-Keeps telling the players they're not smart enough to know what something is even when they clearly should -Gets mad when the party starts asking if they're smart enough to know what literally anything is I don't think this DM is smart enough to know what karma is.
4 роки тому+6
This is why rules exist. And this is why knowledge rolls exist. Like if they are not goblins he should just roll nature check. I think I would quit quickly with such DM.
That guy basically just put Warhammer 40k orks into the game. Combined with the aliens from Aliens. And all that with just a single resistance check, rather than multiple ones. In a world with magic where characters can survive far worse hits. And all that while ignoring the fact that most people in general would be aware of the "goblins" and their morbid traits.
This DM would be ingrained in my head for ever. I wanted to make a sea sorcerer Triton. The DM said we start on a boat. Me and other players went with water characters, my best friend made a crab druid who summons crabs, becomes crabs and has crab arms (simic hybrid). It was because of him I stayed as long as I did. We spent only 1 session in the water. We all ended up making new characters except my best friend, who stuck with his character, arguing that as crabs arent specifically water based, he is ok. The DM allows it as we all want his character "Mr Snips" to stay. I ended up making a Aasimar paladin. In the end the crab druid and me slayed every monster the DM threw against us. I would smite and grapple the enemy while the druid summons hordes of crustaceans to overwhelm them.
Aasimar are just made for Paladins, especially the Scorge subrace. I love how their transformation synergizes with the Paladins´ Divine Smite for full extra radiant damage.
Certainly more on target than a tagalong one of my players brought one time whose response to "you're (going to be) on a ship, probably going pirate" was to demand to play a lawful good centaur paladin, then refuse as disruptively as possible to even consider anything else. He wasn't welcomed back again... And this was when he was in his mid-twenties, and had somehow been playing d&d for years before that. >.
What is a bad dm? A MISERABLE PILE OF RAIL ROADS! but enough talk HAVE AT YOU! *throws dice in bad dms face* Huh multiple stories? Neat! _Yirbel lives!_
Tl;Dr 1st Story: DM with a "me vs them" mentality attempts to kill players with bullshit homebrew "goblins" and receives karmic justice for unfairly denying a player advantages against his monsters 2nd Story: DM fails(?) to properly explain his game and world to a new player, leading the new player to feel useless with their character, then gets mad when the player makes a perfect counter to his bullshit. 3rd Story: DM wanted to write a book, invited his friends to bore them to death with his monologues instead (But seriously, if the whole first chapter of your book is Gary Stu wandering around town while getting info dumped you probably shouldnt be a writer) 4th Story: 10 minutes are apparently too much to wait for some people...
@@pogggaming4470 For starters, if goblins are extremely deadly creatures in your setting like in this story, it should be common knowledge and therefore warned to the players before they engage them in any way. Secondly, instant death effects should only ever be given to endgame traps and creatures. I know some play them that way, but TTRPGs are not videogames, its collaborative story telling and characters should be treated with the same respect as protagonists in a book, when was the last time you saw a main character get done in by a trash mob? That doesnt make for a good story, just a horror one. Finally, whatever you make or create, if the players find a way to vanquish it that didn´t fit your plans, roll with it. Only shitty people get mad because a player got creative with their problem solving or prepared themselves for that specific problem.
Worst DM I ever had: Joined a campaign on Roll20, was forced to play a character that wasn't my own, wasn't filled in on what the party had done up to that point. DM was the most boring and unengaging DM I've ever seen, delivering everything in a flat monotone with the plainest narration ever. Two sessions after I join the group, he ghosts us. Left the group immediately.
I'm sorry man, I haven't even been able to find anyone to play with yet cause of my stupid sporadic schedule. I got a character in mind too and would rage if he died, I'm thinkin I should just write a story instead 🤣 /cheers
I think we met the same guy mine was pharo not gonna give off more specific name (aka exact spelling) but he randomly started the second session out of no where and told me i was holding up the group anf blocked and ghosted me....3 days later i see a new discord post by him looking for 4 out of 5 members he made us random gen characters and everything else and his map was very very un apealing
I had something where I was the only player not given a race or class I would like. The guy talking about how cool dragonborns are. Got that race, the guy that plays flirty characters got a flirty race. I left at the end of character creation because I just felt like I wasn't going to have fun. Haven't rolled with them or even talked to them after that.
Depends heavily on the medium in which the story is taking place. Movies: Show don't tell. Picture Book: combination of the two (you only have so much space on each page for images and words) Novel: Nothing but words, can't really show anything with words, so all you can do is tell.
@@deathsheir2035 not really. "Show dont tell" still aplies in literature, just in a diferent way. As a exemple, you can use it by letting the characters (and the readers) to interact diretcly with the thing. Dont tell them that the mountain have lots of orcs living in caves, let them be attacked and experience it first hand. That's what Tolkien used to exhaustion in his books. He didnt tell about the things, he showed us what the characters did think about the things.
@@albertonishiyama1980 That is still telling the audience what is happening, rather than showing them what is happening. What you described is called "reader engagement." Where instead of being able to show the reader what is happening, descriptions of what is happening must be used instead. Use the right words, in the right combination, will engage the reader to continue reading, to find out more. One description is far more engaging, than the other. That which is more engaging varies from person to person. Those who loves world-building, would more often than not, prefer the mountain being described as orc infested, rather than the heroes suddenly being attacked by orcs during their mountain climb. You can describe the mountain as being orc infested, and how our heroes prepare for the climb up the mountain anyway despite the dangers, ready to take on the onslaught of orcs that they are likely to face, but is their preparation enough?; which in turn, prepares the reader for an orc encounter, and possibly even have them question if the heroes prepared enough to deal with the orcs. That can be engaging enough for readers to want to know how close the heroes came to death despite their preparations. Or you can describe how the heroes start climbing the mountain, and then suddenly, Surprise orc ambush. Heroes caught unprepared, barely making it out alive, and their remaining climb left on edge, in the event of another orc ambush. This too can engage the reader, as the ambush surprised them just the same, and they continue reading to find out how close to death the heroes came. There are only two incorrect methods, when it comes to reader engagement: 1) Not enough detail is provided, to make the readers care about what happens. 2) Too much details, that it drags on for far too long, disengaging the reader. Which ever method you use in attempt to engage the reader (orc mountain, that heroes climb anyway, or climb mountain surprise orc ambush), neither method is better than the other.
@@watcherofmemelords7967 true, Dr. Strange certainly has a mastery over illusion, time, and general arcane knowledge (I think he's meta tier.) I think astoshan could possibly hold is own for a while at least.
I have a story to tell if someone wants to listen (English is not my first language so I am sorry for the grammar mistakes I may have) and it's about bad players (me included to be honest) My group was made by 4 players and the DM, A human druid, a dragonborn barbarian, a furry rouge and a tiefling warlock; all of us true neutral. Our DM was a not railroading one, he gave us total freedom to do what we want but that turned against him when we started to ignore the obvious plot hooks in order to fulfill our background missions or stories we had wrote, so our warlock went to a killing spree eliminating all the target on a list gave to him by the devil in exchange for the soul of his wife (in the end he had to kill himself to complete the deal but instead we kill the devil and retrieved the soul of his wife anyway), the druid made herself a druglord and made a cartel/mafia, the dragonborn had the soul of a dracolitch inside him and after finding that out he convinced the dracolitch to work with him and give him a dragon body which in the end was a trap and sealed the dracolitch inside a philactery and throwed it to the Astral Plane. I was the only one without a backstory like that because I was a simple tabaxi who wanted to go to an adventure. Eventually all of our backstory desires were fulfilled but when a plot hook showed up the party refused because that didn't involved their backstory. Finally the DM asked "why do you keep ignoring them? you all already finished your backstory missions". Druid: " if it was for me I will go to the missions but it's not something my character would do". The others (but me) agreed. DM: "so if it was for you, you would do it?" Druid: "yes". I can almost swear the DM had an evil smile on his face when the druid said that "yes". DM: "Fine see you next week I may have something that you would like to play then". The next week the DM was dressed very weird, he made himself a mustache and untied his long hair, then when we were sitting on the table he said something in character like "be welcome mortals I bought you here to offer you a trip, a mission, the adventure of your lives" Druid: "sorry, not interested. Where is my character sheet BTW?". DM: "I am not speaking with that boring druid, she has failed me. I am speaking to you mortal. Wouldn't you like to go on an adventure for glory and CHEESE?! All of you?". They: (something like yeah). DM: "good, is not like if you had a choice anyway. (Sort of evil and mad)Hahaha". After that he borrowed us some little papers which had the name of our characters on them we picked one randomly and some ended up with someone's else's character. Then the DM described how a flash happened and we entered into the dnd world as that character we took we had to act like ourselves in our character's body and word, it was kinda offensive for the druid because he ended up as my furry and he didn't like furrys. When the DM s character showed up the druid said: "I don't care, I am going to be a drug lord or something". DM: "so if was for you, you will do it. Wasn't that what you said?". Druid: "Fine, you got me there". And we finally started the second act of his campaign which was really good if you ask me, we actually were very interested on it because he gave everything to make it awesome. We ended up finishing the entire campaign and going back to the real world. Honestly it was a really good way for the DM to deal with the difficult players we were. PD: I may add that we were friends for many years so kick out players or the DM wasn't an option. The druid (and the others) ended up apologizing for the troubles. I also know the dialogues because the DM recorded that session and he gave it to me when I had a similar problem with some of my players when I started to DM in a local game store. And if any of you ask the DM's character was a kind of Shegortath the god of madness so he could explain why he could break the 4th wall. I hope you have enjoyed it (and sorry if it wasn't so easy to understand or confusing, as I said English is not my first language)
@@patrickduffin7912Thank you. I will remember telling him that. And he didn't exactly cosplayed as Shegortath but a "modern version of him" he cut vertically a purple and a red jacket (with different styles) and trousers and fixed them together to make outfit, he had a staff with an 8ball which was the "holly simbol" of this deity, and cut his facial hair in order to copy the oblivion's Shegortath. I am honestly kinda impressed by that because he only had 1 week to prepare everything. I hope that didn't ruined your amusement about his performance
@@juancruznoriega7058 Still, the fact he tried in the first place gets a thumbs up in my book and him doing that hardly ruined it. If anything, it made the story more enjoyable.
I would like to think if i had people who didn't want to adventure saying my character wouldn't do that i would just say ok make a character that would...
Sometimes it would be smarter to write a book then run dnd Edit just to be clear I don't mean the book will be good just won't involve others getting mad
One of the worst part is? That guy had them read a novel (read: fanfic of his OC). Plenty of time to do world building there. He could have assumed that the people have already gotten into the world through that. Unless he basically made the whole book all about his PC, in which case... It's still his fault.
@@OzixiThrill Part of the problem when trying to make a homebrew world that is rich in detail and content that few are actually capable or creating. It is far easier to use an existing setting if you want that level of development or just accept that world building homebrew settings is an ongoing process that will involve your player's input.
This reminds me so much of my friend's bad GM. He was in a room that had water flowing into it. He heard something from up ahead, so he declared he crouched down to try to wait for what was ahead. The GM kept on having him make d20 rolls every round without telling him what they were for, then when he got a low one, declared that his character had drowned from crouching under the surface of the water for too long. Apparently, the GM didn't feel his character was smart enough to remember he had to breathe.
