There are two types of D&D mysteries: 1. Bad DM: Nope not there. You don't see anything. That doesn't work. 2. Good DM: *after an hour of searching* Ok the dwarf tells you to CHECK THE BASEMENT. He is confident that you'll find something CHECK THE BASEMENT. "Come on guys let's check the attic again I'm sure there was something weird about that Mannequin" AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!
I will NEVER understand these DMs who actively ruin player's fun because they didn't think of an ability, but the players love to use it. Just how bad do you have to be at improvising?
that's a bit of a catch 22,though: as DM you want your players to be able to solve the mystery but you also don't want it to be too easy otherwise it ruins the fun so you gotta try to find that balance so that it's tricky but not SO tricky that they don't ever get it.
@@JT5555 Crafting a good mystery is hard without a doubt. Personally, I say accept you won't always get it right and you'll have to improvise sometimes, and it won't be as good as you were expecting it to be... but it can still be fun. Of course it's advice I myself struggle to take because I'm a neurotic perfectionist who gets depressed by not living up to their constant unrealistic expectations.
I mean hell I've done it twice, to the same DM with two different characters. Near TPK but our cleric is still alive and working on it, DM makes the enemies use their turns to attack our death-saving collapsed party members? Instantly perma-killing them? Assumedly out of spite because we didn't want to travel with her murderhobo PC who she then made start EATING the dead party before they could be brought anywhere to be revivified? "I'm going to DM this exact campaign years later with the same players and party minus your DMPC. We're getting what not necessarily has to be a better ending, but one that was earned fairly." Other player at the table yanks on an adolescent white dragons tail, causing a cone of cold that kills my PC and not his? DM enforces it? "This character is definitely alive and will continue to be alive at another table. No." Left the table shortly after because it turned out the player character who caused mine's death was a bigot and the DM stood by him instead of the LGBT+ players. DM soon lost all of the original members of her table. They're with me now. Oops.
@@baydiac Some DM's just need to remember that their power is only as real as the other players want it to be. You cant write an end to a character that isn't yours without consent, just on a moral level, so really, the DM only has as much power as the player agrees to give them.
The flirty dm turned deadly probably had a thing for op and when she finally got the hint it wasn't working she started lashing out and gave stupid hard combat. Red flags all around, drop the group or get someone else to dm
My guess for flirting TPK lady is that she had a crush on OP, hated that OP didn't want to do stuff wit her charactrs, and decided to take it out on the whole party when OP didn't budge
13:43 "This isn't even talking about the whole weird flirting thing at the beginning of the story! What even WAS that?!" I'm, like, 99.999% sure the DM had a mega-crush on OP, and was just too awkward a person to know how to handle it right. She was trying to flirt with OP through the NPC's.
Which, if correct, could mean that she saw OP's insistence that she stop, as rejection; and all the terribly unfair combat that came afterward, was her handling rejection poorly.
@@DaZebraffe yup... That seems accurate. It's crazy how petty we get when we get rejected. I've seen this happen soooooooooo many times. And it's not even always romantic rejection. People being rejected as friends or feeling rejected or slighted in any way shape or form, even if it's not actually so, will get so extremely petty and childish about it.. But if I learned one thing through my 30 years on this planet. Always.. always stay cool. Don't let anything phase you. Don't ever, ever change your behavior because you feel insulted. That just makes you seem so much more childish.. You know what happens when you do not give a F. Or at least pretend too? They feel like they are the ones who made a big deal out of nothing and start feeling embarrassed about it. They look like dicks. You look cool. The illusion of confidence is just as effective as actual confidence
I think I might be the 9 year old who's character got killed after I went to bed. Here's the full story if you're interested: So I used to play with my Dad in his weekly 1st edition game. The way it worked was that after my bedtime (9.30) my Dad would take over my character. So this one night I go to bed. The party arrives at a minidumgeon, but I'm low HP and we have a prisoner too. So my Dad decides to leave my thief at the entrance with the prisoner. Logical choice. Except DM decides to roll wandering monsters. Cue giant slug appearing. I'm 3rd level with low HP. My Dad tries to throw the prisoner at the slug as a distraction and sneak away. Rolls poorly, slug eats my character, body, stuff and the only working magical item in the party (a dagger) gone. And so my Dad had to tell his 9 year old daughter the next day that her beloved character died. Fun stuff. To this day she's one of my favorites characters though. But in good news, this hasn't stopped me playing DnD and I still play weekly 14 years later, now 5e with collage friends.
I'd have just said some unknown monster seemed to have captured the rogue and had like a chase and then when they kill the creature they find a magic item. I mean what I'd ACTUALLY have done was just say "the rogue stays vigilant at the cave's entrance, keeping the prisoner secure" You know cause I'm not a twat....... Generally.
That dm was tired of playing with a kid I'd imagine. That's the perfect excuse to not have the character join the session even if you planned for roaming monsters you didn't have to do it like that. Could have saved them for when the party came out at least
I am a very long term DM, and rarely get to play, and I simply do not understand the kind of DMs that pull garbage the way in Stories 1, 2 and 3. D&D is a game that *EVERYONE PLAYS TOGETHER!* Why is that so many DMs believe that the game is them vs. the players?
I've never played D&D, so feel free to dismiss my opinion, but I think it's because DMs have to be somewhat against the players. If the DM is completely on the player's side, the game is too easy. That said, any DM could immediately do a TPK, as it isn't that hard.
@@JoelPerry1 For the record, the GM's job is to challenge the players, not to treat them as adversaries that they must defeat in order to have a good time, though a lot of GM's miss the memo and think that being antagonistic towards their players is the best way to offer a challenging fight, when the reality is that you're supposed to throw challenges at the party that they can overcome and feel good overcoming based on their own power. To put it another way, think about any video game you've ever played. There's always gonna be that one section or boss or whatever that puts you through the wringer and forces you to go through it dozens of times before you win, but the game itself isn't necessarily trying to make you quit, typically, and most challenges will become easier the better you execute your strategy until you get to a point where you can go through the same challenge without suffering a single point of damage. It's the same thing in regards to ttrpgs, the challenges should be hard, maybe even a tad frustrating, but you should always try to be in the player's corner by throwing challenges at them with the mindset that it's nothing they cannot beat on their own, because if the players are happy with the state of the game, then it makes it easier to run games that you enjoy and watch these characters develop over time.
I hear you. Let the situation play out. It might lead to a much better arc or plot point than you envisioned in the first place. Gotta be flexible. Many times a player or party has done something that totally throws off what I had planned to happen. Which then leads me to have to figure out what the bad guys do in response to that. Like they taught us in the military, no plan survives contact with the enemy intact. The bad guys will still have their goal they are trying to get, but now will have to do it another way. This back and forth is way better in my opinion than simply railroading the players.
@@JoelPerry1 I can see how it looks like that. The DM's job is to play the opposition, generate conflict, and provide enough tension that the players feel challenged and like they've earned their victory. A good GM will have villains that could credibly win and will play them intelligently. But the DM's actual job is to host an interesting and enjoyable story for the players. He plays opposition because a game with opponents is more enjoyable. He generates conflict because a story with conflict is more enjoyable. He challenges the players because a hard won victory is more enjoyable than having victory handed to you. And sometimes he lets the players win handily because it's also enjoyable to let players show off how cool their characters are by womping some baddies, especially if those baddies were a serious threat earlier in the campaign.
There's a qyest kinda like that in Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, but a bit different. You start by buying a house for a suspiciously low sum of money and when you try to sleep in it, you find out it's haunted, explaining the low price. So, you've got no choice but to deal with the haunting one way or another, but once you do, it's quite a lovely house.
It *is* a good quest. Simple, but fun, coherent and compact but not small. perfect for a starter group and gives the players both a moral choice and a base of operations.
I did a similar thing in one of my cyberpunk games years ago. Had the team helping an NPC get safely out of town after which they stumbled upon a fairly-well-camouflaged and obviously long-abandoned survivalist's hideout, which gave them their own base that no one knew about. Considering doing similar for my current game.
On the “she was a former solider and elite warrior” thing, if you are going to play a character like that, making them old is the only thing that makes sense. Being young just isn’t, unless they’re some kind of child prodigy. When I played my centaur war veteran, he had a whole life before his current adventures, he was a guard, then solider, then general in many wars. Before retiring and leaving, which is where he picks up, he’s skilled at what he did but not overpowered, because it had been many years since he had fought. An elite solider may run, but if they’re older and not as strong as they once were, then maybe it would make sense for them to run? How about ptsd from battles and such?
@@ArcCaravan yeah I assume so, but describing yourself as an “elite solider” implies a lot that she never showed, obviously I’m looking too far into this since she clearly was a complete weirdo
Lol yeah. The whole "18-year-old battle-hardened veteran" thing is like... well, it's one thing if you're writing for an anime, and the editors send notes back like "Hey you gotta age this character down thirty years because the high schoolers watching won't connect to someone who isn't their own age." It's a trope born out of marketing strategy, which is fine for what it is, but weird as heck when people don't _realize_ that's what it is.
I made an Astral Self Monk, and the main gimmick of that subclass is the character basically doesn't use their physical body to do stuff, they use a more powerful astral manifestation of their body (you can use wisdom instead of Dex/Strength to do stuff, even like strength based checks, it's really cool) And I thought about what kind of person would most benefit from such an ability? And that's basically how I made a 12 year old girl monk that using her astral arms can just machine gun like 20 punches a second. THEN however you run into the problem, how does a child manage to even get to this stage? Variant Human with the Prodigy feat, skilled or skill expert feat at level 4 and with a very no nonsense personality and supporting backstory. Making young characters in DnD is ENTIRELY possible and can even be very fun, but it's CHALLENGING because of all the issues you need to work out. If you do that though, you can get some extremely interesting characters.
Intro: I get DMs want the players to get the hype discovery moment naturally but like . . . Hints man. Let the Orbs give them some proper speculation. 1: Damn, Paul Howard here pulling the best rulings here. At least he was honest with the "it just doesn't work." 2: Looks like we've got a problem DM platter, I wouldn't blame the party for bailing on Nice Girl's Bizzare Adventure with what she's trying to nuke them with. 3: Hot Take, if you get salty about scheduling, don't be a DM. Still, props to OP for strong-arming his way back to life. 4: . . . Well this is . . . An entry . . . For the That Guy Hall of Fame. Not sure where to place her on the Horror Story Totem Pole, but she's fuckin up there. Props to Cleric for bailing early.
“You’re Just DEAD.” I think the DM was jealous OP was now dating and had time outside of DND. However, this petty bullshit would just make me leave the game altogether, not spend MORE time with this arsehole.
When I started dating the man who became my husband, his DM tried to get him to dump me because I would be stealing his time and he would be missing game sessions. It took him several months before he (DM) would allow me to join a game at a change of campaign time. Three years later DM said he valued me more as a player than my husband.
One time, I failed a saving throw that would've killed me. Instead, I surprised my DM by breaking out my cleric's Time Domain ability, which let me reroll one check even after learning if the original succeeded or failed. Nat 20. My DM's response? With a big grin, he says, "I love it when a rarely used ability pays off like that." Great DM. Lots of challenging encounters over a 2 year campaign. Our characters died and resurrected plenty, but he would subtly intervene to prevent TPK. We all knew he'd do that on occasion but generally couldn't pinpoint where or how. It might be a subtle as an enemy stops using an ability that proved too effective or changing which pc they targeted. No DMPCs saving the day. His favorite season, he tells me, was our last one. He'd decided he wanted to let us see how powerful we really were when not fighting world ending elder evils. That hag literally never knew what hit it. 😊 I haven't played since then because we all moved away post graduation and I just don't think I can find a group or game like that again.
