One of my favorite examples of “TWMCWD” was when one of the characters tried to steal an item from another character, failed and used that excuse…the paladin then bound them and handed them over to the town guard and when the thief asked why they threw the excuse back at them
Exactly! Your whole party will hopefully band together (ahh bonding!) and kill/wtv off that character. Then the player will have to make a new character anyway, learning that they shouldn't be 'that guy' as there's consequences. DM shouldn't have to get rid of that Asshat. And It'll be fun to see em get their just deserts by those that character wronged.
For the guy wanting to argue the 5 foot reach should be 2 squares: "Sure, we could do it that way... but that means your enemies can do that too. Which means that next round you're not being attacked by two orcs in melee, you're being attacked by seven, because five more of them can reach you now. Still want to make that change?
@@nimz8521 I’ve never played without flanking, so may be a bit ignorant. But when have the bad guys not been able to flank the PCs? That’s a pretty common mob tactic thrown around where I usually play
@@grandempress1947 yeah a lot of people assume the players want to be the only ones who flank or the only ones who can reach. I get annoyed when I can do things the enemies can't, I want them to flank too. Who are these players that want to just have all the advantage and the enemies get none? Most of my players are very reasonable about this.
One of my favorite things I've read (paraphrased): "I use 'that's what my character would do' to justify why my character puts themselves in situations where they can be killed. You use it to justify your character ruining the game. We are not the same."
@@kcis5940 In our last session, our camp was attacked at night by an assassin and his hired help. My character captured and accepted the surrender of one of the hired minions. My character told him to disarm himself and leave before the party leader saw him and took his boots too. This may come back and bite us in the behind, but, "It's what my character would do."
@@kcis5940 that's a legitimate use of "it's what my character would do".... I don't say that often, my usual response to that phrase is "ever heard of character development?"
Same. I'll risk my characters. I'm not going to do it if it hurts the party, or the fun. But if my -1 wisdom goblin touches the glowing slime and dies, well, she went out being a goblin and now the others know to stay far away.
Good advice. re: #8 "That is what my character would do!" We have a simple rule at PC creation and in play: "Playing a jerk is still being a jerk." We want people who work with others fairly, not against them.
I think there can be a time and place for "jerks" especcially with new players that just want to experience the feeling of being a total asshole without those nasty consequences. You could for example create a villain adventure. Everyone knows what they are getting into, most of the time you do not even need an adventure, you just let the player loose in a setting and let them get rid of all the nasty ideas they have, being as evil in the most creative way they can think of. And after an evening of getting your piss and vinegar of of you, you can return to the normal game.
That's maybe a little too subjective. Like, I got called a jerk for playing a character that's just chronically annoyed with everything. I didn't specifically do anything that hindered the group, i was just annoyed, because they were all playing teenagers and I was the only adult in the room. It was the character, it made sense, and it didn't actually get us into trouble (until the DM pissed me off with tons of unkillable enemies and one combat in a session--then I went out of my way to beat the shit out of things). My rule is so long as it doesn't hinder the team, it's probably cool.
Problematic player: "I attempt to steal my party's member weapon... because that is what my character would do" Rest of the party: "We do not want to hang out with the rogue anymore, so we kick him out of the party... because that is what our characters would do"
Session 0: Rule#1: This is a heroic campaign. You may play a selfish or reluctant hero, but at the end of the day you need to overcome it and play with the group. How you do that is up to you, and if you want we can talk about a more protracted arc where you dabble in bad behavior, come see me. It's a quick way to remind the player that they can be whatever kind of character they want, as long as they serve the fun of playing with their friends.
@@AuspexAO In my session zero I did have to say something like this. You are not allowed to play Bilbo Baggins, the guy that has to be drug along to actually start the adventure. It may be fun for you, but it's seriously annoying for the other players and it comes like Main Character Syndrome. I think I stated it in a positive way, like "Please come up with a reason why your character became an adventurer" so it rules out the option of not being one.
Had one session where we had to make a contract with a hag for some reason. The DM really wanted to sneak in a hidden clause (devils in the details) sorta thing... one of our players was a law student. The two of them went at it, and I kid you not....FOR 3 HOURS! talking about this fictitious contract over and over again, every revision the DM trying to slip something in, it getting pointed out by the player, them debating the exact language of the contract so nothing could be interpreted negatively or taken out of context and repeat. I still have nightmares about that day
I feel like the DM should have just given up. The player is just defective better than him at it. Also, the DM just sounds... I don't even know how to describe it. They obviously want to give you extra punishment just for doing what he wants you to do. Like, how are you supposed to avoid being tricked by the hag?
I have what I call "unwilling main character syndrome". I engage more, ask more questions, and get more involved than the other players at the table. I KNOW I can completely take over the table, so I end up putting about half of my effort into dragging other players' characters into the spotlight. If I see a player not engaging, I will verbally poke that character for ideas and contributions. I will push the quiet player into a leadership role. I do all this because I know that if I let my roleplaying stomp all over the table, the other players will get bored and quit, and I will not have a game to play in anymore.
What you are doing is noble, but it's time to start searching for a new group. You will have much more fun when you can relax and play normally, rather than spending time babysitting unwilling players.
I've a milder case of this. But for my situation it's more about pulling players into feeling more comfortable to RP in. For my games sometimes its shyness, not lack of want to engage, they are just unsure how to approach it.
Me and a few other PCs had to do this a lot in some Call of Cthulhu games. More than half our group were so afraid of their characters dying after a certain point that they'd just kinda stay in the background as much as possible. At the beginning everyone basically had equal time to shine but halfway through my and two other characters became the group's big three so to speak. We led every conversation and conflict. It might be fun getting to essentially lead the group, but having 5 of the 8 players constantly cowering behind you puts you at higher risk of the thing they're afraid of happening to them. There was one player who wouldn't even enter shops in town because he was convinced everything would be a trap. Luckily it stayed fun because it wasn't just on me, but it was basically like having a group of three with five people playing what essentially amounted to being NPCs
Nice job! I have a player that does not do this. I constantly am saying, “excellent! We will resolve that decision with a roll in a moment. What are you, you, and you doing while he is about to do this?” Otherwise, the quieter players I can tell just zone out after awhile from lake of involvement.
I recently got invited to a DnD group from a group of friends. I was really hesitant but just listening to some critical role episodes, I realized how fun the game can be. I went in with minimal expectations and already having an amazing time. It really is a fantastic experience of a game so I appreciate these tips on what to be conscious of as a new player.
Im in the same boat man, i see you’re about a year into your journey by this time tho so hopefully you stayed with it and are still having fun, im hoping myself that i can keep playing this as much i love to play it
We had a player doing the "that's what my character would do" to save an npc from dying, she was tied and was relevant to the plot, but also had a strong bond with the player's character. He ended up at 10 hp from 140 or something similar but he managed to save her. I think that's of the few situations where it's not so bad.
@@elgatochurro yeah. That's the only time I've seen someone use the "that's what my character would do" for something good. Even when everyone was worried the player character would die 'cause he was our strongest DPS at the time.
Everyone should be doing what their character would do. Imo the phrase here is when it’s used to justify toxic behavior not just the standard roleplaying.
I mean there's a difference between being antagonistic to the party and maintaining roleplay because "that's what my character would do" Basically, the golden question to ask yourself - "Is the roleplay antagonistic to the party?" A thief getting in trouble with the law and implicating the lawful neutral party is antagonistic to the party. Similarly, being lawful stupid can also be antagonistic to the party - Whether you like or not, that thief is still apart of the party. Give them a peaceful way to right their wrongs and reconnect to the party. Perhaps "Return what you stole and apologize." Maybe the town gives the party a small quest as "punishment" for the thief. It is also worth noting that being a lawful good character in an unlawful party is also antagonistic to the party. It goes both ways.
My worst player: We're playing over Discord and I messaged all the players an hour before game time, asking if everyone would be ready to play when we all scheduled. Everyone said they could make it in time. Ten minutes before game time, one player hasn't logged in yet so I asked if they were running late and needed more time. They said they were at dinner but could make it by game time. I told them it was in 10 minutes. They insisted that they would make it in time. An hour after game time, they still hadn't logged in so we messaged them again. They told us they went out for drinks after dinner but will be in game shortly. We decided to start the game without them. 4 HOURS AFTER SCHEDULED GAME TIME: They messaged us that they couldn't make it to the game after all. We've already been playing for 3 hours by this point. When they heard that we started the game without them, they implied I was the a**hole for playing without them when they told us they would show up.
We have a problem player like this in our D&D discord server. We have roughly about 5 or so games being run on the server and one sister server, and this problem player always wants to join the games because they want to, (already annoying at this point), and every time for every session in every game, they leave mid-way due to some unknown reason that they keep changing. "My head is hurting too badly so I have to lie down," "I'm having dinner so I'll be back later"(then never comes back), "I'm too peeved at something and can't focus", or my favorite, "I'll be back" (no reason given and doesn't come back). Everyone in the Discord server hates this behavior but for some reason unknown to me they let them get away with it. They've known this player much longer before I arrived in the server so it might be personal, but I seriously don't understand how when I point it out to them, and they all agree, why they don't take action against them.
This kind of thing happens more often than a lot of people think. People want to keep their options open but the game isn't their first priority. They don't want to be excluded in case their plans fall through and they get bored, so they bullshit you so you wait for them until their plans are all fulfilled.
The plot hook one I find interesting. I have played a few games where the DM complained we missed all their plot hooks and for some reason not a single person noticed any of them. We spent the session confused and couldn't figure out what to do. The DM had to point out the plot hooks we had missed. It was a weird session.
I've had this, where a DM has complained about us missing or even intentionally avoiding plot hooks and we're like "... there have been plot hooks? We've been wondering around trying to figure out what we're supposed to be doing."
Try paying attention to what the DM says: Mentions an NPC - go talk to that character Mentions a place - go to that place Says something vague - ask for more details
My favorite one was: Running a Vampire the Masquerade game. Characters were getting ready to go out for the night and they hear the growl of a monster upstairs and a woman screaming. They ignore it. The monster kills the safehouse owner closing down the safehouse. Then the monster goes on to kill another NPC that led into a massive sidequest that would have helped them in their journey. Instead of punishing them, when I gave the rundown of the last session to bring everyone up to speed I explained that they had no more home in that city and that their only connection to a faction had been lost to them. They had to start from a considerable disadvantage and they made it work. After that they stopped ignoring hooks. Sure, I could have worked those hooks back in, but their cavalier attitude toward the world had consequences and I think they enjoyed that more.
I ended up with the opposite problem where my players kept latching onto "hooks" that weren't actual hooks LOL, like going after things intended to be flavor text
In one of the games I was running we at some point had the problem that the PCs did not really know what to and felt a bit lost. I was also starting to struggle a bit to get them to do something, and then I asked them to try and go over the things the things they wanted to do and plot threads that they had not gotten back to dealing with. Turned out that there was more than a dozen different plot threads that they just weren't thinking about, because before they were resolved another interesting plot thread had poped up and stolen their attention. Now we have a strategy channel where they write down these things, and when the plot slows down they get to start discussing "which of these dozen things to do do we want to do now, and is any of the more pressing or needs to be done before others".
I had a player with that same weird interpretation of the 5 foot range and I was blown away! It seems like the most simple and clear rule. If you want the extra square of range, go get a weapon with reach 🤦🏻♂️
@@kel8923 Enlarge wouldn't extend your range, as large creatures still only have a 5' reach. However, a Bugbear Rune Knight using a polearm and could do it, and you can get Lunging Attack from the Martial Adept feat. Use Giant's Might to become large, have someone cast Enlarge on you to become huge. You now occupy a 15' x 15' square, your normal attacks can strike 20' away (10' from being huge size + 5' for polearm reach + 5' from bugbear long arms), and your lunging attack gives you a 25' range. Add on the polearm master, sentinel and crusher feats and you can make an opportunity attack against a creature the moment it enters your range (from polearm master), dropping its speed to 0 if you hit so it can't move any further (from sentinel), then attack it on your turn and strike with the back end of your weapon as a bonus action (from polearm master) after making all of your attacks, knocking the creature back 5' if the bonus attack hits (from crusher) so it has to step into your attack range again next turn. Rinse and repeat. On top of that, after you reach level 18 as a Rune Knight fighter, your Giant's Might makes you huge, then you can use Enlarge to become gargantuan, increasing that range by another 5' for a normal range of 25' and a lunging attack range of 30'.
Shadiversity made a video a while back arguing against the 5' range being unrealistic, so that might be where the weird interpretations are coming from. His arguments were extremely flawed, however, so I wouldn't put any stock in whatever he said in that video. (EDIT for context) Shadiversity's argument was basically exactly what these players were saying, that if he stood at the front edge of his square, that he could reach all the way across one square and into the nearest half of the next square with a lunge, demonstrated IRL. But the game rules assume creatures are in the center of their squares, so the argument falls flat.
I have had the worst luck rolling dice recently. I am consistently rolling 1s and 2s and 3s. And at the worst times -- I took the helm of ship headed for rocks and rolled a nat 1. The ship's wheel came of in my hands. That kind of thing. Ironically, the failed rolls are actually way more entertaining and lead to so much fun. Anyone who never fails a roll is missing so much of the gaming experience.
one of the people i’m playing with is playing a sorcerer with wild magic. we have a rule at our table that any time that player rolls (ability checks, saving throws, and attack rolls) they have to roll a D 20. If they get in at one, they cast wild magic. specifically, they roll a D100 to see what spell they cast from a big list. anytime this player gets a nat one it’s a huge deal, i remember one time they accidentally summoned a super powerful attack and almost gave the entire party a TPK
Damn it, I got PTSD from bad rolls. My High Elf Warlock was the only one left conscious battling an orc during a dungeon crawl. And I had to cover for the rogue and the monk of our party for their death saves (they got 6 each iirc, and had 3 or 2 failed so far). And I could NOT hit for shit. Like, the orc was legit supposed to die in a couple of hits IF my Eldritch Blast hit him, but it did not. And I was just turned into a meatshield but thankfully before the orc got rid of me, both of them managed to stabilize themselves. It was hell, the monk had to waste his only inspiration point to get back up and deal a killing blow to the orc as my high elf warlock fell down at the same turn, seeing the glimpse of her saviour one last time.
My party was fighting Strahd and he ended up grabbing hold of one our paladins. I rolled to shoot with a gun, and failed, thankfully missing the paladin, but then for my second attack, I rolled a Nat 1 where I not only managed to hit the paladin but did so in a way that severed his entire arm from his body. He, um, he died. BuT only after another of our party also managed to hit him… (if I haven’t worded some of this right, it’s because I’m still pretty new to the game so sorry!)
#6 is what's happened to my game. It was so bad that even after a year I had to help him level up his character and explain his character sheet every time we played. He also played a sorcerer who mainly used two daggers and would go a couple sessions without using magic. So when he wanted to use magic I had to explain everything again. Sorry this had turned into a venting post.
I feel your pain. We play Savage Worlds, and for a short time (I had to ask him not to return eventually) we had a player who did not understand the basic skill mechanic of the game. "Justin, you need to roll a d6 and a d8" - I said that hundreds of times to him. It was kind of obvious he didn't really care about the game and was just there because he was bored and had nothing to do on Sundays - so removing him was an easy decision.
@@erc1971erc1971 that sucks. The guy we played with was so into the roll play more than anyone else, and my husbands cousin. So I let it go on to long. I think he just didn't want to be bothered with reading or keeping track of anything. It was frustrating.
This is the most polite, calm vent I've seen. Meanwhile in my group, my rule is if you can't do it, you can't do it. If you don't remember to do it, you don't do it. Knowing how to use your character is your responsibility. With noobs, I make exceptions. After a few months, I stop the exceptions.
I had a player who was playing a warlock with strength as his dump stat and insisting on using shield bash. He obviously failed most of the time, but always wanted to try it. He's currently running a campaign where he randomly nerfs or boosts our characters because he doesn't know what the classes do. EDIT: We've got another player who is playing a paladin and doesn't seem to know about smite or his healing pool. It's turning me into "that guy" who feels the need to point out how someone else should play their character. I don't want to but since our current campaign has challenge rating "all over the place" it feels necessary.
Worst player I’ve ever had in a campaign was… Me. I made a shadow monk who got along with the party. On the neutral good side at first. Throughout the campaign things kept coming up that lead my character to the side of evil. Which was not my intention what so ever. The DM put the devil’s voice in my head, and eventually I realized that my character will have to turn on the party if I wanted to continue. I didn’t wanna be that guy, so I asked if I could retire the character into being an npc, and roll up a new one. I was allowed to, but the cost was pretty steep. At level 19, my old character gained an army of shadow creatures, and wiped us all out. I would from that point on be labeled as the betrayer everytime we started a new campaign. It was just assumed that my characters couldn’t be trusted. Even when I was the Cleric that was keeping them all alive.
Dang. Sounds like you did the most reasonable thing here. Sometimes, character development actually goes into the evil direction and the hero lives long enough to see himself become the villain. That you realised this and stepped back, turning him into an NPC instead is the most reasonable thing to do, I'd say.
my dm experience was ruined for a number of months due to monty python quotes. it would start with "he's not riding a horse, he's just banging coconuts together!" and then the whole session would devolve until the players would literally be shouting "Ni!" at my npc. funny the first time, soul destroying 3 sessions in!
I ran a call of cthulhu game where players basically did the same thing. Really hard to run horror when every player is either a moron that guy or disengaged. I since stopped speaking to these people.
Late reply, but yes, I think dnd should be semi serious. It’s ok to be funny and not be edgy all the time, but when it devolves into poop jokes, meme references for every attack, etc, I don’t like it
I had a player in our game actually try and kill us all after fighting the Big Boss and claimed well “that’s what my charcter would do” so my dm had him fight a Tarrasque by himself and instantly healed all of us. He got mad and we told him “well either leave or be a better person” so he left.
