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I find it hilarious the second DM wanted a realistic game where stab wounds and such could be a serious issue, yet got mad when a player wanted to wear heavy plate. Its almost like that's why heavy plate was commonly used back when combat was still primarily close range, it was invented to protect you from stab wounds lmao.
"noooooo you can't use the realistic counter to my realistic damage system it's supposed to be punishing that's not how this wooooorks" Hehe puny knife go 'bounce' off thicc armor plate
@@toddoverholt4556 If the DM was smart, he would of made his enemies do the thing that the English Longbowmen did to French knights Stab em in the joints or ya know give the enemies, maces to directly counter the armour , Or build encounters that make armour more of a risk ( Muddy fields)
@@mk_gamíng0609 no if the dm was smart he would have given them a couple of encounters without counters just to let him feel safe then started with the counters
@@mk_gamíng0609Just for future Reference. English Longbows didn't kill many knights at Agincourt. Fighting in a freshly plowed field and sinking in the mud killed them. It's almost impossible to stab the joints unless you beat the person inside senseless first.
@@ravenwing199 That's not really true? The Longbows at Agincourt were great for occasionally killing soldiers (Alot more non-Knights died), *often* killing the Horses of the French cavalry, and making the infantry exhaust themselves from keeping their visors down, which heavily restricts breathing. Mud churned up by the cavalry also helped with the latter. Though it never directly killed anyone. Otherwise though, alot of the French died or got taken captive when they reached the English lines and proceeded to get mobbed by English men at arms and archers in close quarters.
The problem with saying “There are consequences” is that for it to actually be consequences, it has to be based on something you did do, or failed to do. It’s not consequences if you railroad them into it, it’s you being a jerk.
That person's reasoning also reminded me of when sometimes people act like character death is the only possible consequence even in situations where there should be consequences, which is also nonsense.
Yeah this just reads like a redditor who got all his ideas from the braindead takes on that website. The way they view media over there (especially in the larger subs) is so binary and so by-the-books that it's super easy to recognize.
Yeah, there's so many moments in that one where those things could have actually been really cool, fun, sombre etc. consequences. But instead of actually treating it like a roleplaying game and having those consequences be a result of player actions they just decided they were gonna happen. It's like at that point bro would be better writing a book.
It's still technically a consequence, a cause and effect. But I agree with the point, it's only relevant that it's a consequence if you had agency in it's causing. As written it's a consequence of decisions made by the DM alone so any possibility for nuance and, y'know...fun rp is absent, nobody else feels involved
is why, as a forever-DM I think the best thing DMs can do when starting is to NOT plan. I think a lot of the frustration of early-DMs is they plan too much and get frustrated when it goes side-ways in the first five minutes
I was once playing a D&D game (3.5e, it was a while ago!) with a few friends and my little sister, who had never played D&D before. She was a lawful good cleric, to be clear. We were travelling on a road between towns in a covered wagon that we had and we came across a camp where two men were outside sparring, heavily armed, and there was a woman screaming from inside a tent. My sister's character leapt into action and walked straight to the tent, where she was naturally stopped by the two men. Long argument happens where she is like "I'm a cleric, if there's a woman in pain or in danger I want to help. You need to let me through or I can only assume you're perpetrating it." They dont let her in, so she pulls out her mace and gets ready to fight her way in, doing prayers and being all hesitant - she was doing a great job of roleplaying her character for someone that had never played before. Other characters come in to give backup, and before we roll initiative, the GM just states "They stab you in the chest and you start bleeding out" - so we go in to help, but despite good medicine rolls and my sister saying "I can just heal myself" - the GM narrates how she instantly drops to 0 HP and has to make death saves now as we engage and fight the two guys. We fail to save my sister's character (bad death saves and medicine checks, and nobody else had any healing spells or items). eventually manage to get into the tent. the woman screaming? She was giving birth. Unattended. On her own while two guys outside had a play fight. when we found this out we said "this makes no sense, of course we're going to assume they're up to no good, they were acting super weird and what reason do they have to bar a CLERIC from assisting with child birth?" and the DM said "it goes to show that you shouldn't judge a situation too hastily." ...we all quit the game on the spot. We never played with that guy again. It put my sister off of tabletop games for years. I'm happy to report now that she runs her own games that I get to play in, and she's far more fair, fun and respectful.
I feel like that GM probably has some skeletons in his closet or weird ideologies around women and reproduction if he's choosing to both: a) Decide to use men ignoring a woman going through labor as a plot hook. That's an entirely sociopathic way to behave - literally no human society ever - outside of tribalistic ostracization - has held it as an ideal to ignore a woman in labor. In his scenario, where an in-group denies an out-group common courtesy, empathy, and aid, women are the out-group. In reality, by and large, "woman goes into labor by the roadside" is a "flag down any help you can get!" situation not a, "practice swordplay casually and deny people who want to help" if you are a companion of said woman and not someone who intends on neglecting the woman. b) Decide that a character choosing to interfere in such a situation is "judging [the] situation too harshly", to the point of insta-killing a character. It's a very icky choice that speaks loudly of "women do the child things, and men mull around and sword-fight while she gets it over with" since the characters he defended out-of-character were the recreating men and not the woman in labor and those who want to assist her, and it's horrifying to think that someone like this is eligible to potentially sire children. I'm going to assume that the GM was a man, because it would be even more horrifying for a woman to have such poor empathy for womanly trauma, and to go through life viewing childbirth as portrayed normal.
@@Yawyna124 That's a well thought-out and succinct way to describe why I think the whole situation really grossed us out, aside from the shitty, unfair DMing. It's also worth mentioning that my little sister was the only girl at the table, which in hindsight also makes it extremely creepy and nasty that he singled her character out to smite by ignoring literally all the mechanics of the game. I do think there were some... weird ideas floating around in that guy's head. To say the least. This was actually the SECOND game I tried to play with this guy. The other ended in session 2 when he upset a player so much by once again ignoring the rules and roleplaying out a really creepy interaction with the entanglement spell, I believe. It was a long time ago. I don't want to go over exactly what that interaction was but they also were playing a female character, so you might imagine how this guy roleplayed them being essentially groped by vines. :T
@@feathers3411 oh ew that's so disgusting. It's one thing to be misogynistic but a whole other thing to force players to listen to your sexual fantasies while doing it. Absolutely disgusting.
oof that really sucks about what they did with your sister's character. Not even attempting to go into combat for something that is pretty obviously combat is kinda dumb, like there are combat mechanics for a reason but they seemed really intent on killing her so they just just said stibity stab and now you're dead.
“He wanted to red wedding their players” Imagine the red wedding in got except the Starks find out about the Lannister complot way ahead of time, they execute all their would be assassins, Rob still decides to marry the Frey girl in a private ceremony just to be safe… and then the red wedding still happens EXACTLY the same as it did before, except this time they also get Sansa and Arya somehow
@@NoriMori1992I'm not sure "complot" is an English word. It's the French word for "conspiracy", but in English you would just say "plot" or "scheme"
Regarding that first story; Once DM'd with a dude who was on his phone scrolling through memes all session, and when he wasnt paying attention someone else in the group found out a house they were about to enter had an ambush waiting for them, so the entire group decided to sneak around it instead and find other entrances. I turned to the guy on his phone and went "so, do you want to enter the house?" ...His character was downed less than a minute later
Lmao, honestly I get the “doing something menial in the middle of a session” thing, the party i play with is quite big (usually 7 players, not including NPC turns) so I’ll sometimes play minesweeper or solitaire between turns in initiative because it can take sometimes half an hour to get around the group. They’re pretty mindless games (more something for my hands to do that isn’t dice towers) so I can easily pay attention to what others are doing and if something important starts happening I immediately get off the game But usually memes takes up more attention, and not paying attention to the game is entirely a choice
@@Cr_nch Oh boy. Half an hour a turn? That's get to be a player problem and not a party size one. It's not like I don't understand. Played with a newer player trying out a spellcaster recently. Tried her best honestly; even knew what spell she wanted to use when her turn began. 2-3 minutes to read and understand the text, 1-2 minutes to measure out effect radius, 2 more minute to realize it's not ideal and re-evaluate her spells, 1 more minute to check her cantrip list and select then unselect true strike (bc we were playing 2014), 1 final minute to decide to throw a dart, roll, and miss. I've honestly resolved 16 velociraptors' 32 attacks significantly faster (granted I accept that some of them will be biting corpses). I used to think this was a meme, but no actually, martials might in fact be good for easing some new players into the game.
I have a few people who "have to be on their device because of their ADHD" and I hate that they have medicalised it. The best I've been able to do is tell them "nothing with text because you can't read and listen at the same time" and its improved it a little. Still, some games, they don't open their devices immediately and they are a lot more invested, which tells me that its a bullshit claim that they need to do something else. So annoying.
They did say that there was a follow up campaign. This just sounds like a session 0 to set up a better plot hook. Not saying it couldn't have been done better, but that seems like it was the intention.
yeah, had a "rocks fall everyone dies" in my group a few sessions ago. We didn't end the campaign, our party have essentially become pawns in a conflict between gods, so there's no way the gods would let us die. They still made us pay dearly to come back though, we're stuck running errands in the Shadowfell trying to stop the place from exploding, which would be bad for most of the gods.
@@Lucifer_Crowe doesnt mean it's over though. All sorts of media uses the "things look absolutly bleak" as season finales before having a redemption arc.
@@Deathnom still has to be fun to play, why should I come back for the next if this finale took away all agency TTRPGs can't be written like a book (a bad one at that)
Meatgrinder campaigns can be fun, so long as everyone goes into it with the expectation of being a meatgrinder. I heard an idea that I wanted to try for a campaign years and years ago but never found the right group. Basically, session zero starts off with everyone bringing a handful of character sheets. They don't have to be fully filled out, just random ideas and basic stats. You roll into an impossible situation, and it keeps going until everyone is down to one character sheet. If a player loses all of their characters, they can make a new one or borrow one from another player. Once everyone is down to their last sheet, they're allowed to escape, and the grizzled survivors are the characters for the rest of the campaign. They get to keep all the XP and items they accrued during the meatgrinder, and they have a hell of a backstory to go with them.
@@kurowkarasu I dig it envision a mix between Battle Royale from 2000 and Angels of Death where you throw basic characters into the pit of insane fukers an whoever lives long enough to be fleshed out is just to stubborn to die XD
What I would love to do one time if I have somewhat experience as a dm would be hidden characters. You're the one making up the characters, the players have a blank sheet which they need to fill in based off how the world interacts with them. For example "I pat the man's shoulder, wishing him well" ends in the dm saying "You heal his arthritis" and the player going "HOLY SHIT I'VE GOT HEALING MAGIC?!" I saw that idea online and would love to do it someday.
Having your characters lose the campaign in the final session with an unbeatable boss is like lighting a forest on fire so you can build an Arbys. Nobody is going to end up happy with this result except a weirdo.
Not supposed to be only riding the story but a story that has multiple branches and paths but that no. if you want to do that go write something instead of dragging your friends
"You don't notice that your close friend who you've been travelling with for weeks/months and who is part of your very small inner circle isn't there."
It's absolutely wild that that DM claimed that he did what he did because "there had to be consequences." My dude, a consequence is the direct result of an action being taken. Taking all agency away from your players and making a bunch of terrible shit happen to them no matter what they did, and actively refusing to let them take any kind of action to prevent the terrible shit from happening, is literally the exact opposite of a consequence.
@@MikeAsbestosya. Like what was the point of the mercenaries of they all die instantly without resistance? Consequence don't mean "bad thing" the consequences of the action they did earlier was "they got mercenary's" and then DM removes them... The DM very clearly meant "you must have suffering" not consequences.
"You don't notice the rogue isn't there." _"But I've secretly been in love with the rogue all this time, he's the only reason I stay with this party and face the danger. I love him. I love him. I love him."_
@@MartialNico My first ever session the DM rolled a nat20 stealth so my party legit did not know where I went till I came out of thin air to say "Sneaky sneaky" I never joined the rest of that campaign so my character just annoyed NPCs an got thrown by a party member for zero reason the end pure beauty
They just assume the rogue is so incredibly sneaky, even they can't see them. And the rogue wakes up late and comes in to clutch the situation. With a massive hangover. Perfect opportunity to turn railroading into roleplaying and character depth.
The last one sounded like the DM had a "Choose your own fantasy plot" book behind the screen and the dice rolls were to see which page they went to next.
A DM I played with said something that sticks with me. He said, "Everyone plays DnD to build awesome fantasy characters, as a DM its your job to reward that, to give them a chance to shine, to have them feel awesome. And in order to do that you need conflict and challenges, but they are all means to an end."
Honestly I do genuinely appreciate how worked-up you got, because that story was basically "The DM removes all agency from the players and then wonders why they didn't enjoy being puppetted into disaster"
YES! Exactly my thought. I was on the plot team of a LARP with a guy like that. All of his write-ups included phrases like, "And then the players will do X" and we had to constantly prod him with "What if they DON'T do X?"
... Ngl, it wouldn't have made a very good book either. Not that you can't do bad endings, but the characters still need to achieve SOME sort of resolution. "Nothing works, they fail and then run away the end without learning anything" just isn't very satisfying.
Would prob still be a shitty book. Wasting the audiences’ time and investment cuz that bad ending was forced af even if it wasn’t an rpg. If it lead to the war they mentioned then sure I guess but it just kinda happens and there wasn’t really a way to do anything about it. Then they’d either almost play the victim by crying in failure or he mad at people for not “getting it”
This is what happens when a dm writes the final beforehand and does everything in its power to avoid being different. If you write a story with a final, you don't need the players
I've made that mistake before. Sometimes i plan too little ahead of time and run out of content too quickly and sessions get delayed, but every time I plan further ahead the players magically manage to do every possible thing to navigate off course :(
@@bobowon5450 Improv is important. Having a rough estimate of where you want the game to go is important so that you have NPCs prepared but if they go off and do something else, being open to changing how the story works so that it fits with what the characters are doing is important. Advice spoken by a prominent DNDtuber (possibly even xp to lvl 3) was if your players dont want to go to the town where the hook NPC for the whole quest is, just move the NPC.
I’ve never had a DM nerf my character. But in one campaign I found online, I chose to play a Wizard, prepared my sheet, and the DM told me, literally, “No, you did it wrong…pick different spells, Wizards should only use support or utility based spells, not attack spells ever.” Ummm…are you sure? Cause I would swear at some point, Fireball and Lightning Bolt are things that exist. Also, I was told to be a Human, because a High Elf Wizard is “basic”
Oh hey! I also had a DM who had a "I don't actually know the rules to D&D but I am too embarrassed to say anything so I'm going to roll a d4 behind the screen and make something up based on that" dice system, it's super uncomfortable
@@Yoroiful That's true but in those situations it's better to be frank and explain exactly what you are "ruling" as a DM and if necessary, why. Or even (heaven forbid) ask your players about a rule you're not sure of. Much better than saying "Uh I roll secret dice now and you lose" to force an outcome. That looks bad, and people aren't stupid
@@Yoroiful It can be really uncomfortable to be interacting with a world and you can't reasonably draw a line between how you think the world will work and how it will actually work because everything is just being improvised. Like if you go to push a boulder, you expect it to be a Strength check, if the DM is suddenly like "roll a Dexterity saving throw to avoid rolling down with it" you'd be pretty disillusioned.
@@Klemkee If you're going to go with "I'm the DM and I'm making these decisions" then own that and be open with your players, yeah. Don't pretend you're working within rules (however many dice you're meant to be rolling) and don't lie to yourself that you're making decisions based on what comes up on the die you're panic rolling to cover up the fact that you don't know what the rules are. That's just wasting everyone's time.
as an ADHD guy I can really relate to having something doing in the meanwhile of a session, to me is not gaming but I usually keep a notepad where I do sketches or scribble things to keep me focused without zoning out every thirty minutes snapping back on reality where I just stared at a point for three minutes and I lost track of everything happening.
I was gonna say, I'm definitely guilty of playing some low-effort games in the background to keep myself engaged. If I ever accidentally get invested and miss something, then I'll close it out and find something less likely to pull focus. It's like listening to something in the car, I kind of need a second activity or I'll drift (unless it's an absolute stellar night, but even the best of us can't have those all the time!) But I'm also just as likely to work on a drawing, or a crochet project. I hope that guy is able to pick up some sort of craft-related hobby (there are plenty that are dnd related, even!) since him gaming during the session is becoming a problem.
