That last story would have just brought out the troll in me so fast. DM: "You heard growling in the woods." Me: "Well, I'm a Neanderthal, I don't know what growling is. I read that in a book. So I keep going." DM: "A wolf appears and attacks you." Me: "Well, I'm a Neanderthal, I don't know what being attacked is. I read that in a book. So I keep going." DM: "The wolf rips out your throat." Me: "That's fine. I don't know what throats are." DM: "You wake up back at camp missing your legs." Me: "No worries! What are legs? I dunno, I'm a Neanderthal! I'll walk out of the camp again. On the way out I'll take my FORGED METAL KNIFE and stab that weird hot stuff in the campfire pit. And kill it, too, because I'm a Neanderthal and I don't know what fire is or that you can't kill it with a metal knife."
The neanderthals one is strange because I'm pretty sure they have people who were hunters, trackers, healers and other skills otherwise the human race wouldn't exist.
Well, do know that neanderthals were NOT our ancestors. They were our evolutionary cousins. SOME humans today MAY have 2-4% neanderthal DNA in them (cross-mating with H. Sapiens), but they weren't our ancestors.
Right Also DM says that OP is a SHAMAN meaning THESE Neanderthals have developed enough to where they have a trip and a designated healer. I think tracking, a panic animal instinct would be easy for them.
The third story just hurts my brain hearing about the DM deny fire and spears despite the fact that they have steel (which means they must have some knowledge of tools and some way to smelt/harvest the steel). What's even the point of the game if you're not even going to have anything happen? Just sit around the (stolen) camp fire all day?
The last one infuriates me because I love the idea of prehistoric campaign, and this DM doesn't have any idea about the stone age outside of just "caveman go oogah boogah"
Oh please. That DM would have told you Neanderthals don't speak as it would never have occurred to them to speak. And then had you roll for... something, tell you you failed the... whatever it was supposed to be; then describe how you are told by the other Neanderthals about something... but you understand them perfectly and can speak back to them... unless you ask to speak to them, at which point it would not occur to you to do so. The more I think about it the more I am convinced this DM was hovering above the peak of Mount Stupid.
I agree with you there, I'm thinking about being a DM myself in the future and one of the ideas I had is a prehistoric campaign. Hearing how this particular DM messed it up badly and how he claimed to have read about Neanderthals in a book, along with somehow claiming the OP's character survived after their throat was ripped out, makes me feel more determined to try to do a better job then he ever did, along with some more exciting things.
"My opinion from the top of Mount Stupid is supported by the book I read that doesn't exist. So your actual knowledge of the subject is wrong." -The DM from the Rail Station story. Honestly, if this went on longer I am positive this DM would have said how the Neanderthals couldn't eat berries from a bush they walked by as "that would never occur to them!".
As someone who also likes learning about prehistoric biota, I ALSO agree with your rage quitting. Neanderthals weren't "boneheads". They could track, make tools, use fire, patch up wounds, and supposedly had their own spiritualism (they burried their dead, too, afaik). "Peter" is an ignorant know-nothing know-it-all.
This reminds me of a really cool paper I read once that posited that Neanderthals didn't exactly die out as breed and integrate into other proto human species until they were no longer distinct. It said that other species migrating into their territories would have had an almost ethereal and otherworldly beauty, and that uh... nature may have taken its course. And that the genetic memory of this occurrence persists today in our fantasizing about elves and other non-human fetishizations. Can't for the life of me remember what it was called, I found it on JSTOR while I was supposed to be researching something completely different. And let me be clear, it was not a scientific study but more of a thought piece with a little bit of scientific support.
Even the book Clan of the Cave Bear gave Neanderthals the ability to make medicine, tools, hunt, and track (though not the ability to make fire, they just carried an ember from camp to camp). And the series was written before paleontologists dug up more evidence that Neanderthals had more complex societies and realized they stood upright.
I can't imagine what the dm for that neanderthal story was thinking. At least other rail roaders have stuff they want to show off with their stories. This guy held a captive audience for nothing to happen
That guy should have been told to stfu much sooner. Seriously, this mofo stonewall everything and thought they would have fun with it? Nah, dude. This guy deserves the lowest rating possible. 🖕
The only thing I can think of is a primitive human orgy considering how much the 14 year olds characters breasts were painstakingly described and labeled as "very distracting". Because literally everything in this story can be summarized as "You all got dumb empty monkey brain, but how about them boobas?"
@@blueboxy21 Hey now, comparing this moron to Neanderthals is a bit much.........An actual Neanderthal would have had the players playing a fun game before the first hour mark and not try to act like their smarter then everyone when their not!
That Final Story! Just WTF man! So the PCs aren’t smart enough, can’t make tools, can’t use Rocks, can’t forge weapons (yet one has a steel knife), while OP survives somehow after getting his throat ripped out and then patched (by who or what?), while his legs get ripped Off without explanation. All while Having to Make 200 stupid ability check rolls for invisible character sheets! Just F*** THIS DM/GM!!! I mean, this game sounds like it was helmed by an online troll! Dipping out to spare yourself sanity was definitely the best, and that Girl player knew she had to leave too. Good for her!
Yeah. That DM in Rail Station story read literally one book (I'm still not convinced he read any book at all) and went straight to the top of Mount Stupid.
This may be overly charitable of me, but I have a feeling Mr. "Read it in a book" was running some kind of "ontological mystery" type game, where the idea was for the players to figure out why they couldn't X, Y, Z, and then go "Hey, cool!" at the big reveal. The mysterious "book" that provides the DM's knowledge, odd technological discontinuities, etc. are all outright lies from the DM, who's banking on things making sense once the truth is uncovered. My guess, based on the evidence presented? The setting is 10,000 years ago, but the PCs are neither modern humans nor Neanderthals. They're domesticated wolves living in a human camp. Those "steel knives" are actually fangs. The campfire was made by the humans that lived in the camp. The PCs can't do anything that requires human brainpower because they don't have human minds. The enemy wolf "gave warning" because he didn't see a human threat, he saw a strange wolf trying to muscle in on his turf. Two problems with this: one, if you can't sell yourself as a DM who knows what they're doing, the players don't go looking for clues, they just assume you're incompetent. The second problem is that, once the players do figure it out, they're not guaranteed to think "Hey, cool!" for all you know, they could think "WTF?! I didn't sign up for a furry game! I'm out, !" Heard a story once that went similarly: DM advertised his game as a RPG sent in the real world of the present day, "with a twist". Midway through the first session, the PCs are captured by vampires and turned, at which point the DM reveals the twist that they're playing V:TM. Half the group quits on the spot because V:TM is (according to them) a game for goths and edgelords.
That might work except the DM said they didn't know how to track. Wolves know how to track. By not just letting the party track without giving details of how, the DM either made a logical screw up they can't come back from, or they weren't wolves at all.
