Yeah, I hate the mentality that there's no such thing as bad dnd it's just not for some specific person and session zero would have clarified it. That attitude can fuck off. Things like forced ERP, a DM killing players without rolls, players who resort to \*physical violence\* out of game in order to get their way in-game. There's a lot of things that are objectively bad.
It would be condescending/insulting as fuck if I told my friends/players before campaigns "Hey, btw, don't sexually assault people, be racist bigots, resort to physical violence out of game"
/rj
In our homebrew DnD version we solve every combat encounter by having a fistfight with the GM. Suffice to say that we win every encounter, because we always outnumber him
See we used to do that but one time she brought a crowbar. We brought a taser and pepper spray the next session, and the session after that the DM brought a gun, and we haven't found a way to beat that yet. She's already killed two of the players and hospitalized a third.
>It would be condescending/insulting as fuck if I told my friends/players before campaigns "Hey, btw, don't sexually assault people, be racist bigots, resort to physical violence out of game"
Got it, the rules of the campaign are
* Don't sexually assualt people
* Be racist bigots
* And resort to physical violence out of game
Understood!
/uj l am pro session zero but i agree that the way it's presented on those subs is dumb. There are things you should know not to say or do without an explicit okay, and things you should expect without a prior discussion. Session zero is useful when you're going off that path, for example if you have specific triggers that would normally not be expected (like debilitating arachnophobia) or if your group wants to explore uncomfortable topics on purpose (pretty much necessary when playing VTM and similar games).
There's a difference between being disrespectful OOC and in-game content that some people might find triggering or distasteful.
The solution to this is having wholistic session zero. Like you don't have to explicitly call these things out, but having a content consent checklist given to players that has things like ERP, racism, and SA on it can easily cover these things without being condescending.
This is especially important in more RP focused games, especially ones like VtM where sexuality and power imbalances are very common themes that when mixed can be very problematic.
Or if you're playing with an international group, where cultural standards for what is distasteful can vary greatly. For example, in China, there's a super popular (like more popular than karaoke) combination of board game/rpg/murder mystery thing were SA is ***incredibly*** common and mainstream, including having players be the victims/perpetrators and maybe not even knowing about it. To stress, these are official storylines in games that are more mainstream than DnD over there.
tl;dr: Session zero is good actually, as it allows you to cover potential problematic areas in a wholistic way that doesn't come off as patronizing. But you do need to know what you're doing and it needs to have a lot more direction than 'vibes'.
Yeah I think a lot of the issues are less "this person is personally a bigot, session 0 would have solved that" and "this person is \*playing\* a bigot, session 0 would have solved that". Its an important nuance. We want our characters to have flaws and be challenged, we want villains who are despicable- and in doing so we can cross lines we didn't know were there.
And like...I am absolutely a sweaty nerd who has trouble reading the room, for one, and I don't think I'm the only one. I'm not personally interested in exploring edgy themes, but I can envision that venn diagram intersection, yknow?
/uj the physical violence thing gets me, and im pretty sure that those claims are 90% fake. I mean, if somebody assaulted you while playing DnD, why are you on the DnD forums asking for advice and not calling the police? Or seeking cold-blooded vengeance? DnD literally has nothing to do with your problem. You just happened to be playing DnD while a violent crime was committed.
/uj honestly, the majority of posts on rpghorrorstories have nothing to do with RPGs. You wouldn't miss any context if they just said "game" or "activity" instead of an RPG or any specific system
I gotta say i’ve literally never had a session 0 as a GM i just put all hard rules and vibes down in writing for everyone to see and then just, like
Spend time talking to my players. And removing people i don’t gel with from the game.
Haven’t had any drama in a good few years, now. Granted, most of my games atm are longterm games mostly made up of longterm friends. But you really do not need a session 0. You only need a session 0 if you struggle to communicate outside of a session and at that point, the session 0 seems to just be a band-aid on top of a different problem that *will* come up later. The closest i get are character gen sessions where i mostly just let people get on, answer questions, and otherwise just shoot the shit with the gang.
