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Player Just Doesn't Accept That Villain Had A Good Reason | Narrated D&D Story
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- Опубліковано 13 бер 2023
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To be honest, it's just as effective to have the villain just be a villain. There's a really raw quote in FFXIV where a guy basically eradicates a whole nation and when confronted is like "What, are you gonna feel better if I had a good reason for it?"
lmao I'd be like "damn dude, you got me there" hahahaha
@@TheMightyBattleSquid The guy actually was not capable of understanding the person screaming at him. He's a pretty good representation of a sociopath in media.
@@DarkWindsoftheVoid55 yeah he's just _broken_ as a person.
....and then Alisaie hit him with that verbal Critical Hit.
Tbf, Zenos had a "reason". Not a good one, but at least he did have one
All he cared about was something to challenge him for once, and when our character proved we could square up against him we became his "friend"
He even fought with us as an ally against a life ending god just so he could have the chance to go "1v1 me bro" after
Tbh I like both kinds, I like good ol jack "Im evil cuz I just love it"
And the "Im evil cuz insert reason/sad stories here"
My issue with that second one is when they try to make us feel sorry for the villain when they cross the line of what makes them sympathetic.
Both can be well done with thought and restraint. You can even combine the two if you're clever.
@The Kaiser Honestly, I'm trying to think of a combo villain. Maybe Handsome Jack if you consider pre-sequel.
@@blakeduckly2875 that could be interesting 🤔 what happened when the well meaning villain Start to enjoy the villainy? At what point do they Snap and how much of it was the party's foiling their original plan? Is it out of madness or vengeance that they become a card carrying villain? All good question ⁉️ I wish you luck 🤞
There are two sides to every story. And I can't help but wonder what the Dwarf player's side would be. He had his entire character concept rug pulled by the DM and the rest of the group seemed to lack sympathy for it. Was he really the type of player who never roleplays? Or was it difficult for him to do so with this group?
Tough call. I still put this on the player. It is the player's choice to get mad.
My question is how can 600 years of illusion and other stuff on the lands be just illusion. Had to be more. IE what happened to the people?
But in the end the player decides how character respond. IE, if it was me, I would still demand he faces punishment for what he did because still crime regardless of reason, but take the new information into account.
Honestly, I'd probably still place blame on the player.
The point of DnD is to tell stories and have fun doing it. He could have easily just been "It's fine that you had a good reason for it, but you still have to pay for your crimes" instead of getting mad at the DM for trying to do something interesting
I'm personally stand with the player on this one. It's his BBEG from his backstory. If I were in the campaign, I wouldn't lay a finger on either. Let the player decide which route to take and let the consequences fall on either head.
Personally, while I might be interested in my backstory being flipped on its head for a GOOD twist, I know players who hate having their backstory modified for a sympathetic twist. This kinda thing is why I ask my players how much they'd allow me to work with their story.
@@VelociraptorsOfSkyrim I think the reason he quit was because the other players were going to prevent any action against the old man.
I can't stand on the player side on this one, a murder hobo is just that, a murder hobo, and he got mad for being prevented to murder hobo what he assumed was the BBEG, and didn't care the real BBEG was even mightier, and threw a tantrum to his companions, tried to murder them, and tore up his character sheet because he wasn't able to murder anyone. That is just childish behaviour, and at any point he could have discussed it or his goal, but he didn't and never tried to, refused to see he was ruining the fun of everyone else, and got entitled to the point of deciding for the whole party that they didn't had a right to roleplay by attempting murder every chance he got. He has no excuse for his behaviour.
Magic cube item description when scanned with True Identify:
There once was a minstrel of old
who then broke away from the fold.
He won't give you up.
He won't let you down.
In a word, you have been limerick-rolled.
Being honest, I don't have anything against sympathetic villains, but we definitely need more *_Jack Horner_* BBEG's instead of everyone being Thanos. 💀
Also, you are told you have to forgive Thanos for killing half your village, because he meant well.
Absolutely agree! Give me a mean person who just wants to be mean, so I don't have to think about if it's okay to hit him.
@@schwarzerritter5724 I'd like to add, that Thanos's plan has a few holes in it. Like I get the idea but when you boil it down to. If I can get these magic stones to rewrite the world as I see fit and your plan is to kill half the galaxy to keep the population "balance". I'm tempted to just go. "Uh if these magic stones can do that...then why not oh I don't know. Solve galaxy hunger then! You know make it so everyone has everything or something anything else.". Then well they become less sympathetic and moronic if you ask me.
That is just my hot take on the whole villain stuff, I can get behind a villain with good enough plan. After all we are all heroes in our own stories. But Like the guy above me.
Sometimes I just want a villain to be evil just cause they are evil.
I disagree we need more BBEGs that are only murdering everyone because he wanted to fuck the avatar of death itself.
Oh, wait do you mean movie Thanos?
You think Thanos is sympathetic?
I was kinda checked out when the DM explained how they had two separate bonus exp systems going on that can, and seemed to lead to party level disparity. If you need a "roleplay exp bonus" to offset the "last hit exp bonus" it's probably best not to have either.
I'm not against exp, and have played games with both exp and milestone. but homebrew exp systems where players can get ahead of others by potentially hogging the spotlight either in battle, roleplay, or exploration can breed an antagonistic environment and considering the DM plot twisted the paladin's story to a "you were the bad guy actually" angle. I can't help but feel there might have been that kind of play environment being fostered at the table, and the paladin player simply had enough.
Edit: i think another point of contention is how the beginning starts with essentially the DM saying "he was a helpful and nice player, despite not roleplaying much and being clearly interested in battle" it comes off as judgmental, the paladin clearly did care about something lore and story wise, otherwise he wouldn't have been upset about the plot twist. which, in hindsight, if the DM really wanted the paladin to have hints at this, at the "well if he talked to x, and asked these specific questions to y" could have come up in the paladin's research he was doing in the first place. If the elders could correlate the village's downfall to the mining, one would assume that there would be written information akin to that as well. it all comes off as a lack of expectation on multiple people's part's. and considering this player was not a problem until this point should have lead somebody at the table to as least wonder how/why it had come to this? if a normally nice and favorable player suddenly outbursts, leaves, and no one seems to care and moves on without them, it makes third parties believe information is missing.
Him having a tantrum because he couldn't adapt doesn't mean he was like actually trying to roleplay
@@Bran_Flakesx7 I know you don't actually want to discuss this properly, but God you can at least pretend you listened to the story and make a point that's not immediately refuted by the story itself.
Him throwing a tantrum doesn't mean he wasn't roleplaying. Not is anyone excusing those actions, especially me. But the fact that he was literally quoted in character by op involving himself in the story and reacting to things done and said with motivation is roleplaying.
You can't just say he wasn't trying because he resorted to violence against his enemy first. You're not seeing the forest for the trees because you're too caught up in tje bad behavior that you dismiss everything else. He very much was roleplaying.
My main point isn't even about whether or not he was. It's that exp bonuses that set to make experience gain lopsided are stupid and foster toxic table habits. I couldn't give a rats ass if the paladin roleplayed or not, but its clear by the the in character talking and researching and in character arguing before the out of character rage that he was. Obviously it wasn't enough for his DM as he described him in such a way, but not roleplaying as much or as well as others is not the same as not trying.
Like , damn I'm more upset that you would flat out ignore whole narrative parts of the story just so you can paint a clear 'villain'. You don't have to tell me you weren't paying attention like this lol
@@lighthadoqdawg "I know you don't want to discuss the properly"
Not with you, you histrionic fuck
I remember standing trial for the murder of 237 goblins, 48 kobolds, twin succubi, a tribe of trolls, a tribe of ogres a pet rustmonster named powder, destruction of property over 14k, theft over 50k, trespassing, home invasion, and littering? Why? I didn't kill the big boss, a rather delusional charm wizard, and as such he wanted me to pay dearly for invading his lair lol.
My group got me off the hook by proving the wizard had no deed to the land in question, thus was a squatter in ruins officially treated as royal owned land..
So from egotistical arch villain, to homeless guy who couldn't afford the lean the crown placed on his actual cottage, due to not appropriating the proper deed to the land he built it on. Pffft, serves him right, I was going to be hung and brought back to life around 400 times if I lost my trial. 😆
Giving extra XP or worse, XP only to however gets the killing blow encourages metagaming, powergaming, and discourages teamwork and support.
I do kind of get where the Dwarf player is coming from. This is a character who loves to fight, whose made his character with the idea of killing someone he's been told by the DM was a bad guy, and then when the opportunity comes the rug's been pulled from under his feet. Everything he knows is a lie. He was invested in this battle, and the DM removed his chance at catharsis. I can see players getting annoyed from this.