I'm reminded of my old railroader DM whose DMPC could not be permanently killed because ELMINSTER himself would come to save him, even when not in the Forgotten Realms setting. When that got old and he almost had to fight my PC he suddenly had a room with an anti-magic field that somehow didn't effect magical ropes wrapped around my PC because he was a 20+ strength Monk and didn't need no Ki to win.
This reminds me, one of the more recent (within the past 2 months, I think) videos on CritCrab's channel is about all the warning sign stories of bad RPGs actually being used as the inspiration on how one DM should run his game, a DM that was part of the CritCrab community no less. Sometimes, all those warnings have the opposite effect on some people.
The first and second one remind me of a game I joined once. Was playing a custom race based on Burmecians from Final Fantasy 9 (DM approved). Decided to go dervish dancer with silk clothing to get that Cleyran vibe, for anyone familiar with the game. The campaign was Kingmaker, but every single enemy would focus my character first, only attacking the rest of the party once my character was incapacitated. I quit when the Giant Centipede knocked my character to 0HP, the cleric healed me so I could get back up and the GM had the centipede climb on top of my character to pin me before I had a chance to get up.
Many years ago I joined into a Dragonstar D&D game, it was going pretty well till the party was captured by Drow space pirates. The entire party was being held and starved for some time my tiny little Arfiacer was the only one who made her con checks but after this, all played out over the course of several days in character? One of the pirates burst in and basically told the party to rape my character or they would kill her. At that point, the entire party went what the hell at the DM and walked from the game here and there. Most of them also cut ties to the DM who I found out later had a long history of pulling shit like that. I didn't get to be in another real D&D game ... for over a decade after that incident. Thankfully now in an amazing 5e game set in Eberson where I play a Wizard who is an Inquisitive Agency's CSI lab :D
I made a goblin bard whom I called Father. And in any situation I would cast charm person or anything like that and have father say you are my dad to the enemy and if it succeeded the interaction would go Father: I am your dad. Enemy: you are my dad. Both: boogie woogie woogie. But if I failed the enemy had to scream "you not my dad".
@@alexanderthegreat6682 which you would only learn by doing. Wisdom is the things you know that school/books can't teach. It's like common sense, worldly experience. Having high int and low wis would be like a mad professor who is a great mathematician but doesn't know how to tie his shoes or keeps losing his keys.
3: DM's need to remember they aren't the main characters, the party is the main characters and build around that. DMPC can be good to add to a party especially if the DM dose enjoy playing a character as well but don't hijack the story as that character.
Here is some advice even tho you did not ask for it. Consistency, and character agency is important. Try to keep what you decided and adjudicated previously be the same later. Changing the rules without first talking it over with the group should not happen. Try to treat everyone the same, no favoritism, nor ignoring characters. Take control when it is needed, and don't let the players run away with the game, but at the same time give them the freedom to do what they want as long as it doesn't disrupt the game. Paint a picture and let the players decide what they want to do with it rather than tell them what they think, but at the same time if a character would know some information based on their race, skills, or background, give that information to them. If you have an NPC in the group, they should be no powerful than the group unless it is for the specific session being played at the moment. In this case they should aid but not dominate whats happening in the session. Nor should a NPC be so far less powerful as to be no help to the group, again unless it is specific to the session now running. It is ok to have a NPC give them information, but they shouldn't be telling the story that the players should be finding out on their own. Tho there does not need to be combat in every game there should be a challenge of some kind, tho once in a while, a purely role playing session can happen but even then attempt to give the PC problems to solve. Being the DM does not make you right, but it gives you the power to make a final decision. Weigh both sides of a problem needing an answer before deciding, and then move on. If a PC can show you where you were wrong, do not feel like you have to stand by the last decision for future occasions that are similar. It is ok to admit you were wrong, but that you are continuing with that decision for now, to keep the game moving.or if it seems right for the campaign then keep it as decided and let the PC know this.
Most of these "bad DMs" sound like me when I first started, but making the beginners mistakes to an extreme. They could be not bad, but just inexperienced.
Sounds like when you first started you were a bad DM, just like them. I’m sure now you’re better since you have noticed these mistakes, but if you do any of these, you are a bad DM, I made some shitty mistakes when I started, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t bad,
Got a funny story of my most recent session I'm DMing. Party travels on their small, personal airship out to a ruined city that has some association with a storm. When they get there they find a huge maelstrom like sandstorm rising into the sky, encircling and blocking all access to this city. No one has ever been able to get through it or at least come back to confirm they have. Captain of the airship tells the party there's no way over it, since it's well above flight ceiling for their airship, and going through it it's going to more than likely result in the airship getting hurled around; the only likely option it's on foot, low to the ground, using the terrain to try to brave it. Player 3: "I say we try to use the airship anyway." Me as Captain: "I really don't think that's a good idea." Player 3: "DM...are you railroading us?" Me: "The captain starts handing you iron rails and slats of wood saying, "I don't know what you're talking about." Players all laughed and I asked them if they really wanted to attempt it with the airship, but they decided to do the on foot idea, lol. Reality was that I was prepared to adhoc the airship attempt, but they were SO EXCITED about getting the airship last session that I didn't want the dice's only reasonable outcome to be having the thing eating sand and leaving them stranded. Especially not when we'd JUST got the campaign back on track after months of RL issues that resulted in two characters and a player getting dropped.
Had this really bad experience with a D&D event, playing 4th Edition Encounters, which are short 3 or 4 battle adventures with no resting and are HARD AS HELL, the DM wasn't familiar with the game and had no experience making characters, he gave us some pre-made PCs for us to tackle the adventure, my PC was a Warlock with no AC but higher than average HP cuz he figured that way I wouldn't be so easily killed, had no good spells and only had one "spell-item combo" which did nothing to the enemies. We died on the 3rd round of the first battle. Here is what's upseting: this event we had to pay to play and we could only participate on final point tally IF we managed to complete the Encounter so we all lost our money and our chance to win prizes because the DM was a total noob!
The one about the angry guy at the end reminds me of how a campaign I was a part of for a little while was run. The party turn order was determined by who sat where around the table, starting immediately to the DM's left and moving clockwise. You had approximately ten seconds to declare what you were going to do for your turn or he would skip you. He wasn't angry or anything, but I didn't think it would be a good match for me, especially since my Lizardfolk Druid both stood out like a sore thumb and didn't bring much to the table.
Player: "Alright, here's my next character, an elder wizard with maximum intelligence who's only purpose is to study and know everything that has ever come to being in the world." Terrible DM: "You're too stupid to know how to write down your discoveries. Oh, but never fear, there's this awesome self insert VERY NPC chosen hero who already knows everything in reality and magic. He'll join you in your quest, but he's in a very important speech of how perfect he is, and he refuses to do it unless a specific group of adventurers are there to witness his greatness." Player: "I kill myself as to never be a part of this "game"."
I don't know, depends on whether the other players were into it. If they were as annoyed with the DM's behavior as he was, then I think it would be fine revenge.
The DM was making them have combat actions prepped for 5 second callouts, maybe that's too short a time to say your action, but have a conversation with him to remedy that. I don't feel there's a need to waste ten minutes of everyone's time passive-aggressively pushing his buttons (or pulling his levers), and then to continuously bring it up to annoy him. Yes, the DM could have more grace and change his ways, but from that story the player sounds far worse
@@flyin_solo2573 : Honestly don't see anything wrong with expecting PCs to choose an action quickly in a combat situation. Some DMs prefer to make combat a stressful activity, as opposed to having combats crawl as people take 5 minutes to analyze every action. Expecting them to declare an action in 5 seconds isn't all that bad, I mean you should be thinking about your action before your turn comes up. The player was just an ass. If he didn't want a high-stress combat game, that's one thing, but he just wanted to childishly sabotage it.
@@taragnor Thats 2 ends of a spectrum. If you make me make a decision on what Im doing in 5 seconds and then give everyone else also 5 seconds, I do not have time to think about what I wanna do. Gimme like a minute MAYBE 2 minues if the situation is particularly precarious. "Some DMs want to make combat more stressful" ah yes after a long week of work stress I finally get to play a game of D&- WHY DONT YOU INSTANTLY KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING????? yeah cuz thats fun
I had a bad DM moment with my current DM once. He wanted us to go steal something from a tower, and we were a lawful oriented party so we turned it down; he kept pointing us to this tower and after 100,000g spent bribing a god to point us in a direction, it pointed us to the tower, we straight up stopped mid-session and told him, "we are not going to do this, stop trying to make us do this" after that, he got the message, and gave us another option the next session. Difference between a good and bad DM? A good DM listens to their players.
While the last DM may have been a touch impatient, I was getting the feeling that the spokesperson was grandstanding; rejecting other party members' participation in an effort to antagonize the DM on purpose...
I had a DM literally forget me. I sat right next to him and I figured out his puzzle but he ignored me; another player repeated the exact same thing and he responded to that player. I was ignored by the dm so much that when the party had to make saving throw and everyone (but me) failed he was going to end the game. It wasn’t til one of the other players pointed out that I passed, that he noticed. In the end, he said that my role saved the party but it was end of the session time anyway so it didn’t matter.
I'm a bit worried about the impact my own DMPC's are having on my current game... the game is supposed to be modeled after a traditional 'Hero's Journey', but I'm trying to do this while keeping the railroading to a minimum. The party is currently being accompanied by two NPCs. One of them is a Gandalf-type guide who is explicitly more powerful than the party, but who has also flat-out told them that she will only accompany them on the beginning stages of the journey, and after they board the boat to their destination, they are on their own. She also makes a point of not doing everything for them, and letting them test their own strength against the dangers on the road, only stepping in when necessary. The other NPC is a childhood friend (the first couple of sessions had the PC's growing up in a small town, and the adventure proper began when they hit adulthood) who has their own stake in the adventure, and who so far has been fairly useless, though he hasn't been dragging them down. Unbeknownst to the party and to himself, he is actually a demigod who has yet to grow into his own power. When he does, how he chooses to use that power will depend in large part on the moral lessons he picks up from the party. He may end up being the edge the party needs to save the world... or he may end up being the final challenge they need to overcome. From a storytelling perspective, these two characters probably work just fine. From a D&D perspective, the only saving grace of the 'Gandalf' is, I suspect, that she won't be sticking around for very long and the party knows that. They don't *seem* annoyed with how she's been played so far, but that would probably change if she stayed around to steal their thunder. The demigod kid, though... that will have to be handled *very* carefully.
Late reply, but I agree with your assessments, and I honestly feel that you have DMPCs who aren't necessarily constricting or overriding. The fact one of your DMPCs is spelling out that they'll help but not steamroll every challenge means you're doing it good. When your Demigod starts to get his power, try to split him off from the party. Maybe have him drop in once in a while, but don't let him hang around for two long. Keep your players focused nor on him going nuts with his new divinity, but on the quest before them Talk with the player/s and ask them to be honest about what and how you're doing. If they're OK with the characters thus far, keep them. If not, maybe make a few tweaks or swap them out. You may need to make an 'Allies' system, where your PC/s can bring NPC characters they can give general orders and you move them and Attack with them. Maybe do a little roleplay to make them feel personable and stuff. Just some thoughts. Also, if this campaign has ended, I hope it was ok!