I never had my character killed when I wasn't there, but I did have my character's personal quest to find his sister (who had become a minor BBEG) culminated when I wasn't there.
I've had my character killed (or as good as) when I wasn't there, but it was a TPK and we started a new campaign the next week. My brother had his character killed while he wasn't playing but was well within earshot. He was grounded to his room after his latest bs shenanigans with the base MPs, and my dad wanted to write him out of the scenario altogether -- mostly because he didn't want to deal with this deadweight NPC for the rest of the campaign, but I suspect it was also partially to punish my brother.
@@JCArules13 Well, which is more childish? Killing your son's PC in a fictional setting? Or making a false accusation of child abuse against your parents, which brings the MPs out to your home to investigate, only to find that you've been holding stolen merchandise for the local shoplifting ring that you're a part of? To this day, I have no idea why my brother wasn't sent to juvie over that one.
I actually did a bit of research into the distance that arrows can travel as a part of working on a ttrpg project with some friends and my bf. Most sources listed an effective range lower than 625ft, with a theoretical uselessly inaccurate range of 1200ft. Under the right circumstances, like if you had a sharpshooter, I could see reaching the 1,000ft threshold, so it could be possible with that kind of distance on a bow. But see that's the problem. that's a *professional*, I've dedicated my life to the bow kind of experienced user. That's not *literally an entire army.* So the idea that you could possibly have a 1000ft bow capable of being wielded and used by soldiers en masse outside of 1: The army is based in an archery first style, putting little effort into its melee combat. 2: A futuristic setting or at the very least with crossbows. 3: having magical enchants for an *entire army* This is insulting at best, and a blatant fuck you at worst Modern crossbows have reached a world record of over 6k feet, but this isn't 1950, and most crossbows cap closer to 500yd going by a google search. This is olden times before guns and fancy shooting tools.
Its genuinely horrifying the amount of horror stories involving a player thats being so publicly honest about pedophiliac roleplaying, had one in an old group i abandoned long ago, she creeped me the hell out (i was 16 she in her late 20s probably)
I’ve blocked ppl who have talked to me for slightly less heinous offenses but once the girl in the last story talking about her creepy fetish and the asking if the DM wanted to act that out. Yeah block immediately don’t come to my game ever again
@@lunebadru5997honestly, that’s what I thought too. Still, it’s gross and creepy for her to shove all of that onto OP and cross their boundaries by going into detail. Trauma isn’t an excuse to harm someone else or push boundaries.
@@gregjayonnaise8314OP had already made it clear from the start that kind of stuff wouldn’t be allowed, I have no idea what got in her head to start recounting an old pedo story to OP even though they already told her no. Some people just don’t know when to keep that crap to themselves.
Also, for that last story? I'll bet money that the problem player kept having her character wander off to the barracks, because she was hoping OP would DM a side interaction there, where she could try to bring the "underage girl with a much older partner" thing into OP's campaign, too. By having her character flirt with an older guardsman. ETA: Also, that her reason for explaining the situation in her other campaign, was because she thought "OP's not getting the hint, so I'll just have to approach the subject directly..."
I think I've only seen two characters capable of making a CHA 20 save... Also, characters have plot armor when the player isn't there. Period. No exceptions.
You're just dead - I *_love_* the way OP just stood his ground and forced the DM to undo the petty killing off of his character. Probably handed it better than I would have.
Yea that lady story was a yikes for all those red flags , especially the wizard & body guard thing. But like he said silver lining it ended pretty calmly rather then nuclear .
Man, I had a DM kill a character when I wasn't around- I took two weeks off the session during some not plot important stuff, it was my birthday one week then i took a week off cuz I had the flu and KH3 had just come out and I'm a big fan- I'd actually talked about taking those days off well in advanced- next thing I hear is that i've been torn to shreads during a twin black dragon fight (I'd left my character in care of another player cuz i was the only healer and hated the idea of leaving the party without that). The DM was like, haha sorry dude. I just kinda swallowed how pissed I was but man, it still bothers me.
In that Paul the DM situation with not allowing the countersign, I can understand having a whole plot and adventure around the players getting framed for something and then having to clear their names. Cool but I would handle it differently because I personally love when players thwart my well planned out plots because you can't intentionally create on your own such a moment in which the player feels so empowered. They will remember that moment for years and will attribute it to your DMing if you properly run with it. I would allow the roll and set a reasonable DC considering their current foe. Then if they fail continue as normal. If not, you have an opportunity to adlib something cool. Think of what the enemy would do if that happened. Did they have a backup plan? Would they come back later with a different way to frame them? Would they attack or wait till after dark and attack? Pay off a guard to accuse them anyways. Plant some evidence in their wagon, on their horses, with a friendly NPC or start viscous rumors that someone important believes to be true. All these things add verisimilitude to your campaign world and show that you care about their agency in your world. Give your enemy NPCs a plan and resources but not a fool proof one. Plan for what they will do if things don't go exactly as they thought. Adaptable enemies are more interesting than static ones.
Many years ago I had a DM who playing with was like being in an abusive relationship. He was very good at the description aspect and the worldbuilding, but clearly had his favorites in the group, and those favorites were always the fighting classes (Fighter, barbarian, Ranger, etc). The rogues and bards were so handicapped as to be useless, as were any primary magic users. Wizards would have components stolen or lost, clerics would have holy symbols taken from them, and basically unless you were a fighter your character got beat up again and again and again with no recourse. (Nevermind that spells often wouldn't work as described "because of something I know and you don't", and all the bad guys always seemed to uncannily make their saves against spells). Characters were kept low level (in retrospect so he could control them) and campaigns were abandoned in favor of "starting over fresh" whenever the characters got to about 6th level and were capable of their own agency. Campaigns repeatedly would descend into the party losing a fight, which would result in "you are captured" and then involvements in all the things that would happen while the characters were imprisoned (torture, jail fights, forced "missions", etc). Things got so bad at one point there was a TPK which then resulted in the characters being continued in some sort of afterlife (which also was a world full of torture, soul stealing, evil godlike beings etc). After it became clear the 4th party was going to meet similar fates to the rest I left one night and never came back. One of my most fun memories was starting a new campaign as DM with some of the players from this group (not inviting the DM) and when the characters actually WON an important fight a player who had never played with anyone but me and the abusive DM pulled me aside and said to me "That was great! I never actually won and saved anyone before!".
Intro was a funny apocalypse ending. 1st story was a pain of a DM. 2nd story felt like killer DM was in retaliation to being told to quit flirting. 3rd story had a great ending with OP standing his ground. 4th story was a rollercoaster with a relatively smooth end. She definitely matches "nice guys".
The DM should have kicked out the last story nice girl looooong before things escalated to that point. She was terrible, but all that long term suffering was avoidable. There's such a thing as too many chances.
I have had a player play an under aged cleric in one of my games back at the start of my DMing. The cleric had amnesia and was super adorable, she essentially became the parties adoptive daughter, everyone went to protect her and loved her, and eventually she found out that a very powerful druid was her father, a druid she had actually been raised by but couldnt remember because of her amnesia. Exploring the characters relationship with the druid through the difficulty of his revealing the truth to the character and him realizing the descisions that he made of keeping that from her for as long as he did was poor judgement despite the things which happened that were his reasons for keeping it from her. It was pretty wholesome, emotional and adorable. That player did not sound like she had that sort of intent with playing an under aged character, especially once she went off about having ERP with another under aged character. Good on that DM for saying no if he wasnt comfortable with her playing an under aged character. I spoke with the player extensively about the cleric i talked about above and her desires for the character before saying that it was ok. In hindsight was it neccessarily the best descision as a new DM to allow her to play that character? Maybe not, but it turned out ok. I was fortunate and still love the story of that cleric today.
Oh wow, saw a video from you yesterday 29 seconds after posting, today it's 4 minutes. I guess I'm deep in the Crispy algorithm now. Not that I'm complaining though, I love your videos!
That story with the sirens sounds lke the DnD version of Stardust Crusaders. Just can´t get on a boat without things going horribly. We have a party member who sadly misses a good deal of sessions due to life but we don´t just kill him off. During less important sessions his character is helping out the local town guard and is gaining levels in bureaucracy.
From Flirting to TPKing story. To OP. That's how modern anchors on large sea going ships work today. I'm not sure about in the medieval period, but I was in the Navy. Today you have the Chain Locker where the anchor chain is kept and fixed to the deck of the Chain Locker. It then goes up thru Anchor Windless, the winch that can lower it, but normally only raises it back up. And finally out thru the Focsle (contracted, modern term for the Forecastle). So DM probably only knew how a modern one worked. Other than that the whole story was messed up. I could see the sirens getting a good run and leaping out of the water, over the ship like a "flying fish", but they would have to get awfully close to the ship to do it and couldn't be singing while swimming fast under water to get the angle they would need for the leap. And that DC was way too high. And way too powered for that.
I’m a player who does on occasion like to play as a young man just starting into the world. Usually around eighteen to twenty if human or still young for the race. The youngest I’ve played was a fourteen year old Orc who was out for his coming of age hunt when he aided the party against a band of goblins. He stayed as the party Barbarian making a name for himself. Not once was it ever made weird as most NPCs wanted to mother him or avoid him. The funniest thing was when the much older Elven fighter who was like a mentor and father figure, tried to give the birds and bees talk. It ended with not only Grarnak (the orc) being confused but so was I (as a twenty year old).
The dead pc storys OP did a masterful move. If DM does some dumb shit like that to your character without an explanation the only proper response is "that didn't happen"
The gaslighting about a new character just to commit to your initial character when it's time to play was the frustrating detail to me, but I'd have fuel for NPCs & Sidekicks once any creepy details are trimmed out.
As soon as it became clear the DM was refusing to allow you to use a spell/class aspect/whatever that would legitimately work for the sole reason s/he couldn't think of any other way for their story to progress, I would start looking for a new group.
That last one's quest, that's a really good way to get the players into a base without just getting them to pay for it, or them slowly taking over a tavern.
Re: dealing with a PC not making it. I'm currently DMing LMoP and we come to a portion I tailored to a specific character. Unfortunately, scheduling conflicts happened and specific character's player can't make it so we collectively agreed to do another portion of the adventure until the player CAN make it. Our excuse for why that character couldn't make it? "PC stays behind to work out the logistics of transporting a small town's worth of supplies." Which worked well for a Bard who has a guild artisan background.
I joined a game with some randoms off roll20 about a year back, it was a one shot. One guy played a seven year old girl, a cleric, I was sat there waiting for it get weird. It did not. He roleplayed well this kid, blessed by the Gods, who healed and buffed us as we fought against evil. I was pretty surprised.