There's no catharsis to be had. They never personally suffered any injustice at his hands. They only read about it from people who were never even hurt. And that's not the fault of the DM. That's the risk you take when you build the backstory of your character around a plot point you don't know everything about that the DM has plans for.
@@samuelsoliday4381 I get that, but it really isn’t cool to entirely change such a fundamental part of a player’s backstory without any kind of permission.
@@zebadicaagain9735 Here's the thing, though. The players backstory was based around the DM's story, not the other way around. This twist was already planned before the player made his character. If it's not fair to decide to change an aspect of a character's backstory, the how is it fair for the DM to have to change a major plot point of his story just to please one player? In the first place, the player's backstory wasn't even changed, the only thing they knew was from what they learned from books and stories, so even in their backstory, they never had full first hand knowledge of what actually happened.
@@samuelsoliday4381An excellent point.
As a fledgling DM, I know that would be just challenging and not exactly what I would do with some of my BBEGs (Who only a small few are sympathetic, and even then still are in the Evil Alignment nexus), and not at all fair to both parties.
It's just... It complicates things more than it should to please just one person in TTRPG.
as a DM, I love fucking with my players, but the hints for me come from the whole story. XP bonuses "to encourage roleplay", mentioning the player at question doesn't roleplay, and suddenly the villian who the DM mentions "everything he read came from libraries" meaning no interaction with anyone in the wizards faction. He basically said "i know combat is the pillar you love, but I like roleplay, so I'm going to ruin your pillar, just so my pillar is shown to be the "right" way". I'm not saying that to judge this DM either. I as a DM had my phase of that being the case too. I had a bunch of combat monkeys but wanted roleplay, so I did stuff like hide rewards behind roleplay, make my characters say how they cast their spells, impose charisma penalties to deception and persausion checks to encourage roleplay, exp bonuses you name it.
The most effective way I have found to "encourage" roleplay, is to just do it, with no strings attached. when the players see a NPC climb a tree and use the fall damage to enhance their attacks they start using acrobatics for advantage ect. when they see a dude getting everything they want in a city with a solid gaurd, they start lying about them to other nobles to sabotage him, over time they get more comfortable and start doing more stuff, no punishment, no rewards needed.
Both parties are at fault, the player should have said "dude, i feel like you're punishing me for not roleplaying by destroying the one thing that I as a character care about and that's not cool" and the DM should have said "hey man, I'm sorry, I thought it would make a cool story and i didn't think how it effected you (giving the DM the benefit of the doubt here) at the end of it all, sure that BBEG was a wash, but then they move on, start a new campagin, and the DM keeps it in mind going forward.
anyhow much love to the community, hope your days go well.
Love the story. Always hate when tables lose members as a result of the villain.
Wasn’t the villain, it was the player
@@davefletch3063 eh
@@davefletch3063nah it was the DM who destroyed the guys characters backstory and everything. Having a villain who you want to kill and the player was obviously really excited to do it
@@michalsimunek9473 No, it wasn't the DM's fault. The player acted like a child, their behavior is their own fault only. Not to mention, the BBG wasn't even a "personal villain", it was a story element that the player decided to make their background revolve around: when you are a player, you should expect that some of the worldbuilding elements may have twists because your DM most-likely decided on them prior to your character's existence, that's stuff that happens all the time. I could understand if this was, like, someone who had personally murdered the party's favorite NPCs throughout the campaign, but this was literally just a plot element they never interacted with.
You can be sympathetic and still evil
Well, dude wasn't really evil. He pretended to be.
Also that seems like a pretty great campaign.
Evil is finite. No matter the species or circumstances. Hence martial artistry being it's antithesis.
@@PrimordialNyx i could pretend to be Jeffrey Dahmer if my act still leads to suffering I'm not a cool guy
@@maxwellmerkel2537 exactly. As soon as you do evil acts you loose any sympathy.
@@PrimordialNyx didn't seem great to me. It actually seemed incredibly contrived. "Oh, so the frozen valley isn't actually frozen... So, why are the white dragons there? Dragons are notorious for seeing through illusions. And no wild shape druids just happen to fly past the snow drift... For hundreds of years?... Sure, whatever."
Had a situation many years ago when the Star Wars RPG was released.
We got all excited, made our crew of smugglers and had several good runs of storytelling.
Until our GM thought it would be awesome to take a PC and have them meet themself, thereby revealing the PC we’d been on many an adventure with was actually a clone.
GM wanted to see our reactions and how we would accept this revelation, which drove a wedge straight down the middle of the group. Half of us went with the new, alleged original person, while the rest of us(myself & two others) stayed with our trusted friend.
GM never bothered to discuss this rather important revelation with the player, pissing her off to no end.
Never got to finish that particular story, nor run anymore Star Wars themed games, though after a brief hiatus to allow tempers to cool, we went back to 2nd Ed Dark Sun & Shadowrun for many more adventures til life does what it does and we all went our separate ways.
20 something years have gone by and I still think about some of those games and the good memories.
That is exactly the issue that happened with the Clone Saga in the Spider-Man books. And the writers and fans had much the same reaction as the player to the whole revelation.
@@emberfist8347 it probably didn't help the writers kept flip-flopping evidence so that, at the end, they could just declare whichever spiderman people liked more to be the "real" one.
Definitely not okay your GM didn't run this by the player first, given their reaction
Sounds like something they literally thought would be cool & dumped it on the table w/o any prior planning
Bad players mostly, trying to kick out the player character that they actually know for a stranger they just so happened to be cloned from.
First Story: I can sympathize with both sides on that one. Without hearing from the dwarf player and getting some more details, I can't say one way or another where my judgment would land.
Honestly this is all on the DM. What's the point in setting up your sketchy BBEG when instead of a fight they throw a wishy washy sad backstory. Like honestly if the mage cared so much he could have gotten involved with the players much earlier and became a support NPC instead of the DM purposely hiding and setting him up as the BBEG.
And what's up with keeping it all a secret? "Oh, there's this super deadly creature that I, an esteemed mage and elder of this village, knows about? *Better make up a bunch of BS instead of warn my colleagues and fellow elders, hurdurr* "
Well from what I understand; this was his first interaction with the players. The player himself got to know about him from books. Also about not telling village elders and others, maybe they did not believe him, happens a lot to people.
@@particularplaypaint5384 you do understand the DM orchestrated it all right? He can decide who know the party and how. He turned a potential npc into a BBEG that no one fights despite literally preparing for one. We're given powerful spells and abilities for a reason to use them on powerful enemies not to sit down and listen to their side of things.
@@particularplaypaint5384 Idk, man, by description the mage seemed to be a very prominent figure in the village. Age + Knowledge + Status(Assuming he was of an appointed/otherwise revered position) strengthens my disbelief. Like, if there was some reason why the village disbelieved him, like him being the nutter-butter hermit living at the precipice of a mountain or something, than maybe I'd kinda see that being the case.
@@TimaeusEXE Tbf, the BBEG, presumably, became the monstrosity. I'm still not a fan of the plot twist, because it seems pretty weak in the narrative and with little pay off.
Eh, I'd be kinda pissed too and the story being told from only this perspective makes it hard to see how the player felt about it before he left other than how it was interpreted here. I think both DM and player have a share of the blame. Also, is the wizard an idiot? Why didn't he just warn them about the danger, ask them to evacuate and cast illusions to hide the thing instead of traumatizing the dwarf later? Was the player of that character just supposed to roleplay like: "Oh! I see, you traumatized me for my own good! Well, then all is good. Good job. Now how do we go about beating the real BBEG" what a good twist my man.
And has the person who wrote this story never been on Twitter? There's plenty of people over 20 having a tantrum there.
He wasn't traumatized. He was born after the incident in question and all he knew was what was told to him by his elders.
@@samuelsoliday4381 And books
Yeah, the DM should have taken the Dwarf aside before they got to the wizard and said something along the lines of, "Hey, I'm thinking of taking your backstory and getting creative with it. Would you mind if things don't quite work out the way you expect?" Then, see how the player responds. If they say "No," or "as long as I can kill the evil bastard," then you know not to try anything super special with the twist. If you really want to make him sympathetic, then have it so that the wizard tried to stop the Eldredge Horror, but it took control of his mind and the dragons and that it is the true mastermind. But, only reveal that _after_ they kill him. Then both parties are satisfied. Sometimes you have to let someone eat the cake before they realize it will make them fat.
Exactly this, the DM should have communicated with him ahead of time
The player built his character's backstory around the DM's concept, not the other way around. The DM is under no obligation to change the story he already planned out just because the player made an uninformed decision.
@@samuelsoliday4381 ... Did you respond to every SINGLE post to say this same thing?