DM's that play the inception level "unknown knowns and known unknowns and unknown unknowns!" nonsense are the best to mess with. "What makes goblins my favored enemy?" "What?" "Why and how are Goblins my favored enemy? Do I not likely the look of goblins? Do I not like *the idea* of goblins? If someone identifies as a goblin are they a favored enemy? What about a goblin that identifies as a human? What about really small, goblin esque humans/halflings? Can someone be made into an honorary goblin and become a favored enemy?" Don't @ me motherfucker, we will dive down this rabbit hole until we hit Wonderland...
Hah the part where he kept asking am I smart enough made me laugh for like 15 minutes that’s the longest I’ve ever laughed ever I still watch it and one time I was actually crying and couldn’t breath one of my parents came in and asked me if I was ok he had to wait like 30 minutes for me to stop laughing and calm down I still can’t get over it
6:57 Good grief with this selfinportant dushes. DMPCs are`t supposed to be OP plot divices, at max they should be a way to the GM act in the game, nothing more, if you want to be The Hero just buy any RPG game and be the savior there :/
I tell you the truth, sometimes as GM is hard don't talk to my self when I'm "world building". Especially because my player are not use to ask simple question like "what's new in town?" or " there something suspicious in this room?". In some occasions I've just add NPCs to the party just to say important information and make the story go forward. Sometimes the player don't interact and just wait for the campaign to be served. (or they waiting for the monster hunting) Even so I agree on the fact that these DM have exaggerated.
@@loto8052Oh, hum...That is new to me, my players usually question me alot about the world so I usually dont need to do it much but, wow, yeah that makes alot of sence to me man, tks for the imput :D
Only time I ever really used a ‘DMPC’ so far was a master craft if I do say so. Basically two players had to emergency leave while we were basically at the end of the campaign and rather than invite two new people for like 3 session in order to balance combat I made ‘Jonerik aka Joe Generic’ Human, Point buy, Champion Fighter, 9 Int,Wis,Cha. 16 Con, Str,Dex. Had few opinions if any and was basically a meat Shield and ironically the players got attached and he actually had his cool moments like 1v1ing a giant spider while at 1 hp for several rounds while the pcs handled the boss.
That last op was just a total troll. My gawd, I wouldn’t have scraped the whole campaign, but I would be tempted to not use any puzzles in any future sessions that guy was in.
in response to the last question, an old jedi master said it best, even if he was talking about something else: "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."
Dude pretty much just imported 40k orkoids into a fantasy setting. that world is screwed by the way as the 'dust' infect and grow until it'snothing but warbands trying to fight eachother or a WAAAUUUUUGH!!!!!!! forms and leaves for other worlds.
Goblinoid dust sounds good in concept, because it’s similar to red sladds, but it needs to have a Con save of 5 + con mod + proficiency (if proficient in con)
When I was a newbie DM in the 80s as a teen, I am guilty of some of these. In my defense, I saw most of the "easy" puzzles I did as just something interesting and obvious and not something that one that did not live in my mind would see. I also saw the "Easter Eggs" as easy free loot that my players were either ignoring or "just being stupid" about. I assumed my players thought like me... and I was far from thinking like most people. My dungeons had great stories and very good complexities... I was just a bad DM. My players did love the "Rule of Disaster" where if everyone died and the party unanimously votes on using it, I rewind the whole mission to where everyone was alive as long as they agree the odds would be against their fore-knowledge and their making the same decisions would instantly give the same results.
That DM from the first story definitely had it coming. I dabble in worldbuilding here and there, and here are my gripes with that his approach to this: 1. Chestburster goblins at such an early level? That's some overpowered bullshit right there. Like, this was NOT balanced for a level 1 encounter, and this is why. Geez, if you REALLY want chestbursters, at least wait until level 4 or 5 and then go for something like the Slaad. Our tank (Arkras) had one of their tadpoles growing in a wound after we fled some Slaad that were too strong for each of our levels at the time. And he luckily didn't end up dying because the Cleric pulled out the growing Slaad chestburster the second heal around. Thank the dice gods for that Cleric player rolling good Medicine checks on that one. But an NPC that we helped saved the life of in that same encounter having one of those kill him that way at a party in our honor? Yeah, that drove home the point that 'shit this could've been our homeboy Arkras' more then enough. We knew we had dodged a bullet and should be careful of these things in the future, but our DM did that without a bullshit early-game kill like this. Give your players at least a shot at avoiding that fate: we got only 2 chances, but that was all we needed. All in all: this character's death should've been retconned, and time should've rewinded to right before the encounter in order to better balance it (after everyone searing on the rulebook not to metagame the crap out of this later, of course). 2. While we're on the subject of chestburster goblins anyways? I frankly don't even see them making sense in a worldbuilding context. How the heck do they grow fast enough to nearly instantly chestburst out of you after breathing it in? I know that the Slaad tadpole I mentioned at least took a few days, because we had to sail back from an island we thought abandoned. Do these goblins NOT have a gestation period like how MOST children are born in a DYNAMIC WORLD!? How long until they mature (for example: is this faster or slower then humans)? Do females and males exist within their species, or are they technically genderless because they technically reproduce with spore clouds? Sorry not sorry, but this just pisses my inner writer off to no end. The very existence of these goblins make zero sense to me. 3. A goblinoid hunter who can't identify that it's actual goblins? Really? That's the purest of bullshit that I have ever seen. Come on, that character would've seen at least one turn into mist at least once, and he would've definitely seen one up close enough to be able to identify them at a reasonable distance. He could DEFINITELY tell an orc from a goblin too, this was really a bad call on the DM's end that should've been retconned the next session. You're the freakin' DM, you can just turn back time to right before you ruled that. Dude needs to get over himself: You're the DM, but you can't be hijacking someone else's character without mind control.
Just as a counter to your first point, designing fair encounters is more of the training wheel edition of D&D. I prefer the more realistic versions where it is possible to encounter a dragon or even a tarrasque at 1st level depending on where the PCs go and what the dice roll is. This represents the verisimilitude of reality in that life isn't fair and that the PCs do not always need to engage in combat. My criticism is not that the monsters were too powerful, but that their chest bursting spore ability should be common knowledge, just like trolls don't fare well against fire is common knowledge to communities where they are encountered. I would also point out that there are many times when a PC gets only one chance (like a saving throw), otherwise they are killed. However, death is rarely a sure thing in D&D as there are options. I know later editions have been more and more generous at keeping characters alive, but character death should always be a possibility, otherwise what is the point of adventuring if there is no real danger of dying.
I think one of my favorite campaigns to play in the DM actually elevated a PC to god tier. This character was basically god tier when we finished the campaign leading up to our newer campaign so it made sense. He took the essence of this character though and made them a literal deity to the people only a few generations removed from the events of the campaign that we played emperor big G style. So much fun to be had.
These were some hilarious stories, ngl, especially given how the players dealt with their respective DM's bullshit. Story 3 was especially great. The only time muderhoboing is unironically acceptable, methinks. 🤣
"Noticing that this supposed hero seemed to have everyone in his pockets whilst evil still existed outside the town walls, the adventurers came to a daring, yet stunning conclusion.. HE was the one behind it all..! And so, bravely they drew their weapons to smite the evil that kept the world in it's thrall!" -A true story, probably.
Once upon a time I had a group for D&D 3.5 full of murderhoboes, all but one player that was basically the personification of apathy towards everything I tried to do in my campaign, we'll call him A. So one day we meet for a new small campaign and he pipes up wanting to be a dm, not his first time according to him (but his first with us), and since I wanted to be a player once in a while I accept his offer. Now I knew he had just finished playing baldurs gate on ps and I had done just about the same so color me surprised when, after telling us it was going to be a super epic campaign and we could use our old characters (clue lv 17 with epic classes, I was an arcane ranger) and he starts the game literally in the same way as the video game baldurs gate, down to the dialog with the barmaid and the rat hunts in the tavern basement, yes normal rat. Suffice to say we didn't last a second session....
i sometimes have the problem feeling that im not a good dm since im not way too good into the rules (trying my best tho) and trying literally very hard to bring joy to my players, i enjoy playing with new players since i can get more creative and away from the rulebook. But aswell i get anxious when experienced players play my game. Though it makes me happy to see that im not that kind of bad as a dm lmao. Thanks.
I feel bad for the last DM. You want everyone to get a chance to play out the elements they enjoy in every session. Some people love RP, lore, combat, or other things. And when you're in a store, your time is likely limited, so there's pressure from that as well. Asking people to have a good idea of what they want to do on their turn in combat quickly isn't a bad thing, that's good for keeping combat flowing. Obviously things can change right before your turn and you might be a caster where that throws your game plan out of the window. So just say "I was gonna but...I'll move here...action this, bonus action that." People can appreciate that because they've been there. Don't be playing on your phone, or chatting away and ignoring the combat. Everyone's there to have a good time, so respect their time and be prepared.
Me and the rest of my party once took down a dragon mid-flight. The DM rolled to see if the corpse would land on us, which it did. And then.... it had Death Throes and exploded. It killed 2 of the Player Characters and all intrest in playing with him as DM ever again :P
I've had a dm like the one in number 3. I think we had 2 fights between levels 1 to 15. It was basically just the dm roleplaying between his several dmpcs. We all got tired of it so I wound up stealing half his players for my game. They loved my game especially after playing his for 2 months and being able to do nothing.
Hearing these stories of outwitting DM's, I'm just taking notes so that I can make my players suffer whenever they die in stupid ways just to spite me.
Oooh wow. I don't think I'm an inpatient DM. But, having 5 Players to run combat and stimulate each players around the table, means I had to find some method to accelerate combat a little. So, I give them about 30 seconds and warn them ahead of time when their turn is going to come around. So they can prepare and keep track of what's happening. After the 30 seconds, I give them a 5 second countdown that, if no action is taken, I make their character take the Dodge action and move on. So far, I've only ever had to do it once. It's allowed them to be much more attentive to the game, coming up with different tactics ahead of time and even learn what their characters can do. Recently, my wife surprised me (I WAS SO HAPPY), with a spell she had access to which would distract the guards. She was SO quick on her feet, I didn't even make my Npc roll or anything. I just gave it to her because it was SO perfect and SO shocking that she would act so quickly, that by giving it to her, everyone around the table cheered for her success and quick thinking. These are moments that makes DnD so much fun, where the PCs can truly dictate the direction of the game and I give them the power to do so. I even have a 13yr old Kid who loves to come back after 13, sessions to this day. Even her mother (also a player) is surprised that her kid hasn't said anything about not wanting to play with us and continues to enjoy the Adventure. Because, and I quote; He feels his character can do anything he puts his imagination into. Creating these moments are key for players to enjoy a game. As that's what DnD is, a Game. And this is my first time DMing and all of my 5 players, who are consistent, truly enjoy playing with me. I know how difficult retention of players is and I'm blessed to say that I've not had any bad players so far around my table. Also, they know I'm very strict. So they know not to overstep their boundaries. ❤️
Once my DM ran an extremely railroady “open world” that was just an op shopping episode with a DMPC and killing a corrupt king OVER AND OVER AGAIN. Every session was LITERALLY THE SAME THING.
