If I showed someone a picture of a non-white character and they literally just went "ew"... I wouldn't let that go, I'd insist he tells me exactly what is "ew" about the picture, a scar on the character? A birth mark? What they're wearing, like animal skins? What *exactly* is "ew" to them? and if it's cause of their freakin' skin colour... yeah they're out of the game, no second chance or warning, I have no tolerance for blatant racism.
Racist says something stupid about Games of Thrones. Crispy: Shows a clip from Game of Throne that blows said idea of out the water. Well, played Crispy.
I mean... whlile the show depicted almost everyone from Essos as not white, the book made most people from the free cities white but with coloured hair (read: naturally sea blue hair) So it becomes a weird thing, where the main cast from Essos in show is not white but mostly former slaves (and Dany's bodyguard of serial preadtors, the Bloodriders), while book version has Dany's former slave army being a mixture of skin tones (and Dany's bodyguard of serial predators are definitely not white, and still the Bloodriders) GoT is very weird about it, is the thing.
DM: So...what do you guy's enjoy about D&D? Players: (Resounding silence of nothing) DM: Okey dokey. That's exactly what you shall receive. Thanks for playing.
Had this problem with new players who had no expectations. One became a motivational speaker slash holy priest. Never expected that in an escape from the temple of the lizard folk
I can work with people who don't have experience with D&D or don't know what they want from it. I even have a few more experienced friends who love playing side characters in campaigns with new players so they can stay out of the spotlight and quietly help set up the dramatic/heroic moments for the new players' characters. What I have a much harder time working with is when people who aren't new won't communicate what they're picturing in the scale of "heroic battle strategy game" to "loose improvisational storytelling where a group of drama nerds collectively chew *all* the furniture." I've had fabulous games all along the scale (with some of my favorites being at the extremes), but as a DM it really helps to know which sort of game people will be expecting.
Cold open: don't sign up for the game if you're not going to play. 1. A five-year-old can usually tell the difference between "this is something I experienced in real life" and "this is something I heard about in a story". Anne isn't mature enough to play make-believe. 2. All aboard the exposition express! What's that GM need players for? 3. NTA. Lex makes Anne look like a well-adjust adult. 4. Eight groups in two months - in other words he's with a new group every week. How has he not clocked that his racism is the problem?
I don't have much difficulty imagining someone who is so wrapped up in their own world view that they project all of their own failing on to others. I've known people exactly like that. Personally, I'm more surprised anyone would keep trying after 8 failed groups like that. Even if they are unable to recognize themselves as problem, I'd expect them to write off the whole hobby as having to many "SJW/snowflakes" in it.
Yeah, people like them suffer from what I've heard to be refered to as "head-ass" syndrome. They are so consumed with their own BS they can't or lack the ability to self-reflect. If they ever have bothered to ask themselves "am I the problem?" they will just as quickly deny it. Exclaiming instead that "no, it's everyone else who's the problem." There is no excuse for it, of course, but it is a miserable existence to hold onto that much hateful ignorance.
The worst part is with #4 that it's probably not racism alone that's getting him kicked out. I mean, what are the odds that 8 groups in a row they all happen to be interacting exclusively with non-white characters? Good chance that there's quite a bit of sexism and homophobia involved as well, because when you're racist, you're probably the other two as well. "I'm sorry, I come here to be immersed, and Girls being buff fighters and gay people existing in a medieval setting aren't immersive!"
Same reason with most people. He takes each new instance as evidence that the world is full of shitty people who cant handle the truth, or his personality, or whatever he deems as himself being the normal one. Rather than any introspection.
"At one instance, our Cleric wanted to cast Fireball to free our Paladin from a Gelatinous Cube." Got ourselves an Arcana Cleric Chad, I see. That's a guy who enjoys the game.
Last story: As a half orc enjoyer, I don't *comprehend* how or why you could play a fantasy game like D&D where you play all sorts of different races and creatures and *still* be racist. Especially for races that are looked down upon or treated with suspicion like tieflings and half orcs!! It's like being a fan of the X-Men and being racist or homophobic: you missed the whole point
From my understanding, people like that will do their best to mentally warp what they're presented with by the DM to fit their personal world view and only react when physical/visual evidence directly goes against that world view. It also feels like they're more likely treat their own character's race as a pile of stats and abilities tacked on to an idealized (in their mind at least) version of themselves instead of what that race is supposed to look and act like.
The X-Men comparison might backfire. An actual racist might see it and identify with Magneto. (Luckily there's a fail-safe if that does happen: just point out that Magneto is Jewish)
Sadly there are racists in the marvel fandom. A lot too. Same with a lot of fandoms where they clearly missed the point in a big way. Ie star trek and doctor who too. Honestly the last like decade they have been coming out of the wood work in every single one of my fandoms. And sadly too often there aren't enough people standing up to them. I lost count of how many online fandom communities I have had ruined by either racist, sexist, or ableist jerks. At this point I just don't engage with most of the so called "true fans" who just want to speak hate and missed the inclusive point of so many stories. It just got too toxic. Which sucks cause I used to love so many online communities for a lot of different fandoms.
@@omninerd4276 Racists in general have been seething since 2008 and really came out of the woodwork in 2016. Take a wild guess what those two dates signify
I don't understand the concept of wanting to play in a fantasy game where you can play anything from orcs to fairies, but still split hairs over there being brown humans. I don't understand these people who think the world can only be beautiful or engaging if everyone everywhere looked exactly alike.
I can I understand if you're the type that likes having analogs of human cultures in your fantasy worlds and you're committed more to historical accuracy/immersion, but clearly this guy had actual problems lol
Because their fantasy is to indulge in their privilege to "not make it political." But for anyone without white skin, or who's queer, or *probably* a woman, your mere existence isn't allowed to be apolitical.
Re: Anne and Tex. Yeah, putting avatars of your loved ones into a *horror* game is kind of asking for trouble. Reminds me of a story a friend told me about a co-worker who was playing Final Fantasy VII for the first time. The co-worker decided to rename the main characters after her kids, and my friend had trouble explaining to her why that was a bad idea without spoiling what was going to happen to "Becky", aka Aeris....
The Tex and Anne story reminds me of people I've met who claim all sf and fantasy is pointless - when asked if they'd seen any, they always said no. Cue a year later after the first LOTR movie came out, and they'd become a total blubbering pile of emotions at the ending (Gandalf and Boromir dead/"dead", the Fellowship split up, Merry and Pippin prisoners, etcetera). I suspect she thought using herself as a basis for character would make it less real for her.
Ok so about the last story: I'm actually currently working on something involving Arthurian Mythos and you'd be surprised to know that there are some dark skinned characters in the mythos and other places in general! Since y'know, people of color existed in those times.
Hell, even Santa Claus had a black secretary in the early version of his stories. People of color have been people, for as long as people have been people
Fun fact: The Holy Roman Emperors in the 10th century chose St. Mauritius as their patron saint. He was an Egyptian-Roman military leader from the 3rd century. Since the 12th century, Mauritius was depicted with a dark complexion. His statue from 1250 in the cathedral of Magdeburg shows him fully as a black African in knightly armour and is considered the oldest depiction of a black person in Europe. He still guards the grave of emperor Otto I., even though he's missing parts of his legs now.
@@johannageisel5390 Wasn't it also kinda common practice in the roman empire, that they deliberately would send legionaries from geographically far away regions into their provinces, to avoid fraternization?
@@shizachan8421 Yep, because it would make it easier for rebellion if it's a British roman soldier in Britian. While, say, like some Germanic roman soldier being a guard in, say Egypt, is less likely to be a case of likely to cause a rebellion.
My Cleric had a teeeeeeense argument with our Wizard in CoS but neither of us thought for a sec we were fighting with words IRL. (and props to the player for their RP)
I learned a long time ago: jerks in real life are usually jerks in the game. Rather than escape their prejudices in a fantasy LARP or RPG, they bring all their dirty baggage with them. When I lived in Ireland, I was in a group playing Werewolf: The Apocalypse. This was during Bush Jr.'s war on Iraq. And one of the other party members treated my character poorly, otten trying to get him killed, just because I was a Yank, and he didn't like the war. Hell, neither did I. But this didn't stop him. It got to the point where the geoup disbanded, because he spent more time trying to kill me off, rather than follow the storyline. We eventually restarted the story, minus one, and had a fun run. I was just lucky enough to find a group that wpuldn't put up with hos nonsense.
The Tex and Anne story makes me nervous, it feels like there’s more going on with those two (especially Anne) than just roleplaying problems. Obviously there’s not nearly enough information going on there for me (or anyone) to properly speculate but… I hope they’ve been able to work out whatever’s going on with them.
That first game is exactly why, among other reasons, I'm forever wary of self-insert characters. It just makes it too hard to separate yourself from the character, which makes for a whole minefield of triggers that can set a person off, even ones far less extreme than those in this game.
