My favorite instance of this, was we had a wizard that was about to fireball a group of dwarven refuges for kicks, and I (basically barbarian) attacked him, and told him I WOULD kill him if he tried to harm the migrants. (My character was standing right next to him, and he would provoke an attack if he persisted to cast) He was a little sore "but it's what my character would do!" "Yeah? Well this is what mine would do, we literally stop evil wizards on a regular basis... how does your character respond?" His character chose to restrain himself under threat of death ;D And honestly, I recommend this in general, if a party member "character" acts like a villain, or acts against the party, treat them like the enemy they are, people generally will rethink what their "character" would do
The "Lawful Good is Boring" attitude. Not everyone wants to play the dashing rogue or the edgy tiefling rebel. Some people just want to play the Knight in Shining Armor, the classic good guy.
some people dont know how to make a Heroic character interesting, so they asume that the archeype is the problem and not them. Is not for everione but they make very cool characters
@@elhoteldeloserrantes5056 That's also an outgrowth of the Lawful Good players not knowing how to let the less than lawful good characters have their fun. Superman knew when to let Batman do his work and to accept that his lectures were falling on deaf ears in most timelines. The Paladin has to know when to take the Rogue's lie at face value and go down to the market to look for truth potions instead of insisting the prisoner not be tortured.
I think that is less a D&D specific issue since i see the sentiment in regards to media in general. A lot of characters people like have layers that stop them from just being a pure lawful good, they have flaws that make it clear they aren't a 100% good person. I think that is what people want: someone who feels REAL, with nuance. Not a token good guy ripped straight out of some Fairy Tale somewhere. Perhaps having them a bad moment here and there where the BAD part of their humanity cracks through, helps stop people thinking they are boring. For example the good guy snapping is a good way to do it by showing that they are lawful good, but you test their patience they can do something borderline evil, not because of changing values but because they are a human, and humans can react volatily when emotionally provoked.
Also i think the fact that people are burned out of these character in TV, Anime and Manga doesn't help, to the point they don't want to see any more of that type of character.
i am barbarian i don't want to rp that much but every "combat focused" games i played ended up being 3 hours of rp 10 minutes of combate so bet my ass i'm pulling my phone out if i'm alweys doing what everyone likes for 3 hours
@@DellikkilleD Being on your phone and not paying attention to the game IS being a disruption. It tells the DM that they have no interest in the campaign and that all of their hard work prepping for the session and planning the scenario is completely wasted on them, which kills DM enthusiasm for running the game. It also killing any sense of storytelling immersion when one character is basically nothing but a meat puppet that suddenly starts doing things when there's a fight. If all you enjoy is combat and have no interest in the other two pillars of play, you'll probably be better served by looking for a new group that's a better fit if your current group uses the other pillars of play.
@@siluda9255 Sounds like you're in a bad fit for a group if all that you want is combat, but only get 10 minutes of it out of three hours of play. As a DM myself, when you pull out your phone, I can all but guarantee you that your DM is thinking, "Why are they even here?"
I hate it when I have a village of a specific race, implied to be tribal and centered around a singular culture, only to have someone complain about it being 'racist' that all the people of this village follow the same ideology, because it's a 'stereotype'. They all live within five minutes of each other, in a small, exclusionary village. Of course they're going to be really similar to each other in terms of beliefs!
Personally I really despise it because it means you can never play to a stereotype and have to always play *AGAINST* it or else be considered racist. If a town is, say, refusing to allow a band of orcs in because the local lord says that orcs are little more than violent thugs and monsters, you don't need to know anything more to know that the noble is in the wrong and orcs are actually deep and complex and not always violent and such. You never get anyone doing stuff like, say, having orcs indeed be a heavily martial society but there being more to it, like honor and facing a challenge, than just brutish violence. The noble will always be wrong for being 'racist' but it never gets asked if there's a good reason for why he does what he does or if he might actually be *right*. A broken clock is right twice a day. Imagine a plot where the first group of orcs is, indeed, little more than a bunch of violent thugs and it's the hippy dippy idiots who go 'not all orcs' that let them in and the party has to fight them off, but the NEXT group that comes along sees no honor in fighting a bunch of civilians just trying to live their lives and the noble, justified from the first encounter, then attacks *them*. That's a lot more complex than the overly simplistic moralizing you'd see most of the time.
Yeah I liked when my half-elf was given strange fearful looks by people in a town which was terrorized by barbarian wild elves. to them, pointy ears = eat your babies
6:51 - In a game I was DMing years ago, the players were having trouble deciding exactly what they were going to do next. One of them literally looked me dead in the eye and said, “Just railroad us to what we’re supposed to do next.” This was actually seconded by at least one other player and none of the rest of them protested. Like anything else, it can be a useful tool when it’s used and not abused.
On the topic of joke characters Some of the most impactful and meaningful character moments I’ve ever seen was when a joke character had an incredibly traumatic or impactful moment occur, and you could almost see the switch flip from “I’m just a whimsical guy!” To “oh shit, that just happened.” And they slowly begin to undergo the heroes journey. It’s beautiful, and I will always Stan the joke characters.
Viva La Dirt League had a sketch that highlighted this very point. Character started out as Fartpants Something and everyone else was ‘no really?’. Cut to the scene where the character dies a heroic death saving the party and now his joke name is revered.
I agree - what isn't usually clarified/expressed is that it is mostly an issue of player intentions and maturity rather than joke characters themselves. If you have people who've come to shit on the camapign and make it all about how much attention they are getting, then yeah - it's gonna be crap. If thwnplayer has good comedic timjng and/or knows when to shut up and let thenothers do their thing, and maybe has an actual arc, like you deacribed, then it's all good. The problem is that, unless you know the player very well, you can never be sure what you'll get.
A piece of advice is to practice your improv. There's no way you'll be able to predict what your players will do, so be ready to make changes on the fly.
On the same note as practice improv. I find running a few "what if" situations for encounters helps put me in the setting. What If the party steals from a shop., what if the party break into the the wrong house, what if they lets a secret slip. Then in session when the party does something you haven't thought of, you'll be able to improvsive because you have a understanding of setting.
I'm also beginning to prepare my first campaign, I already have a pretty jeft doc with aall the rulings I have changed from the game and what I can do to help my players. Madly scared, but I hope in the near future I can get it started. Good luck my friend.
Good luck and all the best, fellow new DM! Hopefully all works out well for both of us and all the other new DMs out here. These MrRipper videos have been a great insight on what people like and don't like.
You know what is worse than players never challenging the DM on ruling? Players who do it all the time. Above all when it's obvious they don't do it in good faith.
At the whole session 0 introduction, I really liked that my group of friends treated things to either be more organic(like people with similar backgrounds or renown to be familiar/acquaintances), pre-established(bc the actual session starts later into the quest, not at its actual start) or players collaborate in character creation(like building joint characters, or intentionally making their character with someone else's in mind). It really helped that bc this was all done via forum, and it took a week or more for people to submit sheets, that players would OOC talk or hype up the RP and player interactions. It really helped setup character development or fast track it, all bc thats what the players wanted.
Hate's strong, but my least favorite trope is the horny bard. I try to do interesting things with my bards, and usually make them more dedicated to the arts than to getting some tail. But I can't even mention that I'm going to play a bard without people insisting that I'm gonna boink every NPC ever, and making jokes about such even when I clarify that's not the case. now, I'm not adverse to flirty characters in general, and half of my characters like to at least flirt, but what I don't like is the idea being forced upon me even when I don't want it to be. Also, most horndog characters I've seen have been the damn rogues, sorcerers and warlocks.
Fully agreed, I just wanted my Bard to be a cinnamon himbo, singing tunes to cheer people up (think a male version of Giselle from Enchanted) but noooo.
THIS. I ran a campaign of warforged in Eberron-- all the players were constructs. The bard kept trying to play into the 'horny bard' stereotype and I kept telling them, "You don't have the physical equipment. You don't have any sex drive. You are a construct!" Their response, "...but I'm a bard." It took time and me urging them to be a cheerleader, rather than a horny stereotype.
My pet peeve relates to this: treating a class as a job description rather than a skillset. If you can make something fit the framework of a "bard" it can be a bard. A military officer with a deep breadth of knowledge, powerful ability to command and give orders, inspiring to those around him, some knowledge of marching songs and such, and a smattering of odd but helpful magic. That can easily be a bard. A dispossessed noble who has an affable attitude, is well liked by those around them, always has a joke on hand, had some prior training with music they didn't pursue and knowledge due to their noble upbringing? Can also be a bard. You don't need to be Bardy McBard from Bardschool who Bards everywhere all the barding time, because their only interest is barding (and maybe music).
@@Syfa considering the colleges of whispers, spirits, swords, and most recently dancing, even the use of music/singing is optional, as long as your actions somehow inspire others.
9:03 ironically 5e stat blocks are more likely to have 0 nuance with alignments while 3.5 very often had the caveat of "usually X alignment". Orcs are listed as just evil in 5e, 3.5 orcs are listed as usually evil.
"Its what my character would do" I hate how much it is vilified, i mean yeah some players use it to lol random or disrupt the story but doing what your character would honestly do isnt wrong it is literally the RP aspect of this RPG.
Pretty much, because every action is basically what they character would do. I understand not liking it if it's disruptive, but it should be understandable if it's to bring some good roleplay moments
Everyone who insists the DMs job to make sure everyone has fun. Whether people have fun is influenced by so many factors outside anyones control, and it treats the dm like a worker in service to the players who are there to be entertained.
I hate when classes are treated as job descriptions rather than skillsets. Aka every stereotype of 'you need to be a barbarian to be angry' (and also a noble savage), or a monk to punch things, or bards *always* being magical musical assholes (and having no other traits outside of that & narcissism), Rogues being kleptomaniacs etc. I like it when bards are say the catch-all of oddball skills, I particularly love them for say military officers. The best barbarian I ever saw was a samurai in a european setting. Lawful good dwarf rogues that don't steal, they just like working with machines and locks. Lawful good being a comeptition between the concepts of "law" and "good" is particularly annoying, instead of a perfect ideal that compromises between both as long as actions serve both.
i dislike players not using the week up to the session to buy their stuff in game when at the city. they prefer to wait until the session to look through the items for a half hour or more, wasting other players time.
shopping should mostly be handled off screen in between games. sure some rp shopping can be fun.. to a point, for significant things. no one wants to go on a grocery shopping trip for imaginary shit.
The high requirements for upfront Backstories. I have put so much effort into character backstories just for the campaign to end after 2 sessions, or for the backstory to not matter and/or the campaign beeing an ill fit for the character, cause no information was given. At least in online games i usually show up with a very short backstory, like my blues brothers fighter, that just adventures or does mercenary work for the money.
my pet peeve is that people willy nilly use "rules lawer" and metagaming as a bludgeon for things like asking to do something slightly outside the set rules or asking someone to reread their features because they got something wrong
Basically everyone, be it dm or players, that try to "win" or otherwise try to play "optimally". Edit: To clarify, when I say playing optimally I basically mean minmaxing, powergaming, and sometimes it can even become metagaming. Wanting to play well is commendable, ofcourse, but from my experience people that play like this are the ones that are typically way less willing to roleplay because they cant handle anything not going their way and can only really consider what the most optimal decision would be and not how their character would act.
People find fun in different ways so I don't think people trying to play the numbers game - in a game of numbers with dice merely being a fluctuation of final result - is inherently wrong. But it's not inherently right either. If someone finds enjoyment in the game that way, I say let them. It's when it - unfortunately often - becomes an outlet for competitiveness and turns a cooperative game into something else that it becomes a problem.
Agree about winning because you can’t really win an RPG. It’s about survival with style. Which is why I disagree about playing optimally, although there may be a nuanced difference in our definitions of the word. I like my companions competent and capable.
i think first dude dont understands fail fowar, is not abuot lack of consecuences is about not stoping the story. example: You dont track the bandits? they have more money and better equipement now whit the loot, now you must try again the next day. His examples are fail foward poorly implemented
I think the one attitude that I don't like is characters have to fall under specific tropes like the Rogue has to steal whatever isn't nailed down or the Bard has to be horny and try to seduce everything. Nothing wrong with having tropes but whenever it is heavily suggested to have only that one option for that class it just takes something away. One attitude I hate is when I'm told I built my character wrong because its not 100% optimized. Most of the time I build characters that have some kind of flaw or quirk while picking spells that feel appropriate for them. One game that I was close to joining but ultimately didn't had this one player that kept telling me I made a huge mistake with some of the spells I chose. I didn't pick Silvery Barbs and Hypnotic Pattern on my Artificer/Wizard. He was absolutely furious because I refused to use those spells. He was sitting there explaining to me why those spells are the best spells like I was some kind of new player, I never played DnD before but I have several other systems so I'm aware of how strong certain spells can be. I didn't join that group because of that player and that 'power-gamer' attitude.
