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It is. But there is a difference between freedom of choice and the illusion of freedom to choose. The players want to pull a guy off a cart and steal it to ride out of town and then kill some guards and run up a tower and barricade themselves in picking off townsfolk till the dragons circle that's their game. At some point a GM can guide them into the story or the players can live with their choices and get killed, then re-roll or start the story from another plane in the service of some evil deity and find a way to re-claim their souls. The difference in that and a true wonder monster is even after multiple attempts to get out of chaos the DM will get worn out.
I would say out of game conflict usually breaks up a lot of the games I've been in. And its bad because you have to find a new player or even worse a whole new group
Also for rules lawyers, as dm I love making stuff up. Like I had a druid sorcerer and rogue dealing with a horde of orcs trying to bash down the castle doors. Druid casts entangle and the sorcerer asked if they could set the magic vines on fire. I said go for it. In the rules? Not really. Epic? Heck yeah. I love when people get creative. My rule of thumb however is anything the players do the baddies can do, and anything they create that's probably broken I let them have their fun before theyre known for such antics and the enemies counter their actions. Have a large iron spike in a bucket? Slam that bucket on an enemy's head? Lethal damage? Works for a while then suddenly most enemies wear helmets to not have their brain stabbed with a bucket spike. You're famous. People hear of your deeds and what you do. The world is alive and reactive
Exactly! Wanna set a Grease spell on fire? Go for it! Technically it's not flammable, but now you have a spot of difficult, slippery terrain that deals fire damage to everyone on it. I'd make it similar to how some AOE spells work with entering it and starting their turn in it deal damage, but at a basic cantrip level of damage. A Fireball goes off in a shack or small house? All windows and doors are blown out or the entire thing blows up if the blast's strong enough! Wanna try to aim a no-aim spell to get better hitting angles, like Magic Missle or Fireball? Roll a straight d20, anything except 20 has the spell go as normal, 20 removes any save and rolls an extra di(ce) or maxes one of the di. Or if an AOE spell with a nucleus, like Fireball or Moonbeam, has that nucleus fall directly on a creature, roll an attack, and if that attack hits, negate the creature's save. (Those actually sound like cool optional rules.) The core books are just as they're advertised, they're "Guides," meaning you can follow them for help or you don't have to if you don't want to. The GM/DM is as the name implies, the Game/Dungeon Master. They ARE the rules!
Wouldn't the bucket example just be a critical hit/called shot with an improvised weapon at that point though? The thing about being a rules lawyer is that you can actually do 99% of the things that you want to do within the context of the rules... it's just not always as viable of an option as you would want it to be. Either it takes too many actions to set up (such as a player trying to climb a tree and tie a rope to it so they can swing) to make it take a round or two longer than they wanted, or the rules that support it (like improvised weapon rules) generally tell you that the more effective option is to use a real weapon rather than the sharpened stick strapped to your boot. Helmets aren't even a real thing other than a few specific callouts because it is implied that anyone wearing heavy armor has a helmet, and specific items and feats related to helmets tend to give penalties to critical confirmation rolls because stabbing someone in the head is generally what a critical hit is considered to be. The world is alive, and the rules are abstractions that cover a broad range of things that aren't explicitly written out.
The helicopter gm and the players just want to have fun reminds me of a time we had a gm who literally would force us to do whatever he wanted because if not we would die. So I decided I was pretty sick of it. So one time he said that if we failed to complete a quest in time or we died we would explode like a huge explosion. So I very casually went to the nearest capital. And then proceed to commit seppuku. To which the whole entire capital was absolutely destroyed. Good times....
I have a GM that’s *kinda* like this, though not nearly as bad I think. He likes to railroad us, change the rules suddenly, and just all around make it a pain to get creative. He gave my character a grappling hook, which was capable of pulling him and one other medium creature to a spot it hooks to, and in one dungeon we were fighting a ton of monsters that would just tear my character to pieces. He is an illusionist, and his AC is garbage. So I did the only thing I thought would save me, grapple the ceiling to get out of the monster’s range. Once I did this, he got so freakin salty about it and started saying that the grappling hook isn’t “designed to hold you up like that and you’d eventually fall” despite it being capable of pulling two medium creatures to a point in range. So I haven’t used it since then because no situation has been presented where it would come in handy WITHOUT him getting pissed about it.
I was the DM (as usual), and two players started arguing over a loot split. I tried to suggest something fair, but neither were happy. They decided to duel to the death for the particular item. They had been playing these characters for months and both were serious. During the battle, one player took a real knife and jammed it into the table (it was after this that a new rule "no real weapons at the table" had to be put into place). In the end, the player that won took the other player's sheet, crinkled it up, and threw it in the losing player's face yelling, "YOU'RE DEAD! YOU'RE DEAD!" And that's my best D&D story.
They were roommates in the same apartment at the time, so I guarantee this wasn't even the maddest that they ever got at each other. This was sometime between 1989-1991 and we were still playing AD&D. I don't remember the exact item, but if I had to guess I would say something like a +2 long sword for a 5th/6th level character (I'm usually very generous with treasure). The knife stabber was the victor. There are a couple of funnier stories about these guys, but not related to D&D. Unfortunately, one died a few years back (which is always a shock for someone your own age). When you interact with people remember that it might be the last time you see them (because it might be true). Needless to say, the duel put an end to the campaign.
I heard that one about the half-dragon. Funny thing is, I've concepted a character like that. My solution, so it can participate in a game no matter if the DM allows the Half-Dragon template? Use the Dragonborn mechanics. Just reskin/reflavor how the character looks, and you're good to go. Same for a 'were'bear character I've got in mind. Simply use the Goliath race from Volo's guide (Or the Elemental Evil book), and reskin the big lugs into lookin' like humanoid bears instead of giantkin. Problem solved.
The star: everything has to be about them. If it isn't, he bitches about "just sitting there." He doesn't insert himself into everything, but if it isn't about him, he'll start drama. The drama queen: anytime something doesn't go his way, he claims that the dm or other players are picking on him and singling him out, even if things didn't go his way due to bad rolls or his own lacking of understanding of the rules. The background: he doesn't roleplay at all. Any time rp is happening, he's nowhere to be seen. Anyone who tries to bring him into the rp is met with typically a single syllable response. Even in combat, he barely does anything other than roll dice and move his token. The shitty rules lawyer: he tries to argue about everything while lacking basic understanding of the rules, just leading to wasted time as we try to explain things to him. The repeater: he builds one character and if that character dies his long lost twin brother with the same name shows up to replace him.
Jeremy Nadaskay I have one guy who fulfills three of those tropes. Poor rules lawyer, monosyllabic RP, and always plays the barbarian with a great axe. (or Wookie, etc)
Holy fuckin shit, this describes my last group almost perfectly, except one guy was the star AND repeater, and I was sort of the (not shitty) rules lawyer.
have a repeater in our group. in one campaign he had the 'Dolf family', ran through 17 of them, just going down the alphabet with names. campaign ended with one of our characters becoming a public official and bringing a death warrant on the entire family. ...next campaign had the Dalf family.
As a background, my only defense for myself and others like me is that I lack the proper amount of emotions. It doesn't mean that I (or others) don't care, I just genuinely have nothing of worth to input in the conversations or roleplay..
If you have genuinely nothing of worth to input in the conversations or roleplay you wouldn't be playing D&D in the first place. The fact that you play but still say things like that means that you like being begged to roleplay just to turn down people, wallow in your own self pity and get some few scarce seconds of attention.
Personal best end of campaign: 8th level pirate theme. Player made enough money to buy the old manor house on the hill. They stopped pirating and one ran for mayor, and won.
I find some of the worst players are those who try and try to rationalize terrible RP and decision making. I was running a Steampunk-ish d&d and this player wanted to be a steam automataun and kept complaining until I finally caved in. he then proceeded to slaughter the town the adventure began in because he was "on the fritz". Needless to say, he wasn't invited to another session of D&D.
My players tend to break the game in funny ways, like magically convincing a burning troll that a fire pit is a pool of water with a second level illusion spell at third level.
I had 2 players that drove me nuts. Session 0, they hadn't met each other before (the players) One rolled up a Mage, the other rolled up an illusionist. Mage consistently rolled 1 to 2 earlier initiative than the illusionist. (this becomes important...) First encounter... some orcs. Mage uses unseen servant to drop pebbles on the orcs. Illusionist casts phantasmal force of a rockslide coming at the orcs. No orcs made save... encounter over, gather the loot. I started having them write what they were going to do each round, without talking to each other to ensure they were not conspiring about spells. They always ended up with the mage doing something, then the illusionist's illusion coming up looking like it was about to do something related. Several sessions later... Fireball Illusion of ancient red dragon (improved phantasmal force) popping up almost immediately, rearing back to breathe fire.... Using the written notes. No conspiring. Each had come up with their own plan without consulting the other. After that I let them make a booklet of spell combos they could call out to each other by the number. Fireball + dragon was #47
I've started using the "Skyrim defense" against powergamers/min-maxers: after two or more times of them showboating in front of a crowd of any sort, people talk. In medieval style settings, gossip is a primary form of recreation/entertainment and eventually word gets back to an archwizard or ebon knight type that decides to seek out the powergamer and challenge them to a duel. Now at this point, as a GM, I consider my options. I can use a powerful NPC to show that "I'm the GM, my dick is always bigger", but to me that feels too heavy-handed since the game is about the players having fun, so I avoid that and save it as an absolute last resort if I can see that this player is a problem and is robbing the group of a chance to have fun. I may lose one player, but if it'll save the game it's worth it. Another option is to have the reputation of the ebon knight/etc precede them so the party hears about the grudge before they encounter the NPC. This option I will usually give the NPC a small following of sycophants and make him a sort of Negan/The Governor type from TWD so that the party really needs to come together and plan for the big showdown, the powergamer is going to have his hands full with the Ebon Knight, and the rest of the party will have a bunch of henchmen to deal with. This option gets everybody engaged and works great in heavy combat campaigns, and during the showdown I make sure the powergamer doesn't emerge unscathed... Perhaps they lose one of their magical items, or maybe even their sword arm, whatever it is their effectiveness is severely limited for a few sessions and they find themselves needing to rely on the rest of the party instead of always leaping ahead shouting "I'LL HANDLE THIS!"... This approach usually humbles the powergamer without costing you a player and sometimes it even teaches them the value of working WITH their party. And the final option is the big climactic showdown... The powergamer is challenged in the town square by the Ebon Knight or the arch mage, and the powergamer dispatches the enemy with absolutely no effort, because it turns out, when the powergamer removes the Knight's helmet, or a woman comes screaming to the town square and collapses, sobbing, onto the chest of the slain foe that the great Ebon Knight was little more than a child, not yet with the first hairs of manhood on his chin, or the arch mage was the mentally infirmed brother of a milkmaid that left him alone for just a moment and when she returned, he was gone. In both cases, the people the Powergamer killed were just "fans" of the true powerful beings with the reputation that just wanted to be like their hero... And now the whole town sees the powergamer as a cold hearted butcher. He isn't arrested, because the whole town saw that the powergamer was acting in self defense, but they all still deeply loathe him as he should have found a way to disable the foe rather than murder it right in the town square. I use this option in more roleplay heavy campaigns because to get out of it, the powergamer is going to need to use their words instead of blades and spells.
That's actually pretty cool, I don't have any min/max chars in the game I dm, and usually I'm the min/max player in the game, but I'm totally using that.
What broke our game was mostly me, as a player, but not entirely my fault. I blame my GM a lot. Great guy otherwise. Game 1) I am speaking to a necromancer. A lich as DM described him. So I thought we can´t even fight that. (level 1-2) I got my tongue twisted a bit. Instead of starting combat, he just one-shots me, without any chance whatsoever. (100+ dmg vs 6hp) Game 2) Leven 1 Assassin, I walk into a tower. Two skeletons sit at a table with a book. I try to read the book. They attack me and I have to actively defend myself, but can only do so against one of them. The second chops my hand right off, so i am more or less usseless/comic relief for the rest of the session/game. (FATE) Game 3) Basicly the same thing as 2) we crashed our ship on a beach, 4 guards come running. There were only 2 of us, wizard and priest. Out of spell slots. No chance. What I am trying to say is, dismemberment and/or instant death out of nowhere at level (0-4) can break maybe not the game, but the players.
Johny Shadow There's your problem, he's playing favorites with his girlfriend. Also what level were you compared to the enemies? He may have been screwing you over with impossible moments and combat.
Well, in there lies the problem. (And a tiny bit of meta-gaming.) We have played "Dragon´s Lair", basically a regional version of DnD, so player and monster levels are a bit different. (Example, the "beatable" "lich", level 18 in DnD.) We were a group of 1-2 level players and the situations, more than being unwinnable, were unforgiving. Now I wouldn´t really mind that if we were playing, say, Tomb of Horrors. But that is past, we had our fun, (and a load of salt) and now I am planning my revenge as his GM. "insert evil laugh"
I wish you luck in your endeavors to show him his mistakes firsthand. Maybe then you can have a normal game without super early deaths. Although I think the lich might have been a more or less a talk than a fight, but I don't know the circumstances so that may be just me.
Some of my games have been broken and almost devolved into Thunderdome Madness due to spontaneous application of physics. While sometimes, I like to imagine how certain things in-game would work in the real world, there have been instances wherein players try to cite real physics as a way to justify bad decisions or maximize decent decisions. Of course, the issue there is that math and science don't blend with high fantasy. Subsequently, scenarios have become an argument between fantasy rulings and real physics, occasionally ending with the collapse of the in-game multiverse (real example).
I almost never like playing with C/E players because of this one guy. My party was all level 5 in a dungeon that was taken over by some cult, and we were investigating an evil presence deep in the temple dungeon. Come to defeat the cult a little too late and they tell us a chained succubus that they now released from its magical binds will destroy the lands...before he can finish our C/E Fighter starts beating the crap outta him to ask where exactly. He gives the info and immediately starts stripping. No clothes whatsoever. The rest of the party and the GM are confused and ask "Why?" and he replies "I'm gonna bang that demon!" The next couple minutes are us arguing with him it's a bad idea, the GM chiming in to tell him the same, but he just went completely nude through the rest of the dungeon (ran into some more cultists but he took them out well enough with our help) until he went to her prison chamber, kicked open the door, and dashed right up to her and started to hump this demon. We were all grossed out and the GM was having none of it at this point, killing him instantly once she was able to be free. The C/E player complained that he should've been forced to make a check or something but in any case he was fine dying and just decided not to play anymore, something we were all thankful for at that point.
If my understanding of the conversation goes, C/E is another way of Saying CE, or Chaotic Evil in terms of alignment. Have to admit though, the story does fit the "lol random" type of CE that a lot of people take it.
The guy was crazy creative and you bunch should have go in and see how far it would have gone, instead you where a bunch of dicks, especially the DM. The aftermath of this intercourse would have been hilarious to see, but no, you've been party poopers...
I've had one instance of a character having an in-story class change that wasn't crazy and campaign shattering. I was the player, and this only happened because myself and the DM had talked about this after a couple sessions in a row, and both agreed that the character and RP of it were fun, but the class choice was restrictive and unfitting for that campaign. (I was an Oread Monk leaning heavily towards the classic monk style of LG-LN, and it had become a largely costal/naval, piratey style campaign.) We also brought up the idea to the players, and as a group, decided it could be fun to create an small side-arc where my guy went missing, and they went to rescue him, meanwhile, he was on a spirit journey while in captivity. All this culminating in them breaking in, and meeting up with the newly awakened barbarian, in light service to the Iron God of Battle. Seeing as we had a few sessions without a player, it was a perfect side quest, and we'd all talked about the idea beforehand. And we worked it into the game in such a way that everyone had fun, and got something out of it. Otherwise, it just gets messy.
11:00 You know this Thunderdome thing actually was one of the greatest things that happened in one campaign we had. I was playing a Halfling Ranger/Druid, and my friend was playing a Half Orc Barbarian... The DM was taking a really long time to get into any kind of action, and a lot of our back-and-forth roleplay was the main thrust of the story it was taking some time for our characters to develop trust. Well my friend's character was always making jokes about my characters size and underestimating his abilities, and my character just halled off and whacked him in the foot with the back of his spear right in the middle of a negotiation with some NPC merchant for information. This lead to a "Let's take it outside" moment between our characters, where they went outside and actually threw down and fought. The DM just kind of didn't know what to do at first. My friend and I are thick as thieves in real life, so we just played it. My Halfling almost died in the first round or two, and took off running, out to a dock, and the fight escalated. My friend's orc killed a couple of deckhands on a smuggler ship trying to get to me. And we both had to take invisibility potions and sneak out of the area separately. It actually lead to our characters bonding and being like the dynamic duo from mutual respect gained. It was really an awesome game.
I'm guilty as a GM for giving my players too much freedom and really spoiling them with choice but at the same time my players tend to power game and metagame a lot. Not all of them, but a few. It's a pain in the arse to get people on track sometimes.