Tangent warning! When I drove a bus, one afternoon doing the late run shuttle from the middle school to the high school, a couple of Rhodes scholars decided to have an axe fight- on a packed school bus in June. Dear god, 2 cans of Axe creates a horrific stink... Called ahead to have the principle meet me- to prevent a mutiny, and group beat down- and she smelled it 150' away!! She was NOT amused, lol. And also, stinkies are the worst!!
I've never played D&D, but I still had to laugh/cringe repeatedly throughout this list because as a coordinator of a volunteer community group, I can assure you that a lot of these very same issues apply!! 🙈 Particularly the problems of "might turn up, might not" non-communicators, and people who can't put their damn phone away for the duration of a one-hour meeting... 🤦🏻♀️ Coordinating any group activities builds lots of awesome transferable skills, but gosh, it can also turn one's hair grey so fast... 😂 (Edit: completely agree re the expectations issue. I think honestly people often forget that we are volunteers and do this stuff for them FOR FREE!)
There was that time one of our fellow players decided to just give himself advantage on every roll. In a 3.5e game, before that was even a mechanic. We were playing online (even back then) and thought we could trust everyone to keep their rolls honest and roll real dice. He probably never would have been caught except that his roommate (who was also a player in the game) happened to always hear multiple dice being rolled from the other room even when it didn't make sense.
@@kyle1598hffgyfvGiving yourself advantage and just accepting what you get will make it look slightly more natural so people will be less likely to suspect you of cheating. If you just make up your rolls you're likely to accidentally make it very clear you're making them up.
@@catpoke9557 I only fudge about 10% of my rolls, especially if it will end up in an unfair party wipe (I will not protect players from the consequences of their own actions, though)
#10 "That's What My Character Would Do" is the bane of many tables. The irony is that the key to good RP is asking "What would my character do," but like you said, if you've created a character who wouldn't color within the lines, you need to create a different character or experience some character growth. At a recent first session where I was a new player to a group, we had a guy who showed up an hour late, stank, and spoke in his outside voice whether in character or out. The first hour had actually been the DM going over his house rules, which included no PvP, but since this guy had played with that DM, he was already familiar with the expectations. Anyway, as soon as our characters introduced themselves, his character started mocking my character because "that's what his character would do." I RP'd back, and a rivalry started brewing. I don't mind a little in-character conflict as long as it goes somewhere, and we did make some humorous moments from it. About three scenes in, his (human) character attempted to "pet" my (tabaxi) character. I looked at the DM and said, "The rules say no PvP, but I do not believe my character would tolerate someone trying to violate his bodily autonomy." The DM nodded, and I rolled to hit. Though I missed, that was enough to get his character to back off. I know that you say, "Just find a different group," but that is not as easy as it sounds.
You didn't mention meta-gaming! Speaking from personal experience, having a player snoop through all the other players' character sheets and then inform the table what each character has in equipment, could do with their spells, and generally using any and all out-of-game information to sink everyone's fun... can be a game destroyer. For example: A tip for would-be meta-gamers: If you recognize the GM's description of the enemy, do not announce to the table its weaknesses. DO ask if any characters may have prior knowledge of such a creature to ascertain whether it has a particular weakness. Play accordingly. A tip for GMs with meta-gamers: don't feel it is necessary to use utterly standard monsters. Feel free to tweak them. If the monster is normally weak to fire, but the setting is a very warm place, then maybe this variant is weak to cold!
I will say, playing minor devil's advocate. The adventurers are likely taking stock of equipment and what their abilities are during rests, since y'know they're a team. So it's not far fetched to inform a fellow player/character of an ability they have that'd very obviously help in a situation they're in. I'm not saying backseat play all other players turns every turn, but if the party is running from a monster and reach a cliff, and noone knows what to do, reminding the wizard he has feather fall prepared should be fine.
I ran a game once where all the players were also Dungeons Masters as well, so they were people who really knew all the rules and all the monsters of the 5th edition. Even though they tried to avoid meta gaming, sometimes it's inevitable, you have so much information that you can't avoid thinking strategies that your character couldn't do. So to create new and exclusive monsters and enemies are a great way to surprise your players and to bring some dynamics to the game
@@elgatochurro You're right they wouldn't but that's why I allow rolls to see if you know what an enemy is? Aberrant = arcana, an undead = religion, plant monster or animal = nature, fey = nature or arcana. But it's easy to tell people to play in characters, but most players aren't professional actors who know how to full immerse themselves into. Say you encounter a skeleton, almost everyone knows their weakness is bludgeoning. Now they are common enemies, but a party of level 1 adventures might not know that, most veteran players are going to whack them with a bludgeoning weapon even if they have to pick up a tree branch to do it or let the spell casters handle them while the martials hold them back.. My point is, when you do have so much out of game knowledge it's hard not to let it seep through no matter how good you are at playing a character. Meta gaming is only bad when it's done with purposeful intention, but when it accidentally slips in it's usually just that, an accident. IF you notice a pattern have a civil conversation about it with said player.
I have a few of these going on at my table, for sure. Key sins at my table are... Not remembering what magic items you have. I have the forced main character syndrome - the rest of the party keeps deferring to my wife's character. My wife, does not want to be the only one doing everything and calling all the shots. I remember one game where the rest of the party was entering the city through the main gate, waiting in line to be inspected by the town guards and having no problem with it. The thief in the party decides "I'm going to try going over the wall". Four failed grappling hook checks later and having caught the attention of the guards on the wall, he decide to go through the sewers. Meanwhile the rest of the party is in the city and checking in to a comfortable inn. Game store I used to hang out in had similar signs and you had to go by the counter to get into the store. If they could smell you, you would be asked to leave. It was a small shop with poor ventilation and even in the cold months could get pretty gamey, even with clean bodies in there.
Once our group decided to run an "evil" campaign, and it took a while for the GM to figure out that plot hooks that count on the characters doing things because "it's the right thing to do" wouldn't work any more. The campaign went a bit off the rails for a while until he adapted and started making plot hooks where the party would benefit directly from biting the hooks.
The worst player I ever played with was actually one of my close friends. He could be very difficult to be around and it really came out when we played D&D. Some of the worst bits: -Was somehow late to a game session AT HIS OWN HOME. His mom let us in and we waited in his basement until he got there. -definitely had “main character syndrome” and would effectively use other players’ characters to achieve his ends. -infamously loved to exploit poorly worded rules or “misread” effects to insane effect. Definitely a power gamer that needed a strong DM to keep him in check.
I had a player who had his dark brooding warlock go off on his own, and he expected me to split the part for lengthy periods like full sessions. So I gave his character and epilogue and said ok please roll up a new character.
About the last one, bad hygiene, please please *please* don't ask them to put cologne on over their bad body odor. The mix of scents just make it even worse than the B.O. alone. It does not mask it at all in my experience. I've nearly puked from such combinations...
One time I had a dungeon master tell us we were gonna play a survival style game where we would be fighting big monsters and the setting was wintery and harsh and then for some reason they thought it would be funny to switch the DMs and play a completely different setting that was just a murder mystery style game and it annoyed literally everybody who made a bunch of barbarians and healers and survivalists who dumped a lot of intelligence.
One time I had a player who just kept ditching on our sessions last minute to go play Pokémon, he was banned as soon as I found out what he’d been ditching for all this time.
I recently had a walk on player join our party. he had missed the first two session, which was fine, but he asked what kind of party member he should build to help round off our party. we were in desperate need for a healer so he made a level three cleric. in the middle of our last battle of the session and as we didn't need healing before this we expected if we were in trouble his character would help. not only did he not grab any healing spells, his character was a passivist and wouldn't help buff or heal anyone, leading to a party wipe! Our DM decided once this character left that it had all been a fever dream and none of it happened, and to not invite that player back.
#9 is something I tend to do. This is because I love the role play aspect of the game and the other 2 players in our group are rather quiet. Luckily, I am aware of this, and I try to find ways to get them involved so I am not taking over everything. "Hold on, if I am not mistaken, Johan grew up not far from the Dark Wood and might know something about what is going on there. Johan, what say you?"
Number 6 speaks to me on a spiritual level. I love her to death, but I have a player like this in my Sunday game. She’s been using features like Unleash Incarnation on her Echo Knight for months (game’s gone on for over a year) and still go “what’s that do” when asked if she wants to use it to add a little extra damage for a killing blow.
I had a thief and an assassin in more than a campaign and they always robbed everyone, including the other players, and most of the game sessions started with them causing troubles and ending with us fixing problems. Like giving a Magical Gauntlet, with a demonic entity bounded to it, to a NECROMANCER asking for help to understand how it works... Or throwing a final of the undead at the guards spreading the curse to the entire town in minutes and have to runaway from a massive charging mana cannon pointed at us, to obliterate said town, to prevent the plague to spread more and all of this because they tried to rob a shop owner. Yeah, it can be considered thrilling and fun, but also frustrating to have waste time and resources to fix problems that the two most dangerous characters of the fellowship kept creating for no reason besides killing and pillaging.
#9 realize you will have players who are more RP heavy, players who are more combat engaged, and bystanders who don't really engage much. However I got so sick of being the "forced main character " that when we started a side campaign I specifically made a character who just flat out refuses to be the boss/leader. Still didn't help with our bystander player but at least everyone isn't looking at me for everything now.
The only time the words "It's what my character would do." doesn't feel like opening a can of worms is when said character is biting the bullet for another character. Like the paladin pushing the bard out of the way of the dragons breath but automatically failing the saving throw to do so.
A lot of these can be prevented with a session zero contract. Lay out all the expectations and consequences for breaking the contract, and most-importantly actually enforce the rules consistently and fairly. Make sure players know what are minor infractions and which are deal breakers. Have appropriate enforcement levels from verbal warning/ reminder up to and including "leave now and never come back." If any issues come up, remind players these are the social etiquette rules they all agreed to before the game started.
The only time, the ONLY time, I’ve ever used the phrase “it’s what my character would do” was when I didn’t use my Decanter of Endless Water against a Fire Elemental on round 1 because my Barbarian Warlock panicked and only has 8 Int, so his reflex was to hit it with his Halberd (which also does bonus cold damage) and then used it on the next round because he had a moment to think.
I was in a group where three out of five people decided to make evil characters. They didn't tell the DM because doing it was against his rules. Their secret alignments came out during role play. It was so terrible that the DM ended up up ghosting us. I ended up watching RUclips videos about problem players to work through my feelings. Turns out that the people with the evil characters were doing all the things in the videos. They had mentioned comments made in the videos word for word during role play.
I have a share of worst players too... One that was dropped almost instantly was a guy who either didn't like the setting or behaved like he didn't like the setting, who thought the setting is stupid, my NPCs are stupid and doing stupid, I'm running my game WRONG, and he called me out for my "mistakes" and tried to avert the genre tropes on every occasion. I didn't know why he joined the game in the first place. Another one was a real-life Neo-Pagan who built entire character concepts around his (quasi)religious beliefs. Not only he thought that ancient Aryan technologies were superior to modern ones and Christianity is evil, but he insisted that the same is true for EVERY campaign setting (no, seriously). I kicked him out after he had an argument with me that he knows better than ME how MY setiing works. And there were not one, but several players, each of whom thought that he's the main hero of every story and the leader of every party, that he's a God's gift to every party, that anything he does is a pure genius, and don't you dare disagree with that. One of them was thinking that he should be the main VILLAIN of every story - no, seriously, every character concept he has shown me was about his character trying to betray the party... and he was still thinking that he is the coolest guy at the table, and his very presence makes game 20% cooler. But I've never accepted any of his characters, actually.
The planning forever thing drives me nuts. Especially since the plan hardly ever holds up for more than 5 minutes. I really like the flashback mechanic blades in the dark uses to try to avoid that.
I was in college when I first started playing D&D. It was a blast! Many of the players were war gamers checking out this new thing called Dungeons and Dragons. After graduating, moving to a big city, and settling in with a real job I began looking for local players. I found them. However these folks were mostly people that would bring their young sons, nephews, neighbors, etc. OMG the whining and crying when their hobbit character attacked a dragon and died!!!
Got a player with "solo player" mentality where he does in game actions that really are completely seperate from what the party as a whole wants to do or puposefully screws with stuff or planned events cause he thinks its "fun" and not cooperating with the party and constantly going off on his own. Generally we asked him not to do these and just cooperate but really i just told my dm if he wants to go off by himself we'll let him but we wont hold it agains the dm if there was a sudden party level encounter and hes alone.
I'm in a group that's mostly filled with audience players compared to active players. I get anxious and talk more than usual. Mainly cause I worry the DM will think no one is having fun.
Just do Initiative the D&D 3.5 way: set up the situation, then go over all of your players asking what their character does before adjudicating anything. It will fix everything.
20:49 I mean, the not telling the GM what spell they're casting actually makes sense in 1 specific circumstance. If you're up against a higher level Spellcasting enemy who has Counterspell, and the DM is making you use the rule of having to use a reaction to identify a spell as it's being cast, (XGE p 85), it would only be fair to be vague about your spells and make the enemy have to choose between identifying it or CSing it. I don't know if that would be me being petty though or not
The DM already knows everything about everything related to your characters. If they're not metagaming that, it's reasonable they won't metagame a Counterspell.
That awkward moment when you realize that you have been that bad player in the past. In my poor excuse off a defense, it happened after I felt that the DM took away my PC's agency and forced me into positions where my actions played no role in the eventual outcome.
A D.M. should never do that. If you want to check the green dragons sore tooth while it sleeps with it's mouth open that's your prerogative. But what happens after is not my fault..... And your death will be a lesson about green dragons you will never forget. Of course I would warn you, but if you walk inside the mouth saying "that's what they would do" I'm down to clown.
@@NoalFarstrider Agreed. The simplest remedy to "TWMCWD" is increasingly severe repercussions for their actions. They can keep acting like an ass, but the DM just keeps turning up the heat on them until they stop, or they die.
I'm in a campaign where I feel like I hit a lot of the points but at the same time my DM loves my character, some of the PCs definitely dislike him a little bit but the actual players all also seem to like him which I find interesting. He does a lot of stupid things and just doesn't think things through but overall he propels the story forward a lot while doing those things. My DM keeps saying that I'm great at role playing him even though he fits a lot of the "issues" in the video. He's a fun character and shows how TWMCWD can work for evil. Just make it interesting and actually worth it, it also helps that he's trying his best and not just doing it for the sake of being bad or chaotic.
Everything you said, I agree with. However, at some point leadership needs to play a role. For example, I was at a game Con. There was a stinky kid; at random, he was my partner. We had two hours. Long story short, we got lunch, I bought axe body sprey, and alike. By the time we were ready to play STARFLEETBATTLES. He was as fresh as a new borne. (Without humiliation). It really comes down to the golden rule. Ya' know? FYI: we won that match with ROM, but got shut out in the next round.
I have a friend who doesn’t understand what the dm is, and she straight up thinks that any player can narrate, she decides when she meets an Npc, and she voices them, AND I TOLD HER TO ROLL FOR CHARISMA AND SHE COMPLETELY IGNORED ME… don’t be like her, wanna date some random Npc that your dm told you that you can’t make up because you’re not the dm? ATLEAST ROLL FOR CHARISMA!!! Omg, every time she “encounters” an Npc (that I didn’t even approve on) she voices them and chooses their response to get her way. Absolutely stupid. She’s not even the dm, I am :/
Here’s the full story! Me (DM) (bard) Her (Druid) Her sister (bard) So, it starts in the middle of a calming village full of elves in an enchanted forest, an elderly man comes up to us saying “oh hi! Please come help my family..!” In an old voice. We go to their house and I heal the woman elf, she (the annoying one) wants to heal the child, she roles and she heals him but halfway, I then finish the healing. Later I heal a fox in need of help and she (druid that’s annoying) heals a baby gnome she encountered (I told her there was one) She takes the baby to a cleric clinic, and adopts him. Even later on, I go to a bakery and get some health and stamina. And she’s taking care of her baby boy whom she named “Ralph” and she goes to the local library to get books on new motherhood, and meets… the manager, WHOM I NEVER AGREED ON EVEN BEING THERE, and she said “hi! Can I borrow some books, even though it’s closed?” And she MADE HIM SAY “ofc!!” When I would’ve made his response “no, sorry!! It’s closed so nobody can borrow books today.” And when she gets home she says “uh, he was cute ..” while me, DEFEATING AN OGER, FINDING A DUNGEON, ACTUALLY PLAYING THE GAME, she then invites the man ( library man) To dinner. And before then she says she’s gonna write him a note, she decides to not send it in fear he won’t like her.. and once he arrives, this is where I got upset. She decides to confess her love to the Npc man, and SHE F** MADE HIM SAY “I do too!” WHICH I HAD TOLD HER SHE HAD TO ROLL FOR CHARISMA AND SHE IGNORED ME?! And I had her sister (bard) commit arson and the house they were having dinner at
My horror player is my former DM. I suggested to run a game as well because I wanted to try it out. He constantly made horrible characters just to piss me off. I tried to kill one of them at one point. Which yes, horrible me. Should not have done that but if your player just sits down in combat, just not fighting and not caring... Yeah, this is how it went. Always. He also just rage quit the game if it didn't go his way and was constantly power gaming and min maxing. I will never DM for him again
Oddly my horror player was my lifelong DM too. He’d get butt hurt or turn passive aggressive whenever I made a ruling he didn’t like and just kinda ‘shut down’. At one point, after game thankfully, he complained about the BBEG playing to win. Me: you pissed him off and left him alive as you all ran, why wouldn’t he come after you? Him: we’ll, you didn’t HAVE TO have him do that. It’s still your choice.
