas (which drew from those myths as inspiration). the "SS" symbols on the collars are meant to be RUNES for crying out loud!!!
And there is whole Norse are blonde with blue eyes i.e. what they believed was a "master race."
Aww, amidst all the trash there's the second story. So sweet, I hope the OP's wife keeps up the good work dming more bad guy stomping!
Hey, just started watching recently and like your stuff to listen to in the background while working on my own DnD shit on the side. To answer the question, both of my players in my main campaign ran two characters at the same time. One of which is a brother-sister duo, the other being a Warlock and his imp summon who grew stronger and became a full demon after being blessed by the god over-seeing hell in my world. The brother-sister duo player really enjoyed it and felt they were able to bounce roleplay off of their own characters to better play them! The other player ended up not really knowing what to do with the demon much, he tried to make it work however eventually just got to a point where the demon was just kinda there. We did a weird thing where I would roleplay him, but he would control him in combat, and moreso recently we just decided to have the demon part ways and be demoted to NPC status
The Skit at 17:56 Was amazing!
The video was posted have 15 minutes. HOW DID YOU GET THERE IN LESS THAN 5 MINUTES?
@@Sylveon526Triplo Friend have you never heard of time travel?
the heeeckkk
I've seen DMs give players a researcher character and an investigator character for mystery games, particularly those set in the past. This was so players could have characters do things like library research and social networking without slowing down the plot too much.
Whoah. Someone's playing with the Critical Drinker?!
GURPS stands for Generic Universal Role Playing System, an RPG designed to play anything and make any character. BPRD stands for Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, fictional organization Hellboy is working for. I'm sure someone already explained it, but I thought it won't hurt to be sure.
If they did, I haven't found it. Much appreciated.
GURPS, also known as "the system Fallout was going to use until Steve Jackson Games pulled out of the deal and the Interplay team needed to come up with the SPECIAL system to replace it"
I have RP’d two characters simultaneously. My game shop runs a DCC campaign and it’s drop in so we can’t always get four players so we usually wind up playing multiple characters (usually a level 0 backup and our main) though we also let our backup do combat as well (which can lead to funny moments when our untrained backups are doing better than our battle hardened team).
We also did an X-crawl one off which was REALLY fun as the game kind of encourages players to fight like it’s professional wrestling so we were doing tag team moves with our second character. Good times
First story: Split the party into two groups. Alternate weeks. You'll make more progress with both groups than you are right now with one mass team. Once you get the two groups split, also put some rules to each group--no phones out at the table, no non-game discussion once the game is on, etc.
Second story Part One: There are some games set up with the idea of playing multiple characters. The old Ars Magica, for instance, you played both a Wizard and a mook. The idea was that players took turns bringing out their big, bad-ass Wizard, who was the de facto party lead for that session, and everyone else brought the team to bear. I've also played in a heist-themed PbP Savage Worlds game where everyone had two characters (all of whom could interact at will in the roleplay thread), but you only could pick one of them for each 'job'.
Second Story, Part Two: Not the Asshole. I don't hate 'there is no win here' encounters, but by god, that's why video games invented cut-scenes. If you really are just going to trump every effort of the Players, no matter what they do, to get them to the dungeon, then as the DM, make it clear from the start that this is the case. I like to use the Interlude mechanic from Savage Worlds for this sort of situation. You describe the set-up (everyone is transported to the arena). You then tell the players, "Yeah, so, this is not a fight you win. Maybe you go down like Rocky I against Apollo Creed. Maybe you spend time running around and trying to evade. Maybe you make a failed escape attempt. Maybe you even just took one shot to the chin and went down like a chump. Point is, YOU get to describe it. Feel free to incorporate some aspect of your character that hasn't gotten proper time to shine, if you want. You'll go in initiative order; the only rule is that you can't undermine what someone else has already put forward." (Savage Worlds also has a system for giving players prompts by flipping cards from a deck.) If you really have to railroad the result, let the players determine the journey.
Third Story: GM Anxiety--the Struggle is Real. Never be afraid to check in with your players, and take any compliments they give you at face value.
Fourth Story: Yeah, just get out of that table as fast as you can.
