This dude just needs to take a break. Like I said in my video, some of the rules are understandable, it's just the tone of aggression. Plus, I'd like to hear this DM's side of the story.
I very much would like to hear his side of the story too. The manifesto is definitely full on aggression and without more context it just comes off as a DM ranting, but I’m curious he thought of these rules.
Like 3 rules there make it seem like there's one or two very shitty players in that group too. That DM clearly doesn't want to DM, but won't just end the game because it's not seem as an ok thing, so they instead created a bunch of "if you do x I'll just leave, this is your warning"
@@lootgoblinmarketplace Yeah, definitely want to hear the DM's side. Taking all the rules together, and understand that most of these are written as reactionary, it paints a picture of a very problematic table. Aggressive response, but not unjustified. They were on a break (hiatus by what the post said); being pulled back in on player request it seems. The write-up is presented as a conditional "If I return, this is how it'll be" type deal. Some reviewers are acting as though this is some first-time DMing, reading each rule as stand-alone, and ignoring the context of the group having a history, and unfairly coming down on the DM as being 100% the issue.
@@zhornlegacy7936 Yeah, I think a lot of what the DM is suggesting is extreme, and like people said he's clearly processing a lot of rage. But, I see almost all other commentators on the topic glossing over the obvious clues in some of the rules, that it's related to specific complaints the DM has faced from his party. It may not even be a Bad DM OR a Bad Party situation, honestly; it could just be a fucking awful fit of DM and Party, where the DM and Party want very different things out of the game.
@zhornlegacy7936 and some rules are way too specific that, like damn what are your players doing to you. Like breaking and spilling stuff on your stuff, which ttrpg stuff gets pretty expensive. No mega-dungeons every session makes it seem like they complained that they weren't playing Dungeon of the Mad Mage but of the DMs creation. People are showing up high and drunk, so often he has to angrily put that reasonable rule in as well.
Something that's absent in a lot of the conversation around this list is that this is a list of 44 things that the DM hasn't done, but is threatening to start doing if this group of people he's come to despise ever drag him back into running a game for them. Like, it's clearly not written from a healthy place, but setting 1 minute timers on people's turns is, explicitly, something the DM didn't do. People are reacting like the DM posted the rules publicly as an example to be followed broadly, but no, he sent the rules to a specific group as an ultimatum intended to be completely unreasonable so that it would be rejected.
it’s like when contractors send out a quote that’s unreasonably high expecting to get out of the job and instead the client accepts it and complains about the price the whole time
Still, pretty much none of these rules are broadly acceptable. Without knowing details, it sounds like this guy was coming from a place of anger. Whether he's mad because his ego or pride got hurt or the players just stopped following the rules entirely, we'll likely never know. What we do know is this person clearly didn't like being DM but was repeatedly, possibly without their own consent.
So people in the comments of the original post started asking questions and two things came out. First the players were awful people who drove their DM to his wits end, secondly he did leave the group but they begged for him to come back since they knew what kind of players they were and the DM gave them this list because he did not want to come back and probably wanted them to leave him alone.
There's also the fact dude deleted the post after. Like, within 48 hours of the original post if I'm not mistaken. So not only was OP and his party a straight group of POS, but enough so to drive this DM insane and get everyone he was looking for sympathy from to turn against him. Absolutely deserved.
I wonder if this is stuff the DM had attempted to communicate stuff in the past and got ignored. Some of the in-game rules for out of game stuff is a step too far...but gotta remember unless the DM is the OP, theyre going to paint themselves synpathetically, even if its subconciously.
yep, and DM was not the OP. A player was, who promptly took it down when redditors searched his history and found that he was bragging about his group giving their DM a had time.
It’s so important to remember that the dude took down his post once people dug into his history and figured out eh bragged about giving his DM a bad time. So, really, my sympathies are with the DM here.
Yeah that's what I see here, honest to God sounds like they just somehow never had a game zero to talk about this stuff? Like it genuinely seems like either the DM shut down any and all discussion or he never tried it in the first place
@@wrath4452Probably wanted “man he sounds like a shit DM”, but majority of responses were “you need to explain why and how did your DM get to this point”
I heard somewhere that the OP's post history had posts bragging about themselves and their party giving the DM a hard time, so assuming that's true it wouldn't be surprising if the other Reddit users took the DM's side
It feels like this 'monster' GM didn't start as one, but the party kind of 'turned him' into one. This really does look like they exceeded his breaking point and he just snapped.
@@SoraPierce I got to this point as a DM myself. Players will often take and take until you feel like quitting the hobby. To be honest, the best strategy is to stop and talk with your players. They often times don't know or are just assholes. Kick the ones who are trash and talk to the ones that just got a little overzealous. Edit: I finally took my own advice.
It makes it look like it's his own fault for not communicating with the party, and some shit he says makes it seem like he's the type of guy to scream at people over paper game
I recently burnt out of DM'ing and honestly a lot of these rules feel like echos of my thoughts. I even asked before I became more jaded for the rules of the table to be followed.
Can't even get fellow party members up to snuff for the most patient, high level GMs. But my poor fucking GM, who now runs tons of solo games for me specifically for bullshit like: Literally had an entire party tell me that during AN ENTIRE SESSION that ONLY I could do something. I had the most dangerous power set to try, and risked my character to end that fucking nightmare of a session. Other people had OBVIOUS ways to do it that had no real consequences, my pc had potential brain death for an obviously desperate or stupid plan. They were going along with the villain's plan to buy time and willingly killing random civilians- as the good guys! They literally believed it was the only way and it would work, knowing that the villain knew as soon as we got out we were killing him perma style. Like he would let them. I said something, the spotlight hog pick me rebuffed and everyone else agreed. Same party had a guy who swore up and down the game worked this way, not mechanically but how it was supposed to work ie this organization behaves like this etc- he pressed this really hard despite being autistic who showed obvious trouble reading things as whole concepts when it was more than a small paragraph, and argued with the GM who had eidetic memory nearly. (gm could find you the fucking page from memory alone for obscure one lines that had big impacts) This was for a game that had several books of lore, all canon, each hundreds of pages that most people just used the main one and summed up the rest because they couldn't remember them. Unfortunately we also had two followers who were new and hated going against the grain and just voted with the crowd, so thought he knew what he was doing. I once was accused of making decisions for the party by the hog that had to be in every scene and started taking all the talking roles. You know why? After the hog just essentially sold his soul because he tried to press cutscene skip on the fucking GM, fucked us over by releasing an obviously trapped demon, and told me to shut up when talking to an npc that was gonna turn us in by only telling him things that he already knew- I explained what the hog was volunteering us for as he happily talked about our plans in front of someone who had tried to kill us and volunteered us to save someone this enemy wanted us to/was trap who we didn't even know wasn't evil and had stake in risking their necks- then put it to a vote. Because he lost UNANIMOUSLY where I just asked them what they wanted to do he tried to claim I was making decisions for them later. I had told them I would go along with them and didn't vote. For once the new players went, "OH!". Dude also wanted to show off his cooking specialty and roleplay how amazing people found his food was- to people starving to death whose stomachs couldn't handle that. Fucking mental case. Two games, run simultaneously before we figured out this party couldn't learn, and had the gall to message the person who obviously cared the least about him (the gm) that he still wanted to hang out. Guy literally had to sit there controlling his anger a few times and when he had a talk with them about their behavior, they assumed it was towards me not them. It got so bad I literally napped during three of the sessions and none of them noticed, except the gm who was so busy managing them he thought I just wasn't wanting to participate. (this is not a behavior I would ever condone, just showing up became a chore) There was a final breaking point where the GM had to privately message the guy who thought he knew how things worked to knock it off. They lost their minds and tried to blame me for not being at an event when I fucking carried them through it with none of them taking it seriously- aka I did the most without my pc even being their to babysit them and went back to mind what we were actually supposed to be doing. I was the only one actually playing the game turns out. Getting to talk to the gm one guy wasn't even playing the character the way he said he was, and the gm was only running it still because he liked my character : / Queue getting him to drop the dead weight and now we do solo games, because honestly... other people weren't terribly better.
@seraphilight thats insane. I've had a few toxic players in my games and at tables that I've played, and they can destroy a person's love of the game. I hope you find an excellent table. You deserve to play with players that are as invested as you
I straight up quit DMing because of a party making me so jaded. I tried to DM a separate group but was so jaded that I couldn't do it with them, I apologized and handed all of my books over to them and full on quit TTRPGs
6. picking up on or ignoring side quests. Sometimes player will simultaneously blunder past heavily telegraphed plot points, and then complain they have nothing to do. Sometimes they can even be explicitly pointed out by the DM and the players will wilfully not engage. To be clear; it's the combination that's the issue: not engaging AND complaining that they don't have things to do. This fits in with some later stuff the DM mentions about the players just wanting to aimlessly wander (exploration/travel) or passing up on small things (fixated on looking for the next mega dungeon), so I'm inclined to think this is linked.
^ Agreed, this actually killed my last game. I've even had those players abort side quests after a single bad roll before because their other DM is hyper hardcore. I would tell them point blank " hey these are the quest hooks you have, you can persue any of the above ' and they'd sit on their hands, and then ask for a quest board (aka mercenary, collect 4 boar liver jobs instead of following any of the three player involved plots going on), and then i'd give them a quest board and they wouldn't take any of the jobs.
I'm guessing the DM's planned narrative is some cringefest the players want no part of like dealing with political intrigue in the 1,000 year old cat-girl empire or something and the players just want to explore dungeons, kill dragons, and collect cool loot. And the DM is telling them to go play video games if they want that type of fun.
@@michaelcarstater2097 as per other comments on here, the original reddit thread was pulled down because the op was found out to be a horror story player after a few questions were asked. The Dm here has lost it, but only because he was pushed there, the game has already ended and the players were badgering them to run again and the rules were a ' i'll only run if this is agreed to '
@@tommaydag420 Yes, thankyou tommaydag. Too many people are trying to pass judgement on individual point in isolation; adding in wild speculations that don't account for the collective information that has come to light via either the collective rule post, or the additional details that were revealed in the thread.
My group likes to make the joke about DM being god. Yesterday, DM showed us a map of our party HQ and said, "Don't worry about grid scale cause there won't ever be combat here." I immediately asked if I could roll Insight against that. We all got a good laugh. Play with people you like and vibe with.
I think your DM will like our party (and DM) My mini-list of silly game decisions DM allowed: 1. Once was fighting against kind of golem that's invincible to magic, AND has a chance of breaking weapon, with a chair 2. My character is from family that had a lot of relatives and EX-es, and I asked if I could roll d100 if I can understand what character says despite not having said language in sheet (surprisingly, succeeded, even tho it didn't gave anything useful) 3. Asked for d100 if that dragon party was about to fight is my character's relative (she wasn't, and ironically I rolled really high damage on fireball) 4. Also threw enemy at important thing at it dealt just enough damage to break it
My group gets so much laughter out of me sometimes. My player’s character said something so charismatic that I decided to change a ruling before revealing it to the party. I said, “I’m just going to give it to you because Autumn succeeded in a persuasion check against *me*” I can’t imagine not having fun with them.
Im glad more people are reading the full list instead of dropping it after rule 10, there's clearly more to this story, this is not something the DM dropped on a group of new players, the OP mentioned that the DM was on a break and this was the condition to get back, and since alot of the rules are specific, to me this shows the rules are a callout to the players action, i would love to have full context of what lead to this and the DM perspective.
What party prompted this kind of response, anyhow? Because I refuse to believe that this DM just woke up and chose violence that day. Like you think this DM is completely batshit crazy, but it gets so specific at times that it feels like the party has been pulling some major shit every session. No-one just pulls this kind of response out of their arse without some sort of reason for it. It could also just be a troll post, like XP to Level 3 said. But it's also Reddit, so...
Yeah, based on some of the rules it seems like this party would regularly have people wander off, derail into random conversations, and order food midsession. I would feel a little hurt as a DM if people constantly left the session and expected me to pause it. If everyone just wants to hang out and do something else, be a little bit more straight forward about it
based on what i have seen, the reddit user deleted the post because people were bring up previous posts showing how bad the players were. Leave it to redditors to search peoples comment and post history to figure who the actual problem is.
@@Theholtenator can't post links on RUclips. As for a tldr, I never read the posts. I have just heard from multiple people that the players posts were toxic
@@zexus480 Extremely reasonable, possibly even too long, depending on circumstances and the exact rules of what does or doesn't count as part of the time you have. Might be too low to fully resolve a turn, but if you have ten full minutes just to think about you wanna do without even counting the time needed to check the exact wording of a spell or something to see if a plan you have can even work, then that's a bit much. I would say three to five minutes, but you get extra time if you need to check the rules.
Yeahhh It hurts when it takes 7 minutes to get through one turn, I started to offhandedly time my players, the average tends to be 2 and a half minutes
I overall like this take on 44 rules compared to lots of other videos on this topic. It feels more nuanced Though one point - 1 minute feels too short. Rule 6 speaks of miniatures rather than theater of mind. Moving actual objects means you have less than 1 minute
Thank you! I do agree that minatures will add some additional time to everyone’s turn. I tend to overthink things when I’m mapping out the exact on a grid!
@@alicepbg2042 Exactly. You have one minute to say "I'm going to move here and then do this". If the "this" is complicated and going to take a bit to work out, that's fine. But at least you are getting started on it as soon as possible. When I was playing, especially as a spell caster, as soon as my turn was over I was already trying to figure out what I was going to do with my next one. Coming up with several ideas, and then allow the changing situation to direct me towards the one I thought was best.
I've been DMing for over 7 years, and am nowhere near this point. I did have individual players that drove me crazy, but their removal improved everything. So it sometimes is just singular players.
Unfortunately, for the last coupe years, i've ran for groups with more than one problem player, sometimes most of the group. People are shitty, this cannot be denied.
@@robinmohamedally7587 also accurate. My highschool DM was a crappy person. Would TPK by 3rd level, and wpuld have us play with character sheet destruction upon death.
"I am not your friend?" .... yyyyeah, no, this is a DM who has been abused, wheedled, nagged, argued with, taken advantage of, and repeatedly, REPEATEDLY treated like garbage by a very shitty group. But he's also not showing a degree of emotional maturity necessary to be a "good" DM. Whether that is a temporary thing, driven by the extremity to which he's been pushed, a permanent flaw in temperament, or merely the result of never really having had a good D&D experience and thinking that this is all there is, I cannot say. Some of his rules are pure sensibility, pure common courtesy, or reasonable. the "Once you move the mini, it stays there" rule also sounds like someone was trying to fudge their way to the outside of a fireball one too many times.
I agree. Alot of these also seems like he's tired of arguing with a toxic party. The dm is here to have fun too. Case in point 'I don't care what reddit says about my ruling' that isn't a rule per say. That's a straight up message posted on a billboard with the caption "I'm getting really tired of you using reddit so that you as a player can tell me how to DM"
People expecting "EmOtIoNaL mAtUrItY" from an MF who was supposedly put through a lot of BS will never not be absolutely tone deaf. No offence is what I'd say but that's cold comfort.
I'm very happy that most of the people I've seen making videos on these rules are trying to see things from the DM's perspective. It's way to easy to believe the DM is awful because the majority of D&D players seem to be just that, players, and this is being presented by a player. It seems that most D&D RUclipsrs have DM'd before and get that there's more than just the player's side to the story.
Did not expect to see you here but yeah, I'd like to see more people react to anger by asking what might have caused it instead of dismissing it outright. This doesn't just apply to games
I do DnD online. To make it fair for everyone, the DM (not me) gets to roll certain things irl. Everyone else has a bot in the discord for rolling to allow everyone to see. Now the DM can't roll *everything* in private, just certain things. Like if an NPC gets insight to see if we are lying or not. Or our death saving throws. But for initiative, attack rolls, etc, then the party members get to see the rolls. This was a rule we all came to an agreement with.
I’ve heard the guy who posted the manifesto was part of the problem. Apparently they were posting on the subreddit about what they and the rest of the plyers were doing to try and piss off the DM. He deleted all of that shortly after posting the manifesto.
There is something pretty toxic in modern D&D communities, a presumption that "everything is your fault", as the DM. It's good to be stoic about the role and always consider whether you can do better, to ask yourself if you are wasting the player's time or not-but there is absolutely such a thing as an annoying, lazy, disruptive, tardy, rude, or inattentive player who simply makes the game worse by being there. The rule I've become extremely harsh about is attendance. It's insulting to prep for a campaign and incorporate a player backstory into the quests, only for the player to no-show because he's playing Helldivers or whatever. I have lost almost all my tolerance for that.
