Yeah, this is super annoying. I want to try out roleplaying and get into character and all that, but in some tables you have people like the following:
- The involved roleplayer who, despite their intent otherwise, takes control of the narrative. They try to involve you, but it always feels like you’re a side character in their story.
- The funny guy, who tries to crack jokes and make the whole game feel light-hearted and silly. I get we’re all here for fun, but sometimes I’d like a bit of meat to bite into.
- The GM’s friend, who derails the game into taking about that cool dog that they had when they flat shared last year. No seriously, it’s a cool dog. Let me find a picture on my phone.
- That guy whose character is a reference to that show you don’t watch. They keep making references to it, and a few other people get it, but you have to awkwardly nod your head.
… Wow, sorry, kind of went on a rant there. I guess I have a bit of frustration at going to play a game, and most of the session being taken up by not playing said game.
Meanwhile I just want to hit things with my greataxe. I don’t care about RP or rules so much. Just let me hit things with my orc barbarian please.
Ah, I see my husband has made a Lemmy account.
For real though, he is not there for the story or the rp, he’s there to rage out and fight. Meanwhile I’m doing shitty voices and putting on a full Oscar worthy performance.
There are such broad dynamics between what players want, and I fucking love how flexible D&D is for that.
You know what women in Italy in the renaissance did to their husbands who displeased them? Used aqua tofana to solve that problem.
“… a strong poison created in Sicily around 1630…”
“It was a colorless, tasteless liquid and therefore easily mixed with water or wine…”
Vizzini never had a chance.
Definitely something to keep in mind the next time he denies me the standing ovation I deserve for my performance. 💅
Players get mad ate when I say this because we’re ‘playing an rpg not a number simulator’
Just make him 8 int and 8 cha so no one asks you do anything important except smash. Thats what i do.
I wanna hear more about the dog…
Reading your list makes me better understand why I get kicked out of groups… I never realized that being the jokester actively harmed people’s ability to enjoy the game. Thank you for that.
It harms THAT SPECIFIC PERSON’S ability to enjoy the game. Your group probably enjoys you if you guys play together regularly.
Yeah it’s a “read the room” kind of thing.
There’s a group that would be annoyed by immersion-breaking 4th wall jokes, and there’s another group that would be relieved by the tension and pressure to perform being broken. Everyone’s going to have slightly different comfort levels so there’s always some compromise on the tone of a campaign.
Gonna say they probably don’t if they’re consistently getting kicked out of groups
Nah, depends on the group. And the jokes.
Should have session 0 to set a baseline tone.
Please explain! This sounds fascinating
A session zero is basically a meeting where the DM and players talk about what kind of campaign they will play, the setting, whether the game will be more combat or RP heavy, whether it will be serious or humorous, topics or themes they’d rather avoid and those they’d like to explore, and maybe a bit about the player characters and how they fit into the story. It’s a good chance to get to know the other players and see whether you’re a good fit for the group.
I’d personally want to support making the player characters during session 0 (maybe not the full character sheet, but at least personality/background and class).
I’ve done campaigns where everyone came into the session 0 with their characters all ready to go and the idea of the characters being adjusted wasn’t really brought up but more the rest of the aspects you mentioned. Differences and some antagonism between characters can make things really interesting, but at least in one of them two of the characters fundamentally wouldn’t ever be in a party together. One of the players felt some cognitive dissonance in wanting their character to stay in the party, but not being able to find a rational reason they would, and kinda had to retcon their character.
Yep, that makes a lot of sense. Making an entire character can take quite long, so I try to do it outside of group sessions especially with new players, but some aspects should be talked through with the group.
Thank you!
https://slyflourish.com/running_session_zeros.html
There’s a ton of really useful stuff on this page and some links that are worth a read, especially Monte Cooks’ consent in gaming pdf
Thank you so much for this link! I’ve never realized before that RPGs are meant to be grounded characters in fantastical scenarios and that players have real connections to their characters. I’ve always viewed my characters as disposable and cannon fodder for risky scenarios.
In my experience, having a person who turns the game into a joke makes it less funny than if it was just played straight. The game is naturally funny and absurd in ways that are best highlighted when the narrative is taken somewhat seriously.