Final Story: Oh, Hell No. Tolerating intolerable people just because they are in the hobby is how RPGs became almost as bad as comic book stores on the issue of Cat-Piss Man.
Good stuff as always, sir.
Homebrew Game
Another thing to add is for DM’s to ask their players “How you feeling”, especially with people in different time zones.
So, what if I _didn't_ make it to the end of the video? Does that mean I have to comment "Yes Lolita"? 😂
You say "HEY LOLITA, HEY" and summon Lana Del Ray and her army of self-labeled "coquettes"
Many decades ago, in one of our Traveller games, we all had multiple characters in order to fill the crew positions on the ship (yeah, we could'a' _hired_ crew but where's the fun in that?) and because we just loved coming up with new character concepts. Quite often, this split nicely between ship crew and away team - though some of us would be running more than one character on the ground as well, which did make fights a lot more "interesting"... so not quite the "only one in any given combat" rule that the DM in the _AITA For Wanting More_ story had.
It generally was fun.
In our current MGT2e game, we've had a couple of players with two characters each and two of us run a couple of NPCs attached to the crew (one being the security robot I bought) and we generally just have them acting in turn in any combat situation as dictated by the initiative rolls. Mind you, we only had at a maximum 5 players (down to 4, now, due to scheduling conflicts), only a couple of whom had more than 1 character in play at any one time, so it's not like we've got 10 players all running 2-3 characters each, turning the combats into a slog.
Having multiple characters is very useful to ensure you're not sitting out parts of the adventure because your character lacks the appropriate skills (or is just so poor at those skills that using them is frustrating) for what's going on at the time. This is quite noticeable in a game like Traveller where you might reasonably expect that your crew/band will have space battles *_and_* planetary (or space station) encounters/adventures/fights, but could conceivably apply to D&D if you run some form of nautical adventure (or fantasy starjammer setting) where you're sailing/flying from place to place and may encounter pirates (or even *_be_* pirates) as well as doing "dungeon crawls", so require specialised characters for each setting.
the BBEG reveal being quick in BG3 is so stupid omfg, like the fct that it's the second half of Act 2 already means it comes more than halfway through the game... Coldest take I heard yet
I love your use of "The Man They Called Cayde". It hits so well every time.
Our game last weekend was definitely in the "running away is a win" category. We got into some serious shit and were in a situation that was one combat round away from a decisive TPK - so we made like shepherds and got the flock outta there! Even then, it was some tense rolls required to turn tail and get out of there without getting our arses shot off - we barely made it.
honestly your jokes are so funny love the skits
in a pirate campaign i was in, i had two characters. the general idea we had was if i chose to be one, the other would "stay behind to help the crew with the ship" so that it would never seem out of place for one to be missing. worked really well, as i scratched both my druid itch and my swashbuckler, enby pirate life.
More coop mechanics and multi stage parts (Three max) and realistic intervention to bolster the party when they reduce a boss enemies health to a certain threshold works wonders for single entity bosses, keeps the immersion, makes it feel epic, players will be on the edge of their seats the whole fight.
I once did a single entity boss where a npc entity could rewind time to a certain extent up to three times but it meant the part rewinds, the boss still uses his attack however the party member or members it is targeting have advantage on their action.
About the multiple player characters at the same time. I am a part of a small group with 3 of us counting the DM. So to make things work we tend to use multiple player characters at the same time so we are not limited to 2 PCs. The DM of the given sessions (we take turns so none of us become a forever DM) usually plays a character too, but doesn't have their character take center stage. The other characters get to shine more then the character the DM is playing.
Pretty sure their "(God I love Thief)" was referring to the videogame thief.
I hear "Big Strong guy taking care of small innocent thing" and i think of Berserker and Illya.
..., F, please tell me the character the GM was using in the game wasn't based on Illya
To be fair, lolita by itself is an innocuous word outside of the context of the book (and certain groups of people, naturally). And lolita as a fashion isn't even a fetish, at least not for most people. iirc, some of the appeal for the people (largely women and girls) who dress that way is that it's a heavily non-sexual aesthetic. Delicate and cute and pretty, without being overexposed or made to accentuate the figure. There's a lot of permutations, too, and all of them are interesting in their own right.