Feats, alignment, Wisdom, balanced encounters guidelines, 2024 PHB subclass mechanics, PC species with a flying speed at lvl 1, power gamers who pretend that their obviously power gamer moves are actually based on a carefully considered role play perspective, intelligent creatures that fight to the death against long odds, ignoring encumbrance even when it is obviously ridiculous to do so, spellcasters who can’t be trusted to monitor spell slot usage, players who have specced into a particular social skill and insist that a rolled skill check is appropriate at all times.
Rule of cool: If something would be cool, no matter how ridiculous, you may roll to attempt it. Law of Dice: The Dice are the ultimate arbiters of the game. You may the DM may fudge rolls, but player dice results are absolute.
The railroading one is so true. Im constantly worried im railroading the party and one of my players (another dm for our group) assures me sometimes its okay, but man. Im a writer so i did my best to make plot events and let the party find their way there, it just feels like i might railroad too much for the plot x.x Aa. Its the mentality of railroading that really gives me the anxiety.
“Practice Rolls”. Buddy, you roll when the DM says so. If you’re trying to manipulate your dice, it’s called cheating. If you wanna just rattle them around in your hand without letting go, gets annoying, but I’ll allow it.
Riddles and puzzles. Whenever quest passing depends on how good is player in riddles irl, not even charscter int, its horrible, it's not dicez not RP, battle or even what is in your sheet, and yakes time. And damn only 1 correct answer is even worse than nat20 only requirements. So whenever there is shpynx with riddle, sorry DM, but i roll to seduce
I personally think puzzles can be ok. As it's a way to challenge people, but have an alternative solution of no one knows the puzzle or a way that can work, but with some different results, that way the game can progress. And puzzles are the hardest thing, more than combat by a lot
Failing forward can be too much if done wrong, but not doing it can be way worse. "The party lost the fight... they all died, the end" is not how most people want their campaign to end. Also, screw the guy that said "don't allow x is a bad DM" that guy is a dick. Lot's of things are straight up worth banning at character creation, some for being bad for dms to work around like flying races, others for being too overused that you just want to curb it, like sharpshooter feat. Sometimes it's good to introduce rules to ban stuff like earning armor proficiency above what the lowest class you have gave you to begin with, just to force mages to stay with robes and mage armor instead of getting a level into fighter for a suit of plate.
The term 'DMPC' has what it means change depending on who's talking. In MY view of the phrase, a high level NPC is not inherently a DMPC, and they don't just become one if they happen to help out in one or two really nasty combats to give the party some breathing room. In my 3.5e games, there are plenty of strong and high level NPCs around the world, but they exist for three reasons: to remind the party they aren't the biggest fish in the pond, to color the world so it feels less like everyone's just waiting for the main cast to solve all their problems for them, and to serve as aspirational figures. Yes, you WILL one day become just as strong as the level 17 gish running your mercenary company, but right now you're level 3. These are not, in my view, DMPCs. To me something becomes a DMPC when they start eating a substantial portion of the narrative pie that's supposed to be for the main party, then they start becoming one because of the narrative weight they take up. I just feel it's too easy to see a high level NPC and then just immediately think they're a DMPC. He's not. He's the head of arcane logistics and he's here to enchant your weapons for you and teach the wizard some more spells. He's got a backstory and character of his own, but unlike the party he isn't a MAIN character.
Exploration and travel aren’t dangerous, and add no Exhaustion on top of it. It mitigates expose of the Ranger and strategic planning. Ambushing and counter-ambushing can be quite fun.
I hate the idea that the Lawful alignment has anything to do with following the laws of whatever land you're in. also that 3.5 player at 9:02 clearly didn't interact with the community in any way. I was playing and DMing throughout the entire run of 3.5 and the wotc boards were full of very active constant talk between us and everyone was very aware that always never meant always. One of our mascots was Ted the Flayer a comedian who popped up to make inappropriately timed jokes. Hell on of the biggest threads was 1,001 Ways to Kill the Tarrasque which can only be killed in exactly one way within the rules.
Re: Action Economy people Oof... Do they not know that the DM can just... Not attack? There are a ton of actions to take. If things are going south, you don't HAVE to pepper the wizard with goblin arrows.
Railroading: I won’t force the players and railroad them however I run to run a living and breathing world. I will make suggestions via roleplay or make obvious plot hooks, up to the players to take them on, but I tend to make a timeline for certain story triggers, so they might fail doing stuff if they take to long. 😊 My players like it, so I must be doing well.
Every week or so, there's a thread on reddit with a new player asking "Hey, my party doesn't have a healer, is that a problem?" And almost every single response is "No, play what you want." That's just really setting that player up for failure. Not having access to a free or cheap way to bring someone back from 0 HP is going to majorly bankrupt the party at low levels of play, and will not really stop being a problem at higher levels. Taking Magic Initiate or the Healer Feat, or just being an Aasimar is such low investment to majorly improve the party's quality of life. No one is asking you to keep shoving Cure Wounds up the barbarian's ass 24/7, but everyone will love you when you can healing word the barbarian back to his feet after he took the dragon's breath weapon at point blank range, even if you can only do it once.
DND attitude I hate most is how some people look down on other games, even games that are TTRPGs by saying "It's just trying to be DND." Or worse, "All games are just wannabe DND." These are real things I've had people tell me and honestly, it put me off of DND for a LONG time.
IWMCWD is a matter of maturity, pure and simple. It is as much over-villainized as it is true. We have (had) two dudes in our campaign look at IWMCWD in very interesting ways: Both are veteran/optimizer/power gamer-y types of dudes, both are very insistant on playing their builds and characters to the fullest - sometimes to an extent bordering on the impractical and slightly inconsiderate, since we are currently a 16th lvl campaign, and both if them ran casters. Yay. Still, mostly not their fault. Dude 1 comes in later in to the campaign. His first character - an android samurai that decided her defining character feature would be she would become a.complete materialist, because 'it is fascinating' died, so he come in with a new one. Detailed backstory, npcs, themed, yet still insanely powerful wizard build. Main objective - has been looking foe his girlfriend-wife for the last 1000-ish years (time mumbo-jumbo, he is also a chronurgist). Proceeds to progressively play this jaded wizard dude as an ever more consistent annoyance to anything and anyone around him 'I've just met you guys, I have my goals, you have yours - we are just around eachother for safety in numbers'. He touches stuff all the time 'You can't tell me not to touch stuff. I don't care you think it's dangerous. I found it - it's mine'. You steal it back from him 'Never steal my stuff, or I will kill you!' We spent literal hours of our lives dealing with random ahit he has lifted off royal palaces and such. We have a talk with dude - gets kind of abrasive, knocks it down a peg, but interactions are strained till the end. It all crescendos with his charavter reacting poorly to us resurrecting the progenitors of all vampires, since wizard's race got wiped out by vampires. Actual good rolepllay by dude 1, but ends with him betraying the party and a lengthy and tedious PvP moment, since 5e doesn't want people having fun past a certain point. It is all resolved with minimal damage to everyone. Yay. Later, we are on our way to make a big dimension-time-jump-thing, because the world needs saving, but breefly meet up with his girlfriend-wife. Dude decides 'Aye, quest fulfilled, IWMCWD' and retires the character, instead of doing the obvious 'I have some important crap to do, but I'll come back for you. After not getting his way exactly in a mini camapign I ran for the DM to take a break, leaves and never comes back. Dude 2 has been with us from the start, has gone through several characters by completing their arcs. His current one he was very excited for - he is way into Warhammer 40k, so he wants to make sort of a blend of factions and insert into out game world. Backstory out the wazoo. First session we run into a village plagued by a disease. What does his character sugggest? Burn the sick, along with the children, of course - they will only spread this thing further. Great roleplay. In-game stand-off ensues, he backs down. We run the rest of session without a hitch. After the session he goes and stumps us with 'Yeah, sorry, my lady isn't a good fit with the party - what should do with her?' In the end, we agree he tones down the the 'purge with fire' part of her, and all should be good. He is still playing her more than a year later. Bottom line: it's a matter of if you wanna be selfish and want others to behold how 'amazing' you are at the game, or if you are going to concede to the greater fact that TTRPGs are a collective experience first and foremost, and that personal satisfaction - while important and something to aim for - comes second to group enjoyment and cohesion.
I dislike when a player asks me "Hey can I make a Presence check against that guy?" and when I ask what they're trying to do, they say "I'm trying to use Presence on that guy." Honey, you tell me what your character does and I arbiter what stat you add to your dice, not the other way around.
@@Mgtowhonesty i mean do people also forget about... or ellistrae following drow? Drow are not evil, it is those who follow a death cult built on torture and hatred would be.
8:13 I also don't like the removal of skill points but I don't know what this guy is referring to. Proficiency does not work like that, animal handling and medicine are separate proficiencies. Did this guy have a DM who told him acrobatics was the skill for lockpicking?
That sorcerers didn't have to work hard because they were born with their magic. I'm sorry, but when you're growing up and harvest season is dangerous because if you aren't ready when you sneeze you cast Burning Hands on accident, you HAD to work hard at magic simply to SURVIVE YOURSELF!
In my favourite book series there is one character who when he was a child accidentaly turned his dog inside out with rogue magic... I blame this perception of sorcerers mainly on bad roleplaying and people not understanding the class.
The GM forcing a party to care about a story because "The BBEG messed with your characters that badly, and will destroy everything" type of scenario. Sure, if I as a hero dont do my part, the world is screwed. But there's a difference from "I wanna adventure to accomplish something" to "Oh I guess I better adventure to just exist". I dunno, feels like it sucks the fun outta everything.
Regarding the "Failing Forwards" trope, I think they're confusing the concept with failing upwards. Failing in a forward direction means that no matter the actions of the players, the story will always progress towards a conclusion of any kind, whether it's good or bad. If the party wipes in combat and die, that's failing forwards to the end of the campaign really quickly. If the party fails a perception check to find a secret door that leads to the end of the dungeon, giving the cultists enough time to summon a demon that then breaks out and fights the party, that's failing forwards to a fight that's likely to be more difficult than if they succeeded the check. Failing upwards means that if they fail, they're given advantages that are almost as good or even arguably better than if they succeed. Such as if they wipe to monsters in a dungeon, they're woken up with a long rest in the BBEG's room, where they have restraints with a relatively easy check to break out of to start a fight. So it'd be potentially better to fail before the fight than to succeed since they'd most likely not have the long rest to get back their resources. The core concept of failing forwards just means that you don't let the story completely stop in its tracks just because the party fails to take the correct course of action, by not having plots that revolve entirely around the players taking certain actions. If the goal of a story is to get a magical artefact at the bottom of a dungeon, and they get completely stuck in a room not knowing how to figure out a puzzle. That's probably the best example of a scenario where you don't let the players fail forwards. But even then, you can add other elements, such as a rival treasure hunting team or roaming dungeon monsters, that will leave the story in motion. But it's also a valid decision for the DM to just require the players to find another path through, such as backtracking all the way out to find someone that specializes in the type of room they got stuck in.
"Racial Languages". Even in Tolkein, "Elven" split into different dialects and languages. But in D&D, an elf born in the slums of the game world equivalent of Dublin, Ireland, learns the same "Elven" as an elf born in the game world's equivalent of the Japanese Imperial Palace. Language, like values, should be cultural, not species.
I hate when a player makes a backstory that's just "blah, blah, blah, so now I 'go on adventures." It doesn't tell me about what you actually want, where you want to go, or how you want to accomplish your goals. Because you have no goals other than to just make ends meet.
Sometimes, people do not have much of a motivation in the beginning, but then find a purpose during the campain, and it's not acyually a bad idea if that's where they want yo do. Some people just do it for the funsies or for the money, but then eventually find a bigger purpose.
@DellikkilleD did I say "believable characters" are the issue? No, I said that characters with no goals are frustrating. I have to throw stuff at the wall hoping at least one of those things interests that character enough to go do it, not to mention what everyone else wants to do. It's not helpful.
@Arlesmon and some never decide or are satisfied with what I come up with, so I am done doing all the work on that. Come to my table with a goal. And even if it's just to make money, tell me what you think would be a lucrative job, and I will work it in.
I haven't watched it yet but wanted to comment that mine is players who insist on always creating gag characters that have no real longevity beyond the first session. It's one thing to create a character that has a quirk that turns into a running gag, but it's a whole other to create a complete parody that only works for the introduction and then feels completely baseless afterwards; worse still when the players themselves get bored of it almost immediately.