@Viewer There are some for which that works, but others where it unfortunately very much doesn't. Particularly when you have to approach things on a player to player basis rather than DM to player and without the DM being willing to backup the advice. But, still, this is devolving into a whole separate issue. The shortened response here is-would that it could be so easy, but it isn't always with the human element added.
Idk, in my group one of our friends is new to tabletop and basically plays a fantasy version of herself. She was really hard on herself at first because she felt like she wasn’t being as ‘creative’ as the rest of us, but we kept reassuring her that its okay and she can just do what she’s comfortable with and figure out her character gradually as she plays. We had a lot of conversations early on like: Her: But I don’t know how to respond quickly when characters are talking to me! Me: Well, make that part of your character - someone whose a little socially awkward and nervous. It takes some time but she’s able to get into the game and have a lot of fun, she especially lets loose in combat where she’s become kind of a pyromaniac. She even kept an in-character journal as her game notes for a while. She still considers her character to be a self-insert but she’s 100% able to separate the game world from reality and the rest of us love her character just like we love her in real life.
@@okayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy Yeah, that'd be why this is an issue that hangs pretty heavily on the human element of things. I'd also say that your example sounds less along the vein of an actual self-insert and more so letting someone know that it's fine for your character to be inspired by certain real life experience or traits you have. For example, this is how our party's warlock is such a "mom friend" or our monk is a socially awkward goofball. In large part, though, it's also just another way of acknowledging that, yeah, this is very much a case by case issue.
I'll admit that for the first game my current group played, I was a self-insert. Granted, I had some idea that all wouldn't be well for 'me' in-game, since the game was Toon. I've moved on from that now, at least.
Among the obvious "dont be racist" suggestion for the last story i also suggest reading more fantasy. PoCs have been a part of fantasy since its youth. Not to mention ancient cultures with various myths which bear fantastical elements and how quite a few of those ended up inspiring the "white" myths and fantasy.
I really don't recommend playing yourself in games. It can get disturbing. Way back when I was in high school a bunch of my friends and I decided to play a game of Wraith: the Oblivion, which is a game in which you're all basically ghosts. We all played ourselves and were killed off one by one in the first session, because, well, we were gonna be ghosts. It got a little creepy afterward. Like the way "I" was killed when I'd noticed a black sedan following me as I drove down an empty road at night. Yeah, it's fiction, but your imagination can run wild when you're on a mostly empty road at night and see a pair of headlights behind you. The game didn't end up going anywhere anyway, pretty much for scheduling reasons. But in later games, none of us ever tried to play as ourselves again.
Sounds like the best time to play self-insert is if you want to feel immersed in horror. And that requires self-awareness to be accurate while staying detached enough to not take it personally. This definitely feels different than making a wish fulfillment version of one's self.
So here's a horror story so old we gotta go back to BECMI days. I'm practically a grognard now a days, but started playing in the 80's, and frequently I got stuck with my brother as the DM/GM/Referee/Storyteller (depending on the system). This horror story involves him running me, alone, through dungeon delve. Now, to be fair this was about 35 years ago, so I don't remember all the details, but this one lead to a ton of trauma and has made certain rules in my own games unbreakable and grounds for immediate ejection. Getting back to it: So I was a kid starting out, probably between 8 and 11. I made a character, and as I was playing alone I picked a human fighter, first level....it was the 80's and I was a kid...cut me some slack. So I start going into the Dungeon and encounter a bunch of little dwarf children. Me, being the young naive kid I was, was instantly of the mindset, "yay! Dwarves and dwarf children! Dwarves are good and I bet this'll be an opportunity for me to get some help / backup. This is where this is about to go horribly wrong. Oh, btw...I figure this is where I need to make folks aware there is a content / trigger warning: violence against children and abuse. *sigh* So the dwarf kids start poking me. I'm like..."umm...ok please stop" My brother: "they are now poking you with sticks!" Annoying, but ok, I had on chainmail armor so, no biggie. "You are taking damage! The dwarf kids are picking the sticks through the chain mail and doing damage!" Now, for those who haven't played old school D&D first level characters don't get a lot of hit points and even getting hit for 1d4 is a big deal, if you were a mage it could be an insta-kill given enough strength bonuses. So everytime my brother speaks, I take at least 1 point of damage, I don't remember how much I had, but it wasn't a lot because I started to panic. "Can I flee out of the dungeon?!" "No, you're surrounded, take more damage " "They won't listen when I ask them to stop?!" "No, take more damage!" "What should I do?" "Up to you, take more damage! You have a sword!" I remember being distraught and really upset at this point. I didn't want to lose my character, but there was no other way from what I could see. I declared I was drawing my sword...and...well, to put it mildly, I pulled an Anakin. Now...I wanna be very clear here, I didn't want to, I felt very much railroaded into having to do this. But it is about to get so so so much worse.... While I am committing what I can only refer to as a war crime, my brother does an impression of one of the dying children calling out for their mother as they die. I fully lost it. I was a mess for a while. Sadly, this was another method of my brother's abuse. He had a good history of extending carrot just to beat me mercilessly with the stick (physically, mentally, or otherwise). Since then I have a very solid, 0-tolerance rule against violence aimed at children in my games. If kids are antagonists, there is always a means to deal with them aside from murder. Anyways, thought I'd share this. Would love to hear your thoughts
@@Fafnd yeah, he pulled other stuff like that over the years, but in retrospect I think it was another avenue to inflict his abuse on me. As for whatever came of him I don't know, I cut contact years ago when the damage his presence in my life became undeniable
13:34 - holy crap! I thought I'd heard of railroading but that DM took it far beyond anything I've ever heard of. It's one thing to force PCs down a series of encounters; completely another to have already choreographed how the fight will go once they've got there.
It is often not as simple as "know the difference between real life and the game". Emotional bleed is a thing and, even if you intellectually know it is all just a game, bleed still may happen on an emotional level. This is why safety tools are important.
Going to respectfully disagree with the DM from the story about Tex and Anne. On one specific point: 5:09 “If I had not done anything to her that would have been no better than favoritism in my opinion.” There’s a player in one of my groups who has triggers related to autonomy suppression. We just don’t have ghosts target her for possession, and stuff in that regard. Sometimes triggers make it so that a player just can’t join that game, but other times it means that player just needs a few accommodations. In this specific story, there are a lot of problems, but in general, there are times when we as DMs can avoid inflicting certain harms on certain PCs for the benefit of the player/group. That’s what Session 0s are for! Figuring out what makes you uncomfortable, so the game can be fun for everybody. And in the context of horror games, I still run through everybody’s triggers, because I want the horror to be the Fun kind of uncomfortable, not the Hurtful kind.
I agree with you. When playing TRPGS, it's important to be mindful of the people you're playing with. Choosing to do something you know might be upsetting is a choice. I don't think it's favouritism, and even if it was I think it would be fine in instances like this
9:10 The DM's right that adventurers take risky missions, but he's also missing the crucial difference between risky and suicidal. The mission, as he presented it, wasn't just risky it was suicidal and the players knew it, which is why they passed on that quest hook.
I am constantly amazed at how DnD is a game where you can do or be anything you absolutely want and you choose to be racist. Cmon, be a little creative
The racism thing only works in certain settings, ones where maybe orcs and humans have ongoing issues type thing. But as lore stands now the racism tropes dont really fit in the official setting since most cities in forgotten realms are at least mildly integrated and almost no races are specified to have hard alignments Its also important to note that there are situations, like kobolds and gnomes, which have deeper issues, or uthgardt and high elves. These are always subvertable and are usually contextual.
@@torch1028 As an African dnd player i will say i do allow "racism" in my game for reasons you just said, story and lore. That being said it's solely IN-GAME. Luckily i play with people that want to heal those kind of issues. I have even had racist pcs who wanted to make their arcs fixing that mindset. I love to see that. HOWEVER That guy from the last story's ideal world is a place where poc don't exist and i personally can't help with that one.
Like playing a character is one thing but that's something that can get really f'd up real quick, same with sexual violence, plus really sick of the idea only white people should be in high fantasy, people like me have always liked fantasy and that kinda shit really gives all the normal players a bad reputation
"I picture knights and wizards. I just can't picture these NPCs in a proper high fantasy setting" Oh yeah my PC who is from plane where people are black, gods are literally walking among the people and everybody including gods is manipulated by plane-shifting dragon to raise undead army doesn't fit fantasy setting. BTW I recommend amonkhet
I had a player in a Marvel Superheroes game and all he wanted his character to do was play Tekken 3 on a 100" TV in his apartment. You have super powers! WTF?
i feel like the first story hits close to home for me. I call these kind of players VG players. Video Game players, they do nothing outside a forced session because they treat it like a video game, play a bit then stop and not think about it before they play again. These kind of players are often several of the following: -Have no idea whats going on. -Never take notes. -Items are horribly mishmashed. -Never bother to read spells and just takes something that sounds good. -Take ages during combat (mostly because of above reasons). -Never give input to the DM. -Write 2-5 lines of backstory then whine when you try to use it to develop them. -Incredibly unfocused or know what to do during games or even notice hints that are slapping them in the face. -They follow video game logic. -These types of players MUST be railroaded or they wont do anything. How do i know all this? Well its my current group and for some reason all groups i have been in before. I yearn for a really good group sometimes....