I don't think it works because the characters were described as having skimpy clothing and the girl's large breasts being almost exposed from her clothing
Dm: You see a suspicious rock, it kind on has a vaguely humanish. Fighter: I investigate! Dm: This rock is a natural formation of granite! It's really amazing to look at! You see crows flying in the distance in a circle! Fighter: I go to investigate! Dm: You find dumped and soiled grain! Fighter: No monsters or bandits? Dm: No. However the grain kind of spilled in a way that reminds you of an island renowned for it's festivals! Fighter: I mount up to go to the island! Dm: There are no festivals currently being held there. You should likely stay here. Cleric: ugh I pray for a merciful death due to boredom. Dm: The gods do not respond... (Welcome to Despairia, nothing ever happens here, there are no magical items, nobody has money, and the gods just don't care since they toddler proofed the entire world! This place is so boring even hell considers it cruel and unusual punishment! ^^) 😂😂😂😂😂😂
Doge: "I'm gonna make you watch the entire process of recording, editing and uploading the video to youtube." Me: (GASP) Yes, I can see your process and learn something new! Doge: "Just kidding." Me: "Ah man." (Sad) But in all seriousness. I feel like watching that would have been more productive than what the poor players had to go through in these stories. Especially, that last story dealing with someone using the excuse "I read it in a book."
But you don't understand it was the book of ultimate knowledge! It holds all of the truths of the world that people have either ignored or simply fooled themselves into believing was true truth circumstantial evidence. If the world ever truly got their hands on such a thing it would throw the world into true pandemonium so this DM is actually the true saviour of the world.
The book guy makes me think of a story someone told me of a relative who pushed to DM just to get him and his two buddies to come over and hang out. It was a huge struggle for anything to happen because they didn't actually have a plan so nothing happened or worked. They actually tried to end the game to have everyone watch a movie and pretended it was a joke when they were going to instead go to a friends to play there. It ended all together when the cousins friends showed up with pizza for a movie night they had apparently planned. Like, it was all a ploy to get a large group to watch a movie.
Y'all ever seen that Spongebob episode with the Magic Conch Shell? Y'know, that one where they get lost in the woods, ask the shell what to do, and it responds, "Nothing"? The last DM was trying to do an any% speedrun of that episode in real life. That, or, we have witnessed the missing link, now thawed from polar icecaps, teaching us his ways from the old days. . . No wonder they went extinct.
I think that one DM was trying to run this one board game that is this mix of Dark Souls and Caveman like stuff but didn't know anything about how the game worked and was just lying his ass off.
“Massive Darkness”. Yep, and can definitely see how his brain is short circuiting while trying to make that Lion fight more difficult than it already is!
18:00 - Was the DM in that story Sierra? Because the amount of auto-fails and railroading going on in that adventure made it seem like the DM WANTED the players to be in a perpetual state of incompetence and dependency. 10000 years ago there WEREN'T any Neanderthals left; Homo Sapiens was fully in dominance with MAYBE a few isolated pockets of Cromagnons left. Primitive humans DID understand some crude, basic first aid and there's evidence that even the Neanderthals engaged in some kind of limited trepanning (with surprising degrees of success). Hell, 10000 years ago there would NOT have been steel tools: it was still the Neolithic Age and COPPER hadn't even been discovered yet. Those knives _should_ have been flint. And back then EVERYONE knew how to make and use spears, EVERYONE knew how to track and hunt (because Hunter/gathers, remember), and EVERYONE was far more competent than the DM permitted because Darwin's Laws were absolute. It sounded like that DM just wanted to see the players flail around helplessly and act like cretins and imbeciles.
Sounds like someone who plays hardcore pvp mmo's. Most of those games have no plot and quests are very scarce and very basic. The point is typically to buy cash shop gear, spend months increasing skills through a large mess of tutorial-less, convoluted and overly complex systems, try to kill people, fail and then grief new players until so many people quit that now there is only 15 people playing at any given time with 10 of them being gold sellers.
Not the "realistic sandbox", that some people love waxing poetically over, though. That type (like the one in the first story) has mostly just a vast emptiness of nothing going on because everything else would be "unrealistic".
Honestly, I would have left the table of the last game, laughing hysterically as I dragged myself out of the chair. I probably would've said the title's quote at the DM.
Being the guy I am, I probably have spent the next 4 hours outlining just how stupid the DM's logic was line by line. Just for the shear pleasure of wasting their time as they have wasted mine.
That last story....what the hell was that DM hoping to accomplish? Where did he learn about early hominids? Why did he think Neanderthals had steel knives, but didn't know how to track, make spears, make fire or the very basics of first aid? Either he was a terrible student, he went to a terrible school, or.....I don't know. I'd say maybe he was a young earth creationist, but I don't think they believe the Earth was here 10,000 years ago. Was the "book" he keeps referencing a bad comic book from the 40s?
the most infuriating thing about the last story is that the dude is completely wrong Neanderthals were highly intelligent (less then humans but doesnt mean they weren't smart), able to adapt to a wide variety of ecological zones, and capable of developing highly functional tools to help them do so, they likely had a way better memory and reaction time then humans due to their brains being bigger then human brains Unlike what earlier scientists thought, they were fully capable of speech and likely developed their own languages and even learned those humans developed, they also seemed to have a better understanding of caring for one another/illnesses and medical knowledge then humans considering we've found way more skeletons with what looks like "surgery" attempts of them then humans, THEY USED FIRE FOR STUFF and learned from other species around them i can GO ON and ON To our current knowledge, they were literally just humans (and had the potential to be WAY smarter then humans aswell) who preferred to scavenge, had a larger build, had more empathy for one another and also had a way higher chance of having ADHD (as traits from them are linked to it)
My first GM was like this: screw over the players for “plot” reasons. Refused to explain the situation they “found” themselves in. Refused to provide any leads or clues to figure what even was going on. Shut down players doing anything to get themselves out of the mess they’re in. Created difficult, confusing, and at times contradictory scenarios or puzzles that requires a Ph.D in a vague video game he played once but never finished. Any solution we came up with to solve his enigma was the wrong one, counterfactual, or reverted back to a previous state because “it was only a dream”. Examples (3.5): +Captured and enslaved by drow who caught the party completely unaware. In a busy inn in the middle of town. And caught my character asleep despite being an elf - who doesn’t require sleep - and would’ve been wide awake at the time of the abduction. +Try to leave a walled city because the GM isn’t giving any direction on what we’re doing in the city. Guards refuse to let us leave because we don’t have the paperwork permitting us to leave - which were also required for entry into the city; how did we get in the city in the first place, then? To which the GM wants the party to reenact waiting in queue at the DMV on a slow day and tells us the paperwork requires payment that would make an ancient dragon cry and take half an in-game year to be processed. Not completed. Processed. +Threw us into a maze whose dimension did not match the size or shape of the land, a shallow island. Complete with illusory walls that allowed some players to pass but not others for no explicable reason and could not be disillusioned away knowing first hand that it was in fact not real. +Trying to cook food for the party and tossing the food directly into the campfire like an idiot because we “didn’t specify what we’re using to cook the food in.” +Make progress to reach the destination of a macguffin and successfully retrieve it under the noses of a Yuan-Ti cult only to wake up “in a cold sweat” as a side effect of encountering a Nightmare half a year realtime ago undoing all the sessions between then and the present in one fell swoop. +Always insisted on watching us roll for stats for new characters - which isn’t too bad. However, no one was allowed to roll a 16-18, before or after other bonuses, or they’ll have to re-roll all their stats until the highest score was no more than 15, “because they’ll be too powerful”, but having most stats be 10 or lower was “too bad, that’s what you rolled.”