The class tiers that got popular to talk about in 3.5, where they declared casting classes to be top of the stack when really casters being SUPER effective was the result of homebrewing rules that over-indulged casters. If held to the rules playing a caster is a lot of hard work from managing spell components deciding what spell to take for the day to saving enough spell slots to last all the encounters you should have throughout a day of whatever your party is doing. If the party gets to the end of the day and the Wizard had the perfect spell to insta-end every encounter and solve every problem the party encountered then you don't have a powerful character, you have a bad DM.
im in a 3.5e game right now where we're trying to play as close to the books as possible, and I'm playing a caster. It's actually been really fun to have to manage my prepared spells and strategize what would best get us through the day. Before this campaign, I was a big 5e player that thought "prepared casters are a waste of time, boring, and weak" but after giving it a try in 3.5, I actually quite prefer it over being able to cast anything in my list whenever I want. It gives utility spells you wouldn't normally use more of a purpose. EDIT: To anyone wondering, as of writing this comment, my character is a level 6 half-elf with 3 levels in wizard and 3 levels in cleric. I'm going for the mystic theurge prestige class.
That the DM has an obligation to do whatever the players want. The DM is a player too, and not all dms like being bad dms for the sake of bad players or doing stuff they dont want to.
the challenge the DM thing on ruling is a very important lesson that I wish more people would learn, then we would have more people reading the PHB rather then having Crawford contradict himself and the rulebook for the 1millionth time. Magic Missile a common one I always ask people when I see this on live stream games and Dms doing this in games I join why are you having it only rolled once when the spell description says that each dart deals 1D4_+1 that means that at level 1 when you cast the spell then you roll 1D4+1 for each dart a total of 3D4+3. The roll 1 die and then multply it would apply otherwise to every other spell that deals multiple dice of damage like your cantrips at higher levels.
Metagaming is when you as a player are putting information into the game that you as a character would not know. For example if you as a player have played through a module before and you know that there's a trap in the hallway, but you as a character do not know that there is a trap in that hallway, metagaming would be if you as a character are suddenly cautious of this hallway and trying to warn people that it could be trapped. If there is no reason for your character to suspect the hallway should be trapped then your character should not have that suspicion. Especially if your character is not known for trap sense such as a rogue. The action economy is essentially a turn-based economy that measures input and output. What the action economy is actually measuring is an almost one for one comparison between the player and the dm. Essentially what it measures is how much work is the party doing compared to how much work is the DM doing. For example if you have four level five characters, and they are against 27 level 3 skeletons, the action economy would prove that for every one turn each character takes you have five skeletons acting upon them.
The dungeon. Even though it's in the name, most of your adventures are better served in any place but the physical dungeon. That way, when we actually find an underground prison, we can point and say, "Look! The real thing!"
I do not like how the martial/caster divide is being discussed. Yes, casters can do heavy stuff and martials do not have the access to a similar toolbox. That is something to discuss. But where I disagree to the entire notion is that casters and martials don't need to be on the same playing field. They are good at different things and are supposed to work together as a team. A caster is powerful as long as they have spell slots. Most martials are efficient most of the time with most of their resources only needing a short rest to replenish. Casters are great sprinters while martials are amazing at running a marathon. Different foes require different skills. Sometimes martials are useless for dmg, sometimes you have a fire sorcerer in a fight against a red dragon.
Agreed casters have their weaknesses. The issue is those weaknesses were based on a rule that so many parties dont use properly, the adventuring day. Thr same reason people worry over warlocks having spells on a short rest
Players who think it’s their job to give you advice on what you should/shouldn’t do when making your character build. Yes, I understand there are mechanically better classes, abilities, and feats I could use instead. Guess what? I don’t CARE! If I wanted to do those things right now, I’d do them. Not everything needs to be optimized to the point you can take on 70+ goblins as a level three wizard (yes, this actually happened at the last table I played at). I don’t need my character to turn into a literal god after just a few levels!
My biggest hated is "But that's not how it works RAW" as if that matters at all. So what? It's my game, I can make my own rules and adjust things to be more fun for my players. Last one tho? THANK YOU FINALLY SOMEONE SAYING IT. A combat starting because a boss said the perfect thing to piss my PC off led and he charged ahead to upcast a lightning bolt on him? That led to a really cool and difficult fight because I charged past DOZENS of guards I didn't see. The abyssal torches flared to life and I could see that I fucked up. "Huh. I was baited. I might need some healing."
Paladins having to be Lawful-good. Paladins should do that which is good, which is not always what is lawful. A person shuned by law should still be given food by the paladin if starving
That sounds more like lawful stupid. A paladin is not going to be peachy keen with slavery just because they happened to sail into a Drow port in the Underdark. A paladin is a paladin because he is just. If the laws aren't just, he ignores those laws or actively fights to fix them. This doesn't mean your Paladin should immediately start clobbering elves by the dozen in an attempt to liberate the town's slaves on sight, but you can be more tense, maybe a bit more jumpy or snappy at others because you're in a place where evil is being done. In the same breath, DMs shouldn't be going out of their way to make paladins fall for not doing the above either. I'm sure it's gotten better, but catch 22's to fuck with Paladins is awful. Now it is up to you if your Paladin tries to uphold the tenants of his religion for instance (make a few to try and give your beliefs more flavor), maybe praying for all that passed, or offering a sacrifice when possible each day to bless the party. Or if you have an oath that keeps you razor focused on your adventure. Either way, you can have a paladin from a highly religious place that observes the laws of his land when possible, but making someone starve to death, while you have enough food is unjust. Maybe the paladin asks the rogue to sneak a piece of the paladins ration to a prisoner when a guard isn't paying attention.
This depends upon which edition you are playing and your DM because 2E had a plethora of paladins from Dragon Magazine that allowed for paladins of any alignment. In 5E, alignment is a cursory whispy thing that barely matters. As others have argued, a paladin's "law" is to their oaths.
Lawful =/= literal law. Otherwise your ideals would change every time you cross a border. Think of it more like "ideological consistency". Lawful creatures are very ideologically consistent. They don't tend to stray from their ideals.
Idk how popular this is but: Being vague about what kind of campaign we're playing mystery is fine. But when you allow me to show up to the table playing a guy who hates elves then have the entire campaign around helping elves it becomes a problem.
@@Arlesmon I think the point is that they shouldn't blame the pc then that they don't want to interact with elves, since he couldn't know what would happen, and couldn't find a good reasoning that fast, so that it makes sense that he accepted to somewhow help the elves. Inshort it's not the PC's but Dm's fault if that happens
That's when a good player says, "This character would not do that. This character doesn't work for the campaign. I'm going to make another character. Is there anything else I should know before I do? Are X species ok? How about Y class option?"
"If the players can do it, the enemies can do it." I'm not saying it's wrong, but it seems to be interpreted as "if the players do it, the monsters SHOULD do it." If the players always shut the monsters down, the DM can just design future encounters to accommodate that. If the DM always shuts the players down, that's a good way to make sure the players stop playing with you.
What I do as well, if there’s a rule question we’re not sure on due to the wording, we normally discuss it later and make a decision for now, retcon if needed
I think removing certain features at character creation encourages more creative gameplay. About to run a campaign where the players are essentially resurrected persons from across time and space. Some races aren't available in this world (I have a hard time incorporating animal folk), and others didn't appear until specific events in history (a Planar convergence opened up opportunities for Tieflings, Aasimer, and Genasi, specifically), and Draconic beings have left the Material Plane (so no Dragonborn or draconic features). Even some classes are unavailable at certain points in history because of certain events. I'm not sure if that's me being difficult, or writing a narrative that is compelling certain characteristics. It is all random though. I have characters roll randomly so they are from just about any point in the timeline.
There’s a line between an excuse and an explanation when it comes to “it’s what my character would do”. The difference is easy, for example my paladin smashed an evil artifact because it’s evil and he’s extremely practical, man doesn’t know how to contain or properly disenchant a magical artifact. So he tried to destroy it. This resulted in an explosion and I got asked if I wanted to change my mind. I said no because it is what he would do, and it wasn’t intended as something directly harmful it’s just him making a mistake. It becomes a bad thing when I (as DM) killed some characters off for narrative weight (and because nobody had less than 2) and the next day the necromancer had raised them all as zombies because “it’s what my character would do” despite how angry that made everyone else. He then proceeded to be a douche bag for like five more sessions including sabotaging the entire campaign, before leaving because “you’re just not a good enough DM to make this fun for me”. Like clearly not, I let you do this shit
I'm going to go with the idealization of Critical Role and Matt Mercer. Now don't get me wrong Vox Machina is a great TV series, Matt Mercer is a good DM, and Critical Role is ok, just ok. But they are by no means going to be the standard. I think the big problem with Critical Role is the sheer number of players. 6 is considered on the higher end of things and Critical Role is usually supporting 7 cast members occasionally 8. On top of that their sessions end up being much longer compared to other streamed or podcasted campaigns. But what makes the whole thing work is players that know how to role play and play the game which not every table has especially if you have some newbies. It is a dynamic that comes from having played together across many sessions over many years and you have to build for that. And for the record my gold standard of the DM I want to be is Monty Martin from the Dungeon Dudes. That man is an artist when it comes to DMing.
I feel like that first commenter just misunderstands what fail forward means. It isn't synonymous with "the party can't ever fail and there are no consequences." All of their scenarios and examples are obvious and stupid cop outs to, like they said, "bail out the party." But failing forward is usually more about how totally failing off one single lost encounter or failed roll can suck ass sometimes. Making failure more like a game of tug of war where a failure pushes you back, but not out, can keep up the momentum of the campaign. It isn't about "planning an event that needs to happen," it's about giving multiple chances where they're warranted and adding in challenges as you go.
Ikr? Lawful good can show a kind and compassionate person, someone who always holds up their end of a promise, or protects those when the law cannot, they follow their oath to the letter, because they kmow for a fact it guides them to show care for the weak and to punish those who harm them.
To a degree, it's necesary for the sake of keeping the game consistent, but it's another thing if it's specifically to get away with player things or to screw someone
That players should be integrated into the world and campaign building. I get that many players want to help create the story, but IMO they already have that through their characters. They can decide what plot hooks to follow, who to side with, etc. As a dm I always try to make the world feel like a believable place where everything could make sense, from economics to politics and individuals. Other people or other dm's might have great ideas for story beats, countries or areas, but they might not fit the world I try to create. Its the dm's job to supply the material, and the players job to act on it. If its different on your table, great. But dont tell me I'm doing it wrong because it works for you.
7:47 the 'oversimplification' one, i think maybe the examples they used were just bad. But they didn't really make a good point. Acrobatics require dexterity and lockpicking also requires dexterity. And with max dexterity. It's only a +5 to both, it's not like you gain the ability to always succeed on either. I actually think the opposite. Fifth edition is better because instead of having 5 or 6 things that could just be called 'acrobatics' now we just have acrobatics. And if you really wanted to you could talk with your dm about having advantage an extra bonus, or maybe even a negative modifier on specific roles in specific situations. Like how some animals have advantage on perception so long as they're using their sense of smell.
I hate it when my character sees a burning orphanage, and I’m like, "I’m running in to save as many as I can," and the DM’s all, "Are you sure?" Like, yes, DM - that’s exactly what my character would do! Why get mad about it?
Even if I was playing an evil character they would rush to save the orphans. For more selfish reasons though. Oh no my future minions! I mean those poor orphans!
@@ciarangale4738 I'm a forever DM. I know what it means. I'm asking OP if he's unironically suggesting that he thinks it means a DM is angry at you because by the literal words of the post that's what he's saying.
People who try to justify being consistently late/absent from the group by saying "it's just a game" or "it's not work". We are busy adults with busy lives, we have to schedule a specific time to get together to play a game and treating it as less important because it's not a job is an asshole move to the rest of us that might only have 1 chance per week, if even that, to be able to show up on time. Especially when the DM plans our encounters on having a full party and only 2/5 are a no call no show, resulting in a canceled game night. Also anyone who sees groups on Twitch/UA-cam and enters a group assuming they'll have a similar experience.
I understand 5e is flexible, and often the variant rules are interesting. But I think 5e pays for that flexibility by not doing anything very well - only good enough. And that’s fine; I think I’m just starting to prefer games that really lean in to their particular settings and create highly specialized mechanics for them.
That first guy sounds like fun. /sarcasm Why get so worked up about something that makes the game more accessible and you can, y'know, talk with the DM about it?