The guy who just cares about the power gaming. No RP, will PVP people who get in his way of said power, even when it comes to party loot and is the lone wolf most of the time.
Yeah, I have a player like that in my group. He has literally tried to kill me for being in stealth and possibly trying to out damage him, as if I could. While this is not D&D, it is still problematic as he knows what is broken and uses it constantly just because he can Playing with him is very frustrating.
In defense of power gamers, they're still gamers and they enjoy playing, they just get their enjoyment from being in control of their character's stats and mechanics, rather than background, narrative or RPing. I'm not saying it validates anyone's toxicity, just that it's a valid style of playing any game. RPing players can be toxic too, like the Rogue who derails the entire narrative by trying to steal literally everything from literally everyone. For me the problem is usually the player's attitude, not the fact they're one type of gamer or another. So if your power gamer is an asshole they either feel undervalued or outright attacked (they worked hard trying to find the perfect combination of stats, features and equipment, and you're just there trying to undermine their work because you want to "show that bloody power gamer what you really think of their power gaming"), or they really are just an asshole. I usually try to give them what they want - set up encounters in such a way that they can utilise their strengths to their maximum potential. I'd do that for an RPing player, why not a power gamer? Is the power gamer a Shadow Monk? Throw in a few weak mooks so they can shadowstep behind and one-punch the shit out of them. A Darkness/Devil's Sight abusing Hexblade? Cool, describe how panicked their enemies are, shivering in the darkness before they get chopped to pieces. Just make sure you adjust your CR accordingly, so that it's always a bit of a challenge for the entire party. Eventually when the power gamer feels like the top dog they'll fall into RPing naturally out of sheer gratitude. Or boredom. If that doesn't work, talk to them about their attitude. A.K.A. the adult conversation. If that fails, kill off their character when they aren't looking and lose their email address. Seriously, it's better to lose one friend than see your entire group disband over one asshole.
I actually do enjoy min-maxing in moderation. I like playing a character with a few serious strengths, and a one or two major weaknesses just because I feel like it gives that character more depth. That being said, I absolutely understand how annoying it can be to have a character who refuses to help out the party, and just tries to do his own thing.
I got one for you. One of my players fell in love with another player (not in game). How is this game breaking you might ask? Well the first player was my wife, the second was not me.
Until recently we had a guy who would go full bore murderhobo almost at random because he played chaotic neutral and was too immature to stop murdering people for ten minutes because 'they might have gold'. That was cured by a new DM we got in for a few games..... the murderhobo decided to attack a peasant farmer. Turned out the peasant farmer was a level 1 peasant/20 MONK looking for tranquility with his farmland, and turned his character into fertilizer pretty much instantly. Best part, because we had no idea where he'd gone, we never found the body respectfully buried under the peach tree in the guy's yard so we never had to even pretend to raise our 'valued party member'. Although we did buy a bushel of peaches on our way back from the adventure!
never heard of thunder dome madness before. i've seen it before, but definitely never heard it called that before. i thought at the beginning you meant they were going crazy and cannibalizing each other....and then at the end i thought that's exactly what you meant.
Dealing with a guy in a couple of public (in store) games. Some just want him out. But a couple of us are trying to TEACH HIM TO PLAY (no mean feat). Def into metagaming and telling others how to play their characters. When we started a new game, the dm told him he was not welcome. He asked why and we told him. He's getting better, but I think some of his issues are just too ingrained. A shame, but some folk can't get behind the whole "not a game you win". thing.
I'm usually the kind of player that just wants to make things happen, good or bad. If there is a button I will push it, if there is a chest with a master lock I will drop it from the tallest tower and watch it smash on the ground to get the goodies inside, if there is some holy flame in a temple I will use it to light my cigarette. But I can get away with it by incorporating it into my character's personality. Alterak, a sleazy half elf assassin with a Charisma of 19, a cape made out of knives, and accidental killer of at least three monarchs.
Playing Rifts from Palladium books and I let my players create characters with rules from any of my books... and I had all of them. It was the most absurdly OP game I've ever ran.
For The Wynne man, I love RIFTS. Any system with a ton of books has potential for ridiculous fun. And the sourcebooks for RIFTS are really fun to just read
here's a nasty game breaker: The multiple personality gamer. starts off with a half elf bard, gets to level 3, drops it for a human bardarian (level 3, of course). gets to level 6 and drops the barbarian for a wizard artificer. Level 6 because the party is at level 6 now. drops that at level 9 for a gnome rogue shadow walker. gets bored again and brings back the bard who is now magically level 9 because that's where the party is. this gamer keeps changing characters to try and be the center of the game. if there are a lot of encounters where a cleric would be the spotlight character, they want to change out for a cleric. if there are a lot of encounters where a ranger would be at an advantage, they want a ranger. i guess this is an extension of that one problem gamer who thinks they have to "win" at D&D or whatever game it is that the group is playing.
I have no problem people with swapping out pcs. I always allow the new pc be at or near level of party. But I treat their pcs as "guest stars" of the week. No special items/plots hooks for them. And I have seen "guest stars" are just people who get bored, "win" D&d, or other reasons.
yeah have a player like that in local community that no one really likes to play with because he does exactly that and is generally an asshole on top of that. I and most DMs i know don;t allow a new character to enter at same level when someone wants to switch character or dies, partly to discourage changing for complete BS and partly to make death a more serious problem. In my case it's always 1 level lower than current party with sped up leveling to catch up because as much as i want to be strict on this running 3.5 with party of different levels is harder on me than it's worth.
So I agree to a degree, but we had a campaign where my character had actually achieved his goals at the point about halfway through, and with where 'chapter 2' was going my character had legitimately no reason to be there, so I swapped him out. You do get people who will just swap willy-nilly though
I Don't mind a character change here and there but I had a player who was on his third and wanted to change again. Another player(NE) wanted his stuff so I said ok, go for it. I usually have a no pvp rule because most players egos can't take it and it becomes way too personal. Since it was technically an NPC now the evil player followed him, assassinated him, and took all his stuff. The original player was pissed so I explained that I had allowed it to discourage players in my game from changing characters all the time. That tends to disrupt the game flow, especially if that character is invested in the story.
About "players just want to have fun". A campaign is a more long lasting and mature experience. If players want to be crazy for a session, let them. If they totally break character and go against the world / character / etc, play a crazy ass one shot without boundaries. You want to play an "allahu akbar"-goblin who has crystals charged with fireballs built into him? Fucking go for it, but it is a one shot.
This is for campaigns, not one shots - but even one shots shouldn't be like that, that just shows that you are immature and your way of having fun is being stupid.
I tend to treat one shots that way. I made a character that was literally a superhumanly strong fat Steven Segal. I never would have played this character in anything else but a one shot. it was open legend and he had plus 2d8 to all unarmed attacks.
I've already planned for this eventual crisis in my upcoming campaign. I'll let them do whatever the hell they want, make up some sick loot to throw at them, then at the end I will have them all suddenly wake up to the real world and that they had all had the same bizarre dream and turn it into a small side quest to see what had caused the communal dream. It may only work once, but it's a way of letting them have a break from reality and still tying it into the campaign so it can continue unhindered :)
Lincoln Frost I have the feeling you're one of those helicopter gms and rules lawyer types. Just remember, somewhere out there peoe are running full blown campaigns this way and LOVING IT! Without any care about what you think about their fun :)
I like the idea that All stories have an end goal. I believe you set small goals to have an end goal. It is how we read epic book trilogies. It works as long as the small goals are very character oriented and allow the characters to explore as normal through their baby goals. However, all goals can be explored at any time of the game. When I DM I usually list three secret goals that bring them to a conclusion epic secret goal. Sometimes the party figures out the epic goal early and dies because they are not ready to take on the legendary dragon at level 5, and don't want to accomplish two of the three goals. They skip to the third book. I did my job I gave them a story, they wanted to skip to the end that is on them. I give them liberty to explore the world through bread crumbs and create the world around their own character builds. I never tell them how to play the campaign -- it's their world. It's their consequences. It's their book. I give allusive guidelines and referee -- they write the content of their character. The more creative -- the better the book. I've been playing DND since 2002. I've found that players like baby goals that build to parent goals but don't want to be micro-managed getting there. They each want to write their own piece of the book. Long winded, sorry.
what usually broke games i played in was one or more members of the party being treated as "RED SHIRTS"...i mean an NPC being a red shirt is fine.. but a player character should never be a red shirt... i mean sure player characters can die.. its part of the game.. but the idea is player characters are basicly heroes in the game.. and a gm could have a whole story for each character to accomplish... but because they got red shirted by the rest of the group " for various reasons" the whole campaign goes askew... one example was a campaign where each character had a skill needed for the final story.. but a chance encounter with a mob only my character could damage lead to my guy being told by the party to hold off the enemy while they set to close the door again.. and instead of giving my guy time to get out of the way.. they just closed the door.. barred it and listened to my character die as i was overwhelmed.. turns out next corner they got overwhelmed by something else.. because again my guy was the only one who could have dmged the enemy... it killed the campaign for sure.. i also never gamed with that grp again.. because it wasnt the first time it happened.. and lets face it.. its not fun if you keep dying because the rest of the group forces their ranged support into melee...
Lol, in a group i used to play with whenever we were in a dungeon everyone refused to open doors, investigate anything or enter rooms first instead telling me to do it cause they were afraid of traps, i was literally the only one interacting with the game while they just followed me around tried to get kills and loot everything before i was done (got them injured a few times cause they ignored enemies). Except when i turned down gold or something for RP reasons (I played a cleric and in general only accepted small donations for my temple if we brought back bad news or failed in some way) then they'd try to talk to get the gold.
Thank you for pointing out that the GM is a player too! A lot of players don't seem to realize that everyone is there to have fun. That said, a lot of common problems in games are mostly or partially the GMs fault.
Only the Gandalf-esque Wizard Class in my game can try to Counter Spell magic at Level 13. But in regards to Disenchanting a more permanent spell effect then you'd need one of my Level 19 Gildarts-style Sorcerers instead... ruclips.net/video/j81azhK5mGI/видео.html
The end of this video, where you're talking about extreme archetypes, reminded me of something my pastor told my fiancé and I during our premarital counseling: often our greatest weaknesses are our greatest strengths taken to the extreme. As someone who has been nearly every one of the archetypes at one time or another (and taken them to the extreme), I think there's a lot of truth in that.
for the character that wanted to be the general, and lead armies, but the DM tried to put him on the throne, that could work really well. you end up a terrible king who just wants to wage war, like robert baratheon, sounds like a fun arc to play. even if the end isnt perfect.
I had to drop a game because the players would argue like that and I dealt with it until they explained that they didnt see it as arguing, but thats just how they 'discuss'... nooooope
What I feel is breaking my game at my table is that I have two characters with Good ideals while the other 4 are just neutral, and thus they keep dragging other characters unwillingly into things.
Our last game of Castles and Crusades was broken by accident. We were playing a group of fantasy adventurers exploring a section of a space ship, and this monster ran into a room marked radiation. In game we had ran across a room like that before so we knew not to go in or we would be sick, but it's a monster we have to kill it. So we ended up throwing some grenades we found on the ship into the room, and low and behold that was the ship's nuclear reactor. The entire ship blew up with us barley managing to escape. We barley managed to get a safe distance away. Our DM was so annoyed, but in game we did't know. We even offered to just pretend that didn't happen, but he insisted that we just move on.
the easiest way to put my off my own character is by the DM saying "your character does this" or "thinks this" or even "your alignment will be changed to neutral evil if you kill this guy" (the guy was a surrendered and badly maimed cultist who we just ended a battle with. If anything it would have been a mercy killing, especially since my character never considered death as anything more than traversing to a different world).
What breaks my game is that my players are too competent. They always find a way out and kill the big bad. That was until I found out that having a large and I mean large group of enemies were too much for them. I was also able to beat them with a simple puzzle. A puzzles where the answer was written on a stone slab in the room but no one wanted to read it.
I do wonder why are you trying to beat your players? If that is the style you and your players enjoy each to their own. At our table we prefer to focus on the shared narrative that we are creating. I find moral dilemmas to be one of the most effective foils to players in my games. Forcing their characters moments of introspection that leads to character growth. Nerdarchist Dave
Played in a game where "players just wanted to have fun". The DM and me were the only ones taking the game at all seriously while the other players did things with no regard to the consequences or what impact it might have on other players. Case and point, the bard (supposed to be chaotic good) casting shatter inside a customs office because they were making him fill out paperwork to get back his cart. I dropped out of that after the sessions where the DM got sick enough of their shit to put us in an encounter we had no chance in, in an attempt to wipe the party. Now though I feel I'm super lucky. I started DMing and my first long-term group is a phenomenal group of players. The few times we've had disagreements they were quickly cleared up within that session and by the next week it was if nothing had happened. Even crazier, this was a group of mostly strangers put together from an online community; it's damn near a miracle it's worked out so well.
Most of the time, I run into the 'players just want to have fun' problem. People aren't really interested, they just want to jump in and do stuff. The lack of a video game on a tv screen and such has the players glued to their smart phones rather than being invested and engaged. Sadly, this even happens when I'm merely going over character creation.
I tend to like a blend of sandbox and story. I give the players plot hooks, and they can choose whether or not to follow them. Plots advance depending on what they do. For instance, a dragon one of the players had a bounty for (because it had attacked a town) had gotten trapped in Barovia before the players had gone there. When they did visit Barovia they met the dragon but were too afraid to fight it, so after they defeated Strahd it left Barovia and went back to its previous plot. When the players left Barovia and discovered what was going on they could have ignored it further but they decided to go and help the NPCs that are trying to figure out what's going on. Had they killed the dragon in Barovia they would have had six months of downtime at their castle where they could pursue whatever they wanted in relative peace.
Critical Role used the Deck of Many Things, the GM (Matt Mercer) even gave the thing to the dumbest member of the party, "Grog Strongjaw" (Travis Willingham), a Goliath Barbarian with an INT score of SIX. Not only did it not destroy the game, it made for some awesome moments....like when Grog pulled the "Knight" card during a fight with a Black Dragon. Knight (level 4): "My life for Strongjaw!" Grog: "Kill the Dragon." Knight: "....Dragon?!"