If the player ignore the plot hooks, advance the plot hooks and have it start to affect them in different ways, they leave town for an idiot quest, the bad guys armies lay siege and kill the players favorite npcs or burn they're base of operations so everything they have and got is burned or stolen, never to be seen again, or kill their pets.
I lot of these are things that "depend." Largely, they depend on the nature of the person doing them. "It's what my character would do" is fine if, say, a characters backstory explicitly said they had severe reasons to hate anyone with orc blood, and that's why they killed off the half-orc NPC you meant for them to capture and interrogate. But its BS if they made a chaotic aligned character just as an excuse to do whatever was most disruptive to the intended plotline. In other words, are these things done with good intent? Or are they done out of bad intent, or even mere negligence. So I instead try to look at intent, not the deeds themselves.
Agreed. I occasionally hide things temporarily from the DM, but only because it wouldn't work without a little surprise. For instance, I once got offered 50,000 gold from obvious demon if I gave them the McGuffin object we had found while also signing a magically binding NDA so we couldn't inform anyone. (It literally made us unable to speak about it) So while the other players were discussing details with the demon, I asked the DM for a pen and started writing on a piece of paper, seemingly just taking notes. What I was actually doing was writing everything down in a piece of paper. I folded it up, placed it in front of me, and accepted the deal. Then I immediately took the notes to the local Paladins. The DM was stunned, but loved it. She rolled with the idea. I got to keep the money, the Paladins helped, but DM said the Paladins no longer trusted me because I had made a deal with a demon AND cheated a contract. I basically lost out on any future quests with the paladins, which seemed totally fair. But none of that would have been possible if I had followed that rule.
Yeah. I once played in a Monster Hunter campaign, and my ranger had trauma from nearly getting killed by a Rathalos, a large silver dragon thing basically. She hated them. Que another player joining the group a few sessions in, he was a dragonborn drakewarden and as his companion... got a baby Rathalos. My character was certainly pissed at him. It was a bit difficult to figure out what to do, because my character wouldn't voluntarily stay near the creature she hates so much. It also presented the opportunity for character growth tho, so I was conflicted. (Un)luckily however, the game got cut short due to IRL drama.
The three things in particular about "people having side conversations", "people never showing up" and "people making characters that dont fit the game" is sadly something that I've seen too much in the campaign I've been a part of. I was usually the only if not one of the only people to ever show up alongside the dm. There was also a time where I met a particularily annoying player "whose name would be pointless to mention", made a character who was way too young to go on adventures and when he had no choice but to go on the adventure, he picked fights with everything and stole from the party members.
I was in a party with another player who was actually a very decent individual...or so we thought. Very nice, thoughtful, and inclusive guy and showed this side for 2 years. One day is character died from a critical hit (we were low lvl) and he told the DM AND I QUOTE "I'm not mad you killed my character...I'm mad because you're just a shitty person" The DM was pretty baffled and kicked the player because it didn't stop at just that as said player preceded to attack all of us for no reason. 6 months later he tried to come back into the group but was caught just copy and pasting the same generic apologies to all of us. Just goes to show you never truly know somebody because I would have never expected this from him.
I recently started a Wrath of the Righteous campaign and the server I play on usually has a line about "What ratio of RP/combat/exploration do you want" so i added it the posting I made asking for players. One of the responses I got was someone who was interested in an RP heavy game with occasional combat and exploration. It made it an easy decision to exclude them. Being the vanguard in a war against a demon invasion is not the game for that person.
I had a player (same class for over 2years) couldn't remember you could move in a turn, that is character sheet changed every session (dnd beyond), adding abilities the sub class doesn't even have, complaining his HP wasn't high enough. Eventually he was the reason the campaign broke down and him being "busy" but wanting the log in bonus like a game made my other players want to do the same. They also expected me to come up with a new campaign when they wanted to play, not follow the story I had crafted around their backstories
Number 14 as described are cheaters. Powergamers are those who use loopholes allowing unintended advantages (there are tons of them, of course) and build their characters around them. Then, yes, they had to argue for the legitimacy of that loopholes, because if DM kills the loophole, it's a death to the build.
This is the big reason I don't allow UA. A lot of these additions still have a ton of loopholes that my munchkin friends will constantly take advantage of. UA is fine when you have a story focused group, but powergamers turn it into a farce.
I had a player who is why I banned metal dice in my games. He would do "test rolls" when he first got them. This resulted in him not actually rolling, but moreso dropping his dice in a way that their weight would make it so they just fell and didn't move. So he'd get like 4 nat 20s in one session and never failed a roll.
@Cheepchipsable I never thought I'd have to make a rule like that tbh I figured it was common etiquette. I did tell him it had to actually roll, to which he tried to argue with me. Hence me banning metal dice as a whole.
From what I've seen, metal dice tend to slide on hard, flat surfaces but roll well over softer ones, like a seat of a couch or an armchair. Maybe this will help.
The problem isn't the metal dice; the problem is the cheating cheater. The solution is for that person to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of uncertainty in a game -- why we roll dice at all. (In the meantime, offer them the opportunity to use 3d6 or 3z7 instead of 1d20.)
@ntony4377 this was years ago, like pre-pandemic years ago lol I'm not in contact with this player anymore after he broke one of my only hard line rules as a dm. No use of sexual assault for shock value. I still prefer people don't use metal dice, at least not without a softer surface like a lined dice tray to roll on simply because they hurt my ears lol but they aren't banned anymore.
#16 "Denying the Collaborative Nature of the Game" The DM and the players have a shared responsibility for generating motivation for characters taking the plot hooks. In a recent game, the party literally met in a tavern--apparently a really crowded tavern where all the outsiders were basically herded to one table. Now, I hate that exhausted trope and find it really difficult to believe, so I wrote into my character's backstory some reasons why he would be willing to throw in his lot with a bunch of strangers. (I still prefer DMs who make an effort to create more plausible reasons for the party forming ... ) Many years ago, for a one-shot, our characters were told to meet a potential employer in some public location, where we were ambushed. After fighting through the ambush and winning, the employer said, "Great, you passed the job interview." My character said, "I don't like to work for people who are that callous with my life, so the price is doubled." Honestly, I felt like that was generous; I can't conceive of someone who is a serious badass agreeing to work for someone who disrespects them like that, but by doubling the price, I was giving the GM a chance to meet me halfway on motivation so that we could move on with the game. Even though it was a one-shot, and there would be zero long-term consequences to the NPCs paying double, the DM steadfastly refused. So my character turned down the job, even though that meant my evening of playing was done. Collaboration is a two-way street.
My worst player: I ran a D&D one-shot over Discord a few months ago about a mystery at a baseball stadium and the players got to play baseball in D&D. It was a fun time, for the most part. One of the players was a Fairy Fey Wanderer Ranger who openly told me that they were trying to break my game months before we started, so I slightly brought this upon myself. Still, they rules-lawyered the hell out of the game, pointed out text in the module I was basing everything on that contradicted what another player was trying to do (casting Magic Weapon on the baseball, a magical ball of force, which I allowed with their pretty good arcana check), and irritated other players to a point where one of them left the Discord call and we ended up calling it quits for the night as they were about to fight a powerful spellcaster. I still have not resumed that game, but it did help me learn about when to be accommodating as a DM and what crosses the line of being too accommodating.
Letting a player into your game after they tell you they're "trying to break your game" is too accommodating. That person hasn't just declared themselves your enemy, they've declared that they're trying to ruin the experience of all your players; you have a responsibility to kick them out.
@@purplelibraryguy8729 I was a newer DM at the time honestly. Probably why I was a little more accommodating than I should have been. This was almost two years ago. Glad to have learned from my mistakes :)
When it comes to number 21.... this is indeed a thing. The game shops in my area have the same signs posted here. It seems to be a common enough thing for gamers to not know what a shower and/or laundromat is.
I feel like the biggest one I always struggle with is inconsistent players. It's always struck me as odd since we have a great group of players that all get along and the sessions are *always* a riot. Yet nobody can dedicate one sunday afternooon for roughly 4 hours on a bi-weekly basis consistently for some reason?
"That's what my character would do" Me using that phrase as an excuse for my character to fall into the pit trap that WE ALL KNEW WAS THERE because he is an idiot. The worst player I've ever had was my friend, she didn't know how to attack after I told her a billion times. Probably because she was reading
I’ve done similar things too. I used a spell that did cold damage to an opponent that was resistant to cold damage because Tim knew that it was resistant but my PC had never seen or heard of the monster so HE didn’t know. After that night’s session I told the DM that I was using a cold spell despite me knowing that it wasn’t very effective and he said, “I forgot all about that, I wasn’t applying the resistance.”
@@tscoff i do that too LOL. I always use a turn to attack with the "wrong" type of damage to roleplay how my PC discovers that it's useless against the monster.
@@GutisFive I don’t always do that. I play my characters. Sometimes they know the strengths and weaknesses of their opponents and sometimes they don’t. Role playing is part of what makes the game fun!
#10: In my game, my son plays a rogue that is like this. He never tries to play it off as "That's what my character would do." and we have a pretty chill group. But once I had a townmaster invite the party to a party to celebrate their victory. At the door, he asked, "I trust the reward I gave you has been divided among your companions in good fashion?" The players loved it... including my son!
Worst player ever: the ones who try to hijack the game. DMs and players need to be on the outlook for this. DMs can be momentarily fooled, thinking the "wild player" is into the world and really role-playing! They are not. They are hijacking the game. We had three sessions where we never had "the first encounter" from this, as every move got sidetracked. I've seen groups be destroyed by this, and the player doing this often thinks they are clever and driving the game, and are usually say, "That is what my character would do." This is just an excuse to do bad and wreck it all. This is their idea of "fun."
Yeah, I had a player who started to do that. What started off as him playing his role as the roguish scoundrel gradually turned into frequent attempts to solve most every encounter or problem on his own. Information gathering, scouting, puzzle solving, he’d want to do it all; even if there were other characters better suited for the task. Then he wanted a homebrew item so he could have his own pet raven and be able to communicate with it telepathically, to make his character more like Assassin’s Creed. The group already had a newbie playing a beastmaster ranger, so I said that the best I could do was maybe an item that would allow him to cast find familiar. We went back and forth on it for awhile and ultimately the group disbanded before we got that far, but it was always a challenge getting him to take a backseat during non-combat encounters.
I'm a first time DM, and I made it explicity clear that I want the world to have consequences, both positive and negative. If the save an NPC, that NPC might return later to help them in tneir adventures. If the ignore the vampires in the north, the vampires will probably sack the city and murder/subjigate everyone. Of course, I also let them know that they will have time to explore other the city and go shopping, or if they want to explore the nearby forest to gather resources, that is fine. The plot can wait a little bit so they have some time to prepare.
Things DMs should not do: 20:39 Look none of us want murder hobos at our table, but consequences shouldn't be used to bash players over their heads for their "bad behavior". If a consequence is something that can be beat, it is just another adventure, which isn't a punishment. If it's something the players cannot overcome you are now playing antagonistically towards your players, extremely unhealthy. So instead of doing that, when your player does stupid murder hobo things, just turn to the player and say no. It works much better and is much healthier for the game.
That's even worse. You're not stopping bad behavior, you're stripping players of their agency. I'm not going to cancel people's decisions when they're bad, I'm going to show them why they were bad, from the world's viewpoint, not from the DM's. It's not playing revenge, it's playing consequences.
@@IRQ17As stated before, you'll either end up killing the PC, or giving them an adventure, neither of which will yield good behavior out of them. They won't learn anything. So yeah, you are playing revenge. Besides, the idea that telling your players no is stripping players of agency is ridiculous. DMs tell players no all the time. If their were no "no's" the game would have no boundaries, which would fundamentally undermine the game. Players need some autonomy, but that does not entail anything the player can think of. How is stopping a player from ruining the game for others with their murder hoboing unhealthy?
@@TheAnimeAtheist From my own example, "getting framed for murder of a major NPC that used to introduce you everywhere and sponsored your party" is neither of those and gets the bonus of being actual direct consequence of their dumb shit plot-wise. The campaign is shaken, they lost a lot of resources and renome and have to rethink what they did without an easy fix to that and the only part coming personally from me as a DM is BBEG rubbing it in their faces - and that's just to make sure they know it's because of their decision and not a pre-scripted event. And for the record, I have the right to veto in my sessions and the players know it. It's basically a "gods are so offended by your last decision they remove it and all consequences of it from reality" scenario for cases where they fucked up so much I can't think of ANY way to solve it (aptly named Power Word: GTFO). So far I used it once: when party's ranger started singing in a shower and got a nat1 on self-imposed performance roll. If they want to do something moderately dumb, I usually just ask if they're sure they want to proceed with the plan. They still do what they want but actually think why I asked that beforehand.
First time viewer here, I really love your content! My session is currently dealing with a problem player and your vids have been super helpful in finding a solution to deal with said player. Now, onto the story. We play Pathfinder 1st edition because the DM likes the customization available in it compared to 5e, and so we get a group together and make some characters. In little ways each of us are problematic I suppose? I played a rogue who made some very bad choices, there was an Oracle that was just there to have fun, and a magus who was a min-maxer (def not a power player though). The problem player was the paladin. Paladin spent multiple sessions harassing my character because they're a tiefling, declared multiple times they aren't "officially apart of the party" and demanded his own private cut of all treasure we receive. He did friendly fire on a few occasions and when told he would be hurting his allies he said he didn't care. He also was a power player and would like about his stats, (he had a 30 AC by level 8 and he one-shot most creatures in encounters.) He used all the money he took from us to buy Uber broken enchantments for his weapons like keen and speed, and I eventually had enough of his character and told him off. "The DM has to make the campaign that much harder for the rest of us just to accommodate you!" I would say to him, and his response was that it doesn't affect him so he doesn't care. We're giving him one last chance this upcoming session to get himself straight and to become a good player but I highly doubt that. We as a group had to have a private discussion without him just so players had a chance to talk about how paladin makes them feel. We've decided as a group that his character will die if he continues acting up. We shall see I suppose. Any recommendations would be great as always on what to do about this. TL;DR Selfish, Problematic Paladin tries to become broken, making the session less fun for the rest of us. Long post I know, more a vent than anything else...
Just a quick update: We decided to attempt a peaceful intervention to tell him how we feel and give him a chance to change. His character changed (because it's what we asked) but he didn't. His character was still doing stupid amounts of damage, and this time he spent the entire session on his phone playing mobile games like Bloons TD. The DM felt massively disrespected because he was no longer paying attention to the game, and decided he's no longer welcome back. Can't say we didn't try to make it work.
I've had all of these happen at my games, at least a handful in each of my campaigns. The only exception is the unrealistic expectations, because I haven't run games in a few years and Critical Role wasn't a thing then. The other thing that you missed that I'd add to the list is metagaming. I've had players do stuff like "Oh that's clearly a demon so it had fire resistance" when his character had never seen a demon or devil before, or just knew how many HP and the AC of certain monsters and would use this information in character. I have also had a player try to use his understanding outside the game of how gunpowder works, to justify his monk being able to create firearms.
I once had a player who gave me pushback EVERY SINGLE TIME I asked them to roll the dice. Yes. Even for combat rolls. It was Pathfinder. Crunchy game. Did not want to roll dice at all. It was weird.
My first time playing DnD I had no idea what I was doing. After finishing my character I stuck to her backstory for how she would act. That meant she didn’t like people, and often preferred being alone, and the group I was playing with (who I had joined mid adventure) wasn’t making it better for my character (but I laughed a lot). When I realized (or was told) my character had to stick with the group to keep playing, I ran several thoughts by myself and came across a few good reasons that tie into the gamplay at that point for her to stick around with a bunch of people. She had an easy target to pickpocket from (although I’m no longer allowed to), she’ s actually met very nice people on her adventures with this group, and I may have given her a crush on the leader who has wings which is funny considering my character is collecting wings from monsters we beat. I didn’t want my character to be a lone wolf, more she wasn’t a fan of people and would rather steal and be on her merry way. But now we’re about to be tpk’d apparently. Also, my situation isn’t helped by the fact that the table mates, my teammates, all pretty much hate me. My character isn’t even allowed to speak and that rule is reinforced constantly by the people I’m expected to work with, but it’s better than playing with my family (trying to, and also being a dm…).
OK . sorry to hear about your table mates. If they hate you( are you sure?) then why play with them? Find another group that you can make friends with. It's not called the world wide web for naught. Good hunting. There are some good players who will appreciate you. I'm certain. Now go foth!
I was in a game once with eight players. One session we were all debating on the best way to infiltrate a dwarven fortress. I, being a rogue changeling, wanted to disguise myself and sneak in all stealthy-like, while the two fighters wanted to rush in, guns blazing (or rather, swords swinging). The argument went on for two whole hours before the DM finally lost it and sicked a white dragon on us, which then destroyed the fortress. It was a fun time.
I remember having playing a campaign that definitely had a main character complex (this was the DMs favoured friend) The player didnt care about main quests or side quests but dominated the direction of the group and ALWAYS wanted to do something to the disadvantage of us quieter players as we never got ample room to say what we wanted. Always trying to get the group into trouble by attempting to be 'funny' all the time and wanting to attack everyone and ignoring DMs queues to stop which alot of times near got us killed. Also he expressed he only cared for combat and focused on 'midmaxing' his character to destroy enemies, which made the DM bump up the difficulty, which made it worse for us... not to mention since he was obsessed with stats each turn of combat he had lasted near 20-30 minutes calculating the number of additives, bonus and effects to his attacks, constantly changing his mind and starting over or asking various winded impossible actions he wanted to do but ultimately were shut down because they were game breaking. Horrible experience
11:58 Was in a group where every player had that except for myself and 2 others. They constantly backtracked if they made a mistake and actively didn’t care about the well-being of the other players. Two even sold the last gift a dead PC gave to them because it didn’t fit their aesthetics.