I have a suspicion that in the second story the op respawning had something to do with Eclipse Phase being part of the rules. Eclipse Phase is a transhumanist sci fi rpg where when you die a backup copy of your mind can be uploaded into a new body of some type.
"You can't do anything at all because I've arbitrarily decided your character has no skills or knowledge whatsoever based on a book that totally exists but only I have ever read. Also you can't leave the game and if you try to I'll permanently cripple your character then make you stay anyway." How did this guy allegedly get through two sessions of this without getting literally thrown out of the store?
That last one had me laughing. Just the sheer stupidity. Oh man that was a good story. How could something so stupid that they could not make a spear, but have a steel knife... and fire not know how to do... anything. Surprised he was not having them roll to breathe... and then just failing the roll because "it wouldn't occur to them to breathe". i don't think they had steel 10k years ago anyways. I think that was like early bronze age.
Peter (dm from the second story) must've wanted his players to roleplay as Embryos instead of neanderthals. Oh and there's big boobs in there for no good reason. Excellent narration as always DnD Doge. You have adorable cats. 💀❤️💀
I've done a few reenactments in my time, and have run into more than a few people like the Neanderthal guy. Having skimmed an encyclopedia article, or nowadays, watched an hour long show on the Discovery channel, they now are experts, and know more even than people who have actually published on the subject. Seriously I have watched one of them argue with a PhD who did his doctorate paper on the Norse, that Vikings actually had horns on their helmets. The only thing to do in that case is crack open a cold one, pop some corn, and watch the stupid unfold.
First one: I will take the unconventional stance that the game failed due to too much structure at the front. A sandbox game generally does not have an objective so the players can make their own hooks. It is a player first way to make a game. Ie, island of dread has pirates, gold to be mined, waring villages, dinosaurs, spider people, and mind controlling squid monsters from an ancient empire, but it does not tell players to get the ambassador to the far end of the island or something. Players have to organize and set up a gold mine when a random encounter results in them finding gold; they never are approached by an npc who tells them "find that gold." You get a story without railroading by letting the players do anything in response to the setting.
Guaranteed the Neanderthal DM was trying to get them to start doing erp and just shutting down everything until they did. How do I know this? I read a book.
When I saw the thumbnail of this video that is what I thought whatever the story was would be XD I thought "What is there to do in a roleplaying game if the GM just has nothing happen ever? ...oh right sex, sex is probably what they want to happen" XD
Absolute saint that wasn't willing to have a pure screaming match with Neanderthal DM. I would've flat out halted the game and screeched for whatever book he has to explain the 4 brain cell logic, or have told him to shut the f**k up and make an actual game
So, not only do they have to roll each day to see if they succeed on training in the new skill, but THE DM ROLLS FOR THEM?! They don't even get to see the results? Or KNOW the results? Did he WANT to drive them all away?
The DM wanted to run stupid players. And I would be like “Show me the goddamn book. Give me your source. I want to review this thing for myself because no fucking way did neanderthals not have pointy spear sticks”
13:04 M8, even I know how to make a spear. even monkeys know how to make spears (I know, I read it in a book :) ) What is this DM trying to do? Is he lonely? Does he take pleasure boring people? What's the point of ANY of this?
Oh God... mr "You'll see", with his Pathfinder adventure "set 2000 years in the future", except it ISN'T, and the GM doesn't give you any idea what is going on!!!
The Neanderthal story is just so laughably bad, I was chuckling the entire time. OP has a good sense of humor it seems. I wouldn't have handled it so well, I'd have called the DM stupid and showed him what a real Neanderthal was like LMAO
Good grief that last one is maddening. How is it that Neanderthals were (supposedly) incapable of making basic tools yet could somehow heal a torn off neck?? Oh it's in that book™? Bet that book also has the fire breathing Parasaurolophus too (there is actually a book about that).
13:28 I can definitely say with an understanding of anatomy that that is not how anatomy works... if anything it'd make them better at throwing spears due to a larger radius from the center point of their turn to throw would mean a longer distance for you to accelerate the spear in your throw before letting go. ya' know, speaking from someone who has also actually thrown spears. Lmao (I like to makeshift spears and shit when I get bored sometimes.)
That last story was tremendously funny thanks to OP's writing. I was laughing my ass off at some of the things being said. I'm honestly surprised that neanderthals from 10.000 years ago even knew how to breath.
Okay, the last DM clearly had no idea what he was doing, so much so that it's infuriating. I mean, yes, Neanderthals were stupid, that's why they died out and the next stage of human evolution took their place, but how on earth can you have steel weapons(Which Neanderthals didn't because steel wasn't a thing until ~4000 years ago, 6000 years after this game takes place) and not know how to make *a spear?!?* It's literally the simplest weapon of ancient man, so simple in fact that all you need is a sharp stick. Seriously, I'd rather be in a campaign with a creepy DM than these time-wasters. To borrow some words from Den of the Drake; Bad D&D is better than *boring* D&D, and both of these games sound psychic damage inducingly boring. It's simple maths really: Boring D&D < Bad D&D < No D&D < Good D&D < Great D&D. The second the primal DM tried to deflect the questions about the book he'd read, I knew he was talking out his backside because that's the kind of deflecting anti-science people use(seriously, ask them for the source of their information and they will make an excuse). Like seriously... There are children's books that tell you more about Neanderthals than whatever non-existent intelligence dump-stat this guy read(My example is Horrible Histories: Savage Stone Age, for anyone wondering).
I've homebrewed a system for gaining proficiencies which involves rolling dice, though I don't force my players to do it if they don't want to, hell, I even leave it up to them to remember to do it. Basically, they need to roll a relevant check for the skill they're trying to gain a proficiency in, and then the result is added to a total that needs to reach a certain threshold in order for them to gain that proficiency. So, if they want to get a proficiency in arcana, they might need, say, a total of 300, each day, they can make a single roll to spend 4 hours studying arcana so long as they have the resources to do so, so say they roll an 8 with a +1 intelligence mod, so 9 is added to the total and they're at 9/300 at that point if that's their first day doing it.
Story 3 - The DM is purposefully using Information he knows if BS just so that he can justify dicking around with his players and stop them from doing anything
The first story is pretty depressing. my own campaign is a bit sandboxy in that I have built up this world and its cities/towns and populated it with NPCs and factions, and the party is free to go wherever they want. However, I have several minor plots and a few major plots that are actively in motion that my players can (and do) uncover and go digging through and exploring of their own choice and at their own pace. I also have named NPCs who will approach the party or contact them asking for help with things, as well as their local adventurer's guild supplying them with the random job fit for adventurers seeking fame and fortune. making a sandbox campaign isn't a bad idea, I think, but you have to have some kind of story or plots going on in that sandbox that your players can find and choose to go down.