Anything chaotic stupid always put me off. The amount of Himbos and female equivalent in DND always irked me as no one is literally this stupid. It is a caricature of people making stupid choices for comedic effect but in dnd i often find this so dumb I lose interest. I can understand a character coming as dumb due to language barriers, actually being illiterate, or having some reason for being rather unintelligent. However, playing a character like your ben stiller from zoolander immediately breaks me from the immersion and ruins the experience for me, and always leads to issues for the party that are not the fun kind of issues to play out in game.
What if it's the case of someone being dumb for the sake of roleplay, but is actually serious or does a inteligente thing when it matters for the sake of the plot? Becuase i kinda tend to do some dumb things, but actually try to play smart in serious moments or moments of tension
Playing stupidity right requires knowing realistic limits and group dynamics. Grog works for Critical roll but may not work in another group. I'm playing a Trippki (PF2E verson of Grippli aka frog man) who has very broken language due to growing up in the wild. And my group us finding out that he isn't academically smart but he is very wise and surprisingly smart when it comes to science (due to him observing how things work in nature and having to make it work by himself).
If it actually helps the story in any way or is a vital part of the characters backstory that can be explained I'm usually ok with it. The problem is the amount of people who simply wish to cause chaos and just claim, "Intelligence is my dump stat so he's an idiot." I've seen stupid characters actually played well and they are a lot of fun, but I'm specifically meaning the himbos that serve no other purpose than to cause problems.
I've personally never been a fan of the Dragonborn race/species. It not only makes no sense lore wise (dragons can true polymorph into whatever race/species they want for breeding purposes). It seems they are there simply for the video game/ mmorpg crowd who just wants to play as a dragon with fly speed and a inborn breath weapon. I just don't let people play Dragonborn in my homebrew worlds.
Hate is a little strong, but I don't like how so many people would rather spend time homebrewing 5e rather than spending the same time learning to play a system that has what they're looking for.
I like playing comedy reliefs, but i understand if not everyone likes them, though they can be good for a serious canpain if they play their comedy in moments the parts needs to relief some tension Another thing i might dislike is that every word you say must be incharacter and there's no out of character say, and this applies i have to leave the game due to an emergency or have to eat or go in a backroom break, because sometimes, things happen. I get that it's for immersion, but there has to be some understanding where you have to say some things OoC
Dm limiting races i can play in setting. Sure if dms created setting has good reason why certain races wouldnt exist there/are rare, im willing to bite my tongue. But sometimes i feel like dm just does not want to see certain races to be played. I love playing as lizardfolks/dragonborn, but one dm caught on to this and started making them rare in subsequent campaigns to prevent me from playing them. Even if he tries to make me just try new ones, i know what i like and shouldnt be just have ones i like playing dropped every chance he gets.
It's the people's playing fault if they can't manage a proper introduction... If the dm says you all meet in a tavern and the players just go "hi howdy ho neighbor, haven't seen you before." Then just go off together that's on them and the dm for being dumbasses about it. The players can meet a million different ways that ends up bringing them together. All hired to do the same job. Which literally led to them spending 4 whole lvls solving the problem before they were payed which was over 3 months in game. Then the next thing they did involved all of them being asked to visit the king so they traveled together. Natural as fucking possible. Another game, all wake up improperly imprisoned and escape together. Travel to the nearest town where we had to stay for several lvls because of complications. Felt natural to stay friends. Another was we joined the same mercenary company and kept getting sent on the same missions. Another. A tournament was held to find the most capable fighters. Afterwards they were told they would be exploring an unknown wilderness and the party would be their only source of other people for a long time. These are all easy and natural ways in which the party stays a group long enough to form a bond
There are 3 character concepts I simply CANNOT STAND: 1. The PC teams up with the party, adventurers with them, learns about them but backstabbing them (9/10 it’s literal) at the end of the campaign. 2. The “This guys a dick but he treats a selective few people like gold” so he’s automatically cool with the party because he’s a pc…if you’re pc treats a select few cherry picked PCs like the golden child but treats everyone else in the party like there utter garbage then that’s not a good PC. And 3: the “ladies man” character…has to have every girl (PC OR NPC) on his “lance” as all times.
Also a couple more because why not? 4: the “Forth wall breaker” like dude, we get it, u love Yugioh and anime, but u don’t have to make a character that is specifically “Ooooh, have you heard of yugioh or sailor moon? I know what those are because I come from a time period where those exist” like…dude, that’s neat, but this is a midevil fantasy world, my character will have NO IDEA what you’re talking about and the proceed to take you to the loony bin. 5. The joke character who doesn’t take combat seriously or says a lot of marvel tier jokes…just stop talking, he gets struck by a bolt of lightning that deals…99999999999999999 damage…roll up a new character…and 6: the character that you can’t hurt no matter what and is basically immortal (yes, I have had these people in my games, yes they were a PAIN IN THE A$$! I had a trickster rogue who INSISTED he could dodge ANYTHING! ANY attack, EVEN MAGIC!and no I’m no talking about the feats dodge or evasion. I’m saying he thought he could just straight up dodge ANYTHING because his dex stat was a 20…I told him that’s not how it works, we argued, he kicks me in the nuts.
I'm confused 5e has feats. I know this for a fact. Nobody removed feats. You won't become better at an unrelated skill if you improve another. Improving an attribute related to the skill will improve all skills that use it, because duh. Whatever he's complaining about isn't D&D 5e
I don't mind the comic relief character, to an extent. What I hate is a joke character whose "joke" is detrimental to the party; or the player who has to hold up the session to get that one fucking gag when after the EIGHTH REROLL (this has happened multiple times) it wasn't gonna be funny anymore, anyway. I am also one of the people who vilifies the statement "it's what my character would do", because after the first few sessions of getting to know everyone's characters, the character's actions should be able to speak for themselves. Also, any GM who uses "grim dark" in their campaign's description and specifically asks for players who haven't played before have consistently used the setting as an excuse to torture players who don't know any better. I have gotten into screaming matches with one GM over this; and his exact argument one time was "If I run a campaign with a player yelling at me at the end of every session, I'm doing my job". NO, YOU'RE BEING A BULLY! That is not how you introduce new people to the hobby! I don't care about whatever 40K lore you're ripping off!
I mean sometimes there are players or Dm's Tha condemn the actions of a pc regardless if it makes sense from the pov of the pov or not, so saying "it's what my Caracter would do" isn't necessarily bad
strongly disagree with the "don't like having my players meet in session 1, always feels forced" one. That, to me, seems like a DM problem. You legitimately have nearly unlimited options for how they can meet, it doesn't need to be the old cliche "they were all coincidentally in the same pub", and player characters definitely don't have to immediately gel and be instant besties, they can have a working relationship to the same goal as they establish vibes. Yes, everyone having already been a group for a while IS one of those options, but discounting all the others, especially when a lot of players love the RP of an initial meetup, because it "always feels forced", that seems like a lack of creativity on the DM's part, unfortunately.
What are the other definitions of metagaming? Metagaming is acting on Information your character doesn’t know and shouldn’t be able to like knowing to rush out and save the other half of a split party with no communication
Thinking that restricting sources as a DM is opressive. If youa re a beginner DM, you have every right to limit everything to the Core rulebook, and do not let anyone convince you otherwise.
As someone who actually LIKES playing a big damn hero i loath the habit of many d&d groups to play like it’s grand theft dragon and play the most sociopathic pragmatic bastards they can imagine then groan and gripe because your neutral good cleric suggests maybe NOT defiling the corpses of dead villagers or mugging the blind orphan halfling child
Min/maxing I haven't had to deal with it yet, but I've always worried about balancing between power and roleplay potential in a character, and last thing I want is the goober with his "perfect character" overshadowing literally everyone. Our barbarian's the tank, the pugilist is our damage dealer, please stop trying to be both. Then there's also the fact that I'm working on a oneshot (which I will ask people not to min/max), and last thing I want is a character completely derailing my little project.
@@DellikkilleD No? How is a character not being optimal the same as being bad? There is a gradient to this. Infact I would even argue that at some point minmaxing basically becomes metagaming.
The guy who is talking about the imbalance between RP and one combat is 100%, right? This disproportionately favors classes with limited resources. Because they can just play Blow their wad. With no reason thought towards consequences and fighters, monks and other classes who are in it for the long haul. But don't have as much burst are left out in the cold
Omg that first guy has absolutely no idea what "fails forward" actually means... Never planning events that need to happen is such a huge and pointless handicap to storytelling. The solution is to simply make those event happen *without a roll.* And this is what bothers me the most in terms of DND attitude. The attitude that some players and DMs have when they think they know better without having even bothered looking into the thing in question. Rules question are cool, rules arguments are wrong. Characters already knowing each other is gold. Either that or give them a rock-solid reason to work together. The whole meet in a tavern and get hired at the same time by chance is lame. The Companions of The Lance started their adventure in a tavern...but they have all known each other for many years, some even grew up together.
I kind of hate the idea of "builds." I don't mind pre-planning your character (and would definitely recommend it), but the multiclass dippers who are obsessed with breaking the game aren't fun to see at the table.
I definitely play with someone like that. I always try to level my character up in a way that makes sense for the character in world, and he always looks at me like I'm trying to suggest that sliced bread cures cancer.
6:39 i think thats too close-minded.. joke characters can be done just as well as serious characters, or they can be done like complete shit (just like normal characters). example: i played a character using the standard joke name of "hugh mann ma'el" (human male). he was a (crystal) mushroom. stereotypical setup for a joke character. however, i used the "dark gift: symbiotic being" to have him implanted into the body (via the eye socket) of a 15 year old "human" boy (who always claimed to be a "normal human" hence how the mushroom picked his name). the boy, xander, was custom lineage.. and i explained that he looked human, sounded human, smelled human, etc.. but he had green blood.. never said what he actually was (i never came up with a true race for him). now, hugh was the one controlling the body moat of the time. he was a newly formed being and had absolutely no survival instinct (which played into the joke as he'd open random things or insert clearly dangerous items into stuff usually causing combat). overall he was a joke character but he had enough serious elements to him to make a proper story out of and with enough rp potential to make the joke usable. example of a bad joke character would be if you named your character "Art La'Tryne, PhD" (ph art d = farted)(latrine) and constantly made poop/fart/toilet jokes/puns.. thats just horrible humor for no gain or rp potential..
"It's what my character would do"
Perfect response: "why?"
My favorite instance of this, was we had a wizard that was about to fireball a group of dwarven refuges for kicks, and I (basically barbarian) attacked him, and told him I WOULD kill him if he tried to harm the migrants. (My character was standing right next to him, and he would provoke an attack if he persisted to cast)
He was a little sore "but it's what my character would do!"
"Yeah? Well this is what mine would do, we literally stop evil wizards on a regular basis... how does your character respond?"
His character chose to restrain himself under threat of death ;D
And honestly, I recommend this in general, if a party member "character" acts like a villain, or acts against the party, treat them like the enemy they are, people generally will rethink what their "character" would do
The "Lawful Good is Boring" attitude. Not everyone wants to play the dashing rogue or the edgy tiefling rebel.
Some people just want to play the Knight in Shining Armor, the classic good guy.
some people dont know how to make a Heroic character interesting, so they asume that the archeype is the problem and not them.
Is not for everione but they make very cool characters
You can do both. Our first Rogue in 5E, was basically Animated Batman.
@@elhoteldeloserrantes5056 That's also an outgrowth of the Lawful Good players not knowing how to let the less than lawful good characters have their fun. Superman knew when to let Batman do his work and to accept that his lectures were falling on deaf ears in most timelines. The Paladin has to know when to take the Rogue's lie at face value and go down to the market to look for truth potions instead of insisting the prisoner not be tortured.
I think that is less a D&D specific issue since i see the sentiment in regards to media in general. A lot of characters people like have layers that stop them from just being a pure lawful good, they have flaws that make it clear they aren't a 100% good person. I think that is what people want: someone who feels REAL, with nuance. Not a token good guy ripped straight out of some Fairy Tale somewhere.
Perhaps having them a bad moment here and there where the BAD part of their humanity cracks through, helps stop people thinking they are boring. For example the good guy snapping is a good way to do it by showing that they are lawful good, but you test their patience they can do something borderline evil, not because of changing values but because they are a human, and humans can react volatily when emotionally provoked.
Also i think the fact that people are burned out of these character in TV, Anime and Manga doesn't help, to the point they don't want to see any more of that type of character.