That being said, if some 60+ year old dude is complaining about a lack of lolis (and indeed is using the term "loli" at all, and particularly in reference to underage girls), then that's a fucking "lolicon" (the proper term for the little girl fetish specifically; hebephilia is technically more broad but still Pretty Fucking Nasty- and also RAMPANT in anime/manga fan circles, unfortunately, even canonically what with all the fanservice and whatever have you), and they should've been kicked so hard they launched all the way into the fucking Kuiper Belt. That's not somebody you want within the same zipcode as you, let alone being around actual teenage girls.
I just want to add for other people who might accidently stumble upon it - Yes there is one lolita fashion style that is called ero lolita and it has more adult elements (corsets and chokers to name some) - This is fashion that adult women are wearing. Just to make sure because I saw comments in true crime video pilling on a person who had sweet lolita as their username.
@@monikasernek1177Oh, I hadn't known about that one... that's a bit... idk, tacky, if you ask me, given what it was based on. Kind of inevitable these days, though; everybody's gotta make an oversexed version of everything...
But yeah, as a fashion movement, beyond it also sometimes being worn by young girls and women (and aside from the apparent subfashion), lolita is pretty far removed from anything fetishistic. Sweet lolita in particular is... idk I would've thought that more people knew about that one, lol. Ig it could be bc of a demographic divide of some sort on a true crime video...
@@Neganium Ero lolitas aren't that overly sexulated, but I saw some who do go a little too overboard with showing skin. Also there are nurse and nun lolitas.
It think the biggest problem with lolita fashion is the name, because the other related fashion movement don't get that much scrutiny (beside gyaru), but then again almost all aesthetic get criticism.
@@monikasernek1177 Yea it's kind of annoying to think about, when there's nothing inherently wrong with the word itself; it exists outside of the context of the book. Literally just a word that translates into "girl" or "little girl", ain't it?
Also, showing skin isn't necessarily the only way to be heavily sexualized. Again, it comes from presentation, sometimes. I've never seen ero, nurse, or nun lolitas, tho (well, maybe nurse? there's a lot of crossover with creepy cute aesthetics and medical imagery, so some of that could fall into the same category), so I can't really say for sure. And it also probably largely depends on the person.
@@Neganium Sadly thanks to the book - it mean something like to seductive girl. Which is sad consider Lolita is a female name. Interestingly is originated from the name Dolores which means pain or sorrow (its also linked together with Lola).
Also with too much skin I wanted to say that there are women who don't wore their bloomers and those are a vital for the ero lolita style.
...the intro story is totally my party. And our group is a manageable size! Four PCs and one DMPC that doesn't steal the spotlight. We're all just excitable nerds that can't shut up and focus. We love each other. Our pacing is crap, tho. 😂😂😂
I do one-on-one campaigns with my partner and I play with multiple characters to make it work. Two is comfortable, four is my limit. For role-play between my characters I either sum up what they talked about or my partner, the GM, takes them over for convos. Some systems are easier than others to make this work, the Basic Role Playing Game system, for example, has rules for running a sidekick. There’s a lot to keep organized for my characters but it’s definitely doable.
In regards to second story, I do sometimes throw "Meant to lose" encounters at my players. But if my players do something I didn't expect and win anyway, I let them win and change my plans.
One of my games (my own setting) I threw a spider-monster at the players that was pretty much unbeatable, to teach them that monsters in this world aren't beaten by strength, but by figuring out their psychology and what they want and manipulating them.
This spider for example didn't want to eat them, she wanted to *hunt* them. Like a fisherman who does it for fun and then throws the fish back. She was talking mad game about "Welcome to my parlour, said the spider to the fly" etc etc. But it was about figuring out she was just playing. They did not figure it out but they didn't have time to go "Rigged encounter" before the twist was revealed.
Anyway, they ended up having a pleasant chat with her while wrapped up in a silk cocoon and leaving after some tea. They also got to meet her beloved pet, a teenage girl she had rescued from a cult that tried to sacrifice her to them (she ate the cultists instead). Fun was had and a valuable lesson was learned about how monsters in this setting behave.
Re: two characters.... a couple of situations.