The arcane archer one reminds me of a clash of player styles I had. My group and I got along pretty well at first. I say at first because the druid eventually left the group and insulted everyone else on the way out. What happened is that we got an old inn as a reward for our first quest. We wanted to reopen it and we’re excited to. But we needed funds and so we decided to adventure to make up that. Around this point the druid starts being late, or just not showing up. No warning. Just not there. They get huffy any time they feel we aren’t sharing enough information and we are often taking 30 minutes or so just to catch them up whenever they both to actually show up. So yeah, annoying. We tolerate it for a time. But the worst times are anytime we head back to our inn to check up on it. It’s not like we are doing the work ourselves even. We had rescued a group of kobolds who were using their skills to fix up the place and make it habitable. We also hired staff to run the place and we had a magic item that created food that we were using to stock the place. We were basically absentee owners, often off adventuring and just bringing back loot and other stuff to spruce up the place and make it more of a touristy hotspot. The druid is quite upset by this point. In their own words they say “this feels more like a tavern building game than real dnd”. I then point out that they were always late and missed sessions of combat or roleplay. It’s not our fault they aren’t there when stuff happens that is supposedly more their preference. And yes I know that is rude but by this point I had endless private messages from this person basically telling me to shut up each session and was done with being patient. The dm says if they aren’t enjoying themselves they are free to leave. They do. I find out later I wasn’t the only one getting those private messages. The dm is also annoyed because the ex-druid insulted the rest of us by saying we, the party, weren’t “including” them despite, from the dm’s perspective, us players were often directly turning to the druid and saying “and what would you like to do” and actively being inclusive and open about it. So yeah, dm is not unhappy to see them go. I think dm quite liked our group and we got along very well and that was why he was insulted on our behalf. And was livid when he learned of the private messages. Like I said, druid sent all of us those messages other than dm. Happy ending though. The tavern is up and running and successful and our group is still close knit and loves adventuring. We are still absentee owners of it but we love having our party come home and be greeted by our kobolds like family. The village we set up in has our backs like crazy and it’s just nice to give our characters a place that feels like coming home. It’s also been a great location for our dm to introduce new characters in as we have every reason to drop by since we own the place and talk with all the locals. New players can be easily folded this way. It’s no tavern simulator. If it was I can think of way more ways to have done that, but we didn’t take that route. We just built a home is all. And home and home bases are important for a party I feel.
The online group that I'm a player in has a fixed day each week, but the sessions sometimes get cancelled up until an hour before the session. Annoying, but often nothing that can be done about it. (Our DMs country has an ongoing energy crisis). My physical group of 5 players that I DM for cannot find a suitable time to play in months at a time. So, on the subject of scheduling well in advance - damned if you do, damned if you don't 😂
16:13 (Apologies in advance if this sounds self-centered, that is not my intention) Yeah, I prefer having a decided day of week to play. My party used to play on Wednesdays but then we changed to Sundays because one of my friends and one of the other party members' friends had shown interest in joining the party, problem was, Wednesdays didn't work for my friend (don't know why they didn't work for party member's friend) as she did horse riding (exact English term unknown, my party and I are Swedish) then. First time a player couldn't make it was yesterday's session, because our dwarf player's mum was sick, so my friend offered that we played at her place as we had decided to play at dwarf player's. She also offered to play the dwarf character as a substitute for the player (kinda unnecessary in hindsight, the only thing the dwarf, whose name is Adrik, didn't do much other than heal the elf Soveliss after he got hit in the face with a rock once because the racist dwarf NPC wouldn't negotiate prices and he got punched in the face by a law enforcer after he shot said dwarf NPC in the ankle for stealing his glass bottle of slime) and she is now the official party substitute until she gets a character of her own, which currently seems unlikely as she has not expressed interest in doing so, so that's what we do when a player can't make it.
That counter music ability is as useless as deflect missiles for monks. I play a monk and when I gained that ability, the DM purposefully stopped having ranged attackers from attacking my characters because he knew I had that ability. I told him, "You know, but the npc probably does not." He still continues to never fire arrows or any other ranged weapon at my monk.
Wanting to play a kid is becoming a common warning sign in these stories. I agree with those who've suggested that the flirty DM was probably into the player and got hostile when things weren't working.
"Flirting to TPKing" story: Why do I get the feeling this sort of encounter and the gaslighting is the DM's passive aggressive response to having their weird flirting getting shut down? "You're just dead" story: FINALLY! Someone who called out their DM on their "RoCkS fAlL aNd YoU dIe" BS!
I am absolutely stealing that last DM's haunted house quest for my new campaign as a low-level adventure to get the ball rolling before springing the main plot I'm writing on my players. It has a nice Witcher 3 vibe to it. I dig it.
I like how spiteful that jealous DM was. All that was missing was describing how the player soiled himself as he died and the party discovered his browser history.
I had a DM who's philosophy was the more player characters he managed to kill, the better the game was. He even worked a chasm into every campaign you would have to roll a nat. 20 to jump or spend 2 days in game to go around or climb out of if you didn't role a nat. 20. But he did know how to run one hell of a game... it was a love/hate thing.
These DM's vs. Players stories make me happy that my DM is the sweetest woman that DOESN'T try to pull the stunts the DM in the first story does. Honestly these DM's that actively try and screw the party over, how do these people see this as fun or rewarding, especially when the players ditch them in the end?
As a forever DM, I am blessed with cooperative players, and it does go both ways. DMs who screw the party over, very bad and unfun. Players who purposefully are just an ass outside of their character, very bad and unfun
@@lordhellstrande2763 it's pretty much a gambling coin flip. Either party as a whole or just a single unit ruins the game, or the DM does. That's the risk all people face when not playing with friends.
There is only a single time I've ever killed a character when the player was gone, and technically, it wasn't even me that pulled the trigger. Resident Evil game, Genesys (FFG) system, a player made a REALLY dumb decisions. I asked, "Are you absolutely, positively, 100% certain that this is the action you want to take?" The player responded with, "Yes. Our teammate-" they'd just saved one of the other PC's from a mad scientist's experiment, and the team's medic literally did open-chest-cavity heart surgery on the fly, so that was pretty epic- "- needs clothes, and the zombies have clothes they don't need." The player then opened a corridor of rooms in the hall just outside of the improvised surgical theater, and zombie test subjects began to shamble out, mere minutes after the team had just sealed them inside when the scientist unlocked the doors to cover his escape. The session ends with the doors opening, and the rest of the party suddenly very bloodthirsty. Next session, the odd one out is AWOL, and nobody knows where he is. He's not answering his phone, he's not on any of his usual online places where someone can grab his attention, and he never said a single thing to anyone about being absent. Session begins, and I, the GM, take control of his sheet. The instant the session opens up, the team's assault specialist (expert in breach-and-clear, covering fire, tactical maneuvers, general battle weapons and tactics, etc...) player declares that his character engages in combat with the AWOL player's character. Initiative is rolled, and before the turn order is finalized, everyone else chimes in that they're participating as well, rolling their initiatives. One PC gets on the computer that controls the facility, but can't quite succeed, though he does delay the total release of the zombies. Other PC's start lighting AWOL up with guns, and then, the Assault player- who was rolling with Setback Dice on everything due to having just been surgically operated on twice- rolls a successful maneuver to vault cover that AWOL had ducked behind, and with a Triumph, stunned him too. This was narrated as a 'meaty whack' from the 'all natural beef rifle' that was dangling freely due to the character having been stripped for surgery, and he then followed up with a full rip of an M240B LMG at point blank. The LMG ripped through his Defense, Soak, and Wounds, past the threshold. The fight was over, or so it appeared. The problem character of the AWOL player was incapacitated, and could be dealt with when the player- "I'm going to spend the Advantage to activate Linked," says the Assault player, his character wielding the LMG which has the weapon quality Linked 3, meaning that with sufficient Advantage on a successful attack roll, the damage can be applied up to 3 extra times. He spent all the Advantage to exceed the PC's Wound threshold TWICE, ensuring that there was no body left to come back as a zombie. I briefly contemplated editing Assault's sheet to replace the M240B with an M249 SAW as the rapid fire cut the PC in half, though I chose not to. After combat ended, the zombies were starting to get loose, and the team hauled ass to a nearby freight elevator, though it was disabled. They sent another PC- named 'Myk', pronounced 'mook' because he was an otherwise 'unnamed mook' who joined the team late- up the shaft to fix it, and after a tense standoff against the oncoming horde, they managed to escape, later finding some clothing for Assault. Just as the session was ending, AWOL shows up, saying he was sick and passed out- which ended up not being true, rather, he didn't feel well, shut his computer off without telling anyone anything, crawled into bed, and slept through his alarm that may or may not have even been set. He was informed that his character had been killed, and when it was explained why, he started to literally cry, and between sobs, lied about what had happened the session prior, saying he NEVER tried to open the cages, and that he NEVER said he was going to take clothes off of zombies, and make the open-heart-surgery victim wear them, all covered in T-Virus grime. Then he said it was a joke, which everyone reminded him, yes, he did declare his prior actions, and no, he never implied it was a joke. His final attempt at retconning his character's demise was that he never actually made any real attempts at opening the zombie cages, which was then proven to be a lie when his digitally archived roll to override the lockdown was shown to him.
Small fun history fact on 3rd story. Sirens, according to ancient greek mythology, used to be half human, half bird women and would fly. Still lured sailors to death with their song though. But the well known version is now more of a mermaid than bird lady.
you know, i experienced the good guy version of that counter song thing. i had an ability to raise ppl from the dead (very rare in the game i was in, not dnd) and one of the player's NPC gf died. this was something mandated by game mechanics and totally fair, there was a fate system to do with NPCs that often leads to their very poetic deaths. the player had acknowleged via chat that he was cool with it, all was above board i had been waiting to use this one ability since the game began. i was AMPED! this was a death i could do something about! the nuance of what exactly had happened was lost on me, cos the DM and the player were talking via DMs, so i just thought she failed a roll. DM was in a bit of a sticky spot. on one hand, im FINALLY getting to use this ability that id been chomping at the bit to use! on the other hand, the other player had fully accepted the consequences of his choice that led to the tragic death of his in character gf, and with the way the game was set up itd feel a bit cheap to just have her....be alive. So our dungeon master was put on the spot and handled it like a champ. My ability worked, but i got into a fight with some crazy underworld fate creature to bring her back. only managed to get half of her soul, making her a draugr (less skyrim, more classic old norse) and unable to be healed unless we go on a quest to the underworld to find the rest of her soul. it was pretty gnarly, and i seriously respect him for coming up with a solution that worked for everyone so quickly. guy is the best DM ive ever played with
Mixed feelings on some of this. When it comes to backgrounds like "former soldier and elite warrior" thing, one has to remember that this is heroic fantasy, such backgrounds around young characters are not uncommon. Even in the real world it DOES happen, consider if you have the needed ability you could say join a group like SEALS or DELTA FORCE here in the US do a 4 year tour in covert operations, and then come out of the military and still be pretty young. In a more fantasy appropriate example even without being unrealistic it would simply say something about the character's background. Sparta, and some eras of Japan's Samurai Aristocracy were training people at a VERY young age to be warriors, just saying it can be made to work. That said if part of the idea of the character is that they have basically been learning martial arts and swordsmanship since they could walk, that should be reflected in the overall build. As far as playing a child character, ignoring the rest of the story, I am really not seeing the big deal. That said if the GM doesn't want it, you really shouldn't fight with the GM. Some games like GURPS do include rules for making younger than normal characters though, the "youth" disadvantage has been in that game pretty much from the beginning. What's more heroic fantasy has been producing teenage heroes for decades, and young adult fantasy has become more popular than ever before, not to mention stuff like Harry Potter. This is before you even consider the global impact of the Anime Explosion. It really doesn't shock me or creep me out that someone might want to create a young character, especially if it's someone who doesn't seem to project themselves onto their character too much, and mostly goes with concepts and ideas. Something like that takes other behaviors to really get warning bells from me, and get me to say "no". As far as sexual behavior goes, even extreme sexual behavior, if everyone is of age I don't generally see the big deal, unless the game is becoming a porn parody. The big issues with this are basically when it either makes people, including the GM, uncomfortable for some reason, it detracts from the game (half the group sits around twiddling their thumbs while half the group talks about kink or whatever so the adventure doesn't progress and people start to leave), or when you start people trying to use their character as an avenue to pursue or facilitate a RL relationship, this can be a problem with couples or married folks in particular, especially the latter. If someone you have no interest in is basically coming onto you through RP, yeah, that's something you need to resolve, but otherwise, I think gamers have these prudish tendencies simply based on peer pressure that they think other gamers would look down on their game for such content. To be fair this is all highly subjective, and has to be handled case by case, and has little to do directly with anything said here, I mostly mention it because I get a really intense "sex and romance in RPGs is bad" vibe from some of these videos, and a lot of the comments. In the hands of a good GM, it can also be a powerful tool, as almost anything can.