Backtracking or retconning is the cancer of immersion. It is very rare that it should be allowed. Had a player who would do this constantly. Tried to teach him 40k. Managed to make every TURN last 4-5hours. TURN NOT GAME! Anyways tried to play a game with him that wasn't a tutorial where he was handed a victory. The bitching and whining over every casualty was amazing. Guy was playing Tyranids... Then he demanded to replay the entire turn because I could tell him from memory every move that happened in the last 5 hours ergo he needed to have a bunch of models back. I cut him out of my life. Lot of other red flags with that guy but holly shit did he enjoy wasting your time and making people treat him like a 409 pound baby.
NOTE: Not in order with the video 1. Solved by punishing the player. They lose a turn, they cast the wrong spell, etc. 2. Solved by introducing the setting and story before character creation session. If player insists on a character that doesn't fit, just put your foot down and say "nope, that doesn't fit the story". 3. You can play judo with the player a bit, but after enough dares, punish the PC. 4. Start a game with a smaller group. The other PC is just not there to go on the adventure. 5. Solved in the same way as #1 6. Just have a talk, and say "well this just my group, and if you don't want to be part of the group, it's fine. Good luck getting in contact with Matt." :P 7. Do a round robin with the players, even out of combat, so that they aren't talking over each other. "So you did that, okay now Player 2, what do you want to do? Okay, player 2 did this, too late to do anything else! What do you want to do Player 3?" 8. Judo the player. Punish him. Use an NPC to say something like "Wow, I'd totally beat him up for that." Nudging them towards pvp. Use a court system to finish up the dispute resolution. "I agree your character would do this, but this is what my NPCs would do. The other PCs can also respond in kind." "The plaintiff states that the defendant stole his magic sword. Evidence has been gathered, and the defendant is hereby fined 1000 gold pieces to be delivered to the plaintiff, as well as 200 gold pieces paid to the court." The defendant appeals to say that he can't afford that fee. "Therefore, the defendant has been sentenced to 6 months hard labour to pay off the debt. The funds accrued in profit from this labour will be payable to the plaintiff." The defendant's character is then out of the game for 6 months in-game, and he probably might want to roll up a new character. 9. Do a round robin. Players each make a suggestion on what to do. Players can vote on it, or they can go it alone. If it takes too long, insert an NPC to offer suggestions. Insert a ticking clock. "1 hour goes by as you discuss. That's 1 less hour to get to the place, and 1 less hour of time that you have to save the princess before she dies." 10. An egg timer! If player takes more than 1 minute to take their turn, they lose the turn. >:) "You hesitated out of fear. Your heart is pumping too hard." The player will be annoyed, but the other players won't be. Advise them to think faster, and don't punish them for not being perfect in their choices. "The wizard does a melee attack, and it barely grazes the monster's head, a miss! But the monster is frightened by this, since he doesn't know if the wizard is actually good with swinging that staff, so he moves away from him." Then the player feels like he still did something, and it encourages him to make a decision within the time limit. 11. Round robin again. Players impact the world in different ways. Combat isn't the way to victory all the time. Power gamer can win at combat, but other players might win at intrigue or stealing gold, or disabling traps, whatever. This may have been the original intent of the class system. You can also fudge a bit with power gamers. "You cut off the villain's head, but your sword then impacted a brick wall and broke. It's because your swing was so strong, and the blade just slid through the flesh like it was nothing." 12. Just know the rules and call them out on it. Put your foot down. If they're cheating at dice, you gotta just not let them do that. At worst, kick them out of the group. 13. Round robin again. Players don't have to co-operate, but if they don't, then they can't defeat the villain, they can't get through the dungeon. Just gradually dish out consequences to each of them - in a judo way, so they don't feel like the GM is just always evil... eg. "I go to eat at the inn by myself" don't say "the inn keeper doesn't want to give you information! bandits attack you in the inn!" or whatever... instead, just play it "realistically" or gently guide them into scenarios where they would need help from others - but don't trap them in those scenarios; they can run away, but they'll feel upset after awhile when they accomplish almost nothing worthy of note above the reputation of those typical NPCs. Do this until they all realize that they have to work together; dropping hints via NPC certainly helps, "Gee if I were to told to do that, I'd get my brother to help me. Two heads are better than one as they say." If two players are co-operating, the others might start thinking about co-operating or feel left out - so it's like a snowball effect. In a way, that would feel like character growth. Maybe I'm just being idealistic here? If the snowball doesn't occur, then maybe it's one of the other problems listed in the video. 14. Solved by fudging. Ranged combat? Maybe the monk can just use their monk speed to run up a cliff ninja-style to get at the ranged enemy. Maybe the paladin just knows how to sniff out a liar? Maybe the cleric can in fact cure disease at low level. Etc. 15. Judo the players. Kill an NPC? Consequences! Murder hobo? Consequences. Guide them into acting sane and civilized, or the rest of society treats them like barbarians who deserve death or infinite prison time. You can have NPCs say their grievances to the players during their trial. Explain this is just how NPCs act and feel in the story and setting and it's out of your hands, as GM. If players just want to be evil murder hobos in consecutive stories, explain that the campaign will be a short one, unless you don't mind running an evil campaign. 16. GM approves all items the players get and writes them down in his own notes. Takes a lot of tracking and lawyering, but if the players already distrust the GM, then your in hot water anyway, and you gotta do this sort of work, hopefully to re-establish trust with them.
I can relate to Analysis Paralysis as a GM - This often happens because some players are VERY timid and are scared of making a decision whether right or wrong because they feel any decision they make will be the wrong one. Then you have players who have a high intellect (masters degree or PHD) who over think a situation and basically over think a situation. This can and does waste so much time because the GM typically will have it all planned out in advance and it then becomes a luck of the draw what you end up doing. Or you will have a GM that will have an encounter ready which will spring on you no matter what entrance you use. This is why in my games one of the players is assigned and becomes party leader due to level/charisma/leadership abilities/his epic quest or other factors. The players give input and the leader makes the decision.
I was running my very first campaign about 5 years ago, and i had this one player be so horrible it killed my game. First off we had to play the game at his apartment because my family smokes and the girlfriend he had couldnt handle the smoking, and that wasnt a problem. What was a problem was he would cheat on dice rolls trying to be a power gamer, and encourage me sabotaging other players characters so he could be in the spotlight. He also had a very bad temper, and during the last session he nearly caused a fist fight with one of my other players, and i just checked out told them to pack things because the game was over and i left.
I have this huge issue where my PCs in my campaign always question or metacritic the game when something that doesn’t quite fit in the usual idea of my campaign in. I understand it doesn’t make sense, but when they belittle the stuff I do it makes me think I’m just not a good DM in general
As a player, i had those moments that felt like my group just cheesing the event, if it was my friend that needed rescue, and one of the players just decided that he would not kill guards (wtf man you just killed people, you an orc lol) but i respected that, but the argument just was annoying As a DM I had my really good friend as a player but when we played he just argued with me all the time and every session's end, he just talked with me at discord and explained to me things i did wrong... While the other was like... Meh it's not that matters, and as a friend and me as a totally new Dm I thought he will enjoy my game but it felt like he searched where to bash me aside, I love him, but I'm happy he decided my game isn't fit for him (although he could do this better then just say that I'm suck) Because when someone is saying that you are suck, it just lets you feel like the others stay because they don't wanna hurt you... And its the last thing I want to happen And I'm always sitting for hours to prepare for the game (I'm having fun with it but still)
I know I’m late to the party, but here is my little gem of a player. Start of the game, he says that he has created a home brew race. I say it’s fine, just let me look at it. Edgelordiest race I have ever seen. Basic tragic backstory, +5 to EVERY STAT, immunity to all damage except radiant, kills anyone he hits automatically. Needless to say, I said he needed to make a new character, and he refused, so I made one for him. He got Grunkelfunk, the gnome bard. He left.
Late comment. I tried this in one game. One player had a robot that also can make literally anything but also had a big gun and had an ac of 25 and existed in a medieval setting and also liked to make a penis for his character out of dead enemies and a cowboy hat. I made a character that was basically a big lionman thing. Not a big important race or anything but I wanted there to be lion people because I had an awesome model for it. Also I wanted a big sword. This by contrast was a hard pill for the dm to swallow and also insisted that I was king of a big empire of these things even though this grossly conflicted with my backstory and it literally made zero sense that a king would leave his kingdom to engage in the most weird and convoluted adventure ever. Also game sessions would last AT MINIUM 8 hours an hour and a half of which was play time the reason was listening to the retarded robot character metagame and rules lawyer. I finally quit at the end of a 12 hour session. I has to be up at 6 the next day so the DM insisted we do one last battle that took 4.5 hours and ended around 11:50 pm. In those 4.5 hours I played 4 rounds of combat. I moved forward hit a thing with my sword and then had to listen to a LOTR extended edition length rules lawyering and meta gaming. I will never play d and d again!
I’m glad I started watching dm guides it really helps me see all the massive mistakes I make as a new dm.. luckily for me my players are all new so I don’t think they can tell but railroading is a mistake I made in my last game. It was like 3 hours into the session and they hadn’t made any decisions or progress at all into the game or story they spent a real hour deciding which direction to go then 30 minutes on whether or not they wanted to go into a building so I thought I’d say a sandstorm was brewing to encourage them/force them into the building. So then they began retreating back to the ship/base to continue discussing what to do. Sandstorm died down they eventually went in and then spent another hour deciding if they wanted to explore the building and go into the “dungeon basically” spending the whole session outside of the entrance then standing and talking in the first room. Then the session ended because it was several hours in at this point. I’m sure there’s many things I could have done to fix the situation I thought the sandstorm push was good even going so far to railroad 1d4 damage every couple minutes they stayed exposed to the elements bad idea I know but like it had been real true hours into this game I set up and they just sat at the entrance of the dungeon discussion if they should explore it or if it was too risky/dangerous. The game was mothership 0e but the situation could apply to most rpgs I assume.
Instead of pushing them in with in game reasons, it's okay for you to straight up ask the players "Why aren't you going in? The adventure is clearly that way?"
i'd have done something similar, in my game the clock is running in game actions take "in game time" so if they spend 30 minutes in the shop buying gear then i say its 5/10 minutes past, but planning especially in the dungeon or in public takes place in real time so if planning starts to drag "along comes a goblin"
I had a DM do this. It’s bad enough when one player does this, but for a whole game to have inappropriate classes? Yeah, I’m not playing with him anymore.
Players who still don't know their characters after 2 years? This is why I CANT STAND watching Critical Role!!! Most of that group STILL dont know how to play the game or their characters. Highly aggravating to watch.
For that last point, I have a FLGS near me that has a display in the bathroom, along with a sign that says to the effect of "we get it, you've had a long day and just want to get a fun game in. If you've got that 'not so fresh feeling", please feel free to use some of these hygiene products (which included single-use sticks of deodorant, toothbrush and toothpaste, etc.). If you need a clean shirt, please take one of these, and pay for it at the cashier before you leave." I think this is a tactful way for the shop to kindly ask people to take care of their hygiene before sitting down at a table.
Expectations: I hate it when players change their Expectations half way through the campaign because they forgot everything in session zero... or what is written on their character sheet.
Session zero needs a written contract that is part of everyone's character sheet. The contract includes expectations and consequences for not meeting those expectations.
On your third point. I knew a guy that told me about one of his players (also a guy I sort of knew) that wanted to set up a provisions and magic ingredient supply shop. Everyone else was in on missions, but he started a business and was like breeding toads and stuff (spell ingredients??) to sell. His goal was to make a ton of money by not fighting, not going on adventures, but by being the proprietor of a one stop shop for adventures.... OK... sure...
I've actually had the opposite of the "plot hook" problem, with players almost magically identifying hooks and trying to speed-run everything. I've spent a lot of time hoping they'd explore my open-world sandbox that I spent so much time on, hoping they'd spend some time RP'ing with each other or the various interesting NPC's I've littered about, but as soon as they detect a whiff of a hook, they're like I GO DO THAT AND ONLY THAT NOW. Look, I don't have the full adventure that hook leads to prepared, you're killing the game time by not exploring the rest of I GO DO THAT AND ONLY THAT NOW. But what about inter-player RP? Surely you can talk to each othe- I GO DO THAT AND ONLY THAT NOW. Okay, but what about the - I GO DO THAT AND ONLY THAT NOW. There's an amazing description for the area - I GO DO THAT AND ONLY THAT NOW. This fun NPC has an intriguing - I GO DO THAT AND ONLY THAT NOW. Okay, fine, here's the big bad and the entire campaign is over because you all decided to speed-run it like I GO DO THAT AND ONLY THAT NOW. Way to go, you won D&D ("and it was ADVANCED!" - Pierce Hawthorne). And all the story prep for you exploring the world I created for you goes in the shitter and also I guess the campaign is over now because that was all I had.
Yep, Go and find another group and only that now. Get out your" little black book of potential new players" Be the Demon King of the interwebs. and rustle some up. I totally understand. Good Hunting.
@@Cyberfender1 I mean, they're good players, the problem is that they're TOO good players, and are basically trying to speedrun D&D. Whch is no fun to DM for.
Regarding #9 I got the opposite problem. As a player I frequently run into situations, where our party does not make a decision until I decide what we do - i feel like I'm forced to be the main character without wanting it. It's super annoying, because I encourage others to speak more, I ask them to take the lead but they wont. There have been a couple of times where terrible consequences had happened, because our DM didnt want to wait forever and I didnt want to take the spotlight again. What can I as a player do to avoid having to choose between being the main character or watching everything fall apart because nobody wants to decide anything at all
Have you outright told the players out of game that you would like them to step up to the plate more? That you feel too much is weighing on you and it's not fun? I was unsure if the asking them to lead part was entirely in character or if the players know how big of a deal it is and not just offhand comments without weight. If you had, I'd suggest looking for another group if they won't work with you to improve everyone's experience. People who will not compromise after a frank and honest conversation don't ever intend to change so the misery will continue...
When it comes to the actual game, I dont know why people even put Mercer as a high standard and expectation. Descriptions and acting, fair, but actual game design: lol
I always hear people complaining that the expectations are too high because not everybody is a professional voice actor like matt mercer. Since when does voice acting makes you a good GM? It IS the cerry on top. But it is NOT mandatory.
Probably the worst thing a player could do imo is constantly see the worst in other players while never seeing the faults in themselves. I have a friend who points out all of our friends' flaws to me behind they're backs. And then he has the nerve to say "I consider myself to be the best player of our friend group." One game we were in, this friend of mine played a secretive rogue who would always go off on his own missions for literal hours. After one session, he vented to me that everyone in the party sucked at roleplay because no one would interact with his character. So he had to go off on his own to get the spotlight. But here's the thing. The party DID try to interact with him!! It he just didn't consider the attempts "good enough roleplay" and brushed them all off. This happened with multiple sessions. So many hours down the drain because of one person's pride...
My worst player was simply thankless. I wrote a oneshot adventure. His job? Bring some snacks. He brought ONE bagel for himself. Then, after the session, said "That's it?" And was surprised when I never invited him again.
There is nothing wrong with "that's what my character would do". The problem is bad communication. If you don't notice that the backstory you have written will lead you to have a reason to want the party dead, throwing bad RP on top of bad character design does not improve the situation. You made your bed now lay in it. Talk to the other players, or the DM. Maybe you can establish a narrative reason for a change of heart. Maybe, it is time for an unfortunate accident. Literally anything is better than just ignoring the character you have created to be more convenient.
One of my favorite examples of “TWMCWD” was when one of the characters tried to steal an item from another character, failed and used that excuse…the paladin then bound them and handed them over to the town guard and when the thief asked why they threw the excuse back at them
That's perfect
Exactly! Your whole party will hopefully band together (ahh bonding!) and kill/wtv off that character. Then the player will have to make a new character anyway, learning that they shouldn't be 'that guy' as there's consequences. DM shouldn't have to get rid of that Asshat. And It'll be fun to see em get their just deserts by those that character wronged.
For the guy wanting to argue the 5 foot reach should be 2 squares: "Sure, we could do it that way... but that means your enemies can do that too. Which means that next round you're not being attacked by two orcs in melee, you're being attacked by seven, because five more of them can reach you now. Still want to make that change?
That's how we do flanking in 5e. If they want flanking rules, the bad guys can flank as well.
Perfection!
@@nimz8521
I’ve never played without flanking, so may be a bit ignorant. But when have the bad guys not been able to flank the PCs? That’s a pretty common mob tactic thrown around where I usually play
@@grandempress1947 yeah a lot of people assume the players want to be the only ones who flank or the only ones who can reach. I get annoyed when I can do things the enemies can't, I want them to flank too. Who are these players that want to just have all the advantage and the enemies get none? Most of my players are very reasonable about this.
It's not even a "if you want to do it that way.." It is geometrically impossible. If one square is 5 feet, two squares is not also 5 feet.
One of my favorite things I've read (paraphrased):
"I use 'that's what my character would do' to justify why my character puts themselves in situations where they can be killed. You use it to justify your character ruining the game. We are not the same."
"GO! I'll hold the Bad Guys"
"Dude, you will get yourself killed!"
"That is what my character would do..."
I did that once and boy! That felt amazing
@@kcis5940 In our last session, our camp was attacked at night by an assassin and his hired help.
My character captured and accepted the surrender of one of the hired minions. My character told him to disarm himself and leave before the party leader saw him and took his boots too.
This may come back and bite us in the behind, but, "It's what my character would do."
Unfortunately, this is almost never the case in my experience.
@@kcis5940 that's a legitimate use of "it's what my character would do".... I don't say that often, my usual response to that phrase is "ever heard of character development?"