@@KC-rg5vi its a irl game but with possibilities of discord as we all live in the same country. You have me intrigued, so ill check a few things and get back to you.
Call of Cthulhu is one of those games where you can roll not just for stats, but also for age, background, occupation, wealth, social position, quirks and significant human connections. (Or you can roll just the stats and select the rest, or you can buy everything with points.) I recently made my wife do this and she ended up playing a big strong but fairly ugly police woman with academic parents and friends in the church. Oh, and I made her roll for gender as well. This way of creating characters can end you up with something that you don’t enjoy, or is very under powered, and it doesn’t allow you any kind of pre concieved character concept, but it is a really good introduction to the rules system and setting. And it makes it very clear that you’re playing someone else, that is not you. It sounds to me that Tex’s wife would benefit.
I feel bad in the cold open where nobody ever interacted or responded to the DMs request for how they wanted the campaign to go. I’ve had something similar happen to me when I pitched a game and everyone was very excited and submitted some characters. I started working on the campaign and asked if anyone wanted to suggest anything or had things they wanted to see or avoid. And I got absolutely no reply back. For three weeks I didn’t get any reply or txt on the message board and eventually I posted up that. Hey guys I had zero responses back and I’m just not feeling any interest here. It was a week later i got three replies back saying they were but again gave no helpful information so I called it quits there. On the first story while it’s difficult not to add a bit of your own personality to a character this player really needs to chill out. Granted the husband went a tad over board but still it’s the ladies husband. I find it kind of unhealthy she couldn’t just separate fact from fiction And used the situation to get attention On the second story oof this DM is really a piece of work. Railroading no player agency, can’t do anything fun or creative. Yeah this guy really shouldn’t be DMing. But jeez to suffer through 4 years is just mind numbingly bad. Yeah on lex I would kick him. The unwanted flirting and general disrespect to the dm and other players. Yeah that racist guy….yeah mmmmmm yeah. There’s a pretty good reason why this guy isn’t very much welcome in DND groups. Same goes with bigots and homophobes. Nobody enjoys a game where real life prejudices and views clash and make things uncomfortable. Don’t be a dick.
I had another comment but deleted it because that last story made me not care that much about the other 3..... What the actual fuck.... I've been sitting here for 10 minutes and still can't come up with a satisfactory response for that so I'm just going to leave it with saying "yeah there's a reason he's had 8 groups in two months, he would be kicked out of my table too in a heartbeat. I don't have the time or patience to deal with that kind of blatant racism and irrational hatred in real life I'm certainly not going to spend my free time dealing with that horseshit"
3rd story: I'd've kicked him as soon as he started making someone else uncomfortable by messaging them like that. especially making advances like that. holy shit.
I actually have issues with keeping my cool in certain situations in DnD. For one instance, I started bawling after drawing a card from the deck of many things and... it was 'The Idiot'. Lol. I took that shiz personally even though, rationally, I knew it wasn't. I always tell people to look over me when stuff like this happens since.. well.. I have a disability that doesn't allow me to control my emotions all that great. I physically cannot contain it as most people can. So, I always tell them to act normal when it happens, I don't need pity or sympathy.. I just need rationale. Listening to these stories makes me realize how much I've grown as a player and what other things about myself I need to work on. I still have my outbursts, but they're a little more contained and I'm still trying to do better.
At least the racist guy was honest. Most people with that mindset would just go on some bullshit rant about “HisToRicAL aCcURacY” (even though trade routes between Africa, Asia, and Europe were very much in place long before the medieval period and the history they’re talking about doesn’t even exist)
Fun Fact: A majority of the human population has darker pigmentation and brighter skin tones are actually less common. This logic doesn't apply to fantasy obviously, but if we were to apply some sort of "things should be normal" logic, then it would technically make more sense if the majority population of a fictional setting was darker skinned. Though obviously if a setting is based off of a location where people have brighter skin, then that makes more sense. But at the end of the day, there's not really a "wrong" amount of people of a certain skin color within a fantasy setting.
Right? Hating an entire group because reasons is a total abandonment of logic and reason. I take each individual as they come, and let their own character speak for them. I get that stereotypes exist for a reason, but just because 50 people come across as the same on a subject doesn't mean the 51st person of that group will follow suit. Everyone is different, some not as much as others. Others are polar opposites. That's why you should let a person's individual character speak for them.
@@pauliepizzo8633 I get that. It's true racism. All humans are human, orcs are orcs, and so forth, unless you're one of the "dark" aspects of a race. If that is a thing naturally imposed by a character's sub-race, say a dark elf, a good DM will keep it as nonchalant as possible, have fairly easy workarounds, and moderate any natural animosity amongst possible character races. There's a difference between playing a part and being a genuine bigot. It can be handled tastefully and in great fun if all involved remember it's simply a game, and the end goal is for everyone to have fun. I've been involved with campaigns where the entire party was made up of broken characters...I mean broken as in almost trash-it-and-reroll-with-a-handicap broken, not overpowered in all ways imaginable broken. It made for some good, bust-a-gut, slapstick humor.
@@bignasty4874 in my game their are no racism towards the different and exotic creatures you play in dnd they are judged by their actions not looks alone
@@CrispysTavern Hey make sure you step back and breath, you seemed super into it, like looking for real dog. Its' a story on the internet of dubious nature and likely If an idiot like this exists, hes going to catch his own soon.
So this is funny, but a friend swears up and down I sound like Crispy. I have a few videos on youtube myself, but nothing amazing. But would love to maybe talk one on one with the guy someday and compare stories. I've got some funny ones from D&D and Pathfinder from the tabletop days I had. I'll include my favorite tabletop adventure I had. Alright a little background before we get into this, the Dungeon Master had spent almost a month and a half setting it up. We'd gone through several missions and found are steps troubling. Are part was comprised of a Gnome, Two humans, a half-orc, and myself who was playing a Dragonborn. So as the campaign was winding toward its conclusion a dragon was the final adversary we faced. We struggled to defeat the creature, scales like diamonds. So our Gnome came up with a solution...he went inside the dragon and not through the mouth. He used several spells to pull this off..but in essence, he blew the dragon up from inside its butt.
I get it, I've gotten pretty emotional over losing characters. I still resent my freinds for essentially bullying one of my characters to death aftet I'd worked really hard on his build and making artwork for him. It can be really frustrating to have all that work go up in smoke. But like, shouldn't making a self insert make that easier? If the character *is* you, it shouldn't be that upsetting to lose them. It's just you and what you would do in that situation, you don't have to worry about thinking up complex motivations. For me, the frustration with dying in RPG's comes from this little dude I've worked so hard on being gone forever. If it's just "me, but in a haunted house", I'd be pretty confident that I wouldn't make it. It takes all the stakes away for me. Afterall, it's just a game.
So, something I've realized about characters dying, you can reuse them, long as it isn't in the DM's timeline world where they died, different world or different dm? Nothings stopping you from reusing them, with appropriate adjustments to fit the world etc
"I can't imagine these guys in a proper high fantasy setting like Game of Thrones!" Amazing, every word you just said was wrong. Besides the fact that non-white people are explicitly in GoT, GoT is also not High Fantasy (debatable, but hear me out), where magic is quite low key and rare. There's like 3 dragons remaining, 2 magic users (that matter), and ice zombies and that's it.
I immediately wanted to make a joke about how the words "in", "a", and "of" were wrong, but your point stands. I don't watch Game of Thrones so best I can guess is PoC aren't common focuses on the show or something. That or he just ignores anything that doesn't fit his racist worldview to the point it affects his memory.
@@ArcCaravan Oh definitely an affected memory lmao, for 6 seasons a second continent with a culture like the Mongolian empire and one like the Ottoman empire were heavily featured, there are plenty of PoC sharing the world with the main Europe-esq continent.
I really don't get the racism some people bring to their fantasy world, and why it's an issue for them. Personally I get that there's going to be people that don't ask look the same, though I'll admit I rarely ever think about it until someone points it out. Kinda like the difference of red skinned goblins or green skinned goblins, they're just goblins with different descriptives.
*Intro Story* - This describes most RPers in a nutshell: they like the idea of playing, but make no real effort to prepare or even show any interest. Were it me? I'd have just said screw those guys and just wrote it out. Probably would have turned out better anyway. *The NPC was... him?!* - A major reason I say what themes and things will be in the games before we even start rolling characters, is to prevent crap like... well... that... I tend to run dark games so I don't blame people for wanting to opt out. *When You Have No Choices* - ...this just pisses me off... demons/devils are my specialty... this is NOT how you run them! This mot- (the following rant has been censored because of RUclips). *AITA for kicking this guy?* - No, no he is definitely not. Reminds me of my own horror story where I had to make the decision to kick out a player, but that is not a story for the comment section. *This Guy... Kind of Sucks* - Definitely... screw this guy, kick him, ban him, get him out. Way to crap all over Egyptian mythology and whatnot. Tonight I hope I have another crazy dream which will inevitably turn into something awesome for my table.