Same but sometimes I'm drawing and sometimes it's taking notes (or just fidgeting with my jewellery because I almost always wear something with textured beads I can play with)
hi im the DM of the discord one ( 1:50 ) found out in the middle of the first session saw him load up a game on steam while we were in a voice chat. was not a play by post
Don't feel bad. I've kicked someone from sessions for doing this exact thing. Granted, the group was in person and that player would constantly have excuses so they wouldn't show up but would want to play virtually. On top of that, they would always be lost as to what's going on and be asking the person before them or me what they/I did prior to the virtual player's turn. Often times requiring recaps of the 5+ turns that happened between their last and current turn
Out of curiosity, was it a video game that required a lot of focus or attention, or one that could be played just to keep your hands busy? The D&D sessions I play in are virtual, have 5-6 players, and a lot of roleplay. I'm someone who struggles to keep focus when someone has been speaking for a long time, unless I have something that occupies my hands and mind just the right amount. I've found that playing simple puzzle games or building in Sims while others roleplay has helped me tremendously in keeping up with what's going on. It's not that I'm bored or not interested, it just helps me focus. I rarely zone out or start daydreaming since I started doing this, and I'm much more invested in everyone else's characters now that I can keep up with what's going on during roleplay (not to mention combat). I ask because I'm wondering if that player is similar.
15:53 or when you're a gm and you keep telling your players to ask around a village for information, and the npcs everyone talks to tell them to go to a specific place, and they ask the gm, "okay, can we go there then?" and the gm says no, not yet, and tells them to keep talking to the villagers. Except they all keep saying the exact. Same. Thing. There is NO other information to be obtained. No secrets to be found. You're not "creating an immersive environment". You're creating busywork because you don't know how to pace a story to save your life. 🤦
The AC cap at 18 thing is so wild to me because you can like, include monsters with high attack rolls, or with abilities that target saving throws, or agile monsters that will try to slip past the paladin to attack softer targets, so that you can let your high AC character have their moments to shine just fine. A high AC does not make you invincible.
Having a super high ac is kind of a double edged sword for balancing. Just because the paladin has an ac of 21, doesn't mean the party sorcerer does, and then suddenly the sorcerer has to deal with enemies that get a +8 to hit or something. Yes it could be done better, but at the same time if every fight is a cake walk people lose interest fast.
@@Deathnom I don't think you have to make EVERY creature hit for a +8. You could have one creature hit for a +12. Now the Paladin might have a bit of trouble with him, but if they focus fire that creature first, now the Paladin has an easier time. But if the party leaves that creature alone, it could get dicey. Or make another creature have a high AC that doesn't have a high to hit. Now when the Paladin and that creature lock blades, they are struggling to hit each other. The rest of the party needs to deal with the high AC creature before it gets behind the paladin and starts taking out the backline.
@@Sambrostar I agree it could be done in a bunch of different ways that would be better or more interesting. I'm just trying to explain why or how it could be unfun or unfair to other players in comparison. Obviously a good dm would add in a ton of variety to keep things fresh, but it can also be difficult as the dm to balance these sorts of things out without risking a tpk or something of the sort.
I so desperately wish you guys had checked the comments on the first one, just cause OP goes into more detail to show how he found out the dude was playing games. They were in a Discord call and the dude was STREAMING HIS GAMEPLAY to the Discord call. It was insane and ridiculous. A lot of the commentary was largely agreeing with your opinions on it until that came out, where everyone was talking about how absolutely crazy it is to stream your video game in a TTRPG call with your friends.
@@VelociraptorsOfSkyrim the fucker threw a hydra at us at level 5 cuz we each received an item from the kingdom for quelling a cult looking to resurrect a fire god Sutr and i got a silver horn of Valhalla. So once a day i got like x d8 barbarians to fight with me
The goofiest thing about the AC story is that a 21 AC IS realistic for a full suit of armour + shield. _In the late medieval era when armour was perfected, a full suit (with all the layers of chainmail and leather beneath) left you impervious to basically anything that wasn't what you could call a "critical hit." If you look up recreations of "duels" in full armour, they usually devolve into a wrestling match, with the winner being whoever manages to pin their opponent long enough to slip a dagger in-between the plates. Also, while certain weapons like war hammers or maces were more effectively against armour, they ran into the huge problem of leverage. To successfully punch through or crumple full plate, you needed to swing with your full body. If your opponent had a shield, they could use it to catch the weapon right at the start of the swing, before it's had time to build momentum._ *TL;DR:* Full plate was OP. A novice in full plate almost always beats an unarmored master.
That last one reminds me of a big post I made on a horror stories subreddit where the dm would ask us what we wanted to do, the party would all decide on something, and then the DM would be like "well that won't work so you're doing this instead" without even letting us try whatever it was. Like why ask if we want to stay and defend the town if you were going to tell us "you have no chance of winning so all your characters run away instead"
I think that DM just literally heard that DM's should ask what the players are going to do and didn't realize that means they need to follow up on what the players are trying to do instead of just continuing on their railroad plot.
Jacob: "this has been super fun" Jacob, 5 seconds later: "this one upset me" Fear not, dear viewer, these are not mutually exclusive emotions (cause same)
I got one for you: One campaign I was in, I played a Conjuration Wizard. The character was successful enough as an Adventurer to acquire 3 Rare (and rather pricey) Spell Tomes: An Atlas of Endless Horizons A Planecaller's Codex And a (+2) Arcane Grimoire Things weren't going that bad at first, until we went to a Desert region for a quest. At which point, we kept drawing the attention of huge Sandworms. Turns out, they're drawn to magic, specifically my Spell Tomes. What's worse, if these Sandworms swallow you, all your equipment had to made a saving throw or be destroyed by stomach acid. Including your magical gear. Armor & Weapons got a bonus to the save because they were naturally more durable, but other stuff (like MY SPELL TOMES) did not. I got lucky, and avoided getting swallowed. My Tomes were safe. The 6,000 Gold's worth of shiny jewelry on our Rogue, however, did not survive. I chalked it up to a unique feature of a unique monster, and moved on. Then we got to the hidden valley home of a Sphinx, and had to fight a horde of mummified undead. A mix of warriors & casters, not too unreasonable. . . . until one invisible bastard, a rogue-type undead, tried to backstab me. Then he used a Bonus Action to hit me with a magical spray of Acid . . . which forced a saving throw for each of my Tomes, which would destroy them on a failure. . . . um, what? I used inspiration to avoid losing my Tomes. Then I used my Conjuration Wizard features to teleport away from this bastard, because screw that nonsense. . . . THEN THE SOMBITCH TELEPORTED AFTER ME. THEN CAME THE ACID, ROLL SAVES FOR THE TOMES. I got VERY lucky, rolled no failures. I teleported again back to my comrades, who ambushed it when it teleported after me, stopping it before it could spray Acid again. The DM was quite proud of this creature, saying he created a "custom feat" to allow for the acid spray. I asked him to stop trying to destroy our Magic Items, but he flatly refused, saying "That happened ALL THE TIME in the older editions, you just learned to live with it." I should just get better. Fine. Whatever. I had a plan. After talking to the Sphinx, we went to some mountains bordering the Desert. We had to locate a hive of large Beetles, and procure a larva. Seemed simple enough. . . . until we saw the Beetles. Picture a Beetle the size of a Rhinoceros. Give it roughly 90 - 100 HP. Put it in a group of about 3 or 4 other Beetles. Now give it 100 feet of movement per round. Definitely strong, but we made plans and laid a trap. We tilted the field to our advantage as best as we could, even setting up a Tiny Hut as a safe refuge if it all went sideways . . . which, of course, it did. Turns out, these Beetles can teleport themselves and one friendly creature as a bonus action (we couldn't find a range on that) also they could do that every single damn round. Also, get this: THEY SPEW ACID AS A BREATH WEAPON, ROLL A SAVE FOR YOUR GEAR & MAGIC ITEMS. Oh, and DID I MENTION WE WERE ONLY LEVEL 6?!?! I had refused to put myself (remember, Wizard) or my Tomes in jeopardy again. So I was hiding in the Tiny Hut while using summoned creatures from Tasha's to run out of the Hut and fight for me. Let me tell you something: trying to fight as a Wizard & support your allies from inside a Tiny Hut you can't leave is NOT EASY OR FUN. But that was the ONLY way keep my VERY EXPENSIVE Magic Items from being destroyed. I brought this up to the DM, told him that I DON'T WANT to be the guy who cowers in a Tiny Hut when initiative is rolled. I hate doing that, it's not fun for me or fair to my Party, can you PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP TRYING TO TAKE AWAY OR DESTROY OUR STUFF. He reiterated that older editions did this ALL THE TIME, that it would KEEP happening, and nothing I said or did was going to stop it. . . . and that's when I had enough.
Yes, that could happen in older editions, but DM's also weren't going out of their way to make a concentrated effort to target magic items to destroy them.
22:00 - i feel like they just wanted to dump trauma onto the PCs because they wanted to be like game of thrones... but they didn't have a sessions zero for that. they didn't make it out to be a stepping stone to have Ned stark be beheaded and THEN you played as the stark family or something....
That last story: Insane. DM was like some envisioning themself assome kind of director/writer and that the rest of the players were just actors dancing to their tune.
There's DM's that railroad, and then there's guys that weld the doors on the train shut and scream we're going off that cliff because I SAY SO! And he was totally cheating on the dice rolls.
dice rolls for a DM are more like suggestions. that's why we have screens. granted, when you do fudge a dice roll, 95% of the time it should be in they player's favor cause they had a really good plan and don't deserve that crit you just rolled.
@@theghostofthomasjenkins9643 agreed. If you're gonna fudge, fudge for the better unless you either can't or it has to be bad as a result of circumstances or players getting consequences for what they do.
"How dare you have those magic items I gave you! I will send lots of homebrew monsters with the ability to destroy magic items at you to punish you!" Insane. That DM was insane.
To play devil's advocate, I love enjoying success as a player, but my frustration with every campaign I've played in with my friends is the stakes tend to suffer. I, as a future DM, want the stakes to be there and want character death to occur and some real decisions to be made that will change the story in some wall, no matter how minor or major it may be. I enjoy success, but part of the fun is also losing too.
@@sgt.squeegee1720it's a very delicate balance. Making stakes and real decisions matter takes some buildup of a clear crossroads; it shouldn't always come out of the blue. These kinda things would or should have been prefaced in a session 0 as well
I'm running a Eldritch horror campaign where creatures quite literally have the capability of dismembering players through the means of a dice roll. I've joked around that they should be prepared to have a few backup characters but at the same time I want them to keep their characters for as long as possible because the development through their success and trauma is far more satisfying than "winning" against them.
Had a friend tell me that he found out one of his players was gaming during the session when they accidentally invited him to join them. The game Baldur's Gate.
Ive actually done that before----- i was playing the rougelike mod while also doing combat in a dnd game, although tbf, all i would do is plan what id do nexxt turn, and then have time leftover from the spell casters figuring out what they wanted to
I did a one shot with coworkers at a game night my friend was running. He gave us a choice of premade characters to be in a story he made. I dont remember many of the characters except my dwarf paladin, a human wizard that had missed every spell attack roll and, a dark elf ranger. We cleared run down tavern of goblins and a troll then made our way into the cellar where some cultists were. Fought off some of their goblin minions and the warlock cultists. We get to a door and I used sense good and evil and the DM said there was great evil on the other side of the door. We look around the room and finally see a big barrel that we identify as being full of Gunpowder. I guess he expected us to blast it and clear the room we were presently in. The entryway to the great evil was double doors so the plan was to have 2 people open the doors then I heave the barrel into the room at the bad guy and everyone else uses something to try and detonate it. Friends open the doors, I rolled real well for my strength check to throw the barrel and it ends up at the big bads feet. The archer shoots a flaming arrow and it misses. The other person throws a lit torch and it misses. Its all up to the wizard of whom has missed everything up to this point and he rolls just enough to hit the barrel with fire chromatic orb. The barrel detonates in a huge fireball and knocks the guy over of whom is still surprised by having his chanting interupted. Big bad Rylo Ken is on the ground reeling as everyone runs up to get their licks in. He sucumbs to the assault and perishes. We all cheer for the guy playing the wizard. Later the DM running the one shot told me that he meant for us to die in that encounter but didn't expect us to use the barrel to blow up the boss so he just let that play out cause it seemed real cool to him.
Holy crap, that last story was insane! If I was in that group I wouldn't have held back, I'd have told GM to go write a book if he doesn't want any agency from his players, told the table to never invite me to a trash fire like this again, and walked out.
I've seen someone else talk about that second post about the AC being too high, and they made a great point: make enemies that force Ability Checks instead of going at their AC, because casting a spell that forces a DEX Save or WIS Save doesn't take AC into account at all.
A good dm would use this, but carefully. The most important rule of any ttrpg is: everyone should have fun. And if a players entire build is based around 'am hard to hit' and you never even consider attacking him once, all you did is make his build useless and make the player feel miserable about it. If you wanna challenge him, throw a few spells. But dont overdo it, especially if its just bandits on the road. Let him have his moments and everyone will have fun.
What I learned about being a dm is: just play into the players strengths. If a paladin has high ac, throw dozens of archers at his face and watch him facetank most of it. If a totem barbarian has resistance to all but psychic damage, dont throw only psychic damage spells at him. Give him a monster that hits like a truck so his ability actually does something and makes him feel like no one else could tank that attack. This is how to be a good dm. And no, Im not saying dont touch their weaknesses, you in fact should do that. But everything has its time and place, and most of the time players will have more fun if you play into their strengths, rather around them.
@@gorgit my first game I had a barbarian and the dm would just get frustrated at just how tough I was until they came across bone nagas and then boom literally every encounter was half a dozen bone nagas descend onto you until a wizard wight that did psychic damage was found then all encounters were bone nagas and wights until I got an item to give me psychic resist then the dm went fuck it Im gonna target everyone but you and we tpked immediately because everyone was perma paralyzed
God, that dm referring to their ending as "consequences". It's one thing to railroad the heroes into a bad end, but to phrase it as if the players had any hand in this? That's just a cherry on top of the nut punch
Story 3 seems like a other case of "DM should 've just written a story" because forcing conclusions and removong agency isn't a game at that point, you're basically a slam poet with a captive audience you tricked inyo sitting at a table with you
Maybe third DM needs a therapist to listen to his stories instead of players? Everyone dies, external locus of control in form of a d6, crying and leaving on minor occasion.
Like fr. I have mental disorders and have emotional issues randomly. As a DM I just let everyone know that and take a minute. This dude needs help and I mean that in a compassionate way.
i played a cleric in a 5e game where i was later informed it was 'low magic' after i had already decided on a class and concept, and what this actually meant is that the dm enforced a flat d20 on every spell cast (i think it was DC10+spell level?) and if you failed, you just don't get the spell and lose the slot. it wasn't even a concentration thing either, i think the way it was being rules was like "your god ignores your plight" for the divine spells, and initially i figured "ok that can be dramatic i'll give it a shot and see how it actually goes" we eventually wiped because i failed to heal the party and kept missing my check to actually cast cure wounds. the only spell i actually got to cast ALL CAMPAIGN (three sessions) was one i was forced to by the antag to heal one of his henchmen otherwise he would have killed someone in the party i didn't stick around after that, and i wasn't sure what the plan was because we definitely weren't given any resources to lean on like potions or scrolls or whatever, accounting for how monstrously difficult it was to actually keep people alive in combat. definitely felt like the dm absolutely did not want spellcasters in his game since on top of that flat check, it was apparently going to get progressively harder for each tier of spell slot to just make it impossible to cast anything?
5:17 when it's someone else's turn and it's kinda taking a while I'll play some stupid simple game on my phone while I wait but never during combat or exposition. Due to my ADHD I have a hard time focusing on two things at once.
My favorite story I have from D&D is the Murder Trumpet of light. At a weapons store, I asked a blacksmith to forge a trumpet. He made it. I also found an old key ring in a dungeon. I collected every dagger I could find, put them on the key ring, and put the key ring on the trumpet. Finally, I would casf Light on the trumpet and use it as a crappy swiss army knife. It's a distraction item, a weapon, a tool, and a flashlight! All at the cost of it weighing 30 pounds by the end!
I got another one here: I join a table. The DM's world had some fuckery going on with it. Tiamat, Goddess of all evil dragons, was in charge of the world. Anyone or anything involving Good-Aligned Deities or the Upper Planes was closed off and denied to us. Restrictions were put on character creation as a consequence. Enter my character. She's a Reborn Lineage Undead Warlock, and her Patron isn't a Divine entity, so she should be mostly unaffected by all that nonsense. I give him the backstory. Nothing that would interfere with his world or interact with the Divine. "Can I make some tweaks?" he asks. "As long as her Patron remains honest to its promises, I'll be okay with that." He agrees that my Patron will remain honest with its promises. Then, in a later session, it came out that he changed out who my Patron was. "WHAT THE HELL? I DIDN'T SAY YOU COULD DO THAT!" "You said as long as your Patron remained honest, I could make changes." "YOU DIDN'T SAY YOU'D CHANGE MY PATRON COMPLETELY!" "You never asked." Then I left.
@@stevefilms1997 The backstory I gave him spelled out the fine print perfectly, with no room for fuckery. But the DM arbitrarily decided that was boring, and changed my Patron's identity behind my back as a Player.