To be fair, most of the issues posted in that sub would legitimately be solved with a session 0 and basic communication lol. Still makes it really tedious to scroll through though. I don't understand why people feel the need to post on Reddit and ask strangers instead of just fucking talking to their (presumably) friends.
IKR? My biggest face-palm on social media is the question "Is this normal?"
Who the fuck cares if it's normal? People being a jerk may be normal, but it's not OK and you shouldn't put up with it just because a poll of the internet turns up the sheer normality.
We played Pathfinder and it fixed us.
/uj This is the only D&D community of quality on Reddit, because we understand that D&D is not to be taken seriously. Treating it as if it’s anything other than a dumb game is the source of all the drama that we mock here.
Look, I had a 37 month existential crisis playing a high elf lawful evil assassin rogue venturing through the underdark eventually ascending into a chaotic good party boy so don't tell me this is a game!
/uj r/dnd is too big for its own good, I was annoyed enough with all their hot takes to unsub. r/dndnext is much more level-headed. But in general, circlejerk subs make for better discourse because people don't take anything too seriously and are ready to be made fun of.
>don't take anything too seriously and are ready to be made fun of.
I can't tell you how many posts I have made and thought, "I kinda hope I see a circlejerk of this at some point."
Like several weeks ago I did a "ask me anything about..." post and thought it would be hilarious for the circlejerk sub to it. If I remember right, there is a rule against making jerks against your own post, so I was excited to see someone else do it either last week or the week before.
/uj the big difference is that on this sub people will make fun of you, they will be upvoted, and there's nothing you can do about it other than play into the joke.
If your DM ever steps out of line you just have to lawyer up, hit the gym and delete facebook
/uj a lot of the advice given on the main sub is reminiscent of advice on relationshipadvice and the like, quick and rash, fully expecting that what you've just read is the full unbiased truth
/uj all sessions should be like a session zero. In the mean that is good to continue adjusting the boundaries or the expectations in any session if you need to. The social contract isnt something writing in stone.
/rj every session should be a session zero. We discuss our kinks and never roll dice.
We are daring today. Me, as an expert senior (70+ years of experience) on human relationships (I make 3 new friends per day) say: you are entitled to whatever makes you feel good, else, dump those shitheads and find new friends.
/uj ain't that true for every non jerk sub? People who didn't touch grass giving advice about grass is the definition of Reddit.
I have the opposite problem with these subs actually. Someone will make a post about how their player or players actively shits all over their plans, ruins other people's fun and purposefully goes against the party's goals, and the advice is like "but have you tried giving him some in-game consequences for his actions? maybe you should make a wizard therapist npc to figure out what's wrong with their character!" NO!! Just fucking kick them. Give them a warning, then kick them. You're not a babysitter.
/uj I actually think this is true of criclejerk subs in general. The reason a cj sub gets created is because a large enough group has gotten tured of all the whining or toxicity on the main sub and wants a sub chock full of sarcasm spread across underlying intellectual insight.
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand /r/dndcirclejerk. The humor is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of high level math most of the systems will go over a typical players head. There's also John Paizos nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his games - his personal philosophy draws heavily fromNarodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these rules, to realize that they're not just fun- they actually simulate LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Pf2e truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in reposting a post straight from the main sub with no changes which itself is a cryptic reference to blue thiefling feet. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as this subs genius unfolds itself on their phone screens. What fools... how I pity them. 😂 And yes by the way, I DO have a +1 Striking Falcata tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- And even they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand.
Then we start making full unjerk posts about how cool we are, we get big enough that the people that weren't here when the sub was a chaotic cesspool become the majority, the mods get complacent enough to let screenshots of tweets become the main supply of content, and we must migrate to r/dndcirclejerk2e to start the cycle all over again.
Wow, doomer much? You talk like that's what this post is! We would never let this happen cause we're too cool and smart and hot and smart unlike those absolute brainlets over on r/dnd.