To be clear, it’s fine to be light hearted and jokey, perhaps most of the time depending on the group.
Knowing when to turn on and off Serious Mode is a skill that can be hard to develop, and IMO it’s perhaps the GMs job to gently say when they want things to be serious.
I guess for me in my last campaign, it was less that I was trying to be a jokester and more that actions which seemed somewhat reasonable to me and high-risk/high-reward were not welcomed by the rest of the group and I didn’t realize how serious people were going to be. We were playing in the world of Firefly and I tried hailing an approaching ship to see what they wanted and if I could negotiate.
The fact that the DM was shocked should have been a hint that I was doing the wrong thing, but at the time I thought that I found a plot hole and was doing such a good job that the DM was blown away. I was wrong and my character has incapacitated by another member of the crew, which continued until I realized that I probably wasn’t welcome to continue campaigning with the group. When I realized this, I genuinely felt really bad that I’d probably upset the group, but it wasn’t until now that I realized how seriously people take this.
I’ve never before played with the specific intent of keeping my character alive, but I think that was more of a videogame mentality. Other folks in the group aren’t exactly excited that I’m putting their characters lives on the line because people obviously invest real time and care into this. My realization was less that I joke too much and more that I don’t take things seriously enough.
That honestly doesn’t seem that bad. It might not be a smart thing to do in the grand scheme of things, but I can see it being an action that a naive member of the crew would do. I think if that truly was the wrong thing to do, then the GM should have stepped in and said something like “Are you sure about that? This region of space is notorious for having lots of pirates around”. Being shunned from a group for something like that feels a bit unreasonable, IMO.
I’m sure there was more to the story than that, but I’m an awkward person. Oh well. Live to try again another day, hopefully better and with more patience for people like me next time. Thanks again!
This is where setting rules or just finding a group who agree on the tone of a game is important. However, even in that some people will have things they do want to role play like shopping. Well be a good role player and make it interesting for them or even turn that shopping into something more. Ask the shopkeep if there’s anything he’s wanted that’s super rare (relic hunt quest), or straight up leave the store. It’s role playing go to a different part of town, you don’t spend 100% of your time irl with anyone why do that in a game? Cause havoc, or don’t, jump into the sewer, fascinate the locals by setting off fireworks or do spells, go to a bar get drunk and do role play karaoke while the guy shops. Have fun, it’s your role play too
You’d hate me. I’m somehow all of those points simultaneously
I’m so thankful that we have none of these people in my group. We’re all about the same, with similar interests, and similar play styles. The only drawback is that we all lean towards resolving situations diplomatically, which means our adventures can lack combat for quite a while, unless we’re in a straight-up dungeon. Eventually someone will get bored and go with “I stab him in the fucking face!” Which ends our diplomacy for a while.
Sounds remarkably similar to my group, but in our latest session it was a kpop video, not a dog
I long for a normal Dungeons and Dragons campaign with a nerdy elf wizard and a sneaky halfling rogue and a chivalrous human knight and a devout dwarven cleric being an adventuring party instead of a loose collection of ideas and concepts with no depth or cohesion. I want to be able to ask someone why they’re with the party and get an in-character answer instead of the player saying they need to be for the story to happen. I want the possibility of a TPK because the DM understands the characters and give us appropriate challenges, I don’t want any semblance of a challenge disappearing because the DM feels bad about dealing damage to his girlfriend’s character
I feel like I have either been, or met nearly every one of these.
I once joined a random pick up game online. Had a session zero, vibe seem alright.
On the day we actually go to play it turns out the DM invited a bunch more people and the group was going to be 8 people. Two of these people show up late, don’t even have character sheets ready. Game was advertised as queer friendly, one of them I think makes their character a transphobic joke but the guy was so awkward it was hard to make out what he was doing. Vibe is now fucked. One person quits the group on the spot.
I spend like three hours of the least inspired, boring D&D of my life. There is no hint that’s it’s wrapping up anytime soon. All we’ve done is spin our wheels trying to grab on to the quest hook, being strung along to talk to the next random generic NPC to inch us closer to actually starting the adventure and had a single combat encounter with one creature where I’m not sure anyone even took any damage.