Even this reflex from you is ridiculous, people have lives. It sucks for you, but you shouldn't hold it against people. You can't control other people only your reactions.
@@billiecruz4399 This is true of both the players and the DM, Billie. Here we have a DM exasperated beyond all reason, fuming and uncontrolled. But from his rules we can see the following: • Players had no consideration of being decisive or brisk on their turns. (This is rude to both other players and the DM.) • Players were making snide or sarcastic comments about the DM in front of him. (Even if said lightly, you should always be careful about insulting people, especially if the person is your host.) • Players were simultaneously loaded with loot, complaining for more, yet complaining combat was too easy. • Players ignored (or mocked) all his NPCs or plot hooks, wandering endlessly looking for loot dungeons. • Players brought none of their own stuff, and were damaging or getting food grease on his minis, handouts, dice, or tiles. • Players were getting drunk or high at the table and unable to focus (or else being disruptive). • Despite this ungrateful behavior, the DM himself was giving one or more players are ride, and/or inviting them into his home. Now, this DM evidently should have communicated his frustrations long ago, like a reasonable grown-up, instead of seething as he did. But if you cannot see that he was exasperated by his players' behavior, and that the players are ultimately responsible too for their behavior, then I have wasted my words.
@@magonus195 you are using the rules as examples of things the guy has had to deal with which I see no reason to assume. One of the rules involves fighting the players, as far as I'm concerned that paints him and his rules in the light of a wildly unstable individual who is not fit to play dnd let alone dm a game. I have never played dnd with people I would rather fight then talk to tho so it might be a personal experience thing
@@billiecruz4399yeah people have lives but they also have the responsibility to inform the group if and when they are going to be late. "Hey guys I'm stuck in traffic, gonna be late" or "Sorry guys work picked up suddenly and the boss wanted me to stay at the store a bit longer to help out, gonna be late" or "oops my bad i got the session time mixed up and I was playing Helldivers, be there in 10 mins".
@@billiecruz4399…Why shouldn’t I hold people’s behavior against them? I can’t control other people only my reactions. So I’m going to react to them being shitty and unreliable by no longer inviting them to things.
I actually implement some of these rules LMAO. 1) I time turns, but I only enforce it when someone takes way too long. A turn is 6 seconds, you don't get 10 minutes to strategize. I once played in a game where a player picked up the PHB to read about how their level 4 monk works for 30 minutes and the DM did nothing. That 4 round combat took 3 hours to resolve. I was the only one in the group doing my turns in a minute. I will not allow that to happen to my game. When a player inevitably says "I don't know how this works" I tell them they can read it when it's not their turn, or when they're out of combat. Or when they are at home. They have access to the entire library through dndbeyond. I have skipped players turns, and you know what? They get better. Timing turns works. I shouldn't have to skip players turns, and I rarely do. Rarely is not never. 5) sometimes a player will ask to use a skill (the one they are good at) for a task that is not appropriate, when I ask them to roleplay it they usually do it. 8) I enforce this one too. Usually I don't have to, but when someone just picks up a dice I ask them "what do you do?". That resolves it. 17) I've only banned one spell. 21) This one was a tough one for me. I knew two players who cheated with dice. These players are my friends. It has changed the way I look at them. I ended up with a house rule: dice must be legible, must be rolled in clear view, and may not be picked up before saying what the result is. I count any picking up as a natural 1, thankfully I've never had to apply the last rule after stating it. my own rule) the nope rule: if a player character attacks another player character the victim is allowed to declare "nope" and have it automatically fail. My rules are a result of players being selfish, hurting other players, and cheating. It ruins the game for me. The rules may seem draconian but the real tragedy here is that they're necessary. I should be able to trust players to not cheat, to not PVP, to treat each other with respect, but I can't. This DM needs to find new players, and ban players faster. Players that are disrespectful should not be punished in game, they should just be told they're disrespectful and choose between changed behavior or find a different DM.
Yeah, I agree that a lot of rules about cheating “feel insulting” to players, but the reality is that there are some players who will totally cheat if you didn’t have them. Sometimes they just can’t help it because they always want to roll high (because it sucks to fail) and they aren’t thinking by about the other players.
@@reginlief1 I've banned Silvery Bards, because it's not fun. If the players use it then I'd have to use it too (for verisimilitude and balance reasons), it's not a fun spell for the players to be subjected to. To have their critical hits turned into misses. Also on a side note, I've banned flying races. I think it's too powerful to be a racial ability. (I know it's powerful because all the power gamers at my table keep begging me to allow flying races, and not because they have cool roleplaying ideas)
"Trust players not to pvp" This is the only part I take umbrage with. Pvp happens, it happens irl, it should happen if the need arises in game. If you are properly roleplaying your characters there are absolutely characters that would come to blows over things. The paladin is not going to accept the assassin taking a job to assassinate the head of the local church of the paladins god. Now, you can argue that those 2 characters shouldn't be in the same party, and you would be right, but if they do end up on the same team, it would be natural for them to butt heads, and potentially come to blows.
Maybe you need to find out what type of people your playing with as a forever DM I never had to implement any of these trash rules because I play with the right people. And banning shit is a BIG no no imo as it just annoys me that you take away from the game because you don't wanna deal with it (flying races aren't to OP and silvery barbs isn't either) seems like you need better players or to be better @@Mastikator
In defense of Rule 7: I used to play with a guy who would constantly move his guy 6 squares forward, then say “Actually, let me thing about this”, then move his character *5* squares back. He’d do this constantly, just to get one square closer to where he wanted to be. He’d also throw a massive fit if you called him out. So we basically have this rule at my table as well, though we’re not super harsh on it
I guarantee his players saw this and berated him for making this list and made themselves out to be the victims and never took a second to do a little inward thinking to try and figure out "why is this guy feeling this way about how we all play DnD?" As evidenced by the player who posted it online for the world to see.
He deleted the post after getting trashed by redditors. You know you're garbage when the worst pile of trash on the internet calls you garbage. You're like, sub-garbage, lol
Why is he playing D&D at all in general if this is how he acts about it, like some of these rules make sense but it really seems like the DM himself doesn't know what he wants he contradicted his rule set like 8 times
@@SubtotalStar850-uh8pgA few things both the comment and this video failed to mention are that he didn't implement the rules, but simply threatened to do it as payback for the players making his DM experience hell, which the players enjoyed doing so much that the same person who posted this list bragged about giving his DM a hard time on Reddit. It is also likely that he was much calmer when saying the rules than the comment purposefully made him out to be.
I can't imagine playing with a party so horrid. Breaking stuff, getting high, not showing up, complaining about roles, letting in game bleed into real world, cheating, and making this poor dm's life hell only to then copy and paste his angry manifesto to reddit without context for online validation from strangers. I would happily play for a dm like this and I would never even want to associate in real life with the kinds of players in that party honestly.
What really gets me is his party was clearly comparing him to other GM's. Especially fucking Critical Role. When I GM, I cannot *stand* getting compared to these huge super popular podcast games or RUclips series. Because guess what dude, I GM for fun in my spare time as a every other weekend hobby. I don't GM for RUclips, I don't GM for a podcast, and I don't GM just for you to bitch when it isn't as grandiose as you were expecting.
finallly someone who reads it and realizes this kinda list doesnt come out of no where. Took me like 5-10 rules to realize something in the party prompted this and its not just a DM giving insane rules. There was something, or a lot of somethings that happened. Its fine to realize these rulings are crazy in a vacuum but together they really paint a story of a DM tired of players not caring most of the time and when they do care, they only care to complain.
@MrGantron414 yeah like Silvery barbs is banned at my table cause my first game as a DM had 3 Silvery barbs users with one being a Halfling Divination Wizard with Bountiful Luck feat and all the martials went ways to have jacked AC and it was all to make the game impossible for me to balance and to screw with me since the enemies I was under the impression to use couldn't hit unless they rolled well or critted and if they did they'd get Silvery barbs'd
@SoraPierce We kept the spell in we just made it a 3rd level spell instead a 1st level. Really makes the Wizard decide does he really want the fireball the first time they get high enough to cast it.
yes, it infuriated me to see that moon-faced hermaphrodite at XP to Level 3 deliberately take things out of context in order to score internet points. This guy is unhinged, for sure, but there's a story to justify it, and you don't even have to know any anciliary information about this list, just reading it will clue you in on who the real villains were.
This guy didn't want to play again and wrote this list so the shitty horrible players would say F it and not pester him to come back anymore. Genuinely, I probably wouldn't mind playing with this GM. With a reasonable party, I'm sure he's very fair. This was just him putting everything that's pissed him off into a list in rule form and effectively saying he isn't coming back.
@@al-mungus677 "He sounds ungodly dude wants a to wirte a book not a tabletop game " there's nothing to support this, just your wishful thinking or projection. Get out of your feelings, dude. The minute thing, though, is a little much. But as, OP wrote, he didn't want to play with them again, and they were pestering him to come back, and these were his rules. How did you miss that important part? history of head trauma?
Id just not play with them instead of writing rules and seeming like a mental insane person. Id wouldn't want to play with him either and I've been DMing for years and never got to this point and just quit if a party was horrible this just shows his immaturity@@robinmohamedally7587
I use a few rules similar to this. People doing things like repeatedly showing up hours late, rolling their dice off the table, getting up for no reason, etc. do get on my nerves. I think some people have kind of utopian expectations based on living a sheltered life and filtering out difficult people long before they even get to the D&D people. If you've never played D&D with a meth addict then you're not in a position to judge me.
Dude have any of you considered just not playing witht these people that piss you off or improving the people you hang around I would never be around a person I couldn't stand in the first place let alone talk to them for hours.
@@al-mungus677 SWEET SUMMER CHILD- where are they? Common FUCKING Decency isn't common!!! See, these fuckers- and I mean everyone- literally every player you DON'T want- will do everything you ask to get in the game. You have to do extreme vetting and be VERY good at flag reading- and even some psychology- to even filter out some of the people you don't want. I say I want the game I AM RUNNING to have THESE. EXACT. EXPECTATIONS. People ASSUME it's like "every other ttrpg game"- which just isn't fucking true. This is even from crowds who follow streamers WHO DON'T DO WHAT THEY SAY THE GAME SHOULD BE. "I love deep and heavy REALISTIC rp! *puts on Sean Connery accent and makes Bond jokes, only does memes to try to make the table laugh- who sit awkwardly in embarassment.*" Except they'll do this ONLY after they get in the game. Some even wait a few sessions. "Player driven, planning, and common sense based around a theme? *proceeds to treat the PARTY game like a solo game, burn time doing absolutely nothing that will help losing time to do helpful things, get pissed at other players asking what THEIR goals are and how they can help them do THE POINT OF THE GAME- only to go OH after it ends super early due to them*" Then the other side competent incompetence- *player takes HIGH level powers swearing they can handle it, proceeds to misinterpret what they mean, literally does not use the power to skip them doing NOTHING for several sessions because their pc is doing literal manual labor instead of using their fucking power* good roleplaying IF it had worked that way, but still terrible player. Literally put the party in stasis. For sessions. Don't get me started on the fucks who complain you run things by the book, especially when it's 5 FUCKING E aka the cakewalk of dnd, because their previous GM held their fucking hand. For example, the encounter has a no-dicerolling win that literally requires 2 brain cells- zombies move 20 feet. You move 30. Do math, throw rock, walk backwards. It gets up? Wow, we skipped that because it will eventually die. Oh. Oh. You're... meleeing it. (and they barely escaped a tpk when they had like three turns of watching it.. slowly... amble up to them.) I've found that the people who had repeatedly good luck with parties were doing "traditional railroad". Dice rolls replace real attempts. They had to put up with dumb shit but were all just there for laughs or the DM told them how they were heroes and won.
5. I view this as a 'role play' vs 'roll play' argument. A player doesn't need to give some in-character immersive shakespearean performance. Just don't do the "I persuade them [rolls] 14, what happens?" As a DM I've seen this a few times, and it's a pain to deal with. It doesn't need to be overly in-depth, just give me something to work with. What's the point you are trying to make, what details did you want to touch on, etc. Give me something I can base the DC off and what type of reactions I'm working with. It can be something like "I bring up the quest we're on for the mayor,, and I want to emphasize if things go well we're going to put in a good word on the guard's behalf". Not in character, no concern over elegant wording, but it gives me as DM details for gauging what the DC should be, if it's something that aligns or opposes what the npc wants, and queues be up for a response. I can even fluff up the details from there to say how elegant/crude the PC was in the narrative based on the result, because I'm not working from a blank slate.
@@GeneBateman1970 Jumping too far into the defensive and missing the nuance here. I agree it would be bad to demand highly detailed in-character portrayals all the time, such as requiring role play to be performed word-for-word, with accents, dramatic inflection, etc. That kind of demand is as silly as demanding you must be athletic IRL to roll athletics in game, or saying a player character has disadvantage on stealth because their player is wearing bright orange at the table. No, the take I'm defending is to at the bare minimum give the DM SOMETHING more than just the dice roll in isolation. Example of the no-detail scenarios I'm talking about. DM: "as you emerge into the orc war chief's tent, you and your companions bound from being captured, the chieftain 'more hoomies! they will make for a great feast tonight!' Player: "[rolls] 17?" DM: "... 17 what?" Player "deception?" Zero effort by the player to provide anything. Alternatively if the player gave some minimal details on what they wanted from their character; Player: "My character is going to lie to the chieftain, try to convince them we were sent by the hag that shares territory with the orcs. [rolls] 17?" Now the DM has things to work with. The DM guide for social DCs is broken up into friendly/neutral/hostile and a range from things they'd accept based on their wants/risks. with this minimal input the DM can now use the base rules of the game, because they can choose an appropriate DC to what the player is trying to achieve, and has somewhere to go for the narrative of how they are setting up the NPC to play out. Secondly; lets not apply the social awkward/autism defense as a virtue signal. If it's cruel to apply such low expectations to players, then it would be far crueller to expect the above and beyond from a DM. We don't know if anyone in this group falls in those categories, but if you want the emotional appeal for the players, why not extend that same emotional appeal for the DM. What's to say they don't also fall into that social awkward, shy, or on the spectrum category?
@@GeneBateman1970 if anything, it is downright rude of them not to warn DM about their disability so that the DM can just deny autists place at the table. Catering to special needs during HOBBY is not a requirment, they wanna play DnD, they either search or ask someone to search for an invalid friendly Master
@@GeneBateman1970 I honestly think you should need a reason To roll persuasion. If you can't think of it, that sucks, but you need to put in some effort too. I don't think you should degrade people with autism or that are shy because they CAN think of a reason to persuade someone.
That DM needs to find a new group. Even if some of these rules are reasonable, and others are not (ingame punishments for out-of-game behavior), there is obviously too much spite present, and that is bound to just lead to toxic antagonism between DM and players.
7. Moving. My first thought here is meta knowledge. If a player move their character around a blind corner, and I start describing the scene they can now see; having them then say they want to undo that movement but then plan out their turn with this newfound knowledge in mind, I'm going to side with the DM. Same for players that move to spots and trigger traps, land in danger zones, trigger opportunity attacks, etc etc.
Honestly I can understand where the DM is coming from with a lot of these rules. His punishments are often too much, and shouldn't be an in-game punishment... But if the players are always late, leaving for breaks every few minutes, ordering food in the middle of combat, and then complaining to him that his sessions aren't fun... I would be pissed too.
I find this shows the usual issue with todays ttrpg playerbase- for all ttrpgs not just dnd, but especially dnd. What makes a game? The usual answer is weirdly specific- and totally wrong. All games are different, and there is no key to what makes a game good- since everyone wants different sorts of games. You find the players that suit the sort of game you want. Problem being the assumption that all games have X means a player says, for example, they are into heavy rp- but what they really typically mean is they roleplay at all. Sometimes it's literally they just do an accent, and unfortunately sometimes it's someone that thinks roleplaying is trying to make everyone else laugh- by being as out there and stupid as possible. When you asked for a serious, heavy rp game. Imagine it going like this- "But it's DnD! It's supposed to be made up and easygoing" "I have a list of dragon canon cock sizes and this isn't for erp.." Anyway, vetting and session 0s are good! People get pissed anyone does this, even on streamer servers where the person they follow is literally doing that and very upfront about it. It's fucking stupid. Just go to one of the million other tables that run the way you find fun, you're not entitled to mine!