That second story at 12:00 with the Paladin, cheating on dice rolls and tracking finite resources just kind of kills it for me. And even with this holy avenger that's some mad unsubtle cheating. Even at max damage critting with said weapon getting 150 plus isn't guaranteed. That's a hell of a lot of damage. That's Half a Basic Balor and at least a 6th I think of an Ancient Dragon.
I mean if you had to confuse reality with a game and have the two bleed into each other, at least Delta Green/Call of Cthulhu is an appropriate choice for that.
With the first story, those players are just casual players. They're not asking the OP stuff because they don't know them. They do know the friend though. Not every player is going to send you six pages of background for their four character ideas. Some people just want to show up and play.
Some people are just like that. CritCrab's recent video talked about the subject. Apologies in advance if I'm not supposed to "promote" other channels, it just answers this recurring question better than I can off the top of my head.
Playing a self-insert in a game isn't necessarily a bad thing (though it's generally more fun playing someone else) but if you are going to "play-act what it would be like if you were in X setting with Y", then you've got to accept that shit may well happen to "you"... as it probably would if you really were in such a setting in real life, tbh. I'm pretty sure that if I were really running around contending with actual monsters or Old Ones, I'd get my arse handed to me in next to no time, so it shouldn't disappointed if a character based on me winds up getting well and truly thrashed in a setting that has monsters and/or Old Ones.
Yeah, these 'AITA for having a completely reasonable response to an unreasonable person/situation?' posts always boggle me. I get there's cases where an OP can give their grievance the benefit of doubt or are unsure if they're overreacting but this one describes Lex like an absolute nightmare to have but still has doubts over kicking him? It just sows more doubt if you ask me
my view on different ethnicities in fantasy is quite simple. As long as it makes sense within the story or world (Or area of the world) then it is fine. I mean in quite a few fantasy cases we already have orcs elves halflings and so on. Also sometimes you can have fun with the world building have the climate and humans be that of the middle of Africa but having the culture that develops being similar to that of ancient China. And in the same world have the area that china is in develop the Scandinavian Vikings. And so on. At the end of the day the only real limit is your own mind after all.
In my opinion, it's a mistake to include skin color, sexual preference, gender identity, etc. in a game unless all players at the table are on the same page. Not everyone is these days, that's reality. People have very different views on these things. I don't describe skin color on my npcs, it's up to your interpretation. I don't include romances in the game or make gender identity a focal point. You put it in your game, make sure all the players involved are on the same page. That's on you as a DM.
Yep. The DM is the ultimate authority. I play rules as written, but when there is a conflict in the rules or the players, I reserve final decision, as a DM that is. The final word on the quality of a DM is how many completed campaigns/incomplete campaigns has one presided over.
Imagine being so sensitive that the description of someone's skin colour bothers you. Do you also avoid mentioning the drow or woodelfs tone? How about the dragons??? Black and brown people exist, it's not some taboo. I don't want to play with someone so delicate that knowing an NPCs skin tone bothers them...
My actual response whilelistening to this d.hole21.40 "My guy just be open about your racism so they can kick you already". Escaping reality is what I do for these games but honestly why...
So the last story reminds me of a tale where My friend is a DM and she’s preparing her own wonderful world and she asked me if it was OK that she plays NPC characters Of colour as she is a white woman we had four people in the chat all of us saying yes it is OK as people of colour exist and that it is not racist of her to play the NPC’s as they exist and have autonomy and have lives and stories of their own.
That last story is (unfortunately) common among nerdy circles. Irony of this person playing a Half-Orc aside given that that race is usually viewed with suspicion, people tend to idealize fantasy as this perfect and very lily-white place where they can "escape the real world" (read: not have to see anyone of color). High fantasy and anime communities are top offenders of this from my knowledge.
The OP of story 2 said the DM couldnt "admit that he made a mistake". He never made a mistake. I've seen that kind of DM time and time again, they have a story they want to tell about characters they want to tell and the players are there as a captive audience. Their own characters only exist insofar as they need to to force the players controlling them to be at the table to witness the DMs 'amazing' story. Which is always absolute fanfic-level garbage. Also he wasn't unable to talk with them, just unwilling. Blah blah malice where you could neglicence yadda yadda, I know. But no. Not after seeing it for the eleventh time. There are certain people who should just write a god damned book, but they don't want to do that because if they did they would be subject to basic standards and beholden to give refunds when it was inevitably useless as anything but a paperweight.
Anne shouldn't be playing RPG's. She clearly has trouble separating the games from reality. Let Lex leave or kick him. Life is too short for putting up with that crap.
"The DM had 10 years of experience and the campaign took place in a world he had been developing over the years and was based on a realistic/fantasy medieval world." Abort, abort, abort! Sea of red flags ahead!
Last story: I find other regional inspirations for fantasy far more interesting than the over saturated, white washed, 90s fantasized version of medieval Europe that this guy wanted. I would have loved to play a character from that region and indulged in using real world inspiration for my character's looks, fighting styles, and mannerisms.
Wow! This episode had almost every kind of rpg horror story don'ts. The only think was missing was forced romances, sexual predator behavior, or furries. At this rate we have to create a ttrpg version of the ten commandments to deal with this endless gaming madness.
If I showed someone a picture of a non-white character and they literally just went "ew"... I wouldn't let that go, I'd insist he tells me exactly what is "ew" about the picture, a scar on the character? A birth mark? What they're wearing, like animal skins? What *exactly* is "ew" to them? and if it's cause of their freakin' skin colour... yeah they're out of the game, no second chance or warning, I have no tolerance for blatant racism.
Sounded like the DM tried but the racist just refused to elaborate so it wasn't pressed until later. Still running a game for more than him.
Last story: Just gonna point out that Game of Thrones is NOT high fantasy. It's low-mid fantasy.
Racist says something stupid about Games of Thrones.
Crispy: Shows a clip from Game of Throne that blows said idea of out the water. Well, played Crispy.
@@KnicKnac Honestly, I don't doubt it. I know jack squat about Game of Thrones beyond what little I've heard, and now seen, and it makes sense.
I mean... whlile the show depicted almost everyone from Essos as not white, the book made most people from the free cities white but with coloured hair (read: naturally sea blue hair)
So it becomes a weird thing, where the main cast from Essos in show is not white but mostly former slaves (and Dany's bodyguard of serial preadtors, the Bloodriders), while book version has Dany's former slave army being a mixture of skin tones (and Dany's bodyguard of serial predators are definitely not white, and still the Bloodriders)
GoT is very weird about it, is the thing.
DM: So...what do you guy's enjoy about D&D?
Players: (Resounding silence of nothing)
DM: Okey dokey. That's exactly what you shall receive. Thanks for playing.
Had this problem with new players who had no expectations. One became a motivational speaker slash holy priest. Never expected that in an escape from the temple of the lizard folk
I can work with people who don't have experience with D&D or don't know what they want from it. I even have a few more experienced friends who love playing side characters in campaigns with new players so they can stay out of the spotlight and quietly help set up the dramatic/heroic moments for the new players' characters.
What I have a much harder time working with is when people who aren't new won't communicate what they're picturing in the scale of "heroic battle strategy game" to "loose improvisational storytelling where a group of drama nerds collectively chew *all* the furniture." I've had fabulous games all along the scale (with some of my favorites being at the extremes), but as a DM it really helps to know which sort of game people will be expecting.
Cold open: don't sign up for the game if you're not going to play.
1. A five-year-old can usually tell the difference between "this is something I experienced in real life" and "this is something I heard about in a story". Anne isn't mature enough to play make-believe.
2. All aboard the exposition express! What's that GM need players for?
3. NTA. Lex makes Anne look like a well-adjust adult.
4. Eight groups in two months - in other words he's with a new group every week. How has he not clocked that his racism is the problem?
I don't have much difficulty imagining someone who is so wrapped up in their own world view that they project all of their own failing on to others. I've known people exactly like that. Personally, I'm more surprised anyone would keep trying after 8 failed groups like that. Even if they are unable to recognize themselves as problem, I'd expect them to write off the whole hobby as having to many "SJW/snowflakes" in it.
Yeah, people like them suffer from what I've heard to be refered to as "head-ass" syndrome. They are so consumed with their own BS they can't or lack the ability to self-reflect. If they ever have bothered to ask themselves "am I the problem?" they will just as quickly deny it. Exclaiming instead that "no, it's everyone else who's the problem." There is no excuse for it, of course, but it is a miserable existence to hold onto that much hateful ignorance.