10,000 years ago pretty much every continent on earth was already settled by someone the last one to do so was Australia, said to be about 35,000 years ago, (unless you count New Zealand as the last major land mass which was said to be found in 1200-1300AD by Polynesians as well as other small atolls in the Pacific Ocean) The oldest cave painting found is said to be from around 30,000 BC not to mention some of the earliest cave paintings depict hunting parties with weapons such as _bows_ and *_spears,_* some with tamed animals and in South Africa stone tools, including spears were found that dated back 460,000 years ago and at least 5 sites have been found with the discovery of fire dating back MORE than 500,000 years ago by the meager thing of RUBBING TWO STONES TOGETHER!
The first story is the perfect examle of why "true sandbox"-games might sound great to some people in theory - until they actually have to *play* in one. The reality is that those games never last. The player characters just wander about aimlessly for a session or three and then the campaign fizzles out.
3:45 in the amount of above table time being taken to gain ONE skill during that downtime the players probably could have just spent actually doing something, leveling up, and potentially getting the skilled feat for THREE. IF they wanted to do that even.
there is so much going on with the last story that i can't even begin to comment on it. what is going on with the gm?? what was the goal here!? regardless as someone who is hyping themselves up to run a game for the first time. i've been thinking about relail roading since i'm running a very very small practice game in a system that is inherently very open and built in player activity. i've also played mostly open world style games? naturally if i want to keep the game small i have to railroad but i don't want to like. rush everyone to the final finish line and i'm playing in a system that heavily emphasises character interactions with interpersonal dynamics so they have to have time to engage with the world and eachother for me to even build the world. so i've come to think of railroads as a pole that's like a moving sidewalk that they have in airports. and the characters are all tied to it with child harnesses. the pole is the plot. and it will move in a direction whether they like it or not. but the length of the child harnesses will allow them to mess around with things that aren't 100% plot related. i think the key is to regulate the length of the child harnesses?? so that the characters aren't tripping and also aren't standing still for too long, and also like?? Putting stuff in the walk for them to do anything with?? I feel like usually in railroad stories it's either the leash is too short and no one can mess around or there is no leash but there's nothing to do. These stories are both bizarre versions of the leash is too short but it's not tied to anything.
Neanderthals are the ones who created THE MANAGING AND CONTAINING OF FIRE AND FUNERAL RIGHTS. They were also great trackers (I LEARNED THIS IN HISTORY OF ART)
I read this comment in a book somewhere, it mentioned a book about a book... but I had to read a book to learn about books, but I read in a book that i needed to learn to read from a book first
I've been in plenty of games where the DM relied a lot on random encounters. Nothing wrong with that, a good time can still be had. But the DM still needs to step up and actually do the work. At the very least provide a 'push' and a 'pull' for the group - reasons and incentives for them to stay together, and actual objectives to be aimed for.
Wait. STEEL knives? Animal skin clothes and STEEL knives? BEFORE THE BRONZE AGE?! BEORE THE IRON AGE?! Steel did not come about for a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time. First came sharp rocks. Then, came copper and tin. Then, came bronze. Then came iron. Then came steel. THEN came steel. I don't know what 'book' this guy read, but it was clearly NOT well-researched non-fiction. CONAN THE BARBARIAN IS MORE HISTORICALLY ACCURATE!
This is what I don't like about D&D 5e being the cloud that blocks out all other TTRPGs from sight: it often times makes for a poor foundation to implement character advancement mechanics that stray from leveling up outside of the class structure. Also, the binary switch of "proficient/not proficient" is garbage, and tying a "skill improvement through repeated use" for it is also asinine.
My guess is the book-reading DM was probably trying to run some sort of horror/mystery game, and used the excuse of neanderthal incompetence to railroad the players into whatever scenario he'd set up. The proof is OP waking up without his legs... the DM was obviously trying to prevent OP from running off again, so that the planned story can happen. I mean don't get me wrong, the DM sounds absolutely incompetent, but I'd stick around out of curiosity to see where he's going with this.
Downtime sounds like a dead end. Bad GM, stupid mechnic, leave the loser on the roadside. As an engineer who loves historical games and the evolution of technology, steel knives would have a been screaming alarm. The creeping would have gotten some very negative IRL feedback to the creep. Neanderthals were H sapiens, just like the Denovians, just not the modern version. Don't know how to apply pressure? Don't know how to track? Would have been done, loudly, and if that book was on the table, he might have eatten it. Screw that guy, to the wall.
Idk why I keep listening to these stories- maybe I jus like seeing insane crashes? But these make me not wanna try playing dnd again, solely outta fear they are more well read than I.
the first one I can slightly understand, he just wanted the party to do their own thing after a while, the 2nd one is just terrible. I'd never ever play with the 2nd one under any circumstance.
That last story would have just brought out the troll in me so fast.
DM: "You heard growling in the woods."
Me: "Well, I'm a Neanderthal, I don't know what growling is. I read that in a book. So I keep going."
DM: "A wolf appears and attacks you."
Me: "Well, I'm a Neanderthal, I don't know what being attacked is. I read that in a book. So I keep going."
DM: "The wolf rips out your throat."
Me: "That's fine. I don't know what throats are."
DM: "You wake up back at camp missing your legs."
Me: "No worries! What are legs? I dunno, I'm a Neanderthal! I'll walk out of the camp again. On the way out I'll take my FORGED METAL KNIFE and stab that weird hot stuff in the campfire pit. And kill it, too, because I'm a Neanderthal and I don't know what fire is or that you can't kill it with a metal knife."
Now _this_ is the proper way to respond to... whatever was going on there.
The neanderthals one is strange because I'm pretty sure they have people who were hunters, trackers, healers and other skills otherwise the human race wouldn't exist.
Well, do know that neanderthals were NOT our ancestors. They were our evolutionary cousins. SOME humans today MAY have 2-4% neanderthal DNA in them (cross-mating with H. Sapiens), but they weren't our ancestors.
Right Also DM says that OP is a SHAMAN meaning THESE Neanderthals have developed enough to where they have a trip and a designated healer. I think tracking, a panic animal instinct would be easy for them.
Right?! They were nomads.
The third story just hurts my brain hearing about the DM deny fire and spears despite the fact that they have steel (which means they must have some knowledge of tools and some way to smelt/harvest the steel).
What's even the point of the game if you're not even going to have anything happen? Just sit around the (stolen) camp fire all day?
The last one infuriates me because I love the idea of prehistoric campaign, and this DM doesn't have any idea about the stone age outside of just "caveman go oogah boogah"
Oh please. That DM would have told you Neanderthals don't speak as it would never have occurred to them to speak. And then had you roll for... something, tell you you failed the... whatever it was supposed to be; then describe how you are told by the other Neanderthals about something... but you understand them perfectly and can speak back to them... unless you ask to speak to them, at which point it would not occur to you to do so.
The more I think about it the more I am convinced this DM was hovering above the peak of Mount Stupid.
I agree with you there, I'm thinking about being a DM myself in the future and one of the ideas I had is a prehistoric campaign. Hearing how this particular DM messed it up badly and how he claimed to have read about Neanderthals in a book, along with somehow claiming the OP's character survived after their throat was ripped out, makes me feel more determined to try to do a better job then he ever did, along with some more exciting things.
@@galiogargoyle6295 but you'd have to read it in a book somewhere to know that this dm was bad
@@galiogargoyle6295 Trust me. You will do a better job.