@@ChuckUFarley90 see the real fuckery is the DM made you sign a patron pack with shaky wording and it came back to bite you. It would be really funny if it didn't entirely ruin the game for you lol.
DUUUUDE this last story had something very similar happen to me vibe-wise, Context: My friends and I found a dm and wanted to play some dnd, for some of us for the first time. We also wanted to try out this one module from MCDM and the Kingdoms and Warfare mechanics ( essentially a court setup and kingdom-building rpg mechanics with warfare chess like mechanics for large scale combat thrown in.) We spent the entire campaign building our castle, expanding our domain and freeing a region from a despot whilst following all sorts of cool plots. Eventually, we wanted to stop some kind of omen from coming true and destroying the world, we followed the breadcrumbs and eventually, after a few precursor omens led us to some weird lair with a large pod structure the size of a room. We all investigated, and somehow activated it... we knew a lot, we did our research, we made so many checks to try and guestimate what would happen.... But the dm had that sort of "trust me" moment. A moment of like, "guess you'll have to find out what it does" So we press the proverbial button, sealing us in nuking a large portion of the continent(MUCH greater than even we thought possible, greater than irl nuke ranges), NOT ending the world, but destroying nearly the entire main area we spent 2 years playing in and building up the world in with time and relationships to npcs etc! WE LOST EVERYTHING and the dm was like, "I hinted it could blow up" 💀
I was in a game where I ended up separated from the group by my own intentional omission. My party had to lead a caravan of refuges from one location to another. The night before, my character was taking care of other tasks in town. Before my stuff was wrapped up, the GM changed focus to the other party members, as they prepared and set off. I'm pretty sure the GM either forgot I hadn't rejoined or just assumed that I would be there. The rest of the party definitely forgot about me, so I just decided to roll with it. They got a few hours away when the caravan was attacked. The rest of the party got through their first actions when the GM turned to me and asked for my action. "Oh I'm not there... you guys left without me so I'm still in town." This was a very casual and relaxed group so everyone laughed once they realized that I was still trying to get supplies and repair equipment and such. They were able to fend off the attack and send a message to me so I could catch up with the caravan by dusk. I realize in a different group or on a more serious/hardcore campaign my action could have trolling or disruptive, but I knew this group and GM would enjoy the mix up.
DM'd a campaign once that started with 8 people. The premise was strange events and attacks were going on the party needed to stop and slowly they would come to realize that everything going on led back to their own boss, a corrupt lord who had made a deal with Shar. Unfortunately, most of the party murder hobo-ed their way through most of the campaign, despite various warnings, and seemed to love doing evil things (like mass murder, threatening allies, and stealing from everyone). Eventually I ruled that the only people who would hire them were the Lords' Alliance who mostly used them as a hit squad in the war that was going on. By this point, one player stopped playing because 5e wasn't the system for him, one player had been bullied out of session (luckily managed to get them into a friendlier group later), one player only wanted RP and got bored of the majority killing everything, one player got busy, another got pissed I wasn't paying 10000 gold to them for every quest they completed and left, and the remaining players were all the previously mentioned murder hobos. Final sesh came down to the remaining three players attempting to fight an orc zealot barbarian who led the opposing army and his goons. Thanks to them not having enough players left and horrible fucking planning, they got wiped out as one pulled cards from the Deck of Many Things mid combat. The campaign ended after that. For a bit more context, I had been playing different campaigns and modules with this group on and off for around 5-7 years, and through all of this I had mentioned their murder hobo-ing frequently, called out players for rude or downright insulting talk outside of game, and tried to make it work to no avail. I guess the tl;dr is, if a group isn't working, don't invest more time into it. People don't change. Drop players who are being jerks and move on with your life. I think if I had just run campaigns with the few fun players, things would have turned out better. Edit: I do also want to say that sure, yes, parts of this are my fault. I think it comes down to that I like more narrative campaigns (the rp in ttrpg) while half my players (the half that showed up and joined more campaigns) liked combat more and some even hated rp. While I could have run stuff differently, I dont think wanting to have RP in these types of games (which are designed for RP) is bad. I don't even think I would say my games are "narrative heavy", there is plenty of combat in them outside of the random fights the MH players started. Also, just a lot of stuff happened out of game that was frustrating or just awful, such as bullying behind the scenes, secret drama chats, ambushing people with baseless accusations, etc. I dont think Im a great DM, but with that group I never felt heard, or that they would talk to me. Whenever I brought up issues, I felt very ignored as things continued as they were before. Im very lucky that since all that, Ive found a new group that actually all communicates and tries to look out for each other and have fun. I dont really hate my first group, I just wish things had gone differently.
Mine did the same once as well, and this was after I gave in to the paladin player (DM's friend)'s incessant whining and voluntarily nerfed my character, so I couldn't do anything about it.
I remember when running Only War once their was one player I had who would always start up War Thunder as soon as the session began. seeing the Steam notification while getting everyone ready always felt like a slap.
For a moment I thought that War Thunder is sort of a spell. You know, like a wizard starting every session with fireball as a meme, only not wizard and not fireball. Don't know what Only War is, but a having a spell "war thunder" kind of matches the name. But then I understood.
@@az8560 Which is funny since in Only War you just play somenormal dudes with guns against whatever horror your squad has been deployed to fight against.
@@AAhmou The horror that time was Tyranids, and that player being the heavy plasma gunner. Being against the front line of the swarm it was always to players great delight when everyone would in a panic tell him to aim at the hierodule demolitioning the defensive lines just to get silence or one word answers from him. then on his turn he would say a little prayer for the emperor (in call as if he's roleplaying), shoot the nearest enemies (usually a group of hormagaunts climbing over the bunker wall) and then immediatly switch back to the other game.
The fact that the first guy even got a conversation about it, is mindblowing. Insta-kick from the VC, and a one-sentence explanation to go away and stay away.
DMs whose idea of a thrilling twist is always, "You succeeded at what you were doing, but the consequences you were working and spending resources to avoid still fully happen." Usually followed by, "And it's actually worse."
I’m pretty sure I saw the last story in a crispy’s tavern video. The Dm had recently finished watching the boys and wanted to make a “bad ending” because he was the type of person to be easily influenced by media he consumes.
I mean, I've written out entire plot skeletons and weird mechanics based off stuff I watch and play and only sometimes do they end up utter disasters, but I've also been rocking with the same clusterfuck of goons for the last 10 years who are always down when I say something like "Hey so I've got this new idea I want to check out in a one shot, roll some characters and get ready for the weekend".
First story reminds me of someone at my game. He was basically never paying attention unless it was combat and his turn. If there was RP or it was someone else's turn he'd be on his phone 9 times out of 10. Most everyone was annoyed with his "antics" it even got so bad that in one combat encounter he declared an attack on one of out allies. The DM was 'nice' enough to let him take that back after having a go at him. After that arc ended we had a time skip where our characters did stuff discussed with our DM over text. Needless to say during this his character was written out of the story and he wasn't invited back. I should mention that this was a regular problem and he was talked to about it. This story was just a definite boiling point for the issue
That armor one was crazy. If one of my players has a high AC, then in some games I'll have other methods of doing damage to the player, like saves, magic missile, AoE, etc. In other games, having a high AC is going to give the player a major advantage so that he can shine and really play his character's strengths.
Honestly my DM just likes throwing numbers at me and the other Paladin, we tank a lot of hits but they do get through eventually from just probability and crits hurt like hell. It's really fun.
My DnD horror stories all revolve around 1 friend of mine. He literally will always try and make a space marine/custodian esq character in everything. Even in a Minecraft themed campaign. DMs can't say no so he just bitches and moans about it and tries to ruin everyone else's time. When he was DM things got even worse, as he just made everyone who did anything remotely interesting get sent to jail, besides me because I was teaching the town blacksmith how to make basic firearms in exchange for using his materials and workbench to repair my own pistol, but when I finished and gave the basic hand cannon I made, WITH NO AMMO, to my follower (vampire child my party found that was following me), he just made her instantly shoot the blacksmith for no reason at all. I said no this is stupid and just left the campaign at that point
Games in background story: I definitely understand having a subway surfers or alike video on in the background to help you focus (I do that) I understand having an idle game (like cookie clicker) on in the background to focus since it doesn't require much thinking I even understand having a full-blown game up if there's a situation where the DM has to hyperfocus on a group of players that you're not apart of which may take a long time (I was in one of these situations with one player taking an hour to complete a puzzle by themself (just by chance) and I decided to do my daily quests in a game which I knew would only take 20 minutes) ...But playing a game while you know there's things going on that you need to pay attention to is VERY disrespectful, especially when you haven't even told the DM you were doing it.
You know what... I was in "County" (jail). I was able to find some board violent criminals and such to play an RPG. There were 4 of us, me, a redhead artist, a Korean thief, and a "smooth criminal". I'm Asian, so I made paper D6 and we played, no problems. What kind of insane asylum escapees are DM-ing nowadays? There should be a psychological test you need to take or something!!!
If a DM tells me that I don't notice that my PARTY MEMBER IS MISSING, I'm leaving the game. If the is game taking place in my own home, I'm kicking the DM out. Not only does that make no sense whatsoever, but it's also taking away my agency and messing with the characterization of my character. I don't need that kind of disrespect in my life.
A False Hydra and other monsters that messes with the players using illusions and altered perception literally does this. I think im missing something in this instance though.
@@linkholder Yeah, and those are garbage monsters that shouldn't exist. I think the false hydra isn't even official (not that official sources are free of garbage like this). My response remains the same.
@@hi-i-am-atan The only thing that can make you forget that you had a close friend for the past who-knows-how-many weeks, and therefore not notice that they're not there, is messing with player characters' memories, which only a really high level casting of Modify Memory (and a good DM doesn't do that to their players unless they specifically consent to it), or some ridiculous memory-destroying monster (same thing applies) can do. It's unfun, frustrating, garbage. I would never do that to my own players (theoretically, I haven't really DM'ed yet, though I hope to do so one day).
A good example of something that could have happened in a game of lancer I played was my DM gave us two options escort some supplies to the city belonging to one of the players clan or save this other clan that was better militarily. Despite my character suggesting the second option the party decided we'd go save the other party members people who needed those supplies. All was good until my DM turned to me and said my character's love interest was in the second city. This led to conflict rp wise. In the end we split the party and acquired the help of some NPCs but had that not happened my character would have gone on their own and probably failed but I would have happily done that as that would have been a fitting end for a character who's spent their whole dedicating themselves to help save plants all over the galaxy as part of the military and to die trying to save the one thing they got have for themselves
9:40 that's the thing though- making a kobold troupe where one or two of them uses wands they picked up raiding makes the enemies stand out and be memorable.
For me it kind of depends on the intensity of what's going on. If it's something mindless and menial it doesn't really bother me. Like 'I'm going to decorate my house in this game while waiting for my turn in combat.' If it's something distracting like 'I'm going to do this big dungeon in a video game that requires a lot of attention' not so much.
I let one of my players play a simple game during session (we’re on Discord), which makes him more present. He needs something to do with his hands and the parts of his brain that need constant stimulation; this helps him focus up. I would not usually allow players to otherwise do this, but if my players play games that are not loud and distracting, it’s fine.
I personally have a really hard time sitting still and just listening to other people talk. (esp in larger parties where i may not always be involved in the rp, or combat scenario that's happening) And when forcing myself to pay attention and not lose focus I drain my mental energy really quickly, which causes me to become very tired. (I have passed out at my desk previously because I become so exhausted) It's not that I don't care and can't be asked to pay attention to the campaign. It's the opposite, I care a lot so I want to be able to stay alert and present with the ongoings of the session, and not miss anything because im so mentally taxed or, half asleep in my chair. I do understand that i'm probably not status quo of people that play games mid session, but people often react very negatively when i tell them i do things in the background to keep myself stimulated so i dont explode internally.
I actually play with a couple of folk who have ADHD (the rest of us have autism), and even the GM *needs* to be doing something else on the side to be able to focus. We don't have a problem with anyone getting distracted, either. It's actually ableist of your tables to react that way, especially when your performance isn't being impacted. I get that neurotypical folk consider it impolite, and I can even see from their perspective why they'd think that, but some people just operate differently!
Isnt there a more healthy solution to this other than keeping yourself stimulated from other things? Like, it sounds you could use some professional help for a permanent better life situation and not watching subway surfer as a temporary solution. No front and no shaming ^^
@@FirekingBarong They aren't mutually exclusive? You can use day-to-day coping mechanisms while working towards long-term behavioural changes, and it's weird to assume that one hasn't already sought professional help (which is also expensive and not readily accessible to everyone). I'd love to take you at your words of 'no front and no shame' but this reads obnoxiously close to 'instead of managing your condition in a harmless and unobtrusive way, have you considered just getting cured?'
As an AuDHD DM who runs games for many ADHDers I think agreed upon side activities are very important for managing people's attentions so long as when it is and isnt appropriate to use them is well established. Another important facet (for me anyway) is learning what keeps different players more engaged and focused, so you can know when they'll want to be paying close attention, if the big dumb Barbarian wants to zone out during the complex political RP then sure, only adds to authenticity when he later doenst know why the party has suddenly changed allegiances
we formed a D&D group and I soon realised that we weren't going going to have adventures, we were basically going to be following railroad tracks. It got to a point where we just asked the DM 'what do you want us to do?' We just wanted this campaign to end. I saw our out when we had to cross a rope bridge across a deep chasm. First, we all went on the bridge at the same time, and the DM was panicking, as that was not his plan (he wanted us to cross one at a time to split us up). He kept insisting the bridge was going to fail, but we said we didn't think it would. When it became obvious the DM was not going to make the bridge fall, I took out my sword and started hacking at the ropes. The DM got up and left in a huff.
I had a table where the DM was our friend and his fiance would play with us, needless to say after 4 nat 20's in a row we started to realize a common trend with her but let it slide cause we were all enjoying ourselves. Well sometime MIDWAY through the campaign she just SUDDENLY starts buying a bunch of stuff? When we probably only had like, 150 gold in all our pockets combined. She was buying up things tht cost like 3k GOLD. It was insane. Were like?? uhh? How can you afford all this? "From my background, I stole a bunch of stuff from my rich father and sold it the other day" Mind you, she was a halfling sorcerer so where she was hiding this stuff that cost over TEN THOUSAND gold? I have no idea plus we were across the world from her father. We confronted the dm and hes like, well she just wanted something from her past since my character had something from my past show up. (Mind you it was just a small gold orb from her grandmother that was passed down in the family. And it was probably not even worth 100 gold AND it happened within the narrative). We told him we werent comfy with this and hes like okay but she wants to keep the items she purchased already.... We didnt have a choice in the matter. Then we came across a candle that can grant ONE wish. It was held in our friends bag of holding that had a LOCK on it. The next day we get there(IRL) its suddenly gone. Where was it you ask? Oh the halfling fiancé has it. How did she get it? Out of session stealth check that she made when we werent there. Yea and mind you, even if that WASNT insane to do. Our friends passive perception is through the roof, it was higher than what she could have rolled WITH stealth on a nat20. We stopped playing with her entirely.
Jesus and I thought I had seen it all when I DM told a player that their character wasn’t allowed to use bonus actions in battle Mind you this players character was a freaking FIGHTER! Think about that shit for a second
That first story hits hard. I was in a game once with a guy who left the Discord call to play f*cking Warthunder tournament rounds for like ~10 mins at a time. Then he'd come back and want to know what he missed. It was one of the first games I found through r/lfg and the DM didn't seemed to care, but it was absolutely infuriating to me. The guy didn't pay much attention when he was there either.
that's like even worse than just passively listening when playing a game. Straight up leaving. it's like in an in person game if he got up from the table and left for significant periods of time. "what'd I miss" well while you weren't here your character died because a wolf ate you and you stood still unable to react because you weren't here.
the reflexive guilt-tripping of that last dm is the worst part of it all; like they already made it clear they have no respect for their players as breathing thinking individuals with different wants and needs, but also, when there's the slightest hint at real consequences (eyyy) for their own railroading actions, they immediately try to turn things into 'oh feel bad for meee i guess i can't do anything rightttt' (y'know with the goal, consciously intended or not, being to diffuse criticism and get the players to console them instead). this is a tactic abusers use. am i accusing that dm of being an abuser? naw. but holy molyyyyy it's just the perfect lil sprinkles on the entire shit-cake huh.
Many think a GM’s most important job is telling a cool story - that’s the group’s job. The GM’s most important job is making sure everybody’s having fun.
