World breakers are like game hackers (people who either use game genie or game sharks) they're not simple cheaters, they're there just to destroy the game, finding new ways to break it instead of enjoying the game, they're not even enjoying themselves either. I remember one of my best friends used to be the world breaker to the point of softlocking various campaigns.
@@dnabre One issue with the knowledge roll type stuff is that they can then become a pouter or powder keg if you make the DCs too high (to avoid the derailment) or alternatively if they pass the check they feel vindicated when they finally get you to the "It's not that important" or "I didn't go that deep with my design" point. It's a good idea, but if you ever play with people you don't know that well outside of the game, it's sometimes a bad idea giving them game mechanics to back-up their derailment. It's much easier, in my experience, to get to a point where magic or some other "needs no further explaining" thing is the basis. If your tabletop system allows for that, I suppose.
I have another one: the living corpse. They seem to be at the table only physically but do not pay attention, do not take notes, do not interact with their fellow players and (in recent times) stay on their phones AL THE TIME...
Ah! Yes, I call them zombies. One may think they are no problem, they can just be an extra. - If they are fine with it then... However... They are not fine with it; instead, they usually drain the other players' brains...
"imma play rdd" Why are you playing a video game during this? You can play a video game at ANY TIME I legit never got people who resign ALL their attention off the game... If you don't wanna play don't ruin the game for the others
@@user-gj7lp5iz6k hi, It’s Jake, zoomer here. I think that you’re generalizing all Zoomers into being an exact stereotype, which has some basis in reality, but which actually is not definitively true. Phones are addicting. Anyone is susceptible to them, of any age. Have a nice day.
man alive this hits home. My in-game "code" for "I haven't figured this out yet" is to name the inn the players want to stay at "The Bouncing Buffalo". They have learned that every time they stay at the Bouncing Buffalo it's a generic tavern that I threw in for them. Yeah the World Breaker still objects to it, but the other players now laugh at him because they know and love the place. Sometimes they tell him, "It's obviously a franchise!" stuff like that.
I keep wondering whether I should make some code words like this for one of my groups who often make a lot of red herrings for themselves and sometimes get fixated on a detail that isn’t related at all. On one hand it’s a challenge for me as Keeper to be flexible and I don’t want to discourage curiosity and investigation. To my credit I do try to insert something to find where possible. Also my main worry is ruining their immersion. But on the other hand it can really bog the game down. Sometimes it means one player takes over, or they miss actual leads because they’re so focused on something else. And that campaign is now on a (irl) time limit, so we’re less able to make large side tracks. So yeah. Not sure.
I have the same with wherever my player want to find some random homeless person. From a campaign long long ago, there was Scuzzy John the Hobo, which was a scifi setting. Now, in any setting, they find Scuzzy John at lest once per campaign.
@@ismirdochegal4804 This way of thinking also gets a LOT of players to suddenly be really shitty. I've killed a campaign because more than half the players were ignoring the game between their turns or had refused to learn the mechanics of the game for the 30th session in a row. They reacted like spoiled children. As a GM, you definitely need to discriminate on the matter of who you will let at your table. Some folks love wasting everyone's time.
I see some people are like me. But I took it a step further. Once - Death on the Reik - I gave players 2 sessions to change their - PCs - behaviour. They didn't. Where's crime, there's punishment. TPK. Me: "I warned you." Gamer: "I like that character." Me: "And I like that campaign. But you become a dick."
The world breaker is a common figure on Internet forums as well. Especially RPG forums. I can't tell you how many times I've see discussions derailed because people want to start arguing about the inner workings of things that don't exist in the first place like FTL drives.
I'm a master of BS, I've felt with world breakers before and made them thoroughly agitated because they couldn't find a hole. Gives me a bright warm feeling inside every time. 🤣😂🤣
@@johnathansanford8206 Oh I bet you have LOTS of fun. Tell us a story please. I want to hear how this has played out. I've only seen it once in all of my years GMing and it was shut down by another player who was significantly more informed than the world breaker.
I mean as long as it makes sense like "Focusing abilties or broken on being physically hit by melee or ranged attack" Not "you literally smacked a harpy in the face, she ignores it and keeps on singing to disrupt your group." Friggin baller gait 3
@@marcar9marcar972 There are plenty of "World Breakers" IRL, they are just a bit... Uhm... Different... Flat-Earthers, Religious-Fanatics, Anti-Vaxers, UFO-Conspiracists, etc.
@@marcar9marcar972 it’s very relatable to games in general, specifically like comparing games to each other. How every other game doesn’t compare to GTAV or RDR2 or anything compared to CP2077. I feel 2077 was ruined for a lot of people by these first three people. You could apply them to anything really, their job, a movie, someone’s friend.
When it come to the world breakers, I would always say "Who are you talking too? Is your character talking to himself? He would need to find someone in town to ask. If you want to spend your time talking to the local elders to see if someone knows, that's great. But no one in this location would know the answers to these questions." If all else fails, double the wandering monsters.
This! I was thinking this. Make it diagetic: if they start hitting up the bartender he can be all "buy an ale or hit the road" and if they keep harassing him with questions after buying the drink, do what a real bartender would do: find other things they "need" to do (help other patrons, converse with a regular away from the pc, cleaning, etc.) that gets them away from the weirdo playing 100 questions.
@@kainthedragon1 when i was a bouncer, if the guy playing 100 questions persisted for too long the bartender would call me over to toss him out... i give bartenders in my games challenge rating 18 and an instant knockout for that purpose
@@wendigo1619 to be fair: most of my bar experience was small town bars without a formal bouncer position: the regulars (or the cook) just doubled as bouncer if called for.
Our group has me, a bio major, my friend who was a med major but changed to bio, a friend with an associates in medical assistance, and another friend who has dabbled in both but perused pharma. We all know enough about anatomy (and are essentially impossible to gross out) that descriptions of injuries and corpses are exceedingly detailed when players ask those questions. Two sessions ago they dissected a yeti, and harvesting odd anatomical parts of monsters has become a pastime after battles.
I had a world breaker in one of my games constantly looking into all the details of everything I put in front of him. We kind of turned it into a joke when I started saying things like, "Dammit Jim! I'm a Dungeon Master, Not and engineer!" or something to that affect every time he began world breaking. I'm sorry your world breaker threw off your rhythm. v_v!
Literally me last D&D session: - I use my stone cunning ability, tell me what I can learn about this random tavern in this random village! - it's just a random tavern dude... - okay, sorry, my bad :D
I had a random chart for "mostly pointless things Stonecunning reveals to you" owing to too many Dwarven PCs in the group. Mostly it was "you spot a fossil of X" or "clearly cut with a #9 chisel" results, but it had snarky observations about inferior non-Dwarven stonemasonry, angles being off, and identifying what regions given construction materials had been quarried from. Utterly useless in general, but it gave me something to tell people when they asked about some random building/tunnel/etc. Once in a while a PC would obsess on one of the results ("Why would anyone import granite all the way from Quun?") and it would wind up leading to some side-quest or roleplaying opportunity, so that was fun.
I'll never forget when I had my players venture in an exploration themed campaign. Every. Single. Damn. Thing. Everything was asked about, that's on me, I made it about exploration I recon but when the mage interrupted the old snake guy in the middle of his speech to ask him what was the name of the pyramid next to them, I lost it and just crumbled into myself
Might as well give a little flavor: "Obviously not Dwarven craftsmanship, the foundation while strong is uneven in places. Not a big problem for a tavern."
Man, the bit about world breakers just kills me every time. "Oh how exactly does this spell work?" idk dude it's magic, we're using abstract rules for a reason
If you're asking in character you will need to find a sage to ask and have intelligence of [really large number]. If you're asking out of character you roll a d20 greater than [some number] and it has a range of [some other number]. Here's the book, look it up.
Some people can just never be happy tbh I've had players try to ask every npc a name and such... I would ask names but only for npcs I'm taking an interest in.
I knew a guy…cuoisidently he is/was the Dweebles of the group…that was the pouter keg. Depended on the night, but he was either pouting or slamming thing around when it didn’t go towards his plan…
One of the friends I regularly play with is one of those as well. It has really been making it difficult for me to enjoy preparing and enjoying that game from time to time.
@@SSkorkowsky wait, double take... I thought you did call it a pouter keg in the video. Ok I see-literally see; I usually only listen most of your videos. I thought you were already making the pun haha
The tester and similar types of players who waste time are probably the worst. Not that I don't enjoy a slowly moving game but then for someone to do everything to derail or poke holes into it is just so disrespectful. It's already really, REALLY difficult to organize a gaming session among 4-5 people who have jobs and other things in their lives, that it's infuriating when you eventually get to have a game session and then it devolves into these types of shenanigans. By the way, your RPG social contract video is top notch and more people really should see it.