The worst part is with #4 that it's probably not racism alone that's getting him kicked out. I mean, what are the odds that 8 groups in a row they all happen to be interacting exclusively with non-white characters? Good chance that there's quite a bit of sexism and homophobia involved as well, because when you're racist, you're probably the other two as well.
"I'm sorry, I come here to be immersed, and Girls being buff fighters and gay people existing in a medieval setting aren't immersive!"
Because somebody has to make Lex seem like the well adjusted adult...obviously.
Same reason with most people. He takes each new instance as evidence that the world is full of shitty people who cant handle the truth, or his personality, or whatever he deems as himself being the normal one. Rather than any introspection.
"At one instance, our Cleric wanted to cast Fireball to free our Paladin from a Gelatinous Cube." Got ourselves an Arcana Cleric Chad, I see. That's a guy who enjoys the game.
Or a light cleric
@@Lycaon1765 that's right! It's probably that one.
Last story: As a half orc enjoyer, I don't *comprehend* how or why you could play a fantasy game like D&D where you play all sorts of different races and creatures and *still* be racist. Especially for races that are looked down upon or treated with suspicion like tieflings and half orcs!! It's like being a fan of the X-Men and being racist or homophobic: you missed the whole point
From my understanding, people like that will do their best to mentally warp what they're presented with by the DM to fit their personal world view and only react when physical/visual evidence directly goes against that world view. It also feels like they're more likely treat their own character's race as a pile of stats and abilities tacked on to an idealized (in their mind at least) version of themselves instead of what that race is supposed to look and act like.
I KNOW! Truly MIND blowing. Shows how completely irrational racists are.
The X-Men comparison might backfire. An actual racist might see it and identify with Magneto.
(Luckily there's a fail-safe if that does happen: just point out that Magneto is Jewish)
Sadly there are racists in the marvel fandom. A lot too. Same with a lot of fandoms where they clearly missed the point in a big way. Ie star trek and doctor who too. Honestly the last like decade they have been coming out of the wood work in every single one of my fandoms. And sadly too often there aren't enough people standing up to them. I lost count of how many online fandom communities I have had ruined by either racist, sexist, or ableist jerks. At this point I just don't engage with most of the so called "true fans" who just want to speak hate and missed the inclusive point of so many stories. It just got too toxic. Which sucks cause I used to love so many online communities for a lot of different fandoms.
@@omninerd4276 Racists in general have been seething since 2008 and really came out of the woodwork in 2016. Take a wild guess what those two dates signify
I don't understand the concept of wanting to play in a fantasy game where you can play anything from orcs to fairies, but still split hairs over there being brown humans. I don't understand these people who think the world can only be beautiful or engaging if everyone everywhere looked exactly alike.
I can I understand if you're the type that likes having analogs of human cultures in your fantasy worlds and you're committed more to historical accuracy/immersion, but clearly this guy had actual problems lol
I see it as "Racists only see themselves as human, everyone else shouldn't be human."
He doesn't need everyone everywhere to look exactly alike.
Just the people within his field of view and in the information he hears about.
Because their fantasy is to indulge in their privilege to "not make it political." But for anyone without white skin, or who's queer, or *probably* a woman, your mere existence isn't allowed to be apolitical.
Re: Anne and Tex. Yeah, putting avatars of your loved ones into a *horror* game is kind of asking for trouble. Reminds me of a story a friend told me about a co-worker who was playing Final Fantasy VII for the first time. The co-worker decided to rename the main characters after her kids, and my friend had trouble explaining to her why that was a bad idea without spoiling what was going to happen to "Becky", aka Aeris....
AKA Aerith.
That is kinda funny not going to lie.
It took me a second to reason why then I realized which Final Fantasy game it is...
The Tex and Anne story reminds me of people I've met who claim all sf and fantasy is pointless - when asked if they'd seen any, they always said no. Cue a year later after the first LOTR movie came out, and they'd become a total blubbering pile of emotions at the ending (Gandalf and Boromir dead/"dead", the Fellowship split up, Merry and Pippin prisoners, etcetera). I suspect she thought using herself as a basis for character would make it less real for her.
Ok so about the last story: I'm actually currently working on something involving Arthurian Mythos and you'd be surprised to know that there are some dark skinned characters in the mythos and other places in general! Since y'know, people of color existed in those times.
Hell, even Santa Claus had a black secretary in the early version of his stories. People of color have been people, for as long as people have been people
Fun fact: The Holy Roman Emperors in the 10th century chose St. Mauritius as their patron saint. He was an Egyptian-Roman military leader from the 3rd century.
Since the 12th century, Mauritius was depicted with a dark complexion. His statue from 1250 in the cathedral of Magdeburg shows him fully as a black African in knightly armour and is considered the oldest depiction of a black person in Europe.
He still guards the grave of emperor Otto I., even though he's missing parts of his legs now.
@@johannageisel5390 Wasn't it also kinda common practice in the roman empire, that they deliberately would send legionaries from geographically far away regions into their provinces, to avoid fraternization?
Fools acting like you can't stand in Morocco and see Gibralter.
@@shizachan8421 Yep, because it would make it easier for rebellion if it's a British roman soldier in Britian. While, say, like some Germanic roman soldier being a guard in, say Egypt, is less likely to be a case of likely to cause a rebellion.
My Cleric had a teeeeeeense argument with our Wizard in CoS but neither of us thought for a sec we were fighting with words IRL. (and props to the player for their RP)
I learned a long time ago: jerks in real life are usually jerks in the game. Rather than escape their prejudices in a fantasy LARP or RPG, they bring all their dirty baggage with them.
When I lived in Ireland, I was in a group playing Werewolf: The Apocalypse. This was during Bush Jr.'s war on Iraq. And one of the other party members treated my character poorly, otten trying to get him killed, just because I was a Yank, and he didn't like the war. Hell, neither did I. But this didn't stop him.
It got to the point where the geoup disbanded, because he spent more time trying to kill me off, rather than follow the storyline. We eventually restarted the story, minus one, and had a fun run. I was just lucky enough to find a group that wpuldn't put up with hos nonsense.
The Tex and Anne story makes me nervous, it feels like there’s more going on with those two (especially Anne) than just roleplaying problems. Obviously there’s not nearly enough information going on there for me (or anyone) to properly speculate but… I hope they’ve been able to work out whatever’s going on with them.
That first game is exactly why, among other reasons, I'm forever wary of self-insert characters. It just makes it too hard to separate yourself from the character, which makes for a whole minefield of triggers that can set a person off, even ones far less extreme than those in this game.
@Viewer There are some for which that works, but others where it unfortunately very much doesn't. Particularly when you have to approach things on a player to player basis rather than DM to player and without the DM being willing to backup the advice. But, still, this is devolving into a whole separate issue. The shortened response here is-would that it could be so easy, but it isn't always with the human element added.
Idk, in my group one of our friends is new to tabletop and basically plays a fantasy version of herself. She was really hard on herself at first because she felt like she wasn’t being as ‘creative’ as the rest of us, but we kept reassuring her that its okay and she can just do what she’s comfortable with and figure out her character gradually as she plays. We had a lot of conversations early on like:
Her: But I don’t know how to respond quickly when characters are talking to me!
Me: Well, make that part of your character - someone whose a little socially awkward and nervous.
It takes some time but she’s able to get into the game and have a lot of fun, she especially lets loose in combat where she’s become kind of a pyromaniac. She even kept an in-character journal as her game notes for a while. She still considers her character to be a self-insert but she’s 100% able to separate the game world from reality and the rest of us love her character just like we love her in real life.
@@okayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy Yeah, that'd be why this is an issue that hangs pretty heavily on the human element of things. I'd also say that your example sounds less along the vein of an actual self-insert and more so letting someone know that it's fine for your character to be inspired by certain real life experience or traits you have. For example, this is how our party's warlock is such a "mom friend" or our monk is a socially awkward goofball. In large part, though, it's also just another way of acknowledging that, yeah, this is very much a case by case issue.
For any newbies out there, talking in the third person helps to dissociate.
I'll admit that for the first game my current group played, I was a self-insert. Granted, I had some idea that all wouldn't be well for 'me' in-game, since the game was Toon. I've moved on from that now, at least.
Among the obvious "dont be racist" suggestion for the last story i also suggest reading more fantasy. PoCs have been a part of fantasy since its youth. Not to mention ancient cultures with various myths which bear fantastical elements and how quite a few of those ended up inspiring the "white" myths and fantasy.
I really don't recommend playing yourself in games. It can get disturbing. Way back when I was in high school a bunch of my friends and I decided to play a game of Wraith: the Oblivion, which is a game in which you're all basically ghosts. We all played ourselves and were killed off one by one in the first session, because, well, we were gonna be ghosts. It got a little creepy afterward. Like the way "I" was killed when I'd noticed a black sedan following me as I drove down an empty road at night. Yeah, it's fiction, but your imagination can run wild when you're on a mostly empty road at night and see a pair of headlights behind you. The game didn't end up going anywhere anyway, pretty much for scheduling reasons. But in later games, none of us ever tried to play as ourselves again.