I play in a game now with an awesome woman and we shared horror stories of other people (some of them women) we have played with and both agreed we were the most likeable women each other had ever played with on Roll20, we're really good friends now but I feel like Roll20 can be a bit of a magnet for weird people in general and some of those weird people are women so that experence stands out. I've been playing for a few years with each of my groups and honestly I really like not being the only woman in a game
You're Just Dead story. This was a little before my time, but as I understand it early on in D&D they tried to end each session back in town. Time out of game passed on a one for one scale, i.e. each day not in game was a day in real life. Ending each session back in town meant that players who couldn't make the session would not have to as their character could just stay in town. Also anyone who did happen to show up to play could take part in that session, even if they were not normally a party member. This allowed a great deal of flexibility in a game environment that you had lots of players with lots of scheduling problems. Of course the main drawback to this is you cannot have a grand plot in the sense of how we do most campaigns today and for as long as I can remember. Instead you have a huge dungeon to explore right outside a town that the players never really leave. Just wanted to throw this out there incase some have really bad scheduling problems they might be able to adapt this to there needs.
The last story is the DM's fault, He should've kicked her BEFORE the other player were annoyed, I'm sure it wasn't uncalled for... yeah SHE WASN'T VERY NICE!
I never had problems with people playing kids or teens and no one ever randomly inserted ERP in games. The most problematic players in my groups are people who are bad at scheduling. I must be lucky.
1: Maybe is just me, but all games, even those outside of tabletop roleplay, not matter how hard they are they should at least be winnable. Otherwise is just a waist of time that cause frustration to anyone. Is like those Mario Maker levels no one plays because they made them so hard on purpose without regarding if someone can pass that level or not.
16:15 I only disagree with one thing you say here. Scheduling and the number of days notice required fluxuates WILDLY between groups. Saying "Uh no three days IS NOT enough" like that's the one universal answer between all tables and groups regardless of situation is absurd. For an online group, like my group, as little as a day's advance is more than enough. But that's my group in an online game played over a Discord VC with Dice Bots. The planning is minimal, as we don't need actual supplies outside of the D20PFSRD or Archives of Nethys, and however much work the GM plans to put into planning an adventure. Because of this games last anywhere between one and six hours depending on the mood and how much prep was done. But this isn't the norm OR an expectation for OTHERS with DIFFERENT setups.
I kind of wonder if that last one was a teenager IRL. A lot of the behavior sounds like immature teenager crap, wanting to rp but not going where the rp is happening, and wanting other people to ask about her character but not asking about theirs, especially.
1) I'm stealing the idea for the haunted house adventure. That is gold. 2) The Arcane Archer is not only a creep, but a bad player. Their character as stated would make a great NPC; unwilling to join group and unwilling to go on adventures. The GM should honestly have banned her from his sessions and been done with it.
Arcane Archer really just... like, girl, you have trauma, okay? At least she realized she'd been insufferable in her group behavior and left, but if it's me, I would've kicked her out the moment someone else left *because* of her. Oof. Support players who behave; those who don't can shape up and fly right or fly right out the damn window.
In the age of Sail the Winch of ships was (as far as I know) not directly connected to the Anchor chain/rope but to a rope that would be sown to the anchor chain and loosend again and again to lift the anchor. So the gm wasn't wrong there. There is even a little documentary about the hms victory (i think) in wich this is explained.
I'm very happy that Pathfinder has specific rules for playing child characters that make them actually a child that you wouldn't want to play as due to the massive amount of restrictions Immediately brings up suspicion when someone wants to play a child/below age of adulthood
Paul Stop It story. To Paul. Dude let them do it. Or at least try to. Sure you wanted the party framed for murder, but that was still possible even if OP had counter acted the band. Maybe not that night, but the mistake IMHO here is Paul was giving the bad guys a story and not a goal. The story being players are whatever'd by the band and wake up the next morning being arrested. A better option is have an idea of who is trying to frame them and the goal is to frame them. Then if the first plan fails the bad guy then has to come up with some other way to achieve the goal. Plan B for me would have been a henchman follow the party to see where they stay that night. Kill the noble. Then try to plant the murder weapon in the party's room or possessions. Then have another lackey tip the town guards off. Then if the party discovers the henchman placing the murder weapon, have the henchman scream his head off for the town guards as the henchman "has found the murders!" If the party kills the guy then the town guards are more likely going to think them the killers. If the party does convince the guards of their innocence, then the bad guy will cut his losses. With each the goal is the same. Each moves from one plan to the next and allows the players to thwart those plans. Until ultimately it is no longer possible to achieve the goal and the bad guy gives up.
That harpy with the 20 save DC would be equivalent of a CR 16ish monster or there abouts just due to bounded accuracy. 8 + 7 + 5 or 8 + 6 + 6 = 20. 8 base, (Cha at 24/22), and proficiency bonus which is their CR compared to the player proficiency table capping at CR 30. You can have a lower monster have a higher DC, but that monster would need v rare or legendary magic items, which your players would then loot if they beat an encoutner that is punching way way higher than its bounded accuracy would allow.
The guy pulling out "it just doesn't work" for the bard vs. entire band situation is so dumb. It's a single person trying to use their abilities to counteract the abilities of an *entire band* working together, rather than a one-on-one situation. You had the most obvious possible explanation for why it wouldn't work *right there!*
The dm with the arcane archer is the classic, try to keep bad players and run off the good players. As soon as AA threatened to quit, I would've booted from the server (though would've also kicked them out rather than lose a good player)
I sometimes feel that the "If you enjoyed this, please like and subscribe" is a thinly veiled, "If you enjoyed this, please keep it to yourself, as some of these stories were just sick."
so when you have multiple harpies and sirens it can be quite tedious - start with the first harpy and have each PC make a wisdom saving throw one at a time and if someone fails, they are charmed by that harpy, anyone who succeeds is immune to that harpy's charm for 24 hours....then move on to the next harpy and repeat the process with even those who already failed making another save and if someone who already failed fails again, they are now charmed by the other harpy instead....this is better than "ok everyone make 10 wisdom saving throws" all at once but it takes time...another way to run it if you want to make it faster is just have everyone make one save with disadvantage and arbitrate it however you think is fair and sensible...the latter method isn't RAW but saves a lot of time and probably produces similar results
Its not that hard to have a discussion with everyone involved prior to a game and find out if there are any very specific things that players really do or don't want in their game. Remember, the job of the DM, or GM if you're doing Basic Fantasy RPG, is to facilitate that the players are having fun. That means appropriate challenge level, and story elements for those players. I have GM'ed for a group of 18+ players who were all pervy and wanted a lot of degeneracy in their game, and who knew that I write erotica, so they specifically asked for those scenarios, and my rule was then that they keep their hands where I can see them while we play. On the other hand, if one player in a group doesn't want adult themes, then I won't go there. I always start with a group with a Q & A with players before getting started, to find out what they want, and what creeps them out or might ruin the fun for them, or stuff they really want that other GM's wont do. The specifics I ask them if they are okay with, or want or don't want are if 3 subjects are off limit, well sort of 2. 1). Torture? Yes or No? If no, then none is included in the story. Some people really don't like even hearing it described. 2). Sex, Yes or no. If No, then the subject doesn't come up. I keep it PG-13. If the players are 18+ and say yes, they want that stuff, then I ask if non-con is okay or not, and if not, then no struggle snuggles will take place in the game. If they want that shit, only then will it be included.
That set up would have been awesome. Setting some traps before an army and picking them off. That is in essence what can make a cool session. The players taking the time to set up an ambush and seeing the results of that play out, sucks the dm just...sucked all the fun outta that one. I also think that last one is a huge red flag for the player that participated with her...antics. In an RP it takes two to tango...just...ew.
There are two types of D&D mysteries:
1. Bad DM: Nope not there. You don't see anything. That doesn't work.
2. Good DM: *after an hour of searching* Ok the dwarf tells you to CHECK THE BASEMENT. He is confident that you'll find something CHECK THE BASEMENT. "Come on guys let's check the attic again I'm sure there was something weird about that Mannequin" AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!
Number 2 feels like the Chair problem
I will NEVER understand these DMs who actively ruin player's fun because they didn't think of an ability, but the players love to use it.
Just how bad do you have to be at improvising?
Good DM should just put something in the attic that maybe circles around the main plot a bit only to subtly herd the PCs back into it.
that's a bit of a catch 22,though: as DM you want your players to be able to solve the mystery but you also don't want it to be too easy otherwise it ruins the fun so you gotta try to find that balance so that it's tricky but not SO tricky that they don't ever get it.
@@JT5555 Crafting a good mystery is hard without a doubt. Personally, I say accept you won't always get it right and you'll have to improvise sometimes, and it won't be as good as you were expecting it to be... but it can still be fun.
Of course it's advice I myself struggle to take because I'm a neurotic perfectionist who gets depressed by not living up to their constant unrealistic expectations.
Man. Gotta love the balls on the guy who straight up told the DM his character wasn't dead.
I mean hell I've done it twice, to the same DM with two different characters.
Near TPK but our cleric is still alive and working on it, DM makes the enemies use their turns to attack our death-saving collapsed party members? Instantly perma-killing them? Assumedly out of spite because we didn't want to travel with her murderhobo PC who she then made start EATING the dead party before they could be brought anywhere to be revivified?
"I'm going to DM this exact campaign years later with the same players and party minus your DMPC. We're getting what not necessarily has to be a better ending, but one that was earned fairly."
Other player at the table yanks on an adolescent white dragons tail, causing a cone of cold that kills my PC and not his? DM enforces it?
"This character is definitely alive and will continue to be alive at another table. No."
Left the table shortly after because it turned out the player character who caused mine's death was a bigot and the DM stood by him instead of the LGBT+ players.
DM soon lost all of the original members of her table. They're with me now. Oops.
@@baydiac and I've done it thrice AND everyone clapped...
@@baydiac
Some DM's just need to remember that their power is only as real as the other players want it to be. You cant write an end to a character that isn't yours without consent, just on a moral level, so really, the DM only has as much power as the player agrees to give them.
The flirty dm turned deadly probably had a thing for op and when she finally got the hint it wasn't working she started lashing out and gave stupid hard combat. Red flags all around, drop the group or get someone else to dm
I was just thinking that sounded likely.