Lets be honest, there are some bad rules here and things that'd make me not want to play at the table, but the players themselves are clearly pushing it and being toxic. It's clear the DM might have an idealized vision on how they want to play DND that doesn't mesh with other people, but the players clearly don't seem to respect the DM's time, potentially cheat, and have no table etiquette.
"have no table etiquette" that's putting it extremely lightly and being VERY generous to those players. There's a couple of items you must be forgetting.
@@robinmohamedally7587yeah 1st player I ever kicked, missed 2 sessions, when he did come he was late and never did have a character sheet, and he’d take forever for his turn (don’t remember for sure but I think he wasn’t a caster so he didn’t have that excuse even). But it was my 1st campaign and I didn’t want to kick someone. The straw that broke the camel was, whenever it was his turn, all the energy and excitement drained from the whole group, myself included
Yeah, some of these are legit complaints, but I think this DM needs to not DM with their group and maybe even take a break from DMing for a while . They're obviously frustrated and are not having fun. and ultimately, FUN is the point of any Table Top Game, The DM and the Players should both be enjoying themselves.
Yeah, when you start writing a manifesto trying to punish your friends, it’s time to take a step back and chill out. DMing can be a lot of work but it still should always be fun! If they are shitty friends in general, it isn’t D&D conduct that is the problem.
@lootgoblinmarketplace the problem I think is that the OP was not being completely honest about table behavior. This reads like a "I'm done with your ---- Doug. And Andrew don't think I forgot about Y. And Jane, you keep doing x when I keep telling you to stop doing it. So if you want me to dm for you guys here's my rules of behaviors I don't want to see."
He did took break, people who saw the reddit post seems to realize this was posted by one if the player. They begged the DM to return and the DM sent this as obvious hint of 'no i don't wanna came back, either accept this ridiculous rule that i wrote to call out some of you or leave me alone.'
@Username-cs1bi The user (u/Khargoth) who submitted the thread. Submitted it to 3 threads. And promptly deleted each original post after people started digging into their post history. Which often was shaming or ridiculing their DM on reddit so there's already a lack of respect. This just feels like the DM is setting boundaries to actually be respected.
I am currently dming for a group of people who never used to show up on time and some people always got up randomly mid session to do whatever. It made me feel like my time wasn't being valued. I started to set a very specific time for start and end, and I always keep to those times. I also give inspiration to players who are on time to the game. Now the party is always on time, and because they know I don't extend the session beyond the agreed amount, they don't get up too much because they don't wanna miss out on their own game time
I kinda relate to some of the rules about actually playing dnd and not eating, constantly leaving, or talking about unrelated thing because I’ve had a party where we played online and at very least once per session someone would be on tik tok, texting, or playing a game during important combat or roleplaying. I noticed how often people seemed to be just leaving for like 5-10 minutes or being on tik tok and RUclips during the whole game and asked if the game was boring and if they wanted to play and what I could change. I was met with a “Everything you’re doing is great I just have a short attention span.” So I get why the dm seems so angry in those rules and I feel it but also if your players are paying attention and don’t seem anywhere near as interested as you, stop playing with them.
Genuinely agree with the bring a second character sheet. If the party agrees combat should be harder they should be prepared for the worst possible outcome. That being said, storytelling should be higher priority than difficulty
Yeah, I think that’s fair too. If you want to make no encounter feel safe, then make sure to be okay to part with your character. I find that fun and I always have a second character I’m itching to play!
Consider just what kinds of actions could motivate that role play rule. “I r-e the innkeeper’s daughter” _ok if you wanna do that, act it out. In front of everyone just role play that. If that’s the kind of thing you wanna do commit to it. Give us a skit. C’mon._ “Never mind, I think I’ll go check if I can restock some potions.” *PROBLEM SOLVED*
these rules sound like a poison pill. they're likely _ment_ to get the party to stop playing with him. it's likely because they started the haiatus because they wanted the break to begin with, but instaid they got pestered over and over about when they can get back to playing, and this is probably the most spitefull no they could give.
Honestly the majority are an extreme version of a very reasonable rule. Very few of the rules aren't broadly applicable to most games if toned down to reasonable proportions.
@@orionstokesweiss2344 fair. But if from the perspective of the players this _is_ a big deal, then the point may be made. As if they aren't willing to compromise then it's clear there were other problems that caused the DM to blow his lid like this.
The longer the list goes The more I realize The players are the biggest issue here. The dm has been taken advantage of and been abused. Seeing that the post was taken down proves this point.
"People don't write manifestos for things they don't care about" that sounds like a challenge. Give me random topics to write a manifesto about. Once there's at least 10 options I'll choose one
@@starhammer5247 I will say I very much do care about tea. It's a perfect example as to the woes of supply and demand as well the evils that can be caused by a substance that overall brings a net benefit to people. Tea is calming and depending on different varieties can be seen as medicine. As such war has been raged over it and blood has flowed. Tea is a primary cause of much political change in the world. To know the full extent of the power Tea has over historical events we must first dissect the phrase "what does that have to do with the price of Tea in China?" It's a phrase that was used so commonly that it can be considered a meme even before the invention of the internet. The phrase exists because the desire for Tea was so great it reshaped the direction whole nations took their countries. It can be argued that the power of the British empire can be directly connected to the desire to secure Tea. The British empire only fell apart after globalized trade became standard and the need for military power to secure Tea imports was gone. The leaves were so desired and valued that it was tossing them into the water that brought the British army in force to America. Never forget tea is not only a soothing, tasty, and healthy drink but a shaper of world politics and leaves of death
This one of the reasons i like online DnD the capacity to keep track of things, i can always check people stuff, like the spell slots, dices, actions, gear, etc. And if i want or need to get out is as easy as just logout, but i do agree with some of the Dm rules here, but as u said theres a lot of problems between dm and players
TBF saw trap dungeon cam be a massive vibe for a 1 shot - i had an old DM run a one shot with a massive tomb and a reincarnation mechanic (new character at random from a massive pile we all donated old characters to who retains the memories of fallen characters.) it was a lot of fun trying to explore/escape the tomb while keeping track of traps and Secrets and trying to find a way to make use of whatever character you picked up (ooh this new barbarian has poison resistance, +5 to con saves and a bunch of hp, maybe he can make it through the poison fog without dying!) That DM was also really good at describing gruesome deaths and traps etc so the premise really let him go ham.
This makes me REALLY appreciate my group! Somebody give this guy a hug! It seems to me that the author let a lot of things go early that he’s trying to overcorrect now. Whatever the case, he needs to find a different group. The damage sounds beyond repair.
I believe the true story is that the original poster was a player, and the party was basically not respecting the DM in the slightest after wanting him to dm for them. They'd mock every NPC he made and basically were the equivalent of chaotic stupid trying to be a chaotic evil party in a hero setting. Top that off, they'd cancel last minute or other things like that without much of a warning and he'd be left out in the dust just basically wasting all of his time preparing for the session. Then at game time when everyone does get together, it's smoke, talk about other things, smoke, finally begin, smoke, wait for everyone to get ready again, and after like 4 hours, it's only been like 30 minutes of actual game time. I'd be pretty annoyed too
I played with a group in a weekly game, and we played for like four years, and nobody would choose spells that required a saving throw, because the DM never ever failed saves. We all knew what he was doing, but we never accused him of fudging his dice rolls.
I'm a new dm. I like to bring back stuff from an earlier session. When the party was level one, the freedom Mama Bear and her Cubs from some trappers. When the party was level three and fighting the rear guard of the Raiders in, Port of the Dragon queen, Mama Bear came back and attacked the guard tree that the players would have had to fight as part of the rearguard.
DM rules often tell a story of what they've been through. This one needs to take a few turns as a player or away from the game for his own sanity. I understand this was written during a barbarian rage. I have a set of rules myself that ive never had to (and hope i never have to) enforce. Just a list of clear expectations so that everyone comes to the table knowing what to expect so everyone can enjoy the game. My session zero also includes ways we can as a group talk about what the players expect from me as a DM. This is also the time players can challenge the ground rules if they dont like them and we can discuss changes. They can even place rules and expectations on me the DM. Whoever wrote these rules, you can have a seat at my table anytime.
I'm pretty hardcore in the camp of "don't use in-game consequences to punish real life problems" but it then feels like there's no other way to punish someone other than jumping straight to excluding them from the campaign.
The DM sounds like he played with inattentive, messy stoners until having a Joker moment and starting to foster an anger for humanity. At first you just see the anger but then it all starts to make sense when you see that people were full on forgetting their sheets and bringing and spilling food and making a mess. DM needs to have a good, serious group that can relax but still be attentive, to see if they can rekindle the love for the game with less defensiveness. That or just take a break and be a player for a bit for a DM and party that can take it seriously.
I, too, loved when Indiana Jones just stood in the way of the boulder, because the damage is only a quarter of his HP and he had healing potions in his backpack.
Yeah, they definitely are having a bit of a rant… but some of these things feel like a person who is hurt. It may mean they aren’t the best fit for this party or to DM in general. But I don’t thinking this is just another power tripping DM
He comes across as someone who dealt with a lot of bs and never addressed any of it as it happened and eventually snapped causing him to lash out all at once. On the one hand I understand his frustration, but on the other he’s handled the situation on such a childish manner. Half of his rules sound like he’d rather write a book while also not understanding the point of tabletop games overall.
@@oriandthesleepytime i like Jacob's videos, i really do, but the one he made of this list was obviously sided with the players and not wanting to see the Dm's side
Like you said we don't know the context, but I'm getting a different vibe. A lot of these rules are far too spiteful for me to think the DM was being reasonable in the game especially with the "don't take D&D serious" and "I'm not your friend" rules despite doing that very thing with this list, how he is trying to encourage rules lawyering between the players while saying his can't be which is just flat out unfair and is encouraging OOC inter-party conflict, the sudden debuffs out of nowhere along with taking away magic items just reeks of trying to screw the players over or even a DM vs player mentality, and saying if your character dies you can't play is very harsh considering the vibe I get is that the DM would be pissed off if a player left after that even though it'd be reasonable to leave a session if you literally can't play. You're right that the DM could've all had a point with this, but plenty of RPG horror stories, along with my experience in retail, shows the some people can be peeved over the smallest criticism or take not going along with them 100% as antagonistic. For the rules regarding his D&D stuff, if accurate, I'm surprised he hasn't kicked the offending player/s out already as he'd be well in his rights to do so if it happened as often as he implied.
Yeah, I’m really conflicted with this list. I can’t tell if he is full spiteful and was just too passive before… but there are a few comments that I feel for this DM. I would hope my friends wouldn’t break my stuff and lie to me about it
Keep in mind that this list was reported by a player that has several posts where they brag about giving their DM a hard time. It’s extremely unlikely these are the actual rules, and not a “slight rephrasing” of the actual rules. For example I’m fine with you arguing about how stuff works with each other but please don’t argue with my rulings Becomes Rules lawyering with each other is encouraged but don’t question me Apply that to every question and remember that the player admitted this was their DM who had in fact left their group and this was their ultimatum for if the group wanted them to return. So he did in fact kick out bad player and leave the situation, he just didn’t cut ties effectively enough to avoid being dragged back in.
My problem with rule 5 is I will drop the most persuasive argument known to man and then roll a 7, grand total 9, get laughed at and then just go back to stabbing. And as with the infinite prisoner’s dilemma I remember the results from last time, go though the rhetoric, roll poorly, ax. And then there’s the inverse, where the quiet guy who played paladin to smite the unworthy is our party face and he’s trying and we’re helping but he couldn’t talk his way into his own house. Rolls a 10, 17 total, everyone loves him.
Some of these are reasonable but come off as unhinged b/c this person has probably been pushed well beyond their breaking point by now. Some are actually unhinged and some seem super specific. Saying I giveth your magical items therefore I can taketh them away is a little crazy. While Mr. Loot Goblin makes a good point that DM is always right I feel there are instances in which a DM should be called out about their rulings if they seem unfair or at the very least I would like an explanation as to why the DM is making said unfair call and see of maybe there is room for compromise.
I'm so grateful to you for taking the DM's side here. My first introduction to the list was people responding to this list, treating it like it came out of nowhere, like he was a Monster DM and this was his standard rule list for any game he ever runs. But even before I started seeing comments on those videos explaining the context (that the players were nightmares and the DM really didn't want to play with them any more), just the list itself screams out to me that "you guys have made my life miserable trying to run a game for you, here are my responses to all the terrible things you put me through." Like, I can't imagine any DM coming up with the rule "don't come to the game stoned" unless someone came to the game stoned. Even rule number 2, the fact that it starts off "if you want harder fights" is an obvious proof that he's responding to players complaining about fight difficulty.
I’ve definitely had players who do not value my time or effort at all, certainly not as bad as his situation sounds though. I think he is taking things way too seriously and personally, however it sounds like his players won’t communicate, pay attention, or accept when things don’t go their way. Me and my players were able to after a long break so everyone could decompress discuss things and get on the same page, the group has been great ever sense. To me this sounds like a DM overreacting to bad players and no one trying to communicate. I do think though if player say they want hard fights they should be ready for the characters to die, otherwise the fight really isn’t that hard. This comment was way longer than I had intended.
Even for every one thats somewhat understandable as a rule, its presented INCREDIBLY rudely and so hostile I can't see the DM as being in the right. And several are just flat out bad rules. Forcing someone who doesnt have 20 charisma to perfectly roleplay an expertise Bard persuading someone is bad. It is not at all a fair standard unless you also demand they make 4 attacks in 6 seconds, grapple a large creature, or cast a spell.
I'm sorry, but every experience I've had with D&D involved incredibly entitled players who expected the DM to bend over backwards for them and had no concern about any of the other players. Super toxic. There's no way I would ever DM a modern group of players.
As a DM it’s my personal opinion that NO DM starts like this. No dm comes in hating their players, because if they did they would not play with them. And a good 60% of the time when players and dms have conflict it’s due to miscommunication on what the dm wants and what the players want. The other 30% and 10% being playstyles not meshing and ACTUAL hatred blooming between dm and players. If your dm is this pissed off and done, then there needs to be some communication. Maybe start a new campaign, have a session zero, and talk things out with your dm. See what everybody is looking for. Your dm also wants to play the game, don’t steal the enjoyment from them too
I agree so much with his rules of showing up on time, not leaving the table and the traveling portion is done. In short I once DM'd for some friends who asked me to run a one-shot. I made it from scratch and asked them to settle on a time and date. The day comes and half the group showed up late, 3/4s left early cause they planned other stuff after they agreed to that day and time slot. We never actually did the one-shot cause they complained I was rail-roading them so the group never left the initial area and the "heroes" instead spent their time breaking into merchant stalls setup at a crossroads, killed a bunch of guards and then set a forest on fire just to then leave early... i never DM'd for them again.
For rule 8, I generally tell people "Tell me what you're going to do, and then wait for me to call for the roll please, cause I'm juggling about 50 different things, I promise you'll get to do it." Lol
I understand especially the parts in which he is addressing the slow players - now I personally think that in certain situations, you need to weigh your options, for example, when you have to choose between killing an enemy or helping your party member. But if you need to check your spell save DC every single turn, that makes my blood boil... I hardly disagree with rule number 9. Everybody knows that exhaustion system in 5e is an unbalanced mess that should be homebrewed into being something more reasonable.
On Rule 6: How would they know they missed a side quests? The DM makes this stuff up so unless, as was pointed out, the DM told them there is no way they would know. Don’t tell them as that’s just being mean. “I had this really cool thing but YOU missed it.”
Number 30 isn't a fair ask. It's a statement of fact that my players *will* eat when I fucking say so or they won't eat at all. Sure it comes from a place of not wanting crumbs everywhere, but this (and many other rules) is not an ask
I was in this dms shoes once. I ran the rules by someone I knew online who also played the game, and their response was something like “If you feel the need to write this out before you play even a single game after today, maybe you just need a break.” I announced to the group that I was going on hiatus, and was upfront that it was because being the only dm drained me so much. I still mostly dm, but the other players at least offer to run every now and again.
It feels like conflict is in that DM wants a well-thought immersive theatrical experience with act-outs, and group wants to smoke weed, eat treats and have shits and giggles for a game.