First when my brother ran Shadowrun, we only had 2 players and we wanted to make sure we could cover all roles, so we each got two characters....and somehow made an all magic party: I had a human burned spy was an adept whose powers enhanced her pistol and social skills and an oni (orc metavariant) mage who wanted to be idol singer but found herself sucked into shadowrunning. The other player had a troll adept focused on melee combat and berzerking and a dryad technomancer who communed with machine sprites.
Second, also my brother, when we started a D&D campaign with the same two players we decided we'd have a system of hiring NPCs on a per adventure basis and each of us play 3 characters (ours and 2 NPCs) this changed to each playing three when our nephew joined the game. Gave us a chance to try out a lot of different builds.
Third - A lot of Powered by the Apocalypse games have the level up option of "create a second character to play" including Monster of the Week. I'm sort of a forever GM on this game, but so far two of my campaigns have had this happen, my first game (my brother and the same other player from my brother's campaigns) we had The Chosen (later changed to The Initiate) and The Flake (conspiracy theorist) on one player... and The Professional (later changed to The Expert) and the Exile on the other player. On my current playtest campaign we have three players and two of them took second characters: The Celebrity (now Pararomantic) is also playing The Spooky (now Hex), The Changeling (now Spellslinger) is also playing The Mundane (hasn't changed playbook yet), and the third character was playing The Monstrous but has now become The Host. (not if you go looking for three of those playbooks... I did say playtest)
Also, look at the podcast The Monster's Playbook, they only started recording at what they call "Season 2" so one of them starts with two characters The Professional and The Spellslinger. The other two players start with The Chosen and The Monstrous (and each had changed their playbook before the podcast started). One of the other two characters also ends up taking a second character.
I'm actually making my own homebrew game system. It's a d100 roll low system based around skill checks being the main interaction, taking place in a flat disc shaped world a bit smaller than Europe that is mainly inhabited by peoples based on late bronze age and early iron age Celts. Everything about it is homebrew and I'm building it from the ground up. However, I have no delusions of grandeur about it becoming really popular or something lol
Heeey, nice to see another d100 roll-under enjoyer in the wild! I got into it via Mythras/RuneQuest, and made my own "hack" to use in any setting, instead of just Glorantha...primarily because my group prefers high-fantasy/magitek over Bronze Age shenanigans lol
Had a campaign where each player had 4 characters and combat played like battletech i loved it
When I finally have my system ready to test, I WANT people to be honest about it. Because that's how you debug a system
Two characters (playing at once rather than in rotation so you bring out the character who most fits the adventure/isn't currently nursing a broken foot) - There are some systems with this as a baked in assumption. Most notably everything I've seen in the 'kids and monsters' genre - Think Digimon - has players control a kid and their monster best friend (often with some suggestion that if you're in conversation with your other character it might be better for the GM to voice the character so you aren't having to talk to yourself to play out the scene). Alongside Digimon and Pokemon fangames, you've got Animon Story (which is a full on celebration of the genre) and Monsters & Other Childish Things (which at least reading the quickstart felt more like a deconstruction of it)
Since you seemed thrown by both halves of the GURPS BPRD acronym and the story only really explained the BPRD part: GURPS - Generic Universal Role Playing System - is a point buy game designed to handle... Well... It attempts to handle anything and while it can handle a lot it starts struggling as soon as you leave the realms of heroic fiction that it assumes all TTRPGs are going to be. It's good at what it does, was bigger in the 90s and 00s than it is now, but takes a _ton_ of work to set up campaigns. (I think the tide turned against it in two chief aspects - A move in the market away from generic systems, and away from crunchy systems, and... Well... GURPS is pretty much the antithesis of the current trends in the market)
The “He’s a what?” Part of your skit killed me 😂😂😂
To answer Crispy's question about playing more than one character, I have done that before. Whether it's controlling an absent player's character in combat or playing a second PC when we were short on players, it's something I can do quite comfortably. Right now one of my groups is playing a Marvel Multiverse game, and I've started playing a second character to fill out the numbers (we're currently on 3 active players, including the GM), but we're doing it the other way round to the OP in the first story: I control both my characters in combat, but for roleplay I'll pick one character and stick with them for the rest of the scene (though I have roleplayed two characters at once before).