That was honestly my theory, considering her vindictive behaviour.
She either had a thing for OP or was under the impression that all bards have to be horny/flirty (maybe both).
Definitely this.
But she never expressed herself out of character... So OP probably never realized it.
My guess for flirting TPK lady is that she had a crush on OP, hated that OP didn't want to do stuff wit her charactrs, and decided to take it out on the whole party when OP didn't budge
yes that's my take too
I think so too
13:43 "This isn't even talking about the whole weird flirting thing at the beginning of the story! What even WAS that?!" I'm, like, 99.999% sure the DM had a mega-crush on OP, and was just too awkward a person to know how to handle it right. She was trying to flirt with OP through the NPC's.
Which, if correct, could mean that she saw OP's insistence that she stop, as rejection; and all the terribly unfair combat that came afterward, was her handling rejection poorly.
@@DaZebraffe yup... That seems accurate. It's crazy how petty we get when we get rejected. I've seen this happen soooooooooo many times.
And it's not even always romantic rejection. People being rejected as friends or feeling rejected or slighted in any way shape or form, even if it's not actually so, will get so extremely petty and childish about it..
But if I learned one thing through my 30 years on this planet. Always.. always stay cool. Don't let anything phase you. Don't ever, ever change your behavior because you feel insulted. That just makes you seem so much more childish..
You know what happens when you do not give a F. Or at least pretend too? They feel like they are the ones who made a big deal out of nothing and start feeling embarrassed about it. They look like dicks. You look cool.
The illusion of confidence is just as effective as actual confidence
I think I might be the 9 year old who's character got killed after I went to bed. Here's the full story if you're interested: So I used to play with my Dad in his weekly 1st edition game. The way it worked was that after my bedtime (9.30) my Dad would take over my character. So this one night I go to bed. The party arrives at a minidumgeon, but I'm low HP and we have a prisoner too. So my Dad decides to leave my thief at the entrance with the prisoner. Logical choice. Except DM decides to roll wandering monsters. Cue giant slug appearing. I'm 3rd level with low HP. My Dad tries to throw the prisoner at the slug as a distraction and sneak away. Rolls poorly, slug eats my character, body, stuff and the only working magical item in the party (a dagger) gone. And so my Dad had to tell his 9 year old daughter the next day that her beloved character died. Fun stuff. To this day she's one of my favorites characters though. But in good news, this hasn't stopped me playing DnD and I still play weekly 14 years later, now 5e with collage friends.
That DM was a POS though
That sucks, but I'm glad you didn't let it turn you off of something that you clearly enjoy.
I'd have just said some unknown monster seemed to have captured the rogue and had like a chase and then when they kill the creature they find a magic item.
I mean what I'd ACTUALLY have done was just say "the rogue stays vigilant at the cave's entrance, keeping the prisoner secure"
You know cause I'm not a twat....... Generally.
Cool dad.
That dm was tired of playing with a kid I'd imagine. That's the perfect excuse to not have the character join the session even if you planned for roaming monsters you didn't have to do it like that. Could have saved them for when the party came out at least
I am a very long term DM, and rarely get to play, and I simply do not understand the kind of DMs that pull garbage the way in Stories 1, 2 and 3. D&D is a game that *EVERYONE PLAYS TOGETHER!* Why is that so many DMs believe that the game is them vs. the players?
I've never played D&D, so feel free to dismiss my opinion, but I think it's because DMs have to be somewhat against the players. If the DM is completely on the player's side, the game is too easy. That said, any DM could immediately do a TPK, as it isn't that hard.
Could be the power going to their heads and like being in control of everything
@@JoelPerry1 For the record, the GM's job is to challenge the players, not to treat them as adversaries that they must defeat in order to have a good time, though a lot of GM's miss the memo and think that being antagonistic towards their players is the best way to offer a challenging fight, when the reality is that you're supposed to throw challenges at the party that they can overcome and feel good overcoming based on their own power.
To put it another way, think about any video game you've ever played. There's always gonna be that one section or boss or whatever that puts you through the wringer and forces you to go through it dozens of times before you win, but the game itself isn't necessarily trying to make you quit, typically, and most challenges will become easier the better you execute your strategy until you get to a point where you can go through the same challenge without suffering a single point of damage.
It's the same thing in regards to ttrpgs, the challenges should be hard, maybe even a tad frustrating, but you should always try to be in the player's corner by throwing challenges at them with the mindset that it's nothing they cannot beat on their own, because if the players are happy with the state of the game, then it makes it easier to run games that you enjoy and watch these characters develop over time.
I hear you. Let the situation play out. It might lead to a much better arc or plot point than you envisioned in the first place. Gotta be flexible. Many times a player or party has done something that totally throws off what I had planned to happen. Which then leads me to have to figure out what the bad guys do in response to that.
Like they taught us in the military, no plan survives contact with the enemy intact. The bad guys will still have their goal they are trying to get, but now will have to do it another way. This back and forth is way better in my opinion than simply railroading the players.
@@JoelPerry1 I can see how it looks like that. The DM's job is to play the opposition, generate conflict, and provide enough tension that the players feel challenged and like they've earned their victory. A good GM will have villains that could credibly win and will play them intelligently.
But the DM's actual job is to host an interesting and enjoyable story for the players. He plays opposition because a game with opponents is more enjoyable. He generates conflict because a story with conflict is more enjoyable. He challenges the players because a hard won victory is more enjoyable than having victory handed to you. And sometimes he lets the players win handily because it's also enjoyable to let players show off how cool their characters are by womping some baddies, especially if those baddies were a serious threat earlier in the campaign.
At almost the exact moment Crispy said he might steal the quest, I thought "Damn, I need to steal this quest." 😂
I've already stolen it.
There's a qyest kinda like that in Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, but a bit different. You start by buying a house for a suspiciously low sum of money and when you try to sleep in it, you find out it's haunted, explaining the low price. So, you've got no choice but to deal with the haunting one way or another, but once you do, it's quite a lovely house.
@@Xylarxcode Yeah, I remember that one! Good quest - don't you get me playing IV again! :D
It *is* a good quest. Simple, but fun, coherent and compact but not small. perfect for a starter group and gives the players both a moral choice and a base of operations.
I did a similar thing in one of my cyberpunk games years ago. Had the team helping an NPC get safely out of town after which they stumbled upon a fairly-well-camouflaged and obviously long-abandoned survivalist's hideout, which gave them their own base that no one knew about. Considering doing similar for my current game.
On the “she was a former solider and elite warrior” thing, if you are going to play a character like that, making them old is the only thing that makes sense. Being young just isn’t, unless they’re some kind of child prodigy.
When I played my centaur war veteran, he had a whole life before his current adventures, he was a guard, then solider, then general in many wars. Before retiring and leaving, which is where he picks up, he’s skilled at what he did but not overpowered, because it had been many years since he had fought. An elite solider may run, but if they’re older and not as strong as they once were, then maybe it would make sense for them to run? How about ptsd from battles and such?
I assume she expected her archer to be a prodigy.
@@ArcCaravan yeah I assume so, but describing yourself as an “elite solider” implies a lot that she never showed, obviously I’m looking too far into this since she clearly was a complete weirdo
So she's a teenaged former soldier with over 20 years of experience in combat--what's the problem??
Lol yeah. The whole "18-year-old battle-hardened veteran" thing is like... well, it's one thing if you're writing for an anime, and the editors send notes back like "Hey you gotta age this character down thirty years because the high schoolers watching won't connect to someone who isn't their own age." It's a trope born out of marketing strategy, which is fine for what it is, but weird as heck when people don't _realize_ that's what it is.
I made an Astral Self Monk, and the main gimmick of that subclass is the character basically doesn't use their physical body to do stuff, they use a more powerful astral manifestation of their body (you can use wisdom instead of Dex/Strength to do stuff, even like strength based checks, it's really cool)
And I thought about what kind of person would most benefit from such an ability?
And that's basically how I made a 12 year old girl monk that using her astral arms can just machine gun like 20 punches a second.
THEN however you run into the problem, how does a child manage to even get to this stage?
Variant Human with the Prodigy feat, skilled or skill expert feat at level 4 and with a very no nonsense personality and supporting backstory.
Making young characters in DnD is ENTIRELY possible and can even be very fun, but it's CHALLENGING because of all the issues you need to work out. If you do that though, you can get some extremely interesting characters.
Intro: I get DMs want the players to get the hype discovery moment naturally but like . . . Hints man. Let the Orbs give them some proper speculation.
1: Damn, Paul Howard here pulling the best rulings here. At least he was honest with the "it just doesn't work."
2: Looks like we've got a problem DM platter, I wouldn't blame the party for bailing on Nice Girl's Bizzare Adventure with what she's trying to nuke them with.
3: Hot Take, if you get salty about scheduling, don't be a DM. Still, props to OP for strong-arming his way back to life.
4: . . . Well this is . . . An entry . . . For the That Guy Hall of Fame. Not sure where to place her on the Horror Story Totem Pole, but she's fuckin up there. Props to Cleric for bailing early.
“You’re Just DEAD.”
I think the DM was jealous OP was now dating and had time outside of DND.
However, this petty bullshit would just make me leave the game altogether, not spend MORE time with this arsehole.
Same
same x2
When I started dating the man who became my husband, his DM tried to get him to dump me because I would be stealing his time and he would be missing game sessions. It took him several months before he (DM) would allow me to join a game at a change of campaign time. Three years later DM said he valued me more as a player than my husband.
I guess we can take solace in the idea that OP having a spine meant that the GM won't pull crap like this moving forward.
Real glad OP forced the DM to retcon that death. It's not like OP didn't give them a heads up.
One time, I failed a saving throw that would've killed me. Instead, I surprised my DM by breaking out my cleric's Time Domain ability, which let me reroll one check even after learning if the original succeeded or failed. Nat 20. My DM's response? With a big grin, he says, "I love it when a rarely used ability pays off like that." Great DM. Lots of challenging encounters over a 2 year campaign. Our characters died and resurrected plenty, but he would subtly intervene to prevent TPK. We all knew he'd do that on occasion but generally couldn't pinpoint where or how. It might be a subtle as an enemy stops using an ability that proved too effective or changing which pc they targeted. No DMPCs saving the day. His favorite season, he tells me, was our last one. He'd decided he wanted to let us see how powerful we really were when not fighting world ending elder evils. That hag literally never knew what hit it. 😊
I haven't played since then because we all moved away post graduation and I just don't think I can find a group or game like that again.
I never had my character killed when I wasn't there, but I did have my character's personal quest to find his sister (who had become a minor BBEG) culminated when I wasn't there.
I've had my character killed (or as good as) when I wasn't there, but it was a TPK and we started a new campaign the next week.
My brother had his character killed while he wasn't playing but was well within earshot. He was grounded to his room after his latest bs shenanigans with the base MPs, and my dad wanted to write him out of the scenario altogether -- mostly because he didn't want to deal with this deadweight NPC for the rest of the campaign, but I suspect it was also partially to punish my brother.
@@robertbryant4669 That seems like a very immature way to punish a child.
I will never understand how DMs think shit like this is ok!!!
@@JCArules13 Well, which is more childish? Killing your son's PC in a fictional setting? Or making a false accusation of child abuse against your parents, which brings the MPs out to your home to investigate, only to find that you've been holding stolen merchandise for the local shoplifting ring that you're a part of?