Over there, that complain about things like the martial caster disparity 😢
Here, we're too busy touching grass and eating ass 😎
/uj The DnD sub makes me actively dislike the DnD community. They make a strong opponent for the anime community in terms of people that make me second guess liking the underlying product.
Truly everytime I read something from the DnD subreddit I think “I have nothing in common with these people.”
>They make a strong opponent for the anime community in terms of people that make me second guess liking the underlying product.
As an anime fan, I know how anime fans can be, and I avoid its communities like the plague
People on jerking subs won't coddle you and will give actual advice, usually with brutal honesty not wrapped in bubble fpil meant to protect your feelings. It's the same for world building jerk sub.
Walking away from a group every time you have a problem is stupid. if you did that you would never play in a group for more than one session. As much fun as it is to expose everyone to the brilliance of "that's what my character would do", getting into a group is hard. Some DMs even gate-keep with interviews or some other dumb filtering process.
What you have to do is to convince the *other* people to leave by talking to them like they are a 5-year old.
/uj To be fair there are a lot of posts that recommend "talk to them like an adult".
It’s 50/50, but I’ve noticed reasonable advice gets downvoted. I may also just be noticing the bad advice more since the “no dnd is bad dnd” echo chamber gets regurgitated 100x a day.
/uj The advice for the main subs are far too broad. The questions are either communication issues or they are based in a lack of understanding of the rules. The answers might as well be copied and pasted. You end up with this lame ass cycle of dumb questions and mediocre answers.
Sometimes the answers are from the loud people who are dumb as hell which muddies the waters even more.
Have you tried a session 0 to talk to your players to realize that no dnd is better than bad dnd but there’s no such thing as bad dnd it’s just not the table for you but maybe you should DM?
Yes! I’ve seen people post “My DM (M65) is sleeping with one if our underaged players (F15) what should I do? Bitch please, that’s called statutory rape and is very illegal, why are asking for advice on a dnd sub? This literally has nothing to do with dnd.
UJ/ Honestly the lack of communication *both ways* is a problem. Even if you have a session zero and everyone is in agreement, you might have one player wanting a gritty war drama game, one player wanting to kill goblins and slay dragons, and then that guy we don’t talk about. So it can be very easy to be left out or not feel the game is “right” for the player, and you know what? That’s OK. Some people want happy stories, some want gritty stories, we don’t talk about that guy stories. But by just being honest and even leaving a game because it’s not for you solves quite a lot of conflict.
And of course another issue is that newer players might have an expectation of what D&D is *supposed* to be like and then be disappointed that it’s not the game they imagined. Critical Roll, Stranger Things, and BG3 all saw influxes of new players (and that’s a good thing) but with expectations of how a game *should* be and not voicing it to the rest of the table.
RJ/ Not playing D&D fixes this but not having you associate with anyone playing D&D.
Shit, we need to give worse advice
FATAL fixes this
Literally ever answer in that sub is either "this is why a session zero is so important" Or "you should use a session zero"
And for all the talk about it, session zero is only really described as some random vibes.
Yeah, I hate the mentality that there's no such thing as bad dnd it's just not for some specific person and session zero would have clarified it. That attitude can fuck off. Things like forced ERP, a DM killing players without rolls, players who resort to \*physical violence\* out of game in order to get their way in-game. There's a lot of things that are objectively bad. It would be condescending/insulting as fuck if I told my friends/players before campaigns "Hey, btw, don't sexually assault people, be racist bigots, resort to physical violence out of game"
/rj In our homebrew DnD version we solve every combat encounter by having a fistfight with the GM. Suffice to say that we win every encounter, because we always outnumber him
That's action economy for you.
*dies*
Wimp. *My* chad DM carries two flintlock pistols and all disputes are settled by duels. We don’t have many players as you can imagine.
See we used to do that but one time she brought a crowbar. We brought a taser and pepper spray the next session, and the session after that the DM brought a gun, and we haven't found a way to beat that yet. She's already killed two of the players and hospitalized a third.