helicopter DM - have only seen it once or twice. i just started my first DM attempt - trying to avoid this type of thing(railroading, etc). i guess i kinda did the thing where you have "favorites" in the opening, but i set it up as the following - you have 3 bodyguards, 2 traveling clerics, and 3 merchants in a caravan all led by the same person. when they get to the town,they get attacked, but the town guard show up before they can be killed. a member of an organization see's potential in them(they took a blow to the back of the head that should have had them seeing starts for hours, and got up within a few minutes). so he pays to get them trained in combat, and equipped. at this point, they more or less have the same gear(in terms of tier, not exact same items. the rogues arent wearing chainmail). i HAVE been on the other end of that as a player, where i just sit and spin. at the end of the campaign, right after the final fight(before healing could start) me and the other caster in the group(this was HIGHLY premeditated) cast meteor storm(9th level spell) or something like that on the group from the sky, so they each took 80D6 of damage (40d6 bludgeoning, 40d6 fire). that dropped most of the group(including the main one i had an issue with) but the fighter was alive, but without a ranged weapon or way to outrun us, he wasn't a problem. you can bet the group got pissed, but they had constantly been overruling me on pretty much everything, and their characters had also been excessively rude to the one other caster in the group(my character was cool with him, casters gotta stick together!). combine that with they went out of their way to piss off my deity, and actually destroyed their physical manifestation, yea i don't regret the decision. the DM actually had other gods(in a world where most gods were dormant, i question consistency) intervene, so i call helicopter DM. im REALLY hoping i dont have this issue, but hopefully the links in the chain i have set up can keep them in line. they seemed to take the plot hook pretty well(they know the leader of the group that attacked them, which are all members of the thieves guild). i have had members of the group that i was in do this, and the one time i stopped showing up to a campaign was a direct result of this. i will say i was, at one point this guy to an extent(my character was neutral evil with a sharp tongue, but a really short temper), but i pretty quickly reached out to the DM and asked if i could change an aspect of my characters flaws(temper) by narrowing it to be specifically being triggered by anti-drow comments, which he was fine with(he isn't a fan of PVP anyway), which the group was pretty careful to avoid(i told them specifically what could set my character off from an out-of-game standpoint, and they avoided it ingame. ok, yea its metagaming on some level, but it would have been made clear when i conjured(my shadow manifested as equipment etc) an axe and cut a guys table in half over a comment about my character(keep in mind, drow hold females as strictly better than males) being caged up and putting me with a male drow keeper. this guy turned out to be a centaur who attacked, and i pummeled(with help from the groups barbarian) him within an inch of his life. thunderdome - thankfully haven't seen much of this one - typically any questions on the rules are pretty easily resolved, but partially because both sides acknowledge that they may not remember something fully, and check the book. occasionally the DM steps in and overrules it. the only time this came into play a bit was a character i had with another one(coincidentally the one that was the "leader" of the group that i dropped a meteor on) but im not entirely sure it qualifies. my character turned on the player(who had been replaced with doppleganger, i knew this in game, but the group didnt) when she realized he had just completed "R" the doppleganger was a serial killer who killed in alphabetical order. well, my characters name started with "S", and i was isolated. so i started attacking him. my character tried to explain it in game, but the group attacked me, even with it making some sense in game. i feel like at some level i was targetted out of game, because i tend to "homebrew" characters, which some people were not a massive fan of. in my case, i specifically avoid trying to make anything broken, and often would preemptively weaken anything i thought could be overbearing. the line between strong and overpowered is narrow, especially in 4e homebrewing. so at some level, i feel like that character getting killed off, especially as early on in the story as it was, was directed more at me than the character. i still homebrew characters, and no others have had issues with the group ganging up on them in a 5 or 6v1, it was just that one instance, but it still felt like it was directed at me more than my character. i will admit, i am often a maxer, i try to build my characters to be as good as possible at what they are supposed to do, but i also try not to make anything overbearing, unless it is something minor. for example, if i make a character who is really, really good at something like history, im less hesitant to let it keep that. but if i make a character like my Dark Vanguard, who can dish solid damage, has limited lifestealing capabilities, and can take a decent hit, i also made sure nothing was overbearing. my damage was good, but not as good as our barbarians(half my physical and necrotic damage went into a pool that i could drain to heal myself or add force damage to my damage). my lifestealing could keep me rolling for a little while, but it couldn't beat out a cleric at your back. it gave me a nice fallback, but that fallback only worked if you had a team with you. if you take damage that would reduce you below 1 HP, prevent it, set your life total equal to the pools level, then drain the pool. you drop into an invulnerable(within reason) state, where you cannot be targeted or damaged. this state ends on your turn. your pool is completely disabled until your next long rest, and you can only make up to two actions per round(one move action, where your movement speed is halved, and one other action). you also cannot sustain spells, so your defense gets weakened as well. so you cheat death for that turn, but after that, you have to end the fight within a round or two or you will still die(your pools maximum is 6 times your level in vanguard, so at best you are around half health). my maximum health was also a d8 as opposed to most tanks d10 or 12, so i am also weaker if they were able to lay down high damage quickly. overall, the character i feel was successful, the ability kit did what it was supposed to, to its full extent, without ever feeling overbearing. for example, my healing pool only once bailed me out of a bad situation, and that was me taking a single massive hit(50-ish psychic damage at level 6, the DM had us all assume we rolled our max hit dice, so i had around 70 max hp with constitution modifiers. ). this did its job, in that it got me past that one hit, and i was able to get out of the area to the rest of the group. the DM allowed me to maintain concentration on a set of shadow barriers that i was deploying to protect the group from a wave of void creatures(when our metal roc took off with the group on it and the dwarf grabbing me as a passed out, there were enough of them to try to follow us world war Z style, without a wall or anything to climb up), though to be fair, he did also have my character fall into a week long comatose state, exhaustion level 5, and one hit point. he could have easily killed the group there too though. that said, having at least one of every three-ish players being a maxer is good, because it means that, if all else fails, you still have an ace in the hole. for the campaign i just finished up in, that ace was our barbarian, and after my vanguard died, my healer(as a 10th level character, i healed our barbarian for at least 200 damage, and probably at least another 300 across the rest of the group, where nobody's life total was higher than 150. by the end of the fight i was running out of tricks and half the group was dying, but we didn't lose anyone.) having a healer who can do that much work in a sustained fight is always good, but i also am under no illusion that i could have pulled the group through if we didn't have the barbarian dishing out heavy hits constantly, and the ranger keeping any spirits he summoned down(they had 1 hp, and low defenses, but could still hit reasonably hard)
All of my tabletop friends are fencers (that's actually where we all met) and we treat the DM as we would a fencing judge. What he says goes and though they're limits to what he can do the DM has final say over things. You can bring it up to him and he may change it or look out for it next time but ultimately we try to keep the game going.
players just want to have fun is literally the biggest issue i have as a dm because there are a few players who start to act ridicules and when they start doing that everyone seems to follow suite and slowly become more and more silly until everyone is completely out of character and ignoring all consequences then getting mad when i don't want them to do that
For the issue of wandering monster syndrome I like what storm kings thunder does where the game has you pick one of a handful of giants to go after and complete related quests until you defeat the big bad. After that there's still room to go after the other giant lords to stop their machinations cause some of the Giants want to basically crush humanity and enslave them but others are doing less malignant things but still bad enough to maybe want to stop
On burn out: I started playing D&D at 14. (as the DM) This was 1982. I ran games until 2012. I totally burned out. I haven't even picked up a die since. I remember one game where the party was evilly aligned and absolutely would not cooperate. It ended up being 6 separate solo adventures. (Though no one even so much as raised their voices, much less attempted physical violence)
I almost cried watching this video, realizing just how bad and abusive my very first DND GM was. I thought I was having fun and doing well but all of the things you mentioned... yes, all of them, started to creep into the game and every Saturday was like work, the sort you don't look forward to. I made it to the end of the campaign but I don't think I will ever be able to be friends with those people again, let alone game with them. 1) Helicopter GM: Would change the rules of the encounter to make it so our character's abilities would not work 2) Players Just Wanna Have Fun: GM's best friend was given all the artifacts and the entire story arc was about them. 3) Wandering Monster Syndrome: we had the opposite of this rather, the entire thing was on rails and there was zero room for deviation 4) Players Entering Thunder Dome Madness: I played a goblin opposite the GM's best friend who was a dwarf and used every single opportunity available to trash my character because "it's what my character would do, he hates goblins", it got to be a bit much 5) Game Extremist: we argued over rules a lot but we also got overruled constantly, see #1, where our opinions or wants for the game didn't really matter to the GM
For what the "breaks a campaign" question goes: I will mention: 6) Yahtzee-Chess I have seen "Yahtzee-Chess" a huge amount of times, it is strange in that it BREAKS the campaign, but often it do not DESTROY the campaign, but instead it leave behind a "Zombie Campaign". OK, definition of some terms I use: --- "Zombie Campaign": A campaign that continue despite everything in it is DEAD! Role play is dead, the story line is dead, the world is dead... ... and ... the brain activity among the players are dead! ... I think that is the reason to why the zombie move on: It can not figure out it is dead. (No brain => No pain!) Warning: Do not spend too much time along a Zombie Campaign as it will eventually eat your brain!!! Yes, zombie disease is infectious and can spread to other campaigns! --- "Yahtzee-Chess": A game that have similarities with both: Chess (Moving pieces at a board. Two sides: The one have to defeat the other.) And: Yahtzee (Rolling dice, and then combine the dice rolls to get a higher score as the highest score wins.) Yahtzee-Chess often look like this: Players are arranged around the table. At the table is the Yahtzee-Chess-board, usually squares or hexagons. Sometimes with drawings on it to show how the Yahtzee-Chess-pieces can move. The Yahtzee-Chess-pieces are usually moved in turns. Each Yahtzee-Chess-player take their turn in some defined turn order. (The Chess part of the game.) A Yahtzee-Chess-piece is often made of metal, sometimes plastic, some of them are painted. Often coins or dice are used in lack of more dedicated pieces. After a Yahtzee-Chess-piece is moved; dice are rolled, and if the combined score is high enough, then the defeated piece is removed from the board. (The Yahtzee part of the game.) There are two teams, usually called "PCs" and "NPCs". Yahtzee-Chess is not a game betting companies will deal with as the outcome is always: "PCs" wins and "NPCs" looses. --- To detect a Yahtzee-Chess playing Zombie Campaign is so simple that you do not even need to see it (eyes)! Listening (ears) can be enough: The characteristic 'reanimate zombie chant' is enough: "WAKE UP! IT'S YOUR TURN!!!".
With helicopter GMing, I had a character, low level mage from the shadow plane, who just wanted to go home. The GM Removed every single spell from the system that had to do with planar travel, I had no choice but to make a new character halfway through the game when I realized that not only could I not find the spell, but I couldn't even learn it naturally via leveling up.
current game was about 12 people instill the last split (open game at a game store). it would split when it got too big and then more people would join. the last split happened when one character died to a hoard of ghouls and as we were running away out druid [in wolf form] grabbed his leg and started running with it. this prompted our CE bard to run towards the body (still not sure what he was going to do). our LG Paladin (who served the now dead guy) got all up in arms saying he Is guy would not allow it and would fight anyone trying anything. this eventually led to the orcs (who controlled the ghouls) to start shooting at the pally that is now guarding the dead pile of mess that was his sovern. but the argument at that point took up too much game time when the gm could have made the ruling of.. Bard doesn't think to do that because of the hoards attacking and pally has no thought to save his sovern due to the puddle being un-savable. now the pally is dead and we had 3-4 people drop the next week. [retrospectively we have had a great group of 6-7 people since so this ended up really great for us. but 3-4 people left not having enjoyed themselves]
The main reason I can not find a group locally to play with is everyone seems to be finding ways to min/max and then tell the DM how their character is an exception to what ever is happening. A BIG PART of them seem to want to play PF for this reason, they can mix/max all kinds of splat that make them question every detail in a game and then say how they break it. "You are tied up with iron bindings, unconscious and taking damage with squirming motion." player-My character grinds his teeth in his sleep and would likely bite through his mouth bindings and then cast a spell to his god.
The first campaign I was ever in was a thunder dome type of situation that not only ended the game but the friendships. Some of the players were upset about the rogue pickpocketing. But instead of having an out of game conversation with that player they teamed up against the character in game and then out of game one of the players (who was drunk at the time) began to yell at that player. Needless to say the group imploded imediately.
I once had a player who ruled the party with an iron mouth. If you weren't playing your character "properly" or didn't agree with his plan of action he would yell and argue for usually an hour. He would even yell at me(the DM) if he couldn't do something that was impossible even though I gave him the chance to roll to do it.I eventually had to ask him to leave and make a new homebrew setting.
My first Star Wars: Edge of the Empire game quickly broke down into "players just wanna have fun" with us bouncing around in silly antics, while I wind up asking myself "why are these people staying together?"
When I got to thunder dome madness, I couldn't help but realize that in our group we have the RP guy, the power player, and I'm the stat min-maxer. We also have the other guy who is just like wtf is wrong with you people. The gm roles with it, but when the power player acid arrows the beholder we are hiding from at level 5 I'm the one that gets petrified...(for those who ask we won because of experienced players knowing how to fight a beholder)
I have one friend at the table who is the definition of power gamer. All he does the whole day is surfing through d&d rules finding the most OP class, spells etc. And there has been an argument when his character murdered another member of the team because the victim was responsable of letting one of his soldiers to die. He then revived the man with spare the dying cantrip and the dust settled. However they still try to fuck each other up and not helping one another. It is not a disaster but it may have become. How can I as a DM fix this problem?
Pathfinder here. So I might have told this tale before, but I use to play with a group in fayettevile and it being a small town only has 1 group. So in this group we had a lot of player types. We had the rules lawyer who always played type. He said he didn't because his dwarf would use a stone axe instead of a metal one. We also had a snow flake who always played something weird. His first character was a female sentient anthropomorphic unicorn. The two hated each other with a passion. So the third game the lawyer ran. He built a map, he built his own race that everyone had to play. He limited it to 5 classes each was an archetype, you couldn't play druid you had to play storm druid. Honestly it was the best and worst game I have ever been in. The emmersion was good, but he wanted me to play thor and I was trying to play marv. Any way so third session in we come to a house and were fighting a witch and her minions and the snow flake decides to light the witches house on fire where all the plot hooks were. The lawyer threw up his papers and left. I think the game was salvageable but not to a person with such a OCD personality.
My party in our current session is split up because two of us escaped an encounter through a hidden door. The other 3 people were trying to get loot from a well (that there was no loot in)
Best way to destroy a campaign? Give all the players cocaine 5 mins before starting, the DM will quit after attempting to keep the players focused and never speak of that day ever again. True story
In the beginning of 5e, I (the dm) was handing out magic items similarly to how I did it in AD&D. That grossly overpowered the PC's. My mistake. I was losing the fun of playing due to MY mistake. We eventually narrated character levels to bring them from around Level 7, to 10, to 15 in narrated jumps. Their magic items now helped without ruling the day. The campaign ended fun for everyone!
Had the 'want to have fun' thing happen in my very first game I ever played. Players meet a small group of soldiers and a couple of wounded survivors in the woods on the way to a cave. Everyone else was trying to progress the story, trying to dig in for some serious information they had. But had that one guy, his exact words were "I pull my sword and stab the wounded man in the neck". Needless to say it caused havoc between my players, nearly a full hour of everyone arguing with him. The game just crashed after that, haven't met back up since because that one guy.
Attendance, scheduling, holidays, and communication. Attendance--straight forward if people don't show up on a consistent basis it ruins everything, Scheduling--finding a time when everyone can play and then sticking with it. That's major. If you play bi-weekly schedule...one no shows...you may not play in a month...Holidays--long breaks kill momentum. As a school teacher it happens to me throughout the year. Communication--none of these problems would be so bad if the players would let everyone know. Most of my Roll *20 players just disappeared at one point or another without explanation and never came back--not all at one time mind you--rather dropping off a player at a time with no discernible pattern. I find this happens more with online groups, but sometimes that's the only way available to play.
Thanks for sharing! Great discussion. I had a player which was one of the above you mentioned. A prima donna type who always has to be the star, AND a rules lawyer and Min Maxer all in one. The game naturally died. I just gave the other player more friends because that's who the NPC's just gravitate towards? And the other player secretly has fun because he knows the prima donna player is getting synchophants in his entourage. There is one thieving NPC who just sucks up to the star player and he had no clue at all this guy was leeching off resources and money from him (the NPC always offers to sell items for the star PC --but he always skims off the top before giving the PC his money for example). There was a little bit of player vs player there? The other player just got his kicks by NOT telling the overbearing player that he has a mole among his followers (both of them have followers). Anyway, the game did not die. We are still playing it today. The Min Maxer just moved on to other things. I think he got too aggravated by one NPC whom he found really annoying. His character is rather easy to troll and that NPC happened to be an enemy that the other player was trying to convert and turn "good". So I wasn't out to get him specifically. It just so happened that way that one time.
perhaps worth mentioning is players that come into the game later and use a different system for generating their stats. Either the DM forgot how every one started, or it's just not that important. What happened is a player had such an issue with that they quit this particular campaign (so far). It just so happens that there are vastly different PC's in the party with very different stats, we don't know each other too well and decided it was better to just roll with it. We all did what we wanted with the DM's permission in order to create some creative and not overpowered PC's. In fact the PC that has overpowered ability scores has them b/ c he was so new that he made a mistake and then the rest of the players laughed it off. What's interesting is that the player that quit had already played with that overpowered stat player without complaint. It was only when another player entered the game that his issue came out. It just goes to show that being rigid and quitting before you even start (at level 4) is probably more harm to yourself and doing the rest of the players a favor. The game is not a competition
Forced role play (and lack of compromise) is what did it for my group. As it goes, I was not the DM for a change. The DM at the time had never done so before and it was literally his first day. A couple encounters in, he asked for some simple backstory. I handed him a paragraph giving the short version of my character as did another player. Another handed a single sentence along the line of "parents dead. Need monies." One was even literally "super amnesia" written on a notecard. The last player though was oddly self-consious about the fluff and outright refused. The DM asked for even a single sentence and showed the other two I mentioned above. Again, the player refused. The DM said we wouldn't continue until he got at least something. The player said "guess I'm done playing then." and proceeded to pull out his phone and browse the Internet. The DM packed up and left. The player's wife started crying and apologizing for him. The player also left shortly after (the wife stayed and kept apologizing). I think we played one very unfulfilling round of munchkins between the remaining 4 of us. Literally haven't played an RPG since then.
List of Campaign Destroyers, for your convenience: 1. _Helicopter GM_ - Overbearing/Micromanaging GM, whether it be they control all of the players, or just control one character. They want to control all the actions, and re-invent your character, so they fit in to their vision (ex. "By the way, you're now a prince in this story. Congrats!"). Invokes favoritism for one or some players over others. The problem with this is it puts the other players in the backseat of the action, where they feel like their choices are irrelevant. It breaks one of the most important rules of D&D: It doesn't allow the players to have fun within the setting and story. 2. _Players wanna have fun_ - Ironic to follow up with this. Game derailment. This describes characters who break theme and character just to do whatever they want. Players take advantage of a system, or do things they're not allowed to within the rules of D&D. Usually re-enforced by a poor GM who doesn't impose consequence. 3. _Wandering Monster Syndrome_ - Lose interest in an invested campaign, and instead do something else. Loss of direction. Usually due to boredom in said campaign. This is more an issue IRL than in a campaign, where people neglect a campaign and put off starting it again. GM burnout. Usually occurs when a poor GM isn't able to keep the campaign interesting or fresh, and so it's ended abruptly. 4. _Player Thunder Dome Madness_ - Conflict between players. This is when one or more players argue with one another, either over rules, plot, or even some sort of IRL conflict brought in to the campaign. This is usually the result of over-inflated egos who bash heads. It's reinforced by a poor GM who doesn't make quick decisions involving rules or resolving conflicts. Resolved via effective communication. 5. _Game Extremist_ - Extremism applied to various factors. Rules Lawyer (someone who halts the natural flow of a campaign by arguing rules for D&D, usually to gain some sort of benefit in doing so) who argues to such a degree, they refuse to allow any progress unless their complaints are met. Power Players ( spotlight hog, someone who either creates their character, or take extreme actions, to ensure their character is the absolute best) who devastate a game by being overpowered and preventing any outside player interaction. IRL player, who just by the grace of their personality is unlikable and overbearing. Meta Gamer (someone who, due to their IRL knowledge of certain events or creatures in a game, make decisions their character otherwise wouldn't...or even be able to predict via their in game knowledge...so as to prevent the negative consequence of said event) who prevent variety or fun via game interference. Usually the result of a poor GM who doesn't establish rules and the overall tone of etiquette or how the game will flow. So pretty much, how do you guarantee the destruction of a campaign? Be a shitty GM.