To this day, I have no idea why my brother wasn't sent to juvie over that one.
With that first story and the arrows, even disregarding the sight, no arrows are going 1000ft
Distance bow w/true strike.
That'd be what, 1000ft at +10 after range/TS right?
@@onyxd6270 What system are you talking about?
I actually did a bit of research into the distance that arrows can travel as a part of working on a ttrpg project with some friends and my bf. Most sources listed an effective range lower than 625ft, with a theoretical uselessly inaccurate range of 1200ft. Under the right circumstances, like if you had a sharpshooter, I could see reaching the 1,000ft threshold, so it could be possible with that kind of distance on a bow.
But see that's the problem. that's a *professional*, I've dedicated my life to the bow kind of experienced user. That's not *literally an entire army.*
So the idea that you could possibly have a 1000ft bow capable of being wielded and used by soldiers en masse outside of
1: The army is based in an archery first style, putting little effort into its melee combat.
2: A futuristic setting or at the very least with crossbows.
3: having magical enchants for an *entire army*
This is insulting at best, and a blatant fuck you at worst
Modern crossbows have reached a world record of over 6k feet, but this isn't 1950, and most crossbows cap closer to 500yd going by a google search. This is olden times before guns and fancy shooting tools.
Its genuinely horrifying the amount of horror stories involving a player thats being so publicly honest about pedophiliac roleplaying, had one in an old group i abandoned long ago, she creeped me the hell out (i was 16 she in her late 20s probably)
Creepy Chick: "I wanna quit!"
Me: "OK, bye Felicia!"
"No...please...Don't go" - Willy Wonka.
"Oh no! ...Anyway"
"Don't threaten me with a good time."
Clap if you care. (…) Alright, let's move on.
One of the most empty threats out there!
I’ve blocked ppl who have talked to me for slightly less heinous offenses but once the girl in the last story talking about her creepy fetish and the asking if the DM wanted to act that out. Yeah block immediately don’t come to my game ever again
It doesn't even sound like a fetish it sounds like she got some personal issues to work out in therapy
@@lunebadru5997honestly, that’s what I thought too. Still, it’s gross and creepy for her to shove all of that onto OP and cross their boundaries by going into detail. Trauma isn’t an excuse to harm someone else or push boundaries.
@@gregjayonnaise8314OP had already made it clear from the start that kind of stuff wouldn’t be allowed, I have no idea what got in her head to start recounting an old pedo story to OP even though they already told her no. Some people just don’t know when to keep that crap to themselves.
What type of less heinous offenses did you block people for?
The last story where the arcane archer was talking about erp made me highly uncomfortable. Hopefully they get the help they need
I hope she recovers from her abuse.
The DM in the third story gives off very strong "If I don't have a girlfriend then no one can" vibes.
Also, for that last story? I'll bet money that the problem player kept having her character wander off to the barracks, because she was hoping OP would DM a side interaction there, where she could try to bring the "underage girl with a much older partner" thing into OP's campaign, too. By having her character flirt with an older guardsman.
ETA: Also, that her reason for explaining the situation in her other campaign, was because she thought "OP's not getting the hint, so I'll just have to approach the subject directly..."
ew i hate that youre right
That's...super gross someone get her some help. DND is not where you handle your trauma
@@lunebadru5997 seems more likely that she was a p3do than traumatized
Actually it seems that D&D is where lots of people are handling their trauma. It's an ongoing theme of this channel. 😮
I think I've only seen two characters capable of making a CHA 20 save...
Also, characters have plot armor when the player isn't there. Period. No exceptions.
1 exception: their character is involved in a fight that resulted in a TPK or the player gave explicit permission otherwise.
You're just dead - I *_love_* the way OP just stood his ground and forced the DM to undo the petty killing off of his character. Probably handed it better than I would have.
Yea that lady story was a yikes for all those red flags , especially the wizard & body guard thing. But like he said silver lining it ended pretty calmly rather then nuclear .
Man, I had a DM kill a character when I wasn't around- I took two weeks off the session during some not plot important stuff, it was my birthday one week then i took a week off cuz I had the flu and KH3 had just come out and I'm a big fan- I'd actually talked about taking those days off well in advanced- next thing I hear is that i've been torn to shreads during a twin black dragon fight (I'd left my character in care of another player cuz i was the only healer and hated the idea of leaving the party without that). The DM was like, haha sorry dude. I just kinda swallowed how pissed I was but man, it still bothers me.
So, how did the rest of the party survive without a healer?
You're just dead: That DM was *definitely* jealous the OP had a girlfriend who wasn't them.
In that Paul the DM situation with not allowing the countersign, I can understand having a whole plot and adventure around the players getting framed for something and then having to clear their names. Cool but I would handle it differently because I personally love when players thwart my well planned out plots because you can't intentionally create on your own such a moment in which the player feels so empowered. They will remember that moment for years and will attribute it to your DMing if you properly run with it. I would allow the roll and set a reasonable DC considering their current foe. Then if they fail continue as normal. If not, you have an opportunity to adlib something cool. Think of what the enemy would do if that happened. Did they have a backup plan? Would they come back later with a different way to frame them? Would they attack or wait till after dark and attack? Pay off a guard to accuse them anyways. Plant some evidence in their wagon, on their horses, with a friendly NPC or start viscous rumors that someone important believes to be true. All these things add verisimilitude to your campaign world and show that you care about their agency in your world. Give your enemy NPCs a plan and resources but not a fool proof one. Plan for what they will do if things don't go exactly as they thought. Adaptable enemies are more interesting than static ones.
Many years ago I had a DM who playing with was like being in an abusive relationship. He was very good at the description aspect and the worldbuilding, but clearly had his favorites in the group, and those favorites were always the fighting classes (Fighter, barbarian, Ranger, etc). The rogues and bards were so handicapped as to be useless, as were any primary magic users. Wizards would have components stolen or lost, clerics would have holy symbols taken from them, and basically unless you were a fighter your character got beat up again and again and again with no recourse. (Nevermind that spells often wouldn't work as described "because of something I know and you don't", and all the bad guys always seemed to uncannily make their saves against spells). Characters were kept low level (in retrospect so he could control them) and campaigns were abandoned in favor of "starting over fresh" whenever the characters got to about 6th level and were capable of their own agency. Campaigns repeatedly would descend into the party losing a fight, which would result in "you are captured" and then involvements in all the things that would happen while the characters were imprisoned (torture, jail fights, forced "missions", etc). Things got so bad at one point there was a TPK which then resulted in the characters being continued in some sort of afterlife (which also was a world full of torture, soul stealing, evil godlike beings etc). After it became clear the 4th party was going to meet similar fates to the rest I left one night and never came back. One of my most fun memories was starting a new campaign as DM with some of the players from this group (not inviting the DM) and when the characters actually WON an important fight a player who had never played with anyone but me and the abusive DM pulled me aside and said to me "That was great! I never actually won and saved anyone before!".
Intro was a funny apocalypse ending.
1st story was a pain of a DM.
2nd story felt like killer DM was in retaliation to being told to quit flirting.
3rd story had a great ending with OP standing his ground.
4th story was a rollercoaster with a relatively smooth end. She definitely matches "nice guys".
AA: "She started threatening to quit."
Me: "Don't threaten me with a good time.... Follow through."
The DM should have kicked out the last story nice girl looooong before things escalated to that point. She was terrible, but all that long term suffering was avoidable. There's such a thing as too many chances.
Oh wow, that haunted mansion quest is pretty cool. I'm definitely... borrowing it this Sunday!
I have had a player play an under aged cleric in one of my games back at the start of my DMing. The cleric had amnesia and was super adorable, she essentially became the parties adoptive daughter, everyone went to protect her and loved her, and eventually she found out that a very powerful druid was her father, a druid she had actually been raised by but couldnt remember because of her amnesia. Exploring the characters relationship with the druid through the difficulty of his revealing the truth to the character and him realizing the descisions that he made of keeping that from her for as long as he did was poor judgement despite the things which happened that were his reasons for keeping it from her. It was pretty wholesome, emotional and adorable.
That player did not sound like she had that sort of intent with playing an under aged character, especially once she went off about having ERP with another under aged character. Good on that DM for saying no if he wasnt comfortable with her playing an under aged character.
I spoke with the player extensively about the cleric i talked about above and her desires for the character before saying that it was ok. In hindsight was it neccessarily the best descision as a new DM to allow her to play that character? Maybe not, but it turned out ok. I was fortunate and still love the story of that cleric today.
You can't rob a Bard of their one chance to ever use Countersong. That's messed up. It's like not letting a wizard use their polymorph.
That woman didn’t want to play dnd, she wanted to do a fantasy kiddie (ugh) erp. So many places online she could have found that
Oh wow, saw a video from you yesterday 29 seconds after posting, today it's 4 minutes. I guess I'm deep in the Crispy algorithm now. Not that I'm complaining though, I love your videos!
That story with the sirens sounds lke the DnD version of Stardust Crusaders. Just can´t get on a boat without things going horribly.
We have a party member who sadly misses a good deal of sessions due to life but we don´t just kill him off. During less important sessions his character is helping out the local town guard and is gaining levels in bureaucracy.
"She's not that nice" is a huge understatement. Holy cow.
From Flirting to TPKing story. To OP. That's how modern anchors on large sea going ships work today. I'm not sure about in the medieval period, but I was in the Navy. Today you have the Chain Locker where the anchor chain is kept and fixed to the deck of the Chain Locker. It then goes up thru Anchor Windless, the winch that can lower it, but normally only raises it back up. And finally out thru the Focsle (contracted, modern term for the Forecastle). So DM probably only knew how a modern one worked.
Other than that the whole story was messed up. I could see the sirens getting a good run and leaping out of the water, over the ship like a "flying fish", but they would have to get awfully close to the ship to do it and couldn't be singing while swimming fast under water to get the angle they would need for the leap. And that DC was way too high. And way too powered for that.
Fun fact. The CR chart gives things DC 20 at CRs 21-23
The one with the character dying: I love the power move of staring the dm down and not budging until they retcon the death bc they knew it was bs
I’m a player who does on occasion like to play as a young man just starting into the world. Usually around eighteen to twenty if human or still young for the race. The youngest I’ve played was a fourteen year old Orc who was out for his coming of age hunt when he aided the party against a band of goblins. He stayed as the party Barbarian making a name for himself. Not once was it ever made weird as most NPCs wanted to mother him or avoid him. The funniest thing was when the much older Elven fighter who was like a mentor and father figure, tried to give the birds and bees talk. It ended with not only Grarnak (the orc) being confused but so was I (as a twenty year old).
The dead pc storys OP did a masterful move. If DM does some dumb shit like that to your character without an explanation the only proper response is "that didn't happen"
The gaslighting about a new character just to commit to your initial character when it's time to play was the frustrating detail to me, but I'd have fuel for NPCs & Sidekicks once any creepy details are trimmed out.
As soon as it became clear the DM was refusing to allow you to use a spell/class aspect/whatever that would legitimately work for the sole reason s/he couldn't think of any other way for their story to progress, I would start looking for a new group.
That last one's quest, that's a really good way to get the players into a base without just getting them to pay for it, or them slowly taking over a tavern.
Re: dealing with a PC not making it.
I'm currently DMing LMoP and we come to a portion I tailored to a specific character. Unfortunately, scheduling conflicts happened and specific character's player can't make it so we collectively agreed to do another portion of the adventure until the player CAN make it. Our excuse for why that character couldn't make it?