I have to stress, I think the DM was a nice guy even if he kind of sucked at it. I liked the original group of people.
But I break when he guides us to start shopping. We haven’t even started the adventure and it’s about to turn into a shopping episode. I panic, I have to leave this fucking moment because I can’t take it anymore. I’m desperate for an excuse to leave that wont hurt the DM’s self-esteem and ruin the game for anyone who was having fun. The best thing I can come up with?
I disconnect mid sentence and act as if the internet dropped out like a bad sit-com phone gag. This wasn’t even well acted, my brain died when I went to disconnect and I just trailed off awkwardly. It’s still so painfully embarrassing to remember. Yet I maintain it was worth it.
I was in a group that were all “officers of the watch”. Some idea was proposed that my character would have no reason to go along with, but rather than stop the group engaging in something fun, I say so, and follow up with “my character probably has some paperwork they need to catch up on anyway.”
Our chaotic player, who has the attention span of a slightly concussed goldfish goes “wait, we have to do paperwork?” and our GM, the goddamned sadist, gets that evil gleam in his eye.
Long story short, that session we role-played the sheer amount of paperwork our last session of kicking in the door and stopping a cultist ritual (by force in some cases) would have generated.
I admire that GM, but I was almost screaming in frustration by the end.
This is hilarious. I bet the DM got out some frustration that day.
Sounds like one of the 12 Tasks of Asterix. They have to get a permit or form filled out in a government building known as “the place that drives you mad.” Like crazy, not angry. Asterix ends up turning the bureaucracy against itself.
Why the fuck would anyone who wants their players to have fun make them do paperwork in a game? I’d have quit on the spot or told them to shove it.
There’s already enough paperwork on character sheets, putting it in game canonically unless it’s some gag comedy thing sounds like the fastest way to be the GM without players.
If you’re gonna do RP shopping, you gotta establish before the session that’s gonna be what’s happening so everyone can come up with ways to interact with the scenario.
You also absolutely have to (looking at you in particular, 5e) establish availabilities and exact prices beforehand. The back and forth of “how much does X cost -> I can’t afford that” is the biggest waste of time when shopping.
I like to make little cards for my shops with the items on it so I can just hand them out whenever one person goes to a shop
You also absolutely have to (looking at you in particular, 5e) establish availabilities and exact prices beforehand.
PF2E’s built in tables ftw!
Genuinely love to break up a combat/dungeon-crawl heavy game with some light-hearted day-in-the-life-of gameplay once in a while. Having the DM describe the lazy cat stretched across the alchemist’s countertop, while some mischievious pickpocket tries to nick the rogue’s enchanted dagger and the knight errant helps an elderly woman cross the street can add a lot of color to a very number-crunchy game. Picking through a flea market of random niche nebulously useful magic items, while a merchant drops hints about the next sidequest, gives you a real adventurer’s vibe.
Genuinely hate having long, drawn out arguments over whether the shopkeep would have the principle material component for my most import spells or basic equipment (there’s no bat guano, one swayback horse, and only sixteen arrows in a fantasy city of 50,000 people? god damn, dude). Or digging through spreadsheets to figure out how many javelins the local economy can absorb. Or bickering over whether the Charm Person spell gets us in fight with town guards. Genuinely do not want anyone consulting a series of random charts and tables to determine why we can’t get a full night’s rest in the town’s nicest inn.
Please just make this a fun story to enjoy and not a pedantic fight over the future prospective mathematical efficiency of my stat block in the next combat.
Or digging through spreadsheets to figure out how many javelins the local economy can absorb.
I actually love this kind of discussion but generally it sparks up because of some javelin-related scheme someone has.
“Wait… All of these hobgoblins have javelins!? This is a market opportunity!”
Have you really played D&D until you set up a market stall in the middle of town and tried to convince the DM corpsing as a peasant to buy your exotic, all-organic, dungeon-harvested goods?
I had a game where done other players tried to pull the “shopping episode” stuff twice before I had to put my foot down.