Same. I'll risk my characters. I'm not going to do it if it hurts the party, or the fun. But if my -1 wisdom goblin touches the glowing slime and dies, well, she went out being a goblin and now the others know to stay far away.
Good advice. re: #8 "That is what my character would do!" We have a simple rule at PC creation and in play: "Playing a jerk is still being a jerk." We want people who work with others fairly, not against them.
I think there can be a time and place for "jerks" especcially with new players that just want to experience the feeling of being a total asshole without those nasty consequences. You could for example create a villain adventure. Everyone knows what they are getting into, most of the time you do not even need an adventure, you just let the player loose in a setting and let them get rid of all the nasty ideas they have, being as evil in the most creative way they can think of. And after an evening of getting your piss and vinegar of of you, you can return to the normal game.
That's maybe a little too subjective. Like, I got called a jerk for playing a character that's just chronically annoyed with everything. I didn't specifically do anything that hindered the group, i was just annoyed, because they were all playing teenagers and I was the only adult in the room. It was the character, it made sense, and it didn't actually get us into trouble (until the DM pissed me off with tons of unkillable enemies and one combat in a session--then I went out of my way to beat the shit out of things). My rule is so long as it doesn't hinder the team, it's probably cool.
Problematic player: "I attempt to steal my party's member weapon... because that is what my character would do"
Rest of the party: "We do not want to hang out with the rogue anymore, so we kick him out of the party... because that is what our characters would do"
Session 0: Rule#1: This is a heroic campaign. You may play a selfish or reluctant hero, but at the end of the day you need to overcome it and play with the group. How you do that is up to you, and if you want we can talk about a more protracted arc where you dabble in bad behavior, come see me.
It's a quick way to remind the player that they can be whatever kind of character they want, as long as they serve the fun of playing with their friends.
@@AuspexAO In my session zero I did have to say something like this. You are not allowed to play Bilbo Baggins, the guy that has to be drug along to actually start the adventure. It may be fun for you, but it's seriously annoying for the other players and it comes like Main Character Syndrome. I think I stated it in a positive way, like "Please come up with a reason why your character became an adventurer" so it rules out the option of not being one.
Had one session where we had to make a contract with a hag for some reason. The DM really wanted to sneak in a hidden clause (devils in the details) sorta thing... one of our players was a law student. The two of them went at it, and I kid you not....FOR 3 HOURS! talking about this fictitious contract over and over again, every revision the DM trying to slip something in, it getting pointed out by the player, them debating the exact language of the contract so nothing could be interpreted negatively or taken out of context and repeat. I still have nightmares about that day
Out of context sounds hilarious to witness
@@pkrangehit they were like:
OBJECTION!
OBJECTION!
*OBJECTION!*
I feel like the DM should have just given up. The player is just defective better than him at it.
Also, the DM just sounds... I don't even know how to describe it. They obviously want to give you extra punishment just for doing what he wants you to do. Like, how are you supposed to avoid being tricked by the hag?
I have what I call "unwilling main character syndrome".
I engage more, ask more questions, and get more involved than the other players at the table. I KNOW I can completely take over the table, so I end up putting about half of my effort into dragging other players' characters into the spotlight.
If I see a player not engaging, I will verbally poke that character for ideas and contributions. I will push the quiet player into a leadership role.
I do all this because I know that if I let my roleplaying stomp all over the table, the other players will get bored and quit, and I will not have a game to play in anymore.
What you are doing is noble, but it's time to start searching for a new group. You will have much more fun when you can relax and play normally, rather than spending time babysitting unwilling players.
I've a milder case of this. But for my situation it's more about pulling players into feeling more comfortable to RP in. For my games sometimes its shyness, not lack of want to engage, they are just unsure how to approach it.
Me and a few other PCs had to do this a lot in some Call of Cthulhu games. More than half our group were so afraid of their characters dying after a certain point that they'd just kinda stay in the background as much as possible. At the beginning everyone basically had equal time to shine but halfway through my and two other characters became the group's big three so to speak. We led every conversation and conflict. It might be fun getting to essentially lead the group, but having 5 of the 8 players constantly cowering behind you puts you at higher risk of the thing they're afraid of happening to them. There was one player who wouldn't even enter shops in town because he was convinced everything would be a trap.
Luckily it stayed fun because it wasn't just on me, but it was basically like having a group of three with five people playing what essentially amounted to being NPCs
Glad to know im not the only person with this problem
Nice job! I have a player that does not do this. I constantly am saying, “excellent! We will resolve that decision with a roll in a moment. What are you, you, and you doing while he is about to do this?” Otherwise, the quieter players I can tell just zone out after awhile from lake of involvement.
I recently got invited to a DnD group from a group of friends. I was really hesitant but just listening to some critical role episodes, I realized how fun the game can be. I went in with minimal expectations and already having an amazing time. It really is a fantastic experience of a game so I appreciate these tips on what to be conscious of as a new player.
Im in the same boat man, i see you’re about a year into your journey by this time tho so hopefully you stayed with it and are still having fun, im hoping myself that i can keep playing this as much i love to play it
We had a player doing the "that's what my character would do" to save an npc from dying, she was tied and was relevant to the plot, but also had a strong bond with the player's character. He ended up at 10 hp from 140 or something similar but he managed to save her.
I think that's of the few situations where it's not so bad.
They legit had a strong bond as you say... That is what their character would do no?
@@elgatochurro yeah. That's the only time I've seen someone use the "that's what my character would do" for something good.
Even when everyone was worried the player character would die 'cause he was our strongest DPS at the time.
I have used that when I save small animals that attack us.... I'm a druid what did you want me to do XD
Everyone should be doing what their character would do. Imo the phrase here is when it’s used to justify toxic behavior not just the standard roleplaying.
I mean there's a difference between being antagonistic to the party and maintaining roleplay because "that's what my character would do"
Basically, the golden question to ask yourself - "Is the roleplay antagonistic to the party?"
A thief getting in trouble with the law and implicating the lawful neutral party is antagonistic to the party.
Similarly, being lawful stupid can also be antagonistic to the party - Whether you like or not, that thief is still apart of the party. Give them a peaceful way to right their wrongs and reconnect to the party. Perhaps "Return what you stole and apologize." Maybe the town gives the party a small quest as "punishment" for the thief.
It is also worth noting that being a lawful good character in an unlawful party is also antagonistic to the party. It goes both ways.
My worst player: We're playing over Discord and I messaged all the players an hour before game time, asking if everyone would be ready to play when we all scheduled. Everyone said they could make it in time. Ten minutes before game time, one player hasn't logged in yet so I asked if they were running late and needed more time. They said they were at dinner but could make it by game time. I told them it was in 10 minutes. They insisted that they would make it in time.
An hour after game time, they still hadn't logged in so we messaged them again. They told us they went out for drinks after dinner but will be in game shortly. We decided to start the game without them.
4 HOURS AFTER SCHEDULED GAME TIME: They messaged us that they couldn't make it to the game after all. We've already been playing for 3 hours by this point. When they heard that we started the game without them, they implied I was the a**hole for playing without them when they told us they would show up.
I certainly hope that you asked that player to find another group. Holding the other players hostage to deciding to do something else is horsepucky.
@@aqacefan We decided that my game wasn't the game for them and they weren't invited to any more games.
We have a problem player like this in our D&D discord server. We have roughly about 5 or so games being run on the server and one sister server, and this problem player always wants to join the games because they want to, (already annoying at this point), and every time for every session in every game, they leave mid-way due to some unknown reason that they keep changing. "My head is hurting too badly so I have to lie down," "I'm having dinner so I'll be back later"(then never comes back), "I'm too peeved at something and can't focus", or my favorite, "I'll be back" (no reason given and doesn't come back). Everyone in the Discord server hates this behavior but for some reason unknown to me they let them get away with it. They've known this player much longer before I arrived in the server so it might be personal, but I seriously don't understand how when I point it out to them, and they all agree, why they don't take action against them.
I have experienced something along the same lines, and it is truly annoying.
This kind of thing happens more often than a lot of people think. People want to keep their options open but the game isn't their first priority. They don't want to be excluded in case their plans fall through and they get bored, so they bullshit you so you wait for them until their plans are all fulfilled.
The plot hook one I find interesting. I have played a few games where the DM complained we missed all their plot hooks and for some reason not a single person noticed any of them. We spent the session confused and couldn't figure out what to do. The DM had to point out the plot hooks we had missed. It was a weird session.
I've had this, where a DM has complained about us missing or even intentionally avoiding plot hooks and we're like "... there have been plot hooks? We've been wondering around trying to figure out what we're supposed to be doing."
Try paying attention to what the DM says:
Mentions an NPC - go talk to that character
Mentions a place - go to that place
Says something vague - ask for more details
My favorite one was: Running a Vampire the Masquerade game. Characters were getting ready to go out for the night and they hear the growl of a monster upstairs and a woman screaming. They ignore it. The monster kills the safehouse owner closing down the safehouse. Then the monster goes on to kill another NPC that led into a massive sidequest that would have helped them in their journey. Instead of punishing them, when I gave the rundown of the last session to bring everyone up to speed I explained that they had no more home in that city and that their only connection to a faction had been lost to them. They had to start from a considerable disadvantage and they made it work. After that they stopped ignoring hooks. Sure, I could have worked those hooks back in, but their cavalier attitude toward the world had consequences and I think they enjoyed that more.
I ended up with the opposite problem where my players kept latching onto "hooks" that weren't actual hooks LOL, like going after things intended to be flavor text
In one of the games I was running we at some point had the problem that the PCs did not really know what to and felt a bit lost. I was also starting to struggle a bit to get them to do something, and then I asked them to try and go over the things the things they wanted to do and plot threads that they had not gotten back to dealing with. Turned out that there was more than a dozen different plot threads that they just weren't thinking about, because before they were resolved another interesting plot thread had poped up and stolen their attention. Now we have a strategy channel where they write down these things, and when the plot slows down they get to start discussing "which of these dozen things to do do we want to do now, and is any of the more pressing or needs to be done before others".
I had a player with that same weird interpretation of the 5 foot range and I was blown away! It seems like the most simple and clear rule. If you want the extra square of range, go get a weapon with reach 🤦🏻♂️
Dude, I had the SAME THING!!
Get yourself a glaive!
Or just be a bugbear
@@kel8923 Enlarge wouldn't extend your range, as large creatures still only have a 5' reach. However, a Bugbear Rune Knight using a polearm and could do it, and you can get Lunging Attack from the Martial Adept feat. Use Giant's Might to become large, have someone cast Enlarge on you to become huge. You now occupy a 15' x 15' square, your normal attacks can strike 20' away (10' from being huge size + 5' for polearm reach + 5' from bugbear long arms), and your lunging attack gives you a 25' range.
Add on the polearm master, sentinel and crusher feats and you can make an opportunity attack against a creature the moment it enters your range (from polearm master), dropping its speed to 0 if you hit so it can't move any further (from sentinel), then attack it on your turn and strike with the back end of your weapon as a bonus action (from polearm master) after making all of your attacks, knocking the creature back 5' if the bonus attack hits (from crusher) so it has to step into your attack range again next turn. Rinse and repeat.
On top of that, after you reach level 18 as a Rune Knight fighter, your Giant's Might makes you huge, then you can use Enlarge to become gargantuan, increasing that range by another 5' for a normal range of 25' and a lunging attack range of 30'.
Shadiversity made a video a while back arguing against the 5' range being unrealistic, so that might be where the weird interpretations are coming from. His arguments were extremely flawed, however, so I wouldn't put any stock in whatever he said in that video.
(EDIT for context) Shadiversity's argument was basically exactly what these players were saying, that if he stood at the front edge of his square, that he could reach all the way across one square and into the nearest half of the next square with a lunge, demonstrated IRL. But the game rules assume creatures are in the center of their squares, so the argument falls flat.
I have had the worst luck rolling dice recently. I am consistently rolling 1s and 2s and 3s. And at the worst times -- I took the helm of ship headed for rocks and rolled a nat 1. The ship's wheel came of in my hands. That kind of thing.
Ironically, the failed rolls are actually way more entertaining and lead to so much fun. Anyone who never fails a roll is missing so much of the gaming experience.
one of the people i’m playing with is playing a sorcerer with wild magic. we have a rule at our table that any time that player rolls (ability checks, saving throws, and attack rolls) they have to roll a D 20. If they get in at one, they cast wild magic. specifically, they roll a D100 to see what spell they cast from a big list. anytime this player gets a nat one it’s a huge deal, i remember one time they accidentally summoned a super powerful attack and almost gave the entire party a TPK
Damn it, I got PTSD from bad rolls.
My High Elf Warlock was the only one left conscious battling an orc during a dungeon crawl. And I had to cover for the rogue and the monk of our party for their death saves (they got 6 each iirc, and had 3 or 2 failed so far). And I could NOT hit for shit. Like, the orc was legit supposed to die in a couple of hits IF my Eldritch Blast hit him, but it did not. And I was just turned into a meatshield but thankfully before the orc got rid of me, both of them managed to stabilize themselves.
It was hell, the monk had to waste his only inspiration point to get back up and deal a killing blow to the orc as my high elf warlock fell down at the same turn, seeing the glimpse of her saviour one last time.
My party was fighting Strahd and he ended up grabbing hold of one our paladins.
I rolled to shoot with a gun, and failed, thankfully missing the paladin, but then for my second attack, I rolled a Nat 1 where I not only managed to hit the paladin but did so in a way that severed his entire arm from his body.
He, um, he died. BuT only after another of our party also managed to hit him… (if I haven’t worded some of this right, it’s because I’m still pretty new to the game so sorry!)
#6 is what's happened to my game. It was so bad that even after a year I had to help him level up his character and explain his character sheet every time we played. He also played a sorcerer who mainly used two daggers and would go a couple sessions without using magic. So when he wanted to use magic I had to explain everything again. Sorry this had turned into a venting post.
I feel your pain. We play Savage Worlds, and for a short time (I had to ask him not to return eventually) we had a player who did not understand the basic skill mechanic of the game. "Justin, you need to roll a d6 and a d8" - I said that hundreds of times to him. It was kind of obvious he didn't really care about the game and was just there because he was bored and had nothing to do on Sundays - so removing him was an easy decision.
@@erc1971erc1971 that sucks. The guy we played with was so into the roll play more than anyone else, and my husbands cousin. So I let it go on to long. I think he just didn't want to be bothered with reading or keeping track of anything. It was frustrating.
This is the most polite, calm vent I've seen.
Meanwhile in my group, my rule is if you can't do it, you can't do it. If you don't remember to do it, you don't do it. Knowing how to use your character is your responsibility. With noobs, I make exceptions. After a few months, I stop the exceptions.
I had a player who was playing a warlock with strength as his dump stat and insisting on using shield bash. He obviously failed most of the time, but always wanted to try it. He's currently running a campaign where he randomly nerfs or boosts our characters because he doesn't know what the classes do.
EDIT: We've got another player who is playing a paladin and doesn't seem to know about smite or his healing pool. It's turning me into "that guy" who feels the need to point out how someone else should play their character. I don't want to but since our current campaign has challenge rating "all over the place" it feels necessary.
one of my fellow players have been playing the same edition for 4 years and always have to refer to the book for anything.
Worst player I’ve ever had in a campaign was… Me.
I made a shadow monk who got along with the party. On the neutral good side at first. Throughout the campaign things kept coming up that lead my character to the side of evil. Which was not my intention what so ever. The DM put the devil’s voice in my head, and eventually I realized that my character will have to turn on the party if I wanted to continue. I didn’t wanna be that guy, so I asked if I could retire the character into being an npc, and roll up a new one. I was allowed to, but the cost was pretty steep. At level 19, my old character gained an army of shadow creatures, and wiped us all out. I would from that point on be labeled as the betrayer everytime we started a new campaign. It was just assumed that my characters couldn’t be trusted. Even when I was the Cleric that was keeping them all alive.
Dang. Sounds like you did the most reasonable thing here. Sometimes, character development actually goes into the evil direction and the hero lives long enough to see himself become the villain. That you realised this and stepped back, turning him into an NPC instead is the most reasonable thing to do, I'd say.
I feel like you need new friends.
my dm experience was ruined for a number of months due to monty python quotes. it would start with "he's not riding a horse, he's just banging coconuts together!" and then the whole session would devolve until the players would literally be shouting "Ni!" at my npc. funny the first time, soul destroying 3 sessions in!
I ran a call of cthulhu game where players basically did the same thing. Really hard to run horror when every player is either a moron that guy or disengaged. I since stopped speaking to these people.
Late reply, but yes, I think dnd should be semi serious. It’s ok to be funny and not be edgy all the time, but when it devolves into poop jokes, meme references for every attack, etc, I don’t like it
I had a player in our game actually try and kill us all after fighting the Big Boss and claimed well “that’s what my charcter would do” so my dm had him fight a Tarrasque by himself and instantly healed all of us. He got mad and we told him “well either leave or be a better person” so he left.
Two thoughts on Bad Hygiene: It isn't a real convention until you have smelled your first unwashed attendee. Also, Axe is NOT "Febreze for men."
Tangent warning!
When I drove a bus, one afternoon doing the late run shuttle from the middle school to the high school, a couple of Rhodes scholars decided to have an axe fight- on a packed school bus in June. Dear god, 2 cans of Axe creates a horrific stink...
Called ahead to have the principle meet me- to prevent a mutiny, and group beat down- and she smelled it 150' away!! She was NOT amused, lol.
And also, stinkies are the worst!!