"PC stays behind to work out the logistics of transporting a small town's worth of supplies." Which worked well for a Bard who has a guild artisan background.
Oh man, a new Crispy video? What a treat, lemme get my popcorn!
I joined a game with some randoms off roll20 about a year back, it was a one shot. One guy played a seven year old girl, a cleric, I was sat there waiting for it get weird. It did not. He roleplayed well this kid, blessed by the Gods, who healed and buffed us as we fought against evil. I was pretty surprised.
The arcane archer one reminds me of a clash of player styles I had. My group and I got along pretty well at first. I say at first because the druid eventually left the group and insulted everyone else on the way out. What happened is that we got an old inn as a reward for our first quest. We wanted to reopen it and we’re excited to. But we needed funds and so we decided to adventure to make up that. Around this point the druid starts being late, or just not showing up. No warning. Just not there. They get huffy any time they feel we aren’t sharing enough information and we are often taking 30 minutes or so just to catch them up whenever they both to actually show up. So yeah, annoying. We tolerate it for a time. But the worst times are anytime we head back to our inn to check up on it. It’s not like we are doing the work ourselves even. We had rescued a group of kobolds who were using their skills to fix up the place and make it habitable. We also hired staff to run the place and we had a magic item that created food that we were using to stock the place. We were basically absentee owners, often off adventuring and just bringing back loot and other stuff to spruce up the place and make it more of a touristy hotspot. The druid is quite upset by this point. In their own words they say “this feels more like a tavern building game than real dnd”. I then point out that they were always late and missed sessions of combat or roleplay. It’s not our fault they aren’t there when stuff happens that is supposedly more their preference. And yes I know that is rude but by this point I had endless private messages from this person basically telling me to shut up each session and was done with being patient. The dm says if they aren’t enjoying themselves they are free to leave. They do. I find out later I wasn’t the only one getting those private messages. The dm is also annoyed because the ex-druid insulted the rest of us by saying we, the party, weren’t “including” them despite, from the dm’s perspective, us players were often directly turning to the druid and saying “and what would you like to do” and actively being inclusive and open about it. So yeah, dm is not unhappy to see them go. I think dm quite liked our group and we got along very well and that was why he was insulted on our behalf. And was livid when he learned of the private messages. Like I said, druid sent all of us those messages other than dm. Happy ending though. The tavern is up and running and successful and our group is still close knit and loves adventuring. We are still absentee owners of it but we love having our party come home and be greeted by our kobolds like family. The village we set up in has our backs like crazy and it’s just nice to give our characters a place that feels like coming home. It’s also been a great location for our dm to introduce new characters in as we have every reason to drop by since we own the place and talk with all the locals. New players can be easily folded this way. It’s no tavern simulator. If it was I can think of way more ways to have done that, but we didn’t take that route. We just built a home is all. And home and home bases are important for a party I feel.
I'm not gonna lie I might also that quest in "She wasn't very nice" it's really good
Hey, it's the thorn hand cannon in the background again, nice
The online group that I'm a player in has a fixed day each week, but the sessions sometimes get cancelled up until an hour before the session. Annoying, but often nothing that can be done about it. (Our DMs country has an ongoing energy crisis).
My physical group of 5 players that I DM for cannot find a suitable time to play in months at a time.
So, on the subject of scheduling well in advance - damned if you do, damned if you don't 😂
16:13 (Apologies in advance if this sounds self-centered, that is not my intention)
Yeah, I prefer having a decided day of week to play. My party used to play on Wednesdays but then we changed to Sundays because one of my friends and one of the other party members' friends had shown interest in joining the party, problem was, Wednesdays didn't work for my friend (don't know why they didn't work for party member's friend) as she did horse riding (exact English term unknown, my party and I are Swedish) then. First time a player couldn't make it was yesterday's session, because our dwarf player's mum was sick, so my friend offered that we played at her place as we had decided to play at dwarf player's. She also offered to play the dwarf character as a substitute for the player (kinda unnecessary in hindsight, the only thing the dwarf, whose name is Adrik, didn't do much other than heal the elf Soveliss after he got hit in the face with a rock once because the racist dwarf NPC wouldn't negotiate prices and he got punched in the face by a law enforcer after he shot said dwarf NPC in the ankle for stealing his glass bottle of slime) and she is now the official party substitute until she gets a character of her own, which currently seems unlikely as she has not expressed interest in doing so, so that's what we do when a player can't make it.
Jesus, I have heard of Main Player Syndrome, but the last story was nuts.
That counter music ability is as useless as deflect missiles for monks. I play a monk and when I gained that ability, the DM purposefully stopped having ranged attackers from attacking my characters because he knew I had that ability. I told him, "You know, but the npc probably does not." He still continues to never fire arrows or any other ranged weapon at my monk.
Wanting to play a kid is becoming a common warning sign in these stories.
I agree with those who've suggested that the flirty DM was probably into the player and got hostile when things weren't working.
Hearing Crispy talk about stealing that quest. Couldnt help but think of the cartoon rat running of with that
quest notes.
That intro story, i like it, the good guys dont always win.
"Flirting to TPKing" story: Why do I get the feeling this sort of encounter and the gaslighting is the DM's passive aggressive response to having their weird flirting getting shut down?
"You're just dead" story: FINALLY! Someone who called out their DM on their "RoCkS fAlL aNd YoU dIe" BS!
That girl had more red flags than the Soviet Union.
I am absolutely stealing that last DM's haunted house quest for my new campaign as a low-level adventure to get the ball rolling before springing the main plot I'm writing on my players. It has a nice Witcher 3 vibe to it. I dig it.
I like how spiteful that jealous DM was. All that was missing was describing how the player soiled himself as he died and the party discovered his browser history.
I had a DM who's philosophy was the more player characters he managed to kill, the better the game was. He even worked a chasm into every campaign you would have to roll a nat. 20 to jump or spend 2 days in game to go around or climb out of if you didn't role a nat. 20. But he did know how to run one hell of a game... it was a love/hate thing.
These DM's vs. Players stories make me happy that my DM is the sweetest woman that DOESN'T try to pull the stunts the DM in the first story does. Honestly these DM's that actively try and screw the party over, how do these people see this as fun or rewarding, especially when the players ditch them in the end?
As a forever DM, I am blessed with cooperative players, and it does go both ways. DMs who screw the party over, very bad and unfun. Players who purposefully are just an ass outside of their character, very bad and unfun
@@lordhellstrande2763 it's pretty much a gambling coin flip. Either party as a whole or just a single unit ruins the game, or the DM does. That's the risk all people face when not playing with friends.
@@23gameoverlord couldn't have said it better
There is only a single time I've ever killed a character when the player was gone, and technically, it wasn't even me that pulled the trigger.
Resident Evil game, Genesys (FFG) system, a player made a REALLY dumb decisions. I asked, "Are you absolutely, positively, 100% certain that this is the action you want to take?" The player responded with, "Yes. Our teammate-" they'd just saved one of the other PC's from a mad scientist's experiment, and the team's medic literally did open-chest-cavity heart surgery on the fly, so that was pretty epic- "- needs clothes, and the zombies have clothes they don't need." The player then opened a corridor of rooms in the hall just outside of the improvised surgical theater, and zombie test subjects began to shamble out, mere minutes after the team had just sealed them inside when the scientist unlocked the doors to cover his escape. The session ends with the doors opening, and the rest of the party suddenly very bloodthirsty.
Next session, the odd one out is AWOL, and nobody knows where he is. He's not answering his phone, he's not on any of his usual online places where someone can grab his attention, and he never said a single thing to anyone about being absent. Session begins, and I, the GM, take control of his sheet. The instant the session opens up, the team's assault specialist (expert in breach-and-clear, covering fire, tactical maneuvers, general battle weapons and tactics, etc...) player declares that his character engages in combat with the AWOL player's character. Initiative is rolled, and before the turn order is finalized, everyone else chimes in that they're participating as well, rolling their initiatives. One PC gets on the computer that controls the facility, but can't quite succeed, though he does delay the total release of the zombies. Other PC's start lighting AWOL up with guns, and then, the Assault player- who was rolling with Setback Dice on everything due to having just been surgically operated on twice- rolls a successful maneuver to vault cover that AWOL had ducked behind, and with a Triumph, stunned him too. This was narrated as a 'meaty whack' from the 'all natural beef rifle' that was dangling freely due to the character having been stripped for surgery, and he then followed up with a full rip of an M240B LMG at point blank.
The LMG ripped through his Defense, Soak, and Wounds, past the threshold. The fight was over, or so it appeared. The problem character of the AWOL player was incapacitated, and could be dealt with when the player- "I'm going to spend the Advantage to activate Linked," says the Assault player, his character wielding the LMG which has the weapon quality Linked 3, meaning that with sufficient Advantage on a successful attack roll, the damage can be applied up to 3 extra times. He spent all the Advantage to exceed the PC's Wound threshold TWICE, ensuring that there was no body left to come back as a zombie. I briefly contemplated editing Assault's sheet to replace the M240B with an M249 SAW as the rapid fire cut the PC in half, though I chose not to. After combat ended, the zombies were starting to get loose, and the team hauled ass to a nearby freight elevator, though it was disabled. They sent another PC- named 'Myk', pronounced 'mook' because he was an otherwise 'unnamed mook' who joined the team late- up the shaft to fix it, and after a tense standoff against the oncoming horde, they managed to escape, later finding some clothing for Assault.
Just as the session was ending, AWOL shows up, saying he was sick and passed out- which ended up not being true, rather, he didn't feel well, shut his computer off without telling anyone anything, crawled into bed, and slept through his alarm that may or may not have even been set. He was informed that his character had been killed, and when it was explained why, he started to literally cry, and between sobs, lied about what had happened the session prior, saying he NEVER tried to open the cages, and that he NEVER said he was going to take clothes off of zombies, and make the open-heart-surgery victim wear them, all covered in T-Virus grime. Then he said it was a joke, which everyone reminded him, yes, he did declare his prior actions, and no, he never implied it was a joke. His final attempt at retconning his character's demise was that he never actually made any real attempts at opening the zombie cages, which was then proven to be a lie when his digitally archived roll to override the lockdown was shown to him.
God that Waterdeep adventure is a bad ass idea...stealing that
Small fun history fact on 3rd story.
Sirens, according to ancient greek mythology, used to be half human, half bird women and would fly. Still lured sailors to death with their song though. But the well known version is now more of a mermaid than bird lady.
Finally...someone else who knows that
you know, i experienced the good guy version of that counter song thing. i had an ability to raise ppl from the dead (very rare in the game i was in, not dnd) and one of the player's NPC gf died. this was something mandated by game mechanics and totally fair, there was a fate system to do with NPCs that often leads to their very poetic deaths. the player had acknowleged via chat that he was cool with it, all was above board
i had been waiting to use this one ability since the game began. i was AMPED! this was a death i could do something about! the nuance of what exactly had happened was lost on me, cos the DM and the player were talking via DMs, so i just thought she failed a roll. DM was in a bit of a sticky spot. on one hand, im FINALLY getting to use this ability that id been chomping at the bit to use! on the other hand, the other player had fully accepted the consequences of his choice that led to the tragic death of his in character gf, and with the way the game was set up itd feel a bit cheap to just have her....be alive. So our dungeon master was put on the spot and handled it like a champ. My ability worked, but i got into a fight with some crazy underworld fate creature to bring her back. only managed to get half of her soul, making her a draugr (less skyrim, more classic old norse) and unable to be healed unless we go on a quest to the underworld to find the rest of her soul. it was pretty gnarly, and i seriously respect him for coming up with a solution that worked for everyone so quickly. guy is the best DM ive ever played with
Not gonna lie, that Siren battle sounds hilarious. Prolly not fun to play, but I'd like to watch a movie of that.