DMs aren't a theatre production bruh, this is a bit sad
@@unamed1142 I didn't respond to every single post to say the same thing. I responded to several people in the top comments who were making the same stupid mistake in their reasoning.
I'm not fond of these "Oh, the 'evil' character who act sketchy as fuck but it's everyone else's fault for not trusting the sketchy as fuck guy" stories.
and bonus xp for killing blow. Christ...
If it's gonna be done, it's gotta be done _well._
They literally undermined his entire character, did he handle it badly yes, but I would to hear his perspective on this story
And how the entire group just railroaded some weak ass character twist
That be like frodo walking all the way to Mt. Doom and then giving the ring to sauron because sauron sad backstory boohoo
I'm definitely conflicted on this one
Frodo Universe.
His character wasn't undermined at all. In the first place, his character's backstory was that the only thing he knew about the eternal winter was what was told to him through books and word of mouth. It's only natural he didn't have the full story.
Sauron did a lot more damage than this wizards literal 0...
@@samuelsoliday4381 like I said I'm not defending the guy, but it became pretty clear he made killing this wizard his own personal goal and no dm should override a players choices and goals for thematic purposes because it sounds cooler
There should have definitely been a conversation about something as important as character arcs and lore
@@ricorojas1854 If the wizard was the character's creation fro their backstory, that would be true. But that's not what happened. The DM had already written in the wizard and all the plot points relating to him before the player even came up with his character. If it's not cool for a player's backstory and goals to be overridden by the DM, then how is it okay for a DM to have to change the entire plot of his story just to please a player who wrote a backstory from a place of ignorance.
DAMN! Even the sheet?? That's as petty as it is sad, sounded like the player was getting invested in the notions of the story rather than must the battles to be that upset. But that was still really blown out of proportion can in character would probably be more relieving ti the dwarf paladin, or make for some sort of neat chance for self reflection. YIRBEL LIVES!
The wizard was in the player's backstory.
This is like being on the quest to retrieving the ceremonial dagger of your clan. You fight with nothing but a dagger in anticipation of finally finding it at level 10+ and when you do, the DM tells you it is just a normal dagger, except it has -1, because it is so old.
@@schwarzerritter5724 Not really like that at all since, in this case, you're planning to murder the dagger....?
@@TheMightyBattleSquid "Hey, you know the thing you wrote your character around? The thing that has been building up the entire game and you have been looking forward to? Well, guess what, plot twist!"
If you want a plot twist, don't allow a player to write his backstory assuming you are playing it straight.
@@schwarzerritter5724 I could be missing something, but I didn't think we were told the origin of the villain. If it was a preestablished part of the world that the player built their character around then the player overreacted, it wasn't their idea to begin with and should have accepted that there could have been more to it.
If the villain did come from the player's backstory though I agree, the DM did him dirty by trying to twist the combat player's personal villain into the good guy.
Notably, he wasn't just invested in the story to have that emotional reaction. He'd also been consistently getting feedback from the DM that he wasn't being engaged enough through the experience awards.
He is the only player in the group who doesn't go along with the metagame "we the players know who succeeded at their saving throws" when he refused to accept the other character claiming to see through the illusion. And again, not given credit for it.
Then he's the only one who looks at the illusion spec'd evil wizard they came here to kill, whom they have no evidence beyond his word for any of what he's saying (since while they could have found that evidence in previous sessions, they obviously hadn't found it), and doesn't want to just give up on the mission to become the erand boy for the evil wizard who drove his people out of their homeland. He doesn't want to hear his speech, and gets more upset about it as his so-called allies are getting more and more enthralled by the wizard's honeyed words.
And again, not getting credit for it, being treated as a mindless killbot because the DM thinks "role playing" is the same as "going along with whatever I throw out there, even if it makes no sense in character to go along with it".
I'd be pretty hot under the collar after being disrespected like that too.
Ah, the classic blunder of assuming a Dwarf with a grudge will be reasonable.
The grudge WILL be made right!
Yep...
"Dwarf King wants this guy's head on a platter and I shall deliver it.."
CHOP!
@@fhuber7507 literally every dwarven character I played had a personal book of grudges. you slight me, he went in the book.
Lesson of the day. Disagree all you want with motives or behaviors of in the story, but for the love of Galadrrrrrrrriel, stop making weird for the rest of the players.
Can we just talk about exaxtly a ding dang "investigation test" is? I heard that phrase and instantly questioned if i was listening to a D&D tale.
Seems like a cause of player and DM having very different version of the Champaign
First story: I'm at 2:55 and what ever it is its the DM's fault. This is going to be a story about a BAD DM trying to make himself look good and gaslight a player. I just tell already.
"Player doesn't rp" the writer says the at 3:12 is saying how the dwarf is excited exclaiming his intentions to the villian of a dwarven story.
I'm starting to think that this player, who was considerate to others ans helpful to the party was queit in the other RP moments because he was giving the other players their spot light.
Entirely. I hate these kind of DMs. “Oh the player didn’t like my super secret horribly written twist and got mad that I basically fucked with this entire story we set up? Must be the players fault cause I’m M. Night Shyamalan.”
Among other things; I believe the problem is likely in part due to the experience reward mechanic.
When you reward individual players for "Good RP" ~ You are creating a competitive environment, since it means everyone wants to get that trophy and there is only so much time to go around
Its not a malice thing, its just clamoring for that boon for their own sake.
Any such system should give the reward to the entire party, unless you want a bit of competitive nature between the players.
For a co-operative spirit, players should feel rewarded for enabling and encouraging the engagement of other players as well as themselves when its time to take the spotlight.
The other players should be seeing the dwarf taking initiative for one of the first times, and be like - 'hell yeah man, what you got?'
But instead, the other players shut them down.
It would be like only paying whoever gets the winning touchdown in football hoping it'll encourage your team to get more touchdowns.
But when you do that, every team member will fight each other over the damn ball - And nobody wins.
Sounds like this guy did plenty of roleplay
YEEEEESSSSSS!!!!!!! The old art style is back!!!!!!!
Weirdly enough I got to side with the player here. I understand the story the dm was going for but the player had his whole concept pulled out from under him and then the party prevented him from even trying to accomplish his goal. Could he have handled the aftermath better? Sure but yeah gonna say I hold the dm accountable on this one. He could have done more to ease this whole twist in. I also don't agree with turning the pc into a npc, it's mostly from a bad experience but dms should leave pcs alone if the player leaves. This is just my opinion though really and all in all I'm sad this even happened to both player and dm.
For sure, the DM talks about how foreshadowing could have been found if they bothered to look for it in the story
But that line also means that the players never actually received it.
After all; How would the Dwarf Player know they need to look for more history/details on what happened in the first place?
Maybe they could have, out of sheer curiosity to explore his lost culture. But that isn't exactly urgent
I totally agree.
So you side with the guy that throwed a tantrum at the table, tried to TPK the party, and tore his character sheet in half, rather than just taking the DM aside and communicating his displeasure (something that's totally up to personal preference, because many other players wouldn't have disliked such twist, and so the DM couldn't have predicted)?
I’ve not come for what you hoped to do, I’ve come for what you did.
Sounds like a great turn of story
Olmec? Insert Shrine of the Silver Monkey joke.
8:50: "A magical and dangerous magical artifact"?
It's a legendary artifact of legend.
Not a fan of you badmouthing your player for "not role playing" and "only being here to kill things", then you proceeding to prove that a lie with his reaction to the plot twist. Someone who wasn't role playing would have shrugged and moved on to the next combat encounter with the new big bad. You know, like all the other players did.
This was a player who was doing a terrific job of role playing a character on a vengeance quest who suddenly finds his so-called allies deceived by the honeyed words of the illusion spec'd evil wizard they're here to kill.
He was the one who actively IGNORED the metagaming bullshit of other people seeing through the illusion so everyone else in the party deciding to believe the one who saw through the illusion. His character didn't see through the illusion, and he's got no reason to assume the other character's senses are any more accurate than his own. The player knows who succeeded and failed their saving throws, but the character doesn't. That's good roleplaying.
I can see why he was pissed at you. Not only did you fuck up the climax to the character's personal story arc, but you consistently treated his contributions and good roleplaying as if it wasn't even happening. And he can see the way you're judging him on his roleplaying in your experience point award system.
And the worst bit is you look this bad just from your own one-sided account. I can't imagine what you're leaving out that he would have mentioned.
This is how I felt and I didn’t know how to say it but this is just perfect
He built his backstory around the dm's plot, not the other way around.