I’m the current DM, so I hope I’m not horrible. About 7 years prior to the teenage me now, I sucked at DMing and didn’t have the knowledge to backup my campaigns. My newest campaign is the best so far, which is nice. I really like these video types where there are multiple stories, they really help with getting a lot of information at once, and for a DM like me, I need a lot of it.
I was playing a 5e Ravnica game and one week our sub DM took over a game while the main DM was at a doctors appointment. during the game, My secret agent posing as a Priest accidentally exposed himself as a Dimir spy in front of the party and a single guard captain when I used a scroll of read thoughts in combination with the encode thoughts spell in order to quickly extract a vital memory from the target before the target leaves my clutches. It was at this point that the sub GM told me that the super secret spy magic, was 100% public knowledge and permanently marked me as a Dimir spy despite the fact that that the book we were using specifically stated that knowledge about the Dimir is vague at best, I even pointed it out from the book. Eventually I stopped arguing, I didnt want to argue since we were all there to have fun and it might be fun to try and get the guard captain arrested for defamation. So I was arrested and was sent to prison. while in prison and the memory strand created from the encode thoughts spell was taken as evidence, I sent my familiar to contact my siblings, my family had strong ties to the local mob boss in the area and i wasn't even in prison for an hour when I was sprung. Although I still had to explain to my family as to why they suspected me as a spy. I told them that I had used a scroll on my target to extract a memory from the witness in order to cover our tracts. Now for those of you who dont know the encode thoughts spell is a cantrip that creates an encoded memory strand from a target and that strand will last for 8 hours unless a the spell is used again to refresh it. and knowing that the judiciary process by itself would take weeks before my trial, all evidence of my crime of being a Dimir spy would vanish long before my trail. So we get to the trial which was also ran by the sub DM that day, and low and behold the memory strand was still active, at first I was perplexed at why it was still around, since the sub DM insured me that there were no magical items that can be used to extend the shelf life of the memory strand. only to be told by the Sub DM that the Guards had a Dimir spy on the payroll who refreshed the memory strand every 8 hours on the dot. I then got into another debt over what my crime was then if it was okay to be a Dimir spy. he then made a circular argument where I was spying illegally, with a long eye roll, I then began to process of defending myself in the court of law where I was placed in a zone of truth and was not allowed to make a save since the caster used a magical item to force me to fail my save automatically. So I began to make my arguments, I luckily had prepared for this eventuality ahead of time and had used the encode thoughts spell before my trial to wipe my memories of the events so going in I had literally believed myself innocent. I then successfully beat my accuser (who was a fellow player) at every argument and proved my innocence and was declared by the courts to not be a Dimir Spy. However the sub DM reported to the Main DM that I failed and that everyone on the planet knew I was a spy. and since then every session I was constantly punished by the sub DM at every chance he got until I killed off the character in order to roll up a new one, which made him mad since he had to figure out a new way to punish my character. eventually he went behind the entire groups back and told me I was kicked out of the game. I contacted the DM and the other players to figure out what happened and they had no idea what was going on. needless to say I was done with the drama and just stopped going. and to this day that was one of the worse experiences I had with D&D.
Did anybody else notice that depending on when this happened the goblins are orc sub types DM may have stolen the chest bursting goblin after breathing in spores thing straight from Alien: Covenant, if he didn’t that quite the coincidence
Warhammer 40K has a race called orks that breed by using spores. Entire planets would be taken over easily due to how fast they can spread into the atmsophere. I don't play Warhammer 40K, but at the same time the DM tried to play 40K using D&D. SO WHY THE FUCK NOT PLAY 40K?!?! CHRIST!!!
@@jordanpritchard5226 he may have taken inspiration, but even Orkz don't tend to gestate WITHIN someone. There may be fringe cases, but it's certainly not common. No, he was just a bad GM. Also, 40k's Orkz are super cool. Everything about them functions off of Power of Belief. Red vehicles love faster because they expect them to, it's all very cool.
Scribbles found within the Notes of a NG Human idiot; BAD DM NOTES #1) is it just me, or does anyone else picture an Overweight Marlon Brando as this bad DM? BAD DM #2) to quote a Fake Mage i know(who's actually a Rogue) name Conlley Artiste: "It's MAGIC...." BAD DM #3) I heard a song in town the other day. I believe it started with "...You talk to much, you worry me to death..." BAD DM #4) They say Patience is a virtue, but apparently he didn't get the memo.... May your pantheon ever favor you(especially in these trying times), Baron Trevelyan of Restenford
Do I know what a elf is? Do I know what a tavern is? Do I know what a door is? Do we know what a tablet is? What’s sitting? What’s a question? Do I know what a face book is? I was dyeing wait do I know what dyeing is
The "Heroic and Infalliable" DMPC can be done right, but they have to be JUST a quest giver. If the party has a historic habit of getting sidetracked, it's a good way of giving their characters an in-game motivation to get down to brass tacks and do the thing for justice or what have you. But the moment the party has their motivation and is back on track, the DMPC isn't needed anymore. That is when you can cash in all it's narrative weight for a noble sacrifice against the BBEG so the party can live on and take up the DMPC's noble quest in his honor or to have the DMPC simply get called off to tackle more legendary problems elsewhere and task the party with finishing this "little" mission for them while they go off and handle the bigger problem, potentially with the promise of them getting to be included in the real action next time if they do good work on this job. There are plenty of other, more creative ways to go about it, but the strongest use of a DMPC is as a character that CAN be awesome by default, but still allowed to fail. It is a narrative device that gets old fast, sets the power limits of the world your in or whatever else you want. Just don't make the DMPC a party member proper. It just isn't what they are meant to be used for.
I want to see a novella sized intro where we're given a heroes adventure with it ending when the hero dies leading to the current situation in the world
I have a dm friend who stutters and have problem trying to narrate We usually just comfort him and call him cute whenever he does that so he doesnt have a problem and the story can simply progress naturally after his moment haha
In some instances, DMPCs are ok. I have a campaign with my family and we take turns dming, and whenever we're the dm we still play our characters, but they're mostly prominent in combat. (To be fair if I'm the only tank build, closest thing being our cleric, so honestly, it would be cruel to not help in combat. And also if anyone puts anything on a really tall shelf I'm the only one who can reach it XD
@@taragnor Theres a fine line between those two. DMPCs are mainly used whenever the DM needs something to be happening that none of the players would know to do. Such as do certain things to advance the story. So in other words: They can be good, to help the storyline. But I do agree that in most cases the DMPC is overpowered to help with the storyline advancing, making them not really good to begin with.
“Do I know what an elf is?”
“Do I know what a door is?”
“Do I know what a table is?”
“Do I know what sitting is?”
This had me howling with laughter!!!
Surprised it didn't get as far as, "Do I know what breathing is?". Whole party suffocates to death because they didn't know how to breath.
Do I know what liking and subscribing is?
Do I know what pickles are? And do I know about a certain scientist?
Am I smart enough to recognize that if he turned himself into a pickle then that would be the funniest $ |-| ! T I have ever seen?
Do I know what laughter is?
-Keeps telling the players they're not smart enough to know what something is even when they clearly should
-Gets mad when the party starts asking if they're smart enough to know what literally anything is
I don't think this DM is smart enough to know what karma is.
This is why rules exist. And this is why knowledge rolls exist. Like if they are not goblins he should just roll nature check.
I think I would quit quickly with such DM.
@ seriously, tho making him quit is much MUCH better!
Number 3 was my favourite. The party got so annoyed at the DM and his DMPC that they straight up Julius Caesared his ass.
I said the exact same thing as I listened to that scene haha 😄
agreed
That one had me laughing.
Red liked your comment, lol
Ah yes, a Ranger with high Intelligence and a preferred enemy of Goblins does not realize that a certain enemy is not a goblin. MAKES SENSE.
'Do I know what a tree is?'
@@singletona082 I hope so.
@@jukesdtj656 Well with That GM it is a legitimately safe thing to ask since he was being an utter knob in putting 'gotcha' player deaths in.
That guy basically just put Warhammer 40k orks into the game. Combined with the aliens from Aliens.
And all that with just a single resistance check, rather than multiple ones. In a world with magic where characters can survive far worse hits.
And all that while ignoring the fact that most people in general would be aware of the "goblins" and their morbid traits.
Do I know what a Ranger is?
This DM would be ingrained in my head for ever. I wanted to make a sea sorcerer Triton. The DM said we start on a boat. Me and other players went with water characters, my best friend made a crab druid who summons crabs, becomes crabs and has crab arms (simic hybrid). It was because of him I stayed as long as I did. We spent only 1 session in the water. We all ended up making new characters except my best friend, who stuck with his character, arguing that as crabs arent specifically water based, he is ok. The DM allows it as we all want his character "Mr Snips" to stay. I ended up making a Aasimar paladin. In the end the crab druid and me slayed every monster the DM threw against us. I would smite and grapple the enemy while the druid summons hordes of crustaceans to overwhelm them.
Aasimar are just made for Paladins, especially the Scorge subrace. I love how their transformation synergizes with the Paladins´ Divine Smite for full extra radiant damage.
Was your best friend Crit Crab?
*deep breath*
CRAB DRUID!
Certainly more on target than a tagalong one of my players brought one time whose response to "you're (going to be) on a ship, probably going pirate" was to demand to play a lawful good centaur paladin, then refuse as disruptively as possible to even consider anything else. He wasn't welcomed back again... And this was when he was in his mid-twenties, and had somehow been playing d&d for years before that. >.
Is his catchphrase "Time for Crab!"?
What is a bad dm? A MISERABLE PILE OF RAIL ROADS! but enough talk HAVE AT YOU! *throws dice in bad dms face* Huh multiple stories? Neat! _Yirbel lives!_
Greater Grievobeast 55 nice reference
Wolf Boy thank you kindly!
Extra points for this one if you happen to be playing Curse of Strahd.
What’s a Yirbel?
@@allthingsdnd why are we here?
Tl;Dr
1st Story: DM with a "me vs them" mentality attempts to kill players with bullshit homebrew "goblins" and receives karmic justice for unfairly denying a player advantages against his monsters
2nd Story: DM fails(?) to properly explain his game and world to a new player, leading the new player to feel useless with their character, then gets mad when the player makes a perfect counter to his bullshit.
3rd Story: DM wanted to write a book, invited his friends to bore them to death with his monologues instead (But seriously, if the whole first chapter of your book is Gary Stu wandering around town while getting info dumped you probably shouldnt be a writer)
4th Story: 10 minutes are apparently too much to wait for some people...
How should you make the homebrew goblins better?
@@pogggaming4470 For starters, if goblins are extremely deadly creatures in your setting like in this story, it should be common knowledge and therefore warned to the players before they engage them in any way.
Secondly, instant death effects should only ever be given to endgame traps and creatures. I know some play them that way, but TTRPGs are not videogames, its collaborative story telling and characters should be treated with the same respect as protagonists in a book, when was the last time you saw a main character get done in by a trash mob? That doesnt make for a good story, just a horror one.
Finally, whatever you make or create, if the players find a way to vanquish it that didn´t fit your plans, roll with it. Only shitty people get mad because a player got creative with their problem solving or prepared themselves for that specific problem.