3:42 I had a situation in my current Strahd game where I was frustrated with the book requiring the players to have access to certain things but not giving any way for them to get those things. There's quite a few places where the book gives Greater Restoration as the only possible way of solving something (Mad Mage, Exethanter), but that's a 5th level spell, available to only four classes and only from level 9, and requires diamond dust. There is literally no single instance in the entire book where players are given access to diamonds (at most it's bags of 'assorted gemstones'). I have a cleric in the party, and I don't want to be too brutal - I have a character who can resurrect people, I want to give them the opportunity to do so, which again requires diamonds. I've seen that other people have resolved the Greater Restoration problem by having Van Richten give the PCs some scrolls, but my PCs can't stand the guy (that's what you get for training a tiger to kill Vistani on sight without telling the PCs your backstory-related reasons for it). Aside from all this, the players kind of breezed past the Vistani camp once to bring Arabella home and didn't talk to anyone, so I had no real way of letting them know about Rahadin's backstory. So I made a new location - a dusk elf village in ruins - where they could find a diary explaining Rahadin's backstory (as well as the notion that Strahd doesn't stay dead, for good measure), a secret stash with two scrolls of Greater Restoration, and I also put the holy symbol in there that opens up the grave in Krezk - because they weren't going to enter Ravenloft before the big battle, I barely managed to convince them to get the skull after the dinner by having an NPC tell them where it was. I placed this location in their way - when rowing across the lake to go looking for the Mad Mage, I had the entire shore covered in thick brush and only one old rotting dock sticking out where they could land. But I wasn't going to give them handfuls of diamonds out of nowhere - I wanted them to work for it - so I also had them encounter a group of little axolotl people living in the lake, who used to trade with the dusk elves - metal tools (smithing is hard underwater) in exchange for the diamonds the axolotls got from a vein in the bottom of the lake. They asked the party to slay a homebrew monster that was eating their children, no big. I'd run this idea past a more experienced DM friend and he warned me that PCs can just refuse to do something - specifically the debuffs they'd get from being underwater would be a problem, so either I had to do something about those or I'd had to make sure the reward was worth it. Sure enough, the PCs were initially weary of the idea of going underwater. So I offered them three magical amulets to give them water breathing, a swim speed, and to negate water resistance debuffs on their melee attacks; and I made sure to have the axolotl leader pull a handful of diamonds out of her pocket. They didn't know how much they were going to get, but the diamonds sealed the deal. I gave them 1000 gold's worth of diamonds each. Now all they have to do is keep their cleric alive to use them 😈
lol the no hold back attitude of internet behavior exceeded into play with strangers... that is why I do not do that. Screw rule 0. Games have rules. Adhere to them. Craft your adventure within those rules or use a game system supporting your narrative.
Honestly the DM just seems mad, not malicious. As a long term GM for many mediums campaigns and systems I feel his suffering. I recently had a similar issue where i organized a massive campaign for a large roleplay Gmod server and our player base would regularly refuse to remember basic details, engage with any systems presented to progress the campaign despite it being established they had to push it forwards. They then complained that the campaign wasn't going anywhere and too long (i had spent 3 months writing it and was pushing 6 months of non stop going in on this eith no breaks) and said "we don't want to do anything and just want to kill stuff". This broke me as a Gm and ruined it for me because it showed they did not value me or my efforts.
2:55 "If you aren't going to role play your checks..." You ever been at an overnight LARP (with camping) and a 'DM' is having a girl act out 'seducing the guards' in front of everyone? That is my first thought since I"ve seen it play out poorly.
The rule of "you get 1 minute and if you try and negotiate I'll break yor legs" feels... unfair? Mainly the tone but also the time limit was not put in good faith, taking care of everyones time needed to think, the rest just feels like a mess and there is a point in games where you have to negotiate the rules.
I can kinda relate to this poor GM to a certain extent.. i just quit before I snapped. I moved on to a group that respects my time, and engages with the game. The other group still tries to ask me to play sometimes... and I have had one of the players since i quit playing with them try to gaslight me into thinking it was me not them and that I was being mean by playing with another group without them. I am apparently a bad friend because I dont want to play with them? Honestly I have reached the point I dont care anymore lol
This is my first time seeing the 44 rules in it's entirely, and ... What an emotional roller coaster. I've seen about the first 10 rules, and without context, this sounds like a guy trying to set up a totalitarian regime disguised as a DnD game. But somehow, the rules become more rational as the list progresses and the story comes out. It's clear that this DM has put his heart and soul into this game, for players that probably don't remember what they did last session. We're still missing a LOT of context, but the fact that these rules were written, and that they leaked online, means that these problems have been going on for a long time and that party communication has broken down to an irreparable state. Frankly, this DM cannot get away from these players fast enough, and these players might genuinely be better off playing Baldur's gate 3 "pass and play" style than getting a new actual GM.
Yeah, I noticed the image first sent around cuts off right around when the rules seem to be more reasonable (like him begging people to not break his stuff and leave every few minutes). I think it showed a little bit of bias because with the full context the DM’s anger isn’t coming from nowhere
Do you know if anyone elaborated on this story? Like one of the players? As for my opinion on this, I'll go one by one. 1. Makes sense. I've played with people who take forever and been one of them when I first began playing. However, I'd say 3 minutes minimum as some shit can take much longer. 2. First off, put a a straw poll for your party as to whether they want easy, well-balanced, harder, or deadly fights. Backup characters are something I see as being necessary in the first place incase anything happens. This kinda retaliation is unnecessary. 3. I get where it's coming from, but I'd say asking what part is unfair and how they'd change it is good to do first before dismissing it. Don't DM through fear. 4. Funny, but honestly it's better to just write a tally down each time with a seperate thing for each player and if it gets too much, kick em. Not only do you have a solid list of reasonable evidence, you also don't waste energy fighting with them. Be the sponge until the hammer is required. This doesn't mean be a pushover, just don't be super angry or retaliatory. 5. Reasoning is shit, same with the punishment. Honestly, same with the tally thing. If they do it enough times, kick em. 6. This really depends on how obvious you make it. Don't rely on a single queue, but don't give 10+. 5 is a good middle ground, and not all to the same person. If they miss all of your queues, even when they're fkin obvious, it's on them. Also talking over whether it's obvious could help. Perspective is a killer. 7. Ok, I'd say you have 2 per turn and once you commit enough, no take backs. Like no moving 8 tiles, entering line of sight of an enemy and going "oh no" only to take it back more than once every, say, 2-3 turns. If you trigger a trap, no take backs. It's really about the exact circumstances of this. No using this to metagame so you can see what's around the corner. 8. Perfect rule, though it could be worded better. Also, roll out from yourself with at least 2 people watching or it's fkin invalid, and no touching the dice till they need to be rolled again and everyone has seen them. 9. For things like this, session 0 is a good time to figure out the pacing. 10. Makes sense, especially the grudge part. However, it's important not to take it over the top. No death sentence for dissing a king. Just a little stint in jail and a fine. Don't take this overboard. 11. I agree with you on this a lot, but at the same time I enjoy making dungeons so yeah... 12. Session 0 should work this out. I agree heavily with what you said on this. 13-14. No punishment, just add to the tally and get other ways to help them arrive. If this happens 2-3 times, yer out. 15. I'd say this is a good rule, however if the rest of the party is there, just remove their character from the session and kick em the next time it happens.
No elaboration from the players, but the Redditors did some digging and found that the poster, one of the Players in question, bragged quite a bit about screwing over his DM. Seems like the Players are just shitheads.
@@starhammer5247 Honestly, I feel bad for the DM more than I do the players. At least, if there's even a single good player who ain't a piece of trash, I hope they get along.
@@starhammer5247 When your reddit history is trashing your DM, and then cry victim when this is the retort and hounding said dm down to dm for your obviously toxic group. Then cry when this is the draconian response. It reads quite normal. Most of it is etiquette for ya know...regular people. Some rules I raise my eyebrow at but it's clearly a point to bad behavior, metagaming, or breaking the Rules as Intended but it works Rules as Written. (Some say flyby+familiar+guidance for easy ways to stop a DM from canceling your guidance spam and that might be why you can't use divination spells just to say "I don't want to deal with cheese weaseling asshole character builds.") The DM sounds like they just had enough of it, and this was their final straw. A final appeal to some sense of normalcy, and honestly they shouldn't even have entertained the group. Because if I was a DM and I had alot of players not show, show up high, get food in middle of session without warning me, etc, etc. I'd just walk off. They can't respect my time. I won't respect theirs. I'd rather just play KOTOR, NW, ID, or BG1-3. Because obviously that's the experience the players want, so that's the experience the players can have.
After hearing all these rules I get the impression that it may be a very large group of players the DM is dealing with and has been exhausted by it. More context is needed
If you aint laughing or just thoroughly enjoying any dnd session you are having as a dm or player im sorry but you gotta find a different group, ive been playing with the same geoup for years now and every single time its laid back chill fun amd engaging and never have i as dm or player have ever had to write to them "rules" They have to follow, just have fun, its the whole point of having it on pen and paper, its maluable fun, infinte in nature just how do you fick something like that up?
I can relate to this gm. I've never gone this far, but I have had groups that really sucked, and I tried to stop running for them, but they REALLY wanted to play. I don't know. It's weird.
Here comes a super hot take: this DM shows the issues with the more privileged side of players in TTRPGs. A lot of players believe it has to be their way or no way at all and will argue to "win" even when it's not necessary. And while some of these rules are excessive, The majority of them are reasonable at base level. A lot of players ONLY care about their power fantasy but then ignore that the DM wants to have fun too. I'm not talking min maxing, but actively trying to strong arm the DM into a specific style of play is toxic and not overly uncommon However, I do agree that there is a solution in merely swapping groups. Some DMs and Groups just don't mix. Some players want to be rewarded for outlandish ideas and some love rigid rules. Some try to think of how to break the system and others would rather keep it direct and simple. Some like to manage their inventory, some rather have bags of holding. It IS the same for DMs. And if your players don't appreciate your work, then drop them. DMs are in higher demand than players and groups like mine, where 4 of the 5 players want to dM so we switch off, is exceptionally rare.
18 doesn't make sense. Stealth checks are basically at n-tuple disadvantage, since a single PC screwing up alerts the enemy and forgoes the surprise round or any other advantage you'd have from stealth as a party. Same goes for deception (let's say your party wants to disguise themselves as part of an enemy group). Therefore, if a check can be an n-tuple disadvantage, whereby the smallest roll determines the success of all party members, then checks should also be allowed to be at n-tuple advantage, whereby all PCs can investigate for clues, all PCs can look for that dragon that's far away, and so on.
Not quite. Group stealth check isn’t n-tuple disadvantage inherently since those who don’t fail can remain hidden. The real issue for the rule is just that it’s all very dependent on the skill check. Some stuff “should” be allowed to have multiple attempts. Like kicking down a door or something. Though there are also edge cases where it’s a bit unclear if repeated attempts should be allowed. Think it’s a bit unfair to assume the rule is absolute. Makes more sense just as a general leaning.
@@skycastrum5803 "Group stealth check isn’t n-tuple disadvantage inherently since those who don’t fail can remain hidden" - I think this might just be based on how both DMs I've been a PC for ran their slightly homebrew 5e campaigns. Apparently the concept of a surprise round doesn't even exist in 5e, so that's my bad. Still, the fact that in many scenarios the entire group is as strong as its weakest link is something to be considered when forbidding players to take advantage of their numbers in scenarios where the group is a strong as its strongest member.
@@karlpoppins Yeah, surprise round thing kind of weird. People do it differently. But technically “surprise” is just a condition. Though that’s kind of the issue for a lot of D&D. People do things different. Often times “officially” something shouldn’t matter, but some random house rule will cause unexpected issues. And sometimes it’s the reverse.
@@skycastrum5803 To be honest, I don't like sticking to what's written. One of my favorite deviations from 5e is that on a nat20 I want all damage (including modifiers) to be doubled, not just the dice rolls; rolling a nat20 and merely doubling a low roll feels like such a huge letdown and a party pooper.
Im not an avid dnd player, so i can't judge these rules too much, but some seem biased to me. Like 14, it seems bad for 2 reasons 1. The in-game solutions for out of game problems thing and 2. The bias because all he says is no good reason judged by himself, and different people have different priorities. If someone values an event over dnd but the GM doesn't, then won't they be punished for no reason in their eyes. My point is there should be a cleanly put list of what is and isn't acceptable at least, right?
The funniest bit to me as an "x Without Number" player/GM is that a lot of times "some guy on reddit" is just straight-up the dude who wrote the games.
Bro I think you forgot what the context of WHO posted this reddit post. The PC and the rest were a total douchebags and the subreddit called them out on it. THAT'S why the post and user got deleted.
DM rule 0 is fckin stupid. The DM is also a player, and the mentality that they can never be wrong will ruin the game in many cases. DMs can be wrong, they might not know every singly rule by heart, or might actually be human and make mistakes. When I make mistakes as a DM and a player points it out, instead of getting deffensive and being a btch about it I adjust the situation to how it is supposed to be rather than double down. When playing with friends its not the DM versus the players, its everyone working together to make a story, and the DMs opinions should not be valued infinitely higher than the other players.
This is 50% "oh damn calm down" and 50% "what did those players do to you???" Id love to hear multiple perspectives from this group bc there is sooo much info missing
Most of these are just rule zero and have some common courtesy. However it's the in game consequences for out of game behaviour is just jarring. It takes you out of the game. Then there are so called rules that aren't actually rules. Just "here is my DM style".
For once its not a player feeling trapped with a DM, but a DM feeling trapped with players. Its easy to say, hard to do, but still remains the only option. Dont play games you cant enjoy.
This dude just needs to take a break. Like I said in my video, some of the rules are understandable, it's just the tone of aggression. Plus, I'd like to hear this DM's side of the story.
I very much would like to hear his side of the story too. The manifesto is definitely full on aggression and without more context it just comes off as a DM ranting, but I’m curious he thought of these rules.
Like 3 rules there make it seem like there's one or two very shitty players in that group too. That DM clearly doesn't want to DM, but won't just end the game because it's not seem as an ok thing, so they instead created a bunch of "if you do x I'll just leave, this is your warning"
@@lootgoblinmarketplace Yeah, definitely want to hear the DM's side.
Taking all the rules together, and understand that most of these are written as reactionary, it paints a picture of a very problematic table.
Aggressive response, but not unjustified.
They were on a break (hiatus by what the post said); being pulled back in on player request it seems. The write-up is presented as a conditional "If I return, this is how it'll be" type deal. Some reviewers are acting as though this is some first-time DMing, reading each rule as stand-alone, and ignoring the context of the group having a history, and unfairly coming down on the DM as being 100% the issue.
@@zhornlegacy7936 Yeah, I think a lot of what the DM is suggesting is extreme, and like people said he's clearly processing a lot of rage. But, I see almost all other commentators on the topic glossing over the obvious clues in some of the rules, that it's related to specific complaints the DM has faced from his party. It may not even be a Bad DM OR a Bad Party situation, honestly; it could just be a fucking awful fit of DM and Party, where the DM and Party want very different things out of the game.
@zhornlegacy7936 and some rules are way too specific that, like damn what are your players doing to you.
Like breaking and spilling stuff on your stuff, which ttrpg stuff gets pretty expensive.
No mega-dungeons every session makes it seem like they complained that they weren't playing Dungeon of the Mad Mage but of the DMs creation.
People are showing up high and drunk, so often he has to angrily put that reasonable rule in as well.
Something that's absent in a lot of the conversation around this list is that this is a list of 44 things that the DM hasn't done, but is threatening to start doing if this group of people he's come to despise ever drag him back into running a game for them. Like, it's clearly not written from a healthy place, but setting 1 minute timers on people's turns is, explicitly, something the DM didn't do. People are reacting like the DM posted the rules publicly as an example to be followed broadly, but no, he sent the rules to a specific group as an ultimatum intended to be completely unreasonable so that it would be rejected.
it’s like when contractors send out a quote that’s unreasonably high expecting to get out of the job and instead the client accepts it and complains about the price the whole time
Yeh, he quite running games for them, and then they harassed him IRL trying to force him to run games for him.
Still, pretty much none of these rules are broadly acceptable. Without knowing details, it sounds like this guy was coming from a place of anger.
Whether he's mad because his ego or pride got hurt or the players just stopped following the rules entirely, we'll likely never know.
What we do know is this person clearly didn't like being DM but was repeatedly, possibly without their own consent.
Literally no evidence of that. Dudes most likely a controlling person with massive insecurities
@@yourunclejohn984If you can't see evidence of that, you are atrociously bad at reading comprehension.
So people in the comments of the original post started asking questions and two things came out. First the players were awful people who drove their DM to his wits end, secondly he did leave the group but they begged for him to come back since they knew what kind of players they were and the DM gave them this list because he did not want to come back and probably wanted them to leave him alone.