@@CathrineMacNiel GMs are in fact entertainers, and RPGs are entertainment. If you’re not entertained when you play, maybe you should consider a different hobby. As for “doormats”, bowing to every whimsy the players might have is hardly fun in the long run. Sure the shallow and simple-minded might find it fun, but then it gets boring and they move on. Challenge, engagement, stimulation, plot, and deep stories on the other hand is way more fun. So yeah, if you’re only familiar with antagonistic, enjoyment-hating GMs, I’m sorry. I’m sure you find an entertaining game someday…
Yo, a Sneak King mention in 2024? That's awesome, I was not expecting that. Also, I hate when my players are playing other games during DnD. It's a sign to me, as a DM, that my game isn't interesting enough. When my friend's turn comes around and we have to wait for him or try to get its attention, it wastes everyone's time. I hate it.
dnd horror stories are the main reason why it took me so long to join an online dnd game after i took a break from dm'ing for 3 years for a group if friends.
I was explaining to a friend the other day what it is about DMing that I enjoy so much: They say that its about the journey, not the destination. As the DM, I make the paved road and the destination, and my players make the journey. They're the ones creating the story, doing the important rolls, creating relationships, following side quests, and creating their own paths. Half the people and towns they go to only exist because of their decisions, and if they'd wanted to, I told them in session 3 where the solution to their goal is, and 20 sessions later they're finally leaving the starting country. Im here to foster the creativity of my players, and it leads to the most rewarding, creative experiences I've ever had.
I love this style of video dude! Super chill and fun. I've noticed your style change a little bit and it's nice. I enjoy throwing them on while I work on something :))
I have a couple of d&d horror stories, which includes my first time actually playing, all caused by the same friend. A couple of years ago my friends and I started to get into d&d, but most of us had no prior experience so it was going to be a learning experience for all of us, with some expected kinks along the way. One of my friends (I'll call him DM) was interested in running a campaign for us, and so we set up a weekend for us to gather and play. Our party consisted of me, a cleric/sorcerer multiclass (a bit ambitious for a first character, but I think I handled it ok), a fighter, a druid, a warlock (the only one of us who had played before), and I think a rogue. It all started out ok, pretty standard stuff: all our characters in a town when a guard who looks and sounds like Christopher Walken asks for volunteers to help solve a problem. I forget the specifics of what exactly we were meant to do, I think there was a problem with the communication between mortals and Gods, and we were asked to investigate. As a cleric, who believed he was only alive due to his God, my character was naturally on board from the get go. We take up the quest and leave town to go to a nearby village to start our search. Along the way, we are accosted by a group of bandits, which is where the problems started. Our warlock intimidated the bandits into leaving us alone, after which we immediately leveled up. So less then an hour in we have to take a break to deal with that. We soon reconvene and continue on our journey, and reach our destination. Unfortunately for us, there are some scarecrows sitting outside the village that attack us, triggering our first real combat. Even more unfortunately, said combat was a slog to get through, although this was partly due to bad luck. We as a party kept failing our saving throws so we were constantly frightened/paralyzed. Add in the facts that scarecrows are resistant to non-magical bludgeon, piercing, and slashing damage, and that there were 5-10 of them, that one encounter took a long time to get through. After having felled our brainless foes, we were approached by the mayor of the village: an Archmage (yes, the CR 12 monster, 18th level spellcaster. That archmage), who was less than pleased that we destroyed the towns guards. We argued that they attacked us first, without warning, and were able to enter the town without any more issues. I believe we booked a night at an inn, but I can't remember if we actually got to spend the night. Our warlock jokingly mentioned we should burn down the town due to it seemingly being mostly composed of guard monsters that attack on sight and annoying mages. This infuriated the Archmage, which led to our third and final combat. We somehow managed to win with 0 casualties, mainly due to the fact that our DM didn't know how to actually use the Archmage (I don't remember his magic or damage resistances coming up, and the only spell that he cast was magic Missile). As we tried to catch our bearings, a man appeared in front of us. It was Morgan Freeman. He informed us that all of the other Gods were dead and/or not real, and the he was the true God. He also told us that Christopher Walken, the man who gave us our quest, was actually the Devil, and we had to go kill him. This revelation didn't sit well with us, and led to several members of the party to become either MIA, or KIA by their own hand. I later found out that the reason for this sudden twist was because our DM thought we weren't taking things seriously. Thankfully our warlock was able to put together a little something that we played to make the weekend, and first d&d experience not a total disaster. TLDR: My first d&d game crashed and burned after Morgan Freeman told us he was God, and Christopher Walken was Satan
So you booked a night at an inn. The Warlock joked about burning down the town, presumably nowhere near the archmage so how the [youtube] did that guy hear you. The same archmage that somehow managed to get mad at you for defending yourselves. And YOU, THE PLAYERS, were the ones who weren't taking the campaign seriously?! That DM was smoking something, and it wasn't even drugs in the traditional sense.
@theuncalledfor Yeah, it was an... interesting first experience. We gave him 2 more shots at DMing, both of which were also bad, so needless to say, we're not letting him do that again. He's also not really better at being a player. His 3 most recent characters that I know of were Buttercup from the Powerpuff girls as a monk, Gordon Ramsey as a barbarian, and Scarecrow, the batman villain (that last one is fun, because he apparently soft tricked our friend who was DMing for him on that one who doesn't know a lot about comic books. They were quite surprised once they found out, but I've only heard this story second hand, as I wasn't part of that particular campaign)
Nerfing players is almost always the wrong way to go about dealing with balance issues (even if the 21 AC Paladin is not an issue). Bringing the other players up is always better, and if your players are too strong then running harder or more complex monsters is way less irritating then saying "I'm going to make you worse." Being made less effective always feels bad, especially if it's not like a plot thing and is just because you were deemed "too strong"
You definetely have a point, however I feel like there is a reasonable limit to "bringing other players up" or else you end up playing lvl 1 characters that are as strong as gods. Nerfing a player is definetely extremely tricky and should not be done with core classes unless both you and the player REALLY know what you're doing, but when using homebrew there's definetely space for it to be a valid solution. And I know that the original conversation wasn't about homebrew bc the player just wanted to be a paladin/wizard, but I just thought I'd bring that up as general food for thought in terms of overall balancing.
💯agree. Nerfing in itself already suggests incompetence by the DM. I've played a couple different games where loot just balanced the rest of the team or vendors had specialist armour/weapons until the next player level up
@@whoanellynelnel3874 yea nerfing is the easier answer for a bad DM becuase they can immediatley identify what they think is too strong. Running harder combats is more difficult
I feel like the dm in the last story was hoping his players would say like “this looks dire, but we will NEVER give up!”. Expecting the players to be adventurously brave, while simultaneously creating a super realistic story and taking away a ton of the free will that DnD gives the players. Like the D6 rolls to determine the fates of the players. Personally I feel like consequences are something the players should feel approaching. I.e, if you want your players to have some sort of character growth OUTSIDE the game for some reason, at least make their decisions feel like they’re their own, unlike just saying “yeah no you sleep in and none of you can do anything about it” I can’t help but empathize with the guy, maybe because he cried, but like I get it. You really want to make an awesome story for your players, I’m 99% sure your heart was in the right place. But ya gotta remember that DnD can both be a moving story, but also just an escape from reality where you get to do a ton of cool things you wouldn’t be able to irl. I could’ve honestly seen a younger version of myself in that dm’s shoes. I too love making cool adventures for my friends. But realizing that EVERYONE wants something different from a campaign is super helpful, and asking your players about it, and then planning the campaign accordingly is even not helpful!! But what do I know, I’ve only really been playing the game for two years time ^^’ Hopefully the guy learned something valuable from the whole thing, improved, and didn’t shy away from dming in the future. Cuz just like ratatouille; everyone can DM! It doesn’t mean everyone is good at it, but everyone deserves their shot to create a fantasy they enjoy.
That first one is just disrespectful to the DM. Nobody wants to play with you if you're mentally checked out, don't expect someone to literally make a game for you when you're busy elsewhere.
I play RPG by text with some friends, actually i preffer it over voice or in person, but yes it is VERY slow, ESPECIALLY during combat situations. Like, a full scale combate, something like a dragon boss with their minions, or even a dungeon delve, could take about a month and a half to complete if the people are particularly slow that day
I was in a game where it took 3 sessions (3 hours each, last session was finishing the combat took an hour) to beat a final boss. And 1 to 2 hours for single random encounters It happens when players just downright dont respect peoples time. They have to slowly search through books for 1 hour to just firebolt. And DM didnt have the backbone to just tell them to hurry up.
That's when I pull out my trusty 0 words 5 minutes hourglass. Never had to come up with a consequence for running it out, but the mere existence of an hourglass on the table really helps with speeding people up.
Oh, the Nerf DMs agitate me. Back in 3.x days, you'd see someone play a Rogue, and suddenly all the enemies are like oozes, constructs, and undead who can't get hit for sneak attack damage. Once had a campaign that was sold to us as a goblin war campaign, and never faced a goblin after level 2. The WAR with the goblinoids was still going, but we never encountered them despite being in the "advance force" that was making forays into enemy territory. Why? Cause the Ranger took Favored Enemy (Goblinoid)... yeah, that was it. ONE guy took ONE relevant ability as a RANGER, the class most likely to get screwed by the rules of the game, and that was just too much.
Oh, had a similar one. One campaign, DM specifically says we can pick any race and class as long as it's not full homebrew, we can pick anything from official books. Okay, artificer fairy, artillerist subclass. Idea was that I create small, portable handcannons and shoot at enemies and mostly fight with that, and later enchant it to use it as a catalyst for some predetermined spells. I sent him the character sheet in advance, as it was asked. We start out without gear, because all of us got caught by some dark elf slavers. Also, custom location, with a homebrew lore, because the guy wanted to play a "Warhammer-ish story, with DND rules". Well, there goes my entire backstory, but whatever, I'll adapt. We got brought out into this arena to fight other captives for our lives. Turns out all three waves he planned (mind, we are lvl 1 at this point) get trivialized, partly because they were all melee and as a fairy I have magic flight as a passive. DM is like "wtf, why can you fly". I'm like, I literally sent you over the sheet days ago, it clearly states I'm a fairy, didn't you look up the racial traits? Nope, he, in fact, did not. For the rest of the first 3-4 sessions I wasn't allowed to fly because "the dark elf masters put an anti-magic field over the arena" Anti-magic field that didn't block anything else, but my flight. Whatever. We escape, get some as a gear, join up with a big caravan as hired mercenaries to head north. Hobgoblin raid... where practically every single hobgoblin is armed with a bow or crossbow, not a single melee only fighter. Next fight has vampire bats that can fly faster than I can. When I point this out, "well, I have to put stuff in the fight to be able to target you, you have 19 AC and can fly, way too OP". I kinda just tuned out after that one. Stayed with the group, because it was a friend group... until there was a fallout where I ended up fighting about some nonsense, turned into a shouting match, at which point I just left and from what I know that was the last DND session of that group ever.
Oh, that's hilarious. Realistically, in the overarching metanarrative of D&D, a ranger with Favored/Species Enemy of goblinoids is someone who you would *want* on the frontlines, who generals and mayors and kings alike would pay out the nose for them to be there, because that's someone who has dedicated a fair portion of their life devoted to combatting wars with goblinoids.
@@blacklightredlight2945 Entirely off-topic, congratulations. Yes, rangers are more likely to get screwed over by DMs refusing to engage with their kit, but the conversation is about it being a fundamentally bad practice to avoid engaging with a PC's kit.
@@Warfoki it's funny because like, yeah there should be stuff that can target you but like...there's a difference between having SOME stuff that can and making so every encounter is every single enemy counters you
The last DM I had got bored of playing as the DM, so instead of just telling us he was bored and asking someone else to take over, he put the difficulty up so much that it was near impossible for us to actually win anything without stressing out or taking heavy losses. The last couple of sessions were miserable. We thought it was going somewhere, only for it to turn out it was planned to be unwinnable in the end.
I was a DM that made a similar mistake. Had the party get captured by a cult and try to blackmail the party to join with them. While it was a rough start, but it made for the best party revenge. My party did everything they could on their missions to screw over the cult, but still "completed" their missions. I was completely on board with the party and while the party didn't continue the campaign in its second arc, we still had a blast
Regarding last one: I truly dont get with how many of such stories are there and none of those ends up with dms getting punched. Their whole idea of a game is to waste your time and fuck you over. Call me whatever you want, but sometimes solution is that simple, you cant argue with someone like that, but can teach a lesson that will stick.
My gf was running her first dnd session and we found out halfway through that one of the players was playing CoD Zombies while playing. We had to get his attention many times. It was frustrating and it was the first and last session we played with that guy.
Agree on games during session- as DMs me and my friend both agreed our little group are fine playing menial games in the background as long as it doesn't disrupt session and distract people from what's going on. Usually it grindy games where you can hit autoplay. But the key thing here is that PERMISSION IS GIVEN.
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oh fr?
Eeesh mate, maybe not going to take nutrition advice from you...
I bought some, unfortunately I had paused the video right before you said "and use code fireball for 10% off" so oof but w/e, maybe on my next order if it's good!
If you really want to be healthy you go carnivore, or at minimum keto.
Fad diets? Fad food replacements? They’re both as bad as each other.
I find it hilarious the second DM wanted a realistic game where stab wounds and such could be a serious issue, yet got mad when a player wanted to wear heavy plate. Its almost like that's why heavy plate was commonly used back when combat was still primarily close range, it was invented to protect you from stab wounds lmao.
"noooooo you can't use the realistic counter to my realistic damage system it's supposed to be punishing that's not how this wooooorks"
Hehe puny knife go 'bounce' off thicc armor plate
@@toddoverholt4556 If the DM was smart, he would of made his enemies do the thing that the English Longbowmen did to French knights
Stab em in the joints or ya know give the enemies, maces to directly counter the armour , Or build encounters that make armour more of a risk ( Muddy fields)
@@mk_gamíng0609 no if the dm was smart he would have given them a couple of encounters without counters just to let him feel safe then started with the counters
@@mk_gamíng0609Just for future Reference. English Longbows didn't kill many knights at Agincourt. Fighting in a freshly plowed field and sinking in the mud killed them. It's almost impossible to stab the joints unless you beat the person inside senseless first.
@@ravenwing199 That's not really true? The Longbows at Agincourt were great for occasionally killing soldiers (Alot more non-Knights died), *often* killing the Horses of the French cavalry, and making the infantry exhaust themselves from keeping their visors down, which heavily restricts breathing.
Mud churned up by the cavalry also helped with the latter. Though it never directly killed anyone. Otherwise though, alot of the French died or got taken captive when they reached the English lines and proceeded to get mobbed by English men at arms and archers in close quarters.
The problem with saying “There are consequences” is that for it to actually be consequences, it has to be based on something you did do, or failed to do. It’s not consequences if you railroad them into it, it’s you being a jerk.
That person's reasoning also reminded me of when sometimes people act like character death is the only possible consequence even in situations where there should be consequences, which is also nonsense.
Yeah this just reads like a redditor who got all his ideas from the braindead takes on that website. The way they view media over there (especially in the larger subs) is so binary and so by-the-books that it's super easy to recognize.
Yeah, there's so many moments in that one where those things could have actually been really cool, fun, sombre etc. consequences. But instead of actually treating it like a roleplaying game and having those consequences be a result of player actions they just decided they were gonna happen. It's like at that point bro would be better writing a book.
It's still technically a consequence, a cause and effect. But I agree with the point, it's only relevant that it's a consequence if you had agency in it's causing. As written it's a consequence of decisions made by the DM alone so any possibility for nuance and, y'know...fun rp is absent, nobody else feels involved
He had no grace.
Too many DM's are role-playing as writers and forcing players into their unpublished works.
"This RPG was written by a failed novelist to try and sell you his micro-fiction"
@@DashingSteelno there’s some cool mechanics in here like…
Zee fan spotted! o/
Absolute best way to describe it, lmfao
is why, as a forever-DM I think the best thing DMs can do when starting is to NOT plan. I think a lot of the frustration of early-DMs is they plan too much and get frustrated when it goes side-ways in the first five minutes
I was once playing a D&D game (3.5e, it was a while ago!) with a few friends and my little sister, who had never played D&D before. She was a lawful good cleric, to be clear. We were travelling on a road between towns in a covered wagon that we had and we came across a camp where two men were outside sparring, heavily armed, and there was a woman screaming from inside a tent. My sister's character leapt into action and walked straight to the tent, where she was naturally stopped by the two men. Long argument happens where she is like "I'm a cleric, if there's a woman in pain or in danger I want to help. You need to let me through or I can only assume you're perpetrating it." They dont let her in, so she pulls out her mace and gets ready to fight her way in, doing prayers and being all hesitant - she was doing a great job of roleplaying her character for someone that had never played before. Other characters come in to give backup, and before we roll initiative, the GM just states "They stab you in the chest and you start bleeding out" - so we go in to help, but despite good medicine rolls and my sister saying "I can just heal myself" - the GM narrates how she instantly drops to 0 HP and has to make death saves now as we engage and fight the two guys. We fail to save my sister's character (bad death saves and medicine checks, and nobody else had any healing spells or items). eventually manage to get into the tent.
the woman screaming? She was giving birth. Unattended. On her own while two guys outside had a play fight. when we found this out we said "this makes no sense, of course we're going to assume they're up to no good, they were acting super weird and what reason do they have to bar a CLERIC from assisting with child birth?" and the DM said "it goes to show that you shouldn't judge a situation too hastily."