I already heard the story about the “goblins” but the other ones were pretty funny
Worst DM I ever had:
Joined a campaign on Roll20, was forced to play a character that wasn't my own, wasn't filled in on what the party had done up to that point. DM was the most boring and unengaging DM I've ever seen, delivering everything in a flat monotone with the plainest narration ever. Two sessions after I join the group, he ghosts us. Left the group immediately.
At least you managed to get into a campaign on Roll20, I tried finding a group for almost two months and finally gave up.
Atleast when I sound monotone I can become Siri
I'm sorry man, I haven't even been able to find anyone to play with yet cause of my stupid sporadic schedule. I got a character in mind too and would rage if he died, I'm thinkin I should just write a story instead 🤣 /cheers
I think we met the same guy mine was pharo not gonna give off more specific name (aka exact spelling) but he randomly started the second session out of no where and told me i was holding up the group anf blocked and ghosted me....3 days later i see a new discord post by him looking for 4 out of 5 members he made us random gen characters and everything else and his map was very very un apealing
I had something where I was the only player not given a race or class I would like. The guy talking about how cool dragonborns are. Got that race, the guy that plays flirty characters got a flirty race. I left at the end of character creation because I just felt like I wasn't going to have fun. Haven't rolled with them or even talked to them after that.
DM #3 Forgot one key rule in storytelling: Show, don't tell.
Depends heavily on the medium in which the story is taking place.
Movies: Show don't tell.
Picture Book: combination of the two (you only have so much space on each page for images and words)
Novel: Nothing but words, can't really show anything with words, so all you can do is tell.
DM 3 clearly wasn't giving a hoot about storytelling and just wanted to shove his mary sue self-insert down everyone's throat.
@@marcogypaetus9607 Hearing how the entire group just straight up mercs his little self insert had me laughing my ass off lol
@@deathsheir2035 not really. "Show dont tell" still aplies in literature, just in a diferent way.
As a exemple, you can use it by letting the characters (and the readers) to interact diretcly with the thing. Dont tell them that the mountain have lots of orcs living in caves, let them be attacked and experience it first hand.
That's what Tolkien used to exhaustion in his books. He didnt tell about the things, he showed us what the characters did think about the things.
@@albertonishiyama1980 That is still telling the audience what is happening, rather than showing them what is happening.
What you described is called "reader engagement." Where instead of being able to show the reader what is happening, descriptions of what is happening must be used instead. Use the right words, in the right combination, will engage the reader to continue reading, to find out more.
One description is far more engaging, than the other. That which is more engaging varies from person to person.
Those who loves world-building, would more often than not, prefer the mountain being described as orc infested, rather than the heroes suddenly being attacked by orcs during their mountain climb.
You can describe the mountain as being orc infested, and how our heroes prepare for the climb up the mountain anyway despite the dangers, ready to take on the onslaught of orcs that they are likely to face, but is their preparation enough?; which in turn, prepares the reader for an orc encounter, and possibly even have them question if the heroes prepared enough to deal with the orcs. That can be engaging enough for readers to want to know how close the heroes came to death despite their preparations.
Or you can describe how the heroes start climbing the mountain, and then suddenly, Surprise orc ambush. Heroes caught unprepared, barely making it out alive, and their remaining climb left on edge, in the event of another orc ambush. This too can engage the reader, as the ambush surprised them just the same, and they continue reading to find out how close to death the heroes came.
There are only two incorrect methods, when it comes to reader engagement: 1) Not enough detail is provided, to make the readers care about what happens.
2) Too much details, that it drags on for far too long, disengaging the reader.
Which ever method you use in attempt to engage the reader (orc mountain, that heroes climb anyway, or climb mountain surprise orc ambush), neither method is better than the other.
The intro is now just Marvel, but with dnd characters😂
Shhhhh
Astoshan is better than any Marvel hero.
@@ichaukan Dr. Strange would like a word with you.
@@watcherofmemelords7967 true, Dr. Strange certainly has a mastery over illusion, time, and general arcane knowledge (I think he's meta tier.) I think astoshan could possibly hold is own for a while at least.
@@Things_I_wish_I_knew it'd be a toss up, up until dormamu got involved.
9:12 5 seconds to decide action in combat?! That's 1 second less than than the action takes to do, in game!
I have a story to tell if someone wants to listen (English is not my first language so I am sorry for the grammar mistakes I may have) and it's about bad players (me included to be honest)
My group was made by 4 players and the DM, A human druid, a dragonborn barbarian, a furry rouge and a tiefling warlock; all of us true neutral. Our DM was a not railroading one, he gave us total freedom to do what we want but that turned against him when we started to ignore the obvious plot hooks in order to fulfill our background missions or stories we had wrote, so our warlock went to a killing spree eliminating all the target on a list gave to him by the devil in exchange for the soul of his wife (in the end he had to kill himself to complete the deal but instead we kill the devil and retrieved the soul of his wife anyway), the druid made herself a druglord and made a cartel/mafia, the dragonborn had the soul of a dracolitch inside him and after finding that out he convinced the dracolitch to work with him and give him a dragon body which in the end was a trap and sealed the dracolitch inside a philactery and throwed it to the Astral Plane. I was the only one without a backstory like that because I was a simple tabaxi who wanted to go to an adventure. Eventually all of our backstory desires were fulfilled but when a plot hook showed up the party refused because that didn't involved their backstory. Finally the DM asked "why do you keep ignoring them? you all already finished your backstory missions". Druid: " if it was for me I will go to the missions but it's not something my character would do". The others (but me) agreed. DM: "so if it was for you, you would do it?" Druid: "yes". I can almost swear the DM had an evil smile on his face when the druid said that "yes". DM: "Fine see you next week I may have something that you would like to play then".
The next week the DM was dressed very weird, he made himself a mustache and untied his long hair, then when we were sitting on the table he said something in character like "be welcome mortals I bought you here to offer you a trip, a mission, the adventure of your lives"
Druid: "sorry, not interested. Where is my character sheet BTW?". DM: "I am not speaking with that boring druid, she has failed me. I am speaking to you mortal. Wouldn't you like to go on an adventure for glory and CHEESE?! All of you?". They: (something like yeah). DM: "good, is not like if you had a choice anyway. (Sort of evil and mad)Hahaha". After that he borrowed us some little papers which had the name of our characters on them we picked one randomly and some ended up with someone's else's character. Then the DM described how a flash happened and we entered into the dnd world as that character we took we had to act like ourselves in our character's body and word, it was kinda offensive for the druid because he ended up as my furry and he didn't like furrys. When the DM s character showed up the druid said: "I don't care, I am going to be a drug lord or something". DM: "so if was for you, you will do it. Wasn't that what you said?". Druid: "Fine, you got me there". And we finally started the second act of his campaign which was really good if you ask me, we actually were very interested on it because he gave everything to make it awesome. We ended up finishing the entire campaign and going back to the real world. Honestly it was a really good way for the DM to deal with the difficult players we were.
PD: I may add that we were friends for many years so kick out players or the DM wasn't an option.
The druid (and the others) ended up apologizing for the troubles.
I also know the dialogues because the DM recorded that session and he gave it to me when I had a similar problem with some of my players when I started to DM in a local game store.
And if any of you ask the DM's character was a kind of Shegortath the god of madness so he could explain why he could break the 4th wall.
I hope you have enjoyed it (and sorry if it wasn't so easy to understand or confusing, as I said English is not my first language)
Cool story
The fact he dressed up as Sheogorath in the first place, gets a hats off from me. Brilliant.
@@patrickduffin7912Thank you. I will remember telling him that. And he didn't exactly cosplayed as Shegortath but a "modern version of him" he cut vertically a purple and a red jacket (with different styles) and trousers and fixed them together to make outfit, he had a staff with an 8ball which was the "holly simbol" of this deity, and cut his facial hair in order to copy the oblivion's Shegortath. I am honestly kinda impressed by that because he only had 1 week to prepare everything. I hope that didn't ruined your amusement about his performance
@@juancruznoriega7058 Still, the fact he tried in the first place gets a thumbs up in my book and him doing that hardly ruined it. If anything, it made the story more enjoyable.
I would like to think if i had people who didn't want to adventure saying my character wouldn't do that i would just say ok make a character that would...
Sometimes it would be smarter to write a book then run dnd
Edit just to be clear I don't mean the book will be good just won't involve others getting mad
One of the worst part is?
That guy had them read a novel (read: fanfic of his OC). Plenty of time to do world building there. He could have assumed that the people have already gotten into the world through that. Unless he basically made the whole book all about his PC, in which case... It's still his fault.
@@OzixiThrill Part of the problem when trying to make a homebrew world that is rich in detail and content that few are actually capable or creating. It is far easier to use an existing setting if you want that level of development or just accept that world building homebrew settings is an ongoing process that will involve your player's input.
@@craigtucker1290 I think the bigger problem was that said DM didn't realize that his goals and his abilities were not aligned...
Want to know something cool? The author of Overlord only wrote it because he couldn’t meet up with his D&D group.
1st story guy got straight up clowned out of the room
Excuse me? What’s narration? I’m not smart enough to know.
Narration is when someone transitions from one scene, to another.
I am a PERSON okay, but what is Transitioning Scenes? I am not smart enough to know.
@@kemix1006 oh, I get it. They're basically ways of saying "we're done with this thing, let's go to the next one"
@@IamaPERSON what's a "thing"?!
@@elecstorm3701 How do you type a comment?
This reminds me so much of my friend's bad GM. He was in a room that had water flowing into it. He heard something from up ahead, so he declared he crouched down to try to wait for what was ahead. The GM kept on having him make d20 rolls every round without telling him what they were for, then when he got a low one, declared that his character had drowned from crouching under the surface of the water for too long. Apparently, the GM didn't feel his character was smart enough to remember he had to breathe.
"World-building"sounds like a euphemism, you can guess what for xD
"Not now, mom, I'm 'world-building' "
Jerking off?
@@Solrex_the_Sun_King I mean yeah, I was trying to be relatively subtle, since I don't know the average age of their audience.
NO sir! I did not see you playing with your dolls, Sir!
@@handlebarfox2366 They are action figures!(said with a retainer induced lisp)
@@conduit64 either you did see the movie, and purposefully chose to ignore the quote, OR you never saw the movie Spaceballs.
I'm reminded of my old railroader DM whose DMPC could not be permanently killed because ELMINSTER himself would come to save him, even when not in the Forgotten Realms setting. When that got old and he almost had to fight my PC he suddenly had a room with an anti-magic field that somehow didn't effect magical ropes wrapped around my PC because he was a 20+ strength Monk and didn't need no Ki to win.
This reminds me, one of the more recent (within the past 2 months, I think) videos on CritCrab's channel is about all the warning sign stories of bad RPGs actually being used as the inspiration on how one DM should run his game, a DM that was part of the CritCrab community no less. Sometimes, all those warnings have the opposite effect on some people.
Dm: Yeah, we start at 14:00.
Everyone: *shows up at 13:57.
Dm: [TRIGGERED]
Mista: First time?