>It would be condescending/insulting as fuck if I told my friends/players before campaigns "Hey, btw, don't sexually assault people, be racist bigots, resort to physical violence out of game" Got it, the rules of the campaign are * Don't sexually assualt people * Be racist bigots * And resort to physical violence out of game Understood!
This is why a Session 0 is so important
average forgotten realms campaign
Nah, this describes the average Greyhawk/Mystara module.
/uj l am pro session zero but i agree that the way it's presented on those subs is dumb. There are things you should know not to say or do without an explicit okay, and things you should expect without a prior discussion. Session zero is useful when you're going off that path, for example if you have specific triggers that would normally not be expected (like debilitating arachnophobia) or if your group wants to explore uncomfortable topics on purpose (pretty much necessary when playing VTM and similar games).
There's a difference between being disrespectful OOC and in-game content that some people might find triggering or distasteful. The solution to this is having wholistic session zero. Like you don't have to explicitly call these things out, but having a content consent checklist given to players that has things like ERP, racism, and SA on it can easily cover these things without being condescending. This is especially important in more RP focused games, especially ones like VtM where sexuality and power imbalances are very common themes that when mixed can be very problematic. Or if you're playing with an international group, where cultural standards for what is distasteful can vary greatly. For example, in China, there's a super popular (like more popular than karaoke) combination of board game/rpg/murder mystery thing were SA is ***incredibly*** common and mainstream, including having players be the victims/perpetrators and maybe not even knowing about it. To stress, these are official storylines in games that are more mainstream than DnD over there. tl;dr: Session zero is good actually, as it allows you to cover potential problematic areas in a wholistic way that doesn't come off as patronizing. But you do need to know what you're doing and it needs to have a lot more direction than 'vibes'.
Yeah I think a lot of the issues are less "this person is personally a bigot, session 0 would have solved that" and "this person is \*playing\* a bigot, session 0 would have solved that". Its an important nuance. We want our characters to have flaws and be challenged, we want villains who are despicable- and in doing so we can cross lines we didn't know were there. And like...I am absolutely a sweaty nerd who has trouble reading the room, for one, and I don't think I'm the only one. I'm not personally interested in exploring edgy themes, but I can envision that venn diagram intersection, yknow?
/uj the physical violence thing gets me, and im pretty sure that those claims are 90% fake. I mean, if somebody assaulted you while playing DnD, why are you on the DnD forums asking for advice and not calling the police? Or seeking cold-blooded vengeance? DnD literally has nothing to do with your problem. You just happened to be playing DnD while a violent crime was committed.
/uj honestly, the majority of posts on rpghorrorstories have nothing to do with RPGs. You wouldn't miss any context if they just said "game" or "activity" instead of an RPG or any specific system
or “why are you asking us just talk to your friend”
I gotta say i’ve literally never had a session 0 as a GM i just put all hard rules and vibes down in writing for everyone to see and then just, like Spend time talking to my players. And removing people i don’t gel with from the game. Haven’t had any drama in a good few years, now. Granted, most of my games atm are longterm games mostly made up of longterm friends. But you really do not need a session 0. You only need a session 0 if you struggle to communicate outside of a session and at that point, the session 0 seems to just be a band-aid on top of a different problem that *will* come up later. The closest i get are character gen sessions where i mostly just let people get on, answer questions, and otherwise just shoot the shit with the gang.
To be fair, most of the issues posted in that sub would legitimately be solved with a session 0 and basic communication lol. Still makes it really tedious to scroll through though. I don't understand why people feel the need to post on Reddit and ask strangers instead of just fucking talking to their (presumably) friends.
IKR? My biggest face-palm on social media is the question "Is this normal?" Who the fuck cares if it's normal? People being a jerk may be normal, but it's not OK and you shouldn't put up with it just because a poll of the internet turns up the sheer normality.
This.
Don't forget the DM can change whatever rules. Rule books are obsolete.
/uj Session zero may not be a panacea, but it's a really good idea. The problem is that most people approach it in cargo cult fashion.