...we all quit the game on the spot. We never played with that guy again. It put my sister off of tabletop games for years. I'm happy to report now that she runs her own games that I get to play in, and she's far more fair, fun and respectful.
I feel like that GM probably has some skeletons in his closet or weird ideologies around women and reproduction if he's choosing to both:
a) Decide to use men ignoring a woman going through labor as a plot hook. That's an entirely sociopathic way to behave - literally no human society ever - outside of tribalistic ostracization - has held it as an ideal to ignore a woman in labor. In his scenario, where an in-group denies an out-group common courtesy, empathy, and aid, women are the out-group. In reality, by and large, "woman goes into labor by the roadside" is a "flag down any help you can get!" situation not a, "practice swordplay casually and deny people who want to help" if you are a companion of said woman and not someone who intends on neglecting the woman.
b) Decide that a character choosing to interfere in such a situation is "judging [the] situation too harshly", to the point of insta-killing a character.
It's a very icky choice that speaks loudly of "women do the child things, and men mull around and sword-fight while she gets it over with" since the characters he defended out-of-character were the recreating men and not the woman in labor and those who want to assist her, and it's horrifying to think that someone like this is eligible to potentially sire children. I'm going to assume that the GM was a man, because it would be even more horrifying for a woman to have such poor empathy for womanly trauma, and to go through life viewing childbirth as portrayed normal.
@@Yawyna124 That's a well thought-out and succinct way to describe why I think the whole situation really grossed us out, aside from the shitty, unfair DMing. It's also worth mentioning that my little sister was the only girl at the table, which in hindsight also makes it extremely creepy and nasty that he singled her character out to smite by ignoring literally all the mechanics of the game. I do think there were some... weird ideas floating around in that guy's head. To say the least. This was actually the SECOND game I tried to play with this guy. The other ended in session 2 when he upset a player so much by once again ignoring the rules and roleplaying out a really creepy interaction with the entanglement spell, I believe. It was a long time ago. I don't want to go over exactly what that interaction was but they also were playing a female character, so you might imagine how this guy roleplayed them being essentially groped by vines. :T
@@feathers3411 oh ew that's so disgusting. It's one thing to be misogynistic but a whole other thing to force players to listen to your sexual fantasies while doing it. Absolutely disgusting.
oof that really sucks about what they did with your sister's character. Not even attempting to go into combat for something that is pretty obviously combat is kinda dumb, like there are combat mechanics for a reason but they seemed really intent on killing her so they just just said stibity stab and now you're dead.
"The baby's head is crowing!"
"Quickly! We must spar."
"AAAGGGHHH!!!"
“He wanted to red wedding their players”
Imagine the red wedding in got except the Starks find out about the Lannister complot way ahead of time, they execute all their would be assassins, Rob still decides to marry the Frey girl in a private ceremony just to be safe… and then the red wedding still happens EXACTLY the same as it did before, except this time they also get Sansa and Arya somehow
So a perfectly ordinary fanfic then?
Thanks for teaching me the word "complot".
@@NoriMori1992I'm not sure "complot" is an English word. It's the French word for "conspiracy", but in English you would just say "plot" or "scheme"
Regarding that first story; Once DM'd with a dude who was on his phone scrolling through memes all session, and when he wasnt paying attention someone else in the group found out a house they were about to enter had an ambush waiting for them, so the entire group decided to sneak around it instead and find other entrances.
I turned to the guy on his phone and went "so, do you want to enter the house?"
...His character was downed less than a minute later
Lmao, honestly I get the “doing something menial in the middle of a session” thing, the party i play with is quite big (usually 7 players, not including NPC turns) so I’ll sometimes play minesweeper or solitaire between turns in initiative because it can take sometimes half an hour to get around the group.
They’re pretty mindless games (more something for my hands to do that isn’t dice towers) so I can easily pay attention to what others are doing and if something important starts happening I immediately get off the game
But usually memes takes up more attention, and not paying attention to the game is entirely a choice
I had something simular where a party member stepped onto my bear trap
@@Cr_nch Oh boy. Half an hour a turn? That's get to be a player problem and not a party size one.
It's not like I don't understand. Played with a newer player trying out a spellcaster recently. Tried her best honestly; even knew what spell she wanted to use when her turn began.
2-3 minutes to read and understand the text, 1-2 minutes to measure out effect radius, 2 more minute to realize it's not ideal and re-evaluate her spells, 1 more minute to check her cantrip list and select then unselect true strike (bc we were playing 2014), 1 final minute to decide to throw a dart, roll, and miss. I've honestly resolved 16 velociraptors' 32 attacks significantly faster (granted I accept that some of them will be biting corpses).
I used to think this was a meme, but no actually, martials might in fact be good for easing some new players into the game.
I have a few people who "have to be on their device because of their ADHD" and I hate that they have medicalised it. The best I've been able to do is tell them "nothing with text because you can't read and listen at the same time" and its improved it a little. Still, some games, they don't open their devices immediately and they are a lot more invested, which tells me that its a bullshit claim that they need to do something else. So annoying.
@@Badartist888
Had some players like this in one of my games. I told them to get a fidget spinner or quit the game.
"It ended like shit, so it was EXACTLY like Game Of Thrones"
Jacob, stop, you're cooking him alive!
Hi chocobo👋
Good
At least with “rocks fall everyone dies” it’s over then and there, they stayed up to 2am to ALL be dissatisfied.
They did say that there was a follow up campaign. This just sounds like a session 0 to set up a better plot hook. Not saying it couldn't have been done better, but that seems like it was the intention.
@@Deathnom it was a "season finale"
yeah, had a "rocks fall everyone dies" in my group a few sessions ago. We didn't end the campaign, our party have essentially become pawns in a conflict between gods, so there's no way the gods would let us die. They still made us pay dearly to come back though, we're stuck running errands in the Shadowfell trying to stop the place from exploding, which would be bad for most of the gods.
@@Lucifer_Crowe doesnt mean it's over though. All sorts of media uses the "things look absolutly bleak" as season finales before having a redemption arc.
@@Deathnom still has to be fun to play, why should I come back for the next if this finale took away all agency
TTRPGs can't be written like a book (a bad one at that)
"Actions have consequences!"
"Dude, you're not letting us take any actions..."
Meatgrinder campaigns can be fun, so long as everyone goes into it with the expectation of being a meatgrinder. I heard an idea that I wanted to try for a campaign years and years ago but never found the right group.
Basically, session zero starts off with everyone bringing a handful of character sheets. They don't have to be fully filled out, just random ideas and basic stats. You roll into an impossible situation, and it keeps going until everyone is down to one character sheet. If a player loses all of their characters, they can make a new one or borrow one from another player. Once everyone is down to their last sheet, they're allowed to escape, and the grizzled survivors are the characters for the rest of the campaign. They get to keep all the XP and items they accrued during the meatgrinder, and they have a hell of a backstory to go with them.
That's a pretty good idea for a session 0, as long as everyone's on board.
Yeah I saw this a while ago too, I think it was in a matt Colville video, though it could have been mentioned elsewhere before as well
@@kurowkarasu I dig it envision a mix between Battle Royale from 2000 and Angels of Death
where you throw basic characters into the pit of insane fukers an whoever lives long enough to be fleshed out is just to stubborn to die XD
AKA darwinian character creation.
What I would love to do one time if I have somewhat experience as a dm would be hidden characters. You're the one making up the characters, the players have a blank sheet which they need to fill in based off how the world interacts with them.
For example "I pat the man's shoulder, wishing him well" ends in the dm saying "You heal his arthritis" and the player going "HOLY SHIT I'VE GOT HEALING MAGIC?!"
I saw that idea online and would love to do it someday.
Having your characters lose the campaign in the final session with an unbeatable boss is like lighting a forest on fire so you can build an Arbys. Nobody is going to end up happy with this result except a weirdo.
Oddly specific
Ah hell yeah, new Arby's
Not necessarily.There are ways to make that into an excellent story beat for a follow up campaign.
I've never been to an Arbys but man, I'd be down for Forest fire Arby's just for the joke alone
Not supposed to be only riding the story but a story that has multiple branches and paths but that no. if you want to do that go write something instead of dragging your friends
That last story's DM be like: "As you go to say no, you say yes instead"
Players: WTF
"You don't notice that your close friend who you've been travelling with for weeks/months and who is part of your very small inner circle isn't there."
Fallout 4?
@@EvilOverlord1662 Yes, but I was referencing: ua-cam.com/video/XhFxsaSh0kQ/v-deo.html
But thou must!
@@EvilOverlord1662 Yes, but also I'm referencing a sketch that Jacob and Colton did earlier.
It's absolutely wild that that DM claimed that he did what he did because "there had to be consequences." My dude, a consequence is the direct result of an action being taken. Taking all agency away from your players and making a bunch of terrible shit happen to them no matter what they did, and actively refusing to let them take any kind of action to prevent the terrible shit from happening, is literally the exact opposite of a consequence.
"There has to be consequences, just *not **_for me!"_*
"There has to be consequences, just *not **_for ME!"_*
The DM is thinking of stakes, not consequences. In either case, however, if no choice is given there are no stakes at all
@@MikeAsbestosya. Like what was the point of the mercenaries of they all die instantly without resistance?
Consequence don't mean "bad thing" the consequences of the action they did earlier was "they got mercenary's" and then DM removes them...
The DM very clearly meant "you must have suffering" not consequences.
"You don't notice the rogue isn't there."
_"But I've secretly been in love with the rogue all this time, he's the only reason I stay with this party and face the danger. I love him. I love him. I love him."_
"You don't notice the rogue isn't there."
I mean, Rogues be sneaky?
I wondered about that too, it's a group of 3 characters, how can they not notice the rogue isn't there ?!!
@@MartialNico My first ever session the DM rolled a nat20 stealth so my party legit did not know where I went till I came out of thin air to say "Sneaky sneaky"
I never joined the rest of that campaign so my character just annoyed NPCs an got thrown by a party member for zero reason the end pure beauty
Sorry, I rolled a d6 where you can't see, you slept bad and don't think about that
They just assume the rogue is so incredibly sneaky, even they can't see them.
And the rogue wakes up late and comes in to clutch the situation. With a massive hangover.
Perfect opportunity to turn railroading into roleplaying and character depth.
The last one sounded like the DM had a "Choose your own fantasy plot" book behind the screen and the dice rolls were to see which page they went to next.
A DM I played with said something that sticks with me. He said, "Everyone plays DnD to build awesome fantasy characters, as a DM its your job to reward that, to give them a chance to shine, to have them feel awesome. And in order to do that you need conflict and challenges, but they are all means to an end."
*YES*
*THIS*
Reminds me of the GM Principle in pretty much every PbtA game: "Be a fan of the characters".
a good dm is one that can kill the party in such a way that it's not clear to the players that they're trying to do that
@thejuiceking2219 naw that's a shitty take. Gm vs players has never been a fun approach to anyone except sociopaths masquerading as GM's.
@@zurgnut there are a lot of sociopaths masquerading as GMs ;)
Honestly I do genuinely appreciate how worked-up you got, because that story was basically "The DM removes all agency from the players and then wonders why they didn't enjoy being puppetted into disaster"
The DM accidentally wrote a Bethesda game, but worse.
@@EvelineRose 🤔
regarding the last one: JUST FUCKING WRITE A BOOK
YES! Exactly my thought.
I was on the plot team of a LARP with a guy like that. All of his write-ups included phrases like, "And then the players will do X" and we had to constantly prod him with "What if they DON'T do X?"
... Ngl, it wouldn't have made a very good book either.
Not that you can't do bad endings, but the characters still need to achieve SOME sort of resolution. "Nothing works, they fail and then run away the end without learning anything" just isn't very satisfying.
Would prob still be a shitty book. Wasting the audiences’ time and investment cuz that bad ending was forced af even if it wasn’t an rpg. If it lead to the war they mentioned then sure I guess but it just kinda happens and there wasn’t really a way to do anything about it. Then they’d either almost play the victim by crying in failure or he mad at people for not “getting it”
Bad endings work as long as you just aren't stupid. The GM just should have not been stupid smh my head.
@@matthewbibby8921 it works if it's act 2, not the damn finale!
This is what happens when a dm writes the final beforehand and does everything in its power to avoid being different. If you write a story with a final, you don't need the players
I've made that mistake before. Sometimes i plan too little ahead of time and run out of content too quickly and sessions get delayed, but every time I plan further ahead the players magically manage to do every possible thing to navigate off course :(
@@bobowon5450 Improv is important. Having a rough estimate of where you want the game to go is important so that you have NPCs prepared but if they go off and do something else, being open to changing how the story works so that it fits with what the characters are doing is important. Advice spoken by a prominent DNDtuber (possibly even xp to lvl 3) was if your players dont want to go to the town where the hook NPC for the whole quest is, just move the NPC.
I’ve never had a DM nerf my character. But in one campaign I found online, I chose to play a Wizard, prepared my sheet, and the DM told me, literally, “No, you did it wrong…pick different spells, Wizards should only use support or utility based spells, not attack spells ever.” Ummm…are you sure? Cause I would swear at some point, Fireball and Lightning Bolt are things that exist. Also, I was told to be a Human, because a High Elf Wizard is “basic”
Ask him what he thinks an evocation wizard does all day
@@BartlebyScrivener-oz6mkevoke a sense of support obviously
@@BartlebyScrivener-oz6mk
They support their party... With overwhelming firepower!
as if a human isnt MORE basic?
@@coralimes3074 they may have meant playing a race with a relevant racial bonus was basic.
*The King rises from the bath water and gives you the quest*
"He's holding the piece of *paper?"*
*"It's laminated."*
Gamer girl bath water?
The quest is his penis.
fr
The king, Husband, rises from the bath water and says "your quest is lay the demon queen and save our kingdom, good luck, make sure of cum back"
Oh hey! I also had a DM who had a "I don't actually know the rules to D&D but I am too embarrassed to say anything so I'm going to roll a d4 behind the screen and make something up based on that" dice system, it's super uncomfortable
Why? Why is it super uncomfortable? DMs change rules around all the time.
@@Yoroiful That's true but in those situations it's better to be frank and explain exactly what you are "ruling" as a DM and if necessary, why. Or even (heaven forbid) ask your players about a rule you're not sure of. Much better than saying "Uh I roll secret dice now and you lose" to force an outcome. That looks bad, and people aren't stupid
@@Yoroiful It can be really uncomfortable to be interacting with a world and you can't reasonably draw a line between how you think the world will work and how it will actually work because everything is just being improvised. Like if you go to push a boulder, you expect it to be a Strength check, if the DM is suddenly like "roll a Dexterity saving throw to avoid rolling down with it" you'd be pretty disillusioned.
@@Klemkee If you're going to go with "I'm the DM and I'm making these decisions" then own that and be open with your players, yeah. Don't pretend you're working within rules (however many dice you're meant to be rolling) and don't lie to yourself that you're making decisions based on what comes up on the die you're panic rolling to cover up the fact that you don't know what the rules are. That's just wasting everyone's time.
Mine didn't know what a perception check was T-T
as an ADHD guy I can really relate to having something doing in the meanwhile of a session, to me is not gaming but I usually keep a notepad where I do sketches or scribble things to keep me focused without zoning out every thirty minutes snapping back on reality where I just stared at a point for three minutes and I lost track of everything happening.
Before you ask, yes it ends sometimes with me hyperfocused on drawings and I loose track anyways.
@@-0NI- but are the drawings cool?
I was gonna say, I'm definitely guilty of playing some low-effort games in the background to keep myself engaged. If I ever accidentally get invested and miss something, then I'll close it out and find something less likely to pull focus. It's like listening to something in the car, I kind of need a second activity or I'll drift (unless it's an absolute stellar night, but even the best of us can't have those all the time!) But I'm also just as likely to work on a drawing, or a crochet project. I hope that guy is able to pick up some sort of craft-related hobby (there are plenty that are dnd related, even!) since him gaming during the session is becoming a problem.
same!
Same but sometimes I'm drawing and sometimes it's taking notes (or just fidgeting with my jewellery because I almost always wear something with textured beads I can play with)
hi im the DM of the discord one ( 1:50 ) found out in the middle of the first session saw him load up a game on steam while we were in a voice chat. was not a play by post
Don't feel bad. I've kicked someone from sessions for doing this exact thing. Granted, the group was in person and that player would constantly have excuses so they wouldn't show up but would want to play virtually. On top of that, they would always be lost as to what's going on and be asking the person before them or me what they/I did prior to the virtual player's turn. Often times requiring recaps of the 5+ turns that happened between their last and current turn
Out of curiosity, was it a video game that required a lot of focus or attention, or one that could be played just to keep your hands busy?