Sounds like the best time to play self-insert is if you want to feel immersed in horror. And that requires self-awareness to be accurate while staying detached enough to not take it personally. This definitely feels different than making a wish fulfillment version of one's self.
So here's a horror story so old we gotta go back to BECMI days. I'm practically a grognard now a days, but started playing in the 80's, and frequently I got stuck with my brother as the DM/GM/Referee/Storyteller (depending on the system).
This horror story involves him running me, alone, through dungeon delve. Now, to be fair this was about 35 years ago, so I don't remember all the details, but this one lead to a ton of trauma and has made certain rules in my own games unbreakable and grounds for immediate ejection.
Getting back to it:
So I was a kid starting out, probably between 8 and 11. I made a character, and as I was playing alone I picked a human fighter, first level....it was the 80's and I was a kid...cut me some slack.
So I start going into the Dungeon and encounter a bunch of little dwarf children. Me, being the young naive kid I was, was instantly of the mindset, "yay! Dwarves and dwarf children! Dwarves are good and I bet this'll be an opportunity for me to get some help / backup.
This is where this is about to go horribly wrong.
Oh, btw...I figure this is where I need to make folks aware there is a content / trigger warning: violence against children and abuse.
*sigh*
So the dwarf kids start poking me. I'm like..."umm...ok please stop"
My brother: "they are now poking you with sticks!"
Annoying, but ok, I had on chainmail armor so, no biggie.
"You are taking damage! The dwarf kids are picking the sticks through the chain mail and doing damage!"
Now, for those who haven't played old school D&D first level characters don't get a lot of hit points and even getting hit for 1d4 is a big deal, if you were a mage it could be an insta-kill given enough strength bonuses.
So everytime my brother speaks, I take at least 1 point of damage, I don't remember how much I had, but it wasn't a lot because I started to panic.
"Can I flee out of the dungeon?!"
"No, you're surrounded, take more damage "
"They won't listen when I ask them to stop?!"
"No, take more damage!"
"What should I do?"
"Up to you, take more damage! You have a sword!"
I remember being distraught and really upset at this point. I didn't want to lose my character, but there was no other way from what I could see.
I declared I was drawing my sword...and...well, to put it mildly, I pulled an Anakin.
Now...I wanna be very clear here, I didn't want to, I felt very much railroaded into having to do this.
But it is about to get so so so much worse....
While I am committing what I can only refer to as a war crime, my brother does an impression of one of the dying children calling out for their mother as they die.
I fully lost it. I was a mess for a while.
Sadly, this was another method of my brother's abuse. He had a good history of extending carrot just to beat me mercilessly with the stick (physically, mentally, or otherwise).
Since then I have a very solid, 0-tolerance rule against violence aimed at children in my games. If kids are antagonists, there is always a means to deal with them aside from murder.
Anyways, thought I'd share this.
Would love to hear your thoughts
Damn your brother needs therapy either that or a timeout.
@@Fafnd yeah, he pulled other stuff like that over the years, but in retrospect I think it was another avenue to inflict his abuse on me.
As for whatever came of him I don't know, I cut contact years ago when the damage his presence in my life became undeniable
It's still fantasy dude
And usually my fantasy doesn't erase real groups of people, just adds spider people and giant friendly bugs
But it isn't his fantasy and that's all that racist guy cared about.
Bro really got mad that brown people were in an area inspired by Egypt
The last story made me think of that old textbook cover of a white guy wearing ancient Egyption clothes.
And now you got me thinking about Yugioh the Abridged series because of a certain bit.
13:34 - holy crap! I thought I'd heard of railroading but that DM took it far beyond anything I've ever heard of. It's one thing to force PCs down a series of encounters; completely another to have already choreographed how the fight will go once they've got there.
That last story, like wow, what the hell is up with that guy?
Seemed like a standard racist to me. I honestly expected worse.
It is often not as simple as "know the difference between real life and the game". Emotional bleed is a thing and, even if you intellectually know it is all just a game, bleed still may happen on an emotional level. This is why safety tools are important.
Crispy has mentioned bleed before regarding other stories.
Going to respectfully disagree with the DM from the story about Tex and Anne.
On one specific point:
5:09
“If I had not done anything to her that would have been no better than favoritism in my opinion.”
There’s a player in one of my groups who has triggers related to autonomy suppression. We just don’t have ghosts target her for possession, and stuff in that regard.
Sometimes triggers make it so that a player just can’t join that game, but other times it means that player just needs a few accommodations.
In this specific story, there are a lot of problems, but in general, there are times when we as DMs can avoid inflicting certain harms on certain PCs for the benefit of the player/group.
That’s what Session 0s are for!
Figuring out what makes you uncomfortable, so the game can be fun for everybody.
And in the context of horror games, I still run through everybody’s triggers, because I want the horror to be the Fun kind of uncomfortable, not the Hurtful kind.
I agree with you. When playing TRPGS, it's important to be mindful of the people you're playing with. Choosing to do something you know might be upsetting is a choice. I don't think it's favouritism, and even if it was I think it would be fine in instances like this
Sounded like he (and everyone else) underestimated her response, not helped by her claiming everything before that incident was fine.
9:10 The DM's right that adventurers take risky missions, but he's also missing the crucial difference between risky and suicidal. The mission, as he presented it, wasn't just risky it was suicidal and the players knew it, which is why they passed on that quest hook.
I'm down for more campaigns based on Middle-Eastern places. There are a lot of cool things to utilize.
"It's still fantasy dude"
But not his fantasy.
I am constantly amazed at how DnD is a game where you can do or be anything you absolutely want and you choose to be racist. Cmon, be a little creative
The racism thing only works in certain settings, ones where maybe orcs and humans have ongoing issues type thing.
But as lore stands now the racism tropes dont really fit in the official setting since most cities in forgotten realms are at least mildly integrated and almost no races are specified to have hard alignments
Its also important to note that there are situations, like kobolds and gnomes, which have deeper issues, or uthgardt and high elves. These are always subvertable and are usually contextual.
You ever read the Hobbit? It's a story of racism lol
@@torch1028 As an African dnd player i will say i do allow "racism" in my game for reasons you just said, story and lore. That being said it's solely IN-GAME. Luckily i play with people that want to heal those kind of issues. I have even had racist pcs who wanted to make their arcs fixing that mindset. I love to see that. HOWEVER That guy from the last story's ideal world is a place where poc don't exist and i personally can't help with that one.
@@koidandi yeah, the unfortunate thing about everything social is that there will be jerks and idiots who take things too far
Like playing a character is one thing but that's something that can get really f'd up real quick, same with sexual violence, plus really sick of the idea only white people should be in high fantasy, people like me have always liked fantasy and that kinda shit really gives all the normal players a bad reputation
I can't wait to hear more about Tex and Anne when they turn up on one of those true crime channels.
"I picture knights and wizards. I just can't picture these NPCs in a proper high fantasy setting"
Oh yeah my PC who is from plane where people are black, gods are literally walking among the people and everybody including gods is manipulated by plane-shifting dragon to raise undead army doesn't fit fantasy setting.
BTW I recommend amonkhet
It fits fantasy, but not his fantasy.
I had a player in a Marvel Superheroes game and all he wanted his character to do was play Tekken 3 on a 100" TV in his apartment. You have super powers! WTF?
Karma rates are better.
i feel like the first story hits close to home for me. I call these kind of players VG players. Video Game players, they do nothing outside a forced session because they treat it like a video game, play a bit then stop and not think about it before they play again. These kind of players are often several of the following:
-Have no idea whats going on.
-Never take notes.
-Items are horribly mishmashed.
-Never bother to read spells and just takes something that sounds good.
-Take ages during combat (mostly because of above reasons).
-Never give input to the DM.
-Write 2-5 lines of backstory then whine when you try to use it to develop them.
-Incredibly unfocused or know what to do during games or even notice hints that are slapping them in the face.
-They follow video game logic.
-These types of players MUST be railroaded or they wont do anything.
How do i know all this? Well its my current group and for some reason all groups i have been in before. I yearn for a really good group sometimes....
If it's a discord game I'm willing to hop on with your group so you have a player that doesn't do all of the above
@@KC-rg5vi its a irl game but with possibilities of discord as we all live in the same country. You have me intrigued, so ill check a few things and get back to you.
@@thetechsupportguy3537 Awesome! If the time allow i'd love to join
@@KC-rg5vi O hyeah we are based in Finland so times might be a bit different. Ill take it up next weekend with the group.
@@thetechsupportguy3537 Great ! Good to know!
The best way to shut someone up who is complaining about adding new people is to simply state "So you are giving up your spot then?"