Six: The Coward. The players that see every challenge as an insurmountable obstacle. These players will abandon whole quest lines and derail entire campaigns by saying they want to go elsewhere because their characters are in over their heads. This forces the dungeon master to either create a game with intentional minimal resistance, or constantly write new adventures because the players don't want to face the challenges the DM has created, leading to the DM burning out and resenting his group. I'm not salty.
I've thought about creating the "frenzied" condition just for this. You take the "frightened" condition and you reverse it. The player can only move forward towards the target of their frenzied condition. They can't move parallel or away from it. They may, attack it, but they MUST use their movement to move towards it. Fuck your coward PC. He's going to die a quick death and then you can go roll up a NON coward PC.
I run into this sometimes. It always bewilders me. Why would a DM write up a scenario that is going just crush the party instantly, or whatever they're afraid of? Being the Coward as you describe, it doesn't respect the time put into prep, or the time of others at the table.
I have a player who's prone to this. It's annoying, but not insurmountable... the most brute-force-but-effective way to deal with it is "Okay, you go back to the tavern and have a dull and quiet evening... until the Dark Lord's troops show up. If only somebody had taken the fight to him!"
I actually know how that Raiders of the Lost Ark trap worked. It's advanced alien photo-optics tech. Don't forget that that scene took place in Peru, where Indy would later find the Crystal Skull tech too.
I've been watching these for years and I still have a hard time remembering that all these skit characters are the same actor. The voices alone are perfect.
@@Tony-dh7mz It's easy to dismiss videos like these as purely hypothetical unless you have personal experience with the subject matter. Learning at least some of the video's examples are based on Skorkowsky's personal experience makes them more real and thus more unpleasant
@@andrewlance3898 no, experiencing them first hand makes it more real, dismissing someone else's experience of them as "absurd" is just ignorance at its worst... Hardly a qualified comment
The Raiders of the Lost Ark light trap? There's a light sensitive mushroom patch growing on the wall. When the light is interrupted it shrivels (or coils) in response, triggering the trap. At least, that's what I did when I ran The Raiders opening sequence as a dungeon.
The trapdoor guy was real?! Holy Molly! I thought it was an exaggeration to show the traits of that kind of player! So sorry you had to deal with that level of bs. Uff.
Tbh back in my dad's day when he played the original d&d as well as some later versions it was standard for his group to strip dungeons clean so they actually had full breakdowns of things like that.
I have a friend with a very technical mind and he does stuff like that, but not in a detrimental way. It's usually more like he's trying to do something clever to bypass said trap. Heck, I do it sometimes, too.
Tbh I often wonder whose resetting these darts, arrows, rockfalls and other traps in these long abandoned catacombs, picking the corpses clean of valuables but leaving the skeletons.
@@RockOfLions The corpses one is easy. There's a pet Gelatinous Cube that gets set free every night to roam the corridors for food. As it passes over the dead bodies it takes everything but the bones with it and the dungeon owner collects all the goodies in the morning (having a special suit or spell to remove them from the Cube without harming it). lol.
It's kinda necessary in AD&D style dungeoning sometimes (I defeated a poison gas trap by successfully deducing it was inside a statue) but if it's done with the purpose of challenging the GM's knowledge of engineering or "magic engineering" then it probably shouldn't be done.
I feel very fortunate for having only experienced a few of these at the table. Some, like the Agitator, are just universal and it sucks when that kind of person also brings it to a game.
I deal with world breakers by asking them the details they ask for and letting them world build if that's the details they want. Sometimes it even turns into an adventure.
@@andrewlance3898 A player "testing" his gm as in actively trying to mess with him has no place at the table to begin with. A player testing his gm as in trying to see if they mesh well together or to see if the gm is good enough in accord to their standard by actually trying to play is fine. The first one is a troll and should just be banned on sight. The second is just someone testing the water.
@@TrueAryador Of course. I wasn't approving of players who maliciously 'test' their GMs, just pointing out the solution proposed above would be insufficient for dealing with them
@@andrewlance3898 You can't exactly "deal" with someone being intentionally disruptive other then confronting them or just banning them without confrontation. Either way they're going to be toxic because that's their jam.
I love the tester. "I go to the movies, what's playing?" Like dude, you chose to play an RPG. It's like being in a horror movie you gotta run up the stairs! hahaha
The Tester is like that Knights of the Dinner Table Call of Cthulhu parody ua-cam.com/video/_jbfIRh8kP8/v-deo.html I've found that just making the action come to them usually fixes things. That letter they burned would have given them clues but the cultists have plans of their own and a timeline which I follow. Whoops.
yeah except when you can't roll for crap, to the point that people are yelling at you to roll another dice to only roll even worse with their dice. "LOL just role play it or play a silly character. It's your choice to have fun or not!" yeah but what if I don't want to play that kind of character? What if it's not fun to never be able to do anything because the dice defeat you at every turn. It's why I mostly don't play "rollplay" games anymore.
Same, but only after a LONG string of shitty rolls. There's only so much "roleplaying" you can do to roll with the punches, so to speak before you just sigh and say fuck it.
@@cyclone8974 you don't have to roleplay a hopelessly clumsy character. Maybe the insatisfaction comes from a lack of description of how you go about failing. When I'm the DM it's easy to come up with millions of different ways to say someone missed an attack rather than just "you miss" or "your character is now dumb because they are rolling low". I have seen players do that out of their own initiative too and it's fun
I’d be honestly concerned for what might be going on in Dweebles life outside the game that might be stressing him out. That behavior was way out of character for him.
Wow. I'm an active gamemaster since 2000, I played with dozens of players, and I never encounterd the Tester. I'm familiar with the other player types (on this list and on Seth's other lists), but this one is completly new to me. Lucky me, I guess. :)
They're often less obvious than the ones in the vid. Having one actually tell you flat out that they were testing you and not just, say, acting like a Worldbreaker or Agitator is rare in my experience. One of the guys I used to run CoC for in high school was a "Stealth Tester" - always kind of pain to run for, and behind my back he was constantly telling the rest of the group how good/bad a job I was doing as a GM each session. I never even knew I was being "graded" until I went to my twenty year reunion and got to talking with some of the other players. Did kind of wonder why the other guys tended to exclude him from future games once they started running their own campaigns, but I wasn't going to complain when they pointedly skipped inviting him in. Just glad to be free of him in other games. Kind of wish I knew what happened to the guy. He didn't show for the reunion and no one knew where he'd gotten off to past 1985.
The micro-world breaker reminds me of a time a player got me to go into the details of how a door worked, how it was attached, how big it was, what it was made out of, etc. I made up answers on the fly to try to keep it real, and then he used my made up answers plus some dice rolls to develop a way to defeat a significant trap/problem solving challenge. Caught me off guard. Played me like a fiddle.
That's funny, I like how you took it well. I've been guilty of this sort of thing, but only when I had a shifty DM. I'd exhaust all reasonable powers and exits the enemy had and establish that they were trapped, then the DM couldn't rescue them without losing face.
My brother-in-law was a bit of a worldbreaker. His wife created a whole homebrew game from the ground up, including an enormous detailed map full of continents. He told all his friends how amazing this game was gonna be, bragging about his wife's skills, all the hours' worth of adventures we'll have, etc. First game session, he announces that he wants to commission a ship and sail off into the unexplored ocean.
This is actually interesting choice. Dick move, sure, but interesting one. Unexplored area can hold anything and offer adventure. That dungeon prepared for the first session? It can be used there, on a random island. Social meeting with local baron? Now he is a captain of a fleet you've just met. Did you just brought interesting artefact and a lot of gold from your voyage? The port city is now rich and important part of politics. Also, you can always find nothing and be forced to return to your home port with a scurvy - the area might not be as much unexplored as it actually holds very little to be explored...
I think all of us have these tendencies in ourselves to varying degrees, but some people just seem to be unable to avoid "going there" to their misery place(s) over and over. It's really hard to deal with someone with serious emotional issues.
My experience with a worldbreaker was that they where actually motivated by trying to find 'loopholes' to exploit in the world. They often had a plan in mind already of some spell or ability they wanted to use for some non-standard way and rather than just saying up front what they want to do, instead ask leading and specific questions inorder to try to trap the GM in advance. It's when the GM unintentionally blocks their idea that they claim something is 'not realistic' and pout. It's a playstyle of someone that thinks they need to outsmart the DM rather than play together.
I've seen this recently in my group, but that's because our GM occasionally nerfs things we like to do, so we'll just pretend to bumble into things naturally sometimes.