The first and second one remind me of a game I joined once. Was playing a custom race based on Burmecians from Final Fantasy 9 (DM approved). Decided to go dervish dancer with silk clothing to get that Cleyran vibe, for anyone familiar with the game. The campaign was Kingmaker, but every single enemy would focus my character first, only attacking the rest of the party once my character was incapacitated. I quit when the Giant Centipede knocked my character to 0HP, the cleric healed me so I could get back up and the GM had the centipede climb on top of my character to pin me before I had a chance to get up.
Many years ago I joined into a Dragonstar D&D game, it was going pretty well till the party was captured by Drow space pirates. The entire party was being held and starved for some time my tiny little Arfiacer was the only one who made her con checks but after this, all played out over the course of several days in character?
One of the pirates burst in and basically told the party to rape my character or they would kill her. At that point, the entire party went what the hell at the DM and walked from the game here and there. Most of them also cut ties to the DM who I found out later had a long history of pulling shit like that. I didn't get to be in another real D&D game ... for over a decade after that incident. Thankfully now in an amazing 5e game set in Eberson where I play a Wizard who is an Inquisitive Agency's CSI lab :D
Thats horrible! D: im glad your party members stuck up for you!
Terrible story, but thrilled to see mention of Dragonstar.
Terrible events in the story, I mean.
I made a goblin bard whom I called Father. And in any situation I would cast charm person or anything like that and have father say you are my dad to the enemy and if it succeeded the interaction would go Father: I am your dad. Enemy: you are my dad. Both: boogie woogie woogie. But if I failed the enemy had to scream "you not my dad".
"Because he isn't smart enough"
1. That's his JOB
2. Wisdom??
I actually want to ask: What makes you more smart in D&D, Intelligence or Wisdom?
@@marooniballooni03759 Intelligence is like having book smarts and Wisdom is like having street smarts.
@@Jomega1212 got it! Thank you very much.
@@Jomega1212 wisdom is wilderness survival skills too
@@alexanderthegreat6682 which you would only learn by doing. Wisdom is the things you know that school/books can't teach. It's like common sense, worldly experience. Having high int and low wis would be like a mad professor who is a great mathematician but doesn't know how to tie his shoes or keeps losing his keys.
3: DM's need to remember they aren't the main characters, the party is the main characters and build around that. DMPC can be good to add to a party especially if the DM dose enjoy playing a character as well but don't hijack the story as that character.
Man, sometimes i'm happy to not be one of these stereotypes, even as a noob dm, with difficulties with speaking and somewhat shy and slow :v
The important thing is trying to make the game fun for everyone, how that is done varies from GM to Players, but finding that balance is key :)
Here is some advice even tho you did not ask for it.
Consistency, and character agency is important.
Try to keep what you decided and adjudicated previously be the same later. Changing the rules without first talking it over with the group should not happen.
Try to treat everyone the same, no favoritism, nor ignoring characters.
Take control when it is needed, and don't let the players run away with the game, but at the same time give them the freedom to do what they want as long as it doesn't disrupt the game.
Paint a picture and let the players decide what they want to do with it rather than tell them what they think, but at the same time if a character would know some information based on their race, skills, or background, give that information to them.
If you have an NPC in the group, they should be no powerful than the group unless it is for the specific session being played at the moment. In this case they should aid but not dominate whats happening in the session. Nor should a NPC be so far less powerful as to be no help to the group, again unless it is specific to the session now running.
It is ok to have a NPC give them information, but they shouldn't be telling the story that the players should be finding out on their own.
Tho there does not need to be combat in every game there should be a challenge of some kind, tho once in a while, a purely role playing session can happen but even then attempt to give the PC problems to solve.
Being the DM does not make you right, but it gives you the power to make a final decision. Weigh both sides of a problem needing an answer before deciding, and then move on. If a PC can show you where you were wrong, do not feel like you have to stand by the last decision for future occasions that are similar. It is ok to admit you were wrong, but that you are continuing with that decision for now, to keep the game moving.or if it seems right for the campaign then keep it as decided and let the PC know this.
Most of these "bad DMs" sound like me when I first started, but making the beginners mistakes to an extreme. They could be not bad, but just inexperienced.
Sounds like when you first started you were a bad DM, just like them. I’m sure now you’re better since you have noticed these mistakes, but if you do any of these, you are a bad DM, I made some shitty mistakes when I started, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t bad,
Got a funny story of my most recent session I'm DMing.
Party travels on their small, personal airship out to a ruined city that has some association with a storm. When they get there they find a huge maelstrom like sandstorm rising into the sky, encircling and blocking all access to this city. No one has ever been able to get through it or at least come back to confirm they have.
Captain of the airship tells the party there's no way over it, since it's well above flight ceiling for their airship, and going through it it's going to more than likely result in the airship getting hurled around; the only likely option it's on foot, low to the ground, using the terrain to try to brave it.
Player 3: "I say we try to use the airship anyway."
Me as Captain: "I really don't think that's a good idea."
Player 3: "DM...are you railroading us?"
Me: "The captain starts handing you iron rails and slats of wood saying, "I don't know what you're talking about."
Players all laughed and I asked them if they really wanted to attempt it with the airship, but they decided to do the on foot idea, lol.
Reality was that I was prepared to adhoc the airship attempt, but they were SO EXCITED about getting the airship last session that I didn't want the dice's only reasonable outcome to be having the thing eating sand and leaving them stranded. Especially not when we'd JUST got the campaign back on track after months of RL issues that resulted in two characters and a player getting dropped.
Had this really bad experience with a D&D event, playing 4th Edition Encounters, which are short 3 or 4 battle adventures with no resting and are HARD AS HELL, the DM wasn't familiar with the game and had no experience making characters, he gave us some pre-made PCs for us to tackle the adventure, my PC was a Warlock with no AC but higher than average HP cuz he figured that way I wouldn't be so easily killed, had no good spells and only had one "spell-item combo" which did nothing to the enemies. We died on the 3rd round of the first battle. Here is what's upseting: this event we had to pay to play and we could only participate on final point tally IF we managed to complete the Encounter so we all lost our money and our chance to win prizes because the DM was a total noob!
The one about the angry guy at the end reminds me of how a campaign I was a part of for a little while was run. The party turn order was determined by who sat where around the table, starting immediately to the DM's left and moving clockwise. You had approximately ten seconds to declare what you were going to do for your turn or he would skip you. He wasn't angry or anything, but I didn't think it would be a good match for me, especially since my Lizardfolk Druid both stood out like a sore thumb and didn't bring much to the table.
Player: "Alright, here's my next character, an elder wizard with maximum intelligence who's only purpose is to study and know everything that has ever come to being in the world."
Terrible DM: "You're too stupid to know how to write down your discoveries. Oh, but never fear, there's this awesome self insert VERY NPC chosen hero who already knows everything in reality and magic. He'll join you in your quest, but he's in a very important speech of how perfect he is, and he refuses to do it unless a specific group of adventurers are there to witness his greatness."
Player: "I kill myself as to never be a part of this "game"."
That last one is also just a bad player as well
I don't know, depends on whether the other players were into it. If they were as annoyed with the DM's behavior as he was, then I think it would be fine revenge.
The DM was making them have combat actions prepped for 5 second callouts, maybe that's too short a time to say your action, but have a conversation with him to remedy that. I don't feel there's a need to waste ten minutes of everyone's time passive-aggressively pushing his buttons (or pulling his levers), and then to continuously bring it up to annoy him. Yes, the DM could have more grace and change his ways, but from that story the player sounds far worse
@@thepoetandie7619 also we dont know if that 5 second rule thing is real. could be exaggerated
@@flyin_solo2573 : Honestly don't see anything wrong with expecting PCs to choose an action quickly in a combat situation. Some DMs prefer to make combat a stressful activity, as opposed to having combats crawl as people take 5 minutes to analyze every action. Expecting them to declare an action in 5 seconds isn't all that bad, I mean you should be thinking about your action before your turn comes up. The player was just an ass. If he didn't want a high-stress combat game, that's one thing, but he just wanted to childishly sabotage it.
@@taragnor Thats 2 ends of a spectrum. If you make me make a decision on what Im doing in 5 seconds and then give everyone else also 5 seconds, I do not have time to think about what I wanna do. Gimme like a minute MAYBE 2 minues if the situation is particularly precarious. "Some DMs want to make combat more stressful" ah yes after a long week of work stress I finally get to play a game of D&- WHY DONT YOU INSTANTLY KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING????? yeah cuz thats fun
This makes me feel better about my own DMing
I had a bad DM moment with my current DM once. He wanted us to go steal something from a tower, and we were a lawful oriented party so we turned it down; he kept pointing us to this tower and after 100,000g spent bribing a god to point us in a direction, it pointed us to the tower, we straight up stopped mid-session and told him, "we are not going to do this, stop trying to make us do this" after that, he got the message, and gave us another option the next session. Difference between a good and bad DM? A good DM listens to their players.
The lesson is that the DM respects player agency and accepts the decisions the players make.
While the last DM may have been a touch impatient, I was getting the feeling that the spokesperson was grandstanding; rejecting other party members' participation in an effort to antagonize the DM on purpose...
I had a DM literally forget me. I sat right next to him and I figured out his puzzle but he ignored me; another player repeated the exact same thing and he responded to that player. I was ignored by the dm so much that when the party had to make saving throw and everyone (but me) failed he was going to end the game. It wasn’t til one of the other players pointed out that I passed, that he noticed. In the end, he said that my role saved the party but it was end of the session time anyway so it didn’t matter.
That last guys, was "that guy". Damn, I would get mad if someone pulled something like that at my table.
I'm a bit worried about the impact my own DMPC's are having on my current game... the game is supposed to be modeled after a traditional 'Hero's Journey', but I'm trying to do this while keeping the railroading to a minimum. The party is currently being accompanied by two NPCs. One of them is a Gandalf-type guide who is explicitly more powerful than the party, but who has also flat-out told them that she will only accompany them on the beginning stages of the journey, and after they board the boat to their destination, they are on their own. She also makes a point of not doing everything for them, and letting them test their own strength against the dangers on the road, only stepping in when necessary.
The other NPC is a childhood friend (the first couple of sessions had the PC's growing up in a small town, and the adventure proper began when they hit adulthood) who has their own stake in the adventure, and who so far has been fairly useless, though he hasn't been dragging them down. Unbeknownst to the party and to himself, he is actually a demigod who has yet to grow into his own power. When he does, how he chooses to use that power will depend in large part on the moral lessons he picks up from the party. He may end up being the edge the party needs to save the world... or he may end up being the final challenge they need to overcome.
From a storytelling perspective, these two characters probably work just fine. From a D&D perspective, the only saving grace of the 'Gandalf' is, I suspect, that she won't be sticking around for very long and the party knows that. They don't *seem* annoyed with how she's been played so far, but that would probably change if she stayed around to steal their thunder. The demigod kid, though... that will have to be handled *very* carefully.
Late reply, but I agree with your assessments, and I honestly feel that you have DMPCs who aren't necessarily constricting or overriding. The fact one of your DMPCs is spelling out that they'll help but not steamroll every challenge means you're doing it good.
When your Demigod starts to get his power, try to split him off from the party. Maybe have him drop in once in a while, but don't let him hang around for two long. Keep your players focused nor on him going nuts with his new divinity, but on the quest before them
Talk with the player/s and ask them to be honest about what and how you're doing. If they're OK with the characters thus far, keep them. If not, maybe make a few tweaks or swap them out.