There's also the fact dude deleted the post after. Like, within 48 hours of the original post if I'm not mistaken. So not only was OP and his party a straight group of POS, but enough so to drive this DM insane and get everyone he was looking for sympathy from to turn against him. Absolutely deserved.
I wonder if this is stuff the DM had attempted to communicate stuff in the past and got ignored. Some of the in-game rules for out of game stuff is a step too far...but gotta remember unless the DM is the OP, theyre going to paint themselves synpathetically, even if its subconciously.
yea
yep, and DM was not the OP. A player was, who promptly took it down when redditors searched his history and found that he was bragging about his group giving their DM a had time.
It’s so important to remember that the dude took down his post once people dug into his history and figured out eh bragged about giving his DM a bad time. So, really, my sympathies are with the DM here.
From the replies, it's clear the players (the OP included) were the problem.
The OP deleted the post for that reason.
Yeah that's what I see here, honest to God sounds like they just somehow never had a game zero to talk about this stuff? Like it genuinely seems like either the DM shut down any and all discussion or he never tried it in the first place
INFO: The OP was clearly one of the players, and soon deleted it likely when the response was not what they wanted.
This DM's players honestly sound like a bunch of disrespectful douchebags
What was the response they were expecting?
@@wrath4452 Probably expected an universal "your DM is a pos". And they got some responses like this but many were also on the DMs side.
@@wrath4452Probably wanted “man he sounds like a shit DM”, but majority of responses were “you need to explain why and how did your DM get to this point”
I heard somewhere that the OP's post history had posts bragging about themselves and their party giving the DM a hard time, so assuming that's true it wouldn't be surprising if the other Reddit users took the DM's side
It feels like this 'monster' GM didn't start as one, but the party kind of 'turned him' into one.
This really does look like they exceeded his breaking point and he just snapped.
Apparently the poster had a bunch of posts complaining about his DM for anything under the sun so i have a feeling the DM just snapped.
@@SoraPierce I got to this point as a DM myself. Players will often take and take until you feel like quitting the hobby. To be honest, the best strategy is to stop and talk with your players. They often times don't know or are just assholes. Kick the ones who are trash and talk to the ones that just got a little overzealous.
Edit: I finally took my own advice.
Yeh the replies to the Reddit post made it clear the players were the problem.
The OP deleted the reddit post because it was clear he was the problem.
I think they deserve each other, both the players and the dm seem like bad people.
It makes it look like it's his own fault for not communicating with the party, and some shit he says makes it seem like he's the type of guy to scream at people over paper game
I recently burnt out of DM'ing and honestly a lot of these rules feel like echos of my thoughts. I even asked before I became more jaded for the rules of the table to be followed.
Can't even get fellow party members up to snuff for the most patient, high level GMs.
But my poor fucking GM, who now runs tons of solo games for me specifically for bullshit like:
Literally had an entire party tell me that during AN ENTIRE SESSION that ONLY I could do something. I had the most dangerous power set to try, and risked my character to end that fucking nightmare of a session. Other people had OBVIOUS ways to do it that had no real consequences, my pc had potential brain death for an obviously desperate or stupid plan. They were going along with the villain's plan to buy time and willingly killing random civilians- as the good guys! They literally believed it was the only way and it would work, knowing that the villain knew as soon as we got out we were killing him perma style. Like he would let them.
I said something, the spotlight hog pick me rebuffed and everyone else agreed. Same party had a guy who swore up and down the game worked this way, not mechanically but how it was supposed to work ie this organization behaves like this etc- he pressed this really hard despite being autistic who showed obvious trouble reading things as whole concepts when it was more than a small paragraph, and argued with the GM who had eidetic memory nearly. (gm could find you the fucking page from memory alone for obscure one lines that had big impacts) This was for a game that had several books of lore, all canon, each hundreds of pages that most people just used the main one and summed up the rest because they couldn't remember them. Unfortunately we also had two followers who were new and hated going against the grain and just voted with the crowd, so thought he knew what he was doing.
I once was accused of making decisions for the party by the hog that had to be in every scene and started taking all the talking roles. You know why? After the hog just essentially sold his soul because he tried to press cutscene skip on the fucking GM, fucked us over by releasing an obviously trapped demon, and told me to shut up when talking to an npc that was gonna turn us in by only telling him things that he already knew- I explained what the hog was volunteering us for as he happily talked about our plans in front of someone who had tried to kill us and volunteered us to save someone this enemy wanted us to/was trap who we didn't even know wasn't evil and had stake in risking their necks- then put it to a vote. Because he lost UNANIMOUSLY where I just asked them what they wanted to do he tried to claim I was making decisions for them later. I had told them I would go along with them and didn't vote. For once the new players went, "OH!". Dude also wanted to show off his cooking specialty and roleplay how amazing people found his food was- to people starving to death whose stomachs couldn't handle that. Fucking mental case. Two games, run simultaneously before we figured out this party couldn't learn, and had the gall to message the person who obviously cared the least about him (the gm) that he still wanted to hang out. Guy literally had to sit there controlling his anger a few times and when he had a talk with them about their behavior, they assumed it was towards me not them.
It got so bad I literally napped during three of the sessions and none of them noticed, except the gm who was so busy managing them he thought I just wasn't wanting to participate. (this is not a behavior I would ever condone, just showing up became a chore) There was a final breaking point where the GM had to privately message the guy who thought he knew how things worked to knock it off. They lost their minds and tried to blame me for not being at an event when I fucking carried them through it with none of them taking it seriously- aka I did the most without my pc even being their to babysit them and went back to mind what we were actually supposed to be doing.
I was the only one actually playing the game turns out. Getting to talk to the gm one guy wasn't even playing the character the way he said he was, and the gm was only running it still because he liked my character : / Queue getting him to drop the dead weight and now we do solo games, because honestly... other people weren't terribly better.
@seraphilight thats insane. I've had a few toxic players in my games and at tables that I've played, and they can destroy a person's love of the game.
I hope you find an excellent table. You deserve to play with players that are as invested as you
I straight up quit DMing because of a party making me so jaded. I tried to DM a separate group but was so jaded that I couldn't do it with them, I apologized and handed all of my books over to them and full on quit TTRPGs
Reading through this, I honestly thought I might have sleep-typed it and sent it to one of my players
6. picking up on or ignoring side quests.
Sometimes player will simultaneously blunder past heavily telegraphed plot points, and then complain they have nothing to do.
Sometimes they can even be explicitly pointed out by the DM and the players will wilfully not engage.
To be clear; it's the combination that's the issue: not engaging AND complaining that they don't have things to do.
This fits in with some later stuff the DM mentions about the players just wanting to aimlessly wander (exploration/travel) or passing up on small things (fixated on looking for the next mega dungeon), so I'm inclined to think this is linked.
^ Agreed, this actually killed my last game. I've even had those players abort side quests after a single bad roll before because their other DM is hyper hardcore. I would tell them point blank " hey these are the quest hooks you have, you can persue any of the above ' and they'd sit on their hands, and then ask for a quest board (aka mercenary, collect 4 boar liver jobs instead of following any of the three player involved plots going on), and then i'd give them a quest board and they wouldn't take any of the jobs.
I'm guessing the DM's planned narrative is some cringefest the players want no part of like dealing with political intrigue in the 1,000 year old cat-girl empire or something and the players just want to explore dungeons, kill dragons, and collect cool loot. And the DM is telling them to go play video games if they want that type of fun.
@@michaelcarstater2097 as per other comments on here, the original reddit thread was pulled down because the op was found out to be a horror story player after a few questions were asked. The Dm here has lost it, but only because he was pushed there, the game has already ended and the players were badgering them to run again and the rules were a ' i'll only run if this is agreed to '
@@tommaydag420 Yes, thankyou tommaydag. Too many people are trying to pass judgement on individual point in isolation; adding in wild speculations that don't account for the collective information that has come to light via either the collective rule post, or the additional details that were revealed in the thread.
@@michaelcarstater2097 Nope, the Players are just genuine assholes.
My group likes to make the joke about DM being god. Yesterday, DM showed us a map of our party HQ and said, "Don't worry about grid scale cause there won't ever be combat here." I immediately asked if I could roll Insight against that. We all got a good laugh. Play with people you like and vibe with.
I think your DM will like our party (and DM)
My mini-list of silly game decisions DM allowed:
1. Once was fighting against kind of golem that's invincible to magic, AND has a chance of breaking weapon, with a chair
2. My character is from family that had a lot of relatives and EX-es, and I asked if I could roll d100 if I can understand what character says despite not having said language in sheet (surprisingly, succeeded, even tho it didn't gave anything useful)
3. Asked for d100 if that dragon party was about to fight is my character's relative (she wasn't, and ironically I rolled really high damage on fireball)
4. Also threw enemy at important thing at it dealt just enough damage to break it
My group gets so much laughter out of me sometimes.
My player’s character said something so charismatic that I decided to change a ruling before revealing it to the party.
I said, “I’m just going to give it to you because Autumn succeeded in a persuasion check against *me*”
I can’t imagine not having fun with them.
Im glad more people are reading the full list instead of dropping it after rule 10, there's clearly more to this story, this is not something the DM dropped on a group of new players, the OP mentioned that the DM was on a break and this was the condition to get back, and since alot of the rules are specific, to me this shows the rules are a callout to the players action, i would love to have full context of what lead to this and the DM perspective.
The fact that a sizable number of these commenters couldn't figure that obvious thing out, makes me despair for the future of humanity
What party prompted this kind of response, anyhow? Because I refuse to believe that this DM just woke up and chose violence that day. Like you think this DM is completely batshit crazy, but it gets so specific at times that it feels like the party has been pulling some major shit every session. No-one just pulls this kind of response out of their arse without some sort of reason for it.
It could also just be a troll post, like XP to Level 3 said. But it's also Reddit, so...
Yeah, based on some of the rules it seems like this party would regularly have people wander off, derail into random conversations, and order food midsession. I would feel a little hurt as a DM if people constantly left the session and expected me to pause it. If everyone just wants to hang out and do something else, be a little bit more straight forward about it
based on what i have seen, the reddit user deleted the post because people were bring up previous posts showing how bad the players were. Leave it to redditors to search peoples comment and post history to figure who the actual problem is.
@@knightofcarrion7358 any links to these other stories? If not a tdlr would be appreciated thx.
@@Theholtenator can't post links on RUclips. As for a tldr, I never read the posts. I have just heard from multiple people that the players posts were toxic
Either this guy is trolling in rage or he's actually been hurt by the party.
Timing turns for people who are genuinely excessively slow is okay, but a minute is way too short.
I do agree a minute is on the shorter time, but some people need a timer just so they actually commit to something!
How about 10 minutes?
@@zexus480
Extremely reasonable, possibly even too long, depending on circumstances and the exact rules of what does or doesn't count as part of the time you have. Might be too low to fully resolve a turn, but if you have ten full minutes just to think about you wanna do without even counting the time needed to check the exact wording of a spell or something to see if a plan you have can even work, then that's a bit much.
I would say three to five minutes, but you get extra time if you need to check the rules.
Yeahhh It hurts when it takes 7 minutes to get through one turn, I started to offhandedly time my players, the average tends to be 2 and a half minutes
1 minute is plenty time to decide. Turn doesn't need to take 1 minute start to finish, just 1 minute to decide.
I overall like this take on 44 rules compared to lots of other videos on this topic. It feels more nuanced
Though one point - 1 minute feels too short. Rule 6 speaks of miniatures rather than theater of mind. Moving actual objects means you have less than 1 minute
Thank you! I do agree that minatures will add some additional time to everyone’s turn. I tend to overthink things when I’m mapping out the exact on a grid!
They did say it was a minute to figure out what they wanna do, not to do it.
@@alicepbg2042 Exactly. You have one minute to say "I'm going to move here and then do this". If the "this" is complicated and going to take a bit to work out, that's fine. But at least you are getting started on it as soon as possible.
When I was playing, especially as a spell caster, as soon as my turn was over I was already trying to figure out what I was going to do with my next one. Coming up with several ideas, and then allow the changing situation to direct me towards the one I thought was best.
1 minute seems okay to decide. Maybe a litttle f,ast. I would be okay with it. They arent saying rolling to hit or damshe in 1 minute
Didn’t consider that-I guess theater of the mind would complicate things…
I've been DMing for over 7 years, and am nowhere near this point.
I did have individual players that drove me crazy, but their removal improved everything. So it sometimes is just singular players.
Unfortunately, for the last coupe years, i've ran for groups with more than one problem player, sometimes most of the group. People are shitty, this cannot be denied.
@@robinmohamedally7587 also accurate. My highschool DM was a crappy person. Would TPK by 3rd level, and wpuld have us play with character sheet destruction upon death.
"I am not your friend?" .... yyyyeah, no, this is a DM who has been abused, wheedled, nagged, argued with, taken advantage of, and repeatedly, REPEATEDLY treated like garbage by a very shitty group. But he's also not showing a degree of emotional maturity necessary to be a "good" DM. Whether that is a temporary thing, driven by the extremity to which he's been pushed, a permanent flaw in temperament, or merely the result of never really having had a good D&D experience and thinking that this is all there is, I cannot say.
Some of his rules are pure sensibility, pure common courtesy, or reasonable. the "Once you move the mini, it stays there" rule also sounds like someone was trying to fudge their way to the outside of a fireball one too many times.
I agree. Alot of these also seems like he's tired of arguing with a toxic party. The dm is here to have fun too.
Case in point 'I don't care what reddit says about my ruling' that isn't a rule per say. That's a straight up message posted on a billboard with the caption "I'm getting really tired of you using reddit so that you as a player can tell me how to DM"
@@MrGantron414 I had player in my now dead game use reddit as a way of justifying his actions.
He quit running, and they harassed him IRL to try and force him to run games for them. This is his response to their harassment.
That quote means literally the opposite in almost every scenario
People expecting "EmOtIoNaL mAtUrItY" from an MF who was supposedly put through a lot of BS will never not be absolutely tone deaf. No offence is what I'd say but that's cold comfort.
I'm very happy that most of the people I've seen making videos on these rules are trying to see things from the DM's perspective. It's way to easy to believe the DM is awful because the majority of D&D players seem to be just that, players, and this is being presented by a player. It seems that most D&D RUclipsrs have DM'd before and get that there's more than just the player's side to the story.
Did not expect to see you here but yeah, I'd like to see more people react to anger by asking what might have caused it instead of dismissing it outright. This doesn't just apply to games
Oh shit Shady Doorags!
I do DnD online. To make it fair for everyone, the DM (not me) gets to roll certain things irl. Everyone else has a bot in the discord for rolling to allow everyone to see. Now the DM can't roll *everything* in private, just certain things. Like if an NPC gets insight to see if we are lying or not. Or our death saving throws. But for initiative, attack rolls, etc, then the party members get to see the rolls. This was a rule we all came to an agreement with.
I’ve heard the guy who posted the manifesto was part of the problem. Apparently they were posting on the subreddit about what they and the rest of the plyers were doing to try and piss off the DM. He deleted all of that shortly after posting the manifesto.
There is something pretty toxic in modern D&D communities, a presumption that "everything is your fault", as the DM. It's good to be stoic about the role and always consider whether you can do better, to ask yourself if you are wasting the player's time or not-but there is absolutely such a thing as an annoying, lazy, disruptive, tardy, rude, or inattentive player who simply makes the game worse by being there. The rule I've become extremely harsh about is attendance. It's insulting to prep for a campaign and incorporate a player backstory into the quests, only for the player to no-show because he's playing Helldivers or whatever. I have lost almost all my tolerance for that.
Even this reflex from you is ridiculous, people have lives. It sucks for you, but you shouldn't hold it against people.
You can't control other people only your reactions.
@@billiecruz4399 This is true of both the players and the DM, Billie. Here we have a DM exasperated beyond all reason, fuming and uncontrolled. But from his rules we can see the following:
• Players had no consideration of being decisive or brisk on their turns. (This is rude to both other players and the DM.)
• Players were making snide or sarcastic comments about the DM in front of him. (Even if said lightly, you should always be careful about insulting people, especially if the person is your host.)
• Players were simultaneously loaded with loot, complaining for more, yet complaining combat was too easy.
• Players ignored (or mocked) all his NPCs or plot hooks, wandering endlessly looking for loot dungeons.
• Players brought none of their own stuff, and were damaging or getting food grease on his minis, handouts, dice, or tiles.