It’s really funny coming back and rewatching this. I just had a session of D&D where I rolled five ones in a row, the worst luck I’ve ever had. And I was annoyed but I was able to laugh it off for the most part and kept the game going
I had a campaign where my players spent more time trying to push their planet into the sun than actually interacting with the world I had spent months preparing for them.
@@asthmeresivolisk3129 "this hemisphere is where we'll build the rocket. Wait, what'd you say the rotational speed and orbital trajectory are? Oh, I thought it was a realistic world. 😒" 🤭
the personalised captions are such a huge bonus on skorkowsky videos. one of the many reasons youre my favorite rpg content creator by far. sincerely, me and my friends with hearing issues
Worldbreaker is my #1 for sure. Just listening to your skit of the worldbreaker was enough to get under my skin. Personally I found a solution that works pretty well when dealing with this kind of player. I respond in an honest, direct, and terse manner. "I don't personally know how pit traps work, but it's not an important aspect of the game to me. It's just a game mechanic." If a player feels like realistic pit trap mechanics are important to them, they are free to find another group. Usually this method works pretty well since in my experience the worldbreaker never actually wants to find another group and the mechanics of the pit trap don't actually matter to them that much.
One that I had some bad experiences with is the Flexer, the player with something to prove. I've played with someone who just NEEDED others to see that he knew the rules (so a lot of rules lawyering), that he had the best stats (which resulted in a lot of metagaming), that he was the best roleplayer (attention hog), that he had the coolest backstory, etc., and it got genuinely grating. This even extended to his GMing, which felt incredibly like he was trying to "beat" the players more than anything, just to show that he could.
I'm finding these very helpful. Just getting back in the game after decades. First gig Saturday this week. Excited, nervous but ready to give it my best.
The simple advice that covers all of this is “Play in good spirits, play in good faith”. That pretty much covers all of it, as all of these people almost deliberately (or quite deliberately) are ignoring one or both of these.
These example strike a cord with me. I think I have some PTSD from my old gaming group due to these personality types. Seth, have you read Robin’s Laws? Would be interesting to see a video on how to create a game that offers something for everyone (as Robin’s Laws suggests). Thanks for the great content! I always look forward to your videos!
This is a great video and really has helped me self reflect, and really helped put things in perspective. Thank you so much Seth, you continue to help me be a better Story Teller and Player
That first one hits me in a real tender spot, I'll never forget the time I almost scared off one of my closest high-school friends from the role playing hobby, one in which me and the other players all were bonded together by. We made our own game systems and ran them for one another in settings that no other fantasy world compared too in terms of originality, it was a closely knit group that made stuff by itself to for itself. I started some totally random argument while this friend was running, I can't even remember it, and I spoiled the whole game and made a total ass of my self. I didn't talk to him for over a year and it would be until recently, a whole 2 maybe 3 years later, that I spoke to him regularly and offered him a seat at my table for this current game wrapping up on Thursday. Love the friends you got, and try your best to appreciate all the hard work people put into this hobby.
My first ever game was set in a seedy Rogueport like town that the rest of the party abandoned two sessions in while I couldn't make it. #3 resonated with me a lot.
It's great to see these again! I really enjoyed the call back to the Role Play Terrorist. A couple of those consistently ruined my Conan game to the point where we as a group just didn't want to game together anymore. Granted I know I made mistakes as a GM as well but these folks only seemed to want to gather with the specific purpose of stopping other ppl's fun. I was lucky though bc I found a new group who are great and we've been having a great time with a game of Traveller.
Wow this was quite the wonderful video Seth, and I'm quite sure reading through the comments most people would love a wonderful sequel! Two I saw that caught my fancy if you were to make a second one is "The Coward" (never goes on quests because they think the GM has it out for them) and "The Absent Minded" (were in a more serious game they do nothing to keep up or impact the story)
You nailed this one. I have a game ending because of a player like this who has many of these behaviors. I have entire world I made for this group simply because the ONE player didn't want to play in the world I have had for over 20 years with 11 binders full of materials and games, that everyone else seemed to love. Now he is unsatisfied AGAIN and says this will be the last game he plays in. Well this time I accept. I am done. No game, sad as that is, is better than a bad game. Watching this video was therapy for me.
My first group to DM had a combo 3-5 player and it literally gave me panic attacks about DMing for weeks. I ended up compiling another group and things got better. Never played with that person ever again though.
I was gaming with a powder keg when I was a teen. They were an adult. When things didn't go their way and I beat their character, they threw their 3-ring binder rules collection across the room. I'm sitting there scared and wondering if he's getting physical with me next. Some groups you just walk away from.
Dweebles once ordered the death of his GM's teddy bear and threatened to have Mike cut off the GM's fingers. He also may or may not have stolen his GM's dice and then shot him. Dweebles is and always has been the dark one. Don't let that cute demeaner fool you.
@@SSkorkowsky ha, I have had many good folk at the table but.... these types show up in public games and you can see their markers very quick, if I see a player happy and enjoying a]game then another takes their time to "eff" around or with them, then they have to leave the table, everyone breaths a sigh of relief .... thanks for the video Seth.....
Maybe the prep time of dressing up as Dweebles, with the slick down hair and chin glue, sends Seth to his dark place ;). Seth/Dweebles looks in the mirror: “You talkin’ to me?” :)
I have found myself being a world breaker not on purpose mind you its just deep immersion and I build things irl so I like learning but after seeing this I can see how I need to tone that back some. Thats why I like these videos they help people become better players.
Yep, I realise now I do this too from time to time. Gonna remind myself it's just a game and we're all here to have fun when I recognize it happening next time.
I have been a couple of the early ones, and it still fills me with shame. -.- That said, thanks for giving Ramones Shirt Guy (can't remember his name atm) a break and having Dweebles be the jerk for a change. XD
Sometimes it is the down to earth looking guys who are the most explosive. Preface with we are all grown men. Had a game with a friend who wanted to bring a mate along. Never met him before but said ok as the friend was a good person. This bloke rocks up, a round faced, chummy, easy smiles kind of guy who is polite, who you could imagine being anyone's friend if they let him, the kind of guy you seeing running FLGS games for the kids. Game starts, we don't even get fifteen minutes in before this guy gets two bad rolls in a row, nothing lethal - and he blows up. Now he's a big guy and on the second failed roll his face instantly turns beetroot red and just goes off as if he's twelve years old. Fist pounding, screaming, shouting, finger one inch away from face waving mess. I won't say how I got him to leave but I got him to leave and told my friend that when I said I didn't want to see that guy again, I didn't mean just in game, I mean ever, anywhere, ever again.
Hey Seth, great video!!! You didn't do the Wimp! Encounter #1 Three Kobolds; I don't know guys, I have a bad feeling about this one. Encounter #2 Stairs; I don't know guys, we should go another way. Encounter #3 Two Orcs; I don't know guys, we should go back to town and get more hirelings. Thanks Seth you have a wonderful day!
my best friend in high school was this. one time i did a rival party made of parodies of my players. said player hadn't caught on yet. the expy said something and he says "my god! this guy is such a weiner!" one of the other players was uncontrollably laughing for a few minutes.
Sadly, all of these tropes have darkened the seats of my gaming table. There is one more: the Jokester. The fellow who deliberately assassinates the game atmosphere by non-stop non-sequiturs or toilet humor or out of character inanities. "The collapse has settled and ahead of you your flashlights claw through the settling dust to reveal statues of antediluvian antiquity. A passage leads on, the choking dust in the air now mingling with the faint stench of rotting fish..." Player: "Man I hate it when monsters forget to take out the compost. We should call the city and complain, let them clean this place out and get back to the public house for some beer and darts." or "I'm angling for some clues. There's some thing fishy here. Is there music here - because I'd hate it if it was out of tuna. Cod I hate that. Hey! I just kidding, no reason to trout about it!". OI!
The unfortunate reality of my long years of experience in RPGs is that I've experienced all of these types of players one way or another. So I have adjusted my player base and recruitment process accordingly which has decreased these encounters DRAMATICALLY. To almost nil. That has made life just a little more tolerable. 😀 Keep up the good work, my man. 👊
I nearly fell out of my seat laughing for #4 and #5. I've known players who certainly operated in the #4 mode. In fantasy games, they tend to play the rouge and hog ALL the loot.
I think a way to sum up a lot of DND complaints is that it's less a game and more a collaborative story-telling experience. The dice rolls are just there to add some honesty to what boils down to "Well my dude has a crossbow and shoots your dude in the head!" and forces some depth of thought into what options your character has available.