The D&D sessions I play in are virtual, have 5-6 players, and a lot of roleplay. I'm someone who struggles to keep focus when someone has been speaking for a long time, unless I have something that occupies my hands and mind just the right amount. I've found that playing simple puzzle games or building in Sims while others roleplay has helped me tremendously in keeping up with what's going on. It's not that I'm bored or not interested, it just helps me focus. I rarely zone out or start daydreaming since I started doing this, and I'm much more invested in everyone else's characters now that I can keep up with what's going on during roleplay (not to mention combat).
I ask because I'm wondering if that player is similar.
15:53 or when you're a gm and you keep telling your players to ask around a village for information, and the npcs everyone talks to tell them to go to a specific place, and they ask the gm, "okay, can we go there then?" and the gm says no, not yet, and tells them to keep talking to the villagers. Except they all keep saying the exact. Same. Thing. There is NO other information to be obtained. No secrets to be found. You're not "creating an immersive environment". You're creating busywork because you don't know how to pace a story to save your life. 🤦
that reads like a rather specific 5e adventure.
The AC cap at 18 thing is so wild to me because you can like, include monsters with high attack rolls, or with abilities that target saving throws, or agile monsters that will try to slip past the paladin to attack softer targets, so that you can let your high AC character have their moments to shine just fine. A high AC does not make you invincible.
gases AOE's and pits do wonders
Having a super high ac is kind of a double edged sword for balancing. Just because the paladin has an ac of 21, doesn't mean the party sorcerer does, and then suddenly the sorcerer has to deal with enemies that get a +8 to hit or something. Yes it could be done better, but at the same time if every fight is a cake walk people lose interest fast.
@@Deathnom I don't think you have to make EVERY creature hit for a +8. You could have one creature hit for a +12. Now the Paladin might have a bit of trouble with him, but if they focus fire that creature first, now the Paladin has an easier time. But if the party leaves that creature alone, it could get dicey.
Or make another creature have a high AC that doesn't have a high to hit. Now when the Paladin and that creature lock blades, they are struggling to hit each other. The rest of the party needs to deal with the high AC creature before it gets behind the paladin and starts taking out the backline.
@@Sambrostar Could just have him do a dex save, would save a lot of trouble, paladins always drop dex.
@@Sambrostar I agree it could be done in a bunch of different ways that would be better or more interesting. I'm just trying to explain why or how it could be unfun or unfair to other players in comparison. Obviously a good dm would add in a ton of variety to keep things fresh, but it can also be difficult as the dm to balance these sorts of things out without risking a tpk or something of the sort.
I so desperately wish you guys had checked the comments on the first one, just cause OP goes into more detail to show how he found out the dude was playing games. They were in a Discord call and the dude was STREAMING HIS GAMEPLAY to the Discord call. It was insane and ridiculous. A lot of the commentary was largely agreeing with your opinions on it until that came out, where everyone was talking about how absolutely crazy it is to stream your video game in a TTRPG call with your friends.
Bro that's insane lol
My old DM loved us having crazy AC or skills cuz his mindset was the tougher you guys are, the meaner things i can throw at you and it was a blast
That's straight up my mentality.
Yes..... yes..... be strong so I can finally use all this cool shit I have in my vault.
@@VelociraptorsOfSkyrim the fucker threw a hydra at us at level 5 cuz we each received an item from the kingdom for quelling a cult looking to resurrect a fire god Sutr and i got a silver horn of Valhalla. So once a day i got like x d8 barbarians to fight with me
@@jarltimbar Amazing
I had a campaign like that once, my character had like 30 ac and a spear that shot magical lasers
It's either 600 Void Chickens or 2 Tarrasques with a couple of Aboleths laying around for some MC fun stuff.
The goofiest thing about the AC story is that a 21 AC IS realistic for a full suit of armour + shield.
_In the late medieval era when armour was perfected, a full suit (with all the layers of chainmail and leather beneath) left you impervious to basically anything that wasn't what you could call a "critical hit." If you look up recreations of "duels" in full armour, they usually devolve into a wrestling match, with the winner being whoever manages to pin their opponent long enough to slip a dagger in-between the plates. Also, while certain weapons like war hammers or maces were more effectively against armour, they ran into the huge problem of leverage. To successfully punch through or crumple full plate, you needed to swing with your full body. If your opponent had a shield, they could use it to catch the weapon right at the start of the swing, before it's had time to build momentum._
*TL;DR:* Full plate was OP. A novice in full plate almost always beats an unarmored master.
21:10 This dm wasnt thinking this is actual brain dead writing and he deserves the hate and to feel bad
That last one reminds me of a big post I made on a horror stories subreddit where the dm would ask us what we wanted to do, the party would all decide on something, and then the DM would be like "well that won't work so you're doing this instead" without even letting us try whatever it was.
Like why ask if we want to stay and defend the town if you were going to tell us "you have no chance of winning so all your characters run away instead"
I think that DM just literally heard that DM's should ask what the players are going to do and didn't realize that means they need to follow up on what the players are trying to do instead of just continuing on their railroad plot.
oh wow that's rough. no player agency at all I guess. Just randomly takes control of everyone's characters and decides the party is running.
Jacob: "this has been super fun"
Jacob, 5 seconds later: "this one upset me"
Fear not, dear viewer, these are not mutually exclusive emotions (cause same)
UH UHM UHHHH
I got one for you:
One campaign I was in, I played a Conjuration Wizard. The character was successful enough as an Adventurer to acquire 3 Rare (and rather pricey) Spell Tomes:
An Atlas of Endless Horizons
A Planecaller's Codex
And a (+2) Arcane Grimoire
Things weren't going that bad at first, until we went to a Desert region for a quest. At which point, we kept drawing the attention of huge Sandworms. Turns out, they're drawn to magic, specifically my Spell Tomes.
What's worse, if these Sandworms swallow you, all your equipment had to made a saving throw or be destroyed by stomach acid. Including your magical gear. Armor & Weapons got a bonus to the save because they were naturally more durable, but other stuff (like MY SPELL TOMES) did not.
I got lucky, and avoided getting swallowed. My Tomes were safe. The 6,000 Gold's worth of shiny jewelry on our Rogue, however, did not survive. I chalked it up to a unique feature of a unique monster, and moved on.
Then we got to the hidden valley home of a Sphinx, and had to fight a horde of mummified undead. A mix of warriors & casters, not too unreasonable.
. . . until one invisible bastard, a rogue-type undead, tried to backstab me. Then he used a Bonus Action to hit me with a magical spray of Acid . . . which forced a saving throw for each of my Tomes, which would destroy them on a failure.
. . . um, what?
I used inspiration to avoid losing my Tomes. Then I used my Conjuration Wizard features to teleport away from this bastard, because screw that nonsense.
. . . THEN THE SOMBITCH TELEPORTED AFTER ME. THEN CAME THE ACID, ROLL SAVES FOR THE TOMES.
I got VERY lucky, rolled no failures. I teleported again back to my comrades, who ambushed it when it teleported after me, stopping it before it could spray Acid again.
The DM was quite proud of this creature, saying he created a "custom feat" to allow for the acid spray. I asked him to stop trying to destroy our Magic Items, but he flatly refused, saying "That happened ALL THE TIME in the older editions, you just learned to live with it." I should just get better.
Fine. Whatever. I had a plan.
After talking to the Sphinx, we went to some mountains bordering the Desert. We had to locate a hive of large Beetles, and procure a larva. Seemed simple enough.
. . . until we saw the Beetles.
Picture a Beetle the size of a Rhinoceros. Give it roughly 90 - 100 HP. Put it in a group of about 3 or 4 other Beetles. Now give it 100 feet of movement per round.
Definitely strong, but we made plans and laid a trap. We tilted the field to our advantage as best as we could, even setting up a Tiny Hut as a safe refuge if it all went sideways . . . which, of course, it did.
Turns out, these Beetles can teleport themselves and one friendly creature as a bonus action (we couldn't find a range on that) also they could do that every single damn round.
Also, get this: THEY SPEW ACID AS A BREATH WEAPON, ROLL A SAVE FOR YOUR GEAR & MAGIC ITEMS.
Oh, and DID I MENTION WE WERE ONLY LEVEL 6?!?!
I had refused to put myself (remember, Wizard) or my Tomes in jeopardy again. So I was hiding in the Tiny Hut while using summoned creatures from Tasha's to run out of the Hut and fight for me.
Let me tell you something: trying to fight as a Wizard & support your allies from inside a Tiny Hut you can't leave is NOT EASY OR FUN. But that was the ONLY way keep my VERY EXPENSIVE Magic Items from being destroyed.
I brought this up to the DM, told him that I DON'T WANT to be the guy who cowers in a Tiny Hut when initiative is rolled. I hate doing that, it's not fun for me or fair to my Party, can you PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP TRYING TO TAKE AWAY OR DESTROY OUR STUFF.
He reiterated that older editions did this ALL THE TIME, that it would KEEP happening, and nothing I said or did was going to stop it.
. . . and that's when I had enough.
Tldr
Copy pasta
Yes, that could happen in older editions, but DM's also weren't going out of their way to make a concentrated effort to target magic items to destroy them.
As an avid 3.5 player, this absolutely does NOT happen in the older editions, and even if it did, there's a good reason it doesn't anymore.
That's when you gather everyone else up and someone else DM's.
22:00 - i feel like they just wanted to dump trauma onto the PCs because they wanted to be like game of thrones... but they didn't have a sessions zero for that. they didn't make it out to be a stepping stone to have Ned stark be beheaded and THEN you played as the stark family or something....
That last story: Insane. DM was like some envisioning themself assome kind of director/writer and that the rest of the players were just actors dancing to their tune.
There's DM's that railroad, and then there's guys that weld the doors on the train shut and scream we're going off that cliff because I SAY SO!
And he was totally cheating on the dice rolls.
dice rolls for a DM are more like suggestions. that's why we have screens. granted, when you do fudge a dice roll, 95% of the time it should be in they player's favor cause they had a really good plan and don't deserve that crit you just rolled.
@@theghostofthomasjenkins9643 agreed. If you're gonna fudge, fudge for the better unless you either can't or it has to be bad as a result of circumstances or players getting consequences for what they do.
I will never understand DMs who feel the need to punish their players. I want my players to succeed.
"How dare you have those magic items I gave you! I will send lots of homebrew monsters with the ability to destroy magic items at you to punish you!"
Insane. That DM was insane.
To play devil's advocate, I love enjoying success as a player, but my frustration with every campaign I've played in with my friends is the stakes tend to suffer. I, as a future DM, want the stakes to be there and want character death to occur and some real decisions to be made that will change the story in some wall, no matter how minor or major it may be.
I enjoy success, but part of the fun is also losing too.
@@sgt.squeegee1720it's a very delicate balance. Making stakes and real decisions matter takes some buildup of a clear crossroads; it shouldn't always come out of the blue. These kinda things would or should have been prefaced in a session 0 as well
@@basili__capybara1864 Agreed, 100% with that. Should be something discussed at session zero and should be the culmination of something in the story.
I'm running a Eldritch horror campaign where creatures quite literally have the capability of dismembering players through the means of a dice roll. I've joked around that they should be prepared to have a few backup characters but at the same time I want them to keep their characters for as long as possible because the development through their success and trauma is far more satisfying than "winning" against them.
Had a friend tell me that he found out one of his players was gaming during the session when they accidentally invited him to join them. The game
Baldur's Gate.
That's fucked.
bro was playing dnd while playing dnd, dndmaxxing
@@MysteryKar Yo Dawg, I heard you like D&D...
Play dnd while you dnd to get more dnd per dnd
Ive actually done that before----- i was playing the rougelike mod while also doing combat in a dnd game, although tbf, all i would do is plan what id do nexxt turn, and then have time leftover from the spell casters figuring out what they wanted to
I did a one shot with coworkers at a game night my friend was running. He gave us a choice of premade characters to be in a story he made. I dont remember many of the characters except my dwarf paladin, a human wizard that had missed every spell attack roll and, a dark elf ranger. We cleared run down tavern of goblins and a troll then made our way into the cellar where some cultists were. Fought off some of their goblin minions and the warlock cultists. We get to a door and I used sense good and evil and the DM said there was great evil on the other side of the door. We look around the room and finally see a big barrel that we identify as being full of Gunpowder. I guess he expected us to blast it and clear the room we were presently in. The entryway to the great evil was double doors so the plan was to have 2 people open the doors then I heave the barrel into the room at the bad guy and everyone else uses something to try and detonate it.
Friends open the doors, I rolled real well for my strength check to throw the barrel and it ends up at the big bads feet. The archer shoots a flaming arrow and it misses. The other person throws a lit torch and it misses. Its all up to the wizard of whom has missed everything up to this point and he rolls just enough to hit the barrel with fire chromatic orb. The barrel detonates in a huge fireball and knocks the guy over of whom is still surprised by having his chanting interupted. Big bad Rylo Ken is on the ground reeling as everyone runs up to get their licks in. He sucumbs to the assault and perishes. We all cheer for the guy playing the wizard.
Later the DM running the one shot told me that he meant for us to die in that encounter but didn't expect us to use the barrel to blow up the boss so he just let that play out cause it seemed real cool to him.
The Last story if the DM was actually decent
And THATS how you dm a game. If players have a cool idea, work with it!
Holy crap, that last story was insane! If I was in that group I wouldn't have held back, I'd have told GM to go write a book if he doesn't want any agency from his players, told the table to never invite me to a trash fire like this again, and walked out.
I've seen someone else talk about that second post about the AC being too high, and they made a great point: make enemies that force Ability Checks instead of going at their AC, because casting a spell that forces a DEX Save or WIS Save doesn't take AC into account at all.
At low level, sleep spell works a ton
A good dm would use this, but carefully. The most important rule of any ttrpg is: everyone should have fun. And if a players entire build is based around 'am hard to hit' and you never even consider attacking him once, all you did is make his build useless and make the player feel miserable about it. If you wanna challenge him, throw a few spells. But dont overdo it, especially if its just bandits on the road. Let him have his moments and everyone will have fun.
What I learned about being a dm is: just play into the players strengths.
If a paladin has high ac, throw dozens of archers at his face and watch him facetank most of it.
If a totem barbarian has resistance to all but psychic damage, dont throw only psychic damage spells at him. Give him a monster that hits like a truck so his ability actually does something and makes him feel like no one else could tank that attack.
This is how to be a good dm. And no, Im not saying dont touch their weaknesses, you in fact should do that. But everything has its time and place, and most of the time players will have more fun if you play into their strengths, rather around them.
And don't forget to let the player have fun. Try to hit the high AC fighter, and shoot the monk every once and a while
@@gorgit my first game I had a barbarian and the dm would just get frustrated at just how tough I was until they came across bone nagas and then boom literally every encounter was half a dozen bone nagas descend onto you until a wizard wight that did psychic damage was found then all encounters were bone nagas and wights until I got an item to give me psychic resist then the dm went fuck it Im gonna target everyone but you and we tpked immediately because everyone was perma paralyzed
It is completely rational to be angry at these DMs. Especially that dude who unfairly thwarted his players.
God, that dm referring to their ending as "consequences".
It's one thing to railroad the heroes into a bad end, but to phrase it as if the players had any hand in this? That's just a cherry on top of the nut punch
I love how specific the player in the first one is, he needs the dm to know EXACTLY which games he was playing instead of the dnd game.
The last dmforgot the most important thing, your friends having fun lol
Story 3 seems like a other case of "DM should 've just written a story" because forcing conclusions and removong agency isn't a game at that point, you're basically a slam poet with a captive audience you tricked inyo sitting at a table with you
Maybe third DM needs a therapist to listen to his stories instead of players? Everyone dies, external locus of control in form of a d6, crying and leaving on minor occasion.
Like fr. I have mental disorders and have emotional issues randomly. As a DM I just let everyone know that and take a minute.
This dude needs help and I mean that in a compassionate way.
i played a cleric in a 5e game where i was later informed it was 'low magic' after i had already decided on a class and concept, and what this actually meant is that the dm enforced a flat d20 on every spell cast (i think it was DC10+spell level?) and if you failed, you just don't get the spell and lose the slot. it wasn't even a concentration thing either, i think the way it was being rules was like "your god ignores your plight" for the divine spells, and initially i figured "ok that can be dramatic i'll give it a shot and see how it actually goes"
we eventually wiped because i failed to heal the party and kept missing my check to actually cast cure wounds. the only spell i actually got to cast ALL CAMPAIGN (three sessions) was one i was forced to by the antag to heal one of his henchmen otherwise he would have killed someone in the party
i didn't stick around after that, and i wasn't sure what the plan was because we definitely weren't given any resources to lean on like potions or scrolls or whatever, accounting for how monstrously difficult it was to actually keep people alive in combat. definitely felt like the dm absolutely did not want spellcasters in his game since on top of that flat check, it was apparently going to get progressively harder for each tier of spell slot to just make it impossible to cast anything?
bro wtf?? if you dont like spellcasters just don't allow them in the first place like what? some people are ridiculous
I could see it working if they gave you the opportunity to get potions and such, or even have the ability to scribe spells onto scrolls.