My idea would've been to pull a Flintstones. XD
Graduate biologist and antrhopology enthusiast here. If someone said neanderthals couldn't track, use spears or use fire i would instantly rage quit
You obviously haven't read "the book" then :P
"My opinion from the top of Mount Stupid is supported by the book I read that doesn't exist. So your actual knowledge of the subject is wrong." -The DM from the Rail Station story.
Honestly, if this went on longer I am positive this DM would have said how the Neanderthals couldn't eat berries from a bush they walked by as "that would never occur to them!".
I would have just chanted Kali Ma and ripped his heart out if that bullshit continued at my tables. By the Gods that was horrendous.
As someone who also likes learning about prehistoric biota, I ALSO agree with your rage quitting. Neanderthals weren't "boneheads". They could track, make tools, use fire, patch up wounds, and supposedly had their own spiritualism (they burried their dead, too, afaik).
"Peter" is an ignorant know-nothing know-it-all.
This reminds me of a really cool paper I read once that posited that Neanderthals didn't exactly die out as breed and integrate into other proto human species until they were no longer distinct. It said that other species migrating into their territories would have had an almost ethereal and otherworldly beauty, and that uh... nature may have taken its course. And that the genetic memory of this occurrence persists today in our fantasizing about elves and other non-human fetishizations. Can't for the life of me remember what it was called, I found it on JSTOR while I was supposed to be researching something completely different. And let me be clear, it was not a scientific study but more of a thought piece with a little bit of scientific support.
Okay, that "I read a book guy" clearly has never read a a book a day in his life. Seriously, his ignorance is on another level.
Even the book Clan of the Cave Bear gave Neanderthals the ability to make medicine, tools, hunt, and track (though not the ability to make fire, they just carried an ember from camp to camp). And the series was written before paleontologists dug up more evidence that Neanderthals had more complex societies and realized they stood upright.
My thought was like, "wow, this sounds like Clan of the Cave Bear if only it sucked."
in that second story, I promise you that GM is a complete goober. I know these things. I read it in a book.
People like that need to stfu
ALL THE BOOKS!!!
I can't imagine what the dm for that neanderthal story was thinking. At least other rail roaders have stuff they want to show off with their stories. This guy held a captive audience for nothing to happen
And it's clear he had no idea what he was doing.
That guy should have been told to stfu much sooner. Seriously, this mofo stonewall everything and thought they would have fun with it? Nah, dude. This guy deserves the lowest rating possible. 🖕
He wasn't thinking, Neanderthals don't think. Trust me, I read it in a book somewhere
The only thing I can think of is a primitive human orgy considering how much the 14 year olds characters breasts were painstakingly described and labeled as "very distracting". Because literally everything in this story can be summarized as "You all got dumb empty monkey brain, but how about them boobas?"
@@blueboxy21 Hey now, comparing this moron to Neanderthals is a bit much.........An actual Neanderthal would have had the players playing a fun game before the first hour mark and not try to act like their smarter then everyone when their not!
"I read it in a book" is going to become a new favorite quote. Lol.
>neanderthals
>steel knives
Must've been some geniuses to figure out the metallurgy
especially without fire!
They skipped the stone age and bronze age, but still didn't know how to think xD
Nah they just stole them. Couldn't tell you from who though.
There was not a damn thing that was "realistic" about his pos of a campaign
Book guy sounds completely infuriating.
And he sounds like a "know-nothing know-it-all".
That Final Story! Just WTF man!
So the PCs aren’t smart enough, can’t make tools, can’t use Rocks, can’t forge weapons (yet one has a steel knife), while OP survives somehow after getting his throat ripped out and then patched (by who or what?), while his legs get ripped Off without explanation.
All while Having to Make 200 stupid ability check rolls for invisible character sheets!
Just F*** THIS DM/GM!!! I mean, this game sounds like it was helmed by an online troll!
Dipping out to spare yourself sanity was definitely the best, and that Girl player knew she had to leave too. Good for her!
It's so nice to meet such a well read DM
Yeah. That DM in Rail Station story read literally one book (I'm still not convinced he read any book at all) and went straight to the top of Mount Stupid.
This may be overly charitable of me, but I have a feeling Mr. "Read it in a book" was running some kind of "ontological mystery" type game, where the idea was for the players to figure out why they couldn't X, Y, Z, and then go "Hey, cool!" at the big reveal. The mysterious "book" that provides the DM's knowledge, odd technological discontinuities, etc. are all outright lies from the DM, who's banking on things making sense once the truth is uncovered. My guess, based on the evidence presented? The setting is 10,000 years ago, but the PCs are neither modern humans nor Neanderthals. They're domesticated wolves living in a human camp. Those "steel knives" are actually fangs. The campfire was made by the humans that lived in the camp. The PCs can't do anything that requires human brainpower because they don't have human minds. The enemy wolf "gave warning" because he didn't see a human threat, he saw a strange wolf trying to muscle in on his turf. Two problems with this: one, if you can't sell yourself as a DM who knows what they're doing, the players don't go looking for clues, they just assume you're incompetent. The second problem is that, once the players do figure it out, they're not guaranteed to think "Hey, cool!" for all you know, they could think "WTF?! I didn't sign up for a furry game! I'm out, !"
Heard a story once that went similarly: DM advertised his game as a RPG sent in the real world of the present day, "with a twist". Midway through the first session, the PCs are captured by vampires and turned, at which point the DM reveals the twist that they're playing V:TM. Half the group quits on the spot because V:TM is (according to them) a game for goths and edgelords.
That might work except the DM said they didn't know how to track. Wolves know how to track. By not just letting the party track without giving details of how, the DM either made a logical screw up they can't come back from, or they weren't wolves at all.
I don't think it works because the characters were described as having skimpy clothing and the girl's large breasts being almost exposed from her clothing
If I sign up to play a game, I'm obviously going to leave if the DM switches to another game in the middle of it.
Dm: You see a suspicious rock, it kind on has a vaguely humanish.
Fighter: I investigate!
Dm: This rock is a natural formation of granite! It's really amazing to look at! You see crows flying in the distance in a circle!
Fighter: I go to investigate!
Dm: You find dumped and soiled grain!
Fighter: No monsters or bandits?
Dm: No. However the grain kind of spilled in a way that reminds you of an island renowned for it's festivals!
Fighter: I mount up to go to the island!
Dm: There are no festivals currently being held there. You should likely stay here.
Cleric: ugh I pray for a merciful death due to boredom.
Dm: The gods do not respond...
(Welcome to Despairia, nothing ever happens here, there are no magical items, nobody has money, and the gods just don't care since they toddler proofed the entire world! This place is so boring even hell considers it cruel and unusual punishment! ^^)
😂😂😂😂😂😂
I know the last story was infuriating but that OP was hilarious
I've read a book about horrible boring DM's once, I won't bother telling you the name of the book since you'll probably have never have heard of it
That book... in Canada. You wouldn't have heard of it.
Nice of that wolf to only eat the legs before patching up his neck and returning him to camp.
Doge: "I'm gonna make you watch the entire process of recording, editing and uploading the video to youtube."
Me: (GASP) Yes, I can see your process and learn something new!