The classic
Barbarian: yeah I fallow the party and don't say anying let me know when we're in a fight *pulls out phone
so... your mad at someone that enjoys a specific part of the game, and prefers to not be a disruption during the rest?
i am barbarian i don't want to rp that much but every "combat focused" games i played ended up being 3 hours of rp 10 minutes of combate so bet my ass i'm pulling my phone out if i'm alweys doing what everyone likes for 3 hours
@@DellikkilleD Being on your phone and not paying attention to the game IS being a disruption. It tells the DM that they have no interest in the campaign and that all of their hard work prepping for the session and planning the scenario is completely wasted on them, which kills DM enthusiasm for running the game. It also killing any sense of storytelling immersion when one character is basically nothing but a meat puppet that suddenly starts doing things when there's a fight. If all you enjoy is combat and have no interest in the other two pillars of play, you'll probably be better served by looking for a new group that's a better fit if your current group uses the other pillars of play.
@@siluda9255 Sounds like you're in a bad fit for a group if all that you want is combat, but only get 10 minutes of it out of three hours of play. As a DM myself, when you pull out your phone, I can all but guarantee you that your DM is thinking, "Why are they even here?"
Follow*
Anyone who brings up or compares something to Mercer and/or “Critical Role” as though that is THE golden standard/end all of DnD.
Don’t get me wrong, I love CR, I have great respect for Mercer. But he is by no means THE standard everyone should be compared to…
That and anyone who brings up Mercer as the reason players think all DMs should be professional voice actors.
Now I agree with this, however I will say that I strive to create something that is of that quality.
Mercer himself even hates it. He made a great comment on Reddit about it years back
It's because it was designed to the lowest common denominator so it has a wide range of success and makes players feel clever...
I hate it when I have a village of a specific race, implied to be tribal and centered around a singular culture, only to have someone complain about it being 'racist' that all the people of this village follow the same ideology, because it's a 'stereotype'. They all live within five minutes of each other, in a small, exclusionary village. Of course they're going to be really similar to each other in terms of beliefs!
Personally I really despise it because it means you can never play to a stereotype and have to always play *AGAINST* it or else be considered racist. If a town is, say, refusing to allow a band of orcs in because the local lord says that orcs are little more than violent thugs and monsters, you don't need to know anything more to know that the noble is in the wrong and orcs are actually deep and complex and not always violent and such. You never get anyone doing stuff like, say, having orcs indeed be a heavily martial society but there being more to it, like honor and facing a challenge, than just brutish violence. The noble will always be wrong for being 'racist' but it never gets asked if there's a good reason for why he does what he does or if he might actually be *right*. A broken clock is right twice a day. Imagine a plot where the first group of orcs is, indeed, little more than a bunch of violent thugs and it's the hippy dippy idiots who go 'not all orcs' that let them in and the party has to fight them off, but the NEXT group that comes along sees no honor in fighting a bunch of civilians just trying to live their lives and the noble, justified from the first encounter, then attacks *them*. That's a lot more complex than the overly simplistic moralizing you'd see most of the time.
Yeah I liked when my half-elf was given strange fearful looks by people in a town which was terrorized by barbarian wild elves. to them, pointy ears = eat your babies
6:51 - In a game I was DMing years ago, the players were having trouble deciding exactly what they were going to do next. One of them literally looked me dead in the eye and said, “Just railroad us to what we’re supposed to do next.” This was actually seconded by at least one other player and none of the rest of them protested. Like anything else, it can be a useful tool when it’s used and not abused.
Another bounty hunter would be more likely to be seen as competition than friend
On the topic of joke characters
Some of the most impactful and meaningful character moments I’ve ever seen was when a joke character had an incredibly traumatic or impactful moment occur, and you could almost see the switch flip from “I’m just a whimsical guy!” To “oh shit, that just happened.” And they slowly begin to undergo the heroes journey. It’s beautiful, and I will always Stan the joke characters.
Viva La Dirt League had a sketch that highlighted this very point. Character started out as Fartpants Something and everyone else was ‘no really?’.
Cut to the scene where the character dies a heroic death saving the party and now his joke name is revered.
I agree - what isn't usually clarified/expressed is that it is mostly an issue of player intentions and maturity rather than joke characters themselves.
If you have people who've come to shit on the camapign and make it all about how much attention they are getting, then yeah - it's gonna be crap. If thwnplayer has good comedic timjng and/or knows when to shut up and let thenothers do their thing, and maybe has an actual arc, like you deacribed, then it's all good.
The problem is that, unless you know the player very well, you can never be sure what you'll get.
Praying i can learn something from these videos as I'm beginning to prepare to dm my first campaign. Good luck to all fellow new dms
A piece of advice is to practice your improv. There's no way you'll be able to predict what your players will do, so be ready to make changes on the fly.
@dizzydial8081 thank you, its definitely going to be nessacary as they are all new players so I have no frame of reference for how they'll act.
On the same note as practice improv. I find running a few "what if" situations for encounters helps put me in the setting. What If the party steals from a shop., what if the party break into the the wrong house, what if they lets a secret slip. Then in session when the party does something you haven't thought of, you'll be able to improvsive because you have a understanding of setting.
I'm also beginning to prepare my first campaign, I already have a pretty jeft doc with aall the rulings I have changed from the game and what I can do to help my players. Madly scared, but I hope in the near future I can get it started. Good luck my friend.
Good luck and all the best, fellow new DM! Hopefully all works out well for both of us and all the other new DMs out here. These MrRipper videos have been a great insight on what people like and don't like.
You know what is worse than players never challenging the DM on ruling? Players who do it all the time. Above all when it's obvious they don't do it in good faith.
At the whole session 0 introduction, I really liked that my group of friends treated things to either be more organic(like people with similar backgrounds or renown to be familiar/acquaintances), pre-established(bc the actual session starts later into the quest, not at its actual start) or players collaborate in character creation(like building joint characters, or intentionally making their character with someone else's in mind). It really helped that bc this was all done via forum, and it took a week or more for people to submit sheets, that players would OOC talk or hype up the RP and player interactions. It really helped setup character development or fast track it, all bc thats what the players wanted.
Hate's strong, but my least favorite trope is the horny bard. I try to do interesting things with my bards, and usually make them more dedicated to the arts than to getting some tail. But I can't even mention that I'm going to play a bard without people insisting that I'm gonna boink every NPC ever, and making jokes about such even when I clarify that's not the case. now, I'm not adverse to flirty characters in general, and half of my characters like to at least flirt, but what I don't like is the idea being forced upon me even when I don't want it to be. Also, most horndog characters I've seen have been the damn rogues, sorcerers and warlocks.
Fully agreed, I just wanted my Bard to be a cinnamon himbo, singing tunes to cheer people up (think a male version of Giselle from Enchanted) but noooo.
THIS. I ran a campaign of warforged in Eberron-- all the players were constructs. The bard kept trying to play into the 'horny bard' stereotype and I kept telling them, "You don't have the physical equipment. You don't have any sex drive. You are a construct!" Their response, "...but I'm a bard." It took time and me urging them to be a cheerleader, rather than a horny stereotype.
My pet peeve relates to this: treating a class as a job description rather than a skillset. If you can make something fit the framework of a "bard" it can be a bard. A military officer with a deep breadth of knowledge, powerful ability to command and give orders, inspiring to those around him, some knowledge of marching songs and such, and a smattering of odd but helpful magic. That can easily be a bard. A dispossessed noble who has an affable attitude, is well liked by those around them, always has a joke on hand, had some prior training with music they didn't pursue and knowledge due to their noble upbringing? Can also be a bard.
You don't need to be Bardy McBard from Bardschool who Bards everywhere all the barding time, because their only interest is barding (and maybe music).
@@Syfa considering the colleges of whispers, spirits, swords, and most recently dancing, even the use of music/singing is optional, as long as your actions somehow inspire others.
9:03 ironically 5e stat blocks are more likely to have 0 nuance with alignments while 3.5 very often had the caveat of "usually X alignment". Orcs are listed as just evil in 5e, 3.5 orcs are listed as usually evil.
"Its what my character would do" I hate how much it is vilified, i mean yeah some players use it to lol random or disrupt the story but doing what your character would honestly do isnt wrong it is literally the RP aspect of this RPG.
Exactly. Unless you are roleplaying as an asshole that type of approach should be celebrated if anything.
It's not the phrase that is vilified. It's people using it as an excuse. Seriously.
Pretty much, because every action is basically what they character would do.
I understand not liking it if it's disruptive, but it should be understandable if it's to bring some good roleplay moments
It is usually only vilified when people use it as an excuse to be an A. Hole. Other than that people just call that good role play
Everyone who insists the DMs job to make sure everyone has fun. Whether people have fun is influenced by so many factors outside anyones control, and it treats the dm like a worker in service to the players who are there to be entertained.
I can attest from personal experience that players themselves can get in the way of their own fun, and the GM can do jack about it when it happens.
I hate when classes are treated as job descriptions rather than skillsets. Aka every stereotype of 'you need to be a barbarian to be angry' (and also a noble savage), or a monk to punch things, or bards *always* being magical musical assholes (and having no other traits outside of that & narcissism), Rogues being kleptomaniacs etc. I like it when bards are say the catch-all of oddball skills, I particularly love them for say military officers. The best barbarian I ever saw was a samurai in a european setting. Lawful good dwarf rogues that don't steal, they just like working with machines and locks.
Lawful good being a comeptition between the concepts of "law" and "good" is particularly annoying, instead of a perfect ideal that compromises between both as long as actions serve both.
i dislike players not using the week up to the session to buy their stuff in game when at the city. they prefer to wait until the session to look through the items for a half hour or more, wasting other players time.
shopping should mostly be handled off screen in between games. sure some rp shopping can be fun.. to a point, for significant things. no one wants to go on a grocery shopping trip for imaginary shit.
The high requirements for upfront Backstories. I have put so much effort into character backstories just for the campaign to end after 2 sessions, or for the backstory to not matter and/or the campaign beeing an ill fit for the character, cause no information was given.
At least in online games i usually show up with a very short backstory, like my blues brothers fighter, that just adventures or does mercenary work for the money.
I understand high requirement if it's for the sake of a long campain, but id it's a one shot, just keep ot for something simple but efective
my pet peeve is that people willy nilly use "rules lawer" and metagaming as a bludgeon for things like asking to do something slightly outside the set rules or asking someone to reread their features because they got something wrong
Basically everyone, be it dm or players, that try to "win" or otherwise try to play "optimally".
Edit: To clarify, when I say playing optimally I basically mean minmaxing, powergaming, and sometimes it can even become metagaming.
Wanting to play well is commendable, ofcourse, but from my experience people that play like this are the ones that are typically way less willing to roleplay because they cant handle anything not going their way and can only really consider what the most optimal decision would be and not how their character would act.
Playing optimally can be really good.
Winning implies someone else is losing, so that's bad.
People find fun in different ways so I don't think people trying to play the numbers game - in a game of numbers with dice merely being a fluctuation of final result - is inherently wrong. But it's not inherently right either. If someone finds enjoyment in the game that way, I say let them. It's when it - unfortunately often - becomes an outlet for competitiveness and turns a cooperative game into something else that it becomes a problem.
Agree about winning because you can’t really win an RPG. It’s about survival with style.
Which is why I disagree about playing optimally, although there may be a nuanced difference in our definitions of the word. I like my companions competent and capable.
Being so Chaotic stupid that you kill your fellow players. Yes I've killed team mates before, but those were genuine accidents.
i think first dude dont understands fail fowar, is not abuot lack of consecuences is about not stoping the story.
example:
You dont track the bandits? they have more money and better equipement now whit the loot, now you must try again the next day.
His examples are fail foward poorly implemented
Your English isn't great but I completely agree with your point.
@@audiblerangerdms6616 thanks
Im writing on the phone and englis is not My native lenguaje so Yeah My writing sucks XD
This is actually a very good point. Unless it's a TPK, let the story continue.
I think the one attitude that I don't like is characters have to fall under specific tropes like the Rogue has to steal whatever isn't nailed down or the Bard has to be horny and try to seduce everything. Nothing wrong with having tropes but whenever it is heavily suggested to have only that one option for that class it just takes something away.
One attitude I hate is when I'm told I built my character wrong because its not 100% optimized. Most of the time I build characters that have some kind of flaw or quirk while picking spells that feel appropriate for them. One game that I was close to joining but ultimately didn't had this one player that kept telling me I made a huge mistake with some of the spells I chose. I didn't pick Silvery Barbs and Hypnotic Pattern on my Artificer/Wizard. He was absolutely furious because I refused to use those spells. He was sitting there explaining to me why those spells are the best spells like I was some kind of new player, I never played DnD before but I have several other systems so I'm aware of how strong certain spells can be. I didn't join that group because of that player and that 'power-gamer' attitude.
The "class stereotypes" thing really bugs me, since I play a few rogues. None of them are thieves.