5:17 when it's someone else's turn and it's kinda taking a while I'll play some stupid simple game on my phone while I wait but never during combat or exposition. Due to my ADHD I have a hard time focusing on two things at once.
See my adhd is the opposite. I need the stimulation. I always play a game I know really well while playing dnd but my dm couldn’t care less
My favorite story I have from D&D is the Murder Trumpet of light. At a weapons store, I asked a blacksmith to forge a trumpet. He made it. I also found an old key ring in a dungeon. I collected every dagger I could find, put them on the key ring, and put the key ring on the trumpet. Finally, I would casf Light on the trumpet and use it as a crappy swiss army knife. It's a distraction item, a weapon, a tool, and a flashlight! All at the cost of it weighing 30 pounds by the end!
I got another one here:
I join a table. The DM's world had some fuckery going on with it. Tiamat, Goddess of all evil dragons, was in charge of the world.
Anyone or anything involving Good-Aligned Deities or the Upper Planes was closed off and denied to us. Restrictions were put on character creation as a consequence.
Enter my character. She's a Reborn Lineage Undead Warlock, and her Patron isn't a Divine entity, so she should be mostly unaffected by all that nonsense.
I give him the backstory. Nothing that would interfere with his world or interact with the Divine.
"Can I make some tweaks?" he asks.
"As long as her Patron remains honest to its promises, I'll be okay with that."
He agrees that my Patron will remain honest with its promises.
Then, in a later session, it came out that he changed out who my Patron was.
"WHAT THE HELL? I DIDN'T SAY YOU COULD DO THAT!"
"You said as long as your Patron remained honest, I could make changes."
"YOU DIDN'T SAY YOU'D CHANGE MY PATRON COMPLETELY!"
"You never asked."
Then I left.
You can’t be a very good warlock if you didn’t read the fine print.
Classic Devil trick and you fell for it.
@@stevefilms1997 The backstory I gave him spelled out the fine print perfectly, with no room for fuckery.
But the DM arbitrarily decided that was boring, and changed my Patron's identity behind my back as a Player.
This is kyuubey fuckery
“You never asked” I DIDNT THINK I HAD TO
Gods swapping followers like currency sounds legit like interesting worldbuilding tho
@@ChuckUFarley90 see the real fuckery is the DM made you sign a patron pack with shaky wording and it came back to bite you. It would be really funny if it didn't entirely ruin the game for you lol.
@@Aeivious *obligated*
DUUUUDE this last story had something very similar happen to me vibe-wise,
Context: My friends and I found a dm and wanted to play some dnd, for some of us for the first time. We also wanted to try out this one module from MCDM and the Kingdoms and Warfare mechanics ( essentially a court setup and kingdom-building rpg mechanics with warfare chess like mechanics for large scale combat thrown in.)
We spent the entire campaign building our castle, expanding our domain and freeing a region from a despot whilst following all sorts of cool plots. Eventually, we wanted to stop some kind of omen from coming true and destroying the world, we followed the breadcrumbs and eventually, after a few precursor omens led us to some weird lair with a large pod structure the size of a room. We all investigated, and somehow activated it... we knew a lot, we did our research, we made so many checks to try and guestimate what would happen.... But the dm had that sort of "trust me" moment. A moment of like, "guess you'll have to find out what it does"
So we press the proverbial button, sealing us in nuking a large portion of the continent(MUCH greater than even we thought possible, greater than irl nuke ranges), NOT ending the world, but destroying nearly the entire main area we spent 2 years playing in and building up the world in with time and relationships to npcs etc! WE LOST EVERYTHING and the dm was like, "I hinted it could blow up"
💀
"Damn DM what does this do"
"I guess you'll have to see :) (PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PRESS IT)"
"Okay"
"Kaboom everyone you love dies lolololol GOTCHA!"
DM: “I’m a failure”
Well he’s not wrong
He's bipolar at the very least
Said this out loud while using headphones, got funny looks from random people, so I replayed that section of the video on speaker, everyone agreed.
I was in a game where I ended up separated from the group by my own intentional omission. My party had to lead a caravan of refuges from one location to another. The night before, my character was taking care of other tasks in town. Before my stuff was wrapped up, the GM changed focus to the other party members, as they prepared and set off. I'm pretty sure the GM either forgot I hadn't rejoined or just assumed that I would be there. The rest of the party definitely forgot about me, so I just decided to roll with it. They got a few hours away when the caravan was attacked. The rest of the party got through their first actions when the GM turned to me and asked for my action. "Oh I'm not there... you guys left without me so I'm still in town." This was a very casual and relaxed group so everyone laughed once they realized that I was still trying to get supplies and repair equipment and such. They were able to fend off the attack and send a message to me so I could catch up with the caravan by dusk. I realize in a different group or on a more serious/hardcore campaign my action could have trolling or disruptive, but I knew this group and GM would enjoy the mix up.
DM'd a campaign once that started with 8 people. The premise was strange events and attacks were going on the party needed to stop and slowly they would come to realize that everything going on led back to their own boss, a corrupt lord who had made a deal with Shar. Unfortunately, most of the party murder hobo-ed their way through most of the campaign, despite various warnings, and seemed to love doing evil things (like mass murder, threatening allies, and stealing from everyone). Eventually I ruled that the only people who would hire them were the Lords' Alliance who mostly used them as a hit squad in the war that was going on.
By this point, one player stopped playing because 5e wasn't the system for him, one player had been bullied out of session (luckily managed to get them into a friendlier group later), one player only wanted RP and got bored of the majority killing everything, one player got busy, another got pissed I wasn't paying 10000 gold to them for every quest they completed and left, and the remaining players were all the previously mentioned murder hobos. Final sesh came down to the remaining three players attempting to fight an orc zealot barbarian who led the opposing army and his goons. Thanks to them not having enough players left and horrible fucking planning, they got wiped out as one pulled cards from the Deck of Many Things mid combat.
The campaign ended after that.
For a bit more context, I had been playing different campaigns and modules with this group on and off for around 5-7 years, and through all of this I had mentioned their murder hobo-ing frequently, called out players for rude or downright insulting talk outside of game, and tried to make it work to no avail.
I guess the tl;dr is, if a group isn't working, don't invest more time into it. People don't change. Drop players who are being jerks and move on with your life. I think if I had just run campaigns with the few fun players, things would have turned out better.
Edit: I do also want to say that sure, yes, parts of this are my fault. I think it comes down to that I like more narrative campaigns (the rp in ttrpg) while half my players (the half that showed up and joined more campaigns) liked combat more and some even hated rp. While I could have run stuff differently, I dont think wanting to have RP in these types of games (which are designed for RP) is bad. I don't even think I would say my games are "narrative heavy", there is plenty of combat in them outside of the random fights the MH players started. Also, just a lot of stuff happened out of game that was frustrating or just awful, such as bullying behind the scenes, secret drama chats, ambushing people with baseless accusations, etc.
I dont think Im a great DM, but with that group I never felt heard, or that they would talk to me. Whenever I brought up issues, I felt very ignored as things continued as they were before. Im very lucky that since all that, Ive found a new group that actually all communicates and tries to look out for each other and have fun. I dont really hate my first group, I just wish things had gone differently.
I heard “sneak king” and my inner eye suddenly unlocked
OMG, that DM fridged his player's best friend for sake of plot.
Mine did the same once as well, and this was after I gave in to the paladin player (DM's friend)'s incessant whining and voluntarily nerfed my character, so I couldn't do anything about it.
I remember when running Only War once their was one player I had who would always start up War Thunder as soon as the session began. seeing the Steam notification while getting everyone ready always felt like a slap.
For a moment I thought that War Thunder is sort of a spell. You know, like a wizard starting every session with fireball as a meme, only not wizard and not fireball. Don't know what Only War is, but a having a spell "war thunder" kind of matches the name. But then I understood.
@@az8560 Which is funny since in Only War you just play somenormal dudes with guns against whatever horror your squad has been deployed to fight against.
If you've brought it up, and they refuse to stop, I'd just kick 'em from the call if they keep it up, if I were you.
@@AAhmou The horror that time was Tyranids, and that player being the heavy plasma gunner. Being against the front line of the swarm it was always to players great delight when everyone would in a panic tell him to aim at the hierodule demolitioning the defensive lines just to get silence or one word answers from him. then on his turn he would say a little prayer for the emperor (in call as if he's roleplaying), shoot the nearest enemies (usually a group of hormagaunts climbing over the bunker wall) and then immediatly switch back to the other game.
This is who I imagine mains German tanks
The fact that the first guy even got a conversation about it, is mindblowing. Insta-kick from the VC, and a one-sentence explanation to go away and stay away.
DMs whose idea of a thrilling twist is always, "You succeeded at what you were doing, but the consequences you were working and spending resources to avoid still fully happen." Usually followed by, "And it's actually worse."
I’m pretty sure I saw the last story in a crispy’s tavern video. The Dm had recently finished watching the boys and wanted to make a “bad ending” because he was the type of person to be easily influenced by media he consumes.
I mean, I've written out entire plot skeletons and weird mechanics based off stuff I watch and play and only sometimes do they end up utter disasters, but I've also been rocking with the same clusterfuck of goons for the last 10 years who are always down when I say something like "Hey so I've got this new idea I want to check out in a one shot, roll some characters and get ready for the weekend".
You’re lying to yourself if you say you’ve never made a character that was inspired by other media. It’s just how we work.
First story reminds me of someone at my game. He was basically never paying attention unless it was combat and his turn. If there was RP or it was someone else's turn he'd be on his phone 9 times out of 10.
Most everyone was annoyed with his "antics" it even got so bad that in one combat encounter he declared an attack on one of out allies. The DM was 'nice' enough to let him take that back after having a go at him. After that arc ended we had a time skip where our characters did stuff discussed with our DM over text. Needless to say during this his character was written out of the story and he wasn't invited back.
I should mention that this was a regular problem and he was talked to about it. This story was just a definite boiling point for the issue
That armor one was crazy. If one of my players has a high AC, then in some games I'll have other methods of doing damage to the player, like saves, magic missile, AoE, etc. In other games, having a high AC is going to give the player a major advantage so that he can shine and really play his character's strengths.
Honestly my DM just likes throwing numbers at me and the other Paladin, we tank a lot of hits but they do get through eventually from just probability and crits hurt like hell. It's really fun.
My DnD horror stories all revolve around 1 friend of mine. He literally will always try and make a space marine/custodian esq character in everything. Even in a Minecraft themed campaign. DMs can't say no so he just bitches and moans about it and tries to ruin everyone else's time. When he was DM things got even worse, as he just made everyone who did anything remotely interesting get sent to jail, besides me because I was teaching the town blacksmith how to make basic firearms in exchange for using his materials and workbench to repair my own pistol, but when I finished and gave the basic hand cannon I made, WITH NO AMMO, to my follower (vampire child my party found that was following me), he just made her instantly shoot the blacksmith for no reason at all. I said no this is stupid and just left the campaign at that point
Games in background story:
I definitely understand having a subway surfers or alike video on in the background to help you focus (I do that)
I understand having an idle game (like cookie clicker) on in the background to focus since it doesn't require much thinking
I even understand having a full-blown game up if there's a situation where the DM has to hyperfocus on a group of players that you're not apart of which may take a long time (I was in one of these situations with one player taking an hour to complete a puzzle by themself (just by chance) and I decided to do my daily quests in a game which I knew would only take 20 minutes)
...But playing a game while you know there's things going on that you need to pay attention to is VERY disrespectful, especially when you haven't even told the DM you were doing it.
You know what... I was in "County" (jail). I was able to find some board violent criminals and such to play an RPG. There were 4 of us, me, a redhead artist, a Korean thief, and a "smooth criminal". I'm Asian, so I made paper D6 and we played, no problems. What kind of insane asylum escapees are DM-ing nowadays? There should be a psychological test you need to take or something!!!
If a DM tells me that I don't notice that my PARTY MEMBER IS MISSING, I'm leaving the game. If the is game taking place in my own home, I'm kicking the DM out.
Not only does that make no sense whatsoever, but it's also taking away my agency and messing with the characterization of my character. I don't need that kind of disrespect in my life.
A False Hydra and other monsters that messes with the players using illusions and altered perception literally does this. I think im missing something in this instance though.
@@linkholder
Yeah, and those are garbage monsters that shouldn't exist. I think the false hydra isn't even official (not that official sources are free of garbage like this). My response remains the same.
The detail they left out was that the rogue was Kevin McCallister
@@theuncalledfor is part of your character's characterization that they're immune to illusions and psionics
@@hi-i-am-atan
The only thing that can make you forget that you had a close friend for the past who-knows-how-many weeks, and therefore not notice that they're not there, is messing with player characters' memories, which only a really high level casting of Modify Memory (and a good DM doesn't do that to their players unless they specifically consent to it), or some ridiculous memory-destroying monster (same thing applies) can do. It's unfun, frustrating, garbage. I would never do that to my own players (theoretically, I haven't really DM'ed yet, though I hope to do so one day).
A good example of something that could have happened in a game of lancer I played was my DM gave us two options escort some supplies to the city belonging to one of the players clan or save this other clan that was better militarily. Despite my character suggesting the second option the party decided we'd go save the other party members people who needed those supplies.
All was good until my DM turned to me and said my character's love interest was in the second city. This led to conflict rp wise. In the end we split the party and acquired the help of some NPCs but had that not happened my character would have gone on their own and probably failed but I would have happily done that as that would have been a fitting end for a character who's spent their whole dedicating themselves to help save plants all over the galaxy as part of the military and to die trying to save the one thing they got have for themselves
13:02 Obviously, the rogue was also a false hydra.
9:40 that's the thing though- making a kobold troupe where one or two of them uses wands they picked up raiding makes the enemies stand out and be memorable.
For me it kind of depends on the intensity of what's going on. If it's something mindless and menial it doesn't really bother me. Like 'I'm going to decorate my house in this game while waiting for my turn in combat.' If it's something distracting like 'I'm going to do this big dungeon in a video game that requires a lot of attention' not so much.
I let one of my players play a simple game during session (we’re on Discord), which makes him more present. He needs something to do with his hands and the parts of his brain that need constant stimulation; this helps him focus up.
I would not usually allow players to otherwise do this, but if my players play games that are not loud and distracting, it’s fine.
Sounds like a form of ADHD to me.
@@rogerwilco2 Oh it is. I try to be as accommodating as I can.
I personally have a really hard time sitting still and just listening to other people talk. (esp in larger parties where i may not always be involved in the rp, or combat scenario that's happening) And when forcing myself to pay attention and not lose focus I drain my mental energy really quickly, which causes me to become very tired. (I have passed out at my desk previously because I become so exhausted) It's not that I don't care and can't be asked to pay attention to the campaign. It's the opposite, I care a lot so I want to be able to stay alert and present with the ongoings of the session, and not miss anything because im so mentally taxed or, half asleep in my chair.
I do understand that i'm probably not status quo of people that play games mid session, but people often react very negatively when i tell them i do things in the background to keep myself stimulated so i dont explode internally.
I actually play with a couple of folk who have ADHD (the rest of us have autism), and even the GM *needs* to be doing something else on the side to be able to focus. We don't have a problem with anyone getting distracted, either. It's actually ableist of your tables to react that way, especially when your performance isn't being impacted. I get that neurotypical folk consider it impolite, and I can even see from their perspective why they'd think that, but some people just operate differently!
Isnt there a more healthy solution to this other than keeping yourself stimulated from other things? Like, it sounds you could use some professional help for a permanent better life situation and not watching subway surfer as a temporary solution. No front and no shaming ^^
@@FirekingBarong They aren't mutually exclusive? You can use day-to-day coping mechanisms while working towards long-term behavioural changes, and it's weird to assume that one hasn't already sought professional help (which is also expensive and not readily accessible to everyone). I'd love to take you at your words of 'no front and no shame' but this reads obnoxiously close to 'instead of managing your condition in a harmless and unobtrusive way, have you considered just getting cured?'
As an AuDHD DM who runs games for many ADHDers I think agreed upon side activities are very important for managing people's attentions so long as when it is and isnt appropriate to use them is well established.
Another important facet (for me anyway) is learning what keeps different players more engaged and focused, so you can know when they'll want to be paying close attention, if the big dumb Barbarian wants to zone out during the complex political RP then sure, only adds to authenticity when he later doenst know why the party has suddenly changed allegiances
@@FirekingBarong do you think you're talking to a plant or something
we formed a D&D group and I soon realised that we weren't going going to have adventures, we were basically going to be following railroad tracks. It got to a point where we just asked the DM 'what do you want us to do?' We just wanted this campaign to end.
I saw our out when we had to cross a rope bridge across a deep chasm. First, we all went on the bridge at the same time, and the DM was panicking, as that was not his plan (he wanted us to cross one at a time to split us up). He kept insisting the bridge was going to fail, but we said we didn't think it would.