@@samuelsoliday4381 i agree with you. There's some things I'd like to add but first off i want to say that until i remembered he did build his backstory around the campaign story, i was a little salty for the player. Of course that feeling went away knowing he did it to himself in a sense. Which leads me to what i wish to add here; communication. The dm should of warned him that by doing that his character's story will be altered in a way he may not like. Its the dm's job to make it fun for everyone and to improvise planned sessions in favor of their enjoyment. Even dms like cinderblock sally say to wing it as you can't plan everything out due to the actions and choices of the party and rail roading is only acceptable when your players are ok with a "point of no return" until it's over. I'd say the player should've been more cool about it, maybe talk to the dm after to try and fix it so that the wizard is really evil and was just buying time for whatever reason to awaken the creature. That's the beauty of dnd- its flexible for both the dm and the party. Still i agree. Bottom line is that they sabotaged their own character and thus denied themselves a fun experience. Regardless of badmouthing and lack of communication from both parties involved.
@@kirkfogg8366 Well I'm glad to see you've remembered. My guess is that the reason the DM didn't do that is because he saw the risks behind building one's character around the dm's campaign to be common sense. But I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree in that regard.
What the fuck are your rambling about.
He wasn't "doing a terrific job of role playing a character on a vengeance quest who suddenly finds his so-called allies deceived by the honeyed words of the illusion wizard". He was just mad that the BBG he wanted to have a boss fight with wasn't actually a boss fight. Do you really think all his being mad and anger was _in character?_ Even tearing his own character shit?
The other players didn't metagame by choosing to trust their _friend and companion_ who saw through the illusion. Even if we ignore that it is fucking stupid to ignore one of your team members going "Guys I found out this is an illusion and this is why", there's still the fact that an illusion, once found out, is automatically disbelieved. Which is actually what _happened,_ considering the post itself explicitly described the players snapping out of the illusion.
The DM couldn't fuck up "the climax to the character's personal arc", because said arc had yet to begin. This was the first time they ever met the wizard. They never interacted with him, fought his minions, "witnessed the havoc and destruction they brought upon the land", or stuff like that. This was literally their first meaningful interaction with the mage. What kind of "climax" is placed at the start of the story? Would have made for a very shitty "character's personal arc", don't you think?
Also, why are you saying "you"? Do you realize this is just a post-reading channel, and this isn't a story that happened to the youtuber itself?
Geez, of all the comments I've read so far of people defending this asshat of a player, this one really only feels like a troll.
Question concerning the Celtic-themed 5e book at the beginning:
Would it work for a Retroverse setting in some ways?
I'm planning on running a _Lasers & Liches_ campaign, and I was wondering how to mix it up a little.
This's *exactly* why you don't just swallow propaganda like that; honestly, I really *like* when villains are given enough depth to be trying to do what they believe to be the *right* thing to do. This story honestly just reminds me of the bandit story, when the players couldn't accept the bandits having actual *depth* to them in terms of how they behave instead of being completely *braindead* like they are in vanilla Skyrim. Unfortunately, people are being *raised* to be shallow and to *only* get all their information from a *single* , and completely *untrustworthy* source; that's why they can't appreciate character *depth* , which's a very *sad* thing to have to acknowledge.
I don't know. This dwarf is a known Illusionist - magic of deception
I'd be pretty hesitant to trust any such character, propoganda or not.
And the story mentions that clues revealing the situation *could* have been found if they looked for them, not that they were actually provided to the players.
Based off the wording; And considering the story itself comes from a biased source. I wouldn't be surprised if the players never actually received any evidence until that conclusion, which the player was likely excited for - Hoping for an epic final battle with the person who ruined his home, only to be expected to sit down and accept it
Not saying that is the case, I wouldn't know for sure. But I'm just a bit suspicious of how its presented
I see your *point*
I kind of *agree* but not with *all* points
The wizard was connected to the player character's backstory. How can it be propaganda if the character saw it himself?
@@schwarzerritter5724 Well, technically what he saw was an illusion. And what he didn't see was the reason for the actions taken against his homeland
Still, "it was an illusion" is basically the same as telling the player "it was a dream"
You can do that, but it requires a big sell for readers/players to accept such a thing on something pivotal they're invested with
Kinda like woke snowflakes
"player didn't like to role play much" but would literally turn on the party and have his character die rather than break character. This is exactly how one would expect a revenge seeking dwarf raised by hobbits who heard stories of his destroyed motherland to act when dealing with a self-admitted illusionist. In his mind the wizard is lying. They'll need more proof than his word and it's safer just to kill him and atone later if he was telling the truth. Missed opportunity for playing out a serious moral dilemma. This a breakdown in player/DM communication regarding the metanarrative, not necessarily an example of failure to RP.
in my session zero we made sure to have a conversation for what happens when a player character's motives break from the party's. the DM offers you a redemption/reconciliation arc or if it can't be done, you get turned into an NPC. it makes for some cool moments as long as everyone is aware and ok with the consequences. if youre gonna make a character at the extreme ends of the alignment chart, go for it, but remember it's still a co-op game.
He wasn't avoiding to break character. Unless his alignment was Evil, that is, but considering Yondalla is a LG goddess, I doubt that was the case. On the contrary, by ignoring in-game information in order to satisfy his out-of-game delusion, he broke character immensely.
Some of yall need to realize that that was kinda the dwarfs backstory right there. And the dm just changed it without even asking him first just for a cliche "actually the good guy twist". You say "MURDER HOBO!1!1!11!" But forget to realize some players just want a good ol plain hero story. On top of that the other players was straight up stopping him from how he wanted to play, and guess what? THAT PART OF HIM ROLEPLAYING. not caring what he had to say because why should he even believe him? Everyone told him that guy was crazy and evil. And even if there's a worse bad guy, he still made people suffer and didn't ho about it the best way. You can be sympathetic but still evil. Did tge player overreact? Sure. But to be fair, that's pretty annoying what the dm and players did to him. So I'm on the players side here. Not every bad guy has to be a secret good guy or sympathetic.
Yeah the story acts as if not dealing damage makes the villagers being terrorized ok.
Are we going to ignore the DM is penalizing players for not roleplaying enough or playing support?
Rubbed me the wrong way too. Last hit bonus was always a stupid idea.
@@OnlineSarcasmFails It sounds like that last hit bonus was literally because it was the only thing the dwarf player did often enough to get rewarded for it. Since he never engaged outside of anything else...
How is giving bonus for roleplay in order to encourage it a penalty? It's like saying daily bonuses in video game penalize player who purposefully not take it
@@jaimytourigny3027 Because while it sounds like a good idea on paper, it's very easy to end up working out unfairly without meaning to. How do you differentiate between role play that is good enough to earn the bonus and what isn't? It creates inherent biases towards certain players and characters, for instance:
A player who is more comfortable and capable of doing a voice or accent is going to stand out from someone who isn't, resulting in more bonuses.
A player who is playing more of a social butterfly is going to take the lead in roleplay more often than a more taciturn one, resulting in more bonuses.
You may have a player who is more shy getting overrun by more eager players at the table, resulting in that player not getting these bonuses.
And a hundred other variables at the table that can make it seem like some players are engaging more with the roleplay than others. You might say "well, I'll just identify and account for all of these things" but given that the DM is responsible for so much beyond just adjudicating roleplay, it leaves too much opportunity for certain players to fall through the cracks and get permanently left behind.
@@codyhelms2556 You can never be totally fair to everyone, that is the basis of everything. You choose your priority, and all you do here is criticize there is one.
If he CAN'T do roleplay, he should find a group more suited to his playstyle, and not force a WHOLE GROUP into what he believe is fun for himself. That wouldn't be ANYONE's fault.
By trying to balance everyone, you end up nerfing everyone but the less prevalent player, basic math.
A player who REFUSE to be social is removing the social aspect of the game for everyone else, and the DM, as well as other players, dealt with him with the outmost patience they could while not spoiling their own fun, the one to cross the line was HIM.
They did let him every opportunity to share, the DM encouraged it, he could have said everything about his expectation out of character like usual, stop acting like his only recourse was "roleplay" he refused to do.
You act and speak like he was left behind, but everything point out to the opposite, he was engaging first, choosing for the party what fights were worth, and even the direction the plot was going by murdering anyone he felt murdering. Just like you said there's too much ways for people to be cut out of roleplay, there is just as many ways for people to overtake a whole group, and table, just to have what they feel they,re entitled to. The problem IS, he threw a tantrum over not having the outcome he wanted RIGHT AWAY, while not being forced to something else, but only to wait for the other players to have the plot revealed to them, and THEY acted up in a way they had a voice in the decision, which he tried to remove from them from the very first moment until the very end.
If someone didn't care about the feeling of others, it was him, trying to decide for the whole party, and trying to murder them for simply disagreeing with him, and subdue him into listening FOR ONCE.