Feats, alignment, Wisdom, balanced encounters guidelines, 2024 PHB subclass mechanics, PC species with a flying speed at lvl 1, power gamers who pretend that their obviously power gamer moves are actually based on a carefully considered role play perspective, intelligent creatures that fight to the death against long odds, ignoring encumbrance even when it is obviously ridiculous to do so, spellcasters who can’t be trusted to monitor spell slot usage, players who have specced into a particular social skill and insist that a rolled skill check is appropriate at all times.
Rule of cool:
If something would be cool, no matter how ridiculous, you may roll to attempt it.
Law of Dice:
The Dice are the ultimate arbiters of the game. You may the DM may fudge rolls, but player dice results are absolute.
The railroading one is so true. Im constantly worried im railroading the party and one of my players (another dm for our group) assures me sometimes its okay, but man.
Im a writer so i did my best to make plot events and let the party find their way there, it just feels like i might railroad too much for the plot x.x
Aa. Its the mentality of railroading that really gives me the anxiety.
“Practice Rolls”. Buddy, you roll when the DM says so. If you’re trying to manipulate your dice, it’s called cheating. If you wanna just rattle them around in your hand without letting go, gets annoying, but I’ll allow it.
Its my adhd, I get to choose the weird tic!
Riddles and puzzles. Whenever quest passing depends on how good is player in riddles irl, not even charscter int, its horrible, it's not dicez not RP, battle or even what is in your sheet, and yakes time. And damn only 1 correct answer is even worse than nat20 only requirements. So whenever there is shpynx with riddle, sorry DM, but i roll to seduce
roll away thats an autofail unless the sphinx happens to have a weird kink.
I personally think puzzles can be ok. As it's a way to challenge people, but have an alternative solution of no one knows the puzzle or a way that can work, but with some different results, that way the game can progress.
And puzzles are the hardest thing, more than combat by a lot
Failing forward can be too much if done wrong, but not doing it can be way worse. "The party lost the fight... they all died, the end" is not how most people want their campaign to end.
Also, screw the guy that said "don't allow x is a bad DM" that guy is a dick. Lot's of things are straight up worth banning at character creation, some for being bad for dms to work around like flying races, others for being too overused that you just want to curb it, like sharpshooter feat. Sometimes it's good to introduce rules to ban stuff like earning armor proficiency above what the lowest class you have gave you to begin with, just to force mages to stay with robes and mage armor instead of getting a level into fighter for a suit of plate.
The term 'DMPC' has what it means change depending on who's talking. In MY view of the phrase, a high level NPC is not inherently a DMPC, and they don't just become one if they happen to help out in one or two really nasty combats to give the party some breathing room. In my 3.5e games, there are plenty of strong and high level NPCs around the world, but they exist for three reasons: to remind the party they aren't the biggest fish in the pond, to color the world so it feels less like everyone's just waiting for the main cast to solve all their problems for them, and to serve as aspirational figures. Yes, you WILL one day become just as strong as the level 17 gish running your mercenary company, but right now you're level 3. These are not, in my view, DMPCs. To me something becomes a DMPC when they start eating a substantial portion of the narrative pie that's supposed to be for the main party, then they start becoming one because of the narrative weight they take up. I just feel it's too easy to see a high level NPC and then just immediately think they're a DMPC. He's not. He's the head of arcane logistics and he's here to enchant your weapons for you and teach the wizard some more spells. He's got a backstory and character of his own, but unlike the party he isn't a MAIN character.
Exploration and travel aren’t dangerous, and add no Exhaustion on top of it. It mitigates expose of the Ranger and strategic planning. Ambushing and counter-ambushing can be quite fun.
I hate the idea that the Lawful alignment has anything to do with following the laws of whatever land you're in.
also that 3.5 player at 9:02 clearly didn't interact with the community in any way. I was playing and DMing throughout the entire run of 3.5 and the wotc boards were full of very active constant talk between us and everyone was very aware that always never meant always. One of our mascots was Ted the Flayer a comedian who popped up to make inappropriately timed jokes. Hell on of the biggest threads was 1,001 Ways to Kill the Tarrasque which can only be killed in exactly one way within the rules.
Re: Action Economy people
Oof... Do they not know that the DM can just... Not attack? There are a ton of actions to take. If things are going south, you don't HAVE to pepper the wizard with goblin arrows.
Railroading: I won’t force the players and railroad them however I run to run a living and breathing world.
I will make suggestions via roleplay or make obvious plot hooks, up to the players to take them on, but I tend to make a timeline for certain story triggers, so they might fail doing stuff if they take to long. 😊
My players like it, so I must be doing well.
Also sounds good and realistic
Probably when new players think it's like a video game, with no consequences.
Every week or so, there's a thread on reddit with a new player asking "Hey, my party doesn't have a healer, is that a problem?" And almost every single response is "No, play what you want." That's just really setting that player up for failure. Not having access to a free or cheap way to bring someone back from 0 HP is going to majorly bankrupt the party at low levels of play, and will not really stop being a problem at higher levels. Taking Magic Initiate or the Healer Feat, or just being an Aasimar is such low investment to majorly improve the party's quality of life. No one is asking you to keep shoving Cure Wounds up the barbarian's ass 24/7, but everyone will love you when you can healing word the barbarian back to his feet after he took the dragon's breath weapon at point blank range, even if you can only do it once.
DND attitude I hate most is how some people look down on other games, even games that are TTRPGs by saying "It's just trying to be DND." Or worse, "All games are just wannabe DND." These are real things I've had people tell me and honestly, it put me off of DND for a LONG time.
IWMCWD is a matter of maturity, pure and simple. It is as much over-villainized as it is true.
We have (had) two dudes in our campaign look at IWMCWD in very interesting ways:
Both are veteran/optimizer/power gamer-y types of dudes, both are very insistant on playing their builds and characters to the fullest - sometimes to an extent bordering on the impractical and slightly inconsiderate, since we are currently a 16th lvl campaign, and both if them ran casters. Yay. Still, mostly not their fault.
Dude 1 comes in later in to the campaign. His first character - an android samurai that decided her defining character feature would be she would become a.complete materialist, because 'it is fascinating' died, so he come in with a new one. Detailed backstory, npcs, themed, yet still insanely powerful wizard build. Main objective - has been looking foe his girlfriend-wife for the last 1000-ish years (time mumbo-jumbo, he is also a chronurgist). Proceeds to progressively play this jaded wizard dude as an ever more consistent annoyance to anything and anyone around him 'I've just met you guys, I have my goals, you have yours - we are just around eachother for safety in numbers'. He touches stuff all the time 'You can't tell me not to touch stuff. I don't care you think it's dangerous. I found it - it's mine'. You steal it back from him 'Never steal my stuff, or I will kill you!' We spent literal hours of our lives dealing with random ahit he has lifted off royal palaces and such. We have a talk with dude - gets kind of abrasive, knocks it down a peg, but interactions are strained till the end. It all crescendos with his charavter reacting poorly to us resurrecting the progenitors of all vampires, since wizard's race got wiped out by vampires. Actual good rolepllay by dude 1, but ends with him betraying the party and a lengthy and tedious PvP moment, since 5e doesn't want people having fun past a certain point. It is all resolved with minimal damage to everyone. Yay.
Later, we are on our way to make a big dimension-time-jump-thing, because the world needs saving, but breefly meet up with his girlfriend-wife. Dude decides 'Aye, quest fulfilled, IWMCWD' and retires the character, instead of doing the obvious 'I have some important crap to do, but I'll come back for you. After not getting his way exactly in a mini camapign I ran for the DM to take a break, leaves and never comes back.
Dude 2 has been with us from the start, has gone through several characters by completing their arcs. His current one he was very excited for - he is way into Warhammer 40k, so he wants to make sort of a blend of factions and insert into out game world. Backstory out the wazoo. First session we run into a village plagued by a disease. What does his character sugggest? Burn the sick, along with the children, of course - they will only spread this thing further. Great roleplay. In-game stand-off ensues, he backs down. We run the rest of session without a hitch. After the session he goes and stumps us with 'Yeah, sorry, my lady isn't a good fit with the party - what should do with her?' In the end, we agree he tones down the the 'purge with fire' part of her, and all should be good. He is still playing her more than a year later.
Bottom line: it's a matter of if you wanna be selfish and want others to behold how 'amazing' you are at the game, or if you are going to concede to the greater fact that TTRPGs are a collective experience first and foremost, and that personal satisfaction - while important and something to aim for - comes second to group enjoyment and cohesion.
I dislike when a player asks me "Hey can I make a Presence check against that guy?" and when I ask what they're trying to do, they say "I'm trying to use Presence on that guy."
Honey, you tell me what your character does and I arbiter what stat you add to your dice, not the other way around.
one of the most popular and best known characters in D&D-themed novels is "Drizzt Do'urden", a GOOD DROW.
Yeah, good drow should exist. The point being that alignment isnt racial
And a horrible Mary Sue.
@@Mgtowhonesty i mean do people also forget about... or ellistrae following drow? Drow are not evil, it is those who follow a death cult built on torture and hatred would be.
8:13
I also don't like the removal of skill points but I don't know what this guy is referring to. Proficiency does not work like that, animal handling and medicine are separate proficiencies. Did this guy have a DM who told him acrobatics was the skill for lockpicking?
That sorcerers didn't have to work hard because they were born with their magic. I'm sorry, but when you're growing up and harvest season is dangerous because if you aren't ready when you sneeze you cast Burning Hands on accident, you HAD to work hard at magic simply to SURVIVE YOURSELF!
In my favourite book series there is one character who when he was a child accidentaly turned his dog inside out with rogue magic...
I blame this perception of sorcerers mainly on bad roleplaying and people not understanding the class.
The GM forcing a party to care about a story because "The BBEG messed with your characters that badly, and will destroy everything" type of scenario.
Sure, if I as a hero dont do my part, the world is screwed. But there's a difference from "I wanna adventure to accomplish something" to "Oh I guess I better adventure to just exist". I dunno, feels like it sucks the fun outta everything.
Regarding the "Failing Forwards" trope, I think they're confusing the concept with failing upwards. Failing in a forward direction means that no matter the actions of the players, the story will always progress towards a conclusion of any kind, whether it's good or bad. If the party wipes in combat and die, that's failing forwards to the end of the campaign really quickly. If the party fails a perception check to find a secret door that leads to the end of the dungeon, giving the cultists enough time to summon a demon that then breaks out and fights the party, that's failing forwards to a fight that's likely to be more difficult than if they succeeded the check.
Failing upwards means that if they fail, they're given advantages that are almost as good or even arguably better than if they succeed. Such as if they wipe to monsters in a dungeon, they're woken up with a long rest in the BBEG's room, where they have restraints with a relatively easy check to break out of to start a fight. So it'd be potentially better to fail before the fight than to succeed since they'd most likely not have the long rest to get back their resources.
The core concept of failing forwards just means that you don't let the story completely stop in its tracks just because the party fails to take the correct course of action, by not having plots that revolve entirely around the players taking certain actions. If the goal of a story is to get a magical artefact at the bottom of a dungeon, and they get completely stuck in a room not knowing how to figure out a puzzle. That's probably the best example of a scenario where you don't let the players fail forwards. But even then, you can add other elements, such as a rival treasure hunting team or roaming dungeon monsters, that will leave the story in motion. But it's also a valid decision for the DM to just require the players to find another path through, such as backtracking all the way out to find someone that specializes in the type of room they got stuck in.
"Racial Languages". Even in Tolkein, "Elven" split into different dialects and languages. But in D&D, an elf born in the slums of the game world equivalent of Dublin, Ireland, learns the same "Elven" as an elf born in the game world's equivalent of the Japanese Imperial Palace. Language, like values, should be cultural, not species.
Power gamers and number munchkins. It's a roleplaying game, not a manipulate the system challenge.
I hate when a player makes a backstory that's just "blah, blah, blah, so now I 'go on adventures." It doesn't tell me about what you actually want, where you want to go, or how you want to accomplish your goals. Because you have no goals other than to just make ends meet.
so.. making a believable char is bad?
Man some of these takes are crazy.
Sometimes, people do not have much of a motivation in the beginning, but then find a purpose during the campain, and it's not acyually a bad idea if that's where they want yo do.
Some people just do it for the funsies or for the money, but then eventually find a bigger purpose.
@DellikkilleD did I say "believable characters" are the issue? No, I said that characters with no goals are frustrating. I have to throw stuff at the wall hoping at least one of those things interests that character enough to go do it, not to mention what everyone else wants to do. It's not helpful.
@Arlesmon and some never decide or are satisfied with what I come up with, so I am done doing all the work on that. Come to my table with a goal. And even if it's just to make money, tell me what you think would be a lucrative job, and I will work it in.