I have been alot of these, I've been described as being dangerously in character and have had characters quit the party when my character had no reason to stay with a bunch of things who stole from her and were generally unpleasant to her. I only needed one reason. I also had a moment in the same game where I literally blew up at the favoritism and thaty character was basically mind controlled between sessions by another player (combined with a deep fear of loss of control and her worldview being shattered by another revalation). She snapped and got revenge in my first (deliberate) pvp kill (mind control in my ad&d days don't count)
what ends up breaking my games is probly mostly my fault as DM. i tend to give alot of leeway in the vein of "if you can adequately explain what you want to do, and how your going to do it, i'll usually let it go" since i love people finding creative solutions, however it inevitably backfires and the players end up getting upset and really breaking the fun and immersion when they want to do something, and its not possible. was running a starfinder game and the party was assulting a large military compound (just the 4 of them) head on. i did everything i could think of to show them that this is not a fight they could win straight up, trying to nudge them over into finding a more creative path. however they proceeded to try and cheese the setting by staying out of range of the enemies and just firing wildly at the walls. once they realized that wouldnt work, they just went the other way, going right up to the wall, and then trying to fight that way. even after drawing pictures and showing them exactly what the situation was (the enemies were up on the battlements and effectively taking cover behind a wall (standard tactics i'd say...) one of the players started throwing a tantrum and just gave up on the session because "i wouldnt let him do anything." it had been building up to this over some time, but this was the part that just ended the whole game, and the group as well.
I think a lot of times the whole "players just wanna have fun" comes not just from new DMs but new players who cover up their embarrassment with roleplaying by acting absurd. I've seen this happen a few times, where a newbie doesn't feel comfortable and goes over the top crazy from a guy who decided the best way to solve problems was "I just eat everything!" to a group of newbies that decided they needed to kill and then pee on everyone they met to avoid scary roleplaying. It makes an interesting question of how to introduce newbies to the hobby in a way that makes them feel comfortable.
I had a campaign where the DM decided to completely remove the alignment system because he felt it restricted character personality too much. This campaign ended when the paladin of our group decided that he wanted to commit mass genocide on a city of innocents just because he was bored. Most of our party agreed with the decision but three of us were against it since it directly violated the character arcs of two of us. My character was traumatized by having to watch his entire home village slaughter itself when he was a child and the other character was an ex-minion of the main villain, looking for retribution for her past evil deeds. She and I said that genocide was against our characters so much that we would betray the party if they started killing innocents and that if our characters died we would quit. This is where the DM decided to just end the campaign. My question is who all is at fault here? Was it the two of us who were against it because it violated the very identity of our characters? Were we being too stubborn? Was it the paladin who wanted to do what goes against the very concept of a paladin just because he was bored of roleplaying and just wanted to fight things? Or was it the DM who gutted the entire alignment system from the game and then was too hands off to tell us we can't make such decisions? I know I rules lawyered this, but all my arguments were met with "you're taking D&D way too seriously. It's just a game. The rules in the book are only guidelines. You don't have to have all of them in every campaign." I was told the campaign's tone was going to be semi-serious before I joined, meaning it was going to be serious with lighthearted moments throughout.
The Paladin was wrong for doing something so obviously out of character, and the DM was in the wrong for letting it get to that point in the first place. Yes, D&D is just a game, but the game they were playing was obviously not the game you signed up for, and it's perfectly fine for you to get annoyed at that.
we had one guy who would just sit on his phone and barely understood how to play his barbarian, and another guy at the same time our eldritch knight who was up till 3 in the morning every night playing rainbow 6 siege when he had to be at work at 8 so he would literally be falling asleep at the table. It ended up being me playing a cleric that i only played because everyone else was kinda new and the dm told me that we would probably need one and my friend playing a wild magic sorcerer that kept getting more and more ridiculous to the point that he was begging me to just let him die because he had hit the ceiling with the character and just didn't know how to play him anymore and already had a new character made up. im now playing a 8'6 goliath arcane trickster with awful stats but some how i'm consistently rolling really well on all of my ability checks and almost max damage on every attack. i am much happier now.
Our group has a unique problem, Every player wants to DM. Some are more experienced, some are not. But on a good week we have 5 players at the table, our entire group is upwards of 11. And all of them want to DM, this leads to out of character conflict about who wants to run what, and to make things little more aggravating, those with the least experience want to run games the most. Watching out suggests in creating a dynamic and enjoyable world gives them motivation to express theirs!
Full-time Player, Part-time GM I Hate Helicopter GMs, that show favoritism, have a vague idea of what they want to play, with mid-MAXers galore, in a Thunderdome environment This one is essentially all the bad things about GMs, catch 22, we do have fun and sometimes it gets a little too crazy that we have to stop and get the laughs out so we can continue
I like Matt Colville's alternative term for "power gamer". He calls them engineers, because the thing they derive their fun from is figuring out how game mechanics work and then pushing those mechanics to breaking point. The 11/10 version of this would be a "perfectionist". That engineer that stops anyone from doing anything until they are 100% sure that it 100% efficient. I love min-maxing, but i do try to not lose sight of the reasons for playing (though DMs do get annoyed when i find gaps in the rules that allow for outlandish extremes)
Hey, if anyone's out there, I have a quick sort-of 'problem'? I'm in my first campaign and my DM seems like he's basically pushing my character to be the main focus of the plot, being a Tiefling who is being pushed by my DM as the reincarnation of one of the big villain's commanders or something. I don't think it's really an issue, but I kind-of do want the other two players to be more involved in this and I feel a bit weird that my guy has so much plot focus. Should I do something? Because this doesn't feel normal, but I'm not sure if it's a problem or if there's anything I should really do about this... or if I even can really do anything, I guess? It's just a situation I'm not really used to and any input would be great.
I'm currently a part of a campaign and am a Tiefling Warlock who chose to align with the Old Ones as the source of my magic, he was all fine with it until he suddenly decided he wanted to involve gods in the campaign which having these gods that his friends Paladin worshipped and believed in conflicted with mine so last time we met up we finished a big part of the story and I went to commune with the god that gave me my powers and he just yelled in my face "YOU CAN'T BECAUSE YOUR GOD DOESN'T EXIST" after letting it after so long months of us doing this campaign to suddenly tell me the source of my power is fake.
Or when the DM's SO is in the game... and they get ALL the things. On a slightly different note l, I was in one campaign where the DM asked for written back story. I was the only one who wrote one. He said privately "You're the only one who did this. So the campaign revolves around your character."
1) Bad player match-up's: We have one friend who is a rules lawyer who also tries to min/max to the point he honestly thinks it's both possible and acceptable to make a character at lvl 8 with multiple hundred strength. He's fine with the idea of having multiple special preexisting character traits, special diseases, and the like because he put it in his backstory. He can be okay if we talk him down and explain that it's simply not happening, no, never, stop. A girl that we play with is the spotlight hog who only cares about role play and is comfortable with leaving the group for multiple years in game to apprentice under a powerful npc, but will then keep coming to games and demanding equal attention to her half of the game. She can be handled if we tell her that she is ruining the game, and explain how that's too far. If they're together though, every time we try to explain something to one of them the other one chimes in just trying to get under their skin, and they'll both start pulling in the other direction, eventually refusing to accept anything less. They've both had to leave multiple campaigns, but they both keep acting like they can patch it up so they won't be the one left out of whatever next game we're starting. 2) Pre-made dungeons: some of our DM's use a few sites or their own pre-made dungeons, it's usually just when they're falling behind, or if the party has gone a bit off track and nothing was planned out but it's not bad enough for divine intervention. Unfortunately sometimes a DM gets bogged down for a couple months, or sometimes players just refuse to accept the standard story-line and keep taking the random sidequests that the DM only mentioned as a formality, so suddenly dungeons become very samey. Even when you change up the layout, the dungeons tend to hold the same theme's and general creatures. 3) Bad character match-up's: This happens A LOT. I know it happens to us all, but it seems like it's in all of our games. Some people make average characters and one or a couple players seem to think that because one in five fights gets close to killing someone, they need to become much stronger. The rest, however, just keep playing normal characters. So a hard fight for normal players is turned into a one or two turn encounter because someone is dealing enough damage to finish a mid, boss in one hit. So the DM beefs up the encounters and suddenly the normal players are effectively useless in some fights, and the min/max characters feel like now they have to get stronger faster. This was particularly bad once when the power character figured the party should try running more and stocked up on teleport items. He then killed everything before anybody else got their initiative, but when anything showed up that could feasibly kill him, or even take all his stuff, he'd hit it once or drop a trap, then leave everyone else with their pants around their ankles.
Some personal experiences I've had... GM was nerfing EVERYTHING in the game the players could have, even BASIC stuff from the regular source books! "it's nerf or nothing"? was more like "let's nerf TO nothing!".... or how about the GM that couldn't math, thinking "3d6" could get a higher number than "4d6, drop lowest 1"... which everyone had to do 3d6 for stats, except one player that had already rolled 4d6d1 for their stats... to anyone that thinks "3d6" is better... (you'll want a program for this...) roll 100d6 and drop the lowest 97 (keeping highest 3 of the d6).... I dare you to not roll perfect 18s.... (any ultra number crunchers know the statistics of it? I'm curious)
He thought that 3d6 is higher than 4d6 drop lowest? That's a special kind of stupid right there. Your question is deceptively easy. TL;DR, the probability of NOT rolling 18 on a single roll is 100% * (1/6)^98, which approximates to 5.51*10^(-75)% chance. Rolling perfect 18s is a chance of 100% * (1 - (1/6)^98)^6, which every calculator I own approximates to 100%. [EDIT: VERY WRONG. See below for correct numbers] *[Explanation deleted for being very very wrong]* I can't give reasons as to WHY any of this is true, statistics is not my forte [AIN'T THAT THE TRUTH]. It's counterintuitive and the schools I've been to never taught anything of much use within that sphere. I've just done this type of calculation enough that I can work out simple problems like this one. Just for shits and giggles, I decided to check out how likely it would be for me to roll my entire d6 cube (it's actually a 3x3x4 box of d6, but all of my friends call it a d6 cube) and not roll 18 or perfect 18s. I have a 3.49*10^(-25)% chance to not roll 18 on any given try, and another effectively 100% (100% * (1 - (1/6)^34)^6) chance to not get a perfect array. [WRONG]
I really shouldn't try reading such things and attempt to understand them when it's over an hour and a half past when it's my pass out time... but thanks for running some numbers on it, I just wanted to know how hard I should laugh at them... with what you said, I shouldn't, cause I'd likely be unable to breath again.
Perhaps a way to explain 4d6 drop lowest vs 3d6 is to do a comparison. Roll 3d6 dice, then allow them to see the total. Then roll another die, and say you can either have the 3d6, or swap any die with the new one. Seeing it in this format might help them to see they certainly can't do any worse - it's just an extra option. Careful just using stats to explain things - people don't like to argue with things they can't understand intuitively, so help them understand it intuitively!
I just looked at my math again and it looks like I made an error: I found the probability of rolling straight sixes on 98d6, not the probability of rolling anything but 6. The actual probability of not rolling a single perfect score is 1.739*10^(-6)% chance (which is still hilariously low), and the chance of not rolling straight 18s is 1.0433*10^(-5)%. The chance of not rolling 18 on any given try with an entire d6 box is 0.14% and the chance of not rolling straight 18s is 0.84%. In my defense, I was tired and statistics is weird. I'm deleting my explanation in the previous post because I don't feel like editing it to be correct, nor do I trust myself to give an accurate and comprehensible explanation.
One player said they eat gnome babies. With the rest of the party being good aligned you can see how that would be a problem. Had to stop the arguments by bringing out a deck of many things and told them that whoever mentions eating gnome babies had to draw 10 cards at minimum. I was actually expecting one of them to do it but no one wanted any of the bad things in the deck of many things.
I've played with a few people who were practically mute the whole game unless the GM asked them direct questions. They had no input, no ideas, no preferences even when the subplot might be about their character. They were player character NPC's and dull as hell.
Gameplay lawyer GMs that, when you ask "I want to do this but there are no mechanics for it in the book, how do you think I should go about this," they simply shoot down the idea entirely almost as if it's, for example, World of Warcraft and it's impossible to dual wield before learning the skill. Like, I love when I'm playing a character with a sword, I encounter a full plate-armored opponent and I'm able to work with the GM on the benefits and drawbacks that would take place if I were to half-sword my weapon and use the pummel as a mace. Rather than the GM saying, "Nope, the game doesn't support that so you can't," he/she says, "sure, that'll make it easier to damage him but remove your bonus to hit and we'll subtract four damage from the total."
My personal biggest complaint right now is that our DM will ignore my ideas of thinking outside the box. Simple things such as "I want to look around. I want to learn more about where I am what's going on. I want to try to figure the puzzle out without fighting every time." They then go straight into, "You walk up to the dwarves and they pull their swords out. Roll for initiative." .. I'm thinking.. I didn't want to walk up to the dwarves. I didn't want to interact with them at all yet. Once in a while, I'm cool with that. Sometimes it's unavoidable, but it should be every single time. I like playing a campaign not a straight up arena.
in a recent game I was playing with someone that min maxed a dwarven cleric to be a buff/summoning cleric. in just a turn or 2 at 3rd lol he was able to basicly fight a half scale war on his own and took the fun out for not only me as a player but for the DM as well to the point where he didn't want to finish or really even start his story arc. I still wanna know what was about to happen..
I'm having issues with my DM, which is my brother. He's very restrictive on what I can do an play, and is like that only for me. "You can't play Aasimar. You can't play Warlock. You can't play Blood Hunter. He's literally not letting me play anything I find fun. I'd like to ruin his game with my current character, but there's other people in the game and I can't ruin it for everyone.
Have a helicopter dm at the moment. Keeps fudging the rolls to cause things to happen. A player critically failed a spell cast but the dm had it kill of several enemies at the same time. We weren't even trying to save them.
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Nerdarchy personally I don't think it's a horrible idea to have the Wandering monster syndrome. That's kinda what makes up every GTA game.
It is. But there is a difference between freedom of choice and the illusion of freedom to choose. The players want to pull a guy off a cart and steal it to ride out of town and then kill some guards and run up a tower and barricade themselves in picking off townsfolk till the dragons circle that's their game. At some point a GM can guide them into the story or the players can live with their choices and get killed, then re-roll or start the story from another plane in the service of some evil deity and find a way to re-claim their souls. The difference in that and a true wonder monster is even after multiple attempts to get out of chaos the DM will get worn out.
I would say out of game conflict usually breaks up a lot of the games I've been in. And its bad because you have to find a new player or even worse a whole new group
1. Deck of many things
2. Deck of many things
3. Deck of many things
4. Deck of many things
5. Deck of many things
What happened when you used it?
The Pyro Gamer many things
I've used it in my games multiple times. It's called rp potential, not ruining the game, lol.
Also for rules lawyers, as dm I love making stuff up. Like I had a druid sorcerer and rogue dealing with a horde of orcs trying to bash down the castle doors. Druid casts entangle and the sorcerer asked if they could set the magic vines on fire. I said go for it. In the rules? Not really. Epic? Heck yeah. I love when people get creative. My rule of thumb however is anything the players do the baddies can do, and anything they create that's probably broken I let them have their fun before theyre known for such antics and the enemies counter their actions. Have a large iron spike in a bucket? Slam that bucket on an enemy's head? Lethal damage? Works for a while then suddenly most enemies wear helmets to not have their brain stabbed with a bucket spike. You're famous. People hear of your deeds and what you do. The world is alive and reactive
Exactly! Wanna set a Grease spell on fire? Go for it! Technically it's not flammable, but now you have a spot of difficult, slippery terrain that deals fire damage to everyone on it. I'd make it similar to how some AOE spells work with entering it and starting their turn in it deal damage, but at a basic cantrip level of damage. A Fireball goes off in a shack or small house? All windows and doors are blown out or the entire thing blows up if the blast's strong enough! Wanna try to aim a no-aim spell to get better hitting angles, like Magic Missle or Fireball? Roll a straight d20, anything except 20 has the spell go as normal, 20 removes any save and rolls an extra di(ce) or maxes one of the di. Or if an AOE spell with a nucleus, like Fireball or Moonbeam, has that nucleus fall directly on a creature, roll an attack, and if that attack hits, negate the creature's save. (Those actually sound like cool optional rules.) The core books are just as they're advertised, they're "Guides," meaning you can follow them for help or you don't have to if you don't want to. The GM/DM is as the name implies, the Game/Dungeon Master. They ARE the rules!