Oh, no. My fears have been realized. I'm in one of Seth's list videos! I can be a bit of a world breaker. I'm not trying to break the world, but I ask lots of questions that the DM might not have an answer to. I'm just curious and want to learn more about the game world and plot.
Mee too, but I figure now that we're aware of it we can be careful of it in the future to not take it too far. Depending on the DM, it can be nice to show interest in something they spent time creating. Just keep it in check.
I'm definitely a mix of those first two mentioned. It's like you said though I don't try to and I actually when I'm being that way I try to remove myself from the situation it's just like it's annoying mindset you can't escape.
It is always nice to have a Seth Skorkowsky video! Calming and to help everyone be better players at the table, because in the end we all just want to have fun but not take it from someone else's. Hopefully I'll be as cool as you some day.
The problem with the worldbreaker isn't the excited digging into details, it's the scale and the purpose. I wish I had a lightweight worldbreaker or two in my games, one who is willing to accept "this is a fiction constructed by one human" but still likes digging to see how detailed the fiction is. Having the worldbreaker DM a session or two also seems like a pretty easy cure.
So the World Breaker I talked about in the video has started playing with me again (the pit trap incident was like 15 years ago). How'd he get over the World Breaking issue? He started GMing and saw certain behaviors he didn't like and realized he'd been guilty of them in the past.
The thing about making these videos being therapeutic... I mean as a long time TTRPG player and game master especially I get that. I am quite certain that anyone with a long TTRPG history with a variety of groups have similar stories :D
Thanks for making these! I live in the USA, deep south, I get to run like 1 or 2 sessions per year because no one here cares. These videos help me to make those sessions the best possible!
While the time difference is huge I would love to play some more RPGs. Interested in some online sessions? I will also gladly DM if interest is there (though we are currently a bit busy, thanks to moving....). Though mostly short adventures/one-shots ->I love me some bigger campaigns and progression for the players, but I know that I don't have time for anther one and I really don't want to let a group down after some sesssions EDIT: jeeez.... I hoped youtube would have some kind of private message system, but it doesn't seem so....
@@S0nyb1ack it's ok lol and while I would LOVE that (Forever DM here) I am also about to start my next college semester and I also work full time, so I would likely have a lot of trouble making the timing work
I came across a few of these during my years as a Dm. Only one solution, talk to the player privately, if they dont understand and change their behaviour = Fired.
I had a experience once where the GM slowly turned the whole table into a group of complainers. Sometimes we just felt things were unfair like at one point we were fighting a buffed up vampire, we got it down pretty low and managed to get it into a beam of sunlight, where it promptly restored all of its health and got a bonus to AC and damage and we had to kill it all over again apparently the only way to kill this vampire was to throw salt on its coffin which we only found out because an NPC did it. Then another time we saved up a ridiculous amount of money because we wanted to buy a castle and just randomly we get teleported to 'The Thieves' Realm' which was never mentioned before or after and the only way to escape was to give all of our money up. So after a level 3-10 campaign of this everytime the GM did anything we were all being extremely picky about it and complaining the whole way through. Luckily we all got out over time but they were a friend so I was one of the last to go.
Pouter Keg. Had a player who was a bit like that, they even threw their dice so we threw the player after a few warnings. Usually everyone tends do some of this stuff once or twice, sometimes on an off day or down to personal logic but managing to do it for a year every session was impressive. As someone has already used #6 for a coward I'll volunteer #7 as the self destructive player. Someone who does dumb things to get killed or intentionally creates characters who aren't heroes in a hero setting and then gets depressed they can't do awesome things like everyone else.
Our group roleplays the bad dice rolls in our game like my middle aged fighter failed a strength check (rolled a nat 1 and even with +8 it still failed) so I made up a war wound from the past that acts up alongside his belief that he can still move like he's twenty again.
Great to hear these “Hello, internet! Seth Skorkowsky!”! Made my morning. Hey, Seth. Are you going to do a review on Uncle Timothy’s Will? I had a really good time watching that. You guys are awesome roleplayers, and I really enjoyed your version of Harvey Duncan Allen! Thanks!
I'll do it eventually. I've since picked up Blood Brothers which it was published in, and plan on gutting and running one of the other adventures in there.
@@SSkorkowsky Wow! Great to hear that! Since watching you guys I also picked up Blood Brothers. Still think the best one there is Uncle Timothy’s, but a few others caught my eye. The Mummy Bride, The Swarming, Spawn of the Deep… Really looking forward to your reviews!
Fun fact: Seth became a horror writer as cover for why his search history looked the way it did after he dealt with the pit trap guy.
:-D
Hah! This cracked me up so much. Can't say I'd blame him.
That's why I became an erotic fiction writer.
Valid. (Hides stories he drew)
World breakers are like game hackers (people who either use game genie or game sharks) they're not simple cheaters, they're there just to destroy the game, finding new ways to break it instead of enjoying the game, they're not even enjoying themselves either.
I remember one of my best friends used to be the world breaker to the point of softlocking various campaigns.
How to deal with worldbreaker: never answer these questions in terms of what you know, answer them in terms of what the character knows.
@@dnabre One issue with the knowledge roll type stuff is that they can then become a pouter or powder keg if you make the DCs too high (to avoid the derailment) or alternatively if they pass the check they feel vindicated when they finally get you to the "It's not that important" or "I didn't go that deep with my design" point. It's a good idea, but if you ever play with people you don't know that well outside of the game, it's sometimes a bad idea giving them game mechanics to back-up their derailment.
It's much easier, in my experience, to get to a point where magic or some other "needs no further explaining" thing is the basis. If your tabletop system allows for that, I suppose.
@@oh_gosh Yup. Correct answer to worldbreaker is not "I don't know", it's "You don't know".
I answer it is : ok how do you get there?
If my character asked about the trap generally i'll say "your character now understands how the trap works" instead of explaining it myself
"You pray for the answers. You hear nothing back."
Jeff would have known how that pit trap worked.
Such a good comment
At least he followed the dice, and that was the most important thing.
I have another one: the living corpse.
They seem to be at the table only physically but do not pay attention, do not take notes, do not interact with their fellow players and (in recent times) stay on their phones AL THE TIME...
Ah! Yes, I call them zombies.
One may think they are no problem, they can just be an extra. - If they are fine with it then...
However... They are not fine with it; instead, they usually drain the other players' brains...
"imma play rdd"
Why are you playing a video game during this? You can play a video game at ANY TIME
I legit never got people who resign ALL their attention off the game... If you don't wanna play don't ruin the game for the others
@@user-gj7lp5iz6k hi, It’s Jake, zoomer here. I think that you’re generalizing all Zoomers into being an exact stereotype, which has some basis in reality, but which actually is not definitively true.
Phones are addicting. Anyone is susceptible to them, of any age.
Have a nice day.
I could also just be immediately assuming that you meant zoomer’s in general, when you didn’t at all.
Aaa...don’t you just love how vague text is?
sounds like you have somebody in mind, lol
man alive this hits home. My in-game "code" for "I haven't figured this out yet" is to name the inn the players want to stay at "The Bouncing Buffalo". They have learned that every time they stay at the Bouncing Buffalo it's a generic tavern that I threw in for them. Yeah the World Breaker still objects to it, but the other players now laugh at him because they know and love the place. Sometimes they tell him, "It's obviously a franchise!" stuff like that.
I keep wondering whether I should make some code words like this for one of my groups who often make a lot of red herrings for themselves and sometimes get fixated on a detail that isn’t related at all.
On one hand it’s a challenge for me as Keeper to be flexible and I don’t want to discourage curiosity and investigation. To my credit I do try to insert something to find where possible. Also my main worry is ruining their immersion.
But on the other hand it can really bog the game down. Sometimes it means one player takes over, or they miss actual leads because they’re so focused on something else. And that campaign is now on a (irl) time limit, so we’re less able to make large side tracks.
So yeah. Not sure.
"do you ask the name of the cashier at McDonald's every time you go?"
I have the same with wherever my player want to find some random homeless person. From a campaign long long ago, there was Scuzzy John the Hobo, which was a scifi setting. Now, in any setting, they find Scuzzy John at lest once per campaign.
Who else comes to these videos with a bundle of anxieties worrying if "Am I like that?"
Turns out in a bit of a tester. :/
Just you. You are like that. No one else
Psychology would say..... just about everyone who clicks the video. 😁
Lol
Me.
I become a Pouter when I go too long without an RPG Philosophy video.
But one day, he will never return, and then i get a sweet sweet stereo!!!!! GLASS HALF FULL BABY!!.....er.
i mean, it will be a very sad day...
Hi Rags! ... (Sorry, had to, never catch EFAP live to do this tiered old meme there where it's appropriate)
Rags is still alive? Impressive.