You may need to make an 'Allies' system, where your PC/s can bring NPC characters they can give general orders and you move them and Attack with them. Maybe do a little roleplay to make them feel personable and stuff.
Just some thoughts. Also, if this campaign has ended, I hope it was ok!
I love how op and the party members in the first story goes insane in a justified manner (which I respect them)
The only good DMPC's are either short lived, or nearly mute assistants that watch the bags while the party goes into the dungeon.
DM's that play the inception level "unknown knowns and known unknowns and unknown unknowns!" nonsense are the best to mess with.
"What makes goblins my favored enemy?"
"What?"
"Why and how are Goblins my favored enemy? Do I not likely the look of goblins? Do I not like *the idea* of goblins? If someone identifies as a goblin are they a favored enemy? What about a goblin that identifies as a human? What about really small, goblin esque humans/halflings? Can someone be made into an honorary goblin and become a favored enemy?"
Don't @ me motherfucker, we will dive down this rabbit hole until we hit Wonderland...
If you hate cats, and Somone meows at you, do you punch them in the face or do you know the difference?
Amazing semantics and so good to exploit
*#3* The DM IS A ONE MAN SHOW
That DM is lucky it only happened to his fictional character and not him.
Imagine that 4th guy getting a new phone and some of the new numbers for his phone number are 1 3 5 7. I think id pay to watch that meltdown.
Hah the part where he kept asking am I smart enough made me laugh for like 15 minutes that’s the longest I’ve ever laughed ever I still watch it and one time I was actually crying and couldn’t breath one of my parents came in and asked me if I was ok he had to wait like 30 minutes for me to stop laughing and calm down I still can’t get over it
I love this story, back here in Brazil I told it on a special podcast we recorded telling about some of the worst stories we saw on the internet!
6:57 Good grief with this selfinportant dushes. DMPCs are`t supposed to be OP plot divices, at max they should be a way to the GM act in the game, nothing more, if you want to be The Hero just buy any RPG game and be the savior there :/
I tell you the truth, sometimes as GM is hard don't talk to my self when I'm "world building". Especially because my player are not use to ask simple question like "what's new in town?" or " there something suspicious in this room?".
In some occasions I've just add NPCs to the party just to say important information and make the story go forward.
Sometimes the player don't interact and just wait for the campaign to be served. (or they waiting for the monster hunting)
Even so I agree on the fact that these DM have exaggerated.
@@loto8052Oh, hum...That is new to me, my players usually question me alot about the world so I usually dont need to do it much but, wow, yeah that makes alot of sence to me man, tks for the imput :D
Only time I ever really used a ‘DMPC’ so far was a master craft if I do say so. Basically two players had to emergency leave while we were basically at the end of the campaign and rather than invite two new people for like 3 session in order to balance combat I made ‘Jonerik aka Joe Generic’ Human, Point buy, Champion Fighter, 9 Int,Wis,Cha. 16 Con, Str,Dex. Had few opinions if any and was basically a meat Shield and ironically the players got attached and he actually had his cool moments like 1v1ing a giant spider while at 1 hp for several rounds while the pcs handled the boss.
@@zane9464 That sounded awesome! Can I use hin as a NPC some day man?
renato afonso maia carneiro only if you describe him as having a mullet
That last op was just a total troll. My gawd, I wouldn’t have scraped the whole campaign, but I would be tempted to not use any puzzles in any future sessions that guy was in.
These stories were hilarious!
What's a UA-cam video?
What's Dungeons and Dragons?
What's a Reddit?
You dont need to know about the last one
in response to the last question, an old jedi master said it best, even if he was talking about something else: "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."
Whats a comment?
@@IcecreamNeo what's a question?
@@deathsheir2035 whats an answer?
Goblinoid dust? Oh, bull$h!t, give me a break.
Dude pretty much just imported 40k orkoids into a fantasy setting.
that world is screwed by the way as the 'dust' infect and grow until it'snothing but warbands trying to fight eachother or a WAAAUUUUUGH!!!!!!! forms and leaves for other worlds.
@@singletona082 He pretty much just wanted to kill a character immediately, and came up with the lamest way to do it.
Goblinoid dust sounds good in concept, because it’s similar to red sladds, but it needs to have a Con save of 5 + con mod + proficiency (if proficient in con)
@@4_mana528 Yeah, not just an automatic "Oh, you breathed in the spores? Well, have fun with a goblin chest-bursting out of you!"
If I ran into this I would kidnap a goblin and use him as a gas weapon, not like murdering the entire town would tick him off.
Oh, man! That first story had me rolling! Good on the players!
"What's a facebook?"
I can't even, that was amazing. Actually crying from laughing so much at that.
When I was a newbie DM in the 80s as a teen, I am guilty of some of these.
In my defense, I saw most of the "easy" puzzles I did as just something interesting and obvious and not something that one that did not live in my mind would see. I also saw the "Easter Eggs" as easy free loot that my players were either ignoring or "just being stupid" about. I assumed my players thought like me... and I was far from thinking like most people. My dungeons had great stories and very good complexities... I was just a bad DM. My players did love the "Rule of Disaster" where if everyone died and the party unanimously votes on using it, I rewind the whole mission to where everyone was alive as long as they agree the odds would be against their fore-knowledge and their making the same decisions would instantly give the same results.
"How a player managed to outwit a bad dungeon master." Oh, one of my players have written about our sessions. XD
That DM from the first story definitely had it coming. I dabble in worldbuilding here and there, and here are my gripes with that his approach to this:
1. Chestburster goblins at such an early level? That's some overpowered bullshit right there. Like, this was NOT balanced for a level 1 encounter, and this is why.
Geez, if you REALLY want chestbursters, at least wait until level 4 or 5 and then go for something like the Slaad. Our tank (Arkras) had one of their tadpoles growing in a wound after we fled some Slaad that were too strong for each of our levels at the time. And he luckily didn't end up dying because the Cleric pulled out the growing Slaad chestburster the second heal around. Thank the dice gods for that Cleric player rolling good Medicine checks on that one. But an NPC that we helped saved the life of in that same encounter having one of those kill him that way at a party in our honor? Yeah, that drove home the point that 'shit this could've been our homeboy Arkras' more then enough. We knew we had dodged a bullet and should be careful of these things in the future, but our DM did that without a bullshit early-game kill like this. Give your players at least a shot at avoiding that fate: we got only 2 chances, but that was all we needed.
All in all: this character's death should've been retconned, and time should've rewinded to right before the encounter in order to better balance it (after everyone searing on the rulebook not to metagame the crap out of this later, of course).
2. While we're on the subject of chestburster goblins anyways? I frankly don't even see them making sense in a worldbuilding context. How the heck do they grow fast enough to nearly instantly chestburst out of you after breathing it in? I know that the Slaad tadpole I mentioned at least took a few days, because we had to sail back from an island we thought abandoned. Do these goblins NOT have a gestation period like how MOST children are born in a DYNAMIC WORLD!? How long until they mature (for example: is this faster or slower then humans)? Do females and males exist within their species, or are they technically genderless because they technically reproduce with spore clouds? Sorry not sorry, but this just pisses my inner writer off to no end. The very existence of these goblins make zero sense to me.
3. A goblinoid hunter who can't identify that it's actual goblins? Really? That's the purest of bullshit that I have ever seen. Come on, that character would've seen at least one turn into mist at least once, and he would've definitely seen one up close enough to be able to identify them at a reasonable distance. He could DEFINITELY tell an orc from a goblin too, this was really a bad call on the DM's end that should've been retconned the next session. You're the freakin' DM, you can just turn back time to right before you ruled that. Dude needs to get over himself: You're the DM, but you can't be hijacking someone else's character without mind control.
Just as a counter to your first point, designing fair encounters is more of the training wheel edition of D&D. I prefer the more realistic versions where it is possible to encounter a dragon or even a tarrasque at 1st level depending on where the PCs go and what the dice roll is. This represents the verisimilitude of reality in that life isn't fair and that the PCs do not always need to engage in combat. My criticism is not that the monsters were too powerful, but that their chest bursting spore ability should be common knowledge, just like trolls don't fare well against fire is common knowledge to communities where they are encountered.
I would also point out that there are many times when a PC gets only one chance (like a saving throw), otherwise they are killed. However, death is rarely a sure thing in D&D as there are options. I know later editions have been more and more generous at keeping characters alive, but character death should always be a possibility, otherwise what is the point of adventuring if there is no real danger of dying.
I think one of my favorite campaigns to play in the DM actually elevated a PC to god tier. This character was basically god tier when we finished the campaign leading up to our newer campaign so it made sense. He took the essence of this character though and made them a literal deity to the people only a few generations removed from the events of the campaign that we played emperor big G style. So much fun to be had.
These were some hilarious stories, ngl, especially given how the players dealt with their respective DM's bullshit.
Story 3 was especially great. The only time muderhoboing is unironically acceptable, methinks. 🤣
"Noticing that this supposed hero seemed to have everyone in his pockets whilst evil still existed outside the town walls, the adventurers came to a daring, yet stunning conclusion.. HE was the one behind it all..! And so, bravely they drew their weapons to smite the evil that kept the world in it's thrall!" -A true story, probably.
@Exile Twilight Good summarization. I couldn’t have made a better story out of that if I tried.
Once upon a time I had a group for D&D 3.5 full of murderhoboes, all but one player that was basically the personification of apathy towards everything I tried to do in my campaign, we'll call him A. So one day we meet for a new small campaign and he pipes up wanting to be a dm, not his first time according to him (but his first with us), and since I wanted to be a player once in a while I accept his offer. Now I knew he had just finished playing baldurs gate on ps and I had done just about the same so color me surprised when, after telling us it was going to be a super epic campaign and we could use our old characters (clue lv 17 with epic classes, I was an arcane ranger) and he starts the game literally in the same way as the video game baldurs gate, down to the dialog with the barmaid and the rat hunts in the tavern basement, yes normal rat. Suffice to say we didn't last a second session....
i sometimes have the problem feeling that im not a good dm since im not way too good into the rules (trying my best tho) and trying literally very hard to bring joy to my players, i enjoy playing with new players since i can get more creative and away from the rulebook. But aswell i get anxious when experienced players play my game.
Though it makes me happy to see that im not that kind of bad as a dm lmao. Thanks.
I feel bad for the last DM. You want everyone to get a chance to play out the elements they enjoy in every session. Some people love RP, lore, combat, or other things. And when you're in a store, your time is likely limited, so there's pressure from that as well. Asking people to have a good idea of what they want to do on their turn in combat quickly isn't a bad thing, that's good for keeping combat flowing. Obviously things can change right before your turn and you might be a caster where that throws your game plan out of the window. So just say "I was gonna but...I'll move here...action this, bonus action that." People can appreciate that because they've been there. Don't be playing on your phone, or chatting away and ignoring the combat. Everyone's there to have a good time, so respect their time and be prepared.
Where'd this guy get his idea of goblins from? West of Loathing and throw in some Alien?
Bit similar to Warhammer orks in that the spores are release when they die in huge quantities
Orks from Warhammer 40K.
How y'all doing
Pretty good, what about you?