Passed Judgements i do the same thing. Creativity is far more important
Creativity sparks Roleplay, which might in turn get MinMaximus to chill for a bit and see that it's not ALL about the numbers.
a little bit of rules lawyering can be ok. That is why we would put that one under Game Extemist. To much of one thing can be bad.
Nerdarchist Dave
Wouldn't the bucket example just be a critical hit/called shot with an improvised weapon at that point though? The thing about being a rules lawyer is that you can actually do 99% of the things that you want to do within the context of the rules... it's just not always as viable of an option as you would want it to be. Either it takes too many actions to set up (such as a player trying to climb a tree and tie a rope to it so they can swing) to make it take a round or two longer than they wanted, or the rules that support it (like improvised weapon rules) generally tell you that the more effective option is to use a real weapon rather than the sharpened stick strapped to your boot. Helmets aren't even a real thing other than a few specific callouts because it is implied that anyone wearing heavy armor has a helmet, and specific items and feats related to helmets tend to give penalties to critical confirmation rolls because stabbing someone in the head is generally what a critical hit is considered to be.
The world is alive, and the rules are abstractions that cover a broad range of things that aren't explicitly written out.
The helicopter gm and the players just want to have fun reminds me of a time we had a gm who literally would force us to do whatever he wanted because if not we would die. So I decided I was pretty sick of it. So one time he said that if we failed to complete a quest in time or we died we would explode like a huge explosion. So I very casually went to the nearest capital. And then proceed to commit seppuku. To which the whole entire capital was absolutely destroyed. Good times....
I have a GM that’s *kinda* like this, though not nearly as bad I think. He likes to railroad us, change the rules suddenly, and just all around make it a pain to get creative. He gave my character a grappling hook, which was capable of pulling him and one other medium creature to a spot it hooks to, and in one dungeon we were fighting a ton of monsters that would just tear my character to pieces. He is an illusionist, and his AC is garbage. So I did the only thing I thought would save me, grapple the ceiling to get out of the monster’s range. Once I did this, he got so freakin salty about it and started saying that the grappling hook isn’t “designed to hold you up like that and you’d eventually fall” despite it being capable of pulling two medium creatures to a point in range. So I haven’t used it since then because no situation has been presented where it would come in handy WITHOUT him getting pissed about it.
I was the DM (as usual), and two players started arguing over a loot split. I tried to suggest something fair, but neither were happy. They decided to duel to the death for the particular item. They had been playing these characters for months and both were serious. During the battle, one player took a real knife and jammed it into the table (it was after this that a new rule "no real weapons at the table" had to be put into place). In the end, the player that won took the other player's sheet, crinkled it up, and threw it in the losing player's face yelling, "YOU'RE DEAD! YOU'RE DEAD!"
And that's my best D&D story.
Ken McNutt II - That is sad. :'(
I have to ask, what was the item?
And was the knife stabber's character the victor?
They were roommates in the same apartment at the time, so I guarantee this wasn't even the maddest that they ever got at each other. This was sometime between 1989-1991 and we were still playing AD&D. I don't remember the exact item, but if I had to guess I would say something like a +2 long sword for a 5th/6th level character (I'm usually very generous with treasure). The knife stabber was the victor. There are a couple of funnier stories about these guys, but not related to D&D. Unfortunately, one died a few years back (which is always a shock for someone your own age).
When you interact with people remember that it might be the last time you see them (because it might be true). Needless to say, the duel put an end to the campaign.
This story sounds like something from my dads many stories of d&d in his youth lol
I heard that one about the half-dragon.
Funny thing is, I've concepted a character like that. My solution, so it can participate in a game no matter if the DM allows the Half-Dragon template?
Use the Dragonborn mechanics. Just reskin/reflavor how the character looks, and you're good to go.
Same for a 'were'bear character I've got in mind. Simply use the Goliath race from Volo's guide (Or the Elemental Evil book), and reskin the big lugs into lookin' like humanoid bears instead of giantkin. Problem solved.
The star: everything has to be about them. If it isn't, he bitches about "just sitting there." He doesn't insert himself into everything, but if it isn't about him, he'll start drama.
The drama queen: anytime something doesn't go his way, he claims that the dm or other players are picking on him and singling him out, even if things didn't go his way due to bad rolls or his own lacking of understanding of the rules.
The background: he doesn't roleplay at all. Any time rp is happening, he's nowhere to be seen. Anyone who tries to bring him into the rp is met with typically a single syllable response. Even in combat, he barely does anything other than roll dice and move his token.
The shitty rules lawyer: he tries to argue about everything while lacking basic understanding of the rules, just leading to wasted time as we try to explain things to him.
The repeater: he builds one character and if that character dies his long lost twin brother with the same name shows up to replace him.
Jeremy Nadaskay I have one guy who fulfills three of those tropes. Poor rules lawyer, monosyllabic RP, and always plays the barbarian with a great axe. (or Wookie, etc)
Holy fuckin shit, this describes my last group almost perfectly, except one guy was the star AND repeater, and I was sort of the (not shitty) rules lawyer.
have a repeater in our group. in one campaign he had the 'Dolf family', ran through 17 of them, just going down the alphabet with names. campaign ended with one of our characters becoming a public official and bringing a death warrant on the entire family.
...next campaign had the Dalf family.
As a background, my only defense for myself and others like me is that I lack the proper amount of emotions. It doesn't mean that I (or others) don't care, I just genuinely have nothing of worth to input in the conversations or roleplay..
If you have genuinely nothing of worth to input in the conversations or roleplay you wouldn't be playing D&D in the first place. The fact that you play but still say things like that means that you like being begged to roleplay just to turn down people, wallow in your own self pity and get some few scarce seconds of attention.
Personal best end of campaign: 8th level pirate theme. Player made enough money to buy the old manor house on the hill. They stopped pirating and one ran for mayor, and won.
That's when the mayor becomes a recurring npc and you have the player make a new character to join the party on their adventures.
I find some of the worst players are those who try and try to rationalize terrible RP and decision making. I was running a Steampunk-ish d&d and this player wanted to be a steam automataun and kept complaining until I finally caved in. he then proceeded to slaughter the town the adventure began in because he was "on the fritz". Needless to say, he wasn't invited to another session of D&D.
My players tend to break the game in funny ways, like magically convincing a burning troll that a fire pit is a pool of water with a second level illusion spell at third level.
I had 2 players that drove me nuts.
Session 0, they hadn't met each other before (the players)
One rolled up a Mage, the other rolled up an illusionist.
Mage consistently rolled 1 to 2 earlier initiative than the illusionist. (this becomes important...)
First encounter... some orcs.
Mage uses unseen servant to drop pebbles on the orcs.
Illusionist casts phantasmal force of a rockslide coming at the orcs.
No orcs made save... encounter over, gather the loot.
I started having them write what they were going to do each round, without talking to each other to ensure they were not conspiring about spells.
They always ended up with the mage doing something, then the illusionist's illusion coming up looking like it was about to do something related.
Several sessions later...
Fireball
Illusion of ancient red dragon (improved phantasmal force) popping up almost immediately, rearing back to breathe fire....
Using the written notes. No conspiring. Each had come up with their own plan without consulting the other.
After that I let them make a booklet of spell combos they could call out to each other by the number. Fireball + dragon was #47
I've started using the "Skyrim defense" against powergamers/min-maxers: after two or more times of them showboating in front of a crowd of any sort, people talk. In medieval style settings, gossip is a primary form of recreation/entertainment and eventually word gets back to an archwizard or ebon knight type that decides to seek out the powergamer and challenge them to a duel.
Now at this point, as a GM, I consider my options. I can use a powerful NPC to show that "I'm the GM, my dick is always bigger", but to me that feels too heavy-handed since the game is about the players having fun, so I avoid that and save it as an absolute last resort if I can see that this player is a problem and is robbing the group of a chance to have fun. I may lose one player, but if it'll save the game it's worth it. Another option is to have the reputation of the ebon knight/etc precede them so the party hears about the grudge before they encounter the NPC. This option I will usually give the NPC a small following of sycophants and make him a sort of Negan/The Governor type from TWD so that the party really needs to come together and plan for the big showdown, the powergamer is going to have his hands full with the Ebon Knight, and the rest of the party will have a bunch of henchmen to deal with. This option gets everybody engaged and works great in heavy combat campaigns, and during the showdown I make sure the powergamer doesn't emerge unscathed... Perhaps they lose one of their magical items, or maybe even their sword arm, whatever it is their effectiveness is severely limited for a few sessions and they find themselves needing to rely on the rest of the party instead of always leaping ahead shouting "I'LL HANDLE THIS!"... This approach usually humbles the powergamer without costing you a player and sometimes it even teaches them the value of working WITH their party.
And the final option is the big climactic showdown... The powergamer is challenged in the town square by the Ebon Knight or the arch mage, and the powergamer dispatches the enemy with absolutely no effort, because it turns out, when the powergamer removes the Knight's helmet, or a woman comes screaming to the town square and collapses, sobbing, onto the chest of the slain foe that the great Ebon Knight was little more than a child, not yet with the first hairs of manhood on his chin, or the arch mage was the mentally infirmed brother of a milkmaid that left him alone for just a moment and when she returned, he was gone. In both cases, the people the Powergamer killed were just "fans" of the true powerful beings with the reputation that just wanted to be like their hero... And now the whole town sees the powergamer as a cold hearted butcher. He isn't arrested, because the whole town saw that the powergamer was acting in self defense, but they all still deeply loathe him as he should have found a way to disable the foe rather than murder it right in the town square. I use this option in more roleplay heavy campaigns because to get out of it, the powergamer is going to need to use their words instead of blades and spells.
That's actually pretty cool, I don't have any min/max chars in the game I dm, and usually I'm the min/max player in the game, but I'm totally using that.
What broke our game was mostly me, as a player, but not entirely my fault. I blame my GM a lot. Great guy otherwise.
Game 1) I am speaking to a necromancer. A lich as DM described him. So I thought we can´t even fight that. (level 1-2) I got my tongue twisted a bit. Instead of starting combat, he just one-shots me, without any chance whatsoever. (100+ dmg vs 6hp)
Game 2) Leven 1 Assassin, I walk into a tower. Two skeletons sit at a table with a book. I try to read the book. They attack me and I have to actively defend myself, but can only do so against one of them. The second chops my hand right off, so i am more or less usseless/comic relief for the rest of the session/game. (FATE)
Game 3) Basicly the same thing as 2) we crashed our ship on a beach, 4 guards come running. There were only 2 of us, wizard and priest. Out of spell slots. No chance.
What I am trying to say is, dismemberment and/or instant death out of nowhere at level (0-4) can break maybe not the game, but the players.
Yeah that mostly sounds like you have a shitty DM
What surprised me was that was quite good otherwise. I guess he just wanted to kill someone and chose me over his girlfriend. Obviously. :D
Johny Shadow There's your problem, he's playing favorites with his girlfriend. Also what level were you compared to the enemies? He may have been screwing you over with impossible moments and combat.
Well, in there lies the problem. (And a tiny bit of meta-gaming.) We have played "Dragon´s Lair", basically a regional version of DnD, so player and monster levels are a bit different. (Example, the "beatable" "lich", level 18 in DnD.)
We were a group of 1-2 level players and the situations, more than being unwinnable, were unforgiving. Now I wouldn´t really mind that if we were playing, say, Tomb of Horrors.
But that is past, we had our fun, (and a load of salt) and now I am planning my revenge as his GM.
"insert evil laugh"
I wish you luck in your endeavors to show him his mistakes firsthand. Maybe then you can have a normal game without super early deaths. Although I think the lich might have been a more or less a talk than a fight, but I don't know the circumstances so that may be just me.
I had a huge 6 chapter story, with a "mature" party... it has been two years and they are still deciding their characters...
Index cards, just give them characters to play.
Some of my games have been broken and almost devolved into Thunderdome Madness due to spontaneous application of physics. While sometimes, I like to imagine how certain things in-game would work in the real world, there have been instances wherein players try to cite real physics as a way to justify bad decisions or maximize decent decisions. Of course, the issue there is that math and science don't blend with high fantasy. Subsequently, scenarios have become an argument between fantasy rulings and real physics, occasionally ending with the collapse of the in-game multiverse (real example).
I almost never like playing with C/E players because of this one guy.
My party was all level 5 in a dungeon that was taken over by some cult, and we were investigating an evil presence deep in the temple dungeon. Come to defeat the cult a little too late and they tell us a chained succubus that they now released from its magical binds will destroy the lands...before he can finish our C/E Fighter starts beating the crap outta him to ask where exactly. He gives the info and immediately starts stripping. No clothes whatsoever. The rest of the party and the GM are confused and ask "Why?" and he replies "I'm gonna bang that demon!"
The next couple minutes are us arguing with him it's a bad idea, the GM chiming in to tell him the same, but he just went completely nude through the rest of the dungeon (ran into some more cultists but he took them out well enough with our help) until he went to her prison chamber, kicked open the door, and dashed right up to her and started to hump this demon. We were all grossed out and the GM was having none of it at this point, killing him instantly once she was able to be free.
The C/E player complained that he should've been forced to make a check or something but in any case he was fine dying and just decided not to play anymore, something we were all thankful for at that point.
Geez, if he wants to fuck the demon, at least buy her a drink first. And he was C/E, so he could at least pull a Cosby.
I'd have given the succubus polymorph and turned him into a sheep.
Enlighten me because I rolled a 1 on my Google Fu skill it seems, what does "C/E" stands for?
If my understanding of the conversation goes, C/E is another way of Saying CE, or Chaotic Evil in terms of alignment. Have to admit though, the story does fit the "lol random" type of CE that a lot of people take it.
The guy was crazy creative and you bunch should have go in and see how far it would have gone, instead you where a bunch of dicks, especially the DM.
The aftermath of this intercourse would have been hilarious to see, but no, you've been party poopers...
I've had one instance of a character having an in-story class change that wasn't crazy and campaign shattering. I was the player, and this only happened because myself and the DM had talked about this after a couple sessions in a row, and both agreed that the character and RP of it were fun, but the class choice was restrictive and unfitting for that campaign. (I was an Oread Monk leaning heavily towards the classic monk style of LG-LN, and it had become a largely costal/naval, piratey style campaign.) We also brought up the idea to the players, and as a group, decided it could be fun to create an small side-arc where my guy went missing, and they went to rescue him, meanwhile, he was on a spirit journey while in captivity. All this culminating in them breaking in, and meeting up with the newly awakened barbarian, in light service to the Iron God of Battle. Seeing as we had a few sessions without a player, it was a perfect side quest, and we'd all talked about the idea beforehand. And we worked it into the game in such a way that everyone had fun, and got something out of it. Otherwise, it just gets messy.
People being too attached to their characters and then assaulting a friendly, old, dottering wizard man in a tower can ruin a game.
11:00 You know this Thunderdome thing actually was one of the greatest things that happened in one campaign we had. I was playing a Halfling Ranger/Druid, and my friend was playing a Half Orc Barbarian... The DM was taking a really long time to get into any kind of action, and a lot of our back-and-forth roleplay was the main thrust of the story it was taking some time for our characters to develop trust. Well my friend's character was always making jokes about my characters size and underestimating his abilities, and my character just halled off and whacked him in the foot with the back of his spear right in the middle of a negotiation with some NPC merchant for information. This lead to a "Let's take it outside" moment between our characters, where they went outside and actually threw down and fought. The DM just kind of didn't know what to do at first. My friend and I are thick as thieves in real life, so we just played it. My Halfling almost died in the first round or two, and took off running, out to a dock, and the fight escalated. My friend's orc killed a couple of deckhands on a smuggler ship trying to get to me. And we both had to take invisibility potions and sneak out of the area separately. It actually lead to our characters bonding and being like the dynamic duo from mutual respect gained. It was really an awesome game.
I'm guilty as a GM for giving my players too much freedom and really spoiling them with choice but at the same time my players tend to power game and metagame a lot. Not all of them, but a few. It's a pain in the arse to get people on track sometimes.
The guy who just cares about the power gaming. No RP, will PVP people who get in his way of said power, even when it comes to party loot and is the lone wolf most of the time.
Yeah, I have a player like that in my group. He has literally tried to kill me for being in stealth and possibly trying to out damage him, as if I could. While this is not D&D, it is still problematic as he knows what is broken and uses it constantly just because he can Playing with him is very frustrating.