Eyy wasn't expecting Rags here! Glad to see your alive.
Hi R'a'g's's's!
Tester: “You passed the test!”
DM: “…You didn’t.”
Tester: “What do you mean? What test?”
DM: “Whether or not it’s fun for ME to DM for YOU.”
This way of thinking is underrated
@@ismirdochegal4804 This way of thinking also gets a LOT of players to suddenly be really shitty. I've killed a campaign because more than half the players were ignoring the game between their turns or had refused to learn the mechanics of the game for the 30th session in a row.
They reacted like spoiled children. As a GM, you definitely need to discriminate on the matter of who you will let at your table. Some folks love wasting everyone's time.
My favorite parts are when you just call the player out, "This player is a dick."
It's refreshing. There are too many weak, pushover DM's these days.
I see some people are like me. But I took it a step further. Once - Death on the Reik - I gave players 2 sessions to change their - PCs - behaviour. They didn't. Where's crime, there's punishment. TPK.
Me: "I warned you."
Gamer: "I like that character."
Me: "And I like that campaign. But you become a dick."
@@Grayald And that's why we have to test them to see if they're worthy of running a game for us! Oh, wait...
The world breaker is a common figure on Internet forums as well. Especially RPG forums. I can't tell you how many times I've see discussions derailed because people want to start arguing about the inner workings of things that don't exist in the first place like FTL drives.
I'm a master of BS, I've felt with world breakers before and made them thoroughly agitated because they couldn't find a hole. Gives me a bright warm feeling inside every time. 🤣😂🤣
@@johnathansanford8206 Oh I bet you have LOTS of fun. Tell us a story please. I want to hear how this has played out. I've only seen it once in all of my years GMing and it was shut down by another player who was significantly more informed than the world breaker.
I mean as long as it makes sense like "Focusing abilties or broken on being physically hit by melee or ranged attack"
Not "you literally smacked a harpy in the face, she ignores it and keeps on singing to disrupt your group."
Friggin baller gait 3
I feel like this could be retitled "Five People Who Sabotage Their Own Fun" in life in general.
AKA SJWs. ESpecially Type 1.
Kind of like how all videos on how to be a good player usually boil down to “How to be a decent human being and avoid being a dick.”
On not sure how number 3 applies to real life though. As far as I know the world is real
@@marcar9marcar972 There are plenty of "World Breakers" IRL, they are just a bit... Uhm... Different...
Flat-Earthers, Religious-Fanatics, Anti-Vaxers, UFO-Conspiracists, etc.
@@marcar9marcar972 it’s very relatable to games in general, specifically like comparing games to each other. How every other game doesn’t compare to GTAV or RDR2 or anything compared to CP2077. I feel 2077 was ruined for a lot of people by these first three people. You could apply them to anything really, their job, a movie, someone’s friend.
I remember Seth calculating the blood needed to be collected for the Mithril Valves puzzle in Tomb of Horrors. 😂
When it come to the world breakers, I would always say "Who are you talking too? Is your character talking to himself? He would need to find someone in town to ask. If you want to spend your time talking to the local elders to see if someone knows, that's great. But no one in this location would know the answers to these questions." If all else fails, double the wandering monsters.
This! I was thinking this. Make it diagetic: if they start hitting up the bartender he can be all "buy an ale or hit the road" and if they keep harassing him with questions after buying the drink, do what a real bartender would do: find other things they "need" to do (help other patrons, converse with a regular away from the pc, cleaning, etc.) that gets them away from the weirdo playing 100 questions.
@@kainthedragon1 when i was a bouncer, if the guy playing 100 questions persisted for too long the bartender would call me over to toss him out... i give bartenders in my games challenge rating 18 and an instant knockout for that purpose
@@wendigo1619 to be fair: most of my bar experience was small town bars without a formal bouncer position: the regulars (or the cook) just doubled as bouncer if called for.
@@kainthedragon1 i worked at a roadside biker bar in the middle of nowhere, they needed me because fights often ended with serious injury
The pit trap part reminds of when my group spent 40 minutes doing the math on pushing over a pot. Our gm was a physics major and it was pretty funny
It’s always fun sounding when your study major can be applied to your role playing.
Our group has me, a bio major, my friend who was a med major but changed to bio, a friend with an associates in medical assistance, and another friend who has dabbled in both but perused pharma.
We all know enough about anatomy (and are essentially impossible to gross out) that descriptions of injuries and corpses are exceedingly detailed when players ask those questions. Two sessions ago they dissected a yeti, and harvesting odd anatomical parts of monsters has become a pastime after battles.
as long as your having fun i suppose
I had a world breaker in one of my games constantly looking into all the details of everything I put in front of him. We kind of turned it into a joke when I started saying things like, "Dammit Jim! I'm a Dungeon Master, Not and engineer!" or something to that affect every time he began world breaking. I'm sorry your world breaker threw off your rhythm. v_v!
I'm guilty of being the tester. I'm going to ring up my old GM and apologize to him for that. Thanks for resurfacing those memories.
Literally me last D&D session:
- I use my stone cunning ability, tell me what I can learn about this random tavern in this random village!
- it's just a random tavern dude...
- okay, sorry, my bad :D
I had a random chart for "mostly pointless things Stonecunning reveals to you" owing to too many Dwarven PCs in the group. Mostly it was "you spot a fossil of X" or "clearly cut with a #9 chisel" results, but it had snarky observations about inferior non-Dwarven stonemasonry, angles being off, and identifying what regions given construction materials had been quarried from. Utterly useless in general, but it gave me something to tell people when they asked about some random building/tunnel/etc. Once in a while a PC would obsess on one of the results ("Why would anyone import granite all the way from Quun?") and it would wind up leading to some side-quest or roleplaying opportunity, so that was fun.
I'll never forget when I had my players venture in an exploration themed campaign. Every. Single. Damn. Thing. Everything was asked about, that's on me, I made it about exploration I recon but when the mage interrupted the old snake guy in the middle of his speech to ask him what was the name of the pyramid next to them, I lost it and just crumbled into myself
Might as well give a little flavor: "Obviously not Dwarven craftsmanship, the foundation while strong is uneven in places. Not a big problem for a tavern."
"The tavern is made of wood. Like most structures in a tiny random village" is a totally valid, medieval anchored answer too 😀
Idk why but i picture a dwarf doing that to gauge how easy a wall will break so he can attack the wall and the rubble shatters a foe.
The real world breaker watching this video:
"That's not even how my hair looks! That's fine I guess. I just hoped you'd made it realistic."
Man, the bit about world breakers just kills me every time. "Oh how exactly does this spell work?" idk dude it's magic, we're using abstract rules for a reason
"If I knew how magic really worked, do you think I'd be sitting here explaining every detail of my rpg world to you, Doug?"
If you're asking in character you will need to find a sage to ask and have intelligence of [really large number].
If you're asking out of character you roll a d20 greater than [some number] and it has a range of [some other number]. Here's the book, look it up.
Some people can just never be happy tbh
I've had players try to ask every npc a name and such... I would ask names but only for npcs I'm taking an interest in.
I usually go with the "you're the warlock/sorcerer/bard/etc. you tell me"
I love minutia like that. There is a lot of creativity to be found in the grey area of how spells actually work.
I knew a guy…cuoisidently he is/was the Dweebles of the group…that was the pouter keg. Depended on the night, but he was either pouting or slamming thing around when it didn’t go towards his plan…
Oooh, "pouter keg". Now THAT is a good one!
One of the friends I regularly play with is one of those as well. It has really been making it difficult for me to enjoy preparing and enjoying that game from time to time.
* Hangs head in shame that I didn't think of calling it Pouter Keg *
@@SSkorkowsky Dammit! I never make my pun rolls in time! Screw this!
@@SSkorkowsky wait, double take... I thought you did call it a pouter keg in the video.
Ok I see-literally see; I usually only listen most of your videos. I thought you were already making the pun haha
I missed these.
Me too! These types of videos from Seth are my favorite
The tester and similar types of players who waste time are probably the worst. Not that I don't enjoy a slowly moving game but then for someone to do everything to derail or poke holes into it is just so disrespectful. It's already really, REALLY difficult to organize a gaming session among 4-5 people who have jobs and other things in their lives, that it's infuriating when you eventually get to have a game session and then it devolves into these types of shenanigans.
By the way, your RPG social contract video is top notch and more people really should see it.
How did you post your comment 14 hours ago when the video was posted only 9 hours ago?!? 😯
@@mydroid2791 Early access through Patreon :)
Six: The Coward. The players that see every challenge as an insurmountable obstacle. These players will abandon whole quest lines and derail entire campaigns by saying they want to go elsewhere because their characters are in over their heads. This forces the dungeon master to either create a game with intentional minimal resistance, or constantly write new adventures because the players don't want to face the challenges the DM has created, leading to the DM burning out and resenting his group. I'm not salty.