Get real, if you have pity for him not being able to murder hobo the plot, then you have no sympathy for anybody else in this campaign and are a bigger hypocrite than what makes you mad.
Absolutely loving your content. Definitely can't wait for the book.
I miss DMing. I had a BBEG who killed his people as a sacrifice to feed a soul seal that prevented an extraplaner being from crossing over from his plane. Sent my players across realms to find spell ingredients for a ritual to kill it. Took 4 months of irl playing. It was fun.
And yes the players killed the bbeg without looking at the clues i left.
As much as I hate to admit it, I think I side with the player in this story. His character had a one track mind, didn't talk at all when rp was happening, sure, but he had a focus for his specific character to kill this important npc from his backstory. It sounds to me like the DM, instead of hiding clues behind investigation or perception rolls or rp, should have straight up given this player hints as to the nature of the truth, if he knew he was persistently not engaging with the world.
Not only that but this NPC has the employ of white dragons. A typically evil dragon type. I think the player wanted nothing more than to crush his character's sworn nemesis, and having his party seemingly stop him from doing that must've been infuriating. If he had gone through with it anyway and done it, regardless of the other player's intervening, he would still probably be in that group. Things would have been rocky, sure, but he would not have left so pettily.
I think its the fault of the other players that this individual left. They were not good sports about letting him engage with the one element of his backstory that he wanted to even engage with.
It must feel so infuriating that the 1 thing you set up to do was misguided from the start, left feeling you might as well not played whatsoever when it all goes down.
Had the opposite once: my investigator in a horror mystery campaign had 85-95% of a case solved, only to learn at the confrontation that the monster was just a monster doing monster things, all the evidence just lined up coincidentally.
He was a douche
Nah I think it's more an issue of communication. This guy CLEARLY wasn't getting what he wanted out of the playstyle of the other players+dm from the start. He should've parted ways much sooner if he was going to throw a tantrum at simply being told to fight the bbeg behind the bbeg instead. He still got his fight, if that's what he wanted. What kind of "story" is completely static from start to end? Not a good one, that's for sure.
@@TheMightyBattleSquid I mean, I'm no Tolkein expert, but wasn't the LotR kinda static in that way? The Orcs were still bad guys, the quest was to drop the ring in the volcano, Sauron is still evil incarnate, etc. The LotR was kind of a straight forward story, save for a few characters and it is widely considered an amazing story.
Y'know what wasn't static, LotR: shadow of war. Widely considered a bad story. There were twist everywhere.
He could have deceived them, waited for the decision about what to do to be made and do otherwise, convince them to kill him, or really ANYTHING, but he instead threw a tantrum for not being able to cut the whole story short for everyone else, he tried to prevent the wizard from even talking and incessantly interrupted the plot reveal, got egotistical enough to try to murder everyone's character, killed his instead and even tore the sheet apart, and never come back. If someone is not good sport and isn't thinking about anyone but himself, it isn't the group. What right did he had to decide for everyone that the plot didn't matter and shouldn't be heard, or be his immediate target and lose THEIR character? This behaviour has a name, it is murder hobo.
Hahahaha, both stories are funny when being told.
The first is highly unpleasant to live through it, but the second is just funny for everyone 🥰🤣
Video begins at 1:04
Bro Rick rolled the whole party
We had a campaign that degraded with a sympathetic villain. The DM hadn't anticipated our reaction to the villain. Basically we ended up talking down the villain and ended up assassinating the agents that hired us and then the king. Apparently that wasn't the original goal but we all kind of ended up in uncharted territory.
Telling your PC that their entire backstory and character arc is a lie and expecting them to just roll with it is bad DMing. What about that was supposed to be fun for the player?
And the motive was idiotic as hell.
Well, for one, the Player could have actually tried to engage with the game rather than have a "Must kill everything!" Mindset.
Second, instead of throwing a fit, the player could gave gone "Cool story bro. You're still an evil fucker and deserve to die."
There are multiple ways the player could still have fun here, he just decided to be a dick about it.
@@emberfist8347 Yeah.
''Oh I found out these belong to an entity that is asleep, should I warn people and ward off those who try to disturb it further? NAH, I'll just enslave the entire region under a blanket of illusionary ice, use dragons to help me deter any intruders and then ask for the help of those who killed said dragons.''
Maybe it's just me but I wouldn't mind it if the execution wasn't bad.
I love heavily RP focused campaigns that try to make the players think. That's not for everyone though.
@@Sunnysideanyway Twist was good but DM shouldnt have made the one guy who is responsible for subjugation of an entire region *the* saint.
To be honest I'm not a big fan of 3 dimensional bads unless they are the true big bad. It's annoying and I'm not here to fight thanos I'm here to fight a bad guy who is truly Evil to get some serotonin.
Agreed.
And not every morally complex character gets their opportunity for redemption, some just get killed for their myriad crimes up until that point.
Honestly I'm on the side of the Dwarf here.
This sounds more like a DM writing a novel than it does a game of D&D. Sometimes your act 3 twist character just dies, and you adapt. Don't boot someone from the game for doing what their character would have done, then call them a murder hobo for role-playing their character, that you signed off on
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 The dwarf apparentelly kicked himself out tho
As a DM, I do not tell the player that their PC has to accept the eplanation the villain might present for why they were the villain.
"That's not good enough to excuse what you did" is a valid PC response.
Also...I can see a player/PC not believing the old guy in a whelchair is really crippled... considering how manipulative evil can be.
I hate the "Bonus exp for the killing blow," rule! It punishes the suport player who was just as much a part of the winning that fight!
Honestly feel like dm is the bad guy here. Were there chances to figure it out? Yeah, but it sounds like the party had to do specific things to find the evidence. Dm really should've spoken to the player about altering their backstory like that
Probably when the Wizard revealed the whole plot while the Dwarf tried to cut the whole thing short by just murder-hobo him, not once, but twice? The player could just have chosen to not believe the wizard, and had plenty of good reasons to do so : He couldn't trust anything there, anything could have been an illusion, a lie, and maybe he was being deceived out of his vengeance. Instead he tried to murder his whole party because they wanted to understand and think of the next step, and destroyed his own character. His murdering behaviour was consistant, he didn't intended to do anything but murder his whole way through
@@jaimytourigny3027 Ok but what's the point in having a BBEG if instead of a huge climatic fight it just turns into a wishy washy sad backstory drop
@@TimaeusEXE To have a mightier and more awesome BBEG to take down? In this case an abyssal creature way more dangerous than a simple wizard casting boring illusions? Like, something that will make the people sing your praise for more than a day? How do you expect "a huge climactic fight" against illusions anyway? What?
@@jaimytourigny3027 what DM doesn't know how to properly use illusions in a climatic fight? Have you not seen Spiderman Far From Home? There's loads of great villains that use illusions.
@@TimaeusEXE Do you realize how judgmental you sound? Also, all the players I've seen win a fight against illusions, where ANGRY to learn it was just that, an ILLUSION. Same thing when they are told "And now you wake up. It was all a dream". You're only trying to strike a point nobody could agree with, while pretending anyone not agreeing is just a bad DM. Can you have anything other than a shallow argument? "On the surface it's great" -> Yeah, but what about how the player will feel when he understand all his attacks where hitting NOTHING really? 9/10 of them will prefer the abyssal monster as an opponent, and feel better killing it instead.
My plot twist campaign? A sort of post apocalypse fantasy world. Not mad max. Green and lush, just ruins and cities from a devastating war and disaster centuries ago with nobody who knows the stories from first hand left alive.
It was a continent surrounded by mythical storms, sea travel impossible. Player area start was green and an ancient city that people reclaimed. Across the mountains lived the monsterous humanoid tribes who would try and raid/overran. Only defended by an array of fortresses.
Players were explorers seeking artifacts of past when they discover something of unrecognizable magic. Long story short, find out that it belonged to a hero who brought and end to the war and sacrificed self to end the slaughter. They learned hero was not dead, and could be revived by ritual if could gather an array of relics that were spread out to protect from being all claimed by enemies.
Players gather all them, take them to main force to revive hero to stop a massive wave of orcs ogres, etc who sought to overrun the defence line. Flash of light and they find themselves in ruins of the fortress, all attackers gone.
Longer story find out, said hero and literature was historical telling of the monster races, they revived a great orc of sorts who breached fort from inside. His revival caused party to slip into a planar state for a while unknowingly.
This also ended the storm. Party flees and finds classic humanoid civilization in a sort of 1700s era beyond the seas. War between continents ensues.
Plot twist 2. Party fights and meets said bbeg and learn real truth. The humans had invaded the continent, they were the attackers. The hero channeled the gods to defend their people who before were tribal and peaceful and in tune with the planes. So when hero got pulled in, his anger at those which destroyed his people channeled into all.