• Players were getting drunk or high at the table and unable to focus (or else being disruptive).
• Despite this ungrateful behavior, the DM himself was giving one or more players are ride, and/or inviting them into his home.
Now, this DM evidently should have communicated his frustrations long ago, like a reasonable grown-up, instead of seething as he did. But if you cannot see that he was exasperated by his players' behavior, and that the players are ultimately responsible too for their behavior, then I have wasted my words.
@@magonus195 you are using the rules as examples of things the guy has had to deal with which I see no reason to assume.
One of the rules involves fighting the players, as far as I'm concerned that paints him and his rules in the light of a wildly unstable individual who is not fit to play dnd let alone dm a game.
I have never played dnd with people I would rather fight then talk to tho so it might be a personal experience thing
@@billiecruz4399yeah people have lives but they also have the responsibility to inform the group if and when they are going to be late. "Hey guys I'm stuck in traffic, gonna be late" or "Sorry guys work picked up suddenly and the boss wanted me to stay at the store a bit longer to help out, gonna be late" or "oops my bad i got the session time mixed up and I was playing Helldivers, be there in 10 mins".
@@billiecruz4399…Why shouldn’t I hold people’s behavior against them? I can’t control other people only my reactions. So I’m going to react to them being shitty and unreliable by no longer inviting them to things.
I actually implement some of these rules LMAO.
1) I time turns, but I only enforce it when someone takes way too long. A turn is 6 seconds, you don't get 10 minutes to strategize. I once played in a game where a player picked up the PHB to read about how their level 4 monk works for 30 minutes and the DM did nothing. That 4 round combat took 3 hours to resolve. I was the only one in the group doing my turns in a minute. I will not allow that to happen to my game. When a player inevitably says "I don't know how this works" I tell them they can read it when it's not their turn, or when they're out of combat. Or when they are at home. They have access to the entire library through dndbeyond. I have skipped players turns, and you know what? They get better.
Timing turns works. I shouldn't have to skip players turns, and I rarely do. Rarely is not never.
5) sometimes a player will ask to use a skill (the one they are good at) for a task that is not appropriate, when I ask them to roleplay it they usually do it.
8) I enforce this one too. Usually I don't have to, but when someone just picks up a dice I ask them "what do you do?". That resolves it.
17) I've only banned one spell.
21) This one was a tough one for me. I knew two players who cheated with dice. These players are my friends. It has changed the way I look at them. I ended up with a house rule: dice must be legible, must be rolled in clear view, and may not be picked up before saying what the result is. I count any picking up as a natural 1, thankfully I've never had to apply the last rule after stating it.
my own rule) the nope rule: if a player character attacks another player character the victim is allowed to declare "nope" and have it automatically fail.
My rules are a result of players being selfish, hurting other players, and cheating. It ruins the game for me. The rules may seem draconian but the real tragedy here is that they're necessary. I should be able to trust players to not cheat, to not PVP, to treat each other with respect, but I can't.
This DM needs to find new players, and ban players faster. Players that are disrespectful should not be punished in game, they should just be told they're disrespectful and choose between changed behavior or find a different DM.
Yeah, I agree that a lot of rules about cheating “feel insulting” to players, but the reality is that there are some players who will totally cheat if you didn’t have them. Sometimes they just can’t help it because they always want to roll high (because it sucks to fail) and they aren’t thinking by about the other players.
What spell did you ban and why?
@@reginlief1 I've banned Silvery Bards, because it's not fun. If the players use it then I'd have to use it too (for verisimilitude and balance reasons), it's not a fun spell for the players to be subjected to. To have their critical hits turned into misses.
Also on a side note, I've banned flying races. I think it's too powerful to be a racial ability.
(I know it's powerful because all the power gamers at my table keep begging me to allow flying races, and not because they have cool roleplaying ideas)
"Trust players not to pvp"
This is the only part I take umbrage with. Pvp happens, it happens irl, it should happen if the need arises in game. If you are properly roleplaying your characters there are absolutely characters that would come to blows over things. The paladin is not going to accept the assassin taking a job to assassinate the head of the local church of the paladins god. Now, you can argue that those 2 characters shouldn't be in the same party, and you would be right, but if they do end up on the same team, it would be natural for them to butt heads, and potentially come to blows.
Maybe you need to find out what type of people your playing with as a forever DM I never had to implement any of these trash rules because I play with the right people. And banning shit is a BIG no no imo as it just annoys me that you take away from the game because you don't wanna deal with it (flying races aren't to OP and silvery barbs isn't either) seems like you need better players or to be better @@Mastikator
In defense of Rule 7: I used to play with a guy who would constantly move his guy 6 squares forward, then say “Actually, let me thing about this”, then move his character *5* squares back. He’d do this constantly, just to get one square closer to where he wanted to be. He’d also throw a massive fit if you called him out. So we basically have this rule at my table as well, though we’re not super harsh on it
I guarantee his players saw this and berated him for making this list and made themselves out to be the victims and never took a second to do a little inward thinking to try and figure out "why is this guy feeling this way about how we all play DnD?" As evidenced by the player who posted it online for the world to see.
He deleted the post after getting trashed by redditors. You know you're garbage when the worst pile of trash on the internet calls you garbage. You're like, sub-garbage, lol
Why is he playing D&D at all in general if this is how he acts about it, like some of these rules make sense but it really seems like the DM himself doesn't know what he wants he contradicted his rule set like 8 times
@@SubtotalStar850-uh8pgA few things both the comment and this video failed to mention are that he didn't implement the rules, but simply threatened to do it as payback for the players making his DM experience hell, which the players enjoyed doing so much that the same person who posted this list bragged about giving his DM a hard time on Reddit. It is also likely that he was much calmer when saying the rules than the comment purposefully made him out to be.
I can't imagine playing with a party so horrid. Breaking stuff, getting high, not showing up, complaining about roles, letting in game bleed into real world, cheating, and making this poor dm's life hell only to then copy and paste his angry manifesto to reddit without context for online validation from strangers. I would happily play for a dm like this and I would never even want to associate in real life with the kinds of players in that party honestly.
I think there's a line of people forming to be this guy's DM. Someone forward him to Matt mercer
What really gets me is his party was clearly comparing him to other GM's. Especially fucking Critical Role.
When I GM, I cannot *stand* getting compared to these huge super popular podcast games or RUclips series. Because guess what dude, I GM for fun in my spare time as a every other weekend hobby. I don't GM for RUclips, I don't GM for a podcast, and I don't GM just for you to bitch when it isn't as grandiose as you were expecting.
The hilarious thing is it didn't work. Reddit felt bad for the DM.
@@seraphilight Right? [Curb Your Enthusiasm Theme plays]
It seems like they deserve each other, both DM and players seem like bad people to play with
finallly someone who reads it and realizes this kinda list doesnt come out of no where. Took me like 5-10 rules to realize something in the party prompted this and its not just a DM giving insane rules. There was something, or a lot of somethings that happened. Its fine to realize these rulings are crazy in a vacuum but together they really paint a story of a DM tired of players not caring most of the time and when they do care, they only care to complain.
Most DMs have ground rules that each have a story behind them. If there is a list of banned spells someone probably used it badly.
@MrGantron414 yeah like Silvery barbs is banned at my table cause my first game as a DM had 3 Silvery barbs users with one being a Halfling Divination Wizard with Bountiful Luck feat and all the martials went ways to have jacked AC and it was all to make the game impossible for me to balance and to screw with me since the enemies I was under the impression to use couldn't hit unless they rolled well or critted and if they did they'd get Silvery barbs'd
@SoraPierce We kept the spell in we just made it a 3rd level spell instead a 1st level. Really makes the Wizard decide does he really want the fireball the first time they get high enough to cast it.
@@darrienjones8917 this works as well i have heard. I have heard people switching between 2nd and 3rd tbh, still dont knoe which one I perfer
yes, it infuriated me to see that moon-faced hermaphrodite at XP to Level 3 deliberately take things out of context in order to score internet points. This guy is unhinged, for sure, but there's a story to justify it, and you don't even have to know any anciliary information about this list, just reading it will clue you in on who the real villains were.
This guy didn't want to play again and wrote this list so the shitty horrible players would say F it and not pester him to come back anymore.
Genuinely, I probably wouldn't mind playing with this GM. With a reasonable party, I'm sure he's very fair. This was just him putting everything that's pissed him off into a list in rule form and effectively saying he isn't coming back.
He sounds ungodly dude wants a to wirte a book not a tabletop game you get a minute to do everything.
@@al-mungus677 "He sounds ungodly dude wants a to wirte a book not a tabletop game " there's nothing to support this, just your wishful thinking or projection. Get out of your feelings, dude. The minute thing, though, is a little much. But as, OP wrote, he didn't want to play with them again, and they were pestering him to come back, and these were his rules. How did you miss that important part? history of head trauma?
Id just not play with them instead of writing rules and seeming like a mental insane person. Id wouldn't want to play with him either and I've been DMing for years and never got to this point and just quit if a party was horrible this just shows his immaturity@@robinmohamedally7587
I use a few rules similar to this. People doing things like repeatedly showing up hours late, rolling their dice off the table, getting up for no reason, etc. do get on my nerves. I think some people have kind of utopian expectations based on living a sheltered life and filtering out difficult people long before they even get to the D&D people. If you've never played D&D with a meth addict then you're not in a position to judge me.
Dude have any of you considered just not playing witht these people that piss you off or improving the people you hang around I would never be around a person I couldn't stand in the first place let alone talk to them for hours.
@@al-mungus677 SWEET SUMMER CHILD- where are they? Common FUCKING Decency isn't common!!!
See, these fuckers- and I mean everyone- literally every player you DON'T want- will do everything you ask to get in the game. You have to do extreme vetting and be VERY good at flag reading- and even some psychology- to even filter out some of the people you don't want. I say I want the game I AM RUNNING to have THESE. EXACT. EXPECTATIONS. People ASSUME it's like "every other ttrpg game"- which just isn't fucking true. This is even from crowds who follow streamers WHO DON'T DO WHAT THEY SAY THE GAME SHOULD BE.
"I love deep and heavy REALISTIC rp! *puts on Sean Connery accent and makes Bond jokes, only does memes to try to make the table laugh- who sit awkwardly in embarassment.*" Except they'll do this ONLY after they get in the game. Some even wait a few sessions.
"Player driven, planning, and common sense based around a theme? *proceeds to treat the PARTY game like a solo game, burn time doing absolutely nothing that will help losing time to do helpful things, get pissed at other players asking what THEIR goals are and how they can help them do THE POINT OF THE GAME- only to go OH after it ends super early due to them*"
Then the other side competent incompetence-
*player takes HIGH level powers swearing they can handle it, proceeds to misinterpret what they mean, literally does not use the power to skip them doing NOTHING for several sessions because their pc is doing literal manual labor instead of using their fucking power* good roleplaying IF it had worked that way, but still terrible player. Literally put the party in stasis. For sessions.
Don't get me started on the fucks who complain you run things by the book, especially when it's 5 FUCKING E aka the cakewalk of dnd, because their previous GM held their fucking hand. For example, the encounter has a no-dicerolling win that literally requires 2 brain cells- zombies move 20 feet. You move 30. Do math, throw rock, walk backwards. It gets up? Wow, we skipped that because it will eventually die. Oh. Oh. You're... meleeing it. (and they barely escaped a tpk when they had like three turns of watching it.. slowly... amble up to them.)
I've found that the people who had repeatedly good luck with parties were doing "traditional railroad". Dice rolls replace real attempts. They had to put up with dumb shit but were all just there for laughs or the DM told them how they were heroes and won.
I'll refresh until I get this story!
5. I view this as a 'role play' vs 'roll play' argument.
A player doesn't need to give some in-character immersive shakespearean performance.
Just don't do the "I persuade them [rolls] 14, what happens?"
As a DM I've seen this a few times, and it's a pain to deal with. It doesn't need to be overly in-depth, just give me something to work with. What's the point you are trying to make, what details did you want to touch on, etc.
Give me something I can base the DC off and what type of reactions I'm working with.
It can be something like "I bring up the quest we're on for the mayor,, and I want to emphasize if things go well we're going to put in a good word on the guard's behalf". Not in character, no concern over elegant wording, but it gives me as DM details for gauging what the DC should be, if it's something that aligns or opposes what the npc wants, and queues be up for a response. I can even fluff up the details from there to say how elegant/crude the PC was in the narrative based on the result, because I'm not working from a blank slate.
that attitude hurts players who are shy, socially awkward or have autism. instead of punishing them for doing their best why not encourage them?
@@GeneBateman1970 Jumping too far into the defensive and missing the nuance here.
I agree it would be bad to demand highly detailed in-character portrayals all the time, such as requiring role play to be performed word-for-word, with accents, dramatic inflection, etc. That kind of demand is as silly as demanding you must be athletic IRL to roll athletics in game, or saying a player character has disadvantage on stealth because their player is wearing bright orange at the table.
No, the take I'm defending is to at the bare minimum give the DM SOMETHING more than just the dice roll in isolation.
Example of the no-detail scenarios I'm talking about.
DM: "as you emerge into the orc war chief's tent, you and your companions bound from being captured, the chieftain 'more hoomies! they will make for a great feast tonight!'
Player: "[rolls] 17?"
DM: "... 17 what?"
Player "deception?"
Zero effort by the player to provide anything.
Alternatively if the player gave some minimal details on what they wanted from their character;
Player: "My character is going to lie to the chieftain, try to convince them we were sent by the hag that shares territory with the orcs. [rolls] 17?"
Now the DM has things to work with. The DM guide for social DCs is broken up into friendly/neutral/hostile and a range from things they'd accept based on their wants/risks. with this minimal input the DM can now use the base rules of the game, because they can choose an appropriate DC to what the player is trying to achieve, and has somewhere to go for the narrative of how they are setting up the NPC to play out.
Secondly; lets not apply the social awkward/autism defense as a virtue signal. If it's cruel to apply such low expectations to players, then it would be far crueller to expect the above and beyond from a DM. We don't know if anyone in this group falls in those categories, but if you want the emotional appeal for the players, why not extend that same emotional appeal for the DM. What's to say they don't also fall into that social awkward, shy, or on the spectrum category?
Autistic players should not have it easier because they were born messed up. They can strive to overcome themselves and should do it@@GeneBateman1970
@@GeneBateman1970 if anything, it is downright rude of them not to warn DM about their disability so that the DM can just deny autists place at the table. Catering to special needs during HOBBY is not a requirment, they wanna play DnD, they either search or ask someone to search for an invalid friendly Master
@@GeneBateman1970 I honestly think you should need a reason To roll persuasion. If you can't think of it, that sucks, but you need to put in some effort too. I don't think you should degrade people with autism or that are shy because they CAN think of a reason to persuade someone.
That DM needs to find a new group. Even if some of these rules are reasonable, and others are not (ingame punishments for out-of-game behavior), there is obviously too much spite present, and that is bound to just lead to toxic antagonism between DM and players.
At that point, If the DM was a victim indeed, fairly sure he'd avoid TTRPGs as if they were a particularly ugly leper.
7. Moving. My first thought here is meta knowledge. If a player move their character around a blind corner, and I start describing the scene they can now see; having them then say they want to undo that movement but then plan out their turn with this newfound knowledge in mind, I'm going to side with the DM.
Same for players that move to spots and trigger traps, land in danger zones, trigger opportunity attacks, etc etc.
Honestly I can understand where the DM is coming from with a lot of these rules. His punishments are often too much, and shouldn't be an in-game punishment... But if the players are always late, leaving for breaks every few minutes, ordering food in the middle of combat, and then complaining to him that his sessions aren't fun... I would be pissed too.
I find this shows the usual issue with todays ttrpg playerbase- for all ttrpgs not just dnd, but especially dnd.
What makes a game? The usual answer is weirdly specific- and totally wrong. All games are different, and there is no key to what makes a game good- since everyone wants different sorts of games. You find the players that suit the sort of game you want. Problem being the assumption that all games have X means a player says, for example, they are into heavy rp- but what they really typically mean is they roleplay at all. Sometimes it's literally they just do an accent, and unfortunately sometimes it's someone that thinks roleplaying is trying to make everyone else laugh- by being as out there and stupid as possible. When you asked for a serious, heavy rp game. Imagine it going like this- "But it's DnD! It's supposed to be made up and easygoing" "I have a list of dragon canon cock sizes and this isn't for erp.."