@@clarkside4493 Even worse they also the "wake up with amnesia" type of character, as you now also need to write backstory for them.
I haven't watched it yet but wanted to comment that mine is players who insist on always creating gag characters that have no real longevity beyond the first session.
It's one thing to create a character that has a quirk that turns into a running gag, but it's a whole other to create a complete parody that only works for the introduction and then feels completely baseless afterwards; worse still when the players themselves get bored of it almost immediately.
The class tiers that got popular to talk about in 3.5, where they declared casting classes to be top of the stack when really casters being SUPER effective was the result of homebrewing rules that over-indulged casters. If held to the rules playing a caster is a lot of hard work from managing spell components deciding what spell to take for the day to saving enough spell slots to last all the encounters you should have throughout a day of whatever your party is doing. If the party gets to the end of the day and the Wizard had the perfect spell to insta-end every encounter and solve every problem the party encountered then you don't have a powerful character, you have a bad DM.
im in a 3.5e game right now where we're trying to play as close to the books as possible, and I'm playing a caster. It's actually been really fun to have to manage my prepared spells and strategize what would best get us through the day. Before this campaign, I was a big 5e player that thought "prepared casters are a waste of time, boring, and weak" but after giving it a try in 3.5, I actually quite prefer it over being able to cast anything in my list whenever I want. It gives utility spells you wouldn't normally use more of a purpose.
EDIT:
To anyone wondering, as of writing this comment, my character is a level 6 half-elf with 3 levels in wizard and 3 levels in cleric. I'm going for the mystic theurge prestige class.
That the DM has an obligation to do whatever the players want.
The DM is a player too, and not all dms like being bad dms for the sake of bad players or doing stuff they dont want to.
the challenge the DM thing on ruling is a very important lesson that I wish more people would learn, then we would have more people reading the PHB rather then having Crawford contradict himself and the rulebook for the 1millionth time. Magic Missile a common one I always ask people when I see this on live stream games and Dms doing this in games I join why are you having it only rolled once when the spell description says that each dart deals 1D4_+1 that means that at level 1 when you cast the spell then you roll 1D4+1 for each dart a total of 3D4+3. The roll 1 die and then multply it would apply otherwise to every other spell that deals multiple dice of damage like your cantrips at higher levels.
Metagaming is when you as a player are putting information into the game that you as a character would not know. For example if you as a player have played through a module before and you know that there's a trap in the hallway, but you as a character do not know that there is a trap in that hallway, metagaming would be if you as a character are suddenly cautious of this hallway and trying to warn people that it could be trapped. If there is no reason for your character to suspect the hallway should be trapped then your character should not have that suspicion. Especially if your character is not known for trap sense such as a rogue.
The action economy is essentially a turn-based economy that measures input and output. What the action economy is actually measuring is an almost one for one comparison between the player and the dm. Essentially what it measures is how much work is the party doing compared to how much work is the DM doing. For example if you have four level five characters, and they are against 27 level 3 skeletons, the action economy would prove that for every one turn each character takes you have five skeletons acting upon them.
The dungeon. Even though it's in the name, most of your adventures are better served in any place but the physical dungeon. That way, when we actually find an underground prison, we can point and say, "Look! The real thing!"
I do not like how the martial/caster divide is being discussed. Yes, casters can do heavy stuff and martials do not have the access to a similar toolbox. That is something to discuss. But where I disagree to the entire notion is that casters and martials don't need to be on the same playing field. They are good at different things and are supposed to work together as a team. A caster is powerful as long as they have spell slots. Most martials are efficient most of the time with most of their resources only needing a short rest to replenish. Casters are great sprinters while martials are amazing at running a marathon.
Different foes require different skills. Sometimes martials are useless for dmg, sometimes you have a fire sorcerer in a fight against a red dragon.
Agreed casters have their weaknesses. The issue is those weaknesses were based on a rule that so many parties dont use properly, the adventuring day. Thr same reason people worry over warlocks having spells on a short rest
Players who think it’s their job to give you advice on what you should/shouldn’t do when making your character build.
Yes, I understand there are mechanically better classes, abilities, and feats I could use instead. Guess what? I don’t CARE! If I wanted to do those things right now, I’d do them.
Not everything needs to be optimized to the point you can take on 70+ goblins as a level three wizard (yes, this actually happened at the last table I played at). I don’t need my character to turn into a literal god after just a few levels!
A joke character i played as ended up becoming one of the best characters I've ever written and played as
I will not abide the standard bard trope. You can get your pervy jollies somewhere else.
My biggest hated is "But that's not how it works RAW" as if that matters at all. So what? It's my game, I can make my own rules and adjust things to be more fun for my players.
Last one tho? THANK YOU FINALLY SOMEONE SAYING IT. A combat starting because a boss said the perfect thing to piss my PC off led and he charged ahead to upcast a lightning bolt on him? That led to a really cool and difficult fight because I charged past DOZENS of guards I didn't see. The abyssal torches flared to life and I could see that I fucked up. "Huh. I was baited. I might need some healing."
Paladins having to be Lawful-good. Paladins should do that which is good, which is not always what is lawful.
A person shuned by law should still be given food by the paladin if starving
Paladins are Lawful in respect to their oaths, not the laws of the land
That sounds more like lawful stupid. A paladin is not going to be peachy keen with slavery just because they happened to sail into a Drow port in the Underdark. A paladin is a paladin because he is just. If the laws aren't just, he ignores those laws or actively fights to fix them. This doesn't mean your Paladin should immediately start clobbering elves by the dozen in an attempt to liberate the town's slaves on sight, but you can be more tense, maybe a bit more jumpy or snappy at others because you're in a place where evil is being done.
In the same breath, DMs shouldn't be going out of their way to make paladins fall for not doing the above either. I'm sure it's gotten better, but catch 22's to fuck with Paladins is awful.
Now it is up to you if your Paladin tries to uphold the tenants of his religion for instance (make a few to try and give your beliefs more flavor), maybe praying for all that passed, or offering a sacrifice when possible each day to bless the party. Or if you have an oath that keeps you razor focused on your adventure.
Either way, you can have a paladin from a highly religious place that observes the laws of his land when possible, but making someone starve to death, while you have enough food is unjust. Maybe the paladin asks the rogue to sneak a piece of the paladins ration to a prisoner when a guard isn't paying attention.
This depends upon which edition you are playing and your DM because 2E had a plethora of paladins from Dragon Magazine that allowed for paladins of any alignment. In 5E, alignment is a cursory whispy thing that barely matters. As others have argued, a paladin's "law" is to their oaths.
Lawful =/= literal law. Otherwise your ideals would change every time you cross a border.
Think of it more like "ideological consistency". Lawful creatures are very ideologically consistent. They don't tend to stray from their ideals.
Idk how popular this is but: Being vague about what kind of campaign we're playing mystery is fine. But when you allow me to show up to the table playing a guy who hates elves then have the entire campaign around helping elves it becomes a problem.
Ehat if it's the case where said character does hate elves at first, but then overcomes their prejudice?
@@Arlesmon I think the point is that they shouldn't blame the pc then that they don't want to interact with elves, since he couldn't know what would happen, and couldn't find a good reasoning that fast, so that it makes sense that he accepted to somewhow help the elves. Inshort it's not the PC's but Dm's fault if that happens
That's when a good player says, "This character would not do that. This character doesn't work for the campaign. I'm going to make another character. Is there anything else I should know before I do? Are X species ok? How about Y class option?"
"If the players can do it, the enemies can do it."
I'm not saying it's wrong, but it seems to be interpreted as "if the players do it, the monsters SHOULD do it." If the players always shut the monsters down, the DM can just design future encounters to accommodate that. If the DM always shuts the players down, that's a good way to make sure the players stop playing with you.
1:18 my opinion of that is, assume the dm is right, you can challenge but when a ruling is made dont spend extra time on it
What I do as well, if there’s a rule question we’re not sure on due to the wording, we normally discuss it later and make a decision for now, retcon if needed
I think removing certain features at character creation encourages more creative gameplay. About to run a campaign where the players are essentially resurrected persons from across time and space. Some races aren't available in this world (I have a hard time incorporating animal folk), and others didn't appear until specific events in history (a Planar convergence opened up opportunities for Tieflings, Aasimer, and Genasi, specifically), and Draconic beings have left the Material Plane (so no Dragonborn or draconic features). Even some classes are unavailable at certain points in history because of certain events.
I'm not sure if that's me being difficult, or writing a narrative that is compelling certain characteristics. It is all random though. I have characters roll randomly so they are from just about any point in the timeline.
There’s a line between an excuse and an explanation when it comes to “it’s what my character would do”. The difference is easy, for example my paladin smashed an evil artifact because it’s evil and he’s extremely practical, man doesn’t know how to contain or properly disenchant a magical artifact. So he tried to destroy it. This resulted in an explosion and I got asked if I wanted to change my mind. I said no because it is what he would do, and it wasn’t intended as something directly harmful it’s just him making a mistake. It becomes a bad thing when I (as DM) killed some characters off for narrative weight (and because nobody had less than 2) and the next day the necromancer had raised them all as zombies because “it’s what my character would do” despite how angry that made everyone else. He then proceeded to be a douche bag for like five more sessions including sabotaging the entire campaign, before leaving because “you’re just not a good enough DM to make this fun for me”. Like clearly not, I let you do this shit
I'm going to go with the idealization of Critical Role and Matt Mercer. Now don't get me wrong Vox Machina is a great TV series, Matt Mercer is a good DM, and Critical Role is ok, just ok. But they are by no means going to be the standard. I think the big problem with Critical Role is the sheer number of players. 6 is considered on the higher end of things and Critical Role is usually supporting 7 cast members occasionally 8. On top of that their sessions end up being much longer compared to other streamed or podcasted campaigns. But what makes the whole thing work is players that know how to role play and play the game which not every table has especially if you have some newbies. It is a dynamic that comes from having played together across many sessions over many years and you have to build for that. And for the record my gold standard of the DM I want to be is Monty Martin from the Dungeon Dudes. That man is an artist when it comes to DMing.
I feel like that first commenter just misunderstands what fail forward means. It isn't synonymous with "the party can't ever fail and there are no consequences." All of their scenarios and examples are obvious and stupid cop outs to, like they said, "bail out the party."
But failing forward is usually more about how totally failing off one single lost encounter or failed roll can suck ass sometimes. Making failure more like a game of tug of war where a failure pushes you back, but not out, can keep up the momentum of the campaign. It isn't about "planning an event that needs to happen," it's about giving multiple chances where they're warranted and adding in challenges as you go.
"Lawful good not lawful nice" nothing says can't be a decent person while being lawful good.
Ikr? Lawful good can show a kind and compassionate person, someone who always holds up their end of a promise, or protects those when the law cannot, they follow their oath to the letter, because they kmow for a fact it guides them to show care for the weak and to punish those who harm them.
There are various degrees of rules lawyering...
Maybe but I have encountered more assholes than whitehats
To a degree, it's necesary for the sake of keeping the game consistent, but it's another thing if it's specifically to get away with player things or to screw someone
That players should be integrated into the world and campaign building.
I get that many players want to help create the story, but IMO they already have that through their characters. They can decide what plot hooks to follow, who to side with, etc. As a dm I always try to make the world feel like a believable place where everything could make sense, from economics to politics and individuals. Other people or other dm's might have great ideas for story beats, countries or areas, but they might not fit the world I try to create.
Its the dm's job to supply the material, and the players job to act on it. If its different on your table, great. But dont tell me I'm doing it wrong because it works for you.
7:47 the 'oversimplification' one, i think maybe the examples they used were just bad. But they didn't really make a good point. Acrobatics require dexterity and lockpicking also requires dexterity. And with max dexterity.
It's only a +5 to both, it's not like you gain the ability to always succeed on either.
I actually think the opposite. Fifth edition is better because instead of having 5 or 6 things that could just be called 'acrobatics' now we just have acrobatics. And if you really wanted to you could talk with your dm about having advantage an extra bonus, or maybe even a negative modifier on specific roles in specific situations. Like how some animals have advantage on perception so long as they're using their sense of smell.
I hate it when my character sees a burning orphanage, and I’m like, "I’m running in to save as many as I can," and the DM’s all, "Are you sure?" Like, yes, DM - that’s exactly what my character would do! Why get mad about it?
Is saying "are you sure" a sign the DM is angry? I've never heard that take.
Even if I was playing an evil character they would rush to save the orphans. For more selfish reasons though. Oh no my future minions! I mean those poor orphans!