It created a cool moral dilemma of what is good/evil based on perceptions. The campaign actually was built around what good/evil is and it being the energies within all living things and in themselves, equal and neutral of sorts.
Homebrew WoD game where we were trying to break into a security office of an amusement park. My character had earlier managed to bluff that we were just contracted security and determined the numbers used on the door keypad were 0356789. My character called the manager the she bluffed earlier and successfully persuaded them to tell us what the code was. GM simply answered Tommy Two-Tone. I (the player) immediately shook my and rolled my eyes so hard.
100% at the player's side in the story. You can make your villain as sympathetic as you want, but you can't force players to not have own opinion. Also, I also would not buy that kind of story from a deception master.
Why should anyone trust that wizard? He destroyed a village, drove off people, gathered an army of chromatic dragons, and if his story about abyssal creature is true - I would think that he just wanted it for himself. Because otherwise he had no reason to do all that. Just reveal the truth, and next day some paladins order would be standing guard to make sure no one wakes up the beast.
Entirely the DMs fault. Imagine being an American or Russian soldier marching to Berlin, and you get there and Hitler’s like “Bro chill out, I just tried to save Germany”.
That's not the same thing at all.
First DM wanted his BBEG to be a DMNPC, but only if the party discovered his ultra-specific and convoluted plot. That isn't good DM'ing. Not saying you need to allow your party of PCs to dictate the game, but if they can't figure things out in the way you have set them, maybe you need to be the one who pivots to change the story to fit them, not the other way around.
Sorry but no amount of sympathetic motive really justifies his actions and the Wizard still kicked out the majority of his villiage for really stupid reasons.
NGL thats just sounds like the group not caring about how the player wanted to play their character what your character that grew up with may not just say hey in light of new information that makes sense like everyone else far removed from the heart of the conflict. it sounded more like his story than the others. but thats could also be just because they only described that one character.
Can't trust the DM of the first story as we never hear the player's side of the story. It makes me feel like the DM is excluding facts or missed out on details about the dwarf player that gives a new perspective.
Like for all we know, the DM and/or the other players were bullies to the dwarf player and him tearing up his character sheet was the last straw. As you might think this is a stretch at first, but after listening to these sorts of D&D stories for a longwhile, where one side comes across as a cardboard cutout such as the dwarf player in this case, its usually done to obfuscate the truth of the matter.
Anyone having trouble with the discord link?
Honestly the Dwarf player's reaction is understandable after a rugpull like that. DM knew how focused the player was and didn't even try to give him any kind of indication that things were different. In one moment his entire backstory and motivation was pretty much invalidated
All the "oh they could have found out if they'd asked X and Y" is an easy thing for a DM to say being that they are omniscient
I just want to say, to all of the people in the comments who keep saying "The player was in the right, this is the DM's fault"... I hope none of you are play as PCs, otherwise, I'm sorry for your DMs and all of the people who play alongside you.
Dude throwed a tantrum, attacked his party, ruined the session for everybody, and all because he didn't agree with how the DM handled a plot point. No, it doesn't matter if it was tied to the player's backstory. No, it doesn't matter if the writing didn't set him up well or had some plotholes. No, it doesn't matter if the player was looking forward to the boss fight in their head. All it matters is that the player chose to act like a toddler instead of handling his disappointment civilly, in response of a normal behavior.
(Also, maybe it's me, but the post seems to imply that the wizard wasn't custom-tailored to the PC's backstory, but the other way around. In that case, a player should always expect that something about the gameworld might have more to it than they know, whether it be some minor but significant details or a full-blown plotwist like in this case. This is just a side note, though, because it's not what determines whether the player or DM have been in the wrong or not: the point is that the player acted like shit.)
Interesting
Nah, the player was in the right on this one. Tantrum aside (which sure, I wouldve pulled aside for), you took the backstory of a character who doesnt like RP as much as you and made it RP heavy. You didnt do it to make him have fun, you did it to make your story "better." Go write a book bad DM.
A bad DM being well bad nothing unusual here considering how rare even decent DMs are as such the player's reaction is totally justified. Also the wizard was a total idiot if they are already mining the Abyssal creatures blood and teeth he should of told everyone about what it was then say they need to find the creatures heart or brain and deliver a killing blow to make mining safer because it might wake up at any time and chomp on everyone inside then go after the village rather then perform a ton of unnecessary steps to get everyone out of the valley. I mean honestly the wizard and by extension the DM who came up with this whole story obviously didn't think things through based on how things were described.
There is never a reason to harm. Stealth never fails.
🧘
Can't be detected by corpses
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 tell it to infection & such. Next.
There's really no good answer here, I think. The player wanted to actually engage with his backstory, and the dm and the party weren't letting him. Sure, the villain not actually being the bbeg is a cool twist and all, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the good of the game.
He was given a chance to engage with his backstory though. Multiple, tbh.
He was so dead set on "Kill old dwarf" that he completely passed those up. Even if he had decided that the wizard needed to die, the fact that he was stating that every 5 seconds and wasn't allowing his character to grow due to new information is on him, not the DM.
He could have joined forces with the wizard. He could have gone "Cool motive, still a villain" as well. He chose to ignore all those and just go yee haw forward.
They did, by turning the poor attitude dwarf into an NPC. He didn’t want to grow as a character…of course they could have brought him back as the bad guy, maybe have him kill the old man as planned, drive the other players out of the tower and awaken the abyssal
I would've honestly just tweaked things a bit. Made it so that while the villain still cast illusionary magic, instead of doing so to stop an apocalypse barrier from being breached, that he instead became the barrier, and then the PC kills him. Whoops, now they have an angry god who wants to wreak havok on the world and they killed the guy who was containing said god.
@@VernulaUtUmbra The problem is DM turned the old man into a saint.
''It was just a prank bro! All an illusion, not a 1d4 dmg to the town!''
Meanwhile according to Dwarf's entire life: ''People went missing, died, suffered because of a wizard and his oversized rod.''
Had old man was still abusing this situation in some way while simultaneously preventing others from waking the creature up, it would've been a great twist.
Then we would have the dilemma of ''If you stop this evil dude who is clearly subjugating your home, people are gonna wake up an eldritch abomination that is gonna destroy everything you hold dear. BUT if you *dont* stop him, he will continue to reign over this land with absolute control.''
Instead DM is like ''Yo the old man is actually cool, You have absolutely no reason to kill him or stop him. All those dragons you killed were actually good too, and town people are pretty okay. Here now team up.''
@@Kronosfobi DMs are not master writers. They don't do that as their daily job. This DM just thought that going for the classic "bad guy is secretly a good guy" would have been a cool story moment and went for it, and it didin't occur to them to give more nuance to the situation (nuance that, to be fair, could have very well been plotted out, but that the DM never got to communicate because all the dwarf's player could say was "kill kill i want to kill this guy let me kill" - all while disregarding the rest of the party's interest, nonetheless). It isn't the DM's fault just because they didn't execute this specific plot point very well.
It is, however, absolutely the player's fault for acting the way he himself did. That nobody could control but the player himself. And it is that who lead to ruining the session to the rest of the party - not the DM misjudjing how his plot would have been received. The difference is that if I were in the player's position, I would have just taken the DM aside and said "You know man/girl, the reveal that the BBEG was actually a good guy really let me down because it's part of my character's backstory and I was looking forward to it; do you think you could take that into account or we could work out something together?". If I were in the DM's position, I would have looked at the player straight in the eyes and told them to get out of my house and only come back after coming back to their senses.
Yeah, the dm in that first story was definitely being a dick and i don't blame the player at all for acting the way he did. When a character's entire backstory and motive is centered around taking revenge for a wrong, whether real or imagined, and that revenge is denied to him at the end, it basically just means the character's entire life has been completely wasted.
Not really. He wanted to do right by his people, the goal just moved from the wizard to the big bad behind them. He didn't even have to fight the wizard to find out. Just walk to the next spot and defeat that thing so the wizard would unoccupy the area and his people could return home.
How is making the story "interesting" being a dick?
Really, the player was being a dick by getting mad that the DM did a plot twist instead of engaging with the Character. He could have easily still taken his revenge, or had the character grow as a person.
But instead he acted like a jackass
@@TheMightyBattleSquid I get the feeling he wouldn't have cared about the real BBEG once he killed the old guy. It would have probably been along the lines of "Welp, that's MY quest done. Have fun with saving the world, I'm going home." *leaves" (Had someone DO that once, player then proceeded to get up & go play games on the DM's N64 for the rest of the night. He wasn't invited back.)
@@TheMightyBattleSquid but that's not what he wanted to do in his backstory. The dm just screwed up the entire point of why the guy was questing.