I've had an issue with group size in one of my campaigns. We had about half a dozen players at one point (I don't remember exact numbers), with one player even running two characters. It was clearly more than the DM could reasonably handle (he wasn't very experienced, which didn't help either). As such, I convinced him to make a second plot thread and split the group in two. The idea was that smaller groups would be easier to handle, easier to organize and get everyone together, etc. So the second group was formed, with some characters staying on the old plotline, some jumping to the new one. And all was good right?
Well... no. See, once the plotline split in two, everyone wanted to make a second character to go on whichever plotline their main wasn't on. One player even made a THIRD character to JOIN their main on the second plotline! That meant that the party hadn't gotten any smaller or easier to manage, the scheduling issues weren't in any way reduced, and the DM had to alternate between TWO campaigns that were BOTH too large to handle.
I don't have a problem with splitting the party. But if you're going to do so, at least make sure the two branches end up SMALLER THAN THE ONE THEY BRANCHED OFF OF.
My buddy Fran runs a very similar multiple characters rule, it's pretty interesting and makes for some unusual interactions
A couple of people at my table, including myself, are allowed by GM to run two characters, he also has a two character per player limit, but with the caveat that the player have some experience so that they don't trip over themselves.
i'm currently RPing two player characters technically! i'm running a dragonrider ranger homebrew with a twist, that rather than the dragon being hatched and raised, the player character was actually raised with the dragon's family and they're the same age-they're sort of like non-blood twins, platonic soulmates type of deal as close knit brothers. the fact that they were raised together makes the collaboration together IC a lot easier, but it does come with a few challenges when they have disagreements. it's very interesting to play, though, and i find it very fun seeing them interact in different ways with the party around them and the NPCs given their personalities are quite a bit different (the elf is much more withdrawn and pessimistic, very cautious and gets overloaded easily, while the copper dragon is a lot friendlier and more curious being sheltered for most of his life, and much louder and outspoken.) they're only about a hundred and haven't left the wyrm's den until about a year ago when one went missing--i wouldn't advise taking it on with people you don't know, but my DM and party have been friends for quite a while and we're very good with communication OOC, and i was very glad the DM lets me be creative with it. There are limitations on what I can do technically, to keep me on par with others-but the boys rarely stray too far from each other-and when they do, there's often a member of the party who breaks away to accompany the other so we have really good collaboration together. i'd recommend giving it a try with a DM and party you know can let you be creative and have fun with it, while working together with them!
Addendum to the characters from the Home brew story: there's a cute series of videos called Doomkemon which is mostly about the female protagonist of Pokemon Sword/Shield rooming with the Doom Slayer.
OP from the Homebrew story here, I'll be sure to check it out!
My first time playing a TTRPG I played multiple characters. My friend had some character sheets of his old highschool friends' characters. He let me erase one so I could make MY character, but then let me then have the other sheets so I could control an entire party instead of just a single character.
“I might tell you part two if I’m so inclined” = immediately checked out lol
With the first story yea I’m currently playing 2 players characters rn. Basically me and my party were On a mission to retrieve an ancient weapon from this underground goblin burial ground for one of our members. Inside of the tomb there was this ancient statue where once you touch it you instantly have a random effect happening to you along with a permanent buff. So when my character touched the statue a clone appeared and I ended up having to play 2 versions of myself. At first I made the both of them extremely suspicious and hostile towards one another giving them a Mauler Twins relationship with one another but once they found out from an extremely powerful devil said that neither of them is a fake and that they are both there own persons. they asked if they could have their soul split and al become individuals. After the devil did so their relationship immediately evolved into something similar like Fred and George from Harry Potter. So far I’m enjoying it and seeing how their relationship develops also did I mention this is my first time ever playing DnD
3:24
i’m in the middle of my first campaign and i have 4 playable characters that i use
i know it sounds INSANE but its actually working out super well! i use them all in combat and roleplaying, our dm can also roleplay as some of my characters when she wants to since she knows them really well
i wasn’t planning on playing four characters at the same time, but my four characters just worked so well into the story that we decided to use all of them
definitely not for everyone since it’s a lot to keep track of and you need to be fast in roleplaying and combat so you don’t hog all the time but it’s a super fun challenge!!