I've thought about creating the "frenzied" condition just for this. You take the "frightened" condition and you reverse it. The player can only move forward towards the target of their frenzied condition. They can't move parallel or away from it. They may, attack it, but they MUST use their movement to move towards it. Fuck your coward PC. He's going to die a quick death and then you can go roll up a NON coward PC.
I run into this sometimes. It always bewilders me. Why would a DM write up a scenario that is going just crush the party instantly, or whatever they're afraid of? Being the Coward as you describe, it doesn't respect the time put into prep, or the time of others at the table.
@@DownToTruck or why play a game when you know the DM is just going to go easy on you?
I have a player who's prone to this. It's annoying, but not insurmountable... the most brute-force-but-effective way to deal with it is "Okay, you go back to the tavern and have a dull and quiet evening... until the Dark Lord's troops show up. If only somebody had taken the fight to him!"
@@DownToTruck what's the point of heroism if you only fight what's beneath you?
its shocking how fast negativity can infect people
Nothing travels faster than the speed of doubt -Norman Gunsten (aussie comedian)
I actually know how that Raiders of the Lost Ark trap worked. It's advanced alien photo-optics tech. Don't forget that that scene took place in Peru, where Indy would later find the Crystal Skull tech too.
I've been watching these for years and I still have a hard time remembering that all these skit characters are the same actor. The voices alone are perfect.
Me: Haha these are such absurd examples.
Seth: It's all real.
Me: *takes stress damage*
"The reality of problem players dawns on you. Make a SAN check."
@@andrewlance3898 roll 1d6 +1 for the cosmic horror realisation
Why is it absurd? because you've never experienced it?
That seems more absurd....
Are you a newb?
@@Tony-dh7mz It's easy to dismiss videos like these as purely hypothetical unless you have personal experience with the subject matter. Learning at least some of the video's examples are based on Skorkowsky's personal experience makes them more real and thus more unpleasant
@@andrewlance3898
no, experiencing them first hand makes it more real,
dismissing someone else's experience of them as "absurd" is just ignorance at its worst...
Hardly a qualified comment
The Raiders of the Lost Ark light trap?
There's a light sensitive mushroom patch growing on the wall. When the light is interrupted it shrivels (or coils) in response, triggering the trap.
At least, that's what I did when I ran The Raiders opening sequence as a dungeon.
The silky smooth voice of Seth Skorkowsky telling us like it is! Love these videos.
The trapdoor guy was real?! Holy Molly! I thought it was an exaggeration to show the traits of that kind of player! So sorry you had to deal with that level of bs. Uff.
Tbh back in my dad's day when he played the original d&d as well as some later versions it was standard for his group to strip dungeons clean so they actually had full breakdowns of things like that.
I have a friend with a very technical mind and he does stuff like that, but not in a detrimental way. It's usually more like he's trying to do something clever to bypass said trap. Heck, I do it sometimes, too.
Tbh I often wonder whose resetting these darts, arrows, rockfalls and other traps in these long abandoned catacombs, picking the corpses clean of valuables but leaving the skeletons.
@@RockOfLions The corpses one is easy. There's a pet Gelatinous Cube that gets set free every night to roam the corridors for food. As it passes over the dead bodies it takes everything but the bones with it and the dungeon owner collects all the goodies in the morning (having a special suit or spell to remove them from the Cube without harming it). lol.
It's kinda necessary in AD&D style dungeoning sometimes (I defeated a poison gas trap by successfully deducing it was inside a statue) but if it's done with the purpose of challenging the GM's knowledge of engineering or "magic engineering" then it probably shouldn't be done.
I feel very fortunate for having only experienced a few of these at the table. Some, like the Agitator, are just universal and it sucks when that kind of person also brings it to a game.
I deal with world breakers by asking them the details they ask for and letting them world build if that's the details they want. Sometimes it even turns into an adventure.
That's not a bad idea. At the very least, it deals with players driven by curiosity, but players who are trying to test you won't be satisfied
@@andrewlance3898
A player "testing" his gm as in actively trying to mess with him has no place at the table to begin with.
A player testing his gm as in trying to see if they mesh well together or to see if the gm is good enough in accord to their standard by actually trying to play is fine.
The first one is a troll and should just be banned on sight. The second is just someone testing the water.
@@TrueAryador Of course. I wasn't approving of players who maliciously 'test' their GMs, just pointing out the solution proposed above would be insufficient for dealing with them
@@andrewlance3898
You can't exactly "deal" with someone being intentionally disruptive other then confronting them or just banning them without confrontation. Either way they're going to be toxic because that's their jam.
I love the tester. "I go to the movies, what's playing?" Like dude, you chose to play an RPG. It's like being in a horror movie you gotta run up the stairs! hahaha
Nope, you want boring, go for it,
next player watya doin?
You have to choose between Dragon Ball Evolution and the Last Airbender movie.
@@fran3ro Harsh yet still too fair.
"What's playing? It's your choice. You can watch anything you want. By yourself. At your place. Us? We're going to play a game without you"
The Tester is like that Knights of the Dinner Table Call of Cthulhu parody
ua-cam.com/video/_jbfIRh8kP8/v-deo.html
I've found that just making the action come to them usually fixes things. That letter they burned would have given them clues but the cultists have plans of their own and a timeline which I follow. Whoops.
Tester: "I was testing you. Congratulations, you past."
Me: "That's funny, so was I. Don't let the door hit ya on the way out."
Missed the slam dunk pun "the pouterkeg"
To my eternal shame, I completely missed it.
I've definitely been a pouter in the past. But I cut that shit out when I wasn't having fun. Mostly due to watching the RPG social contract
yeah except when you can't roll for crap, to the point that people are yelling at you to roll another dice to only roll even worse with their dice. "LOL just role play it or play a silly character. It's your choice to have fun or not!" yeah but what if I don't want to play that kind of character? What if it's not fun to never be able to do anything because the dice defeat you at every turn. It's why I mostly don't play "rollplay" games anymore.
Same, but only after a LONG string of shitty rolls. There's only so much "roleplaying" you can do to roll with the punches, so to speak before you just sigh and say fuck it.
@@cyclone8974 you don't have to roleplay a hopelessly clumsy character. Maybe the insatisfaction comes from a lack of description of how you go about failing. When I'm the DM it's easy to come up with millions of different ways to say someone missed an attack rather than just "you miss" or "your character is now dumb because they are rolling low". I have seen players do that out of their own initiative too and it's fun
You all need to watch Seth Skorkowsky’s “Cure your dice curse with 1 easy fix” video. 😆🎲🐔
Ehh.. we all have bad days sometimes. It’s not always easy to laugh it off when you really wanted your character to succeed at something.
Watching this makes me grateful for the two players I have with cyberpunk 2020.
Goated game!
I’d be honestly concerned for what might be going on in Dweebles life outside the game that might be stressing him out. That behavior was way out of character for him.
Wow. I'm an active gamemaster since 2000, I played with dozens of players, and I never encounterd the Tester. I'm familiar with the other player types (on this list and on Seth's other lists), but this one is completly new to me. Lucky me, I guess. :)
Same,
They're often less obvious than the ones in the vid. Having one actually tell you flat out that they were testing you and not just, say, acting like a Worldbreaker or Agitator is rare in my experience. One of the guys I used to run CoC for in high school was a "Stealth Tester" - always kind of pain to run for, and behind my back he was constantly telling the rest of the group how good/bad a job I was doing as a GM each session. I never even knew I was being "graded" until I went to my twenty year reunion and got to talking with some of the other players.
Did kind of wonder why the other guys tended to exclude him from future games once they started running their own campaigns, but I wasn't going to complain when they pointedly skipped inviting him in. Just glad to be free of him in other games.
Kind of wish I knew what happened to the guy. He didn't show for the reunion and no one knew where he'd gotten off to past 1985.
@@richmcgee434
Let them test,
I would enjoy it, see if you can break it,
Challenge Accepted
The micro-world breaker reminds me of a time a player got me to go into the details of how a door worked, how it was attached, how big it was, what it was made out of, etc. I made up answers on the fly to try to keep it real, and then he used my made up answers plus some dice rolls to develop a way to defeat a significant trap/problem solving challenge. Caught me off guard. Played me like a fiddle.
That's funny, I like how you took it well. I've been guilty of this sort of thing, but only when I had a shifty DM. I'd exhaust all reasonable powers and exits the enemy had and establish that they were trapped, then the DM couldn't rescue them without losing face.