Anyway, vetting and session 0s are good! People get pissed anyone does this, even on streamer servers where the person they follow is literally doing that and very upfront about it. It's fucking stupid. Just go to one of the million other tables that run the way you find fun, you're not entitled to mine!
Lets be honest, there are some bad rules here and things that'd make me not want to play at the table, but the players themselves are clearly pushing it and being toxic. It's clear the DM might have an idealized vision on how they want to play DND that doesn't mesh with other people, but the players clearly don't seem to respect the DM's time, potentially cheat, and have no table etiquette.
"have no table etiquette" that's putting it extremely lightly and being VERY generous to those players. There's a couple of items you must be forgetting.
@@robinmohamedally7587yeah 1st player I ever kicked, missed 2 sessions, when he did come he was late and never did have a character sheet, and he’d take forever for his turn (don’t remember for sure but I think he wasn’t a caster so he didn’t have that excuse even). But it was my 1st campaign and I didn’t want to kick someone. The straw that broke the camel was, whenever it was his turn, all the energy and excitement drained from the whole group, myself included
Yeah, some of these are legit complaints, but I think this DM needs to not DM with their group and maybe even take a break from DMing for a while . They're obviously frustrated and are not having fun. and ultimately, FUN is the point of any Table Top Game, The DM and the Players should both be enjoying themselves.
Yeah, when you start writing a manifesto trying to punish your friends, it’s time to take a step back and chill out. DMing can be a lot of work but it still should always be fun! If they are shitty friends in general, it isn’t D&D conduct that is the problem.
@@lootgoblinmarketplace Exactly.
@lootgoblinmarketplace the problem I think is that the OP was not being completely honest about table behavior. This reads like a "I'm done with your ---- Doug. And Andrew don't think I forgot about Y. And Jane, you keep doing x when I keep telling you to stop doing it. So if you want me to dm for you guys here's my rules of behaviors I don't want to see."
He did took break, people who saw the reddit post seems to realize this was posted by one if the player. They begged the DM to return and the DM sent this as obvious hint of 'no i don't wanna came back, either accept this ridiculous rule that i wrote to call out some of you or leave me alone.'
@Username-cs1bi The user (u/Khargoth) who submitted the thread. Submitted it to 3 threads. And promptly deleted each original post after people started digging into their post history. Which often was shaming or ridiculing their DM on reddit so there's already a lack of respect. This just feels like the DM is setting boundaries to actually be respected.
Just remember kids. THINK ABOUT YOUR FUCKING TURN BEFORE ITS TIME TO TAKE IT.
I am currently dming for a group of people who never used to show up on time and some people always got up randomly mid session to do whatever. It made me feel like my time wasn't being valued. I started to set a very specific time for start and end, and I always keep to those times. I also give inspiration to players who are on time to the game. Now the party is always on time, and because they know I don't extend the session beyond the agreed amount, they don't get up too much because they don't wanna miss out on their own game time
Am using this, thank you. I have a tardiness issue with some of my players and i am pretty sure this will help a lot.
@@moonieglow1 good luck with your games!
I kinda relate to some of the rules about actually playing dnd and not eating, constantly leaving, or talking about unrelated thing because I’ve had a party where we played online and at very least once per session someone would be on tik tok, texting, or playing a game during important combat or roleplaying. I noticed how often people seemed to be just leaving for like 5-10 minutes or being on tik tok and RUclips during the whole game and asked if the game was boring and if they wanted to play and what I could change. I was met with a “Everything you’re doing is great I just have a short attention span.” So I get why the dm seems so angry in those rules and I feel it but also if your players are paying attention and don’t seem anywhere near as interested as you, stop playing with them.
Something tells me that the players that need to have a rule to not pull out a bong are not good players
Genuinely agree with the bring a second character sheet. If the party agrees combat should be harder they should be prepared for the worst possible outcome. That being said, storytelling should be higher priority than difficulty
Yeah, I think that’s fair too. If you want to make no encounter feel safe, then make sure to be okay to part with your character. I find that fun and I always have a second character I’m itching to play!
Consider just what kinds of actions could motivate that role play rule.
“I r-e the innkeeper’s daughter”
_ok if you wanna do that, act it out. In front of everyone just role play that. If that’s the kind of thing you wanna do commit to it. Give us a skit. C’mon._
“Never mind, I think I’ll go check if I can restock some potions.”
*PROBLEM SOLVED*
these rules sound like a poison pill. they're likely _ment_ to get the party to stop playing with him. it's likely because they started the haiatus because they wanted the break to begin with, but instaid they got pestered over and over about when they can get back to playing, and this is probably the most spitefull no they could give.
Honestly the majority are an extreme version of a very reasonable rule. Very few of the rules aren't broadly applicable to most games if toned down to reasonable proportions.
@@orionstokesweiss2344 which may be part of the point.
@@bohba13 Meaning they aren't a poison pill at all. They are reasonable rules through the lens of a very pissed off person.
@@orionstokesweiss2344 fair. But if from the perspective of the players this _is_ a big deal, then the point may be made. As if they aren't willing to compromise then it's clear there were other problems that caused the DM to blow his lid like this.
The longer the list goes
The more I realize
The players are the biggest issue here. The dm has been taken advantage of and been abused.
Seeing that the post was taken down proves this point.
"People don't write manifestos for things they don't care about" that sounds like a challenge. Give me random topics to write a manifesto about. Once there's at least 10 options I'll choose one
I kind of want to see this. So I want you to argue if a Cereal is a Soup or a Salad.
Chicken or the egg, Resident Evil, Anime, RUclips, Vtubers, 3D Printing, Berserk, Computers, Glasses, Consoles, Tea, Coffee, Delta Biscuits.
@@starhammer5247 I will say I very much do care about tea. It's a perfect example as to the woes of supply and demand as well the evils that can be caused by a substance that overall brings a net benefit to people. Tea is calming and depending on different varieties can be seen as medicine. As such war has been raged over it and blood has flowed. Tea is a primary cause of much political change in the world. To know the full extent of the power Tea has over historical events we must first dissect the phrase "what does that have to do with the price of Tea in China?" It's a phrase that was used so commonly that it can be considered a meme even before the invention of the internet. The phrase exists because the desire for Tea was so great it reshaped the direction whole nations took their countries. It can be argued that the power of the British empire can be directly connected to the desire to secure Tea. The British empire only fell apart after globalized trade became standard and the need for military power to secure Tea imports was gone. The leaves were so desired and valued that it was tossing them into the water that brought the British army in force to America. Never forget tea is not only a soothing, tasty, and healthy drink but a shaper of world politics and leaves of death
I did a whole thing for Tea and it seems like RUclips memory holed the comment
Shame, I would have loved to see a tea manifesto @@tomraineofmagigor3499
This really does sound like a DM who was pushed to his absolute limits. I'm not defending all of his rules, but some of them do make sense in a way.
This one of the reasons i like online DnD the capacity to keep track of things, i can always check people stuff, like the spell slots, dices, actions, gear, etc. And if i want or need to get out is as easy as just logout, but i do agree with some of the Dm rules here, but as u said theres a lot of problems between dm and players
TBF saw trap dungeon cam be a massive vibe for a 1 shot - i had an old DM run a one shot with a massive tomb and a reincarnation mechanic (new character at random from a massive pile we all donated old characters to who retains the memories of fallen characters.) it was a lot of fun trying to explore/escape the tomb while keeping track of traps and
Secrets and trying to find a way to make use of whatever character you picked up (ooh this new barbarian has poison resistance, +5 to con saves and a bunch of hp, maybe he can make it through the poison fog without dying!)
That DM was also really good at describing gruesome deaths and traps etc so the premise really let him go ham.
This makes me REALLY appreciate my group! Somebody give this guy a hug! It seems to me that the author let a lot of things go early that he’s trying to overcorrect now. Whatever the case, he needs to find a different group. The damage sounds beyond repair.
I believe the true story is that the original poster was a player, and the party was basically not respecting the DM in the slightest after wanting him to dm for them. They'd mock every NPC he made and basically were the equivalent of chaotic stupid trying to be a chaotic evil party in a hero setting. Top that off, they'd cancel last minute or other things like that without much of a warning and he'd be left out in the dust just basically wasting all of his time preparing for the session. Then at game time when everyone does get together, it's smoke, talk about other things, smoke, finally begin, smoke, wait for everyone to get ready again, and after like 4 hours, it's only been like 30 minutes of actual game time.
I'd be pretty annoyed too
I only saw a few of the rules. This is the first time I’ve seen the full list. DM sounds absolutely done with the players.
I played with a group in a weekly game, and we played for like four years, and nobody would choose spells that required a saving throw, because the DM never ever failed saves. We all knew what he was doing, but we never accused him of fudging his dice rolls.
I'm a new dm. I like to bring back stuff from an earlier session. When the party was level one, the freedom Mama Bear and her Cubs from some trappers. When the party was level three and fighting the rear guard of the Raiders in, Port of the Dragon queen, Mama Bear came back and attacked the guard tree that the players would have had to fight as part of the rearguard.
DM rules often tell a story of what they've been through. This one needs to take a few turns as a player or away from the game for his own sanity.
I understand this was written during a barbarian rage. I have a set of rules myself that ive never had to (and hope i never have to) enforce. Just a list of clear expectations so that everyone comes to the table knowing what to expect so everyone can enjoy the game.
My session zero also includes ways we can as a group talk about what the players expect from me as a DM.
This is also the time players can challenge the ground rules if they dont like them and we can discuss changes. They can even place rules and expectations on me the DM.
Whoever wrote these rules, you can have a seat at my table anytime.
I'm pretty hardcore in the camp of "don't use in-game consequences to punish real life problems" but it then feels like there's no other way to punish someone other than jumping straight to excluding them from the campaign.
The DM sounds like he played with inattentive, messy stoners until having a Joker moment and starting to foster an anger for humanity.
At first you just see the anger but then it all starts to make sense when you see that people were full on forgetting their sheets and bringing and spilling food and making a mess.
DM needs to have a good, serious group that can relax but still be attentive, to see if they can rekindle the love for the game with less defensiveness. That or just take a break and be a player for a bit for a DM and party that can take it seriously.
I love instant death traps bro
The best part of Indiana Jones was when he died to the boulder and the movie ended right there
I, too, loved when Indiana Jones just stood in the way of the boulder, because the damage is only a quarter of his HP and he had healing potions in his backpack.
@@lagg1e BOOM! GOT EEM. You win, Luisroberto loses. Too easy
I would consider these. But I don’t like restricting my players, I want everyone to just have fun and escape the harsh reality of everyday life.
THANK YOU
I thought I was the only person giving the DM the benefit of the doubt!
Yeah, they definitely are having a bit of a rant… but some of these things feel like a person who is hurt. It may mean they aren’t the best fit for this party or to DM in general. But I don’t thinking this is just another power tripping DM
I was, but i got drowned out by a sea of DERP. Probably all toxic players.
He comes across as someone who dealt with a lot of bs and never addressed any of it as it happened and eventually snapped causing him to lash out all at once.
On the one hand I understand his frustration, but on the other he’s handled the situation on such a childish manner. Half of his rules sound like he’d rather write a book while also not understanding the point of tabletop games overall.
From what I know, he didn't even want to come back, but they kept hounding him about it.
@@starhammer5247 yep, that's right, those rules were his conditions of returning to DM for them, after they wanted him back.
Exploration isn't just overland travel. Dungeon delving is exploration, and likely the most common type of exploration in any given game.
0:18 - they literaly did. These were the conditions for returning from their hiatus.
Which they clearly didn't want to.
@@oriandthesleepytime i like Jacob's videos, i really do, but the one he made of this list was obviously sided with the players and not wanting to see the Dm's side
Like you said we don't know the context, but I'm getting a different vibe. A lot of these rules are far too spiteful for me to think the DM was being reasonable in the game especially with the "don't take D&D serious" and "I'm not your friend" rules despite doing that very thing with this list, how he is trying to encourage rules lawyering between the players while saying his can't be which is just flat out unfair and is encouraging OOC inter-party conflict, the sudden debuffs out of nowhere along with taking away magic items just reeks of trying to screw the players over or even a DM vs player mentality, and saying if your character dies you can't play is very harsh considering the vibe I get is that the DM would be pissed off if a player left after that even though it'd be reasonable to leave a session if you literally can't play. You're right that the DM could've all had a point with this, but plenty of RPG horror stories, along with my experience in retail, shows the some people can be peeved over the smallest criticism or take not going along with them 100% as antagonistic.
For the rules regarding his D&D stuff, if accurate, I'm surprised he hasn't kicked the offending player/s out already as he'd be well in his rights to do so if it happened as often as he implied.
Yeah, I’m really conflicted with this list. I can’t tell if he is full spiteful and was just too passive before… but there are a few comments that I feel for this DM. I would hope my friends wouldn’t break my stuff and lie to me about it
Keep in mind that this list was reported by a player that has several posts where they brag about giving their DM a hard time. It’s extremely unlikely these are the actual rules, and not a “slight rephrasing” of the actual rules.
For example
I’m fine with you arguing about how stuff works with each other but please don’t argue with my rulings
Becomes
Rules lawyering with each other is encouraged but don’t question me
Apply that to every question and remember that the player admitted this was their DM who had in fact left their group and this was their ultimatum for if the group wanted them to return. So he did in fact kick out bad player and leave the situation, he just didn’t cut ties effectively enough to avoid being dragged back in.
My problem with rule 5 is I will drop the most persuasive argument known to man and then roll a 7, grand total 9, get laughed at and then just go back to stabbing. And as with the infinite prisoner’s dilemma I remember the results from last time, go though the rhetoric, roll poorly, ax. And then there’s the inverse, where the quiet guy who played paladin to smite the unworthy is our party face and he’s trying and we’re helping but he couldn’t talk his way into his own house. Rolls a 10, 17 total, everyone loves him.
Some of these are reasonable but come off as unhinged b/c this person has probably been pushed well beyond their breaking point by now. Some are actually unhinged and some seem super specific. Saying I giveth your magical items therefore I can taketh them away is a little crazy. While Mr. Loot Goblin makes a good point that DM is always right I feel there are instances in which a DM should be called out about their rulings if they seem unfair or at the very least I would like an explanation as to why the DM is making said unfair call and see of maybe there is room for compromise.
I'm so grateful to you for taking the DM's side here. My first introduction to the list was people responding to this list, treating it like it came out of nowhere, like he was a Monster DM and this was his standard rule list for any game he ever runs. But even before I started seeing comments on those videos explaining the context (that the players were nightmares and the DM really didn't want to play with them any more), just the list itself screams out to me that "you guys have made my life miserable trying to run a game for you, here are my responses to all the terrible things you put me through." Like, I can't imagine any DM coming up with the rule "don't come to the game stoned" unless someone came to the game stoned. Even rule number 2, the fact that it starts off "if you want harder fights" is an obvious proof that he's responding to players complaining about fight difficulty.
I’ve definitely had players who do not value my time or effort at all, certainly not as bad as his situation sounds though. I think he is taking things way too seriously and personally, however it sounds like his players won’t communicate, pay attention, or accept when things don’t go their way. Me and my players were able to after a long break so everyone could decompress discuss things and get on the same page, the group has been great ever sense. To me this sounds like a DM overreacting to bad players and no one trying to communicate. I do think though if player say they want hard fights they should be ready for the characters to die, otherwise the fight really isn’t that hard. This comment was way longer than I had intended.
Turns out the poster, one of the Players, is a real shitbag and bragged about making his DMs life miserable.
Being able to read a hot take rant and see the genuine pain behind it is always nice.
Even for every one thats somewhat understandable as a rule, its presented INCREDIBLY rudely and so hostile I can't see the DM as being in the right.
And several are just flat out bad rules. Forcing someone who doesnt have 20 charisma to perfectly roleplay an expertise Bard persuading someone is bad. It is not at all a fair standard unless you also demand they make 4 attacks in 6 seconds, grapple a large creature, or cast a spell.
I'm sorry, but every experience I've had with D&D involved incredibly entitled players who expected the DM to bend over backwards for them and had no concern about any of the other players. Super toxic. There's no way I would ever DM a modern group of players.
As a DM it’s my personal opinion that NO DM starts like this. No dm comes in hating their players, because if they did they would not play with them. And a good 60% of the time when players and dms have conflict it’s due to miscommunication on what the dm wants and what the players want. The other 30% and 10% being playstyles not meshing and ACTUAL hatred blooming between dm and players.