Doge: "Just kidding."
Me: "Ah man." (Sad)
But in all seriousness. I feel like watching that would have been more productive than what the poor players had to go through in these stories. Especially, that last story dealing with someone using the excuse "I read it in a book."
But you don't understand it was the book of ultimate knowledge! It holds all of the truths of the world that people have either ignored or simply fooled themselves into believing was true truth circumstantial evidence. If the world ever truly got their hands on such a thing it would throw the world into true pandemonium so this DM is actually the true saviour of the world.
The book guy makes me think of a story someone told me of a relative who pushed to DM just to get him and his two buddies to come over and hang out. It was a huge struggle for anything to happen because they didn't actually have a plan so nothing happened or worked. They actually tried to end the game to have everyone watch a movie and pretended it was a joke when they were going to instead go to a friends to play there. It ended all together when the cousins friends showed up with pizza for a movie night they had apparently planned. Like, it was all a ploy to get a large group to watch a movie.
That last story kept getting worse and worse. I wouldn't have been able to stay invested for that long
Y'all ever seen that Spongebob episode with the Magic Conch Shell? Y'know, that one where they get lost in the woods, ask the shell what to do, and it responds, "Nothing"?
The last DM was trying to do an any% speedrun of that episode in real life.
That, or, we have witnessed the missing link, now thawed from polar icecaps, teaching us his ways from the old days. . .
No wonder they went extinct.
I think that one DM was trying to run this one board game that is this mix of Dark Souls and Caveman like stuff but didn't know anything about how the game worked and was just lying his ass off.
“Massive Darkness”. Yep, and can definitely see how his brain is short circuiting while trying to make that Lion fight more difficult than it already is!
18:00 - Was the DM in that story Sierra? Because the amount of auto-fails and railroading going on in that adventure made it seem like the DM WANTED the players to be in a perpetual state of incompetence and dependency. 10000 years ago there WEREN'T any Neanderthals left; Homo Sapiens was fully in dominance with MAYBE a few isolated pockets of Cromagnons left. Primitive humans DID understand some crude, basic first aid and there's evidence that even the Neanderthals engaged in some kind of limited trepanning (with surprising degrees of success). Hell, 10000 years ago there would NOT have been steel tools: it was still the Neolithic Age and COPPER hadn't even been discovered yet. Those knives _should_ have been flint. And back then EVERYONE knew how to make and use spears, EVERYONE knew how to track and hunt (because Hunter/gathers, remember), and EVERYONE was far more competent than the DM permitted because Darwin's Laws were absolute.
It sounded like that DM just wanted to see the players flail around helplessly and act like cretins and imbeciles.
DM wants to run a sandbox game but even a sandbox game has plot hooks.
Sounds like someone who plays hardcore pvp mmo's. Most of those games have no plot and quests are very scarce and very basic. The point is typically to buy cash shop gear, spend months increasing skills through a large mess of tutorial-less, convoluted and overly complex systems, try to kill people, fail and then grief new players until so many people quit that now there is only 15 people playing at any given time with 10 of them being gold sellers.
Not the "realistic sandbox", that some people love waxing poetically over, though. That type (like the one in the first story) has mostly just a vast emptiness of nothing going on because everything else would be "unrealistic".
I think the dm just wanted Beavis and Butterfield players.
Butthead: uh..., huhuhuh...
Neavis: Fire! FIRE! Yeah, fire is cool...
Beavis - "Hey, cool! Found a frog!"
Butthead - *SLAMS Beavis in the back of the head with a club. * "MY frog!"
@@solarchos4352 ... FROG CLUB-THWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!
@@solarchos4352
Beavis and butthead at the same time: FROG BASEBALL!
God, that last story was painful. I was actually yelling as the story was being told. That DM must of read some stupid books.
Hint: if someone noncommittally says something is fine, IT'S NOT FINE.
> Story 2. Downtime.
> Hears the word "realistic" used for gaming as "better."
> Screams.
Honestly, I would have left the table of the last game, laughing hysterically as I dragged myself out of the chair. I probably would've said the title's quote at the DM.
Being the guy I am, I probably have spent the next 4 hours outlining just how stupid the DM's logic was line by line. Just for the shear pleasure of wasting their time as they have wasted mine.
That last story....what the hell was that DM hoping to accomplish? Where did he learn about early hominids? Why did he think Neanderthals had steel knives, but didn't know how to track, make spears, make fire or the very basics of first aid? Either he was a terrible student, he went to a terrible school, or.....I don't know. I'd say maybe he was a young earth creationist, but I don't think they believe the Earth was here 10,000 years ago. Was the "book" he keeps referencing a bad comic book from the 40s?
Boy those people are more patient than I am .
So Neanderthals were a nomadic society of hunter-gatherers who didn't know how to track, orientation and basic hunting tools, got it. 👍
But they have steel!
the most infuriating thing about the last story is that the dude is completely wrong
Neanderthals were highly intelligent (less then humans but doesnt mean they weren't smart), able to adapt to a wide variety of ecological zones, and capable of developing highly functional tools to help them do so, they likely had a way better memory and reaction time then humans due to their brains being bigger then human brains
Unlike what earlier scientists thought, they were fully capable of speech and likely developed their own languages and even learned those humans developed, they also seemed to have a better understanding of caring for one another/illnesses and medical knowledge then humans considering we've found way more skeletons with what looks like "surgery" attempts of them then humans, THEY USED FIRE FOR STUFF and learned from other species around them i can GO ON and ON
To our current knowledge, they were literally just humans (and had the potential to be WAY smarter then humans aswell) who preferred to scavenge, had a larger build, had more empathy for one another and also had a way higher chance of having ADHD (as traits from them are linked to it)
My first GM was like this: screw over the players for “plot” reasons. Refused to explain the situation they “found” themselves in. Refused to provide any leads or clues to figure what even was going on. Shut down players doing anything to get themselves out of the mess they’re in. Created difficult, confusing, and at times contradictory scenarios or puzzles that requires a Ph.D in a vague video game he played once but never finished. Any solution we came up with to solve his enigma was the wrong one, counterfactual, or reverted back to a previous state because “it was only a dream”.
Examples (3.5):
+Captured and enslaved by drow who caught the party completely unaware. In a busy inn in the middle of town. And caught my character asleep despite being an elf - who doesn’t require sleep - and would’ve been wide awake at the time of the abduction.
+Try to leave a walled city because the GM isn’t giving any direction on what we’re doing in the city. Guards refuse to let us leave because we don’t have the paperwork permitting us to leave - which were also required for entry into the city; how did we get in the city in the first place, then? To which the GM wants the party to reenact waiting in queue at the DMV on a slow day and tells us the paperwork requires payment that would make an ancient dragon cry and take half an in-game year to be processed. Not completed. Processed.
+Threw us into a maze whose dimension did not match the size or shape of the land, a shallow island. Complete with illusory walls that allowed some players to pass but not others for no explicable reason and could not be disillusioned away knowing first hand that it was in fact not real.
+Trying to cook food for the party and tossing the food directly into the campfire like an idiot because we “didn’t specify what we’re using to cook the food in.”