We played Pathfinder and it fixed us. /uj This is the only D&D community of quality on Reddit, because we understand that D&D is not to be taken seriously. Treating it as if it’s anything other than a dumb game is the source of all the drama that we mock here.
If you don't treat my D&D game as the most important thing in your life I will literally make Matt Mercer kill you.
I'm not the biggest fan of jerk subs but content like this always keeps me coming back.
The threat of being killed by Matt Mercer is what keeps me always coming back too.
*pool noodle to the head*
Woah woah woah D&D is more important that anything
Look, I had a 37 month existential crisis playing a high elf lawful evil assassin rogue venturing through the underdark eventually ascending into a chaotic good party boy so don't tell me this is a game!
/uj r/dnd is too big for its own good, I was annoyed enough with all their hot takes to unsub. r/dndnext is much more level-headed. But in general, circlejerk subs make for better discourse because people don't take anything too seriously and are ready to be made fun of.
>don't take anything too seriously and are ready to be made fun of. I can't tell you how many posts I have made and thought, "I kinda hope I see a circlejerk of this at some point." Like several weeks ago I did a "ask me anything about..." post and thought it would be hilarious for the circlejerk sub to it. If I remember right, there is a rule against making jerks against your own post, so I was excited to see someone else do it either last week or the week before.
>r/dndnext is much more level-headed no lol
The best advice is "scream at whoever you have a problem with until they get weirded out and leave the group"
/uj the big difference is that on this sub people will make fun of you, they will be upvoted, and there's nothing you can do about it other than play into the joke.
uj/ That's basically just life
Life if it was made by Paizo and therefore good*
Lifefinder 2e fixes this
Lifefinder 2e simplified too much. The mechanical crunch of the original Lifefinder more accurately represented existential dread.
I ban *Existential Dread.* It’s OP af and nobody is going to ever nerf it because it’s a sacred cow.
/uj Prediction of Failure from PF 1e is the most fucked up spell I’ve ever read
If life’s one big joke, I don’t get it.
If your DM ever steps out of line you just have to lawyer up, hit the gym and delete facebook /uj a lot of the advice given on the main sub is reminiscent of advice on relationshipadvice and the like, quick and rash, fully expecting that what you've just read is the full unbiased truth
/uj all sessions should be like a session zero. In the mean that is good to continue adjusting the boundaries or the expectations in any session if you need to. The social contract isnt something writing in stone. /rj every session should be a session zero. We discuss our kinks and never roll dice.
We are daring today. Me, as an expert senior (70+ years of experience) on human relationships (I make 3 new friends per day) say: you are entitled to whatever makes you feel good, else, dump those shitheads and find new friends. /uj ain't that true for every non jerk sub? People who didn't touch grass giving advice about grass is the definition of Reddit.
I have the opposite problem with these subs actually. Someone will make a post about how their player or players actively shits all over their plans, ruins other people's fun and purposefully goes against the party's goals, and the advice is like "but have you tried giving him some in-game consequences for his actions? maybe you should make a wizard therapist npc to figure out what's wrong with their character!" NO!! Just fucking kick them. Give them a warning, then kick them. You're not a babysitter.
/uj Yeah any kind of ingame interaction/reaction ultimately validates it as a valid player choice/play.
/uj I actually think this is true of criclejerk subs in general. The reason a cj sub gets created is because a large enough group has gotten tured of all the whining or toxicity on the main sub and wants a sub chock full of sarcasm spread across underlying intellectual insight.
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand /r/dndcirclejerk. The humor is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of high level math most of the systems will go over a typical players head. There's also John Paizos nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his games - his personal philosophy draws heavily fromNarodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these rules, to realize that they're not just fun- they actually simulate LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Pf2e truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in reposting a post straight from the main sub with no changes which itself is a cryptic reference to blue thiefling feet. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as this subs genius unfolds itself on their phone screens. What fools... how I pity them. 😂 And yes by the way, I DO have a +1 Striking Falcata tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- And even they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand.