If your dm is this pissed off and done, then there needs to be some communication. Maybe start a new campaign, have a session zero, and talk things out with your dm. See what everybody is looking for. Your dm also wants to play the game, don’t steal the enjoyment from them too
I agree so much with his rules of showing up on time, not leaving the table and the traveling portion is done. In short I once DM'd for some friends who asked me to run a one-shot. I made it from scratch and asked them to settle on a time and date. The day comes and half the group showed up late, 3/4s left early cause they planned other stuff after they agreed to that day and time slot. We never actually did the one-shot cause they complained I was rail-roading them so the group never left the initial area and the "heroes" instead spent their time breaking into merchant stalls setup at a crossroads, killed a bunch of guards and then set a forest on fire just to then leave early... i never DM'd for them again.
And half of the internet, is r-tarded, and will blame YOU for that game not turning out well, instead of the toxic players.
For rule 8, I generally tell people "Tell me what you're going to do, and then wait for me to call for the roll please, cause I'm juggling about 50 different things, I promise you'll get to do it." Lol
i hate the timer because i have mental impairment
I understand especially the parts in which he is addressing the slow players - now I personally think that in certain situations, you need to weigh your options, for example, when you have to choose between killing an enemy or helping your party member. But if you need to check your spell save DC every single turn, that makes my blood boil...
I hardly disagree with rule number 9. Everybody knows that exhaustion system in 5e is an unbalanced mess that should be homebrewed into being something more reasonable.
Waited for one of my players for ten minutes to take their turn it’s hell
On Rule 6: How would they know they missed a side quests? The DM makes this stuff up so unless, as was pointed out, the DM told them there is no way they would know. Don’t tell them as that’s just being mean. “I had this really cool thing but YOU missed it.”
If the player never listen or pay attention when the DM speak, it's on them. The DM is not a babysitter.
Number 30 isn't a fair ask. It's a statement of fact that my players *will* eat when I fucking say so or they won't eat at all. Sure it comes from a place of not wanting crumbs everywhere, but this (and many other rules) is not an ask
I was in this dms shoes once. I ran the rules by someone I knew online who also played the game, and their response was something like “If you feel the need to write this out before you play even a single game after today, maybe you just need a break.”
I announced to the group that I was going on hiatus, and was upfront that it was because being the only dm drained me so much. I still mostly dm, but the other players at least offer to run every now and again.
It feels like conflict is in that DM wants a well-thought immersive theatrical experience with act-outs, and group wants to smoke weed, eat treats and have shits and giggles for a game.
3:42 I had a situation in my current Strahd game where I was frustrated with the book requiring the players to have access to certain things but not giving any way for them to get those things. There's quite a few places where the book gives Greater Restoration as the only possible way of solving something (Mad Mage, Exethanter), but that's a 5th level spell, available to only four classes and only from level 9, and requires diamond dust. There is literally no single instance in the entire book where players are given access to diamonds (at most it's bags of 'assorted gemstones'). I have a cleric in the party, and I don't want to be too brutal - I have a character who can resurrect people, I want to give them the opportunity to do so, which again requires diamonds.
I've seen that other people have resolved the Greater Restoration problem by having Van Richten give the PCs some scrolls, but my PCs can't stand the guy (that's what you get for training a tiger to kill Vistani on sight without telling the PCs your backstory-related reasons for it). Aside from all this, the players kind of breezed past the Vistani camp once to bring Arabella home and didn't talk to anyone, so I had no real way of letting them know about Rahadin's backstory.
So I made a new location - a dusk elf village in ruins - where they could find a diary explaining Rahadin's backstory (as well as the notion that Strahd doesn't stay dead, for good measure), a secret stash with two scrolls of Greater Restoration, and I also put the holy symbol in there that opens up the grave in Krezk - because they weren't going to enter Ravenloft before the big battle, I barely managed to convince them to get the skull after the dinner by having an NPC tell them where it was. I placed this location in their way - when rowing across the lake to go looking for the Mad Mage, I had the entire shore covered in thick brush and only one old rotting dock sticking out where they could land.
But I wasn't going to give them handfuls of diamonds out of nowhere - I wanted them to work for it - so I also had them encounter a group of little axolotl people living in the lake, who used to trade with the dusk elves - metal tools (smithing is hard underwater) in exchange for the diamonds the axolotls got from a vein in the bottom of the lake. They asked the party to slay a homebrew monster that was eating their children, no big. I'd run this idea past a more experienced DM friend and he warned me that PCs can just refuse to do something - specifically the debuffs they'd get from being underwater would be a problem, so either I had to do something about those or I'd had to make sure the reward was worth it.
Sure enough, the PCs were initially weary of the idea of going underwater. So I offered them three magical amulets to give them water breathing, a swim speed, and to negate water resistance debuffs on their melee attacks; and I made sure to have the axolotl leader pull a handful of diamonds out of her pocket. They didn't know how much they were going to get, but the diamonds sealed the deal.
I gave them 1000 gold's worth of diamonds each. Now all they have to do is keep their cleric alive to use them 😈
lol the no hold back attitude of internet behavior exceeded into play with strangers... that is why I do not do that.
Screw rule 0. Games have rules. Adhere to them. Craft your adventure within those rules or use a game system supporting your narrative.
Honestly the DM just seems mad, not malicious. As a long term GM for many mediums campaigns and systems I feel his suffering. I recently had a similar issue where i organized a massive campaign for a large roleplay Gmod server and our player base would regularly refuse to remember basic details, engage with any systems presented to progress the campaign despite it being established they had to push it forwards. They then complained that the campaign wasn't going anywhere and too long (i had spent 3 months writing it and was pushing 6 months of non stop going in on this eith no breaks) and said "we don't want to do anything and just want to kill stuff". This broke me as a Gm and ruined it for me because it showed they did not value me or my efforts.
2:55 "If you aren't going to role play your checks..."
You ever been at an overnight LARP (with camping) and a 'DM' is having a girl act out 'seducing the guards' in front of everyone?
That is my first thought since I"ve seen it play out poorly.
The rule of "you get 1 minute and if you try and negotiate I'll break yor legs" feels... unfair? Mainly the tone but also the time limit was not put in good faith, taking care of everyones time needed to think, the rest just feels like a mess and there is a point in games where you have to negotiate the rules.
I can kinda relate to this poor GM to a certain extent.. i just quit before I snapped. I moved on to a group that respects my time, and engages with the game. The other group still tries to ask me to play sometimes... and I have had one of the players since i quit playing with them try to gaslight me into thinking it was me not them and that I was being mean by playing with another group without them. I am apparently a bad friend because I dont want to play with them? Honestly I have reached the point I dont care anymore lol
Yknow….. a simple conversation with your group could fix like 90 percent of these rules
"44 signs that your DM is unhappy with you"
This is my first time seeing the 44 rules in it's entirely, and ... What an emotional roller coaster. I've seen about the first 10 rules, and without context, this sounds like a guy trying to set up a totalitarian regime disguised as a DnD game. But somehow, the rules become more rational as the list progresses and the story comes out.
It's clear that this DM has put his heart and soul into this game, for players that probably don't remember what they did last session. We're still missing a LOT of context, but the fact that these rules were written, and that they leaked online, means that these problems have been going on for a long time and that party communication has broken down to an irreparable state.
Frankly, this DM cannot get away from these players fast enough, and these players might genuinely be better off playing Baldur's gate 3 "pass and play" style than getting a new actual GM.
Yeah, I noticed the image first sent around cuts off right around when the rules seem to be more reasonable (like him begging people to not break his stuff and leave every few minutes). I think it showed a little bit of bias because with the full context the DM’s anger isn’t coming from nowhere
Do you know if anyone elaborated on this story? Like one of the players?
As for my opinion on this, I'll go one by one.
1. Makes sense. I've played with people who take forever and been one of them when I first began playing. However, I'd say 3 minutes minimum as some shit can take much longer.
2. First off, put a a straw poll for your party as to whether they want easy, well-balanced, harder, or deadly fights. Backup characters are something I see as being necessary in the first place incase anything happens. This kinda retaliation is unnecessary.
3. I get where it's coming from, but I'd say asking what part is unfair and how they'd change it is good to do first before dismissing it. Don't DM through fear.
4. Funny, but honestly it's better to just write a tally down each time with a seperate thing for each player and if it gets too much, kick em. Not only do you have a solid list of reasonable evidence, you also don't waste energy fighting with them.
Be the sponge until the hammer is required. This doesn't mean be a pushover, just don't be super angry or retaliatory.
5. Reasoning is shit, same with the punishment. Honestly, same with the tally thing. If they do it enough times, kick em.
6. This really depends on how obvious you make it. Don't rely on a single queue, but don't give 10+. 5 is a good middle ground, and not all to the same person. If they miss all of your queues, even when they're fkin obvious, it's on them. Also talking over whether it's obvious could help. Perspective is a killer.
7. Ok, I'd say you have 2 per turn and once you commit enough, no take backs. Like no moving 8 tiles, entering line of sight of an enemy and going "oh no" only to take it back more than once every, say, 2-3 turns. If you trigger a trap, no take backs. It's really about the exact circumstances of this.
No using this to metagame so you can see what's around the corner.
8. Perfect rule, though it could be worded better. Also, roll out from yourself with at least 2 people watching or it's fkin invalid, and no touching the dice till they need to be rolled again and everyone has seen them.
9. For things like this, session 0 is a good time to figure out the pacing.
10. Makes sense, especially the grudge part. However, it's important not to take it over the top. No death sentence for dissing a king. Just a little stint in jail and a fine. Don't take this overboard.
11. I agree with you on this a lot, but at the same time I enjoy making dungeons so yeah...
12. Session 0 should work this out. I agree heavily with what you said on this.
13-14. No punishment, just add to the tally and get other ways to help them arrive. If this happens 2-3 times, yer out.
15. I'd say this is a good rule, however if the rest of the party is there, just remove their character from the session and kick em the next time it happens.
No elaboration from the players, but the Redditors did some digging and found that the poster, one of the Players in question, bragged quite a bit about screwing over his DM. Seems like the Players are just shitheads.
@@starhammer5247 Honestly, I feel bad for the DM more than I do the players. At least, if there's even a single good player who ain't a piece of trash, I hope they get along.
@@starhammer5247It reads like the players were being assholes about it.
@@missivory_missraine It really does.
@@starhammer5247 When your reddit history is trashing your DM, and then cry victim when this is the retort and hounding said dm down to dm for your obviously toxic group. Then cry when this is the draconian response. It reads quite normal. Most of it is etiquette for ya know...regular people. Some rules I raise my eyebrow at but it's clearly a point to bad behavior, metagaming, or breaking the Rules as Intended but it works Rules as Written. (Some say flyby+familiar+guidance for easy ways to stop a DM from canceling your guidance spam and that might be why you can't use divination spells just to say "I don't want to deal with cheese weaseling asshole character builds.")
The DM sounds like they just had enough of it, and this was their final straw. A final appeal to some sense of normalcy, and honestly they shouldn't even have entertained the group. Because if I was a DM and I had alot of players not show, show up high, get food in middle of session without warning me, etc, etc. I'd just walk off. They can't respect my time. I won't respect theirs. I'd rather just play KOTOR, NW, ID, or BG1-3. Because obviously that's the experience the players want, so that's the experience the players can have.
After hearing all these rules I get the impression that it may be a very large group of players the DM is dealing with and has been exhausted by it. More context is needed
If you aint laughing or just thoroughly enjoying any dnd session you are having as a dm or player im sorry but you gotta find a different group, ive been playing with the same geoup for years now and every single time its laid back chill fun amd engaging and never have i as dm or player have ever had to write to them "rules" They have to follow, just have fun, its the whole point of having it on pen and paper, its maluable fun, infinte in nature just how do you fick something like that up?
I can relate to this gm. I've never gone this far, but I have had groups that really sucked, and I tried to stop running for them, but they REALLY wanted to play. I don't know. It's weird.
Here comes a super hot take: this DM shows the issues with the more privileged side of players in TTRPGs. A lot of players believe it has to be their way or no way at all and will argue to "win" even when it's not necessary. And while some of these rules are excessive,
The majority of them are reasonable at base level.
A lot of players ONLY care about their power fantasy but then ignore that the DM wants to have fun too. I'm not talking min maxing, but actively trying to strong arm the DM into a specific style of play is toxic and not overly uncommon
However, I do agree that there is a solution in merely swapping groups. Some DMs and Groups just don't mix. Some players want to be rewarded for outlandish ideas and some love rigid rules. Some try to think of how to break the system and others would rather keep it direct and simple. Some like to manage their inventory, some rather have bags of holding. It IS the same for DMs. And if your players don't appreciate your work, then drop them. DMs are in higher demand than players and groups like mine, where 4 of the 5 players want to dM so we switch off, is exceptionally rare.
18 doesn't make sense. Stealth checks are basically at n-tuple disadvantage, since a single PC screwing up alerts the enemy and forgoes the surprise round or any other advantage you'd have from stealth as a party. Same goes for deception (let's say your party wants to disguise themselves as part of an enemy group). Therefore, if a check can be an n-tuple disadvantage, whereby the smallest roll determines the success of all party members, then checks should also be allowed to be at n-tuple advantage, whereby all PCs can investigate for clues, all PCs can look for that dragon that's far away, and so on.
Not quite. Group stealth check isn’t n-tuple disadvantage inherently since those who don’t fail can remain hidden.
The real issue for the rule is just that it’s all very dependent on the skill check. Some stuff “should” be allowed to have multiple attempts. Like kicking down a door or something. Though there are also edge cases where it’s a bit unclear if repeated attempts should be allowed. Think it’s a bit unfair to assume the rule is absolute. Makes more sense just as a general leaning.
@@skycastrum5803 "Group stealth check isn’t n-tuple disadvantage inherently since those who don’t fail can remain hidden" - I think this might just be based on how both DMs I've been a PC for ran their slightly homebrew 5e campaigns. Apparently the concept of a surprise round doesn't even exist in 5e, so that's my bad.
Still, the fact that in many scenarios the entire group is as strong as its weakest link is something to be considered when forbidding players to take advantage of their numbers in scenarios where the group is a strong as its strongest member.
@@karlpoppins Yeah, surprise round thing kind of weird. People do it differently. But technically “surprise” is just a condition. Though that’s kind of the issue for a lot of D&D. People do things different. Often times “officially” something shouldn’t matter, but some random house rule will cause unexpected issues. And sometimes it’s the reverse.
@@skycastrum5803 To be honest, I don't like sticking to what's written. One of my favorite deviations from 5e is that on a nat20 I want all damage (including modifiers) to be doubled, not just the dice rolls; rolling a nat20 and merely doubling a low roll feels like such a huge letdown and a party pooper.
Im not an avid dnd player, so i can't judge these rules too much, but some seem biased to me. Like 14, it seems bad for 2 reasons 1. The in-game solutions for out of game problems thing and 2. The bias because all he says is no good reason judged by himself, and different people have different priorities. If someone values an event over dnd but the GM doesn't, then won't they be punished for no reason in their eyes. My point is there should be a cleanly put list of what is and isn't acceptable at least, right?
Tbh, having a time clock to play “speed D&D” sounds like a potentially fun and wacky variant
The funniest bit to me as an "x Without Number" player/GM is that a lot of times "some guy on reddit" is just straight-up the dude who wrote the games.
Just because theres a point docent mean you are in the right,its something you need to remember all the time
Bro I think you forgot what the context of WHO posted this reddit post.
The PC and the rest were a total douchebags and the subreddit called them out on it.
THAT'S why the post and user got deleted.
DM rule 0 is fckin stupid. The DM is also a player, and the mentality that they can never be wrong will ruin the game in many cases. DMs can be wrong, they might not know every singly rule by heart, or might actually be human and make mistakes. When I make mistakes as a DM and a player points it out, instead of getting deffensive and being a btch about it I adjust the situation to how it is supposed to be rather than double down. When playing with friends its not the DM versus the players, its everyone working together to make a story, and the DMs opinions should not be valued infinitely higher than the other players.
This is 50% "oh damn calm down" and 50% "what did those players do to you???" Id love to hear multiple perspectives from this group bc there is sooo much info missing
Most of these are just rule zero and have some common courtesy.
However it's the in game consequences for out of game behaviour is just jarring. It takes you out of the game.
Then there are so called rules that aren't actually rules. Just "here is my DM style".
For once its not a player feeling trapped with a DM, but a DM feeling trapped with players.
Its easy to say, hard to do, but still remains the only option. Dont play games you cant enjoy.