I've never played D&D, but I still had to laugh/cringe repeatedly throughout this list because as a coordinator of a volunteer community group, I can assure you that a lot of these very same issues apply!! 🙈 Particularly the problems of "might turn up, might not" non-communicators, and people who can't put their damn phone away for the duration of a one-hour meeting... 🤦🏻♀️
Coordinating any group activities builds lots of awesome transferable skills, but gosh, it can also turn one's hair grey so fast... 😂 (Edit: completely agree re the expectations issue. I think honestly people often forget that we are volunteers and do this stuff for them FOR FREE!)
There was that time one of our fellow players decided to just give himself advantage on every roll. In a 3.5e game, before that was even a mechanic. We were playing online (even back then) and thought we could trust everyone to keep their rolls honest and roll real dice. He probably never would have been caught except that his roommate (who was also a player in the game) happened to always hear multiple dice being rolled from the other room even when it didn't make sense.
IF he was going to just cheat anyway, why bother with 2 dice? Why not roll just 1 and make up the desired result?
@@kyle1598hffgyfvGiving yourself advantage and just accepting what you get will make it look slightly more natural so people will be less likely to suspect you of cheating. If you just make up your rolls you're likely to accidentally make it very clear you're making them up.
@@catpoke9557 I only fudge about 10% of my rolls, especially if it will end up in an unfair party wipe (I will not protect players from the consequences of their own actions, though)
#10 "That's What My Character Would Do" is the bane of many tables.
The irony is that the key to good RP is asking "What would my character do," but like you said, if you've created a character who wouldn't color within the lines, you need to create a different character or experience some character growth.
At a recent first session where I was a new player to a group, we had a guy who showed up an hour late, stank, and spoke in his outside voice whether in character or out. The first hour had actually been the DM going over his house rules, which included no PvP, but since this guy had played with that DM, he was already familiar with the expectations.
Anyway, as soon as our characters introduced themselves, his character started mocking my character because "that's what his character would do." I RP'd back, and a rivalry started brewing. I don't mind a little in-character conflict as long as it goes somewhere, and we did make some humorous moments from it.
About three scenes in, his (human) character attempted to "pet" my (tabaxi) character. I looked at the DM and said, "The rules say no PvP, but I do not believe my character would tolerate someone trying to violate his bodily autonomy." The DM nodded, and I rolled to hit. Though I missed, that was enough to get his character to back off.
I know that you say, "Just find a different group," but that is not as easy as it sounds.
You didn't mention meta-gaming! Speaking from personal experience, having a player snoop through all the other players' character sheets and then inform the table what each character has in equipment, could do with their spells, and generally using any and all out-of-game information to sink everyone's fun... can be a game destroyer.
For example:
A tip for would-be meta-gamers: If you recognize the GM's description of the enemy, do not announce to the table its weaknesses. DO ask if any characters may have prior knowledge of such a creature to ascertain whether it has a particular weakness. Play accordingly.
A tip for GMs with meta-gamers: don't feel it is necessary to use utterly standard monsters. Feel free to tweak them. If the monster is normally weak to fire, but the setting is a very warm place, then maybe this variant is weak to cold!
I will say, playing minor devil's advocate. The adventurers are likely taking stock of equipment and what their abilities are during rests, since y'know they're a team.
So it's not far fetched to inform a fellow player/character of an ability they have that'd very obviously help in a situation they're in.
I'm not saying backseat play all other players turns every turn, but if the party is running from a monster and reach a cliff, and noone knows what to do, reminding the wizard he has feather fall prepared should be fine.
Just stop caring about a weakness or such
I ran a game once where all the players were also Dungeons Masters as well, so they were people who really knew all the rules and all the monsters of the 5th edition. Even though they tried to avoid meta gaming, sometimes it's inevitable, you have so much information that you can't avoid thinking strategies that your character couldn't do. So to create new and exclusive monsters and enemies are a great way to surprise your players and to bring some dynamics to the game
@@MsJuniorHarris "can't help it" think in CHARACTER
Your character doesn't know all the rules and monster manual
@@elgatochurro You're right they wouldn't but that's why I allow rolls to see if you know what an enemy is? Aberrant = arcana, an undead = religion, plant monster or animal = nature, fey = nature or arcana. But it's easy to tell people to play in characters, but most players aren't professional actors who know how to full immerse themselves into. Say you encounter a skeleton, almost everyone knows their weakness is bludgeoning. Now they are common enemies, but a party of level 1 adventures might not know that, most veteran players are going to whack them with a bludgeoning weapon even if they have to pick up a tree branch to do it or let the spell casters handle them while the martials hold them back.. My point is, when you do have so much out of game knowledge it's hard not to let it seep through no matter how good you are at playing a character. Meta gaming is only bad when it's done with purposeful intention, but when it accidentally slips in it's usually just that, an accident. IF you notice a pattern have a civil conversation about it with said player.
I have a few of these going on at my table, for sure.
Key sins at my table are...
Not remembering what magic items you have.
I have the forced main character syndrome - the rest of the party keeps deferring to my wife's character. My wife, does not want to be the only one doing everything and calling all the shots.
I remember one game where the rest of the party was entering the city through the main gate, waiting in line to be inspected by the town guards and having no problem with it. The thief in the party decides "I'm going to try going over the wall". Four failed grappling hook checks later and having caught the attention of the guards on the wall, he decide to go through the sewers. Meanwhile the rest of the party is in the city and checking in to a comfortable inn.
Game store I used to hang out in had similar signs and you had to go by the counter to get into the store. If they could smell you, you would be asked to leave. It was a small shop with poor ventilation and even in the cold months could get pretty gamey, even with clean bodies in there.
Once our group decided to run an "evil" campaign, and it took a while for the GM to figure out that plot hooks that count on the characters doing things because "it's the right thing to do" wouldn't work any more. The campaign went a bit off the rails for a while until he adapted and started making plot hooks where the party would benefit directly from biting the hooks.
The worst player I ever played with was actually one of my close friends. He could be very difficult to be around and it really came out when we played D&D. Some of the worst bits:
-Was somehow late to a game session AT HIS OWN HOME. His mom let us in and we waited in his basement until he got there.
-definitely had “main character syndrome” and would effectively use other players’ characters to achieve his ends.
-infamously loved to exploit poorly worded rules or “misread” effects to insane effect. Definitely a power gamer that needed a strong DM to keep him in check.
I had a player who had his dark brooding warlock go off on his own, and he expected me to split the part for lengthy periods like full sessions. So I gave his character and epilogue and said ok please roll up a new character.
About the last one, bad hygiene, please please *please* don't ask them to put cologne on over their bad body odor. The mix of scents just make it even worse than the B.O. alone. It does not mask it at all in my experience. I've nearly puked from such combinations...
One time I had a dungeon master tell us we were gonna play a survival style game where we would be fighting big monsters and the setting was wintery and harsh and then for some reason they thought it would be funny to switch the DMs and play a completely different setting that was just a murder mystery style game and it annoyed literally everybody who made a bunch of barbarians and healers and survivalists who dumped a lot of intelligence.
One time I had a player who just kept ditching on our sessions last minute to go play Pokémon, he was banned as soon as I found out what he’d been ditching for all this time.
I recently had a walk on player join our party. he had missed the first two session, which was fine, but he asked what kind of party member he should build to help round off our party. we were in desperate need for a healer so he made a level three cleric. in the middle of our last battle of the session and as we didn't need healing before this we expected if we were in trouble his character would help. not only did he not grab any healing spells, his character was a passivist and wouldn't help buff or heal anyone, leading to a party wipe! Our DM decided once this character left that it had all been a fever dream and none of it happened, and to not invite that player back.
#9 is something I tend to do. This is because I love the role play aspect of the game and the other 2 players in our group are rather quiet. Luckily, I am aware of this, and I try to find ways to get them involved so I am not taking over everything. "Hold on, if I am not mistaken, Johan grew up not far from the Dark Wood and might know something about what is going on there. Johan, what say you?"
But by adding "...what do you say?" Is actually REALLY good, cos it brings others into the game more 🙂
Me, a veteran, playing with noobies. Gadly, they are coming out of the shell.
Being quiet is bad, unless that's the character
Being quiet is AWFUL, DEAD SILENCE is horrible
Number 6 speaks to me on a spiritual level. I love her to death, but I have a player like this in my Sunday game. She’s been using features like Unleash Incarnation on her Echo Knight for months (game’s gone on for over a year) and still go “what’s that do” when asked if she wants to use it to add a little extra damage for a killing blow.
I had a thief and an assassin in more than a campaign and they always robbed everyone, including the other players, and most of the game sessions started with them causing troubles and ending with us fixing problems. Like giving a Magical Gauntlet, with a demonic entity bounded to it, to a NECROMANCER asking for help to understand how it works... Or throwing a final of the undead at the guards spreading the curse to the entire town in minutes and have to runaway from a massive charging mana cannon pointed at us, to obliterate said town, to prevent the plague to spread more and all of this because they tried to rob a shop owner.
Yeah, it can be considered thrilling and fun, but also frustrating to have waste time and resources to fix problems that the two most dangerous characters of the fellowship kept creating for no reason besides killing and pillaging.
#9 realize you will have players who are more RP heavy, players who are more combat engaged, and bystanders who don't really engage much. However I got so sick of being the "forced main character " that when we started a side campaign I specifically made a character who just flat out refuses to be the boss/leader. Still didn't help with our bystander player but at least everyone isn't looking at me for everything now.
The only time the words "It's what my character would do." doesn't feel like opening a can of worms is when said character is biting the bullet for another character. Like the paladin pushing the bard out of the way of the dragons breath but automatically failing the saving throw to do so.
A lot of these can be prevented with a session zero contract. Lay out all the expectations and consequences for breaking the contract, and most-importantly actually enforce the rules consistently and fairly.
Make sure players know what are minor infractions and which are deal breakers.
Have appropriate enforcement levels from verbal warning/ reminder up to and including "leave now and never come back."
If any issues come up, remind players these are the social etiquette rules they all agreed to before the game started.
The only time, the ONLY time, I’ve ever used the phrase “it’s what my character would do” was when I didn’t use my Decanter of Endless Water against a Fire Elemental on round 1 because my Barbarian Warlock panicked and only has 8 Int, so his reflex was to hit it with his Halberd (which also does bonus cold damage) and then used it on the next round because he had a moment to think.
I was in a group where three out of five people decided to make evil characters. They didn't tell the DM because doing it was against his rules. Their secret alignments came out during role play. It was so terrible that the DM ended up up ghosting us. I ended up watching RUclips videos about problem players to work through my feelings. Turns out that the people with the evil characters were doing all the things in the videos. They had mentioned comments made in the videos word for word during role play.
I think the dark loner characters can be fun in there forced to accompany the party and eventually start liking the party
I have a share of worst players too...
One that was dropped almost instantly was a guy who either didn't like the setting or behaved like he didn't like the setting, who thought the setting is stupid, my NPCs are stupid and doing stupid, I'm running my game WRONG, and he called me out for my "mistakes" and tried to avert the genre tropes on every occasion. I didn't know why he joined the game in the first place.
Another one was a real-life Neo-Pagan who built entire character concepts around his (quasi)religious beliefs. Not only he thought that ancient Aryan technologies were superior to modern ones and Christianity is evil, but he insisted that the same is true for EVERY campaign setting (no, seriously). I kicked him out after he had an argument with me that he knows better than ME how MY setiing works.
And there were not one, but several players, each of whom thought that he's the main hero of every story and the leader of every party, that he's a God's gift to every party, that anything he does is a pure genius, and don't you dare disagree with that. One of them was thinking that he should be the main VILLAIN of every story - no, seriously, every character concept he has shown me was about his character trying to betray the party... and he was still thinking that he is the coolest guy at the table, and his very presence makes game 20% cooler. But I've never accepted any of his characters, actually.
The planning forever thing drives me nuts. Especially since the plan hardly ever holds up for more than 5 minutes. I really like the flashback mechanic blades in the dark uses to try to avoid that.
This is a real problem in games I'm part of. Even if we plan out of session for expediency, it doesn't work and that hurts my head.
I was in college when I first started playing D&D. It was a blast! Many of the players were war gamers checking out this new thing called Dungeons and Dragons. After graduating, moving to a big city, and settling in with a real job I began looking for local players. I found them. However these folks were mostly people that would bring their young sons, nephews, neighbors, etc. OMG the whining and crying when their hobbit character attacked a dragon and died!!!
A hobbit we're you trying commit suicide to your character.
Got a player with "solo player" mentality where he does in game actions that really are completely seperate from what the party as a whole wants to do or puposefully screws with stuff or planned events cause he thinks its "fun" and not cooperating with the party and constantly going off on his own.
Generally we asked him not to do these and just cooperate but really i just told my dm if he wants to go off by himself we'll let him but we wont hold it agains the dm if there was a sudden party level encounter and hes alone.
I'm in a group that's mostly filled with audience players compared to active players. I get anxious and talk more than usual. Mainly cause I worry the DM will think no one is having fun.
Just do Initiative the D&D 3.5 way: set up the situation, then go over all of your players asking what their character does before adjudicating anything. It will fix everything.
20:49 I mean, the not telling the GM what spell they're casting actually makes sense in 1 specific circumstance. If you're up against a higher level Spellcasting enemy who has Counterspell, and the DM is making you use the rule of having to use a reaction to identify a spell as it's being cast, (XGE p 85), it would only be fair to be vague about your spells and make the enemy have to choose between identifying it or CSing it.
I don't know if that would be me being petty though or not
The DM already knows everything about everything related to your characters. If they're not metagaming that, it's reasonable they won't metagame a Counterspell.
That awkward moment when you realize that you have been that bad player in the past. In my poor excuse off a defense, it happened after I felt that the DM took away my PC's agency and forced me into positions where my actions played no role in the eventual outcome.
A D.M. should never do that. If you want to check the green dragons sore tooth while it sleeps with it's mouth open that's your prerogative. But what happens after is not my fault..... And your death will be a lesson about green dragons you will never forget. Of course I would warn you, but if you walk inside the mouth saying "that's what they would do" I'm down to clown.
@@NoalFarstrider Agreed. The simplest remedy to "TWMCWD" is increasingly severe repercussions for their actions. They can keep acting like an ass, but the DM just keeps turning up the heat on them until they stop, or they die.
I'm in a campaign where I feel like I hit a lot of the points but at the same time my DM loves my character, some of the PCs definitely dislike him a little bit but the actual players all also seem to like him which I find interesting. He does a lot of stupid things and just doesn't think things through but overall he propels the story forward a lot while doing those things. My DM keeps saying that I'm great at role playing him even though he fits a lot of the "issues" in the video. He's a fun character and shows how TWMCWD can work for evil. Just make it interesting and actually worth it, it also helps that he's trying his best and not just doing it for the sake of being bad or chaotic.
I loved how you borked "pay attention" into "play attention" and just ran with it. Nice recovery.
Everything you said, I agree with. However, at some point leadership needs to play a role. For example, I was at a game Con. There was a stinky kid; at random, he was my partner. We had two hours. Long story short, we got lunch, I bought axe body sprey, and alike. By the time we were ready to play STARFLEETBATTLES. He was as fresh as a new borne. (Without humiliation). It really comes down to the golden rule. Ya' know?
FYI: we won that match with ROM, but got shut out in the next round.
I had a player who insisted everyone roll for all magic items even if they couldn't use it, instead of seeing how it could improve the group.
I have a friend who doesn’t understand what the dm is, and she straight up thinks that any player can narrate, she decides when she meets an Npc, and she voices them, AND I TOLD HER TO ROLL FOR CHARISMA AND SHE COMPLETELY IGNORED ME… don’t be like her, wanna date some random Npc that your dm told you that you can’t make up because you’re not the dm? ATLEAST ROLL FOR CHARISMA!!! Omg, every time she “encounters” an Npc (that I didn’t even approve on) she voices them and chooses their response to get her way. Absolutely stupid. She’s not even the dm, I am :/
Here’s the full story!
Me (DM) (bard)
Her (Druid)
Her sister (bard)
So, it starts in the middle of a calming village full of elves in an enchanted forest, an elderly man comes up to us saying “oh hi! Please come help my family..!” In an old voice. We go to their house and I heal the woman elf, she (the annoying one) wants to heal the child, she roles and she heals him but halfway, I then finish the healing. Later I heal a fox in need of help and she (druid that’s annoying) heals a baby gnome she encountered (I told her there was one)
She takes the baby to a cleric clinic, and adopts him.
Even later on, I go to a bakery and get some health and stamina. And she’s taking care of her baby boy whom she named “Ralph” and she goes to the local library to get books on new motherhood, and meets… the manager, WHOM I NEVER AGREED ON EVEN BEING THERE, and she said “hi! Can I borrow some books, even though it’s closed?” And she MADE HIM SAY “ofc!!” When I would’ve made his response “no, sorry!! It’s closed so nobody can borrow books today.” And when she gets home she says “uh, he was cute ..” while me, DEFEATING AN OGER, FINDING A DUNGEON, ACTUALLY PLAYING THE GAME, she then invites the man ( library man)
To dinner. And before then she says she’s gonna write him a note, she decides to not send it in fear he won’t like her.. and once he arrives, this is where I got upset. She decides to confess her love to the Npc man, and SHE F** MADE HIM SAY “I do too!” WHICH I HAD TOLD HER SHE HAD TO ROLL FOR CHARISMA AND SHE IGNORED ME?! And I had her sister (bard) commit arson and the house they were having dinner at
My horror player is my former DM. I suggested to run a game as well because I wanted to try it out. He constantly made horrible characters just to piss me off. I tried to kill one of them at one point. Which yes, horrible me. Should not have done that but if your player just sits down in combat, just not fighting and not caring... Yeah, this is how it went. Always. He also just rage quit the game if it didn't go his way and was constantly power gaming and min maxing. I will never DM for him again
I had a friend who was the same exact way. I think it comes down to being a control freak.