In defense of power gamers, they're still gamers and they enjoy playing, they just get their enjoyment from being in control of their character's stats and mechanics, rather than background, narrative or RPing. I'm not saying it validates anyone's toxicity, just that it's a valid style of playing any game. RPing players can be toxic too, like the Rogue who derails the entire narrative by trying to steal literally everything from literally everyone. For me the problem is usually the player's attitude, not the fact they're one type of gamer or another. So if your power gamer is an asshole they either feel undervalued or outright attacked (they worked hard trying to find the perfect combination of stats, features and equipment, and you're just there trying to undermine their work because you want to "show that bloody power gamer what you really think of their power gaming"), or they really are just an asshole.
I usually try to give them what they want - set up encounters in such a way that they can utilise their strengths to their maximum potential. I'd do that for an RPing player, why not a power gamer? Is the power gamer a Shadow Monk? Throw in a few weak mooks so they can shadowstep behind and one-punch the shit out of them. A Darkness/Devil's Sight abusing Hexblade? Cool, describe how panicked their enemies are, shivering in the darkness before they get chopped to pieces. Just make sure you adjust your CR accordingly, so that it's always a bit of a challenge for the entire party. Eventually when the power gamer feels like the top dog they'll fall into RPing naturally out of sheer gratitude. Or boredom. If that doesn't work, talk to them about their attitude. A.K.A. the adult conversation. If that fails, kill off their character when they aren't looking and lose their email address. Seriously, it's better to lose one friend than see your entire group disband over one asshole.
Big Blue That guy really deserves to get beat in the game by the rest of the party.
I actually do enjoy min-maxing in moderation. I like playing a character with a few serious strengths, and a one or two major weaknesses just because I feel like it gives that character more depth. That being said, I absolutely understand how annoying it can be to have a character who refuses to help out the party, and just tries to do his own thing.
I got one for you. One of my players fell in love with another player (not in game). How is this game breaking you might ask? Well the first player was my wife, the second was not me.
Damn son that sucks. I hope you didn't have kids with her.
Helicondrummer Use stealth attack on them using a dagger coated in wyverns venom( that’d be Komodo spit)
Until recently we had a guy who would go full bore murderhobo almost at random because he played chaotic neutral and was too immature to stop murdering people for ten minutes because 'they might have gold'. That was cured by a new DM we got in for a few games..... the murderhobo decided to attack a peasant farmer. Turned out the peasant farmer was a level 1 peasant/20 MONK looking for tranquility with his farmland, and turned his character into fertilizer pretty much instantly. Best part, because we had no idea where he'd gone, we never found the body respectfully buried under the peach tree in the guy's yard so we never had to even pretend to raise our 'valued party member'. Although we did buy a bushel of peaches on our way back from the adventure!
never heard of thunder dome madness before. i've seen it before, but definitely never heard it called that before. i thought at the beginning you meant they were going crazy and cannibalizing each other....and then at the end i thought that's exactly what you meant.
"Two men enter, one man leave... THUNDERDOME!"
Dealing with a guy in a couple of public (in store) games. Some just want him out. But a couple of us are trying to TEACH HIM TO PLAY (no mean feat). Def into metagaming and telling others how to play their characters. When we started a new game, the dm told him he was not welcome. He asked why and we told him. He's getting better, but I think some of his issues are just too ingrained. A shame, but some folk can't get behind the whole "not a game you win". thing.
Were they a warlock jester, and also did the party have a lizardfolk who drank dragon blood?
I'm usually the kind of player that just wants to make things happen, good or bad. If there is a button I will push it, if there is a chest with a master lock I will drop it from the tallest tower and watch it smash on the ground to get the goodies inside, if there is some holy flame in a temple I will use it to light my cigarette. But I can get away with it by incorporating it into my character's personality. Alterak, a sleazy half elf assassin with a Charisma of 19, a cape made out of knives, and accidental killer of at least three monarchs.
Please turn this into a series with some more personal game stories.
Playing Rifts from Palladium books and I let my players create characters with rules from any of my books... and I had all of them. It was the most absurdly OP game I've ever ran.
For The Wynne if you ever want to feel like a God that is the system to do it in...lol
For The Wynne man, I love RIFTS. Any system with a ton of books has potential for ridiculous fun. And the sourcebooks for RIFTS are really fun to just read
It's still quite popular
The Palladium system is a flexible,and wide open game.I've been a player/gm for over 22 yrs
here's a nasty game breaker: The multiple personality gamer. starts off with a half elf bard, gets to level 3, drops it for a human bardarian (level 3, of course). gets to level 6 and drops the barbarian for a wizard artificer. Level 6 because the party is at level 6 now. drops that at level 9 for a gnome rogue shadow walker. gets bored again and brings back the bard who is now magically level 9 because that's where the party is. this gamer keeps changing characters to try and be the center of the game. if there are a lot of encounters where a cleric would be the spotlight character, they want to change out for a cleric. if there are a lot of encounters where a ranger would be at an advantage, they want a ranger. i guess this is an extension of that one problem gamer who thinks they have to "win" at D&D or whatever game it is that the group is playing.
User Prime
Yep, someone I know has very suicidal characters and changes them up about as often as you described.
I have no problem people with swapping out pcs. I always allow the new pc be at or near level of party. But I treat their pcs as "guest stars" of the week. No special items/plots hooks for them. And I have seen "guest stars" are just people who get bored, "win" D&d, or other reasons.
yeah have a player like that in local community that no one really likes to play with because he does exactly that and is generally an asshole on top of that.
I and most DMs i know don;t allow a new character to enter at same level when someone wants to switch character or dies, partly to discourage changing for complete BS and partly to make death a more serious problem. In my case it's always 1 level lower than current party with sped up leveling to catch up because as much as i want to be strict on this running 3.5 with party of different levels is harder on me than it's worth.
So I agree to a degree, but we had a campaign where my character had actually achieved his goals at the point about halfway through, and with where 'chapter 2' was going my character had legitimately no reason to be there, so I swapped him out.
You do get people who will just swap willy-nilly though
I Don't mind a character change here and there but I had a player who was on his third and wanted to change again. Another player(NE) wanted his stuff so I said ok, go for it. I usually have a no pvp rule because most players egos can't take it and it becomes way too personal. Since it was technically an NPC now the evil player followed him, assassinated him, and took all his stuff. The original player was pissed so I explained that I had allowed it to discourage players in my game from changing characters all the time. That tends to disrupt the game flow, especially if that character is invested in the story.
About "players just want to have fun". A campaign is a more long lasting and mature experience. If players want to be crazy for a session, let them. If they totally break character and go against the world / character / etc, play a crazy ass one shot without boundaries.
You want to play an "allahu akbar"-goblin who has crystals charged with fireballs built into him? Fucking go for it, but it is a one shot.
This is for campaigns, not one shots - but even one shots shouldn't be like that, that just shows that you are immature and your way of having fun is being stupid.
I tend to treat one shots that way. I made a character that was literally a superhumanly strong fat Steven Segal.
I never would have played this character in anything else but a one shot. it was open legend and he had plus 2d8 to all unarmed attacks.
+Lincoln Frost
So, in other words, they are having fun wrong?
I've already planned for this eventual crisis in my upcoming campaign. I'll let them do whatever the hell they want, make up some sick loot to throw at them, then at the end I will have them all suddenly wake up to the real world and that they had all had the same bizarre dream and turn it into a small side quest to see what had caused the communal dream. It may only work once, but it's a way of letting them have a break from reality and still tying it into the campaign so it can continue unhindered :)
Lincoln Frost I have the feeling you're one of those helicopter gms and rules lawyer types. Just remember, somewhere out there peoe are running full blown campaigns this way and LOVING IT! Without any care about what you think about their fun :)
I like the idea that All stories have an end goal. I believe you set small goals to have an end goal. It is how we read epic book trilogies. It works as long as the small goals are very character oriented and allow the characters to explore as normal through their baby goals. However, all goals can be explored at any time of the game. When I DM I usually list three secret goals that bring them to a conclusion epic secret goal. Sometimes the party figures out the epic goal early and dies because they are not ready to take on the legendary dragon at level 5, and don't want to accomplish two of the three goals. They skip to the third book. I did my job I gave them a story, they wanted to skip to the end that is on them. I give them liberty to explore the world through bread crumbs and create the world around their own character builds. I never tell them how to play the campaign -- it's their world. It's their consequences. It's their book. I give allusive guidelines and referee -- they write the content of their character. The more creative -- the better the book. I've been playing DND since 2002. I've found that players like baby goals that build to parent goals but don't want to be micro-managed getting there. They each want to write their own piece of the book. Long winded, sorry.
what usually broke games i played in was one or more members of the party being treated as "RED SHIRTS"...i mean an NPC being a red shirt is fine.. but a player character should never be a red shirt... i mean sure player characters can die.. its part of the game.. but the idea is player characters are basicly heroes in the game.. and a gm could have a whole story for each character to accomplish... but because they got red shirted by the rest of the group " for various reasons" the whole campaign goes askew... one example was a campaign where each character had a skill needed for the final story.. but a chance encounter with a mob only my character could damage lead to my guy being told by the party to hold off the enemy while they set to close the door again.. and instead of giving my guy time to get out of the way.. they just closed the door.. barred it and listened to my character die as i was overwhelmed.. turns out next corner they got overwhelmed by something else.. because again my guy was the only one who could have dmged the enemy... it killed the campaign for sure.. i also never gamed with that grp again.. because it wasnt the first time it happened.. and lets face it.. its not fun if you keep dying because the rest of the group forces their ranged support into melee...
Lol, in a group i used to play with whenever we were in a dungeon everyone refused to open doors, investigate anything or enter rooms first instead telling me to do it cause they were afraid of traps, i was literally the only one interacting with the game while they just followed me around tried to get kills and loot everything before i was done (got them injured a few times cause they ignored enemies). Except when i turned down gold or something for RP reasons (I played a cleric and in general only accepted small donations for my temple if we brought back bad news or failed in some way) then they'd try to talk to get the gold.
Thank you for pointing out that the GM is a player too! A lot of players don't seem to realize that everyone is there to have fun. That said, a lot of common problems in games are mostly or partially the GMs fault.
Put the whole Campaign in a Magical World.
Make one character take "Dispel Magic"
Wait for them to use it.
Only the Gandalf-esque Wizard Class in my game can try to Counter Spell magic at Level 13. But in regards to Disenchanting a more permanent spell effect then you'd need one of my Level 19 Gildarts-style Sorcerers instead...
ruclips.net/video/j81azhK5mGI/видео.html
The end of this video, where you're talking about extreme archetypes, reminded me of something my pastor told my fiancé and I during our premarital counseling: often our greatest weaknesses are our greatest strengths taken to the extreme. As someone who has been nearly every one of the archetypes at one time or another (and taken them to the extreme), I think there's a lot of truth in that.
for the character that wanted to be the general, and lead armies, but the DM tried to put him on the throne, that could work really well. you end up a terrible king who just wants to wage war, like robert baratheon, sounds like a fun arc to play. even if the end isnt perfect.
The inconsistent DM, the meta gaming DM, the cheating DM.
I had to drop a game because the players would argue like that and I dealt with it until they explained that they didnt see it as arguing, but thats just how they 'discuss'... nooooope
What I feel is breaking my game at my table is that I have two characters with Good ideals while the other 4 are just neutral, and thus they keep dragging other characters unwillingly into things.
That schrodringer's mimic t-shirt is very cool :D
Thomas Joychild
That it is :D
Our last game of Castles and Crusades was broken by accident. We were playing a group of fantasy adventurers exploring a section of a space ship, and this monster ran into a room marked radiation. In game we had ran across a room like that before so we knew not to go in or we would be sick, but it's a monster we have to kill it. So we ended up throwing some grenades we found on the ship into the room, and low and behold that was the ship's nuclear reactor. The entire ship blew up with us barley managing to escape. We barley managed to get a safe distance away. Our DM was so annoyed, but in game we did't know. We even offered to just pretend that didn't happen, but he insisted that we just move on.
the easiest way to put my off my own character is by the DM saying "your character does this" or "thinks this" or even "your alignment will be changed to neutral evil if you kill this guy" (the guy was a surrendered and badly maimed cultist who we just ended a battle with. If anything it would have been a mercy killing, especially since my character never considered death as anything more than traversing to a different world).
What breaks my game is that my players are too competent. They always find a way out and kill the big bad. That was until I found out that having a large and I mean large group of enemies were too much for them. I was also able to beat them with a simple puzzle. A puzzles where the answer was written on a stone slab in the room but no one wanted to read it.
I do wonder why are you trying to beat your players? If that is the style you and your players enjoy each to their own.
At our table we prefer to focus on the shared narrative that we are creating.
I find moral dilemmas to be one of the most effective foils to players in my games. Forcing their characters moments of introspection that leads to character growth.
Nerdarchist Dave
@@Nerdarchy that the thing, I wasn’t trying to beat them. They just really sucked at solving the puzzle.
Played in a game where "players just wanted to have fun". The DM and me were the only ones taking the game at all seriously while the other players did things with no regard to the consequences or what impact it might have on other players. Case and point, the bard (supposed to be chaotic good) casting shatter inside a customs office because they were making him fill out paperwork to get back his cart. I dropped out of that after the sessions where the DM got sick enough of their shit to put us in an encounter we had no chance in, in an attempt to wipe the party.
Now though I feel I'm super lucky. I started DMing and my first long-term group is a phenomenal group of players. The few times we've had disagreements they were quickly cleared up within that session and by the next week it was if nothing had happened. Even crazier, this was a group of mostly strangers put together from an online community; it's damn near a miracle it's worked out so well.
Most of the time, I run into the 'players just want to have fun' problem. People aren't really interested, they just want to jump in and do stuff. The lack of a video game on a tv screen and such has the players glued to their smart phones rather than being invested and engaged. Sadly, this even happens when I'm merely going over character creation.
I tend to like a blend of sandbox and story. I give the players plot hooks, and they can choose whether or not to follow them. Plots advance depending on what they do. For instance, a dragon one of the players had a bounty for (because it had attacked a town) had gotten trapped in Barovia before the players had gone there. When they did visit Barovia they met the dragon but were too afraid to fight it, so after they defeated Strahd it left Barovia and went back to its previous plot. When the players left Barovia and discovered what was going on they could have ignored it further but they decided to go and help the NPCs that are trying to figure out what's going on. Had they killed the dragon in Barovia they would have had six months of downtime at their castle where they could pursue whatever they wanted in relative peace.
Player playing a special race because they asked and others happened a LOT in my last group...
Squirrel Games i played an orc recently, but i played it only in name really. otherwise, was the same as a half-orc :D (5th ed)
Something that can ruin a DnD game from my perspective.....Deck of Many Things :)
Stephen Foerster a smart gm would only introduce that if they are ok with the campaign ending
Critical Role used the Deck of Many Things, the GM (Matt Mercer) even gave the thing to the dumbest member of the party, "Grog Strongjaw" (Travis Willingham), a Goliath Barbarian with an INT score of SIX. Not only did it not destroy the game, it made for some awesome moments....like when Grog pulled the "Knight" card during a fight with a Black Dragon.
Knight (level 4): "My life for Strongjaw!"
Grog: "Kill the Dragon."