When it became obvious the DM was not going to make the bridge fall, I took out my sword and started hacking at the ropes. The DM got up and left in a huff.
Ad ends at 1:40, by the way
I had a table where the DM was our friend and his fiance would play with us, needless to say after 4 nat 20's in a row we started to realize a common trend with her but let it slide cause we were all enjoying ourselves. Well sometime MIDWAY through the campaign she just SUDDENLY starts buying a bunch of stuff? When we probably only had like, 150 gold in all our pockets combined. She was buying up things tht cost like 3k GOLD. It was insane. Were like?? uhh? How can you afford all this? "From my background, I stole a bunch of stuff from my rich father and sold it the other day"
Mind you, she was a halfling sorcerer so where she was hiding this stuff that cost over TEN THOUSAND gold? I have no idea plus we were across the world from her father. We confronted the dm and hes like, well she just wanted something from her past since my character had something from my past show up. (Mind you it was just a small gold orb from her grandmother that was passed down in the family. And it was probably not even worth 100 gold AND it happened within the narrative). We told him we werent comfy with this and hes like okay but she wants to keep the items she purchased already.... We didnt have a choice in the matter.
Then we came across a candle that can grant ONE wish. It was held in our friends bag of holding that had a LOCK on it. The next day we get there(IRL) its suddenly gone. Where was it you ask? Oh the halfling fiancé has it. How did she get it? Out of session stealth check that she made when we werent there. Yea and mind you, even if that WASNT insane to do. Our friends passive perception is through the roof, it was higher than what she could have rolled WITH stealth on a nat20.
We stopped playing with her entirely.
Jesus and I thought I had seen it all when I DM told a player that their character wasn’t allowed to use bonus actions in battle
Mind you this players character was a freaking FIGHTER! Think about that shit for a second
WHY
I assume this wasn't the effect of a debuff?
@@basedeltazero714 no the DM said it was just too op
@@sunbleachedangel cuz he was a power tripping dick who thought bonus actions were OO
No way! What did Jesus say?
That first story hits hard. I was in a game once with a guy who left the Discord call to play f*cking Warthunder tournament rounds for like ~10 mins at a time. Then he'd come back and want to know what he missed.
It was one of the first games I found through r/lfg and the DM didn't seemed to care, but it was absolutely infuriating to me. The guy didn't pay much attention when he was there either.
that's like even worse than just passively listening when playing a game. Straight up leaving. it's like in an in person game if he got up from the table and left for significant periods of time. "what'd I miss" well while you weren't here your character died because a wolf ate you and you stood still unable to react because you weren't here.
the reflexive guilt-tripping of that last dm is the worst part of it all; like they already made it clear they have no respect for their players as breathing thinking individuals with different wants and needs, but also, when there's the slightest hint at real consequences (eyyy) for their own railroading actions, they immediately try to turn things into 'oh feel bad for meee i guess i can't do anything rightttt' (y'know with the goal, consciously intended or not, being to diffuse criticism and get the players to console them instead).
this is a tactic abusers use.
am i accusing that dm of being an abuser? naw. but holy molyyyyy it's just the perfect lil sprinkles on the entire shit-cake huh.
Many think a GM’s most important job is telling a cool story - that’s the group’s job. The GM’s most important job is making sure everybody’s having fun.
the most important Job? We aren't entertainers and or doormats...
@@CathrineMacNiel GMs are in fact entertainers, and RPGs are entertainment. If you’re not entertained when you play, maybe you should consider a different hobby. As for “doormats”, bowing to every whimsy the players might have is hardly fun in the long run. Sure the shallow and simple-minded might find it fun, but then it gets boring and they move on. Challenge, engagement, stimulation, plot, and deep stories on the other hand is way more fun. So yeah, if you’re only familiar with antagonistic, enjoyment-hating GMs, I’m sorry. I’m sure you find an entertaining game someday…
I think it's a little bit of both. Because you collaborate with the players to make a good story.
Yo, a Sneak King mention in 2024? That's awesome, I was not expecting that. Also, I hate when my players are playing other games during DnD. It's a sign to me, as a DM, that my game isn't interesting enough. When my friend's turn comes around and we have to wait for him or try to get its attention, it wastes everyone's time. I hate it.
20:22 was he wrong though
dnd horror stories are the main reason why it took me so long to join an online dnd game after i took a break from dm'ing for 3 years for a group if friends.
I was explaining to a friend the other day what it is about DMing that I enjoy so much: They say that its about the journey, not the destination. As the DM, I make the paved road and the destination, and my players make the journey. They're the ones creating the story, doing the important rolls, creating relationships, following side quests, and creating their own paths. Half the people and towns they go to only exist because of their decisions, and if they'd wanted to, I told them in session 3 where the solution to their goal is, and 20 sessions later they're finally leaving the starting country. Im here to foster the creativity of my players, and it leads to the most rewarding, creative experiences I've ever had.
I love this style of video dude! Super chill and fun. I've noticed your style change a little bit and it's nice. I enjoy throwing them on while I work on something :))
I have a couple of d&d horror stories, which includes my first time actually playing, all caused by the same friend.
A couple of years ago my friends and I started to get into d&d, but most of us had no prior experience so it was going to be a learning experience for all of us, with some expected kinks along the way. One of my friends (I'll call him DM) was interested in running a campaign for us, and so we set up a weekend for us to gather and play.
Our party consisted of me, a cleric/sorcerer multiclass (a bit ambitious for a first character, but I think I handled it ok), a fighter, a druid, a warlock (the only one of us who had played before), and I think a rogue.
It all started out ok, pretty standard stuff: all our characters in a town when a guard who looks and sounds like Christopher Walken asks for volunteers to help solve a problem. I forget the specifics of what exactly we were meant to do, I think there was a problem with the communication between mortals and Gods, and we were asked to investigate. As a cleric, who believed he was only alive due to his God, my character was naturally on board from the get go. We take up the quest and leave town to go to a nearby village to start our search.
Along the way, we are accosted by a group of bandits, which is where the problems started.
Our warlock intimidated the bandits into leaving us alone, after which we immediately leveled up. So less then an hour in we have to take a break to deal with that. We soon reconvene and continue on our journey, and reach our destination. Unfortunately for us, there are some scarecrows sitting outside the village that attack us, triggering our first real combat.
Even more unfortunately, said combat was a slog to get through, although this was partly due to bad luck. We as a party kept failing our saving throws so we were constantly frightened/paralyzed. Add in the facts that scarecrows are resistant to non-magical bludgeon, piercing, and slashing damage, and that there were 5-10 of them, that one encounter took a long time to get through.
After having felled our brainless foes, we were approached by the mayor of the village: an Archmage (yes, the CR 12 monster, 18th level spellcaster. That archmage), who was less than pleased that we destroyed the towns guards. We argued that they attacked us first, without warning, and were able to enter the town without any more issues.
I believe we booked a night at an inn, but I can't remember if we actually got to spend the night. Our warlock jokingly mentioned we should burn down the town due to it seemingly being mostly composed of guard monsters that attack on sight and annoying mages. This infuriated the Archmage, which led to our third and final combat.
We somehow managed to win with 0 casualties, mainly due to the fact that our DM didn't know how to actually use the Archmage (I don't remember his magic or damage resistances coming up, and the only spell that he cast was magic Missile).
As we tried to catch our bearings, a man appeared in front of us. It was Morgan Freeman. He informed us that all of the other Gods were dead and/or not real, and the he was the true God. He also told us that Christopher Walken, the man who gave us our quest, was actually the Devil, and we had to go kill him.
This revelation didn't sit well with us, and led to several members of the party to become either MIA, or KIA by their own hand. I later found out that the reason for this sudden twist was because our DM thought we weren't taking things seriously.
Thankfully our warlock was able to put together a little something that we played to make the weekend, and first d&d experience not a total disaster.
TLDR: My first d&d game crashed and burned after Morgan Freeman told us he was God, and Christopher Walken was Satan
So you booked a night at an inn. The Warlock joked about burning down the town, presumably nowhere near the archmage so how the [youtube] did that guy hear you. The same archmage that somehow managed to get mad at you for defending yourselves. And YOU, THE PLAYERS, were the ones who weren't taking the campaign seriously?!
That DM was smoking something, and it wasn't even drugs in the traditional sense.
@theuncalledfor Yeah, it was an... interesting first experience. We gave him 2 more shots at DMing, both of which were also bad, so needless to say, we're not letting him do that again.
He's also not really better at being a player. His 3 most recent characters that I know of were Buttercup from the Powerpuff girls as a monk, Gordon Ramsey as a barbarian, and Scarecrow, the batman villain (that last one is fun, because he apparently soft tricked our friend who was DMing for him on that one who doesn't know a lot about comic books. They were quite surprised once they found out, but I've only heard this story second hand, as I wasn't part of that particular campaign)
Nerfing players is almost always the wrong way to go about dealing with balance issues (even if the 21 AC Paladin is not an issue). Bringing the other players up is always better, and if your players are too strong then running harder or more complex monsters is way less irritating then saying "I'm going to make you worse." Being made less effective always feels bad, especially if it's not like a plot thing and is just because you were deemed "too strong"
fucking make harder encounters or something, it's not rocket science
You definetely have a point, however I feel like there is a reasonable limit to "bringing other players up" or else you end up playing lvl 1 characters that are as strong as gods. Nerfing a player is definetely extremely tricky and should not be done with core classes unless both you and the player REALLY know what you're doing, but when using homebrew there's definetely space for it to be a valid solution. And I know that the original conversation wasn't about homebrew bc the player just wanted to be a paladin/wizard, but I just thought I'd bring that up as general food for thought in terms of overall balancing.
💯agree. Nerfing in itself already suggests incompetence by the DM. I've played a couple different games where loot just balanced the rest of the team or vendors had specialist armour/weapons until the next player level up
@@whoanellynelnel3874 yea nerfing is the easier answer for a bad DM becuase they can immediatley identify what they think is too strong. Running harder combats is more difficult
@@Aeivioustrue that, one of my DM's loved reminding us "if you're op -- WE'RE ALL OP" indicating our battle map😂😅
I feel like the dm in the last story was hoping his players would say like “this looks dire, but we will NEVER give up!”. Expecting the players to be adventurously brave, while simultaneously creating a super realistic story and taking away a ton of the free will that DnD gives the players.
Like the D6 rolls to determine the fates of the players. Personally I feel like consequences are something the players should feel approaching. I.e, if you want your players to have some sort of character growth OUTSIDE the game for some reason, at least make their decisions feel like they’re their own, unlike just saying “yeah no you sleep in and none of you can do anything about it”
I can’t help but empathize with the guy, maybe because he cried, but like I get it. You really want to make an awesome story for your players, I’m 99% sure your heart was in the right place. But ya gotta remember that DnD can both be a moving story, but also just an escape from reality where you get to do a ton of cool things you wouldn’t be able to irl.
I could’ve honestly seen a younger version of myself in that dm’s shoes. I too love making cool adventures for my friends. But realizing that EVERYONE wants something different from a campaign is super helpful, and asking your players about it, and then planning the campaign accordingly is even not helpful!!
But what do I know, I’ve only really been playing the game for two years time ^^’
Hopefully the guy learned something valuable from the whole thing, improved, and didn’t shy away from dming in the future. Cuz just like ratatouille; everyone can DM! It doesn’t mean everyone is good at it, but everyone deserves their shot to create a fantasy they enjoy.
That first one is just disrespectful to the DM.
Nobody wants to play with you if you're mentally checked out, don't expect someone to literally make a game for you when you're busy elsewhere.
I love your content. The cool collection of stories that you gained and wisdom from other campaigns shows. Keep up the great work.
I play RPG by text with some friends, actually i preffer it over voice or in person, but yes it is VERY slow, ESPECIALLY during combat situations.
Like, a full scale combate, something like a dragon boss with their minions, or even a dungeon delve, could take about a month and a half to complete if the people are particularly slow that day
I was in a game where it took 3 sessions (3 hours each, last session was finishing the combat took an hour) to beat a final boss.
And 1 to 2 hours for single random encounters
It happens when players just downright dont respect peoples time.
They have to slowly search through books for 1 hour to just firebolt.
And DM didnt have the backbone to just tell them to hurry up.
or just be a giga brain DM and have everything memorized
That's when I pull out my trusty 0 words 5 minutes hourglass. Never had to come up with a consequence for running it out, but the mere existence of an hourglass on the table really helps with speeding people up.
Oh, the Nerf DMs agitate me. Back in 3.x days, you'd see someone play a Rogue, and suddenly all the enemies are like oozes, constructs, and undead who can't get hit for sneak attack damage. Once had a campaign that was sold to us as a goblin war campaign, and never faced a goblin after level 2. The WAR with the goblinoids was still going, but we never encountered them despite being in the "advance force" that was making forays into enemy territory. Why? Cause the Ranger took Favored Enemy (Goblinoid)... yeah, that was it. ONE guy took ONE relevant ability as a RANGER, the class most likely to get screwed by the rules of the game, and that was just too much.
Oh, had a similar one. One campaign, DM specifically says we can pick any race and class as long as it's not full homebrew, we can pick anything from official books. Okay, artificer fairy, artillerist subclass. Idea was that I create small, portable handcannons and shoot at enemies and mostly fight with that, and later enchant it to use it as a catalyst for some predetermined spells. I sent him the character sheet in advance, as it was asked.
We start out without gear, because all of us got caught by some dark elf slavers. Also, custom location, with a homebrew lore, because the guy wanted to play a "Warhammer-ish story, with DND rules". Well, there goes my entire backstory, but whatever, I'll adapt. We got brought out into this arena to fight other captives for our lives. Turns out all three waves he planned (mind, we are lvl 1 at this point) get trivialized, partly because they were all melee and as a fairy I have magic flight as a passive. DM is like "wtf, why can you fly". I'm like, I literally sent you over the sheet days ago, it clearly states I'm a fairy, didn't you look up the racial traits? Nope, he, in fact, did not.
For the rest of the first 3-4 sessions I wasn't allowed to fly because "the dark elf masters put an anti-magic field over the arena" Anti-magic field that didn't block anything else, but my flight. Whatever. We escape, get some as a gear, join up with a big caravan as hired mercenaries to head north. Hobgoblin raid... where practically every single hobgoblin is armed with a bow or crossbow, not a single melee only fighter. Next fight has vampire bats that can fly faster than I can.
When I point this out, "well, I have to put stuff in the fight to be able to target you, you have 19 AC and can fly, way too OP". I kinda just tuned out after that one. Stayed with the group, because it was a friend group... until there was a fallout where I ended up fighting about some nonsense, turned into a shouting match, at which point I just left and from what I know that was the last DND session of that group ever.
Ranger is a fundamentally bad class. Rogues with wilderness knowledge are better.
Oh, that's hilarious. Realistically, in the overarching metanarrative of D&D, a ranger with Favored/Species Enemy of goblinoids is someone who you would *want* on the frontlines, who generals and mayors and kings alike would pay out the nose for them to be there, because that's someone who has dedicated a fair portion of their life devoted to combatting wars with goblinoids.
@@blacklightredlight2945 Entirely off-topic, congratulations. Yes, rangers are more likely to get screwed over by DMs refusing to engage with their kit, but the conversation is about it being a fundamentally bad practice to avoid engaging with a PC's kit.
@@Warfoki it's funny because like, yeah there should be stuff that can target you but like...there's a difference between having SOME stuff that can and making so every encounter is every single enemy counters you
The last DM I had got bored of playing as the DM, so instead of just telling us he was bored and asking someone else to take over, he put the difficulty up so much that it was near impossible for us to actually win anything without stressing out or taking heavy losses. The last couple of sessions were miserable. We thought it was going somewhere, only for it to turn out it was planned to be unwinnable in the end.
I was a DM that made a similar mistake. Had the party get captured by a cult and try to blackmail the party to join with them. While it was a rough start, but it made for the best party revenge. My party did everything they could on their missions to screw over the cult, but still "completed" their missions. I was completely on board with the party and while the party didn't continue the campaign in its second arc, we still had a blast
Regarding last one: I truly dont get with how many of such stories are there and none of those ends up with dms getting punched. Their whole idea of a game is to waste your time and fuck you over. Call me whatever you want, but sometimes solution is that simple, you cant argue with someone like that, but can teach a lesson that will stick.
Looking forward to seeing Colten's hot takes about Jacob and how it makes them irrationally angry!
My gf was running her first dnd session and we found out halfway through that one of the players was playing CoD Zombies while playing. We had to get his attention many times. It was frustrating and it was the first and last session we played with that guy.
Agree on games during session- as DMs me and my friend both agreed our little group are fine playing menial games in the background as long as it doesn't disrupt session and distract people from what's going on. Usually it grindy games where you can hit autoplay.
But the key thing here is that PERMISSION IS GIVEN.