@@fatherblack1534 some DMs are just terrible players 😪
Oddly my horror player was my lifelong DM too. He’d get butt hurt or turn passive aggressive whenever I made a ruling he didn’t like and just kinda ‘shut down’.
At one point, after game thankfully, he complained about the BBEG playing to win.
Me: you pissed him off and left him alive as you all ran, why wouldn’t he come after you?
Him: we’ll, you didn’t HAVE TO have him do that. It’s still your choice.
@@MJ-jd7rs and then, if he would have been the DM, he would have done the exact same thing.
for some reason, this happens a lot lol
If the player ignore the plot hooks, advance the plot hooks and have it start to affect them in different ways, they leave town for an idiot quest, the bad guys armies lay siege and kill the players favorite npcs or burn they're base of operations so everything they have and got is burned or stolen, never to be seen again, or kill their pets.
I lot of these are things that "depend." Largely, they depend on the nature of the person doing them. "It's what my character would do" is fine if, say, a characters backstory explicitly said they had severe reasons to hate anyone with orc blood, and that's why they killed off the half-orc NPC you meant for them to capture and interrogate. But its BS if they made a chaotic aligned character just as an excuse to do whatever was most disruptive to the intended plotline. In other words, are these things done with good intent? Or are they done out of bad intent, or even mere negligence. So I instead try to look at intent, not the deeds themselves.
Agreed. I occasionally hide things temporarily from the DM, but only because it wouldn't work without a little surprise. For instance, I once got offered 50,000 gold from obvious demon if I gave them the McGuffin object we had found while also signing a magically binding NDA so we couldn't inform anyone. (It literally made us unable to speak about it)
So while the other players were discussing details with the demon, I asked the DM for a pen and started writing on a piece of paper, seemingly just taking notes. What I was actually doing was writing everything down in a piece of paper. I folded it up, placed it in front of me, and accepted the deal. Then I immediately took the notes to the local Paladins. The DM was stunned, but loved it. She rolled with the idea.
I got to keep the money, the Paladins helped, but DM said the Paladins no longer trusted me because I had made a deal with a demon AND cheated a contract. I basically lost out on any future quests with the paladins, which seemed totally fair. But none of that would have been possible if I had followed that rule.
Yeah. I once played in a Monster Hunter campaign, and my ranger had trauma from nearly getting killed by a Rathalos, a large silver dragon thing basically. She hated them.
Que another player joining the group a few sessions in, he was a dragonborn drakewarden and as his companion... got a baby Rathalos. My character was certainly pissed at him. It was a bit difficult to figure out what to do, because my character wouldn't voluntarily stay near the creature she hates so much. It also presented the opportunity for character growth tho, so I was conflicted. (Un)luckily however, the game got cut short due to IRL drama.
The three things in particular about "people having side conversations", "people never showing up" and "people making characters that dont fit the game" is sadly something that I've seen too much in the campaign I've been a part of. I was usually the only if not one of the only people to ever show up alongside the dm. There was also a time where I met a particularily annoying player "whose name would be pointless to mention", made a character who was way too young to go on adventures and when he had no choice but to go on the adventure, he picked fights with everything and stole from the party members.
I was in a party with another player who was actually a very decent individual...or so we thought. Very nice, thoughtful, and inclusive guy and showed this side for 2 years. One day is character died from a critical hit (we were low lvl) and he told the DM AND I QUOTE
"I'm not mad you killed my character...I'm mad because you're just a shitty person"
The DM was pretty baffled and kicked the player because it didn't stop at just that as said player preceded to attack all of us for no reason. 6 months later he tried to come back into the group but was caught just copy and pasting the same generic apologies to all of us. Just goes to show you never truly know somebody because I would have never expected this from him.
That's so bizzare. Why would someone act like that, and then want to come back into the group after they were kicked for hating all of the players?
@@firstnamelastname7244 Bruh no idea probably couldnt get a group anywhere else but still I also thought it qas bizzare
I recently started a Wrath of the Righteous campaign and the server I play on usually has a line about "What ratio of RP/combat/exploration do you want" so i added it the posting I made asking for players.
One of the responses I got was someone who was interested in an RP heavy game with occasional combat and exploration. It made it an easy decision to exclude them. Being the vanguard in a war against a demon invasion is not the game for that person.
I had a player (same class for over 2years) couldn't remember you could move in a turn, that is character sheet changed every session (dnd beyond), adding abilities the sub class doesn't even have, complaining his HP wasn't high enough. Eventually he was the reason the campaign broke down and him being "busy" but wanting the log in bonus like a game made my other players want to do the same. They also expected me to come up with a new campaign when they wanted to play, not follow the story I had crafted around their backstories
That frustrated face at the end of the wizard taking ages picking spells skit had me slayed 😂😂
Great vid
Number 14 as described are cheaters. Powergamers are those who use loopholes allowing unintended advantages (there are tons of them, of course) and build their characters around them. Then, yes, they had to argue for the legitimacy of that loopholes, because if DM kills the loophole, it's a death to the build.
This is the big reason I don't allow UA. A lot of these additions still have a ton of loopholes that my munchkin friends will constantly take advantage of. UA is fine when you have a story focused group, but powergamers turn it into a farce.
I had a player who is why I banned metal dice in my games. He would do "test rolls" when he first got them. This resulted in him not actually rolling, but moreso dropping his dice in a way that their weight would make it so they just fell and didn't move. So he'd get like 4 nat 20s in one session and never failed a roll.
No rule that the die should roll or at least move? Maybe only use a cup to roll?
@Cheepchipsable I never thought I'd have to make a rule like that tbh I figured it was common etiquette. I did tell him it had to actually roll, to which he tried to argue with me. Hence me banning metal dice as a whole.
From what I've seen, metal dice tend to slide on hard, flat surfaces but roll well over softer ones, like a seat of a couch or an armchair. Maybe this will help.
The problem isn't the metal dice; the problem is the cheating cheater. The solution is for that person to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of uncertainty in a game -- why we roll dice at all. (In the meantime, offer them the opportunity to use 3d6 or 3z7 instead of 1d20.)
@ntony4377 this was years ago, like pre-pandemic years ago lol I'm not in contact with this player anymore after he broke one of my only hard line rules as a dm. No use of sexual assault for shock value.
I still prefer people don't use metal dice, at least not without a softer surface like a lined dice tray to roll on simply because they hurt my ears lol but they aren't banned anymore.
#16 "Denying the Collaborative Nature of the Game"
The DM and the players have a shared responsibility for generating motivation for characters taking the plot hooks.
In a recent game, the party literally met in a tavern--apparently a really crowded tavern where all the outsiders were basically herded to one table. Now, I hate that exhausted trope and find it really difficult to believe, so I wrote into my character's backstory some reasons why he would be willing to throw in his lot with a bunch of strangers. (I still prefer DMs who make an effort to create more plausible reasons for the party forming ... )
Many years ago, for a one-shot, our characters were told to meet a potential employer in some public location, where we were ambushed. After fighting through the ambush and winning, the employer said, "Great, you passed the job interview." My character said, "I don't like to work for people who are that callous with my life, so the price is doubled."
Honestly, I felt like that was generous; I can't conceive of someone who is a serious badass agreeing to work for someone who disrespects them like that, but by doubling the price, I was giving the GM a chance to meet me halfway on motivation so that we could move on with the game.
Even though it was a one-shot, and there would be zero long-term consequences to the NPCs paying double, the DM steadfastly refused.
So my character turned down the job, even though that meant my evening of playing was done.
Collaboration is a two-way street.
My worst player: I ran a D&D one-shot over Discord a few months ago about a mystery at a baseball stadium and the players got to play baseball in D&D. It was a fun time, for the most part.
One of the players was a Fairy Fey Wanderer Ranger who openly told me that they were trying to break my game months before we started, so I slightly brought this upon myself. Still, they rules-lawyered the hell out of the game, pointed out text in the module I was basing everything on that contradicted what another player was trying to do (casting Magic Weapon on the baseball, a magical ball of force, which I allowed with their pretty good arcana check), and irritated other players to a point where one of them left the Discord call and we ended up calling it quits for the night as they were about to fight a powerful spellcaster. I still have not resumed that game, but it did help me learn about when to be accommodating as a DM and what crosses the line of being too accommodating.
Powergamers are by far the most annoying in my experience.
Letting a player into your game after they tell you they're "trying to break your game" is too accommodating. That person hasn't just declared themselves your enemy, they've declared that they're trying to ruin the experience of all your players; you have a responsibility to kick them out.
@@purplelibraryguy8729 I was a newer DM at the time honestly. Probably why I was a little more accommodating than I should have been. This was almost two years ago. Glad to have learned from my mistakes :)
When it comes to number 21.... this is indeed a thing. The game shops in my area have the same signs posted here. It seems to be a common enough thing for gamers to not know what a shower and/or laundromat is.
I feel like the biggest one I always struggle with is inconsistent players. It's always struck me as odd since we have a great group of players that all get along and the sessions are *always* a riot. Yet nobody can dedicate one sunday afternooon for roughly 4 hours on a bi-weekly basis consistently for some reason?
"That's what my character would do" Me using that phrase as an excuse for my character to fall into the pit trap that WE ALL KNEW WAS THERE because he is an idiot. The worst player I've ever had was my friend, she didn't know how to attack after I told her a billion times. Probably because she was reading
I’ve done similar things too. I used a spell that did cold damage to an opponent that was resistant to cold damage because Tim knew that it was resistant but my PC had never seen or heard of the monster so HE didn’t know. After that night’s session I told the DM that I was using a cold spell despite me knowing that it wasn’t very effective and he said, “I forgot all about that, I wasn’t applying the resistance.”
@@tscoff i do that too LOL.
I always use a turn to attack with the "wrong" type of damage to roleplay how my PC discovers that it's useless against the monster.
@@GutisFive I don’t always do that. I play my characters. Sometimes they know the strengths and weaknesses of their opponents and sometimes they don’t. Role playing is part of what makes the game fun!
@@GutisFive Why not two turns? Three?
#10: In my game, my son plays a rogue that is like this. He never tries to play it off as "That's what my character would do." and we have a pretty chill group. But once I had a townmaster invite the party to a party to celebrate their victory. At the door, he asked, "I trust the reward I gave you has been divided among your companions in good fashion?" The players loved it... including my son!
Worst player ever: the ones who try to hijack the game.
DMs and players need to be on the outlook for this. DMs can be momentarily fooled, thinking the "wild player" is into the world and really role-playing! They are not. They are hijacking the game. We had three sessions where we never had "the first encounter" from this, as every move got sidetracked. I've seen groups be destroyed by this, and the player doing this often thinks they are clever and driving the game, and are usually say, "That is what my character would do." This is just an excuse to do bad and wreck it all. This is their idea of "fun."
Yeah, I had a player who started to do that. What started off as him playing his role as the roguish scoundrel gradually turned into frequent attempts to solve most every encounter or problem on his own. Information gathering, scouting, puzzle solving, he’d want to do it all; even if there were other characters better suited for the task. Then he wanted a homebrew item so he could have his own pet raven and be able to communicate with it telepathically, to make his character more like Assassin’s Creed. The group already had a newbie playing a beastmaster ranger, so I said that the best I could do was maybe an item that would allow him to cast find familiar. We went back and forth on it for awhile and ultimately the group disbanded before we got that far, but it was always a challenge getting him to take a backseat during non-combat encounters.
I'm a first time DM, and I made it explicity clear that I want the world to have consequences, both positive and negative.
If the save an NPC, that NPC might return later to help them in tneir adventures. If the ignore the vampires in the north, the vampires will probably sack the city and murder/subjigate everyone.
Of course, I also let them know that they will have time to explore other the city and go shopping, or if they want to explore the nearby forest to gather resources, that is fine. The plot can wait a little bit so they have some time to prepare.
Things DMs should not do: 20:39
Look none of us want murder hobos at our table, but consequences shouldn't be used to bash players over their heads for their "bad behavior". If a consequence is something that can be beat, it is just another adventure, which isn't a punishment. If it's something the players cannot overcome you are now playing antagonistically towards your players, extremely unhealthy. So instead of doing that, when your player does stupid murder hobo things, just turn to the player and say no. It works much better and is much healthier for the game.
That's even worse. You're not stopping bad behavior, you're stripping players of their agency. I'm not going to cancel people's decisions when they're bad, I'm going to show them why they were bad, from the world's viewpoint, not from the DM's. It's not playing revenge, it's playing consequences.
@@IRQ17As stated before, you'll either end up killing the PC, or giving them an adventure, neither of which will yield good behavior out of them. They won't learn anything. So yeah, you are playing revenge.
Besides, the idea that telling your players no is stripping players of agency is ridiculous. DMs tell players no all the time. If their were no "no's" the game would have no boundaries, which would fundamentally undermine the game. Players need some autonomy, but that does not entail anything the player can think of.
How is stopping a player from ruining the game for others with their murder hoboing unhealthy?
@@TheAnimeAtheist From my own example, "getting framed for murder of a major NPC that used to introduce you everywhere and sponsored your party" is neither of those and gets the bonus of being actual direct consequence of their dumb shit plot-wise. The campaign is shaken, they lost a lot of resources and renome and have to rethink what they did without an easy fix to that and the only part coming personally from me as a DM is BBEG rubbing it in their faces - and that's just to make sure they know it's because of their decision and not a pre-scripted event.
And for the record, I have the right to veto in my sessions and the players know it. It's basically a "gods are so offended by your last decision they remove it and all consequences of it from reality" scenario for cases where they fucked up so much I can't think of ANY way to solve it (aptly named Power Word: GTFO). So far I used it once: when party's ranger started singing in a shower and got a nat1 on self-imposed performance roll. If they want to do something moderately dumb, I usually just ask if they're sure they want to proceed with the plan. They still do what they want but actually think why I asked that beforehand.
@@IRQ17 Sounds like you gave them an adventure to me.
@@TheAnimeAtheist Define "adventure" because from my point of view I broke the one they were having.
In "difficult situations" I tend to ask the player "Do you think if your character acted like this many times in his past he would be here now?"
First time viewer here, I really love your content! My session is currently dealing with a problem player and your vids have been super helpful in finding a solution to deal with said player. Now, onto the story. We play Pathfinder 1st edition because the DM likes the customization available in it compared to 5e, and so we get a group together and make some characters. In little ways each of us are problematic I suppose? I played a rogue who made some very bad choices, there was an Oracle that was just there to have fun, and a magus who was a min-maxer (def not a power player though). The problem player was the paladin. Paladin spent multiple sessions harassing my character because they're a tiefling, declared multiple times they aren't "officially apart of the party" and demanded his own private cut of all treasure we receive. He did friendly fire on a few occasions and when told he would be hurting his allies he said he didn't care. He also was a power player and would like about his stats, (he had a 30 AC by level 8 and he one-shot most creatures in encounters.) He used all the money he took from us to buy Uber broken enchantments for his weapons like keen and speed, and I eventually had enough of his character and told him off. "The DM has to make the campaign that much harder for the rest of us just to accommodate you!" I would say to him, and his response was that it doesn't affect him so he doesn't care. We're giving him one last chance this upcoming session to get himself straight and to become a good player but I highly doubt that. We as a group had to have a private discussion without him just so players had a chance to talk about how paladin makes them feel. We've decided as a group that his character will die if he continues acting up. We shall see I suppose. Any recommendations would be great as always on what to do about this.
TL;DR Selfish, Problematic Paladin tries to become broken, making the session less fun for the rest of us.
Long post I know, more a vent than anything else...
Just a quick update: We decided to attempt a peaceful intervention to tell him how we feel and give him a chance to change. His character changed (because it's what we asked) but he didn't. His character was still doing stupid amounts of damage, and this time he spent the entire session on his phone playing mobile games like Bloons TD. The DM felt massively disrespected because he was no longer paying attention to the game, and decided he's no longer welcome back.
Can't say we didn't try to make it work.
I've had all of these happen at my games, at least a handful in each of my campaigns. The only exception is the unrealistic expectations, because I haven't run games in a few years and Critical Role wasn't a thing then.
The other thing that you missed that I'd add to the list is metagaming. I've had players do stuff like "Oh that's clearly a demon so it had fire resistance" when his character had never seen a demon or devil before, or just knew how many HP and the AC of certain monsters and would use this information in character. I have also had a player try to use his understanding outside the game of how gunpowder works, to justify his monk being able to create firearms.
I once had a player who gave me pushback EVERY SINGLE TIME I asked them to roll the dice.
Yes. Even for combat rolls. It was Pathfinder. Crunchy game. Did not want to roll dice at all. It was weird.
My first time playing DnD I had no idea what I was doing. After finishing my character I stuck to her backstory for how she would act. That meant she didn’t like people, and often preferred being alone, and the group I was playing with (who I had joined mid adventure) wasn’t making it better for my character (but I laughed a lot). When I realized (or was told) my character had to stick with the group to keep playing, I ran several thoughts by myself and came across a few good reasons that tie into the gamplay at that point for her to stick around with a bunch of people. She had an easy target to pickpocket from (although I’m no longer allowed to), she’ s actually met very nice people on her adventures with this group, and I may have given her a crush on the leader who has wings which is funny considering my character is collecting wings from monsters we beat. I didn’t want my character to be a lone wolf, more she wasn’t a fan of people and would rather steal and be on her merry way. But now we’re about to be tpk’d apparently. Also, my situation isn’t helped by the fact that the table mates, my teammates, all pretty much hate me. My character isn’t even allowed to speak and that rule is reinforced constantly by the people I’m expected to work with, but it’s better than playing with my family (trying to, and also being a dm…).
OK . sorry to hear about your table mates. If they hate you( are you sure?) then why play with them? Find another group that you can make friends with. It's not called the world wide web for naught. Good hunting. There are some good players who will appreciate you. I'm certain. Now go foth!