We hadn’t even gone on our first quest yet. We had no Gold to buy anything.
Meanwhile in my games PCs regularly never buy or upgrade equipment because nobody wants to waste time in session (good!) but also refuse to just do stuff through discord during the rest of the week (bad!).
When I switched from Roll20 to Foundry I discovered my players hadn’t been recording half the loot I gave them and barely had level 5 equipment at level 10. I had to replace the next pile of loot with 120,000gp worth of character specific magic items to get them appropriately equipped.
You should try the item piles module for foundry if you haven’t checked it out yet, it shows you in the chat if they’re taking items and gold and you don’t have to finagle around with manually giving them items
That was back when I was on Pathfinder, I’m on PF2e now so merchants and chests are included in the system by default.
I have several shops designed and NPC staffed in the characters home town. They seem allergic to selling or buying though
Well it’s roleplay isn’t it?
If one person is dominating the game that much, that’s not a good thing.
Imagine not getting to roleplay shopping because you’re a wizard and spent all your money on scribing spells. Imagine thinking that keeps you from roleplaying during anyone else’s shopping, assuming that you are also present for the shopping instead of doing something else.
I can’t exactly talk though, last session in Curse of Strahd, my character basically turned the session into a heist because he had the best Stealth score and there wasn’t enough Invisibility spell for the rest of the party. It’s a CoS game, being seen by half the encounters is basically a TPK in and of itself. But he was able to turn what was supposed to be a scouting mission into a successful rescue and robbery, so it was kind of worth it.
All good jazz musicians and role players know, its not about the notes you play, but the ones you don’t.
Edit: After watching HBomberguy’s plagerism video, I feel compelled to mention that this is a butchered Miles Davis quote. Borrowed from “Biopic Of The Cool: Don Cheadle Channels A Jazz Legend In ‘Miles Ahead’” by Amy Nicholson, www.mtv.com. March 30, 2016.
Thanks, bleeding gums Murphy!
If it’s a common item with a listed price, and you’re in a city big enough to reasonably have that item in stock, just do your shopping “offline”. Sometimes I even include a low-level Forge cleric in small towns so the party could do their sub-100gp item shopping. (In that case the cleric charges an extra 10% donation for the Forgetemple, which they will use to feed orphans, create farming equipment, etc…)
Yup this is how we do it, don’t count anything lower than gp either. Game time passes but not real time, and if you bargain you make corresponding roles, DM can decide if you get advantage or disadvantage depending on the context.
By chance I ran across a relevant video earlier today. Shopping should be fun! https://youtu.be/5kRLCKH6bA8?si=4E8KEGQhfJv8f8jZ
This is why I don’t like RP. It’s abused by people who have my least favorite personality type. And you can’t tell them to stop, because someone else in the game is their friend and thinks it’s cool.
Hey, not being judgmental, just curious. Are the games you enjoy more almost entirely combat? Or do you just skip roleplaying stuff like shopping? What would your ideal split be?
My first game I participated in (it ran for several years, with a bit of a ship of theseus situation, by the time it ended the GM and I were the only original ones left) was basically entirely combat. It was a super drag, but that was half 4e’s fault. Tbh it wasn’t good after we swapped to 5e but it was better. I still had fun because, you know, spending time with friends, but I really didn’t enjoy it that much. I started playing with another group of friends and it was almost exactly opposite, almost entirely RP with very little combat for the most part, except for the occasional dungeon delve or something along those lines where it would be mostly combat for several sessions. I really loved that game and it really opened my eyes to how much fun the game could actually be. It’s also really group/dm dependent though.
That game ended, and we’re doing a new one with the same group, but one of the players is now co-dming, intending to do more of the combat while the original dm does more of the roleplay (splitting planning, equally active during sessions). We’re only a couple sessions in but it’s working out really well so far
Tl;dr I’m a crotchety old fuck and I have a different idea of fun from some people; I like rolling dice.
I like a little bit of RP. Like there’s a quest giver in a tavern and he says there’s a monster in the forest, and you go there and you meet a witch, and she tells you about a curse, and then you go to the forest and use the curse knowledge to slay the monster. Traditional 1980s on-rails D&D shit.