This made me realize the insane situations my dm puts us in combat wise 😂 we always get help with long/crazy combats, but 11 rounds is still a lot when fighting a god 😅.
I've role played up to 3 different charecter in one campaign. My group (6 players 1 DM)played as a mercenary guild and we would each have 3 characters we would use for different missions. We would each pick one of our PCs for those missions. It wad a lot of fun. I'd recommend the guild idea. It helps of you get bord of characters easily or like to play more of your ideas.
These skits are HILARIOUS😂
The Nazis actually did have a big occult obsession that extended to pagan gods, especially germanic ones, since that's the local ones.
Well the Norse gods too since Sandanavian people among the group that Germans considered "Aryan".
@@emberfist8347 The Germanic gods and the Norse gods are mostly the same gods. Woden/Odin, etc
Is it ever going to be possible to watch these videos without BG3 spoilers? My wife and I are trying to play through that game but with our newborn son we only get like half an hour a day, so it's going to take us a few months...
having two characters really cuts down on being bored with the same character. in both campaigns i've played where this was allowed, it was a roaring success, and once in pathfinder i played 5 characters at once (rules-legal). summon, twinned eidolon, waxwork human, black skeleton (lowest HD sentient undead, and not specifically evil. a well-hidden feat allows you to resummon the same one over and over again). and a wood golem. all styled to look exactly like my true character with important differences, like how the waxwork human was styled after a rogue, with an abrasive immature personality but is secret sweet on the inside. i gave the "sisters" slightly different voices to help the other players tell them apart. i was the only experienced player other than the DM, so between my 5 fast turns i still took less time than any one of the 4 beginner players. the DM asked me to join as a co-DM, rule expert, and support in case they players get in over their head.
the backstory for my character is that with her twinned eidolon, she always treated it like a twin sister, but no one believed she was real because she was rarely around. once she figured out how to summon her, they really began to develop the sibling bond, then she made the waxwork human to be their triplet. her father was a lord (and a good man) and he was murdered for political reasons. they tried to murder my character, but ended up killing the eidolon instead, who was promptly re-summoned and revealed the murderers. where it goes from there changes depending on the tie-in to the DM's campaign.
So the only campaign I completed start to finish had a rule where each player could have 2 characters but only bring one to a session (downtime was handled via play by post on discord) and both had to be maintained (an occasional hunt roll to top up on blood at a minimum. We were plsying VtM) so when a character wasn't being played it basically became a glorified tamagotchi.
It worked out pretty well. The only horror story was a problem player who ended up staking himself out of spite.
Hey Grizzled Old Graybeard! Another Old says hello. I've been gaming since 1986.
We makin it to the FBI watchlist with this one
Especially with that DM and the Elf. Right onto the watchlist with the other R fetishists. Unsurprisingly, most coming from loving THOSE H...
For the first story split up the group make a persistent world where when the characters aren't off on adventures they do some day to day tasks to earn little bits of money. This way you can also have events happening in the world during the off sessions which makes the world feel more alive and there are actual consequences to the things your groups do. It's not as complicated as you think and travelling can be done during the week. Also in my current campaign we have a cleric who uses the chaotic rules from 0e to become basically a necromancer and it's hilarious to think that during the week he basically moonlights as a fortune teller speaking with the dead.
The whole thing with the Pagan gods... I'm pretty sure that I heard somewhere that the Jew/Christian God was originally a Pagan god that the Jews chose to worship as a single divine entity, with Christians doing the same thing later on as well. I don't know if it's true or not, just sharing what I heard somewhere.
Anyway, amazing video as always, Crispy!
The evolution of religion is complicated...
With the Nazis they weren't all Christian. Himmler was a nutjob even by their standards and believed the Germanic descended from the civilization of Atlantis among other things. And they did venerate Norse mythology and history along making a modern mythology out of past kings.
There was an official Hellboy Gurps rulebook. I mainly got it as it had a short comic story (haven't seen it published in any other book)
It is VERY disturbing how many people in RPG:s want to live out their segs-fantasies.
Fr. Like, I get it, you're horny. But that's what dating apps are for. Also, if you really wanna live your s fantasies in sth like DnD, do it with your SO. By yourselves. You don't need to involve your friends and random strangers who weren't aware of your...ideas.