Your description of powergamers sounds more like cheating than powergaming to me.
I mean, it is a form of cheating, even though it's not precisely against the rules
I was in a game once with eight players. One session we were all debating on the best way to infiltrate a dwarven fortress. I, being a rogue changeling, wanted to disguise myself and sneak in all stealthy-like, while the two fighters wanted to rush in, guns blazing (or rather, swords swinging). The argument went on for two whole hours before the DM finally lost it and sicked a white dragon on us, which then destroyed the fortress. It was a fun time.
You should make a video about the unspoken contracts between the players and dungeon masters. With an entire section on snacks obviously
I remember having playing a campaign that definitely had a main character complex (this was the DMs favoured friend)
The player didnt care about main quests or side quests but dominated the direction of the group and ALWAYS wanted to do something to the disadvantage of us quieter players as we never got ample room to say what we wanted.
Always trying to get the group into trouble by attempting to be 'funny' all the time and wanting to attack everyone and ignoring DMs queues to stop which alot of times near got us killed.
Also he expressed he only cared for combat and focused on 'midmaxing' his character to destroy enemies, which made the DM bump up the difficulty, which made it worse for us... not to mention since he was obsessed with stats each turn of combat he had lasted near 20-30 minutes calculating the number of additives, bonus and effects to his attacks, constantly changing his mind and starting over or asking various winded impossible actions he wanted to do but ultimately were shut down because they were game breaking. Horrible experience
11:58
Was in a group where every player had that except for myself and 2 others. They constantly backtracked if they made a mistake and actively didn’t care about the well-being of the other players. Two even sold the last gift a dead PC gave to them because it didn’t fit their aesthetics.
Backtracking or retconning is the cancer of immersion. It is very rare that it should be allowed.
Had a player who would do this constantly. Tried to teach him 40k. Managed to make every TURN last 4-5hours. TURN NOT GAME!
Anyways tried to play a game with him that wasn't a tutorial where he was handed a victory. The bitching and whining over every casualty was amazing. Guy was playing Tyranids...
Then he demanded to replay the entire turn because I could tell him from memory every move that happened in the last 5 hours ergo he needed to have a bunch of models back.
I cut him out of my life. Lot of other red flags with that guy but holly shit did he enjoy wasting your time and making people treat him like a 409 pound baby.
NOTE: Not in order with the video
1. Solved by punishing the player. They lose a turn, they cast the wrong spell, etc.
2. Solved by introducing the setting and story before character creation session. If player insists on a character that doesn't fit, just put your foot down and say "nope, that doesn't fit the story".
3. You can play judo with the player a bit, but after enough dares, punish the PC.
4. Start a game with a smaller group. The other PC is just not there to go on the adventure.
5. Solved in the same way as #1
6. Just have a talk, and say "well this just my group, and if you don't want to be part of the group, it's fine. Good luck getting in contact with Matt." :P
7. Do a round robin with the players, even out of combat, so that they aren't talking over each other. "So you did that, okay now Player 2, what do you want to do? Okay, player 2 did this, too late to do anything else! What do you want to do Player 3?"
8. Judo the player. Punish him. Use an NPC to say something like "Wow, I'd totally beat him up for that." Nudging them towards pvp. Use a court system to finish up the dispute resolution. "I agree your character would do this, but this is what my NPCs would do. The other PCs can also respond in kind." "The plaintiff states that the defendant stole his magic sword. Evidence has been gathered, and the defendant is hereby fined 1000 gold pieces to be delivered to the plaintiff, as well as 200 gold pieces paid to the court."
The defendant appeals to say that he can't afford that fee.
"Therefore, the defendant has been sentenced to 6 months hard labour to pay off the debt. The funds accrued in profit from this labour will be payable to the plaintiff." The defendant's character is then out of the game for 6 months in-game, and he probably might want to roll up a new character.
9. Do a round robin. Players each make a suggestion on what to do. Players can vote on it, or they can go it alone. If it takes too long, insert an NPC to offer suggestions. Insert a ticking clock. "1 hour goes by as you discuss. That's 1 less hour to get to the place, and 1 less hour of time that you have to save the princess before she dies."
10. An egg timer! If player takes more than 1 minute to take their turn, they lose the turn. >:) "You hesitated out of fear. Your heart is pumping too hard." The player will be annoyed, but the other players won't be. Advise them to think faster, and don't punish them for not being perfect in their choices. "The wizard does a melee attack, and it barely grazes the monster's head, a miss! But the monster is frightened by this, since he doesn't know if the wizard is actually good with swinging that staff, so he moves away from him." Then the player feels like he still did something, and it encourages him to make a decision within the time limit.
11. Round robin again. Players impact the world in different ways. Combat isn't the way to victory all the time. Power gamer can win at combat, but other players might win at intrigue or stealing gold, or disabling traps, whatever. This may have been the original intent of the class system. You can also fudge a bit with power gamers. "You cut off the villain's head, but your sword then impacted a brick wall and broke. It's because your swing was so strong, and the blade just slid through the flesh like it was nothing."
12. Just know the rules and call them out on it. Put your foot down. If they're cheating at dice, you gotta just not let them do that. At worst, kick them out of the group.
13. Round robin again. Players don't have to co-operate, but if they don't, then they can't defeat the villain, they can't get through the dungeon. Just gradually dish out consequences to each of them - in a judo way, so they don't feel like the GM is just always evil... eg. "I go to eat at the inn by myself" don't say "the inn keeper doesn't want to give you information! bandits attack you in the inn!" or whatever... instead, just play it "realistically" or gently guide them into scenarios where they would need help from others - but don't trap them in those scenarios; they can run away, but they'll feel upset after awhile when they accomplish almost nothing worthy of note above the reputation of those typical NPCs. Do this until they all realize that they have to work together; dropping hints via NPC certainly helps, "Gee if I were to told to do that, I'd get my brother to help me. Two heads are better than one as they say." If two players are co-operating, the others might start thinking about co-operating or feel left out - so it's like a snowball effect. In a way, that would feel like character growth. Maybe I'm just being idealistic here?
If the snowball doesn't occur, then maybe it's one of the other problems listed in the video.
14. Solved by fudging. Ranged combat? Maybe the monk can just use their monk speed to run up a cliff ninja-style to get at the ranged enemy. Maybe the paladin just knows how to sniff out a liar? Maybe the cleric can in fact cure disease at low level. Etc.
15. Judo the players. Kill an NPC? Consequences! Murder hobo? Consequences. Guide them into acting sane and civilized, or the rest of society treats them like barbarians who deserve death or infinite prison time. You can have NPCs say their grievances to the players during their trial. Explain this is just how NPCs act and feel in the story and setting and it's out of your hands, as GM. If players just want to be evil murder hobos in consecutive stories, explain that the campaign will be a short one, unless you don't mind running an evil campaign.
16. GM approves all items the players get and writes them down in his own notes. Takes a lot of tracking and lawyering, but if the players already distrust the GM, then your in hot water anyway, and you gotta do this sort of work, hopefully to re-establish trust with them.
Love how Luke makes up new words when he is craving bacon and or angry
I can relate to Analysis Paralysis as a GM - This often happens because some players are VERY timid and are scared of making a decision whether right or wrong because they feel any decision they make will be the wrong one. Then you have players who have a high intellect (masters degree or PHD) who over think a situation and basically over think a situation. This can and does waste so much time because the GM typically will have it all planned out in advance and it then becomes a luck of the draw what you end up doing. Or you will have a GM that will have an encounter ready which will spring on you no matter what entrance you use. This is why in my games one of the players is assigned and becomes party leader due to level/charisma/leadership abilities/his epic quest or other factors. The players give input and the leader makes the decision.
I was running my very first campaign about 5 years ago, and i had this one player be so horrible it killed my game. First off we had to play the game at his apartment because my family smokes and the girlfriend he had couldnt handle the smoking, and that wasnt a problem. What was a problem was he would cheat on dice rolls trying to be a power gamer, and encourage me sabotaging other players characters so he could be in the spotlight. He also had a very bad temper, and during the last session he nearly caused a fist fight with one of my other players, and i just checked out told them to pack things because the game was over and i left.
I have this huge issue where my PCs in my campaign always question or metacritic the game when something that doesn’t quite fit in the usual idea of my campaign in. I understand it doesn’t make sense, but when they belittle the stuff I do it makes me think I’m just not a good DM in general
As a player, i had those moments that felt like my group just cheesing the event, if it was my friend that needed rescue, and one of the players just decided that he would not kill guards (wtf man you just killed people, you an orc lol) but i respected that, but the argument just was annoying
As a DM I had my really good friend as a player but when we played he just argued with me all the time and every session's end, he just talked with me at discord and explained to me things i did wrong... While the other was like... Meh it's not that matters, and as a friend and me as a totally new Dm I thought he will enjoy my game but it felt like he searched where to bash me aside, I love him, but I'm happy he decided my game isn't fit for him (although he could do this better then just say that I'm suck)
Because when someone is saying that you are suck, it just lets you feel like the others stay because they don't wanna hurt you... And its the last thing I want to happen
And I'm always sitting for hours to prepare for the game (I'm having fun with it but still)
I know I’m late to the party, but here is my little gem of a player. Start of the game, he says that he has created a home brew race. I say it’s fine, just let me look at it. Edgelordiest race I have ever seen. Basic tragic backstory, +5 to EVERY STAT, immunity to all damage except radiant, kills anyone he hits automatically. Needless to say, I said he needed to make a new character, and he refused, so I made one for him. He got Grunkelfunk, the gnome bard. He left.
Late comment. I tried this in one game. One player had a robot that also can make literally anything but also had a big gun and had an ac of 25 and existed in a medieval setting and also liked to make a penis for his character out of dead enemies and a cowboy hat.
I made a character that was basically a big lionman thing. Not a big important race or anything but I wanted there to be lion people because I had an awesome model for it. Also I wanted a big sword.
This by contrast was a hard pill for the dm to swallow and also insisted that I was king of a big empire of these things even though this grossly conflicted with my backstory and it literally made zero sense that a king would leave his kingdom to engage in the most weird and convoluted adventure ever. Also game sessions would last AT MINIUM 8 hours an hour and a half of which was play time the reason was listening to the retarded robot character metagame and rules lawyer. I finally quit at the end of a 12 hour session. I has to be up at 6 the next day so the DM insisted we do one last battle that took 4.5 hours and ended around 11:50 pm. In those 4.5 hours I played 4 rounds of combat. I moved forward hit a thing with my sword and then had to listen to a LOTR extended edition length rules lawyering and meta gaming.
I will never play d and d again!
I’m glad I started watching dm guides it really helps me see all the massive mistakes I make as a new dm.. luckily for me my players are all new so I don’t think they can tell but railroading is a mistake I made in my last game. It was like 3 hours into the session and they hadn’t made any decisions or progress at all into the game or story they spent a real hour deciding which direction to go then 30 minutes on whether or not they wanted to go into a building so I thought I’d say a sandstorm was brewing to encourage them/force them into the building. So then they began retreating back to the ship/base to continue discussing what to do. Sandstorm died down they eventually went in and then spent another hour deciding if they wanted to explore the building and go into the “dungeon basically” spending the whole session outside of the entrance then standing and talking in the first room. Then the session ended because it was several hours in at this point. I’m sure there’s many things I could have done to fix the situation I thought the sandstorm push was good even going so far to railroad 1d4 damage every couple minutes they stayed exposed to the elements bad idea I know but like it had been real true hours into this game I set up and they just sat at the entrance of the dungeon discussion if they should explore it or if it was too risky/dangerous. The game was mothership 0e but the situation could apply to most rpgs I assume.
Instead of pushing them in with in game reasons, it's okay for you to straight up ask the players "Why aren't you going in? The adventure is clearly that way?"
Go read the AngryGM, he's great!
i'd have done something similar, in my game the clock is running in game actions take "in game time" so if they spend 30 minutes in the shop buying gear then i say its 5/10 minutes past, but planning especially in the dungeon or in public takes place in real time so if planning starts to drag "along comes a goblin"
I had a DM do this. It’s bad enough when one player does this, but for a whole game to have inappropriate classes? Yeah, I’m not playing with him anymore.
Players who still don't know their characters after 2 years? This is why I CANT STAND watching Critical Role!!! Most of that group STILL dont know how to play the game or their characters. Highly aggravating to watch.
For that last point, I have a FLGS near me that has a display in the bathroom, along with a sign that says to the effect of "we get it, you've had a long day and just want to get a fun game in. If you've got that 'not so fresh feeling", please feel free to use some of these hygiene products (which included single-use sticks of deodorant, toothbrush and toothpaste, etc.). If you need a clean shirt, please take one of these, and pay for it at the cashier before you leave." I think this is a tactful way for the shop to kindly ask people to take care of their hygiene before sitting down at a table.
Expectations: I hate it when players change their Expectations half way through the campaign because they forgot everything in session zero... or what is written on their character sheet.
Session zero needs a written contract that is part of everyone's character sheet.
The contract includes expectations and consequences for not meeting those expectations.
On your third point. I knew a guy that told me about one of his players (also a guy I sort of knew) that wanted to set up a provisions and magic ingredient supply shop. Everyone else was in on missions, but he started a business and was like breeding toads and stuff (spell ingredients??) to sell. His goal was to make a ton of money by not fighting, not going on adventures, but by being the proprietor of a one stop shop for adventures.... OK... sure...
I've actually had the opposite of the "plot hook" problem, with players almost magically identifying hooks and trying to speed-run everything. I've spent a lot of time hoping they'd explore my open-world sandbox that I spent so much time on, hoping they'd spend some time RP'ing with each other or the various interesting NPC's I've littered about, but as soon as they detect a whiff of a hook, they're like I GO DO THAT AND ONLY THAT NOW. Look, I don't have the full adventure that hook leads to prepared, you're killing the game time by not exploring the rest of I GO DO THAT AND ONLY THAT NOW. But what about inter-player RP? Surely you can talk to each othe- I GO DO THAT AND ONLY THAT NOW. Okay, but what about the - I GO DO THAT AND ONLY THAT NOW. There's an amazing description for the area - I GO DO THAT AND ONLY THAT NOW. This fun NPC has an intriguing - I GO DO THAT AND ONLY THAT NOW. Okay, fine, here's the big bad and the entire campaign is over because you all decided to speed-run it like I GO DO THAT AND ONLY THAT NOW. Way to go, you won D&D ("and it was ADVANCED!" - Pierce Hawthorne). And all the story prep for you exploring the world I created for you goes in the shitter and also I guess the campaign is over now because that was all I had.
Yep, Go and find another group and only that now. Get out your" little black book of potential new players" Be the Demon King of the interwebs. and rustle some up. I totally understand. Good Hunting.
@@Cyberfender1
I mean, they're good players, the problem is that they're TOO good players, and are basically trying to speedrun D&D. Whch is no fun to DM for.
Speaking as DM/GM who has been running games since Advanced D&D first came out... you NAILED this one!
I'm guilty of main character syndrome sometimes, but in my defense when others just want to sit there someone needs to advance the story.
@@igorsdonjon2271 honestly as a dm, i agree. Sometimes other players need one player to lead them
Regarding #9 I got the opposite problem. As a player I frequently run into situations, where our party does not make a decision until I decide what we do - i feel like I'm forced to be the main character without wanting it. It's super annoying, because I encourage others to speak more, I ask them to take the lead but they wont. There have been a couple of times where terrible consequences had happened, because our DM didnt want to wait forever and I didnt want to take the spotlight again. What can I as a player do to avoid having to choose between being the main character or watching everything fall apart because nobody wants to decide anything at all
I don't have an answer for this since I've only just started playing the game myself, but do the other players and the DM know you feel this way?
Have you outright told the players out of game that you would like them to step up to the plate more? That you feel too much is weighing on you and it's not fun?
I was unsure if the asking them to lead part was entirely in character or if the players know how big of a deal it is and not just offhand comments without weight.
If you had, I'd suggest looking for another group if they won't work with you to improve everyone's experience. People who will not compromise after a frank and honest conversation don't ever intend to change so the misery will continue...
When it comes to the actual game, I dont know why people even put Mercer as a high standard and expectation. Descriptions and acting, fair, but actual game design: lol
And probably most of the descriptions were done for him
I always hear people complaining that the expectations are too high because not everybody is a professional voice actor like matt mercer. Since when does voice acting makes you a good GM? It IS the cerry on top. But it is NOT mandatory.
Probably the worst thing a player could do imo is constantly see the worst in other players while never seeing the faults in themselves.
I have a friend who points out all of our friends' flaws to me behind they're backs. And then he has the nerve to say "I consider myself to be the best player of our friend group."
One game we were in, this friend of mine played a secretive rogue who would always go off on his own missions for literal hours. After one session, he vented to me that everyone in the party sucked at roleplay because no one would interact with his character. So he had to go off on his own to get the spotlight. But here's the thing. The party DID try to interact with him!! It he just didn't consider the attempts "good enough roleplay" and brushed them all off. This happened with multiple sessions. So many hours down the drain because of one person's pride...
My worst player was simply thankless.
I wrote a oneshot adventure. His job? Bring some snacks.
He brought ONE bagel for himself.
Then, after the session, said "That's it?" And was surprised when I never invited him again.
There is nothing wrong with "that's what my character would do". The problem is bad communication.
If you don't notice that the backstory you have written will lead you to have a reason to want the party dead, throwing bad RP on top of bad character design does not improve the situation. You made your bed now lay in it.
Talk to the other players, or the DM. Maybe you can establish a narrative reason for a change of heart. Maybe, it is time for an unfortunate accident. Literally anything is better than just ignoring the character you have created to be more convenient.