@@IamaPERSON I'm dreading work today
@@UndeadSteampunk well hopefully, it turns out good for you.
Me too
Me and the rest of my party once took down a dragon mid-flight. The DM rolled to see if the corpse would land on us, which it did. And then.... it had Death Throes and exploded. It killed 2 of the Player Characters and all intrest in playing with him as DM ever again :P
I've had a dm like the one in number 3. I think we had 2 fights between levels 1 to 15. It was basically just the dm roleplaying between his several dmpcs. We all got tired of it so I wound up stealing half his players for my game. They loved my game especially after playing his for 2 months and being able to do nothing.
Am i smart enough to know how to like and subscribe?
Yes, you are
@@Heyyaka Cool.
Please give us more of the bad dm and how that get karma stories some of the most fun ones I love to watch but that’s just my personal opinion
In other words, play nice, and give the party something interesting.
Hearing these stories of outwitting DM's, I'm just taking notes so that I can make my players suffer whenever they die in stupid ways just to spite me.
Oooh wow.
I don't think I'm an inpatient DM. But, having 5 Players to run combat and stimulate each players around the table, means I had to find some method to accelerate combat a little.
So, I give them about 30 seconds and warn them ahead of time when their turn is going to come around.
So they can prepare and keep track of what's happening.
After the 30 seconds, I give them a 5 second countdown that, if no action is taken, I make their character take the Dodge action and move on.
So far, I've only ever had to do it once. It's allowed them to be much more attentive to the game, coming up with different tactics ahead of time and even learn what their characters can do.
Recently, my wife surprised me (I WAS SO HAPPY), with a spell she had access to which would distract the guards. She was SO quick on her feet, I didn't even make my Npc roll or anything. I just gave it to her because it was SO perfect and SO shocking that she would act so quickly, that by giving it to her, everyone around the table cheered for her success and quick thinking.
These are moments that makes DnD so much fun, where the PCs can truly dictate the direction of the game and I give them the power to do so.
I even have a 13yr old Kid who loves to come back after 13, sessions to this day.
Even her mother (also a player) is surprised that her kid hasn't said anything about not wanting to play with us and continues to enjoy the Adventure.
Because, and I quote; He feels his character can do anything he puts his imagination into.
Creating these moments are key for players to enjoy a game. As that's what DnD is, a Game.
And this is my first time DMing and all of my 5 players, who are consistent, truly enjoy playing with me.
I know how difficult retention of players is and I'm blessed to say that I've not had any bad players so far around my table.
Also, they know I'm very strict. So they know not to overstep their boundaries.
❤️
Bad DMs learning IT the hard way, this is how you deal with them 😂 Also, what’s a DM?
Once my DM ran an extremely railroady “open world” that was just an op shopping episode with a DMPC and killing a corrupt king OVER AND OVER AGAIN. Every session was LITERALLY THE SAME THING.
My first time dming I did not understand the exp factor that well and.... My party was really really over leveled.
I died after the first
I’m the current DM, so I hope I’m not horrible. About 7 years prior to the teenage me now, I sucked at DMing and didn’t have the knowledge to backup my campaigns. My newest campaign is the best so far, which is nice. I really like these video types where there are multiple stories, they really help with getting a lot of information at once, and for a DM like me, I need a lot of it.
I have a feeling these guys dose this 10 more times before they learn anything.
i was chuckling though the "Do I know what ( ) is?" do I know what a facebook is killed me
I remember this first story from Neckbeardia's channel. Still makes me laugh to this day.
I was playing a 5e Ravnica game and one week our sub DM took over a game while the main DM was at a doctors appointment. during the game, My secret agent posing as a Priest accidentally exposed himself as a Dimir spy in front of the party and a single guard captain when I used a scroll of read thoughts in combination with the encode thoughts spell in order to quickly extract a vital memory from the target before the target leaves my clutches. It was at this point that the sub GM told me that the super secret spy magic, was 100% public knowledge and permanently marked me as a Dimir spy despite the fact that that the book we were using specifically stated that knowledge about the Dimir is vague at best, I even pointed it out from the book. Eventually I stopped arguing, I didnt want to argue since we were all there to have fun and it might be fun to try and get the guard captain arrested for defamation. So I was arrested and was sent to prison. while in prison and the memory strand created from the encode thoughts spell was taken as evidence, I sent my familiar to contact my siblings, my family had strong ties to the local mob boss in the area and i wasn't even in prison for an hour when I was sprung. Although I still had to explain to my family as to why they suspected me as a spy. I told them that I had used a scroll on my target to extract a memory from the witness in order to cover our tracts. Now for those of you who dont know the encode thoughts spell is a cantrip that creates an encoded memory strand from a target and that strand will last for 8 hours unless a the spell is used again to refresh it. and knowing that the judiciary process by itself would take weeks before my trial, all evidence of my crime of being a Dimir spy would vanish long before my trail. So we get to the trial which was also ran by the sub DM that day, and low and behold the memory strand was still active, at first I was perplexed at why it was still around, since the sub DM insured me that there were no magical items that can be used to extend the shelf life of the memory strand. only to be told by the Sub DM that the Guards had a Dimir spy on the payroll
who refreshed the memory strand every 8 hours on the dot. I then got into another debt over what my crime was then if it was okay to be a Dimir spy. he then made a circular argument where I was spying illegally, with a long eye roll, I then began to process of defending myself in the court of law where I was placed in a zone of truth and was not allowed to make a save since the caster used a magical item to force me to fail my save automatically. So I began to make my arguments, I luckily had prepared for this eventuality ahead of time and had used the encode thoughts spell before my trial to wipe my memories of the events so going in I had literally believed myself innocent. I then successfully beat my accuser (who was a fellow player) at every argument and proved my innocence and was declared by the courts to not be a Dimir Spy. However the sub DM reported to the Main DM that I failed and that everyone on the planet knew I was a spy. and since then every session I was constantly punished by the sub DM at every chance he got until I killed off the character in order to roll up a new one, which made him mad since he had to figure out a new way to punish my character. eventually he went behind the entire groups back and told me I was kicked out of the game. I contacted the DM and the other players to figure out what happened and they had no idea what was going on. needless to say I was done with the drama and just stopped going. and to this day that was one of the worse experiences I had with D&D.
Ah yes, the goblin story.
Love this one, so funny!
I love these kinds of stories.
Bad DMs learning IT the hard way, who wouldn't?
Did anybody else notice that depending on when this happened the goblins are orc sub types DM may have stolen the chest bursting goblin after breathing in spores thing straight from Alien: Covenant, if he didn’t that quite the coincidence
Using 24-hour timekeeping to upset someone is a level of petty I can only aspire to be.
Love how this video could easily be called “the power of karma in dnd”
Ganking the DMPC was awesome
In the levers one, it seems like the player was more of a That Guy than the GM, honestly.
Yeah definitely.
These bad DM stories gave me a good laugh.
Love the card board cut out art lol
Oh hey, nobody posting a single letter comment that gets edited to say “first”
Am I intelligent enough to know what "first" is?
Superluigi881
No
Arsene Lupin Cool
Welcome to the pinnacle of humanity
first
Umm... since when do goblins have spores? Sounds more like a slaad or mycinoid to me.
Warhammer 40K has a race called orks that breed by using spores. Entire planets would be taken over easily due to how fast they can spread into the atmsophere. I don't play Warhammer 40K, but at the same time the DM tried to play 40K using D&D. SO WHY THE FUCK NOT PLAY 40K?!?! CHRIST!!!
@@jordanpritchard5226 he may have taken inspiration, but even Orkz don't tend to gestate WITHIN someone. There may be fringe cases, but it's certainly not common.
No, he was just a bad GM. Also, 40k's Orkz are super cool. Everything about them functions off of Power of Belief. Red vehicles love faster because they expect them to, it's all very cool.
Wizard:uses feather fall and phantom steed
Also wizard:Adiós
Scribbles found within the Notes of a NG Human idiot;
BAD DM NOTES #1) is it just me, or does anyone else picture an Overweight Marlon Brando as this bad DM?
BAD DM #2) to quote a Fake Mage i know(who's actually a Rogue) name Conlley Artiste: "It's MAGIC...."
BAD DM #3) I heard a song in town the other day. I believe it started with "...You talk to much, you worry me to death..."
BAD DM #4) They say Patience is a virtue, but apparently he didn't get the memo....
May your pantheon ever favor you(especially in these trying times),
Baron Trevelyan of Restenford
Hey do you ever post your own stories about d&d? Like stuff that happened to you in a campaign
Do I know what a elf is?
Do I know what a tavern is?
Do I know what a door is?
Do we know what a tablet is?
What’s sitting?
What’s a question?
Do I know what a face book is?
I was dyeing wait do I know what dyeing is
The "Heroic and Infalliable" DMPC can be done right, but they have to be JUST a quest giver. If the party has a historic habit of getting sidetracked, it's a good way of giving their characters an in-game motivation to get down to brass tacks and do the thing for justice or what have you. But the moment the party has their motivation and is back on track, the DMPC isn't needed anymore. That is when you can cash in all it's narrative weight for a noble sacrifice against the BBEG so the party can live on and take up the DMPC's noble quest in his honor or to have the DMPC simply get called off to tackle more legendary problems elsewhere and task the party with finishing this "little" mission for them while they go off and handle the bigger problem, potentially with the promise of them getting to be included in the real action next time if they do good work on this job. There are plenty of other, more creative ways to go about it, but the strongest use of a DMPC is as a character that CAN be awesome by default, but still allowed to fail. It is a narrative device that gets old fast, sets the power limits of the world your in or whatever else you want. Just don't make the DMPC a party member proper. It just isn't what they are meant to be used for.
I want to see a novella sized intro where we're given a heroes adventure with it ending when the hero dies leading to the current situation in the world
"what's a question?"
Top 10 questions scientist still can't answer
Story 3 was both brutal and funny
This is the funniest thing I've ever listened to.
What's with the mascot peeking around the doorway and chuckling?
Did you see the cardboard cutout mascot?
@@ezrafaulk3076 Yes, I did.
@@naturalone6529 okay; I think it's supposed to be an outwitting the DM visual gag.
@@ezrafaulk3076 Ok. I was really confused for a second.
This was insane I cant imagine being in this campaign
So I've been honestly nervous about becoming the DM for my group, but after seeing this video I think I'll be ok haha
I have a dm friend who stutters and have problem trying to narrate
We usually just comfort him and call him cute whenever he does that so he doesnt have a problem and the story can simply progress naturally after his moment haha
In some instances, DMPCs are ok.
I have a campaign with my family and we take turns dming, and whenever we're the dm we still play our characters, but they're mostly prominent in combat.
(To be fair if I'm the only tank build, closest thing being our cleric, so honestly, it would be cruel to not help in combat.
And also if anyone puts anything on a really tall shelf I'm the only one who can reach it XD
A friendly NPC that travels with the party is fine, a DMPC is pretty much always bad.
@@taragnor Theres a fine line between those two.
DMPCs are mainly used whenever the DM needs something to be happening that none of the players would know to do.
Such as do certain things to advance the story.
So in other words: They can be good, to help the storyline.
But I do agree that in most cases the DMPC is overpowered to help with the storyline advancing, making them not really good to begin with.
your vids narration is awesome