Call of Cthulhu is one of those games where you can roll not just for stats, but also for age, background, occupation, wealth, social position, quirks and significant human connections. (Or you can roll just the stats and select the rest, or you can buy everything with points.) I recently made my wife do this and she ended up playing a big strong but fairly ugly police woman with academic parents and friends in the church. Oh, and I made her roll for gender as well. This way of creating characters can end you up with something that you don’t enjoy, or is very under powered, and it doesn’t allow you any kind of pre concieved character concept, but it is a really good introduction to the rules system and setting. And it makes it very clear that you’re playing someone else, that is not you.
It sounds to me that Tex’s wife would benefit.
To be completely honest, it's stories like these that make me not want to play D&D sometimes
I think this is like the most even of stories across the board, all had issues but none of them had BIG ground breaking moments.
I feel bad in the cold open where nobody ever interacted or responded to the DMs request for how they wanted the campaign to go. I’ve had something similar happen to me when I pitched a game and everyone was very excited and submitted some characters. I started working on the campaign and asked if anyone wanted to suggest anything or had things they wanted to see or avoid. And I got absolutely no reply back. For three weeks I didn’t get any reply or txt on the message board and eventually I posted up that. Hey guys I had zero responses back and I’m just not feeling any interest here. It was a week later i got three replies back saying they were but again gave no helpful information so I called it quits there.
On the first story while it’s difficult not to add a bit of your own personality to a character this player really needs to chill out. Granted the husband went a tad over board but still it’s the ladies husband. I find it kind of unhealthy she couldn’t just separate fact from fiction
And used the situation to get attention
On the second story oof this DM is really a piece of work. Railroading no player agency, can’t do anything fun or creative. Yeah this guy really shouldn’t be DMing. But jeez to suffer through 4 years is just mind numbingly bad.
Yeah on lex I would kick him. The unwanted flirting and general disrespect to the dm and other players.
Yeah that racist guy….yeah mmmmmm yeah. There’s a pretty good reason why this guy isn’t very much welcome in DND groups. Same goes with bigots and homophobes. Nobody enjoys a game where real life prejudices and views clash and make things uncomfortable. Don’t be a dick.
Okay but .... what?!? I heard about many couples ruining campaigns with there shenanigans but.... what was Anne thinking???
Probably didn't expect it to end badly after doing this before. Seemed to be her usual schtick when roleplaying based on what OP said.
Ah yes, because in medieval times places like Africa and Asia didn't exist. Those continents emerged from the ocean much much later.
Probably assumed fantasy meant Medieval Europe.
I had another comment but deleted it because that last story made me not care that much about the other 3..... What the actual fuck.... I've been sitting here for 10 minutes and still can't come up with a satisfactory response for that so I'm just going to leave it with saying "yeah there's a reason he's had 8 groups in two months, he would be kicked out of my table too in a heartbeat. I don't have the time or patience to deal with that kind of blatant racism and irrational hatred in real life I'm certainly not going to spend my free time dealing with that horseshit"
3rd story: I'd've kicked him as soon as he started making someone else uncomfortable by messaging them like that. especially making advances like that. holy shit.
What would the guy from the last story say if he met a drow
Who am i kidding that probably was what got him kick from one(or more) of the other games
Probably nothing because he's actually racist against poc, not playing up fantasy racism.
Seemed fine with Orcs. I think his problem is not wanting other real races aknowledge as human in fantasy.
I would like to see a DnD version of Bionicle.
Sounds confusing but not impossible.
@@ArcCaravan for real?
I actually have issues with keeping my cool in certain situations in DnD.
For one instance, I started bawling after drawing a card from the deck of many things and... it was 'The Idiot'. Lol. I took that shiz personally even though, rationally, I knew it wasn't.
I always tell people to look over me when stuff like this happens since.. well.. I have a disability that doesn't allow me to control my emotions all that great. I physically cannot contain it as most people can. So, I always tell them to act normal when it happens, I don't need pity or sympathy.. I just need rationale.
Listening to these stories makes me realize how much I've grown as a player and what other things about myself I need to work on. I still have my outbursts, but they're a little more contained and I'm still trying to do better.
The husband knew what he was doing. She needed ro sever ties with reality in a game of make-believe.
At least the racist guy was honest. Most people with that mindset would just go on some bullshit rant about “HisToRicAL aCcURacY” (even though trade routes between Africa, Asia, and Europe were very much in place long before the medieval period and the history they’re talking about doesn’t even exist)
Fun Fact: A majority of the human population has darker pigmentation and brighter skin tones are actually less common. This logic doesn't apply to fantasy obviously, but if we were to apply some sort of "things should be normal" logic, then it would technically make more sense if the majority population of a fictional setting was darker skinned.
Though obviously if a setting is based off of a location where people have brighter skin, then that makes more sense. But at the end of the day, there's not really a "wrong" amount of people of a certain skin color within a fantasy setting.
I'm commenting to show I was here :)
I have no tolerance for racists not in real life and not in d&d
Right? Hating an entire group because reasons is a total abandonment of logic and reason. I take each individual as they come, and let their own character speak for them. I get that stereotypes exist for a reason, but just because 50 people come across as the same on a subject doesn't mean the 51st person of that group will follow suit. Everyone is different, some not as much as others. Others are polar opposites. That's why you should let a person's individual character speak for them.
@@bignasty4874 amen to that
@@bignasty4874 also their is the fact that in univers racism is a thing
@@pauliepizzo8633 I get that. It's true racism. All humans are human, orcs are orcs, and so forth, unless you're one of the "dark" aspects of a race. If that is a thing naturally imposed by a character's sub-race, say a dark elf, a good DM will keep it as nonchalant as possible, have fairly easy workarounds, and moderate any natural animosity amongst possible character races. There's a difference between playing a part and being a genuine bigot. It can be handled tastefully and in great fun if all involved remember it's simply a game, and the end goal is for everyone to have fun. I've been involved with campaigns where the entire party was made up of broken characters...I mean broken as in almost trash-it-and-reroll-with-a-handicap broken, not overpowered in all ways imaginable broken. It made for some good, bust-a-gut, slapstick humor.
@@bignasty4874 in my game their are no racism towards the different and exotic creatures you play in dnd they are judged by their actions not looks alone
Don't give yourself too much credit, Crispy. I'm sure you've got plenty of secret racists lurking in your comments, just waiting to strike...
Trust me. I know. But so far…
@@CrispysTavern Hey make sure you step back and breath, you seemed super into it, like looking for real dog. Its' a story on the internet of dubious nature and likely If an idiot like this exists, hes going to catch his own soon.
That's everything everywhere.
So this is funny, but a friend swears up and down I sound like Crispy. I have a few videos on youtube myself, but nothing amazing. But would love to maybe talk one on one with the guy someday and compare stories. I've got some funny ones from D&D and Pathfinder from the tabletop days I had. I'll include my favorite tabletop adventure I had.
Alright a little background before we get into this, the Dungeon Master had spent almost a month and a half setting it up. We'd gone through several missions and found are steps troubling. Are part was comprised of a Gnome, Two humans, a half-orc, and myself who was playing a Dragonborn. So as the campaign was winding toward its conclusion a dragon was the final adversary we faced. We struggled to defeat the creature, scales like diamonds. So our Gnome came up with a solution...he went inside the dragon and not through the mouth. He used several spells to pull this off..but in essence, he blew the dragon up from inside its butt.
Your avatar is *awesome* congrats Crispy!
Guy in the last story was so racist that I bet his character was named Orkkk, the Barbarian of The White North.
You and Doge had some same stories to read today. (The haunted house and the racist ones)
Tends to happen when you watch multiple horror story channels. Same thing happened to me with Crispy's Tavern, CritCrab, and Crowe's Perch.
I get it, I've gotten pretty emotional over losing characters. I still resent my freinds for essentially bullying one of my characters to death aftet I'd worked really hard on his build and making artwork for him. It can be really frustrating to have all that work go up in smoke.
But like, shouldn't making a self insert make that easier? If the character *is* you, it shouldn't be that upsetting to lose them. It's just you and what you would do in that situation, you don't have to worry about thinking up complex motivations.
For me, the frustration with dying in RPG's comes from this little dude I've worked so hard on being gone forever. If it's just "me, but in a haunted house", I'd be pretty confident that I wouldn't make it. It takes all the stakes away for me.
Afterall, it's just a game.
So, something I've realized about characters dying, you can reuse them, long as it isn't in the DM's timeline world where they died, different world or different dm? Nothings stopping you from reusing them, with appropriate adjustments to fit the world etc
It's Still Fantasy Dude!
But not his fantasy.
"I can't imagine these guys in a proper high fantasy setting like Game of Thrones!"
Amazing, every word you just said was wrong.
Besides the fact that non-white people are explicitly in GoT, GoT is also not High Fantasy (debatable, but hear me out), where magic is quite low key and rare. There's like 3 dragons remaining, 2 magic users (that matter), and ice zombies and that's it.
I immediately wanted to make a joke about how the words "in", "a", and "of" were wrong, but your point stands. I don't watch Game of Thrones so best I can guess is PoC aren't common focuses on the show or something. That or he just ignores anything that doesn't fit his racist worldview to the point it affects his memory.