Knight: "....Dragon?!"
helicopter DM - have only seen it once or twice. i just started my first DM attempt - trying to avoid this type of thing(railroading, etc). i guess i kinda did the thing where you have "favorites" in the opening, but i set it up as the following - you have 3 bodyguards, 2 traveling clerics, and 3 merchants in a caravan all led by the same person. when they get to the town,they get attacked, but the town guard show up before they can be killed. a member of an organization see's potential in them(they took a blow to the back of the head that should have had them seeing starts for hours, and got up within a few minutes). so he pays to get them trained in combat, and equipped. at this point, they more or less have the same gear(in terms of tier, not exact same items. the rogues arent wearing chainmail).
i HAVE been on the other end of that as a player, where i just sit and spin. at the end of the campaign, right after the final fight(before healing could start) me and the other caster in the group(this was HIGHLY premeditated) cast meteor storm(9th level spell) or something like that on the group from the sky, so they each took 80D6 of damage (40d6 bludgeoning, 40d6 fire). that dropped most of the group(including the main one i had an issue with) but the fighter was alive, but without a ranged weapon or way to outrun us, he wasn't a problem. you can bet the group got pissed, but they had constantly been overruling me on pretty much everything, and their characters had also been excessively rude to the one other caster in the group(my character was cool with him, casters gotta stick together!). combine that with they went out of their way to piss off my deity, and actually destroyed their physical manifestation, yea i don't regret the decision. the DM actually had other gods(in a world where most gods were dormant, i question consistency) intervene, so i call helicopter DM.
im REALLY hoping i dont have this issue, but hopefully the links in the chain i have set up can keep them in line. they seemed to take the plot hook pretty well(they know the leader of the group that attacked them, which are all members of the thieves guild). i have had members of the group that i was in do this, and the one time i stopped showing up to a campaign was a direct result of this.
i will say i was, at one point this guy to an extent(my character was neutral evil with a sharp tongue, but a really short temper), but i pretty quickly reached out to the DM and asked if i could change an aspect of my characters flaws(temper) by narrowing it to be specifically being triggered by anti-drow comments, which he was fine with(he isn't a fan of PVP anyway), which the group was pretty careful to avoid(i told them specifically what could set my character off from an out-of-game standpoint, and they avoided it ingame. ok, yea its metagaming on some level, but it would have been made clear when i conjured(my shadow manifested as equipment etc) an axe and cut a guys table in half over a comment about my character(keep in mind, drow hold females as strictly better than males) being caged up and putting me with a male drow keeper. this guy turned out to be a centaur who attacked, and i pummeled(with help from the groups barbarian) him within an inch of his life.
thunderdome - thankfully haven't seen much of this one - typically any questions on the rules are pretty easily resolved, but partially because both sides acknowledge that they may not remember something fully, and check the book. occasionally the DM steps in and overrules it. the only time this came into play a bit was a character i had with another one(coincidentally the one that was the "leader" of the group that i dropped a meteor on) but im not entirely sure it qualifies. my character turned on the player(who had been replaced with doppleganger, i knew this in game, but the group didnt) when she realized he had just completed "R" the doppleganger was a serial killer who killed in alphabetical order. well, my characters name started with "S", and i was isolated. so i started attacking him. my character tried to explain it in game, but the group attacked me, even with it making some sense in game. i feel like at some level i was targetted out of game, because i tend to "homebrew" characters, which some people were not a massive fan of. in my case, i specifically avoid trying to make anything broken, and often would preemptively weaken anything i thought could be overbearing. the line between strong and overpowered is narrow, especially in 4e homebrewing. so at some level, i feel like that character getting killed off, especially as early on in the story as it was, was directed more at me than the character. i still homebrew characters, and no others have had issues with the group ganging up on them in a 5 or 6v1, it was just that one instance, but it still felt like it was directed at me more than my character.
i will admit, i am often a maxer, i try to build my characters to be as good as possible at what they are supposed to do, but i also try not to make anything overbearing, unless it is something minor. for example, if i make a character who is really, really good at something like history, im less hesitant to let it keep that. but if i make a character like my Dark Vanguard, who can dish solid damage, has limited lifestealing capabilities, and can take a decent hit, i also made sure nothing was overbearing. my damage was good, but not as good as our barbarians(half my physical and necrotic damage went into a pool that i could drain to heal myself or add force damage to my damage). my lifestealing could keep me rolling for a little while, but it couldn't beat out a cleric at your back. it gave me a nice fallback, but that fallback only worked if you had a team with you. if you take damage that would reduce you below 1 HP, prevent it, set your life total equal to the pools level, then drain the pool. you drop into an invulnerable(within reason) state, where you cannot be targeted or damaged. this state ends on your turn. your pool is completely disabled until your next long rest, and you can only make up to two actions per round(one move action, where your movement speed is halved, and one other action). you also cannot sustain spells, so your defense gets weakened as well. so you cheat death for that turn, but after that, you have to end the fight within a round or two or you will still die(your pools maximum is 6 times your level in vanguard, so at best you are around half health). my maximum health was also a d8 as opposed to most tanks d10 or 12, so i am also weaker if they were able to lay down high damage quickly. overall, the character i feel was successful, the ability kit did what it was supposed to, to its full extent, without ever feeling overbearing. for example, my healing pool only once bailed me out of a bad situation, and that was me taking a single massive hit(50-ish psychic damage at level 6, the DM had us all assume we rolled our max hit dice, so i had around 70 max hp with constitution modifiers. ). this did its job, in that it got me past that one hit, and i was able to get out of the area to the rest of the group. the DM allowed me to maintain concentration on a set of shadow barriers that i was deploying to protect the group from a wave of void creatures(when our metal roc took off with the group on it and the dwarf grabbing me as a passed out, there were enough of them to try to follow us world war Z style, without a wall or anything to climb up), though to be fair, he did also have my character fall into a week long comatose state, exhaustion level 5, and one hit point. he could have easily killed the group there too though.
that said, having at least one of every three-ish players being a maxer is good, because it means that, if all else fails, you still have an ace in the hole. for the campaign i just finished up in, that ace was our barbarian, and after my vanguard died, my healer(as a 10th level character, i healed our barbarian for at least 200 damage, and probably at least another 300 across the rest of the group, where nobody's life total was higher than 150. by the end of the fight i was running out of tricks and half the group was dying, but we didn't lose anyone.) having a healer who can do that much work in a sustained fight is always good, but i also am under no illusion that i could have pulled the group through if we didn't have the barbarian dishing out heavy hits constantly, and the ranger keeping any spirits he summoned down(they had 1 hp, and low defenses, but could still hit reasonably hard)
All of my tabletop friends are fencers (that's actually where we all met) and we treat the DM as we would a fencing judge. What he says goes and though they're limits to what he can do the DM has final say over things. You can bring it up to him and he may change it or look out for it next time but ultimately we try to keep the game going.
players just want to have fun is literally the biggest issue i have as a dm because there are a few players who start to act ridicules and when they start doing that everyone seems to follow suite and slowly become more and more silly until everyone is completely out of character and ignoring all consequences then getting mad when i don't want them to do that
For the issue of wandering monster syndrome I like what storm kings thunder does where the game has you pick one of a handful of giants to go after and complete related quests until you defeat the big bad. After that there's still room to go after the other giant lords to stop their machinations cause some of the Giants want to basically crush humanity and enslave them but others are doing less malignant things but still bad enough to maybe want to stop
On burn out: I started playing D&D at 14. (as the DM) This was 1982. I ran games until 2012. I totally burned out. I haven't even picked up a die since. I remember one game where the party was evilly aligned and absolutely would not cooperate. It ended up being 6 separate solo adventures. (Though no one even so much as raised their voices, much less attempted physical violence)
I almost cried watching this video, realizing just how bad and abusive my very first DND GM was. I thought I was having fun and doing well but all of the things you mentioned... yes, all of them, started to creep into the game and every Saturday was like work, the sort you don't look forward to. I made it to the end of the campaign but I don't think I will ever be able to be friends with those people again, let alone game with them.
1) Helicopter GM: Would change the rules of the encounter to make it so our character's abilities would not work
2) Players Just Wanna Have Fun: GM's best friend was given all the artifacts and the entire story arc was about them.
3) Wandering Monster Syndrome: we had the opposite of this rather, the entire thing was on rails and there was zero room for deviation
4) Players Entering Thunder Dome Madness: I played a goblin opposite the GM's best friend who was a dwarf and used every single opportunity available to trash my character because "it's what my character would do, he hates goblins", it got to be a bit much
5) Game Extremist: we argued over rules a lot but we also got overruled constantly, see #1, where our opinions or wants for the game didn't really matter to the GM
For what the "breaks a campaign" question goes:
I will mention:
6) Yahtzee-Chess
I have seen "Yahtzee-Chess" a huge amount of times, it is strange in that it BREAKS the campaign, but often it do not DESTROY the campaign, but instead it leave behind a "Zombie Campaign".
OK, definition of some terms I use:
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"Zombie Campaign":
A campaign that continue despite everything in it is DEAD! Role play is dead, the story line is dead, the world is dead...
... and ... the brain activity among the players are dead! ... I think that is the reason to why the zombie move on: It can not figure out it is dead. (No brain => No pain!)
Warning:
Do not spend too much time along a Zombie Campaign as it will eventually eat your brain!!!
Yes, zombie disease is infectious and can spread to other campaigns!
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"Yahtzee-Chess":
A game that have similarities with both:
Chess (Moving pieces at a board. Two sides: The one have to defeat the other.)
And:
Yahtzee (Rolling dice, and then combine the dice rolls to get a higher score as the highest score wins.)
Yahtzee-Chess often look like this:
Players are arranged around the table.
At the table is the Yahtzee-Chess-board, usually squares or hexagons. Sometimes with drawings on it to show how the Yahtzee-Chess-pieces can move.
The Yahtzee-Chess-pieces are usually moved in turns. Each Yahtzee-Chess-player take their turn in some defined turn order. (The Chess part of the game.)
A Yahtzee-Chess-piece is often made of metal, sometimes plastic, some of them are painted. Often coins or dice are used in lack of more dedicated pieces.
After a Yahtzee-Chess-piece is moved; dice are rolled, and if the combined score is high enough, then the defeated piece is removed from the board. (The Yahtzee part of the game.)
There are two teams, usually called "PCs" and "NPCs".
Yahtzee-Chess is not a game betting companies will deal with as the outcome is always: "PCs" wins and "NPCs" looses.
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To detect a Yahtzee-Chess playing Zombie Campaign is so simple that you do not even need to see it (eyes)! Listening (ears) can be enough: The characteristic 'reanimate zombie chant' is enough:
"WAKE UP! IT'S YOUR TURN!!!".
With helicopter GMing, I had a character, low level mage from the shadow plane, who just wanted to go home. The GM Removed every single spell from the system that had to do with planar travel, I had no choice but to make a new character halfway through the game when I realized that not only could I not find the spell, but I couldn't even learn it naturally via leveling up.
hard railing roading mixed with minimal allowance for roleplaying has been causing some serious issues with a group i play with.
current game was about 12 people instill the last split (open game at a game store). it would split when it got too big and then more people would join. the last split happened when one character died to a hoard of ghouls and as we were running away out druid [in wolf form] grabbed his leg and started running with it. this prompted our CE bard to run towards the body (still not sure what he was going to do). our LG Paladin (who served the now dead guy) got all up in arms saying he Is guy would not allow it and would fight anyone trying anything.
this eventually led to the orcs (who controlled the ghouls) to start shooting at the pally that is now guarding the dead pile of mess that was his sovern. but the argument at that point took up too much game time when the gm could have made the ruling of.. Bard doesn't think to do that because of the hoards attacking and pally has no thought to save his sovern due to the puddle being un-savable. now the pally is dead and we had 3-4 people drop the next week. [retrospectively we have had a great group of 6-7 people since so this ended up really great for us. but 3-4 people left not having enjoyed themselves]
I have a player that always wants to feel super powerful and it's ultra frustrating sometimes.
The main reason I can not find a group locally to play with is everyone seems to be finding ways to min/max and then tell the DM how their character is an exception to what ever is happening. A BIG PART of them seem to want to play PF for this reason, they can mix/max all kinds of splat that make them question every detail in a game and then say how they break it. "You are tied up with iron bindings, unconscious and taking damage with squirming motion." player-My character grinds his teeth in his sleep and would likely bite through his mouth bindings and then cast a spell to his god.
The first campaign I was ever in was a thunder dome type of situation that not only ended the game but the friendships. Some of the players were upset about the rogue pickpocketing. But instead of having an out of game conversation with that player they teamed up against the character in game and then out of game one of the players (who was drunk at the time) began to yell at that player. Needless to say the group imploded imediately.
I once had a player who ruled the party with an iron mouth. If you weren't playing your character "properly" or didn't agree with his plan of action he would yell and argue for usually an hour. He would even yell at me(the DM) if he couldn't do something that was impossible even though I gave him the chance to roll to do it.I eventually had to ask him to leave and make a new homebrew setting.
My first Star Wars: Edge of the Empire game quickly broke down into "players just wanna have fun" with us bouncing around in silly antics, while I wind up asking myself "why are these people staying together?"
When I got to thunder dome madness, I couldn't help but realize that in our group we have the RP guy, the power player, and I'm the stat min-maxer. We also have the other guy who is just like wtf is wrong with you people. The gm roles with it, but when the power player acid arrows the beholder we are hiding from at level 5 I'm the one that gets petrified...(for those who ask we won because of experienced players knowing how to fight a beholder)
Thanks for all the advice on how to break my D&D game, can't wait to give some of these things a shot
I have one friend at the table who is the definition of power gamer. All he does the whole day is surfing through d&d rules finding the most OP class, spells etc. And there has been an argument when his character murdered another member of the team because the victim was responsable of letting one of his soldiers to die. He then revived the man with spare the dying cantrip and the dust settled. However they still try to fuck each other up and not helping one another. It is not a disaster but it may have become. How can I as a DM fix this problem?
Pathfinder here. So I might have told this tale before, but I use to play with a group in fayettevile and it being a small town only has 1 group. So in this group we had a lot of player types. We had the rules lawyer who always played type. He said he didn't because his dwarf would use a stone axe instead of a metal one. We also had a snow flake who always played something weird. His first character was a female sentient anthropomorphic unicorn. The two hated each other with a passion. So the third game the lawyer ran. He built a map, he built his own race that everyone had to play. He limited it to 5 classes each was an archetype, you couldn't play druid you had to play storm druid. Honestly it was the best and worst game I have ever been in. The emmersion was good, but he wanted me to play thor and I was trying to play marv. Any way so third session in we come to a house and were fighting a witch and her minions and the snow flake decides to light the witches house on fire where all the plot hooks were. The lawyer threw up his papers and left. I think the game was salvageable but not to a person with such a OCD personality.
My party in our current session is split up because two of us escaped an encounter through a hidden door. The other 3 people were trying to get loot from a well (that there was no loot in)
Best way to destroy a campaign? Give all the players cocaine 5 mins before starting, the DM will quit after attempting to keep the players focused and never speak of that day ever again. True story
In the beginning of 5e, I (the dm) was handing out magic items similarly to how I did it in AD&D. That grossly overpowered the PC's. My mistake. I was losing the fun of playing due to MY mistake. We eventually narrated character levels to bring them from around Level 7, to 10, to 15 in narrated jumps. Their magic items now helped without ruling the day. The campaign ended fun for everyone!
Had the 'want to have fun' thing happen in my very first game I ever played. Players meet a small group of soldiers and a couple of wounded survivors in the woods on the way to a cave. Everyone else was trying to progress the story, trying to dig in for some serious information they had. But had that one guy, his exact words were "I pull my sword and stab the wounded man in the neck". Needless to say it caused havoc between my players, nearly a full hour of everyone arguing with him. The game just crashed after that, haven't met back up since because that one guy.
Attendance, scheduling, holidays, and communication. Attendance--straight forward if people don't show up on a consistent basis it ruins everything, Scheduling--finding a time when everyone can play and then sticking with it. That's major. If you play bi-weekly schedule...one no shows...you may not play in a month...Holidays--long breaks kill momentum. As a school teacher it happens to me throughout the year. Communication--none of these problems would be so bad if the players would let everyone know. Most of my Roll *20 players just disappeared at one point or another without explanation and never came back--not all at one time mind you--rather dropping off a player at a time with no discernible pattern. I find this happens more with online groups, but sometimes that's the only way available to play.
Thanks for sharing! Great discussion. I had a player which was one of the above you mentioned. A prima donna type who always has to be the star, AND a rules lawyer and Min Maxer all in one. The game naturally died. I just gave the other player more friends because that's who the NPC's just gravitate towards? And the other player secretly has fun because he knows the prima donna player is getting synchophants in his entourage. There is one thieving NPC who just sucks up to the star player and he had no clue at all this guy was leeching off resources and money from him (the NPC always offers to sell items for the star PC --but he always skims off the top before giving the PC his money for example). There was a little bit of player vs player there? The other player just got his kicks by NOT telling the overbearing player that he has a mole among his followers (both of them have followers). Anyway, the game did not die. We are still playing it today. The Min Maxer just moved on to other things. I think he got too aggravated by one NPC whom he found really annoying. His character is rather easy to troll and that NPC happened to be an enemy that the other player was trying to convert and turn "good". So I wasn't out to get him specifically. It just so happened that way that one time.
perhaps worth mentioning is players that come into the game later and use a different system for generating their stats. Either the DM forgot how every one started, or it's just not that important. What happened is a player had such an issue with that they quit this particular campaign (so far). It just so happens that there are vastly different PC's in the party with very different stats, we don't know each other too well and decided it was better to just roll with it. We all did what we wanted with the DM's permission in order to create some creative and not overpowered PC's. In fact the PC that has overpowered ability scores has them b/ c he was so new that he made a mistake and then the rest of the players laughed it off. What's interesting is that the player that quit had already played with that overpowered stat player without complaint. It was only when another player entered the game that his issue came out.
It just goes to show that being rigid and quitting before you even start (at level 4) is probably more harm to yourself and doing the rest of the players a favor. The game is not a competition
be great to see more of this. was very informing and eye opening.
I had literally all five of these happen at different times throughout the first game where I was playing a character.
Forced role play (and lack of compromise) is what did it for my group. As it goes, I was not the DM for a change. The DM at the time had never done so before and it was literally his first day. A couple encounters in, he asked for some simple backstory. I handed him a paragraph giving the short version of my character as did another player. Another handed a single sentence along the line of "parents dead. Need monies." One was even literally "super amnesia" written on a notecard. The last player though was oddly self-consious about the fluff and outright refused. The DM asked for even a single sentence and showed the other two I mentioned above. Again, the player refused. The DM said we wouldn't continue until he got at least something. The player said "guess I'm done playing then." and proceeded to pull out his phone and browse the Internet. The DM packed up and left. The player's wife started crying and apologizing for him. The player also left shortly after (the wife stayed and kept apologizing). I think we played one very unfulfilling round of munchkins between the remaining 4 of us. Literally haven't played an RPG since then.