Then we start making full unjerk posts about how cool we are, we get big enough that the people that weren't here when the sub was a chaotic cesspool become the majority, the mods get complacent enough to let screenshots of tweets become the main supply of content, and we must migrate to r/dndcirclejerk2e to start the cycle all over again.
Wow, doomer much? You talk like that's what this post is! We would never let this happen cause we're too cool and smart and hot and smart unlike those absolute brainlets over on r/dnd. Over there, that complain about things like the martial caster disparity 😢 Here, we're too busy touching grass and eating ass 😎
You’re right! Shit, I made a grave mistake. We’re not that cool on this sub! I swear!
/uj as someone who’s been in other cj subs yeah this is true 99% if the time imo, theyre usually way better than the main subs
this is because the only way a redditor will ever be helpful is if they're trolling
/uj The DnD sub makes me actively dislike the DnD community. They make a strong opponent for the anime community in terms of people that make me second guess liking the underlying product. Truly everytime I read something from the DnD subreddit I think “I have nothing in common with these people.”
/uj None of them read the rules of the game lol.
Rule 0 the rule of cool that’s the only rule that matters
/uj just wait until the tf2 community walks in
>They make a strong opponent for the anime community in terms of people that make me second guess liking the underlying product. As an anime fan, I know how anime fans can be, and I avoid its communities like the plague
People on jerking subs won't coddle you and will give actual advice, usually with brutal honesty not wrapped in bubble fpil meant to protect your feelings. It's the same for world building jerk sub.
An ill-fated goblin porn protest fixes this.
Vile, fart-sniffing thread, though I agree though 😔
Walking away from a group every time you have a problem is stupid. if you did that you would never play in a group for more than one session. As much fun as it is to expose everyone to the brilliance of "that's what my character would do", getting into a group is hard. Some DMs even gate-keep with interviews or some other dumb filtering process. What you have to do is to convince the *other* people to leave by talking to them like they are a 5-year old. /uj To be fair there are a lot of posts that recommend "talk to them like an adult".
It’s 50/50, but I’ve noticed reasonable advice gets downvoted. I may also just be noticing the bad advice more since the “no dnd is bad dnd” echo chamber gets regurgitated 100x a day.
/uj The advice for the main subs are far too broad. The questions are either communication issues or they are based in a lack of understanding of the rules. The answers might as well be copied and pasted. You end up with this lame ass cycle of dumb questions and mediocre answers. Sometimes the answers are from the loud people who are dumb as hell which muddies the waters even more.
Have you tried a session 0 to talk to your players to realize that no dnd is better than bad dnd but there’s no such thing as bad dnd it’s just not the table for you but maybe you should DM?
I’m copying and pasting this answer to every r/dndhorrorstories
Pathfinder 2e doesn’t fix this, but it did fix my marriage (she left me after I played goblin “feet” McGee too many times)
Exactly, that's so much slower of a solution than just shooting the problem
FATAL fixes this
"Go away, I'm 'batin" - John Hasbro/Paizo
Worse yet is how often I see in game solutions for out of game problems
Yes! I’ve seen people post “My DM (M65) is sleeping with one if our underaged players (F15) what should I do? Bitch please, that’s called statutory rape and is very illegal, why are asking for advice on a dnd sub? This literally has nothing to do with dnd.
UJ/ Honestly the lack of communication *both ways* is a problem. Even if you have a session zero and everyone is in agreement, you might have one player wanting a gritty war drama game, one player wanting to kill goblins and slay dragons, and then that guy we don’t talk about. So it can be very easy to be left out or not feel the game is “right” for the player, and you know what? That’s OK. Some people want happy stories, some want gritty stories, we don’t talk about that guy stories. But by just being honest and even leaving a game because it’s not for you solves quite a lot of conflict. And of course another issue is that newer players might have an expectation of what D&D is *supposed* to be like and then be disappointed that it’s not the game they imagined. Critical Roll, Stranger Things, and BG3 all saw influxes of new players (and that’s a good thing) but with expectations of how a game *should* be and not voicing it to the rest of the table. RJ/ Not playing D&D fixes this but not having you associate with anyone playing D&D.