@@ArcCaravan Oh definitely an affected memory lmao, for 6 seasons a second continent with a culture like the Mongolian empire and one like the Ottoman empire were heavily featured, there are plenty of PoC sharing the world with the main Europe-esq continent.
I really don't get the racism some people bring to their fantasy world, and why it's an issue for them. Personally I get that there's going to be people that don't ask look the same, though I'll admit I rarely ever think about it until someone points it out. Kinda like the difference of red skinned goblins or green skinned goblins, they're just goblins with different descriptives.
Except that wasn't fantasy racism, it was real racism.
@@RiveroftheWither I'm fully aware.
First story. Kicking my own ass would be kinda meta.
another crispy video let’s gooo
*Intro Story* - This describes most RPers in a nutshell: they like the idea of playing, but make no real effort to prepare or even show any interest. Were it me? I'd have just said screw those guys and just wrote it out. Probably would have turned out better anyway.
*The NPC was... him?!* - A major reason I say what themes and things will be in the games before we even start rolling characters, is to prevent crap like... well... that...
I tend to run dark games so I don't blame people for wanting to opt out.
*When You Have No Choices* - ...this just pisses me off... demons/devils are my specialty... this is NOT how you run them! This mot- (the following rant has been censored because of RUclips).
*AITA for kicking this guy?* - No, no he is definitely not. Reminds me of my own horror story where I had to make the decision to kick out a player, but that is not a story for the comment section.
*This Guy... Kind of Sucks* - Definitely... screw this guy, kick him, ban him, get him out.
Way to crap all over Egyptian mythology and whatnot.
Tonight I hope I have another crazy dream which will inevitably turn into something awesome for my table.
the last guy has played WAY too much warhammer fantasy
That second story at 12:00 with the Paladin, cheating on dice rolls and tracking finite resources just kind of kills it for me. And even with this holy avenger that's some mad unsubtle cheating. Even at max damage critting with said weapon getting 150 plus isn't guaranteed. That's a hell of a lot of damage. That's Half a Basic Balor and at least a 6th I think of an Ancient Dragon.
I mean if you had to confuse reality with a game and have the two bleed into each other, at least Delta Green/Call of Cthulhu is an appropriate choice for that.
4:29 To be fair. I totally get being done with horror as I can't do horror alot myself
With the first story, those players are just casual players. They're not asking the OP stuff because they don't know them. They do know the friend though.
Not every player is going to send you six pages of background for their four character ideas. Some people just want to show up and play.
It's still fantasy, ma dude.
(Story 3) "Lex threatens that if he doesn't get his way he will leave the party entirely..." Hey now, don't threaten me with a good time.
Wow a crispy rat and a D&D Doge covered the same stories on the same day, kinda neat lol.
It’s called the “I’m racist “ whisper
22:36 BUT -- BUT MAH FREEDUM!
That second story reminds me of a DM I had two years ago. Yeesh. That was horrible.
How does someone stay in a group long enough to get that laundry list of problems?
Some people are just like that. CritCrab's recent video talked about the subject. Apologies in advance if I'm not supposed to "promote" other channels, it just answers this recurring question better than I can off the top of my head.
Playing a self-insert in a game isn't necessarily a bad thing (though it's generally more fun playing someone else) but if you are going to "play-act what it would be like if you were in X setting with Y", then you've got to accept that shit may well happen to "you"... as it probably would if you really were in such a setting in real life, tbh.
I'm pretty sure that if I were really running around contending with actual monsters or Old Ones, I'd get my arse handed to me in next to no time, so it shouldn't disappointed if a character based on me winds up getting well and truly thrashed in a setting that has monsters and/or Old Ones.
We should have an episode that's just AITA stories except there's actually an argument as to whether or not OP is the asshole
Yeah, these 'AITA for having a completely reasonable response to an unreasonable person/situation?' posts always boggle me. I get there's cases where an OP can give their grievance the benefit of doubt or are unsure if they're overreacting but this one describes Lex like an absolute nightmare to have but still has doubts over kicking him? It just sows more doubt if you ask me
Feels like AITA stories are written by people with enough self awareness to consider the idea they're wrong. If they didn't, why would they ask?
Now I must know, do you actually play the sax? (I think that is a sax in the background at least)
It’s not me but I used to play a lot in a local jazz combo.
These days not so much but I still have a deep love for the art.
Lex should be asked to no longer play with them
You stream mini campaigns? Where can I watch them
Great to see some Delta Green representation. Terrible game to base the character on yourself, though.
my view on different ethnicities in fantasy is quite simple. As long as it makes sense within the story or world (Or area of the world) then it is fine. I mean in quite a few fantasy cases we already have orcs elves halflings and so on. Also sometimes you can have fun with the world building have the climate and humans be that of the middle of Africa but having the culture that develops being similar to that of ancient China. And in the same world have the area that china is in develop the Scandinavian Vikings. And so on. At the end of the day the only real limit is your own mind after all.
In my opinion, it's a mistake to include skin color, sexual preference, gender identity, etc. in a game unless all players at the table are on the same page. Not everyone is these days, that's reality. People have very different views on these things. I don't describe skin color on my npcs, it's up to your interpretation. I don't include romances in the game or make gender identity a focal point. You put it in your game, make sure all the players involved are on the same page. That's on you as a DM.
Yep. The DM is the ultimate authority. I play rules as written, but when there is a conflict in the rules or the players, I reserve final decision, as a DM that is. The final word on the quality of a DM is how many completed campaigns/incomplete campaigns has one presided over.
Imagine being so sensitive that the description of someone's skin colour bothers you. Do you also avoid mentioning the drow or woodelfs tone? How about the dragons??? Black and brown people exist, it's not some taboo. I don't want to play with someone so delicate that knowing an NPCs skin tone bothers them...
My actual response whilelistening to this d.hole21.40 "My guy just be open about your racism so they can kick you already". Escaping reality is what I do for these games but honestly why...
ngl im a bit emotional when i play a game and characters i like die but ill still wanna play
So the last story reminds me of a tale where My friend is a DM and she’s preparing her own wonderful world and she asked me if it was OK that she plays NPC characters Of colour as she is a white woman we had four people in the chat all of us saying yes it is OK as people of colour exist and that it is not racist of her to play the NPC’s as they exist and have autonomy and have lives and stories of their own.
I don't grok bigots. I understand functionally how the clockworks turn, but I just don't get the willful ignorance in the face of reality
sooooo.....this happens so often...the first story I mean
It's still fantasy dude.
That last story is (unfortunately) common among nerdy circles. Irony of this person playing a Half-Orc aside given that that race is usually viewed with suspicion, people tend to idealize fantasy as this perfect and very lily-white place where they can "escape the real world" (read: not have to see anyone of color). High fantasy and anime communities are top offenders of this from my knowledge.
The OP of story 2 said the DM couldnt "admit that he made a mistake". He never made a mistake. I've seen that kind of DM time and time again, they have a story they want to tell about characters they want to tell and the players are there as a captive audience. Their own characters only exist insofar as they need to to force the players controlling them to be at the table to witness the DMs 'amazing' story. Which is always absolute fanfic-level garbage. Also he wasn't unable to talk with them, just unwilling. Blah blah malice where you could neglicence yadda yadda, I know. But no. Not after seeing it for the eleventh time. There are certain people who should just write a god damned book, but they don't want to do that because if they did they would be subject to basic standards and beholden to give refunds when it was inevitably useless as anything but a paperweight.
Anne shouldn't be playing RPG's. She clearly has trouble separating the games from reality.
Let Lex leave or kick him. Life is too short for putting up with that crap.
"The DM had 10 years of experience and the campaign took place in a world he had been developing over the years and was based on a realistic/fantasy medieval world."
Abort, abort, abort! Sea of red flags ahead!
Give me a open ended question about something I don't have strong opinions on either way, you will not receive much of a response.
I love how we can just say “airship” and everyone gets it.
Makes me mad airships got such a bad name from that story.
@@ArcCaravan I love airships. Of course, I’ve never been in a compulsory orgy on one, so…
I am not that familiar with GoT, can it be classified as high fantasy? From the impression I got that world is rather low on magical stuff.
Some people (usually casual) don't notice the difference between high fantasy and low fantasy.
No choice: lmao 6 months? Left group with a vague lie? I'm leaving that group much quicker and with a scathing review for the DM's performance.
Last story: I find other regional inspirations for fantasy far more interesting than the over saturated, white washed, 90s fantasized version of medieval Europe that this guy wanted. I would have loved to play a character from that region and indulged in using real world inspiration for my character's looks, fighting styles, and mannerisms.
Wow! This episode had almost every kind of rpg horror story don'ts. The only think was missing was forced romances, sexual predator behavior, or furries. At this rate we have to create a ttrpg version of the ten commandments to deal with this endless gaming madness.
i dont even watch or read Game of Thrones and even i was confused by the "Whitesteros" thing
It's still fantasy, dude...