Dweebles should have done a Fight Back instead of Dodge. I can't believe you railroaded him like that!
Glad to see you doing these again!
Thats what i thought too. Or run
My brother-in-law was a bit of a worldbreaker. His wife created a whole homebrew game from the ground up, including an enormous detailed map full of continents. He told all his friends how amazing this game was gonna be, bragging about his wife's skills, all the hours' worth of adventures we'll have, etc.
First game session, he announces that he wants to commission a ship and sail off into the unexplored ocean.
This is actually interesting choice. Dick move, sure, but interesting one. Unexplored area can hold anything and offer adventure. That dungeon prepared for the first session? It can be used there, on a random island. Social meeting with local baron? Now he is a captain of a fleet you've just met. Did you just brought interesting artefact and a lot of gold from your voyage? The port city is now rich and important part of politics. Also, you can always find nothing and be forced to return to your home port with a scurvy - the area might not be as much unexplored as it actually holds very little to be explored...
Must have wanted a divorce
I think all of us have these tendencies in ourselves to varying degrees, but some people just seem to be unable to avoid "going there" to their misery place(s) over and over. It's really hard to deal with someone with serious emotional issues.
My experience with a worldbreaker was that they where actually motivated by trying to find 'loopholes' to exploit in the world. They often had a plan in mind already of some spell or ability they wanted to use for some non-standard way and rather than just saying up front what they want to do, instead ask leading and specific questions inorder to try to trap the GM in advance. It's when the GM unintentionally blocks their idea that they claim something is 'not realistic' and pout. It's a playstyle of someone that thinks they need to outsmart the DM rather than play together.
I've seen this recently in my group, but that's because our GM occasionally nerfs things we like to do, so we'll just pretend to bumble into things naturally sometimes.
It’s really funny coming back and rewatching this. I just had a session of D&D where I rolled five ones in a row, the worst luck I’ve ever had. And I was annoyed but I was able to laugh it off for the most part and kept the game going
I like how the agitator is in a Cyberpunk Red game
5:12 I'm imagining if the map had been a 3d globe he still would have pointed away from it. 🤣 _Let's go to space!! 🙃_
I had a campaign where my players spent more time trying to push their planet into the sun than actually interacting with the world I had spent months preparing for them.
@@asthmeresivolisk3129 "this hemisphere is where we'll build the rocket. Wait, what'd you say the rotational speed and orbital trajectory are? Oh, I thought it was a realistic world. 😒" 🤭
Enjoying (for a given value) both the flashbacks to past tabletop groups and how relevant to live-roleplaying fests these examples are.
Trebuchets are awesome! loved them when I played a lot of ‘Age of Empires 2 -conqueros edition’ back in the day!
the personalised captions are such a huge bonus on skorkowsky videos. one of the many reasons youre my favorite rpg content creator by far.
sincerely, me and my friends with hearing issues
"How does the trap work?"
* Saxophone begins to play. "A wizard did it!"
LMAO...!!!
As long as it is the sax intro to Careless Whisper.
LOL.....Stolen
@@rolanejo8512 what about the sax from Baker Street?
Woof...this is too accurate 😳 I should be able to subtly send this to a few people. Awesome job as always!
This is what is so great about D&D. It has the potential to teach you on how to deal with problem people.
Problem people like me. :-P
Worldbreaker is my #1 for sure. Just listening to your skit of the worldbreaker was enough to get under my skin. Personally I found a solution that works pretty well when dealing with this kind of player. I respond in an honest, direct, and terse manner. "I don't personally know how pit traps work, but it's not an important aspect of the game to me. It's just a game mechanic." If a player feels like realistic pit trap mechanics are important to them, they are free to find another group. Usually this method works pretty well since in my experience the worldbreaker never actually wants to find another group and the mechanics of the pit trap don't actually matter to them that much.
One that I had some bad experiences with is the Flexer, the player with something to prove.
I've played with someone who just NEEDED others to see that he knew the rules (so a lot of rules lawyering), that he had the best stats (which resulted in a lot of metagaming), that he was the best roleplayer (attention hog), that he had the coolest backstory, etc., and it got genuinely grating. This even extended to his GMing, which felt incredibly like he was trying to "beat" the players more than anything, just to show that he could.
I also have one of those in my group. Thing is, those kind of players have good roleplay and can be funny but man are they exhausting..
I've seen that (though not as bad, thankfully). The Flexer is a good term for it.
I'm finding these very helpful. Just getting back in the game after decades. First gig Saturday this week. Excited, nervous but ready to give it my best.
Best of luck. I hope you and your players have a blast no matter how the dice fall.
I didn't realize how much I had missed these list videos.
The simple advice that covers all of this is “Play in good spirits, play in good faith”. That pretty much covers all of it, as all of these people almost deliberately (or quite deliberately) are ignoring one or both of these.
These example strike a cord with me. I think I have some PTSD from my old gaming group due to these personality types. Seth, have you read Robin’s Laws? Would be interesting to see a video on how to create a game that offers something for everyone (as Robin’s Laws suggests). Thanks for the great content! I always look forward to your videos!
This is a great video and really has helped me self reflect, and really helped put things in perspective. Thank you so much Seth, you continue to help me be a better Story Teller and Player
That first one hits me in a real tender spot, I'll never forget the time I almost scared off one of my closest high-school friends from the role playing hobby, one in which me and the other players all were bonded together by.
We made our own game systems and ran them for one another in settings that no other fantasy world compared too in terms of originality, it was a closely knit group that made stuff by itself to for itself.
I started some totally random argument while this friend was running, I can't even remember it, and I spoiled the whole game and made a total ass of my self.
I didn't talk to him for over a year and it would be until recently, a whole 2 maybe 3 years later, that I spoke to him regularly and offered him a seat at my table for this current game wrapping up on Thursday.
Love the friends you got, and try your best to appreciate all the hard work people put into this hobby.
I have to admit. Your videos, the soothing effect of your voice, helps me get through dumb stressful nights. Love what youre doing homie! much love.
I'm a simple man: the Gang's back in force, I click like, comment and start sharing the video everywhere :D
My first ever game was set in a seedy Rogueport like town that the rest of the party abandoned two sessions in while I couldn't make it. #3 resonated with me a lot.
It's great to see these again! I really enjoyed the call back to the Role Play Terrorist. A couple of those consistently ruined my Conan game to the point where we as a group just didn't want to game together anymore. Granted I know I made mistakes as a GM as well but these folks only seemed to want to gather with the specific purpose of stopping other ppl's fun.
I was lucky though bc I found a new group who are great and we've been having a great time with a game of Traveller.
Wow this was quite the wonderful video Seth, and I'm quite sure reading through the comments most people would love a wonderful sequel! Two I saw that caught my fancy if you were to make a second one is "The Coward" (never goes on quests because they think the GM has it out for them) and "The Absent Minded" (were in a more serious game they do nothing to keep up or impact the story)
You nailed this one. I have a game ending because of a player like this who has many of these behaviors. I have entire world I made for this group simply because the ONE player didn't want to play in the world I have had for over 20 years with 11 binders full of materials and games, that everyone else seemed to love. Now he is unsatisfied AGAIN and says this will be the last game he plays in. Well this time I accept. I am done. No game, sad as that is, is better than a bad game. Watching this video was therapy for me.
I clicked the 'thumbs up' when Seth said that these videos are 95% therapy!
Your list videos are pretty much my favorites- I always find something I can relate to !
My first group to DM had a combo 3-5 player and it literally gave me panic attacks about DMing for weeks. I ended up compiling another group and things got better. Never played with that person ever again though.
I was gaming with a powder keg when I was a teen. They were an adult. When things didn't go their way and I beat their character, they threw their 3-ring binder rules collection across the room. I'm sitting there scared and wondering if he's getting physical with me next. Some groups you just walk away from.
Great video as per usual. Oh man Dweebles got pretty dark in this one - I don't even know him anymore!
Dweebles once ordered the death of his GM's teddy bear and threatened to have Mike cut off the GM's fingers. He also may or may not have stolen his GM's dice and then shot him. Dweebles is and always has been the dark one. Don't let that cute demeaner fool you.
@@SSkorkowsky ha, I have had many good folk at the table but.... these types show up in public games and you can see their markers very quick, if I see a player happy and enjoying a]game then another takes their time to "eff" around or with them, then they have to leave the table, everyone breaths a sigh of relief .... thanks for the video Seth.....
Maybe the prep time of dressing up as Dweebles, with the slick down hair and chin glue, sends Seth to his dark place ;). Seth/Dweebles looks in the mirror: “You talkin’ to me?” :)
I have found myself being a world breaker not on purpose mind you its just deep immersion and I build things irl so I like learning but after seeing this I can see how I need to tone that back some. Thats why I like these videos they help people become better players.