@@ArvelDreth "are you sure" typically means the DM is warning you that you're likely to die if you do something/ the DM thinks you're making a mistake
@@ciarangale4738 I'm a forever DM. I know what it means. I'm asking OP if he's unironically suggesting that he thinks it means a DM is angry at you because by the literal words of the post that's what he's saying.
@@ArvelDreth somehow i missed the second part of your original comment, my mistake
People who try to justify being consistently late/absent from the group by saying "it's just a game" or "it's not work". We are busy adults with busy lives, we have to schedule a specific time to get together to play a game and treating it as less important because it's not a job is an asshole move to the rest of us that might only have 1 chance per week, if even that, to be able to show up on time. Especially when the DM plans our encounters on having a full party and only 2/5 are a no call no show, resulting in a canceled game night.
Also anyone who sees groups on Twitch/UA-cam and enters a group assuming they'll have a similar experience.
I understand 5e is flexible, and often the variant rules are interesting. But I think 5e pays for that flexibility by not doing anything very well - only good enough. And that’s fine; I think I’m just starting to prefer games that really lean in to their particular settings and create highly specialized mechanics for them.
That first guy sounds like fun. /sarcasm
Why get so worked up about something that makes the game more accessible and you can, y'know, talk with the DM about it?
Anything chaotic stupid always put me off. The amount of Himbos and female equivalent in DND always irked me as no one is literally this stupid. It is a caricature of people making stupid choices for comedic effect but in dnd i often find this so dumb I lose interest. I can understand a character coming as dumb due to language barriers, actually being illiterate, or having some reason for being rather unintelligent. However, playing a character like your ben stiller from zoolander immediately breaks me from the immersion and ruins the experience for me, and always leads to issues for the party that are not the fun kind of issues to play out in game.
What if it's the case of someone being dumb for the sake of roleplay, but is actually serious or does a inteligente thing when it matters for the sake of the plot?
Becuase i kinda tend to do some dumb things, but actually try to play smart in serious moments or moments of tension
Playing stupidity right requires knowing realistic limits and group dynamics. Grog works for Critical roll but may not work in another group. I'm playing a Trippki (PF2E verson of Grippli aka frog man) who has very broken language due to growing up in the wild. And my group us finding out that he isn't academically smart but he is very wise and surprisingly smart when it comes to science (due to him observing how things work in nature and having to make it work by himself).
If it actually helps the story in any way or is a vital part of the characters backstory that can be explained I'm usually ok with it. The problem is the amount of people who simply wish to cause chaos and just claim, "Intelligence is my dump stat so he's an idiot." I've seen stupid characters actually played well and they are a lot of fun, but I'm specifically meaning the himbos that serve no other purpose than to cause problems.
The female equivalent of a himbo is a bimbo, man. Bimbo is the original term, himbo is the male equivalent that emerged in the modern lexicon.
"No one is literally this stupid"
Have you been on twitter?
I've personally never been a fan of the Dragonborn race/species. It not only makes no sense lore wise (dragons can true polymorph into whatever race/species they want for breeding purposes). It seems they are there simply for the video game/ mmorpg crowd who just wants to play as a dragon with fly speed and a inborn breath weapon.
I just don't let people play Dragonborn in my homebrew worlds.
First person doesn’t know what “fail forward” is.
Hate is a little strong, but I don't like how so many people would rather spend time homebrewing 5e rather than spending the same time learning to play a system that has what they're looking for.
The examples given for failing forward are very stupid and not really how most systems that implement the concept in the rules actually work.
People giving their druids a feral child backstory. "Chaos Gremlin" isn't an interesting character concept
I like playing comedy reliefs, but i understand if not everyone likes them, though they can be good for a serious canpain if they play their comedy in moments the parts needs to relief some tension
Another thing i might dislike is that every word you say must be incharacter and there's no out of character say, and this applies i have to leave the game due to an emergency or have to eat or go in a backroom break, because sometimes, things happen.
I get that it's for immersion, but there has to be some understanding where you have to say some things OoC
Almost everything about it
Dm limiting races i can play in setting. Sure if dms created setting has good reason why certain races wouldnt exist there/are rare, im willing to bite my tongue.
But sometimes i feel like dm just does not want to see certain races to be played. I love playing as lizardfolks/dragonborn, but one dm caught on to this and started making them rare in subsequent campaigns to prevent me from playing them. Even if he tries to make me just try new ones, i know what i like and shouldnt be just have ones i like playing dropped every chance he gets.
I need to know what the guy who said "they removed feats in 5e" was smoking. Do people not read the book?
Reading is for nerds
It's the people's playing fault if they can't manage a proper introduction...
If the dm says you all meet in a tavern and the players just go "hi howdy ho neighbor, haven't seen you before." Then just go off together that's on them and the dm for being dumbasses about it.
The players can meet a million different ways that ends up bringing them together.
All hired to do the same job. Which literally led to them spending 4 whole lvls solving the problem before they were payed which was over 3 months in game. Then the next thing they did involved all of them being asked to visit the king so they traveled together. Natural as fucking possible.
Another game, all wake up improperly imprisoned and escape together. Travel to the nearest town where we had to stay for several lvls because of complications. Felt natural to stay friends.
Another was we joined the same mercenary company and kept getting sent on the same missions.
Another. A tournament was held to find the most capable fighters. Afterwards they were told they would be exploring an unknown wilderness and the party would be their only source of other people for a long time.
These are all easy and natural ways in which the party stays a group long enough to form a bond
There are 3 character concepts I simply CANNOT STAND: 1. The PC teams up with the party, adventurers with them, learns about them but backstabbing them (9/10 it’s literal) at the end of the campaign. 2. The “This guys a dick but he treats a selective few people like gold” so he’s automatically cool with the party because he’s a pc…if you’re pc treats a select few cherry picked PCs like the golden child but treats everyone else in the party like there utter garbage then that’s not a good PC. And 3: the “ladies man” character…has to have every girl (PC OR NPC) on his “lance” as all times.
Also a couple more because why not? 4: the “Forth wall breaker” like dude, we get it, u love Yugioh and anime, but u don’t have to make a character that is specifically “Ooooh, have you heard of yugioh or sailor moon? I know what those are because I come from a time period where those exist” like…dude, that’s neat, but this is a midevil fantasy world, my character will have NO IDEA what you’re talking about and the proceed to take you to the loony bin. 5. The joke character who doesn’t take combat seriously or says a lot of marvel tier jokes…just stop talking, he gets struck by a bolt of lightning that deals…99999999999999999 damage…roll up a new character…and 6: the character that you can’t hurt no matter what and is basically immortal (yes, I have had these people in my games, yes they were a PAIN IN THE A$$! I had a trickster rogue who INSISTED he could dodge ANYTHING! ANY attack, EVEN MAGIC!and no I’m no talking about the feats dodge or evasion. I’m saying he thought he could just straight up dodge ANYTHING because his dex stat was a 20…I told him that’s not how it works, we argued, he kicks me in the nuts.
I'm confused 5e has feats. I know this for a fact. Nobody removed feats. You won't become better at an unrelated skill if you improve another.
Improving an attribute related to the skill will improve all skills that use it, because duh.
Whatever he's complaining about isn't D&D 5e
7:45 what the heck are they talking about, I assume 4e but like thats not at all how it works?
I don't mind the comic relief character, to an extent. What I hate is a joke character whose "joke" is detrimental to the party; or the player who has to hold up the session to get that one fucking gag when after the EIGHTH REROLL (this has happened multiple times) it wasn't gonna be funny anymore, anyway. I am also one of the people who vilifies the statement "it's what my character would do", because after the first few sessions of getting to know everyone's characters, the character's actions should be able to speak for themselves.
Also, any GM who uses "grim dark" in their campaign's description and specifically asks for players who haven't played before have consistently used the setting as an excuse to torture players who don't know any better. I have gotten into screaming matches with one GM over this; and his exact argument one time was "If I run a campaign with a player yelling at me at the end of every session, I'm doing my job". NO, YOU'RE BEING A BULLY! That is not how you introduce new people to the hobby! I don't care about whatever 40K lore you're ripping off!
I mean sometimes there are players or Dm's Tha condemn the actions of a pc regardless if it makes sense from the pov of the pov or not, so saying "it's what my Caracter would do" isn't necessarily bad
@@LeoNidas-c8g I know, and I know context is everything; just had the urge to vent a bit once I started.
strongly disagree with the "don't like having my players meet in session 1, always feels forced" one. That, to me, seems like a DM problem. You legitimately have nearly unlimited options for how they can meet, it doesn't need to be the old cliche "they were all coincidentally in the same pub", and player characters definitely don't have to immediately gel and be instant besties, they can have a working relationship to the same goal as they establish vibes. Yes, everyone having already been a group for a while IS one of those options, but discounting all the others, especially when a lot of players love the RP of an initial meetup, because it "always feels forced", that seems like a lack of creativity on the DM's part, unfortunately.
What are the other definitions of metagaming?
Metagaming is acting on Information your character doesn’t know and shouldn’t be able to like knowing to rush out and save the other half of a split party with no communication
Thinking that restricting sources as a DM is opressive. If youa re a beginner DM, you have every right to limit everything to the Core rulebook, and do not let anyone convince you otherwise.
As someone who actually LIKES playing a big damn hero i loath the habit of many d&d groups to play like it’s grand theft dragon and play the most sociopathic pragmatic bastards they can imagine then groan and gripe because your neutral good cleric suggests maybe NOT defiling the corpses of dead villagers or mugging the blind orphan halfling child
the attitude of "Why would my character do this ? Itd doesnt benefit me." tthan dont play the game
Why would someone decide for the player what their character would do?
Min/maxing
I haven't had to deal with it yet, but I've always worried about balancing between power and roleplay potential in a character, and last thing I want is the goober with his "perfect character" overshadowing literally everyone. Our barbarian's the tank, the pugilist is our damage dealer, please stop trying to be both.
Then there's also the fact that I'm working on a oneshot (which I will ask people not to min/max), and last thing I want is a character completely derailing my little project.
make better games and adjust on the fly. expecting players to make bad characters is bad.
@@DellikkilleD
Just because a character isnt min maxed doesnt mean its bad.
@@tobiasbayer4866 I mean, yeah, it kind of does.
@@DellikkilleD
No?
How is a character not being optimal the same as being bad?
There is a gradient to this.
Infact I would even argue that at some point minmaxing basically becomes metagaming.
The guy who is talking about the imbalance between RP and one combat is 100%, right? This disproportionately favors classes with limited resources. Because they can just play Blow their wad. With no reason thought towards consequences and fighters, monks and other classes who are in it for the long haul. But don't have as much burst are left out in the cold
Omg that first guy has absolutely no idea what "fails forward" actually means... Never planning events that need to happen is such a huge and pointless handicap to storytelling. The solution is to simply make those event happen *without a roll.*
And this is what bothers me the most in terms of DND attitude. The attitude that some players and DMs have when they think they know better without having even bothered looking into the thing in question.
Rules question are cool, rules arguments are wrong.
Characters already knowing each other is gold. Either that or give them a rock-solid reason to work together.
The whole meet in a tavern and get hired at the same time by chance is lame. The Companions of The Lance started their adventure in a tavern...but they have all known each other for many years, some even grew up together.
Nice that someone knows these books
I kind of hate the idea of "builds." I don't mind pre-planning your character (and would definitely recommend it), but the multiclass dippers who are obsessed with breaking the game aren't fun to see at the table.
I definitely play with someone like that. I always try to level my character up in a way that makes sense for the character in world, and he always looks at me like I'm trying to suggest that sliced bread cures cancer.
6:39 i think thats too close-minded.. joke characters can be done just as well as serious characters, or they can be done like complete shit (just like normal characters). example: i played a character using the standard joke name of "hugh mann ma'el" (human male). he was a (crystal) mushroom. stereotypical setup for a joke character. however, i used the "dark gift: symbiotic being" to have him implanted into the body (via the eye socket) of a 15 year old "human" boy (who always claimed to be a "normal human" hence how the mushroom picked his name). the boy, xander, was custom lineage.. and i explained that he looked human, sounded human, smelled human, etc.. but he had green blood.. never said what he actually was (i never came up with a true race for him). now, hugh was the one controlling the body moat of the time. he was a newly formed being and had absolutely no survival instinct (which played into the joke as he'd open random things or insert clearly dangerous items into stuff usually causing combat). overall he was a joke character but he had enough serious elements to him to make a proper story out of and with enough rp potential to make the joke usable.
example of a bad joke character would be if you named your character "Art La'Tryne, PhD" (ph art d = farted)(latrine) and constantly made poop/fart/toilet jokes/puns.. thats just horrible humor for no gain or rp potential..
What does "X" mean?