The most important thing to me is that my character sheet and decisions determine what happens in the game, not my own personal charisma or rhetorical prowess. I don’t need to be an expert in fencing to stab a guard, or an expert in ninjutsu to sneak across a courtyard. Likewise, I shouldn’t have to be a master orator in order to convince some dude to tell me where he saw the monster. Let me just say I do that, and roll for it. And if other players get to talk their way out of shit, that makes me feel bad. Like you didn’t have to roll? Fuck you.
Also what I despise is when the game devolves into any one of the following very common tropes:
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You meet some NPC and one of the players just wants to talk with them forever about lore and story and shit. It doesn’t matter. She’s there to give you a McMuffin. Get the scroll of water purification or whatever! It’s fine if you have to do a bit of RP to get there, but the objective is not to learn about her grandchildren and their pet toad.
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Shopping, as mentioned in the OP. It is a huge waste of time. Just say “I go to the store and buy 3 healing potions” and you can look up how much they cost in the DMG or wherever. If the DM thinks you’ll learn something important while shopping, they’ll say “when you enter the store, a busty lizard woman winks at you with her second pair of eyelids. Roll perception”. “8”. “You notice she’s not wearing any underwear, but you don’t see any reason to be suspicious”.
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Combat is cool, and it’s like 60% of the character I made. It’s the most cooperative part of the game, and I think it’s fun.
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People who do voices drive me fucking insane, no, I don’t care if you listen to some podcast where people do that. It’s grating. This is a party preference thing and I know some people think it’s fun. I just don’t.
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The party splits up in a city and does different things. Oh great now the DM is going to be sidetracked by Glarfblarg’s lost eyebrow tweezers, and 2 or 3 people are just going to sit there watching other people play the game they showed up to play.
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This is a player problem, but “my character is so unique and important, please give us a side quest relating to my own personal tragic backstory”. No. Fuck off with that shit. If the DM decides to work that into the plot in a way that’s fun for everyone, WITHOUT BEING ASKED OR NAGGED, great. But if a player is insistent and tries to railroad the campaign into something narcissistic, fuck that.
So yeah I think RP is generally bad in anything above low doses. But that’s my personal preference and I think other people are free to enjoy it. I suspect people who got into the hobby more recently like RP more than others, because apparently podcasts exist and there are podcast people who make it fun to listen to, I don’t really know. But BACK IN MY DAY there was a necromancer in a cave beneath a gnarled tree, and he’s been stealing children from the village, and you have to go down there and kill him and his army of zombie babies. And no you can’t talk him out of it and make him good.
It sounds like you need to force more discussion in session 0 talks (or earlier). Do you want an RP-light, fairly linear game? Great! You’re not alone. But everyone at your table needs to agree to that, or at least one of you is not having a good time.
I like a good hack and slash dungeon crawl. I also like RP heavy games. But those are two very different games, and it’s good to have consistency within whatever game you’re playing.
I found this post by sorting by ALL and I’ve never done any role playing games. But I wanted to thank you for a great comment to read and an A+ old man rant. Upvoted from a fellow crotchety old fuck.
Absolutely nothing wrong with games like that! I feel you on player vs character charisma, and in backstory hooks and the like. Our DM really likes to hook our backstories into the game, and I frustrate him a little sometimes by usually keeping my background simple. Done right, the backstory hooks into current events, so it’s not a “why are we doing this instead of the main quest” deal. Some of my favorite game memories are of conversations amongst the party characters dicussing what’s going on with those hooks and helping the related character through it. I think it’s really good for me though because our players are really good. We make sure that everyone gets involved, or if someone’s not feeling it tonight we can steer more clear of them. We’re not afraid to hand waive unimportant things, especially if/when the party gets split up. Everyone’s really working together to make sure everyone’s having a good time, and I feel like that’s not as common as it should be.
Nothing against more strategy and combat focused games though! The teamwork is really what makes combat come alive in my opinion, and there’s nothing more satisfying than a well laid plan coming together (except maybe everything going wrong and pulling it off anyways)
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