+Make progress to reach the destination of a macguffin and successfully retrieve it under the noses of a Yuan-Ti cult only to wake up “in a cold sweat” as a side effect of encountering a Nightmare half a year realtime ago undoing all the sessions between then and the present in one fell swoop.
+Always insisted on watching us roll for stats for new characters - which isn’t too bad. However, no one was allowed to roll a 16-18, before or after other bonuses, or they’ll have to re-roll all their stats until the highest score was no more than 15, “because they’ll be too powerful”, but having most stats be 10 or lower was “too bad, that’s what you rolled.”
I have a suspicion that in the second story the op respawning had something to do with Eclipse Phase being part of the rules. Eclipse Phase is a transhumanist sci fi rpg where when you die a backup copy of your mind can be uploaded into a new body of some type.
That caveman game...That table had to have been trolling OP.
To what end? I think you are probably correct, but at the same time, was it just because they didnt want to play with someone new?
"You can't do anything at all because I've arbitrarily decided your character has no skills or knowledge whatsoever based on a book that totally exists but only I have ever read. Also you can't leave the game and if you try to I'll permanently cripple your character then make you stay anyway."
How did this guy allegedly get through two sessions of this without getting literally thrown out of the store?
That last one had me laughing. Just the sheer stupidity. Oh man that was a good story. How could something so stupid that they could not make a spear, but have a steel knife... and fire not know how to do... anything. Surprised he was not having them roll to breathe... and then just failing the roll because "it wouldn't occur to them to breathe". i don't think they had steel 10k years ago anyways. I think that was like early bronze age.
Neanderthals were FAR smarter than Peter. They could track, cook, etc.
Believe it or not players actually like not playing role playing games. Trust me, I read it in a book.
"Are you sure it wasn't nothing?" pretty sure it was nothing and the DM is just awful
Peter (dm from the second story) must've wanted his players to roleplay as Embryos instead of neanderthals. Oh and there's big boobs in there for no good reason.
Excellent narration as always DnD Doge. You have adorable cats. 💀❤️💀
Big difference between "railroading" and "pointing a direction"...
I've done a few reenactments in my time, and have run into more than a few people like the Neanderthal guy. Having skimmed an encyclopedia article, or nowadays, watched an hour long show on the Discovery channel, they now are experts, and know more even than people who have actually published on the subject. Seriously I have watched one of them argue with a PhD who did his doctorate paper on the Norse, that Vikings actually had horns on their helmets. The only thing to do in that case is crack open a cold one, pop some corn, and watch the stupid unfold.
First one: I will take the unconventional stance that the game failed due to too much structure at the front. A sandbox game generally does not have an objective so the players can make their own hooks. It is a player first way to make a game.
Ie, island of dread has pirates, gold to be mined, waring villages, dinosaurs, spider people, and mind controlling squid monsters from an ancient empire, but it does not tell players to get the ambassador to the far end of the island or something. Players have to organize and set up a gold mine when a random encounter results in them finding gold; they never are approached by an npc who tells them "find that gold." You get a story without railroading by letting the players do anything in response to the setting.
How would having broad shoulders make you WORSE at throwing things???
Because of the distractingly big breasts
I read it in a book. DM, you dont not what you are talking about.
Guaranteed the Neanderthal DM was trying to get them to start doing erp and just shutting down everything until they did.
How do I know this? I read a book.
When I saw the thumbnail of this video that is what I thought whatever the story was would be XD
I thought "What is there to do in a roleplaying game if the GM just has nothing happen ever? ...oh right sex, sex is probably what they want to happen" XD
Absolute saint that wasn't willing to have a pure screaming match with Neanderthal DM.
I would've flat out halted the game and screeched for whatever book he has to explain the 4 brain cell logic, or have told him to shut the f**k up and make an actual game
So, not only do they have to roll each day to see if they succeed on training in the new skill, but THE DM ROLLS FOR THEM?! They don't even get to see the results? Or KNOW the results?
Did he WANT to drive them all away?
Oh, look at that face, such a handsome baby house panther. Every house needs one or six. ;)
The DM wanted to run stupid players.
And I would be like “Show me the goddamn book. Give me your source. I want to review this thing for myself because no fucking way did neanderthals not have pointy spear sticks”
13:04 M8, even I know how to make a spear. even monkeys know how to make spears (I know, I read it in a book :) )
What is this DM trying to do? Is he lonely? Does he take pleasure boring people? What's the point of ANY of this?
I don't think that last DM actually read any book on Neanderthals.
EDIT: Further in, I'm convinced he's never read an actual book in his life.
That neanderthal story was bad. Up there with Mr. "Tee hee, you'll see!"
Oh God... mr "You'll see", with his Pathfinder adventure "set 2000 years in the future", except it ISN'T, and the GM doesn't give you any idea what is going on!!!
The Neanderthal story is just so laughably bad, I was chuckling the entire time. OP has a good sense of humor it seems. I wouldn't have handled it so well, I'd have called the DM stupid and showed him what a real Neanderthal was like LMAO
Why the hell would anyone run a game where the players can only crap and self gratify around a slowly dwindling fire?
Good grief that last one is maddening. How is it that Neanderthals were (supposedly) incapable of making basic tools yet could somehow heal a torn off neck?? Oh it's in that book™? Bet that book also has the fire breathing Parasaurolophus too (there is actually a book about that).
13:28 I can definitely say with an understanding of anatomy that that is not how anatomy works... if anything it'd make them better at throwing spears due to a larger radius from the center point of their turn to throw would mean a longer distance for you to accelerate the spear in your throw before letting go.
ya' know, speaking from someone who has also actually thrown spears. Lmao
(I like to makeshift spears and shit when I get bored sometimes.)
did the dm read a book called "neanderthals suck" or something?
That last story was tremendously funny thanks to OP's writing. I was laughing my ass off at some of the things being said.
I'm honestly surprised that neanderthals from 10.000 years ago even knew how to breath.
Okay, the last DM clearly had no idea what he was doing, so much so that it's infuriating. I mean, yes, Neanderthals were stupid, that's why they died out and the next stage of human evolution took their place, but how on earth can you have steel weapons(Which Neanderthals didn't because steel wasn't a thing until ~4000 years ago, 6000 years after this game takes place) and not know how to make *a spear?!?* It's literally the simplest weapon of ancient man, so simple in fact that all you need is a sharp stick. Seriously, I'd rather be in a campaign with a creepy DM than these time-wasters. To borrow some words from Den of the Drake; Bad D&D is better than *boring* D&D, and both of these games sound psychic damage inducingly boring.
It's simple maths really: Boring D&D < Bad D&D < No D&D < Good D&D < Great D&D.
The second the primal DM tried to deflect the questions about the book he'd read, I knew he was talking out his backside because that's the kind of deflecting anti-science people use(seriously, ask them for the source of their information and they will make an excuse). Like seriously... There are children's books that tell you more about Neanderthals than whatever non-existent intelligence dump-stat this guy read(My example is Horrible Histories: Savage Stone Age, for anyone wondering).