List of Campaign Destroyers, for your convenience:
1. _Helicopter GM_ - Overbearing/Micromanaging GM, whether it be they control all of the players, or just control one character. They want to control all the actions, and re-invent your character, so they fit in to their vision (ex. "By the way, you're now a prince in this story. Congrats!"). Invokes favoritism for one or some players over others. The problem with this is it puts the other players in the backseat of the action, where they feel like their choices are irrelevant. It breaks one of the most important rules of D&D: It doesn't allow the players to have fun within the setting and story.
2. _Players wanna have fun_ - Ironic to follow up with this. Game derailment. This describes characters who break theme and character just to do whatever they want. Players take advantage of a system, or do things they're not allowed to within the rules of D&D. Usually re-enforced by a poor GM who doesn't impose consequence.
3. _Wandering Monster Syndrome_ - Lose interest in an invested campaign, and instead do something else. Loss of direction. Usually due to boredom in said campaign. This is more an issue IRL than in a campaign, where people neglect a campaign and put off starting it again. GM burnout. Usually occurs when a poor GM isn't able to keep the campaign interesting or fresh, and so it's ended abruptly.
4. _Player Thunder Dome Madness_ - Conflict between players. This is when one or more players argue with one another, either over rules, plot, or even some sort of IRL conflict brought in to the campaign. This is usually the result of over-inflated egos who bash heads. It's reinforced by a poor GM who doesn't make quick decisions involving rules or resolving conflicts. Resolved via effective communication.
5. _Game Extremist_ - Extremism applied to various factors. Rules Lawyer (someone who halts the natural flow of a campaign by arguing rules for D&D, usually to gain some sort of benefit in doing so) who argues to such a degree, they refuse to allow any progress unless their complaints are met. Power Players ( spotlight hog, someone who either creates their character, or take extreme actions, to ensure their character is the absolute best) who devastate a game by being overpowered and preventing any outside player interaction. IRL player, who just by the grace of their personality is unlikable and overbearing. Meta Gamer (someone who, due to their IRL knowledge of certain events or creatures in a game, make decisions their character otherwise wouldn't...or even be able to predict via their in game knowledge...so as to prevent the negative consequence of said event) who prevent variety or fun via game interference. Usually the result of a poor GM who doesn't establish rules and the overall tone of etiquette or how the game will flow.
So pretty much, how do you guarantee the destruction of a campaign?
Be a shitty GM.
I have been alot of these, I've been described as being dangerously in character and have had characters quit the party when my character had no reason to stay with a bunch of things who stole from her and were generally unpleasant to her. I only needed one reason.
I also had a moment in the same game where I literally blew up at the favoritism and thaty character was basically mind controlled between sessions by another player (combined with a deep fear of loss of control and her worldview being shattered by another revalation). She snapped and got revenge in my first (deliberate) pvp kill (mind control in my ad&d days don't count)
what ends up breaking my games is probly mostly my fault as DM. i tend to give alot of leeway in the vein of "if you can adequately explain what you want to do, and how your going to do it, i'll usually let it go" since i love people finding creative solutions, however it inevitably backfires and the players end up getting upset and really breaking the fun and immersion when they want to do something, and its not possible. was running a starfinder game and the party was assulting a large military compound (just the 4 of them) head on. i did everything i could think of to show them that this is not a fight they could win straight up, trying to nudge them over into finding a more creative path. however they proceeded to try and cheese the setting by staying out of range of the enemies and just firing wildly at the walls. once they realized that wouldnt work, they just went the other way, going right up to the wall, and then trying to fight that way. even after drawing pictures and showing them exactly what the situation was (the enemies were up on the battlements and effectively taking cover behind a wall (standard tactics i'd say...) one of the players started throwing a tantrum and just gave up on the session because "i wouldnt let him do anything." it had been building up to this over some time, but this was the part that just ended the whole game, and the group as well.
I think a lot of times the whole "players just wanna have fun" comes not just from new DMs but new players who cover up their embarrassment with roleplaying by acting absurd. I've seen this happen a few times, where a newbie doesn't feel comfortable and goes over the top crazy from a guy who decided the best way to solve problems was "I just eat everything!" to a group of newbies that decided they needed to kill and then pee on everyone they met to avoid scary roleplaying. It makes an interesting question of how to introduce newbies to the hobby in a way that makes them feel comfortable.
Why would anyone insist on a half-dragon in 5th edition when you have Dragonborn in the player's handbook as one of the basic playable races?
LOL, meaning that enough half dragons got together to breed their own race.
I had a campaign where the DM decided to completely remove the alignment system because he felt it restricted character personality too much. This campaign ended when the paladin of our group decided that he wanted to commit mass genocide on a city of innocents just because he was bored. Most of our party agreed with the decision but three of us were against it since it directly violated the character arcs of two of us. My character was traumatized by having to watch his entire home village slaughter itself when he was a child and the other character was an ex-minion of the main villain, looking for retribution for her past evil deeds. She and I said that genocide was against our characters so much that we would betray the party if they started killing innocents and that if our characters died we would quit. This is where the DM decided to just end the campaign.
My question is who all is at fault here? Was it the two of us who were against it because it violated the very identity of our characters? Were we being too stubborn? Was it the paladin who wanted to do what goes against the very concept of a paladin just because he was bored of roleplaying and just wanted to fight things? Or was it the DM who gutted the entire alignment system from the game and then was too hands off to tell us we can't make such decisions?
I know I rules lawyered this, but all my arguments were met with "you're taking D&D way too seriously. It's just a game. The rules in the book are only guidelines. You don't have to have all of them in every campaign." I was told the campaign's tone was going to be semi-serious before I joined, meaning it was going to be serious with lighthearted moments throughout.
The Paladin was wrong for doing something so obviously out of character, and the DM was in the wrong for letting it get to that point in the first place. Yes, D&D is just a game, but the game they were playing was obviously not the game you signed up for, and it's perfectly fine for you to get annoyed at that.
we had one guy who would just sit on his phone and barely understood how to play his barbarian, and another guy at the same time our eldritch knight who was up till 3 in the morning every night playing rainbow 6 siege when he had to be at work at 8 so he would literally be falling asleep at the table. It ended up being me playing a cleric that i only played because everyone else was kinda new and the dm told me that we would probably need one and my friend playing a wild magic sorcerer that kept getting more and more ridiculous to the point that he was begging me to just let him die because he had hit the ceiling with the character and just didn't know how to play him anymore and already had a new character made up. im now playing a 8'6 goliath arcane trickster with awful stats but some how i'm consistently rolling really well on all of my ability checks and almost max damage on every attack. i am much happier now.
Our group has a unique problem, Every player wants to DM. Some are more experienced, some are not. But on a good week we have 5 players at the table, our entire group is upwards of 11. And all of them want to DM,
this leads to out of character conflict about who wants to run what, and to make things little more aggravating, those with the least experience want to run games the most. Watching out suggests in creating a dynamic and enjoyable world gives them motivation to express theirs!
Full-time Player, Part-time GM
I Hate Helicopter GMs, that show favoritism, have a vague idea of what they want to play, with mid-MAXers galore, in a Thunderdome environment
This one is essentially all the bad things about GMs, catch 22, we do have fun and sometimes it gets a little too crazy that we have to stop and get the laughs out so we can continue
I like Matt Colville's alternative term for "power gamer". He calls them engineers, because the thing they derive their fun from is figuring out how game mechanics work and then pushing those mechanics to breaking point. The 11/10 version of this would be a "perfectionist". That engineer that stops anyone from doing anything until they are 100% sure that it 100% efficient. I love min-maxing, but i do try to not lose sight of the reasons for playing (though DMs do get annoyed when i find gaps in the rules that allow for outlandish extremes)
Hey, if anyone's out there, I have a quick sort-of 'problem'? I'm in my first campaign and my DM seems like he's basically pushing my character to be the main focus of the plot, being a Tiefling who is being pushed by my DM as the reincarnation of one of the big villain's commanders or something. I don't think it's really an issue, but I kind-of do want the other two players to be more involved in this and I feel a bit weird that my guy has so much plot focus.
Should I do something? Because this doesn't feel normal, but I'm not sure if it's a problem or if there's anything I should really do about this... or if I even can really do anything, I guess? It's just a situation I'm not really used to and any input would be great.
I'm currently a part of a campaign and am a Tiefling Warlock who chose to align with the Old Ones as the source of my magic, he was all fine with it until he suddenly decided he wanted to involve gods in the campaign which having these gods that his friends Paladin worshipped and believed in conflicted with mine so last time we met up we finished a big part of the story and I went to commune with the god that gave me my powers and he just yelled in my face "YOU CAN'T BECAUSE YOUR GOD DOESN'T EXIST" after letting it after so long months of us doing this campaign to suddenly tell me the source of my power is fake.
Or when the DM's SO is in the game... and they get ALL the things. On a slightly different note l, I was in one campaign where the DM asked for written back story. I was the only one who wrote one. He said privately "You're the only one who did this. So the campaign revolves around your character."
1) Bad player match-up's: We have one friend who is a rules lawyer who also tries to min/max to the point he honestly thinks it's both possible and acceptable to make a character at lvl 8 with multiple hundred strength. He's fine with the idea of having multiple special preexisting character traits, special diseases, and the like because he put it in his backstory. He can be okay if we talk him down and explain that it's simply not happening, no, never, stop. A girl that we play with is the spotlight hog who only cares about role play and is comfortable with leaving the group for multiple years in game to apprentice under a powerful npc, but will then keep coming to games and demanding equal attention to her half of the game. She can be handled if we tell her that she is ruining the game, and explain how that's too far. If they're together though, every time we try to explain something to one of them the other one chimes in just trying to get under their skin, and they'll both start pulling in the other direction, eventually refusing to accept anything less. They've both had to leave multiple campaigns, but they both keep acting like they can patch it up so they won't be the one left out of whatever next game we're starting.
2) Pre-made dungeons: some of our DM's use a few sites or their own pre-made dungeons, it's usually just when they're falling behind, or if the party has gone a bit off track and nothing was planned out but it's not bad enough for divine intervention. Unfortunately sometimes a DM gets bogged down for a couple months, or sometimes players just refuse to accept the standard story-line and keep taking the random sidequests that the DM only mentioned as a formality, so suddenly dungeons become very samey. Even when you change up the layout, the dungeons tend to hold the same theme's and general creatures.
3) Bad character match-up's: This happens A LOT. I know it happens to us all, but it seems like it's in all of our games. Some people make average characters and one or a couple players seem to think that because one in five fights gets close to killing someone, they need to become much stronger. The rest, however, just keep playing normal characters. So a hard fight for normal players is turned into a one or two turn encounter because someone is dealing enough damage to finish a mid, boss in one hit. So the DM beefs up the encounters and suddenly the normal players are effectively useless in some fights, and the min/max characters feel like now they have to get stronger faster. This was particularly bad once when the power character figured the party should try running more and stocked up on teleport items. He then killed everything before anybody else got their initiative, but when anything showed up that could feasibly kill him, or even take all his stuff, he'd hit it once or drop a trap, then leave everyone else with their pants around their ankles.
Some personal experiences I've had... GM was nerfing EVERYTHING in the game the players could have, even BASIC stuff from the regular source books! "it's nerf or nothing"? was more like "let's nerf TO nothing!".... or how about the GM that couldn't math, thinking "3d6" could get a higher number than "4d6, drop lowest 1"... which everyone had to do 3d6 for stats, except one player that had already rolled 4d6d1 for their stats... to anyone that thinks "3d6" is better... (you'll want a program for this...) roll 100d6 and drop the lowest 97 (keeping highest 3 of the d6).... I dare you to not roll perfect 18s.... (any ultra number crunchers know the statistics of it? I'm curious)
He thought that 3d6 is higher than 4d6 drop lowest? That's a special kind of stupid right there.
Your question is deceptively easy. TL;DR, the probability of NOT rolling 18 on a single roll is 100% * (1/6)^98, which approximates to 5.51*10^(-75)% chance. Rolling perfect 18s is a chance of 100% * (1 - (1/6)^98)^6, which every calculator I own approximates to 100%. [EDIT: VERY WRONG. See below for correct numbers]
*[Explanation deleted for being very very wrong]*
I can't give reasons as to WHY any of this is true, statistics is not my forte [AIN'T THAT THE TRUTH]. It's counterintuitive and the schools I've been to never taught anything of much use within that sphere. I've just done this type of calculation enough that I can work out simple problems like this one.
Just for shits and giggles, I decided to check out how likely it would be for me to roll my entire d6 cube (it's actually a 3x3x4 box of d6, but all of my friends call it a d6 cube) and not roll 18 or perfect 18s. I have a 3.49*10^(-25)% chance to not roll 18 on any given try, and another effectively 100% (100% * (1 - (1/6)^34)^6) chance to not get a perfect array. [WRONG]
I really shouldn't try reading such things and attempt to understand them when it's over an hour and a half past when it's my pass out time... but thanks for running some numbers on it, I just wanted to know how hard I should laugh at them... with what you said, I shouldn't, cause I'd likely be unable to breath again.
Perhaps a way to explain 4d6 drop lowest vs 3d6 is to do a comparison.
Roll 3d6 dice, then allow them to see the total. Then roll another die, and say you can either have the 3d6, or swap any die with the new one. Seeing it in this format might help them to see they certainly can't do any worse - it's just an extra option.
Careful just using stats to explain things - people don't like to argue with things they can't understand intuitively, so help them understand it intuitively!
I just looked at my math again and it looks like I made an error: I found the probability of rolling straight sixes on 98d6, not the probability of rolling anything but 6. The actual probability of not rolling a single perfect score is 1.739*10^(-6)% chance (which is still hilariously low), and the chance of not rolling straight 18s is 1.0433*10^(-5)%.
The chance of not rolling 18 on any given try with an entire d6 box is 0.14% and the chance of not rolling straight 18s is 0.84%.
In my defense, I was tired and statistics is weird. I'm deleting my explanation in the previous post because I don't feel like editing it to be correct, nor do I trust myself to give an accurate and comprehensible explanation.
That's fine, just wanted a rough chance percentage odds, you've done more than enough, thanks.
One player said they eat gnome babies. With the rest of the party being good aligned you can see how that would be a problem. Had to stop the arguments by bringing out a deck of many things and told them that whoever mentions eating gnome babies had to draw 10 cards at minimum. I was actually expecting one of them to do it but no one wanted any of the bad things in the deck of many things.
I've played with a few people who were practically mute the whole game unless the GM asked them direct questions. They had no input, no ideas, no preferences even when the subplot might be about their character. They were player character NPC's and dull as hell.
Gameplay lawyer GMs that, when you ask "I want to do this but there are no mechanics for it in the book, how do you think I should go about this," they simply shoot down the idea entirely almost as if it's, for example, World of Warcraft and it's impossible to dual wield before learning the skill.
Like, I love when I'm playing a character with a sword, I encounter a full plate-armored opponent and I'm able to work with the GM on the benefits and drawbacks that would take place if I were to half-sword my weapon and use the pummel as a mace. Rather than the GM saying, "Nope, the game doesn't support that so you can't," he/she says, "sure, that'll make it easier to damage him but remove your bonus to hit and we'll subtract four damage from the total."
My personal biggest complaint right now is that our DM will ignore my ideas of thinking outside the box. Simple things such as "I want to look around. I want to learn more about where I am what's going on. I want to try to figure the puzzle out without fighting every time." They then go straight into, "You walk up to the dwarves and they pull their swords out. Roll for initiative." .. I'm thinking.. I didn't want to walk up to the dwarves. I didn't want to interact with them at all yet. Once in a while, I'm cool with that. Sometimes it's unavoidable, but it should be every single time. I like playing a campaign not a straight up arena.
a recent game i played as an orc. DM allowed me, but it was basically only in name and physical appearence for i was still playing it as a half-orc.
in a recent game I was playing with someone that min maxed a dwarven cleric to be a buff/summoning cleric. in just a turn or 2 at 3rd lol he was able to basicly fight a half scale war on his own and took the fun out for not only me as a player but for the DM as well to the point where he didn't want to finish or really even start his story arc. I still wanna know what was about to happen..
Good episode guys! These are all things any group should definitely watch out for.
I'm having issues with my DM, which is my brother. He's very restrictive on what I can do an play, and is like that only for me. "You can't play Aasimar. You can't play Warlock. You can't play Blood Hunter. He's literally not letting me play anything I find fun. I'd like to ruin his game with my current character, but there's other people in the game and I can't ruin it for everyone.
Have a helicopter dm at the moment. Keeps fudging the rolls to cause things to happen. A player critically failed a spell cast but the dm had it kill of several enemies at the same time. We weren't even trying to save them.