@@VelociraptorsOfSkyrim He didn't want "more interesting". it's his backstory and he wanted his quest to end a certain way. The dm pulled the rug out from under him and expected him to be ok with it.
Nah on the twist, the player was really invested, the dm should have been a little more heavy handed with the story but it sounds like nobody was interested in investigating.
DM didn't screw over player, he told a story with a plot twist, and player threw a tantrum when he didn't get what he wanted.
Old illusionist isn't a "Thanos" or even a villain. He didn't hurt anyone or destroy anything. The town was getting rich pulling out the Abyssal monster's teeth and he was afraid they would wake it up and it would kill everyone. So he evacuated the town, kept ppl away from the sleeping monster and prepared to try and kill it, or at least keep it contained. Hell, he even made a pristine valley the ppl he evacuated could move into once the threat was dealt with, and made sure the dragons he recruited to deal with the Avyssal monster didn't hurt anyone or rampage on the region.
In short that old guy NPC is a hero, DM made a good story, and even set it up so the tantrum player could drop back in at anytime without lagging in lvl, AND some commentors here are either stupid or not paying attention
someone else in another reply said it best. "just because you didn't deal damage, doesn't mean it's okay to terrorize and entire country of people and out them from their home without any explanation either when it happened, or any time later."
If the DM wanted to write a story about an illusionist who made the hard choice to save the entire realm from a greater evil, then fine, he can write a /story/ about that. or he could have told the party that the campaign was a story he wanted to unfold, because he clearly didn't do that, otherwise there wouldn't be any confusion.
no matter how you slice it, if the DM's motives align with how /you/ feel then they are completely selfish. but considering that the Dm was running not one but two competitive exp systems to encourage the players to not work together, I wouldn't give them any benefit of the doubt that this wasn't just how they have fun with the game, creating conflict at the table.
I really wish your voice wasn't so monotonous. Would make these far more enjoyable to listen to.
cool story bro. i attack the wizard. only answer here.
The first story it sounds like the dm wanted the party to be his tool. A weapon to be pointed at the next cool thing he had planned. None of the story mattered, not a single session leading to the confrontation with the wizard meant anything other than leveling the party up to be ready to fight the ultra cool abyssal monster he’d dreamed up. Bad storyteller attempts grandiose narrative twist to justify the party fighting what he wanted them to fight from the beginning. All stakes destroyed, all personal investment degraded, every loss and close call a meaningless adrenaline rush. You will fight what I say, go where I point you, and change as my goals demand. Bad dm.
I'm not gonna lie, you don't take a player's story and throw it in the garbage. He wanted the guy to be evil and he wanted to kill the evil guy, then the DM ruined his plot and he didn't have a reason to play his character anymore. I get why he'd be pissed. This is something I'd never do to one of my players. That said, I did have players who said "this is my character's point of view. You can do whatever you want with this story," and it's fun, but not everyone wants that
Thing is, the DM here _didn't_ throw the PC's backstory in the garbage.
They made a rather minor alteration to it and the player had a hissy fit. Nothing about the situation prevented the player from killing the Evil guy.
Just because the Villain has an arguably sympathetic motive doesn't mean you can't put him to the sword.
Sure, it might form a rift between the party members, but intraparty drama can be interesting.
@@VelociraptorsOfSkyrim Minor alteration?
Imagine if Dragonborn is the one that is supposed to destroy the world instead of Alduin, you call that a minor alteration?
Dwarf's story was simple. There is a old cuck who abused his power and took control over a region by bringing down an endless winter, employing White dragons (which are typically evil) and generally secretive as fuck.
After killing said dragons on the way to the old cuck's bdsm dungeon, Cuck says ''It's all a prank bro, this is all an illusion! Im actually protecting ya'll from a giant sleeping dildo.''
DM still could've made the evil mage an actually EVIL mage. He still could've been abusing his power, subjugating an entire region under his thumb.
The twist then would be ''If you kill this guy to save your people, you will risk the world by possibly waking up an ancient creature. But if you DONT stop him, he will continue to reign supreme.''
Sympathetic villains should be in observable stories, not interactive one.
It undermines the effort and purpose the player put into the story so far.
Mediums aren't interchangeable.
I have never disagreed with something more in my entire life regarding D&D... You go and enjoy your... "bad guy does bad things and morality is black and white" bullshit lol... At my table, the world is alive and morality can be black, white, OR gray....
The villain should NOT have a good reason. That is what makes them a villain. It isn't that they can't have a reason, just that the reason does not justify the undertaken action.
Remember the character is a paladin with powers ordained by a deity or deities in the service of their oath.
These comments are wild bro. Its one thing to be annoyed and another entirely to ATTACK YOUR PARTY and rip your character sheet. Thats not how grown adults should act... Especially over a game lol
So, the GM criticises the player for not roleplaying enough, then snatches away his most compelling reason to engage in roleplay. Can't say I blame him for feeling pissed off.
He didn't though, he simply gave him a new target. The abyssal creature was still alive. His character wanted to do right by his people. So kill the thing keeping the wizard and dragons tied to the area and you have your character's happy ending. Killing the wizard was simply the easiest route initially presented. Now that has changed. Nothing more nothing less.
If you want to twist the story to make the DM the bad guy, sure.
@@TheMightyBattleSquidhow would you feel about preparing for literal weeks or months just for a chance to kill one bad wizard... only for the group and GM to then say "NO DONT DO IT HE IS REALLY A GOOD GUY". I would also probably rage quit from the session... I would come back next session but yeah.
Haven't you heard?
Only fan girls/boys and adults who watch cartoons made for children can appreciate character depth.
From a role playing aspect I get Dravel having issues. His whole life he was told about how his people were betrayed and their home stolen by a wizard lunatic and a legion of monsters, and then sees the source of his hatred right there, ready for vengeance, and everyone else is telling Dravel that he should at least wait and listen rather than just murder an old man who is offering no threat. He believes what he has been told his whole life and can’t help but find faults and reasons to disbelieve and hate the wizard more. I get that, but sadly this is not good-ish role playing but a player with no interest in anything but fighting and killing monsters and bad guys, no matter how much the dm and other players try to have him 1 take part in the actual story and 2 just shut up, listen, and not kill the old man simply because he was told that it was all the old man’s fault.
I once had a player who said something along the lines of "my character would just charge forward and try to kill this person, but I think doing a combat encounter for this would be overlong and unpredictable, so how about we roleplay that my character charges forward and tries to kill this person but the party knocks him unconscious?"
So It's like dark souls.
Ah the thanos "greater good" character. Let some suffer so the majority can live. Then half ass the smpathy act he does so people can relate lol. Poor execution and over used tropes are a story killer. The biggest cause is overly complicating the story and characters in it. "Keep it simple, Stupid." Trust me that will save you all the frustration in the world.
Jesus christ the number of people in the comments here who feel they as the player have the right to decide how the world reacts and plays out is unreal. As the player you have as little control over that as the DM should have over your actions as the PC. Being mad that the BBEG turned out to have certain motivations you didn't foresee is as dumb as the DM being mad that you as the player didn't act in the way he wanted you to.
What the dm did is essentially like taking lord of the ring but as soon as frodo gets to mordor it turns out sayron Is a good guy so he should totally not destroy the ring. it ruins the point of the story. Also if the dm wants player backstory he should not go and plot twist it without talking with the player first. Some players are not here for moral questioning but just to do one thing relating to their character.
@@TrixyTrixter It absolutely wasn't lol. It was just a regular local "villain" thing. The DM is the one who designs the universe and the motivation of the (non player) characters that inhabit it.
And he could just just shrug and attack the guy in the end if he wanted to, but he has no business being upset OUT OF CHARACTER. And if the other players want to stop him from doing so, that's also entirely up to them.
As a player, the only agency you have is over your own character. As a DM, you have no agency over player characters. That's how it works. If you don't like how a player is running their character, talk to them about it and kick them out if it's not reconcilable. If you don't like how the DM runs things, talk to them about it. If it's not reconcilable, leave. In either of these cases, being upset about it is just entitlement.
@@TheRealXartaX Ahh yes. The argument of "If you are not the majority your story don't mater" he should just attack and have the others kill his character because the clearly illusion wizard must be telling the truth tottaly bro. The fact everyone else decided to trust a stranger completely after they enslaved a town because of a sob story speaks more of meta knowledge between them than the player who did have investment in the part of the story. It was a terrible plot twist for the dm to pull and the other players deciding the player cannot avenge his village and those dead because "bad plot story" is terrible rp from them.
Also how are you gonna talk to the dm when they hide it until the reveal? If the dm comes out to tell a player "The guy who killed your parents were tottaly in the right bro. Why you not just be friend with the murderer?" there was no point to talk about it. The player not returning was the best decicion as the DM seems terrible and the players equally so for going along with it instead of backing up their team mate at his characters main point.