Yep, I realise now I do this too from time to time. Gonna remind myself it's just a game and we're all here to have fun when I recognize it happening next time.
Hey, Todd wasn't the only example jerk in this episode!
I have been a couple of the early ones, and it still fills me with shame. -.-
That said, thanks for giving Ramones Shirt Guy (can't remember his name atm) a break and having Dweebles be the jerk for a change. XD
Sometimes it is the down to earth looking guys who are the most explosive. Preface with we are all grown men. Had a game with a friend who wanted to bring a mate along. Never met him before but said ok as the friend was a good person. This bloke rocks up, a round faced, chummy, easy smiles kind of guy who is polite, who you could imagine being anyone's friend if they let him, the kind of guy you seeing running FLGS games for the kids. Game starts, we don't even get fifteen minutes in before this guy gets two bad rolls in a row, nothing lethal - and he blows up. Now he's a big guy and on the second failed roll his face instantly turns beetroot red and just goes off as if he's twelve years old. Fist pounding, screaming, shouting, finger one inch away from face waving mess. I won't say how I got him to leave but I got him to leave and told my friend that when I said I didn't want to see that guy again, I didn't mean just in game, I mean ever, anywhere, ever again.
Hey Seth, great video!!!
You didn't do the Wimp!
Encounter #1 Three Kobolds; I don't know guys, I have a bad feeling about this one.
Encounter #2 Stairs; I don't know guys, we should go another way.
Encounter #3 Two Orcs; I don't know guys, we should go back to town and get more hirelings.
Thanks Seth you have a wonderful day!
my best friend in high school was this. one time i did a rival party made of parodies of my players. said player hadn't caught on yet. the expy said something and he says "my god! this guy is such a weiner!" one of the other players was uncontrollably laughing for a few minutes.
Depends on what you are playing. In B/X this is smart play, in GURPS also. Not so much in 5E. If its Traveller, well that's just weird.
I admit I am ALL of these at different times, but I try to dial it back. Like a lot. And I don't stay that way forever.
Eor is not a pouter. He's just bored with your presence. Great video, as always. Thanks man.
Sadly, all of these tropes have darkened the seats of my gaming table.
There is one more: the Jokester. The fellow who deliberately assassinates the game atmosphere by non-stop non-sequiturs or toilet humor or out of character inanities. "The collapse has settled and ahead of you your flashlights claw through the settling dust to reveal statues of antediluvian antiquity. A passage leads on, the choking dust in the air now mingling with the faint stench of rotting fish..." Player: "Man I hate it when monsters forget to take out the compost. We should call the city and complain, let them clean this place out and get back to the public house for some beer and darts." or "I'm angling for some clues. There's some thing fishy here. Is there music here - because I'd hate it if it was out of tuna. Cod I hate that. Hey! I just kidding, no reason to trout about it!". OI!
The unfortunate reality of my long years of experience in RPGs is that I've experienced all of these types of players one way or another. So I have adjusted my player base and recruitment process accordingly which has decreased these encounters DRAMATICALLY. To almost nil. That has made life just a little more tolerable. 😀
Keep up the good work, my man. 👊
I nearly fell out of my seat laughing for #4 and #5. I've known players who certainly operated in the #4 mode. In fantasy games, they tend to play the rouge and hog ALL the loot.
Good Lord, I've had all these in my games at one time or another, going back over 40 years.
I really like your "list videos", Seth! Good stuff. 🎲 ⚔️ 🏹 🧙 🔮
I think a way to sum up a lot of DND complaints is that it's less a game and more a collaborative story-telling experience. The dice rolls are just there to add some honesty to what boils down to "Well my dude has a crossbow and shoots your dude in the head!" and forces some depth of thought into what options your character has available.
Oh, no. My fears have been realized. I'm in one of Seth's list videos! I can be a bit of a world breaker. I'm not trying to break the world, but I ask lots of questions that the DM might not have an answer to. I'm just curious and want to learn more about the game world and plot.
Mee too, but I figure now that we're aware of it we can be careful of it in the future to not take it too far. Depending on the DM, it can be nice to show interest in something they spent time creating. Just keep it in check.
I'm definitely a mix of those first two mentioned. It's like you said though I don't try to and I actually when I'm being that way I try to remove myself from the situation it's just like it's annoying mindset you can't escape.
It is always nice to have a Seth Skorkowsky video! Calming and to help everyone be better players at the table, because in the end we all just want to have fun but not take it from someone else's.
Hopefully I'll be as cool as you some day.
The problem with the worldbreaker isn't the excited digging into details, it's the scale and the purpose. I wish I had a lightweight worldbreaker or two in my games, one who is willing to accept "this is a fiction constructed by one human" but still likes digging to see how detailed the fiction is.
Having the worldbreaker DM a session or two also seems like a pretty easy cure.
So the World Breaker I talked about in the video has started playing with me again (the pit trap incident was like 15 years ago). How'd he get over the World Breaking issue? He started GMing and saw certain behaviors he didn't like and realized he'd been guilty of them in the past.
The thing about making these videos being therapeutic... I mean as a long time TTRPG player and game master especially I get that. I am quite certain that anyone with a long TTRPG history with a variety of groups have similar stories :D
Thanks for making these! I live in the USA, deep south, I get to run like 1 or 2 sessions per year because no one here cares. These videos help me to make those sessions the best possible!
While the time difference is huge I would love to play some more RPGs. Interested in some online sessions?
I will also gladly DM if interest is there (though we are currently a bit busy, thanks to moving....). Though mostly short adventures/one-shots ->I love me some bigger campaigns and progression for the players, but I know that I don't have time for anther one and I really don't want to let a group down after some sesssions
EDIT: jeeez.... I hoped youtube would have some kind of private message system, but it doesn't seem so....
@@S0nyb1ack it's ok lol and while I would LOVE that (Forever DM here) I am also about to start my next college semester and I also work full time, so I would likely have a lot of trouble making the timing work
Once again, I forgot that all these guys are Seth. He is so good at portraying them all.
I came across a few of these during my years as a Dm. Only one solution, talk to the player privately, if they dont understand and change their behaviour = Fired.
Oh man this is giving me flashbacks to my first games!
I had a experience once where the GM slowly turned the whole table into a group of complainers.
Sometimes we just felt things were unfair like at one point we were fighting a buffed up vampire, we got it down pretty low and managed to get it into a beam of sunlight, where it promptly restored all of its health and got a bonus to AC and damage and we had to kill it all over again apparently the only way to kill this vampire was to throw salt on its coffin which we only found out because an NPC did it. Then another time we saved up a ridiculous amount of money because we wanted to buy a castle and just randomly we get teleported to 'The Thieves' Realm' which was never mentioned before or after and the only way to escape was to give all of our money up.
So after a level 3-10 campaign of this everytime the GM did anything we were all being extremely picky about it and complaining the whole way through. Luckily we all got out over time but they were a friend so I was one of the last to go.
Pouter Keg.
Had a player who was a bit like that, they even threw their dice so we threw the player after a few warnings.
Usually everyone tends do some of this stuff once or twice, sometimes on an off day or down to personal logic but managing to do it for a year every session was impressive.
As someone has already used #6 for a coward I'll volunteer #7 as the self destructive player. Someone who does dumb things to get killed or intentionally creates characters who aren't heroes in a hero setting and then gets depressed they can't do awesome things like everyone else.
I've never dealt with a 'Tester' but I totally understand why you hate that more than the rest.
Powder Keg pouting: "Figures!" So good
Our group roleplays the bad dice rolls in our game like my middle aged fighter failed a strength check (rolled a nat 1 and even with +8 it still failed) so I made up a war wound from the past that acts up alongside his belief that he can still move like he's twenty again.
Great to hear these “Hello, internet! Seth Skorkowsky!”! Made my morning.
Hey, Seth. Are you going to do a review on Uncle Timothy’s Will? I had a really good time watching that. You guys are awesome roleplayers, and I really enjoyed your version of Harvey Duncan Allen! Thanks!
I'll do it eventually. I've since picked up Blood Brothers which it was published in, and plan on gutting and running one of the other adventures in there.
@@SSkorkowsky Wow! Great to hear that! Since watching you guys I also picked up Blood Brothers. Still think the best one there is Uncle Timothy’s, but a few others caught my eye. The Mummy Bride, The Swarming, Spawn of the Deep… Really looking forward to your reviews!
Your RPG Philosophy videos are always gold, and not just for understanding how people play at the table. Thanks Seth.