I've homebrewed a system for gaining proficiencies which involves rolling dice, though I don't force my players to do it if they don't want to, hell, I even leave it up to them to remember to do it. Basically, they need to roll a relevant check for the skill they're trying to gain a proficiency in, and then the result is added to a total that needs to reach a certain threshold in order for them to gain that proficiency. So, if they want to get a proficiency in arcana, they might need, say, a total of 300, each day, they can make a single roll to spend 4 hours studying arcana so long as they have the resources to do so, so say they roll an 8 with a +1 intelligence mod, so 9 is added to the total and they're at 9/300 at that point if that's their first day doing it.
7:20 - hey that wasn’t a kitty at all! It was Raid Shadow Legends!
Story 3 -
The DM is purposefully using Information he knows if BS just so that he can justify dicking around with his players and stop them from doing anything
In that last story, the train DID leave the station. It was just going in REVERSE.
That DM read the wrong book... If he reads any books at all.
The first story is pretty depressing.
my own campaign is a bit sandboxy in that I have built up this world and its cities/towns and populated it with NPCs and factions, and the party is free to go wherever they want.
However, I have several minor plots and a few major plots that are actively in motion that my players can (and do) uncover and go digging through and exploring of their own choice and at their own pace. I also have named NPCs who will approach the party or contact them asking for help with things, as well as their local adventurer's guild supplying them with the random job fit for adventurers seeking fame and fortune.
making a sandbox campaign isn't a bad idea, I think, but you have to have some kind of story or plots going on in that sandbox that your players can find and choose to go down.
10,000 years ago pretty much every continent on earth was already settled by someone
the last one to do so was Australia, said to be about 35,000 years ago, (unless you count New Zealand as the last major land mass which was said to be found in 1200-1300AD by Polynesians as well as other small atolls in the Pacific Ocean)
The oldest cave painting found is said to be from around 30,000 BC
not to mention some of the earliest cave paintings depict hunting parties with weapons such as _bows_ and *_spears,_* some with tamed animals
and in South Africa stone tools, including spears were found that dated back 460,000 years ago
and at least 5 sites have been found with the discovery of fire dating back MORE than 500,000 years ago by the meager thing of RUBBING TWO STONES TOGETHER!
The first story is the perfect examle of why "true sandbox"-games might sound great to some people in theory - until they actually have to *play* in one. The reality is that those games never last. The player characters just wander about aimlessly for a session or three and then the campaign fizzles out.
The Neanderthal one infuriates me so much. This guy is so wrong about so many things.
3:45 in the amount of above table time being taken to gain ONE skill during that downtime the players probably could have just spent actually doing something, leveling up, and potentially getting the skilled feat for THREE. IF they wanted to do that even.
there is so much going on with the last story that i can't even begin to comment on it. what is going on with the gm?? what was the goal here!?
regardless as someone who is hyping themselves up to run a game for the first time. i've been thinking about relail roading since i'm running a very very small practice game in a system that is inherently very open and built in player activity. i've also played mostly open world style games? naturally if i want to keep the game small i have to railroad but i don't want to like. rush everyone to the final finish line and i'm playing in a system that heavily emphasises character interactions with interpersonal dynamics so they have to have time to engage with the world and eachother for me to even build the world. so i've come to think of railroads as a pole that's like a moving sidewalk that they have in airports. and the characters are all tied to it with child harnesses. the pole is the plot. and it will move in a direction whether they like it or not. but the length of the child harnesses will allow them to mess around with things that aren't 100% plot related.
i think the key is to regulate the length of the child harnesses?? so that the characters aren't tripping and also aren't standing still for too long, and also like?? Putting stuff in the walk for them to do anything with?? I feel like usually in railroad stories it's either the leash is too short and no one can mess around or there is no leash but there's nothing to do. These stories are both bizarre versions of the leash is too short but it's not tied to anything.
Neanderthals are the ones who created THE MANAGING AND CONTAINING OF FIRE AND FUNERAL RIGHTS. They were also great trackers (I LEARNED THIS IN HISTORY OF ART)
I read this comment in a book somewhere, it mentioned a book about a book... but I had to read a book to learn about books, but I read in a book that i needed to learn to read from a book first
The dnd doge music reminds me of the song Don't let me down.
last story was a kafkaesque situation of moronic proportions,
I've been in plenty of games where the DM relied a lot on random encounters. Nothing wrong with that, a good time can still be had. But the DM still needs to step up and actually do the work. At the very least provide a 'push' and a 'pull' for the group - reasons and incentives for them to stay together, and actual objectives to be aimed for.
12:06 Neanderthals couldn't track? REALLY?
That last story...Is it wrong that my brain had a stroke from listening to this level of nonsenses. actually this sound like a good story.
Wait. STEEL knives? Animal skin clothes and STEEL knives? BEFORE THE BRONZE AGE?! BEORE THE IRON AGE?!
Steel did not come about for a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time.
First came sharp rocks.
Then, came copper and tin.
Then, came bronze.
Then came iron.
Then came steel. THEN came steel.
I don't know what 'book' this guy read, but it was clearly NOT well-researched non-fiction. CONAN THE BARBARIAN IS MORE HISTORICALLY ACCURATE!
What kind of narcotics was that last dm on? Good grief.
This caveman bullshirt made me angry
This is what I don't like about D&D 5e being the cloud that blocks out all other TTRPGs from sight: it often times makes for a poor foundation to implement character advancement mechanics that stray from leveling up outside of the class structure.
Also, the binary switch of "proficient/not proficient" is garbage, and tying a "skill improvement through repeated use" for it is also asinine.
This dude read Clan of the Cave Bear and thought it was a textbook.
My guess is the book-reading DM was probably trying to run some sort of horror/mystery game, and used the excuse of neanderthal incompetence to railroad the players into whatever scenario he'd set up. The proof is OP waking up without his legs... the DM was obviously trying to prevent OP from running off again, so that the planned story can happen. I mean don't get me wrong, the DM sounds absolutely incompetent, but I'd stick around out of curiosity to see where he's going with this.
All those books he read and not one of them was on how to be a good DM. What a shame.
2:56 I have to disagree on one thing, Doge, a slog still implies progress. There's no progress EVER here. It's all random encounters forever...
I think that DM might be the Neanderthal...
That last DM clearly never played Far cry Primal
Broad shoulders negates all throwing ability? Did this guy also get a Florida education?
Seriously. You'd think thicker shoulders would be BETTER for throwing ANYTHING!!!
Man I hope that's Call of Cth- oh no.
Downtime sounds like a dead end. Bad GM, stupid mechnic, leave the loser on the roadside.
As an engineer who loves historical games and the evolution of technology, steel knives would have a been screaming alarm. The creeping would have gotten some very negative IRL feedback to the creep. Neanderthals were H sapiens, just like the Denovians, just not the modern version. Don't know how to apply pressure? Don't know how to track? Would have been done, loudly, and if that book was on the table, he might have eatten it. Screw that guy, to the wall.
Idk why I keep listening to these stories- maybe I jus like seeing insane crashes?
But these make me not wanna try playing dnd again, solely outta fear they are more well read than I.
the first one I can slightly understand, he just wanted the party to do their own thing after a while, the 2nd one is just terrible. I'd never ever play with the 2nd one under any circumstance.
Is that Akane Kurashiki in the thumbnail??
Yeah, looking at the kitty is nice.