@@TrixyTrixter It's not "your story". The only thing that is your story is what you've presented in your background (which will be accepted not by the GM) as well as any actions your character personally take throughout the campaign. All other aspects to the story, is up the the GM. There's a reason the GM is also known as "the story teller". If you don't like it, sucks to be you. You can leave. You're not entitled to anything besides what actions your character take.
@@TheRealXartaX Spoken as a true bad gm. Gotta make sure the players follow your story and dont get any say in the parts related to their characters because you need a bad plot twist.
Honestly, this GM sounds like part of the toxic side of the Undertale fandom!
...
I don't acept that "good reason" either. I would get mad and leave too, if the GM pulled this last-minite, with absolutly no foreshadowing!
In my dnd campaign, I had my players investigating a killer who wore a mask in the shape of the smiling comedy mask as seen in theaters. He had murdered several local maidens and had stabbed one of the party when she had followed him alone.
Come to find out there was more than one and they all served the god-dragons of the world by bringing them hearts and protecting mystical trees that provided life among a world that was desolated by it suffering from a massive crack.
Part of me really wants to pull a Petrification time jump someday... turn my players to stone and then they wake up to the sight of someone who was just a week or month ago a kid, now full grown... and they're needed. (actually had been planning something like this once, but that campaign didn't last long enough sadly to do it)
I don't get it, the Dwarf player clearly only wanted to do combat, got annoyed that the BBEG was actually a decent person, but got so mad they ignored the plot hook for the upcoming true BBEG to fight the party right then and there? No patience in that one
Not about patience.
From what I understand here, this BBEG was directly related to that character's backstory. He grew up witnessing the cruelty of the old wizard and what he did to his home.
A simple illusion wouldnt be that harmful, and dragons that had a purpose for being there wouldnt have bothered to terorise the civillians.
People still died under that ''illusion'' which I still find as a stupid excuse.
Storyteller here specifically said how hard it was for the player to roleplay, which ironically the only time he tries to do so his entire story is pulled right under him.
DM should've talked with the player on how they intend to change the backstory.
Imagine after everything we see on Lord of the Rings, it turns out Sauron was a good guy all along and all those orc armies, slaves, Nazguls are just illusions.
It would've been stupid.
Now I understand DM tried to give hints to what the real danger is, and the idea is REALLY good. Crystals being tooth and oil being the blood etc are perfect ideas.
But the problem is that the old man who apperantly turned into a saint by now was supposed to be an evil bastard that the player relied on while creating their character.
And after all o that they tell him to shut up and listen to the old man who is still responsible for countless deaths. Warning people about the nature of crystals BEFORE subjugating an entire realm under a dome of illusion? NAAAH it'll be fiiine..
Why do I always get annoyed by character backgrounds that amount to X race character was raised by Y race? I always suppress my normal "let people have fun" attitude for that.
sounds like a personsl and disturbing problem
The amount of commenters here who are like "I totally understand the player throwing a tantrum because the bad guy turned out to not be a bad guy" is ... concerning af. The problem with the group was that it was an RP focused campaign and the problem player was only interested in combat and revenge fantasies. probably not a good fit and tbh... I run both 100% evil AND sympathetic villains at my table. The players are allowed to do anything (Including killing the sympathetic villains) but the one-note "HES BAD I KILL HIM!" approach I'm seeing here wouldn't be at my table in the first place lol...
Not to mention a fucking tantrum... buh-bye, don't come back.
Sorry, gotta say that the Dwarf didn't engage with the story being told and side with the DM on this one
1) Dwarf was annoying other players with how they were dead set on killing the Wizard. Already makes him more at fault than the DM.
2) The Dwarf could have easily reacted in any number of ways; angry but understanding the bigger threat was the Abyssal being, "Cool motive, still going to die", realizing that the Wizard made a hard decision and allowing him to be judged by the townsfolk he evicted, there are literally a hundred other options.
3) The Dwarf started with a single minded idea and refused to budge even a tiny amount away from it. The other players were willing to let it play out but he threw a tantrum when he didn't get his way.
It literally feels like he wants the DM to be the storyteller and then get pissed when the story is being told. I'd have kicked him out of the group if he'd reacted like that.
He had his backstory being ignored completely it was a bad DM move and the movie was nonsensical.
@@emberfist8347 His backstory was ignored completely?
A powerful Dwarven Wizard cast his people out of their town and he did everything in his power to find said wizard. He wanted to track down that wizard to make him pay, but it not everything was what it seemed initially.
The DM took his 2 dimensional backstory of "Kill evil dude" and actually gave it nuance. The Wizard still drove out the dwarves. The Wizard still created a harsh area to prevent people from being around. The Wizard was surrounded by evil aligned dragons.
Shit, I'd be pissed at my DM if my personal quest started and ended with two boss battles.
@@VernulaUtUmbra Except it was giving nuance he was trying to pull the rug out from under him by making what he knew to be a complete lie.
@@emberfist8347Nothing was a lie, all the bad shit still happened.
And most _good_ stories have situations be more complicated than the protagonist originally thought. That doesn't make it a lie.
@@VelociraptorsOfSkyrim The idea his home was stuck in a permanent winter and it wasn’t that was a lie.
Okay, I get why the player was upset, but he sounds like someone who I wouldn’t want involved even if the BBEG was played straight as a legitimate evil. I don’t force players in my campaigns to roleplay, but I do expect them to not behave in a way that makes it less enjoyable to the others.
And pretty much trying to go ‘I attack’ every time the DM finishes a sentence and insisting on a certain kind of action while having a tantrum would make me quickly lose sympathy for them. There are ways to air your grievances about a story decision, and his way was wrong.
His entire goal was changed with no warning or anything. That was his characters only reason for being. People like you are idiots and I bet you have your little safe spaces where the BBEG was actually trying to do good and didnt mean any harm bnoohoo. Go back to reddit.
Biggest downside of the Celtics setting is 5e, do still getting a copy as I'm missing some celtic stuff for my DnD
Moral of the story: Don't make your whole personality about the bbeg. Everyone is the hero of their own story and could be an act.
shut up idiot
Seems like the player has a case of character lockdown, where a lack of fluidity when acting as your character railroads your roleplay decisions. Normally this is a common problem for paladins/monks but is equally challenging for new players joining an established group.
The rage and ripping up of the character sheet from not receiving the desired outcome is more unusual. Likely a lack of patience that plagues them in another area of their life that stems from receiving empty praise and/or a lack of boundaries.
It's very clear that the Dwarf's player in the first story is a "video game" style player - one who ignores the role play and is focused strictly on the fights, what EXP he gets and ignores everything else. The man-baby tantrum was just... pathetic to be brutally honest. All he cared about was killing the BBEG and likely completely zoned out for literally everything else. Didn't even care that the "BBEG" was basically an old man in a wheelchair.
The twist to that game worked... for everyone but the Dwarf's player and honestly... he was kind of a "that guy" anyways. I don't think he was a good fit for the table (especially after his tantrum).
Well the reasons he had that tantrum was his backstory was completely upended and the motive was moronic.
Like number 1 thousand
Nevermind, both stories stink
Except in this case the king isn't a idiot and it is actually in my A digger person thing.
i would fist fight my group
4 real
Having a villlain who have a good reason why they justify their action. I like these villains as not all villains consider them self evil due to culture or traditions reason for in universe reason. When a sympathetic villain is done well some time you feel bad for them and want to change everything on a dime for them. As once they explain why they did their action make sense with context .
Such as Thrawn in the Starwars universe only wanting to serve the Empire . As to have the universe in be preprepared for the Yuuzhan Vong War invasion that did more damage in universe then the clone wars and the civil war did( rebels vs the Empire). Villain such as thrawn for being symapthetic villain are great in D&D and fiction when done well . As having i am villain who like to do evil due to i am evil feel like a bad that does not work out for all villain types.
I am so tired of Villains getting off too easy, so I am going to have a prize giveaway, of 10 dullers gift cards to the top ten liked comments, role one there are no rules, I just want to read a story of the BBGE look like the victim, I want to read a story where the party cut a devils arm and legs off and doing a Holk and Loki moment, acid splash. I want to see a devil cry and beg for death.
This is how heroes are supposed to be, the player did a good job.
I mean.....if the village had to be evacuated because it was on top of a giant abyssal demon, thats not really a crime.
The player had a story that was tied into the world, that was bigger than he thought.
If anything this shows that player cared far more about getting revenge for his ancestors than he actually cared for his people.
If anything, it showed absolute disregard for his clans wellbeing.
100 percent the players fault.