Mixed feelings on some of this.
When it comes to backgrounds like "former soldier and elite warrior" thing, one has to remember that this is heroic fantasy, such backgrounds around young characters are not uncommon. Even in the real world it DOES happen, consider if you have the needed ability you could say join a group like SEALS or DELTA FORCE here in the US do a 4 year tour in covert operations, and then come out of the military and still be pretty young. In a more fantasy appropriate example even without being unrealistic it would simply say something about the character's background. Sparta, and some eras of Japan's Samurai Aristocracy were training people at a VERY young age to be warriors, just saying it can be made to work. That said if part of the idea of the character is that they have basically been learning martial arts and swordsmanship since they could walk, that should be reflected in the overall build.
As far as playing a child character, ignoring the rest of the story, I am really not seeing the big deal. That said if the GM doesn't want it, you really shouldn't fight with the GM. Some games like GURPS do include rules for making younger than normal characters though, the "youth" disadvantage has been in that game pretty much from the beginning. What's more heroic fantasy has been producing teenage heroes for decades, and young adult fantasy has become more popular than ever before, not to mention stuff like Harry Potter. This is before you even consider the global impact of the Anime Explosion. It really doesn't shock me or creep me out that someone might want to create a young character, especially if it's someone who doesn't seem to project themselves onto their character too much, and mostly goes with concepts and ideas. Something like that takes other behaviors to really get warning bells from me, and get me to say "no".
As far as sexual behavior goes, even extreme sexual behavior, if everyone is of age I don't generally see the big deal, unless the game is becoming a porn parody. The big issues with this are basically when it either makes people, including the GM, uncomfortable for some reason, it detracts from the game (half the group sits around twiddling their thumbs while half the group talks about kink or whatever so the adventure doesn't progress and people start to leave), or when you start people trying to use their character as an avenue to pursue or facilitate a RL relationship, this can be a problem with couples or married folks in particular, especially the latter. If someone you have no interest in is basically coming onto you through RP, yeah, that's something you need to resolve, but otherwise, I think gamers have these prudish tendencies simply based on peer pressure that they think other gamers would look down on their game for such content. To be fair this is all highly subjective, and has to be handled case by case, and has little to do directly with anything said here, I mostly mention it because I get a really intense "sex and romance in RPGs is bad" vibe from some of these videos, and a lot of the comments. In the hands of a good GM, it can also be a powerful tool, as almost anything can.
I play in a game now with an awesome woman and we shared horror stories of other people (some of them women) we have played with and both agreed we were the most likeable women each other had ever played with on Roll20, we're really good friends now but I feel like Roll20 can be a bit of a magnet for weird people in general and some of those weird people are women so that experence stands out. I've been playing for a few years with each of my groups and honestly I really like not being the only woman in a game
You're Just Dead story. This was a little before my time, but as I understand it early on in D&D they tried to end each session back in town. Time out of game passed on a one for one scale, i.e. each day not in game was a day in real life. Ending each session back in town meant that players who couldn't make the session would not have to as their character could just stay in town. Also anyone who did happen to show up to play could take part in that session, even if they were not normally a party member. This allowed a great deal of flexibility in a game environment that you had lots of players with lots of scheduling problems. Of course the main drawback to this is you cannot have a grand plot in the sense of how we do most campaigns today and for as long as I can remember. Instead you have a huge dungeon to explore right outside a town that the players never really leave.
Just wanted to throw this out there incase some have really bad scheduling problems they might be able to adapt this to there needs.
23:05 It's not stealing ... It's taking inspiration 🤣
It's playing a tabletop game.
The last story is the DM's fault, He should've kicked her BEFORE the other player were annoyed, I'm sure it wasn't uncalled for... yeah SHE WASN'T VERY NICE!
I never had problems with people playing kids or teens and no one ever randomly inserted ERP in games.
The most problematic players in my groups are people who are bad at scheduling. I must be lucky.
1: Maybe is just me, but all games, even those outside of tabletop roleplay, not matter how hard they are they should at least be winnable. Otherwise is just a waist of time that cause frustration to anyone. Is like those Mario Maker levels no one plays because they made them so hard on purpose without regarding if someone can pass that level or not.
16:15
I only disagree with one thing you say here.
Scheduling and the number of days notice required fluxuates WILDLY between groups. Saying "Uh no three days IS NOT enough" like that's the one universal answer between all tables and groups regardless of situation is absurd. For an online group, like my group, as little as a day's advance is more than enough. But that's my group in an online game played over a Discord VC with Dice Bots. The planning is minimal, as we don't need actual supplies outside of the D20PFSRD or Archives of Nethys, and however much work the GM plans to put into planning an adventure. Because of this games last anywhere between one and six hours depending on the mood and how much prep was done. But this isn't the norm OR an expectation for OTHERS with DIFFERENT setups.
I kind of wonder if that last one was a teenager IRL. A lot of the behavior sounds like immature teenager crap, wanting to rp but not going where the rp is happening, and wanting other people to ask about her character but not asking about theirs, especially.
Yeah, it's all classic MCS, which in female players is definitely more common among the teenage bracket.
1) I'm stealing the idea for the haunted house adventure. That is gold.
2) The Arcane Archer is not only a creep, but a bad player. Their character as stated would make a great NPC; unwilling to join group and unwilling to go on adventures. The GM should honestly have banned her from his sessions and been done with it.
Arcane Archer really just... like, girl, you have trauma, okay? At least she realized she'd been insufferable in her group behavior and left, but if it's me, I would've kicked her out the moment someone else left *because* of her. Oof. Support players who behave; those who don't can shape up and fly right or fly right out the damn window.
In the age of Sail the Winch of ships was (as far as I know) not directly connected to the Anchor chain/rope but to a rope that would be sown to the anchor chain and loosend again and again to lift the anchor. So the gm wasn't wrong there. There is even a little documentary about the hms victory (i think) in wich this is explained.
Anyone else remembers:
"Countersong! F**king countersong!" * insert Fear of the Dark *
I'm very happy that Pathfinder has specific rules for playing child characters that make them actually a child that you wouldn't want to play as due to the massive amount of restrictions
Immediately brings up suspicion when someone wants to play a child/below age of adulthood
Paul Stop It story. To Paul. Dude let them do it. Or at least try to. Sure you wanted the party framed for murder, but that was still possible even if OP had counter acted the band. Maybe not that night, but the mistake IMHO here is Paul was giving the bad guys a story and not a goal. The story being players are whatever'd by the band and wake up the next morning being arrested. A better option is have an idea of who is trying to frame them and the goal is to frame them. Then if the first plan fails the bad guy then has to come up with some other way to achieve the goal.
Plan B for me would have been a henchman follow the party to see where they stay that night. Kill the noble. Then try to plant the murder weapon in the party's room or possessions. Then have another lackey tip the town guards off. Then if the party discovers the henchman placing the murder weapon, have the henchman scream his head off for the town guards as the henchman "has found the murders!" If the party kills the guy then the town guards are more likely going to think them the killers. If the party does convince the guards of their innocence, then the bad guy will cut his losses. With each the goal is the same. Each moves from one plan to the next and allows the players to thwart those plans. Until ultimately it is no longer possible to achieve the goal and the bad guy gives up.
Adventures? That sounds like it's going to get in the way of my breakfast and walking simulation
I've seen a few GM's have base granting quests. I like the idea, thought up one for shadow run.
Holy shit crispys voice dropped since the last time I listened
That harpy with the 20 save DC would be equivalent of a CR 16ish monster or there abouts just due to bounded accuracy. 8 + 7 + 5 or 8 + 6 + 6 = 20. 8 base, (Cha at 24/22), and proficiency bonus which is their CR compared to the player proficiency table capping at CR 30. You can have a lower monster have a higher DC, but that monster would need v rare or legendary magic items, which your players would then loot if they beat an encoutner that is punching way way higher than its bounded accuracy would allow.
The guy pulling out "it just doesn't work" for the bard vs. entire band situation is so dumb.
It's a single person trying to use their abilities to counteract the abilities of an *entire band* working together, rather than a one-on-one situation. You had the most obvious possible explanation for why it wouldn't work *right there!*
What ive never heard of that bard ability lol thats cool
Leaving the usual like! Have a good evening everyone!
The dm with the arcane archer is the classic, try to keep bad players and run off the good players. As soon as AA threatened to quit, I would've booted from the server (though would've also kicked them out rather than lose a good player)
Are you sure the challange rating of the sirens is semantics and not semtex ß
I sometimes feel that the "If you enjoyed this, please like and subscribe" is a thinly veiled, "If you enjoyed this, please keep it to yourself, as some of these stories were just sick."
so when you have multiple harpies and sirens it can be quite tedious - start with the first harpy and have each PC make a wisdom saving throw one at a time and if someone fails, they are charmed by that harpy, anyone who succeeds is immune to that harpy's charm for 24 hours....then move on to the next harpy and repeat the process with even those who already failed making another save and if someone who already failed fails again, they are now charmed by the other harpy instead....this is better than "ok everyone make 10 wisdom saving throws" all at once but it takes time...another way to run it if you want to make it faster is just have everyone make one save with disadvantage and arbitrate it however you think is fair and sensible...the latter method isn't RAW but saves a lot of time and probably produces similar results
Dm: quietly moves the plot to the attic because otherwise the players will run in circles for three hours
Its not that hard to have a discussion with everyone involved prior to a game and find out if there are any very specific things that players really do or don't want in their game. Remember, the job of the DM, or GM if you're doing Basic Fantasy RPG, is to facilitate that the players are having fun. That means appropriate challenge level, and story elements for those players.
I have GM'ed for a group of 18+ players who were all pervy and wanted a lot of degeneracy in their game, and who knew that I write erotica, so they specifically asked for those scenarios, and my rule was then that they keep their hands where I can see them while we play. On the other hand, if one player in a group doesn't want adult themes, then I won't go there.
I always start with a group with a Q & A with players before getting started, to find out what they want, and what creeps them out or might ruin the fun for them, or stuff they really want that other GM's wont do. The specifics I ask them if they are okay with, or want or don't want are if 3 subjects are off limit, well sort of 2. 1). Torture? Yes or No? If no, then none is included in the story. Some people really don't like even hearing it described. 2). Sex, Yes or no. If No, then the subject doesn't come up. I keep it PG-13. If the players are 18+ and say yes, they want that stuff, then I ask if non-con is okay or not, and if not, then no struggle snuggles will take place in the game. If they want that shit, only then will it be included.
That set up would have been awesome. Setting some traps before an army and picking them off. That is in essence what can make a cool session. The players taking the time to set up an ambush and seeing the results of that play out, sucks the dm just...sucked all the fun outta that one.
I also think that last one is a huge red flag for the player that participated with her...antics. In an RP it takes two to tango...just...ew.
oh perfect timing
I’m terrible when running combat scenes, but my party is enjoying my campaign so far.